Chapter III: Part 3

Altho Kropotkin has written more than thirty geographical articles for the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, it is difficult to think of this revolutionaire as a contributor to this backward publication. The _Encyclopedia Britannica_ is not on the trail for truth--it wants current prejudices. For instance, Professor Samuel Davidson, D. D., LL. D., was asked to contribute an essay on the _Canon_. Happening to be a scholar as well as a theolog, the venerable man was not satisfied with the logic of Father Irenaeus, that since the earth has four corners, and there are four winds, and animals have four legs, there must be four Gospels. His article was so mutilated by the editors of the _Encyclopedia_, that in justice to himself, he was obliged to publish the original version in book form, _The Canon of the Bible_. When the _Encyclopedia_ mentions liberty, it is from the reactionary viewpoint. The _American Supplement_ follows its parent in this respect, for here are eulogistic accounts of the second and third Alexanders, by Nathan Haskell Dole.[45] This literat is so ignorant of the most important epochs in the Russian Revolution, that he writes, "Vera Zasulich murdered General Trepov;" when all the world knows that Trepov was only wounded and soon recovered.[46] Luxuriously abound the weeds of his misstatements.[47] He speaks of the 'private virtues' of Alexander III. They must have been very private indeed, for no one ever discovered them. He speaks of his 'noble aspirations,' but the son of Maria of Hesse-Darmstadt had only this one aspiration: to wipe out freedom as effectually as a whirlwind blows away a puff of smoke. Such is the famous publication to which all school-girls resort when they must prepare a composition on Milton.

Kropotkin's strictly scientific works, the _Orography of Asia_ and the _Glacial Period_ were written in Russian and have not been translated into English.

During his imprisonment at Clairvaux, appeared his _Words of a Rebel_, 1885, in French, published by Elisee Reclus. It is a critical exposition of Anarchism.[48]

In 1886 he published his first book in English, _In Russian and French Prisons_. This work soon disappeared from the market. Kropotkin himself offered a high price for a copy, but could not obtain one. It seems the agents of the Russian government bought up the entire edition and destroyed it.

In 1892 appeared his _Conquest of Bread_, in French, which has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, English. It is perhaps his most important work and has been much reviewed and quoted. Notice to those who wish to think: Study this volume.

In 1898 appeared his _Fields, Factories and Workshops_. This highly excellent work is the splendid outcome of several essays which were written a decade previous for the _Nineteenth Century_ (1880-1890), and one for the Forum, (_Possibilities of Agriculture_, August 1890). If nations would follow this book, how great would be their gain in prosperity and happiness![49]

This book is a plea for intensive agriculture, and in view of the great cry, "Back to the land!" which is sweeping over the nations, it is a fulfilled prophecy. It is the remedy for social ills--the solution of the labor problem. Kropotkin shows that by the new method of scientific farming, a man can make a living from an acre of ground,[50] and as soon as the workingman realizes this fact--and can get a bit of land--he will be able to discharge his employer and bounce his boss. By all means read the chapters on _The Possibilities of Agriculture_: no fairy-tale is more miraculous.[51]

In 1899 appeared in book form the _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_ which had first run serially in the _Atlantic Monthly_, (September 1898 to September 1899), under the title, _Autobiography of a Revolutionist_. In the magazine, the introduction is by Robert Erskine Ely, who was Kropotkin's host when the Russian traveled in America. In the book, however, the preface is by Brandes. Neither of these forewords is brilliant, but the latter is the worse. When we think of Norway, we think of only one man--Ibsen. When we think of Denmark, we think of only one man--Brandes. But in this case his preface was a fizzle. In fact, it is almost as bad as the erudite Lavrov's preface to Stepniak's splendid _Underground Russia_. No better and nobler book than these _Memoirs_ has been written; nothing higher and purer could be written. Only one thing is lacking; indeed, it is the chief omission in the cosmos of Kropotkin--the poetic note. He is good and great, but the passionate fire is denied him. His soul is not aflame with poesy's burning brand. He could never cry out like the student Ivan Kalayev, "My soul is burning with stormy passion; my heart is full of battle-boldness. O, if I could only see the coming of liberty! O, to pull the mask of falsehood from the face of the murderer, to strike the tyrant with the steel-arm! Enuf tears! Let the glorious, victorious struggle arise! The people are calling us! It is a shame, it is a crime to wait longer! Fall upon the enemy, my honest hereditary sword! I am thine, altogether thine, O my country, my mother!" But leaving divine enthusiasm aside, this volume is perfection. He who peruses its loving pages, gains a tender brother whose body is unseen, but whose memory becomes imperishable. When you read it, you cry a little, because the man who wrote it was so kind. Across the miles you seem to hear his fraternal voice, and you know if you write to him, he will answer you thus: "Dear Comrade."--If you have time to read but a single volume a year, and desire one by a Russian, and ask my advice, I say: Read one of these--_Underground Russia_, by Stepniak; or _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_, by Kropotkin.[52]

In 1902 he wrote _Modern Science and Anarchism_, a booklet of about one hundred pages which is much admired and extensively advertised by the anarchists.

By far his most important work of recent years is, _Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution_.[53] His contention is that in progressive evolution, mutual aid plays a greater part than mutual struggle. He claims that most Darwinians have misinterpreted Darwin's ideas. For an able analysis of this great book, see the review by Professor Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, (_Popular Science Quarterly_, December 1903).

In 1905 appeared his _Russian Literature_[54]--a very good and useful text-book--which originated in a series of eight lectures, delivered March 1901, at the Lowell Institute in Boston. It is not perfect, but this is not the author's fault. With only three hundred pages at his disposal, it is impossible to treat all adequately, while some writers had to be omitted entirely. For example, there is not a line about the famous anti-militarist novelist, Vsevolod Garshin (1855-1888), or of Simon Nadson (1862-1887), the exquisite and melancholy poet who chanted songs not at sunrise, but in shadow and solitude, and died in youth and sadness, leaving to the Outcasts of the Ages another great name to cherish.[55]

In reading this book we experience a peculiarly uneasy sensation:--

We read of Lomonosov, by far the greatest Russian of his age, whose life was broken by political persecution.

We read of the moral Novikov, whom Catherine II. sentenced to serve fifteen years in a secret cell in Schusselburg.

We read of Labzin, who wrote against corruption, and consequently was forced to end his days in exile.

We read of Radischeff--the first to point out the horrors of serfdom--who was imprisoned, deported, and died by suicide.

We read of the epoch-making Pushkin who was exiled to Kishinev at twenty, and later to Mikhailovskoye, and who escaped permanent political exile in Siberia by accident.

We read of the Byronic Lermontov who was banished to the Caucasus for writing a poem on the death of Pushkin.

We read of Ryleev, Odoevsky, Shevchenko, Griboyedov, Pisarev, Chernishevsky, whose martyrdoms I have already mentioned.

We read of the brilliant and poetic Polezhaev, who was send to the barracks when a minor and died there from consumption.

We read of the popular novelist Bestuzhev, who was exiled to Siberia and then sent to the Caucasus as a soldier.

We read of the great Gogol who suffered at the hands of the censorship.

We read of Turgenev who was arrested and exiled to his distant estates for writing a brief obituary notice of Gogol. Had it not been for his influential friends he would have gone to Siberia.

We read of Leo Tolstoy whose excellent educational experiment was violently abolished by the government, so enraging this extraordinary man that he warned Alexander II. he would shoot the first police officer who would again dare to enter his home.

We read of the high-strung Dostoyevsky who for no reason at all was sentenced to death, brought to the gibbet, pardoned there, condemned to hard labor, imprisoned, exiled, deprived of literary work, beaten with the cat-o'-nine-tails, tortured in a thousand ways, year after year, till he became a mental and physical wreck. In all the history of the human race, from the day that primitive man roamed the untamed forests, and stubbing his naked toe against a root, fell down to worship it, to placate it, to appease it, until the scientific time that a biologist like Haeckel absolutely denied the existence of god and soul,--there has been nothing more horribly cruel than the czarish treatment which the Russian government meted out to the gifted youth who produced a work in his early twenties that caused Nekrasov to cry out to Belinsky, "A new Gogol is born to us!"[56]

We read of Plescheev, one of Russia's foremost poets, who was sent as a soldier to the Orenburg region, and endured persecution for years.

We read of Mikhail Mikhailov--one of the most valued contributors to the _Sovremennik_. (The Contemporary), a wonderful periodical numbering among its contributors, Chernishevsky, Dobrolubov, Tolstoy, Nekrasov--who was condemned to hard labor in Siberia where he soon died.

We read of Ostrovsky, the Father of the Russian Drama, who was placed under police supervision as a suspect.

We read of the loving Levitov--"a pure flower of the Russian steppes"--who while a student was exiled to the far north, and later removed to Vologda where he was forced to live in complete isolation from everything intellectual and in awful poverty verging on starvation.

We read of Petropavlovsky who was early exiled to the Siberian government of Tobolsk, where he was kept many years and from which he was released only to die soon after from consumption.

We read of Saltykoff (Schedrin), the greatest of satirists, who was exiled for several years in the miserable provincial town of Vyatka.

We read of Belinsky, the greatest of critics, who fortunately died young enuf to escape the fortress. When he was dying an agent of the state-police would call from time to time to ascertain if he were still alive. Had he recovered he would have been transfered to Peter and Paul.

We read of the persecution of Palm and Potyekhin; of the years that Melshin, Korolenko, Zasodimsky, Elpatievsky, etc, spent in exile. By this time a terrible truth dawns upon the startled mind: In Romanoff's Russia, scarcely one single writer of worth has escaped imprisonment or banishment.[57] And these prophets who have been thus persecuted were not despicable rhymers like Alfred Austin, or duke-and-duchess novelists like Harold MacGrath. They were great-brained men whose mission was to uplift a nation. Had the Catherines, Nicholases, and Alexanders been less powerful, Russia would not now be the foulest blot on our skull-strewn earth.[58]

Ivan Federof was the first of Russian printers. In 1564 he cast the Slavonic characters. Being accused of heresy, he fled for his life. The Lithuanian magnates with whom he sought refuge, forced him to till the soil. Unhappy Federof said, "It was not my work to sow the grain, but to scatter thru the earth food for the mind, nourishment for the souls of all mankind." He perished in Lemberg in extreme poverty.[59] Woful was his fate--symbolic of the sad destiny which was to befall every literary man in Knoutland.[60]

Let the Russian who intends to become an author prepare his last will and testament, and notify the nearest undertaker. No night will be too dark to keep gendarmes from bursting into his room and hauling him off to a prison from which he may never emerge. (If he comes from an aristocratic family let him adopt an empty-eyed skull and yellow cross-bones as a suitable coat-of-arms). In the den of the bloody bear there is a blackness as of many clouds. Within this deep shadow, Virtue is slaughtered and Genius treated like an unwelcome cur.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] When Pushkin began to write, the Russian literary language was in a somewhat unsettled and nebulous state, and his poetry helped to form and fix it. He thus did for Russian literature what Chaucer did for English.

[43] Kropotkin is too mild. Pobedonostzeff, world-renowned as the "Modern Torquemada," shed more blood, and was a colder and--if possible--crueller being than the terrible Spanish Inquisitor, while the physical tortures that he used, with the exception of burning at the stake which was too open an affair, were practically the same that were in vogue during the Dark Ages. He started numerous massacres which resulted in the deaths of great numbers. He often inflamed peoples who lived in harmony, to destroy each other. He was eminently successful in stirring up racial hatred and religious prejudice. "When I was in the Caucasus I saw the Georgian everywhere working peacefully and contentedly side by side with the Tartar and the Armenian. How happily and simply, like children, they played and sang and laughed, and how difficult now to believe that these simple, delightful people are busy killing each other in a senseless, stupid way, obedient to dark and evil influences."--Maxim Gorky in London Times. These "dark and evil influences" emanated from the medieval fissures in the theologic brain of Constantine Petrovitch Pobedonostzeff.

[44] Twenty years previous, in the pages of this very magazine, the same thing occurred, for the enlightened Ingersoll and the orthodox Jeremiah Black argued about Christianity.

[45] We would naturally expect better things from the author of that specially fine sonnet, "Russia" (see Stedman's American Anthology), beginning:

"Saturnian mother! why dost thou devour
Thy offspring, who by loving thee are curst?"

[46] The same mistake (and a respectable number of others) is made by William Eleroy Curtis in his false and disgusting "The Land of the Nihilist." He devotes a whole chapter to Alexander II., speaks continually of his assassination, and yet does not know even the name of the famous assassin. He says it is Elnikoff (sic)! This is a bad guess. On this occasion two bombs were thrown. The first by Rysakov, and it destroyed the carriage. The second by Grinevetsky, and it destroyed the emperor. How carefully and conscientiously the well-informed author has studied the history of the Russian Revolution which he so vilely condemns! If he ever compiles a work on England, I dare say he will announce that Charles I. was sentenced to death by the Quakers.

[47] It almost equals Broughton Brandenburg's "The Menace of the Red Flag" (Broadway Magazine, June 1908), in which Bakunin is called a Frenchman! I read the unlimited number of errors in this article with uncontrollable amazement. Few men, I said, are gifted with such an infinite amount of ignorance and godliness. The next day the newspapers announced that this same Saint Broughtonius had been arrested by his wife and was being sued for abandonment and non-support.

P. S. As I correct these proofs I learn that Brandenburg the Blessed is again under arrest; this time for forging Grover Cleveland's signature to a campaign article and selling it to the New York Times for $200.

[48] For an impartial discussion of the various anarchial schools, including of course Peter Kropotkin's, see "Anarchism" by Dr. Paul Eltzbacher.

[49] Without venturing my own opinion, I must say that in this work Kropotkin enunciates a theory which few radicals accept--the Decentralisation of Industries. Briefly stated, the doctrine is this: It is untrue that certain nations are specialised either for industry or for agriculture. Countries which economists have declared to be merely agricultural lands, have recently advanced so rapidly in industries that the supremacy of the champions is seriously threatened. No one or two nations can again secure a monopoly of industry, for the tendency of modern civilization is towards a spreading and scattering of industries all over the earth. Not a mere shifting of the center of gravity from one country to another, as formerly happened in Europe when the commercial hegemony migrated from Italy to Spain, then to Holland, and finally to Britain, but an actual and permanent decentralisation of industry, by its very nature making it impossible for any nation to gain industrial ascendancy. Even the most backward nations will soon manufacture almost everything they need. There is much advantage in this combination of industrial with agricultural pursuits. It is well to have production for home use--each region producing and consuming its own manufactured goods and its own agricultural product.----Of course the Socialists are diametrically opposed to this contention, and they answer it with one word--the trusts.--When I spoke with Leonard D. Abbott about Kropotkin, he told me his high opinion of him, but soon referred to this hypothesis, and laughed. It was the same when I mentioned the point to Dr. Antoinette Konikov, etc. See Abbott's "A Visit to Prince Kropotkin," (Twentieth Century, October 2, 1897).

[50] My friend Elmer Littlefield has demonstrated the same thing on his acre on Fellowship Farm, Westwood, Mass. His magazine, Ariel, is an enthusiastic advocate of intensive agriculture.

[51] Bolton Hall's "Three Acres and Liberty" is based to a great extent on this work of Kropotkin's.

[52] After finishing the "Memoirs," my friend, Miss Margaret Scott wrote me: "As a system of ethical training it might be advisable to have our police lieutenants read one chapter a day of Kropotkin, while lawyers, mayors and such, should have to get thru three. Think of the mental upheaval!"

[53] Spargo the Socialist--always a vehement foe of the Anarchists--calls this "a wonderful book." See his "The Socialists."

[54] This book is not permitted in Russia--when Kellogg Durland traveled there, he had to rip off the cover and wrap the pages around his body.

[55] Several intelligent Russians tell me Nadson is their favorite poet; therefore this must be considered a serious omission. One exclaimed, "What, he writes about Fet and not Nadson!"

[56] On this subject see "Russia and the Russians," by Edmund Noble.

[57] "The history of Russian Literature is a martyrology." See "Russian Traits and Terrors," by E. B. Lanin, the collective signature of several writers in the Fortnightly Review. The Twentieth Century (June 26, 1897) ends its review of this volume with this sentence: "Concerning Russian prisons the book makes revelations so sickening that language is polluted by the recital of them. Swinburne's fierce ode is mild in its characterization of their brutal infamy, and it is possible, after reading these pages to agree with Ernest Belfort Bax's assertion that any sane man, knowing the facts, who pronounces it wrong to assassinate the Czar, deliberately lies."--Swinburne's poem, "Russia: An Ode," altho it contains a few weak lines, is certainly one of the most fiery outbursts in the language, and is clearly the work of a master. Here is a representative passage:

"Hell recoils heart-stricken: horror worse than hell
Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell,
Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fierier breath,
Rises red in arms devised of darkling death.
Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame,
Call aloud on justice by her darker name;
Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide.
Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide."

[58] Imagine the United States of America if Franklin had been murdered, if Irving had been knouted, if Bryant had been exiled, if Emerson had been imprisoned, if Longfellow had been starved, if Whittier had been hanged, if Holmes had been flogged, if Thoreau had been shot, if Whitman had been poisoned, if Hawthorne had been chained with iron, if Lowell had been kept in a secret dungeon, if Motley had spent his life in a mine, if Parkman had been tortured, etc., etc., etc.

[59] See "Russian Novelists" by Viscount Vogue. But the statements of this virulent French reactionary must be received with extreme caution as his perverted brains frequently prevent him from stating the truth. For example, in speaking of Turgenev, he says, "But, tho always ready to help others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer. Was it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies?" By 'political intriguer' he means an 'enemy to the empire, a revolutionist. Now the facts are that no one was of greater use to Herzen the arch-revolutionist and his thundering Kolokol, than Turgenev. Herzen was in England and often it was impossible to explain how he knew some of the events which he described. It was Turgenev who furnished him this information. All this is revealed by the published correspondence of Herzen and Turgenev. Turgenev was fully and entirely in sympathy with the Russian Revolution. He earnestly desired to meet Ippolit Mishkin, and begged Kropotkin to tell him all he knew about this defiant revolutionary orator. Turgenev deeply loved his own Bazaroff, and in explaining him says, "If the reader is not won by Bazaroff, notwithstanding his roughness, absence of heart, pitiless dryness and terseness, then the fault is with me--I have missed my aim; but to sweeten him with syrup (to use Bazaroff's own language), this I did not want to do, altho perhaps thru that I would have won Russian youth at once to my side.... When he calls himself nihilist, you must read revolutionist."

[60] This does not include obsequious authors like Derzhavin and Karamzin. Masters are usually willing to fling a few crumbs to their fawning dogs.

IN LATER LIFE

There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the
Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind,--Leo Tolstoy
and Peter Kropotkin.--GEORG BRANDES

A storm careered madly over the Northern Sea, its impatient waves heaving and howling, leaping with a burning frenzy, the fuming raging billows surging and swelling, calling and crying, roaring louder and louder, vaulting higher and higher.

The steamer shook and swayed and struggled; the frightened passengers sought shelter in their state-rooms, but one of them sat for hours upon the stem of the deck, enjoying the tempest intensely, putting out his face so it could be watered by the foam of the dashing waves. This was Kropotkin. After the years he had spent in the charnel cell, no wonder every fibre in his body was trembling and throbbing to meet the force and passion of the sea-storm.

He landed safely in the country where Herzen founded _The Bell_, where Lavrov edited _Forward_, where Felix Volkhovsky was to conduct _Free Russia_, and where he himself was to start _Freedom_.

For over thirty years he has remained abroad. He never returned to Russia. He is one of the few revolutionists who never went back to that sunken swamp where liberty's wrapped in her winding-sheets, while tyranny's robed in ermine. There are two reasons for this. In the first place he became interested in a new-born idea--Anarchism--and felt he could be more useful as an apostle of this movement than as a rebel in Trepovdom. As is well-known, his lectures and writings on the subject have earned him the title, "Father of Anarchist-Communism." Secondly, when the Nihilists were changed (by purple butchers) into Terrorists, they dropped their propaganda of pamphlets to study the properties of petroleum, and thus were forced to neglect the varletry. However, Kropotkin's sympathies drew him more and more towards those human machines who toil so hard for their bread that if you cut their pennies open, the blood would gush from them.

About a year after his escape, Kropotkin attended an important labor congress in Belgium (1877). A few days later the police received an order to arrest him. At this time the theologians were in power, and the Belgian comrades knowing a clerical ministry would be only too willing to turn him over to the blood-sucking czar, insisted upon his leaving the country. On returning to his hotel, he found his good friend James Guillaume--small physically, big in all other respects--barring the way to his room, and sternly announcing that Kropotkin could enter only by using force against him.

The next morning the ejected delegate sailed for London, but soon went to Paris where he helped to form radical groups. Again he was wanted by the police, but by mistake they arrested a Russian student (1878). Later he left for Switzerland where he founded an anarchistic paper, _Le Revolte_ (1879).

Two years later Alexander II. was assassinated. The government hanged the revolutionists at home, but pretended the exiles abroad were responsible for the deed. The Holy League was formed to execute the refugees. An officer who knew Kropotkin when he was a page de chambre, was appointed to kill him. A woman was sent from Petersburg to Geneva to lead the conspiracy. Kropotkin took matters coolly, collected a pile of threatening letters--of which the police later relieved him--and nothing happened except that Helvetia was told if it did not expel the agitator, then Alexander III., the Lord's Anointed, would drive out from Russia all the Swiss governesses and ladies' maids, while the czarina would refuse to eat Swiss cheese. This was more than the little republic could stand, and Kropotkin was told to go. He says he did not take umbrage at this.

He went once more to London, where he met his old comrade Chaykovsky, and together they began to preach their gospel of freedom. Always to work for the liberation of humanity--that isn't such a bad idea, is it?[61]

At this time there was no movement in the Island which had imbibed the narcotic of reaction and lay in a wakeless torpor, and Kropotkin and his devoted wife felt so lonely among the napping Britons that they decided to cross the channel. "Better a prison in France than this grave," they said. They were followed by an army of informers, freely furnished by the loving Russian Government which cannot bear to see its children travel without suitable protection. Not to be outdone in courtesy, the French police soon escorted him to the official lodging-house.

Kropotkin was incarcerated in the central prison of Clairvaux where had been confined old Blanqui--the communard at whose burial Louise Michel spoke words which will have no funeral. Kropotkin was well-treated, the officials were polite, and he was permitted to give his fellow-prisoners instruction in physics, languages, geometry and cosmography. Unfortunately, Clairvaux is built on marshy ground, and Kropotkin fell sick from malaria. His wife who was studying in Paris, preparing for the degree of Doctor of Science, hastened from Wurtz's laboratory to the prison-town. She remained there until her iconoclast was released. This event occurred after three years' imprisonment. He then went to the capital, lectured to an audience of several thousand, and left France immediately to avoid a forcible expulsion.

Such are some of the scenes in the life of Peter Kropotkin--imprisoned by governments, pursued by police, followed by spies,[62] hounded by agents of autocracy.

This peace-loving man whose name is synonym for kindness, this tender soul as modest as Newton, as gentle as Darwin, has been hunted from frontier to border-line. Against none of his persecutors does he utter a single invective. He is the epitome of mildness, the incarnation of humaneness.[63]

Ask anyone who has seen Kropotkin for an hour or has known him for a generation, to describe his most characteristic trait, and the invariable answer will be: simplicity. His is a great spirit--it has cast out flam. "Kropotkin is one of the most sincere and frank of men," says Stepniak. "He always says the truth, pure and simple, without any regard for the _amour propre_ of his hearers, or for any consideration whatever. This is the most striking and sympathetic feature of his character. Every word he says may be absolutely believed. His sincerity is such, that sometimes in the ardour of discussion an entirely fresh consideration unexpectedly presents itself to his mind, and sets him thinking. He immediately stops, remains quite absorbed for a moment, and then begins to think aloud, speaking as tho he were an opponent. At other times he carries on this discussion mentally, and after some moments of silence, turning to his astonished adversary, smilingly says, 'You are right.' This absolute sincerity renders him the best of friends, and gives especial weight to his praise and blame."

Indulging in a favorite Russian pastime.]

Most of Kropotkin's Russian revolutionary comrades--using the term Comrade in its broad sense--ended their days in misery. Kroutikoff strangled himself with a piece of linen; Stransky poisoned himself; Zapolsky cut his throat with a pair of scissors; Leontovitch and Bogomoloff hacked theirs with a bit of glass; Zhutin died in chains bound to the wall; Kolenkin perished from wounds torn open by fetters; Rodin poisoned himself with matches; Nathalie Armfeldt died of prison consumption; Beverly was wounded with bullets and murdered with bayonet-thrusts; Ivan Cherniavsky and wife and child were transported to Irkutsk, the temperature was thirty degrees below zero, and the baby died, while the mother went mad, howled, laughed, prayed, cursed, rocked the dead infant in her arms and sang nursery songs;[64] Semyonovsky shot himself; Uspensky hanged himself; Martinova was dragged to the police station on the very day that she expected to become a mother; Gratchevsky threw kerosene from his lamp over himself, set it on fire and died shrieking--but at least he escaped from Schlusselburg; Edelson was marched to the Arctic zone even after he had become insane; Mukhanov was killed with a volley of balls; Sergius Pik was struck in the head, his jaw was smashed by the gendarmes' guns, a ghastly hole was made above his eye, his blood and brains oozed and fell on his chest;[65] Sophia Gurevitch was ripped open with bayonets; Sherstnova was shot to death for signaling with a hand-mirror; the young wife of Felix Volkhovsky shot herself thru the head; the wonderful Kuprianov died in prison at the age of nineteen; Shtchedrin was chained to the barrow, became insane and so perished; Nadyeshda Sigida was flogged to death;[66] Marie Vetrova was raped and murdered;[67] Jessy Helfman was tortured indescribably; Bobohov swallowed a handful of opium; Ossinsky's hair turned white in five minutes; Maria Kovalevskaya--cover thy face, freedom--suffered, took poison and died in the prison infirmary; Yakimova stayed up nights in the Trubetzkoi Ravelin to prevent the rats from devouring her baby; Olga Lubatovitch was stripped naked by men and beaten; Malyovany died in exile; the student Schmidt was murdered in his cell by his jailers; Spiridonova was violated by a cossack officer and by a police chief; the high-minded Plotnikoff ended his days in an asylum; Bogulubov became a raving lunatic; Serdukov was so broken that he shot himself after his release; the poet Polivanoff also committed suicide thus--(Ah, those twenty long years in Schlusselburg!); the noble Balmaschoff was hanged; the beautiful Zinaida too; Isaiev, Okladsky, Zubkovsky went mad; Kviotkovsky, Presniakoff, Soukanoff died in Skipper Peter's Prison; Buzinsky, Gellis, Ignatius Ivanoff succumbed in the Key-Town Fortress; to Federoff was reserved a fate worse than death, worse than torture, worse than madness, for it was his destiny to become a dupe of the Black Hundreds and unwittingly slay Georg Iollos--lover of liberty;[68] Ludmila Volkenstein,--but why continue an unhappy list which has neither beginning nor end? I could fill a library with such cases.

Such individual torments fell not to the lot of Peter Kropotkin. Personally he has been favored by fortune. He has touched existence on every side and lived every life. The wisdom of the world is in his brain, and within his heart is lodged all its goodness. His experience has been unusually wide. He has been on intimate terms with czar and serf, he has met millionaire and mendicant, he has hobnobbed with prince and pauper. He has lectured to aristocratic audiences who gazed calmly at him thru gilded lorgnettes and foppish monocles, and to empty-stomached workmen who cried loudly, "Pierre! Pierre! Notre Pierre!"[69]

The finest men of all nations have honored him. When a prisoner at Clairvaux, a petition for his release was signed by such geniuses as Herbert Spencer, Victor Hugo and Algernon Swinburne. When he required books, Ernest Renan put his library at his service. While at Paris, Turgenev--who won immortality by a single word--wished to be introduced to him and celebrate his escape by a little banquet. When Catherine Breshkovskaya journeyed for the first time to Petersburg, Kropotkin was on the same train; they discussed problems, and this extraordinary woman says his words thrilled like fire.[70] Elie Reclus was his brother. Elisee published his writings and asked him to contribute to his Geography--the greatest in existence. Jean Grave is his disciple. Ernest Crosby loved him. Georg Brandes praises him lavishly. Zola paid his work a high compliment. Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent an interesting day at his home. J. Scott Keltie, the eminent authority on African history, is one of his warmest friends. Bates, the Naturalist on the Amazons whom Darwin mentions so often, appreciated his scientific ability. Enrico Ferri closely studied his works. The learned Lavrov was his comrade. Denjiro Kotoku, the Japanese essayist who founded the radical _Heiminshimbun_, considers him one of the greatest humanitarians of the nineteenth century.[71] At the home of Edward Clodd he argued with Grant Allen. When at East Aurora, I saw only one picture over the desk of Elbert Hubbard, and that was Kropotkin. Those who have read _De Profundis_ will recall in what high pure words Oscar Wilde speaks of him. Tolstoy calls him a learned man.[72] The authors of _Russian Traits and Terrors_ speak of him as "one whose scientific accuracy and objectivity is beyond praise." James Knowles so respected him that he allowed him to write anarchistic articles for his high-toned _Nineteenth Century_. Laurence Gronlound gives him as a type of the ideal anarchist. In the soul of every libertarian swings a fragrant censer which offers up olibanum to the stainless character of the great revolutionist. Put those who love Kropotkin on one side, and those who don't on the other, and you will have separated the heralds of the morning from the spooks of the night. It is no more necessary to be an anarchist-communist to have a warm spot in your heart for Peter Kropotkin, than it is necessary to believe in Adam and Eve to enjoy Milton's _Paradise Lost_.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] Kropotkin is still able to cross London Bridge, but his comrade is missing. For many years Chaykovsky kept away from Russia. During a whole generation the man who taught Perovskaya was a wanderer in other lands. Some months ago he went back--he could control his yearning no longer. He is now in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The Father of the Revolution will sleep among his children.

P. S. As this book goes to press, the happy news comes that Chaykovsky has been liberated on a heavy bail, but it is not yet known what the government intends to do with him.

[62] Some types are depicted in Gorky's latest work, "The Spy," translated by Thomas Seltzer. Because of its subject-matter this book acts as an emetic.

[63] remember hearing James F. Morton, A. M.--author of the excellent essay "The Curse of Race Prejudice"--speak to Elbert Hubbard about Catherine Breshkovskaya whom he had seen at the Sunrise Club, and in wishing to illustrate her gentleness and lack of resentment for those who ill-treated her, he called her "a female Kropotkin."

[64] When George Kennan heard this woman's story, his face became wet with tears almost for the first time since boyhood. See his admirable but terrible "Siberia and the Exile System."

[65] See the letter by the eye-witness Nicholas Zotoff (hanged August 7, 1889). It is published in "King Stork and King Log," a two-volume work by Stepniak.

[66] Leo Deutsch was a prisoner at Kara at the time of this tragedy, and he describes it in his "Sixteen Years in Siberia."

[67] See "Woman, the Glory of the Russian Revolution" (Altruria, July 1907), by Dr. Sonia Winstan. Note this sentence: "In arrests the police are always more cruel to women than to men, and I have seen women dragged by the hair to jail thru the streets of St. Petersburg, while men in the same group were led along in the ordinary way. In the prisons innocent young women are often placed with the lowest murderers."

[68] In Robert Crozier Long's "The Black Hundreds," in The Cosmopolitan, January 1908.

[69] "He is an incomparable agitator. Gifted with a ready and eager eloquence, he becomes all passion when he mounts the platform. Like all true orators, he is stimulated by the sight of the crowd which is listening to him. Upon the platform this man is transformed. He trembles with emotion; his voice vibrates with that accent of profound conviction, not to be mistaken or counterfeited, and only heard when it is not merely the mouth which speaks, but the innermost heart. His speeches, altho he cannot be called an orator of the first rank, produce an immense impression; for when feeling is so intense it is communicative, and electrifies an audience. When, pale and trembling, he descends from the platform, the whole room throbs with applause."--STEPNIAK.

[70] In Ernest Poole's "Catherine Breshkovskaya" in the Outlook. See also Kennan. After being a Siberian exile for over twenty-two years she came to America to collect funds for the Revolution, and immediately went back to Russia. She was captured, and like Chaykovsky is now in the fortress of Peter and Paul. She often said it was a shame for a Revolutionist to die in bed.

[71] In my "Symposium on Humanitarians." For several other contributors who mentioned Kropotkin as one of their favorites, see this "Symposium," now published in book form by The Altrurians.

[72] In the "Russian Revolution," a senseless pamphlet, edited by V. Tchertkoff who is talented enuf to be doing better things. When it comes to a question of righteous resistance, Leo Tolstoy is unbearable. A man who can say in effect, "Let the officials do whatever they want to do, let them shoot you down as often as they please, let them fill every prison in vast Russia with your bodies, let them rape your mothers and daughters and wives, let them hang your young children, but never resist in any way, only think of Jesus and read the Gospels,"--such a man is what the doctors call non compos mentis. No wonder the Russian Government does not molest him. The gentle Kropotkin says, "I am in sympathy with most of Tolstoy's work, tho there are many of his ideas with which I absolutely disagree--his asceticism, for instance, and his doctrine of non-resistance. It seems to me, too, that he has bound himself, without reason or judgment, to the letter of the New Testament."

THE HISTORIAN OF THE REVOLUTION

The heroism of our Russian comrades in the face of torture and
death will be told in days to come by generations made rich by
their sacrifices. History will pay an eternal homage to the victims
of the bloody tyranny which now rules Russia.--J. RAMSAY
MACDONALD, M. P.

To the present generation of Russian Revolutionists Kropotkin is not an influence, but an inspiration. He is not a leader but an elder brother. He is to them a type of the man who without a moment's hesitation leaves everything for the Cause. He is a powerful voice crying out loudly against the oppressors of mankind. Voices like these they hear distinctly, and follow eagerly, tho they lead to a cold Siberian grave.

With the lavishness of the mountain cataract that wastes its waters on the rocks, the young radicals of Russia pour out their blood for an ignorant[73] and ungrateful people. As willingly as lovers walk to the altar, they go to the slaughter. They die as serenely as if they had a thousand lives to lose instead of one. When a Revolutionist is hanged, another takes his place while the gallow-grass around the choked neck is still visible. Imprison them for a quarter of a century, and on the day of their release they will conspire against czardom.[74] Torture them in the mines of Nerchinsk, beat the men with the plet, rape the girls at will, thrust them into black holes swarming with vermin and rodents, taunt them, starve them, chill them, strike them to the ground, stamp on their faces with military boots, deprive them of air, worry their nerves to the breaking-point, string them up on slippery scaffolds, and they will only shout, "Long live the Revolution!"[75]

Liberty is the goddess they worship, and for her sake, when necessary, they taste no food by day and touch no pillow by night. For her they put away books and handle bombs, and exchange palaces for prisons, and leave desks for dungeons, and go from colleges to coffins. Their backs are ready for the lash, their throats are prepared for the noose.

If the end comes at dawn in the yard of the Schlusselburg Prison, or at noon below the level of the Neva in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, or at midnight among the silent snows of Saghalien,--O liberty, how thy lovers meet it!

Against an autocracy as powerful as the Romanoff dynasty, rebels have never before contended. In all the world no men and women like those of Young Russia. From primal days to modern times, no martyrs like these. Such sacrifices were never seen before.[76] Few expect to live beyond twenty, and thousands upon thousands perish long before that age.[77] They offer themselves to be nipped in the fairest hour of their proudest bloom. O brilliant-eyed youth, O rosy-cheeked maid, be not so heedless of yourselves. Think a little of the pleasures of life. Leave the stupid muzhik to his fate, and cross the sea to a freer land.

But from the foot of the scaffold there comes a cry, and from the steppes of Siberia is heard a voice, and from the saltworks of Usolie rings an answer, and from the gold-mines of Kara comes a response, and from the Butirki of Moscow someone speaks, and from the prison of Akatui, Young Russia utters the same word--Svoboda! Svoboda! Svoboda!

Sometime in the future, when the true historian of the Russian Revolution appears, he will write of men and women of so exalted a nature, that antiquity will be dumb and boast no more her classic heroes.

He will write of Bakunin, the Jupiter from whose forehead leaped a full-fledged movement;

Of Dobroluboff, the genius who perished at twenty-five with a vaster wisdom to his credit than any youngster of whom we have record;

Of Olga Lubatovitch, the immortal girl in whose great heart burnt the undying fire of insurrection;

Of Vera Figner, the poetess, a woman of the rarest beauty and the highest talents, who passed her life behind stone walls;

Of Aaron Sundelevitch, the thoughtful Jew who established the first free printing press in Saint Petersburg;

Of Zuckerman, who was so merry that even in hell he jested, but who after all was only human and committed suicide in the wilds of Yakutsk;

Of Maria Kutitonskaya, who was ready to be hanged with a baby in her womb;

Of Eugene Semyonovsky, who wrote a letter to his father before committing suicide, that would make everything on earth--except of course an official--weep;

Of the taciturn Kibalchitch, who was arrested for giving a pamphlet to a peasant, and who, hearing in prison that an attempt had been made to exterminate the imperial family, broke his habitual silence by exclaiming, "It's good! It's fine! If they don't send me to Siberia, I'll study nitroglycerine,"--and who kept his promise, for he was the chemist who prepared the bomb that caused the blood of Alexander to redden the snow;

Of Ippolit Mishkin, the hero of the Case where all were heroes, whose oratory inflamed all Russia, who was sentenced because he tried to rescue Chernishevsky, who received fifteen additional years for making a speech in prison over the dead body of Comrade Leo Dmohovsky, a man whom Turgenev wished to know, and whom Perovskaya wished to save;

Of Demetrius Lisogub, the millionaire who lived like a pauper, giving everything to the Cause and spending nothing on himself, grudging every coin he had to pay for his bread, dressing in rags even during the severest winters, supporting for a time the whole revolutionary movement, but continually sorrowing that in order not to forfeit his wealth he could take no active part in the battle, and smiling with happiness only when brought to the scaffold in the hangman's cart, for at last he could bestow more than money--he could sacrifice himself;

Of the printer Maria Kriloff who tho old, ill and half-blind, worked with so much devotion that she excelled young and strong compositors, and who stuck to her post until she was arrested, weapons in hand, in the secret printing-office of _Cherny Perediel_;

Of the intrepid Sophia Bogomoletz, who left husband and child for the Revolution, and spent her life in prison;

Of Nicholas Blinoff, who was slaughtered in the Jewish pogrom in Zhitomir with the word 'Brother' on his noble lips;

Of young Leo Weinstein, who fell in the same massacre crying 'Comrades;'

Of the child Silin of Warsaw, who when only fifteen years of age was condemned to death; when he was led out with bandaged eyes to be shot on the sand-hills, he wept so bitterly that the soldiers called to him, "Do not cry, there is no pain," upon which he shouted back, "I am crying because I must die before accomplishing anything."

He will tell how Valerian Ossinsky died, and then we will not think of Christ upon the Cross.

He will write of those soft-eyed, sweet-voiced, tender Terrorists whose blessed bombs and bullets laid tyrants low: Zinaida who shot Min; Spiridonova who slew Lujenovsky; Bizenko who killed Sakharoff; Eserskaja who assassinated Klingenberg; Ragozinnikova who destroyed Maximoffsky.

Of those noble and daring youths who struck to the death their country's oppressors: Kaltourin and Gelvakov who dispatched Strelnikoff; Balmaschoff who executed Sipyagin; Karpowitch who ended the days of Bogolepoff; Kalayev who removed Sergius; Schaumann who aimed well at Bobrikoff; Sazonov who wiped out Plehve.

Of these he will write and of many, many more whose names are unknown to an ignorant public which yells itself hoarse for empty-headed officials, but whose memories encircle the hearts of freedom's orphans.

He will write too, of a revolutionary thinker who dreams a philosophy which would dethrone tyranny and upraise liberty, the humanitarian who harbors a love which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth, the true World-Man of the Better-Day--Comrade Kropotkin.

_Reader, I press your hand warmly_

FOOTNOTES:

[73] See "The Laborer and the Man with the White Hand" in Turgenev's "Poems in Prose."

[74] Since they are not permitted to work for freedom from the house-tops, they must do it in their secret chambers.

[75] For a Russian revolutionary drama powerfully depicting such a scene, see "On the Eve," by Dr. Leopold Kampf. It has no connection with Turgenev's great novel of the same name. For a tragedy whose interest centers around a beautiful young man who has become insane in a Russian prison, see "To the Stars," by Leonid Andreyev, (Translated by Dr. A. Goudiss, Poet Lore, Winter 1907). Called by Helen A. Clarke, "a play in which there is no villain except the far-off Russian Government."

[76]

"Since the world's first wail went up from lands and seas
Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
Down the deepest and the loathiest ways of hell,
Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
Saw not, where filth was foulest, and the night
Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems
Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams.
Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives
Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives,
Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered,
Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured.
Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thoughts could shape,
Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape," etc.
SWINBURNE: "Russia: An Ode."

[77] "Marie Spiridonova was only twenty-one when she killed Lujenovsky; and in St. Petersburg I knew a girl, a medical student--sweet, quiet, all soul--who was barely eighteen when she said to me, simply "I shall live but a year or two--no more." In this expectancy of death there is no mawkishness, no pose. They have seen their comrades go after a few days or years of service; their fate will be the same." LeRoy Scott, "The Terrorists," in Everybody's Magazine.

Announcements

Lives of Great Altrurians

BY VICTOR ROBINSON

This is to be a series of biographies of men and women whose life-work was the liberation of humanity from bondage. Not of bishops and warriors will Victor Robinson write, but of the Great Companions whose lances struck the shields of despotism. These lives are to be of no standard size and will not be written on contract-time. A great deal of inclination and a little bit of opportunity will be the determining factors.

Out of this series, two numbers have already been published:

WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT PETER KROPOTKIN

The rest of the subjects are still lodged within the cerebral cells of the author. The following are in preparation for precious print:

MAXIM GORKY WALT WHITMAN ROBERT INGERSOLL ELISEE RECLUS THOMAS PAINE FERDINAND LASSALLE KARL MARX VICTOR HUGO ALEXANDER HERZEN GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI HERBERT SPENCER HENRIK IBSEN THOMAS HUXLEY LEO TOLSTOY CHARLES DARWIN ERNEST HAECKEL LOUISE MICHEL EMILE ZOLA AUGUST COMTE BARUCH SPINOZA IVAN TURGENEV HARRIET MARTINEAU GIORDANO BRUNO GRANT ALLEN WENDELL PHILLIPS HENRY GEORGE HENRY THOREAU MRS. STANTON

William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft

BY VICTOR ROBINSON

Written in the Author's Eighteenth Year

William Godwin was the father of philosophic radicalism in England. His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the pioneer of the woman suffrage movement. Yet the present generation of reformers knows little about these glorious Liberals. This booklet tells briefly of Godwin's early life, of his development from orthodoxy to rationalism, of his epoch-making "Political Justice," of his narrow escape from imprisonment on the charge of high treason, of his first meeting and dislike of Mary Wollstonecraft, of his later love and marriage with her, of her former marriage and attempt at suicide, of their views on the marriage relation, of the storm which Mary Wollstonecraft caused by writing "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," of her lamented death, of her talented daughter who eloped with Shelley, of Godwin's subsequent love affairs, of his philosophy, of his old age, etc.

+_Pierre Ramus_+: in "Die Freie Generation:"

Selten wohl, dass uns eine kleine Broschurenschrift in die Haende
fiel, die mit aehnlicher Glut des edelsten Idealismus verfasst ist,
wie jene unseres amerikanischen Genossen Victor Robinson.

+_Eugene V. Debs_+, in "Appeal to Reason:"

The story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft is now in
pamphlet form, fresh from the gifted pen of Victor Robinson. It is
a story of two great souls charmingly told by another.

+_Elbert Hubbard_+, editor of "The Philistine:"

At the Roycroft Chapel, Victor gave us a most admirable address on
Godwin--quite the best thing he ever did.

+_John Sherwin Crosby_+, author of "Government:" I shall prize your
very graphic sketch because of its intrinsic worth.

+_William Lloyd Garrison_+, the son of the great Abolitionist:

I have read with pleasure your estimate of these brave thinkers.
What surviving qualities have truth and courage!

+_Clinton P. Farrell_+, brother-in-law and publisher of Ingersoll:
Many many thanks for this beautiful booklet--a gem. May you live
long and continue in the making of good books.

+_Voltairine de Cleyre_+, the most radical woman in Philadelphia:

I am glad that some one has taken up the work I began some fifteen
years ago,--that of compelling the deserved recognition due to Mary
Wollstonecraft from the English-speaking radical world.

+_Champe S. Andrews_+, counsel of the Medical Society of New York:

I am indebted to you for the very delightful monograph on the lives
of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. I value this book on
account of its excellent literary and biographical value.

+_Henry J. Weeks_+, lover of our furred and feathered brothers:

As soon as I received your book, my wife read it to me from
beginning to end, starting with loving interest and ending with
sympathetic tears. Then I read it again myself. Then I called upon
my friend Fred Heath, editor of "The Social Democratic Herald," and
talked to him about my "William and Mary," and together we hied to
the public library and made a search for all we could find about
the lives of these interesting friends.

+_Artistically printed Illustrated with portraits
25 cents, postpaid_+

THE ALTRURIANS

12 MT. MORRIS PARK, WEST, NEW YORK CITY

A Symposium on Humanitarians

CONDUCTED BY

VICTOR ROBINSON