Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VII
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
1872 Prince Krapotkin began to work among the artisans
in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. In the beginning
of the seventies, young men and women of the families
of the highest rank, by hundreds and hundreds, “went
out among the people,” labored there twelve, fifteen
hours a day in the fields, in the workshops, in the
factories, in order to propagate modern ideas everywhere
among the common people. But in the provincial and
country towns, where everything is spread by rumor,
the presence of a propagandist could not possibly long
be a secret to the police and government. One arrest
followed another. Not less than thirty-seven provinces
were declared, in a government circular of 1875, to be
“infected by socialistic contagion.” In 1876 and 1877,
the whole of this generation, as it may be called, of
youth with their minds in a ferment was mowed down.
All the prisons were full of political offenders, and it
was constantly found necessary to build new ones.
Mere suspicion led to imprisonment. A letter from a
friend who had “gone out among the people,” an answer
from a child twelve years old, who, when interrogated
by the police, did not know what he said from fright,
was quite sufficient. So also in 1876 to 1878, in the
different Russian cities, on the chance occasion of a
funeral or a death sentence, there were demonstrations
and street revolts, the outbreak of passionate despair,
meaningless in so far as they could never reach the
proportions of a general revolt, and invariably
immediately suppressed by the military. The uselessness of
all such demonstrations produced the result that a party
of terror was finally formed, which determined to work
by single attempts at assassination.
The earlier propaganda made its exit at the end of
the seventies with the 193 trial. These unfortunate
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
