Comrade Kropotkin Part 1

Comrade Kropotkin.

by Victor Robinson.

_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 compa.s.sionate 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 t.i.tanic 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 ma.s.sacre, 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 wors.h.i.+p Freedom, and whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tle-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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s 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 succ.u.mbing 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 b.l.o.o.d.y gloom.

Hope was dead. Freedom was buried. Literature was in exile. Knowledge lay in a closed coffin. But censors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.bility 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 pa.s.sed 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 gus.h.i.+ng 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, a.s.sumed 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 wors.h.i.+pper 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Const.i.tution 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.

Advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sage, 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?"