"Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? … If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages. I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods … What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Variant translation: Whoever holds dear the future of communism cannot embark upon such measures. It is possible that no one has explained what a hostage really is? A hostage is imprisoned not as punishment for some crime. He is held in order to blackmail the enemy with his death. — As translated in Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution (1970) edited and translated by Martin A. Miller
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Peter Kropotkin
161 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Peter Kropotkin →
Related Quotes
"That we are Utopians is well known. So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and …"
"Oh, the beautiful utopia, the lovely Christmas dream we can make as soon as we admit that those who govern represent …"
"Have not prisons — which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices tha…"
"Once a German jurist of great renown, Ihering, wanted to sum up the scientific work of his life and write a treatise,…"
"It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We …"
"Ah, if men were those superior beings that the utopians of authority like to speak to us of, if we could close our ey…"
"What we do want is so to arrange things that every human being born into the world shall be ensured the opportunity i…"
"Has not experience demonstrated quite recently that Jack the Ripper performed his exploits under the eye of the Londo…"
"When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of m…"
"When we ask ourselves by what means a certain moral level can be maintained in a human or animal society, we find onl…"