My arm, which was stretched out in front of me, was traversed longitudinally by a rifle-bullet in a peculiar manner. I sank to the ground at first, but soon recovered sufficiently to get up and run away.
That inexpressible sense of complete satisfaction by means of suffering, for which I was continually searching—which, so to say, I felt to slumber within me—once more appeared in actual experience. I always had the impression that there was something wanting, that it was necessary to awaken something within me which hitherto had existed in my consciousness only in a dormant state.... At the same time, a voice whispered to me that I was demanding something superhuman; that the attainment of such a thing must logically overwhelm my purely human powers, and that it would involve my annihilation.
Day and night these thoughts tormented me: “You must gain this experience—even if it involves your destruction!... But what if, at the last moment—as at Baku—a further incapacity, a ‘spiritual syncope,’ ensues?”
One thing I knew—“When you reach it, it will only be by yourself; all others will break to pieces before you!”
XVII.
I no longer had any interest in the development of revolutionary affairs, since for my own purposes they were no longer serviceable.
The new questions which now arose—as, for example, the propaganda among the Lumpenproletariat—left me cold.... In the pogrom we had seen what an unawakened force—reputed as revolutionary, but in reality masochistic—was slumbering in the Lumpenproletariat. That this force could also be used in the service of reaction was ascribed to the fact that all these thieves, criminals, and prostitutes, came into contact only with the working classes. But since they earn from the latter nothing but contempt, their sensibility was turned against the working classes.
This unfortunate state of affairs it was proposed to counteract by going among the criminals, just as in earlier years they had gone among the working people. An endeavour was made to organize the Lumpenproletariat, in order to win their sympathies.
The movement was in part successful, although it brought with it much corruption. Thus it happened that the criminals endeavoured to turn the matter to their own advantage, and began to pursue their profession in the name of anarchism. For example, in Warsaw they visited the house of an enormously rich Jewish banker, whose father had recently died, and, under the mask of anarchism, demanded from him 10,000 roubles, with the threat that if he did not give the money, they would dig up the corpse of his father and bury it in unconsecrated ground. When we remember there is nothing more horrible for an orthodox Jew than to rest in unconsecrated soil, we shall understand that the banker gave the money; but this occurrence aroused a great sensation, and people began to identify anarchists with common criminals.
Now the anarchists had to endure the persecution, not only of the Government, but also that of other revolutionary parties and of the Lumpenproletariat—the latter for this reason: because they did not wish their names to be associated with actions which were undertaken for personal advantage, and not for revolutionary aims.