Comrade Kropotkin Part 2

"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 b.u.t.ter, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.signed, 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 wors.h.i.+p of a better world than this. We who have no faith in G.o.d 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 n.o.bility, 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 prost.i.tute 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, coa.r.s.e, 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 ma.s.sacre was to terrify the population into submitting meekly to various governmental impositions. The ma.s.sacre 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 a.s.sociation, 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 pa.s.s 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.