FIRST DAYS AT KARA—FRIENDS OLD AND NEW

We entered a long, dimly-lighted corridor. Close to the door stood a man in convict dress beside a mighty chest. “Good day, Martinòvsky!” said I; for although I had never seen him before, I knew from our comrades’ descriptions that he, being stàrosta, remained on duty from early morning till late evening by this big chest, which was the prisoners’ larder. He looked a little surprised at the greeting, but on our announcing our names a pleasant smile lighted up his grave features, and he shook hands with us warmly.

“Deutsch goes to No. 2 and Tchuikòv to No. 4!” The gendarme’s announcement interrupted us. A door was opened, and I stepped into my room. It was a large apartment; a long table and benches stood in the middle; round three walls ran the bed-shelves; there was a huge stove, and three great windows admitted plenty of light.

My new companions welcomed me warmly. There were fifteen men in the room, two of them—Sundelèvitch and Paul Orlov—being already known to me from of old. The first question to be settled was where my sleeping-place should be, and it was decided that I should lie next to Sundelèvitch, which meant that Starinkyèvitch, whose place this had been, must find room elsewhere. I found later that it was a great sacrifice this comrade had made for me, for Starinkyèvitch was thereby separated from his friend Martinòvsky. In a room where so many men lived constantly crowded together, the only possibility of close 210intercourse and the sharing of intimate thoughts between two friends was when they lay side by side on the bed-shelf, and it was only subsequently that I found out what significance this had in our situation.

When we arrived, supper was already over, but we were given each a glass of tea with a tiny scrap of sugar, and a piece of black bread. I was overwhelmed with questions, and was made to tell all about my arrest, my adventures, and what was going on in Russia. We chattered, joked, and laughed as only the young can, for except Berezniàk and Dzvonkyèvitch, who were forty and forty-five respectively, we were all between the ages of twenty-four and thirty. I had an odd feeling, as if after a long absence I found myself once more in an intimate family circle. Time flew, and it was late at night before I lay down to sleep, spreading on the wooden boards of the bed-shelf a little mattress that I had brought with me. My journey from Moscow had lasted seven months; I was sick of moving about, and now experienced a real feeling of comfort at the idea of having come to anchor for years.

I had been rejoicing much beforehand at the prospect of meeting in Kara my old friend Jacob Stefanòvitch,[78] 211from whom I had last parted four years ago, in Switzerland. He had then returned to Russia, had been arrested in February, 1882, convicted in the “Case of the Seventeen,” and sentenced to eight years’ “katorga.” He had been two years in Kara before my arrival. As he was lodged in another room I could only pay him a flying visit that evening, for soon after our entrance the rounds were made and the doors all locked for the night. Next morning, as soon as the rounds had been made and the roll-call got over, I called to the gendarmes through the peephole in our door, and made them take me to No. 1 room, where Stefanòvitch was. During the daytime we were permitted to go from one room to another—a privilege obtained by the “politicals” only after a long, hard fight, although in the criminals’ prison the doors of the rooms had never been kept locked by day.

In No. 1 there were also sixteen men, that being the complete number; and now that we had arrived every room was full. After greeting the comrades here and chatting with my friend, I visited all the other rooms. Of course, the advent of a new-comer is a great event in the prison, and is generally expected beforehand, for notwithstanding all official precaution, a good deal of intelligence from without finds its way through the walls. The arrival is awaited with the greatest impatience, as may be imagined; and for a few days the monotony of the life is enlivened by the new-comer’s tidings of the world in general and of the revolutionary movement in particular.

Not only had I much to tell, but I was much interested in learning the views of my comrades, though all that I 212heard was not entirely to my liking. I recollect a conversation I had with an old acquaintance, Volòshenko,[79] who passed for a very intelligent man. He had been arrested at Ki?v in 1879, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude, afterwards increased by eleven years more in consequence of an attempted escape. When I spoke of the new tendencies in the Russian revolutionary movement, and mentioned that a Socialist group had been formed calling itself the “League for the Emancipation of Labour,” and professing the Marxian views held by the German Social Democrats, Volòshenko seemed highly amused.

“Social Democrats in Russia! That’s a comical idea! Who are these people?”

“You see one of them before you,” I replied.

Volòshenko and many others in the room stared in blank astonishment. Had I announced myself a follower of the prophet Mahomet they could scarcely have been more surprised. The ideas of Karl Marx were at that time but little known in Russia. It was indeed thought one’s duty to read the first volume of Das Kapital, which had appeared in a Russian translation, and it was usual to find educated people in European Russia recognising Marx’s services to the science of political economy; but in Kara they had not progressed even so far. As to the philosophical basis of Marx’s theory of Socialism practically nothing was known; nevertheless it was rejected, partly owing to the influence of Eugene Dühring, partly to that of the Russian author N. Mihailovsky, and finally on account of a dictum of so-called “sane common sense” that Marx’s ideas were quite inapplicable to Russia. This last was Volòshenko’s contention, fortified, however, by no personal knowledge of Marx’s writings.

I was in a position to give more than verbal tidings of the new tendency. We had succeeded, despite all official scrutiny, in smuggling various prohibited writings into the prison, and among them the first publication of our group, 213Plehànov’s Socialism and the Political Struggle. For a long time no forbidden literature had penetrated to Kara; the excitement was great, and the new material for thought was seized on with avidity. I was very anxious to discover Sundelèvitch’s attitude towards this problem, for in the old days, when we were nearly all Terrorists, he was considered as more or less of a Social Democrat—at any rate, he had been known to approve of the German development on those lines, so far as that country was concerned. We had been acquainted in 1878, when he had in charge the transport of forbidden literature for the Zemlyà i Vòlya (Land and Liberty) group; and he had made use of his special experience in such illegal traffic to get Stefanòvitch and myself safely across the frontier after our flight from Ki?v prison. At that time we had had many hot discussions with Sundelèvitch over the methods of conducting our struggle in Russia; for I was then a decided opponent of the Social Democrats, and as a Terrorist and “Naròdnik” (i.e. member of the party whose object it was to organise revolts among the peasants) held the peaceful tactics of German Socialists to be utterly ineffectual—naturally, therefore, I would have all the more scouted the idea of introducing them into Russia. Sundelèvitch, on the contrary, did not believe in “the People,” and thought agitation among the Russian working-classes quite futile. In his opinion the first thing to do was to fight for political freedom; and then, as soon as that was obtained, to resort to the constitutional methods of the German Social-Democratic party. Consequently, he did not join the terrorist party till it began its political activity in 1878; and he was one of the first to enunciate the idea that its methods were only temporarily adopted because they offered the sole possible means in Russia of overthrowing the existing political order. He was one of the most energetic in organising terrorist conspiracies, and the party owed much to his help in carrying through their active work; he was invaluable in striking out the most 214effective and practical suggestions. He was arrested quite by chance in a public library in Petersburg during the autumn of 1879, and was prosecuted in the “Case of the Sixteen,” when Kviatkòvsky and Pressnyàkov were sentenced to death, and he himself to lifelong penal servitude.

I had been thinking much about our former arguments, for I had since been converted to the views Sundelèvitch then advocated, and I now hoped to find a kindred spirit in him. Even on purely personal grounds I desired it; for when a man is convinced of the rightness of his own plan of action, it must be irksome to live for years with others who, while sharing his principles, differ entirely as to the best means of carrying them out; and this is especially so when what one holds most sacred is in question, no matter how tolerant one may be. I earnestly hoped I should not be alone in my views, and I could have asked for no better friend than Sundelèvitch, who was incomparable as a comrade—one of the finest natures I have ever known, unselfish, trustworthy, judicious.

As I now lay beside him during the long evenings we talked of our common friends still in freedom and fighting for the cause, of the victims of that fight who had died the death of heroes or were languishing in Schlüsselburg; but instinctively I shrank at first from touching on theoretical subjects, dreading that we might be out of sympathy, for I soon heard that he was no longer of his old way of thinking. Like many others during their first years of imprisonment, Sundelèvitch experienced a reaction; he absolutely threw over the Marxian doctrine, and would not admit the economic teaching of Das Kapital to be sound. In time we fought many a tough battle on this head, my friend declaring that for Germans Social Democracy might do, but that such ideas would never effect anything in Russia.

With my other friend, Stefanòvitch, I had less opportunity for conversation, as we inhabited different rooms; 215but to him also my opinions came unexpectedly, and seemed strange and incomprehensible. When we had parted four years back we had been quite at one, and he had remained, as he was then, half Naròdnik, half Terrorist; while I, having thoroughly assimilated the new ideas, had, with some other companions, founded the Social Democratic organisation, Tchòrny Peredyèl (Redivision of the Land). He learned this now for the first time, and could not tell off-hand how he should regard it; but being unusually thoughtful and far-seeing, he appreciated the importance of the change that had come over the opinions of his comrades in the struggle. He grasped the trend of the new doctrine, and trie............