Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

I may add that I have the absolute certitude that--at least in one case--drugs were administered to a prisoner in the fortress--namely, ‘Sabúroff,’ in 1879.

It was a terrible thing to see, and to think what it meant.

Their zeal was great; considerable fortunes were brought into the service of the cause; and I am inclined to think that, compared with all similar movements which took place later on, this one stood perhaps on the most practical basis.

Groups of young men, some of whom were on the road to become brilliant university professors, or men of mark as historians and ethnographers, had come together about 1864, with the intention of carrying to the people education and…

It must be said that the political atmosphere was such that the best men had reasons, or had at least weighty excuses, for keeping quiet.

The Italian Opera, formerly a forum for radical demonstrations, was now deserted; the Russian Opera, timidly asserting the rights of its great composers, was frequented by a few enthusiasts only.

A class of men who formerly would have lived in the country on the modest income of a small estate cultivated by a hundred serfs, or on a still more modest salary of a functionary in a law court, now made fortunes, or had such yearly…

Many new ways to fortune had been opened since serfdom had been abolished, and the crowd rushed with eagerness into these channels.

Petersburg, was full of men of advanced opinions, who seemed ready at that time to make any sacrifices for their ideas. ‘What has become of them?’ I asked myself.

But no one dared to suggest any remedy, or to hint at any field of action, at any outcome from a position which was represented as hopeless.

A feeling of despair took possession of all those who wished to do anything useful in public life; while the peasantry were ruined at an appalling rate by over-taxation, and by ‘beating out’ of them the arrears of the taxes by means of…

Technical education--in a country which was so much in want of engineers, educated agriculturists, and geologists--was treated as equivalent to revolutionism.

Education was considered as a sort of luxury, for the few only.

All Russia wanted technical education, but the Ministry opened only classical gymnasia, because formidable courses of Latin and Greek were considered the best means of preventing the pupils from reading and thinking.

Petersburg police, were indeed the real rulers of Russia.

All those sonorous phrases about making mankind progress, while at the same time the progress-makers stand aloof from those whom they pretend to push onwards, are mere sophisms made up by minds anxious to shake off a fretting contradiction.

This is the direction in which, and these are the kind of people for whom, I must work.

Both deeply feel, both meditate, both think; they are ready to widen their knowledge: only give it to them; only give them the means of getting leisure.

The masses want to know: they are willing to learn; they can learn.

Would not science itself progress in leaps and cause mankind to make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed?

What if that knowledge--and only that--should become the possession of all?

And now we are fully in the period of a rapid desiccation, accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steppes, and man has to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim…

They are already ruined--poor as Lazarus--and in a few years they will be made still poorer by a foolish taxation.

He needs me to live with him, to help him to become the owner or the free occupier of that land.

How dare I talk to him of American machines, when all that he can raise must be sold to pay rent and taxes?