Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin

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. Dmitri Kelnitz, Serghéi, and myself, in our sheepskins and with our peasant looks, passed unnoticed, and continued to visit the haunted ground. But Dmitri 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 Dmitri had to hunt every day for a place where he could spend the night in relative safety. "Can I spend 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 his neighborhood. " "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 the money. " But on principle Dmitri 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 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. Tchaikovsky was in the south, and we forced Dmitri 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 southwest 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.