Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

There was something truly repulsive in the talk of these men, who the day before would have crouched down before the same lady.

The system of espionage which is exercised in the palace, especially around the emperor himself, would seem almost incredible to the uninitiated.

Imagination often carries a boy beyond the realities of the moment, and my frame of mind at that time was such that if an attempt had been made in my presence upon the Tsar I should have covered him with my body.

Immediately after the abolition of serfdom, a great movement began for the opening of Sunday schools; they were opened everywhere by private persons and corporations--all the teachers being volunteers--and the peasants and workers, old and…

Officers, students, even a few pages, became teachers; and such excellent methods were worked out that (Russian having a phonetic spelling) we succeeded in teaching a peasant to read in nine or ten lessons.

But suddenly all Sunday schools, in which the mass of the peasantry would have learned to read in a few years, without any expenditure by the State, were closed.

That meant, of course, to break entirely with my father, whose ambitions were quite different, and to rely for my living upon what I might earn by means of lessons.

Even those of our contemporary economists who seldom revert to the works of the father of political economy, and often forget the ideas which inspired them, know that chapter almost by heart, so often has it been copied and recopied since.

It has become an article of faith; and the economical history of the century which has elapsed since Adam Smith wrote has been, so to speak, an actual commentary upon it.

We have, first, the broad division into producers and consumers: little-consuming producers on the one hand, little-producing consumers on the other hand.

Skilled artisanship is being swept away as a survival of a past condemned to disappear.

The artist who formerly found æsthetic enjoyment in the work of his hands is substituted by the human slave of an iron slave.

Nay, even the agricultural labourer, who formerly used to find a relief from the hardships of his life in the home of his ancestors--the future home of his children--in his love of the field and in a keen intercourse with nature, even he…

And the division and subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as firmly established as those of old India.