[1365] Kropotkin, quoted by Eltzbacher, p. 236. “Revolution, once it becomes socialistic, will cease to be sanguinary and cruel. The people are not cruel. It is the privileged classes that are cruel. People are ordinarily kind and humane, and will suffer long rather than cause others any suffering.” (Bakunin, Œuvres, vol. iii, pp. 184-185.) The same idea runs through Sorel’s Réflexions sur la Violence.
[1366] Bakunin, Sozial-politischer, pp. 335 and 353.
[1367] Sozial-politischer, p. 361. The proclamation was addressed to Young Russia just after the Tsar Alexander II had accepted the challenge of Liberalism by emancipating the serfs. But he immediately proceeded to revive the cruel system of espionage and repression carried out by his father Nicholas I, and so roused the indignation of the more advanced leaders, who thought that they had in him a hero who would open the golden gates of liberty. Bakunin at the time was under the influence of an unscrupulous fanatic of the name of Netchaieff, whose savage and revolting passion for the execution of criminal deeds in the name of revolution had completely captivated him. Later on he vigorously reproved such acts, and declared that they ought to be suppressed.
[1368] Ibid.
[1369] Bakunin, Sozial-politischer, p. 332.
[1370] Réflexions sur la Violence, p. 253.
[1371] Paroles d’un Révolté, pp. 17-18.
[1372] Réflexions sur la Violence, p. 218.
[1373] Berth, Les Nouveaux Aspects du Socialisme, p. 3.
[1374] Réflexions sur la Violence, introduction.