I hastened, of course, to share with my friends my impressions of the
International Workingmen’s Association and my books. At the university
I had no friends, properly speaking; I was older than most of my
companions, and among young people a difference of a few years is
always an obstacle to complete comradeship. It must also be said that
since the new rules of admission to the university had been introduced
in 1861, the best of the young men, the most developed and the most
independent in thought, were sifted out of the gymnasia, and did not
gain admittance to the university. Consequently, the majority of my
comrades were good boys, laborious, but taking no interest in anything
besides the examinations.
I was friendly with only one of them: let me call him Dmítri Kelnitz.
He was born in South Russia, and, although his name was German, he
hardly spoke German, and his face was South Russian rather than
Teutonic. He was very intelligent, had read a great deal, and had
seriously thought over what he had read. He loved science and deeply
respected it, but, like many of us, he soon came to the conclusion that
to follow the career of a scientific man meant to join the camp of the
Philistines, and that there was plenty of other and more urgent work
that he could do. He attended the university lectures for two years,
and then abandoned them, giving himself entirely to social work. He
lived anyhow; I even doubt if he had a permanent lodging. Sometimes he
would come to me and ask, ‘Have you some paper?’ and, having taken
a supply of it, he would sit at the corner of a table for an hour or
two, diligently making a translation. The little that he earned in this
way was more than sufficient to satisfy all his limited wants. Then he
would hurry to a distant part of the town to see a comrade or to help
a needy friend; or he would cross St. Petersburg on foot, to a remote
suburb, in order to obtain free admission to a college for some boy in
whom the comrades were interested. He was undoubtedly a gifted man.
In Western Europe a man far less gifted would have worked his way to
a position of political or socialist leadership. No such thought ever
entered the brain of Kelnitz. To lead men was by no means his ambition,
and there was no work too insignificant for him to do. This trait,
however, was not distinctive of him alone; all those who had lived some
years in the students’ circles of those times were possessed of it to a
high degree.
Soon after my return Kelnitz invited me to join a circle which was
known among the youth as ‘the Circle of Tchaykóvsky.’ Under this name
it played an important part in the history of the social movement in
Russia, and under this name it will go down to history. ‘Its members,’
Kelnitz said to me, ‘have hitherto been mostly constitutionalists; but
they are excellent men, with minds open to any honest idea; they have
plenty of friends all over Russia, and you will see later on what you
can do.’ I already knew Tchaykóvsky and a few other members of this
circle. Tchaykóvsky had won my heart at our first meeting, and our
friendship has remained unshaken for twenty-seven years.
The beginning of this circle was a very small group of young men and
women--one of whom was Sophie Peróvskaya--who had united for purposes
of self-education and self-improvement. Tchaykóvsky was of their
number. In 1869 Necháieff had tried to start, amidst the youth imbued
with the above-mentioned desire of working amongst the people, a secret
revolutionary organization, and to secure this end he resorted to the
ways of old conspirators, without recoiling even before deceit when
he wanted to force his associates to follow his lead. Such methods
could have no success in Russia, and very soon his society broke down.
All the members were arrested, and some of the best and purest of
the Russian youth went to Siberia before they had done anything. The
circle of self-education of which I am speaking was constituted in
opposition to the methods of Necháieff. The few friends had judged,
quite correctly, that a morally developed individuality must be the
foundation of every organization, whatever political character it
may take afterward and whatever programme of action it may adopt in
the course of future events. This was why the circle of Tchaykóvsky,
gradually widening its programme, spread so extensively in Russia,
achieved such important results, and later on, when the ferocious
prosecutions of the government created a revolutionary struggle,
produced that remarkable set of men and women who fell in the terrible
contest they waged against autocracy.
At that time, however--that is, in 1872--the circle had nothing
revolutionary in it. If it had remained a mere circle of
self-improvement, it would soon have petrified like a monastery.
But the members found a suitable work. They began to spread good
books. They bought the works of Lassalle, Bervi (on the condition of
the labouring classes in Russia), Marx, Russian historical works,
and so on--whole editions--and distributed them among students in
the provinces. In a few years there was not a town of importance
in ‘thirty-eight provinces of the Russian Empire,’ to use official
language, where this circle did not have a group of comrades engaged
in the spreading of that sort of literature. Gradually, following the
general drift of the times, and stimulated by the news which came from
Western Europe about the rapid growth of the labour movement, the
circle became more and more a centre of socialistic propaganda among
the educated youth, and a natural intermediary between numbers of
provincial circles; and then, one day, the ice between students and
workers was broken, and direct relations were established with working
people at St. Petersburg and in some of the provinces. It was at that
juncture that I joined the circle, in the spring of 1872.
All secret societies are fiercely prosecuted in Russia, and the western
reader will perhaps expect from me a description of my initiation and
of the oath of allegiance which I took. I must disappoint him, because
there was nothing of the sort, and could not be; we should have been
the first to laugh at such ceremonies, and Kelnitz would not have
missed the opportunity of putting in one of his sarcastic remarks,
which would have killed any ritual. There was not even a statute. The
circle accepted as members only persons who were well known and had
been tested in various circumstances, and of whom it was felt that they
could be trusted absolutely. Before a new member was received, his
character was discussed with the frankness and seriousness which were
characteristic of the Nihilist. The slightest token of insincerity or
conceit would have barred the way to admission. The circle did not care
either to make a show of numbers, and had no tendency to concentrate
in its hands all the activity that was going on among the youth, or
to include in one organization the scores of different circles which
existed in the capitals and the provinces. With most of them friendly
relations were maintained; they were helped, and they helped us, when
necessity arose, but no assault was made on their autonomy.
The circle preferred to remain a closely united group of friends; and
never did I meet elsewhere such a collection of morally superior men
and women as the score of persons whose acquaintance I made at the
first meeting of the circle of Tchaykóvsky. I still feel proud of
having been received into that family.