Next morning I went to one of our weavers’ meetings. It took place in an underground dark room. I was dressed as a peasant, and was lost in the crowd of other sheepskins. My comrade, who was known to the workers, simply introduced me: ‘Borodín, a friend.’ ‘Tell us, Borodín,’ he said, ‘what you have seen abroad.’ And I spoke of the labour movement in Western Europe, its struggles, its difficulties, and its hopes.
The audience consisted mostly of middle-aged people. They were intensely interested. They asked me questions, all to the point, about the minute details of the working-men’s unions, the aims of the International Association and its chances of success, and then came questions about what could be done in Russia, and the prospects of our propaganda. I never minimized the dangers of our agitation, and frankly said what I thought. ‘We shall probably be sent to Siberia, one of these days; and you—part of you—will be kept long months in prison for having listened to us.’ This gloomy prospect did not frighten them. ‘After all, there are men in Siberia, too—not bears only.’ ‘Where men are living others can live.’ ‘The devil is not so terrible as they paint him.’ ‘If you are afraid of wolves, never go into the wood,’ they said as we parted. And when, afterward, several of them were arrested, they nearly all behaved bravely, sheltering us and betraying no one.
XVI
During the two years of which I am now speaking many arrests were made, both at St. Petersburg and in the provinces. Not a month passed without our losing someone, or learning that members of this or that provincial group had disappeared. Toward the end of 1873 the arrests became more and more frequent. In November one of our main settlements in a suburb of St. Petersburg was raided by the police. We lost Peróvskaya and three other friends, and all our relations with the workers in this suburb had to be suspended. We founded a new settlement, further away from the town, but it had soon to be abandoned. The police became very vigilant, and the appearance of a student in the workmen’s quarters was noticed at once; spies circulated among the workers, who were watched closely. Dmítri Kelnitz, Serghéi, and myself, in our sheepskins and with our pleasant looks, passed unnoticed, and continued to visit the haunted ground. But Dmítri and Serghéi, whose names had acquired a wide notoriety in the workmen’s quarters, were eagerly wanted by the police; and if they had been found accidentally during a nocturnal raid at a friend’s lodgings they would have been arrested at once. There were periods when Dmítri had every day to hunt for a place where he could spend the night in relative safety. ‘Can I stay the night with you?’ he would ask, entering some comrade’s room at ten o’clock. ‘Impossible! my lodgings have been closely watched lately. Better go to N——.’ ‘I have just come from him, and he says spies swarm in his neighbourhood.’ ‘Then, go to M——; he is a great friend of mine, and above suspicion. But it is far from here, and you must take a cab. Here is money.’ But, on principle, Dmítri would not take a cab, and would walk to the other end of the town to find a refuge, or at last go to a friend whose rooms might be searched at any given moment.
Early in January 1874, another settlement, our main stronghold for propaganda amongst the weavers, was lost. Some of our best propagandists disappeared behind the gates of the mysterious Third Section. Our circle became narrower, general meetings were increasingly difficult, and we made strenuous efforts to form new circles of young men who might continue our work when we should all be arrested. Tchaykóvsky was in the south, and we forced Dmítri and Serghéi to leave St. Petersburg—actually forced them, imperiously ordering them to leave. Only five or six of us remained to transact all the business of our circle. I intended, as soon as I should have delivered my report to the Geographical Society, to go to the south-west of Russia, and there to start a sort of land league, similar to the league which became so powerful in Ireland at the end of the seventies.
After two months of relative quiet, we learned in the middle of March that nearly all the circle of the engineers had been arrested, and with them a young man named Nízovkin, an ex-student, who unfortunately had their confidence, and, we were sure, would soon try to clear himself by telling all he knew about us. Besides Dmítri and Serghéi he knew Serdukóff, the founder of the circle, and myself, and he would certainly name us as soon as he was pressed with questions. A few days later, two weavers—most unreliable fellows, who had even embezzled some money from their comrades, and who knew me under the name of Borodín—were arrested. These two would surely set the police at once upon the track of Borodín, the man, dressed as a peasant, who spoke at the weavers’ meetings. Within a week’s time all the members of our circle, excepting Serdukóff and myself, were arrested.
There was nothing left to us but to fly from St. Petersburg: this was exactly what we did not want to do. All our immense organization for printing pamphlets abroad and for smuggling them into Russia; all the network of circles, farms, and country settlements with which we were in correspondence in nearly forty (out of fifty) provinces of European Russia and which had been slowly built up during the last two years; finally, our workers’ groups at St. Petersburg and our four different centres for propaganda amongst workers of the capital—how could we abandon all these without having found men to maintain our relations and correspondence? Serdukóff and I decided to admit to our circle two new members, and to transfer the business to them. We met every evening in different parts of the town, and as we never kept any addresses or names in writing—the smuggling addresses alone had been deposited in a secure place, in cipher—we had to teach our new members hundreds of names and addresses and a dozen ciphers, repeating them over and over, until our friends had learned them by heart. Every evening we went over the whole map of Russia in this way, dwelling especially on its western frontier, which was studded with men and women engaged in receiving books from the smugglers, and the eastern provinces, where we had our main settlements. Then, always in disguise, we had to take the new members to our sympathizers in the town, and introduce them to those who had not yet been arrested.
The thing to be done in such a case was to disappear from one’s apartments, and to re-appear somewhere else under an assumed name. Serdukóff had abandoned his lodging, but, having no passport, he concealed himself in the houses of friends. I ought to have done the same, but a strange circumstance prevented me. I had just finished my report upon the glacial formations in Finland and Russia, and this report had to be read at a meeting of the Geographical Society. The invitations were already issued, but it happened that on the appointed day the two geological societies of St. Petersburg had a joint meeting, and they asked the Geographical Society to postpone the reading of my report for a week. It was known that I was going to present certain ideas about the extension of the ice cap as far as Middle Russia, and our geologists, with the exception of my friend and teacher, Friedrich Schmidt, considered this speculation of far too reaching a character, and wanted to have it thoroughly discussed. For one week more, consequently, I could not go away.
Strangers prowled about my house and called upon me under all sorts of fantastical pretexts: one of them wanted to buy a forest on my Tambóv estate, which was situated in absolutely treeless prairies. I noticed in my street—the fashionable Morskáya—one of the two arrested weavers whom I have mentioned, and thus learned that my house was watched. Yet I had to act as if nothing extraordinary had happened, because I was to appear at the meeting of the Geographical Society the following Friday night.
The meeting came. The discussions were very animated, and one point, at least, was won. It was recognized that all old theories concerning the diluvial period in Russia were totally baseless, and that a new departure must be made in the investigation of the whole question. I had the satisfaction of hearing our leading geologist, Barbot-de-Marny, say, ‘Ice cap or not, we must acknowledge, gentlemen, that all we have hitherto said about the action of floating ice had no foundation whatever in actual exploration.’ And I was proposed at that meeting to be nominated president of the Physical Geography section, while I was asking myself whether I should not spend that very night in the prison of the Third Section.