Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism

http://www.ditext.com/yarmolinsky/yarframe.html

Road to Revolution:

A Century of Russian Radicalism

Avrahm Yarmolinsky

1956

For BABETTE

Foreword

This book, intended for the common reader as well as for the student, chronicles the Russian revolutionary tradition. The account covers a little more than a hundred years, from the first serious questionings of the established order to the emergence, toward the close of the past century, of two major rival parties committed to a violent break with the past. It was first in the eighteen-thirties that a few Russian heads were turned by socialist theory, and the present work naturally records its fortunes under three czars. The development of Populism, the native variety of Socialism, is a dominant theme. The mutinies and popular rebellions of earlier times, among them the jacqueries headed by the Cossack firebrands, Stepan Razin and Yemelyan Pugachev, in the reigns of Czar Alexis and Catherine the Great respectively, do not belong to the story.

Of necessity the socio-political setting, changing with the passage of time, has been sketched in. Only thus could the sequence of events, including those of the intellectual order, be intelligible. Cut off by the autocracy from political experience, with no opportunity to subject theory to the harsh test of practice, the radical movement was to a large extent a matter of doctrine and dogma, the product of minds given to pursuing ideas a outrance. Hence the close attention to ideological trends and to the men who were responsible for them or gave them currency. Throughout emphasis falls, however, on clandestine activities, whether executed or merely planned, whether they took the form of peaceful propaganda or political assassination.

The men and, from the sixties on, the women, behind these efforts and exploits include a variety of human types. They illustrate what Pascal called 'the glory and the baseness in man,' and, of course, a mixture of the two, as also of insight and dunderheadedness. Along with zealots and triflers, there are a few crackpots and many innocents. And there is the sinister premonitory shadow of a being less than human that lies across these pages. In the later chapters the centre of the stage is held by idealists, in some cases willing to use any means for the sake of the end, people who have learned to forego pity and are ready to immolate others as well as themselves in the service of what they believe to be just. The tale is a tragic one, though not without moments of comedy.

I would have liked to bring the story down to the epochal turning point of the year 1917. But this would have required another volume. Attention centres here upon early stirrings, initial attempts, and pioneer endeavors. The narrative follows the headwaters of the revolutionary current and comes to a stop just before the rivulets join to form a sizable, if divided, stream. Yet this survey of 'unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago' is not without relevance to what happened when the old order was finally overthrown, and should help to bring into sharper focus the Soviet phenomenon, if only because of the way it contrasts with all that the nineteenth-century radicalism dreamed of, stood for. The revolution has followed a course unforeseen either by the populists or their Marxist adversaries. Nevertheless there originated within the period examined some of the ways of acting and thinking that persisted into the current century and have influenced Soviet ideology and practice. Such, for example, is the concept of what may be called the telescoped revolution, involving seizure of political power and its dictatorial use to the end of enforcing socialism. Several Soviet historians have emphasized the debt Bolshevism owes to the cohort of populist propagandists and terrorists which went by the name of The People's Will. Indeed, it is doubtful if the doctrine of Leninism can be fully understood without taking account of the indigenous social-revolutionary tradition as it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Over the years, and especially since 1917, the literature on that subject has grown enormously. It is mostly in the nature of monographs and papers on particular episodes and personalities, also of documentary source material, such as police reports, prisoners' depositions, trial records, texts of underground publications issued by the various secret groups and societies. The present study seeks to be a work of synthesis based on much of that literature. Practically all the necessary research was carried out in the New York Public Library, which has an unusually ample Russian collection. Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made for the friendly services of my former associates in the Slavonic Division of the library. I also wish to thank Boris Ivanovich Nicolaevsky for allowing me to draw, now and then, on his intimate knowledge of the Russian revolutionary movement. The dedication is an inadequate token of my indebtedness to my wife, who gave me every kind of help in the writing of this book.

A word should be said about chronology. Unless marked NS. (New Style), the dates are according to the calendar which was used in Russia before 1 February, 1918 (Old Style); being of the nineteenth century, they are twelve days earlier than they would be if reckoned by the calendar now in general use. N.S. is omitted where it is clear from the context that the date is reckoned by the latter calendar.

A. Y.

September, 1956

Road to Revolution

Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, 1956.

Chapter 1

The Ancestor: Radishchev

In May, 1790, when Catherine II had been on the throne twenty-eight years, copies of a new book, entitled A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, found their way into one or two bookstores in the Russian capital. The few people who bought it must have gaped as they turned the pages of the bulky volume duly provided with the censor's imprimatur. Indebted to the technique of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, this medley of narrative, argument, invective, and homily, enlivened by thumbnail character sketches sharply drawn and an occasional digression into surprisingly frank autobiography, was least of all a rambling travelogue. It was a political tract of unprecedented boldness. Here spoke, in the rhetorical and tearful accents of the period, not only a sensitive heart that bled at the sight of suffering and swelled with indignation -- an indignation not free from self-righteousness -- at the spectacle of injustice, but also a mind committed to the ideas of a revolutionary age.

While informed with the spirit of Western Enlightenment, the book is deeply rooted in the native soil. Never before had the seamy side of Russian life been so boldly exposed, nor the vernacular used to voice sentiments so unbecoming a subject of the Empress and a member of the Orthodox Church. One chapter intimates that the gaudy facade of Catherine's rule conceals a corrupt and cruelly oppressive regime. By innuendo her favourites, notably Potemkin, are told off as a pack of greedy, incompetent sycophants, mercilessly plundering the people. Nor does the author mince words in denouncing the criminal negligence and venality of lesser officialdom. He is no gentler with those who wear a crown. Of Emperor Joseph II he writes: 'He was a king. Tell me, then, in whose head can there be more absurdities than in a king's?' His political ideal, government by law, is compatible with monarchy. But there is not a little in the book to suggest that the nation would be best off if the throne were to be swept away.

His animus against autocracy is most apparent in the ode entitled 'Liberty,' excerpts from which are inserted in the text. This clumsy and prolix piece -- in its entirety it runs to fifty-four ten-line stanzas -- celebrates freedom as the highest good, godlike in its creative possibilities. Apparently composed between 1781 and 1783, it was to some extent inspired by the American Revolution. The poet apostrophizes Washington as an unconquerable warrior guided by liberty. In lines omitted from the book he thus addresses the American States rejoicing at their newly acquired freedom: 'You jubilate while we suffer here, and all thirst for the same, the same.' If he could at least be buried in America! But no, let him be interred in his native land, so that youth, seeing his grave, may say: 'This man, who was born under the yoke of authority, and bore gilded fetters, was the first to prophesy freedom to us.'

The poet envisions a popular rising against a tyrannical king, his trial by the successful rebels and his death verdict. In this connexion the regicide Cromwell is praised for having taught the peoples to revenge themselves on rulers who violate the rights of man. An accusing finger is also pointed at the Church: in partnership with the State 'faith' oppresses society, the one seeking to enslave the mind, the other to obliterate the will.

The last stanzas are heavy with confused, dark augury, that brightens at the close. They have recently been read, not without some exercise of the imagination, as a foreshadowing of the Russian revolution. The Empire, the poet vaticinates, will go on expanding and, as a result, the bond uniting the several parts will weaken; then the country will pass through a great upheaval; fire and famine and civil strife will lay it waste and shatter it into fragments; they will reunite on a new basis, presumably as a federation, and under the aegis of freedom; this will be crushed by authority; in the fulness of time, however, the shackled people will rise, and on a day that will be 'the most elect among all days' liberty will shine forth.

In prose, and more soberly, the author calls for religious tolerance and the abolition of censorship, citing in this connexion the constitutions of four American states. He seems to be aware that equality before the law is not enough. 'Right, without power,' he remarks, 'has always been esteemed an empty word.' Indeed, on one occasion he mentions 'equality of possessions' as a desideratum. Both as a devotee of liberty and as an egalitarian he attacks the status and privileges of the nobility, particularly its right to own bondsmen. In fact, the main force of his protest is directed against 'the hundred-headed monster' of serfdom.

Solitary voices had called attention to the evils of this institution in the past, and the public prints that blossomed out briefly in the 1770's had helped to make it odious. The Freemasons, whose numbers had grown considerably since the lodges first appeared in the mid-century, had sought to humanize the treatment of the serfs. A Journey goes much further. Later abolitionists were to add nothing to the case against serfdom that is made out in the book. Episode upon episode builds up an accusing story of misery and oppression. 'Greedy beasts, insatiable leeches,' cries the author, 'what do we leave to the peasant? That which we cannot take away: air.' He offers no palliatives. He demands complete, if gradual, emancipation. The serfs must become fully-fledged citizens, owning the land they till.

How is liberation to be brought about? The author has an imaginary sovereign appeal to the owners to take the initiative in freeing the serfs. Morality, religion, the public good, the economic interest of the masters themselves are invoked in turn. There is yet another argument, which a czar will use in a later generation: if freedom does not come from above, it must come from below, the result of 'the very weight of enslavement.' Serfdom is bound to lead to a bloody uprising. The danger is imminent. 'Already Time has lifted his scythe awaiting an opportune moment. . . .' The author, far from being appalled by it, welcomes the prospect of a popular explosion, in which, he knows, the members of his own class stand to lose everything, including their lives. 'Oh, would that the slaves, burdened with heavy shackles, rose in their despair,' he exclaims, 'and with the irons that deprive 'them of freedom crushed our heads, the heads of their inhuman masters, and reddened the fields with our blood!' There are, in A Journey, other less bombastic passages which call to mind the motto coined by another rebel under different circumstances: 'War to the castles, peace to the huts!'

II

Either the censor approved the manuscript of A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow without looking into it, or he failed to grasp the meaning of what he read. In any event, he had permitted the release of a literary bomb.

It burst in a charged atmosphere, throbbing with the remote thunders of the French Revolution. We have it on the authority of the French Minister to Russia that the news of the fall of the Bastille made a great stir in Petersburg (now Leningrad), as it did in so many European centres. While it caused consternation at the court and in the mansions, it aroused enthusiasm among middle-class people and some scions of the gentry. Strangers embraced in the streets and congratulated each other. The event seems to have been the object of some sympathetic comment even in high places. One evening in the autumn of 1789 a secretary to the Empress arriving home -- his apartment was in the Winter Palace -- found the passage leading to his drawing-room flooded with the light of many candles. His daughter, a precocious child of seven, explained that she had arranged the illumination, a feature of all the parties at the Palace, to celebrate the capture of the Bastille and 'the freeing of those poor French prisoners.'

Citizen Edmond Genet, the new French charge d'affaires, reported to his government that the Russian soil held 'the seeds of true democracy.' He was amazed at the signs of friendliness that he met in many quarters. When it became known that he had been forbidden the Court, many Guard officers called on him to pay their respects. Early in 1790 a Moscow review carried the observation that the preceding year had inaugurated 'a new epoch for mankind.' Even in the provinces news from France was eagerly followed. An alarmed ecclesiastic remarked that due to the emotions 'inflamed by the example of France . . . free talk against the autocratic power' was 'well-nigh universal.' This was in 1790. Two years later a Russian statesman, writing to another Russian aristocrat, deplored the effect of the French revolution, adding: 'Not that it hasn't many partisans among us, as elsewhere.' There was no doubt exaggeration in these statements. Yet it is probable that the French upheaval did stimulate whatever political discontent existed in Russia at this time. At any rate, the more enlightened segment of the literate public, a very limited group indeed, briefly displayed a considerable concern with politics.

Small wonder, then, that A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow attracted attention. It aroused particular interest among what a contemporary called 'the riff-raff.' Before many weeks had elapsed the book was brought to the notice of the Empress. She read it. She was mortified, she was enraged. She covered the margins with angry comment, in ungrammatical Russian. The wretch takes a black view of everything, has an ungrateful heart, is trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs. He would rouse the people against their superiors. He calls war murder! He exudes French poison. The idea of bewailing the condition of the peasantry! Why, in Russia the lot of a serf owned by a good master is the best in the whole world. This pen-pusher has no regard for the laws, either human or divine, he threatens the foundations of the family, he is against the commandments. Nothing escapes his censure. If he contracted the pox in his youth, it was the Government's fault (the author blames the authorities for his disease because they sanction prostitution instead of trying to eradicate it). He extolls Cromwell and Mirabeau, 'who deserves not one, but several gibbets.' His dislike of monarchs stares you in the eye, he threatens them with the block. And he pins his hopes to the mutiny of the churls. Seditious, criminal pages!

A Journey had been completed, as the Empress was soon to learn, nearly a year before the fall of the Bastille. Also the single passage on revolutionary France in the text conveys a rather dim view of developments there. Noting that despite all the talk of liberty, the National Assembly has not abolished censorship, the author concludes that 'the French should weep, and mankind with them.' Nevertheless, Catherine decided -- and not without reason -- that the book exhibited the temper that was turning France upside down. It was an incendiary work, besides being an affront to her person. The police were ordered to destroy all copies they could lay hands on. As a result, of the six hundred and fifty copies printed, only seventeen are extant. Nor could the author go unpunished. His name did not appear in the volume, but it was easy to identify him.

He proved to be an official in charge of the Petersburg custom-house, a widower, just over forty, by the name of Alexander Radishchev. As a boy he had attended the exclusive Corps of Pages, which partook of the nature of an educational establishment. The pupils served as pages at the imperial court and were instructed in sixteen subjects, all of them taught by a single pedagogue, a Frenchman. In his middle teens he had been sent abroad by the Empress to study law and related subjects. He spent five intellectually profitable years at the University of Leipzig, reading the works of the French philosophes more assiduously than his German textbooks. Back home, he entered government service, but continued to keep abreast of events in the West and of European thought, particularly in the field of economics and politics. He did not shed his radicalism with his youth. He also found time for writing, and among other things gradually composed the chapters that made up A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow. It was run off on his own printing-press by his own serfs, private printing establishments having been permitted in 1783.

Radishchev was arrested and handed over to a prosecutor infamous for his manhandling of prisoners. The outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion: he was condemned to be beheaded. But he promptly and abjectly apologized, disclaimed any intention other than to acquire literary fame, and pleaded for mercy, protesting his loyalty to the Empress and enjoining his sons in his last will 'to love and respect her sacred person above all.' In view of his recantation, and because peace had just been concluded with Sweden, Catherine commuted the death sentence to a ten-year term of exile to Siberia. At the end of that time he re-entered the service, but soon committed suicide (in 1802, at the age of 53). In A Journey and elsewhere Radishchev had expressed his conviction that a man has the moral right to take his own life if he cannot live it with dignity.

III

After the Empress had finished reading A Journey, she concluded that, since the author's purpose was no less than to snatch the sceptre from the hands of the monarch, and since he could not carry out this design alone, he must have had partners in crime. Questioned on that point while under arrest, Radishchev's truthful reply was in the negative. He was rather unsociable, he added, and spent his leisure at home composing his 'vile book.'

If he had no accomplices, from the first his book was not without a symapthetic audience. As has been suggested, in the latter years of Catherine's reign her thirty-six million subjects included people infected with democratic ideas. Like so much else in Russian culture they were an importation from the West. French political literature, which played its part in throwing up barricades in Paris, was read and taken to heart in Russia. It helped to form the intellectual climate hostile to the established order. The Empress herself was instrumental in spreading European Enlightenment in her adopted country, particularly during those early years when it pleased her to play the part of a crowned philosopher. She opened schools, encouraged book publishing, sponsored a periodical press, though only as long as the satire in which it indulged remained innocuous. A peasant uprising at home and the turn events were taking in France helped to put an end to her flirtation with liberalism. The regime which had started out as an enlightened despotism ended as despotism tout court. But she could not wholly undo what was, in part, the work of her own hands.

The constituted authorities had nothing to fear from the men who were hospitable to Radishchev's idea and sympathized with the French Revolution. Intellectuals and semi-intellectuals born into the lesser nobility and the third estate, they were a tiny minority, impotent, nearly mute, alienated from their surroundings by education. Cruelly ill at ease, they could only dream of a distant future when, as they might have phrased it, man's natural right to liberty and happiness would be secured by laws grounded on reason and justice.

Some of the Russians staying in France temporarily succumbed to the revolutionary virus. The Russian ambassador in Paris complained that the priest attached to the embassy had got out of hand, the Rights of Man having gone to his head. Among those infected were several scions of the topmost aristocracy who were being educated abroad. Prince Dmitry Golitzyn, aged eighteen, is said to have taken part in the assault on the Bastille. Another raw youth, Count Paul Strogonov, heir to an immense fortune, who was in Paris with his French tutor early in the Revolution, joined the Club des Jacobins -- his membership certificate is dated 7 August, 1790. The idea of returning home, where he would have to breathe the air of despotism, horrified him. But, like Golitzyn, return he did, and eventually both made brilliant careers, one becoming a senator, the other -- Governor-General of Moscow.

One of the women who ruled Russia in the eighteenth century had had to cope with an opposition that stemmed from the top of the social hierarchy. In 1730 a group of great lords, men of ancient lineage who owned vast estates and thousands of 'souls,' attempted to force a charter on Empress Anna, limiting the sovereign's authority, guaranteeing certain basic rights to the population and giving the upper nobility a voice in the affairs of state. Had such a constitution been granted, it would in all likelihood gradually have developed along democratic lines, and the history of Russia and the world would have had a different complexion. But the aristocratic frondeurs failed, and by the time Catherine took power they had ceased to count. By and large, the upper classes, particularly the country squires, were as innocent of political ambitions as the infant third estate and the lower orders. They were solidly behind the autocratic regime, since it guaranteed their economic and social prerogatives, especially the exclusive right to live off the labour of the serfs. Catherine was at pains to formalize the corporative organization of the nobility as a privileged caste. In her reign the nobles had more reason than ever to feel that they were the backbone of the empire, the mainstay of the throne and, indeed, the salt of the earth.

As for the rural masses, they clung to the belief that the occupant of the throne, an anointed ruler, was their protector against the greed and inhumanity of the masters. By giving himself out to be Czar Peter III, a Cossack by the name of Pugachev succeeded in rousing a large segment of the peasantry against the landed gentry, and for two or three years (1773-75) a bloody jacquerie raged throughout the eastern section of European Russia. The rising was crushed, and the lot of the villagers only worsened. While professing liberal sentiments, the 'crowned Tartuffe in petticoats,' as Pushkin called Catherine, actually extended the status of bondsmen to hundreds of thousands of State peasants by making generous gifts of lands that they inhabited to her favourites, as did also her successor. By 1782 the nobility owned fifty-three per cent, of the peasant population. Completely at the mercy of their masters, and more thoroughly exploited than ever before, the serfs were in an ugly mood, but their resentment found vent only in an occasional outbreak of insubordination or the lynching of an exceptionally harsh landowner. Cowed and brutalized, the peasantry was wholly absorbed in the task of keeping above the starvation line.

In short, while abroad revolution was smashing the edifice of absolute rule and feudal privilege, in Russia the finishing touches had been put to it, and it stood there, complete and seemingly impregnable.

Radishchev was, no doubt, aware of this situation. He knew that he had been born too soon, that he would not live to see 'the elect among all days.' He was a near-republican in a semi-Oriental autocracy, a democrat in a squirearchy, an egalitarian in a caste society, an abolitionist in an age that witnessed the expansion of quasi-slavery, a nobleman with a bad conscience in a period when the nobility accepted its privileges as its rightful due. A humanitarian, he denounced the evils of industrialism, describing mines as 'graves in which thousands of men are buried alive.' What sustained him was a sense of the historic significance of his work, the stubborn belief that subsequent generations were certain to heed his message. Like one of the imaginary characters that he used as mouthpieces in his book, he thought of himself as 'a citizen of the time to come.' He concludes his project for the emancipation of the serfs with these words: This is not a reverie: the gaze penetrates the thick curtain of time concealing the future from our eyes; I look across a century.' He could have said with Saint-Just: 'I cast my anchor into the future and press posterity to my heart.'

The excesses of the French Revolution quickly alienated the sympathies of not a few who had begun by applauding it. For some of these enthusiasts devotion to liberty, equality, and fraternity was a passing indiscretion, for others -- a matter of fashion, like Jacobin hats and cravats. Besides, it was becoming distinctly unsafe for Catherine's subjects to show the slightest sign of anything but abhorrence for what she called the French grabuge.

The Empress watched the drastic course of the Revolution with glowing dismay. Her reaction to the news of the execution of the King, as set down by her secretary, was that 'it was absolutely necessary to exterminate everything French, down to the name.' This sentiment, expressed in French, dominated the reporting of French affairs in the Russian press. Not even moderately objective comment on them was tolerated. Although in official utterances Catherine insisted that her empire was immune to the French infection, her fury was not unmixed with fear. She saw conspirators everywhere and imagined that her life was in danger.

The sense of insecurity was not confined to her. On 13 November (N.S.), 1792, Count Vorontzov, Russian Ambassador to Great Britain, wrote to his brother that the world was witnessing a struggle to the death between the 'haves' and 'have-nots,' in which the latter were sure to win, and that Russia too was in the end bound to become a victim of this universal epidemic, perhaps within his son's lifetime. 'I have decided,' he concluded, 'to teach him a trade, that of a locksmith or a cabinetmaker. When his vassals tell him that they no longer need him and wish to divide his lands among them, let him at least be able to earn his bread with his own labour.' A week later the Count returned to the subject of the irresistible onward march of the 'democrats,' winding up dejectedly with the remark: 'Our turn, too, will come....'

Several pamphlets by native authors, directed against the Revolution, made their appearance, and one versifier told the French that they could have enjoyed lasting peace if, like the Russians, they had known how to obey. But the Empress was inclined to rely on police measures rather than on ideological weapons to combat the menace of subversion.

She had always disliked the Freemasons. Now they fell under suspicion as harbouring political designs and she visited her wrath upon them. In vain did they go out of their way to deny any connexion with Radishchev -- his book was dedicatedj to a prominent Mason -- protesting that criticism of the constituted authorities was against their principles. Their lodges were outlawed and their leader, Nikolay Novikov, clapped into jail without a trial and publicly branded as a charlatan. The charitable and educational institutions established by the Masons were disbanded and many thousands of volumes published under their auspices went up in smoke. Among them were copies of a Russian version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Book burning became a regular police occupation. The umbrageousness of the censors knew no limits. A new translation of Voltaire, the former protege of the Empress, was confiscated by her order, and so was a tragedy by a native playwright celebrating the republicanism of medieval Novgorod. The French residents of the capital were forced to take an oath which amounted to disowning their country, and Russians staying in France were ordered to return home. Whenever possible, French instructors were replaced by Swiss. The royalist emigres, received at Court with open arms, set the tone of polite society, in opinions as well as in sartorial matters. Rarely did a young gentleman display a Jacobin touch in his attire, just for the devil of it, and a lady was apt to wear her hair a la reine and a gown a la contre-revolution in black and yellow, the colours of the anti-French coalition.

Paul I, who succeeded his mother on the throne after her sudden death in November 1796, was at pains to undo her governmental system. But he continued to maintain the quarantine against the French contagion which she had instituted. His unbalanced mind was swayed chiefly by hatred of democratic principles. Russians were forbidden to go abroad, and the country was practically barred to all foreigners except aristocratic emigres. An embargo was placed on foreign literature and music. Everything that smacked of Jacobinism in men's or women's apparel was expressly banned. A special decree proscribed the use in print of certain words, such as 'citizen,' 'fatherland,' 'society.' In the five black years of Paul's reign his subjects had an opportunity to learn more than ever about the abuse of autocratic power, though not as much as their descendants were to be taught in our time.

Official rigours were mitigated by inefficiency. There were chinks in the iron curtain between Russia and the West, rung down by Catherine and reinforced by her son. Intellectual contacts with the outside world did not cease even under Paul. All the French tutors could not be eliminated. Nor were the Swiss who had replaced some of them immune to liberal ideas. One, an instructor in a military college, taught the cadets the Marseillaise. The reactionary regime of the last years of the century silenced but could not, of course, entirely choke off the opposition.

In the summer of 1793 one Fyodor Krechetov, described officially as a dangerous political criminal, was confined until further notice to a solitary cell in the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul, where Radishchev had spent some time before his deportation to Siberia. One charge against this retired lieutenant was that he had brought out a list of the works he had prepared for publication -- the man was a graphomaniac -- without submitting it to censorship. A more serious accusation was that he had been spreading subversive notions by word of mouth. It was alleged that he had made scurrilous remarks about the Empress and expressed the wish 'to overthrow the autocracy and make a republic or some such thing, so that all should be equal.' His head was full of plans for reforms, and on one occasion he had observed that if the authorities failed to put them into effect, 'a small band, uniting with the discontented, could do for the Government in the twinkling of an eye.' Krechetov and some of his acquaintances were readers of A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow.

Two manuscript copies of the book were in the possession of an army man arrested in 1794. Among his papers were found poems which, in a dithyrambic style resembling that of Radishchev's ode 'Liberty,' urged the people 'to crush the walls of autocracy.' Another military man was overheard saying that all monarchs were 'tyrants and evildoers,' and that all men were equal, which earned him exile to Siberia. This was in 1797. Two years later a small landowner of gentle birth was arrested in Kiev: he had been heard to say that people would be better off if they were 'free and equal,' like the French. In 1798 the police discovered a group of army officers stationed in the province of Smolensk who were meeting secretly to read forbidden books, which, in the words of the official report were certain 'to deprave weak minds and implant in them the spirit of liberty and sympathy with the French republic. . . . The books in question apparently included A Journey fron Petersburg to Moscow. Repeatedly Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was read aloud, and the scene of the murder of the Roman dictator elicited sanguinary remarks directed at the tyrant a home. In their letters the men liked to quote the phrase 'Brutus, thou sleep'st,' adding: 'while the fatherland is in irons. It is reported that a Major Potemkin volunteered to assassinate the Emperor.

A truly seminal work, Radishchev's book continued to be read, sub rosa, mostly in transcripts. More of these are extant than printed copies, and fabulous rentals are said to have been paid for them. The efforts of the authorities to consign Radishchev to oblivion were of no avail. Echoes of his ideas are discernible in the writings of several minor authors who were active at the turn of the century. Nor was his name unknown to the next two generations. But it was in mid-century, when the movement for political and social reform was taking shape, that the significance of his pioneering effort began to be widely appreciated. A reprint of his book appeared in London in 1858. Ten years later the ban on it was removed. Nevertheless, an expurgated edition of Radishchev's writings issued in Petersburg in 1872 was confiscated by administrative order, It was only early in the twentieth century that A Journey became freely accessible to the general public.

By that time his reputation as the first prophet and marty of Russian freedom was firmly established. He was honoured as the Ancestor by both liberals and radicals. The former rightly read A Journey as the first programme of Russian political democracy. The latter hailed it as the fountainhead of Russian revolutionary tradition and Radishchev as the progenitor of radical thought and feeling. They stressed the fact that he sanctioned the use of force for political ends, that he was a militant by temperament as well as by conviction, that he sided with the downtrodden and had a deep faith in the masses as the prime mover of history, that he was indeed the first swallow of the populist spring that was to come generations after his death.

On 22 September, 1918, a statue of Radishchev was unveiled in the garden of the Winter Palace in Leningrad. It was the first of the monuments erected, at Lenin's suggestion, in the capital of the triumphant revolution. In recent years Soviet scholarship has heaped extravagant encomia on Radishchev. One author has blithely declared that he was the greatest political thinker of the eighteenth century. He was actually an apt disciple of Western Enlightenment in its later phase. Convinced that no ruler will give up an ounce of his authority voluntarily, he invoked the arbitrament of force without, however, losing faith in the power of reason to deal with the sources of human suffering. He was clear-sighted enough to examine native realities in the light of his ideas and, his recantation notwithstanding, he was a pioneer in courageously speaking out against the twin evils of Russian life: autocracy and serfdom, although he knew that his was a voice crying in the wilderness.

Source URL: http://www.ditext.com/yarmolinsky/yar1.html

* * *

Road to Revolution

Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, 1956.

Chapter 2

The Decembrists: The Secret Societies

On the night of 23 March, 1801, Paul I was strangled in his bedroom by a group of titled conspirators. They acted on the pretext that the Czar's mental derangement was endangering the safety of both the dynasty and the State. It was the last of the palace revolutions to which the successors of Peter the Great owed the throne. Like those that went before, it left the regime intact.

At the outset, however, great changes seemed afoot. Grand Duke Alexander had been described by Citizen Genet as 'an ardent democrat.' When he became Czar he surrounded himself with a group of young reformers dubbed by the diehards 'the Jacobin gang.' Before long he had as his chief adviser, Speransky, a Francophile statesman of liberal views, who wished to see the country industrialized, modernized, brought within the orbit of European civilization. The French influence strongly reasserted itself. 'You who abhor everything that upsets the social order,' wrote one dismayed Russian aristocrat to another the year after Alexander's accession, 'will be overwhelmed, on arriving in Petersburg, to see there hundreds of young men who deserve to be adopted sons of Robespierre and Danton.' An increasing number of people were exposed to Western ideas. The influence of English liberalism and, to lesser extent, German romanticism, was beginning to make itself felt. At the same time a growing body of native literature was having a humanizing effect, which tended to render the iniquity of the system more distasteful to the literate public.

The Emperor revoked certain repressive measures, stayed the censor's hand, and encouraged popular education. He also planned to bestow civil rights on the citizenry by a special edict, which was to be Russia's Magna Carta, and in 1809 Speransky drafted something in the nature of a constitution. In the preamble to this document the serf-owners are described as 'a handful of parasites.' The adoption of some form of representative government would have gone far toward conciliating the progressive elements of the gentry and even the inchoate middle class, which was becoming aware of the political implications of its economic interests. Nothing came of these plans for reform, however. The instrument drafted by Speransky was laid on the shelf, as was also a charter, based in part on the constitution of the United States, which was prepared a decade later. As his people were not long in discovering, Alexander was not the man to lead them out of bondage. 'He would gladly have consented to set the whole world free,' an intimate said of him, 'on condition that the whole world gladly did his bidding.'

The Government's foreign policy served to alienate the affections of the agrarians, without winning over the industrialists. The alliance with France after Tilsit, and the adherence to the Continental System, ruined the country's export trade, which was confined to agricultural products, and brought the State to the verge of bankruptcy. Feeling ran so high among the nobility that it looked as though Alexander might end like his father. A memorial addressed to the Czar, which was circulated in manuscript, called attention to famine in the border provinces, high prices in the capitals, crushing taxes, onerous levies of recruits everywhere, universal indignation and despair.

At the outbreak of the so-called Patriotic War of 1812 the landed gentry was further disturbed by fears that the invaders were going to liberate the serfs, and rumours of such an eventuality seeped down to the peasantry. Here and there, in the occupied territory, serfs refused to obey their masters, saying that now they were under the French, they were free. But it soon became clear to all concerned that Bonaparte, like Hitler in the next century, had come not to liberate, but to conquer and pillage. As a matter of fact, in Poland and Lithuania the French crushed the peasant risings for which the war had been a signal. Speaking before the Senate on 20 December, 1812, about the Russian campaign, Napoleon said that he could have won over the majority of the people by proclaiming the liberty of 'the slaves' but, seeing the brutishness of that large class of the population, he had refrained from enacting a measure which 'would have doomed many families to death, devastation, and horrible tortures.' To his brother Jerome he wrote that many villagers had petitioned him to issue an emancipation decree, promising to take up arms for him, but that in the absence of a middle class which could direct and moderate the popular movement that such a step would have started, he felt that to arm slaves would have meant 'to deliver over the country to frightful evils.'

One of the petitions mentioned by Napoleon has recently been brought to light. Dated Ruza (a town in central Russia), 30 September, 1812, and purporting to come from 'The Russian Provinces,' it opens with the statement that it has been God's will to end serfdom among the Russian people with the aid of Napoleon's power, and concludes with assurances of allegiance to him. For the most part, however, the masses were hostile to the French and, as everyone knows, their passive resistance played a part in annihilating la Grande Armee.

The invasion laid waste the western and some of the central provinces and left in its wake much economic distress. The campaigns of 1813 and 1814, while adding to the lustre of Russia's arms, were a further drain on the country's resources and increased the heavy burden borne by the masses. There was a widespread feeling among the peasantry that their patriotic service to the country had earned them their freedom, and that they were going to receive it at the Czar's hands. He had another view of the matter. 'May our faithful peasants receive their reward from God,' the Emperor said in his manifesto of 30 August, 1814, adding that, as regards privately owned serfs, 'we are certain that our care for their welfare will be forestalled by their masters' solicitude for them.' The institution of serfdom remained intact in spite of the fact that its drawbacks were beginning to show up with the development of a money economy.

Within a few years Alexander's early liberalism had virtually vanished and was replaced by the reactionary principles of the Holy Alliance. The ambassador to England, Count Semyon Vorontzov, writing to his son at the beginning of the reign, described the period as 'a suspension of tyranny,' predicting that his compatriots, like the Roman slaves after the Saturnalia, would soon relapse into their normal condition of servitude. His words proved prophetic. The decade that followed the Napoleonic wars witnessed something like a reversion to the nightmare of Paul's reign. 'Emperor Alexander I,' wrote Lafayette to Jefferson on 20 December, 1823, 'is now the head of the European counter-revolution.'

As a matter of fact, even while Alexander had been consorting with 'the Jacobin gang,' he had also been depending upon his father's trusted servitor, Arakcheyev, who combined the brutality of a vicious martinet with the meanness of a small-minded bureaucrat. With this man as the all-powerful vizier, the country was again at the mercy of intolerant obscurantism. The press was terrorized, elementary schooling was curtailed, and on the pretext that education must be based on 'piety,' the universities were emasculated. The few half-hearted administrative reforms, instead of leading to a parliamentary regime, only strengthened the hands of an incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy. The changes were 'a drama of feebleness and insincerity,' to use the language of Jeremy Bentham when, in 1814, he turned down the invitation to assist the commission for the revision of the Empire's code of laws.

The Government did introduce one novelty: the so-called military settlements. These were initiated before the war, but it was only in the year marked by the formation of the Holy Alliance that they were started on their disastrous career in earnest. This was a pet scheme of the Czar's whereby, to the alarm of the other powers, he hoped to obtain an unlimited supply of cannon fodder, cheap. The maintenance of the armed forces swallowed up a large part of the State revenue -- fifty-four and a half per cent, of it in 1816 -- and the settlements are generally believed to have been an ill-conceived measure of economy. An attempt has recently been made by an American scholar to show that the Czar was inspired by high motives in launching this enterprise, that the colonies were to be 'spearheads of civilization,' a boon to a backward people. Whatever the intentions behind the venture, its results proved a source of unmitigated misery to the population immediately concerned.

The plan called for the ultimate transformation of most of the Crown peasants into a military caste from which alone combat personnel was to be drawn, and which in time was to include a quarter to one-third of the country's male population. The members of this estate were to live in newly established settlements which were eventually to occupy a wide zone stretching across the Empire, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Thither the bulk of the standing army was gradually to be transferred. Indeed, elements of several regular regiments were quartered in the settlements which actually materialized. In these communities all the males, from the age of seven up, wore uniform. The men were enrolled in battalions and received military training but, unlike ordinary soldiers, were expected to support themselves by agricultural work and handicrafts. The settlements formed a state within a state, with an autonomous administration and laws and courts of their own. They were a centrally planned, strictly regulated society, a nightmare Utopia of paternalism and regimentation. Life there was subject to a rigid army regimen, families living in barrack-like cottages, the men working in the fields in squads. Even the women's chores, such as heating the stove, were done at the signal of a drum. Marriages were arranged by official order, and expectant mothers had to report to headquarters when they felt birth pangs.

From the first, the military settlements were abominated by the liberal-minded and eyed with apprehension even by conservatives. 'In the nature of things,' wrote the Empress's secretary, 'sooner or later Russia will not avoid a revolution. . . . The conflagration will start with these notorious settlements.' The peasants involved resented them fiercely, and there were some outbreaks of violence. These were ruthlessly put down. Alexander is alleged to have said that the settlements would be maintained even at the cost of lining the road from Petersburg to Chudovo with corpses. It would have meant seventy-five miles of them. Although the enterprise proved a failure financially and otherwise, due in part to the corruption and incompetence of the administration, which was headed by Arakcheyev, the most hated man in Russia, the Emperor refused to abandon it. By the end of his reign, the settlements had a population of some three hundred thousand male souls.

II

Ground down as the masses were, they remained inert, their discontent finding expression in sporadic riots and killings of brutal serf owners, as also, obliquely, in religious dissent. The landed gentry clung to its privileged status and to the monarch as its guarantor. Of course, the squires grumbled, particularly those who exported much of their produce. For some time Russia had been the bread-basket of Europe, and in the 'twenties the fall of world prices of grain, caused in part by the English Corn Laws, hit the agrarians hard. Because of disturbances in the Balkans, Turkey closed the straits to Russian shipping, thus further reducing the export of cereals. The government was blamed for failing to promote the nation's vital interests. The State, which was the chief buyer in the domestic market, fixed the prices it paid at so low a level as to make its purchases almost confiscatory. The industrialists, too, had their grievances. These were caused chiefly by a policy that seesawed between protectionism and free trade. A manuscript pamphlet, purporting to come from the quill of a Moscow merchant, stated that business had no confidence in the government and complained that the merchants at home were treated worse than the Jews in Germany. Mme. de Stael had once told the Emperor that his character was his empire's constitution and his conscience the latter's guarantee. A few of his subjects, including some Petersburg shopkeepers, were now openly discussing the advantages of a more tangible kind of constitution, establishing representative government and civil liberties.

The opposition, such as it was, took shape, however, not in the nascent third estate, but in the Army and Navy command, particularly among the officers of the Guard regiments, the elite of the armed forces. Brought up by French tutors, many of these young aristocrats had been exposed to the humanitarian and liberal ideas of the age. The conflict with Napoleon gave their liberalism a nationalist tinge. During the War of 1812 the Army came to feel, as one general put it, that it served not the Emperor but the country. Actual warfare was a relief from the drudgery of drills which had been a fetish with Paul and was so with his son after him. Peace meant return to a discipline as meaningless as it was exacting. Moreover, higher appointments were being bestowed on drill masters and careerists, rather than on men with an honourable war record. Native Russians were passed over in favour of Germans from the Baltic provinces. Alexander probably preferred them for the reason given by his brother Nicholas: 'The Russian gentry serves the State, the Germans serve us.' Peace did not improve the lot of the common soldier. He was subject to corporal punishment, and he could reflect that while his term of service amounted to a quarter of a century (guardsmen served twenty-three years), a Pole served seven years and a Finn was free from military service.

The army men had cause to be disgruntled not only as professionals but also as citizens. The domestic scene was all the more shocking to them after they had something of a glimpse of life abroad during the foreign campaigns. They could not help noticing the difference between the standard of living of the French masses and that of the Russian peasantry. The officers, and to some slight extent even the privates, had breathed the freer air of Europe, had read books and newspapers, and had interested themselves in public affairs. Along with the souvenirs in their knapsacks, they carried back subversive ideas in their heads. The corps that remained in France until 1818 was considered so disaffected that upon its return it was disbanded. The Emperor had sanctioned the free institutions of Finland, recently annexed, and in 1815 granted a constitution of sorts to Poland. But the monarch who abroad wore the halo of a liberator of peoples, at home was a despotic ruler and the head of a system based on serfdom. Some of the officers took this discrepancy as an affront to national dignity, indeed, as treasonable to the country's interests, and in consequence their personal allegiance to their sovereign was sorely tried.

They also felt the impact of events in foreign parts. The uprisings in Spain and Portugal, the Carbonarist insurrections in Naples and Piedmont, the Greek rebellion, were so many object lessons to malcontents in Petersburg and Moscow. Several writers, notably a young scapegrace with a golden tongue in his head by the name of Pushkin, wrote saucy epigrams against those in power and lyrics celebrating liberty and tyrannicide.

In a communication to his Government dated April 1820, the French ambassador wrote that he could not think without horror of what would happen to Europe if forty million Russians, still half savage and brutalized by slavery, conceived a desire for freedom and proceeded to shake off their chains. True, the dangerous notion hadn't yet entered the heads of the lower orders, but it was already inflaming the well-born. 'The entire youth,' he went on, 'and particularly the Army officers, feed on and are imbued with liberal doctrines. The boldest theories are the ones that please the most. . . . Already they imagine, nay, approve, the excesses, the very crimes to which the love of freedom can lead.' The ambassador had in mind the assassination of the Due de Berry by the Parisian saddler, Louvel. 'Among these youths,' he wrote, 'the infamous Louvel inspires less horror than in France, and his detestable crime has found apologists among the officers entrusted with guarding the Emperor!'

It was inevitable that young, impulsive, generous-minded patriots should attempt some kind of action. They began, meekly enough, by seeking political enlightenment in books, mostly foreign, and they read Radishchev's ode, 'Liberty,' as well as his Journey, which had the attraction of forbidden fruit. They formed circles to discuss public affairs and wrote letters arguing the necessity of getting together to work for the good of the country. In those years Europe was honeycombed with clandestine groups plotting against the governments leagued in the Holy Alliance. Russia was not without its small quota of plotters.

III

The earliest Russian underground organization of a political character bore the high-sounding name of The Society of the True and Faithful Sons of the Fatherland. It was started in 1816 by a youthful Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guards. At no time during its brief existence did it count more than thirty members. Some of them were sons of the first families of the land, many were officers in the exclusive Guard regiments and veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns.

The Society was also known as The Union of Salvation. It was out to save the country by abolishing serfdom and introducing a constitutional regime. On that point there was complete unanimity. But there was no agreement on how to achieve these objectives. Should a petition be addressed to the Emperor? No, 'acting upon minds,' influencing public opinion -- that was the way to proceed. It may be that the end of the reign would provide an opportunity for action. Then the Union, grown strong and powerful, would emerge into the open, its members refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Czar unless he repented the error of his ways and agreed to enact the programme sponsored by the Society.

But why not hasten the propitious moment? The association was barely six months old when a member, who cherished a dagger he had meant for Napoleon, suggested that Alexander be assassinated by a band of masked men on one of his trips to Tsarskoe Selo. The proposal was turned down, but a year later there was again talk of regicide. A report had reached the Union that the Emperor intended to restore Poland within its pre-partition borders, which would have meant the loss to the Empire of the Ukrainian and White Russian provinces. According to other rumours, Alexander was planning to transfer the capital to Warsaw, and to free the serfs in a manner which was likely to provoke a disastrous jacquerie. In an excess of patriotic indignation a young Sub-Lieutenant, who was just then suffering from an unrequited passion, volunteered to shoot the Czar as he was leaving the Uspensky Cathedral in the Kremlin. The would-be assassin intended to use two pistols, killing the Emperor with one and himself with the other, so as to give the affair the semblance of a duel fatal to both noble combatants.

The group included other reckless spirits, but also some timid souls who were horrified by the thought of violence against the sacred person of the monarch. The regicidal plan was abandoned. Before long the Union of Salvation fell apart.

Early in 1818 another secret society, the Union of Welfare, came into being. To judge by its statutes, known as the Green Book, from the colour of its binding, the purpose of this association was to promote the public good by spreading enlightenment and 'true rules of morality.' The chief duty of the members was to conduct themselves virtuously and persuade others to do likewise. The closest that the statutes came to political matters was to suggest that official corruption be combatted by personal example and moral suasion. As for serfdom, the members were enjoined to incline serf owners to treat their peasants in a humane fashion, particularly not to break up families in selling them. Like its predecessor, the Union of Welfare affected oaths, rites, and a fairly elaborate hierarchy, which gave it a resemblance to a Masonic lodge. Freemasonry, though nominally prohibited, was tolerated and had a large following. But, unlike the lodges, the Union of Welfare nourished ambitions other than philanthropic.

The Green Book had a supplement which was shown only to a chosen few and which outlined a political programme of a fairly radical complexion. Here the objectives of the Society were declared to be: to infiltrate the armed forces and the civil administration and at an opportune moment force the Government to grant a constitution, free the serfs, shorten the period of military service, abolish the military settlements, remove 'foreigners,' that is Balts, from important posts, and enact other liberal reforms.

The Union succeeded in enrolling up to two hundred members. Army men continued to be the dominant element. Headquarters were in the capital, and several cells sprang up in Moscow and in the south. It is doubtful if many of the members took their plotting very seriously or regarded it as a dangerous game. Some of them were not averse to collaborating with the Government. The belief lingered on that freedom in Russia would come from the Throne. Had not the Emperor declared in 1818 at the opening of the Warsaw Diet that 'he hoped to extend liberal institutions to all the lands under his sceptre'?

As time went on, it was becoming increasingly clear that the authorities were not likely to meet the would-be reformers halfway. The anti-Government trend within the Union grew more pronounced, and republicanism supplanted attachment to constitutional monarchy. The conviction was ripening that the whole system needed a thorough overhauling and that this could not be done peacefully. One of the most resolute advocates of a revolutionary programme and the tactics of force was Colonel Pavel Pestel, a veteran of Borodino and the European campaigns. The son of a thoroughly assimilated German who held the post of Governor-General of Siberia, this young man with a Napoleonic profile, of which he was rather proud, a Machiavellian bent, and the makings of a doctrinaire, stood out among the members of the Union. He headed a branch of it at Tulchin (in the Ukraine), which he had started when he was transferred to the Second Army, made up of line regiments and stationed in the south.

Pestel afterwards asserted that the society had from the first been a revolutionary organization. But, as a matter of fact, some of the members resisted the leftward swing. The men had been enrolled without much discretion, and there were among them too many faint hearts and lackadaisical spirits. What helped to intimidate them and to stimulate their exodus from the Society was the Semyonovsky affair, or rather its consequences.

In the autumn of the year 1820 the brutal behaviour of a newly appointed Colonel created a mild mutiny in the Czar's favourite Guard regiment, the Semyonovsky. In the barracks of another regiment copies of two leaflets were found. One was addressed to the Preobrazhensky guardsmen, the other to soldiers generally. The first described the Czar as 'a powerful brigand' and the gentry as another enemy of the people, and declared that the rule of these 'evildoers' must be replaced by laws 'deemed useful by the fatherland.' In the second, the men were urged to arrest their superiors and elect new officers from their own midst, and they were assured that failure to do so would lead to 'a terrible revolution.' The identity of the author or authors of these leaflets is a mystery to this day. It is certain that the Union of Welfare had nothing to do with them or with the mutiny. At most, the mutineers may have received moral support from members of the Society. Nevertheless, the Emperor believed that the disturbances had been fomented by officers -- he had some inkling of the existence of the Union -- and was greatly alarmed. The mutineers were severely punished and the regiment was disbanded, the men becoming a leaven of discontent in the units to which they were transferred. The entire Guard was subjected to the surveillance of a special secret police.

Membership in the Union now involved more danger than heretofore. The disintegration of the cells in the two capitals, which had been going on for some time, grew more rapid. Under these circumstances a dozen delegates from the several branches met early in 1821 and agreed to dissolve the Union.

This step was a ruse intended to rid the society of undesirables and to deceive the authorities. The handful of men who formed the core of the Union intended to carry on under cover of strict secrecy. They were known as the Northern Society. The branches located in the Ukraine, refusing to disband, assumed a quasi-independent status and the name of the Southern Society.

IV

For some time the Northern Society remained in a state of suspended animation. There were times when its active members could be counted on the fingers of one hand. By the summer of 1823 it began to show signs of life. It was headed by a three-man Duma. The triumvirs were all Guard officers: Prince Sergey Trubetzkoy, Prince Yevgeny Obolensky, and Nikita Muravyov, a senator's son and heir to vast estates and thousands of serfs. A reader of French political literature, notably the writings of Benjamin Constant, Muravyov was the most articulate member of the group. He composed 'a free man's catechism,' in which the wickedness of autocracy and the advantages of representative government are demonstrated by passages from Scripture. He also drafted a constitutional charter, which he kept rewriting. Though he had at one time been a republican, this charter provides for an empire headed by a hereditary monarch with strictly limited authority. The country is organized, somewhat after the pattern of the United States, as a federation of thirteen regions (the number of the original American states). The bi-cameral National Assembly, as well as the regional legislatures are elective bodies, but the electorate is restricted by high property qualifications. The serfs are given their personal freedom, without being assured of land. Trial by jury is introduced, and civil liberties are guaranteed to the entire citizenry. To bring about this transformation, Muravyov advocated a long period of peaceful propaganda.

The rather infirm allegiance of the membership was divided between this moderate programme and a more radical one, which called for the establishment of a republican regime, possibly preceded by the extermination of the Imperial family. One retired Captain, a man of thrifty disposition, suggested, perhaps half jokingly, the construction of an 'economy gallows' tall enough to accommodate the Czar as well as the Grand Dukes, hanged one from the feet of the other.

The counsels of moderation were even less heeded in the Southern Society. It continued to be dominated by Pestel's vigorous personality. Content to leave the work of propaganda and organization to others, he was above all an ideologue, abreast of the currents of the time. 'Everywhere the spirit of change,' he wrote, 'made the minds seethe.' Indeed, 'revolutionary thoughts' were the distinguishing mark of the age. Another feature of it was the struggle of the masses against the aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of wealth. Both, particularly the latter, were inimical to the public good and could only be wiped out by a republican government. In contrasting the radical temper of the south with the timidity and inaction of the north, he was writing to Nikita Muravyov in 1823: 'Half measures are worth nothing; here we want to make a clean sweep.'

The one task to which he devoted himself wholeheartedly was the composition of a treatise entitled Russkaya Pravda (Russian Law, or Justice), which remained unfinished. This was meant to be a set of instructions for the guidance of the Provisional Government that the triumphant revolution would establish, in fact, a blueprint for the Russia of the future, conceived by a man who did not question his right to prescribe and command.

Pestel's thinking was a curious amalgam of liberalism and authoritarianism, with a preponderance of the latter. Russkaya Pravda advocates a republican representative regime based on universal suffrage. It is a centralized, monolithic, totalitarian state, exercising absolute control, in the name of public welfare, not only over the behaviour but also the minds of the citizens. To this end it relies on the clergy and a powerful police, including a secret service charged with spying on the population. Private associations, whether open or secret, are forbidden, and so are cards, drinking, all manner of dissipation. In industry free enterprise is the rule, and no provisions are made to safeguard against economic inequality. In fact, 'the rich will always be with us,' Pestel observes, adding, surprisingly enough: 'and this is good.' Private property is declared 'sacred and inviolable.' Yet no legal privileges attach to wealth: before the law all citizens are equal. Of course, this means the abolition of serfdom. The agrarian programme has socialist overtones: half of the land is owned privately, the other half is nationalized and periodically distributed on an equalitarian basis among the families engaged in agriculture. Indeed, every citizen has the right to the free use of acreage sufficient to give him a living. Apparently, Pestel thus hoped to prevent the formation of a landless proletariat, a prospect he abhorred. He was thus committed to a kind of 'mixed economy,' with a private and a nationalized sector.

While Muravyov's constitution evinces respect for cultural pluralism and favours the federalist principle as reconciling 'the grandeur of nations with the liberty of citizens,' Russkaya Pravda looks toward a Russia that would be one and indivisible, a country with a uniform culture, a single language, a common faith. The ethnic minorities must give up their separate identity, all except the Poles, who are to be granted independence conditionally. As for the Jewish citizenry, Pestel was not averse to seeing it leave Russia in a body. If the Jews fail to assimilate, he held, they ought to be helped to emigrate to Asia Minor and there set up a state of their own. Pestel may have borrowed the idea from a converted Jew who was a member of a clandestine group in touch with the Northern Society. This man, Grigory Peretz, used Herut (Hebrew for freedom) as a password in his cell and spoke of founding a society for the settling of the European Jews either in the Crimea or in the Orient 'as a separate nation.'

Russkaya Pravda, Muravyov's constitution, and similar attempts by other hands were the subject of much debate. Both the northerners and the southerners shared a weakness for planning what to do on the morrow of the successful overturn. Less thought was given to the ways and means of bringing it about. The one procedure that was ruled out was a popular rising. It was felt that the cause had as much to fear from a disorderly populace as from the forces of the existing order. In fact, at least some of the plotters held that it was incumbent on the society to act precisely in order to prevent the bloody popular revolution which the abuses of officialdom were bound to bring about. The sympathy of the masses was desired, but not their co-operation. Will not a popular revolution, it was asked, turn out to be a Frankenstein monster? 'Let us suppose,' wrote one member of the Southern Society to another, 'that it is easy to bring the axe of revolution into play, but are you certain that you will be able to stop it afterwards?' Aristocratic army men could not help looking down upon 'the mob,' but half acknowledged contempt was not unmixed with apprehension. Baron Steinheil, of the Northern Society, in questioning the desirability of a popular revolution, argued that 'in Moscow alone there were ninety thousand house serfs ready to seize knives, and the first victims will be their (the plotters') sisters, aunts, and grandmothers.'

According to one activist, the Society's intention was to set up a popular government even at the cost of 'a terrible torrent of blood.' Another was ready 'to exterminate twenty-five million to bring freedom to the other twenty-five million.' As a rule, however, the men were eager to avoid violence and believed in the feasibility of a bloodless overturn. Both societies pinned their hopes to a purely military action, a neat coup modelled on the Spanish insurrection of 1820, rather than on the French revolution. At the same time the possibility of coming to an understanding with those in power was not ruled out, the bayonets remaining in the background merely as a threat intended to exact concessions from the Government.

How were they to get hold of the bayonets? The plotters were vague on the subject. It was generally expected that the privates would do the bidding of their officers. One southerner, a Lieutenant-Colonel, said that if his company refused to join the insurgents he would drive the men to it with sticks. No systematic attempt was to be made to acquaint the soldiers with the aims of the movement or to win them over to the cause, but the officers were advised to secure the devotion of their men by all means. A leading southerner favoured appealing to their religious sentiment. A fellow member dissented, retorting that 'faith is contrary to freedom.' Many years were to pass before this became an article of the revolutionary creed.

Pestel, for one, was by no means optimistic about the ability of the societies to sway the soldiery. True, the ranks were bristling with discontent, but he knew that it was a far cry from grumbling to mutiny. Nor was he unaware of the immemorial habit of devotion to the Czar which dominated the simple folk. But, he told himself, if the people were faced with the fact of the end of the dynasty, the revolution might succeed. From the first, he had believed that the coup must be preceded by the assassination of the Emperor, indeed, of the entire imperial family. Accordingly, he conceived the idea of 'a lost cohort,' a small band of dedicated men, ready to act as regicides under orders from the Society. The plan found some adherents in the north as well. It was assumed that the regicides would be helped to escape abroad, but if caught they would be tried and mercilessly condemned even under the new regime, so as not to bring the Society into disrepute. For the sake of the cause, the terrorists must be ready to forfeit not only their lives, but their very honour. There is a curiously modern ring about this idea.

V

While the two societies had a separate existence, efforts were not lacking to bring them together. In May, 1823, an emissary from the South told the Northerners that the Southern Society was ready to act that very year and asked if it could count on their assistance. He received an evasive reply. The Northern group, still very feeble, was preoccupied with questions of ideology and internal organization.

In the spring of the following year Pestel himself appeared in the capital. His mission was to effect a merger between the two Societies. His republican platform appealed to some Northerners, but there was one plank in it to which all objected. What Pestel advocated was in effect the seizure of state power by the conspirators. The autocracy overthrown, the directorate of the Society should, he argued, become the Provisional Government, vested with authority to decree the new regime as outlined in Russkaya Pravda, and remaining in power a decade or longer. This dictatorial scheme, to which there was considerable opposition even in the South, was rejected in the North as a revolting usurpation of the people's sovereignty. Even the more radically-minded took it for granted that the Society would confine itself to destroying the old order and that the Provisional Government would last no longer than was necessary to arrange for the convocation of a National Assembly, which would adopt a constitution and guide the destinies of the country generally.

In spite of this disagreement with Pestel, a conference of the Northern militants resolved that the merger was 'both useful and necessary,' and directed the Duma to continue negotiating with him. But that ruling body was firmly opposed to amalgamation with the South and so did not carry out the mandate. Pestel seems to have attempted to split the Society, but did not succeed. He won the enmity of its leadership and the reputation of a potentially dangerous, self-seeking individual who would bear watching. All he achieved was an agreement that neither Society should start the insurrection without consulting the other, unless suddenly forced to act. The two organizations continued to function separately.

Pestel was greatly discouraged by his failure. He had no illusions about the strength of the organization over which he presided. Of its three subdivisions two had only a nominal existence. Alone the branch located in the town of Vasilkov, near Kiev, was fairly active. It was headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, formerly of the Semyonov-sky Guard Regiment, and Lieutenant Bestuzhev-Ryumin. They shared Pestel's republicanism, but by no means subscribed to the rest of his programme.

In 1824 the Southern Society concluded a pact with a secret Polish organization. It was a half-hearted and wholly fruitless agreement between parties that distrusted each other's motives. In the summer of that year a member returning from a stay in 'warm Siberia,' as the Caucasus was sometimes referred to, reported that the army corps stationed there harboured an independent clandestine league ready to support a revolution. Nothing further was heard of the matter.

An event of real significance was the absorption of the Society of United Slavs, an underground group with about fifty members that was active in the south-western provinces. It had been started as a 'Pythagorean Brotherhood,' which affected the language and ritualism of Freemasonry. Eventually the fraternity, putting away childish things, set as its goal no less an objective than the establishment of a federation of Slav peoples liberated from 'tyranny.' This panslavist emphasis went hand in hand with a militantly democratic and libertarian disposition. 'Having passed through a thousand deaths,' a member vowed in taking the oath, 'having overcome a thousand obstacles, I will dedicate my last breath to freedom and the brotherly union of the noble Slavs.' One of the rules of the Society was directed against serfdom. It read: 'Do not wish to have a slave if you do not want to be a slave yourself.' The United Slavs were mostly people in humble circumstances: army officers with nothing but their miserable pay to live on, government clerks, small landowners. One member is known to have been of peasant stock.

The two groups did not discover each other's existence until the summer of 1825. Without delay negotiations were begun to bring the United Slavs en masse into the fold of the Southern Society. The spokesman of the latter -- it was Lieutenant Bestuzhev-Ryumin -- painted a dazzling, if altogether false, picture of the power of the organization he represented, its immense backing at home, its high connections abroad. The entire army, he said, had been won over to the cause. Moscow and Petersburg were impatiently awaiting the revolt, and the constitution drafted by the Society practically guaranteed a speedy and bloodless victory. "The fate of despotism would be sealed the following summer,' he asserted, when the Emperor arrived in the South to review the Third Army Corps. 'At that time the hateful tyrant will succumb under our blows, we will raise the standard of freedom and march on Moscow, proclaiming the constitution.'

The United Slavs, though overawed, were not without misgivings. They had at heart a popular movement, believing that any change made without the participation of the masses was unsound. The Southern Society, as has been noted, advocated a purely military coup. Might not a revolution so initiated prove the grave rather than the cradle of liberty? And what measures were to be taken to prevent the projected Provisional Government with its dictatorial powers from resulting in a new tyranny? 'The Slavs' also disliked the highhanded way in which they were treated during the negotiations. In the end they gave in, apparently convinced that the Southern Society sought to establish a 'pure Democracy' in Russia.

During the meeting at which the fusion was effected Bestuzhev-Ryumin fired the audience with a speech. The present age, he declared, was one in which the peoples of the earth were endeavouring to liberate themselves from slavery. Would the Russians, who had freed Europe from Napoleon's yoke, fail to shake off their own? He bade his hearers look about them: the masses were oppressed, commerce had dwindled, industry had all but ceased, the army was restive. Was it surprising that almost all enlightened people had joined the Society or were in sympathy with its aims? It would soon act, and free Russia, perhaps all of Europe. 'The high deed will be accomplished,' he cried, 'and we shall be proclaimed the heroes of the age!' He took from his neck the small icon that, according to Orthodox custom, he wore next to his skin, and swore upon it to be faithful to the Society and to take up arms at the first call. The others did likewise and, amid embraces, there was a murmur of solemn vows, a burst of passionate outcries. 'Long live the constitution! Long live the republic! Long live the people! Perish the nobility and the rank of czar!'

The former 'Slavs' were guided by the maxim: 'Having bared your sword against your monarch, you must fling the scabbard as far away as possible.' Two days after the merger a dozen of them volunteered for 'the lost cohort,' which was still only a project. The Society now had a considerable contingent of activists eager -- perhaps too eager in the opinion of some Southerners -- for drastic action. They were set the task of preparing the privates for the impending insurrection, without initiating them into the real aims of the movement.

Meanwhile there had been changes in the Northern Society, too. At the end of 1824 Prince Trubetzkoy was transferred to Kiev. He was replaced in the Duma by a retired Ensign, who had been enrolled the previous year. This man, one Kondraty Ryleyev, was an employee of the Russian-American Company, the trading corporation that was exploiting the Russian possessions in America. In his leisure hours he wrote civic verse, which enjoyed a measure of popularity. A thoroughgoing democrat, he abhorred Pestel's dictatorial plans, but shared his republicanism. He admired the United States as the only country, he once observed, that had a good Government. Yet he also dreamed of reviving the dubious glories of pre-Muscovite Russia.

His thinking shows traces of the emphasis on the exceptional and superior nature of Russia's manifest destiny, which was to mark Slavophilism and, to an extent, Populism and Bolshevism. On one occasion, in arguing against a fellow conspirator who maintained that the country was not ripe for a radical change and that a monarchy like the English suited Russia best, Ryleyev remarked that Great Britain, enslaved by an aristocracy as it was, could not be a guide on the road to liberty. In fact, he went on, that country would be the last to taste freedom. "The European overturn must be started in Russia'; there the revolution could not be crushed by foreign intervention as it had been in Naples and Spain -- witness the events of 1812. 'The world,' he declared, 'must expect everything from Russia.' A friend of Ryleyev's chimed in: 'Russia will be transformed in a Russian way.'

An incandescent, if unstable, soul, capable of kindling people with his enthusiasm, Ryleyev soon came to occupy a dominant position in the Society, which was not remarkable for outstanding personalities. Nikita Muravyov was still a member of the Duma, but his influence was rapidly waning, and by the autumn of 1825 he had practically withdrawn from the organization.

The military continued to make up most of the membership. When Ryleyev suggested that merchants should be admitted, the retort was: 'Impossible! Merchants are ignoramuses!' The Society had members and sympathizers in several of the Guard regiments garrisoned in the capital. A foothold was also secured in the Guard Equipage, a special naval unit trained for amphibious combat. This was done with the aid of Midshipman Dmitry Zavalishin. At seventeen he had conceived the notion of founding an international knightly order to effect the spiritual regeneration of mankind and, incidentally, to annex California to the Russian Empire. At first he sought to place this society under the Czar's protection. But by 1825 he had reached the conclusion that nothing good could come from the Government. He became active in the Northern Society without giving up the pretence that the secret order which was the figment of his imagination was a force in world politics. By his own account, he became such a power in the Society that out of jealousy Ryleyev removed him from the capital by giving him an assignment to ascertain the state of public opinion in the provinces. Before departing from Petersburg -- this was in November 1825 -- he wrote to the Emperor urging him to enact liberal reforms or face a revolution. At the same time he exhorted the Duma to disband the Society on the ground that too many members were motivated not by zeal for freedom but by thirst for power, and that consequently victory would merely substitute one despotism for another.

The conspirators wished to gain a toehold in the Navy so as to be able to deport the Grand Dukes and their families to a foreign country on board a man-o'-war. This alternative to a sterner method of disposing of the potential pretenders to the throne was under serious consideration. As for the Czar, it was generally held that his life could not be spared. When, in the summer of 1825, Captain Yakubovich arrived in the capital intent on killing the Emperor simply to avenge his transfer to the Caucasus after a duel, Ryleyev persuaded him to postpone action until the Society was ready. He had at his disposal yet another would-be regicide, a penniless and somewhat unbalanced former Lieutenant by the name of Kakhovsky. The man had come to Petersburg on his way to join the Greek insurgents, and the prospect of becoming a Russian Brutus caught his imagination.

Early in November, 1825, Prince Trubetzkoy was back in the capital. During his stay in Kiev he had kept in touch with the Vasilkov Branch of the Southern Society, which had assumed a dominant position. Before leaving for the North, he concluded something in the nature of an informal agreement with the Southerners. According to its terms, the insurrection was scheduled for May 1826 when the Czar was expected to review the troops stationed in the South. As the initial act, he was to be assassinated. Thereupon the Northerners were to arrest the Grand Dukes and ship them abroad. Then Pestel was to occupy Kiev, Bestuzhev-Ryumin was to march on Moscow, and Sergey Muravyov-Apostol take over the command of the Guards in the capital. The Northern Society was assigned the tasks of determining the composition of the Provisional Government and of drafting a new constitutional charter.

Events played havoc with these none too carefully laid plans.

Source URL: http://www.ditext.com/yarmolinsky/yar2.html

* * *

Road to Revolution

Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, 1956.

Chapter 3

The Decembrists: Insurrection

On 19 November, 1825. Emperor Alexander died at Taganrog, a town in Southern Russia. The news only reached the capital on 27 November, and as the Czar had been childless, the troops and the highest dignitaries of the Church and State immediately swore allegiance to Constantine, the eldest of his three brothers.

As a matter of fact, Constantine, who at the time was living in Warsaw, had previously renounced his claim to the throne in favour of the Grand Duke Nicholas, but the rescript which legalized this deviation from the order of succession had remained secret. Nicholas, though not unaware of the arrangement, acknowledged his brother as Emperor and took the oath of allegiance to him. On his part, Constantine failed to act promptly and unequivocally. He refused to make a formal announcement of his abdication or to come to the capital. This, coupled with delay due to slow communications, resulted in uncertainty and confusion. For over three weeks the country was 'in the strange predicament,' as the London Times put it, 'of having two self-denying Emperors, and no active ruler.' Not until 12 December was the situation clarified, and Nicholas felt free to signify his acceptance of the throne.

It will be recalled that from the first the plotters had looked forward to the Czar's death as the signal for revolt. Those at the helm of the Northern Society did not learn of Alexander's illness until the day before his demise became known in the capital, so that the news of his passing took them completely by surprise. At all events, Constantine's accession went off without any untoward incident. The Society was ready to suspend its activities. But when its leaders, who had informants in high places, became aware that the wrong Grand Duke had been proclaimed Emperor, and that the dynastic imbroglio had brought about a virtual interregnum, they could not help perceiving that here was an opportunity 'to obtain the rights enjoyed by other nations,' as one put it, that was not likely to recur for many long years. The moment had arrived for the two Societies to come out into the open. The Northerners found this all the more imperative since they believed that an explosion was certain to occur in the South. The hour for action had struck.

There was no unanimity as to the course to be followed. After much debating a plan was half-heartedly agreed upon. It hinged on the refusal of the troops garrisoned in the capital to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. A mutiny was to be engineered ostensibly in favour of Constantine as the legitimate Emperor. The plan was to be abandoned if Constantine arrived in the capital and made an unambiguous public announcement of his abdication. The conspirators took advantage of the fact that, of the two brothers, the elder was the one less disliked, perhaps because of his absence from the scene. The privates were to be urged not to swear allegiance to Nicholas on the ground that he was a usurper and that the real Czar was kept in chains, or that he was marching on the capital at the head of his loyal troops and would punish the traitors. Of course, the plotters knew all this to be untrue. Fraud cast its shadow across the cradle of the Russian revolution. The conspirators could have shaken all hearts with the slogan of liberty. They could have made capital out of the very real grievances of the rank and file in the Guards. Instead, they chose to play on the soldiers' legitimist sentiment. By pretending to defend the very essence of the old order, Zavalishin was to observe in retrospect, they had robbed the undertaking of meaning.

The square in front of the Senate building was selected as the rendezvous for the mutinous troops. Once the rising was under way and the insurgents had a sizable number of bayonets to back them, the Senate was to be forced to issue a manifesto announcing the end of the existing regime, proclaiming democratic reforms, and naming a provisional government. This was promptly to convoke a Constituent Assembly empowered to adopt a constitution for the Empire and decide the fate of the imperial family, which in the meantime would be kept under arrest. The plan of assassinating the Czar and his kin was given up. The majority envisaged the revolution as an armed demonstration intended to force the Government to come to terms with the Society. It was to be an orderly, decorous affair, keeping as far as possible within legal bounds and avoiding bloodshed. Pestel's idea of the seizure of state power had no adherents in the North.

In case of failure the insurgents were to retreat to the military settlements in the hope of finding support there, and, if need be, retire farther into the interior. But this was a mere suggestion. There was something sketchy about all the particulars of the plan. Thus, the matter of arming and provisioning the troops was hardly given any thought. The conspirators apparently went on the assumption that the Government would yield before it came to a show of force. The person elected -- not without misgivings -- to head the insurrection was Prince SergeyTrubetzkoy. He was styled 'Dictator,' a title that ill-suited this mild-tempered, rather irresolute man of notably moderate views and a stickler for legality.

During these decisive December days the Northern Society developed a feverish activity. Its directors, together with other militants, a dozen men in all, were virtually in continuous session. Ryleyev was 'the mainspring of the enterprise,' as a fellow conspirator put it. One or two activists arrived from Moscow and some new members were recruited, but they scarcely made up for the defections from the ranks. On close inspection, these proved very thin indeed. The active membership did not exceed sixty, and the foothold the Society had secured in the army and navy was exceedingly precarious. Few units could be counted upon with any degree of assurance. Hardly anything had been done by way of propaganda among the soldiery, except to spread the rumour that in his last will the deceased Czar had freed the serfs and reduced the term of military service to ten years, and that Constantine, unlike Nicholas, intended to carry out the terms of his brother's testament.

The enterprise seemed doomed to failure. Many of the men were not unaware of this, and the 'Dictator,' for one, was ready to give up or postpone the undertaking. But it was too late to withdraw. Those at the centre strongly suspected that the Society had been denounced to Nicholas. Since they could not escape the consequences, they felt that they must go through with their plan. Some of them seem to have been motivated by a zeal for self-immolation. At one meeting young Prince Odoyeysky, who like Ryleyev, wrote verse, exclaimed: 'We shall die! How gloriously we shall die!' There were moments when waves of delirious enthusiasm swept over the conspirators. The important thing, they told themselves, was to take the first step; success was with the daring.

As a rule, the oath of allegiance was administered to the troops soon after the new reign was proclaimed by manifesto. The insurrection had to be timed for the interval between the promulgation of the manifesto and the administration of the oath. The conspirators believed that the soldiers could not be roused against Nicholas, once they had kissed the cross in swearing allegiance to him. Consequently, the date for the coup could be set only after it became known when Nicholas would be proclaimed Emperor. On the morning of 13 December he signed the manifesto, directing that it be made public on the morrow. The date was a strictly guarded secret. By noon the plotters were in possession of it. So Monday, 14 December, was to be the day!

The time was short. Impossible to make any but the scantiest preparations. Impossible to get in touch with the Southerners to obtain help or arrange for concerted action. And the manifesto which was to be forced on the Senate had yet to be put in shape. Some last-minute changes were made in the distribution of the parts to be played by the individual conspirators. Yakubovich was instructed to occupy the Winter Palace with the aid of a detachment of sailors. At the same time, as if in anticipation of his failure, it was arranged that the first contingent of troops to reach the Senate Square was to attack the Palace. Colonel Bulatov, the Dictator's deputy, was assigned to seize the Fortress of Peter and Paul -- its guns covered the Palace and the centre of the city.

As the afternoon advanced Ryleyev was assailed by a dreadful thought: was it wise to have decided to spare the lives of the imperial family? Was it not a tragic mistake, likely to precipitate the horrors of civil war and jeopardize the cause? Acting on his own, and in violation of the adopted plan, he exacted a half promise from Kakhovsky to make his way into the Winter Palace early the next morning and assassinate Nicholas.

II

The fateful day dawned upon men armed with wavering courage and uncertain hopes. The first hitch in the plan occurred in the small hours. Yakubovich declined the assignment he had accepted the previous day to seize the Palace and put all the potential pretenders to the throne under arrest. A little earlier Kakhovsky had gone back on his pledge to stage a private overture to the revolution by killing Nicholas. Long before sunrise another blow fell: the senators held a brief session, heard the manifesto announcing Nicholas' ascension to the throne, promptly swore allegiance to him, and dispersed to attend a reception at the palace. It was then barely seven-thirty a.m. The conspirators had not counted on anything happening at such an ungodly hour. There was no sign of mutiny. The timetable had gone completely wrong.

Not until nearly eleven o'clock did the first unit of insurgents, some seven hundred bayonets strong, enter the Senate Square. At the head of the column Yakubovich marched gallantly, his plumed hat on the tip of his bare sabre. Nothing had been done about placing the imperial family under arrest, and so the mutineers should have attempted to seize the Winter Palace -- a few blocks away. Instead, they drew up in battle formation, near the monument of Peter the Great, presumably waiting for reinforcements. Since the senators were not sitting, there was no reason why the Senate Square should remain the rebels' rendezvous. The situation called for a change of plan. But there was no one with authority to issue the necessary orders. Both Prince Trubetzkoy, the 'Dictator,' and Colonel Bulatoy, his alternate, had failed to show up.

The Czar, for his part, was on the alert. The conspirators' suspicion that he knew of their plans was well founded. An hour or so before he decided to accept the throne, the existence of the two secret societies had been disclosed to him in a report from Field Marshal Diebitsch. It was based on data supplied by informers. One of them was a non-commissioned officer by the name of Ivan (John) Sherwood, a native of Kent and the son of an English weaver established in Russia. The same day another informer acquainted Nicholas with the particulars of the conspiracy. 'In the early hours of the day after tomorrow,' he wrote to Diebitsch on 12 December, 'I shall either be the sovereign or a corpse.'

There were many anxious moments for the Czar that day, but he did not lose his head. He acted with intelligence and dispatch. Hours before dawn he received many generals and high officials and assured himself of their allegiance. He reinforced the guards at the palace, and when the mutineers appeared on the Senate Square he concentrated a large number of troops, including cavalry, in the vicinity. In directing operations against the insurgents he repeatedly exposed himself to the danger of assassination, and afterwards he marvelled at his luck in not having been shot at. Accompanied by a small retinue, he passed among the crowd that packed the area and read his manifesto aloud to one group after another. The reading was punctuated by shouts of 'Hurrah for Constantinel' from the insurgents.

They did nothing further until the Governor of the capital, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, rode up to their ranks and railed at them: they were not worthy of the name of Russian soldiers, they should throw themselves at the Czar's feet. At that several shots rang out -- one of them Kakhovsky's -- and the General slid off his horse, fatally wounded. Another General who attempted to harangue the men was badly mauled by civilian sympathizers of the rebels.

The loyal cavalry then took the offensive. This attack was repelled with slight losses to both sides.

Force having failed, persuasion was again resorted to. Followed by deacons, two metropolitans in ceremonial vestments with uplifted crosses addressed the men, assuring them that Nicholas was the legitimate Czar. Their efforts were of no avail. The Emperor's younger brother, Michael, also tried to remonstrate with the men. A pistol was aimed at him, but it misfired, and the Grand Duke retired to safety.

About this time the ranks of the insurgents were swelled by a column of grenadiers and a large detachment of sailors. There were cheers, and the officers embraced. Ryleyev was the first to greet the commander of the naval unit with 'the kiss of freedom.' These ominous developments induced Nicholas to order carriages for his wife and mother, so that they could flee, if necessary, to Tzarskoe Selo (now Pushkin).

It was now about two p.m. A little later several more companies of grenadiers arrived. Contrary to the conspirators' expectation, these men had mutinied, even though they had already taken the oath of allegiance to the new Czar. A Colonel who had followed them to the Square in an effort to keep them from joining the insurrection was fatally wounded by Kakhovsky. On his part, the Emperor encouraged no effort to keep the units which turned against him from joining their comrades. He preferred to have all the bad eggs in one basket.

The second contingent of grenadiers was the last reinforcement received by the rebels. The students of one naval and one military college sent a delegation to the insurgents asking permission to join them. In reply the youths were thanked for their 'noble intention' and advised 'to spare themselves for future exploits.'

There was still no trace of the 'Dictator.' Ryleyev went to look for him and did not return. Without saying a word to his comrades, Trubetzkoy had left his quarters in the morning and spent the rest of the day wandering about the city 'in great fear and dejection,' as he put it later. His deputy, too, was nowhere to be seen. Nor did a leader spring from the ranks.

The rebels managed to thrust back another cavalry attack, a half-hearted affair, in which both sides clearly spared each other. For the rest, they stood about idly as though on parade.Their shouts of 'Hurrah for Constantine!' mingled with 'Hurrah for Konstitutzya (constitution)!' That they believed this to be the name of Constantine's spouse is a widespread report which was probably originated by a loyalist wag. The privates and, for that matter, the populace that milled around them were perhaps not entirely in the dark regarding the real objectives of the uprising.

The conspirators had hoped against hope to be able to rouse six Guards regiments. Actually they succeeded in mustering only some three thousand privates and thirty officers. Furthermore, the sailors had failed to provide themselves with sufficient ammunition and had left their cannon behind. More troops had arrived on the Square, but had drifted away, discouraged by the confusion in the ranks.

Could bold action still have saved the day for the revolution? Possibly. There was doubtless some vacillation among the loyal troops. Eight hundred members of the Finnish Guard Regiment, who had taken up a position in the vicinity of the Square, were temporizing and waiting on events. Messages came from various military units asking the mutineers to hold out until after dark and promising to join them then. Also the vast throng of civilians, mostly of the lower classes, that filled the area was unmistakably hostile toward the Government forces. They hurled stones and chunks of wood at the Czar's retinue and the loyal cavalry and occasionally manhandled a police officer. 'Give us arms,' voices were heard in the crowd, 'and in half an hour we'll turn the city upside down.' But mob participation was just what the conspirators were firm in rejecting.

Inaction, and confusion due to absence of central command, continued. The situation did not improve when Prince Obolensky, an inexperienced staff officer with a weak voice and a lisp, was chosen to fill Trubetzkoy's empty place. The day, mild at the start, had turned quite raw, and the men shivered in the icy wind. They were tired, both their patience and their ammunition were running low. And they were now completely ringed by imperial troops outnumbering them four to one, a force of ten thousand men being held in reserve by the Czar.

About mid-December in Petersburg the sun sets near three p.m. As twilight descended on the city, the Emperor decided that it was dangerous to leave the issue unsettled, for under cover of darkness some loyal units might go over to the rebels and the insurrection spread to the populace. Still reluctant to use drastic measures on the opening day of his reign, he gave the mutineers a chance to capitulate. They refused.

It was then that several field-pieces were trained on the Square and its environs. Half a dozen volleys were sufficient to clear the area. On the snow lay the dead and the wounded. Both insurgents and innocent bystanders were mowed down by grapeshot or drowned in the Neva, cannon balls having broken the ice to which some of the men had fled. Curiously enough, not a single conspirator was among the casualties. The police estimated the number of those killed at seventy to eighty, but there were probably more.

The first cannon shot thundered out about four p.m. A futile attempt was made to rally a group of men in the gathering dusk, with a view to leading them to an assault on the Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river. By five p.m. the uprising was over. It had lasted about six hours. All that remained for the authorities was to round up the fleeing mutineers and arrest the members of the Society.

Ten days later a battalion of infantry garrisoned in the town of Bryansk, central Russia, refused to swear allegiance to Nicholas, shouting 'Hurrah for Emperor Constantine!' The next day, however, the men were persuaded to take the oath. They had been instigated by several officers who belonged to a secret group, probably affiliated with the Northern Society.

III

On the eve of the uprising the Northern Duma had sent a communication to Colonel Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, informing him of the impending action. On the same day an emissary arrived from the South with the message that down there a hundred thousand men were 'ready.' Nothing could have been further from the truth. Preparations in the South were just as sketchy as in Petersburg, if not more so. Soldiers as they were, revolutionaries as they wished to be, some of those men had a curiously feeble sense of reality: they deceived themselves as easily as they did their comrades.

One of the reasons why the Northerners had felt compelled to act was the belief that the Southern Society was certain to come out into the open. Actually it remained quiescent. When in September, Alexander had arrived in Taganrog, the idea was conceived of dispatching several men there on a mission of murder. Later on there was talk of assassinating Grand Duke Constantine on his way to Taganrog, where the Emperor lay ill. Nothing came of these terrorist fantasies. Nor did Czar's death arouse the Society to action. The troops in the South took the oath of allegiance to Constantine without demur.

For some time the existence of the Society had been known to the authorities. On the very day that witnessed the rising in Petersburg they struck at the heart of the organization by placing Pestel under arrest. One of his comrades raised the question of freeing him by force. They contented themselves with destroying some of his incriminating papers and burying a copy of Russkaya Pravda in the ground, so as to preserve it for future generations. Alone the former members of 'the United Slavs' intensified their propaganda among the privates. They stressed the hard lot of the soldiery and went so far as to point out the advantages that the common people would derive from a republican form of government. They even worked out a plan involving immediate, bold military action. It was turned down by the directorate of the Society. All that the activists were told was that the insurrection would occur sooner than had been planned, namely, that 'the voice of the fatherland' would summon its sons 'to the standards of liberty' by February or March of the following year. Actually, events took another course.

News travelled slowly across Russia's great distances. Not until 24 December did the Southerners hear of Nicholas's accession and the abortive insurrection in the capital. There could be no doubt that their organization was now an open secret to the authorities. And indeed, two days later the Muravyov-Apostol brothers, Sergey and Matvey, learned that an order for their arrest had been received by the commanding officer of the Chernigov Infantry Regiment in which they served. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who, with Sergey, headed the Vasilkov Branch, was also to be arrested. The three men got the news on their way home after a visit to a neighboring town. What was to be done? Fleeing or hiding was futile. Matvey suggested suicide. The others demurred. It was decided to continue on their way back to Vasilkov.

They had gone only as far as the village of Trilesy, some distance from Vasilkov, when, on 29 December, in the small hours, the brothers were placed under arrest. Bestuzhev-Ryumin was not with them at the time. They soon broke away from their captors, however, with the aid of several officers of their regiment who happened to be on the spot. It was largely under pressure from these men, all active members of the Society, that the military insurrection, so much debated and so little prepared for, was launched then and there. Like the Petersburg Putsch, it was a leap in the dark, a hastily improvised enterprise, stumbled into, rather than deliberately planned.

Sergey Muravyov-Apostol was trusted, indeed, all but idolized by the men under him, and so the two companies of the Chernigov Regiment stationed at Trilesy and in a nearby village readily obeyed his order to take the field. The soldiers were told that they would be fighting to free the people and to improve their own lot, and that the rest of the army was with them. Headed by Muravyov-Apostol, the insurgents reached Vasilkov the following day, having marched part of the time through a snowstorm, and occupied the town without firing a shot. There they were joined by four more companies. The men, over nine hundred strong, celebrated the occasion by consuming great quantities of vodka -- according to the tavern-keepers, 186 buckets. There was also some pillaging, mostly of Jewish property.

The officers spent the night making plans, while the commander was chiefly occupied putting finishing touches to a composition entitled The Orthodox Catechism. At more than one point it vaguely echoes the American Declaration of Independence. The czars are accursed of God, the Catechism declares, for they have robbed the people of freedom, and without liberty there can be no happiness. The republican form of government is the only one in agreement with divine law. Jesus Christ must be the only king on earth as He is in Heaven. It is the duty of the Army and the people 'to take up arms against tyranny and restore faith and freedom in Russia.' An appeal to the people at large, expressing similar sentiments in similar language, was also drafted. Here all the misfortunes of the nation are attributed to autocratic government. The Czar's death is a sign that God wills the Russians to shake off the bonds of slavery. 'Henceforth Russia is free.' The Army will establish 'a popular government' in an orderly fashion and without internecine strife.

The next day, 31 December, the new regime was formally inaugurated with a short Mass in the market-place. It was served by the regimental chaplain. Then in a trembling voice the young priest read aloud the newly composed catechism the assembled troops. Couched in somewhat archaic, ecclesiastical language, it was probably unintelligible to the men. But when the author addressed them briefly urging them to serve the cause of freedom loyally, their hurrahs were lusty, and that not only because some of them were drunk. They had complete confidence in their leader, even if they were not clear about what he wanted them to fight for. The story goes that one private said that he was all for a republic, but, he asked, 'Who is going to be our czar?' The anecdote, like the one about Konstitutzya, must have been loyalist trouvaille, but was not inapposite.

The officers could not help noticing, however, that the arguments against autocracy taken from Scripture made little impression on the soldiers, and later on they reluctantly fell back upon the lie regarding the usurpation of the throne by Nicholas (the men had taken the oath of allegiance to him on Christmas Day).

With Sergey Muravyov-Apostol were his brothers Ippolit and Matvey, who were deeply attached to him. One was an impulsive youth of nineteen, the other a timid, overscrupulous man who had no faith in the venture and was a liability to the command. This included Lieutenant Bestuzhev-Ryumin as well as the four officers who had freed the brothers from arrest, all former 'Slavs' and men of energy and courage. Between the commander and his aides there was little harmony. He was a high-minded idealist, though not free from the aristocrat's arrogance, a Christian without the fanatic's inhumanity. His religion sanctioned taking up arms against tyranny, but he detested the use of force. At heart he hoped that the rest of the army would come over to his side, and that there would be no need to give battle. He wished to conduct the insurrection on a high moral plane, in keeping with the sacredness of the cause. He made it clear to the men that they were at liberty to stay or go. This the 'Slavs' found quixotic. They held that those not with them were against them. They favoured swift action, hard blows, surprise movements; he hesitated, procrastinated, fumbled.

The religious service over, the little army of the revolution, looking far from trim, left Vasilkov. The 'Slavs' favoured marching on nearby Kiev. Instead, the commander decided to proceed westward to a town where he expected his forces to be augmented by several regiments which had been infiltrated by the Society. At dusk the insurgents halted in a village. They spent the night there, as well as New Year's Day, to the disgust of some of the men who felt that such dilatoriness was the height of folly. Discipline being lax, there was more drinking and some marauding by the men. The local peasantry, all privately owned serfs, were rather friendly, but no attempt was made to enlist their active support.

During the day a part of another company of the Chernigov Regiment -- army units were scattered through the countryside -- joined the rebel ranks. No other troops rallied to the cause.

Leaving the village, the men now marched South, suspecting danger in the West and still hoping for reinforcements. These did not materialize. The couriers that were sent out found no response. Some of the members of the Society had been arrested, while others went back on their pledged word to spring into action at the first call. The rebels seemed to be labouring under an evil spell. Their leader acted as though he were in a trance. Plans were formulated and no sooner tried than abandoned. Nothing succeeded. The march of the revolutionary cohort resembled a funeral procession, as Bestuzhev-Ryumin was to put it. Naturally, the faint-hearted began to drop away.

In the evening the column again halted in a village. That night the commander's two brothers had a long talk about man's fate. The rest of the officers took counsel about more immediate matters, and decided to change the route once more, heading for a town where some troops commanded by 'Slavs' were garrisoned.

The following day -- it was 3 January -- the insurgents again found themselves tramping from hamlet to hamlet, meeting no resistance but getting no help and cut off from the outside world. One of the reasons why the military authorities were slow in taking measures against them was that they were not sure of the loyalty of the troops stationed near the scene of the uprising.

Finally, in the afternoon, as the insurgents were trudging along a road across the snowy steppe, they caught sight of a detachment of cavalry in the distance. As the horsemen drew nearer, some of them were recognized as members of a company commanded by Colonel Pykhachev. A few months previously at a meeting of the Society this officer had proudly claimed for his men the honour of being the first to fire a shot for freedom. Obviously, these were friends hastening to rally to the banner of liberty. Word was passed to the soldiers, and there was general rejoicing. Without warning the 'friends' trained a cannon on the mutineers and opened fire. Colonel Pykhachev had been put under arrest the previous day, and his company took the field not with the mutineers but against them.

The cannon volley mowed down half a dozen privates and one officer. Another committed suicide. Sergey Muravyov-Apostol himself was wounded. Ippolit was either killed or, believing his beloved brother dead in a lost cause, took his own life. The insurgents laid down their arms without firing a single shot, allegedly under orders from the commander, unwilling to precipitate a fratricidal conflict. Believing themselves betrayed, the enraged men seized their officers and handed them over to the attacking troops.

Thus ended the second, and last, abortive attempt at insurrection made by the gentlemen who were to go down in history as the Decembrists.

IV

Of the privates who took part in the uprising of 14 December, six or seven hundred were rounded up on the Senate Square and in the adjacent streets. The rest of the survivors returned to the barracks of their own free will. The official theory was that the men had acted out of an excess of loyalty to the throne. The only punishment meted out to most of them was transfer to active service in the Caucasus, where desultory warfare against rebellious natives was in progress. The soldiers who took part in the Southern mutiny did not come off so lightly. One hundred and twenty of them were court-martialled, and many were put to the rods. The flogging was, however, rather perfunctory, except in the case of two men. They were former officers who, having been demoted and deprived of their rank in the gentry, had become subject to corporal punishment. The common soldiers, who, as usual, executed the sentence, took a sadistic pleasure in beating them to within an inch of their lives.

Arrests of the ringleaders began while the blood on the snow and the cobbles was still fresh. Denounced by an officer seized on the Senate Square, Ryleyev was taken the very evening of the 14th. On being questioned, he named Trubetzkoy as the chief instigator of the mutiny. This led to the arrest of the Prince late that night. Ryleyev also revealed the existence of the Southern Society and identified Pestel as its head. He wanted to prevent the Southerners from making an attempt like that of which he had been the moving spirit. It appears that no sooner had the uprising collapsed than he lost the faith that had inspired it. Later on the honest penitent implored the Czar to execute him alone and pardon the rest. To the last he would pray to God, he wrote, that 'his recantation and the punishment meted out to him should forever deter his fellow citizens from criminal enterprises against the authorities.'

Some conspirators gave themselves up voluntarily. Thus Colonel Bulatov came to the palace and handed over his sword to the Emperor, telling him, it is reported, that he had intended to assassinate him and that several times during the fateful Monday he had approached him, armed with pistols and a dagger, but that he had not been able to bring himself to execute his design. He was incarcerated in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, which, it will be recalled, he had been assigned to occupy. Shortly thereafter he smashed his head against the wall of his cell and died. One officer vainly sought safety in hiding. No one tried to escape abroad. Before many days had passed two or three hundred men were behind bars in the capital. They included members of the Southern Society who had been shipped there in irons.

Nicholas appointed a special commission to investigate the conspiracy, but he personally interrogated some of the prisoners and gave minute instructions as to how they should be treated. There was nothing clumsy about his technique as a detective. He reproached, ridiculed, threatened, cajoled, bullied, and stormed. Some he broke down with harshness, he overwhelmed others with magnanimity. There were those whom he convinced that the whole wretched affair was a misunderstanding, that he practically shared the plotters' views. 'What do you want a revolution for?' he said to Zavalish. 'I am your revolution.' He would astonish Europe, he insinuated indirectly, by pardoning all the culprits.

With Kakhovsky the Czar had a long heart-to-heart talk. He encouraged the prisoner to speak with complete frankness. Kakhovsky pictured feelingly the lamentable condition of the country and suggested that in his place the Emperor himself would have embraced the revolution. With tears in his eyes Nicholas promised to work for the public good, to be a Father to the fatherland. The following day Kakhovsky wrote to him from prison: 'Since yesterday I have loved you as a huma being, and with all my heart I want to love you as my sovereign.' Apparently, in time he did, without ceasing to believe in government by constitutional law and in the blessings of freedom. One of his communications to the Emperor contains a paean to liberty.

Having discovered in the Czar a kindred soul, the would-be regicide had turned into an ardent loyalist. Kakhovsky was by no means the only one to experience such a change of heart. Some prisoners, immediately upon their arrest, honestly repented what they had done or had intended to do, others cried peccavi after they had been broken by weeks of solitary confinement. The emotion that had inflamed the men during the days just preceding the coup burned out like fire in straw. A profound disillusionment possessed them. To many the enterprise now seemed utterly mad, or, worse still, ludicrous.

Undoubtedly not a few prisoners offered abject recantations in the hope of saving their necks. Men who as soldiers and nobles should have exhibited a keen sense of personal honour cringed and grovelled before their captors. Prince Trubetzkoy went down on bis knees to the Czar, pleading for his life. Prince Odoyevsky, who, shortly before the uprising, had exulted in the prospect of a glorious death, was no sooner in prison than his exaltation gave way to hysterical terror. Half out of his mind, he frantically protested his devotion to the throne and offered to lead the authorities to 'the root' of the conspiracy.

The conduct of the Southern leaders was not very different. Sergey Muravyov-Apostol repented and recanted, but without self-abasement. This cannot be said of Pestel. He flattered himself, he wrote to a member of the Investigating Commission after seven weeks in prison, that the Emperor was pleased with him because of his complete frankness. He had hidden nothing, nothing at all. Yet he could not vindicate himself before the monarch, he could only beg for mercy. The thought that he had belonged to the secret society was for him a source of burning grief and crushing pain, though he drew some solace from the fact that he had not engaged in overt action. But he would atone for his crime: 'Every moment of my life will be filled with gratitude and boundless attachment to the sacred person of the Czar and to his most august family.'

It is reported that later he regained self-control and became rather defiant in dealing with his questioners. But he did not cease to regret his past. He had once been a deist troubled by doubts as to the existence of a benevolent Providence. Some of his fellow conspirators were free-thinkers. Like Ryleyev, and like the repentant revolutionaries of a later generation, he now turned to religion. 'Faith in our Saviour is at present my happiness and solace,' he wrote to his parents.

Whether they were sincere penitents or simply terror-stricken men, the prisoners for the most part turned the chamber in which they were interrogated into a confessional. Not only did they reveal their own criminal activities and thoughts, but they informed against their fellow members at great length, naming names, reporting conversations, plans, and even rumours and suspicions, engaging in mutual recrimination. They went so far as to betray the simple-minded privates whom they had led astray. The foremost militants were no better than the rank and file. And none was a victim of third-degree methods, let alone the more drastic methods of persuasion perfected in our generation.

The fewest stuck to their convictions or took care not to incriminate fellow conspirators. One prisoner, a man of moderate views, who at first recanted, later wrote in a deposition: 'Shamefully I repudiated what has been the finest thing in my life. Our secret society consisted of men of whom Russia will always be proud. The smaller the handful, the more glory to them, for, due to the disproportion of forces, the voice of liberty sounded several hours only, but it is pleasant that it did sound.'

After labouring for six months the Commission of Inquiry turned over its findings to a special tribunal. Of the nearly six hundred persons investigated, only a hundred and twenty men, about equally divided between the two Societies, were brought to trial. Most of them were deported to Siberia, a number to serve terms of hard labour. Ryleyev, Kakhovsky, Pestel, Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, and Bestuzhev-Ryumin were singled out as the worst offenders. They were sentenced to be quartered, at the suggestion of Count Speransky, who, as a member of both the Commission and the Court, dominated the proceedings. This was the man whom the Decembrists had planned to include in the Provisional Government they were to set up. The three ecclesiastical members of the Court declared that while they recognized the justice of the death sentence, it did not behove them as churchmen to sign it. Thus they abandoned the condemned to the secular arm. The Czar neither confirmed nor cancelled the verdict. Following the precedent set by a certain Roman procurator, he washed his hands of the matter, leaving it to the tribunal. He merely ordered that the execution should not involve the shedding of blood. Accordingly, the quartering was commuted to hanging.

The sentence was carried out on 13 July, 1826, in the small hours of a Northern white night. A detachment from each of the regiments in which the condemned had served was dispatched to the Fortress of Peter and Paul to witness the grim ceremony. The executioners were so inexperienced -- there had been no hanging for many decades -- that either the ropes snapped under the weight of three of the bodies burdened with fetters, or else the nooses slipped. Ryleyev, Muravyov-Apostol, and Kakhovsky fell into the pit dug under the gallows and after a delay of half an hour were hanged again. Of the several sayings that legend attributes to these men as they waited, the words, ascribed to Ryleyev, may be recorded: 'I am happy that I shall die twice for my country.' The Czar wrote to his mother that a prayer for him was on Kakhovsky's lips just before he was hanged.

It is a matter for speculation how many men would have suffered torture and death for a similar attempt under the tyranny which in our own day has succeeded that of the czars.

V

No more than a handful of men were active in the secret societies and in the plot that led to the two risings. That in itself scarcely accounts for the failure of the Decembrists. A close-knit group of dedicated souls who know what they want and fight for it without sparing themselves or others can be effective out of all proportion to their numbers. But the Decembrists were never at one with regard to their principles or their tactics. Aside from a crackpot or two, there were among them naive dreamers, and sober reformers, Jacobins like Pestel and laissez-faire liberals like Trubetzkoy, fanatics and opportunists, revolutionaries who would overthrow the Government and gradualists who would bring it to terms. They began by plotting 'between Lafitte and Veuve Cliquot,' as Pushkin put it. Later on, a more serious mood prevailed. But hardly one of them was of the stuff of which conspirators are made; too few realized that there can be no conspiring by half. There was no lack of inflammable youths protesting their readiness to lay down their lives on the altar of freedom, but there was a dearth of men of steady convictions capable of sustained effort. Not a few, in spite of their military training and experience, were intellectuals touched with the Hamletic blight.

In the eighteenth century the Guard officers had played the part of the Praetorian cohorts who made and unmade Roman emperors. The Decembrists tried to effect a political revolution with the means that had been successful in producing palace revolutions. Their tactics were those of men born too late, their aims those of men born too early.

The Decembrist programme, vague as it was on some points, always spoke for the emancipation of the serfs. It reflected the attitude of those agrarians who were beginning to realize the economic advantages of free over servile labour. But abolitionist sentiment was by no means strong, and its growth was checked in the 'twenties by the depression, which removed the incentive to intensified agriculture. The country squires were firmly opposed to emancipation. They distrusted all change and were content as long as the state protected their God-given right to the fruits of serf labour.

Matters affecting the country's economy, particularly its rural sector, were not overlooked by the Decembrists. But they were above all political liberals. Their imagination was fired by the ideals of freedom, popular sovereignty, government by law. Hence their advocacy of a republican regime or, as the next best thing, a constitutional monarchy. But politcal democracy found scant support among the nobility and the nascent third estate. At the top of the social pyramid there were men who were inclined to favour a constitutional regime, but one that would serve the interests of the aristocracy. The peasants, with their long memory of feudal oppression, still regarded the czar's unlimited authority as their sole protection from the rapacity of the gentry. It has been seen that the lower orders did not figure in the strategic calculations of the Decembrists. Except for the 'Slavs', they viewed the masses as the passive object of political action.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the more clear-eyed among the members of the Societies were haunted by a sense of fighting for a hopeless cause. They suspected that, in words attributed to Pestel, they were trying to reap before they had sown. Nikolay Turgenev, at one time director of the Northern Society, made this entry in his diary: 'All feel, but do not yet understand their needs. Such an epoch foretokens a revolution, but is not one in which a revolution can succeed.' Nevertheless, the Decembrists appreciated that their effort was not to be wholly in vain. On the eve of the ill-starred rising Ryleyev is reported to have said: 'I am certain that we shall perish, but the example will remain.' This was also the opinion of such a disinterested contemporary observer as the Residen Minister in charge of the British mission in Petersburg. Shortly after the executions he was writing to Canning: 'The late conspiracy failed for want of management, and want of head direct it, and was too premature to answer any good purpc but I think the seeds are sown which one day will produ important consequences.'

The Englishman, like the Russian, read the future correctly. If the uprising failed to 'awaken Russia,' as Ryleyev had hoped the memory of what he and his comrades had attempted proved a potent thing. Eventually their ideals became a dominant element of Russian political thought. And they bequeathed to posterity a heroic legend, as the defeated not seldom do. The Government itself helped to build it by forbidding all references in the press to the events of 14 December -- the rising in the South remained in the background.

Radishchev was canonized as the first martyr of the revolutionary faith. The Decembrists came to be revered as the first to take up arms against the autocracy. They were seen as knights without fear and without reproach who challenged the monster to battle, though certain that they themselves must perish. The tragedy of their fate was enhanced by the devotion of the wives who followed them into Siberia. Some thirty-five years later Alexander Herzen, who believed himself to be their spiritual descendant, called them 'a phalanx of heroes . . . giants forged of pure steel from head to foot. . . ." In view of the evidence, some of which has only recently come to light, it is clear that they were of different stuff and stature. They were, by and large, perceptive, patriotic, public-spirited young men, but impulsive and unstable, with an enthusiasm for freedom and justice, half genuine feeling, half rhetoric. Pushed by the hand of chance, they fought, however ineptly and ineffectually, the opening skirmish in Russia's battle for democracy -- the end of which seems further off than ever. It fell to their lot to be the founders of Russia's feeble tradition of political liberalism. The revolutionaries, too, including Lenin, have traced their lineage to these amateurish pioneers.

Source URL: http://www.ditext.com/yarmolinsky/yar3.html

* * *

Road to Revolution

Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, 1956.

Chapter 4

The Coasts of Utopia

The easy triumph over the rebels failed to give the victors a sense of security. On the day Nicholas ascended the throne he is said to have addressed these words to his younger brother: 'The revolution is at Russia's gate, but I swear that it will not enter as long as there is breath in me. . . .' If necessary, he was ready to lock up half the population to save the other half from revolutionary infection. There was in him no trace of the duality that marked his predecessor's character. The history of his reign is one of coercion and reaction. Across it lay the shadow of the gallows.

The military settlements were abolished. For the rest, the system remained intact. The Czar was not unaware of the drawbacks of serfdom. On one official occasion he observed that it was 'an evil perceptible and obvious to all.' The police reported to him that it was a 'powder magazine under the State,' that the idea of freedom was spreading among the serfs, and that cases of violence against the masters were on the increase. Some measures were enacted to improve the lot of the peasants, but they were half-hearted and largely ineffectual. The Emperor lacked the courage to take a step that seemed to threaten a social revolution, since emancipation would not only do away with the gentry's rights to the 'souls' they owned but would also encroach upon their claim to their lands. He heeded those of his counsellors who held the institution to be the keystone of the arch, the deep-rooted tree that afforded shade to Church and Throne alike, as one of the ministers put it in arguing against laying the axe to serfdom. Nicholas thus threw away the opportunity for reform offered him by the long period of peace following the suppression of the Decembrist movement.

An innovation was a special department of political police, known as the Third Division of His Majesty's Chancery. Its avowed purpose was 'to guard the foundations of the Russian State.' Placed outside and above the network of administrative offices, it had a wide jurisdiction and was responsible solely to the Czar. It had at its disposal the Corps of Gendarmes and a force of undercover men. The Third Division was the predecessor of the incomparably more infamous and efficient security agency, which, under various names -- the earliest was the Cheka -- has been the watchdog of the Soviet Government.

The schools were subjected to rigid supervision, and an effort was made to confine education, particularly higher education, to the privileged classes. The underlying sentiment, expressed by the Chief of the Third Division, was that in Russia learning should be dispensed, like a poisonous drug, by government prescription only. The head of the educational system wished the schools to be 'intellectual dams,' barring the influx of new ideas. He considered it his duty to retard the nation's mental development, so as to prolong its youth. Control over the Church was tightened and the persecution of religious dissenters intensified. A network of committees kept watch over native publications as well as over imported printed matter.

Occasionally a censor would assume the role of critic and even seek to lead an author in the way he should go. In 1836 a writer was pronounced insane by the authorities for having published an essay which clashed with the official view, as set forth by the Minister of Education, to the effect that 'Russia's past is admirable, its present more than magnificent; as for its future, it is beyond anything that the boldest imagination can picture.' There is a familiar ring about this formula. It fairly epitomizes the Communist party line on Russian history. Yet, Nicholas's rule, while paternalistic and dictatorial, fell short of totalitarianism, certainly in the area of culture. The State made no systematic attempt to mobilize the artists in the service of its policies. They were allowed as a natural and unquestioned right the modicum of freedom without which the creative spirit cannot live.

The severity of the regime was, as usual, tempered by its inefficiency. Despite the stifling atmosphere, the intellectual life of the country made headway. Close contacts with the West were unavoidable. Russian students in the universities abroad were becoming less rare. Somehow or other, forbidden French and German books managed to get into the hands of eager readers in the capitals and even in the provinces. A remarkable body of native letters was growing apace, and a periodical press taking its rise. Literature offered one intellectual interest that could be cultivated in relative freedom by a leisured class cut off from all participation in public life. There was plenty of time for reading and philosophizing, for keeping diaries and writing letters.

Driven back upon themselves, unable to act, men thought and felt. It was an age of tender consciences and tenderer minds. The speculations of the German romantic philosophers, at second hand, enjoyed a great vogue, reaching even the half-educated. Circles were formed for the reading and discussion of Schelling, Fichte, Hegel. In the Moscow salons the talk often touched on abstruse points in metaphysics. Idealistic philosophy, exalting the inner life and the world of the spirit, was the fashion. Spurning ends of a material and transitory nature, such as social betterment, one aspired to what is eternally true and beautiful. One rapturously accepted the world as the incarnation of the Absolute. This 'metaphysical complacency,' as a contemporary called it, was a defense mechanism which enabled men to ignore evils against which they were powerless. A small group of intellectuals, alienated from the people, were chiefly busy searching their souls and comforting themselves the while with Utopian reveries.

II

Few mutterings and stirrings disturbed the torpor that paralysed the political life of the country in the first two decades of Nicholas's reign. The Marquis de Custine, who visited the country in the late 'thirties, remarked: 'Russia is a cauldron of boiling water, tightly closed and placed on a fire which is becoming hotter and hotter; I fear an explosion.' The cauldron was certainly covered, with officialdom sitting on the lid, but the water was hardly beginning to bubble. In the army the spirit of opposition was dead. It was in the schools that a ferment was beginning to work. A ferment of ideas.

The aristocracy still shunned the universities, and the student body, which was very small, came from groups on the middle rungs of the social ladder. In the 'thirties the University of Moscow, the oldest in the land, was attended by a handful of youths destined to leave their mark on Russian, and not only Russian, political thought. The majority, which included Vissarion Belinsky and Michael Bakunin, were wrapped up in German metapEysics. But there was also a more realistic set. These boys considered themselves heirs of the Decembrists, recited the forbidden verse of jtyleyev, and scarved their throats in the tricolore. They were supported by serf labour, but hated serfdom as they did autocracy.

The outstanding figure among these 'politicals' was Alexander Herzgn. Born of an irregular union between a wealthy Russian aristocrat and a German woman of humble birth, his childhood experiences predisposed him to rebellion. He early absorbed the radical ideas to which a precocious Russian boy, instructed by foreign tutors, one of them a former Jacobin, was exposed. He was thirteen when the Decembrist rising took place, and he was present at the thanksgiving service in the Kremlin after the hangings. The scene made a lasting impression on him. In time the Decembrists became for him the object of a cult.

Already in his early teens he felt himself dedicated to a high and hallowed cause. His enthusiasm was shared by his friend Nick, who was to be his lifelong comrade-in-arms. This Nikolay Ogarev, too, was the son of a wealthy landowner. One afternoon the boys -- they were in their middle teens -- found themselves on the Sparrow (now Lenin) Hills, the panorama of Moscow stretched out gloriously before them in the setting sun. In the exaltation of the moment, they embraced, swearing to devote their lives to the fight for freedom. They kept this vow.

Herzen entered the University in 1829 and applied himself to the study of the natural sciences. He readily became the leader of the small group of like-minded spirits that he found there. The news of fighting on the barricades in Paris in July 1830 and of the November uprising in Warsaw profoundly stirred them, and Herzen added the portrait of~Kosciuszko to his 'icon-case' containing pictures of the heroes of the French Revolution.

Along toward the end of his university years he and his friends discovered the writings of Saint-Simon and Fourier, or rather of their disciples. Socialist teachings were just beginning to gain currency in Russia. In a dramatic dialogue couched in execrable verse, Ogarev recalled how he and Herzen and a third comrade had gathered in a narrow room and sworn on the Bible to dedicate their lives to the people and the cause of liberty 'upon the basis of socialism,' and to that end form a secret society. Thereupon they had fallen on each others' necks and 'wept in young ecstasy.'

What impressed these youths most was Saint-Simon's vision of mankind totally regenerated by a new Christianity, a faith that exalted both the individual and the community. Nor could they fail to be fascinated by doctrines that boldly denounced the failings of the existing order and promised to abolish the exploitation of man by man. They were somewhat repelled by the emphasis Saint-Simonism placed on the role of the State and were inclined to favour Fourier's plan for phalansteries which relied on private initiative and the free co-operation of workers. The failure of the French revolution and of the Polish insurrection had made them question the efficacy of purely political overturns, and now the teachings of the socialists further strengthened their feeling that the time was ripe for more thoroughgoing changes.

Herzen completed his studies in 1833, but the circle over which he presided broke up only the following year, when both he and Ogarev were arrested. The charge against them was that they belonged to a group of young men who gathered to sing songs containing 'vile and ill-intentioned expressions directed against the oath of allegiance to the monarch.' Herzen was discovered by the official investigators to be 'a bold free- thinker, very dangerous to society.' He and Ogarev were under suspicion of having founded a secret organization aiming to overthrow the existing order through the propagation of 'revolutionary opinions permeated with Saint-Simon's pernicious doctrine.' Not that the prosecutor was clear as to whether this Saint-Simon was the socialist or the courtier of Louis XIV and author of the well-known memoirs.

The two friends were deported to the provinces. In the isolation of exile Herzen had moods of despair and of religious exaltation. Yet neither mysticism nor despondency over his own lot could take his mind off the oppression he saw around him, and he continued to be a Christian socialist. A play in verse which he wrote in 1839 exalts Quakerism as a kind of Gospel communism. It ends with a scene in which George Fox gives his blessing to William Penn who is setting out to America to found 'an evangelical commune.'

Toward the end of his enforced stay in the provinces Herzen came upon the works of Hegel, which he had previously known only at second hand. In Petersburg and particularly in Moscow, where he was permitted to spend much time during 1839-41 and where he settled in 1842 after finally regaining his freedom, he found the German thinker all the rage. It is on record that one night in February 1840 a group of young Moscow philosophers, after attending a charity ball, gathered around a supper table to toast all the categories of Hegelian logic, from Pure Being, through Essence, to Idea. Spurred on by the general interest in Hegel, Herzen delved deeper into his writings. The quietist interpretation of the master's teachings was the prevalent one. His maxim: 'All that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational' seemed to justify the acceptance of things as they were. Conservatism thus had the highest philosophical sanction. Both Bakunin and Belinsky unflinchingly adhered to this interpretation. 'To revolt against reality is to kill in oneself the living source of life,' the former wrote, blithely mixing his metaphors. And Belinsky, already an influential critic, did not hestitate to glorify the autocracy in print.

Herzen protested hotly against such a way of understanding Hegel's philosophy. To him the core of it was a sense of existence as an adventure opening up ever-widening horizons, a conception of the cosmos as an endless unfolding of the spirit, proceeding in stages of conflict and conciliation, and reaching in man the summit of self-knowledge and freedom. His instinctive aversion to quietism, his scientific training, his contacts with the seamy side of Russian life, all inclined him to a view of Hegel approximating that of his Leftist disciples in the West. While deploring the master's accent on contemplation and his neglect of action and 'creative reason,' i.e., the will, he perceived in the dialectical conception of history a sanction for political and social change. If everything real is rational, he argued, then rebellion against an order of things grown oppressive is also justified by reason. Herzen reached the conclusion that he later formulated thus: 'The philosophy of Hegel is the algebra of revolution. . . .'

Bakunin, who had been in Germany since the summer of 1840, had arrived independently at the same conclusion. In October, 1842, he published in the pages of a Left Hegelian German review an impassioned essay proclaiming Hegelianism a revolutionary tool and winding up with the dictum which was to become the motto of international anarchism: 'The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.' Belinsky too had undergone a change of heart partly under Herzen's influence. He revolted against an idealism that in concentrating on lofty abstractions ignored the concrete individual, the suffering man and woman, and he turned a jaundiced eye on the phenomenal world about him,

III

What added zest to the intellectual life in Moscow at this time was the war of words between Westernists and Slavophils. The latter were romantic doctrinaires who found in German philosophy sanction for their distrust of the intellect, their religiosity, their traditionalism. They believed that Russia possessed a culture distinct from and superior to that of the West. It rested on the adamant foundations of the Orthodox faith and on the love which bound the people to the czar. Hence it was destined to supersede European civilization, built as this was on the legalistic principle of the social contract and infected with materalism and unbelief. Hence, too, it behoved Russia to look to herself alone, refusing to borrow from other nations. Only by cultivating her own patrimony would she achieve her salvation and that of the world.

Slavophilism was the backward-looking philosophy of an upper class that had seen its day. Yet the Slavophils were not wholly reactionary. They detested the bureaucracy, and in fact the authorities regarded them with suspicion. Their adherence to the monarchy was tinged with a kind of anarchism. The Russian people, they held, had an inborn distaste for statehood, with its servitude and coercion. Indeed, in their eyes the autocracy was only justified because it allowed the people to shift the burden of political power from their shoulders to those of one individual and so, free of the guilt it entailed, devote themselves to the things of the spirit. The Slavophils abominated the prospect of the government invading the inner life of men. Nothing would have been more abhorrent to them than the modern totalitarian state.

All the early representatives of the school advocated civil liberties, particularly freedom of conscience. And they wished to see the serfs freed. Their thinking showed a strongly democratic, or rather populist, bias. They idealized the Russian folk at the expense of the privileged classes. While these had gone a-whoring after strange gods, the argument ran, the unspoiled peasantry alone had preserved intact the true Orthodox faith, with its living sense of equality and brotherhood. As a result, the daily life of the common people was permeated with a genuine and spontaneous collectivism, which was poles apart from the individualism of the West. The Slavophils made much of the fact -- or rather what they believed to be a fact -- that throughout the Great Russian area the land worked by the peasants had for centuries been held in common and periodically redistributed by the assembly of householders (mir) in each village according to the number of workers or family units (tyagla) in the household. They did not exactly discover the obshchina, as the rural commune was known, with its joint responsibility for the collection of the poll-tax and the fulfilment of the serf's obligations to his master. As far back as 1788 a book, printed in Petersburg had described the institution. But the Slavophils were the first to focus attention on it. Indeed, they exalted it as the very foundation of that authentically Russian way of life on which Peter the Great had laid violent hands and which they were anxious to restore. They saw in it the people's school of ethics, a safeguard against the pauperization of the masses which was going on in the West, a bulwark against the class struggle that was tearing Europe apart. The obshchina, with the native artel -- the guild of work-men sharing equally in the product of their labour -- was the clearest indication that the destiny and mission of Russia, of the Slavic world generally, differed radically from those of the West.

The Slavophil doctrine of the decisive importance of the collectivist elements in peasant life seems to have originated in the late 'thirties. Elaborated in the years that followed, it achieved an extraordinary career.

As for the Westernists -- the name, though thrust upon them by their opponents, was a fitting one -- they were committed to the proposition that Russia moved within the European orbit and that its progress was bound to follow the general lines of European development. Their minds ran in positivist rather than pietistic channels, and they were free from the messianic streak that marked Slavophil thinking. They pinned their faith to institutional reform, where their adversaries were inclined to expect social betterment from a change of heart wrought by divine grace. Both factions, it must be kept in mind, were schools of opinion, representing rival historico-philosophical trends. Neither had formulated a programme of action. Two groups of advanced thinkers, they existed in a political vacuum.

The Westernist school had a mighty champion in the person of Vissarion Belinsky. He was the first prominent man-of-letters in modern Russia who was not a gentleman with a manorial background. The son of a naval doctor, he had to struggle against poverty all his life. With literary criticism as his sole medium of expression, the man, born to 'howl like a jackal,' as he put it, could only coo about such seemingly innocuous subjects as Pushkin's verse or Gogol's prose. Nevertheless, it was to his articles in Otechestvennye zapiski (Fatherland Notes) and, after 1846, in Sovremennik (The Contemporary) that, on the twenty-fifth of each month, young people turned first. After he had repudiated conservative Hegelianism, he managed to insinuate into his prolix essays and reviews a libertarian, democratic outlook, an anguished concern for man's well-being here and now.

This concern was at the heart of what he called his socialism. The doctrine, he wrote to a friend in September, 1841, had become for him 'the idea of ideas . . . the alpha and omega of faith and knowledge.' Collective ownership of the means of production was apparently not an essential part of his new credo. Least of all did socialism mean to him the supremacy of the community over the individual. Society was for him a means of securing and enlarging the life of its members. Towards the end of his short life he came to the conclusion that Russia's hope lay in the development of an industrial middle class, and even at the height of his infatuation with 'sociality' he described the Government of the United States as 'ideal.' He was a political radical, not without a nationalistic bias, who held respect for the dignity of every human being to be the cornerstone of morality and who dreamed of a golden age to come in which men would live in perfect freedom and equality under the rule of reason. There were moments when 'fierce Vissarion' was prepared to bring the millennium about by fire and sword. And -- which was rather uncommon at this period among those who longed for a new social order -- he was possessed of a strong animus against religion.

Naturally such thoughts could only be expressed in talk and private correspondence. One letter of his, a lengthy communication written ten months before his untimely death in May, 1848, and addressed to Gogol, gained wide circulation in manuscript copies. It was an outburst against a book in which the novelist revealed his pietistic and obscurantist outlook.

Belinsky's letter was at once his testament and the manifesto of liberal Westernism. He described Russia as a country which had for a government 'huge corporations of official thieves and robbers,' and completely lacked guarantees protecting the person, the honour, the property of the citizenry. The Orthodox Church he denounced as 'a prop of the knout and a toady to despotism, an institution foreign to Christ, who was the first to teach mankind the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.' The Russians, Belinsky insisted, might be ridden by superstitions, but fundamentally they were a level-headed and deeply atheistic people. The country saw its salvation not in mysticism, asceticism, or quietism, but in the advance of civilization, enlightenment, humaneness; it required laws which would be in agreement not with the teachings of the Church, but with common sense and justice; its most pressing needs were emancipation of the serfs, abolition of corporal punishment, strict enforcement of the laws already in existence.

Another protagonist of Westernism was Herzen. As Moscow was the Slavophil stronghold, he took part in the endless disputations that raged in the literary salons there. Night after night he broke lances with Khomyakov, the formidable dialectician, with Konstantin Aksakov, the fighting fanatic, with the Kireyevsky brothers, twin pillars of Orthodoxy and nationalism. He found their theories absurd, chimerical, extremely dangerous, seeing in them, as he put it later, 'fresh oil for anointing the Czar, new chains laid upon thought.' And yet he was simultaneously repelled and attracted by 'the vile coterie.'

As time went on, the relations between the two groups worsened, and early in 1845 there was a complete break. Nevertheless, Herzen retained a certain affection for some of his adversaries, and that not only because their personal characteristics appealed to him. The fact is that at some points his own thinking came close to theirs. Years afterwards he wrote: 'Like Janus, or the two-headed eagle, we looked in opposite directions, but one heart beats in our breasts.' He shared the partiality of his Moscow opponents for everything Russian and their faith in the common people; he was stirred by their intimations of Slavdom's world mission; he was more deeply impressed than he knew by the Slavophil emphasis on the collectivist spirit of the Russian folk, as it was embodied in the obshchina.

His devotion to socialism remained steadfast. It involved an animus against 'capitalism.' An entry in his diary, dated 17 June, 1844, commends the Fourierists for condemning mercantilism and modern industrialism as 'a syphilitic sore infecting the blood and bone of society.' On the positive side, it was a commitment to a humane ideal, now free from supernaturalism. The goal was a secular, rationally organized society. Not that he was clear what form the organization ought to take. Certainly the available blueprints were far from satisfactory. In the writings of Saint-Simon and Fourier there were prophetic hints, he thought, but also des niaiseries. Proudhon's denunciation of private property appealed to him, but he was unable to rid himself of the feeling that private property was essential to a complete personality. As for communism, he could discover in it nothing but 'negation.' Before long he would describe it as 'Russian autocracy upside down.' In any event, socialism was not a subject one could deal with in print. As a writer, he inveighed against quietism in philosophy and indirectly advocated greater freedom in private life.

Some of the Westernists, like the Decembrists before them, assumed that if everyone were assured human rights and the opportunity to pursue his economic advantage, all would be well. Others found this view no longer acceptable. From the West came sinister rumours of the disastrous effects of the laissez-faire policy on the masses. These reports were echoed in the native literature. In a book of philosophic dialogues, published in Petersburg in 1844, one year before the appearance of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, it was argued that unrestricted economic competition wreaks havoc on the health, the happiness, the morals of generations. In 1847 an instructor in the University of Petersburg published a study in which he commended 'the social school of economists' who would restrict freedom of competition, replace anarchy with order, and impose a just and rational organization on industry.

Socialism seemed to offer an escape from the prospect of falling from the frying-pan of quasi-feudalism into the fire of capitalism. It teased the imagination with the dream-like vision of a society where body and spirit were at ease. A contemporary notes that by 1843 the works of Proudhon, Cabet, Fourier, and Leroux were in the hands of everyone in Petersburg, forming 'the object of study, ardent discussion, questions, and all manner of hopes.' In Moscow Saint-Simon was popular. Herzen has it that there socialism went hand in hand with Hegelianism. Nor was the vogue restricted to the capitals. A young engineer, writing from a small town in the province of Yaroslavl, requested his brother to get him La Phalange or the works of Considerant, saying he would rather go without boots than without the books of one of Fourier's apostles. The importation of such literature was of course forbidden, but dealers were careful to stock up on the titles they found on the Index, and pedlars called at the homes of trusted customers, prepared either to lend or sell bootlegged books. Though Slavophilism had adumbrated a connexion between the European Utopias and such native realities as the obshchina and the artel, socialism was plainly an imported article.

As the 'forties wore on, signs of a change in the intellectual climate multiplied. The rise of Slavophilism and Westernism indicated that the contemplation and cultivation of the inner self were giving place to a sense of civic responsibility. Interest in metaphysics was beginning to be supplanted by a concern with the material conditions of life. Here and there young men were turning against the Church and transferring their affections from philosophy to economic theory and the natural sciences. The early stories of Dostoevsky and Turgenev, which belong to this period, carry an undertone of social protest, and occasionally one comes across a piece of fiction in which this note, in spite of the rigours of censorship, sounds clear. Dead Souls, as well as other writings of Gogol, who was a pietist and a religious humanist, were interpreted as satires directed against the system. Literary criticism, under the influence of Belinsky, was becoming a critique of life, hailing the realistic approach and emphasizing the author's duties as a citizen. The civic motif now appears for the first time in the visual arts, notably in the canvases of a group of genre painters. A leading Petersburg journal, in characterizing the spirit of the times, speaks of materialism and 'sociality.' The word was soon to be supplanted by its synonym, 'socialism.' [The term was apparently first used in a French Saint-Simonist review in 1832. Its earliest occurrence in English is dated 1835 in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, and 1839 in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'socialist' first occurred in 1833, but E. H. Carr (Studies in Revolution, p. 10) traces the word back to 1827, when it appeared in an Owenite publication.]

IV

Although men did no more than read and talk, their interest in social theories and civic affairs drew them together. In Kiev a number of intellectuals marked the twentieth anniversary of the Decembrist uprising by forming a secret brotherhood, which in some respects resembled the Society of the United Slavs. It was inspired by a devotion to evangelical Christianity and a belief in the innate democratic virtues of the Slavic race. The programme called for the emancipation of the serfs and for other radical reforms. A distant objective was the overthrow of the autocracy and the establishment of a federation of Slav republics patterned on the United States of America. The Society, which chose Cyril and Methodius, the apostles to the Slavs, as patron saints, produced some propaganda pieces, which failed, however, to circulate, and after a year's existence it was wiped out by arrests.

A more noteworthy circle existed in Petersburg. Here, from 1845 on, a group of young men gathered once a week to spend a long evening together in the shabby drawing-room of a certain Mikhail Butashevich-Petrashevsky, hereafter referred to as Petrashevsky, a clerk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He was a man of unconventional and strongly-held convictions, not without a touch of the crank about him. 'Finding no one worthy of my attachment,' he wrote, 'I have devoted myself to the service of mankind . . . striving for the common good has supplanted in me egoism and the instinct of self-preservation, and respect for truth has freed me from every trace of self-regard.' From the first he had a sense of election, a feeling that he was destined, like Atlas, as he put it, to carry the world on his shoulders. With boundless faith in man's progress under the tutelage of reason, he looked forward to the day when words like 'poverty, suffering, bitterness, coercion, punishment, injustice, vice, and crime' would be mere reminders of past ages like skeletons of antediluvian animals.

In 1841, at the age of twenty, he planned to publish a political review, but went no further than to jot down notes for articles. Several years later he attempted to spread his ideas through the unlikely medium of a dictionary of borrowed words, which he helped to compile. Here he found a way to expound briefly the doctrines of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and even of the obscure seventeenth-century Utopian, James Harrington. The word 'opposition' gave him a chance to defend civil liberties and the jury system; 'nepotism' allowed him to set forth the advantages of elective government; under 'odalisque' he championed women's rights, under 'Negrophil' he attacked serfdom. The copies of the book, which had somehow slipped by the censors, were of course seized by the police. Petrashevsky now concentrated on the weekly gatherings he had started in his rooms. In connexion with these meetings he ran a co-operative lending library consisting chiefly of forbidden French and German books. He did not, however, confine his efforts to the educated. A born proselytizer, he is said to have joined an artisans' dancing class in order to make converts there. He estimated his acquaintances at eight hundred.

In good time his Fridays became something of an institution, a social and debating club, rather than a secret society. The gatherings were attended by at least a score of men: small officials, army officers, school teachers, several students, writers, including the young Dostoevsky. The company included no women, though they would have been welcome, for 'through women ideas spread faster,' as one visitor put it. It was a group of a lower social status than that of the Decembrists. The talk was not exactly of the kind that befitted sons of the Orthodox Church and loyal subjects of the Czar. Political and literary news was retailed, the moves of the Government were discussed, high officials freely gossiped about, the latest abuses hotly denounced, the necessity for reforms urged. Republican, pacifist, abolitionist, internationalist sentiments were freely voiced; religion, and even the family, were questioned. Here were the first manifestations of the spirit of nihilism, which was to assert itself in the next generation.

The revolution of 1848 made a great stir in the circle. A more formal and serious note crept into the gatherings. It was decided to devote each evening to the study of a definite social problem. Sometimes a speech would be made or a manuscript read. There might be a chairman provided with a bell in the form of a hemisphere surmounted by the figure of Liberty. One evening Petrashevsky spoke on how men of letters could spread their ideas. Again, he argued the need for freedom of the press and discoursed on the difference between social and political liberty, insisting on the necessity for economic change. On one occasion there was a lecture on political economy. On another an instructor in a military college quoted Feuerbach on the harmfulness of religion. A man must know, not believe, and all things are subject to the test of reason -- such was the tenor of a talk which led one visitor, a fervent Christian, to lose his faith. Petrashevsky himself was a freethinker. He once characterized Christ as 'a well-known demagogue who ended his career somewhat unsuccessfully.' But his guests included men who combined radicalism with deep religious feeling.

Often the conversation at the Friday meetings turned to socialism. While to some it was an object of intellectual curiosity, other embraced it as a faith. The core of it, Petrashevsky held, was organization, 'the reaction of the human spirit against the influence of liberalism, an influence which is anarchic and destructive of social life.' By liberalism he meant, of course, laissez-faire policy. He bracketed liberals and bankers as the masters of Western Europe. On another occasion, however, this unbeliever described socialism as 'the dogma of Christian love seeking realization in practical life.'

The particular variety of socialism that commanded the allegiance of many was Fourierism. Just at the time when the Fourierist colonies set up in the United States were falling apart, the French Utopian's doctrines were gaining enthusiastic adherents in Russia. While the Americans had a chance to test out his theories, the Russians had to content themselves with talk, and as a result there was no limit to the extravagance of their daydreams. One Friday Konstantin Timkovsky, a government official, proposed that some country, perhaps the world, be divided into halves, one to be turned over to the Fourierists, the other to the communists, for social experiments. 'Let them live in friendly neighbourliness,' he is reported to have said, 'and borrow from one another the good things each has.'

The host took offence at this concession to communism, a doctrine that neither he nor most of his guests favoured. In their minds it was associated with violence. The fewest shared the attitude of the visitor who looked forward to the time when people would own everything in common, 'just as reason which unites them is common to all men.' Petrashevsky wrote to Timkovsky that the communists had nothing but atheism to offer the Fourierists. The latter, he pointed out, sought to achieve 'gradually and naturally' the aims which the communists would accomplish by force. A square mile of land, he argued, and two thousand men and women were sufficient 'to turn the most fantastic dream of paradisal bliss into reality.' His enthusiasm for the master's teachings was unlimited. When he had first discovered them, he felt as though he had been 'born anew.' It is reported that he had attempted to set up a phalanstery on his own estate, but gave up the idea after his forty serfs had set fire to their paradise. He did not, however, give up the hope of living in a phalanstery himself.

Petrashevsky was resolutely opposed to violence and undemocratic methods. When one of his visitors argued that the transition to the new order might require a temporary dictatorship, he exclaimed that he would kill the dictator with his own hands. His conviction that socialism offered a painless way of solving the social problem and one that was possible under the existing regime was shared by many of his guests. As one habitue had it, Fourierism repudiated 'liberalism, demogagy, mutiny, and rebellion.' Among the frequenters of the Friday meetings there were, however, a few who were less unrealistic and, moreover, temperamentally impatient with Fabian policies. The hard facts of Russian life intruded upon Utopian fantasies. The French reformers' condemnation of capitalist society could not but sharpen the opposition of their Russian followers to the semi-feudal order under which they lived. Certainly not all of Item shared Fourier's political indifferentism. As a matter of fact, Petrashevsky himself favoured the gradual transformation of the Russian Empire into a federated republic like the United States of America. There were intimations of using force against the Czar's Government, and he himself came in for a good deal of obloquy at the gatherings. An army officer was the author of an essay in which he described Nicholas as the anti-Christ spoken of in the Apocalpyse and suggested that the Emperor be put for a few days on the diet of the Vitebsk peasants -- their bread looked like dried horse-dung mixed with straw.

Of course, abolition of serfdom was a general desideratum. And there were those who believed that only a peasant uprising would bring it about. Unlike the Decembrists, some of Petrashevsky's visitors came close to seeing the masses as an active political force. He himself attributed peasant poverty to collective land tenure, but at least one of his guests held that the obshchina was potentially an important national asset.

It has been indicated that the Petrashevsky coterie was in no sense a formal association. Late in 1848 an army officer and another frequenter of the Fridays proposed to set up such an organized body. They spoke of it as 'a brotherhood of mutual aid,' but were vague about its real purpose. Several men met privately to discuss the idea. One of them was Nikolay Speshnev, a substantial young landowner who had travelled abroad and there fallen under the influence of socialist theories. He advocated nationalization of land and government control of the country's entire economy. During the talks about 'the Brotherhood' he expressed the desire to see it organized as a 'purely political society' planning for propaganda and 'insurrection.' Afterwards he explained that he had spoken so boldly in order to bring the discussion to an end by frightening the participants. If that was his purpose, he achieved it, for the matter was dropped.

It is doubtful, however, if he gave up the idea of a secret society. Unlike Petrashevsky, he seems to have believed that a revolution would occur in the near future. The police found among his papers a statement to the effect that 'the undersigned' had joined 'the Russian Society,' and had obligated himself 'to participate openly and fully in the uprising and fight, when the Committee has decided that the time for the insurrection has arrived,' also to enrol other members and have each sign a similar pledge.

Speshnev was not the only one to entertain the thought of an armed uprising. Early in 1849 he had a talk with one, Chernosvitov, who had attended a few Fridays. Imagining that the man -- a former police official who had turned to gold mining in Siberia -- belonged to a secret society, Speshnev, to draw him out, passed himself off as a member of an imaginary underground organization. Thereupon Chernosvitov developed a plan for engineering the revolution: it was to start in Siberia, spread to the Urals, where four hundred thousand men with easy access to arms were waiting for the first sign of revolt, finally reaching the capitals. One of Petrashevsky's numerous acquaintances kept a tobacco shop, which was frequented by young men with whom the proprietor discussed liberty and equality and the chances of a republican regime in Russia. One of these youths, a student by the name of Tolstoy, spoke of surveying the capital with a view to finding sites for barricades. Another, when in his cups, volunteered to kill the Czar.

During the winter of 1848-49 some of the men who had attended the gatherings at Petrashevsky's also formed a more intimate 'salon,' so as to be safe from the secret service agents who, they suspected, not without reason, were mingling with the guests at the Fridays. At a meeting of this group, which included young Dostoevsky in addition to several other men of letters, Speshnev offered to have the writings of the authors present printed abroad and smuggled into the country. At another gathering Filippov. a student, proposed that the members write essays on various aspects of Russian life and reproduce them secretly by lithography. Speshnev's offer was not taken up, nor did the essays or the lithographing materialize. But it appears that a clandestine printing-press was actually set up, though not used. The enterprise, which was a capital offence, was concealed from Petrashevsky. It was carried out by Speshnev and Filippov, aided by half a dozen others, including Dostoevsky.

If the press remained idle, it was not for lack of appropriate copy. Several of the manuscripts which were read aloud at the gatherings were apparently intended for circulation. Such was a story from the pen of a Lieutenant of the Guards, in which a veteran of the Napoleonic wars advised the soldiery to follow the example of the French who had recently got rid of their king. Filippov himself was the author of a propagandist piece in the form of a commentary on the Ten Commandments. It applauded violence against brutal masters on the part of serfs, and described a czar who did not side with the people as 'a ruler whose authority was not from the Lord but from Satan.' Another manuscript that fairly begged to be printed was Belinsky's letter to Gogol, which was mentioned previously. Dostoevsky received a copy of it from Moscow and read it at Petrashevsky's and elsewhere, arousing 'universal rapture.'

V

On 7 April, 1849, [In ignoring the fact that Fourier was born on 7 April according to the Western calendar, the Russians were twelve days late marking the occasion.], Fourier's birthday was celebrated with a dinner. Eleven men met in a room decorated with a portrait of the master imported from Paris for the occasion. The first speaker pointed out that the event they were commemorating was destined to bring about the transformation of the planet and of the human beings inhabiting it. He held forth in exalted language on some of the more extreme and abstruse aspects of Fourier's teachings, but did not omit to refer to matters nearer home. 'My fatherland,' he exclaimed, 'is in chains, my fatherland is enslaved; religion, ignorance -- the companion of despotism -- have obscured, have stifled its natural inclinations. There is no room, however, for despair. Transfiguration is at hand!' the speaker cried; and it would be brought about by 'pure science.' All applauded; two enthusiasts embraced him.

Then Petrashevsky rose. He referred to himself as one of the oldest 'propagators of socialism.' This doctrine, he explained, sought to harmonize the organization of society with the needs of man's nature. He urged his hearers not to try to invent a new social system, but merely to apply the principle of Fourierism. The difficulties that confronted its Russian adherents should, however, not be minimized, for an unhappy accident had made them representatives of socialism on 'the savage soil' of an ignorant country, and faced them with conditions that neither Fourier himself nor his Western disciples could have foreseen.

The next speaker, after a grandiloquent opening, painted a black picture of the life around him: 'We live in a vast, hideous capital, amidst a monstrous conglomeration of human beings languishing in the grip of monotonous drudgery, soiled by dirty toil, smitten by disease and depravity, a conglomeration broken up into families which injure each other, waste time and energy, and join together to perform useless labours. And yonder the provincial cities strive to imitate the capital, their only aim and highest ambition being to become populous, depraved, monstrous like the capital! Still lower, tens of millions of labourers toil all day long, in sunshine and rain, tilling the soil which is not theirs that it may give them of its scanty fruit. Not for this has man laboured so long, and this is not the crown of his labours; it awaits him, he deserves it, and he will soon take it and cover his tormented head with it, and arise, king of the earth.'

From this point on, the note of exultation dominated his speech. 'We are celebrating the coming redemption of mankind,' he went on. 'To turn this life of torture, disaster, poverty, shame and disgrace into a life harmonious and abundant with joy, wealth, and happiness, and to cover all this poverty-ridden earth with palaces and flowers -- this is our great task, than which there is no greater on earth. . . . We here in our land,' he concluded, with messianic pride, 'will begin the transformation, and the whole earth will accomplish it.'

The practical outcome of the dinner, the first political banquet in Russia, was a decision to undertake a translation of the master's Theorie de Vunite universelle. The plan was not carried out. Some two weeks later the banqueters found themselves behind bars.

The existence of the circle had long been an open secret. In March 1848, Petrashevsky was placed under surveillance. Early in the next year a secret service agent managed to gain his confidence and in March began to frequent the Friday meetings. The result was that on the night of 23 April, 1849, Petrashevsky and some thirty of his visitors were rounded up and imprisoned in the Fortress of Peter arid Paul. Other arrests followed shortly. Altogether over a hundred men were examined. (When the conversation at the gatherings had touched on the question of the total number of 'socialists' in Russia, the estimates -- probably over-generous -- would range from four to eight hundred.)

Many of the prisoners behaved in much the same way as had the Decembrists under arrest. They recanted and pleaded for mercy. Tolstoy declared in a written deposition: 'I am guilty not only of the crimes with which I am charged, but of much greater ones. . . . And I would be a scoundrel if I dared to beg the Czar to spare me. All the mercy I crave is that he should forgive me in his heart, or else life will be poison for me. I can only say, like the prodigal son: "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight."'

Petrashevsky was among the few who bore themselves with dignity. He was deeply concerned over the fate of his comrades. He pleaded that if punishment was to be meted out, he alone should receive it: if he could not serve mankind as he had hoped, he wished to serve his country by such an act of self-sacrifice. He did not feel that he or his fellow prisoners had done anything unlawful. They were, he told his judges, not fanatics and monsters, but thinkers, cherishing the truth above all. Let them be shown that they erred and they would give up their convictions. He lectured and upbraided the court. In his memoranda he offered, among other things, to advise the Government on matters of public policy. One of his suggestions was that the Czar finance a phalanstery near Paris. He would thereby end the dangerous hostility between rich and poor in Western Europe, thus earning for himself a fame far above 'Napoleon's ruinous glory.' Believing that he was at the point of death, he bequeathed a third of his possessions to Considerant for the establishment of a phalanstery, and his body to an anatomical theatre.

For a long time Petrashevsky consistently denied any subversive designs. By the seventh month of his incarceration he was reduced to such a state that he declared himself willing to sign any confession presented to him. Solitary confinement, which all the prisoners had to endure, eventually affected his mind.

The Investigating Commission established the fact that a handful of young men met at Petrashevsky's and elsewhere to discuss socialist theories, air pernicious opinions of a liberal nature, and read revolting manuscripts. Nothing was discovered to indicate that they had formed anything like a secret organization with a programme of revolutionary action. At most, theirs was 'a conspiracy of ideas.' Credence was given to Speshnev's statement that 'the Russian Society' mentioned in the pledge found among his papers did not exist and that the pledge itself had neither been seen nor signed by anyone. No trace was found of the press which he and Filippov had confessed to having attempted to set up: it must have been removed from Speshnev's quarters after his arrest. Nevertheless twenty-three men were court-martialled and fifteen of them condemned to death by shooting. The verdict was reviewed by the Auditoriat General, the highest judicial body in the land. It handed down the decision that fully twenty-one of the defendants were liable to capital punishment, but recommended clemency. Accordingly, the Emperor commuted the death sentence to terms of hard labour of varying lengths. The men, including Dostoevsky, were taken to a public square, and there, in the presence of massed troops and a gaping crowd, they heard their death sentences and went through all the preparations for execution. At the last moment they were informed that the Czar in his mercy had made them a gift of their lives.

Petrashevsky and some of his fellow convicts died in Siberian exile. Others returned to European Russia alter having served their terms.

VI

The severity of the punishment meted out to the group which was to become known as the Petrashevists was due to the fact that the upheaval of 1848, like the events of 30 July in Paris and the revolution of 1789, had caused a spasm of reaction in the empire. Russia, a contemporary observed, was Europe's whipping boy. The news of the establishment of the second French republic produced a panic at court. The Czar's first thought was to march his troops to the Rhine. A month later he issued a hysterical manifesto bristling with threats against the revolutionaries and concluding with the words: 'Heed ye, nations, and submit, for God is with us!' He contented himself with assisting the anti-democratic forces in Prussia and putting down the Hungarian insurrection. In conservative circles the growth of the Russian working-class had long been regarded with apprehension. The February revolution enhanced the fear that such a development might lead to a repetition of what was happening in the West. The Governor-General of Moscow ordered that no more factories be built in that city, and it took a good deal of special pleading to overrule him. A high official, writing about those days in his memoirs, noted the appearance of 'a party of Reds who dreamed of a republic even for Russia.' The party was a figment of the dignitary's imagination. The spectre of communism that, according to Marx and Engels, was haunting Europe was seen in the palaces of Russia as well.

While intervening abroad, the Government tightened the bonds at home. The chief of the gendarmerie suggested a war to embitter the people against the French and their teachings. The authorities contented themselves with a campaign against the press. It was forbidden to publish anything 'about working people in France and in other states where political disturbances occurred or could occur.' Never before had censorship been so strict. It was during these years that several authors, including Turgenev, made their acquaintance with jail. Death alone had saved Belinsky from arrest.

The schools too were subjected to new stringencies. The universities were ordered to base their teachings not on rational but on religious truths, and the rectors and deans were enjoined to see to it that nothing in the instruction favoured socialism or communism. The chair of philosophy was abolished on the ground that the subject, while not demonstrably useless, was possibly harmful. All thought of reform, particularly the freeing of the serfs, was abandoned. The country breathed an intolerably oppressive air.

Herzen was spared the experience of living through that period of white terror. He had gone abroad with his family in 1847, to escape the fruitless discussions, the choking atmosphere of despotism. His first contacts with life in Western Europe were disheartening. He discovered that France was dominated by the section of the population that had appropriated all the gains of the Revolution: meshchanstvo (bourgeoisie) . Basically this was to him not so much a social class, but an ethical and aesthetic phenomenon: a spirit hopelessly crass, shallow, ignoble, the tyranny of the mindless mob, the twilight of the soul, the death of culture. The bourgeois, he wrote, had all the vices of the nobleman and the plebeian, and none of their virtues. Herzen was given to changes of heart, but he hardly ever wavered in his dislike of the European middle-class. As he did not put his light under a bushel, he contributed no little to the discrediting of the bourgeoisie in the eyes of his compatriots.

The February revolution found him in Rome and his friend Bakunin in Brussels. Bakunin immediately rushed to Paris and attached himself to the Republican Guard. 'The revolutionary movement,' he wrote, 'will only cease when all of Europe, including Russia, is transformed into a federated democratic republic' And he went off to rouse the Germans and the Poles, only to be arrested in Berlin. By April, when Herzen arrived in the French capital, the political skies were already overcast. With deep interest and growing apprehension, he watched the course of events. During the June massacres he and his wife sat with their Russian friends in a candle-lit room, since the light of a lamp would have seemed too garish, talking in whispers like mourners. He wished he had died on a barricade so that he could have taken some beliefs with him to the grave. Ogarev was then in Russia, but kept abreast of developments abroad. His advice, given in verse, was that those who had not committed suicide flee to America. As, indeed, many Europeans did.

The thought of emigrating to America occurred to Herzen too, but he rejected it. Weren't the United States but an extension of Europe, a revised edition of a familiar text? Furthermore, although the French Republic was becoming a police state, not unlike Nicholas's empire, it still had freedom of the press. He stayed on, spending part of the time in France, part in Italy, his mind furiously at work trying to make out the meaning of the cruel events, to learn the lessons of 1848, 'a pedagogical year.' Chief among them was the failure of political democracy. Universal suffrage, he wrote to friends at home, had given a controlling voice to orang-utans. The omnipotent middle-class was interested not in liberty, but in protecting its property. Except for 'a holy minority,' the masses were incapable of sustained protest. The liberals did not understand them and could offer them no guidance. Paris had become an extinct volcano, its crater filled with mud. Europe had reached an impasse. 'Repent, gentlemen, repent,' Herzen cried, 'the judgment day of your world is here!'

Well, perhaps the doomsday of the old order was not at hand. But the revolution would rise from its ashes, and its objective would be not a 'political revolution' -- the masses would have learned to expect nothing from that -- but socialism. This was what Europe would bequeath to the future as 'the fruit of its efforts, the summit of its development.' Herzen envisaged a vast and violent upheaval, which was bound to wipe out Western civilization. He mourned its end, but hailed 'the chaos and destruction' that would sweep into discard the exploitative society and the centralized state, sacrificing freedom to order, the individual to the collective. Exalting reason as 'the guillotine within man,' he momentarily favoured Blanqui's programme of dictatorship and, with characteristic inconsistency, Proudhon's anarchism. Indeed, he wrote for the latter's shortlived organ, La Voix du Peuple, and backed it financially.

The coup d'etat of 2 December, 1851, and the subsequent establishment of the Second Empire distressed but did not surprise Herzen. Events bore out his blackest anticipations. In his headlong fashion he decided that darkness had descended on Europe. Indeed, he concluded that the old world lay dying. Would the end come through 'the barbarism of the sceptre,' or 'the barbarism of communism,' that 'socialism of vengeance'? In any event, the conflict was inevitable. It might break out anywhere, in Paris or New York, and it would spread far and wide. Reaction having done its worst and wars having changed the face of Europe, the 'have-nots' would rise against the 'haves,' and communism, tempestuous, iniquitous, bloody, would sweep across the earth. Then, he prophesied, amid the ruins of palaces, factories and government offices, there would appear the new tables of the law: a socialist decalogue.

Herzen did not rule out the possibility of Socialism being defeated. He also conceded that the masses, having achieved victory, might become infected with the middle-class spirit. On an earlier occasion he had prophesied that in the fulness of time a new revolution would destroy Socialism. Meanwhile he remained committed to it. Not that the concept lost its vagueness for him. He described or was to describe it variously as embodied Christianity, a stomach problem, man's coming of age, the application of reason to public economy, as imminent, as far-off. He was satisfied that it had the highest moral sanction. Yet he felt the need of finding some guarantee that the socialist ideal was not an insubstantial dream. He believed that he had found such a guarantee at home.

As his disillusionment with the West deepened, his own country appeared to him in a different light. 'Faith in Russia saved me,' he wrote, 'when I was on the brink of moral death.' The Slavophils were right: Russia was different. Unlike effete Europe, it was full of vigour, self-confidence, audacity. In later years he was to speak of the Russians' lack of pieties, their readiness to utter 'with a kind of joy those ultimate, extreme words' which their Western teachers 'barely whisper, blanching and glancing about.' The dead hand of the past did not weigh on this virgin land. Like most Slavs, Russians 'belonged to geography, rather than to history.' Peter had forced Western civilization on his subjects with the help of the knout, so there was little in it that they cherished, surely not the principles of property and authority. Above all, Russia possessed the obshchina.

This institution had its drawbacks: it did not make for the most productive agricultural economy and, which was more deplorable, it submerged the individual. Yet potentially it was of immense value. It was 'the life-giving principle of the Russian people.' With its immemorial tradition of equality, collective ownership of land, and communal self-government, Herzen argued, the obshchina was in effect the seed of a socialist society. Under its aegis the simple villagers practised in their daily living what the noblest minds of Europe only dreamed of. The muzhik was the man of destiny. Herzen had been haunted by the thought that just as Christianity had undone the Roman Empire, so socialism was destined to overwhelm and renew modern civilization. He now decided that since the muzhik's whole being was keyed to a collective mode of existence, not the West but Russia, or rather Slavdom, was in a position to assure the triumph of the new faith. Certainly a purely political change could not tempt the Russians. Taking advantage of her backwardness and of Europe's experience, she might indeed bypass the morass of capitalism and middle-class culture on her way to Socialism. There was no historic necessity for her to follow in the footsteps of other countries.

During the early years of his stay abroad Herzen poured out these ideas in a succession of brilliant, if brittle and somewhat hysterical essays, published in German and French and before long brought out in Russian. Later on he kept returning to these speculations. They had the greatest resonance in intellectual circles at home.

Herzen's thesis regarding the socialist potentialities of the obshchina was corroborated by Baron August von Haxthausen, a Prussian sociologist of archconservative views, who spent most of the year 1843 in Russia investigating conditions there under semi-official auspices. He presented his findings in an imposing two-volume opus published simultaneously in German and French in 1847. In his foreword to this work the author mentions the obshchina and goes on to say: 'In all other countries muffled rumblings announce the approach of a social revolution directed against property. . . . In Russia such an overturn is impossible. There the Utopia of European revolutionaries is already realized.' In his third volume, brought out in 1853, the Baron treated the subject of the peasant commune at some length. Like others before him, he saw its main advantage in that it assured the Empire against the two evils that threatened the other nations with ruin: the proletariat and pauperism. His views on the subject were to play an important part in the controversy centring around the institution of the obshchina. A generation later Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, another foreign student of Russia, was to write: 'A kind of virtual and latent Socialism, a vague and naive Communism is current among the Russian people. . . . Russia is the only country in the civilized world where one can attempt to abolish private property by decree.'

As an ideologue Herzen had come home, but only in spirit. When the French police informed their Petersburg confreres that he had taken part in an anti-Government street demonstration, he was ordered to return to Russia. But he refused, thus burning his bridges. In 1851 he naturalized himself in Switzerland. But this citizen of the canton of Uri felt himself more profoundly a Russian than ever, with his life work cut out for him. On the one hand, he would acquaint foreigners with his country, which they feared but did not know. On the other, he would make himself the voice of those at home who were tongueless. Although at this time he put his faith in revolution, he knew that his weapon was not the pistol or the bomb, but the printed word.

He had arrived in London, the city of refuge for radicals from the Continent, in 1852, a bereaved and heart-broken man. One of his small sons and his mother had been drowned, and his wife had died in childbirth shortly afterwards. He urgently needed work into which he could throw himself body and soul. Having inherited a considerable fortune, he had an annual income of fifty to sixty thousand francs. He used some of his money to set up, in 1853, the Free Russian Press.