The schools and banks were closed, all the honest people of our county and the whole province of Tchernigoff were placed under police surveillance, many were exiled to the northern provinces and me they began to persecute.
I clearly perceived then that the government of Alexander II introduced reforms only on paper, only seeking to create the impression that it desired to better the life of the population. Actually, however, the government wickedly persecuted every attempt to help the laboring people to emerge from the darkness into light, to approach knowledge, to proclaim its own rights.
It was clearly evident, not only in our locality but throughout the whole of Russia, that the government feared knowledge in the people and endeavored to keep it in a state of rightless slavery. This compelled me to seek another path, another way of working in the interest of my beloved people, and toward the end of the '60s I decided to go to Russia in search of men with whom to start an illegal struggle, i.e., a movement forbidden under the Czar's laws.
For more than two years I wandered about Russia, ever looking for some revolutionary centre, which could exist only as an underground organization. Gradually, by changing one kind of work for another, I penetrated into a rather large organization, which had decided to get personally in contact with the people, not through books and proclamations.
At that time the difference between the sea of peasants and the little lake of intellectuals was so great that they were, entirely ignorant of one another. Besides, the moujik's suspicion of any person bearing the appearance of a "gentleman" was so deeply rooted that it was impossible to carry to the peasant and labor midst any message and retain the dress of the gentry. It was necessary to change the appearance from foot to head, to look a perfect plebeian.
I put on a peasant dress, threw a bag across my shoulder, obtained a stick and set out to tramp. Although I did not tramp the country long, only one summer, yet I succeeded in visiting many villages, and nowhere did I meet with distrust. The peasants eagerly listened to my talks and those of my comrades. We told them that the land ought not belong to the few; that it should be placed in possession of all the people, of all those who wish to toil on it; that there ought not be such a system which permits the selling, mortgaging, buying and renting of thousands of acres by a few hands, while people were starving nearby because they lacked the land from which to obtain bread. The peasants would agree with us and also say that the land ought to belong to those who labor on it, who till it.