At that time, however—that is, in 1872—the circle had nothing revolutionary in it. If it had remained a mere circle of self-improvement, it would soon have petrified, like a monastery. But the members found a suitable work. They began to spread good books. They bought the works of Lassalle, Bervi (on the condition of the laboring classes in Russia), Marx, Russian historical works, and so on—whole editions—and distributed them among students in the provinces. In a few years there was not a town of importance in “thirty-eight provinces of the Russian Empire,” to use official language, where this circle did not have a group of comrades engaged in the spreading of that sort of literature. Gradually, following the general drift of the times, and stimulated by the news which came from Western Europe about the rapid growth of the labor movement, the circle became more and more a centre of socialistic propaganda among the educated youth, and a natural intermediary between members of provincial circles; and then, one day, the ice between students and workers was broken, and direct relations were established with working-people at St. Petersburg and in some of the provinces. It was at that juncture that I joined the circle, in the spring of 1872.
All secret societies are fiercely prosecuted in Russia, and the Western reader will perhaps expect from me a description of my initiation and of the oath of allegiance which I took. I must disappoint him, because there was nothing of the sort, and could not be; we should have been the first to laugh at such ceremonies, and Kelnitz would not have missed the opportunity of putting in one of his sarcastic remarks, which would have killed any ritual. There was not even a statute. The circle accepted as members only persons who were well known and had been tested in various circumstances, and of whom it was felt that they could be trusted absolutely. Before a new member was received, his character was discussed with the frankness and seriousness which were characteristic of the nihilist. The slightest token of insincerity or conceit would have barred the way to admission. The circle did not care to make a show of numbers, and had no tendency to concentrate in its hands all the activity that was going on amongst the youth, or to include in one organization the scores of different circles which existed in the capitals and the provinces. With most of them friendly relations were maintained; they were helped, and they helped us, when necessity arose, but no assault was made on their autonomy.
The circle preferred to remain a closely united group of friends; and never did I meet elsewhere such a collection of morally superior men and women as the score of persons whose acquaintance I made at the first meeting of the Circle of Tchaikovsky. I still feel proud of having been received into that family.
XIV
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
