Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin

When I joined the Circle of Tchaikovsky, I found its members hotly discussing the direction to be given to their activity. Some were in favor of continuing to carry on radical and socialistic propaganda among the educated youth; but others thought that the sole aim of this work should be to prepare men who would be capable of arousing the great inert laboring masses, and that their chief activity ought to be among the peasants and workmen in the towns. In all the circles and groups which were formed at that time by the hundred, at St. Petersburg and in the provinces, the same discussions went on; and everywhere the second programme prevailed over the first.

If our youth had merely taken to socialism in the abstract, they might have felt satisfied with a simple declaration of socialist principles, including as a distant aim "the communistic possession of the instruments of production," -- and in the meantime they might have carried on some sort of political agitation. Many middle-class socialist politicians in Western Europe and America really take this course. But our youth had been drawn to socialism in quite another way. They were not theorists about socialism, but had become socialists by living no better than the workers live, by making no distinction between "mine and thine" in their circles, and by refusing to enjoy for their own satisfaction the riches they had inherited from their fathers. They had done with regard to capitalism what Tolstoy urges should be done with regard to war, when he calls upon the people, instead of criticising war and continuing to wear the military uniform, to refuse, each one for himself, to be a soldier and to bear arms. In this same way our Russian youth, each one for himself or herself, refused to take personal advantage of the revenues of their fathers. It was, of course, necessary that they should identify themselves with the people. Thousands and thousands of young men and women had already left their houses, and now they tried to live in the villages and the industrial towns in all possible capacities. This was not an organized movement: it was one of those mass movements which occur at certain periods of sudden awakening of human conscience. Now that small organized groups were formed, ready to try a systematic effort for spreading ideas of freedom and revolt in Russia, they were forced to carry on that propaganda among the masses of the peasants and of the workers in the towns. Various writers have tried to explain this movement "to the people" by influences from abroad: "foreign agitators are everywhere," was a favorite explanation. It is certainly true that our youth listened to the mighty voice of Bakúnin, and that the agitation of the International Workingmen's Association had a fascinating effect upon us. But the movement had a far deeper origin: it began before "foreign agitators" had spoken to the Russian youth, and even before the International Association had been founded. It was beginning in the groups of Karakozov in 1866; Turgenev saw it coming, and already in 1859 faintly indicated it. I did my best to promote that movement in the Circle of Tchaikovsky; but I was only working with the tide which was infinitely more powerful than any individual efforts.