'There is no liberation without land.'
'You are like a diplomat at the Congress of Vienna,' Bakunin repeated to me with vexation, when we were talking afterwards with the representatives of the provisional Polish government in his room. 'You keep picking holes in words and expressions. This is not an article for a newspaper, it is not literature.'
'For my part,' observed Giller, 'I am not going to quarrel about words; change them as you like, so long as the main drift remains the same.'
'Bravo, Giller,' criNI Bakunin gleefully.
'Well, that fellow,' I thought, 'has come with his horses shod 17 'Slavn' is the Hussian for 'glory.' (Tr.)
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for any season ; he will not yield an inch in fact, and that is why he so readily yields in words.'
The manifesto was corrected, the members of the Zhond18
signed it. I sent it off to the printing-press.
Giller and his companions were fully persuaded that we represented the focus abroad of a whole organisation which depended upon us and would at our command join them or not join them.
For them what was essential lay not in words nor in theoretical agreements; they could always tone down their profession de foi by interpretations, so that its vivid colours would have altered, faded and vanished.
That the first nuclei of an organisation were being formed in Russia there was no doubt. The first fibrils, the first threads could be discerned with the naked eye; from these threads, these knots, a vast web might be woven, given time and tranquillity.
All that was true, but it was not there yet, and every violent shock threatened to ruin the work for a whole generation and to tear asunder the first lacework of the spider's web.
That is just what, after sending the Committee's letter to the press, I said to Giller and his companions, telling them of the prematureness of their rising. Padlewski knew Petersburg too well to be surprised by my words-though he did assure me that the vigour and ramification of the League of Land and Freedom went much farther than we imagin�d; but Giller grew thoughtful. 'You thought,' I said to him, smiling, 'that we were stronger? You were right. We have great power and influence, but that power rests entirely on public opinion, that is, it may evaporate all in a minute; we are strong through the sympathy with us, through our harmony with our people. There is no organisation to which we could say, "Turn to the right or turn to the left." '
'But, my dear fellow, all the same . . .' Bakunin was beginning, walking about the room in excitement.
'Why, is there?' I asked him, and stopped.
'Well, that is as you like to call it; of course, if you go by the external form, it is not at all in the Russian character, but you see . . . .'
'Let me finish ; I want to explain to Giller why I have been so insistent about words. If people in Russia do not see on your standard "Land for the Peasants" and "Freedom for the Provinces," then our sympathy will do you no good at all but will 18 The Polish provisional government. ( R.)
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ruin us; because all our strength rests on their hearts beating in unison with ours. Our hearts may beat more strongly and so be one second ahead of our friends; but they are bound to us by sympathy and not by duty!'
'You will be satisfied with us,' said Giller and Padlewski.
Next day two of them went off to Warsaw, while the third went off to Paris.
The calm before the storm came on. It was a hard, dark time, in which it kept seeming as though the storm would pass over, but it drew nearer and nearer. Then came the ukaz 'juggling' with the levying of recruits;19 this was the last straw; men who were still hesitating to take the final and irrevocable step dashed into the fray. Now even the Whites began to go over to the side of the rebellion.
Padlewski came again; the decree was not withdrawn. Padlewski went off to Poland.
Bakunin was going to Stockholm quite independently of Lapinski's expedition, of which no one thought at the time. Potebnya turned up for a brief moment and vanished after Bakunin. A plenipotentiary from 'Land and Freedom' came from Petersburg via Warsaw at the same time as Potebnya ; he described with indignation how the Poles who had summoned him to Warsaw had done nothing. He was the first Russian who had seen the beginning of the rebellion; he told us about the murder of the soldiers, about the wounded officer who was a member of the Society. The soldiers thought that this was treachery and began exasperatedly to beat the Poles. Padlewski, who was the chief leader in Kovno, tore his hair, but was afraid to act openly in opposition to his followers.
The plenipotentiary was full of the importance of his mission and invited us to become the agents of the League of Land and Freedom. I declined this, to the extreme surprise not only of Bakunin but even of Ogarev. I said that I did not like this hackneyed French term. The plenipotentiary was treating us as the Commissaires of the Convention of 1 793 treated the generals in the distant armies. I did not like that either.
'And are there many of you? ' I asked him.
19 In the autumn of 1 862 the Tsarist authorities issued an uka::. on the levying of recruits in the Kingdom of Poland, which was put into effect according to lists made up beforehand. The authorities tried by this means to put an end to the revolutionary movement in Poland. The conduct of the levy in January 1 863, caused the start of the rising. (A.S.)
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'That is hard to say: some hundreds in Petersburg and three thousand in the provinces.'
'Do you believe it?' I asked Ogarcv afterwards. He did not answer.
'Do you believe it?' I asked Bakunin.
'Of course ; but,' he added, 'well, if there arc not as many now there soon will be!' and he burst into a roar of laughter.
'That is another matter.'
'The essence of it all is the giving support to feeble beginnings; if they were strong they would not need us,' observed Ogarev, vo,·ho was always dissatisfied with my scepticism on these occasions.
'Then they ought to come to us frankly admitting their weakness and asking for friendly help instead of proposing the stupid job of being agents.'
'That is youth,' Bakunin commented, and he went off to Svo,·eden.
And after him Potebnya went off too. With heartfelt sorrow I said good-bye to him. I did not doubt for one second that he was going straight to dcstruction.2°
A few days before 13akunin's departure Martyanov came in, paler than usual, gloomier than usual ; he sat down in a corner and said nothing. He was pining for Russia and brooding over the thought of returning home. A discussion of the Polish rebellion sprang up. Martyanov listened in silence, then got up, preparing to go, and suddenly stopped in front of me, and said gloomily:
'You must not be angry with me, Alexander Ivanovich; that may be so or it may not, but, anyway, you have done for The Bell. What business had you to meddle in Polish affairs? The Poles may be in the right, but their cause is for their gentry, not for you. You have not spared us, God forgive you, Alexander lvanovich ; you will remember what I say. I shall not see it myself; I am going home. There is nothing for me to do here.'