DIPLOMATIC REMINISCENCES BEFORE AND DURING THE WORLD WAR, 1911-1917 (EXCERPT)
- AUTHOR: A. Nekuludoff
- DATE: 1920.00.00
- ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: N/A
- SOURCE: Diplomatic Reminiscences Before and During the World War, 1911-1917, Chapter XXIV, 480-483
- NOTE: Translated from the French by Alexandra Paget
- ALTERNATE VERSIONS: N/A
It was quite natural after the Revolution had triumphed in Russia the convicts and political exiles of note should have agreed to meet together in the capital of the regenerated country and should have enjoyed an enthusiastic reception from their former associates. But it was difficult to understand -- for our Allies at least -- why in war time and when the journey between the West and Russia was so difficult, so long and so costly, we need have allowed the whole body and, alas! the riffraff also, of our revolutionary emigrants to come back to us from France, Switzerland, Italy? It would have been so easy and yet so rational to subsidise them liberally on the spot until the end of the war and the resumption of normal communications.
But it was just because those who were actually organising the Revolution needed to reinforce the most detestable elements amongst their clients and zealots. And above and before all things they wanted to welcome the Zimmerwaldians, the friends of the German Socialdemokratie. And when the British barred the way to the Lenins, the Trotskys and their staff, the Provisional Government was constrained to tolerate their arrival by Germany, to receive them ceremoniously and to allow their open and vehement propaganda of peace at any price.
I saw all this crowd of exiles passing through Stockholm, I made the acquaintance of a few amongst them, I heard a great deal of talk about others.
One of the first who passed through and stayed for one day in the Swedish capital was the celebrated Prince Kropotkin, a Revolutionist of the old camp, the spiritual heir of Bakunin, the head of the Anarchist school, the pillar of the former International, and with all that an eminent geographer and collaborator with Elisée Réclus.
I expected to find a peremptory, intransigent personage, airing the most extreme theories with great assurance. I saw before me a very polite old man, with the courtesy of a bygone age, exceedingly simple in manner but with the dignity of a gentleman of the old school, and the impetuosity of youth becoming apparent occasionally -- and just at the right moment -- through this modest exterior. A sympathetic current at once set in between us and we talked quite openly. At one moment, when the conversation had turned to the person of Nicolas II., I took up his defence as a man and did not think it necessary to conceal the sincere sympathy I still felt for him. Kropotkin's face darkened. "I do not agree with you in the least," he said. "From us he has only earned anger and contempt." "But for you it is quite another matter," I broke in; "'Thou hast not served him. From thine earliest youth thou hast thrown off his bloodstained fetters.' [1] And I have served him all my life, I have in no way found this service to be a reproach; on the contrary I was proud of it. So that if I did not take up the defence of my unfortunate ex-Sovereign now, I, too, should not deserve the esteem of the Russian people."
The old Revolutionist was silent for a few minutes, then allowed that from my point of view I was right.
A respectful crowd of Russian exiles, reporters, etc., were awaiting their turn to talk with the "great man"; meanwhile, in the modest room he was occupying, his wife, so good, so unaffected and such a perfect lady in her dignified simplicity, was busily packing into a small chest some remedies which might be needed on the journey by her adored man, who was old and often ailing after his long career of work, travels, dangers, prison.
The correspondent of a prominent Russian newspaper came to talk to Kropotkin in front of me. At one moment this gentleman -- who seemed sympathetic and to be possessed of sound principles -- touched on the question of a peace "without annexations and without indemnities" which had just been raised by the Zimmerwaldian clique and even by the neutral democratic Socialists. It was curious to see how the old man, with such a calm manner, started. "What? so that Germany should always have Alsace-Lorraine in her hands? So that the French frontier should still be as near Paris as it was before the war? But that is inadmissable, absolutely inadmissable. France could never breathe freely. And who, if not Germany herself, is going to pay for the ruins she has heaped up with joyous heart wherever her troops have passed? She is to pay for them. I am genuinely sorry for the German people, but they also have their share of responsibility and they must contribute by their work and by their money to the work of rightful reparation."
When I returned to see Kropotkin again later on in the day we, like the two good old Muscovites that we were, ended by reviewing our recollections of Moscow, our mutual friends, our relations, our acquaintances. Those who have read the very vivid memoirs of Prince Kropotkin know that he was brought up by a grasping and often brutal father in an atmosphere of revolting abuse of the serfdom which still existed then. I myself was fortunate enough to have been only about four years old when the ever-blessed hand of the Emperor Alexander II, swept away this blemish which was disgracing Russia; my parents had just left foreign parts and the diplomatic world, and they sought the society of people, refined like them, like them detesting vulgarity and courseness, having like them intellectual interests. Now Moscow society at that period possessed many person and many families with similar tastes. Consequently, my memories were infinitely brighter and softer than those of my host. But nevertheless this recalling of the past in its setting -- so original, so dear to every really Russian heart -- of old Moscow, established one more link between me and the old Revolutionist, the old gentleman who had become an Anarchist through reaction against the injustice, the cruelty, the exploitation which had embittered his soul from his earliest youth. I was sorry to part from this sympathetic, interesting and sincere man, with whom I had a great deal more in common than with many of my good friends in society or in my profession.
- Celebrated lines of Lermonteff's on the death of the Decembrist Prince Odoievsky. The poet speaks of the "great world" and of its chains; but he clearly means the whole Tsarinian régime and the somewhat cruel Emporer Nicolas I, to be understood by that.
Last Updated: 2008.12.10
