The two years that I worked with the circle of Tchaykóvsky, before I
was arrested, left a deep impression upon all my subsequent life and
thought. During those two years it was life under high pressure--that
exuberance of life when one feels at every moment the full throbbing of
all the fibres of the inner self, and when life is really worth living.
I was in a family of men and women so closely united by their common
object, and so broadly and delicately humane in their mutual relations,
that I cannot now recall a single moment of even temporary friction
marring the life of our circle. Those who have had any experience of
political agitation will appreciate the value of this statement.
Before abandoning entirely my scientific career, I considered
myself bound to finish the report of my journey to Finland for the
Geographical Society, as well as some other work that I had in hand
for the same society; and my new friends were the first to confirm me
in that decision. It would not be fair, they said, to do otherwise.
Consequently, I worked hard to finish my geological and geographical
books.
Meetings of our circle were frequent, and I never missed them. We used
to meet then in a suburban part of St. Petersburg, in a small house
of which Sophie Peróvskaya, under the assumed name and the fabricated
passport of an artisan’s wife, was the supposed tenant. She was born
of a very aristocratic family, and her father had been for some time
the military governor of St. Petersburg; but, with the approval of
her mother, who adored her, she had left her home to join a high
school, and with the three sisters Korníloff--daughters of a rich
manufacturer--she had founded that little circle of self-education
which later on became our circle. Now, in the capacity of an artisan’s
wife, in her cotton dress and men’s boots, her head covered with a
cotton kerchief, as she carried on her shoulders her two pails of
water from the Nevá, no one would have recognized in her the girl who
a few years before shone in one of the most fashionable drawing-rooms
of the capital. She was a general favourite, and every one of us,
on entering the house, had a specially friendly smile for her--even
when she, making a point of honour of keeping the house relatively
clean, quarrelled with us about the dirt which we, dressed in peasant
top-boots and sheepskins, brought in after walking the muddy streets
of the suburbs. She tried then to give to her girlish, innocent, and
very intelligent little face the most severe expression possible to it.
In her moral conceptions she was a ‘rigorist,’ but not in the least of
the sermon-preaching type. When she was dissatisfied with some one’s
conduct, she would cast a severe glance at him from beneath her brows;
but in that glance one saw her open-minded, generous nature, which
understood all that is human. On one point only she was inexorable. ‘A
women’s man,’ she once said, speaking of some one, and the expression
and the manner in which she said it, without interrupting her work, is
engraved for ever in my memory.
Peróvskaya was a ‘popularist’ to the very bottom of her heart, and
at the same time a revolutionist, a fighter of the truest steel. She
had no need to embellish the workers and the peasants with imaginary
virtues in order to love them and to work for them. She took them as
they were, and said to me once: ‘We have begun a great thing. Two
generations, perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be
done.’ None of the women of our circle would have given way before
the certainty of death on the scaffold. Each would have looked
death straight in the face. But none of them, at that stage of our
propaganda, thought of such a fate. Peróvskaya’s well-known portrait
is exceptionally good; it records so well her earnest courage, her
bright intelligence, and her loving nature. The letter she wrote to her
mother a few hours before she went to the scaffold is one of the best
expressions of a loving soul that a woman’s heart ever dictated.
The following incident will show what the other women of our circle
were. One night, Kupreyánoff and I went to Varvara B., to whom we had
to make an urgent communication. It was past midnight, but, seeing a
light in her window, we went upstairs. She sat in her tiny room at a
table copying a programme of our circle. We knew how resolute she was,
and the idea came to us to make one of those stupid jokes men sometimes
think funny. ‘B.,’ I said, ‘we come to fetch you: we are going to
try a rather mad attempt to liberate our friends from the fortress.’
She asked not one question. She quietly laid down her pen, rose from
her chair, and said only, ‘Let us go.’ She spoke in so simple, so
unaffected a voice that I felt at once how foolishly I had acted, and
told her the truth. She dropped back into her chair, with tears in her
eyes, and in a despairing voice asked: ‘It was only a joke? Why do you
make _such_ jokes?’ I fully realized then the cruelty of what I had
done.
* * * * *
Another general favourite in our circle was Serghéi Kravchínsky, who
became so well known, both in England and in the United States, under
the name of Stepniák. He was often called ‘the Baby,’ so unconcerned
was he about his own security: but his carelessness about himself was
merely the result of a complete absence of fear, which, after all, is
often the best policy for one who is hunted by the police. He soon
became well known for his propaganda in the circles of workers, under
his real Christian name of Serghéi, and consequently was very much
wanted by the police; notwithstanding that, he took no precautions
whatever to conceal himself, and I remember that one day he was
severely scolded at one of our meetings for what was described as a
gross imprudence. Being late for the meeting, as he often was, and
having a long distance to cover in order to reach our house, he,
dressed as a peasant in his sheepskin, ran the whole length of a great
main thoroughfare at full speed in the middle of the street. ‘How
could you do it?’ he was reproachfully asked. ‘You might have aroused
suspicion, and have been arrested as a common thief.’ But I wish that
everyone had been as cautious as he was in affairs where other people
could be compromised.
We made our first intimate acquaintance over Stanley’s book, ‘How
I Discovered Livingstone.’ One night our meeting had lasted till
twelve, and as we were about to leave, one of the Korníloffs entered
with a book in her hand, and asked who among us could undertake to
translate by the next morning at eight o’clock sixteen printed pages
of Stanley’s book. I looked at the size of the pages, and said that if
somebody would help me the work could be done during the night. Serghéi
volunteered, and by four o’clock the sixteen pages were done. We read
to each other our translations, one of us following the English text;
then we emptied a jar of Russian porridge which had been left on the
table for us, and went out together to return home. We became close
friends from that night.
I have always liked people capable of working, and doing their work
properly. So Serghéi’s translation and his capacity of working rapidly
had already influenced me in his favour. But when I came to know more
of him, I felt real love for his honest, frank nature, for his youthful
energy and good sense, for his superior intelligence, simplicity, and
truthfulness, and for his courage and tenacity. He had read and thought
a great deal, and upon the revolutionary character of the struggle
which we had undertaken it appeared we had similar views. He was ten
years younger than I was, and perhaps did not quite realize what a
hard contest the coming revolution would be. He told us later on, with
much humour, how he once worked among the peasants in the country.
‘One day,’ he said, ‘I was walking along the road with a comrade
when we were overtaken by a peasant in a sleigh. I began to tell the
peasant that he must not pay taxes, that the functionaries plunder the
people, and I tried to convince him by quotations from the Bible that
they must revolt. The peasant whipped up his horse, but we followed
rapidly; he made his horse trot, and we began to run behind him; all
the time I continued to talk to him about taxes and revolt. Finally he
made his horse gallop; but the animal was not worth much--an underfed
peasant pony--so my comrade and I did not fall behind, but kept up our
propaganda till we were quite out of breath.’
For some time Serghéi stayed in Kazán, and I had to correspond with
him. He always hated writing letters in cipher, so I proposed a means
of correspondence which had often been used before in conspiracies.
You write an ordinary letter about all sorts of things, but in this
letter it is only certain words--let us say, every fifth word--which
has a meaning. You write, for instance: ‘Excuse my hurried letter.
Come to-night to see me; to-morrow I shall go away to my sister. My
brother Nicholas feels worse; it was late to make an operation.’
Reading each fifth word, you find: ‘Come to-morrow to Nicholas, late.’
We had to write letters of six or seven pages to transmit one page
of information, and we had to cultivate our imagination in order to
fill the letters with all sorts of things by way of introducing the
words that were required. Serghéi, from whom it was impossible to
obtain a cipher letter, took to this kind of correspondence, and used
to send me letters containing stories with thrilling incidents and
dramatic endings. He said to me afterward that this correspondence
helped to develop his literary talent. When one has talent, everything
contributes to its development.
In January or February 1874 I was at Moscow, in one of the houses in
which I had spent my childhood. Early in the morning I was told that
a peasant desired to see me. I went out and found it was Serghéi, who
had just escaped from Tver. He was strongly built, and he, with another
ex-officer, Rogachóff, endowed with equal physical strength, went
travelling about the country as lumber sawyers. The work was very hard,
especially for inexperienced hands, but both of them liked it; and no
one would have thought to look for disguised officers in these two
strong sawyers. They wandered in this capacity for about a fortnight
without arousing suspicion, and made revolutionary propaganda right
and left without fear. Sometimes Serghéi, who knew the New Testament
almost by heart, spoke to the peasants as a religious preacher,
proving to them by quotations from the Bible that they ought to start
a revolution. Sometimes he formed his arguments of quotations from the
economists. The peasants listened to the two men as to real apostles,
took them from one house to another, and refused to be paid for food.
In a fortnight they had produced quite a stir in a number of villages.
Their fame was spreading far and wide. The peasants, young and old,
began to whisper to one another in the barns about the ‘delegates;’
they began to speak out more loudly than they usually did that the land
would soon be taken from the landlords, who would receive pensions from
the Tsar. The younger people became more aggressive toward the police
officers, saying: ‘Wait a little; our turn will come soon: you Herods
will not rule long now.’ But the fame of the sawyers reached the ears
of one of the police authorities, and they were arrested. An order was
given to take them to the next police official, ten miles away.
They were taken under the guard of several peasants, and on their
way had to pass through a village which was holding its festival.
‘Prisoners? All right! Come on here, my uncle,’ said the peasants, who
were all drinking in honour of the occasion. They were kept nearly the
whole day in that village, the peasants taking them from one house to
another, and treating them to home-made beer. The guards did not have
to be asked twice. They drank, and insisted that the prisoners should
drink too. ‘Happily,’ Serghéi said, ‘they gave us the beer in such
large wooden bowls, which were passed round, that I could put my mouth
to the rim of the bowl as if I were drinking, but no one could see how
much beer I had imbibed.’ The guards were all drunk toward night, and
preferred not to appear in this state before the police officer, so
they decided to stay in the village till morning. Serghéi kept talking
to them, and all listened to him, regretting that such a good man had
been caught. As they were going to sleep, a young peasant whispered to
Serghéi, ‘When I go to shut the gate I will leave it unbolted.’ Serghéi
and his comrade understood the hint, and as soon as all fell asleep
they went out into the street. They started at a fast pace, and at
five o’clock in the morning were twenty miles away from the village,
at a small railway station, where they took the first train, and went
to Moscow. Serghéi remained there, and later, when all of us at St.
Petersburg had been arrested, the Moscow circle, under his inspiration,
became the main centre of the agitation.
* * * * *
Here and there, small groups of propagandists had settled in towns and
villages in various capacities. Blacksmiths’ shops and small farms
had been started, and young men of the wealthier classes worked in
the shops or on the farms, to be in daily contact with the toiling
masses. At Moscow, a number of young girls, of rich families, who
had studied at the Zürich university and had started a separate
organization, went even so far as to enter cotton factories, where they
worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and lived in the factory
barracks the miserable life of the Russian factory girls. It was a
grand movement, in which, at the lowest estimate, from two to three
thousand persons took an active part, while twice or thrice as many
sympathizers and supporters helped the active vanguard in various ways.
With a good half of that army our St. Petersburg circle was in regular
correspondence--always, of course, in cipher.
The literature which could be published in Russia under a rigorous
censorship--the faintest hint of socialism being prohibited--was
soon found insufficient, and we started a printing office of our own
abroad. Pamphlets for the workers and the peasants had to be written,
and our small ‘literary committee,’ of which I was a member, had its
hands full of work. Serghéi wrote a couple of such pamphlets--one
in the Lamennais style, and another containing an exposition of
socialism in a fairy tale--and both had a wide circulation. The books
and pamphlets which were printed abroad were smuggled into Russia by
thousands, stored at certain spots, and sent out to the local circles,
which distributed them amongst the peasants and the workers. All this
required a vast organization as well as much travelling about, and a
colossal correspondence, particularly for protecting our helpers and
our bookstores from the police. We had special ciphers for different
provincial circles, and often, after six or seven hours had been passed
in discussing all details, the women, who did not trust to our accuracy
in the cipher correspondence, spent all the night in covering sheets of
paper with cabalistic figures and fractions.
The utmost cordiality always prevailed at our meetings. Chairmen and
all sorts of formalism are so utterly repugnant to the Russian mind
that we had none; and although our debates were sometimes extremely
hot, especially when ‘programme questions’ were under discussion, we
always managed very well without resorting to Western formalities. An
absolute sincerity, a general desire to settle the difficulties for the
best, and a frankly expressed contempt for all that in the least degree
approached theatrical affectation were quite sufficient. If anyone of
us had ventured to attempt oratorical effects by a speech, friendly
jokes would have shown him at once that speech-making was out of
place. Often we had to take our meals during these meetings, and they
invariably consisted of rye bread, with cucumbers, a bit of cheese, and
plenty of weak tea to quench the thirst. Not that money was lacking;
there was always enough, and yet there was never too much to cover
the steadily growing expenses for printing, transportation of books,
concealing friends wanted by the police, and starting new enterprises.
At St. Petersburg it was not long before we had wide acquaintance
amongst the workers. Serdukóff, a young man of splendid education, had
made a number of friends amongst the engineers, most of them employed
in a state factory of the artillery department, and he had organized
a circle of about thirty members, who used to meet for reading and
discussion. The engineers are pretty well paid at St. Petersburg, and
those who were not married were fairly well off. They soon became quite
familiar with the current radical and socialist literature--Buckle,
Lassalle, Mill, Draper, Spielhagen, were familiar names to them; and
in their aspect these engineers differed little from students. When
Kelnitz, Serghéi, and I joined the circle, we frequently visited their
group, and gave them informal lectures upon all sorts of things.
Our hopes, however, that these young men would grow into ardent
propagandists amidst less privileged classes of workers were not fully
realised. In a free country they would have been the habitual speakers
at public meetings; but, like the privileged workers of the watch trade
in Geneva, they treated the mass of the factory hands with a sort of
contempt, and were in no haste to become martyrs to the socialist
cause. It was only after they had been arrested and kept three or four
years in prison for having dared to _think_ as socialists, and had
sounded the full depth of Russian absolutism, that several of them
developed into ardent propagandists, chiefly of a political revolution.
* * * * *
My sympathies went especially toward the weavers and the workers in the
cotton factories. There are many thousands of them at St. Petersburg,
who work there during the winter, and return for the three summer
months to their native villages to cultivate the land. Half peasants
and half town workers, they had generally retained the social spirit of
the Russian villager. The movement spread like wildfire among them. We
had to restrain the zeal of our new friends; otherwise they would have
brought to our lodgings hundreds at a time, young and old. Most of them
lived in small associations, or _artéls_, ten or twelve persons hiring
a common apartment and taking their meals together, each one paying
every month his share of the general expenses. It was to these lodgings
that we used to go, and the weavers soon brought us in contact with
other _artéls_ of stonemasons, carpenters, and the like. In some of
these _artéls_ Serghéi, Kelnitz, and a couple more of our friends were
quite at home, and spent whole nights talking about socialism. Besides,
we had in different parts of St. Petersburg special apartments, kept
by some of our people, to which ten or twelve workers would come every
night to learn reading and writing, and after that to have a talk. From
time to time one of us went to the native villages of our town friends,
and spent a couple of weeks in almost open propaganda amongst the
peasants.
Of course, all of us who had to deal with this class of workers had
to dress like the workers themselves--that is, to wear the peasant
garb. The gap between the peasants and the educated people is so great
in Russia, and contact between them is so rare, that not only does
the appearance in a village of a man who wears the town dress awaken
general attention, but even in town, if one whose talk and dress reveal
that he is not a worker is seen to go about with workers, the suspicion
of the police is aroused at once. ‘Why should he go about with “low
people,” if he has not a bad intention?’ Often, after a dinner in a
rich mansion, or even in the Winter Palace, where I went frequently to
see a friend, I took a cab, hurried to a poor student’s lodging in a
remote suburb, exchanged my fine clothes for a cotton shirt, peasant’s
top-boots, and a sheepskin, and, joking with peasants on the way, went
to meet my worker friends in some slum. I told them what I had seen of
the labour movement abroad. They listened with an eager attention; they
lost not a word of what was said; and then came the question, ‘What
can we do in Russia?’ ‘Agitate, organize,’ was our reply; ‘there is no
royal road;’ and we read them a popular story of the French Revolution,
an adaptation of Erckmann-Chatrian’s admirable ‘Histoire d’un Paysan.’
Every one admired M. Chovel, who went as a propagandist through the
villages colporting prohibited books, and burned to follow in his
footsteps. ‘Speak to others,’ we said; ‘bring men together; and when
we become more numerous, we shall see what we can attain.’ They fully
understood, and we had only to moderate their zeal.
Amongst them I passed my happiest hours. New Year’s day of 1874, the
last I spent in Russia at liberty, is especially memorable to me. The
previous evening I had been in a choice company. Inspiring, noble words
were spoken that night about the citizen’s duties, the well-being of
the country, and the like. But underneath all the thrilling speeches,
one note resounded: How could each of the speakers preserve his own
personal well-being? Yet no one had the courage to say, frankly and
openly, that he was ready to do only that which would not endanger
his own dovecote. Sophisms--no end of sophisms--about the slowness
of evolution, the inertia of the lower classes, the uselessness of
sacrifice, were uttered to justify the unspoken words, all intermingled
with assurances of each one’s willingness to make sacrifices. I
returned home, seized suddenly with profound sadness amid all this talk.
Next morning I went to one of our weavers’ meetings. It took place in
an underground dark room. I was dressed as a peasant, and was lost
in the crowd of other sheepskins. My comrade, who was known to the
workers, simply introduced me: ‘Borodín, a friend.’ ‘Tell us, Borodín,’
he said, ‘what you have seen abroad.’ And I spoke of the labour
movement in Western Europe, its struggles, its difficulties, and its
hopes.
The audience consisted mostly of middle-aged people. They were
intensely interested. They asked me questions, all to the point,
about the minute details of the working-men’s unions, the aims of the
International Association and its chances of success, and then came
questions about what could be done in Russia, and the prospects of our
propaganda. I never minimized the dangers of our agitation, and frankly
said what I thought. ‘_We_ shall probably be sent to Siberia, one of
these days; and you--part of you--will be kept long months in prison
for having listened to us.’ This gloomy prospect did not frighten them.
‘After all, there are men in Siberia, too--not bears only.’ ‘Where men
are living others can live.’ ‘The devil is not so terrible as they
paint him.’ ‘If you are afraid of wolves, never go into the wood,’ they
said as we parted. And when, afterward, several of them were arrested,
they nearly all behaved bravely, sheltering us and betraying no one.