Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

Yet not less than fifteen hundred persons were arrested during this hunt, and half of them were kept in prison for years.

Then began a great movement ‘to the people’ in a new form, when several hundred young men and women, disregarding all precautions hitherto taken, rushed to the country, and, travelling through the towns and villages, incited the masses to…

But the factories were now flooded with spies, and it was evident that, do what they might, both propagandists and workers would very soon be arrested and hidden for ever in Siberia.

The countless arrests which were made in the summer of 1874, and the serious turn which was given by the police to the prosecution of our circle, produced a deep change in the opinions of Russian youth.

But you, sir,’ he continued, turning toward the procureur, ‘you know what part you are playing in these proceedings.

You have received little education, and you hardly understand what you are doing.

Life suddenly ceased to have any meaning for me.

One sees beloved faces and hears beloved voices, knowing that the vision will last but a few moments; one feels so near to the other, and yet so far off, as there can be no intimate conversation before a stranger, an enemy and a spy.

But then sorrow crept into my cell and nearly broke me down.

I would have consented to live on nothing but bread and water, in the dampest of cellars, if only permitted to work.

I could hardly express now the immensity of relief I then felt at being enabled to resume writing.

He hated the very sight of the blue uniforms of the gendarmes--those executioners of all independent thought in Russia--and expressed his feeling frankly in their presence.

Socialist on principle, he carried out his principles in his most frugal and laborious mode of living, toiling on passionately at his great scientific work--the main purpose of his life--a work which was to be a nineteenth-century…

If he had been in Paris during the uprising of June 1848, he would surely have fought with the last handful of workers behind the last barricade; but in the preparatory period he would have followed Louis Blanc or Ledru Rollin.

As for the socialist agitation, he understood it when it is conducted by means of public meetings--not as the secret, minute work of personal propaganda which we were carrying on.

He did not believe in the possibility of a popular uprising, and he conceived a revolution only as the action of a representative body, like the National Assembly of France in 1789.

The absence of free speech in Russia, the Russian readiness to submit to oppression, the veiled words to which our writers resort, were utterly repulsive to his frank and open nature.

Veracity--absolute veracity--and the most open-hearted frankness were the dominating features of his character; he could not bear deceit or even conceit in any form.

From early youth he had longed to go abroad, where men think as they like, read what they like, and openly express their thoughts.

I will take plenty of exercise, practise gymnastics, and not let myself be broken down by my surroundings.

Polakóff would have admitted everything concerning himself; but he would have preferred to be marched to Siberia rather than to involve another person.

The procureur blushed. ‘Would you have me believe,’ I continued, ‘that you, a practical man, did not notice that the two are written in quite different pencils?

To-morrow he has to pass an examination, and you will spoil forever the scientific career of a young man who has gone through great hardships, and has struggled for years against all sorts of obstacles, to attain his present position.

And when, afterward, several of them were arrested, they nearly all behaved bravely, sheltering us and betraying no one.

They asked me questions, all to the point, about the minute details of the working-men’s unions, the aims of the International Association and its chances of success, and then came questions about what could be done in Russia, and the…