The greatest excitement has prevailed in Russia for the last few weeks since it became known that representatives of the Zemstvos of thirty-four provinces of the Empire were going to meet at St. Petersburg in order to discuss the necessary reforms in the general political organization of the country. The very fact that such an authorization had been granted was equivalent to an invitation to discuss a scheme of a Constitution; and so it was understood everywhere. When the Zemstvo delegates were leaving their respective provincial towns they were sent off by groups of enthusiastic friends, whose parting words were: 'Return with a Constitution!' Their original intention was to make of their conference a solemn official gathering which would s... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
On the 5th of May last the celebration of the centenary of the French Revolution began by the commemoration of the opening of the States-General at Versailles, at the same date, in the memorable year of 1789. And Paris—that city which in January last so clearly manifested its dissatisfaction with Parliamentary rule—heartily joined in the festivities organized to celebrate a day when parliamentary institutions, crossing the Channel, went to take firm root on the Continent. Must we see in the enthusiasm of the Parisians one of those seeming contradictions which are so common in the complicated life of large human agglomerations? Or was it the irresistible attraction of a spring festival which induced the Parisians to rush in flock... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
PÚSHKIN: Beauty of form -- Púshkin and Schiller -- His youth; his exile; his later career and death -- Fairy tales: Ruslán and Ludmíla -- His lyrics -- "Byronism" -- Drama -- Evghéniy Onyéghin -- LÉRMONTOFF:Púshkin or Lérmontoff? -- His life -- The Caucasus -- Poetry of Nature -- Influence of Shelley -- The Demon -- Mtzyri -- Love of freedom -- His death -- Púshkin and Lérmontoff as prose-writers -- Other poets and novelists of the same epoch.PÚSHKIN Púshkin is not quite a stranger to English readers. In a valuable collection of review articles dealing with Russian writers which Professor Coolidge, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, put at my disposal, I found that in 1832, and...
A Factor of EvolutionMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Peter Kropotkin 1902 Chapter 1: MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS Struggle for existence. -- Mutual Aid -- a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. -- Invertebrates. -- Ants and Bees -- Birds: Hunting and fishing associations. -- Sociability. -- Mutual protection among small birds. -- Cranes; parrots. The conception of struggle for existence as a factor of evolution, introduced into science by Darwin and Wallace, has permitted us to embrace an immensely wide range of phenomena in one single generalization, which soon became the very basis of our philosophical, biological, and sociological speculations. An immense variety of facts: -- adaptations of function and structure of organic beings to their surroundings; physiological and anatomical evolution; intellectual progress, and moral development itself, which we formerly used to explain by so many different causes, were embodied by...
Since the publication of this book Englishmen have for the first time the opportunity of learning the life and ideas, the sufferings and wrongs of the people of Russia. The voiceless, unknown masses of cultivators of the soil, 83 percent of the whole population, have hitherto been vaguely pictured in English minds as a herd of coarse and brutalized semi-barbarians. In Stepniak's book they start into vivid reality as a nation of lovable and social human beings. Nay more, they appear before us as men whose social and personal development is in some directions wider than our own, men who bear a message of enlargement to the Teutons and Kelts of Western Europe. In his previous works Stepniak has shown the English public how the Russian governme... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John viii. 32). I have but little time left to live, and I should like before my death to tell you, working people, what I have been thinking about your oppressed condition and about those means which will help you to free yourselves from it. Maybe something of what I have been thinking (and I have been thinking much about it) will do you some good. I naturally turn to the Russian laborers, among whom I live and whom I know better than the laborers of any other country, but I hope that my remarks may not be useless to the laborers of other countries as well. Every one who has eyes and a heart sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor... (From : Anarchy Archives.)