Russian literatureKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
History
Russian literature
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Russian literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
The work of the poet OGARYÓFF (1813-1877) was not very large, and
his intimate friend, Hérzen, who was a great master in personal
characteristics, could say of him that his chief life-work was the
working out of such an ideal personality as he was himself. His private
life was most unhappy, but his influence upon his friends was very
great. He was a thorough lover of freedom, who, before he left Russia,
set free his ten thousand serfs, surrendering all the land to them,
and who, throughout all his life abroad remained true to the ideals of
equality and freedom which he had cherished in his youth. Personally,
he was the gentlest imaginable of men, and a note of resignation, in
the sense of Schiller’s, sounds throughout his poetry, amongst which
fierce poems of revolt and of masculine energy are few.
As to MIKHAIL BAKÚNIN (1824-1876), the other great friend of
Hérzen, his work belongs chiefly to the International Working Men’s
Association, and hardly can find a place in a sketch of Russian
literature; but his personal influence on some of the prominent writers
of Russia was very great. Suffice it to say that Byelínskiy distinctly
acknowledged in his letters that Bakúnin was his “intellectual father,”
and that it was in fact he who infused the Moscow circle, of which
I have just spoken, and the St. Petersburg literary circles with
socialistic ideas. He was the typical revolutionist, whom nobody could
approach without being inspired by a revolutionary fire. Besides,
if advanced thought in Russia has always remained true to the cause
of the different nationalities--Polish, Finnish, Little Russian,
Caucasian--oppressed by Russian tsardom, or by Austria, it owes this
to a very great extent to Ogaryóff and Bakúnin. In the international
labour movement Bakúnin became the soul of the left wing of the great
Working Men’s Association, and he was the founder of modern Anarchism,
or anti-State Socialism, of which he laid down the foundations upon his
wide historical and philosophical knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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