‘SAN FRANCISCO, _October 15, 1861_.
‘FRIENDS,—I have succeeded in escaping from Siberia, and after
long wanderings on the Amur, on the shores of the sea of
Tartary and across Japan, I am to-day in San Francisco.
‘Friends, I long to come to you with my whole heart, and as
soon as I arrive I will set to work, I will take a job under
you on the Polish Slavonic cause, which has been my _idée fixe_
since 1846 and was in practice my speciality in 1848 and 1849.
‘The destruction, the complete destruction, of the Austrian
empire will be my last word; I don’t say deed—that would be too
ambitious; to promote it, I am ready to become a drummer-boy or
even a rascal, and if I should succeed in advancing it by one
hair’s-breadth I shall be satisfied. And after that will come
the glorious free Slav federation, the one way out for Russia,
the Ukraine, Poland, and the Slavonic peoples generally.’
We had known of his intention of escaping from Siberia some months
before. By the New Year Bakunin in his own exuberant person was clasped
in our arms.
A new element, or rather an old element, the shadow of the ’forties, and
most of all of 1848, risen up from the dead, came into our work, into our
league that consisted of two. Bakunin was just the same; he had grown
older in body only, his spirit was as young and enthusiastic as in the
days of the all-night arguments with Homyakov in Moscow. He was just as
devoted to one idea, just as capable of being carried away by it, and of
seeing in everything the fulfilment of his desires and ideals, and even
more ready for every effort, every sacrifice, feeling that he had not so
much life before him, and consequently he must make haste and not let
slip a single chance. He fretted against prolonged study, the weighing
of pros and cons, and, as confident and theoretical as ever, longed for
any action if only it were in the midst of the turmoil of revolution, in
the midst of upheavals and menacing danger. Now, too, as in the articles
signed Jules Elizard,[37] he repeated: ‘_Die Lust der Zerstörung ist eine
schaffende Lust._’ The fantasies and ideals with which he was imprisoned
in Königstein in 1849 he had preserved complete and carried across Japan
and California in 1861. Even his language recalled the finer articles
of _La Réforme_ and _La vraie République_, the striking speeches of _La
Constituante_ and Blanqui’s Club. The spirit of the parties of that
period, their exclusiveness, their personal sympathies and antipathies,
above all, their faith in the second coming of the revolution—it was all
there.
Strong characters, if not at once ruined by prison and exile, are
preserved in an extraordinary way by it; they come out of it as though
from out of a swoon and go on with what they were about when they lost
consciousness. The Decembrists came back from being buried in the snows
of Siberia more youthful than the crushed and trampled young people
who met them. While two generations of Frenchmen changed backwards and
forwards several times, turned red and turned white, advancing with the
flow and borne back by the ebb tide, Barbès and Blanqui remained steady
beacons, recalling from behind prison bars and distant foreign lands the
old ideals in all their purity.
‘The Polish Slavonic cause ... the destruction of the Austrian empire
... the glorious free Slav Federation ...’ and all this is to happen
straight off as soon as he arrives in London! And he writes from San
Francisco with one foot on the ship!
The European reaction did not exist for Bakunin, the bitter years from
1848 to 1858 did not exist for him either; of them he had but a brief,
far-away, faint knowledge. He _read through_ them, read through them in
Siberia, just as he had read in Kaidanov’s history of the Punic Wars and
of the Fall of the Roman Empire. Like a man who has returned after a
plague, he heard of those who were dead and heaved a sigh for them; but
he had not sat by the bedside of the dying, had not hoped to save them,
had not followed them to the grave. The events of 1848, on the contrary,
were all about him, near to his heart; detailed and eager conversations
with Caussidière, the speeches of the Slavs at the Prague Conference,
discussions with Arago or Ruge—all these were affairs of yesterday to
Bakunin; they were all still ringing in his ears and hovering before his
eyes.
Though, indeed, it is no wonder that it was so, even apart from prison.
The first days after the February revolution were the happiest days
in the life of Bakunin. Returning from Belgium, to which he had been
driven by Guizot for his speech on the Polish anniversary of the 29th
of November 1847, he plunged, head over ears, into all the depths and
shallows of the revolutionary sea. He never left the barracks of the
Montagnards, slept with them, ate with them and preached, preached
continually, communism and _l’égalité du salaire_, levelling-down in the
name of equality, the emancipation of all the Slavs, the destruction of
all the Austrias, the revolution _en permanence_, war to the extinction
of the last foe. Caussidière, the prefect from the barricades engaged in
bringing ‘order into chaos,’ did not know how to get rid of the precious
orator, and plotted with Flocon to send him off to the Slavs in earnest,
with a brotherly _accolade_ and a conviction that there he would break
his neck and be no more trouble. ‘_Quel homme! quel homme!_’ Caussidière
used to say of Bakunin: ‘On the first day of the revolution he is simply
a treasure, but on the day after he ought to be shot!’[38]
When I arrived in Paris from Rome at the beginning of May 1848, Bakunin
was already holding forth in Bohemia, surrounded by Old-believing
monks, Czechs, Croats and democrats, and he continued haranguing them
until Prince Windischgrätz put an end to his eloquence with cannon (and
seized the opportunity to shoot his own wife by accident). Disappearing
from Prague, Bakunin appeared again as military commander of Dresden;
the former artillery officer taught the art of war to the professors,
musicians and chemists who had taken up arms, and advised them to hang
Raphael’s Madonna and Murillo’s pictures on the city walls and so guard
them from the Prussians, who were _zu Klassisch gebildet_ to dare to fire
on Raphael.
Artillery was always his stumbling-block. On the way from Paris to
Prague he came somewhere in Germany upon a revolt of peasants; they were
shouting and making an uproar before the castle, not knowing what to do.
Bakunin got out of his conveyance, and, without wasting time on finding
out what was the subject of dispute, formed the peasants into ranks and
so skilfully instructed them that by the time he resumed his seat to
continue his journey the castle was burning on all four sides.
Bakunin will some day conquer his sloth and keep his promise; some day
he will tell the long tale of the martyrdom that began for him after
the taking of Dresden. I recall here only the chief points. Bakunin
was sentenced to the scaffold. The Saxon king commuted the axe to
imprisonment for life; and afterwards, with no ground for doing so,
handed him over to Austria. The Austrian police thought they would find
out from him something concerning the plans of the Slavs. They imprisoned
Bakunin in Gratchin, and getting nothing out of him they sent him to
Olmütz. Bakunin was taken in fetters with a strong escort of dragoons;
the officer who got into the conveyance with him loaded his pistol.
‘What is that for?’ asked Bakunin. ‘Surely you don’t imagine that I can
escape under these conditions?’
‘No, but your friends may try to rescue you; the Government has heard
rumours to that effect, and in that case....’
‘What then?’
‘I have orders to put a bullet through your brains....’
And the party galloped off.
In Olmütz Bakunin was chained to the wall, and in that position he spent
six months. At last Austria got tired of keeping a foreign criminal for
nothing; she offered to give him up to Russia. Nicholas did not want
Bakunin at all, but he had not the strength of mind to refuse. On the
Russian frontier Bakunin’s fetters were removed. Of that act of mercy I
have heard many times; the fetters were indeed taken off, but those who
tell the tale forget to add that others much heavier were put on. The
Austrian officer who handed over the convict insisted on the return of
the fetters as Crown property.
Nicholas commended Bakunin’s valiant conduct at Dresden, and clapped
him into the Alexeyevsky Ravelin. There he sent Orlov to him with
orders to tell him that he (Nicholas) desired from him an account of
the German and Slav movement (the monarch was not aware that every
detail of the same had been published in the newspapers). This account
he asked for not as his Tsar, but as his spiritual father. Bakunin
asked Orlov in what sense the Tsar understood the words ‘spiritual
father’: did it imply that everything told in confession was bound to
be kept a holy secret? Orlov did not know what to say: these people are
more accustomed to ask questions than to answer them. Bakunin wrote a
newspaper ‘leading article.’ Nicholas was satisfied with that. ‘He is
a good and intelligent fellow, but a dangerous man; he must be kept
shut up,’ and for _three whole years_ after this approval from the Most
High, Bakunin was buried in the Alexeyevsky Ravelin. The treatment must
have been thorough, too, since even that giant was brought so low that
he tried to take his own life. In 1854 Bakunin was transferred to the
Schlüsselburg. Nicholas was afraid that Sir Charles Napier would rescue
him; but Sir Charles Napier and company did not rescue Bakunin from the
Ravelin, but Russia from Nicholas. Alexander II., in spite of his fit
of mercy and magnanimity, left Bakunin in confinement till 1857, then
sent him to live in Eastern Siberia. In Irkutsk he found himself free
after nine years of imprisonment. Fortunately for him, the governor of
that region was an original person—a democrat and a Tatar, a liberal
and a despot, a relative of Mihail Bakunin’s and of Mihail Muravyov’s,
himself a Muravyov, not yet nicknamed ‘of the Amur.’ He let Bakunin
have a respite, the chance of living like a human being, of reading the
newspapers and magazines, and even shared his dreams of future upheavals
and wars. In gratitude to Muravyov, Bakunin in his own mind appointed him
Commander-in-Chief of the future citizen army, with which he proposed to
annihilate Austria and found the Slav league.
In 1860 Bakunin’s mother petitioned the Tsar for her son’s return to
Russia; the monarch replied that Bakunin would never be brought back from
Siberia in his lifetime, but, that she might not be denied all comfort
and royal mercy, he permitted her son to enter the Government service
as a copying clerk. Then Bakunin, taking into consideration that the
Tsar was only forty and that his cheeks were ruddy with health, made
up his mind to escape; I completely approve of this decision. The last
years have shown better than anything else could have done that he had
nothing to expect in Siberia. Nine years of imprisonment and several
years of exile were enough. The political exiles were not, as was said,
the worse off because of his escape, but because times had grown worse,
men had grown worse. What influence had Bakunin’s escape on the infamous
persecution and death of Mihailov? And as for the reprimand of a man
like Korsakov—that is not worth talking about. It is a pity he incurred
nothing worse.
Bakunin’s escape is remarkable owing to the space covered; it is the very
longest escape in a geographical sense. After making his way to the Amur,
on the pretext of commercial business, he succeeded in persuading an
American skipper to take him to the shores of Japan. At Hako-date another
American captain undertook to convey him to San Francisco. Bakunin went
on board his ship and found the sea-captain busily preparing for a
dinner; he was expecting some honoured guest, and invited Bakunin to join
them. Bakunin accepted the invitation, and only when the visitor arrived,
discovered that it was the Russian Consul.
It was too late, too absurd to conceal himself: he entered at once
into conversation with him and said that he had obtained leave for a
pleasure-trip. A small Russian squadron under the command, if I remember
right, of Admiral Popov was riding at anchor about to sail for Nikolayev:
‘You are not returning with our men?’ inquired the Consul. ‘I have only
just arrived,’ said Bakunin, ‘and I want to see a little more of the
country.’ After dining together they parted _en bons amis_. Next day he
passed the Russian squadron in the American steamer: there were no more
dangers to be feared, apart from those of the ocean. As soon as Bakunin
had looked about him and settled down in London, that is, had made the
acquaintance of all the Poles and Russians there, he set to work. To
a passion for propaganda, for agitation, for demagogy, to incessant
activity in founding, organising plots and conspiracies, and establishing
relations, to a belief in their immense significance, Bakunin added a
readiness to be the first to carry out his ideas, a readiness to risk his
life, and reckless daring in facing all the consequences.
His was an heroic nature, deprived of complete achievement by the course
of events. He sometimes wasted his strength on what was useless, as a
lion wastes his strength pacing up and down in the cage, always imagining
that he will escape from it. But Bakunin was not a mere rhetorician,
afraid to act upon his own words, or trying to evade carrying his
theories into practice....
Bakunin had many weak points. But his weak points were small while his
strong qualities were great.... Is it not in itself a sign of greatness
that wherever he was flung by destiny, as soon as he had grasped two or
three characteristics of his surroundings, he discerned the revolutionary
forces and at once set to work to carry them on further, to fan the fire,
to make of it the burning question of life?
It is said that Turgenev meant to draw Bakunin’s portrait in Rudin; but
Rudin barely suggests certain features of Bakunin. Turgenev, following
the biblical example of the Almighty, created Rudin in his own image
and semblance: though Turgenev’s Rudin, saturated in the jargon of
philosophy, is like Bakunin in his youth.
In London he first of all set to revolutionising the _Kolokol_, and
in 1862 advanced against us almost all that in 1847 he had advanced
against Byelinsky. Propaganda was not enough; there ought to be immediate
action, centres and committees ought to be organised; to have people
closely and remotely associated with us was not enough, we ought to
have ‘initiated and half-initiated brethren,’ organisations on the
spot—Slavonic organisations, Polish organisations. Bakunin thought us
too moderate, unable to take advantage of the position at the moment,
and not sufficiently inclined to resolute measures. He did not lose
heart, however, but was convinced that in a short time he would set us
on the right path. While awaiting our conversion, Bakunin gathered about
him a regular circle of Slavs. Among them there were Czechs, from the
writer Fritsch to a musician who was called Naperstok[39]; Serbs who were
simply called after their father’s names Ivanovic, Danilovic, Petrovic;
there were Wallachians who did duty for Slavs, with the everlasting
‘esko’ at the end of their names; there was actually a Bulgarian who
had been an officer in the Turkish army, and there were Poles of every
shade—Bonapartist, Miroslavist, Czartorysczkist: democrats free from
socialistic ideas but of a military tinge; socialists, catholics,
anarchists, aristocrats, and men who were simply soldiers, ready to fight
anywhere in the northern or in the southern states of America, but by
preference in Poland.
With them Bakunin made up for his nine years’ silence and solitude. He
argued, lectured, made arrangements, shouted, gave orders, and decided
questions, organised and encouraged all day long, all night long, for
days and nights together. In the brief minutes he had left, he rushed
to his writing-table, cleared a little space from cigarette-ash, and
set to work to write five, ten, fifteen letters to Semipalatinsk and
Arad, to Belgrade and to Constantinople, to Bessarabia, Moldavia and
Byelaya-Krinitsa. In the middle of a letter he would fling aside the pen
and bring up to date the views of some old-fashioned Dalmatian, then,
without finishing his exhortations, snatch up the pen and go on writing.
This, however, was made easier for him by the fact that he was writing
and talking about one and the same thing. His activity, his laziness,
his appetite, his titanic stature and the everlasting perspiration he
was in, everything about him, in fact, was on a superhuman scale. He
was a giant himself with his leonine head and the mane that stood up
round it. At fifty he was exactly the same vagrant student, the same
homeless _Bohémien_ from the _rue de Bourgogne_, with no thought for the
morrow, careless of money, flinging it away when he had it, borrowing it
indiscriminately, right and left, when he had not, as simply as children
take from their parents, careless of repayment; as simply as he himself
would give his last shilling to any one, only keeping what he needed
for cigarettes and tea. This manner of life did not worry him; he was
born to be a great vagrant, a great nomad. If any one had asked him
point-blank what he thought of the rights of property, he might have
answered as Lalande answered Napoleon about God: ‘Sire, in my pursuits I
have not come upon any necessity for these rights!’ There was something
childlike, simple and free from malice about him, and this gave him an
extraordinary charm and attracted both the weak and the strong, repelling
none but stiff petty-bourgeois. His striking personality, the eccentric
and powerful appearance he made everywhere, in the circle of the young of
Moscow, in the lecture-room of the Berlin University, among Weitling’s
Communists and Caussidière’s Montagnards, his speeches in Prague, his
leadership in Dresden, his trial, imprisonment, sentence to death,
tortures in Austria and surrender to Russia—where he vanished behind
the terrible walls of the Alexeyevsky Ravelin—make of him one of those
original figures which neither the contemporary world nor history can
pass by.
When carried away in argument, Bakunin poured on his opponent’s head a
noisy storm of abuse for which no one else would have been forgiven;
every one forgave Bakunin, and I among the first. Martyanov would
sometimes say: ‘He is only a grown-up Lisa,[40] Alexandr Ivanovitch, a
child; you can’t be angry with him!’
That he ever came to get married, I can only put down to the boredom
of Siberia. He preserved intact all the habits and customs of his
fatherland, that is of student-life in Moscow; heaps of tobacco lay on
his table like stores of forage, cigar-ash covered his papers, together
with half-finished glasses of tea; from morning onwards, clouds of
smoke hung about the room from a regular chorus of smokers, who smoked
as though against time, hurriedly blowing it out and drawing it in—as
only Russians and Slavs do smoke, in fact. Many a time I enjoyed the
amazement, accompanied by a certain horror and embarrassment, of the
landlady’s servant, Grace, when at dead of night she brought boiling
water and a fifth basin of sugar into this hotbed of Slav emancipation.
Long after Bakunin had left London, tales were told at No. 10 Paddington
Green of the way he went on, which upset all the accepted notions and
religiously observed forms and habits of English middle-class life. Note
at the same time that both the maid and the landlady were passionately
devoted to him.
‘Yesterday,’ one of his friends told Bakunin, ‘So-and-so arrived from
Russia; he is a very fine man, formerly an officer.’
‘I have heard about him; he is very well spoken of.’
‘May I bring him?’
‘Certainly; but why bring him, where is he? I’ll go and see him. I’ll go
at once.’
‘He seems to be rather a constitutionalist.’
‘Perhaps, but....’
‘But I know he is a courageous and noble man.’
‘And trustworthy?’
‘He is much respected at Orsett House.’
‘Let us go to him.’
‘Why? He meant to come to you, that was what we agreed. I will bring him.’
Bakunin rushes to his writing; he writes and blots out something, copies
it out, and seals up something addressed to Jassy; in suspense, he begins
walking about the room with a tread which sets the whole house—No. 10
Paddington Green—moving with him.
The officer quietly and modestly makes his appearance. Bakunin _le met à
l’aise_, talks like a comrade, like a young man, fascinates him, scolds
him for his constitutionalism, and suddenly asks: ‘I am sure you won’t
refuse to do something for the common cause.’
‘Of course not.’
‘There is nothing that detains you here?’
‘Nothing; I have only just arrived, I....’
‘Can you go to-morrow or next day with this letter to Jassy?’
Such a thing had not occurred to the officer either at the front in
time of war or on the General’s staff. However, accustomed to military
obedience, he says, after a pause, in a voice that does not sound quite
natural, ‘Oh yes!’
‘I knew you would. Here is the letter perfectly ready.’
‘I am ready to set off at once ...’ (the officer is overcome with
confusion). ‘I had not at all reckoned on such a journey.’
‘What? No money? Well, you should say so; that’s of no consequence. I’ll
borrow it for you from Herzen, you can pay it back later on. Why, what is
it? Some twenty pounds or so. I’ll write to him at once. You will find
money at Jassy. From there you can make your way to the Caucasus. We
particularly need a trustworthy man there.’
The officer, amazed, dumbfoundered, and his companion equally so, took
their leave. A little girl whom Bakunin employed on great diplomatic
occasions ran to me through the rain and sleet with a note. I used to
keep chocolates expressly for her benefit, to comfort her for the climate
and the country she lived in, and so I gave her a big handful and added:
‘Tell the tall gentleman that I will talk it over with him personally.’
The correspondence did in fact turn out to be superfluous. Bakunin
arrived to dinner, that is an hour later.
‘Why twenty pounds for X.?’
‘Not for him, for the cause; and, I say, brother, isn’t X. a splendid
fellow?’
‘I have known him for some years. He has stayed in London before.’
‘It is such a chance, it would be a sin to let it slip. I am sending him
to Jassy, and then he can have a look round in the Caucasus.’
‘To Jassy? And from there to the Caucasus?’
‘I see you are going to be funny,’ said Bakunin. ‘You won’t prove
anything by jokes.’
‘But you know you don’t want anything in Jassy.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know, in the first place, because nobody wants anything in Jassy; and
in the second place, if anything were wanted, you would have been telling
me about it incessantly for the last week. You have simply come upon a
shy young man who wants to prove his devotion, and so you have taken it
into your head to send him to Jassy. He wants to see the Exhibition and
you will show him Moldavia. Come, tell me what for?’
‘What inquisitiveness! You never go into these things with me; what right
have you to ask?’
‘That is true: in fact, I imagine that it is a secret you will keep from
all; anyway, I have not the slightest intention of giving money for
messengers to Jassy and Bucharest.’
‘But he will pay you back, he will have money.’
‘Then let him make a wiser use of it; that is enough, you can send the
letter by some Petresko-Manon-Lescaut; and now let’s go and eat.’
And Bakunin, laughing himself, and shaking his head, which was always a
little too heavy for him, set steadily and zealously to work upon dinner,
after which he always said: ‘Now comes the happy moment,’ and lighted a
cigarette.
He used to receive every one, at all times, everywhere. Often he would
be asleep like Onyegin, or tossing on his bed, which creaked under him,
while two or three Slavs would be in his bedroom smoking with desperate
haste; he would get up heavily, souse himself with water, and at the same
moment proceed to instruct them; he was never bored, never tired of them;
he could talk without weariness, with the same freshness of mind, to the
cleverest or the stupidest man.
This lack of discrimination sometimes led to very funny incidents.
Bakunin used to get up late; he could hardly have done otherwise, since
he spent the night talking and drinking tea.
One morning at eleven o’clock he heard some one stirring in his room. His
bed stood curtained off in a large alcove.
‘Who’s there?’ shouted Bakunin, waking.
‘A Russian.’
‘What is your name?’
‘So-and-so.’
‘Delighted to see you.’
‘Why is it you get up so late and you a democrat?’
Silence: the sounds of splashing water, cascades.
‘Mihail Alexandrovitch!’
‘Well?’
‘I wanted to ask you, were you married in church?’
‘Yes.’
‘You did wrong. What an example of inconsistency; and here is T. having
his daughter legally married. You old men ought to set us an example.’
‘What nonsense are you talking?’
‘But tell me, did you marry for love?’
‘What has that to do with you?’
‘There was a rumour going about that you married because your bride was
rich!’[41]
‘Have you come here to cross-examine me? Go to the devil!’
‘Well now, here you are angry, and I really meant no harm. Good-bye. But
I shall come and see you again all the same.’
‘All right, all right. Only be more sensible next time.’
Meanwhile the Polish storm was drawing nearer and nearer. In the
autumn of 1862 Potyebnya arrived in London for a few days. Mournful,
pure-hearted, completely devoted to the rebellion, he came to talk to
us for himself and his comrades, meaning in any case to go his own way.
Poles began to arrive more and more frequently; their language was bolder
and more definite. They were moving directly and consciously towards the
outbreak. I felt with horror that they were going to inevitable ruin. ‘I
am terribly sorry for Potyebnya and his comrades,’ I said to Bakunin,
‘and the more so that I doubt whether their aims are the same as those of
the Poles.’
‘Oh yes they are, yes they are,’ Bakunin retorted. ‘We can’t sit for ever
with our hands folded, reflecting; we must take events as they come, or
else one will always be too far behind or too far in front.’
Bakunin grew younger, he was in his element: he loved not only the
uproar of the revolt and the noise of the club, the market-place and the
barricade; he loved the preparatory agitation, also, the excited and at
the same time restrained life, spent among conspiracies, consultations,
sleepless nights, conferences, agreements, rectifications, invisible inks
and cryptic signs. Any one who has taken part in rehearsals for private
theatricals or in preparing a Christmas tree knows that the preparation
is one of the nicest, most delightful parts of the entertainment. But
though he was carried away by the preparations for the Christmas tree,
I had a gnawing at my heart; I was continually arguing with him and
reluctantly doing what I did not want to do.
Here I must stop to ask a sorrowful question. How, whence did I come
by this readiness to give way with a murmur, this weak yielding after
opposition and a protest? I had at the same time a conviction that
I ought to act in one way and a readiness to act in quite another.
This instability, this disharmony, _dieses Zögernde_ has done me no
end of harm in my life, and has not even left me the faint comfort of
recognising that my mistake was involuntary, unconscious; I have made
blunders _à contre-cœur_; I had all the arguments on the other side
before my eyes. I have described already in one of my earlier chapters
the part I took in the 13th of June 1849. That is typical of what I am
describing. I did not for one instant believe in the success of the
13th of June; I saw the absurdity of the movement and its impotence,
the indifference of the people, the ferocity of the reaction, and the
pettiness of the revolutionaries. (I had written about it already, and
yet I went out into the square, though I laughed at the people who went.)
How many misfortunes, how many blows I should have been spared in my
life, if at all the important crises in it I had had the strength to
listen to myself alone. I have been reproached for being easily carried
away; I have been carried away, too, but that is not what matters most.
Though I might be carried away by my impressionable temper, I pulled
myself up at once; thought, reflection and observation almost always
gained the day in theory, but not in practice. That is just what is hard
to explain: why I let myself be led _nolens volens_....
My speedy surrender to persuasion was due to false shame, though
sometimes to the better influences of love, friendship and indulgence;
but why was all that too strong for my reason?
After the funeral of Worcell on the 5th of February 1857, when all the
mourners had dispersed to their homes and I, returning to my room, sat
down sadly to my writing-table, a melancholy question came into my mind.
Were not all our relations with the Polish exiles buried in the grave
with that saint?
The gentle character of the old man, which was a conciliating element in
the misunderstandings that were constantly arising, had gone for ever,
but the misunderstandings remained. Privately, personally, we might
love one or another among the Poles and be friendly with them, but there
was little common understanding between us in general, and that made our
relations strained and conscientiously reserved; we made concessions to
one another, that is, weakened ourselves and decreased in each other what
was almost the best and strongest in us. It was impossible to come to a
common understanding by open talk. We started from different points, and
our paths simply intersected in our common hatred for the autocracy of
Petersburg. The ideal of the Poles was behind them, they strove towards
their past, from which they had been cut off by violence and which was
the only starting-point from which they could advance again. They had
masses of holy relics, while we had empty cradles. In all their actions
and in all their poetry there is as much of despair as there is of living
faith.
They look for the resurrection of their dead, we long to bury ours as
soon as possible. Our lines of thought, our forms of inspiration are
different; our whole genius, our whole constitution has nothing in
common with theirs. Our association with them seemed to them alternately
a _mésalliance_ and a marriage of prudence. On our side there was
more sincerity, but not more depth: we were conscious of our indirect
responsibility, we liked their reckless daring and respected their
indomitable protest. What could they like, what could they respect in us?
They did violence to themselves in making friends with us; they made an
honourable exception for a few Russians.
In the dark prison-house of Nicholas’s reign, sitting in bondage with
our fellow-captives, we had more sympathy for each other than knowledge
of each other. But as soon as the window was opened a little space,
we divined that we were led by different paths and that we should go
in different directions. After the Crimean War we heaved a sigh of
relief, and our joy was an offence to them: the new atmosphere in Russia
suggested to them not hopes but losses. For us the new times began with
ambitious claims, we rushed forward ready to smash everything; with them
it began with requiems and services for the dead. But for a second time
the Government welded us together. At the sound of firing at priests and
children, at crucifixes and women, the sound of firing above the chanting
of hymns and prayers, all questions were silenced, all differences were
wiped out. With tears and lamentations, I wrote then a series of articles
which deeply touched the Poles.
From his deathbed, old Adam Czartorysczki sent me by his son a warm word
of greeting; a deputation of Poles in Paris presented me with an address
signed by four hundred exiles, to which signatures were sent from all
parts of the world, even from Polish refugees living in Algiers and in
America. It seemed as though in so much we were united; but one step
further, and the difference, the vast difference, could not be overlooked.
One day Branicki, Hoetsky and one or two other Poles were sitting with
me; they were all on a brief visit to London, and had come to shake hands
with me for my articles. The talk fell on the shot fired at Constantine.
‘That shot,’ I said, ‘will do you terrible damage. The Government might
have made some concessions; now it will yield nothing, but will be twice
as savage.’
‘But that is just what we want!’ one of the party observed with heat;
‘there could be no worse misfortune for us than concessions. We want a
breach, an open conflict.’
‘I hope most earnestly that you may not regret it.’
He smiled ironically, and no one added a word. That was in the summer of
1861. And a year and a half later Padlewski said the same thing when he
was on his way to Poland _via_ Petersburg.
The die was cast!...
Bakunin believed in the possibility of a rising of the peasants and the
army in Russia, and to some extent we believed in it too; and indeed
the Government itself believed in it, as was shown later on by a series
of measures, of officially inspired articles, and of punishments by
special decree. That men’s minds were working and in a ferment was beyond
dispute, and no one saw at the time that the popular excitement would be
turned to brutal patriotism.
Bakunin, not too much given to weighing every circumstance, looked only
towards the ultimate goal, and took the second month of pregnancy for the
ninth. He carried us away not by arguments but by his hopes. He longed to
believe, and he believed, that Zhmud[42] and the regions of the Volga,
the Don and the Ukraine would rise as one man when they heard of Warsaw;
he believed that the Old Believers would take advantage of the Catholic
movement to obtain a legal standing for dissent.
That the league among the officers of the troops stationed in Poland
and Lithuania—the league to which Potyebnya belonged—was growing and
gathering strength was beyond all doubt; but it was very far from
possessing the strength which the Poles through design and Bakunin
through simplicity ascribed to it.
One day towards the end of September Bakunin came to me, looking
particularly preoccupied and somewhat solemn.
‘The Warsaw Central Committee,’ he said, ‘have sent two members to
negotiate with us. One of them you know—Padlewski; the other is G., a
veteran warrior; he was sent from Poland in fetters to the mines, and as
soon as he was back he set to work again. This evening I will bring them
to see you, and to-morrow we will meet in my room. We want to _define our
relations once for all_.’
My answer to the officers was being printed at that time.
‘My programme is ready, I will read aloud my letter.’
‘I agree with your letter, you know that; but I don’t know whether they
will altogether like it; in any case, I imagine that it won’t be enough
for them.’
In the evening Bakunin arrived with three visitors instead of two. I read
my letter aloud. While we were talking and while I was reading, Bakunin
sat looking anxious, as relations are at an examination, or as lawyers
are when they tremble lest their client should make a slip and spoil the
whole game of the defence that has been so well played, if not strictly
in accordance with the whole truth, anyway to a successful finish.
I saw from their faces that Bakunin had guessed right, and that they were
not particularly pleased by what I read them. ‘First of all,’ observed
G., ‘we will read the letter to you from the Central Committee.’ M. read
it; the document, with which readers of the _Kolokol_ are familiar, was
written _in Russian_, not quite correctly, but clearly. It has been said
that I translated it from the French and altered the sense. That is _not
true_. All three spoke Russian well.
The drift of the document was to tell the Russians through us that the
provisional Polish Government agreed with us and adopted as its basis:
‘_The recognition of the right of the peasantry to the land tilled by
them, and the complete independence of every people in the determination
of its destiny._’
This manifesto, M. said, bound me to soften the interrogative and
hesitating form of my letter. I agreed to some changes, and suggested to
them that they might accentuate and define more clearly the idea of the
self-determination of provinces; they agreed. This dispute over words
showed that our attitude towards the same questions was not identical.
Next day Bakunin was with me in the morning. He was displeased with me,
thought I had been too cold, as though I did not trust them.
‘Whatever more do you want? The Poles have never made such concessions.
They express themselves in other words which are accepted among them as
an article of faith; they can’t possibly at the first step, as they hoist
the national flag, wound the sensitive popular feeling.’
‘I fancy, all the same, that they really care very little about the land
for the peasants and far too much about the provinces.’
‘My dear fellow, you will have a document in your hands corrected by you
and signed in the presence of all of us; whatever more do you want?’
‘I do want something else though!’
‘How difficult every step is to you! You are not a practical man at all.’
‘Sazonov used to say that before you said it.’
Bakunin waved his hand in despair and went off to Ogaryov’s room. I
looked mournfully after him. I saw that he was in the middle of his
revolutionary debauch, and that there would be no bringing him to reason
now. With his seven-league boots he was striding over seas and mountains,
over years and generations. Beyond the insurrection in Warsaw he was
already seeing his ‘Glorious and Slav Federation’[43] of which the Poles
spoke with something between horror and repulsion; he already saw the
red flag of ‘Land and Freedom’ waving on the Urals and the Volga, in
the Ukraine and the Caucasus, possibly on the Winter Palace and the
Peter-Paul fortress, and was in haste to smooth away all difficulties
somehow, to blot out contradictions, not to fill up ravines but to fling
a skeleton bridge across them.
‘_There is no freedom without land._’
‘You are like a diplomat at the Congress of Vienna,’ Bakunin repeated
to me with vexation, when we were talking afterwards with the
representatives of the Polish Committee in his room. ‘You keep picking
holes in words and expressions. This is not an article for a newspaper,
it is not literature.’
‘For my part,’ observed G., ‘I am not going to quarrel about words;
change them as you like, so long as the main drift remains the same.’
‘Bravo, G.,’ cried Bakunin, gleefully.
‘Well, that fellow,’ I thought, ‘has come prepared for every emergency;
he will not yield an inch in fact, and that is why he so readily yields
in words.’
The manifesto was corrected, the members of the Committee signed it. I
sent it off to the printing-press.
G. and his companions were fully persuaded that we represented the centre
of a whole organisation in Russia which depended upon us and would at our
command join them or not join them. For them what was essential lay not
in words nor in theoretical agreements; they could always tone down their
_profession de foi_ by interpretations which would dim its vivid colours
and change them.
That the first nucleus of an organisation was being formed in Russia
there could be no doubt. The first threads could be discerned with the
naked eye; from these threads, these knots, a web on a vast scale might
be woven, given time and tranquillity. All that was true, but it was not
there yet, and every violent shock threatened to ruin the work for a
whole generation and to tear asunder the first lacework of the spider’s
web.
That is just what, after sending the Committee’s letter to the press,
I said to G. and his companions, telling them of the prematureness of
their rising. Padlewski knew Petersburg too well to be surprised by my
words—though he did assure me that the vigour and number of branches of
the League of Land and Freedom went much further than we imagined; but
G. grew thoughtful. ‘You thought,’ I said to him, smiling, ‘that we were
stronger? You were right. We have great power and influence, but that
power rests entirely on public opinion, that is, it may evaporate all in
a minute; we are strong through the sympathy with us, through our harmony
with our own people. There is no organisation to which we could say,
“Turn to the right or turn to the left.”’
‘But, my dear fellow, all the same ...’ Bakunin was beginning, walking
about the room in excitement.
‘Why, _is_ there?’ I asked him.
‘Well, that is as you like to call it; of course if you go by the
external form, it is not at all in the Russian character, but you see....’
‘Allow me to finish; I want to explain to G. why I have been so insistent
about words. If people in Russia do not see on your standard “Land for
the Peasants” and “Freedom for the Provinces,” then our sympathy _will
do you no good at all but will ruin us_; because all our strength rests
on their hearts beating in unison with ours. Our hearts may beat more
strongly and so be one second ahead of our friends; but they are bound to
us by sympathy and not by duty!’
‘You will be satisfied with us,’ said G. and Padlewski.
Next day two of them went off to Warsaw, while the third went off to
Paris.
The calm before the storm followed. It was a hard and gloomy time, in
which it kept seeming as though the storm would pass over, while it drew
nearer and nearer. Then came the decree tampering with the levying of
recruits; this was the last straw; men who were still hesitating to
take the final and irrevocable step dashed into the fray. Now even the
_Whites_ began to go over to the side of the rebellion.
Padlewski came again; the decree was not withdrawn. Padlewski went off to
Poland.
Bakunin was going to Stockholm quite independently of Lapinski’s
expedition, of which no one dreamed at the time. Potyebnya turned up
for a brief moment. A plenipotentiary from ‘Land and Freedom’ came from
Petersburg _via_ Warsaw at the same time as Potyebnya; he described
with indignation how the Poles who had summoned him to Warsaw had done
nothing. He was the first Russian who had seen the beginning of the
rebellion; he told us about the murder of the soldiers, about the wounded
officer who was a member of the society. The soldiers thought that this
was treachery and began furiously beating the Poles. Padlewski, who was
the chief leader in Kovno, tore his hair, but was afraid to act openly in
opposition to his followers.
The plenipotentiary was full of the importance of his mission and invited
us to become the _agents_ of the League of Land and Freedom. I declined
this, to the extreme surprise not only of Bakunin but even of Ogaryov. I
said that I did not like this hackneyed French term. The plenipotentiary
treated us as the Commissaires of the Convention of 1793 treated the
generals in the distant armies. I did not like that either.
‘And are there many of you?’ I asked him.
‘That is hard to say: some hundreds in Petersburg and three thousand in
the provinces.’
‘Do you believe it?’ I asked Ogaryov afterwards. He did not answer. ‘Do
you believe it?’ I asked Bakunin.
‘Of course; but,’ he added, ‘_well, if there are not as many now there
soon will be_!’ and he burst into a roar of laughter.
‘That is another matter.’
‘The whole point is to give support to what is beginning; if they
were strong they would not need us,’ observed Ogaryov, who was always
displeased with my scepticism on these occasions.
‘Then they ought to come to us frankly admitting their weakness and
asking for friendly help instead of proposing the silly position of
agents.’
‘That is youth,’ Bakunin commented, and he went off to Sweden. And after
him Potyebnya went off too. With heartfelt sorrow I said good-bye to him.
I did not doubt for one second that he was going straight to his death.
A few days before Bakunin’s departure Martyanov came in, paler than
usual, gloomier than usual; he sat down in a corner and said nothing. He
was pining for Russia and brooding over the thought of returning home.
A discussion of the Polish rebellion sprang up. Martyanov listened in
silence, then got up, preparing to go, and suddenly standing still,
facing me, said gloomily:—
‘You must not be angry with me, Alexandr Ivanovitch; that may be so or
it may not, but anyway you have done for the _Kolokol_. What business
had you to meddle in Polish affairs? The Poles may be in the right, but
their cause is for their gentry, not for you. You have not spared us. God
forgive you, Alexandr Ivanovitch; you will remember what I say. I shall
not see it myself, I am going home. There is nothing for me to do here.’
‘You are not going to Russia, and the _Kolokol_ is not ruined,’ I
answered him.
He went out without another word, leaving me heavily weighed down by this
second prediction and by a dim consciousness that a blunder had been made.
Martyanov did as he had said; he returned home in the spring of 1863 and
went to die in penal servitude, exiled by his Liberal Tsar for his love
for Russia and his trust in him.
Towards the end of 1863 the circulation of the _Kolokol_ dropped from two
thousand or two thousand five hundred to five hundred, and never again
rose above one thousand copies. The Charlotte Corday from Orlov and the
Daniel from the peasants had been right.
_Written at Montreux and Lausanne at the end of 1865._
LETTERS FROM OGARYOV AND BAKUNIN TO THE RUSSIAN OFFICERS WHO TOOK PART IN
THE POLISH REBELLION.
‘FRIENDS,—With deep love and deep sorrow we bid farewell to
this comrade as he sets off to join you; only the secret hope
that this rebellion will be postponed brings us some comfort
as regards your future and the fate of the whole cause. We
understand that you cannot but join the Polish rebellion
whatever form it may take; you give yourselves as atonement
for the sins of the Russian Tsardom; moreover, to leave Poland
to be beaten without any protest from the Russian militant
party would have the fatal appearance of Russia taking a dumbly
submissive, immoral part in the butchering for which Petersburg
alone is responsible. Nevertheless, your position is hopeless
and tragic. We see no chance of success. Even if Warsaw were
free for one month, it would only mean that you had paid a debt
by your share in the movement of _national independence_, but
to raise the Russian socialist banner of “Land and Freedom” is
not vouchsafed to Poland; while you are too few.
‘This premature rebellion will obviously mean the ruin of
Poland, while the Russian cause will be drowned for years to
come in the flood of national hatred which goes hand in hand
with devotion to the Tsar, and it will only rise again later,
long years later, when your heroic deed will have become the
same sort of tradition as that of the 14th of December and will
stir the hearts of a generation not yet begotten. The moral of
this is clear: put off the rebellion till a better time, when
forces are united; put it off by your influence on the Polish
Committee and by your influence on the Government itself, which
may yet be alarmed into removing the unhappy decree; put it off
by every means within your power.
‘If your efforts are fruitless there is nothing else for
you but to submit to your fate and accept your inevitable
martyrdom, even though its consequence will be ten years’
stagnation for Russia. Anyway, as far as possible be sparing
of men and of strength, that elements may be left from this
unhappy defeated struggle for victory in the distant future.
But if you succeed and the rebellion is deferred, then you
ought to adopt a firm line of conduct and not to depart from it.
‘Then you ought to keep one object in view: to make the
Russian cause a general one and not exclusively Polish, to
create a complete unbroken chain of secret alliance between
all the militant forces in the name of “Land and Freedom” and
of the National Assembly, as you say in your letter to the
Russian officers. For that, it is essential that the Russian
Officers’ Committee should be independent, and therefore its
centre should be outside Poland. You ought to organise a
centre outside yourselves to which you will owe allegiance,
then you will be in a commanding position and at the head of
a well-organised force which will take part in the rebellion,
not in the name of Polish nationality exclusively, but in the
name of “Land and Freedom,” and will take part in it not in
accordance with the needs of the moment, but at the time when
all forces have been reckoned and success is assured.
‘To us this plan seems so clear that you too cannot but
recognise what must be done. Accomplish it whatever labour it
may cost.
‘N. OGARYOV.’
‘FRIENDS AND BROTHERS,—The lines written by our friend
Nikolay Platonovitch Ogaryov are full of true and boundless
devotion to the great cause of our national and indeed Panslav
emancipation. One cannot but agree with him that the premature
and partial rising of Poland threatens to interrupt the general
steady advance of the Slav, and especially of the Russian,
progressive movement. It must be owned that in the present
temper of Russia and of all Europe there is too little hope
of success for such a rebellion, and that the defeat of the
progressive party in Poland will inevitably be followed by the
temporary triumph of the Tsarist despotism in Russia. But on
the other hand, the position of the Poles is so insufferable
that they can hardly be patient for long.
‘The Government itself by its infamous measures of cruel
and systematic oppression is provoking them, it seems, to a
rebellion, the postponement of which would be for that very
reason as good for Poland as it is essential for Russia. To
defer it till a much later date would undoubtedly be the
salvation of them as well as of us. You ought to devote all
your efforts to bring this about, without, however, failing
to respect their sacred rights and their national dignity.
Persuade them so far as you can and so far as circumstances
permit, but yet lose no time, be active in propaganda and
organisation, that you may be ready for the decisive moment;
and when, driven beyond the utmost limit of possible patience,
our unhappy Polish brothers rise, do you rise too, not against
them but for them; rise up in the name of Russian honour, in
the name of Slav duty, in the name of the Russian people, with
the battle-cry, “Land and Freedom”; and if you are doomed to
perish, your death will serve the common cause ... and God
knows! Perhaps in opposition to every calculation of cold
prudence your heroic deed may unexpectedly be crowned with
success....
‘As for myself, whatever may await you, success or death, I
hope that it may be my lot to share your fate.
‘Good-bye—and perhaps till we meet again soon.
‘M. BAKUNIN.’