Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

For many landlords the liberation of the serfs was an excellent money transaction.

The young generation gave to Russia that remarkable staff of ‘peace mediators’ and justices of the peace who contributed so much to the peaceful issue of the emancipation.

But those who had no trade had hard times before them, and yet the majority preferred to live anyhow rather than remain with their old masters.

Besides, such men came out from among them as could make a stand for their rights.

They talked to their masters as equals talk to equals, as if they never had stood in different relations.

Their inborn good nature and softness remained with them, but all traces of servility had disappeared.

When I saw our Nikólskoye peasants, fifteen months after the liberation, I could not but admire them.

But they so much valued the abolition of their personal enslavement that they accepted the ruinous charges--not without murmuring, but as a hard necessity--the moment that personal freedom was obtained.

They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the obligations of serfdom.

With their usual good sense, the peasants had understood that serfdom was done away with, that ‘freedom had come,’ and they accepted the conditions imposed upon them, although these conditions were very heavy.

And yet--except in two places where there were insurrections, and a very few other spots where small disturbances, entirely due to misunderstandings and immediately appeased, took place--Russia remained quiet, more quiet than ever.

If anything could have provoked revolts, it was precisely the perplexing vagueness of the conditions created by the new law.

Where were the uprisings which had been predicted by the champions of slavery?

They would be slaves no more; the reaction had not got the upper hand.

They centred their efforts on obtaining a postponement of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments, and on imposing upon the emancipated serfs so high a redemption tax for the land that it would render their economical freedom…

The liberation of the serfs had to be accomplished; and another important point was won--the liberated serfs would receive, besides their homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated for themselves.

They whispered into his ears that the day serfdom was abolished the peasants would begin to kill the landlords wholesale, and Russia would witness a new Pugachóff uprising, far more terrible than that of 1773.

There was no lack of young men amongst the nobility who earnestly worked for a frank abolition of the old servitude; but the serfdom party drew closer and closer round the emperor, and got power over his mind.

I frequently heard this rumour; and on the very eve of the emancipation they seemed to doubt that it would be done without pressure from abroad. ‘Nothing will be done unless Garibaldi comes,’ was the reply which a peasant made at St.

It is most remarkable--so strong is the force of tradition--that the rumour went among the peasants that it was Napoleon III. who had required of the Tsar, in the treaty of peace, that the peasants should be freed.

The peasants waited now, and during a journey which Alexander made in Middle Russia they flocked around him as he passed, beseeching him to grant them liberty--a petition, however, which Alexander received with great repugnance.

No sooner had the news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming than the insurrections nearly stopped.

These outbreaks on the one side, and the profound aversion to serfdom which had grown up in the generation which came to the front with the advent of Alexander II. to the throne, rendered the emancipation of the peasants more and more…

I wrote my second number, still more vigorously insisting upon the necessity of uniting all forces in the name of liberty.

The beauty of the style of Hérzen--of whom Turguéneff has truly said that he wrote in tears and blood, and that no other Russian had ever so written--the breadth of his ideas, and his deep love of Russia took possession of me, and I used…