The Autobiography of a Revolutionist: Western Europe

I.

A STORM raged in the North Sea, as we approached the coasts of England. But I met the storm with delight. I enjoyed the struggle of our steamer against the furiously rolling waves, and sat for hours on the stem, the foam of the waves dashing into my face. After the two years that I had spent in a gloomy casemate, every fibre of my inner self seemed alive and eager to enjoy the full intensity of life.

My intention was not to stay abroad more than a few weeks or months; just enough time to allow the hue and cry caused by my escape to subside, and also to restore my health a little. I landed under the name of Levashóff, under which I had left Russia; and avoiding London, where the spies of the Russian embassy would soon have been at my heels, I went first to Edinburgh.

It has so happened, however, that I have never returned to Russia. I was soon taken up by the wave of the anarchist movement, which was just developing then in Western Europe; and I felt that I should be more useful in helping that movement to find its proper expression than I could possibly be in Russia. In my mother country I was too well known to carry on an open propaganda, especially among the workers and the peasants ; and later on, when the Russian movement became a conspiracy and an armed struggle against the representative of autocracy, all thought of a popular movement was necessarily abandoned ; while my own inclinations drew me more and more intensely toward casting in my lot with the laboring and toiling masses. To carry to them such conceptions as would turn their efforts to the best advantage of the common people; to deepen and to widen the ideals and principles which would underlie the coming social revolution ; to bring them to the workers, not as an order coming from their leaders, but as a result of their own reason ; and so to awaken their own initiative, now that they were called upon to appear in the historical arena as the builders of a new, equitable mode of organization of society, — this seemed to me as necessary for the development of mankind as anything I could accomplish in Russia at that time. Accordingly, I joined the few men who were working in that direction in Western Europe, relieving those of them who had been broken down by years of hard struggle.

When I landed at Hull and went to Edinburgh, I informed only my friends in Russia and a few in the Jura Federation of my safe arrival in England. A socialist must always rely upon his own work for his living, and consequently, as soon as I was settled in a small room beyond the meadows. I tried to find employment.

Among the passengers on board our steamer there was a Norwegian professor, with whom I talked, trying to remember the little that I formerly had known of the Swedish language. He spoke German. “ But as you speak some Norwegian,” he said to me, “and are trying to learn it, let us both speak it.”

“ You mean Swedish ? ” I ventured to ask. “ I speak Swedish, don’t I ? ”

“ Well, I should say it is rather Norwegian ; surely not Swedish,” was his reply.

Thus happened to me what happened to one of Jules Verne’s heroes, who had learned by mistake Portuguese instead of Spanish. At any rate, I talked a good deal with the professor, — let it be in Norwegian, — and he gave me a Christiania paper, which contained the reports of the Norwegian North Atlantic deep-sea expedition, just returned home. As soon as I was at Edinburgh I wrote a note in English about these explorations, and sent it to Nature, which my brother and I used regularly to read at St. Petersburg from its first appearance. The sub-editor acknowledged the note with thanks, remarking with an extreme leniency, which I have often met with since in England, that my English was “ all right,” and only required to be made “ a little more idiomatic.” I may say that I had learned English in Russia, and, with my brother, had translated Page’s Philosophy of Geology and Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Biology. But I had learned it from books, and pronounced it very badly, so that I had the greatest difficulty in making myself understood by my Scotch landlady ; her daughter and I used to write on scraps of paper what we had to say to each other ; and as I had no idea of idiomatic English, I must have made the most amusing mistakes. I remember, at any rate, protesting once to her, in writing, that it was not a “ cup of tea ” that I expected at tea time, but many cups. I am afraid my landlady took me for a glutton, but I must say, by way of apology, that neither in the geological books I had read in English nor in Spencer’s Biology was there any allusion to such an important matter as tea-drinking.

I got from Russia the Journal of the Russian Geographical Society, and soon began to supply the Times with occasional paragraphs about Russian geographical explorations. Prjevalsky was at that time in Central Asia, and his progress was followed in England with interest.

However, the money I had brought with me was rapidly disappearing, and all my letters to Russia being intercepted, I could not succeed in making my address known to my relatives. So I moved in a few weeks to London, thinking I could find more regular work there. The old refugee, P. L. Lavróff, continued to edit at London his newspaper Forward ; but as I hoped soon to return to Russia, and the editorial office of the Russian paper must have been closely watched by spies, I did not go there.

I went, very naturally, to the office of Nature, where I was most cordially received by the sub-editor, Mr. J. Scott Keltie. The editor wanted to increase the column of Notes, and found that I wrote them exactly as they were required. A table was consequently assigned me in the office, and scientific reviews in all possible languages were piled upon it. “ Come every Monday, Mr. Levashóff,” I was told, “ look over these reviews, and if there is any article that strikes you as worthy of notice, write a note, or mark the article : we will send it to a specialist.”Mr. Keltie did not know, of course, that I used to rewrite each note three or four times before I dared to submit my English to him; but taking the scientific reviews home, I soon managed very nicely, with my Nature notes and my Times paragraphs, to get a living. I found that the weekly payment, on Thursday, of the paragraph contributors to the Times was an excellent thing. To be sure, there were weeks when there was no interesting news from Prjevalsky, and news from other parts of Russia was not found interesting ; in such cases my fare was bread and tea only.

One day, however, Mr. Keltie took from the shelves several Russian books, asking me to review them for Nature. I looked at the books, and, to my embarrassment, saw that they were my own works on the Glacial Period and the Orography of Asia. My brother had not failed to send them to our favorite Nature. I was in great perplexity, and, putting the books into my bag, took them home, to reflect upon the matter. “ What shall I do with them ? ” I asked myself. “ I cannot praise them, because they are mine ; and I cannot be too sharp on the author, as I hold the views expressed in them.” I decided to take them back next day, and explain to Mr. Keltie that, although I had introduced myself under the name of Levashóff, I was the author of these books, and could not review them.

Mr. Keltie knew from the papers about Kropotkin’s escape, and was very much pleased to discover the refugee safe in England. As to my scruples, he remarked wisely that I need neither scold nor praise the author, but could simply tell the readers what the books were about. From that day a friendship, which still continues, grew up between us.

In November or December, 1876, seeing in the letter box of P. L. Lavróff’s paper an invitation for “ K.” to call at the editorial office to receive a letter from Russia, and thinking that the invitation was for me, I called at the office, and soon established friendship with the editor and the younger people who printed the paper.

However, I did not stay long in England. I had been in lively correspondence with my friend James Guillaume, of the Jura Federation, and as soon as I found some permanent geographical work, which I could do in Switzerland as well as in London, I removed to Switzerland. The letters that I got at last from home told me that I might as well stay abroad, as there was nothing in particular to be done in Russia. A wave of enthusiasm was rolling over the country, at that time, in favor of the Slavonians who had revolted against the age-long Turkish oppression, and my best friends, Serghéi (Stepniák), Kelnitz, and several others, had gone to the Balkan peninsula to join the insurgents. “ We read,” my friends wrote, “ the correspondence of the Daily News about the horrors in Bulgaria; we weep at the reading, and go next to enlist either as volunteers in the Balkan insurgents’ bands or as nurses.”

I went to Switzerland, and, following the advice of my Swiss friends, settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

II.

The Jura Federation of the International Workingmen’s Association has played an important part in the modern development of socialism.

It always happens that after a political party has set before itself a purpose, and has proclaimed that nothing short of the complete attainment of that aim will satisfy it, it divides into two factions. One of them remains what it was, while the other, although it professes not to have changed a word of its previous intentions, accepts some sort of compromise, and gradually, from compromise to compromise, is driven farther from its primitive programme, and becomes a party of modest makeshift reform.

Such a division had occurred within the International Workingmen’s Association. Nothing less than an expropriation of the present owners of land and capital, and a transmission of all that is necessary for the production of wealth to the producers themselves, was the avowed aim of the association at the outset. The workers of all nations were called upon to form their own organizations for a direct struggle against capitalism ; to work out the means of socializing the production of wealth and its consumption ; and, when they should be ready to do so, to take possession of the necessaries for production, and to control production with no regard to the present political organization, which must undergo a complete reconstruction. The association had thus to be the means for preparing an immense revolution in men’s minds, and later on in the very forms of life, — a revolution which would open to mankind a new era of progress based upon the solidarity of all. That was the ideal which aroused from their slumber millions of European workers, and attracted to the association its best intellectual forces.

However, two factions soon developed. When the war of 1870 had ended in a complete defeat of France, and the uprising of the Paris Commune had involved the extermination of at least thirty thousand of the most active workers of Paris, while the Draconian laws which were passed against the association excluded the French workers from participation in it; and when, on the other hand, parliamentary rule had been introduced in “ united Germany,” — the goal of the radicals since 1848, — an effort was made to modify the aims and the methods of the whole socialist movement. The “ conquest of power within the existing states ” became the watchword of that section, which took the name of “ Social Democracy.” The first electoral successes of this party at the elections to the German Reichstag aroused great hopes. The number of the Social Democratic deputies having grown from two to seven, and next to nine, it was confidently calculated by otherwise intelligent men that before the end of the century the Social Democrats would have a majority in the German parliament, and would then introduce the socialist “ popular state ” by means of suitable legislation. The socialist ideal of this party gradually lost the character of something that had to be worked out by the labor organizations themselves, and became state management of the industries, — state socialism ; that is, state capitalism. In fact, to-day, in Switzerland, the efforts of the Social Democrats are directed in politics toward centralization as against federalism, and in the economic field to promoting the state management of railways and the state monopoly of banking and of the sale of spirits. The state management of the land and of the leading industries, and even of the consumption of riches, would be the next step.

Gradually, all the life and activity of the German Social Democratic party was absorbed by electoral considerations. Trade unions were treated with contempt and strikes were met with disapproval, because both diverted the attention of the workers from electoral struggles. Every popular outbreak, every revolutionary agitation in any country of Europe, was received by the Social Democratic leaders with even more animosity than by the capitalist press.

In the Latin countries, however, this new idea found but few adherents. The sections and federations of the International remained true to the principles which had prevailed at the foundation of the association. Federalist by their history, hostile to the idea of a centralized state, and possessed of revolutionary traditions, the Latin workers could not follow the evolution of the Germans.

The division between the two branches of the socialist movement became apparent immediately after the FrancoGerman war. The association, as I have already mentioned, had created a governing body in the shape of a general council which resided at London ; and the leading spirits of that council being two Germans, Engels and Marx, the council became the stronghold of the new Social Democratic direction ; while the inspirers and intellectual leaders of the Latin federations were Bakúnin and his friends.

The conflict between the Marxists and the Bakúnists was not in the least a personal affair. It was the necessary conflict between the principles of federalism and those of centralization, the free commune and the state’s paternal rule, the free action of the masses of the people and the betterment of existing capitalist conditions through legislation, — a conflict between the Latin spirit and the German Geist, which, after the defeat of France on the battlefield, claimed supremacy in science, politics, philosophy, and socialism too, representing its own conception of socialism as “ scientific,” while all other interpretations it described as “ utopian.”

At the Hague Congress of the International Association, which was held in 1872, the London general council, by means of a fictitious majority, excluded Bakúnin, his friend Guillaume, and even the Jura Federation from the International. But as it was certain that most of what remained then of the International — that is, the Spanish, the Italian, and the Belgian federations — would side with the Jurassians, the congress tried to dissolve the association. A new general council, composed of a few Social Democrats, was nominated in New York, where there were no workmen’s organizations belonging to the association to control it, and where it has never been heard of since. In the meantime, the Spanish, the Italian, the Belgian, and the Jura federations of the International continued to exist, and to meet as usual, for the next five or six years, in annual international congresses.

The Jura Federation, at the time when I came to Switzerland, was the centre and the leading voice of the organizations. Bakúnin had just died, on July 1, 1876, but the federation retained the position it had taken under his impulse.

The conditions in France, Spain, and Italy were such that only the maintenance of the revolutionary spirit that had developed amongst the Internationalist workers previous to the Franco-German war prevented the governments from taking decisive steps toward crushing the whole labor movement, and inaugurating the reign of White Terror. It is well known that the reëstablishment of a Bourbon monarchy in France was very near becoming an accomplished fact. Marshal MacMahon was maintained as president of the republic only in order to prepare for a monarchist restoration ; the very day of the solemn entry of Henry V. into Paris was settled, and even the harnesses of the horses, adorned with the pretender’s crown and initials, were ready. And it is also known that it was only the fact that Gambetta and Clémenceau — the opportunist and the radical—had covered wide portions of France with committees, armed and ready to rise as soon as the ooup d’état should be made, which prevented the proposed restoration. But the real strength of those committees was in the workers who had formerly belonged to the International and had retained the old spirit. Speaking from considerable personal knowledge, I may venture to say that the radical middleclass leaders would have hesitated in case of emergency, while the workers would have seized the first opportunity for an uprising which, beginning with the defense of the republic, might have gone farther on in the socialist direction.

The same was true in Spain. As soon as the clerical and aristocratic surroundings of the king drove him to put on the screws of reaction, the republicans menaced him with a movement in which, they knew, the real fighting element would be the workers. In Catalonia alone there were over one hundred thousand men in strongly organized trade unions, and more than eighty thousand of them belonged to the International, regularly holding congresses, and punctually paying their contributions to the association with a truly Spanish sense of duty. I can speak of these organizations from personal knowledge, gained on the spot, and I know that they were ready to proclaim the United States of Spain, abandon ruling the colonies, and in some of the most advanced regions make serious attempts in the direction of collectivism. It was this permanent menace which prevented the Spanish monarchy from suppressing all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations, and from inaugurating a frank clerical reaction.

Similar conditions prevailed also in Italy. The trade unions in north Italy had not reached the strength they have now ; but parts of Italy were honeycombed with International sections and republican groups. The monarchy was kept under a continual menace of being upset, the moment that the middle-class republicans should appeal to the revolutionary elements among the workers.

In short, looking back upon these years, from which we are separated now by a quarter of a century, I am firmly persuaded that if Europe did not pass through a period of stern reaction after 1871, this was mainly due to the spirit which was aroused in Western Europe before the Franco-German war, and has been maintained since by the anarchist Internationalists, the Blanquists, the Mazzinians, and the Spanish " cantonalist ” republicans.

Of course, the Marxists, absorbed by their local electoral struggles, knew little of these conditions. Anxious not to draw the thunderbolts of Bismarck upon their heads, and fearing above all that a revolutionary spirit might make its appearance in Germany, and lead to repressions which they were not strong enough to face, they not only repudiated, for tactical purposes, all sympathy with the western revolutionists, but gradually became inspired with hatred toward the revolutionary spirit, and denounced it with virulence wheresoever it made its appearance, even when they saw its first signs in Russia.

No revolutionary papers could be printed in France at that time, under Marshal MacMahon. Even the singing of the Marseillaise was considered a crime ; and I was once very much amazed at the terror which seized several of my co-passengers in a train when they heard a few recruits singing the revolutionary song (in May, 1878). " Is it permitted again to sing the Marseillaise ? ” they asked one another with anxiety. The Spanish papers were very well edited, and some of the manifestoes of their congresses were admirable expositions of anarchist socialism; but who knows anything of Spanish ideas outside of Spain ? The Italian papers were all short-lived, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere under different names ; and admirable as some of them were, they did not spread beyond Italy. Consequently, the Jura Federation, with its papers printed in French, became the centre for the maintenance and expression in the Latin countries of the spirit which — I repeat it — saved Europe from a very dark period of reaction. And it was also the ground upon which the theoretical conceptions of anarchism were worked out by Bakúnin and his followers in a language that was understood all over continental Europe.

III.

Quite a number of remarkable men, of different nationalities, nearly all of whom had been personal friends of Bakúnin, belonged at that time to the Jura Federation. The editor of our chief paper, the organ of the federation, was James Guillaume, a teacher by profession, from one of the aristocratic families of Neuchâtel. Small, thin, with the stiff appearance and resoluteness of Robespierre, and with a truly golden heart which opened only in the intimacy of friendship, he was a born leader by his phenomenal powers of work and his stern activity. For eight years he fought against all sorts of obstacles to maintain the paper in existence, taking the most active part in every detail of the federation, till he had to leave Switzerland, where he could find no work whatever, and settled in France, where his name will be quoted some day with the utmost respect in the history of education.

Adhémar Schwitzguébel, also a Swiss, was the type of the jovial, lively, clearsighted French - speaking watchmakers of the Bernese Jura hills. A watch engraver by trade, he never attempted to abandon his position of manual worker, and, always merry and active, he supported his large family through the severest periods of slack trade and curtailed earnings. His gift of taking a difficult economic or political question, and, after much thought about it, considering it from the workingman’s point of view, without divesting it of its deepest meaning, was wonderful. He was known far and wide in the “ mountains,” and with the workers of all countries he was a general favorite.

His direct counterpart was another Swiss, a watchmaker, Spichiger. He was a philosopher, slow in both movement and thought, English in his physical aspect; always trying to get at the full meaning of every fact, and impressing all of us by the justness of the conclusions he reached while scooping out watch lids.

Round these three gathered a number of solid, stanch, middle-aged or elderly workmen, passionate lovers of liberty, happy to take part in such a promising movement, and a hundred or so bright young men, also mostly watchmakers, — all very independent and affectionate, very lively, and ready to go to any length in self-sacrifice.

Several refugees of the Paris Commune had joined the federation. Elisée Reclus, the great geographer, was of their number, —a type of the true Puritan in his manner of life, and of the French encyclopædist philosopher of the last century in his mind ; the man who inspires others, but never has governed any one, and never will do so ; the anarchist whose anarchism is the epitome of his broad, intimate knowledge of the forms of life of mankind under all climates and in all stages of civilization ; whose books rank among the very best of the century ; whose style, of a striking beauty, moves the mind and the conscience ; and who, as he enters the office of an anarchist paper, says to the editor, maybe a boy in comparison to himself, " Tell me what I have to do,” and will sit down, like a newspaper subordinate, to fill up a gap of so many lines in the current number of the paper. In the Paris Commune he simply took a rifle and stood in the ranks ; and if he invites a contributor to work with him upon a volume of his world-famed Geography, and the contributor timidly asks, " What have I to do ? ” he replies : “ Here are the books, here is a table. Do as you like.”

By his side was Lefrancais, an elderly man, formerly a teacher, who had been thrice in his life a refugee : after June, 1848, after Napoleon’s coup d’état, and after 1870. An ex-member of the Commune, and consequently one of those who were said to have left Paris carrying away millions in their pockets, he worked as a freight handler at the railway at Lausanne, and was nearly killed in that work, which required younger shoulders than his. His book on the Paris Commune is the one in which the real historical meaning of that movement was put in its proper light. " A communalist, not an anarchist, please,” he would say. " I cannot work with such fools as you are ; ” and he worked with none but us, " because you, fools, are still the men whom I love best. With you one can work, remaining one’s self.”

Another ex-member of the Paris Commune who was with us was Pindy, a carpenter from the north of France, an adopted child of Paris. He became widely known at Paris, during a strike, for his vigor and bright intelligence, and was elected a member of the Commune, which nominated him commander of the Elysée palace. When the Versailles troops entered Paris, shooting their prisoners by the hundred, three men, at least, were shot in different parts of the town, having been mistaken for Pindy. After the fight, however, he was concealed by a brave girl, a seamstress, who saved him by her calmness when the house was searched by the troops, and afterward became his wife. Only a year later they succeeded in leaving Paris unnoticed, and came to Switzerland. Here Pindy learned assaying, at which he became skillful; spending his days by the side of his red-hot stove, and at night devoting himself passionately to propaganda work, in which he admirably combined the passion of a revolutionist with the good sense and organizing powers characteristic of the Parisian worker.

Paul Brousse was then a young doctor, full of mental activity, uproarious, sharp, lively, ready to develop any idea with a geometrical logic to its utmost consequences ; powerful in his criticisms of the state and state organization ; finding enough time to edit two papers, in French and in German, to write scores of voluminous letters, to be the soul of an evening workmen’s party; constantly active in organizing men, with the subtle mind of a true “southerner.”

Among the Italians who collaborated with us in Switzerland, two men whose names stood always associated, and will be remembered in Italy by more than one generation, two close personal friends of Bakúnin, were Cafiero and Malatesta. Cafiero was an idealist of the highest and the purest type, who gave all his considerable fortune to the cause, and never has asked himself since what he shall live upon to-morrow; a thinker plunged in philosophical speculation ; a man who never would harm any one, and yet took the rifle and marched in the mountains of Benevento, when he and his friends thought that an uprising of a socialist character might be attempted, were it only to show the people that their uprisings ought to have a deeper meaning than that of a mere revolt against tax collectors. Malatesta was a student of medicine, who had left the medical profession and also his fortune for the sake of the revolution ; full of fire and intelligence, a pure idealist, who has never thought in all his life — and he is now approaching the age of fifty — whether he will have a piece of bread for his supper and a bed for the night. Not having even so much as a room that he may call his own, he may go on selling sherbet in the streets of London to get his living, but in the evening he will write brilliant articles for the Italian papers. Imprisoned in France, released, re-condemned in Italy, expelled, locked up in an island, escaped, and again in Italy in disguise ; always in the hottest of the struggle, whether it be in Italy or elsewhere, — and so for thirty years in succession. And when you meet him again, released from a prison or escaped from an island, he is just as you saw him last ; always renewing the struggle, with the same love of men, the same absence of hatred toward his adversaries and jailers, the same hearty smile for a friend, the same caress for a child.

The Russians were few among us, most of them following the German Social Democrats. We had, however, Doukóvsky, a friend of Hérzen, who had left Russia in 1863, — a brilliant, elegant, highly intelligent nobleman, a favorite with the workers, — who better than any of the rest of us had what the French call l’oreille du peuple (the ear of the workers), because he knew how to fire them by showing them the great part they had to play in rebuilding society, to lift them to high historical vistas, to throw a flash of light on the most intricate economic problem, and to electrify them with his earnestness and sincerity. Sokolóff, formerly an officer of the Russian general staff, an admirer of Paul Louis Courier for his boldness and of Proudhon for his philosophical ideas, who had made many a socialist in Russia by his review articles, was also with us temporarily.

I mention only those who became widely known as writers, or as delegates to congresses, or in some other way. And yet, I ask myself if I ought not rather to speak of those who never committed their names to print, but were as important in the life of the federation as any one of the writers; who fought in the ranks, and were always ready to join in any enterprise, never asking whether the work would be grand or small, distinguished or modest, — whether it would have great consequences, or simply result in infinite worry for themselves and their families.

I ought also to mention the Germans Werner and Rinke, the Spaniard Albarracin, and many others ; but I am afraid that these faint sketches of mine may not convey to the reader the same feelings of respect and love with which every one of this little family inspired those who knew him or her personally.

IV.

Of all the towns of Switzerland that I knew, La Chaux-de-Funds was perhaps the least attractive. It lies on a high plateau entirely devoid of any vegetation, open to bitterly cold winds in the winter, when the snow lies as deep as at Moscow, and melts and falls again as often as at St. Petersburg. But it was important to spread our ideas in that centre, and to give more life to the local propaganda. Pindy, Spichiger, Albarracin, the Blanquist Ferré, were there, and from time to time I could pay visits to Guillaume at Neuchâtel, and to Schwitzgudbel in the valley of St. Imier.

A life full of work that I liked began now for me. We held many meetings, ourselves distributing our announcements in the cafés and the workshops. Once a week we held our section meetings, at which the most animated discussions took place, and we went also to preach socialism at the gatherings convoked by the political parties. I traveled a good deal, visiting other sections and helping them.

During that winter we won the sympathy of many, but our regular work was very much hampered by a crisis in the watch trade. Half the workers were out of work or only partially employed, so that the municipality had to open dining rooms to provide cheap meals at cost price. The coöperative workshop established by the anarchists at La Chaux-de-Fonds, in which the earnings were divided equally among all the members, had great difficulty in getting work, in spite of its high reputation, and Spichiger had to resort several times to wool-combing for an upholsterer, in order to get his living.

We all took part, that year, in a manifestation with the red flag at Bern. The wave of reaction spread to Switzerland, and the carrying of the workers’ banner was prohibited by the Bern police, in defiance of the constitution. It was necessary, therefore, to show that at least here and there the workers would not have their rights trampled underfoot, and would offer resistance. We all went to Bern on the anniversary of the Paris Commune, to carry the red flag in the streets, notwithstanding the prohibition. Of course there was a collision with the police, in which two comrades received sword cuts and two police officers were rather seriously wounded. But the red flag was carried safe to the hall, where a most animated meeting was held. I hardly need say that the so-called leaders were in the ranks, and fought like all the rest. The trial involved nearly thirty Swiss citizens, all demanding to be prosecuted, and those who had wounded the two police officers coming forward spontaneously to say that they had done it. A great deal of sympathy was won to the cause during the trial; it was understood that all liberties have to be defended jealously, in order not to be lost. The sentences were consequently very light, not exceeding three months’ imprisonment.

However, the Bern government prohibited the carrying of the red flag anywhere in the canton ; and the Jura Federation thereupon decided to carry it, in defiance of the prohibition, in St. Imier, where we held our congress that year. This time most of us were armed, and ready to defend our banner to the last extremity. A body of police had been placed in a square to stop our column ; a detachment of the militia was kept in readiness in an adjoining field, under the pretext of target practice, — we distinctly heard their shots as we marched through the town. But when our column appeared in the square, and it was judged from its aspect that aggression would result in serious bloodshed, the mayor let us continue our march, undisturbed, to the hall where the meeting was to be held. None of us desired a fight ; but the strain of that march, in fighting order, was such that I do not know what feeling prevailed in most of us, during the first moments after we reached the hall, — relief at having been spared an undesired fight, or regret that the fight did not take place. Man is a very complex being.

Our main activity, however, was in working out the practical and theoretical aspects of anarchist socialism, and in this direction the federation has undoubtedly accomplished something that will last.

We saw that a new form of society is germinating in the civilized nations, and must take the place of the old one : a society of equals, who will not be compelled to sell their hands and brains to those who choose to employ them, in a haphazard way, but who will be able to apply their knowledge and capacities to production, in an organism so constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest sum possible of wellbeing for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative. This society will he composed of a multitude of associations, federated for all the purposes which require federation : trade federations for production of all sorts, — agricultural, industrial, intellectual, artistic; communes for consumption, making provision for dwellings, gas works, supplies of food, sanitary arrangements, etc.; federations of the communes, and federations of communes with trade organizations ; and finally, wider groups covering all the country, or several countries, composed of men who collaborate for the satisfaction of such economic, intellectual, artistic, and moral needs as are not limited to a given territory. All these will combine directly, by means of free agreements between them, just as the railway companies or the postal departments of different countries coöperate now, without having a central railway or postal government ; or as the meteorologists, the Alpine clubs, the lifeboat stations in Great Britain, the cyclists, the teachers, and so on, combine for all sorts of work in common, for intellectual pursuits, or simply for pleasure. There will be full freedom for the development of new forms of production, invention, and organization ; individual initiative will be encouraged, and the tendency toward uniformity and centralization will be discouraged. This ideal society will have no crystallization, but will continually modify its aspect, because it will be a living, evolving organism; no need of government will be felt, because free agreement and federation take its place in all those functions which governments consider as theirs at the present time, and because, the causes of conflict being reduced in number, those conflicts which may still arise can be submitted to arbitration.

None of us minimized the importance of the change which we looked for. We understood, on the contrary, that such a change cannot be produced by the conjectures of one man of genius, that it will not be one man’s discovery, but that it must result from the constructive work of the masses, just as the forms of judicial procedure which were elaborated in the early mediæval ages, the village community, the guild, or the mediæval city,were worked out by the people.

Other men had undertaken to picture ideal commonwealths, sometimes basing them upon the principle of authority, and sometimes upon the principle of freedom. Robert Owen and Fourier had given the world their ideals of a free, organically developing society, in opposition to the pyramidal ideals which had been copied from the Roman Empire or from the Roman Church. Proudhon had continued their work, and Bakúnin, applying his wide and clear understanding of the philosophy of history to the criticism of present institutions, " edified while he was demolishing.” But all that was preparatory work only.

The International Workingmen’s Association inaugurated a new method of solving the problems of practical sociology by appealing to the workers themselves. The educated men who had joined the association undertook only to enlighten the workers as to what was going on in different countries of the world, to analyze the obtained results, and, later on, to aid them in formulating their conclusions. We did not pretend to evolve an ideal commonwealth out of our theoretical views as to what a society ought to be, but we invited the workers to investigate the causes of the present evils, and in their discussions and congresses to consider the practical aspects of a better social organization than the one we live in. A question raised at an international congress was recommended as a subject of study to all labor unions. In the course of the year it was discussed all over Europe, in the small meetings of the sections, with a full knowledge of the local needs of each trade and each locality ; then the work of the sections was brought before the next congress of each federation, and finally it was submitted in a more elaborate form to the next international congress. The structure of the society which we longed for was thus worked out from beneath, and the Jura Federation took a large part in the elaboration of the anarchist ideal.

As to myself being placed in such favorable conditions, I gradually came to realize that anarchism represents more than a mere mode of action and a mere conception of a free society ; that it is part of a philosophy, natural and social, which must be developed in a quite different way from the metaphysical or dialectic methods which have been employed in sciences dealing with man. I saw that it must be treated by the same methods as natural sciences; not, however, on the slippery ground of mere analogies which has been accepted by Herbert Spencer, but on the solid basis of induction applied to human institutions. And I did my best to accomplish what I could in that direction.

V.

Two congresses were held in the autumn of 1877 in Belgium : one of the International Workingmen’s Association at Verviers, and the other an international socialist congress at Ghent. The latter was especially important, as it was known that an attempt would be made by the German Social Democrats to bring all the labor movement of Europe under one organization, subject to a central committee, which would be the old general council of the International under a new name. It was therefore necessary to preserve the autonomy of the labor organizations in the Latin countries, and we did our best to be well represented at this congress. I went under the name of Levashóff; two Germans walked nearly all the distance from Basel to Belgium ; and although we were only nine anarchists at Ghent, we succeeded in checking the centralization scheme.

Twenty-two years have passed since ; a number of international socialist congresses have been held, and at every one of them the same struggle has been renewed, — the Social Democrats trying to enlist all the labor movement of Europe under their banner and to bring it under their control, and the anarchists opposing and preventing it. What an amount of wasted force, of bitter words exchanged and efforts divided, simply because those who have adopted the formula of “ conquest of power within the existing states ” do not understand that activity in this direction cannot embody all the socialist movement! From the outset socialism took three independent lines of development, which found their expression in Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen. Saint-Simonism has developed into Social Democracy, and Fourierism into anarchism ; while Owenism is developing, in England and America, into trade-unionism, coöperation, and the so-called municipal socialism, and remains hostile to Social Democratic state socialism, while it has many points of contact with anarchism. But because of failure to recognize that the three march toward a common goal in three different ways, and that the two latter bring their own precious contribution to human progress, a quarter of a century has been given to endeavors to realize the unrealizable Utopia of a unique labor movement of the Social Democratic pattern.

The Ghent congress ended for me in an unexpected way. The Belgian police learned who Levashóff was, and received the order to arrest me for a breach of police regulations which I had committed in giving at the hotel an assumed name. My Belgian friends warned me. They maintained that the clerical ministry which was in power was capable of giving me up to Russia, and insisted upon my leaving the congress at once. They would not let me return to the hotel, and led me straight from a meeting to a group of Ghent comrades, who, after much whispering and subdued whistling to other groups of comrades, scattered in a dark square, finally took me under escort to a Social Democrat worker, who received me in the most touching way as a brother. Next morning I left once more for England.

I did not stay long in London. In the admirable collections of the British Museum I studied the beginnings of the French Revolution, — how revolutions come to break out, — but I wanted more activity, and soon went to Paris. A revival of the labor movement was beginning there, after the rigid suppression of the Commune. With the Italian Costa and the few anarchist friends we had among the Paris workers, and with Jules Guesde and his colleagues who were not strict Social Democrats at that time, we started the first socialist groups.

Our beginnings were ridiculously small. Half a dozen of us used to meet in cafés, and when we had an audience of a hundred persons at a meeting we felt happy. No one would have guessed then that two years later the movement would be in full swing. But France has its own ways of development. When a reaction has gained sway, all visible traces of a movement disappear. Those who fight against the current are few. But in some mysterious way, by a sort of invisible infiltration of ideas, the reaction is undermined; a new current sets in, and then it appears, all of a sudden, that the idea which was thought to be dead was there alive, spreading and growing all the time; and as soon as public agitation becomes possible, thousands of adherents, whose existence nobody suspected, come to the front. “ There are at Paris,” old Blanqui used to say, “ fifty thousand men who never come to a meeting or to a demonstration ; but the moment they feel that the people can appear in the streets to manifest their opinion, they are there to storm the position.” So it was then. There were not twenty of us to carry on the movement, not two hundred openly to support it. At the first commemoration of the Commune, in March, 1878, we surely were not two hundred. But two years later the amnesty for the Commune was voted, and the working population of Paris was in the streets to greet the returning Communards; it flocked by the thousand to cheer them at the meetings, and the socialist movement took a sudden expansion, carrying with it the radicals.

The time had not yet come for that revival, however, and one night in April, 1878, Costa and a French comrade were arrested. A police court condemned them to imprisonment for eighteen months as Internationalists. I escaped arrest only by mistake. The police wanted Levashóff, and went to arrest a Russian student whose name sounded very much like that. I had given my real name, and continued to stay at Paris under that name for another month. Then I was called to Switzerland.

VI.

During this stay at Paris I made my first acquaintance with Turguéneff. He had expressed to our common friend Lavróff the desire to see me, and, as a true Russian, to celebrate my escape by a small friendly dinner. It was with a feeling near to worship that I crossed the threshold of his room. If by his Sportsman’s Notebook he rendered to Russia the immense service of throwing odium upon serfdom (I did not know at that time that he took a leading part in Hérzen’s powerful Bell), he has rendered no less service through his later novels. He has shown what the Russian woman is, what treasuries of mind and heart she possesses, what she may be as an inspirer of men; and he has taught us how men who have a real claim to superiority look upon women, how they love. Upon me, and upon thousands of my contemporaries, this phase of his made an indelible impression, far more powerful than the best articles upon women’s rights.

His appearance is well known. Tall, strongly built, the head covered with soft and thick gray hair, he was certainly beautiful; his eyes gleamed with intelligence, not devoid of a touch of humor, and his whole manner testified to that simplicity and absence of affectation which are characteristic of all the best Russian writers. His fine head revealed a formidable development of brain power, and when he died, and Paul Bert, with Paul Reclus (the surgeon), weighed his brain, it so much surpassed the heaviest brain then known,—that of Cuvier,— reaching something over two thousand grammes, that they would not trust to their scales, but got new ones, to repeat the weighing.

His talk was especially remarkable. He spoke, as he wrote, in images. When he wanted to develop an idea, he did not resort to arguments, although he was a master in philosophical discussions ; he illustrated his idea by a scene presented in a form as beautiful as if it had been taken out of one of his novels.

Of all novel-writers of our century, Turguéneff has certainly attained the greatest perfection as an artist, and his prose sounds to the Russian ear like music, — music as deep as that of Beethoven. His principal novels — the series of Dmitri Rúdin, A Noblemen’s Retreat, On the Eve, Fathers and Sons, Smoke, and Virgin Soil — represent the leading “ history-making ” types of the educated classes of Russia, which evolved in rapid succession after 1848 ; all sketched with a fullness of philosophical conception and humanitarian understanding and an artistic beauty which have no parallel in any other literature. Yet Fathers and Sons — a novel which he rightly considered his profoundest work — was received by the young people of Russia with a loud protest. Our youth declared that the nihilist Bazároff was by no means a true representation of his class; many described him even as a caricature upon nihilism. This misunderstanding deeply affected Turguéeff, and, although a reconciliation between him and the young generation took place later on, at St. Petersburg, after he had written Virgin Soil, the wound inflicted upon him by these attacks was never healed.

He knew from Lavróff that I was a devoted admirer of his writings ; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokólsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazároff. I frankly replied, “ Bazároff is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as much as you did your other heroes.” “ No, I loved him, intensely loved him,” Turguéneff replied, with an unexpected vigor. “Wait; when we get home I will show you my diary, in which I noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazároff’s death.”

Turguéneff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazároff. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazároff’s point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. “ Analysis first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith; an egotist cannot even believe in himself : ” so he characterized Hamlet. “ Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber’s plate for the magic helmet of Mambrin (who of us has never made the same mistake ?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which they alone may see. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it,— and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a skeptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies; and his skepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.”

These thoughts of Turguéneff give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet, and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazároff. He represented his superiority well, but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love to a sick friend which he bestowed on his heroes when they approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.

“ Did you know Myshkin ? ” he once asked me, in 1878. At the trial of our circles Myshkin revealed himself as the most powerful personality. “ I should like to know all about him,” he continued. “ That is a man ; not the slightest trace of Hamletism.” And in so saying he was obviously meditating on this new type in the Russian movement, which did not exist in the phase that Turguéneff described in Virgin Soil, but was to appear two years later.

I saw him for the last time in the autumn of 1881. He was very ill, and worried by the thought that it was his duty to write to Alexander III., — who had just come to the throne, and hesitated as to the policy he should follow, — asking him to give Russia a constitution, and proving to him by solid arguments the necessity of that step. With evident grief he said to me: “ I must do it, but I feel I shall not be able to do it.” In fact, he was already suffering awful pains occasioned by a cancer in the spinal cord, and had the greatest difficulty even in sitting up and talking for a few moments. He did not write then, and a few weeks later it would have been useless. Alexander III. had announced in a manifesto his intention to remain the absolute ruler of Russia.

P. Kropotkin.