Memoirs of a Revolutionist · Part IV · Chapter 4 16 (1/2)

XVI

During the two years of which I am now speaking many arrests were made, both at St. Petersburg and in the provinces. Not a month passed without our losing someone, or learning that members of this or that provincial group had disappeared. Toward the end of 1873 the arrests became more and more frequent. In November one of our main settlements in a suburb of St. Petersburg was raided by the police. We lost Peróvskaya and three other friends, and all our relations with the workers in this suburb had to be suspended. We founded a new settlement, further away from the town, but it had soon to be abandoned. The police became very vigilant, and the appearance of a student in the workmen’s quarters was noticed at once; spies circulated among the workers, who were watched closely. Dmitri Kelnitz, Serghéi, and myself, in our sheepskins and with our peasant looks, passed unnoticed, and continued to visit the haunted ground. But Dmitri and Serghéi, whose names had acquired a wide notoriety in the workmen’s quarters, were eagerly wanted by the police; and if they had been found accidentally during a nocturnal raid at a friend’s lodgings, they would have been arrested at once. There were periods when Dmitri had to hunt every day for a place where he could spend the night in relative safety. “Can I spend the night with you?” he would ask, entering some comrade’s room at ten o’clock. “Impossible! my lodgings have been closely watched lately. Better go to N.” “I have just come from him, and he says spies swarm his neighborhood.” “Then go to M.; he is a great friend of mine and above suspicion. But it is far from here, and you must take a cab. Here is the money.” But on principle Dmitri would not take a cab, and would walk to the other end of the town to find a refuge, or at last go to a friend whose rooms might be searched at any moment.

Early in January, 1874, another settlement, our main stronghold for propaganda amongst the weavers, was lost. Some of our best propagandists disappeared behind the gates of the mysterious Third Section. Our circle became narrower, general meetings were increasingly difficult, and we made strenuous efforts to form new circles of young men who might continue our work when we should all be arrested. Tchaikovsky was in the south, and we forced Dmitri and Serghéi to leave St. Petersburg⁠—actually forced them, imperiously ordering them to leave. Only five or six of us remained to transact all the business of our circle. I intended, as soon as I should have delivered my report to the Geographical Society, to go to the southwest of Russia, and there to start a sort of land league, similar to the league which became so powerful in Ireland at the end of the seventies.

After two months of relative quiet, we learned in the middle of March that nearly all the circle of the engineers had been arrested, and with them a young man named Nízovkin, an ex-student, who unfortunately had their confidence, and, we were sure, would soon try to clear himself by telling all he knew about us. Besides Dmitri and Serghéi he knew Serdyukov, the founder of the circle, and myself, and he would certainly name us as soon as he was pressed with questions. A few days later, two weavers⁠—most unreliable fellows, who had even embezzled some money from their comrades, and who knew me under the name of Borodín⁠—were arrested. These two would surely set the police at once upon the track of Borodín, the man dressed as a peasant, who spoke at the weavers’ meetings. Within a week’s time all the members of our circle, excepting Serdyukov and myself, were arrested.

There was nothing left us but to fly from St. Petersburg: this was exactly what we did not want to do. All our immense organization for printing pamphlets abroad and for smuggling them into Russia; all the network of circles, farms, and country settlements with which we were in correspondence in nearly forty (out of fifty) provinces of European Russia, and which had been slowly built up during the last two years; and finally, our workers’ groups at St. Petersburg and our four different centres for propaganda amongst workers of the capital⁠—how could we abandon all these without having found men to maintain our relations and correspondence? Serdyukov and I decided to admit to our circle two new members, and to transfer the business to them. We met every evening in different parts of the town, and as we never kept any addresses or names in writing⁠—the smuggling addresses alone had been deposited in a secure place, in cipher⁠—we had to teach our new members hundreds of names and addresses and a dozen ciphers, repeating them over and over, until our friends had learned them by heart. Every evening we went over the whole map of Russia in this way, dwelling especially on its western frontier, which was studded with men and women engaged in receiving books from the smugglers, and on the eastern provinces, where we had our main settlements. Then, always in disguise, we had to take the new members to our sympathizers in the town, and introduce them to those workers who had not yet been arrested.

The thing to be done in such a case was to disappear from one’s apartments, and to reappear somewhere else under an assumed name. Serdyukov had abandoned his lodging, but, having no passport, he concealed himself in the houses of friends. I ought to have done the same, but a strange circumstance prevented me. I had just finished my report upon the glacial formations in Finland and Russia, and this report had to be read at a meeting of the Geographical Society. The invitations were already issued, but it happened that on the appointed day the two geological societies of St. Petersburg had a joint meeting, and they asked the Geographical Society to postpone the reading of my report for a week. It was known that I would present certain ideas about the extension of the ice cap as far as Middle Russia, and our geologists, with the exception of my friend and teacher, Friedrich Schmidt, considered this a speculation of too far-reaching character, and wanted to have it thoroughly discussed. For one week more, consequently, I could not go away.

Strangers prowled about my house and called upon me under all sorts of fantastical pretexts: one of them wanted to buy a forest on my Tambóv estate, which was situated in absolutely treeless prairies. I noticed in my street⁠—the fashionable Morskáya⁠—one of the two arrested weavers whom I have mentioned, and thus learned that my house was watched. Yet I had to act as if nothing extraordinary had happened, because I was to appear at the meeting of the Geographical Society the following Friday night.

The meeting came. The discussions were very animated, and one point, at least, was won. It was recognized that all old theories concerning the diluvial period in Russia were totally baseless, and that a new departure must be made in the investigation of the whole question. I had the satisfaction of hearing our leading geologist, Barbot-de-Marny, say, “Ice cap or not, we must acknowledge, gentlemen, that all we have hitherto said about the action of floating ice had no foundation whatever in actual exploration.” And I was proposed at that meeting to be nominated president of the physical geography section, while I was asking myself whether I should not spend that very night in the prison of the Third Section.

It would have been best not to return at all to my apartment, but I was broken down with fatigue, after the exertion of the last few days, and went home. There was no police raid during that night. I looked through the heaps of my papers, destroyed everything that might be compromising for anyone, packed all my things, and prepared to leave. I knew that my apartment was watched, but I hoped that the police would not pay me a visit before late in the night, and that at dusk I could slip out of the house without being noticed. Dusk came, and, as I was starting, one of the servant girls said to me, “You had better go by the service staircase.” I understood what she meant, and went quickly down the staircase and out of the house. One cab only stood at the gate; I jumped into it. The driver took me to the great Nevsky Prospekt. There was no pursuit at first, and I thought myself safe; but presently I noticed another cab running full speed after us; our horse was delayed somehow, and the other cab passed ours.

To my astonishment, I saw in it one of the two arrested weavers, accompanied by someone else. He waved his hand as if he had something to tell me. I told my cabman to stop. “Perhaps,” I thought, “he has been released from arrest, and has an important communication to make to me.” But as soon as we stopped, the man who was with the weaver⁠—he was a detective⁠—shouted loudly, “Mr. Borodín, Prince Kropotkin, I arrest you!” He made a signal to the policemen, of whom there are hosts along the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg, and at the same time jumped into my cab and showed me a paper which bore the stamp of the St. Petersburg police. “I have an order to take you before the governor-general for an explanation,” he said. Resistance was impossible⁠—a couple of policemen were already close by⁠—and I told my cabman to turn round and drive to the governor-general’s house. The weaver remained in his cab and followed us.

It was now evident that the police had hesitated for ten days to arrest me, because they were not sure that Borodín and I were the same person. My response to the weaver’s call had settled their doubts.

It so happened that just as I was leaving my house a young man came from Moscow, bringing me a letter from a friend, Voinarálsky, and another from Dmitri addressed to our friend Polakov. The former announced the establishment of a secret printing-office at Moscow, and was full of cheerful news concerning the activity in that city. I read it and destroyed it. As the second letter contained nothing but innocent friendly chat, I took it with me. Now that I was arrested, I thought it would be better to destroy it, and, asking the detective to show me his paper again, I took advantage of the time that he was fumbling in his pocket to drop the letter on the pavement without his noticing it. However, as we reached the governor-general’s house the weaver handed it to the detective, saying, “I saw the gentleman drop this letter on the pavement, so I picked it up.”

Now came tedious hours of waiting for the representative of the judicial authorities, the procureur or public prosecutor. This functionary plays the part of a straw man, who is paraded by the state police during their searches: he gives an aspect of legality to their proceedings. It was many hours before that gentleman was found and brought to perform his functions as a sham representative of Justice. I was taken back to my house, and a most thorough search of all my papers was made; this lasted till three in the morning, but did not reveal a scrap of paper that could tell against me or anyone else.

From my house I was taken to the Third Section, that omnipotent institution which has ruled in Russia from the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I down to the present time⁠—a true “state in the state.” It began under Peter I in the Secret Department, where the adversaries of the founder of the Russian military empire were subject to the most abominable tortures, under which they expired; it was continued in the Secret Chancelry during the reigns of the Empresses, when the Torture Chamber of the powerful Minich inspired all Russia with terror; and it received its present organization from the iron despot, Nicholas I, who attached to it the corps of gendarmes⁠—the chief of the gendarmes becoming a person far more dreaded in the Russian Empire than the Emperor himself.

In every province of Russia, in every populous town, nay, at every railway station, there are gendarmes who report directly to their own generals or colonels, who in turn correspond with the chief of the gendarmes; and the latter, seeing the Emperor every day, reports to him what he finds necessary to report. All functionaries of the empire are under gendarme supervision; it is the duty of the generals and colonels to keep an eye upon the public and private life of every subject of the Tsar⁠—even upon the governors of the provinces, the ministers, and the grand dukes. The Emperor himself is under their close watch, and as they are well informed of the petty chronicle of the palace, and know every step that the Emperor takes outside his palace, the chief of the gendarmes becomes, so to speak, a confidant of the most intimate affairs of the rulers of Russia.

At this period of the reign of Alexander II the Third Section was absolutely all-powerful. The gendarme colonels made searches by the thousand without troubling themselves in the least about the existence of laws and law courts in Russia. They arrested whom they liked, kept people imprisoned as long as they pleased, and transported hundreds to Northeast Russia or Siberia according to the fancy of general or colonel; the signature of the minister of the interior was a mere formality, because he had no control over them and no knowledge of their doings.

It was four o’clock in the morning when my examination began. “You are accused,” I was solemnly told, “of having belonged to a secret society which has for its object the overthrow of the existing form of government, and of conspiracy against the sacred person of his Imperial Majesty. Are you guilty of this crime?”

“Till I am brought before a court where I can speak publicly, I will give you no replies whatever.”

“Write,” the procureur dictated to a scribe: “Does not acknowledge himself guilty. Still,” he continued, after a pause, “I must ask you certain questions. Do you know a person of the name of Nikolái Tchaikovsky?”

“If you persist in your questions, then write ‘No’ to any question whatsoever that you are pleased to ask me.”

“But if we ask you whether you know, for instance, Mr. Polakov, whom you spoke about awhile ago?”

“The moment you ask me such a question, don’t hesitate: write ‘No.’ And if you ask me whether I know my brother, or my sister, or my stepmother, write ‘No.’ You will not receive from me another reply: because if I answered ‘Yes’ with regard to any person, you would at once plan some evil against him, making a raid or something worse, and saying next that I named him.”

A long list of questions was read, to which I patiently replied each time, “Write ‘No.’ ” That lasted for an hour, during which I learned that all who had been arrested, with the exception of the two weavers, had behaved very well. The weavers knew only that I had twice met a dozen workers, and the gendarmes knew nothing about our circle.

“What are you doing, prince?” a gendarme officer said, as he took me to my cell. “Your refusal to answer questions will be made a terrible weapon against you.” “It is my right, is it not?” “Yes, but⁠—you know.⁠ ⁠… I hope you will find this room comfortable. It has been kept warm since your arrest.”

I found it quite comfortable, and fell sound asleep. I was waked the next morning by a gendarme, who brought me the morning tea. He was soon followed by somebody else, who whispered to me in the most unconcerned way, “Here’s a scrap of paper and a pencil: write your letter.” It was a sympathizer, whom I knew by name; he used to transmit our correspondence with the prisoners of the Third Section.

From all sides I heard knocks on the walls, following in rapid succession. It was the prisoners communicating with one another by means of light taps; but, being a newcomer, I could make nothing out of the noise, which seemed to come from all parts of the building at once.