Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Terror in Russia (1909).djvu/86



HAVE attempted to give in the preceding pages a correct statement of the violent repression which is going on now in Russia, since the concession of representative government, contained in the Manifesto of October 30, 1905, was nullified by an under-current of organised reaction. In this statement I have done my best to avoid anything that might be a distortion, or an exaggeration of facts, and yet the picture is so terrible that it is almost shaking one's faith in human progress.

Suffering and martyrdom are certainly unavoidable in every struggle for freedom. But the amount of suffering and cruel repression now prevalent in Russia surpasses everything that is known from the lessons of modern history.

Every nation is certainly bound to work out her liberty in her own way and with her own forces, however painful the way may be. But one of the greatest achievements of modern civilisation is precisely the feeling of intimate kinship among all nations. It is now impossible that one nation should suffer, as Russia suffers at the present moment, without these sufferings having their effect upon all the family of civilised nations and awakening among them a general feeling of solidarity. Despotism in one part of the world reacts upon all the races of the world. And when it takes such brutal and mediæval forms as it takes in Russian prisons and in the punitive expeditions, by means of which autocracy is maintained in the Russian Empire, all mankind feels the effect of such a return to the horrors of the Dark Ages.

To all those who realise the unity of mankind this exposure of the horrors of the present repression in Russia is sure to appeal.