Part 7
P. S. As this book goes to press, the happy news comes that Chaykovsky has been liberated on a heavy bail, but it is not yet known what the government intends to do with him.
[62] Some types are depicted in Gorky's latest work, "The Spy," translated by Thomas Seltzer. Because of its subject-matter this book acts as an emetic.
[63] remember hearing James F. Morton, A. M.--author of the excellent essay "The Curse of Race Prejudice"--speak to Elbert Hubbard about Catherine Breshkovskaya whom he had seen at the Sunrise Club, and in wishing to illustrate her gentleness and lack of resentment for those who ill-treated her, he called her "a female Kropotkin."
[64] When George Kennan heard this woman's story, his face became wet with tears almost for the first time since boyhood. See his admirable but terrible "Siberia and the Exile System."
[65] See the letter by the eye-witness Nicholas Zotoff (hanged August 7, 1889). It is published in "King Stork and King Log," a two-volume work by Stepniak.
[66] Leo Deutsch was a prisoner at Kara at the time of this tragedy, and he describes it in his "Sixteen Years in Siberia."
[67] See "Woman, the Glory of the Russian Revolution" (Altruria, July 1907), by Dr. Sonia Winstan. Note this sentence: "In arrests the police are always more cruel to women than to men, and I have seen women dragged by the hair to jail thru the streets of St. Petersburg, while men in the same group were led along in the ordinary way. In the prisons innocent young women are often placed with the lowest murderers."
[68] In Robert Crozier Long's "The Black Hundreds," in The Cosmopolitan, January 1908.
[69] "He is an incomparable agitator. Gifted with a ready and eager eloquence, he becomes all passion when he mounts the platform. Like all true orators, he is stimulated by the sight of the crowd which is listening to him. Upon the platform this man is transformed. He trembles with emotion; his voice vibrates with that accent of profound conviction, not to be mistaken or counterfeited, and only heard when it is not merely the mouth which speaks, but the innermost heart. His speeches, altho he cannot be called an orator of the first rank, produce an immense impression; for when feeling is so intense it is communicative, and electrifies an audience. When, pale and trembling, he descends from the platform, the whole room throbs with applause."--STEPNIAK.
[70] In Ernest Poole's "Catherine Breshkovskaya" in the Outlook. See also Kennan. After being a Siberian exile for over twenty-two years she came to America to collect funds for the Revolution, and immediately went back to Russia. She was captured, and like Chaykovsky is now in the fortress of Peter and Paul. She often said it was a shame for a Revolutionist to die in bed.
[71] In my "Symposium on Humanitarians." For several other contributors who mentioned Kropotkin as one of their favorites, see this "Symposium," now published in book form by The Altrurians.
[72] In the "Russian Revolution," a senseless pamphlet, edited by V. Tchertkoff who is talented enuf to be doing better things. When it comes to a question of righteous resistance, Leo Tolstoy is unbearable. A man who can say in effect, "Let the officials do whatever they want to do, let them shoot you down as often as they please, let them fill every prison in vast Russia with your bodies, let them rape your mothers and daughters and wives, let them hang your young children, but never resist in any way, only think of Jesus and read the Gospels,"--such a man is what the doctors call non compos mentis. No wonder the Russian Government does not molest him. The gentle Kropotkin says, "I am in sympathy with most of Tolstoy's work, tho there are many of his ideas with which I absolutely disagree--his asceticism, for instance, and his doctrine of non-resistance. It seems to me, too, that he has bound himself, without reason or judgment, to the letter of the New Testament."
THE HISTORIAN OF THE REVOLUTION
The heroism of our Russian comrades in the face of torture and death will be told in days to come by generations made rich by their sacrifices. History will pay an eternal homage to the victims of the bloody tyranny which now rules Russia.--J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M. P.
To the present generation of Russian Revolutionists Kropotkin is not an influence, but an inspiration. He is not a leader but an elder brother. He is to them a type of the man who without a moment's hesitation leaves everything for the Cause. He is a powerful voice crying out loudly against the oppressors of mankind. Voices like these they hear distinctly, and follow eagerly, tho they lead to a cold Siberian grave.
With the lavishness of the mountain cataract that wastes its waters on the rocks, the young radicals of Russia pour out their blood for an ignorant[73] and ungrateful people. As willingly as lovers walk to the altar, they go to the slaughter. They die as serenely as if they had a thousand lives to lose instead of one. When a Revolutionist is hanged, another takes his place while the gallow-grass around the choked neck is still visible. Imprison them for a quarter of a century, and on the day of their release they will conspire against czardom.[74] Torture them in the mines of Nerchinsk, beat the men with the plet, rape the girls at will, thrust them into black holes swarming with vermin and rodents, taunt them, starve them, chill them, strike them to the ground, stamp on their faces with military boots, deprive them of air, worry their nerves to the breaking-point, string them up on slippery scaffolds, and they will only shout, "Long live the Revolution!"[75]
Liberty is the goddess they worship, and for her sake, when necessary, they taste no food by day and touch no pillow by night. For her they put away books and handle bombs, and exchange palaces for prisons, and leave desks for dungeons, and go from colleges to coffins. Their backs are ready for the lash, their throats are prepared for the noose.
If the end comes at dawn in the yard of the Schlusselburg Prison, or at noon below the level of the Neva in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, or at midnight among the silent snows of Saghalien,--O liberty, how thy lovers meet it!
Against an autocracy as powerful as the Romanoff dynasty, rebels have never before contended. In all the world no men and women like those of Young Russia. From primal days to modern times, no martyrs like these. Such sacrifices were never seen before.[76] Few expect to live beyond twenty, and thousands upon thousands perish long before that age.[77] They offer themselves to be nipped in the fairest hour of their proudest bloom. O brilliant-eyed youth, O rosy-cheeked maid, be not so heedless of yourselves. Think a little of the pleasures of life. Leave the stupid muzhik to his fate, and cross the sea to a freer land.
But from the foot of the scaffold there comes a cry, and from the steppes of Siberia is heard a voice, and from the saltworks of Usolie rings an answer, and from the gold-mines of Kara comes a response, and from the Butirki of Moscow someone speaks, and from the prison of Akatui, Young Russia utters the same word--Svoboda! Svoboda! Svoboda!
Sometime in the future, when the true historian of the Russian Revolution appears, he will write of men and women of so exalted a nature, that antiquity will be dumb and boast no more her classic heroes.
He will write of Bakunin, the Jupiter from whose forehead leaped a full-fledged movement;
Of Dobroluboff, the genius who perished at twenty-five with a vaster wisdom to his credit than any youngster of whom we have record;
Of Olga Lubatovitch, the immortal girl in whose great heart burnt the undying fire of insurrection;
Of Vera Figner, the poetess, a woman of the rarest beauty and the highest talents, who passed her life behind stone walls;
Of Aaron Sundelevitch, the thoughtful Jew who established the first free printing press in Saint Petersburg;
Of Zuckerman, who was so merry that even in hell he jested, but who after all was only human and committed suicide in the wilds of Yakutsk;
Of Maria Kutitonskaya, who was ready to be hanged with a baby in her womb;
Of Eugene Semyonovsky, who wrote a letter to his father before committing suicide, that would make everything on earth--except of course an official--weep;
Of the taciturn Kibalchitch, who was arrested for giving a pamphlet to a peasant, and who, hearing in prison that an attempt had been made to exterminate the imperial family, broke his habitual silence by exclaiming, "It's good! It's fine! If they don't send me to Siberia, I'll study nitroglycerine,"--and who kept his promise, for he was the chemist who prepared the bomb that caused the blood of Alexander to redden the snow;
Of Ippolit Mishkin, the hero of the Case where all were heroes, whose oratory inflamed all Russia, who was sentenced because he tried to rescue Chernishevsky, who received fifteen additional years for making a speech in prison over the dead body of Comrade Leo Dmohovsky, a man whom Turgenev wished to know, and whom Perovskaya wished to save;
Of Demetrius Lisogub, the millionaire who lived like a pauper, giving everything to the Cause and spending nothing on himself, grudging every coin he had to pay for his bread, dressing in rags even during the severest winters, supporting for a time the whole revolutionary movement, but continually sorrowing that in order not to forfeit his wealth he could take no active part in the battle, and smiling with happiness only when brought to the scaffold in the hangman's cart, for at last he could bestow more than money--he could sacrifice himself;
Of the printer Maria Kriloff who tho old, ill and half-blind, worked with so much devotion that she excelled young and strong compositors, and who stuck to her post until she was arrested, weapons in hand, in the secret printing-office of _Cherny Perediel_;
Of the intrepid Sophia Bogomoletz, who left husband and child for the Revolution, and spent her life in prison;
Of Nicholas Blinoff, who was slaughtered in the Jewish pogrom in Zhitomir with the word 'Brother' on his noble lips;
Of young Leo Weinstein, who fell in the same massacre crying 'Comrades;'
Of the child Silin of Warsaw, who when only fifteen years of age was condemned to death; when he was led out with bandaged eyes to be shot on the sand-hills, he wept so bitterly that the soldiers called to him, "Do not cry, there is no pain," upon which he shouted back, "I am crying because I must die before accomplishing anything."
He will tell how Valerian Ossinsky died, and then we will not think of Christ upon the Cross.
He will write of those soft-eyed, sweet-voiced, tender Terrorists whose blessed bombs and bullets laid tyrants low: Zinaida who shot Min; Spiridonova who slew Lujenovsky; Bizenko who killed Sakharoff; Eserskaja who assassinated Klingenberg; Ragozinnikova who destroyed Maximoffsky.
Of those noble and daring youths who struck to the death their country's oppressors: Kaltourin and Gelvakov who dispatched Strelnikoff; Balmaschoff who executed Sipyagin; Karpowitch who ended the days of Bogolepoff; Kalayev who removed Sergius; Schaumann who aimed well at Bobrikoff; Sazonov who wiped out Plehve.
Of these he will write and of many, many more whose names are unknown to an ignorant public which yells itself hoarse for empty-headed officials, but whose memories encircle the hearts of freedom's orphans.
He will write too, of a revolutionary thinker who dreams a philosophy which would dethrone tyranny and upraise liberty, the humanitarian who harbors a love which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth, the true World-Man of the Better-Day--Comrade Kropotkin.
_Reader, I press your hand warmly_
FOOTNOTES:
[73] See "The Laborer and the Man with the White Hand" in Turgenev's "Poems in Prose."
[74] Since they are not permitted to work for freedom from the house-tops, they must do it in their secret chambers.
[75] For a Russian revolutionary drama powerfully depicting such a scene, see "On the Eve," by Dr. Leopold Kampf. It has no connection with Turgenev's great novel of the same name. For a tragedy whose interest centers around a beautiful young man who has become insane in a Russian prison, see "To the Stars," by Leonid Andreyev, (Translated by Dr. A. Goudiss, Poet Lore, Winter 1907). Called by Helen A. Clarke, "a play in which there is no villain except the far-off Russian Government."
[76]
"Since the world's first wail went up from lands and seas Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these. Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell Down the deepest and the loathiest ways of hell, Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire, Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire, Saw not, where filth was foulest, and the night Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite. Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams. Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives, Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered, Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured. Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thoughts could shape, Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape," etc. SWINBURNE: "Russia: An Ode."
[77] "Marie Spiridonova was only twenty-one when she killed Lujenovsky; and in St. Petersburg I knew a girl, a medical student--sweet, quiet, all soul--who was barely eighteen when she said to me, simply "I shall live but a year or two--no more." In this expectancy of death there is no mawkishness, no pose. They have seen their comrades go after a few days or years of service; their fate will be the same." LeRoy Scott, "The Terrorists," in Everybody's Magazine.
Announcements
Lives of Great Altrurians
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
This is to be a series of biographies of men and women whose life-work was the liberation of humanity from bondage. Not of bishops and warriors will Victor Robinson write, but of the Great Companions whose lances struck the shields of despotism. These lives are to be of no standard size and will not be written on contract-time. A great deal of inclination and a little bit of opportunity will be the determining factors.
Out of this series, two numbers have already been published:
WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT PETER KROPOTKIN
The rest of the subjects are still lodged within the cerebral cells of the author. The following are in preparation for precious print:
MAXIM GORKY WALT WHITMAN ROBERT INGERSOLL ELISEE RECLUS THOMAS PAINE FERDINAND LASSALLE KARL MARX VICTOR HUGO ALEXANDER HERZEN GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI HERBERT SPENCER HENRIK IBSEN THOMAS HUXLEY LEO TOLSTOY CHARLES DARWIN ERNEST HAECKEL LOUISE MICHEL EMILE ZOLA AUGUST COMTE BARUCH SPINOZA IVAN TURGENEV HARRIET MARTINEAU GIORDANO BRUNO GRANT ALLEN WENDELL PHILLIPS HENRY GEORGE HENRY THOREAU MRS. STANTON
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
Written in the Author's Eighteenth Year
William Godwin was the father of philosophic radicalism in England. His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the pioneer of the woman suffrage movement. Yet the present generation of reformers knows little about these glorious Liberals. This booklet tells briefly of Godwin's early life, of his development from orthodoxy to rationalism, of his epoch-making "Political Justice," of his narrow escape from imprisonment on the charge of high treason, of his first meeting and dislike of Mary Wollstonecraft, of his later love and marriage with her, of her former marriage and attempt at suicide, of their views on the marriage relation, of the storm which Mary Wollstonecraft caused by writing "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," of her lamented death, of her talented daughter who eloped with Shelley, of Godwin's subsequent love affairs, of his philosophy, of his old age, etc.
+_Pierre Ramus_+: in "Die Freie Generation:"
Selten wohl, dass uns eine kleine Broschurenschrift in die Haende fiel, die mit aehnlicher Glut des edelsten Idealismus verfasst ist, wie jene unseres amerikanischen Genossen Victor Robinson.
+_Eugene V. Debs_+, in "Appeal to Reason:"
The story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft is now in pamphlet form, fresh from the gifted pen of Victor Robinson. It is a story of two great souls charmingly told by another.
+_Elbert Hubbard_+, editor of "The Philistine:"
At the Roycroft Chapel, Victor gave us a most admirable address on Godwin--quite the best thing he ever did.
+_John Sherwin Crosby_+, author of "Government:" I shall prize your very graphic sketch because of its intrinsic worth.
+_William Lloyd Garrison_+, the son of the great Abolitionist:
I have read with pleasure your estimate of these brave thinkers. What surviving qualities have truth and courage!
+_Clinton P. Farrell_+, brother-in-law and publisher of Ingersoll: Many many thanks for this beautiful booklet--a gem. May you live long and continue in the making of good books.
+_Voltairine de Cleyre_+, the most radical woman in Philadelphia:
I am glad that some one has taken up the work I began some fifteen years ago,--that of compelling the deserved recognition due to Mary Wollstonecraft from the English-speaking radical world.
+_Champe S. Andrews_+, counsel of the Medical Society of New York:
I am indebted to you for the very delightful monograph on the lives of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. I value this book on account of its excellent literary and biographical value.
+_Henry J. Weeks_+, lover of our furred and feathered brothers:
As soon as I received your book, my wife read it to me from beginning to end, starting with loving interest and ending with sympathetic tears. Then I read it again myself. Then I called upon my friend Fred Heath, editor of "The Social Democratic Herald," and talked to him about my "William and Mary," and together we hied to the public library and made a search for all we could find about the lives of these interesting friends.
+_Artistically printed Illustrated with portraits 25 cents, postpaid_+
THE ALTRURIANS
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A Symposium on Humanitarians
CONDUCTED BY
VICTOR ROBINSON
"Name your 10 favorite humanitarians of the 19th century." To this interesting question, replies have been received from 100 men and women, many of them of national and some of international fame. Among the contributors are:
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE ERNEST CROSBY ALEXIS ALADIN PAUL CARUS ABRAHAM JACOBI EUGENE DEBS ROSE HARTWICK THORPE BENJAMIN R. TUCKER JOHN SPARGO WILLIAM MARION REEDY EDWARD BLISS FOOTE HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT EMMA GOLDMAN HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH HYPATIA BRADLAUGH LUTHER BURBANK HERBERT N. CASSON VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE INA COOLBRITH HAVELOCK ELLIS HARRISON GREY FISKE B.O. FLOWER HAMLIN GARLAND WM. LLOYD GARRISON JACOB GORDIN MOSES HARMAN MORRIS ROSENFELD SADAKICHI HARTMAN HENRY HOLT GEO. WHARTON JAMES ALEXANDER BERKMAN JOSEPH JASTROW BOLTON HALL ANDREW D. WHITE JACQUES LOEB ROSE PASTOR STOKES EDWIN MARKHAM N.O. NELSON SIMON NEWCOMB LOUIS F. POST
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NEVER-TOLD TALES
Graphic Stories of the Evils of Sexual Ignorance
BY DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON
It is time that these tales should no longer remain "Never Told Tales." It is time that the ignorance which costs so much health, so much happiness, so many lives, should no longer be permitted to hold its blighting sway in our midst; it is time that life-destroying prudery should give way to vitalizing knowledge; it is time that sanctimonious hypocracy should give way to common-sense. It is time in short, that darkness should give way to light, and misery to happiness--it is time, therefore, that the "Never-Told Tales" should at last be told!
The author is convinced that if these tales were put into the hands of every man and woman about to marry, and into the hands of every father and mother who have adolescent children, much misery would be prevented and much good would be accomplished. Hence does he send them forth into the world.... _From the Author's Preface._
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