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 favor
of the Slavonians. Many believed, also, that a 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 great public. They produced a very favorable 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
favor, 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 justly be 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 labor 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 labor, 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 ex
hausted. Even the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London
"Times" had been asked to mention the affair in his paper, but had
not done so, perhaps thinking it improbable. Then, without telling any
one her 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 fired with enthusiasm, and writing
powerful articles to glorify the girl. Even the
serious "Revue des Deux Mondes" wrote, in its review of the year, that
the two persons who had most impressed public opinion in Europe during
1878 were Prince Gortchakóff at the Berlin congress and
Véra Zasúlich. Their portraits were given side by side
in several almanacs. Upon the workers in Europe the devotion of
Véra Zasúlich produced a tremendous impression.
A few months after that, without any
plot having been formed, four attempts were made against crowned heads
in close succession. The worker Hoedel and Dr. Nobiling shot at the
German Emperor; a few weeks later, a Spanish worker, Oliva Moncasi,
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
Jura Federation and the International Workingmen's Association were
responsible.
More than twenty years have passed
since then, and I may say most positively that there was absolutely
no ground whatever for that supposition. However, all the European
governments fell upon Switzerland, reproaching her with harboring
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 attacks,
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 thus remained without
an organ.
Besides, the politicians of
Switzerland, who looked with an unfavorable 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 official organ 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 found no work in the watch trade, and, burdened
as he was by a large family, had 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 the organ of 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 paper 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 (about four dollars) 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 complex
historical and economical questions should 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.
The paper was a success, and still continues, at Paris, under the name
of "Temps Nouveaux."
Socialist papers have often a tendency
to become mere annals of complaints about existing conditions. The
oppression of the laborers 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
employers is insisted upon: and this succession of hopeless efforts,
related in the paper, 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 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 philo
sophy has accomplished a certain change in human thought, and
subsequently in institutions. But this is not history. The greatest
social philosophers have only caught the indications of coming changes,
have understood their inner relations, and, aided by induction and
intuition, have foretold what was to occur. It may also be easy to
draw a plan of social organization, 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 endeavored to familiarize my 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
fetichism 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.
To the judgment of these two friends
I could trust implicitly. If Herzig frowned, muttering,
"Yes--well--it may go," I knew that it would not do. And when
Dumartherary, who always complained of the bad state of his spectacles
when he had to read a not quite legibly written manuscript, and
therefore generally read proofs only, interrupted his reading by
exclaiming, "Non, ça ne va pas!" I felt at once that it was
not the proper thing, and tried to guess what thought or expression
provoked his disapproval. I knew there was no use asking him, "Why
will it not do?" He would have answered: "Ah, that is not my affair;
that's yours. It won't do; that is all I can say." But I felt he was
right, and I simply sat down to rewrite the passage, or, taking the
composing-stick, set up in type a new passage instead.
I must own also that we had hard times
with it. No sooner had we issued four or five numbers than the printer
asked us to find another printing-office. For the workers and their
publications the liberty of the press inscribed in the constitution
has many limitations beside the paragraphs of the law. The printer had
no objection to our paper: he liked it; but in Switzerland all
printing-offices depend upon the government, which employs them more
or less upon statistical reports and the like; and our printer was
plainly told that if he continued to print the paper he need not
expect to have any more orders from the Geneva gov
ernment. I made the tour of all the French-speaking part of
Switzerland, and saw the heads of all the printing-offices, but
everywhere, even from those who did not dislike the tendency of our
paper, I received the same reply: "We could not live without work
from the government, and we should have none if we undertook to
print 'Le Révolté.'"
I returned to Geneva in very low
spirits; but Dumartheray was only the more ardent and hopeful. "It's
all very simple," he said. "We buy our own printing-plant on a three
months' credit, and in three months we shall have paid for it." "But
we have no money, only a few hundred francs," I objected. "Money,
nonsense! We shall have it! Let us only order the type at once and
immediately issue our next number--and money will come!" Once more
his judgment was quite right. When our next number came out from our
own "Imprimerie Jurassienne," and we had told our difficulties and
printed a couple of small pamphlets besides,--all of us helping in the
printing,--the money came in; mostly in coppers and small silver
coins, but it came. Over and over again in my life I have heard
complaints among the advanced parties about the want of money; but the
longer I live, the more I am persuaded that our chief difficulty is
not so much a lack of money as of men who will march firmly and
steadily towards a given aim in the right direction, and inspire others.
For twenty-one years our paper has now continued to live from hand to
mouth,--appeals for funds appearing on the front page in almost every
number; but as long as there is a man who sticks to it and puts all
his energy into it, as Herzig and Dumartheray did at Geneva, and as
Grave has done for the last sixteen years at Paris, the money comes
in, and a yearly debit of about eight hundred pounds is made up,--mainly
out of the pennies and small silver coins of the workers,--to cover
the yearly expenditure for printing the paper and the pamphlets. For
a paper, as for
everything else, men are of an infinitely greater value than money.
We started our printing-office in a
tiny room, and our compositor was a man from Little Russia, who
undertook to put our paper in type for the very modest sum of sixty
francs a month. If he could only have his modest dinner every day,
and the possibility of going occasionally to the opera, he cared for
nothing more. "Going to the Turkish bath, John? "I asked him once as I
met him at Geneva in the street, with a brown-paper parcel under his
arm. "No, removing to a new lodging," he replied, in his usual
melodious voice, and with his customary smile.
Unfortunately, he knew no French. I
used to write my manuscript in the best of my handwriting,--often
thinking with regret of the time I had wasted in the classes of our
good Ebert at school,--but John could read French only indifferently
well, and instead of "immédiatement" he would read
"immidiotermut" or "inmuidiatmunt," and set up in type such wonderful
words as these; but as he "kept the space," and the length of the line
did not have to be altered in making the corrections, there were only
four or five letters to be corrected in such uncouth words as the
above, and but one or two in each of the shorter ones; thus we managed
pretty well. We were on the best possible terms with him, and I soon
learned a little typesetting under his direction. The composition was
always finished in time to take the proofs to a Swiss comrade who was
the responsible editor, and to whom we submitted them before going to
press, and then one of us carted all the forms to a printing-office.
Our "Imprimerie Jurassienne" soon became widely known for its
publications, especially for its pamphlets, which Dumartheray would
never allow to be sold at more than one penny. Quite a new style had
to be worked out for such pamphlets. I must say that I was often
wicked enough to envy those writers who could use
any number of pages for developing their ideas, and were allowed to
make the well-known excuse of Talleyrand: "I have not had the time to
be brief." When I had to condense the results of several months'
work--upon, let me say, the origins of law--into a penny pamphlet, I
had to take the time to be brief. But we wrote for the workers, and
twenty centimes for a pamphlet is often too much for the average worker.
The result was that our penny and half-penny pamphlets sold by the
scores of thousands, and were reproduced in many other countries in
translations. My leaders of that period were published later on, while
I was in prison, by Elisée Reclus, under the title of "The
Words of a Rebel,"--Paroles d'un Révolté.
France was always the chief object
of our aims; but "Le Révolté" was severely prohibited in
France, and the smugglers had so many good things to import into
France from Switzerland that they did not care to meddle with our
paper. I went once with them, crossing in their company the French
frontier, and found that they were very brave and reliable men, but I
could not induce them to undertake the smuggling of our paper. All we
could do, therefore, was to send it in sealed envelopes to about a
hundred persons in France. We charged nothing for postage, counting
upon voluntary contributions from our subscribers to cover our extra
expenses,--which they always did,--but we often thought that the
French police were missing a splendid opportunity for ruining our
paper by subscribing to a hundred copies and sending no voluntary
contributions.
For the first year we had to rely
entirely upon ourselves; but gradually Elisée Reclus took a
greater interest in the work, and finally gave more life than ever to
the paper after my arrest. Reclus had invited me to aid him in the
preparation of the volume of his monumental Geography which dealt
with the Russian dominions in Asia. He had
learned Russian, but thought that, as I was well acquainted with
Siberia, I might be helpful; and as the health of my wife was poor,
and the doctor had ordered her to leave Geneva with its cold winds at
once, we removed early in the spring of 1880 to Clarens, where Elisée
Reclus lived at that time. We settled above Clarens, in a small
cottage overlooking the blue waters of Lake Geneva, with the pure
snow of the Dent du Midi in the background. A streamlet that thundered
like a mighty torrent after rains, carrying away immense rocks and
digging for itself a new bed, ran under our windows, and on the slope
of the hill opposite rose the old castle of Châtelard, of which
the owners, up to the revolution of the burla papei (the burners
of the papers) in 1799, levied upon the neighboring peasants servile
taxes on the occasion of births, marriages, and deaths. Here, aided by
my wife, with whom I used to discuss every event and every proposed
paper, and who was a severe literary critic of my writings, I produced
the best things that I wrote for "Le Révolté," among
them the address "To the Young," which was spread in hundreds of
thousands of copies in all languages. In fact, I worked out here the
foundation of nearly all that I wrote later on. Contact with educated
men of similar ways of thinking is what we anarchist writers,
scattered by proscription all over the world, miss, perhaps, more
than anything else. At Clarens I had that contact with Elisée
Reclus and Lefrançais, in addition to permanent contact with
the workers, which I continued to maintain; and although I worked
much for the Geography, I could produce even more than usual for the
anarchist propaganda.