Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

In this last case the conflict itself will depend much less upon the efficacy of firearms and guns than upon the force of the creative genius which will be brought into action in the work of reconstruction of society.

It will depend chiefly upon the constructive forces of society taking for the moment a free course; upon the inspirations being of a higher standard, and so winning more sympathy even from those who, as a class, are opposed to the change.

The conflict, being thus engaged in on larger issues, will purify the social atmosphere itself; and the numbers of victims on both sides will certainly be much smaller than they would have been in case the fight had been fought upon…

But quite a network of habits and customs of domestic slavery, of utter disregard of human individuality, of despotism on the part of the fathers, and of hypocritical submission on that of the wives, the sons, and the daughters, had…

Everywhere in Europe, at the beginning of this century, there was a great deal of domestic despotism--the writings of Thackeray and Dickens bear ample testimony to it--but nowhere else had that tyranny attained such a luxurious development…

All Russian life, in the family, in the relations between commander and subordinate, military chief and soldier, employer and employee, bore the stamp of it.

Quite a world of customs and manners of thinking, of prejudices and moral cowardice, of habits bred by a lazy existence, had grown up; and even the best men of the time paid a large tribute to these products of the serfdom period.

Terrorism was called into existence by certain special conditions of the political struggle at a given historical moment.

But Nihilism has impressed its stamp upon the whole of the life of the educated classes of Russia, and that stamp will be retained for many years to come.

It is Nihilism, again, in its various manifestations which gives to many of our writers that remarkable sincerity, that habit of ‘thinking aloud,’ which astounds western European readers.

He refused to bend before any authority except that of reason, and in the analysis of every social institution or habit he revolted against any sort of more or less masked sophism.

The life of civilized people is full of little conventional lies.

Persons who dislike each other, meeting in the street, make their faces radiant with a happy smile; the Nihilist remained unmoved, and smiled only for those whom he was really glad to meet.

All those forms of outward politeness which are mere hypocrisy were equally repugnant to him, and he assumed a certain external roughness as a protest against the smooth amiability of his fathers.

Marriage without love and familiarity without friendship were repudiated.

The Nihilist girl, compelled by her parents to be a doll in a doll’s house, and to marry for property’s sake, preferred to abandon her house and her silk dresses; she put on a black woollen dress of the plainest description, cut off her…

He discarded the conventional forms of society talk, and expressed his opinions in a blunt and terse way, even with a certain affectation of outward roughness.

Nihilism, with its affirmation of the rights of the individual and its negation of all hypocrisy, was but a first step toward a higher type of men and women, who are equally free, but live for a great cause.

The young generation actually refused to eat that bread, and to enjoy the riches that had been accumulated in their fathers’ houses by means of servile labour, whether the labourers were actual serfs or slaves of the present industrial…

Petersburg, Moscow, and Kíeff, eager to learn a profession which would free them from the domestic yoke, and some day, perhaps, also from the possible yoke of a husband.

After hard and bitter struggles, many of them won that personal freedom.

Now they wanted to utilize it, not for their own personal enjoyment, but for carrying to the people the knowledge that had emancipated them.

The aim of all that reading and discussion was to solve the great question which rose before them: In what way could they be useful to the masses?

Gradually, they came to the idea that the only way was to settle amongst the people and to live the people’s life.

Young men went into the villages as doctors, doctors’ assistants, teachers, village scribes, even as agricultural labourers, blacksmiths, woodcutters, and so on, and tried to live there in close contact with the peasants.