PART SIXTHWESTERN EUROPE
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 I had spent in a gloomy casemate, every fibre of my inner self seemed to be throbbing with life, 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 Lavashóff, the name 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, however, so happened that I have never returned to Russia. I was soon taken up by the wave of the anarchist movement, which was just then rising 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 labouring and toiling masses. To bring to them such conceptions as would aid them to direct their efforts to the best advantage of all the workers; to deepen and to widen the ideals and principles which will underlie the coming social revolution; to develop these ideals and principles before 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 but a few friends in Russia and 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 the Scotch capital in a small room in the suburbs, I tried to find some work.
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 rather say Norwegian; certainly not Swedish,’ was his reply.
Thus happened to me what happened to one of JulesVerne’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 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 reached 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 ‘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’ also with occasional paragraphs about Russian geographical explorations. Prjeválsky 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 beingintercepted, 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 newspaperForward; 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 institution. To be sure, there were weeks when there was no interesting news from Prjeválsky, 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 favourite ‘Nature.’ I was in great perplexity, and, putting the books into my bag, took them home, to reflect upon the matter. ‘What shall Ido 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 Kropótkin’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.
When I called for the first time at the office—my beard shaved and my top hat on—and asked the lady who opened the door, in my very best English: ‘Is Mr.Lavróffin?’ I imagined that no one would ever know who I was as long as I had not mentioned my name. It appeared, however, that the lady—who did not know me at all, but well knew my brother while he stayed at Zürich—at once recognized me and ran upstairs to say who the visitor was. ‘I knew you immediately,’ she said afterwards, ‘by your eyes, which reminded me of those of your brother.’
That time, I did not stay long in England. I was 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 particular to be done in Russia. A wave of enthusiasm was rolling over the country at that time in favour 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 Balkán peninsula to join the insurgents. ‘We read,’ my friends wrote, ‘the “Daily News” correspondence about the horrors in Bulgaria; we weep at the reading, and go next to enlist either as volunteers in the Balkán insurgents’ band or as nurses.’
I went to Switzerland, joined the Jura Federation of the International Workingmen’s Association, and, following the advice of my Swiss friends, settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
The Jura Federation 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 fractions. 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 theavowed 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 fractions soon developed. When the war of 1870 had ended in a complete defeat of France, and the uprising of the Paris Commune had been crushed, and 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 by the Germans to modify the aims and the methods of the whole socialist movement. The ‘conquest of powerwithin 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 reasonable 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 graduallylost the character of something that had to be worked out by the labour organizations themselves, and became state management of the industries—in fact, state socialism; that is, state capitalism. 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 in a more or less distant future.
Gradually, all the life and activity of the German social democratic party was subordinated to 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 direction 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 Franco-German war. The International, 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 inspirersand intellectual leaders of the Latin federations were Bakúnin and his friends.
The conflict between the Marxists and the Bakúnists was not 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 GermanGeist, which, after the defeat of France on the battlefield, claimed supremacy in science, politics, philosophy, and in 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 international federations. Bakúnin had just died (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 labour movement and inaugurating the reign of White Terror. It is well known that the re-establishment 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 thecoup d’étatshould be made, which prevented the proposed restoration. But the real strength of those committees was in the workers, many of whom had formerly belonged to the International and had retained the old spirit. Speaking from personal knowledge, I may venture to say that the radical middle-class leaders would have hesitated in case of an emergency, while the workers would have seized the first opportunity for an uprising which, beginning with the defence of the republic, might have gone further 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 turn 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 Spaniards belonged to the International, regularly holding congresses, and punctually paying their contributionsto 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 continual menace of being upset should the middle-class republicans 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 French Press had consequently no socialist papers. 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? As to the Italian papers, they were all short-lived, appearing, disappearing, and re-appearing 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.
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 ‘Bulletin’ of the federation, was James Guillaume, a teacher by profession, who belonged to one of the aristocratic families of Neuchâtel. Small, thin, with the stiff appearance and resoluteness of Robespierre, and with a truly goldenheart 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, clear-sighted 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 working-man’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 favourite.
His direct counterpart was another Swiss, also 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 he was pondering over all sorts of subjects during his work of scooping out watch lids.
Round these three gathered a number of solid, staunch, 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 anyone, 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 with 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.’
At his side was Lefrançais, an elderly man, formerly a teacher, who had been thrice in his life an exile: after June 1848, after Napoleon’scoup d’état, and after 1871. 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,’ as he said, ‘you fools are still the men whom I love best. With you one can work, and remain 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, supported by the International, for his vigour and bright intelligence, and was elected a member of the Commune, which nominated him commander of the Tuileries 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 who afterwards became his wife. Only twelve months later they succeeded in leaving Paris unnoticed, and came to Switzerland. Here Pindy learned assaying, at which he became skilful; 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 a workmen’s evening 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 a considerablefortune to the cause, and who never since has asked himself what he shall live upon to-morrow; a thinker plunged in philosophical speculation; a man who never would harm anyone, 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 all his life—and he is now approaching the age of fifty—has never thought whether he would have a piece of bread for his supper and a bed for the night. Without even so much as a room that he could call his own, he would sell sherbet in the streets of London to get his living, and in the evening write brilliant articles for the Italian papers. Imprisoned in France, released, expelled, recondemned in Italy, confined to an island, escaped, and again in Italy in disguise; always in the hottest of the struggle, whether it be in Italy or elsewhere—he has persevered in this life for thirty years in succession. And when we meet him again, released from a prison or escaped from an island, we find him just as we 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, Joukóvsky, a friend of Hérzen, who had left Russia in 1863—a brilliant, elegant, highly intelligent nobleman, a favourite with the workers—who better than any of the rest of us had what the French calll’oreille du peuple(the ear of the workers), because he knew how to fire them by showing them the great part they had to playin rebuilding society, to lift them by holding before them high historical views, 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 to 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.
Of all the towns of Switzerland that I know, La Chaux-de-Fonds is 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 ourideas in that centre, and to give more life to the local propaganda. Pindy, Spichiger, Albarracin, the two Blanquists, Ferré and Jeallot, were there, and from time to time I could pay visits to Guillaume at Neuchâtel, and to Schwitzguébel in the valley of St. Imier.
A life full of work that I liked began now for me. We held many meetings, distributing ourselves 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 anarchism at the gatherings convoked by the political parties. I travelled 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 co-operative 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 mostanimated 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 themselves 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, to the sound of a military band, 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 well-being for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative. This society will be 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 communes among themselves, and federations of communes with trade organizations; and finally, wider groups covering 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 co-operate now, without having a central railway or postal government, even though the former are actuated by merely egoistic aims and the latter belong to different and often hostile States; 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.
Moreover, this society will not be crystallized into certain unchangeable forms, 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 can 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 and depth of the change which we looked for. We understood that the current opinions upon the necessity of private ownership in land, factories, mines, dwelling houses, and so on, as a means of securing industrial progress, and of the wage-system as a means of compelling men to work, would not soon give way to higher conceptions of socialized ownership and production. We knew that a tedious propaganda and a long succession of struggles, individual and collective revolts against the now prevailing forms of property, of individual self-sacrifice, of partial attempts at reconstruction and partial revolutions would have to be lived through, before the current ideas upon private ownership would be modified. And we understood also that the now current ideas concerning the necessity of authority—in which all of us have been bred—would not and could not be abandoned by civilized mankind all at once. Long years of propaganda and a long succession of partial acts of revolt against authority, as well as a complete revision of the teachings now derived from history, would be required before men could perceive that they had been mistaken in attributing to their rulers and their laws what was derived in reality from their own sociable feelings and habits. We knew all that. But we also knew that in preaching change in both these directions we should be working with the tide of human progress.
When I made a closer acquaintance with the working population and their sympathizers from the better educated classes, I soon realized that they valued their personal freedom even more than they valued theirpersonal well-being. Fifty years ago the workers were ready to sell their personal liberty to all sorts of rulers, and even to a Cæsar, in exchange for a promise of material well-being, but now this was no longer the case. I saw that the blind faith in elected rulers, even if they were taken from amongst the best leaders of the labour movement, was dying away amongst the Latin workers. ‘We must know first what we want, and then we can do it best ourselves,’ was an idea which I found widely spread among them—far more widely than is generally believed. The sentence which was put in the statutes of the International Association: ‘The emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the workers themselves,’ had met with general sympathy and had taken root in minds. The sad experience of the Paris Commune only confirmed it.
When the insurrection broke out, considerable numbers of men belonging to the middle classes themselves were prepared to make, or at least to accept, a new start in the social direction. ‘When my brother and myself, coming out of our little room, went out in the streets,’ Elisée Reclus said to me once, ‘we were asked on all sides by people belonging to the wealthier classes: “Tell us what is to be done? We are ready to try a new start;” butwewere not prepared yet to make the suggestions.’
Never before had a government been as fairly representative of all the advanced parties as the Council of the Commune, elected on March 25, 1871. All shades of revolutionary opinion—Blanquists, Jacobinists, Internationalists—were represented in it in a true proportion. And yet the workers themselves, having no distinct ideas of social reform to impress upon their representatives, the Commune Government did nothing in that direction. The very fact of having been isolated from the masses and shut up in the Hôtel de Ville paralysed them. For the very success of socialism, the ideas ofno-government, of self-reliance, of free initiative of the individual—of anarchism, in a word—had thus to be preached side by side with those of socialized ownership and production.
We certainly foresaw that if full freedom is left to the individual for the expression of his ideas and for action, we should have to face a certain amount of extravagant exaggerations of our principles. I had seen it in the Nihilist movement in Russia. But we trusted—and experience has proved that we were right—that social life itself, supported by a frank, open-minded criticism of opinions and actions, would be the most effective means for threshing out opinions and for divesting them of the unavoidable exaggerations. We acted, in fact, in accordance with the old saying that freedom remains still the wisest cure for freedom’s temporary inconveniences. There is, in mankind, a nucleus of social habits, an inheritance from the past, not yet duly appreciated, which isnotmaintained by coercion and is superior to coercion. Upon it all the progress of mankind is based, and so long as mankind does not begin to deteriorate physically and mentally, it will not be destroyed by any amount of criticism or of occasional revolt against it. These were the opinions in which I grew confirmed more and more in proportion as my experience of men and things increased.
We understood, at the same time, 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, the mediæval city, or the foundations of international law, were worked out by the people.
Many of our predecessors had undertaken to picture ideal commonwealths, basing them upon the principle of authority, or, on some rare occasions, upon the principleof 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, ‘built up while he was demolishing.’ But all that was only preparatory work.
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 analyse the obtained results, and, later on, to aid the workers in formulating their conclusions. We did not pretend to evolve an ideal commonwealth out of our theoretical views as to what a societyought 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 labour 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, in theory and practice, from beneath, and the Jura Federation took a large part in that elaboration of the anarchist ideal.
For myself, placed as I was in such favourable conditions, I gradually came to realize that anarchismrepresents 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, such as Herbert Spencer accepts, but on the solid basis of induction applied to human institutions. And I did my best to accomplish what I could in that direction.
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 labour 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 labour 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, the compositor Werner and the engineer Rinke, 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 labour movement of Europe under their banner and to bring itunder 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, co-operation, 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 endeavours to realize the unrealizable Utopia of a unique labour movement of the social democratic pattern.
The Ghent congress ended for me in an unexpected way. Three or four days after it had begun, 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; Guillaume barred the way, telling me that I should have to use force against him if I insisted upon returning thither. I had to go with some Ghent comrades, and as soon as I joined them, muffled calls and whistling came from all corners of adark square over which groups of workers were scattered. It all looked awfully mysterious. At last, after much whispering and subdued whistling, a group of comrades took me under escort to a social democrat worker, with whom I had to spend the night, and who received me, anarchist though I was, in the most touching way as a brother. Next morning I left once more for England, on board a steamer, provoking a number of good-natured smiles from the British custom-house officers, who wanted me to show them my luggage, while I had nothing to show but a small hand-bag.
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 labour 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 the upper hand, 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 menwho 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.
During this stay at Paris I made my first acquaintance with Turguéneff. He had expressed to our common friend, P. L. Lavróff, the desire to see me, and, as a true Russian, to celebrate my escape by a small friendly dinner. It was with almost a feeling of 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, whattreasuries 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 part of his teaching 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 grey hair, he was certainly beautiful; his eyes gleamed with intelligence, not devoid of a touch of humour, and his whole manner testified to that simplicity and absence of affectation which are characteristic of the best Russian writers. His fine head revealed a vast 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.
‘You must have had a great deal of experience in your life amongst Frenchmen, Germans, and other peoples,’ he said to me once. ‘Have you not remarked that there is a deep, unfathomable chasm between many of their conceptions and the views which we Russians hold on the same subjects—points upon which we can never agree?’
I replied that I had not noticed such points.
‘Yes, there are some. Here is one of them. One night, we were at the first representation of a new play. I was in a box with Flaubert, Daudet, Zola.... (I am not quite sure whether he named both Daudet and Zola,but he certainly named one of the two.) All were men of advanced opinions. The subject of the play was this: A woman had separated from her husband. She had had a new love and had settled with another man. This man was represented in the play as an excellent person. For years they had been quite happy. Her two children—a girl and a boy—were babies at the moment of the separation; now, they had grown, and throughout all these years they had considered the man as their real father. The girl was about eighteen and the boy about seventeen. The man treated them quite as a father, they loved him, and he loved them. The scene represented the family meeting at breakfast. The girl comes in, approaches her supposed father, and he is going to kiss her—when the boy, who has learned in some way that they are not his children, rushes forward towards him, and shouts out: “Don’t dare!”N’osez pas!
‘The hall was brought down by this exclamation. There was an outburst of frantic applause. Flaubert and the others joined in it. I was disgusted. “Why,” I said, “this family was happy; the man was a better father to these children than their real father, ... their mother loved him and was happy with him.... This mischievous, perverted boy ought simply to be flogged for what he has said....” It was of no use. I discussed for hours with them afterwards: none of them could understand me!’
I was, of course, fully in accord with Turguéneff’s point of view. I remarked, however, that his acquaintances were chiefly amongst the middle classes. There the difference from nation to nation is immense indeed. But my acquaintances were exclusively amongst the workers, and there is an immense resemblance between the workers, and especially amongst the peasants, of all nations.
In so saying, I was, however, quite wrong. After I had had the opportunity of making a closer acquaintancewith French workers, I often thought of the rightness of Turguéneff’s remark. There is a real chasm indeed between the conceptions which prevail in Russia upon marriage relations and those which prevail in France: amongst the workers as well as in the middle classes; and upon many other points there is almost the same chasm between the Russian point of view and that of other nations.
It was said somewhere, after Turguéneff’s death, that he intended to write a novel upon this subject. If it was begun, the above mentioned scene must be in his manuscript. What a pity that he did not write that novel! He, a thorough ‘Occidental’ in his ways of thinking, could have said very deep things upon a subject which must have so deeply affected him personally throughout his life.
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 ‘Dmítri Rúdin,’ ‘A Nobleman’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 fulness 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 of Nihilism. This misunderstanding deeply affected Turguéneff, 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 an enthusiastic 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.’ ‘On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,’ Turguéneff replied, with unexpected vigour. ‘When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have 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 then egoism, and therefore no faith—an egoist cannot even believe in himself:’ so he characterized Hamlet. ‘Therefore he is a sceptic, 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 may be alone to see. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it—and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies; and his scepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.’
These thoughts of Turguéneff give, I think, the truekey 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 admirably well: he understood the tragic character of his isolated position; but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love which he bestowed, as on a sick friend, when his heroes approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.
‘Did you know Mýshkin?’ he once asked me, in 1878. At the trial of our circle Mýshkin revealed himself as the most powerful personality. ‘I should like to know all about him,’ he continued. ‘Thatisa 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 feel that 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.
In the meantime affairs in Russia took quite a new turn. The war which Russia began against Turkey in 1877 had ended in general disappointment. There was in the country, before the war broke out, a great deal of enthusiasm in favour of the Slavonians. Many believed, also, that the war of liberation in the Balkans would result in a move in the progressive direction in Russia itself. But the liberation of the Slavonian populations was only partly accomplished. The tremendous sacrifices which had been made by the Russians were rendered ineffectual by the blunders of the higher military authorities. Hundreds of thousands of men had been slaughtered in battles which were only half victories, and the concessions wrested from Turkey were brought to naught at the Berlin Congress. It was also widely known that the embezzlement of State money went on during this war on almost as large a scale as during the Crimean war.
It was amidst the general dissatisfaction which prevailed in Russia at the end of 1877, that one hundred and ninety-three persons, arrested since 1873, in connection with our agitation, were brought before a high court. The accused, supported by a number of lawyers of talent, won at once the sympathies of the public. They produced a very favourable impression upon St. Petersburg society; and when it became known that most of them had spent three or four years in prison, waiting for this trial, and that no less than twenty-one of them had either put an end to their lives by suicide or become insane, the feeling grew still stronger in their favour, even among the judges themselves. The court pronounced very heavy sentences upon a few, and relatively lenient ones upon the remainder; saying that the preliminary detention had lasted so long, and was so hard a punishment in itself, that nothing could justlybe added to it. It was confidently expected that the Emperor would still further mitigate the sentences. It happened, however, to the astonishment of all, that he revised the sentences only to increase them. Those whom the court had acquitted were sent into exile in remote parts of Russia and Siberia, and from five to twelve years of hard labour were inflicted upon those whom the court had condemned to short terms of imprisonment. This was the work of the chief of the Third Section, General Mézentsoff.
At the same time, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, General Trépoff, noticing, during a visit to the house of detention, that one of the political prisoners, Bogolúboff, did not take off his hat to greet the omnipotent satrap, rushed upon him, gave him a blow, and, when the prisoner resisted, ordered him to be flogged. The other prisoners, learning the fact in their cells, loudly expressed their indignation, and were in consequence fearfully beaten by the warders and the police. The Russian political prisoners bore without murmuring all hardships inflicted upon them in Siberia, or through hard labour, but they were firmly decided not to tolerate corporal punishment. A young girl, Véra Zasúlich, who did not even personally know Bogolúboff, took a revolver, went to the chief of police, and shot at him. Trépoff was only wounded. Alexander II. came to look at the heroic girl, who must have impressed him by her extremely sweet face and her modesty. Trépoff had so many enemies at St. Petersburg that they managed to bring the affair before a common-law jury, and Véra Zasúlich declared in court that she had resorted to arms only when all means for bringing the affair to public knowledge and obtaining some sort of redress had been exhausted. Even the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London ‘Times,’ who had been asked to mention the affair in his paper, had not done so, perhaps thinking it improbable. Then, without telling anyone abouther intentions, she went to shoot Trépoff. Now that the affair had become public, she was quite happy to know that he was but slightly wounded. The jury acquitted her unanimously; and when the police tried to rearrest her, as she was leaving the court-house, the young men of St. Petersburg, who stood in crowds at the gates, saved her from their clutches. She went abroad, and soon was among us in Switzerland.
This affair produced quite a sensation throughout Europe. I was at Paris when the news of the acquittal came, and had to call that day on business at the offices of several newspapers. I found the editors glowing with enthusiasm, and writing forcible articles in honour of this Russian girl. Even the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes,’ in its review of the year 1878, declared that the two persons who had most impressed public opinion in Europe during the year were Prince Gortchakóff at the Berlin Congress and Véra Zasúlich. Their portraits were given side by side in several almanacs. Upon the workers of Western Europe the devotion of Véra Zasúlich produced a profound impression.
During the same year, 1878, without any plot having been formed, four attempts were made against crowned heads in close succession. The workman Hoedel, and after him Dr. Nobiling, shot at the German Emperor; a few weeks later, a Spanish workman, Oliva Moncási, followed with an attempt to shoot the King of Spain, and the cook Passanante rushed with his knife upon the King of Italy. The governments of Europe could not believe that such attempts upon the lives of three kings should have occurred without there being at the bottom some international conspiracy, and they jumped to the conclusion that the anarchist Jura Federation was the centre of that conspiracy.
More than twenty years have passed since then, and I can say most positively that there was absolutely no ground whatever for such a supposition. However, allthe European governments fell upon Switzerland, reproaching her with harbouring revolutionists who organized such plots. Paul Brousse, the editor of our Jura newspaper, the ‘Avant-Garde,’ was arrested and prosecuted. The Swiss judges, seeing there was not the slightest foundation for connecting Brousse or the Jura Federation with the recent attempts, condemned Brousse to only a couple of months’ imprisonment for his articles; but the paper was suppressed, and all the printing offices of Switzerland were asked by the federal government not to publish this or any similar paper. The Jura Federation was thus silenced.
Besides, the politicians of Switzerland, who looked with an unfavourable eye on the anarchist agitation in their country, acted privately in such a way as to compel the leading Swiss members of the Jura Federation either to retire from public life or to starve. Brousse was expelled from Switzerland. James Guillaume, who for eight years had maintained against all obstacles the ‘Bulletin’ of the federation, and made his living chiefly by teaching, could obtain no employment, and was compelled to leave Switzerland and remove to France. Adhémar Schwitzguébel, boycotted in the watch trade and burdened by a large family, had finally to retire from the movement. Spichiger was in the same condition, and emigrated. It thus happened that I, a foreigner, had to undertake the editing of a paper for the federation. I hesitated, of course, but there was nothing else to be done, and with two friends, Dumartheray and Herzig, I started a new fortnightly at Geneva, in February 1879, under the title of ‘Le Révolté.’ I had to write most of it myself. We had only twenty-three francs to start the paper, but we all set to work to get subscriptions, and succeeded in issuing our first number. It was moderate in tone, but revolutionary in substance, and I did my best to write it in such a style that complicated historical and economical questionsshould be comprehensible to every intelligent worker. Six hundred was the utmost limit which the edition of our previous papers had ever attained. We printed two thousand copies of ‘Le Révolté,’ and in a few days not one was left. It was a success, and it still continues, at Paris, under the title of ‘Temps Nouveaux.’
Socialist newspapers have often a tendency to become mere annals of complaints about existing conditions. The oppression of the workers in the mine, the factory, and the field is related; the misery and sufferings of the workers during strikes are told in vivid pictures; their helplessness in the struggle against their employers is insisted upon; and this succession of hopeless efforts, described every week, exercises a most depressing influence upon the reader. To counterbalance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burning words, by means of which he tries to inspire his readers with energy and faith. I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper must be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated institutions. These symptoms should be watched, brought together in their intimate connection, and so grouped as to show to the hesitating minds of the greater number the invisible and often unconscious support which advanced ideas find everywhere, when a revival of thought takes place in society. To make one feel in sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart all over the world, with its revolt against age-long injustice, with its attempts at working out new forms of life—this should be the chief duty of a revolutionary paper. It is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions.
Historians often tell us how this or that system of philosophy has accomplished a certain change in human thought, and subsequently in institutions. But this is not history. The greatest social philosophers have onlycaught the indications of coming changes, have understood their inner relations, and, aided by induction and intuition, have foretold what was to occur. Sociologists have also drawn plans of social organizations, by starting from a few principles and developing them to their necessary consequences, like a geometrical conclusion from a few axioms; but this is not sociology. A correct social forecast cannot be made unless one keeps an eye on the thousands of signs of the new life, separating the occasional facts from those which are organically essential, and building the generalization upon that basis.
This was the method of thought with which I endeavoured to familiarize our readers—using plain comprehensible words, so as to accustom the most modest of them to judge for himself whereunto society is moving, and himself to correct the thinker if the latter comes to wrong conclusions. As to the criticism of what exists, I went into it only to disentangle the roots of the evils, and to show that a deep-seated and carefully-nurtured fetishism with regard to the antiquated survivals of past phases of human development, and a widespread cowardice of mind and will, are the main sources of all evils.
Dumartheray and Herzig gave me full support in that direction. Dumartheray was born in one of the poorest peasant families in Savoy. His schooling had not gone beyond the first rudiments of a primary school. Yet he was one of the most intelligent men I ever met. His appreciations of current events and men were so remarkable for their uncommon good sense that they were often prophetic. He was also one of the finest critics of the current socialist literature, and was never taken in by the mere display of fine words, or would-be science. Herzig was a young clerk, born at Geneva; a man of suppressed emotions, shy, who would blush like a girl when he expressed an original thought, and who, after I was arrested, when he became responsible for the continuance of the journal, by sheer force of will learned to write very well.Boycotted by all Geneva employers, and fallen with his family into sheer misery, he nevertheless supported the paper till it became possible to transfer it to Paris.