I
In the middle of May 1862, a few weeks before our promotion, I was told
one day by the Captain to make up the final list of the regiments which
each of us intended to join. We had the choice of all the regiments of
the Guards, which we could enter with the first officer’s grade, and of
the Army with the third grade of lieutenant. I took a list of our form,
and went the round of my comrades. Everyone knew well the regiment
he was going to join, most of them already wearing in the garden the
officer’s cap of that regiment.
‘Her Majesty’s Cuirassiers,’ ‘The Body Guard Preobrazhénsky,’ ‘The
Horse Guards,’ were the replies which I inscribed in my list.
‘But you, Kropótkin? The artillery? The Cossacks?’ I was asked on all
sides. I could not stand these questions, and at last, asking a comrade
to complete the list, I went to my room to think once more over my
final decision.
That I should not enter a regiment of the Guard, and give my life to
parades and court balls, I had settled long before. My dream was to
enter the university--to study, to live the student’s life. That meant,
of course, to break entirely with my father, whose ambitions were quite
different, and to rely for my living upon what I might earn by means
of lessons. Thousands of Russian students live in that way, and such a
life did not frighten me in the least. But--how should I get over the
first steps in that life? In a few weeks I should have to leave the
school, to don my own clothes, to have my own lodging, and I saw no
possibility of providing even the little money which would be required
for the most modest start. Then, failing the university, I had been
often thinking of late that I could enter the Artillery Academy. That
would free me for two years from the drudgery of military service, and
by the side of the military sciences I could study mathematics and
physics. But the wind of reaction was blowing, and the officers of the
academies had been treated during the previous winter as if they were
schoolboys; in two academies they had revolted, and in one of them they
had left in a body.
My thoughts turned more and more toward Siberia. The Amúr region had
recently been annexed by Russia; I had read all about that Mississippi
of the East, the mountains it pierces, the sub-tropical vegetation of
its tributary, the Usurí, and my thoughts went further--to the tropical
regions which Humboldt had described, and to the great generalizations
of Ritter, which I delighted to read. Besides, I reasoned, there is
in Siberia an immense field for the application of the great reforms
which have been made or are coming: the workers must be few there, and
I shall find a field of action to my tastes. The worst would be that
I should have to separate from my brother Alexander; but he had been
compelled to leave the university of Moscow after the last disorders,
and in a year or two, I guessed (and guessed rightly), in one way
or another we should be together. There remained only the choice of
the regiment in the Amúr region. The Usurí attracted me most; but,
alas, there was on the Usurí only one regiment of infantry Cossacks.
A Cossack not on horseback--that was too bad for the boy that I still
was, and I settled upon ‘the mounted Cossacks of the Amúr.’
This I wrote on the list, to the great consternation of all my
comrades. ‘It is so far,’ they said, while my friend Daúroff, seizing
the Officers’ Handbook, read out of it, to the horror of all present:
‘Uniform, black, with a plain red collar without braids; fur bonnet
made of dog’s fur or any other fur; trousers, gray.’
‘Only look at that uniform!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bother the cap!--you can
wear one of wolf or bear fur; but think only of the trousers! Gray,
like a soldier of the Train!’ The consternation reached its climax
after that reading.