Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

I never forced the men to cross, but they themselves, knowing why I had to hurry, would decide at a given moment that an attempt must be made. ‘There are not seven deaths in one’s life, and one cannot be avoided,’ they would say, and…

The idea of a famine that might break out next spring on the lower Amúr oppressed me all the time.

The rivers were freezing, and I had to cross the Ob in a boat amidst the floating ice, which menaced at every moment to crush our small craft.

I was offered the leadership of a trading caravan which the Cossacks intended to organize in order to find that route, and I accepted it with enthusiasm.

All the immense region to the north of it, five hundred miles wide and five hundred miles deep, was totally, absolutely unknown.

When I jumped into the water and, also taking a stick, began to sing our river song, ‘Dubínushka,’ which helps all present to give a sudden push at the same moment, the Chinese enjoyed immensely the fun of it, and after several such pushes…

A thick crowd of a hundred Chinese soon surrounded me, and although I knew not a word of their tongue, and they knew no more of mine, we chatted in the most amicable way by mimicry and we understood each other.

To pat one on the shoulders in sign of friendship is decidedly international language.

To offer each other tobacco and to be offered a light is again an international expression of friendship.

And when I told them by signs that in case I should have nothing to eat I might eat it--the joke was transmitted from one to the other through the whole crowd.

They roared with laughter, and began to pat me even more caressingly on the shoulders; they took me about, showing me their houses, everyone offered me his pipe, and the whole crowd accompanied me as a friend to the steamer.

As there was nothing more to be done in the direction of reform, I tried to do what seemed to be possible under the existing circumstances--only to become convinced of the absolute uselessness of such efforts.

In my new capacity of attaché to the Governor-General for Cossack affairs, I made, for instance, a most thorough investigation of the economical condition of the Usurí Cossacks, whose crops used to be lost every year, so that the…

All the measures I recommended were accepted, and special grants of money were given for aiding the emigration of some and for supplying cattle to others, as I had suggested.

The higher administration of Siberia was influenced by excellent intentions, and I can only repeat that, everything considered, it was far better, far more enlightened, and far more interested in the welfare of the people than the…

The very fact of their belonging to a government which radiated from a distant capital caused them to look upon everything from the point of view of functionaries of the government, who think first of all about what their superiors will…

The interests of the country are a secondary matter.

I soon realized the absolute impossibility of doing anything really useful for the masses of the people by means of the administrative machinery.

Again, to live with natives, to see at work the complex forms of social organization which they have elaborated far away from the influence of any civilization, was, as it were, to store up floods of light which illuminated my subsequent…

But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and…

The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.

I wish that all framers of plans of State discipline could pass through the school of real life before they begin to frame their State Utopias: we should then hear far less than at present of schemes of military and pyramidal organization…

The Poles, on the contrary--this must be said to their honour--were never so submissive as that, and this time they broke into open revolt.

They evidently had no chance of success--they revolted nevertheless.

He had promised us not to execute them, but after having waited several days for the reply, he ordered the sentence to be carried out secretly early in the morning.