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diff --git a/34745-8.txt b/34745-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..322a78d --- /dev/null +++ b/34745-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3614 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Comrade Kropotkin, by Victor Robinson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Comrade Kropotkin + +Author: Victor Robinson + +Release Date: December 24, 2010 [EBook #34745] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMRADE KROPOTKIN *** + + + + +Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Sania Ali Mirza, Martin +Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +LIVES OF GREAT ALTRURIANS + +COMRADE KROPOTKIN + +BY +VICTOR ROBINSON + +"_To liberate one's country!" she said. "It is terrible even to utter +those words, they are so grand._" TURGENEV: "On the Eve." + +PRICE, ONE DOLLAR +THE ALTRURIANS +12 MOUNT MORRIS PARK WEST +NEW YORK CITY +1908 + + +This book is not copyrighted-- + +How could it be? + + +[Illustration: PETER ALEXEIVITCH KROPOTKIN + +Born in the Old Esquerries' Quarter of Moscow in 1842] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +DEDICATION + +FOREWORD + PAGE +UNDER NICHOLAS I. 7 + +SCENES FROM SERFDOM 15 + +EXPLORATIONS 23 + +THE NIHILISTS 29 + +THE TERRORISTS 36 + +SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA 43 + +THE FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL 54 + +BROTHERS 62 + +THE OPEN GATE 71 + +FROM THE PRINTING PRESS 82 + +IN LATER LIFE 106 + +THE HISTORIAN OF THE REVOLUTION 120 + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + FACING +PETER KROPOTKIN Frontispiece PAGE + +THE SCAFFOLD'S BRIDE 32 + +NICHOLAS CHAYKOVSKY 44 + +SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA 52 + +BEFORE THE SEARCH 66 + +THE COSSACKS 112 + + + + +_TO GEORGE KENNAN_ + + _I dedicate this work. I need not say why. He will know-- + Everyone will know. With tears, during the night, + I have read your book, thou earnest truth-seeker. + O compassionate traveler, what a man you must have been! + For the weary Siberian exiles called you + 'Dear George Ivanovich!' With a heart + Full of thankfulness for the work you have done, + I lay my bitter and bloody pages at your feet._ + VICTOR ROBINSON + + + + +FOREWORD + + +Bernard Shaw calls us a nation of villagers. To a large extent this +appellation holds good. We are so self-sufficient unto ourselves that +the most important events in the world leave us cold if they take place +outside of the realm of the star-spangled banner. + +A wonderful and terrible thing is happening in the largest empire on +earth; a downtrodden people is engaged in a death-grapple with its +merciless rulers; and never were masters so inhuman, and never were +people so heroic. In comparison with this titanic struggle the French +Revolution itself sinks into insignificance. But what do we know about +it? And what do we care? Russia is far away.... Once in a while the +report of a particularly atrocious massacre, or a particularly cruel +torture inflicted upon a young girl revolutionist will shock our +sensibilities, will cause a pang in our hearts, will perhaps make our +hair stand on end,--but in a day or two we forget all about it. We are +so busy! + +No wonder that this battle-drama appeals with special force, and exerts +a special charm on the young of all lands,--the young who worship +Freedom, and whose breasts beat warmly for Ideals. No wonder therefore +that it appeals to Victor Robinson. + +This essay was written at the age of twenty, and the youth of the author +will serve as an apology, if apology be needed, for the sharpness of +some of the expressions found in these pages. But is excuse really +necessary? I hardly think so. No language can be too strong when +condemning the Russian Bureaucracy, no judgment can be too severe when +pronounced on czardom and its cruel minions. In fact the English +language sometimes seems inadequate.... + +A remarkable commentary on the conditions in Russia is the fact that he +who studies them carefully and thoroly, be he the gentlest and sweetest +youth who would not harm a fly or tread on a worm, becomes saturated +with the conviction that in Russia, the rebel's bomb and pistol and +dagger are not only legitimate and necessary, but even noble weapons of +defense and offense. + +I refrain from any remarks as to the intrinsic value of this book, as it +is perhaps not quite proper for a father to criticize, favorably or +otherwise, the literary productions of his son. One comment however I +would like to make: For one who is utterly unfamiliar with the Russian +language, and who has worked alone and unaided, (in the leisure moments +left over by strenuous college studies), the author has accomplished a +rather noteworthy feat. He has succeeded in imbuing the book with such +an atmosphere, in presenting such vivid and faithful glimpses of Russian +life and literature, and exhibiting such wide and varied knowledge of +the subject, that even a Russian writer would not be ashamed to have his +name appear on the title-page of this volume. + +Love understandeth all things. + +DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON. +New York City, November 11, 1908. + + + + +UNDER NICHOLAS I. + + I understand that doom awaits him who first rises against the + oppressors of the people. When has Liberty been redeemed without + victims? Fate has already condemned me. I shall perish for my + native land. I feel it, I know it, and gladly bless my + destiny.--_Ryleev._ + + +A fabled king of Thrace fed his horses on human flesh, but a real czar +of Russia washed his streets with blood. On his accession to the red +throne, the Iron Despot immediately expelled progress from his empire by +butchering the Decembrists--those pioneers of freedom who fought for a +constitution and the abolition of serfdom. Exiles began to tramp the +lonely Siberian highway, and from the time of that Nicholas I. to this +Nicholas II.--a period of 75 years--over a million political prisoners +have taken the 'long journey.' + +The mighty country was turned into a military camp. The term of service +was twenty-five years. The life was so hard that when a man was +recruited, his relatives followed him as if to his grave. His mother ran +after him, and sometimes fell dead on the spot. The emperor spent his +time reviewing troops and altering uniforms.[1] If an officer appeared +in the streets with the hooks of his uncomfortable collar unfastened, he +was liable to be degraded to the rank of a common soldier and deported +to some distant province. If a soldier complained of his diet, or was +guilty of the slightest infraction of the most insignificant rule, he +was condemned to run the gauntlet. He was stripped naked, his hands were +tied behind him, and he was brought between two long rows of pawing +privates and eager 'non-coms,' equipped and armed with sticks, whips and +gun-stocks. Behind the soldiers stood officers commanding, "Harder! +Harder!" Thru these lines the victim was compelled to run--because in +yesterday's paltry parade conducted by a petty sergeant, he scratched +his itching neck. At first it was his shoulders which they struck, but +before he had gone very far he had no longer a back, but only a bleeding +mass of quivering flesh thru which parts of the bones protruded. A +doctor was always present to see that the culprit did not die before +receiving his full punishment. That is, if he were booked for 500 blows +and was on the point of succumbing after receiving 300, it was the +physician's duty to send him to a hospital to regain sufficient strength +to allow the additional 200 to be administered. However, in spite of the +medicus, the mangled men often perished before their time, and then +there was nothing to do but beat the corpse.[2] + +During this reign originated the widespread system of stealing Jewish +children from their homes, separating them from their families, severing +them from their faith, and bringing them up to serve in the army. These +were the Cantonists.[3] Thus it came about that when a mother of Israel +gave birth to a boy, she did not rejoice as for one born and living, but +lamented as for one dead and departed. (Sometimes Jewish mothers saved +their children from the army by cutting off their fingers, or taking out +one of their eyes). + +Liberty was so shackeled she did not even dare weep aloud.[4] Since that +unlucky day when Ryleev, Pestel, Bestuzhev, Kakovsky and +Muraviov-Apostol dangled from a tall straight post and a strong +crossbar, no revolutionist arose to oppose tyranny. During all the many +years of the reign of Nicholas-with-the-Stick, no ray of light +brightened a darkened nation, no torch glimmered in the bloody gloom. +Hope was dead. Freedom was buried. Literature was in exile. Knowledge +lay in a closed coffin. But censorship was alive, and autocracy had more +eyes than Argus. + +An anonymous pamphlet, toward the end of his reign, cried out that the +czar had rolled a great stone before the door of the sepulchure of +Truth, that he had placed a strong guard round her tomb, and in the +exultation of his heart had exclaimed, "For thee, no resurrection!" + +So thoroly was liberalism crushed, so completely was absolutism supreme, +that 'Nikolaus Palkin' walked the streets of bleeding Russia unattended +and unafraid. + +Alas, when a nation has only knees to bend, but no hands to strike! + +After his shadow had obscured the sun for a quarter of a century, a +brilliant festival was given in his honor at Moscow--called the Holy +City because it contains a Miracle Monastery for glorifying God and a +Kremlin Fortress for crucifying Man. It was a fancy-dress ball, and a +thousand gorgeous uniforms were there, from the leather coat of the +Tungus to the embroidered flummery of the chamberlain. In this affair +the children of the nobility played an important part. They were +lavishly attired, and each carried an ensign representing the arms of +the provinces of the Russian empire. At a given signal the little +emblem-bearers began to march, and on reaching the purple platform upon +which the royal family sat, all standards were lowered. The inflexible +autocrat viewed the scene with satisfaction--all the provinces bowed +before him. When the children retired to the rear of the immense hall, +someone pulled the smallest of the boys from the ranks and placed him on +the imperial elevation. The lad was arrayed as a Persian prince, and +wore a jewel-covered belt and a high bonnet. Nicholas I. looked at his +chubby face all surrounded with pretty curls and taking him to the +czarevna Marie Alexandrovna, said in his military voice, "This is the +sort of boy you must bring me." The woman was gravid at the time, and +the soldier-like joke made her blush. + +"Will you have some sweets?" asked the emperor. + +"I want some of those tiny biscuits which were served at tea," eagerly +responded the child. A waiter was called and he emptied a full tray into +the tall bonnet. + +"I will take them home to Sasha," said the curly little cherub. + +Mikhael--the czar's brother--now paid attention to the little visitor. +"When you are a good boy," he said, "they treat you so," and he passed +his rough hand downwards over the rotund features of the diminutive +would-be Persian; "but when you are naughty, they treat you so," and he +rubbed the child's nose upward. + +The poor innocent did his best to restrain himself, but unhappily the +gushing tears could not be repressed. The ladies at once took his part, +and Marie Alexandrovna set him by her side on a velvet chair with a +gilded back--William Morris being then unknown. Soon the big eyes began +to close, and drowsily putting his beautiful head in the lap of the +future empress, the boy fell soundly asleep. + +And the frolic went on. Under the glittering chandeliers the dancers +glided. Over the waxen floors the merry feet waltzed. Wine disappeared +by barrels, and revelry ran riot. Swords, spurs, buckles, medals, +diamonds--how they all sparkled! The smooth-cheeked courtiers and the +slick-tongued cavaliers gaily jested, and the silk-swathed ladies +flirted their proverbial fans and smiled flatteringly at their wit, but +not the wisest of them knew that someday this babe would awake and make +his name terrible to the ears of tyrants! + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] See "Russia," by Alfred Rambaud. + +[2] Among those who witnessed this spectacle was Germain de Lagny, who +describes it in his book, "The Knout and the Russians" ... "After +fourteen hundred strokes, his face which had long before begun to turn +blue, assumed suddenly a greenish hue; his eyes became haggard and +almost started out of their sockets, from which large blood-colored +tears trickeled down and stained his cheeks. He was gasping and +gradually sinking. The officer who accompanied me ordered the ranks to +open, and I approached the body. The skin was literally ploughed up, and +had, so to say, disappeared. The flesh was hacked to pieces and almost +reduced to a state of jelly; long stripes hung down the prisoner's sides +like so many thongs, while other pieces remained fastened and glued to +the sticks of the executioners. The muscles, too, were torn to shreds. +No mortal tongue can ever convey a just idea of the sight.... It was +seven months before he was cured and his health re-established; and, at +the expiration of this period, he was solemnly taken back to the place +of execution, and forced once more to run the gauntlet, in order to +receive his full amount of six thousand strokes. He died at the +commencement of this second punishment.... After all, Russia is only an +immense barrack, in which every one is in a state of arrest." Yet the +author of these words was a worshipper of Nicholas! + +[3] They were called Cantonists because they were kept and trained in +military settlements or cantons under Arakcheev. It is a most remarkable +fact--considering the circumstance that they were taken away in early +childhood--that several Cantonists who were able to live thru the +horrors of the service, returned to their homes as orthodox and as +fanatically devoted to their religion as if they had spent the preceding +twenty-five years not in the military barracks of the gentiles, but in +cheder and shool reciting the Torah. + +[4] He slaughtered Poland like a hound tears a hare. "But below all (in +the Museum of the Kremlin), far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust +and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of +Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good +promise--which Alexander I. gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas +I. took away with so much bloodshed."--Andrew D. White, "The Development +and Overthrow of Serfdom in Russia," Atlantic Monthly November 1862. +This sentence which I have quoted is correct, but the reader who is +unfamiliar with Russian history had better avoid the article, as the +last paragraph alone contains as many lies as there are kalachi in +Moscow. + + + + +SCENES FROM SERFDOM + + To be sold, three coachmen, well-trained and handsome; and two + girls, the one eighteen and the other fifteen years of age, both of + them good-looking and well acquainted with various kinds of + handiwork. In the same house there are for sale two hairdressers; + the one twenty-one years of age can read, write, play on a musical + instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can dress ladies' and + gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos and organs. + + Advertisement in the _Moscow Gazette_, 1801. + + +Peter Kropotkin's father was a general and a prince. His family +originated with a grandson of Rostislav Mstislavich the Bold. His +ancestors had been Grand Princes of Smolensk. He was a descendant of the +house of Rurik, and judged from the standpoint of heredity, had more +right to the throne than the Romanoffs. Incidentally he was like most +military men--barbarous, pitiless, merciless. He owned twelve hundred +male serfs. We do not know how many maids. Neither do we know how many +were scarred by the knout, how many were flogged till the breath of life +left them, nor how many hanged themselves under his window. + +If this brave warrior--who received the cross of Saint Anne for +gallantry, because his servant Froll rushed into the flames to save a +child--became imbued with the notion that there was not sufficient hay +in the barn, he would call one of his serfs, strike him in the face, and +accuse him of overfeeding the horses. In order to prove he was right he +would make another calculation, and come to the conclusion there was too +much hay. So he would bang his slave again for not giving the equidae +enuf. Suddenly he would sit down and write a note: Take So and So to the +police station, and let 100 lashes with the birch rod be administered to +him. + +On such occasions Peter would run out--his rosy cheeks wet with +weeping--catch the unhappy soul in a dark passage, and try to kiss his +hand. The serf would tear it away, and say bitterly, "Let me alone; you +too, when you grow up, will you not be just the same?" + +"No, no, never!" cried the child, while the hot tears choked him and +made him cough for breath. + +The females of all animals, having dislikes and preferences, exercise +the right of selection; rejecting one and receiving another; sending +away a male who is repulsive to them, and accepting a wooer they find +attractive.[5] + +Such absurd liberty was never allowed the serfs. They married when, +where and whom the master wished. The Kropotkins owned a woman named +Polya--intelligent and artistic--an exceptional serf. Her body was +bound; her hands were doomed to labor; her talents brought benefits not +to herself; her skill was at the service of others; her industry +profited her owners; she was a chattel, chained and confined--but her +heart could not be controlled. She deeply loved a neighboring servant, +and was with child from him. The lover, forgetting the Russian proverb, +"One cannot break a stone wall with his forehead," implored permission +to marry her.... The Kropotkins owned also a dwarf called 'bandy-legged +Filka.' Because of a terrible kick which he received in his boyhood, he +ceased to grow. His legs were crooked, his feet were turned inward, his +nose was broken, his jaw was deformed. It was the General's will that +the refined Polya should wed this unsightly imp. She was forced to +obey. The 'happy couple' were sent to the estate of Ryazan.[6] + +During the sixth year of the reign of Alexander II., a servant dashed +wildly into Peter Kropotkin's room. It was early in the morning, and +Kropotkin was still in bed. But the servant brandished the tea tray and +babbled excitedly, "Prince, freedom! The manifesto is posted on the +Gostinoi Dvor." In a moment Kropotkin was dressed and began to run out. +Just then a friend came running in. "Kropotkin, freedom!" he shouted, +"Here is the manifesto!" + +Kropotkin read it. His eyes beamed. He stamped his feet. O happy day! No +more slavery--serfdom was abolished--the muzhiks were free. Not the dark +ghosts of reaction, but the luminous sons of light had triumphed. Not +Shuvaloff, Muravioff, and Trepoff, but Herzen, Turgenev and +Chernishevsky.[7] + +That afternoon Kropotkin attended the last performance of the Italian +Opera. Baveri, the conductor of the band, raised his baton; the +musicians began to play, but human voices drowned the notes, for the +people were shouting for their czar--Redeemer!--Deliverer! Then Baveri +stopped, but the hurrahs did not. Again Baveri waved his stick wildly in +the air, the fiddlers grasped tightly their bows, the drummers beat with +all their strength, the players inflated their lungs and blew the brazen +instruments with might and main, but from that powerful band not a bar +of music could be heard, for the people were shouting for their +czar--Immanuel!--Illustrious! Strangers met in the streets, embraced, +kissed each other thrice on the cheek, and shouted for their +czar--Father!--Messiah! In front of the royal palace, peasants and +professors mingled, and shouted for their czar--Emancipator!--Liberator! +When he really appeared, crowds eager and immense, ran after the +carriage and shouted for their czar--Tsar Osvoboditel! + +As a dream disappears at dawn, so died this enthusiasm. The brief moment +of promise was followed by an eternal hour of despair; the short day was +succeeded by the endless night. Hell may not be Hell, but a Romanoff is +a Romanoff. Only one year later, the despot in Alexander awoke--mature +and monstrous. If the dead could touch the living, Nicholas would have +hugged his son. The steps of the scaffold became slippery with the blood +of the best. The rope of the hangman was jerked day and night, and the +key of the jailer creaked in a thousand locks. Reaction had won, and +liberalism lay covered with a crimson shroud. + +The Valuev volcano vomited its smothering lava as far as Siberia, and +General Kukel who with Kropotkin's help was preparing a long list of +necessary reforms, was dismissed from his post because another place had +been found for him--in prison. + +On the other hand there was a district chief who robbed the peasants and +whipped their wives, and whose brutality and dishonesty were so +unanswerably exposed by the energetic Kropotkin that this officer was +also transfered--to a higher position in Kamchatka where he found more +roubles for his purse and more women for his knout. + +When Kropotkin returned to St. Petersburg on an official commission, a +high functionary said to him, "Do you know that Chernishevsky has been +arrested? He is now in the fortress." + +"Chernishevsky? What has he done?" + +"Nothing in particular, nothing! But _mon cher_, you know--state +considerations!... Such a clever man, awfully clever! And such an +influence he has upon the youth. You understand that a government cannot +tolerate that: that's impossible! intolerable _mon cher, dans un Etat +bien ordonné_!"[8] + +For these mad acts of a drunken despotism, there was neither shadow of +excuse nor shade of reason, except that a Romanoff was hungry and +thirsty for victims, satisfying the blood-craving spirit that cried +within him, demanding that the brightest youths and the noblest girls be +changed to lifeless corpses. + +Is it any wonder that men who on the great day of emancipation quoted +with tears in their eyes the beautiful article by Herzen,[9] "Thou hast +conquered, Galilean," now recited these other words by the same exile: +"Alexander Nikolaevich, why did you not die on that day? Your name would +have been transmitted in history as that of a hero." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] See Darwin's "Descent of Man." + +[6] Yet Kropotkin was not among the cruelest proprietors. To read what +occurred on the estate of General Arakcheev is enuf to drive the +stoutest mind insane. In the "Russki Archiv" is an account of a woman +who by the most horrible tortures killed hundreds of her serfs, chiefly +of the female sex, several of them young girls of eleven and twelve. +Another woman murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife, +because he had neglected to take proper care of a rabbit. See Sir D. M. +Wallace's "Russia." Also the "Memoirs of a Sportsman" and "Mumu" by +Turgenev. + +[7] Leonora B. Lang, who translated Rambaud's "Histoire de la Russie" +from French to English, says there are about thirteen ways of spelling +Patzinak. Ditto for Chernishevsky. The form which I have chosen is +perhaps as proper as any, and simpler than most. An English reader is +not supposed to be able to pronounce Tschernyschewskiy. + +[8] See P. Kropotkin's "Memoirs of a Revolutionist." + +[9] For an account of Herzen's influence, see the "Russian Revolutionary +Movement," by Konni Zilliacus. This excellent volume which all should +read is of especial interest to Finns. + + + + +EXPLORATIONS + + And at the same time falls upon his ear the plaintive song of the + Russian peasant; all wailing and lamentation, in which so many ages + of suffering seem concentrated. His squalid misery, his whole life + stands forth full of sorrow and outrage. Look at him; exhausted by + hunger, broken down by toil, the eternal slave of the privileged + classes, working without pause, without hope of redemption. For the + government purposely keeps him ignorant, and every one robs him, + every one tramples on him, and no one stretches out a hand to + assist him. No one? Not so. The young man knows now "what to do." + He will stretch forth his hand. He will tell the peasant how to + free himself and how to become happy. His heart throbs for this + poor sufferer who can only weep. The flush of enthusiasm mounts to + his brow, and with burning glances he takes in his heart a solemn + oath to concentrate all his life, all his strength, all his + thoughts, to the liberation of this population which drains its + life blood in order that he, the favored son of privilege, may live + at his ease, study, and instruct himself. He will take off the fine + clothes that burn into his very flesh; he will put on the rough + coat and the wooden shoes of the peasant, and abandoning the + splendid paternal palace which oppresses him like the reproach of a + crime, he will go forth "among the people" in some remote district, + and there, the slender and delicate descendant of a noble race, he + will do the hard work of the peasant, enduring every privation in + order to carry to him the words of redemption, the Gospel of our + age,--Socialism. What matters to him if the cut-throats of the + Government lay hands upon him? What to him are exile, Siberia, + death? Full of his sublime idea, clear, splendid, vivifying as the + mid-day sun, he defies suffering, and would meet death with a + glance of enthusiasm and a smile of happiness.--STEPNIAK: + _Underground Russia_. + + +Peter Kropotkin came into life sailing on its topmost wave. The fat of +the land, and its milk and honey were his. Personally, nothing was +denied him. All the gifts had been lavished upon him. Position was his, +health he had in abundance, he was as handsome as the characters in +Tolstoy's _War and Peace_, and his talents were many and varied. To use +the Russian vernacular, he was born in his shirt. + +But not praise from princes or bows from beauties could induce him to +fritter away his splendid energies in senseless dinky-dinks at Moscow or +foppish balls at Petersburg. He wished to exercise head, hand and heart, +for he agreed with John Ruskin that whatever else you are, you must not +be useless and you must not be cruel--two adjectives which best portray +the average official. + +As has already been said, while still a youth Kropotkin went to Siberia +to aid Kukel improve the prisons, the exile system, etc. But when the +Herzen-reading Kukel was recalled, and it was no longer permitted to +mention the word "reform," Kropotkin became an explorer. + +Being clever, he soon made several important discoveries--the +border-ridge of the Khingan, the tertiary volcanoes of the Uyun +Kholdonsti, a direct route to the Amur. + +Also it is interesting to remember that he was among the first Europeans +who entered Manchuria,[10] and he went at the risk of being put in a +cage and conveyed across the Gobi on a camel's back. It was impossible +to go as an officer, so Kropotkin disguised himself as a trader, put on +a long blue cotton dress, and acted like a Muscovite merchant--sitting +on the edge of the chair, pouring his tea in the saucer, blowing on it +with puffed-out cheeks and staring eyes, and nibbling tiny particles +from his lump of sugar. + +One night as he wandered thru a Chinese town, the inhabitants by signs +asked him why such a young man wore a beard. Answering by the same +means, Kropotkin told them that if he had nothing else to eat he could +eat the beard. This caused the Celestials to roar with laughter, and +they petted him tenderly, showed him their houses, and offered him more +pipes than Skitaletz's Gavril Petrovitch could have smoked. + +In 1866, Kropotkin found what previous explorers had vainly sought--a +communication between the gold mines of Yakutsk and Transbaikalia. + +Then came what he considers his chief contribution to science: the +important discovery that the maps of Northern Asia were incorrect, +because the main lines of structure run neither north and south, nor +east and west, but from the southwest to the northeast.[11] + +Later Kropotkin was to lead an expedition to the Arctic seas, but as the +government was spending enormous sums in erecting scaffolds, it could +not spare a poltinik for explorations in unknown regions. However the +Geographical Society sent him to Finland to study the glacial deposits. +Here he made valuable researches relative to the glaciation of the +country. He conceived the idea of writing a monumental physical +geography of Northern Europe. His chief ambition was to become the +Secretary of the Society, for then he would be in a condition to +considerably advance the cause of science. + +But because he now had more leisure than formerly, he began seriously to +think of another subject--The People. When he crossed a plain which had +no interest for a geologist, he thought of their sufferings. When he +walked from one gravel pit to another, he mused on their downtrodden +hopes. Sometimes the hammer would pause in mid-air before it struck the +chisel, because the naturalist was dreaming of these plundered beings. +After collecting an immense amount of evidence, he anticipated what keen +joy he would have in analysing and arranging it for publication; but +then another feeling would assert itself--what right had he to this +happiness when all around him were men and women and children +struggling and slaving for a bit of mouldy bread? Yes, yes, Kropotkin +was thinking about the hungry people. + +It was in the autumn of 1871, as he looked over the hillocks of Finland, +and saw with his scientific eye the ice accumulating in the archipelagos +at the dawn of mankind, that he received this telegram from the +Geographical Society: "The council begs you to accept the position of +secretary to the society." + +At last Kropotkin was in a position to realise his old dream, but he +pondered much before answering, for he now dreamed a new dream--how to +lighten the burdens of the overworked people. + +A voice in the wind said, "To work for Science is great." + +Then another voice spoke saying, "To toil for Humanity is greater." + +So Kropotkin wired, "Most cordial thanks, but cannot accept." The chisel +of the geologist slipped from his fingers, and from that day on Peter +Kropotkin carried in his upraised hand a burning torch for the weary +people. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[10] By P. Kropotkin: "A Journey from the Trans-Baikal to the Amur by +Way of Manchuria," in the "Russian Messenger," June 1865. + +[11] Not even Kropotkin's enemies have denied his scientific ability. +Zenker, in his unfair and unsympathetic book on "Anarchism" says, "The +dreaded Anarchist Kropotkin is and always has been active as a writer of +geographical and geological works, and enjoys a considerable reputation +in these sciences, apart from his activity as a Socialist teacher and +agitator." The conservative Hon. Andrew D. White in his "Autobiography" +calls him "one of the most gifted scientific thinkers of our time." The +unbelievably cruel Pobedonostzeff--who would gladly have used the +thumb-screws on him--refers to him as "a learned geographer and +sociologist." + + + + +THE NIHILISTS + + "He is a nihilist." + + "What!" cried his father. As to Paul Petrovitch, he raised his + knife, on the end of which was a small bit of butter, and remained + motionless. + + "He is a nihilist," repeated Arcadi. + + "A nihilist," said Nicholas Petrovitch. "This word must come from + the Latin _Nihil_, nothing, as far as I can judge; and consequently + it signifies a man who ... who recognizes nothing?" + + "Or rather who respects nothing," said Paul Petrovitch; and he + began again to butter his bread. + + "A man who looks at everything from a critical point of view," said + Arcadi. + + "Does that not come to the same thing?" asked his uncle. + + "No, not at all; a nihilist is a man who bows before no authority, + who accepts no principle without examination, no matter what credit + the principle has."--TURGENEV: _Fathers and Sons_. + + +It was a cheerless Saint Petersburg to which Kropotkin returned--a city +in the grip of the powers of darkness. The officials despoiled the +muzhiks of their last copecks, and if the poor peasants sought redress +in institutions ironically known as "courts of justice,"[12] they were +either imprisoned for life or murdered outright--at the order of the +very men who were fleshed with pillage. + +The best writers had escaped abroad, or languished in faraway Siberia, +or had departed upon a still longer journey. + +Where was Lavrov? Who heard of Mikhailov? What fortress held Pisarev? +Why sat no ardent youths at Chernishevsky's feet? + +The reformers who had worked for the abolition of serfdom were still. An +uncanny fear possessed them. They trembled at the thought of Trepoff. +They shuddered at the sight of Shuvaloff. They wished nothing but +obscurity; they prayed only for oblivion to cover them. They denied with +pale faces that they had ever held advanced opinions. They were a +pitiful lot, but it is hard to blame them. Like a blood-crazed beast +Alexander roamed his empire, slaughtering human beings with a ferocity +that would have made a pack of wolves protest. In the dead of the night +they were shot--and sometimes at dawn. No reasons were assigned, no +questions answered. Russia prostrated herself at the feet of +power--poisoned with the fangs of force. Little wonder the old +generation was frightened. + +The lime had grown in their bones, and to have these bones crushed by +Katkoff in the casemates of the Fortress of Peter and Paul was not +pleasant. The fathers withdrew from the society of their sons. Even the +older brothers held aloof. At every step the young people heard, +"Prudence, young man." Never before was youth so deserted, and never +before was youth so splendid, so supreme, so sublime. Was it for them to +follow the craven footsteps of a cowardly generation? Let the +overcrowded prisons answer! Let the youngster-jammed dungeons reply! + +From the army came the young officer and cast aside his uniform. From +the palace stepped forth the young prince and threw off his costly +mantle. From the general's family hastened the young heiress and put +away her silken dresses. + +It is not for a halting tongue to celebrate this youthful band of +pioneers. It is not for a faltering pen to chant praises to those whose +glory is unrivalled. History has not seen their equals. They deserve the +worship of a better world than this. We who have no faith in God or +reverence for Government, may well bow our heads at the recollection of +men who left comfortable firesides to expose themselves to maddening +tortures. We may well fall right down on our knees at the thought of +women who bade farewell to wealthy parents to bare their breasts to the +sabre of the gendarme and the embrace of the cossack. + +Authorities they rejected. The chains of custom they rent asunder. Even +the axiomatic they re-examined. With the luke-warm, half-hearted +agnosticism of Huxley, they were dissatisfied. Out-and-out apostles of +Atheism were they, and one of the first books they printed was Ludwig +Buchner's. The theory of transformism they eagerly accepted, and more +than any English evolutionist they would gladly have died to prove +Darwin right and Cuvier wrong.[13] + +Only one mistake they made--they spat upon Art. They found no joy in +beauty. An arched rainbow, a Grecian urn, a vine-covered cottage, were +nothing to them. They scorned the laurels of the golden-haired Apollo. +They claimed a shoemaker was superior to Raphael because he makes useful +things while the other does not. + +[Illustration: THE SCAFFOLD'S BRIDE + +It is for such girls that the czar buys rope.] + +Their sacred watchword was: To The People. This great movement--which +Turgenev[14] named Nihilism--spread rapidly. Many schools were +established and enormous numbers of peasants flocked to them. The old +sat on the benches with their grandchildren and did their best to learn. +Teachers and the taught were enthused with the great idea. Leaders and +the led were comrades. The youths did not spend a couple of hours with +the peasants and then run off to indulge in an abnormal orgy prepared by +a pathic Grand Duke. Altho several were heirs to fortunes, they refused +to accept any money from their parents. They lived exactly like the +peasants, several in a room, ate black bread and dressed in boots and +sheepskin. Many of the girls formerly owned a trunkful of jewels and a +houseful of servants, but now they dispensed with chignon and crinoline. +They cropped their hair close and put on blue spectacles so they might +not be fair in the eyes of men. They wanted no love affairs. They wanted +to educate the ignorant. Children of the rich, offsprings of +aristocrats, scions of nobility, brought up in luxury, encouraged in +idleness, unused to manual work, unaccustomed to physical labor, they +now toiled fifteen hours a day in the factories. To look peasant-like, +the prettiest maidens rubbed their cheeks with grease and steeped their +hands in brine. All the woes of the commoners they accepted for +themselves. Were there ever before such luminous sons, such divine +daughters? Ask history for a parallel, and Clio's scroll is blank! + +Let this statement stand--indeed not even the twisted intellect of the +perverted W. T. Stead[15] could demolish it--had the autocracy +permitted these young teachers to continue their educative work among +the peasants, Russia to-day would not be a nation of illiterate muzhiks, +and millions who are now hopelessly blind would have eyes that see. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[12] "This court is worse than a house of ill-fame; there they sell only +bodies, but here you prostitute honor and justice and law."--IPPOLIT +MISHKIN. + +[13] If the reader has not read Stepniak's "Underground Russia" he +should do so without delay. + +[14] See his "Fathers and Sons," but avoid the abominable translation by +Eugene Schuyler. To the eternal honor of the nihilists it must be said +that they instantly and emphatically repudiated the hero of this novel, +the brutal Bazarov. I myself have no hesitancy in saying that I prefer +even the perfumed dandy Paul Petrovitch, to this harsh, coarse, +repulsive, insulting individual who treats his loving parents like dogs, +and who refers to a beautiful woman by exclaiming, "What a magnificent +body! How fine it would look on a dissecting table!" Here is one of the +curiosities of literature: a great artist conceives a great admiration +for a great type, and yet he produces--a caricature! But Kropotkin seems +to have a somewhat higher opinion of Bazarov, for in a letter which I +received from him, he says, "Those Nihilists who understood Bazarov as +Pisarev did, were right. Those who reproached Turgenev for Bazarov's +scorn to work for mankind were right again. Turgenev has not succeeded +in representing the man of action whom he admired well enough to excite +the uninitiated admiration of the reader." For a correct representation +of a nihilist in a novel--which the nihilists themselves heartily +accepted--see the character of Rakmetov in Chernishevsky's wonderful +"What is to be done?" Among those who enthusiastically praised this work +was Sophia Perovskaya. + +[15] The English eulogist of Russian officialism, the hypocrite who is +intimate with Nicholas II., the scoundrel who praises Trepoff, and yet +speaks of uplifting humanity!! He has written a lying book, "The Truth +About Russia." + + + + +THE TERRORISTS + + In July 1906, I was in Bialystok. A pogrom had just been started. I + saw women who were repeatedly raped before the eyes of their + husbands and their fathers. I saw a child, four years old, + deliberately shot in the arm by a soldier. I saw a girl of twelve + shot in the stomach. I saw a hospital that was purposely fired upon + by soldiers merely to create a panic among the patients. The local + schoolmaster was killed by three gendarmes driving nails into his + skull. The whole reason for the massacre was to terrify the + population into submitting meekly to various governmental + impositions. The massacre is a recognized weapon of the Russian + Government, often used to shape political ends. By what standards + of the eternal verities is it wrong to combat this kind of + slaughter by removing the official or officials responsible? To + assassinate an Alikhanov, a Pavlov, a Min, a Dubossov, a Sergius, a + Plehve, is, to my mind, precisely like killing a rattlesnake that + has crawled into a nursery, or stamping out a pest, or blowing up a + building to stop the further spread of the flames. + KELLOGG DURLAND: _The Necessity for Terrorism in Russia_. + + +It is not often remembered--tho it should be--that at this time these +Nihilists were not politicals, and did not fight czarism. Their object +was to teach the alphabet, not to overthrow the dynasty. It was only +when the government condemned to a slow death in Siberia every one who +printed a leaflet, or distributed a pamphlet, or attended a meeting, or +listened to a speaker, or joined a co-operative association, or started +an experimental farm, or went to a technical school, or taught a +peasant--that they commenced to oppose the Romanoff regime. It was only +when the ultimatum, "No schools allowed!"[16] was for several years +rammed down their throats at the point of the bayonet that the Nihilists +became Terrorists. It was only when the prisons overflowed with their +young warm blood that Sophia Perovskaya waved her handkerchief. + +The shaft of truth is naked, and so armored with bias is the mind of +man, that the missle cannot pierce the mail. In spite of the +unanswerable array of historical data, many will still exclaim, "We do +not believe in using force in Russia. We believe in education." + +O huge Sviatogor, giant-hero of the primitive Russians, endow us with +your mighty nerves, lest we burst! + +There was a girl--Miss Gukovskaya. A young girl--fourteen years old.[17] +She addressed a crowd--about Kovalsky. She was transported to a remote +part of Siberia for life. The child could not endure the wilderness and +drowned herself in the Yenisei. + +There was another girl who gave a single pamphlet to a worker. Her +punishment was nine years of hard labor and then life-long exile among +Siberian snows. + +A young man was found reading a book not admired by the censor. He was +put in prison and kept there until he committed suicide. + +When the gay and gentle Starinyevitch was a student, a manifesto was +found in his possession. Unwilling to incriminate another, he refused to +say from whom he received it. For this omission he spent twenty years +in filthy prisons. + +While searching the room of Rosovsky who was not yet twenty, the police +discovered a proclamation of the Executive Committee. + +"Who gave it to you?" + +"That I cannot say. I am not a spy." + +He was sentenced to death and died on the scaffold.[18] + +Kropotkin mentions another youth of nineteen who posted a circular in a +railway station. He was caught and killed--hanged I think. "He was a +boy," says Kropotkin, "He was a boy but he died like a man." + +Ask a Revolutionist if he knows Sophia Bardina and his glowing eyes will +answer yes. Because she read a couple of articles in public, she was +condemned to several years' penal servitude, which by special favor of +the czar was commuted to life-long exile. + +Leo Deutsch in his mild and modest _Sixteen Tears in Siberia_, tells of +a few girls of Romny who hit upon the plan of loaning one another books +and making notes on them. Soon a few young men joined, and thus was +formed a small reading society, such as might help to pass away the long +winter evenings in the dull provincial town. For this--and for +absolutely nothing but this--"the conspirators of Romny" were deported +across the Urals. + +Only a couple of years ago, several schoolteachers met at Tiflis to +discuss the best method of improving their educational curricula. A +commander entered and cried, "Disperse!" Turning to his cossacks he +said, "These women are yours"--and all were raped with impunity. + +As long as the Romanoffs rule Russia, only idiots opaque and impervious +to reason, can speak of education without action. + +If education were permitted, revolutionary violence would not be, +because terrorism is the last straw to which the drowning nation +clutches. They cling to this because under existing circumstances +nothing else is possible, nothing, nothing, nothing. + +Russia has produced no greater Terrorist than Gregory Gershuni, and when +this glorious Jew stood before his "judges" he told them: "History will +forgive you everything; the centuries of oppression, the millions you +have starved to death, the other millions you have sent to be butchered +on the battlefield; everything but this--that you have driven us who +mean well with our fatherland to seek recourse in murder."[19] + +Men cannot meet for purposes of discussion, because if they do, they +will be beaten and bayoneted. Children cannot, for they will be hacked +to pieces. Women cannot, for their bodies will be utilized to warm the +beds of cossacks. + +Such liberticide must be answered by tyrannicide! And the hand that +holds a dagger, red with the blood of a despot, is the noblest hand of +all! + +FOOTNOTES: + +[16] This fact is so notorious that even an obscurantist like W. R. +Morfill must admit it. See the passage in his mediocre book, "Russia." +But illiberal as this work is, it at least is not outrageous. What +however are we to do with Augustus Hare ("Studies in Russia") who writes +that exile to Siberia is pleasant; with Rev. Henry Landsell ("Through +Siberia") who informs us that punishment with the knout was not painful; +with Miss Annette Meakin ("A Ribbon of Iron") who describes the cruel +Gribsky as a kindly man; with John A. Logan ("Joyful Russia") who is +religiously convinced that the czar is an angel; with Francis H. Skrine +("Expansion of Russia") who approves the worst crimes of the house of +Romanoff. Of course lackeys are always plentiful, but how sad that +Russian Despotism should have Anglo-American defenders. + +[17] Russian heroines begin early. The renowned Vera Zasulitch was just +sweet sixteen when she startled the world by shooting and wounding the +murderous General Trepoff. + +[18] See "Russia Under the Czars," by Stepniak. + +[19] This is the sentiment of all Russian Rebels. When the beautiful +revolutionary nurse, Anna Korba, was on trial, 1882, she said, "If the +party of the Will of the People adopts the policy of terror, it is not +because it prefers terrorism, but because terrorism is the only possible +method of attaining the objects set before it by the historical +conditions of Russian life. These are sad and fateful words, and they +bear a prophecy of terrible calamity. Gentlemen--Senators, you are well +acquainted with the fundamental laws of the Russian Empire. You are +aware that no one has a right to advocate any change in the existing +imperial form of Government, or even to think of such a thing. Merely to +present to the Crown a collective petition is forbidden--and yet the +country is growing and developing, the conditions of social life are +becoming day by day more and more complicated, and the moment approaches +when the Russian people will burst thru the barriers from which there is +no exit." Here she was interrupted by the presiding judge, but +continued, "The historical task set before the party of the Will of the +People is to widen these barriers and to obtain for Russia independence +and freedom. The means for the attainment of these objects depend +directly upon the Government. We do not adher obstinately to terrorism. +The hand that is raised to strike will instantly fall if the Government +will change the political conditions of life. Our party has patriotic +self-control enuf not to take revenge for its bleeding wounds; but, +unless it prove false to the Russian people, it cannot lay down its arms +until it has conquered for that people freedom and well-being." One of +the last things that Stepniak tells us in "King Stork and King Log" is: +"Terrorism is the worst of all methods of revolutionary warfare, and +there is only one thing that is worse still--slavish submissiveness, and +the absence of any protest."----An unusually good editorial, "The +Meaning of Terrorism," appeared recently in the New York Evening Post, +in which it was correctly said, "In exchange for freedom of +self-expression, the Revolutionists stand ready instantly to abandon +terror, and they point for proof of their sincerity to the cessation of +warfare during the period when the Duma was being elected and sat, to +their readiness even now to suspend hostilities for the coming +elections; small reason tho they have for confidence in the future plans +of the government."----The Boston Herald (March 16, 1905), in a column +editorial called "How Assassins Are Made," says, "The dark cloud of +Russian oppression is riven only by thunderbolts. There is no wind of +free speech to drive it away."----The editor of Altruria (November 1907) +in answering a gentleman who objected to terrorism in Russia, writes, +"When he says 'there are other ways,' he is mistaken. That's all. That +is just the trouble. In Russia there are no other ways; not at present. +There was hope of peaceful reformation; the Government destroyed that +hope. The bomb and the bullet, therefore remain the only weapon." + + + + +SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA + + All the condemned died like heroes. Kibalkitch and Geliabov + appeared very calm and resigned. Timothy Mikhailov pale but firm; + Rysakov calm and under control, but his face was as white as a + sheet. Sophia Perovskaya's courage struck us all with astonishment. + Not a sign of fear of death in her lovely countenance. Her cheeks + wore the fresh roses of youth and health, and a heroine's soul + gleamed from her gentle, but firm and serious face. + --From the reactionary _Kolnische Zeitung_. + + +Russia has long been famous for its circles, which far surpass in +interest and excellence, those of any other country. According to the +calculation of the police, each member contributes to the society either +a pint or a quart of blood, but this computation is too conservative. +Those who join Russian Circles do not measure the amount, but are ready +to give unto the last drop. At these meetings, chairmen and ceremony are +unknown. Those present sit on chairs, lean against the window-sill, or +squat on a broken sofa. They sing melancholy songs, smoke cigarettes and +overwork the samovar. They dress carelessly in loose blouses of colored +calico. Their hair is disheveled, their faces are flushed, their eyes +are blazing. All argue at once, and in order to make themselves heard, +interrupt each other, shout animatedly, bang the table, and rattle the +spoon in the glass. The noise is deafening, but from the din of the +debate fly forth sparks which may eventually inflame even this outraged +empire of officials and icons. + +In 1872, Kropotkin joined the most important of these groups--the Circle +of Chaykovsky. Kropotkin was now a thoro-going revolutionist, and it is +foolish to ask as Grand Duke Nicholas did, "When did you begin to +entertain such ideas?" + +In a country like Russia, where the present government incites the +troops to massacre the people, hoping in this way to prolong its +existence;[20] where the wardens do a thriving business by turning over +the female prisoners to the soldiers at so much a piece; where the +Dnieper-Demons beat women to the ground and ride their horses over their +bosoms; where they toss children in the air and catch them on their +bayonets;[21] where they hack babes in twain and hurl the bleeding +pieces at their agonized mothers; where they hammer spikes thru the +heads of old men;[22] where youths are exiled for life for reading a +forbidden author; where vulgar officers command refined women to become +their mistresses[23] or pay the penalty of having their families shipped +to that side of the tear-drenched monument which says, "Asia;" where +officials who plan pogroms are promoted, and those who protest are +imprisoned[24] where tortures like pricking out the eyes[25] and +striking the stomach are perpetrated; where virgin and matron are used +to glut the lust of the cossack;[26] where such crimes are openly +committed from dawn to dusk and thru the darkness of the black night, +that at mere thought of them the suffering brain reels, and the +horrified senses faint--in a land like this could a Peter Kropotkin +remain Chamberlain to the Czarina? + +[Illustration: NICHOLAS CHAYKOVSKY + +"The Father of the Russian Revolution."] + +Such rare-souled characters formed this Circle, that Kropotkin spent +here the two happiest years of his life. To pass whole days with +Nicholas Chaykovsky, to speak with the Kornilov sisters, to work with +the young Kuprianov, to grasp the honest hand of Stepniak, to enter the +room at night in top-boots after lecturing to peasants, and see sweet +Sophia Perovskaya say severely, "How dare you bring so much mud in this +house!"--what life could be intenser? + +The Circle of Chaykovsky held its meetings in a little dwelling in the +suburbs of Saint Petersburg. There was nothing about it to excite +suspicion. The neighbors often saw the mistress attending to her +business. They knew her to be an artisan's wife, an ordinary +workingwoman. She wore a cotton dress and men's shoes, her head was +covered with a fancy kerchief, and she trudged slowly along, carrying on +her shoulders full pails of water from the Neva River. + +But they did not know that she belonged to the highest aristocracy; that +one of her ancestors was the morganatic husband of Empress Elizabeth, +daughter of Peter the Great; that her grandfather was Minister of Public +Instruction; that her uncle was a renowned conqueror in Asia Minor; that +her father was Governor General of St. Petersburg; that she herself had +shone in the most fashionable drawing rooms of the capital, and that her +name was Sophia Perovskaya,--a name which thrills the soul of every +rebel to its center. + +Physically she was like a novelist's heroine. She had golden hair and +her eyes were blue. A lissom figure, a musical voice, a charming +laugh.[27] Pure with a maiden's modesty, chaste with a virginal shyness. +So graceful and girlish that she never looked more than eighteen--even +when she was twenty-six. Of such a sympathetic nature that when she +became a nurse, sufferers whose nerves quivered in distress, claimed +their agony abated as soon as she entered. Her mother she loved to +adoration, and often at the risk of her life, she left her hiding-place +to give Varvara Sergyevna the joy of folding her hunted child in her +aching arms. Her father had human form, but was in reality a fiend, yet +rejoice that he lived, for from his ultra-reactionary loins was born the +white queen of the red revolution. + +From her sixteenth year, Sonya was ready to die for the Cause--with a +smile on her beautiful lips and a wave of her graceful hand, with the +crimson banner above her head, and upon her bosom a red carnation. I +speak figuratively. She would not have worn these things. She was +altogether too simple. + +Hers was a life full of pain, and in 1881 came the supreme sorrow. Her +heart twitched with the torture, for Andrew Geliabov, the man she loved +so fondly, was in the casemate of the fortress, and all knew, and Sonya +knew too, that soon around his beloved neck would be a bluish streak. +Yet her brilliant intellect was not dimmed or darkened. That will of +iron and those nerves of steel, neither broke nor faltered. It was then +that she arranged every detail for the assassination of Alexander II. +She may have wept in private, but to her comrades she said with dry +eyes, "When I give the signal, throw the bomb." + +The appointed day came. In a metal-clad carriage, the czar drove to the +parade. Behind him in a sledge rode Colonel Dvorjitsky. Burning eyes +looked at a girl. A handkerchief fluttered in the air--Sonya's signal! +Rysakov threw his bomb. The Emperor alighted--unhurt. Then Grinevetsky +too, flung a blessed ball of Kibalkitch's make, and within a few hours +the old despot and the young martyr passed out of the world. + +Sophia Perovskaya inspired the greatest stanzas of the Poet of the +Sierras, for usually the verse of the slangy Joaquin Miller is mediocre. +But how grand are these!: + + + "A storm burst forth! From out the storm + The clean, red lightning leapt, + And lo, a prostrate royal form ... + And Alexander slept! + Down thru the snow, all smoking, warm + Like any blood, his crept. + Yea, one lay dead, for millions dead! + One red spot in the snow + For one long damning line of red, + Where exiles endless go-- + The babe at breast, the mother's head + Bowed down and dying so. + + And did a woman do this deed? + Then build her scaffold high, + That all may on her forehead read + The martyr's right to die! + Ring Cossack round on royal steed! + Now lift her to the sky! + But see! From out the black hood shines + A light few look upon! + Lorn exiles, see, from dark, deep mines, + A star at burst of dawn!... + A thud! A creak of hangman's lines!-- + A frail shape jerked and drawn!..." + + +Before stepping upon the scaffold, Sophia Perovskaya wrote a note. (I +know it has often been printed, but how can I help publishing it again?) +Think you she laments that one so gifted should perish so young? Read: + +"Mother, mother! Beloved, beloved one! If you only knew how cruelly I +suffer at the thought of the sorrow and torture I have caused you, +dearest--! I beg and beseech you not to rack your tender heart for my +sake. Spare yourself, and think of all those who are round you at home, +and who love you no less than I do--and need you constantly; and who, +more than I, are entitled to your love and affection. Spare yourself +too, for the sake of me, who would be so happy if only the agonizing +thought of the sorrow I have caused you did not torture me so +unspeakably. Sorrow not over my fate which I created for myself, as you +know, at the strict behest of my conscience. You know that I could not +have acted differently, that I was obliged to do what my heart ordered, +that I had to go and leave you, beloved mother, when my country called +me. Do not think that the death that inevitably awaits me has any terror +for my soul. That which has happened is only, you know, what I have been +expecting every day, every hour, during all those years, and what sooner +or later, must overtake me and my friends. Soon, in the course of a few +days, I must die for the cause, for the idea, for which I devoted my +life and all the powers of my soul and body. How happy I should be then, +dearest, beloved! Once more I beseech you not to mourn for me. You are +well aware how ineffably I love you, I have always, always, loved you. +By this love I conjure you to forgive your Sonya! Again and again I kiss +your beloved hands, and on my knees, thank you for all you have given me +during every moment of my life. On my knees I beseech you to bear to all +the dear ones at home my last loving greetings! To-morrow I shall stand +once more in the presence of my judges; probably for the last time. But +my clothes are so shabby, and I wanted to tidy myself up a bit. Buy and +send me, dearest mama, a little white collar and a pair of simple loose +sleeves with links. Perhaps it will be vouchsafed us once again to +meet. Till then, farewell! Do not forget my last fervent prayer, my +last thought: forgive me and do not bewail me." + +[Illustration: SOPHIA PEROVSKAYA + +She was hanged in her twenties, but her name is as immortal as the +eternal sun.] + +Yes, this is her letter. "Buy and send me, dearest mama, a little white +collar and a pair of simple loose sleeves with links." + +A woman still--but glorified, radiant, resplendent--a woman all +inspired, upraised, exalted, uplifted, aureoled. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[20] See the book on massacres by the ex-bureaucrat Prince Urusoff, in +which the high official shows that the government itself is the chief +pogrom-preparer. Translated by Herman Rosenthal. + +[21] See "Within the Pale," by Michael Davitt. Also Bialik's "'Al +Shechitah," either in the Jewish Quarterly Review or The Maccabean, +January 1907. Translation by Helena Frank. + +[22] See the "Report of the Duma Commission on the Pogrom at Bialystok," +published in the London Jewish Chronicle, July 1906. Reprinted in its +entirety in the American Jewish Year Book, 1906-1907. At Kishineff, the +wife of Fanorissi Siss had nails driven thru her eyes. See also Book II +of "Gillette's Social Redemption," and Kropotkin's letter in the London +Times, July 25, 1908. + +[23] See "Russia from Within," by Alexander Ular. This truthful volume +contains many horrible revelations concerning the fearfully cruel and +corrupt Grand Dukes. + +[24] For a well-edited "Table of Pogroms" see American Jewish Year Book, +1906-1907. Out of hundreds of examples, here is one: On the last day of +October 1905, a frightful carnage overtook the Jews in Odessa. Their +financial loss amounted to at least one million rubles, and six thousand +of them were killed and injured. The Self-Defense was well organized, +but when they fought too valiantly, the police surrounded them and shot +them down. The janitors were ordered to point out Jewish flats to the +mob. An imperial Ukase was published, thanking the troops for their +excellent work. Nineteen officers who tried to prevent the wholesale +butchery were transfered to obscure posts, while Neidhardt who was +Prefect of Police at this time was promoted to the position of Governor +of Nishni-Novgorod. I purposely quote very modern instances, so English +readers will see that the crimes of the Romanoffs are not things of the +past. + +[25] See "The Revolution in the Baltic Provinces." The author's name is +withheld for obvious reasons, but the terrible little book is edited by +J. Ramsay MacDonald, a well-known member of Parliament. The reader of +nervous temperament will not find the chapter on the "Torture Chambers +of Riga," at all enjoyable. + +[26] For numerous instances see the "Red Reign," by Kellogg Durland. +From every standpoint this is one of the most admirable works that has +appeared on Russia. + +[27] "She had the ready laugh of a girl, and laughed with so much +heartiness, and so unaffectedly, that she really seemed a young lass of +sixteen.... At dinner time, when all met, there was chatting and joking +as tho nothing was at stake, and it was then that Sophia Perovskaya--at +the very moment when she had in her pocket a loaded revolver intended to +blow up everything and everybody into the air--most frequently delighted +the company with her silver laugh."--STEPNIAK. + + + + +THE FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL + + A strange feeling came over me when I saw that I was being conveyed + to this prison, used by the Government of the Czars for political + offenders only; a place never spoken of in Russia without a + shudder.--LEO DEUTSCH: _Sixteen Years in Siberia_. + + +The Circle of Chaykovsky exerted an immense influence all over the +empire, forming branches in every province, and producing the greatest +of the Russian Revolutionists. Yet the particular group to which +Kropotkin belonged was daily decreasing, on account of the imprisonment +of its members. + +In January 1874, the police became so vigilant that the remaining +comrades thought it wise for Stepniak to leave St. Petersburg. But this +noble and lovable giant, whose simplicity earned him the epithet of +"Baby," refused to obey. He protested warmly, and remained at his risky +post until the Nihilists actually forced him to depart to a safer city. + +It was also time for Kropotkin--who had become famous by his speeches to +the 'prostoi narod'--to conceal himself, but in his case a strange +circumstance prevented. He had just completed his essay on the glacial +formations, and it was necessary to read it at a meeting of the +Geographical Society. When he finished, an animated discussion began, +but laurels were on Kropotkin's head; it was admitted that all old +theories concerning the diluvial period in Russia were erroneous. This +paper produced such an excellent impression that it was proposed to +nominate the author president of the Physical Geography section. So +Kropotkin sat among the fine gentlemen, and shook hands with the +dignified professors, and smilingly thanked the learned savants for the +honors they conferred upon him, but inwardly he asked himself if he +would not spend that very night in the prison of the Third Section. + +His guess was not a bad one. He was soon arrested. After certain tedious +formalities, he was put in a cab. A colossal Circassian sat at his side. +The genial Kropotkin spoke to him, but the mass of meat only snored. +Many of Kropotkin's comrades were already entombed in Litovsky prison, +but his question if he too were going there was unanswered. Then the cab +crossed Palace Bridge, and it was no longer necessary to interrogate the +guardian. Peter Kropotkin knew he was bound for that silent coffin of +stone which darkly rises like a Hell-on-Earth--the Fortress of Saint +Peter and Saint Paul. + +He leaned over and looked at the flowing Neva, knowing he would not soon +see the graceful river again. Over the gulf of Finland, clouds were +hanging, but the prisoner searched for patches of blue sky. The sun was +going down, wearily perhaps, but proudly, for as it slowly sank below +the horizon it left behind it gossamer colors of sapphire and scarlet, +with glint and glow of gold. (And the officer snored.) + +The carriage turned to the left and entered a dark passage. Kropotkin +was now within the gate of the Cemetery for the Living, the mouldy, +murderous Tomb of Torture. Thru his mind flashed all the horrors of this +famous prison whose dreaded name is uttered only in a voice hushed and +awed.[28] Within these walls the Decembrists became martyrs. Here +Nechaev--in the gloomy Alexis ravelin[29]--was kept a prisoner for life. +Here Perovskaya had been confined. Here was incarcerated the +poet-prince Odoevsky, about whose early death the banished Lermontov +wrote so tender an elegy. + +The carriage stopped before another gate which was opened by soldiers. +Here Catherine II.[30] buried alive all who opposed her abominations. +Here the terrible Minich tortured his enemies until they expired from +the agony. Here Princess Tarakanova was locked in a cell which filled +with water, causing the rats to climb upon her body to save themselves +from drowning. Here in the awful loneliness of the silent dungeons, an +army of unfortunates had gone insane. + +The carriage rested again and Kropotkin was taken to a third iron gate +which opened into a dark room where he could vaguely see several +soldiers in soft felt boots gliding noiselessly about as if they were +phantoms from another world. He recalled that here was caged much of the +winged glory of Russian Literature--Ryleev, the poet of freedom whose +forbidden ballads Kropotkin's mother copied in her note-books; +Griboyedov who wrote one immortal masterpiece[31] and then put pen no +more to paper because the censor mutilated his work beyond recognition; +Shevchenko who dipped his quill in a soul of tears and wrote +heart-breaking poetry about his fellow-serfs; Dostoyevsky, the sensitive +novelist who described so well the injured and insulted; Pisarev, a +truly marvellous critic whose voice was a trumpet-call arousing the +youth to a higher life; Chernishevsky, the profoundest thinker of his +time, as great a genius as the race of man has produced.[32] These--and +how many more!--had spent weary years in the fortress where he was now +walking. + +He remembered that in one of these cells the dauntless Karakozov was +frightfully maltreated by being deprived of sleep. The gendarmes, who +were changed every two hours, were ordered to keep him awake. Karakozov +was inventive, and as he sat on his small stool he would cross his legs, +and swing one of them to make his tormentors believe he was up; +meanwhile he would steal a nap, continuing to swing his leg. When the +gendarmes--depraved, imbruted blood-spillers--discovered the deception, +they shook him every few moments whether he swung his limb or not. It is +also quite certain that all his joints were crushed, for when he was +taken out from the fortress to be hanged, he looked like a lump of +rubber or heap of jelly. His head, arms, legs, trunk, were altogether +loose as if they contained no bones or only broken ones. It was terrible +to see the strenuous efforts he made to ascend the scaffold. + +Kropotkin was taken to another black hall where armed sentries were +moving. He thought of the mighty Bakunin, who was kept in an Austrian +prison chained to the wall for two years, and then spent six more in +this Fortress of Peter and Paul, and yet came out as fresh and pink as a +boy. + +He was put into a cell--a casemate originally intended for a cannon. A +heavy oak door was shut behind him, a huge key turned in the lock, and +the prince who had slept in the lap of an empress, who had been petted +by Nicholas I., and who as sergeant of the corps of pages became the +closest personal attendant of Alexander II., was left alone in a +darksome reduit. + +The prisoner examined his cell. High up in the granite wall a hole was +cut. Kropotkin dragged his stool there, looked out and listened. +Emptiness--no sound. He tapped the walls--no response. He struck the +floor with his foot--no reply. He spoke to the sentry--no answer. The +coldness, the dampness, the darkness were bad enuf, but this utter +silence, this intense stillness, this grave-like deadness were +maddening. + +No human being addressed him; no living thing held intercourse with +him--except the pigeons which came morning and afternoon to his window +to receive food thru the grating. Only the bells of the fortress +cathedral were heard. Every quarter of an hour they chimed to the glory +of Jesus, and every midnight they pealed forth, "God save the Czar." + +Then all was mute ... and nothing more.... + +Not only did no one speak to him, he was not even permitted to speak to +himself. When the killing silence first began to oppress him, he hummed +a tune. Then the spirit of song took hold of him, and he raised his +voice. He sang from his favorite opera, Glinka's _Ruslan and +Ludmila_--"Have I then to say farewell to love forever?" + +"Sir," said a bass voice thru the food-window, "do not sing!" + +A few days later, Peter Kropotkin could not sing. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[28] See the "Memoirs of a Revolutionist." + +[29] See the "Russian Bastille" by Simon O. Pollock in the International +Socialist Review, March 1907. + +[30] If anyone cares to know to what sexual depravities royal ladies can +descend, let him read what Dr. W. W. Sanger says about Empress Elizabeth +and the two Catherines in his valuable "History of Prostitution." The +number of lovers they caressed was surpassed only by the number of +thinkers they tortured. The first-named had a reputation for humaneness. +Does this mean that during her reign no one was exiled? No, it means +that during her reign only 80,000 of her subjects were knouted and +deported to Siberia. + +[31] Prophetically named "The Misfortune of Having Brains." (Gore ot +Uma). + +[32] For a brief but sympathetic sketch of Chernishevsky by one who knew +him personally, see the "Russian Revolt" by Edmund Noble. It contains +this sentence: "Such was the cost of trying to be a Cobden or a Bright +in Russia!" + + + + +BROTHERS + + The worst is, that the gendarmes cannot live without political + plots; if they have none to deal with in reality, they must invent + some; otherwise they run the risk of seeing their budget diminished + for the next year. This is the reason why alarming reports as to + future political attempts circulate as a rule a few weeks and even + months before the renewal of the special budget serving to pay this + sort of people.--MAXIM KOVALEVSKY: _Russian Political + Institutions_. + + +So time crept on with crippled feet, halting and limping on its broken +crutches, held back by heavy ball and clanking chain. Thru the five feet +of granite the sun could not penetrate, but grief came in thru the +mortar. No oxygen passed the Judas, but with noisy wings sorrow flew in +the embrasure. The oaken doors held freedom out, but sadness passed the +bars of iron. + +A great blow came to Kropotkin. He heard news which sickened him. Life +lost its meaning. His stool remained unused in the corner.[33] All the +day long, and during the endless hours of night, he wandered up and +down his cell like a dazed animal. Friendly faces could not see him, but +distress was his warder, and despair became his familiar visitor. He had +learnt of the arrest of his brother Alexander[34]--the Sasha for whom he +had saved the tiny tea-cakes. + +The history of Peter Kropotkin can never be written and the name of +Alexander left out. Tho only a year older, Sasha was in advance of him +intellectually. This alone shows what a remarkable child he was, for +Peter also was precocious: at twelve he dropped his title of prince, +signing himself merely P. Kropotkin; at fourteen he wrote articles in +favor of a constitution; and while still at school, he became the author +of a text-book on physics which was printed for the use of his +class-mates. + +But more than anyone else, it was Sasha who opened unknown vistas to +him, who stimulated his mind, who guided his studies, and directed his +reading. + +"What happiness," wrote Kropotkin many years later, "it was for me to +have such a brother! To him I owe the best part of my development." + +However, we soon forget Sasha's abilities--great as they were--in the +contemplation of his white soul, of his spotless character, of his open +heart, of his affectionate and exceptional personality. + +When he grew to manhood, he departed from Russia. His spirit was too +lofty to exist in this blood-soaked hell of ghoulish czars. He needed +freedom like the eagle needs the mountain crag. Had he shared his +brother's views, he would have remained to work and die for the Cause. +But as it was his opinion that a popular uprising was an impossibility, +he could take no part in political agitation, and he went to Switzerland +with wife and child. Here his great scientific work assumed monumental +proportions; it was to be a nineteenth century counterpart of the +renowned _Tableau de la Nature_ of the Encyclopædists. He labored in +love, for science was to him what it was to Darwin. + +Then he heard of Kropotkin's arrest. In a twinkling he left everything. +He re-entered the gore-dripping cave of the Bloody Bear. For his loved +brother's sake he breathed again the murderous miasma. Once more he +walked in that cursed country where the nagaika of the cossack beats +freedom to death. + +Better than anyone else, he knew that if Kropotkin could not write, he +would die. The Geographical Society and the Academy of Sciences wished +the prisoner to finish a volume on the glacial period, and using this as +a support, Sasha petitioned the authorities to allow his brother resume +work. He made every scholar in the capital miserable, and plagued every +scientific association until they agreed to support his application. + +The fruit of this labor was that the governor entered Kropotkin's cell +bearing precious gifts. It would take an Ippolit Mishkin in his most +eloquent moment to describe the captive's unfathomable joy when he felt +the paper beneath his palm and clutched in his hungry fingers, an inked +pen! + +In the presence of gendarmes, the brothers were permitted to see each +other.[35] Sasha was much agitated. He hated the very sight of the +uniforms of the executioners, and was too frank to keep his feelings to +himself. Kropotkin was happy to see his honest face, his eyes full of +love, and yet he wished him as far away as Zurich, for he knew that tho +Sasha now came to the Third Section by day of his own free will, the +time would come when he would be brought there by night under the escort +of blue-garbed gendarmes. + +Kropotkin was right. Sasha wrote a letter to his friend, the famous +refugee and profound thinker, P. L. Lavrov, in which he mentioned his +fears that his brother will fall ill in his armored chamber. + +The Third Section intercepted the letter and arrested the writer. This +was the story which leaked into Kropotkin's cell and broke him down. + + +There is a touching little poem by Nora Perry about two attractive young +ladies who come home after the ball. It is late, and they sit on the bed +in their pretty nightgowns, stockingless, slipperless, combing their +beautiful hair. Their dresses and flowers and ribbons are scattered over +the room. They talk of the evening's revel, and laugh idly at the waltz +and merry quadrille. Yet the hearts of these girls are not quite as +light as their lips, for they both love one man and they fall asleep +dreaming of him--his face shines out like a star. Here the poetess leans +over the alluring sleepers and whispers if they could but peep into the +future, they would not be jealous of each other, for ere another year +rolls by, one will be ready for bridal and the other for burial. The +eyes of one will sparkle among her jewels; her cheeks will blush thru +her curls, but the other will be in that cabalistic country where there +is neither wish nor want. + +[Illustration: "BEFORE THE SEARCH"--_By Kolinichenko_ + +A Russian student burning his papers.] + +Yet is it not well that we cannot lift the mysterious veil and peer +behind the darksome curtain? Otherwise would not we see future tragedies +that would rob us of all strength to live thru the present? + +Certain it is that had Kropotkin guessed the fate that was to befall +Sasha, he would soon have left the fortress--carried out. + +It may be a mooted point as to whether cossacks or gendarmes have been +more successful in violating women, but all will agree that the former +are pre-eminent in sabering students, while the latter receive the palm +when it comes to searching houses. When half a dozen of them, +accompanied by an officer,[36] burst into Sasha's flat after midnight, +on Christmas eve, they excelled themselves. Against Alexander Kropotkin +there was no accusation except that he had written a personal letter to +a personal friend. Yet the Third Section kept him a prisoner for several +months. + +At this time his charming child, whom illness rendered still more +affectionate and intelligent, was dying from consumption. It was not +Sasha's nature to ask favors from his enemies, but when Death beckons +with its bony finger, one cannot be proud. So Sasha asked permission to +see his son for the last time. The request was refused. He begged to be +allowed to go home for one hour, promising on his word of honor to +return. The request was refused. Then the high-souled man cast his +spirit in the dust before them and implored to be taken there in chains, +and guarded by gendarmes. The request was refused. + +The child died; the mother went half mad with grief; Sasha was told he +would be transported to one of the loneliest towns in farthest Siberia; +that he would travel in a cart between two gendarmes; that his wife +could not go with him, but might follow later. + +A year passed, and Sasha remained in exile. Another year, and he was +still in Siberia. His sister Helene, without asking anyone, wrote a +petition to the czar. She gave it to her cousin Dmitri Kropotkin, an +unfeeling scoundrel who was afterwards killed by the revolutionist +Goldenberg. At this time he was governor-general of Kharkoff, +aide-de-camp of the emperor, and a favorite of the court. Heartless as +he was, he thought it unjust for a non-political to be exiled so long, +and he handed the petition personally to Alexander II., adding words of +his own in support of it. Romanoff took the document and wrote upon it: + +"Let him remain there."[37] + +Ten years later. Sasha was still in bleak Siberia, cut off from his +scientific work, severed from the intellectual world. A gloomy +night--the wolves howled and Sasha lived. But these things could not go +on forever. A silent night--the wail of the wolf ceased, and the soul of +Sasha escaped.[38] Helene wrote no petitions to Death, but it was Death +that liberated him. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[33] Determining to preserve his physical vigor, Kropotkin mapped out +for himself a course in gymnastics. Among other feats, he made excellent +if undignified use of his weighty oak stool. He balanced it on his nose +and lifted it with his teeth; he put it on the end of his foot and +raised it at right angles to his body; he turned it on its edges and +twirled it like a wheel; he tossed it from one hand to the other, faster +and faster; and he hurled it between, under, and across his legs. + +[34] That is, his arrest in 1875; for Alexander Kropotkin had previously +been arrested and thrown into prison in 1858, for reading Emerson's +essay on "Self-Reliance," which was loaned to him by a university +professor. For a portrait and his noble behavior on this occasion, see +George Kennan's world-known "Siberia and the Exile System." + +[35] See Kropotkin's "Memoirs of a Revolutionist." + +[36] "There is not depicted in Russian literature a single type of +officer which inspires sympathy or commands respect."... "Each of these +young officers knows a string of such anecdotes all relating to the same +topic. Here we have a tipsy cornet who rushes among a crowd of Jews and +scatters them with drawn saber. A sublieutenant sabers a student who had +inadvertently jogged his elbow. An officer shoots dead a civilian who +had ventured the remark that a gentleman never addressed ladies to whom +he had not been introduced."--G. SAVITCH in La Revue. + +[37] This is a typical drop in the ocean of his extreme cruelty.--Among +those who contributed to my "Symposium on Humanitarians," (see August +1908 issue of the Medico-Pharmaceutical Critic and Guide), was the +distinguished ex-ambassador to Germany and Russia, Andrew D. White, +Ph.D., L.H.D., LL.D. He mentioned as one of his favorites, Alexander II. +Naturally I could not understand such a barbaric choice. A little later, +this eminent former President and Professor of Cornell University +published his "Autobiography," and I found he was the apologist, admirer +and friend of Pobedonostzeff! He speaks as highly of this relentless +persecutor as of Leo Tolstoy! I deserve to have my face slapped for +expecting Truth and Right from an official personage! + +[38] He committed suicide by shooting himself. + + + + +THE OPEN GATE + + The autumn night is dark as the crime of the traitor. But darker + still, piercing the mist like a gloomy vision, stands--the prison. + The sentinels are striding idly around, and in the deepness of the + night is heard their groanlike melancholy "Lis-ten!" Tho the walls + of the barrier are strong, tho the iron locks are unbreakable, tho + the eyes of the gaolers are keen, and everywhere are shining + bayonets, still the prison is not a morgue. Thou sentinel, be not + negligent, trust not the darkness, be careful, Lis-ten!... + MIKHAILOV. + + +The plague of the prisons was upon Kropotkin--he was sick with +scurvy[39] and dying from insufficient oxidation of the blood. The +wretches who lifted the shutter of the Judas and spied upon him, +believed he would soon change his silent casemate for a silent coffin. + +His relatives heard about his condition, and their alarm was great. His +sister Helene tried to obtain his release on bail, but the procureur +turned himself like a golden pheasant and said with a sinister smile, +"If you bring me a doctor's certificate that he will die in ten days, I +will release him." The girl fell in a chair and sobbed aloud. Shubin +smiled again, for like Gorky's Tchizhik in _Orloff and his Wife_, he was +fond of gratuitous entertainments. + +But a prince is not a peasant, and Kropotkin was examined by a thoroly +competent physician who ordered his transfer to the military hospital +(where politicals were sent when it was thought they would soon require +an undertaker). + +Kropotkin improved at once. With a full chest he breathed the blest air +which he had missed so long. The rays of the sun warmed him, and the +scent of flowers gladdened his life. The immense window of his spacious +room may have been grated, but it was never closed. He sat there all day +gazing at the rows of trees. Later he was taken out for an hour's walk +in the prison yard--large, and full of sweet growing grass. The first +moment he entered it, he stopped on the doorstep unable to move. Before +him was a gate, and it was open! He tried not to look at it, yet stared +at it all the time. + +The desire of the moth for the flame, the attraction of steel for +loadstone, the bond between chlorine and hydrogen, the affinity of +kalium for the halogens--what are these compared to the passion of a +prisoner for an open gate? + +Kropotkin trembled as if in a fever. From head to foot his body shook, +while the heart leaped and his pulses throbbed. He soon managed to let +his Circle know how near he was to liberty, and immediately the comrades +determined to aid him in escaping. Plans and plots were devised and +disposed of, till Kropotkin feared all would be too late. He violated +the rules of hygiene, hoping to keep in bad health, for he knew his +walks would be stopped as soon as the doctor pronounced him well. Alas! +in spite of all his efforts, his weight increased, his eyes brightened, +his complexion cleared, his digestion improved. All symptoms of scurvy +left him,--the livid spots under the skin and the oozy spongy gums +disappeared. + +At last all was ready. The revolutionists were sentimental, and decided +the escape should occur June 29th, Old Style, for this is the day of +Peter and Paul. It was arranged that Kropotkin's signal that all was +well should be the taking off of his hat, and if all were right outside, +the comrades would send up a red toy balloon. The day of the "saints" +came. At the usual time--four o'clock--Kropotkin was brought out for his +walk. He took off his hat, and waited for the little balloon. But in the +air no red ball arose, and at the end of an awful hour, he returned to +his cell--sick, crushed and broken. + +A peculiar thing had happened. Usually hundreds of balloons could be +bought near the Gostinoi Dvor. Yet that day not a red one was seen--only +blue and white ones were there. Later one was discovered in the +possession of a child, but it was damaged and could not ascend. The +comrades rushed into an optician's shop, bought an apparatus for making +hydrogen, and filled the rubber with the gas. Had they pumped it full of +fluorine, the result would not have been worse. No inflation occurred, +and the unexpanded balloon did not fly--but time did. The comrades grew +worried. Then a lady attached the useless toy to her umbrella, and +holding it above her head walked along the prison wall. But Kropotkin +saw nothing because the wall was high and the lady was short. + +The next day, at two, another lady came to the prison, bringing +Kropotkin a watch. Not dreaming that a pocket time-piece could contain +anything dangerous, the authorities passed it along without examination. +Kropotkin did not look at the hour, but pulled off the lid, and found a +tiny cipher note containing a new plan. (Had one of the officials +performed this operation the lady's life would have been forfeited.) + +This time the comrades rented the bungalow opposite the hospital. A +musician was there ready to play on his violin if all were well. For a +mile around every cab had been hired to render pursuit difficult. But +what was to be done with the soldier who was posted at the gate and who +could easily prevent Kropotkin from gaining the street, by merely +stepping in front of him with lowered bayonet? Ah, the comrades, like +Chitchikoff in Gogol's _Dead Souls_, had an idea. This soldier had once +worked in the laboratory of the hospital, and therefore they appointed +one of their number to divert his attention by a discussion on +microscopes. + +At four o'clock Kropotkin was escorted to the yard. He waited a moment, +wiped his brow as if it were hot, and took off his hat. From the little +gray house a violin sounded. The tones fell sweetly on Kropotkin's ears. +He moved toward the gate intending to run in a moment. Suddenly--the +music ceased. His heart hurt. Something writhed. One painful minute +passed ... Two ... Three ... Four ... Five ... Ten minutes ... No music +... A quarter of an hour.... Some heavily loaded carts entered the gate, +and Kropotkin understood the cause of the interruption. + +Immediately the violin trilled. Kropotkin listened with interest. The +musician was talented, and performed with much feeling. You felt that if +three of the strings broke, like Paganini he would still make ravishing +music on the fourth. Moreover his technique was perfect. He was playing +a mazurka from Kontsky--wild, eager, thrilling,--a mad mazurka. It +attracted Kropotkin like a magnet. It pulled him to the end of the +footpath. He trembled lest it should stop again, but the intoxicated +sounds floated over the prison yard, louder and louder, with +ever-increasing passion and freedom. + +Kropotkin glanced at the sentry. This hero followed a line parallel to +his, but five paces nearer the gate. He was supposed to walk directly +behind the prisoner, but as Kropotkin always crawled feebly along at a +snail's pace, the able-bodied sentry who was too vigorous to creep, hit +upon the above device. + +Five paces nearer the gate--that was bad. But the sentry was only a +sentry, while Peter Kropotkin was a mathematician and a psychologist. He +calculated that if he began to run, the soldier instead of heading +directly for the gate to cut off his escape, would obey his natural +instinct and endeavor to seize him as quickly as possible. He would thus +describe two sides of a triangle, of which Kropotkin would describe the +third alone. + +Fortissimo--how loudly that violin played! Kropotkin ran! + +No sooner had he taken a few steps than some peasants who were piling +wood, shouted, "He runs! Stop him"! It was for the people that Kropotkin +was in prison; it was for them that he descended from his high estate; +it was for them that he was ready to die at any moment. But the blocks +with the slanted brows did not understand. At night when they lay on +their rotting straw, they thanked the good gods for sending them such +good masters. Now they called out, "Stop him! Stop him!"[40] + +When Kropotkin heard that cry, he fled with a speed equal to Commandant +Masyukov's, when Madame Sigida struck him. Already the sentry--doing +just what Kropotkin expected him to do--was at his heels. Three soldiers +who were sitting on the doorstep, followed. The athletic sentinel was so +confident he could outrun the invalid that he did not fire, but flung +his rifle forward, trying to give the fleeing patient a bayonet-blow in +the back. But it is never safe to take chances with even a sick runner, +when he is sprinting for his life. + +"Did you ever see what a big tail that louse has under the microscope?" +asked the scientific comrade of the soldier at the gate. + +"What, man! A tail? Why, man, you're crazy!" + +"That's right. It has a tail as long as that." + +"Come man, none of your tales now. Do you take me for a fool? I know a +thing or two about the microscope myself." + +"But I tell you it has. I aught to know better. That's the very first +thing I saw under the microscope." + +At this moment Kropotkin ran past them unnoticed, and tho usually much +interested in convex lenses, took absolutely no part in the animated +argument. + +On gaining the street he was dumfounded to see that the huge man who +occupied the carriage wore a military cap. The unhappy thought came to +him that he had been betrayed. But on running nearer he saw it was a +friend. + +"Jump in! Jump in!" cried this modern Mikoula Selaninovich in a terrible +voice, calling him a vile name. Leaning over to the coachman, he shoved +a revolver in his face, screaming, "Gallop! Gallop! I will kill you, +you----!!" using language abusive enuf to have made every foul-mouthed +cossack in the cavalry stare in mute admiration. + +Springing into the air from a forefoot, the beautiful horse--a famous +trotter named Barbar--flew along as if it were shod not with steel but +with wings. When the cause of Revolution is triumphant, this flying +quadruped should receive a statue of purest gold, for two years later it +rendered another magnificent service to the movement by bearing to +safety the Nihilist Stepniak, after he helped assassinate the monstrous +Mezentsov--murderer of many.[41] + +Like lightning it leapt thru a narrow lane; they entered the immense +Nevsky Prospect; they turned into a side-street; Kropotkin ran up a +stair-case; the smiling comrade-coachman drove away. At the top of the +steps waiting with painful anxiety was his sister-in-law. Physiologists +claim it is impossible to do two things at one instant, but Kropotkin +says that when he fell into her arms, she laughed and cried at once, +and at the same time bade him change his clothes and crop his beard. Ten +minutes later, he and his muscular Mikoula left the house, and took a +cab. About an hour after, the house was searched, but as Kropotkin was +not there, and it was necessary to arrest someone, the police took his +sister and his sister-in-law. + +Kropotkin was puzzled where to spend the time till evening, but his big +friend knew. He called out to the cabman, "To Donon!" which has the same +significance in Saint Petersburg that Delmonico has in New York, or +Cecil in London, or Doree in Paris, or Bristol in Berlin, or Sacher in +Vienna. + +The decision was wise, for the police searched the dirty slums, but not +the swell West End. So Kropotkin, dressed in an elegant costume, entered +the aristocratic restaurant, and as he walks thru the halls flooded with +light and crowded with guests, let us fill the biggest bumper with the +richest wine, and quaff congratulations to the noblest prince that was +ever imprisoned--and escaped. + +Then softly let us retreat on tiptoe, and glance at his products for the +bookshelf. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[39] For a description of this disease, see Professor Osler's +"Principles and Practise of Medicine."----"In parts of Russia scurvy is +endemic, at certain seasons reaching epidemic proportions; and the +leading authorities upon the disorder, now in that country, are almost +unanimous, according to Hoffmann, in regarding it as +infectious."----This reference to a physician reminds me of an +interesting little book which has just appeared, "Glimpses of Medical +Europe," by Dr. Ralph L. Thompson. Writing of Russia he says, "In St. +Petersburg are fine parks and theatres and comfortable hotels in +abundance. But despite it all there is an odd feeling of oppression that +strikes one the moment he lands on Russian soil, and one doesn't breathe +freely till he is out of it all."... "Personally I wouldn't mind +foregoing health, friends and money, to fame; but if it came to a +question of living in Russia, I would choose to die unknown." + +[40] For a work dealing with revolutionary workmen and peasants, see +"Mother," by Maxim Gorky. See also the admirable "Russia's Message" by +William English Walling. This book is illustrated with magnificent +photographs, including the latest one of Kropotkin. + +[41] The Russian Revolutionists are too modest. Stepniak in "Underground +Russia," finds it necessary to mention that Mezentsov was stabbed to +death in the streets of Saint Petersburg in full daylight, but he does +not tell the reader that he himself was the author of the glorious deed. +To find this out, we must go to another work; for instance, Konni +Zilliacus's "Russian Revolutionary Movement," or Leo Deutsch's "Sixteen +Years in Siberia," (see the English translation by Helen Chisholm). On +the other hand Deutsch escaped in a romantic manner from the prison in +Kiev, but in his book he refers to it so casually that if we wish to +learn the facts we must go to another work; either Stepniak's, or +Professor Thun's "Geschichte der revolutionaren Bewegung in Russland." + + + + +FROM THE PRINTING PRESS + + You poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, if you understand your + true mission and the very interests of art itself, come with us. + Place your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service + of the revolution. Figure forth to us, in your eloquent style, or + your impressive pictures, the heroic struggles of the people + against their oppressors, fire the hearts of our youth with that + glorious revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our + ancestors; tell women what a noble career is that of a husband who + devotes his life to the great cause of social emancipation! Show + the people how hideous is their actual life, and place your hands + on the causes of its ugliness; tell us what a rational life would + be, if it did not encounter at every step the follies and ignomies + of our present social order.--P. KROPOTKIN: _An Appeal to the + Young_. + + +Peter Kropotkin's writings range from obscure articles in unknown papers +read by a handful of faithful subscribers, to cloth-bound far-famed +volumes translated into several languages; include contributions to +periodicals as revolutionary as _Revolte_ and as respectable as the +_Atlantic Monthly_; embrace all subjects from machinery to music, and +from Tolstoyism to Terrorism. + +Judged from a literary standpoint, his work is distinctly +disappointing. It is styleless. But it has one redeeming feature: +clearness. The man is straight. He is not ashamed of his ideas. He +speaks right out. He is one of the few authors who writes for the +peculiar purpose of being understood. He does not bury the flower of his +thought in a wilderness of words. + +It cannot be contended that Kropotkin gave up his style because he +writes for workers who are unable to appreciate the beauty of literary +composition. A man may refuse a title with an oath as Carlyle did, or +give it up as Kropotkin himself did, but he who has a style relinquishes +it not, for this is a gift besides which the 'boast of heraldry' is as a +puppy's snappish yelp unto the lion's mighty roar. + +Neither can it be claimed that Kropotkin's stylistic deficiency is due +to the fact that he is an economist. So was Henry George, and yet there +is a magical music in _Progress and Poverty_ which makes the phrases +flow like a poem of Pushkin's. + +Nor can it be argued that his style has been spoilt by the circumstance +that he writes in various languages, for in none of his work is there +epigram, imagery or imagination--the glorious trinity of the stylists. +But what has a foreign tongue to do with it? Was not Kossuth just as +much an artist in English as in his native pepper? Even when he cried +that we must seize the opportunity by the _front hair_? Many waters +cannot quench love, and strange alphabets do not wipe out style. + +What is a stylist? He is one who handles words, who licks phrases into +shape, who moulds clauses to his bidding, who compels a sentence to +leave a deathless impression, who weaves a connected chain of harmony +from the scattered links of language. + +Kropotkin has written very much, but practice does not make a stylist +any more than learning the rules in the _Rationale of Verse_ makes one +capable of producing _The Raven_. The secret of style is revealed to +few. Its essence is a mystery in which only a handful are initiated. The +elusive occultism of art consists in this--that a single expression has +the power to either damn a passage into oblivion, or to emblazon it +forever in eternity. + +To give a striking instance: When Edgar Poe first wrote _To Helen_, +these lines composed the second stanza: + + + "On desperate seas long wont to roam, + Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, + Thy Naiad airs have brought me home + To the beauty of fair Greece, + And the grandeur of old Rome." + + +In this case the concluding couplet is cheap and commonplace--"fair +Greece" and "old Rome" being anemic expressions unfit to live. Poe +amended it to read: + + + "To the glory that was Greece, + And the grandeur that was Rome." + + +Miracle of Art! This is not a change, but an apotheosis. We now have two +lines which lay before us in gorgeous perfection a picture of the past; +two lines as splendid as they were sickly, as magnificent as formerly +they were mediocre. Yet the idea is the same in both cases. What then is +it which makes so much difference? It is the manner of expression--it is +style--it is art. + +There is no reason why one man should be a stylist and another should +not, but so it is. Huxley was a stylist; Darwin was not; Herzen, yes; +Kropotkin, no. + +Being anxious to know Kropotkin's exact attitude towards Art, I wrote to +him asking categorically: "In your opinion, have exquisite poets like +Keats and Pushkin--who never touched social questions, but celebrated +only beauty--been of much benefit to mankind?" + +He answered thus: "Not in a direct way, but perhaps _very much in an +indirect way_: Pushkin by creating language,[42] and Keats by teaching +love of nature. As to "exquisiteness," have we not had too much of those +egotistic sweets?" + +Closely analysed, and reduced to its ultimate elements, this answer +shows that Kropotkin has no use for art per se. According to him Keats +and Pushkin are benefactors not because of their beautiful verses, but +because of other reasons. Exquisiteness he condemns altogether. He +rejects the doctrine of Art for the sake of Art. He does not subscribe +to the creed of Flaubert, Gautier, Bouilhet, Maupassant, Anatole France +and Lafcadio Hearn. + +I think Kropotkin is wrong, and I believe that because his work lacks +artistic finish, much of it is doomed to perish. + +Maxim Gorky, in speaking of a brief period when the Russian Censorship +was somewhat suspended, said, "Books fell over the land like flakes of +snow, but their effect was as sparks of fire!" + +If Kropotkin wished to express the same idea, he would say it something +like this: "Numerous books of all descriptions were published and +distributed thruout Russia." + +How fine Gorky's; how poor Kropotkin's. How vivid the former; how weak +the latter. This is the difference between style and lack of it. Not in +the entire range of Kropotkin's writings is there a single sentence in +any way comparing with the above one of Gorky's; for he who writes +without art holds a crippled pen. I may be mistaken, but in my opinion +this single quotation from the Bitter One is worth all Kropotkin's +_Freedom Pamphlets_. It is sublime in its similes and exquisite in its +antitheses. There is a power in it which unchains enthusiasm and awakens +intensity. "Books fell over the land like flakes of snow, but their +effect was as sparks of fire." It is art. It is unforgettable, while to +remember a phrase from _Modern Science and Anarchism_ is impossible. + +With this introduction, we may proceed to examine his work, much of +which is necessary and valuable, tho none of it is of primal or +epoch-making importance. Stepniak is right when he says, "He is not a +mere manufacturer of books. Beyond his purely scientific labors, he has +never written any work of much moment." And as Herzen said of Ogaryov, +we may remark of Kropotkin: "His chief life-work was the working out of +such an ideal personality as he is himself." + +The majority of prominent periodicals in England and America to which +Kropotkin has contributed, are listed in the _Reader's Guide_ which can +be found in any library, and those interested can look them up. Of +course, many of these articles are first-class, but I can stop to +mention only two. See _Russia and the Student Riots_ (_Outlook_, April +6, 1901), which deals with the disturbances which caused the young +revolutionist, Peter Karpowitch, to kill Bogolepov, Minister of Public +Instruction. It shows with painful clearness the extreme and useless +savagery of that cruel, repulsive, Stead-praised, arch-murderer, +Nicholas II. + +See also the _Present Crisis in Russia_, (_North American Review_, May +1901). In this excellent essay he refers to the Procurator of the Holy +Synod in these words: "Pobedonostzeff, a narrow-minded fanatic of the +state religion, who--if it were only in his power--would have burnt at +the stake all protestants against Orthodoxy and Catholicism."[43] + +Who should answer this article, but Pobedonostzeff himself! (_Russia and +Popular Education_, _N. A. R._ September 1901). How strange when Light +and Darkness are arrayed against each other![44] Pobedonostzeff calls +Kropotkin "a learned geographer and sociologist;" but says; "Tho a +Russian, he (Kropotkin) does not understand Russia, and is incapable of +understanding his country; for the soul of the Russian people is a +closed book to him which he has never opened." It is noteworthy that he +does not attempt to deny Kropotkin's charge that if it were only in his +power he would burn at the stake all protestants against orthodoxy and +catholicism. Doubtless he considers this his chief crown of glory. + +There was a further response from Kropotkin, (_Russian Schools and the +Holy Synod_, _N. A. R._ April 1902). + +Among his pamphlets which are used assiduously by the anarchists of all +countries for propaganda, and which often cause the arrest of the +devoted distributer, are: _Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal. The +State: Its Historic Role. War. Law and Authority. The Paris Commune. +Organized Vengeance--called Justice. Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and +Principles. An Appeal to the Young. The Psychology of Revolution. The +Wage System._ These tracts are valuable as eye-openers to uneducated +workmen, but they possess no merit whatsoever for cultured liberals. + +Altho Kropotkin has written more than thirty geographical articles for +the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, it is difficult to think of this +revolutionaire as a contributor to this backward publication. The +_Encyclopedia Britannica_ is not on the trail for truth--it wants +current prejudices. For instance, Professor Samuel Davidson, D. D., LL. +D., was asked to contribute an essay on the _Canon_. Happening to be a +scholar as well as a theolog, the venerable man was not satisfied with +the logic of Father Irenaeus, that since the earth has four corners, and +there are four winds, and animals have four legs, there must be four +Gospels. His article was so mutilated by the editors of the +_Encyclopedia_, that in justice to himself, he was obliged to publish +the original version in book form, _The Canon of the Bible_. When the +_Encyclopedia_ mentions liberty, it is from the reactionary viewpoint. +The _American Supplement_ follows its parent in this respect, for here +are eulogistic accounts of the second and third Alexanders, by Nathan +Haskell Dole.[45] This literat is so ignorant of the most important +epochs in the Russian Revolution, that he writes, "Vera Zasulich +murdered General Trepov;" when all the world knows that Trepov was only +wounded and soon recovered.[46] Luxuriously abound the weeds of his +misstatements.[47] He speaks of the 'private virtues' of Alexander III. +They must have been very private indeed, for no one ever discovered +them. He speaks of his 'noble aspirations,' but the son of Maria of +Hesse-Darmstadt had only this one aspiration: to wipe out freedom as +effectually as a whirlwind blows away a puff of smoke. Such is the +famous publication to which all school-girls resort when they must +prepare a composition on Milton. + +Kropotkin's strictly scientific works, the _Orography of Asia_ and the +_Glacial Period_ were written in Russian and have not been translated +into English. + +During his imprisonment at Clairvaux, appeared his _Words of a Rebel_, +1885, in French, published by Elisee Reclus. It is a critical exposition +of Anarchism.[48] + +In 1886 he published his first book in English, _In Russian and French +Prisons_. This work soon disappeared from the market. Kropotkin himself +offered a high price for a copy, but could not obtain one. It seems the +agents of the Russian government bought up the entire edition and +destroyed it. + +In 1892 appeared his _Conquest of Bread_, in French, which has been +translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, English. +It is perhaps his most important work and has been much reviewed and +quoted. Notice to those who wish to think: Study this volume. + +In 1898 appeared his _Fields, Factories and Workshops_. This highly +excellent work is the splendid outcome of several essays which were +written a decade previous for the _Nineteenth Century_ (1880-1890), and +one for the Forum, (_Possibilities of Agriculture_, August 1890). If +nations would follow this book, how great would be their gain in +prosperity and happiness![49] + +This book is a plea for intensive agriculture, and in view of the great +cry, "Back to the land!" which is sweeping over the nations, it is a +fulfilled prophecy. It is the remedy for social ills--the solution of +the labor problem. Kropotkin shows that by the new method of scientific +farming, a man can make a living from an acre of ground,[50] and as soon +as the workingman realizes this fact--and can get a bit of land--he will +be able to discharge his employer and bounce his boss. By all means read +the chapters on _The Possibilities of Agriculture_: no fairy-tale is +more miraculous.[51] + +In 1899 appeared in book form the _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_ which had +first run serially in the _Atlantic Monthly_, (September 1898 to +September 1899), under the title, _Autobiography of a Revolutionist_. In +the magazine, the introduction is by Robert Erskine Ely, who was +Kropotkin's host when the Russian traveled in America. In the book, +however, the preface is by Brandes. Neither of these forewords is +brilliant, but the latter is the worse. When we think of Norway, we +think of only one man--Ibsen. When we think of Denmark, we think of only +one man--Brandes. But in this case his preface was a fizzle. In fact, it +is almost as bad as the erudite Lavrov's preface to Stepniak's splendid +_Underground Russia_. No better and nobler book than these _Memoirs_ has +been written; nothing higher and purer could be written. Only one thing +is lacking; indeed, it is the chief omission in the cosmos of +Kropotkin--the poetic note. He is good and great, but the passionate +fire is denied him. His soul is not aflame with poesy's burning brand. +He could never cry out like the student Ivan Kalayev, "My soul is +burning with stormy passion; my heart is full of battle-boldness. O, if +I could only see the coming of liberty! O, to pull the mask of falsehood +from the face of the murderer, to strike the tyrant with the steel-arm! +Enuf tears! Let the glorious, victorious struggle arise! The people are +calling us! It is a shame, it is a crime to wait longer! Fall upon the +enemy, my honest hereditary sword! I am thine, altogether thine, O my +country, my mother!" But leaving divine enthusiasm aside, this volume is +perfection. He who peruses its loving pages, gains a tender brother +whose body is unseen, but whose memory becomes imperishable. When you +read it, you cry a little, because the man who wrote it was so kind. +Across the miles you seem to hear his fraternal voice, and you know if +you write to him, he will answer you thus: "Dear Comrade."--If you have +time to read but a single volume a year, and desire one by a Russian, +and ask my advice, I say: Read one of these--_Underground Russia_, by +Stepniak; or _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_, by Kropotkin.[52] + +In 1902 he wrote _Modern Science and Anarchism_, a booklet of about one +hundred pages which is much admired and extensively advertised by the +anarchists. + +By far his most important work of recent years is, _Mutual Aid: A Factor +in Evolution_.[53] His contention is that in progressive evolution, +mutual aid plays a greater part than mutual struggle. He claims that +most Darwinians have misinterpreted Darwin's ideas. For an able analysis +of this great book, see the review by Professor Vladimir G. +Simkhovitch, (_Popular Science Quarterly_, December 1903). + +In 1905 appeared his _Russian Literature_[54]--a very good and useful +text-book--which originated in a series of eight lectures, delivered +March 1901, at the Lowell Institute in Boston. It is not perfect, but +this is not the author's fault. With only three hundred pages at his +disposal, it is impossible to treat all adequately, while some writers +had to be omitted entirely. For example, there is not a line about the +famous anti-militarist novelist, Vsevolod Garshin (1855-1888), or of +Simon Nadson (1862-1887), the exquisite and melancholy poet who chanted +songs not at sunrise, but in shadow and solitude, and died in youth and +sadness, leaving to the Outcasts of the Ages another great name to +cherish.[55] + +In reading this book we experience a peculiarly uneasy sensation:-- + +We read of Lomonosov, by far the greatest Russian of his age, whose life +was broken by political persecution. + +We read of the moral Novikov, whom Catherine II. sentenced to serve +fifteen years in a secret cell in Schusselburg. + +We read of Labzin, who wrote against corruption, and consequently was +forced to end his days in exile. + +We read of Radischeff--the first to point out the horrors of +serfdom--who was imprisoned, deported, and died by suicide. + +We read of the epoch-making Pushkin who was exiled to Kishinev at +twenty, and later to Mikhailovskoye, and who escaped permanent political +exile in Siberia by accident. + +We read of the Byronic Lermontov who was banished to the Caucasus for +writing a poem on the death of Pushkin. + +We read of Ryleev, Odoevsky, Shevchenko, Griboyedov, Pisarev, +Chernishevsky, whose martyrdoms I have already mentioned. + +We read of the brilliant and poetic Polezhaev, who was send to the +barracks when a minor and died there from consumption. + +We read of the popular novelist Bestuzhev, who was exiled to Siberia and +then sent to the Caucasus as a soldier. + +We read of the great Gogol who suffered at the hands of the censorship. + +We read of Turgenev who was arrested and exiled to his distant estates +for writing a brief obituary notice of Gogol. Had it not been for his +influential friends he would have gone to Siberia. + +We read of Leo Tolstoy whose excellent educational experiment was +violently abolished by the government, so enraging this extraordinary +man that he warned Alexander II. he would shoot the first police officer +who would again dare to enter his home. + +We read of the high-strung Dostoyevsky who for no reason at all was +sentenced to death, brought to the gibbet, pardoned there, condemned to +hard labor, imprisoned, exiled, deprived of literary work, beaten with +the cat-o'-nine-tails, tortured in a thousand ways, year after year, +till he became a mental and physical wreck. In all the history of the +human race, from the day that primitive man roamed the untamed forests, +and stubbing his naked toe against a root, fell down to worship it, to +placate it, to appease it, until the scientific time that a biologist +like Haeckel absolutely denied the existence of god and soul,--there +has been nothing more horribly cruel than the czarish treatment which +the Russian government meted out to the gifted youth who produced a work +in his early twenties that caused Nekrasov to cry out to Belinsky, "A +new Gogol is born to us!"[56] + +We read of Plescheev, one of Russia's foremost poets, who was sent as a +soldier to the Orenburg region, and endured persecution for years. + +We read of Mikhail Mikhailov--one of the most valued contributors to the +_Sovremennik_. (The Contemporary), a wonderful periodical numbering +among its contributors, Chernishevsky, Dobrolubov, Tolstoy, +Nekrasov--who was condemned to hard labor in Siberia where he soon died. + +We read of Ostrovsky, the Father of the Russian Drama, who was placed +under police supervision as a suspect. + +We read of the loving Levitov--"a pure flower of the Russian +steppes"--who while a student was exiled to the far north, and later +removed to Vologda where he was forced to live in complete isolation +from everything intellectual and in awful poverty verging on starvation. + +We read of Petropavlovsky who was early exiled to the Siberian +government of Tobolsk, where he was kept many years and from which he +was released only to die soon after from consumption. + +We read of Saltykoff (Schedrin), the greatest of satirists, who was +exiled for several years in the miserable provincial town of Vyatka. + +We read of Belinsky, the greatest of critics, who fortunately died young +enuf to escape the fortress. When he was dying an agent of the +state-police would call from time to time to ascertain if he were still +alive. Had he recovered he would have been transfered to Peter and Paul. + +We read of the persecution of Palm and Potyekhin; of the years that +Melshin, Korolenko, Zasodimsky, Elpatievsky, etc, spent in exile. By +this time a terrible truth dawns upon the startled mind: In Romanoff's +Russia, scarcely one single writer of worth has escaped imprisonment or +banishment.[57] And these prophets who have been thus persecuted were +not despicable rhymers like Alfred Austin, or duke-and-duchess novelists +like Harold MacGrath. They were great-brained men whose mission was to +uplift a nation. Had the Catherines, Nicholases, and Alexanders been +less powerful, Russia would not now be the foulest blot on our +skull-strewn earth.[58] + +Ivan Federof was the first of Russian printers. In 1564 he cast the +Slavonic characters. Being accused of heresy, he fled for his life. The +Lithuanian magnates with whom he sought refuge, forced him to till the +soil. Unhappy Federof said, "It was not my work to sow the grain, but to +scatter thru the earth food for the mind, nourishment for the souls of +all mankind." He perished in Lemberg in extreme poverty.[59] Woful was +his fate--symbolic of the sad destiny which was to befall every +literary man in Knoutland.[60] + +Let the Russian who intends to become an author prepare his last will +and testament, and notify the nearest undertaker. No night will be too +dark to keep gendarmes from bursting into his room and hauling him off +to a prison from which he may never emerge. (If he comes from an +aristocratic family let him adopt an empty-eyed skull and yellow +cross-bones as a suitable coat-of-arms). In the den of the bloody bear +there is a blackness as of many clouds. Within this deep shadow, Virtue +is slaughtered and Genius treated like an unwelcome cur. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[42] When Pushkin began to write, the Russian literary language was in a +somewhat unsettled and nebulous state, and his poetry helped to form and +fix it. He thus did for Russian literature what Chaucer did for English. + +[43] Kropotkin is too mild. Pobedonostzeff, world-renowned as the +"Modern Torquemada," shed more blood, and was a colder and--if +possible--crueller being than the terrible Spanish Inquisitor, while the +physical tortures that he used, with the exception of burning at the +stake which was too open an affair, were practically the same that were +in vogue during the Dark Ages. He started numerous massacres which +resulted in the deaths of great numbers. He often inflamed peoples who +lived in harmony, to destroy each other. He was eminently successful in +stirring up racial hatred and religious prejudice. "When I was in the +Caucasus I saw the Georgian everywhere working peacefully and +contentedly side by side with the Tartar and the Armenian. How happily +and simply, like children, they played and sang and laughed, and how +difficult now to believe that these simple, delightful people are busy +killing each other in a senseless, stupid way, obedient to dark and evil +influences."--Maxim Gorky in London Times. These "dark and evil +influences" emanated from the medieval fissures in the theologic brain +of Constantine Petrovitch Pobedonostzeff. + +[44] Twenty years previous, in the pages of this very magazine, the same +thing occurred, for the enlightened Ingersoll and the orthodox Jeremiah +Black argued about Christianity. + +[45] We would naturally expect better things from the author of that +specially fine sonnet, "Russia" (see Stedman's American Anthology), +beginning: + + + "Saturnian mother! why dost thou devour + Thy offspring, who by loving thee are curst?" + + +[46] The same mistake (and a respectable number of others) is made by +William Eleroy Curtis in his false and disgusting "The Land of the +Nihilist." He devotes a whole chapter to Alexander II., speaks +continually of his assassination, and yet does not know even the name of +the famous assassin. He says it is Elnikoff (sic)! This is a bad guess. +On this occasion two bombs were thrown. The first by Rysakov, and it +destroyed the carriage. The second by Grinevetsky, and it destroyed the +emperor. How carefully and conscientiously the well-informed author has +studied the history of the Russian Revolution which he so vilely +condemns! If he ever compiles a work on England, I dare say he will +announce that Charles I. was sentenced to death by the Quakers. + +[47] It almost equals Broughton Brandenburg's "The Menace of the Red +Flag" (Broadway Magazine, June 1908), in which Bakunin is called a +Frenchman! I read the unlimited number of errors in this article with +uncontrollable amazement. Few men, I said, are gifted with such an +infinite amount of ignorance and godliness. The next day the newspapers +announced that this same Saint Broughtonius had been arrested by his +wife and was being sued for abandonment and non-support. + +P. S. As I correct these proofs I learn that Brandenburg the Blessed is +again under arrest; this time for forging Grover Cleveland's signature +to a campaign article and selling it to the New York Times for $200. + +[48] For an impartial discussion of the various anarchial schools, +including of course Peter Kropotkin's, see "Anarchism" by Dr. Paul +Eltzbacher. + +[49] Without venturing my own opinion, I must say that in this work +Kropotkin enunciates a theory which few radicals accept--the +Decentralisation of Industries. Briefly stated, the doctrine is this: It +is untrue that certain nations are specialised either for industry or +for agriculture. Countries which economists have declared to be merely +agricultural lands, have recently advanced so rapidly in industries that +the supremacy of the champions is seriously threatened. No one or two +nations can again secure a monopoly of industry, for the tendency of +modern civilization is towards a spreading and scattering of industries +all over the earth. Not a mere shifting of the center of gravity from +one country to another, as formerly happened in Europe when the +commercial hegemony migrated from Italy to Spain, then to Holland, and +finally to Britain, but an actual and permanent decentralisation of +industry, by its very nature making it impossible for any nation to gain +industrial ascendancy. Even the most backward nations will soon +manufacture almost everything they need. There is much advantage in this +combination of industrial with agricultural pursuits. It is well to have +production for home use--each region producing and consuming its own +manufactured goods and its own agricultural product.----Of course the +Socialists are diametrically opposed to this contention, and they answer +it with one word--the trusts.--When I spoke with Leonard D. Abbott about +Kropotkin, he told me his high opinion of him, but soon referred to this +hypothesis, and laughed. It was the same when I mentioned the point to +Dr. Antoinette Konikov, etc. See Abbott's "A Visit to Prince Kropotkin," +(Twentieth Century, October 2, 1897). + +[50] My friend Elmer Littlefield has demonstrated the same thing on his +acre on Fellowship Farm, Westwood, Mass. His magazine, Ariel, is an +enthusiastic advocate of intensive agriculture. + +[51] Bolton Hall's "Three Acres and Liberty" is based to a great extent +on this work of Kropotkin's. + +[52] After finishing the "Memoirs," my friend, Miss Margaret Scott wrote +me: "As a system of ethical training it might be advisable to have our +police lieutenants read one chapter a day of Kropotkin, while lawyers, +mayors and such, should have to get thru three. Think of the mental +upheaval!" + +[53] Spargo the Socialist--always a vehement foe of the +Anarchists--calls this "a wonderful book." See his "The Socialists." + +[54] This book is not permitted in Russia--when Kellogg Durland traveled +there, he had to rip off the cover and wrap the pages around his body. + +[55] Several intelligent Russians tell me Nadson is their favorite poet; +therefore this must be considered a serious omission. One exclaimed, +"What, he writes about Fet and not Nadson!" + +[56] On this subject see "Russia and the Russians," by Edmund Noble. + +[57] "The history of Russian Literature is a martyrology." See "Russian +Traits and Terrors," by E. B. Lanin, the collective signature of several +writers in the Fortnightly Review. The Twentieth Century (June 26, 1897) +ends its review of this volume with this sentence: "Concerning Russian +prisons the book makes revelations so sickening that language is +polluted by the recital of them. Swinburne's fierce ode is mild in its +characterization of their brutal infamy, and it is possible, after +reading these pages to agree with Ernest Belfort Bax's assertion that +any sane man, knowing the facts, who pronounces it wrong to assassinate +the Czar, deliberately lies."--Swinburne's poem, "Russia: An Ode," altho +it contains a few weak lines, is certainly one of the most fiery +outbursts in the language, and is clearly the work of a master. Here is +a representative passage: + + + "Hell recoils heart-stricken: horror worse than hell + Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell, + Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fierier breath, + Rises red in arms devised of darkling death. + Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame, + Call aloud on justice by her darker name; + Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide. + Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide." + + +[58] Imagine the United States of America if Franklin had been murdered, +if Irving had been knouted, if Bryant had been exiled, if Emerson had +been imprisoned, if Longfellow had been starved, if Whittier had been +hanged, if Holmes had been flogged, if Thoreau had been shot, if Whitman +had been poisoned, if Hawthorne had been chained with iron, if Lowell +had been kept in a secret dungeon, if Motley had spent his life in a +mine, if Parkman had been tortured, etc., etc., etc. + +[59] See "Russian Novelists" by Viscount Vogue. But the statements of +this virulent French reactionary must be received with extreme caution +as his perverted brains frequently prevent him from stating the truth. +For example, in speaking of Turgenev, he says, "But, tho always ready to +help others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer. +Was it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have +aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies?" By +'political intriguer' he means an 'enemy to the empire, a revolutionist. +Now the facts are that no one was of greater use to Herzen the +arch-revolutionist and his thundering Kolokol, than Turgenev. Herzen was +in England and often it was impossible to explain how he knew some of +the events which he described. It was Turgenev who furnished him this +information. All this is revealed by the published correspondence of +Herzen and Turgenev. Turgenev was fully and entirely in sympathy with +the Russian Revolution. He earnestly desired to meet Ippolit Mishkin, +and begged Kropotkin to tell him all he knew about this defiant +revolutionary orator. Turgenev deeply loved his own Bazaroff, and in +explaining him says, "If the reader is not won by Bazaroff, +notwithstanding his roughness, absence of heart, pitiless dryness and +terseness, then the fault is with me--I have missed my aim; but to +sweeten him with syrup (to use Bazaroff's own language), this I did not +want to do, altho perhaps thru that I would have won Russian youth at +once to my side.... When he calls himself nihilist, you must read +revolutionist." + +[60] This does not include obsequious authors like Derzhavin and +Karamzin. Masters are usually willing to fling a few crumbs to their +fawning dogs. + + + + +IN LATER LIFE + + There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the + Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind,--Leo Tolstoy + and Peter Kropotkin.--GEORG BRANDES + + +A storm careered madly over the Northern Sea, its impatient waves +heaving and howling, leaping with a burning frenzy, the fuming raging +billows surging and swelling, calling and crying, roaring louder and +louder, vaulting higher and higher. + +The steamer shook and swayed and struggled; the frightened passengers +sought shelter in their state-rooms, but one of them sat for hours upon +the stem of the deck, enjoying the tempest intensely, putting out his +face so it could be watered by the foam of the dashing waves. This was +Kropotkin. After the years he had spent in the charnel cell, no wonder +every fibre in his body was trembling and throbbing to meet the force +and passion of the sea-storm. + +He landed safely in the country where Herzen founded _The Bell_, where +Lavrov edited _Forward_, where Felix Volkhovsky was to conduct _Free +Russia_, and where he himself was to start _Freedom_. + +For over thirty years he has remained abroad. He never returned to +Russia. He is one of the few revolutionists who never went back to that +sunken swamp where liberty's wrapped in her winding-sheets, while +tyranny's robed in ermine. There are two reasons for this. In the first +place he became interested in a new-born idea--Anarchism--and felt he +could be more useful as an apostle of this movement than as a rebel in +Trepovdom. As is well-known, his lectures and writings on the subject +have earned him the title, "Father of Anarchist-Communism." Secondly, +when the Nihilists were changed (by purple butchers) into Terrorists, +they dropped their propaganda of pamphlets to study the properties of +petroleum, and thus were forced to neglect the varletry. However, +Kropotkin's sympathies drew him more and more towards those human +machines who toil so hard for their bread that if you cut their pennies +open, the blood would gush from them. + +About a year after his escape, Kropotkin attended an important labor +congress in Belgium (1877). A few days later the police received an +order to arrest him. At this time the theologians were in power, and +the Belgian comrades knowing a clerical ministry would be only too +willing to turn him over to the blood-sucking czar, insisted upon his +leaving the country. On returning to his hotel, he found his good friend +James Guillaume--small physically, big in all other respects--barring +the way to his room, and sternly announcing that Kropotkin could enter +only by using force against him. + +The next morning the ejected delegate sailed for London, but soon went +to Paris where he helped to form radical groups. Again he was wanted by +the police, but by mistake they arrested a Russian student (1878). Later +he left for Switzerland where he founded an anarchistic paper, _Le +Revolte_ (1879). + +Two years later Alexander II. was assassinated. The government hanged +the revolutionists at home, but pretended the exiles abroad were +responsible for the deed. The Holy League was formed to execute the +refugees. An officer who knew Kropotkin when he was a page de chambre, +was appointed to kill him. A woman was sent from Petersburg to Geneva to +lead the conspiracy. Kropotkin took matters coolly, collected a pile of +threatening letters--of which the police later relieved him--and +nothing happened except that Helvetia was told if it did not expel the +agitator, then Alexander III., the Lord's Anointed, would drive out from +Russia all the Swiss governesses and ladies' maids, while the czarina +would refuse to eat Swiss cheese. This was more than the little republic +could stand, and Kropotkin was told to go. He says he did not take +umbrage at this. + +He went once more to London, where he met his old comrade Chaykovsky, +and together they began to preach their gospel of freedom. Always to +work for the liberation of humanity--that isn't such a bad idea, is +it?[61] + +At this time there was no movement in the Island which had imbibed the +narcotic of reaction and lay in a wakeless torpor, and Kropotkin and his +devoted wife felt so lonely among the napping Britons that they decided +to cross the channel. "Better a prison in France than this grave," they +said. They were followed by an army of informers, freely furnished by +the loving Russian Government which cannot bear to see its children +travel without suitable protection. Not to be outdone in courtesy, the +French police soon escorted him to the official lodging-house. + +Kropotkin was incarcerated in the central prison of Clairvaux where had +been confined old Blanqui--the communard at whose burial Louise Michel +spoke words which will have no funeral. Kropotkin was well-treated, the +officials were polite, and he was permitted to give his fellow-prisoners +instruction in physics, languages, geometry and cosmography. +Unfortunately, Clairvaux is built on marshy ground, and Kropotkin fell +sick from malaria. His wife who was studying in Paris, preparing for the +degree of Doctor of Science, hastened from Wurtz's laboratory to the +prison-town. She remained there until her iconoclast was released. This +event occurred after three years' imprisonment. He then went to the +capital, lectured to an audience of several thousand, and left France +immediately to avoid a forcible expulsion. + +Such are some of the scenes in the life of Peter Kropotkin--imprisoned +by governments, pursued by police, followed by spies,[62] hounded by +agents of autocracy. + +This peace-loving man whose name is synonym for kindness, this tender +soul as modest as Newton, as gentle as Darwin, has been hunted from +frontier to border-line. Against none of his persecutors does he utter a +single invective. He is the epitome of mildness, the incarnation of +humaneness.[63] + +Ask anyone who has seen Kropotkin for an hour or has known him for a +generation, to describe his most characteristic trait, and the +invariable answer will be: simplicity. His is a great spirit--it has +cast out flam. "Kropotkin is one of the most sincere and frank of men," +says Stepniak. "He always says the truth, pure and simple, without any +regard for the _amour propre_ of his hearers, or for any consideration +whatever. This is the most striking and sympathetic feature of his +character. Every word he says may be absolutely believed. His sincerity +is such, that sometimes in the ardour of discussion an entirely fresh +consideration unexpectedly presents itself to his mind, and sets him +thinking. He immediately stops, remains quite absorbed for a moment, and +then begins to think aloud, speaking as tho he were an opponent. At +other times he carries on this discussion mentally, and after some +moments of silence, turning to his astonished adversary, smilingly says, +'You are right.' This absolute sincerity renders him the best of +friends, and gives especial weight to his praise and blame." + +[Illustration: THE COSSACKS + +Indulging in a favorite Russian pastime.] + +Most of Kropotkin's Russian revolutionary comrades--using the term +Comrade in its broad sense--ended their days in misery. Kroutikoff +strangled himself with a piece of linen; Stransky poisoned himself; +Zapolsky cut his throat with a pair of scissors; Leontovitch and +Bogomoloff hacked theirs with a bit of glass; Zhutin died in chains +bound to the wall; Kolenkin perished from wounds torn open by fetters; +Rodin poisoned himself with matches; Nathalie Armfeldt died of prison +consumption; Beverly was wounded with bullets and murdered with +bayonet-thrusts; Ivan Cherniavsky and wife and child were transported to +Irkutsk, the temperature was thirty degrees below zero, and the baby +died, while the mother went mad, howled, laughed, prayed, cursed, +rocked the dead infant in her arms and sang nursery songs;[64] +Semyonovsky shot himself; Uspensky hanged himself; Martinova was dragged +to the police station on the very day that she expected to become a +mother; Gratchevsky threw kerosene from his lamp over himself, set it on +fire and died shrieking--but at least he escaped from Schlusselburg; +Edelson was marched to the Arctic zone even after he had become insane; +Mukhanov was killed with a volley of balls; Sergius Pik was struck in +the head, his jaw was smashed by the gendarmes' guns, a ghastly hole was +made above his eye, his blood and brains oozed and fell on his +chest;[65] Sophia Gurevitch was ripped open with bayonets; Sherstnova +was shot to death for signaling with a hand-mirror; the young wife of +Felix Volkhovsky shot herself thru the head; the wonderful Kuprianov +died in prison at the age of nineteen; Shtchedrin was chained to the +barrow, became insane and so perished; Nadyeshda Sigida was flogged to +death;[66] Marie Vetrova was raped and murdered;[67] Jessy Helfman was +tortured indescribably; Bobohov swallowed a handful of opium; Ossinsky's +hair turned white in five minutes; Maria Kovalevskaya--cover thy face, +freedom--suffered, took poison and died in the prison infirmary; +Yakimova stayed up nights in the Trubetzkoi Ravelin to prevent the rats +from devouring her baby; Olga Lubatovitch was stripped naked by men and +beaten; Malyovany died in exile; the student Schmidt was murdered in his +cell by his jailers; Spiridonova was violated by a cossack officer and +by a police chief; the high-minded Plotnikoff ended his days in an +asylum; Bogulubov became a raving lunatic; Serdukov was so broken that +he shot himself after his release; the poet Polivanoff also committed +suicide thus--(Ah, those twenty long years in Schlusselburg!); the noble +Balmaschoff was hanged; the beautiful Zinaida too; Isaiev, Okladsky, +Zubkovsky went mad; Kviotkovsky, Presniakoff, Soukanoff died in Skipper +Peter's Prison; Buzinsky, Gellis, Ignatius Ivanoff succumbed in the +Key-Town Fortress; to Federoff was reserved a fate worse than death, +worse than torture, worse than madness, for it was his destiny to become +a dupe of the Black Hundreds and unwittingly slay Georg Iollos--lover of +liberty;[68] Ludmila Volkenstein,--but why continue an unhappy list +which has neither beginning nor end? I could fill a library with such +cases. + + +Such individual torments fell not to the lot of Peter Kropotkin. +Personally he has been favored by fortune. He has touched existence on +every side and lived every life. The wisdom of the world is in his +brain, and within his heart is lodged all its goodness. His experience +has been unusually wide. He has been on intimate terms with czar and +serf, he has met millionaire and mendicant, he has hobnobbed with prince +and pauper. He has lectured to aristocratic audiences who gazed calmly +at him thru gilded lorgnettes and foppish monocles, and to +empty-stomached workmen who cried loudly, "Pierre! Pierre! Notre +Pierre!"[69] + +The finest men of all nations have honored him. When a prisoner at +Clairvaux, a petition for his release was signed by such geniuses as +Herbert Spencer, Victor Hugo and Algernon Swinburne. When he required +books, Ernest Renan put his library at his service. While at Paris, +Turgenev--who won immortality by a single word--wished to be introduced +to him and celebrate his escape by a little banquet. When Catherine +Breshkovskaya journeyed for the first time to Petersburg, Kropotkin was +on the same train; they discussed problems, and this extraordinary woman +says his words thrilled like fire.[70] Elie Reclus was his brother. +Elisee published his writings and asked him to contribute to his +Geography--the greatest in existence. Jean Grave is his disciple. Ernest +Crosby loved him. Georg Brandes praises him lavishly. Zola paid his work +a high compliment. Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent an interesting day at +his home. J. Scott Keltie, the eminent authority on African history, is +one of his warmest friends. Bates, the Naturalist on the Amazons whom +Darwin mentions so often, appreciated his scientific ability. Enrico +Ferri closely studied his works. The learned Lavrov was his comrade. +Denjiro Kotoku, the Japanese essayist who founded the radical +_Heiminshimbun_, considers him one of the greatest humanitarians of the +nineteenth century.[71] At the home of Edward Clodd he argued with Grant +Allen. When at East Aurora, I saw only one picture over the desk of +Elbert Hubbard, and that was Kropotkin. Those who have read _De +Profundis_ will recall in what high pure words Oscar Wilde speaks of +him. Tolstoy calls him a learned man.[72] The authors of _Russian Traits +and Terrors_ speak of him as "one whose scientific accuracy and +objectivity is beyond praise." James Knowles so respected him that he +allowed him to write anarchistic articles for his high-toned _Nineteenth +Century_. Laurence Gronlound gives him as a type of the ideal anarchist. +In the soul of every libertarian swings a fragrant censer which offers +up olibanum to the stainless character of the great revolutionist. Put +those who love Kropotkin on one side, and those who don't on the other, +and you will have separated the heralds of the morning from the spooks +of the night. It is no more necessary to be an anarchist-communist to +have a warm spot in your heart for Peter Kropotkin, than it is necessary +to believe in Adam and Eve to enjoy Milton's _Paradise Lost_. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[61] Kropotkin is still able to cross London Bridge, but his comrade is +missing. For many years Chaykovsky kept away from Russia. During a whole +generation the man who taught Perovskaya was a wanderer in other lands. +Some months ago he went back--he could control his yearning no longer. +He is now in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The Father of the +Revolution will sleep among his children. + +P. S. As this book goes to press, the happy news comes that Chaykovsky +has been liberated on a heavy bail, but it is not yet known what the +government intends to do with him. + +[62] Some types are depicted in Gorky's latest work, "The Spy," +translated by Thomas Seltzer. Because of its subject-matter this book +acts as an emetic. + +[63] remember hearing James F. Morton, A. M.--author of the excellent +essay "The Curse of Race Prejudice"--speak to Elbert Hubbard about +Catherine Breshkovskaya whom he had seen at the Sunrise Club, and in +wishing to illustrate her gentleness and lack of resentment for those +who ill-treated her, he called her "a female Kropotkin." + +[64] When George Kennan heard this woman's story, his face became wet +with tears almost for the first time since boyhood. See his admirable +but terrible "Siberia and the Exile System." + +[65] See the letter by the eye-witness Nicholas Zotoff (hanged August 7, +1889). It is published in "King Stork and King Log," a two-volume work +by Stepniak. + +[66] Leo Deutsch was a prisoner at Kara at the time of this tragedy, and +he describes it in his "Sixteen Years in Siberia." + +[67] See "Woman, the Glory of the Russian Revolution" (Altruria, July +1907), by Dr. Sonia Winstan. Note this sentence: "In arrests the police +are always more cruel to women than to men, and I have seen women +dragged by the hair to jail thru the streets of St. Petersburg, while +men in the same group were led along in the ordinary way. In the prisons +innocent young women are often placed with the lowest murderers." + +[68] In Robert Crozier Long's "The Black Hundreds," in The Cosmopolitan, +January 1908. + +[69] "He is an incomparable agitator. Gifted with a ready and eager +eloquence, he becomes all passion when he mounts the platform. Like all +true orators, he is stimulated by the sight of the crowd which is +listening to him. Upon the platform this man is transformed. He trembles +with emotion; his voice vibrates with that accent of profound +conviction, not to be mistaken or counterfeited, and only heard when it +is not merely the mouth which speaks, but the innermost heart. His +speeches, altho he cannot be called an orator of the first rank, produce +an immense impression; for when feeling is so intense it is +communicative, and electrifies an audience. When, pale and trembling, he +descends from the platform, the whole room throbs with +applause."--STEPNIAK. + +[70] In Ernest Poole's "Catherine Breshkovskaya" in the Outlook. See +also Kennan. After being a Siberian exile for over twenty-two years she +came to America to collect funds for the Revolution, and immediately +went back to Russia. She was captured, and like Chaykovsky is now in the +fortress of Peter and Paul. She often said it was a shame for a +Revolutionist to die in bed. + +[71] In my "Symposium on Humanitarians." For several other contributors +who mentioned Kropotkin as one of their favorites, see this "Symposium," +now published in book form by The Altrurians. + +[72] In the "Russian Revolution," a senseless pamphlet, edited by V. +Tchertkoff who is talented enuf to be doing better things. When it comes +to a question of righteous resistance, Leo Tolstoy is unbearable. A man +who can say in effect, "Let the officials do whatever they want to do, +let them shoot you down as often as they please, let them fill every +prison in vast Russia with your bodies, let them rape your mothers and +daughters and wives, let them hang your young children, but never resist +in any way, only think of Jesus and read the Gospels,"--such a man is +what the doctors call non compos mentis. No wonder the Russian +Government does not molest him. The gentle Kropotkin says, "I am in +sympathy with most of Tolstoy's work, tho there are many of his ideas +with which I absolutely disagree--his asceticism, for instance, and his +doctrine of non-resistance. It seems to me, too, that he has bound +himself, without reason or judgment, to the letter of the New +Testament." + + + + +THE HISTORIAN OF THE REVOLUTION + + The heroism of our Russian comrades in the face of torture and + death will be told in days to come by generations made rich by + their sacrifices. History will pay an eternal homage to the victims + of the bloody tyranny which now rules Russia.--J. RAMSAY + MACDONALD, M. P. + + +To the present generation of Russian Revolutionists Kropotkin is not an +influence, but an inspiration. He is not a leader but an elder brother. +He is to them a type of the man who without a moment's hesitation leaves +everything for the Cause. He is a powerful voice crying out loudly +against the oppressors of mankind. Voices like these they hear +distinctly, and follow eagerly, tho they lead to a cold Siberian grave. + +With the lavishness of the mountain cataract that wastes its waters on +the rocks, the young radicals of Russia pour out their blood for an +ignorant[73] and ungrateful people. As willingly as lovers walk to the +altar, they go to the slaughter. They die as serenely as if they had a +thousand lives to lose instead of one. When a Revolutionist is hanged, +another takes his place while the gallow-grass around the choked neck is +still visible. Imprison them for a quarter of a century, and on the day +of their release they will conspire against czardom.[74] Torture them in +the mines of Nerchinsk, beat the men with the plet, rape the girls at +will, thrust them into black holes swarming with vermin and rodents, +taunt them, starve them, chill them, strike them to the ground, stamp on +their faces with military boots, deprive them of air, worry their nerves +to the breaking-point, string them up on slippery scaffolds, and they +will only shout, "Long live the Revolution!"[75] + +Liberty is the goddess they worship, and for her sake, when necessary, +they taste no food by day and touch no pillow by night. For her they put +away books and handle bombs, and exchange palaces for prisons, and leave +desks for dungeons, and go from colleges to coffins. Their backs are +ready for the lash, their throats are prepared for the noose. + +If the end comes at dawn in the yard of the Schlusselburg Prison, or at +noon below the level of the Neva in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, or +at midnight among the silent snows of Saghalien,--O liberty, how thy +lovers meet it! + +Against an autocracy as powerful as the Romanoff dynasty, rebels have +never before contended. In all the world no men and women like those of +Young Russia. From primal days to modern times, no martyrs like these. +Such sacrifices were never seen before.[76] Few expect to live beyond +twenty, and thousands upon thousands perish long before that age.[77] +They offer themselves to be nipped in the fairest hour of their proudest +bloom. O brilliant-eyed youth, O rosy-cheeked maid, be not so heedless +of yourselves. Think a little of the pleasures of life. Leave the stupid +muzhik to his fate, and cross the sea to a freer land. + +But from the foot of the scaffold there comes a cry, and from the +steppes of Siberia is heard a voice, and from the saltworks of Usolie +rings an answer, and from the gold-mines of Kara comes a response, and +from the Butirki of Moscow someone speaks, and from the prison of +Akatui, Young Russia utters the same word--Svoboda! Svoboda! Svoboda! + +Sometime in the future, when the true historian of the Russian +Revolution appears, he will write of men and women of so exalted a +nature, that antiquity will be dumb and boast no more her classic +heroes. + +He will write of Bakunin, the Jupiter from whose forehead leaped a +full-fledged movement; + +Of Dobroluboff, the genius who perished at twenty-five with a vaster +wisdom to his credit than any youngster of whom we have record; + +Of Olga Lubatovitch, the immortal girl in whose great heart burnt the +undying fire of insurrection; + +Of Vera Figner, the poetess, a woman of the rarest beauty and the +highest talents, who passed her life behind stone walls; + +Of Aaron Sundelevitch, the thoughtful Jew who established the first free +printing press in Saint Petersburg; + +Of Zuckerman, who was so merry that even in hell he jested, but who +after all was only human and committed suicide in the wilds of Yakutsk; + +Of Maria Kutitonskaya, who was ready to be hanged with a baby in her +womb; + +Of Eugene Semyonovsky, who wrote a letter to his father before +committing suicide, that would make everything on earth--except of +course an official--weep; + +Of the taciturn Kibalchitch, who was arrested for giving a pamphlet to a +peasant, and who, hearing in prison that an attempt had been made to +exterminate the imperial family, broke his habitual silence by +exclaiming, "It's good! It's fine! If they don't send me to Siberia, +I'll study nitroglycerine,"--and who kept his promise, for he was the +chemist who prepared the bomb that caused the blood of Alexander to +redden the snow; + +Of Ippolit Mishkin, the hero of the Case where all were heroes, whose +oratory inflamed all Russia, who was sentenced because he tried to +rescue Chernishevsky, who received fifteen additional years for making a +speech in prison over the dead body of Comrade Leo Dmohovsky, a man whom +Turgenev wished to know, and whom Perovskaya wished to save; + +Of Demetrius Lisogub, the millionaire who lived like a pauper, giving +everything to the Cause and spending nothing on himself, grudging every +coin he had to pay for his bread, dressing in rags even during the +severest winters, supporting for a time the whole revolutionary +movement, but continually sorrowing that in order not to forfeit his +wealth he could take no active part in the battle, and smiling with +happiness only when brought to the scaffold in the hangman's cart, for +at last he could bestow more than money--he could sacrifice himself; + +Of the printer Maria Kriloff who tho old, ill and half-blind, worked +with so much devotion that she excelled young and strong compositors, +and who stuck to her post until she was arrested, weapons in hand, in +the secret printing-office of _Cherny Perediel_; + +Of the intrepid Sophia Bogomoletz, who left husband and child for the +Revolution, and spent her life in prison; + +Of Nicholas Blinoff, who was slaughtered in the Jewish pogrom in +Zhitomir with the word 'Brother' on his noble lips; + +Of young Leo Weinstein, who fell in the same massacre crying 'Comrades;' + +Of the child Silin of Warsaw, who when only fifteen years of age was +condemned to death; when he was led out with bandaged eyes to be shot on +the sand-hills, he wept so bitterly that the soldiers called to him, "Do +not cry, there is no pain," upon which he shouted back, "I am crying +because I must die before accomplishing anything." + +He will tell how Valerian Ossinsky died, and then we will not think of +Christ upon the Cross. + +He will write of those soft-eyed, sweet-voiced, tender Terrorists whose +blessed bombs and bullets laid tyrants low: Zinaida who shot Min; +Spiridonova who slew Lujenovsky; Bizenko who killed Sakharoff; Eserskaja +who assassinated Klingenberg; Ragozinnikova who destroyed Maximoffsky. + +Of those noble and daring youths who struck to the death their country's +oppressors: Kaltourin and Gelvakov who dispatched Strelnikoff; +Balmaschoff who executed Sipyagin; Karpowitch who ended the days of +Bogolepoff; Kalayev who removed Sergius; Schaumann who aimed well at +Bobrikoff; Sazonov who wiped out Plehve. + +Of these he will write and of many, many more whose names are unknown to +an ignorant public which yells itself hoarse for empty-headed officials, +but whose memories encircle the hearts of freedom's orphans. + +He will write too, of a revolutionary thinker who dreams a philosophy +which would dethrone tyranny and upraise liberty, the humanitarian who +harbors a love which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth, the +true World-Man of the Better-Day--Comrade Kropotkin. + + _Reader, I press your hand warmly_ + +FOOTNOTES: + +[73] See "The Laborer and the Man with the White Hand" in Turgenev's +"Poems in Prose." + +[74] Since they are not permitted to work for freedom from the +house-tops, they must do it in their secret chambers. + +[75] For a Russian revolutionary drama powerfully depicting such a +scene, see "On the Eve," by Dr. Leopold Kampf. It has no connection with +Turgenev's great novel of the same name. For a tragedy whose interest +centers around a beautiful young man who has become insane in a Russian +prison, see "To the Stars," by Leonid Andreyev, (Translated by Dr. A. +Goudiss, Poet Lore, Winter 1907). Called by Helen A. Clarke, "a play in +which there is no villain except the far-off Russian Government." + +[76] + + + "Since the world's first wail went up from lands and seas + Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these. + Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell + Down the deepest and the loathiest ways of hell, + Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire, + Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire, + Saw not, where filth was foulest, and the night + Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite. + Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems + Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams. + Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives + Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives, + Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered, + Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured. + Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thoughts could shape, + Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape," etc. + SWINBURNE: "Russia: An Ode." + + +[77] "Marie Spiridonova was only twenty-one when she killed Lujenovsky; +and in St. Petersburg I knew a girl, a medical student--sweet, quiet, +all soul--who was barely eighteen when she said to me, simply "I shall +live but a year or two--no more." In this expectancy of death there is +no mawkishness, no pose. They have seen their comrades go after a few +days or years of service; their fate will be the same." LeRoy Scott, +"The Terrorists," in Everybody's Magazine. + + + + +Announcements + + + + +Lives of Great Altrurians + +BY VICTOR ROBINSON + + +This is to be a series of biographies of men and women whose life-work +was the liberation of humanity from bondage. Not of bishops and warriors +will Victor Robinson write, but of the Great Companions whose lances +struck the shields of despotism. These lives are to be of no standard +size and will not be written on contract-time. A great deal of +inclination and a little bit of opportunity will be the determining +factors. + +Out of this series, two numbers have already been published: + + +WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT +PETER KROPOTKIN + + +The rest of the subjects are still lodged within the cerebral cells of +the author. The following are in preparation for precious print: + + +MAXIM GORKY +WALT WHITMAN +ROBERT INGERSOLL +ELISEE RECLUS +THOMAS PAINE +FERDINAND LASSALLE +KARL MARX +VICTOR HUGO +ALEXANDER HERZEN +GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI +HERBERT SPENCER +HENRIK IBSEN +THOMAS HUXLEY +LEO TOLSTOY +CHARLES DARWIN +ERNEST HAECKEL +LOUISE MICHEL +EMILE ZOLA +AUGUST COMTE +BARUCH SPINOZA +IVAN TURGENEV +HARRIET MARTINEAU +GIORDANO BRUNO +GRANT ALLEN +WENDELL PHILLIPS +HENRY GEORGE +HENRY THOREAU +MRS. STANTON + + + + +William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft + +BY VICTOR ROBINSON + +Written in the Author's Eighteenth Year + + +William Godwin was the father of philosophic radicalism in England. His +wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the pioneer of the woman suffrage +movement. Yet the present generation of reformers knows little about +these glorious Liberals. This booklet tells briefly of Godwin's early +life, of his development from orthodoxy to rationalism, of his +epoch-making "Political Justice," of his narrow escape from imprisonment +on the charge of high treason, of his first meeting and dislike of Mary +Wollstonecraft, of his later love and marriage with her, of her former +marriage and attempt at suicide, of their views on the marriage +relation, of the storm which Mary Wollstonecraft caused by writing "A +Vindication of the Rights of Woman," of her lamented death, of her +talented daughter who eloped with Shelley, of Godwin's subsequent love +affairs, of his philosophy, of his old age, etc. + + + +_Pierre Ramus_+: in "Die Freie Generation:" + + Selten wohl, dass uns eine kleine Broschurenschrift in die Hände + fiel, die mit ähnlicher Glut des edelsten Idealismus verfasst ist, + wie jene unseres amerikanischen Genossen Victor Robinson. + + +_Eugene V. Debs_+, in "Appeal to Reason:" + + The story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft is now in + pamphlet form, fresh from the gifted pen of Victor Robinson. It is + a story of two great souls charmingly told by another. + + +_Elbert Hubbard_+, editor of "The Philistine:" + + At the Roycroft Chapel, Victor gave us a most admirable address on + Godwin--quite the best thing he ever did. + + +_John Sherwin Crosby_+, author of "Government:" I shall prize your + very graphic sketch because of its intrinsic worth. + + +_William Lloyd Garrison_+, the son of the great Abolitionist: + + I have read with pleasure your estimate of these brave thinkers. + What surviving qualities have truth and courage! + + +_Clinton P. Farrell_+, brother-in-law and publisher of Ingersoll: + Many many thanks for this beautiful booklet--a gem. May you live + long and continue in the making of good books. + + +_Voltairine de Cleyre_+, the most radical woman in Philadelphia: + + I am glad that some one has taken up the work I began some fifteen + years ago,--that of compelling the deserved recognition due to Mary + Wollstonecraft from the English-speaking radical world. + + +_Champe S. Andrews_+, counsel of the Medical Society of New York: + + I am indebted to you for the very delightful monograph on the lives + of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. I value this book on + account of its excellent literary and biographical value. + + +_Henry J. Weeks_+, lover of our furred and feathered brothers: + + As soon as I received your book, my wife read it to me from + beginning to end, starting with loving interest and ending with + sympathetic tears. Then I read it again myself. Then I called upon + my friend Fred Heath, editor of "The Social Democratic Herald," and + talked to him about my "William and Mary," and together we hied to + the public library and made a search for all we could find about + the lives of these interesting friends. + + +_Artistically printed Illustrated with portraits + 25 cents, postpaid_+ + + +THE ALTRURIANS + +12 MT. MORRIS PARK, WEST, NEW YORK CITY + + + + +A Symposium on Humanitarians + +CONDUCTED BY + +VICTOR ROBINSON + + +"Name your 10 favorite humanitarians of the 19th century." To this +interesting question, replies have been received from 100 men and women, +many of them of national and some of international fame. Among the +contributors are: + + +ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE +ERNEST CROSBY +ALEXIS ALADIN +PAUL CARUS +ABRAHAM JACOBI +EUGENE DEBS +ROSE HARTWICK THORPE +BENJAMIN R. TUCKER +JOHN SPARGO +WILLIAM MARION REEDY +EDWARD BLISS FOOTE +HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT +EMMA GOLDMAN +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH +HYPATIA BRADLAUGH +LUTHER BURBANK +HERBERT N. CASSON +VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE +INA COOLBRITH +HAVELOCK ELLIS +HARRISON GREY FISKE +B.O. FLOWER +HAMLIN GARLAND +WM. LLOYD GARRISON +JACOB GORDIN +MOSES HARMAN +MORRIS ROSENFELD +SADAKICHI HARTMAN +HENRY HOLT +GEO. WHARTON JAMES +ALEXANDER BERKMAN +JOSEPH JASTROW +BOLTON HALL +ANDREW D. WHITE +JACQUES LOEB +ROSE PASTOR STOKES +EDWIN MARKHAM +N.O. NELSON +SIMON NEWCOMB +LOUIS F. POST + +_Finely printed. Paper 25c. Cloth 50c._ + + +THE ALTRURIANS + +12 MT. MORRIS PARK, WEST, NEW YORK CITY + + + + +NEVER-TOLD TALES + +Graphic Stories of the Evils of Sexual Ignorance + +BY DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON + + +It is time that these tales should no longer remain "Never Told Tales." +It is time that the ignorance which costs so much health, so much +happiness, so many lives, should no longer be permitted to hold its +blighting sway in our midst; it is time that life-destroying prudery +should give way to vitalizing knowledge; it is time that sanctimonious +hypocracy should give way to common-sense. It is time in short, that +darkness should give way to light, and misery to happiness--it is time, +therefore, that the "Never-Told Tales" should at last be told! + +The author is convinced that if these tales were put into the hands of +every man and woman about to marry, and into the hands of every father +and mother who have adolescent children, much misery would be prevented +and much good would be accomplished. Hence does he send them forth into +the world.... + _From the Author's Preface._ + +Artistically bound and printed. Cloth $1, postpaid + + +PUBLISHED BY + +THE ALTRURIANS + +12 MOUNT MORRIS PARK WEST + +NEW YORK CITY + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Comrade Kropotkin, by Victor Robinson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMRADE KROPOTKIN *** + +***** This file should be named 34745-8.txt or 34745-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/7/4/34745/ + +Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Sania Ali Mirza, Martin +Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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