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.
o 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