Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin

The years 1857-–-61 were years of rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia. All that had been whispered for the last decade, in the secrecy of friendly meetings, by the generation represented in Russian literature by Turgenev, Tolstoy, Hérzen, Bakúnin, Ogarev, Kavélin, Dostoévsky, Grigoróvich, Ostróvsky, and Nekrasov, began now to leak out in the press. Censorship was still very rigorous; but what could not be said openly in political articles was smuggled in under the form of novels, humorous sketches, or veiled comments on west European events, and everyone read between the lines and understood.

Having no acquaintances at St. Petersburg apart from the school and a narrow circle of relatives, I stood outside the radical movement of those years -- miles, in fact, away from it. And yet, this was, perhaps, the main feature of the movement -- that it had the power to penetrate into so "well meaning" a school as our corps was, and to find an echo in such a circle as that of my Moscow relatives.