Whatever was started for the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and was immediately paralyzed by hosts of difficulties which came, not so much from the bad intentions of the administrators, but simply from the fact that these officials belonged to a pyramidal, centralized administration.
Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: “Whatever was started for the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and was immediately paralyzed…”
Editor's note · Context
He critiques the bureaucratic obstacles that hinder local progress in Russia.
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The amount of interest in socialism and all sorts of schemes of reform and reconstruction of society was very great in all layers of society.
But in all civilized countries the production, both agricultural and industrial, ought to and easily might be immensely increased so as to secure a reign of plenty for all.
I took a lively part in this movement, and with a few English comrades we started, in addition to the three socialist papers already in existence, an anarchist-communist monthly, ‘Freedom,’ which continues to live up to the present day.
Far more important, however, than this outbreak of discontent, was the spirit which prevailed amongst the poorer portion of the working population in the outskirts of London.

