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MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST.* VERY few living men have had a career so chequered, or a life so full of startling changes and dramatic episodes, as Prince Peter Kropotkin. The Kropotkins are one of the oldest of Russian noble families. One of their forbears was the famous Rurik who, with his brothers Sineus and Turor, settled at Novgorod in 862; others of their ancestors were Grand Princes of Smolensk. The elder Kropotkin, Peter's father, lived in feudal, one might almost say barbaric, state. At his country house, where the family passed the summer, he kept nearly a hundred domestic servants; at his town house, in the Old Equerries Quarter itt Moscow, fifty, all serfs. Here Peter was born, and spent much of his boyhood; and the description of that period of his life, of his parents, his brothers, and his tutors, the coming of the two-horse sledges from NikOlskoye (the country seat), generally a short time before Christmas, twenty-five of them laden with country produce, makes pleasant reading. Then there was the great event of the year, to which the two lads, Alexander and Peter, always looked forward with glad anticipation, the spring flitting to Nikolskoye, a hundred and sixty miles from Moscow, which involved nearly as much preparation and ordering as the moving of an army. When, after many delays, the time of starting was come, the father (who generally followed later) called his family together, and read aloud his orders, drawn up in proper form and addressed to " the Princess Kropotkin, wife of Prince Alexei PetrOvich Kropotkin, Colonel and Commander," in which the halting places were duly enumerated and in- structions given in military phraseology for the regulation of the march. "Then all present, the family and the servants, sat down for a moment, signed themselves with the cross, and bade my father good-bye." The family went in carriages, the impedimenta in carts, the servants on foot. While marching through Moscow discipline was maintained and respectability observed; afterwards it was dress as you like and go as you please. " The men and women, dressed in all sorts of im- possible coats, belted with cotton handkerchiefs, burned by the sun or dripping with rain, and helping themselves along with sticks cut from the woods, looked more like a wandering band of gipsies than the household of a wealthy landowner." The journey, as may be supposed, was a great delight for the two boys, and their lives at Nililekoye, with its immense orchards and gay gardens where flower-beds "intermingled with alleys of lime trees, lilacs, and acacias," were very pleasant. Alex- ander and Peter, together with their tutor, M. Ponlain, a veteran of the Grand Army who had been wounded in the Peninsular War, had a house to themselves. This gentleman told them of the French Revolution, and how Count Mirabeau and other nobles renounced their titles, which so impressed the younger brother that from that time forth he discarded his title so far as a boy could, and has never since signed himself "Prince." At this time Russia was under the iron rule of Nicholas I., whose sway over his nobles was as abso- lute as theirs over their serfs. The way in which the brothers were made to enter the Army, for which they had neither aptitude nor inclination, is eminently characteristic of Russian methods and Imperial despotism. When Peter was eight years old the Czar visited Moscow on the occasion of some anniversary, an event which the nobility of Moscow celebrated by a fancy dress ball and other festivities. Madame Nazimoff, a very beautiful woman, was expected to be present in the costume of a Persian Princess, accompanied by her little son, gorgeously got up as a Persian Prince. But at the last moment the child fell ill, and as the clothes fitted him Peter had to go in his
• Memoirs of a Bero6utiont3t. By P. Kropotklu. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [21s.)
place. During the evening be was taken to the Imperial platform, and there noticed by the Czar, who offered him sweets and gave him biscuits. On his way home he was told that he had been made a page,—which meant that when he was a little older he would join the Corps of Pages, and after receiving a military education and at set times figuring at Court as a page de chand,re, become an officer in the Guards or any other regiment ho might choose. Alexander's fate was decided in the following year. One night after all the household had gone to bed a carriage with jingling bells stopped at their father's gate, and a man alighted shouting loudly : " Open ! An ordinance from his Majesty the Emperor." Everybody was terrified. Prince Kropotkin, wondering what offence he had committed, and with a foreboding of dire possibilities, went trembling to his study. But Nicholas merely wanted to know the names of the sons of the officers who had served in the Prince's old regiment, in order that the boys might be sent to military schools, and in the result Alexander was ordered to enter a corps of cadets. As the Prince wanted his sons to be soldiers, he probably did not regard this interference with his domestic concerns as a hardship. But it did go against the grain when he was not allowed to dispose of himself in marriage. Two years after his first wife's death he was minded to take another, and had cast his eyes on a very nice. looking young person belonging to a wealthy family (the Prince wanted to "marry money "), and was about to propose to her, when General TimofeUf intervened. Besides being the Prince's commanding officer, the General had the Czar's ear and was a terrible martinet. He would flog a soldier nearly to death for making a mistake on parade, and degrade an officer to Siberia for appearing in public with the hooks of his collar unfastened. One day this very objectionable gentleman called at Prince Kropotkin's house, where he had never been before, and asked him to marry his wife's niece, Mlle. Elisabeth Karandino, a request with which the Prince deemed it expedient to comply, though, as years afterwards he humorously remarked to his son, she had nothing but a big trunk filled wit h ladies' finery, and one serf (her maid) sitting on it. Yet one cannot sympathise much with him. He was only being served with his own sauce, for though by no means a cruel master, he had been in the habit of pairing his serfs with no more regard to their feelings than if they had been brute beasts.
In 1857, when he was nearly fifteen, the author entered the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg, and his military education began. On this period of his life, though highly important, as touching the development of his character, considerations of space forbid us to dwell. He was an apt scholar, passed his examinations with credit, and already showed that bent for mathematics and the natural sciences which he subsequently cultivated with so much success. His great desire was to enter the University, but this bad been to break with his father. On the other hand, he was quite resolved not to join a Guard regiment and give his life to parades and Court balls. So when his military education was finished he elected to join the "mounted Cossacks of the Amur," to his comrades' consternation and his father's anger. His reasons for making so strange a choice were that, as he believed, there would be in Siberia an immense field for the application of the great reforms which had been or were impending, and that the workers being few, he should find a field of action to his taste. Moreover, he had a strong desire to explore the region of the Amur, and its great tributary, the Usuri. His thoughts went even farther,—" to the tropical regions which Humboldt had described, and to the great generalisations of Ritter, which I delighted to read." During his sojourn in that far country the young Kropotkin met with many adventures, explored the Amur, travelled in Manchuria, and made important geographical discoveries. On his return to St. Petersburg in 1807 he left the Army to study at the University, and wrote a work on the physical geography of Northern Asia, afterwards published by the Russian Geographical Society, which he regards as his chief contribution to science. His ambition was to become the Society's secretary, and in 1871 the position was offered to him ; meanwhile, however, his views had changed, and the flattering pffer was declined. For reasons which he gives at length, Prince Peter Kropotkin had decided to abandon the pursuit of science, and became an apostle of Socialism and revolution. He joined the "circle of Tchaykovsky," which may be defined as a secret Nihilist society. Many of its members were, however, merely constitutionalists, and probably most of them would have been content with the convocation of an Assembly of Notables without legislative powers, and administrative reforms, and freedom of speaking and writing. On the other hand, Russian Liberals are all more or less Socialist, a peculiarity probably due to a variety of causes, some political and historic, others perhaps racial and personal. Moreover, Individualism has never had a chance in Russia. People who hold and express strong opinions, or who do not strictly mind their own business, are apt to find themselves in conflict with the authorities, and end their days either in prison or in exile. The proceedings of the Nihilists until they were provoked to reprisals were quite harmless, so harmless that in any other country than Russia they would have passed without reproof. Young men and women went " to the people," lived among peasants and artisans, teaching them to read and write and talking to them about political and social reform. For so doing they were arrested, and after months, or even years, of preliminary detention, tried and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and exile. Nor was this all. Alexander II., notwithstanding his supposed liberal tendencies, was both weak and despotic, and let him- self be persuaded that only by indiscriminate severity could his dynasty be preserved from destruction. So when the sentences were submitted for his approval he would double them with a stroke of his pen, and send those of the accused who had been acquitted to wear out their lives in the hyper. horean regions of the extreme North. Then Nihilism became Terrorism, the famous Executive Coinmittee was organised, attempted arrests were resisted " under arms," the chief of the Third Section and other high functionaries "executed,' and the movement culminated in the murder of the Czar. In this movement Prince Kropotkin had no part. He was arrested before it began and was living at Geneva when Alexander died. The story of his imprisonment in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, of his escape therefrom and flight to England, makes a dramatic and exciting narrative. From many of the views set forth in that part of the Memoirs which we may call his apologia pro vita sun, most English readers will be disposed widely to differ ; but there can be no two opinions of the value of the book, both as a biography and as a contribution to the history of our own time. It abounds in character-sketches vividly portrayed and written in English almost without a fault. His views on literature and art show insight and critical acumen. He is convirsalt with many languages, and in science a master. How, it may be asked, can a man so learned and so able have become an apostle of Anarchy P The answer is not obvious, but if we were to hazard a guess we should say it is a -ease of philanthropy run mad. Kropotkin is entirely sympathetic and passionately pitiful, and long contemplation of the misery of the many has overturned the balance of his judgment. On every other 'abject he reasons, but when it comes to Anarchism he p.u.bstitutes assertions for arguments, and predictions for proofs. " Let us destroy government and authority," he says in effect, "and from the ensuing chaos will emerge a new social heaven and a new social earth, a world without war, crime, poverty, ignorance, inequality of condition, or any other of the evils which afflict society as now constituted." This he calls " scientific Socialism." Most of us would call it the fantasy of a disordered imagination. But, whatever else it may be, it is not scientific. A scientific theory must be based on something more substantial than uninspired prophecy. It must be based on facts and susceptible of proof, and, so far as we are aware, no civilised society has tried the experiment of entirely dispensing with authority and law. France on several occasions, also certain Spanish- American Republics, have come very near it, but the result can hardly be regarded as satisfactory even by prophesying Anarchists.
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