Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

But a quarter of an hour later the boy was back and, taking his place amidst the corpses at the wall, said: ‘I am ready.’ Twelve bullets put an end to his young life.

The separation between leaders and workers which I had noticed at Geneva in the Temple Unique did not exist in the Jura Mountains.

It set people thinking about the evils of any government, however democratic its origin.

Each nation, each separate region, and even each local section had to be left free to develop on its own lines.

I thus made my first acquaintance with that famous Jura Federation which played for the next few years an important part in the development of socialism, introducing into it the no-government, or anarchist, tendency.

I could not reconcile this wire-pulling by the leaders with the burning speeches I had heard them pronounce from the platform.

More and more I began to feel that I was bound to cast in my lot with them.

I saw how much the toiling masses needed to be helped by men possessed of education and leisure in their endeavours to spread and to develop the organization; but few and rare were those who came to assist without the intention of making…

I saw how eager the workers were to gain instruction, and how despairingly few were those who volunteered to aid them.

For us it may be a pleasure to spend a couple of hours at a meeting, but for men whose working day begins at five or six in the morning those hours have to be stolen from necessary rest.

But, even under the best circumstances, belonging to a trade union, or to any advanced party, requires a series of uninterrupted sacrifices.

No small amount of moral courage was required to join openly a section of the International Association, and to face the discontent of the master and a probable dismissal at the first opportunity, with the long months out of work which…

Outsiders never realize the sacrifices which are made by the workers in order to keep their labour movements alive.

The mean, the trivial disappeared to leave room for the grand, the elevating inspirations.

Most of the Paris Internationalists were almost total abstainers from drink, and all had abandoned smoking. ‘Why should I nurture in myself that weakness?’ they said.

Another thing that impressed me deeply was the elevating influence which the International exercised.

Every day, week after week and year after year, thousands of workers gave their time and their coppers, taken upon their very food, in order to support the life of each group, to secure the appearance of the papers, to defray the expenses…

One must have lived among the workers at that time to realize the effect which the sudden growth of the Association had upon their minds--the trust they put in it, the love with which they spoke of it, the sacrifices they made for it.

No one desired class war, but all said that if the ruling classes rendered it unavoidable, through their blind obstinacy, the war must be fought over, provided it would bring with it well-being and liberty to the down-trodden masses.

All hoped that a great social revolution, peaceful or not, would soon come and totally change the economic conditions.

The workers had built all their hopes on the international movement.

I could thus follow the movement from the inside, and know the workers’ view of it.

It was a people’s university as well as a people’s forum.

The more I read the more I saw that there was before me a new world, unknown to me, and totally unknown to the learned makers of sociological theories--a world that I could know only by living in the Workingmen’s Association and by meeting…

All discussions about the impracticability of socialism and the necessary slowness of evolution are of little value, because the speed of evolution can only be judged from a close knowledge of the human beings of whose evolution we are…