August 18, 2025 • 27 mins
In Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Vol. 1, Peter Kropotkin, a notable Russian anarcho-communist and scientist, invites readers into his captivating life journey. This autobiography not only chronicles his personal experiences but also sheds light on the intricate tapestry of 19th-century Russian society and politics. Born into nobility and educated in the military, Kropotkin ultimately rejected the values of his social class to champion anti-authoritarian socialism, standing against both the Tsarist regime and the authoritarian Bolsheviks. With a diverse range of interests spanning literature, biology, economics, and geographical exploration, Kropotkins memoirs begin with his childhood and education, leading to his transformative time in Siberia. (Introduction by Elin)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The corps of pages, Chapter eight of Memoirs of a
Revolutionist Volume one by Peter Kropotkin. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain recording by Irlin. The years eighteen
fifty seven to sixty one were years of rich growth
in the intellectual forces of Russia. All that had been
(00:23):
whispered for the last decade in the secrecy of friendly
meetings by the generation represented in Russian literature by Turgenev, Tolstoy,
Hertzen Bakunin, Ogaryov, Kavelin, Dostoyevsky, Grigorovitch, Ostrovski, and Nekhlasov began
now to leak out in the press. Censorship was still
(00:44):
very rigorous, but what could not be said openly in
political articles was smuggled in under the form of novels,
humorous sketches, or veiled comments on West European events. And
every one read between the lines and understood. Having no
acquaintances at Saint Petersburg, apart from the school and a
narrow circle of relatives, I stood outside the radical movement
(01:07):
of those years, miles in fact away from it. And
yet this was perhaps the main feature of the movement
that it had the power to penetrate into so well
meeting a school as our corps was, and to find
an echo in such a circle as that of my
Moscow relatives. I used at that time to spend my
Sundays and holidays at the house of my aunt mentioned
(01:30):
in a previous chapter under the name of Princess Mitsky.
Prince Mitski thought only of extraordinary lunches and dinners, while
his wife and their young daughter led a very gay life.
My cousin was a beautiful girl of nineteen, of a
most amiable disposition, and nearly all her male cousins were
madly in love with her. She in turn fell in
(01:52):
love with one of them, and wanted to marry him.
But to marry a cousin is considered a great sin
by the Russian Church, and the old princes tried in
vain to obtain a special permission from the high ecclesiastical dignitaries.
Now she brought her daughter to Saint Petersburg, hoping that
she might choose, among her many admirers a more suitable
(02:12):
husband than her own cousin. It was labor lost, i
must add, But their fashionable apartment was full of brilliant
young men from the guards and from the diplomatic service.
Such a house would be the last to be thought
of in connection with revolutionary ideas. And yet it was
in that house that I made my first acquaintance with
the revolutionary literature of the times. The great refugee Haudson
(02:37):
had just begun to issue at London his review The
Polar Star, which made a commotion in Russia, even in
the palace circles, and was widely circulated secretly at Saint Petersburg.
My cousin got it in some way, and we used
to read it together. Her heart revolted against the obstacles
which were put in the way of her happiness, and
(02:58):
her mind was the more open to the power powerful
criticisms which the great writer launched against the Russian autocracy
and all the rotten system of misgovernment. With a feeling
near to worship, I used to look on the medallion
which was printed on the paper cover of The Polar Star,
and which represented the noble heads of the five Decembrists
whom Nicholas the first had hanged after the rebellion of
(03:20):
December fourteenth, eighteen twenty five. Bistuzev Kahovski Pistil Ruliev and
Muryavo of Apostole, the beauty of the style of Hrzen,
of whom Tutgenyev 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
(03:41):
love of Russia took possession of me, and I used
to read and reread those pages, even more full of
heart than of brain. In eighteen fifty nine or early
in eighteen sixty, I began to edit my first revolutionary paper.
At that age, what could I be but a constitutionalist?
And my paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia.
(04:05):
I wrote about the foolish expenses of the Court, the
sums of money which were spent at Nice to keep
quite a squadron of the navy in attendance on the
Dowager Empress, who died in eighteen sixty. I mentioned the
misdeeds of the functionaries, which I continually heard spoken of,
and I urged the necessity of constitutional rule. I wrote
(04:25):
three copies of my paper and slipped them into the
desks of three comrades of the higher forms, who I
thought might be interested in public affairs. I asked my
readers to put their remarks behind the Scotch Grandfather clock
in our library. With a throbbing heart, I went next
day to see if there was something for me behind
(04:45):
the clock. Two notes were there. Indeed, two comrades wrote
that they fully sympathized with my paper, and only advised
me not to risk too much. I wrote my second number,
still more vigorously, insisted upon the necessity of uniting all
forces in the name of liberty. But this time there
was no reply behind the clock. Instead, the two comrades
(05:09):
came to me. We are sure, they said, that it
is you who edit the paper, and we want to
talk about it. We are quite agreed with you, and
we are here to say let us be friends. Your
paper has done its work. It has brought us together,
but there is no need to continue it. In all
the school there were only two more who would take
any interest in such matters. While if it becomes known
(05:31):
that there is a paper of this kind, the consequences
will be terrible for all of us. Let us constitute
a circle and talk about everything. Perhaps we shall put
something into the heads of a few others. This was
so sensible that I could only agree and we sealed
our union by a hearty shaking of hands. From that
time we three became firm friends and used to read
(05:53):
a great deal together and discuss all sorts of things.
The abolition of serfdom was the question which then engrossed
the attention of all thinking men. The Revolution of eighteen
forty eight had had its distinct echo in the hearts
of the Russian peasant folk, and from the year eighteen
fifty the insurrections of revolted serfs began to take serious proportions.
(06:17):
When the Korean War broke out and militia was levied
all over Russia, these revolts spread with a violence never
before heard of. Several serf owners were killed by their serfs,
and the peasant uprisings became so serious that whole regiments
with artillery were sent to quelldom, whereas in former times
small detachments of soldiers would have been sufficient to terrorize
(06:39):
the peasants into obedience. 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 the second to the throne, rendered the
emancipation of the peasants more and more imperative. The Emperor,
himself averse to serfdom, and supported or rather influenced in
(07:01):
his own family by his wife, his brother Constantine, and
the Grand Duchess Helene Pavlovna, took the first steps in
that direction. His intention was that the initiative of the
reform should come from the nobility, the serf owners themselves,
But in no province of Russia could the nobility be
induced to send a petition to the Czar to that effect.
(07:24):
In March eighteen fifty six, he himself addressed the Moscow
nobility on the necessity of such a step, But a
stubborn silence was all their reply to his speech, so
that when Alexander the Second, growing quite angry, concluded with
those memorable words of Hertzen, it is better, gentlemen, that
it shd come from above than to wait till it
(07:44):
comes from beneath. Even these words had no effect, and
it was to the provinces of Old Poland, Grodno, Vilno
and Kovno, where Napoleon the First had abolished serfdom on
paper in eighteen twelve that recourse was he had the
governor General of those provinces. Nesimov managed to obtain the
(08:06):
desired address from the Polish nobility. In November eighteen fifty seven,
the famous rescript to the Governor General of the Lithuanian
Provinces announcing the intention of the Emperor to abolish serfdom
was launched, and we read with tears in our eyes
the beautiful article of hedtzen thou hast Conquered Galilean, in
(08:28):
which the refugees in London declared that they would no
more look upon Alexander the Second as an enemy, but
would support him in the great work of emancipation. The
attitude of the peasants was very remarkable. No sooner had
the news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming,
than the insurrections nearly stopped. The peasants waited now, and
(08:50):
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 Lexander received with great repugnance.
It is most remarkable, so strong is the force of tradition,
that the rumor went among the peasants that it was
Napoleon the third, who had required of the Czar in
(09:12):
the Treaty of Peace that the peasants should be freed.
I frequently heard this rumor, 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 Saint Petersburg to a comrade of mine who talked
to him about freedom coming. But after these moments of
(09:35):
general rejoicing, years of incertitude and disquiet followed. Specially appointed
committees in the provinces and at Saint Petersburg discussed the
proposed liberation of the serfs, but the intentions of Alexander
the Second seemed unsettled. A check was continually put upon
the press in order to prevent it from discussing details.
(09:57):
Sinister rumors circulated at Saint Petersburg and reached our corps.
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. They whispered into
his ears that the day's serfdom was abolished, the peasants
(10:19):
would begin to kill the landlord's wholesale and Russia would
witness a new Pugachev uprising, far more terrible than that
of seventeen seventy three. Alexander, who was a man of
weak character, only too readily lent his ear to such predictions.
But the huge machine for working out the emancipation law
(10:39):
had been set to work. The committees had their sittings,
scores of schemes of emancipation addressed to the Emperor, circulated
in manuscript or were printed in London. Hatterson, seconded by Turgenev,
who kept him well informed about all that was going
on in government circles, discussed in His Bell and His
Polar Star the details of the various schemes, and Tchernishevsky
(11:04):
in the contemporary so Domenik. The Slavo fields, especially Aksakov
and Belyaev, had taken advantage of the first moments of
relative freedom, allowed the press to give the matter a
wide publicity in Russia and to discuss the features of
the emancipation with a thorough understanding of its technical aspects.
(11:25):
All intellectual Saint Petersburg was with Hutsen and particularly with Czenishevski.
And I remember how the officers of the horse guards
whom I saw on Sundays after the church parade at
the home of my cousin Dmitri Nikolayevitch Kropotkin, who was
aid the camp of that regiment and aid the camp
of the Emperor USU side with Czernishevski, the leader of
(11:47):
the advanced party in the emancipation struggle. The whole disposition
of Saint Petersburg, in the drawing rooms and in the
street was such that it was impossible to go back.
The liberation of the serfs had to be accomplished, and
another important point was one the liberated serfs would receive,
besides their homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated
(12:10):
for themselves. However, the party of the old nobility were
not discouraged. They centered their efforts on obtaining a postponement
of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments,
and on imposing upon the emancipated serf so high a
redemption tax for the land that it would render their
economical freedom illusory. And in this they fully succeeded Alexander
(12:34):
the Second dismissed the real soul of the whole business,
Nikolay Milutin, brother of the Minister of War, saying to him,
I am so sorry to part with you, but I
must the nobility describe you as one of the reds.
The first committees, which had worked out the scheme of
emancipation were dismissed too, and new committees revised the whole
(12:56):
work in the interest of the serf owners. The press
was muzzled once more things assumed a very gloomy aspect.
The question whether the liberation would take place at all
was now asked. I feverishly followed the struggle, and every Sunday,
when my comrades returned from their homes, I asked them
what their parents said. By the end of eighteen sixty
(13:20):
the news became worse and worse. The value of party
has got the upper hand. They intend to revise the
whole work. The relatives of the Princess x a friend
of the Czar, work hard upon him. The liberation will
be postponed. They fear a revolution. In January eighteen sixty one,
(13:40):
slightly better rumors began to circulate, and it was generally
hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on
the day of the Emperor's accession to the throne, February nineteen.
The nineteenth came, but it brought nothing with it. I
was on that day at the palace. There was no
grand livy, only a sma, and pages of the second
(14:02):
form were sent to such levies in order to get
accustomed to the palace ways. It was my turn that day,
and as I was seeing off one of the grand
Duchesses who came to the palace to assist at the mass,
her husband did not appear, and I went to fetch him.
He was called out of the Emperor's study, and I
told him in a half jocose way, of the perplexity
(14:23):
of his wife, without having the slightest suspicion of the
important matters that may have been talked of in the
study at that time. Apart from a few of the initiated,
no one in the palace suspected that the manifesto had
been signed on February nineteen, and was kept back for
a fortnight only because the next Sunday, the twenty sixth,
was the beginning of the Carnival week. And it was
(14:45):
feared that, owing to the drinking which goes on in
the villages during the carnival, peasant insurrections might break out.
Even the carnival fair, which used to be held at
Saint Petersburg on the square near the Winter Palace, was
removed that year to another square from fear of a
popular insurrection in the capital. Most sanguinary instructions had been
(15:07):
issued to the army as to the ways of repressing
peasant uprisings. A fortnight later, on the last Sunday of
the carnival, March five, or rather March seventeen, New Style,
I was at the Corps, having to take part in
the military parade at the riding school. I was still
in bed when my soldier servant Ivanov, dashed in with
(15:29):
the tea tray exclaiming Prince Freedom. The manifesto is posted
on the gostinout vor, the shops opposite the corps. Did
you see it yourself? Yes, people stand round, one reads,
the other listens. It is freedom. In a couple of minutes,
I was dressed and out. A comrade was coming in
(15:51):
Kropotkin Freedom. He shouted, here is the manifesto. My uncle
learned last night that it would be read at the
early mass at the Isac Cathedral, so we went. There
were not many people there, peasants. Only The manifesto was
read and distributed after the mass. They well understood what
it meant. When I came out of the church, two
peasants who stood in the gateway said to me, in
(16:13):
such a draw way, well, sir, now all gone, And
he mimicked how they had shown him the way out.
Years of expectation were in that gesture of sending away
the master. I read and re read the manifesto. It
was written in an elevated style by the old Metropolitan
of Moscow Filagreete, but with a useless mixture of Russian
(16:36):
and Old Slavonian which obscured the scents. It was liberty,
but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to
remain serfs for two years more till February nineteenth, eighteen
sixty three. Notwithstanding all this, one thing was evident. Serfdom
was abolished, and the liberated serfs would get the land
(16:57):
and their homesteads. They would have to pay for, but
the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be
slaves no more. The reaction had not got the upper hand.
We went to the parade, and when all the military
performances were over, Alexander the Second, remaining on horseback, loudly
called out the officers to me. They gathered round him,
(17:21):
and he began, in a loud voice a speech about
the great event of the day. The officers, the representatives
of the nobility in the army. These scraps of sentences
reached our ears. An end has been put to centuries
of injustice. I expect sacrifices from the nobility. The loyal
(17:41):
nobility will gather round the throne, and so on. Enthusiastic
hurrahs resounded amongst the officers. As he ended. We ran,
rather than marched, back on our way to the corps,
hurrying to be in time for the Italian Opera, of
which the last performance in the season was to begin
that afternoon. Some manifestation was sure to take place. Then
(18:05):
our military attire was flung off with great haste, and
several of us dashed light footed to the six story gallery.
The house was crowded during the first ent act. The
smoking room of the opera filled with excited young men
who all talked to one another, whether acquainted or not.
We planned at once to return to the hall and
(18:26):
to sing with the whole public in a mass choir,
the hymn God Save the Tsar. However, sounds of music
reached our ears, and we all hurried back to the hall.
The band of the opera was already playing the hymn,
which was drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from the galleries,
the boxes, the pit. I saw Baveri, the conductor, waving
(18:49):
his stick, but not a sound could be heard from
the powerful band. Then Baveri stopped, but the harahs continued.
I saw the stick waved again in the air. I
saw the fiddle boughs moving, and musicians blowing the brass instruments.
But again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band. Bavera
began conducting the hymn once more, and it was only
(19:11):
by the end of that third repetition that isolated sounds
of the brass instrument peered through the clamour of human voices.
The same enthusiasm was in the streets. Crowds of peasants
and educated men stood in front of the palace, shouting hirahs,
and the Tsar could not appear without being followed by
demonstrative crowds running after his carriage. Hudson was right when,
(19:35):
two years later, as Alexander was drowning the Polish insurrection
in blood and Muraviov the Hangar was strangling it. On
the scaffold, he wrote, Alexander Nikolaevitch, why did you not
die on that day? Your name would have been transmitted
in history as that of a hero. Where were the
(19:56):
uprisings which had been predicted by the champions of slavery?
Conditions more indefinite than those which had been created by
the pologenie the emancipation law could not have been invented.
If anything could have provoked revolts, it was precisely the
perplexing vagueness of the conditions created by the new law.
And yet, except in two places where there were insurrections,
(20:20):
and a very few other spots were 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,
(20:41):
although these conditions were very heavy. I was in Nikolskoya
in August eighteen sixty one and again in the summer
of eighteen sixty two, and I was struck with a quiet,
intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions.
They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to
pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in
(21:01):
reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the
obligations of serfdom. 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. For the first months, they
kept two holidays a week, saying that it was a
(21:23):
sin to work on Friday. But when the summer came
they resumed work with even more energy than before. When
I saw our Nikolskoya 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, talked
(21:45):
to equals, as if they had never stood in different relations. Besides,
such men came out from among them as could make
a stand for their rights. The Pologenia was a large
and difficult book, which it took me a good deal
of time to understand. But when Vasili Ivanov, the elder
of Nikolskoye, came one day to ask me to explain
(22:06):
to him some obscurity in it, I saw that he,
who was not even a fluent reader, had admirably found
his way amongst the intricacies of the chapters and paragraphs
of the law. The household people, that is, the servants,
came out the worst of all. They got no land,
and would hardly have known what to do with it
if they had. They got freedom and nothing besides. In
(22:30):
our neighborhood. Nearly all of them left their masters. None,
for example, remained in the household of my father. They
went in search of positions elsewhere, and a number of
them found employment at once with a merchant class who
were proud of having the coachmen of Prince so and so,
or the cook of General so and so. Those who
(22:51):
knew a trade found work in the towns. For instance,
my father's band remained a band and made a good
living at Kaluga, retaining amiable relations with us. 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. As to the landlords. While the
(23:13):
larger ones made all possible efforts at Saint Petersburg to
reintroduce the old conditions under one name or another, they
succeeded in doing so to some extent. Under Alexander the Third,
by far the greater numbers submitted to the abolition of
serfdom as a sort of necessary calamity. The young generation
gave to Russia that remarkable staff of peace mediators and
(23:36):
justices of the peace, who contributed so much to the
peaceful issue of the emancipation. As to the old generation.
Most of them had already discounted the considerable sums of
money they were to receive from the peasants for the
land which was granted to the liberated serfs, and which
was valued much above its market price. They schemed as
(23:56):
to how they would squander that money in the restaurants
of the capital or at the green tables and gambling,
and they did squander it. Almost all of them as
soon as they got it. For many landlords, the liberation
of the serfs was an excellent money transaction. Thus, land
which my father, in anticipation of the emancipation sold in
(24:18):
parcels at the rate of eleven roubles the Russian acre
was now estimated at forty roubles in the peasants allotments,
that is three and a half times above its market value.
And this was the rule in all our neighborhood. While
in my father's Tambov estate on the prairies, the mere
that is, the village community rented all his land for
(24:40):
twelve years at a price which represented twice as much
as he used to get from that land by cultivating
it with server labor. Eleven years after that memorable time,
I went to the Tambov estate, which I had inherited
from my father. I stayed there for a few weeks,
and on the evening of my departure, our village priest,
(25:00):
an intelligent man of independent opinions, such as one meets
occasionally in our southern provinces, went out for a walk
round the village. The sunset was glorious, a balmy air
came from the prairies. He found a middle aged peasant,
Anton Savierliev, sitting on a small eminence outside the village
(25:21):
and reading a book of psalms. The peasant hardly knew
how to spell and old Slavonic, and often he would
read a book from the last page, turning the pages backward.
It was the process of reading which he liked most,
and then a word would strike him, and its repetition
pleased him. He was reading now a psalm of which
each verse began with a word rejoice. What are you reading?
(25:44):
He was asked, Well, father, I will tell you, was
his reply. Fourteen years ago the old Prince came here.
It was in the winter. I had just returned home,
quite frozen. A snowstorm was raging. I had scarce sleep,
begun undressing when we heard a knock at the window.
It was the elder who was shouting, go to the prince.
(26:05):
He wants you. We all, my wife and our children
were thunder stricken. What can he want of you? My
wife cried in alarm. I signed myself with a cross
and went. The snow storm almost blinded me as I
crossed the bridge. Well it ended or right. The old
Prince was taking his afternoon's sleep and when he woke up,
(26:27):
he asked me if I knew plastering work, and only
told me come tomorrow to repair the plaster in that room.
So I went home quite happy, And when I came
to the bridge, I found my wife standing there. She
had stood there all the time in the snow storm,
with a baby in her arms, waiting for me. What
has happened, Sevilli, she cried, Well, I said, no harm.
(26:50):
He only asked me to make some repairs. That father
was the old Prince, and now the young Prince came
here the other day. I went to see him and
found him in the garden at the tea table in
the shadow of the house. You father sat with him
and the elder of the canton, with his mayor's chain
upon his breast. Will you have tea savillage? He asks me,
(27:12):
take a chair, Peter Grigoryev. He says that to the
old one, give us one more chair. And Peter Grigoryev,
you know what a terror for us he was when
he was the manager of the old Prince. Brought the
chair and we all sat round the tea table talking,
and he poured out tea for all of us. Well, now, father,
(27:33):
the evening is so beautiful. The bomb comes from the prairies,
and I sit and read. Rejoice, Rejoice, This is what
the abolition of serfdom meant for the peasants. End of
the corps of Pages, Chapter eight
The corps of pages, Chapter eight of Memoirs of a
Revolutionist Volume one by Peter Kropotkin. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain recording by Irlin. The years eighteen
fifty seven to sixty one were years of rich growth
in the intellectual forces of Russia. All that had been
(00:23):
whispered for the last decade in the secrecy of friendly
meetings by the generation represented in Russian literature by Turgenev, Tolstoy,
Hertzen Bakunin, Ogaryov, Kavelin, Dostoyevsky, Grigorovitch, Ostrovski, and Nekhlasov began
now to leak out in the press. Censorship was still
(00:44):
very rigorous, but what could not be said openly in
political articles was smuggled in under the form of novels,
humorous sketches, or veiled comments on West European events. And
every one read between the lines and understood. Having no
acquaintances at Saint Petersburg, apart from the school and a
narrow circle of relatives, I stood outside the radical movement
(01:07):
of those years, miles in fact away from it. And
yet this was perhaps the main feature of the movement
that it had the power to penetrate into so well
meeting a school as our corps was, and to find
an echo in such a circle as that of my
Moscow relatives. I used at that time to spend my
Sundays and holidays at the house of my aunt mentioned
(01:30):
in a previous chapter under the name of Princess Mitsky.
Prince Mitski thought only of extraordinary lunches and dinners, while
his wife and their young daughter led a very gay life.
My cousin was a beautiful girl of nineteen, of a
most amiable disposition, and nearly all her male cousins were
madly in love with her. She in turn fell in
(01:52):
love with one of them, and wanted to marry him.
But to marry a cousin is considered a great sin
by the Russian Church, and the old princes tried in
vain to obtain a special permission from the high ecclesiastical dignitaries.
Now she brought her daughter to Saint Petersburg, hoping that
she might choose, among her many admirers a more suitable
(02:12):
husband than her own cousin. It was labor lost, i
must add, But their fashionable apartment was full of brilliant
young men from the guards and from the diplomatic service.
Such a house would be the last to be thought
of in connection with revolutionary ideas. And yet it was
in that house that I made my first acquaintance with
the revolutionary literature of the times. The great refugee Haudson
(02:37):
had just begun to issue at London his review The
Polar Star, which made a commotion in Russia, even in
the palace circles, and was widely circulated secretly at Saint Petersburg.
My cousin got it in some way, and we used
to read it together. Her heart revolted against the obstacles
which were put in the way of her happiness, and
(02:58):
her mind was the more open to the power powerful
criticisms which the great writer launched against the Russian autocracy
and all the rotten system of misgovernment. With a feeling
near to worship, I used to look on the medallion
which was printed on the paper cover of The Polar Star,
and which represented the noble heads of the five Decembrists
whom Nicholas the first had hanged after the rebellion of
(03:20):
December fourteenth, eighteen twenty five. Bistuzev Kahovski Pistil Ruliev and
Muryavo of Apostole, the beauty of the style of Hrzen,
of whom Tutgenyev 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
(03:41):
love of Russia took possession of me, and I used
to read and reread those pages, even more full of
heart than of brain. In eighteen fifty nine or early
in eighteen sixty, I began to edit my first revolutionary paper.
At that age, what could I be but a constitutionalist?
And my paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia.
(04:05):
I wrote about the foolish expenses of the Court, the
sums of money which were spent at Nice to keep
quite a squadron of the navy in attendance on the
Dowager Empress, who died in eighteen sixty. I mentioned the
misdeeds of the functionaries, which I continually heard spoken of,
and I urged the necessity of constitutional rule. I wrote
(04:25):
three copies of my paper and slipped them into the
desks of three comrades of the higher forms, who I
thought might be interested in public affairs. I asked my
readers to put their remarks behind the Scotch Grandfather clock
in our library. With a throbbing heart, I went next
day to see if there was something for me behind
(04:45):
the clock. Two notes were there. Indeed, two comrades wrote
that they fully sympathized with my paper, and only advised
me not to risk too much. I wrote my second number,
still more vigorously, insisted upon the necessity of uniting all
forces in the name of liberty. But this time there
was no reply behind the clock. Instead, the two comrades
(05:09):
came to me. We are sure, they said, that it
is you who edit the paper, and we want to
talk about it. We are quite agreed with you, and
we are here to say let us be friends. Your
paper has done its work. It has brought us together,
but there is no need to continue it. In all
the school there were only two more who would take
any interest in such matters. While if it becomes known
(05:31):
that there is a paper of this kind, the consequences
will be terrible for all of us. Let us constitute
a circle and talk about everything. Perhaps we shall put
something into the heads of a few others. This was
so sensible that I could only agree and we sealed
our union by a hearty shaking of hands. From that
time we three became firm friends and used to read
(05:53):
a great deal together and discuss all sorts of things.
The abolition of serfdom was the question which then engrossed
the attention of all thinking men. The Revolution of eighteen
forty eight had had its distinct echo in the hearts
of the Russian peasant folk, and from the year eighteen
fifty the insurrections of revolted serfs began to take serious proportions.
(06:17):
When the Korean War broke out and militia was levied
all over Russia, these revolts spread with a violence never
before heard of. Several serf owners were killed by their serfs,
and the peasant uprisings became so serious that whole regiments
with artillery were sent to quelldom, whereas in former times
small detachments of soldiers would have been sufficient to terrorize
(06:39):
the peasants into obedience. 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 the second to the throne, rendered the
emancipation of the peasants more and more imperative. The Emperor,
himself averse to serfdom, and supported or rather influenced in
(07:01):
his own family by his wife, his brother Constantine, and
the Grand Duchess Helene Pavlovna, took the first steps in
that direction. His intention was that the initiative of the
reform should come from the nobility, the serf owners themselves,
But in no province of Russia could the nobility be
induced to send a petition to the Czar to that effect.
(07:24):
In March eighteen fifty six, he himself addressed the Moscow
nobility on the necessity of such a step, But a
stubborn silence was all their reply to his speech, so
that when Alexander the Second, growing quite angry, concluded with
those memorable words of Hertzen, it is better, gentlemen, that
it shd come from above than to wait till it
(07:44):
comes from beneath. Even these words had no effect, and
it was to the provinces of Old Poland, Grodno, Vilno
and Kovno, where Napoleon the First had abolished serfdom on
paper in eighteen twelve that recourse was he had the
governor General of those provinces. Nesimov managed to obtain the
(08:06):
desired address from the Polish nobility. In November eighteen fifty seven,
the famous rescript to the Governor General of the Lithuanian
Provinces announcing the intention of the Emperor to abolish serfdom
was launched, and we read with tears in our eyes
the beautiful article of hedtzen thou hast Conquered Galilean, in
(08:28):
which the refugees in London declared that they would no
more look upon Alexander the Second as an enemy, but
would support him in the great work of emancipation. The
attitude of the peasants was very remarkable. No sooner had
the news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming,
than the insurrections nearly stopped. The peasants waited now, and
(08:50):
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 Lexander received with great repugnance.
It is most remarkable, so strong is the force of tradition,
that the rumor went among the peasants that it was
Napoleon the third, who had required of the Czar in
(09:12):
the Treaty of Peace that the peasants should be freed.
I frequently heard this rumor, 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 Saint Petersburg to a comrade of mine who talked
to him about freedom coming. But after these moments of
(09:35):
general rejoicing, years of incertitude and disquiet followed. Specially appointed
committees in the provinces and at Saint Petersburg discussed the
proposed liberation of the serfs, but the intentions of Alexander
the Second seemed unsettled. A check was continually put upon
the press in order to prevent it from discussing details.
(09:57):
Sinister rumors circulated at Saint Petersburg and reached our corps.
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. They whispered into
his ears that the day's serfdom was abolished, the peasants
(10:19):
would begin to kill the landlord's wholesale and Russia would
witness a new Pugachev uprising, far more terrible than that
of seventeen seventy three. Alexander, who was a man of
weak character, only too readily lent his ear to such predictions.
But the huge machine for working out the emancipation law
(10:39):
had been set to work. The committees had their sittings,
scores of schemes of emancipation addressed to the Emperor, circulated
in manuscript or were printed in London. Hatterson, seconded by Turgenev,
who kept him well informed about all that was going
on in government circles, discussed in His Bell and His
Polar Star the details of the various schemes, and Tchernishevsky
(11:04):
in the contemporary so Domenik. The Slavo fields, especially Aksakov
and Belyaev, had taken advantage of the first moments of
relative freedom, allowed the press to give the matter a
wide publicity in Russia and to discuss the features of
the emancipation with a thorough understanding of its technical aspects.
(11:25):
All intellectual Saint Petersburg was with Hutsen and particularly with Czenishevski.
And I remember how the officers of the horse guards
whom I saw on Sundays after the church parade at
the home of my cousin Dmitri Nikolayevitch Kropotkin, who was
aid the camp of that regiment and aid the camp
of the Emperor USU side with Czernishevski, the leader of
(11:47):
the advanced party in the emancipation struggle. The whole disposition
of Saint Petersburg, in the drawing rooms and in the
street was such that it was impossible to go back.
The liberation of the serfs had to be accomplished, and
another important point was one the liberated serfs would receive,
besides their homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated
(12:10):
for themselves. However, the party of the old nobility were
not discouraged. They centered their efforts on obtaining a postponement
of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments,
and on imposing upon the emancipated serf so high a
redemption tax for the land that it would render their
economical freedom illusory. And in this they fully succeeded Alexander
(12:34):
the Second dismissed the real soul of the whole business,
Nikolay Milutin, brother of the Minister of War, saying to him,
I am so sorry to part with you, but I
must the nobility describe you as one of the reds.
The first committees, which had worked out the scheme of
emancipation were dismissed too, and new committees revised the whole
(12:56):
work in the interest of the serf owners. The press
was muzzled once more things assumed a very gloomy aspect.
The question whether the liberation would take place at all
was now asked. I feverishly followed the struggle, and every Sunday,
when my comrades returned from their homes, I asked them
what their parents said. By the end of eighteen sixty
(13:20):
the news became worse and worse. The value of party
has got the upper hand. They intend to revise the
whole work. The relatives of the Princess x a friend
of the Czar, work hard upon him. The liberation will
be postponed. They fear a revolution. In January eighteen sixty one,
(13:40):
slightly better rumors began to circulate, and it was generally
hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on
the day of the Emperor's accession to the throne, February nineteen.
The nineteenth came, but it brought nothing with it. I
was on that day at the palace. There was no
grand livy, only a sma, and pages of the second
(14:02):
form were sent to such levies in order to get
accustomed to the palace ways. It was my turn that day,
and as I was seeing off one of the grand
Duchesses who came to the palace to assist at the mass,
her husband did not appear, and I went to fetch him.
He was called out of the Emperor's study, and I
told him in a half jocose way, of the perplexity
(14:23):
of his wife, without having the slightest suspicion of the
important matters that may have been talked of in the
study at that time. Apart from a few of the initiated,
no one in the palace suspected that the manifesto had
been signed on February nineteen, and was kept back for
a fortnight only because the next Sunday, the twenty sixth,
was the beginning of the Carnival week. And it was
(14:45):
feared that, owing to the drinking which goes on in
the villages during the carnival, peasant insurrections might break out.
Even the carnival fair, which used to be held at
Saint Petersburg on the square near the Winter Palace, was
removed that year to another square from fear of a
popular insurrection in the capital. Most sanguinary instructions had been
(15:07):
issued to the army as to the ways of repressing
peasant uprisings. A fortnight later, on the last Sunday of
the carnival, March five, or rather March seventeen, New Style,
I was at the Corps, having to take part in
the military parade at the riding school. I was still
in bed when my soldier servant Ivanov, dashed in with
(15:29):
the tea tray exclaiming Prince Freedom. The manifesto is posted
on the gostinout vor, the shops opposite the corps. Did
you see it yourself? Yes, people stand round, one reads,
the other listens. It is freedom. In a couple of minutes,
I was dressed and out. A comrade was coming in
(15:51):
Kropotkin Freedom. He shouted, here is the manifesto. My uncle
learned last night that it would be read at the
early mass at the Isac Cathedral, so we went. There
were not many people there, peasants. Only The manifesto was
read and distributed after the mass. They well understood what
it meant. When I came out of the church, two
peasants who stood in the gateway said to me, in
(16:13):
such a draw way, well, sir, now all gone, And
he mimicked how they had shown him the way out.
Years of expectation were in that gesture of sending away
the master. I read and re read the manifesto. It
was written in an elevated style by the old Metropolitan
of Moscow Filagreete, but with a useless mixture of Russian
(16:36):
and Old Slavonian which obscured the scents. It was liberty,
but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to
remain serfs for two years more till February nineteenth, eighteen
sixty three. Notwithstanding all this, one thing was evident. Serfdom
was abolished, and the liberated serfs would get the land
(16:57):
and their homesteads. They would have to pay for, but
the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be
slaves no more. The reaction had not got the upper hand.
We went to the parade, and when all the military
performances were over, Alexander the Second, remaining on horseback, loudly
called out the officers to me. They gathered round him,
(17:21):
and he began, in a loud voice a speech about
the great event of the day. The officers, the representatives
of the nobility in the army. These scraps of sentences
reached our ears. An end has been put to centuries
of injustice. I expect sacrifices from the nobility. The loyal
(17:41):
nobility will gather round the throne, and so on. Enthusiastic
hurrahs resounded amongst the officers. As he ended. We ran,
rather than marched, back on our way to the corps,
hurrying to be in time for the Italian Opera, of
which the last performance in the season was to begin
that afternoon. Some manifestation was sure to take place. Then
(18:05):
our military attire was flung off with great haste, and
several of us dashed light footed to the six story gallery.
The house was crowded during the first ent act. The
smoking room of the opera filled with excited young men
who all talked to one another, whether acquainted or not.
We planned at once to return to the hall and
(18:26):
to sing with the whole public in a mass choir,
the hymn God Save the Tsar. However, sounds of music
reached our ears, and we all hurried back to the hall.
The band of the opera was already playing the hymn,
which was drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from the galleries,
the boxes, the pit. I saw Baveri, the conductor, waving
(18:49):
his stick, but not a sound could be heard from
the powerful band. Then Baveri stopped, but the harahs continued.
I saw the stick waved again in the air. I
saw the fiddle boughs moving, and musicians blowing the brass instruments.
But again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band. Bavera
began conducting the hymn once more, and it was only
(19:11):
by the end of that third repetition that isolated sounds
of the brass instrument peered through the clamour of human voices.
The same enthusiasm was in the streets. Crowds of peasants
and educated men stood in front of the palace, shouting hirahs,
and the Tsar could not appear without being followed by
demonstrative crowds running after his carriage. Hudson was right when,
(19:35):
two years later, as Alexander was drowning the Polish insurrection
in blood and Muraviov the Hangar was strangling it. On
the scaffold, he wrote, Alexander Nikolaevitch, why did you not
die on that day? Your name would have been transmitted
in history as that of a hero. Where were the
(19:56):
uprisings which had been predicted by the champions of slavery?
Conditions more indefinite than those which had been created by
the pologenie the emancipation law could not have been invented.
If anything could have provoked revolts, it was precisely the
perplexing vagueness of the conditions created by the new law.
And yet, except in two places where there were insurrections,
(20:20):
and a very few other spots were 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,
(20:41):
although these conditions were very heavy. I was in Nikolskoya
in August eighteen sixty one and again in the summer
of eighteen sixty two, and I was struck with a quiet,
intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions.
They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to
pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in
(21:01):
reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the
obligations of serfdom. 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. For the first months, they
kept two holidays a week, saying that it was a
(21:23):
sin to work on Friday. But when the summer came
they resumed work with even more energy than before. When
I saw our Nikolskoya 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, talked
(21:45):
to equals, as if they had never stood in different relations. Besides,
such men came out from among them as could make
a stand for their rights. The Pologenia was a large
and difficult book, which it took me a good deal
of time to understand. But when Vasili Ivanov, the elder
of Nikolskoye, came one day to ask me to explain
(22:06):
to him some obscurity in it, I saw that he,
who was not even a fluent reader, had admirably found
his way amongst the intricacies of the chapters and paragraphs
of the law. The household people, that is, the servants,
came out the worst of all. They got no land,
and would hardly have known what to do with it
if they had. They got freedom and nothing besides. In
(22:30):
our neighborhood. Nearly all of them left their masters. None,
for example, remained in the household of my father. They
went in search of positions elsewhere, and a number of
them found employment at once with a merchant class who
were proud of having the coachmen of Prince so and so,
or the cook of General so and so. Those who
(22:51):
knew a trade found work in the towns. For instance,
my father's band remained a band and made a good
living at Kaluga, retaining amiable relations with us. 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. As to the landlords. While the
(23:13):
larger ones made all possible efforts at Saint Petersburg to
reintroduce the old conditions under one name or another, they
succeeded in doing so to some extent. Under Alexander the Third,
by far the greater numbers submitted to the abolition of
serfdom as a sort of necessary calamity. The young generation
gave to Russia that remarkable staff of peace mediators and
(23:36):
justices of the peace, who contributed so much to the
peaceful issue of the emancipation. As to the old generation.
Most of them had already discounted the considerable sums of
money they were to receive from the peasants for the
land which was granted to the liberated serfs, and which
was valued much above its market price. They schemed as
(23:56):
to how they would squander that money in the restaurants
of the capital or at the green tables and gambling,
and they did squander it. Almost all of them as
soon as they got it. For many landlords, the liberation
of the serfs was an excellent money transaction. Thus, land
which my father, in anticipation of the emancipation sold in
(24:18):
parcels at the rate of eleven roubles the Russian acre
was now estimated at forty roubles in the peasants allotments,
that is three and a half times above its market value.
And this was the rule in all our neighborhood. While
in my father's Tambov estate on the prairies, the mere
that is, the village community rented all his land for
(24:40):
twelve years at a price which represented twice as much
as he used to get from that land by cultivating
it with server labor. Eleven years after that memorable time,
I went to the Tambov estate, which I had inherited
from my father. I stayed there for a few weeks,
and on the evening of my departure, our village priest,
(25:00):
an intelligent man of independent opinions, such as one meets
occasionally in our southern provinces, went out for a walk
round the village. The sunset was glorious, a balmy air
came from the prairies. He found a middle aged peasant,
Anton Savierliev, sitting on a small eminence outside the village
(25:21):
and reading a book of psalms. The peasant hardly knew
how to spell and old Slavonic, and often he would
read a book from the last page, turning the pages backward.
It was the process of reading which he liked most,
and then a word would strike him, and its repetition
pleased him. He was reading now a psalm of which
each verse began with a word rejoice. What are you reading?
(25:44):
He was asked, Well, father, I will tell you, was
his reply. Fourteen years ago the old Prince came here.
It was in the winter. I had just returned home,
quite frozen. A snowstorm was raging. I had scarce sleep,
begun undressing when we heard a knock at the window.
It was the elder who was shouting, go to the prince.
(26:05):
He wants you. We all, my wife and our children
were thunder stricken. What can he want of you? My
wife cried in alarm. I signed myself with a cross
and went. The snow storm almost blinded me as I
crossed the bridge. Well it ended or right. The old
Prince was taking his afternoon's sleep and when he woke up,
(26:27):
he asked me if I knew plastering work, and only
told me come tomorrow to repair the plaster in that room.
So I went home quite happy, And when I came
to the bridge, I found my wife standing there. She
had stood there all the time in the snow storm,
with a baby in her arms, waiting for me. What
has happened, Sevilli, she cried, Well, I said, no harm.
(26:50):
He only asked me to make some repairs. That father
was the old Prince, and now the young Prince came
here the other day. I went to see him and
found him in the garden at the tea table in
the shadow of the house. You father sat with him
and the elder of the canton, with his mayor's chain
upon his breast. Will you have tea savillage? He asks me,
(27:12):
take a chair, Peter Grigoryev. He says that to the
old one, give us one more chair. And Peter Grigoryev,
you know what a terror for us he was when
he was the manager of the old Prince. Brought the
chair and we all sat round the tea table talking,
and he poured out tea for all of us. Well, now, father,
(27:33):
the evening is so beautiful. The bomb comes from the prairies,
and I sit and read. Rejoice, Rejoice, This is what
the abolition of serfdom meant for the peasants. End of
the corps of Pages, Chapter eight
Popular Podcasts
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.