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From my childhood I have never sympathized with the dualism of sentiments and devotion. One may have a very complex character, one may admire the who… - Catherine Breshkovsky
" "From my childhood I have never sympathized with the dualism of sentiments and devotion. One may have a very complex character, one may admire the whole world and understand all the beauties contained in it; one may be happy to sympathize with every perfection of nature and art; and yet one must have along with all these riches an aim, a God, a virtue, or a principle, that will stand above all the rest. And while enjoying the luxury of life, one must be ready at every moment to perform one's duty towards the aim that stands over all. That is my ideal of a human being; and I must add that the more superior the aim chosen to stand highest is to other aims or ends of life, the more valuable is the person who has chosen it. (February 1913 letter, p255)
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About Catherine Breshkovsky
Yekaterina Konstantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaya (née Verigo; born 25 January [O.S. 13 January] 1844 – 12 September 1934), better known as Catherine Breshkovsky, was a major figure in the Russian socialist movement, a Narodnik, and later one of the founders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. She has been described as Russia's first female political prisoner. She spent over four decades in prison and Siberian exile for peaceful opposition to Tsarism, acquiring, in her latter years, international stature as a political prisoner. Also popularly known as 'babushka', Breshkovsky was the grandmother of the Russian Revolution.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskai︢a︡
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Yekaterina Konstantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaya
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Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya
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Yekaterina Verigo
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Additional quotes by Catherine Breshkovsky
"My father helped me to think," she says. "He was a man of broad, liberal ideas. We read together many books of science and travel. Social science absorbed me. By sixteen I had read much of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, and I knew the French Revolution by heart. I spoke French from babyhood, and my German governess had taught me German; and at that time the world's best thought was not garbled by the Russian censorship. Fired by such ideas, I saw the poor, degraded slaves around me, and longed to set them free. At first I believed that freedom could be reached without a radical change of government. No revolutionary spirit had yet been kindled. It was the first great era of the Liberals. The emancipation of the serfs was soon to take place; so too the introduction of trial by jury; and these promised reforms sent a social impulse sweeping through Russia. I was thrilled by the glad news. Filled with young enthusiasm, I opened a little school near our estate. I found the peasant an abject, ignorant creature, who did not understand even the meagre rights he already had. He could think only of his mud hut and his plot of ground. As for the government, he knew only that in peace he must pay money; in war, lives. The new rumors had kindled his old heart-deep hope of freedom. The twenty peasants in my school, like the millions in Russia, suspected that the proclamation had been hidden, and often went to the landowners demanding their freedom. At last the manifesto emancipating the serfs arrived." This was in 1861, when Catherine was seventeen. (from article by Abraham Cahan, p16-7)
I have had the same experiences with other peoples, whose psychology is strange to the whole body of our nation. How well it is that science is making a successful advance toward giving different countries a knowledge of each other! It is so dull to have only strangers around us in every place on earth, when we are brothers, all coming from one source The soul is the same, the habits are different. (October 1912 letter)
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