Memoirs of a revolutionist

This book would not probably have been written for some time to come, were it not for the kind invitation and the most friendly encouragement of the editor and the publisher of...

I have mentioned in this book how tragical was the position of our youth in the seventies and eighties, on account of ‘the fathers’ having abandoned entirely to their sons the t...

New branches budded from the old stocks. Some of them achieved more or less distinction in different parts of Russia; some owned more luxurious houses in the new style in other...

It must be confessed that things did not always end with kneeling. There was in the class-room a birch rod, and Poulain resorted to it when there was no hope of progress with th...

Dancing-parties were not infrequent, to say nothing of a couple of obligatory balls every winter. Father’s way, in such cases, was to have everything done in a good style, whate...

For the quiet life of the landlords of those times Nikólskoye was admirably suited. There was nothing in it of the luxury which is seen in richer estates; but an artistic hand w...

Human feelings were not recognized, not even suspected, in serfs, and when Turguéneff published his little story ‘Mumú,’ and Grigoróvich began to issue his thrilling novels, in...

The corps was divided into five forms, of which the highest was the first, and the lowest the fifth, and the intention was that I should enter the fourth form. However, as it ap...

For the fifth form the inspector secured two remarkable men. He entered our class-room, one day, quite radiant, and told us that we should have a rare chance. Professor Klasóvsk...

Our sister Hélène, who was now married, was at St. Petersburg, and every Saturday night I went to visit her. Her husband had a good library, in which the French philosophers of...

The burial did not pass without an accident which might have had serious consequences. An immense canopy had been erected under the dome of the cathedral over the coffin. A huge...

I understood then how much depends in warfare upon the state of mind of the troops, and how little can be done by mere discipline when more than an average effort is required fr...

I was in Nikólskoye in August 1861, and again in the summer of 1862, and I was struck with the quiet intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions. They...

A few minutes later, as the procession once more crossed the quay, on its way back to the palace, an old peasant, bareheaded too, pushed himself through the double hedge of sold...

It was not easy to move the soldiers out of our garden. They had cleared the barrels and boxes of their contents, and with their pockets full of coffee, and with conical lumps o...

Then, amidst this effervescence, the news spread over Russia that during the night of January 10 bands of insurgents had fallen upon the soldiers who were cantoned in the villag...

My first experiences in my new capacity of navigator were all but successful. It so happened that I had to proceed with a few barges as rapidly as possible to a certain point on...

I was offered the leadership of a trading caravan which the Cossacks intended to organize in order to find that route, and I accepted it with enthusiasm. No European had ever vi...

The higher administration of Siberia was influenced by excellent intentions, and I can only repeat that, everything considered, it was far better, far more enlightened, and far...

There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden birth of a generalization, illuminating the mind after a long period of patient research. What has seemed fo...

But what right had I to these higher joys, when all round me was nothing but misery and struggle for a mouldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live i...

On the other side, with some of the members of these circles--Karakózoff, Ishútin, and their nearest friends--the movement took a political direction. During the years from 1862...

Such was the change which had been accomplished in the Old Equerries’ Quarter within the last fifteen years. The last stronghold of the old nobility was now invaded by the new s...

I was furious, and next day hotly reproached Ootin for his behaviour. ‘As a leader,’ I told him, ‘you were bound to know that a strike had really been spoken of.’ In my innocenc...

I reached the once renowned and brilliant city in the evening, and early next morning went out from my hotel on my search. To my bewilderment I saw, however, at every street cor...

All secret societies are fiercely prosecuted in Russia, and the western reader will perhaps expect from me a description of my initiation and of the oath of allegiance which I t...

The following incident will show what the other women of our circle were. One night, Kupreyánoff and I went to Varvara B., to whom we had to make an urgent communication. It was...

There was nothing left to 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 smug...

I made a minute inspection of the room where I had now to spend no one could say how many years. From the position of the high chimney of the Mint I guessed that I was in the so...

The gendarmes lost their heads. They had not hands enough to make the arrests nor eyes enough to trace the steps of every propagandist. Yet not less than fifteen hundred persons...

For many days in succession I had practised how to get rid of that immeasurably long and cumbrous garment. It was so long that I carried the lower part on my left arm, as ladies...

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 l...

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 h...

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, apprecia...

In Russia, the struggle for freedom was taking a more and more acute character. Several political trials had been brought before high courts--the trial of ‘the hundred and ninet...

My wife was about to pass her examination for the degree of Bachelor of Science at the Geneva University, and we settled, therefore, in a tiny town of France, Thonon, situated o...

There is always some comical incident in such trials, and this time it was supplied by a letter of mine. There was nothing upon which to base the whole accusation. Scores of sea...

Martin, the same friend of mine whom I have already mentioned, obtained permission to serve part of his time in cellular confinement. He preferred isolation to life in a room wi...

To start a paper, subsidized by the police, with a police agent at its head, is an old plan, and the prefect of the Paris police, Andrieux, resorted to it in 1881. I was with El...

Above all he wrote to me about his scientific work. He always had a decided leaning towards astronomy, and when we were at St. Petersburg he had published in Russia an excellent...