LIFE STORY OF "GRANDMOTHER OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION"
Triumphant Return from Forty-four Years in Siberian Exile
Told by Catherine Breshkovskaya, the Russian Revolutionist
This life story of the "Grandmother of the Revolution," Catherine Breshkovskaya, is the living symbol of the Russian people's long and hard struggle for freedom. Of her seventy-three years forty-four have been spent in prison and Siberian exile. But neither the wilderness of Siberia nor the severity of convict labor has broken the spirit of this little woman. Entering the struggle against Czarism while still in its infancy, she lived to see its complete overthrow, and the Russian people remembered their loving "Babushka." They made her journey from Siberia to Petrograd after the revolution a continuous triumphal procession, such as no Czar or King has ever been accorded. Mme. Breshkovskaya, upon her arrival home, began touring Russia in the interests of Kerensky's policies. Her love for the common people, her influence on the peasantry, her faith in the stability of the New Russia, made her a great power. She has told the story of her life in the Petrograd weekly, "Niva," which has been translated by Isaac Don Levine for the New York Tribune. Here she tells for the first time how she journeyed afoot over Russia to preach "freedom from ignorance and political tyranny" to the peasants; how she was sentenced to Siberia; how she escaped, was captured, reimprisoned and flogged; and how on the news of the Czar's downfall she began her journey home on a sledge over the snow and ice to join her people in the establishment of the republic.
I—"I ALWAYS PITIED THE SERFS"
I was born in 1844. I passed my childhood and youth in the province of Tchernigoff, and all my life I remained grateful to my parents for the good and wise training and schooling which they gave me. They pitied the serfs and never oppressed them. Nevertheless there was a sharp difference between our life, the life of landlords, and that of the peasants in their cabins, such a shocking difference that my childish soul suffered greatly from the contradiction between the reality and the teaching of Christ. My mother would often read to us the New Testament and biographies of the great apostles of truth and love for humanity.
All my life I thought so much and ceaselessly about the needs of the people, the suffering of the people, that all my sorrows and joys are bound up with the people. And I always made it my duty to serve the people and do all that is necessary to open the people's eyes to its own life and wants.
My own life was entirely composed of love and devotion to my country and people and of a passionate desire to serve them with all the powers in my possession up to the very hour of my death.
I am asked: "How did I arrive at the firm resolution to live only for the people?" I think that this resolution was always present in me, from my youngest years, from the very beginning of my conscious life.
When I turn back in my mind to review my past life, I see myself, first of all, a little five-year-old lassie, who suffered at heart for somebody: for the coachman, or the chambermaid, or the day laborer, or the oppressed peasants (at that time serfdom still existed in Russia).
The impressions of the people's suffering sank so deeply into my childish soul that they never deserted me afterward in all my life.
I was seventeen when, in 1861, the peasants were freed of the violence of the landlords, but were so badly supplied with land that the laboring masses were again forced to go into slavery to the wealthy. The agitations among the peasants provoked terrible executions. Their torture was taking place before my very eyes, strengthening my aspiration to serve the people with all my might, so as to lighten their bitter lot.
No revolutionary circles and organizations were known to exist at that time in the provinces, but there soon came the activity of the Zemstvos, and I applied to it all my efforts. Ten years I labored in the peasant school and the village, organizing credit-savings banks, mutual aid, co-operative shops and campaigns on the eve of the elections of judges and rural boards. My work was progressing, the confidence of the peasants in me was helping it along, but against me and my assistants the nobility arose, reporting us to the ministers, and the labor of many years was swept away as if with a broom.
The schools and banks were closed, all the honest people of our county and the whole province of Tchernigoff were placed under police surveillance, many were exiled to the northern provinces and me they began to persecute.
II—"I DECIDED TO START A REVOLUTION"
I clearly perceived then that the government of Alexander II introduced reforms only on paper, only seeking to create the impression that it desired to better the life of the population. Actually, however, the government wickedly persecuted every attempt to help the laboring people to emerge from the darkness into light, to approach knowledge, to proclaim its own rights.
It was clearly evident, not only in our locality but throughout the whole of Russia, that the government feared knowledge in the people and endeavored to keep it in a state of rightless slavery. This compelled me to seek another path, another way of working in the interest of my beloved people, and toward the end of the '60s I decided to go to Russia in search of men with whom to start an illegal struggle, i.e., a movement forbidden under the Czar's laws.
For more than two years I wandered about Russia, ever looking for some revolutionary centre, which could exist only as an underground organization. Gradually, by changing one kind of work for another, I penetrated into a rather large organization, which had decided to get personally in contact with the people, not through books and proclamations.
At that time the difference between the sea of peasants and the little lake of intellectuals was so great that they were, entirely ignorant of one another. Besides, the moujik's suspicion of any person bearing the appearance of a "gentleman" was so deeply rooted that it was impossible to carry to the peasant and labor midst any message and retain the dress of the gentry. It was necessary to change the appearance from foot to head, to look a perfect plebeian.
I put on a peasant dress, threw a bag across my shoulder, obtained a stick and set out to tramp. Although I did not tramp the country long, only one summer, yet I succeeded in visiting many villages, and nowhere did I meet with distrust. The peasants eagerly listened to my talks and those of my comrades. We told them that the land ought not belong to the few; that it should be placed in possession of all the people, of all those who wish to toil on it; that there ought not be such a system which permits the selling, mortgaging, buying and renting of thousands of acres by a few hands, while people were starving nearby because they lacked the land from which to obtain bread. The peasants would agree with us and also say that the land ought to belong to those who labor on it, who till it.
We would also tell them that the landlords were oppressing the people; that they had seized all the government in their hands; that the bureaucracy was fraternizing with the landlords, hindering the people from living a free life. In this the peasants would also agree with us.
We had difficulty only talking about one subject, the Czar. We tried to explain to the peasants that the Czar was acting concertedly with the nobility and bureaucracy, that he it was who was the chief oppressor of the people. But the peasants would not want to believe it. They were so distant in those days from understanding state affairs, being unable to read, because of general illiteracy, and lacking fundamental knowledge, that they had no idea how much evil the Czarist form of government had done to the nation.
The peasants trusted the Czar; they were convinced that the Czar was a kind master of Russia who had to maintain an army to defend her from enemies, and that the peasants had to till the land, pay taxes, for the maintenance of the army. They thought that the Czar loved his people and took care of them, and, if officials did oppress the people sometimes, it was due to the fact that they deceived the Czar. And if the Czar were only to learn the whole truth he would drive out the officials and again become a loving father to his people.
III—"I TOLD THE PEASANTS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CZAR"
Such were the beliefs of the peasants about the Czar. In spite of it all, I continued to tell them the real truth about the Czar, explaining to them that the Czar knows of all the oppressions and is in charge of every one of the oppressors. The peasants would say that I was mistaken, but, nevertheless, listened to my arguments, and not one of them insulted me with vulgar language.
I was not alone in the tramp from village to village. Three thousand youths went to the people at that time, spreading all over the thirty-six provinces of Russia, and we all talked to the people on the same subject; we all endeavored to arouse the people to a good, free life. However, the government soon discovered our activities and began to arrest many, imprisoning, exiling to hard-labor settlements and to Siberia.
I was arrested entirely by accident in 1874. I was "covering" the provinces of Kieff, Podolia, Tchernigoff and Kherson, and had in my bag detailed maps of these localities, in order to know my way and avoid arousing suspicion by questions. Whenever I stopped in the village cabins no peasant would ever look into my bag, and thus no one could ever find out who I was.
But once, while stopping in Tulchin, the Province of Podolia, the woman-laborer of the peasant who gave shelter to me looked into my bag and discovered the maps there. To an illiterate person every printed word was a rarity, especially in those days. It will be understood, of course, that the laborer was shocked by her discovery. The same day she went to do some gardening for the sheriff and told him everything. The sheriff became alarmed and hurried off to look for me.
And I, without suspecting anything, was at the time returning from the market, where I purchased a couple of apples, some pork and bread.
Suddenly I saw the sheriff racing toward me in a carriage, shouting: "Get into the carriage!"
Well, I understood immediately what the trouble was. I got into the carriage and kept still.
We arrived at the cabin. "Where is the luggage of this woman?" The peasant replied: "She has no luggage, but she has a bag."
The bag was examined and what could they find in it but maps and proclamations? Clearly, my case was closed.
The sheriff was rather inexperienced, simple-minded, so he unfolded the proclamations and started to read them aloud, before the whole crowd. The peasants, after listening to them, said:
"These are the real words. The whole truth is written there. This is the very truth which the nobles have hidden from us."
In the meantime the examining officer arrived, and there both of them began to read the proclamation aloud. Meanwhile a multitude of peasants gathered, listening even under the windows. They learned my proclamation by heart. The county police chief was notified. He arrived, immediately perceived the meaning of it all, and ordered me to prison.
IV—"I WAS HANDCUFFED AND LOCKED IN A DARK CELL"
In those days a woman propagandist was something unheard of and unseen. In fear of this new phenomenon the warden of the Bratzlau jail thought it necessary to incarcerate me immediately in a dark cell and handcuff me. A month passed in wandering about country prisons, till gendarmes came, took me away from the police and dragged me first to a Kieff jail, then to Moscow, and finally to Petrograd, where I was tried with other offenders after being kept in prison for four years in solitary confinement. The condition of the imprisonment was serious. Of the 300 prisoners held for total only 193 survived, among whom there were 37 women. During all of my imprisonment I made no explanation to the judicial authorities, and I was condemned to five years of convict labor. But it was not dreadful. Nothing was dreadful when one had faith in one's righteousness.
My healthy organism and ripe age helped me endure the many years' torments at a time when the young, tender lives fell sick quickly and were carried off one after another by death, leaving a feeling of atrocious pain and indelible bitterness.
But we all retained our eagerness for activity, so early interrupted by an evil hand. The thought of returning to the party, to revolutionary work, lived in our minds in the form of a red-hot nail, and aroused all our abilities, all our power to seek a means to escape. There, to the fighters, to the bright populists, our spiritual vision was directed.
I was already in on the rights of a settler, beyond the Baikal, in Barguzin, when, together with three men comrades, I moved into the hilly taiga, with its thousands of impediments and dangers. Our daring escape, which ended in our capture while wandering about unfathomed abysses and rocks, has been described by Tiutchev. I, as a former hard-labor criminal, was condemned to four years more of penal servitude and forty whips, which, however, the authorities did not dare to apply, "in order to arouse against the administration the political exiles," as the Military Governor of the Outer Baikal said in his report.
I was thus forced to go, in 1882, after another year of imprisonment, to the same old Kara mines, at that time full of prisons for convicts and politicals. Both the first and the second perished there of scurvy, typhus, endless tuberculosis, but mostly the convicts, as the officials disregarded them entirely and kept them in the most shameful conditions.
My second arrival at Kara was for me rather a joyous occasion. When I first came there I was the only woman doing hard labor; it was not fashionable yet to send women to mines. But now I found already sixteen or eighteen feminine comrades, and all of my second term I passed in the best society in the world. The annual term of convict labor consisted of eight months and my term flew past me unnoticed. Only one thing was aggravating, and that was to see how the frailer among us in health gradually sank and surely neared their graves, in the blossom of their lives.
V—"I LANGUISHED FOR EIGHT YEARS IN A DEAD CITY"
In 1885 I was again sent on the rights of a settler beyond the Baikal, in the dead city of Selenginsk, where I spent eight of the most sad years of my life. The naked steppe, the nailed-up cabins and the tireless trailing of the police became my lot. I was given neither the rights of a peasant nor a passport for travel in Siberia. And the heart burned with a passionate desire to escape, to renew the struggle with the enraged foe and take revenge for the innocently destroyed powers for good—the daughters and sons of our motherland. I sought, attempted, fought against obstacles, but all in vain. The steppe beyond the Baikal, the moundless Mongolian steppe, and, on the north, the inaccessible Baikal were the severe allies of the guard with which the authorities had surrounded me. There was no railroad nor steamship connection with the outside world. Right there then, in lifeless Selenginsk, I languished for eight whole years, languished like a hawk in a cage. All alone, ever yearning, I would go out into the steppe and in a loud voice pour my tempestuous heart, longing for freedom, into space.
There was not a day on which I did not think of escaping, and I was always ready for any risk and peril, clinging to the littlest possibility to get away, but all in vain. No one, absolutely no one, promised any help. All those in whom it was possible to confide considered any attempt to escape foredoomed. My soul ached. And only the thought of my comrades—convicts who were sent to the Yakutsk huts, only the thought of their suffering made me forget my own. The eight empty years of my life in Selenginsk have remained all through my life a gray void, eating up the warm feelings of a warm heart. I filled my time with work, so as to be able to send my earnings to the dark prisons, snowbound wastes, to the hungry, forgotten comrades. I read, studied, in order to know how mankind lived, and how far or near was the possibility of transforming it into that "intelligent being" with whom it would be joyful to live. "Have patience," I would tell myself in the moments of keen grief; "be patient, endure to the end; you will get what you are waiting for."
In 1890, after living for four years on the rights of a peasant, I finally received a passport to travel all over Siberia, and on the same day I departed from the suffocating place so as to gradually approach the boundary of European Russia as my term was nearing its end. My health was much undermined by the severe trials I had undergone in solitariness. Anæmia and strong neuralgia had tormented me in Selenginsk. But the inherited vigor of the organism soon returned to me, and the last four years of my life in Siberia, spent in journeying from town to town, I succeeded in having many conversations with young and mature people—succeeded in making allies of some of the leading citizens of Siberia. And when in September, 1896, I returned to Russia I found there many students of both sexes whom I taught in Siberia the theories and the urgency of regenerating the old watchwords. They soon tackled the work of liberation, and many of them remain loyal to this date to our principles.
VI—"WHEN I CAME BACK FROM SIBERIA"
Again I arrived in Russia in September. But upon my arrival I encountered a new movement, which was rapidly conquering a place for itself. Marxism was taking hold of, capturing, the minds of the youth, and the old fighters were regarded as dead forces. But faith in the force of personality, faith in the healthy strength of the people, a knowledge of their aims and needs lent so much firm confidence to my energy that, without hesitating a moment, I began to do some practical work, which had ripened in my mind as long before as the celebrated trial, in 1878, when I declared to my judges that "I have the honor of belonging to the Russian socialistic and revolutionary party, and consequently do not recognize the authority of the Czar's courts over me."
Eighteen years passed after that, and my adherence to the party of socialism and revolutionism lived in me as freshly and ardently as in the days of my arrest and trial. Confidence that the peasant masses, these pillars of the state government, will obey the voice of their friends and will not be slow to follow their leaders—this confidence urged me to hasten the consolidation of the various forces likely to join the Social Revolutionary party, as it has been christened from its very beginning.
It is necessary to bear in mind that from Siberia I came back to Russia all alone. I did not even have the addresses of the old comrades who remained in safety in the gloomy folds of Alexander III's reign. And it took considerable time, care and patience before my tireless but modest little journeys about Russia netted definite results as to acquaintance with people and opportunities. The readiness of the peasants to join the party became ever clearer, and on the fourth year of endeavor the party loudly proclaimed its existence, and in the fifth year all the separate committees recognized one centre. Both the increase in membership and growth in activity attracted the savage attention of the Czar's government.
In 1903 the party suffered an enormous wreck. Wholesale arrests and searches robbed it of many of its leading workers, of its best printing shops and stores of literature. It was necessary to replace all that. By this time the work of the party had developed and grown strong abroad, thanks to our talented and zealous emigrants, who bent all their energies for the publication of party organs and popular books and pamphlets.
In order to recall this youth to immediate activities at home, in Russia, I went abroad for the first time. In May, 1903, I boarded a steamer in Odessa and accompanied by an experienced contrabandist-intellectual, went, by way of Rumania, Hungary and Vienna to Geneva, Switzerland, where there centred the group of the party workers who were scattered in Paris, London and Switzerland. At this conference we were fully joined by the old fighters of the past '70s, Shishko, Volkhovskoy, Lazaroff, Tchaikovsky.
The youth, which frequented all our lectures and debates, listened attentively to the voices of our speakers. Victor Tchernoff, the editor-in-chief of our central organs (and Minister of Agriculture in Kerensky's first Cabinet), victoriously defended the position of the party against the attacks of our opponents. At the same time I persistently spoke of the necessity to tackle the real task, to propagate our ideas among the peasants and workmen, to organize all the forces capable of and ready to enter into a battle with the old régime, ready to sacrifice their lives for a free Russia. And thus it was that a stream of young people of both sexes began to flow back to Russia, carrying with them Social Revolutionary literature, and the booklets "In Battle Shalt Thou Obtain Thy Rights" were lavishly spread on all the roads of the Fatherland.
VII—"I VISITED AMERICA—MY FRIENDS OF FREEDOM"
This task, the labor, of directing the forces of young Russia occupied two whole years of my life. It is true I succeeded in the meantime in visiting America, where I was urgently called by the friends of freedom. I sent out from there considerable sums of money to cover the expenses of the organization, mainly for literature, the import of which into Russia was very expensive. In the United States I acquired many genuine friends, who have remained faithful to me ever since. They proved it by profuse attention to all my needs during the last years of my exile and imprisonment, and from 1907 to 1917 they never ceased even for a week to take care of me.
When the blows of the open struggle of 1905 had reached me I again crossed the boundary into my country, but this time I passed it on foot, running across in the company of two "contrabandists" and a comrade who carried with him a supply of dynamite.
That was the Russian revolution marching, challenging all Russia to an unequal combat.
Everybody knows the events of 1905, 1906 and 1907. The efforts of the revolutionists of all parties were unable to withstand the physical force of the evil government, but they have not only shaken up the paralyzed mind of the great people, but enticed them into demonstrating their power and seeing themselves as a victor, though temporarily. The combat was already nearing its end; the banners were already lowered and hidden for the next spiritual and physical upheaval; already the executioners were hanging and slaughtering, shooting and torturing the best champions of freedom; but my spirit was yet far from submission, my heart was still heaving with hope, and with head forward I threw myself into the thick of events. After the wreck of the second Duma I anticipated a new outburst of indignation on the part of the people. But apparently the cup of doubts had not yet been exhausted, and the people ponderingly looked into the future, not risking to sacrifice their remaining feeble forces.
VIII—"THE HANGMAN'S ROPE WAS AT MY THROAT"
It was in the days of such oppression on one side and vain strainings of all energies, on the other that I was arrested in Samara in 1907, again in the month of September.
It seemed to me that this time I would be unable to escape alive from the hands of the hangmen. This was what I thought. But I felt otherwise. Two years and nine months I was kept in the fortress of Peter and Paul, thinking not of that, but of the time when Russia, after the inevitable victorious and triumphant second revolution, would take up the work of construction and transform our powerless country, our almost illiterate people, into an exemplary state, which could serve as a model to other peoples in culture as well as in social reform.
Faith in the possibility of seeing my country free, my people developing in material and spiritual plenty, gave me strength, exalted my powers. I found myself still able to work with the people and for the people and was grieved to waste time in exile, in the listlessness of the Siberian taiga. I again made preparations for an escape, aiming to join my party comrades, who called me, in revolutionary activity. And again my escape failed. Only two or three hours separated me from my goal from a sure shelter and it was painful to fall again into the hands of the enemy after a thousand miles' journey in the winter.
The thought occurred to me again that they would not pardon me my attempts to escape, my efforts to identify myself again with the revolutionary movement. At the same time there pulsed so much life in my heart that I could not imagine the end of my activities. Neither the long terms passed in jail nor my exile in Yakutsk had dimmed my spirit. "I will live through all this," said an inner voice to me; "I will live through everything and live to see the bright days of freedom." From Yakutsk I was brought to Irkutsk, and my life here was filled with the same persecutions as my exile in Kirensk. I fell very ill and observed how the physicians carefully concealed from me the danger of my malady. It seemed so strange to me that people could think of my fatal end when my soul was full of complete faith that time was bringing me nearer daily to a different kind of end, the triumph of the revolution.
The longer the war continued the more horrible its consequences grew, the clearer the rascality of the government manifested itself, the more patent appeared the inevitableness of the rise of democracy all over the world, the nearer advanced also our revolution.
I waited for the sound of the bell announcing freedom, and wondered why this sound was tardy in making itself heard. When in November of last year explosions of indignation followed one another, when irate calls were exchanged among the several groups of the population, I was already planted with one foot in the Siberian sleigh, feeling sorry only that the snow road was beginning to melt.
The 17th of March a telegram reached me in Minusinsk announcing freedom. The same day I was on my way to Atchinsk, the nearest railroad station. From Atchinsk on began my uninterrupted communion with soldiers, peasants, workmen, railroad employees, students and multitudes of beloved women, who to-day all bear the burdens of the normal and now also abnormal life of a great state.