When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their factory to work as a working girl, and noticing his superior qualities began giving books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to talk and explain his position to him, and how to remedy it.  When the possibility of freeing himself and others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the injustice of this state appeared more cruel and more terrible than before, and he longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for the punishment of those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel injustice.  Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the acquirement of knowledge.  It was not clear to him how knowledge should bring about the realisation of the social ideal, but he believed that the knowledge that had shown him the injustice of the state in which he lived would also abolish that injustice itself.  Besides knowledge would, in his opinion, raise him above others.  Therefore he left off drinking and smoking, and devoted all his leisure time to study.  The revolutionist gave him lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the facility with which he took it in, surprised her.  In two years he had mastered algebra, geometry, history—­which he was specially fond of—­and made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and especially socialistic literature.  The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratieff with her, forbidden books having been found in their possession, and they were imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda Government.  There Kondratieff became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still firmer in his socialistic views.  While in exile he became leader in a large strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of the director.  He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia.

His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views of the existing economic conditions.  Having seen the absurdity of the religion in which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and at first with fear, but later with rapture, freedom from it, he did not tire of viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious dogmas, as if wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been practised on him.

He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and, like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and halting stations, which enabled him to continue his studies.  He was now studying the first volume of Karl Marks’s, and carefully hid the book in his sack as if it were a great treasure.  He behaved with reserve and indifference to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as unanswerable truths.