The policeman now tried to take me by the arm, and so conduct me through the streets, but I hotly resisted such treatment, declaring that I had committed no crime, and that he had no possible justification for putting me in such a position.
We arrived at last at the House of Detention. Here I was searched again, and for the first time since my arrest was questioned by an official as to my personal identity.
My detective soon appeared, bringing the lady, who, weeping bitterly, protested her absolute innocence, and indignantly demanded the explanation of such an insult. Coming on the top of all my own experiences since my arrival in Freiburg this scene put me into a state of fury.
“What is all this?” cried I to the police officer. “How can you take upon yourself to insult this lady? I repeat again that I do not know her; she is not my wife, and I have never set eyes on her in my life before.”
“Well, we shall see about that. It is my business. It is no affair of yours whom we arrest,” declared he; and I thought to myself, “This is a nice state of things! We might as well be in Russia.”
I was then told to follow a warder, who took me up to the first floor. The lock of a cell-door turned, grating, and I found myself installed in the Grand-Ducal prison of Baden.
When the warder had withdrawn with his lantern absolute silence reigned, and the chamber was perfectly dark. Lights were not allowed here either in the cells or passages. I took my bearings as well as I could, groping along the walls, and, having found a bed, I lay down fully dressed as I was. My mind was in a state of chaos; I could follow no clear train of thought, nor form any conclusions about what had occurred. The sense of fate weighed me down; my strength seemed broken. Sinister dreams left me no peace all night, and consequently I awoke from slumber in a dazed condition, not knowing where I was or what had happened to me. When at last with an effort I realised my position, despair seized on me. Extradition to Russia stared me in the face; I could not banish the fear of it. True, at that time there was no extradition treaty between Germany and Russia which applied to political refugees.[[3]] But I had special reasons for fearing that I might be treated exceptionally; and that the significance of my position may be clear to the reader, I must now give some details of my earlier career.
In 1874, just ten years before the events described above, as a youth of nineteen I had joined the “Propagandist movement,”[[4]] which at that time engrossed a great number of young students throughout Russia. Like most of the young Propagandists, I was led to this chiefly by sympathy with the sufferings and endurance of the people. According to our views, it was the sacred duty of every reasonable and upright human being who really loved his country to devote all his powers to the object of freeing the people from the economic oppression, the slavery, the barbarism, to which they were subjected. The young generation, always most prone to pity the misfortunes of others, could not remain indifferent to the miserable situation of the newly enfranchised serfs. An entire social revolution in Russia appeared to the Propagandists the sole means of altering the existing wretched material conditions, and of removing the heavy burden on the people; following, therefore, the teaching of the Socialists of Western Europe, they set before themselves as their ultimate object the abolition of private property and the collective ownership of the means of production. The Propagandists felt entirely convinced that the people would instantly embrace their ideas and aims and join them at the first appeal. This belief was an inspiration to them, and spurred them to unlimited self-sacrifice for the idea that possessed them. These youths and girls renounced without hesitation their previous social position and the assured future that the existing order of things offered them; without further ado they left the educational institutions where they were studying, recklessly broke all family ties, and threw their personal fate into the balance, in order to live entirely for the idea, to sacrifice themselves without stint for the idea, to make every faculty and possibility serve in the sacred cause of the people’s deliverance. Any personal sacrifice seemed to these young enthusiasts scarcely worth speaking of when the great cause was in question. The common ideal, the common aim, and the enthusiasm of each individual drew the Propagandists together into one great family, linked by all the ties of affection and mutual dependence. Fraternal relations of the most affectionate intimacy grew up among all these young people; a complete altruism governed their actions, and each was prepared for any sacrifice on behalf of another. Only in great historical moments, in the time of the early Christian martyrdoms, and the founding of religious sects, have proselytes manifested such personal devotion, such exalted feeling.[[5]]
In this elect band, however, there were found (as has happened in every such movement) individuals not capable of this unselfish fervour; there were among them some paltry spirits, and even some who proved traitors. Certainly the number of these latter was infinitesimally small; but the history of revolutionary movements shows sufficiently that hundreds of the most able secret or public agents of a government can never do a tithe of the harm to a secret society that can be effected by a single traitor in its own ranks. In this manner did treachery become pregnant with evil results for the Propagandists, and it gave to the movement a character it might otherwise never have developed. Early in the year 1874 the young revolutionists, men and women, went out “among the people,” according to the plan they had formed; they distributed themselves among the villages, where they lived and dressed like peasants, carrying on an active Socialist propaganda. But scarcely had they begun operations when treachery made itself apparent; two or three of the initiated denounced the organisation, and delivered over hundreds of their comrades to the authorities. Searches and arrests took place without number; the police pounced on “guilty” and innocent alike, and all the prisons in Russia were soon filled to overflowing. In this one year more than a thousand persons were seized. Many of them suffered long years of imprisonment under the most horrible conditions, some committed suicide, others lost their reason, and in many cases long terms of incarceration resulted in illness and premature death. Under these circumstances the reader can conceive the bitter hatred kindled in the ranks of the Socialists against the traitors who had sacrificed so many lives. The knowledge of the victims’ terrible sufferings would naturally incite their friends to avenge them; inevitably, too, the thought would arise of punishing treachery, in order to put a stop by intimidation to the trade of the informer. But the Propagandists were in the highest degree men of peace, and it was not easy for them to harbour thoughts of violence. When such ideas were first mooted, they long remained only subjects of discussion.