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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