A Herzen Reader

We must get our bearings in the new situation. It is true that we are emerging poorer from these five years of good hopes, but, to make up for it, with less of a burden on our swampy journey.

We thought that the autocracy in Russia could still perform the noble deed of freeing the serfs with land. [. . .] But what did happen? Autocracy, which never gives anything careful thought, spilling blood and tears with the callousness of a locomotive encountering obstacles, shyly stopped as it pronounced the words "emancipation with land," and began to consult with generals and bureaucrats, with young scholars and old men "decrepit" in their ignorance. As if that were not enough, they summoned prominent people and ordered them to keep their advice to themselves. All of this taken together—the involuntary realization that the imperial house has no more faith in its moral power and in its blood ties with the people, leads both the government and the revolutionary to sense that they have the right to act boldly!

Our article from April i, i860, was the final effort to convince ourselves of the possibility of "the improvement of the imperial way of life" with its liberation from crude and ignorant nobles and the pernicious, numbing bureaucracy.

But already Alexander II, frightened by some kind of apparitions, held onto the endless tails of Panin's coat and said to him: "Do not deceive me!"

That is a kind of abdication.

Alexander II released his bow, and in this lies his historical significance; where the arrow lands is out of his control, and it does not even depend on whether Panin deceives him or not. Isn't this tsarist vacillation another kind of vivos voco?³ Isn't it a bell reminding the minority of adults that it is time to do things themselves, that there has been enough of relying com­pletely on the government? Let us leave administrative matters and diplo­matic gossip to it. Let us withdraw from its place on the parade ground and take up our own affairs, and let it stand, like a Neva pyramid, like a mansion in which a dead person lives.

Be assured that there is nothing to expect from the government. Without an Achilles heel for reason, engaged in the preservation of old rituals and official uniforms, satisfied with magnificent robes and material power, it will sometimes, under the influence of the current flow of ideas, convul­sively extend its hand to progress, and every time will take fright halfway there... This all may continue for a long time, at least until someone more daring peeps under the curtain and sees not that the emperor is dead but that the government had given the order: "long live the people!"

Who has not happened to see old citadels gloomily standing for centu­ries on end? Since the time when they poured death down on enemies, a new life has surrounded them with a garland of streets, gardens, palaces, stretching further and further into the fields and coming closer and closer to the embrasures with their rusty cannon, along which a watchman walks in businesslike idleness, while within, sparrows build their nests. Genera­tions go by, and suddenly the question presents itself to everyone: what is the point of these walls, which are not defending us from anyone, why maintain a garrison, with an idle prankster with gray whiskers reporting

every evening to the commandant? The city finds it ridiculous: the ancient fortress is reduced to rubble, and life quickly covers over the scars with its own little swellings and ditches.

Such a threatening fortress is our government. Everything is requisi­tioned by the commandant, everything, as is expected in a state of siege, willing or not, does its duty. Russia offers the fantastic spectacle of a state in which everything acknowledged to be a human being consists wholly of officials, military and civilian.

Only literature, the universities, and the peasant hut took no positive part in the establishment and maintenance of the autocratic official order, accepted as the government's goal. No attention was paid to the dispirited hut; only schismatic groups were being harassed by officials from time to time for violations of church form. Literature and the universities were roundly hated by Nicholas, an expert on these matters.

The entire people were under a guardianship, like some sort of adoles­cent. The late guardian had gone to the Herculean extent that he did not allow private individuals to build railroads with their own money!

After that, it remained for the people to finally conclude that they were adolescents, to assume a zoological form and quietly dwell in the company of residents of Khiva, beavers, Kirgiz, and lemurs. But it was precisely here that there proved to be some signs of life. A slave, constrained hand and foot, tied and bound to the "job," without a voice, tangled up in the bureau­cracy's nets, sent to be a soldier and flogged, flinched at the incursion of a foreign enemy,⁴ stretched his muscles, and on the edge of disgrace felt his own power. [. . .]

The tsar also flinched and he also opened his eyes. the silence of the steppe, theft nearby, theft far away, neither a friendly glance nor a human face nor devotion, all buttoned-up collars and properly sewn and fitted uni­forms. while below are groans, armies perishing, the thunder of cannon, the fire's glow, ships sinking, blood flowing. a dispatch from Eupatoria fell from his hand and he died.⁵

Russia offered five years of waiting for a few kind words, for the desire to do good. And what happened? The very same proof of inability, of bank­ruptcy in doing good that after five years turned out to be evil!

And what follows from this? It is time to stop playing at garrisons. Let the government govern and let us take up our own affairs. For this we must go into retirement—the household is in disorder, the children need to be educated and landowner's sons need to be tamed.

We will weaken the government by our non-participation. Their busi­ness will suffer but the office work will not stop. Without us they still have

enough assistants to fill all the official cracks—clerks, bureaucrat-Germans, and bureaucrat-doctrinaires. It has raised officialdom to a science and has lowered the government to the level of an office in charge of decorum. Out of gratitude they should remain with the government, like mice with a sink­ing ship...

But we will be off on our own!

April 25, 1860

Notes

Source: "Za piat' let," Kolokol, l. 72, June i, i860; ^274-78, 555-56.

Herzen is referring to Panin's appointment, the exile of Unkovsky and Evropeus, and the harassment of students and professors at St. Petersburg University.

"Seven terrible years" refers to the reactionary period between the failed i848 upris­ings and the death of Nicholas I in Й55.

On "vivos voco," see the introduction and Doc. 9.

French forces landed in the Crimea in i854.

Russian forces were defeated near Eupatoria on February 5, Й55, news received by Nicholas I on February i4; his health took a serious turn for the worse within a few days and by February i8 he was dead. This rapid sequence of events led to rumors of suicide.

♦ 29 +

The Bell, No. 75, July i, i860. Earlier in i860, Herzen responded to a letter from a Rus­sian ship captain with an essay about the extraordinary importance of ending corporal punishment, a practice which offended both human dignity and natural empathy. "The great men of the i4th of December understand the importance of this so well, that members of the society undertook an obligation not to tolerate corporal punishment on their estates, and eliminated it from regiments they commanded" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 27:bk. i, 22).

The article below is one of Herzen's most direct and passionate public statements on the issue, one of the problems weighing on his mind when he established the Free Russian Press (Doc. i3). This became a cause dear to many in Russia's emerging civil society, but not one that soon led to new laws. Almost four decades later, at one of the lively and significant Pirogov medical congresses (April 2i-28, Й96, in Kiev), the for­mer serf D. N. Zhbankov made a plea for "removing the negative factors which retarded cultural development," including corporal punishment. Zhbankov wore a peasant blouse, even to the Pirogov Society dinners, in order to call attention to the peasants' situation (Frieden, Russian Physicians, i9i).

Down with Birch Rods! [i860]

We would like to make a very simple and possible proposal to the educated minority of the gentry—a proposal carrying with it neither responsibility nor danger. We propose that they set up

a union to ban corporal punishment

The degree of education of this minority, its conduct on the provincial committees, its maturity as expressed in a desire for self-governance—all this is incompatible with the savage beating and lashing of serfs. In times of backwardness and patriarchal brutality, the conscience of the person met­ing out the punishment was to a certain degree clear; he believed that this was not only his right but thought that it was his duty. No one believes that now, and now everyone knows that punishment without a trial—based on personal views—is a selfish application of the rights of the stronger person and is the same kind of torment as the lashing of a horse. Serfs in the field and the house are beaten exclusively and naturally for financial advantage and for petty convenience.

The government cannot and will not hinder such a negative union. The government does not impose on gentry the obligation to lash their serfs. It simply allows this and helps in a fatherly way. [. . .]

Let landowners think that flogging will not be around for long, and, fol­lowing the awkwardness of the transitional state, one must, against one's will, part company with the rod. is it not better to give it up voluntarily? To cast off the rod like the French nobility threw their feudal charters into the fire on August 4th? ¹

It is noble to reject the right to flog in light of the Cherkassky party and Samarin and Milyutin who are united with Cherkassky.² And, really, what would the government take you for, thinking that you demand human rights for yourself and also want to flog without a trial, and this at a time when the government itself is beginning to limit beating in the military?

In every province let three or four landowners give each other their solemn promise never to resort to corporal punishment, never to allow themselves to beat anyone—that is enough of a beginning. Of course it is perfectly clear that the thing shouldn't be done halfway—it's little enough not to beat people yourself and not to send them to be flogged. it is necessary to forbid stewards, elders, and butlers, and to forbid it in such a way that the field and house serfs knew!

This is not the first time we have had to be embarrassed at the poverty of our demands. Yes, there is a great deal one must tame and keep silent in oneself in order to stretch out a hand as if asking for alms. for what?.. for recognizing human dignity in oneself and in those near to you!

If only our voice is not in vain, if only it reminded some and advised oth­ers that the time has come to leave off butchery; if only as a first instance it succeeded in sparing several peasants from torture and several landowners from a stain on their conscience.

We do not want to know what landowners did up till now. We close our eyes to the past, when much was done due to ignorance, habit, an awful upbringing, and the disgraceful example of the parental home. Amnesty and oblivion are also necessary here. But three years ago, the situation changed, and from the point when the question of emancipation was raised by the government, discussed in journals, sitting-rooms, and front halls, in the capital and the provinces—since that time it has become impos­sible to be an honorable and educated person and beat one's people. (Of course, we exclude theoretical fanatics of flogging, these are damaged people, and they can talk nonsense and still be the most honorable of people, like every madman.)

Let us give each other our word of honor not to flog our peasants and set up not just one union but hundreds of them in various provinces and vari­ous districts. Most of all, do not be afraid of your small numbers; two ener­getic people, firmly marching toward their goal, are more powerful than a whole crowd that lacks any goal. Didn't Wilberforce and Cobden begin with three or four people who came to agreement in a club or a tavern?³ [. . .] Man is as weak as a spark and as strong as a spark, if he believes in his strength and comes upon a ready environment in time.

Throw away the despicable rod and join hands in the Union to Ban Cor­poral Punishment!

Notes

Source: "Rozgi doloi!" Kolokol, l. 75, July 1, i860; 14:287-89, 561.

At a meeting of the Constituent Assembly in 1789.

Prince Vladimir A. Cherkassky (1824-1878) was an expert member on the Edito­rial Commission considering the issue of serfdom and emancipation; Yury F. Samarin (1819-1876) was a writer, public figure, member of the Editorial Commission, and a Slavophile.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was an English activist who successfully fought to end the slave trade in Britain; Richard Cobden (1804-1865) was an English political figure, opponent of the Corn Laws, advocate of free trade, and member of Parliament.

The Bell, No. 90, January i5, i86i. Herzen learned about Konstantin Aksakov's death through a letter from the deceased's brother, Ivan. Turgenev wrote to Herzen in Febru­ary i86i informing him that the article below made a deep impression on readers in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, and that Turgenev himself appreciated the linking of his name with that of Belinsky and others in the essay "Provincial Universities" (that appeared in the subsequent issue) as much as he would a prestigious govern­ment award (Let 3^85). Ivan Aksakov later added that what Herzen wrote was much better than anything published in Russia about his brother or about Khomyakov (who died in September i860). Despite differing on a number of issues, Herzen had deep respect for the Moscow Slavophiles, agreeing with Konstantin Aksakov on the need to emancipate the serfs with land, and on the hopelessness of the government in St. Petersburg. At this point he felt closer in some ways to the Slavophiles than to pro- government liberals or the increasingly intolerant progressive writers. The Ministry of Education banned a speech at St. Petersburg University about Aksakov by Professor Nikolay I. Kostomarov (i8i7-i885) because of Herzen's praise for the deceased in The Bell. Walicki notes that the Aksakov obituary was "lengthy and extraordinarily warm," reflecting an idealization of Slavophilism and a celebration of its utopia at a moment when Slavophiles were about to abandon this vision (Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, 592). Lengthy excerpts from this tribute were included in Herzen's memoir (My Past and Thoughts, 2:549-50).

In the same issue of The Bell, Herzen reported on the "arrest" of the papers of history professor Platon V. Pavlov (i823-i895) in St. Petersburg, in connection with a Kharkov student affair. Pavlov, who had previously taught in Kiev and Moscow, was exiled to Vetlyuga after an i862 speech at a millennium celebration in St. Petersburg, later trans­formed and immortalized by Dostoevsky in the novel Demons.

Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov [1861]

Following the powerful fighter for the Slavic cause in Russia, A. S. Khomya- kov, one of his comrades-in-arms, Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov, passed away last month.

Khomyakov died young, even younger than Aksakov; it is painful for the people who loved them to know that these noble, tireless activists, these op­ponents, who were closer to us than many of our own, are no more. One can­not argue with the absurd power of fate, which has neither ears nor eyes and cannot even be offended, and for that reason, with tears and a pious feeling we close the lid on their coffins and move on to that which lives after them.

The Kireevskys,¹ Khomyakov, and Aksakov finished their work; whether their lives were long or short, when closing their eyes they could with full consciousness say to themselves that they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish; if they were unable to stop the courier's troika sent by Peter, in which Biron sits and thrashes the coachman to make him gal­lop along rows of grain and trample people, then they did bring a halt to mindlessly enthusiastic public opinion and caused all serious people to be­come thoughtful.

The turning point in Russian thought began with them. And when we say that, it would seem, we cannot be suspected of bias.

Yes, we were their opponents, but very strange ones. We had a single love, but not an identical one.

From our earliest years we and they were struck by a single, powerful, instinctive, physiological, passionate feeling, which they took as a recollec­tion and we as prophecy—a feeling of boundless, all-embracing love for the Russian people, the Russian way of life, and the Russian way of thinking. And like Janus or a two-headed eagle, we gazed in different directions while our heart beat as one.

They transferred all their love and all their tenderness to the oppressed mother. For us, brought up away from home, that tie had weakened. A French governess had charge of us and we learned later on that our mother was not she, but a downtrodden peasant woman, which we ourselves had guessed from the resemblance in our features and because her songs were more native to us than vaudeville. We came to love her very much but her life was too cramped for us. It was very stuffy in her little room—all black­ened faces looking out from the silver icon frames, priests and deacons— frightening the unhappy woman, who had been beaten by soldiers and clerks; even her eternal cry about lost happiness tore at our heart. We knew that she had no radiant memories, and we knew something else, that her happiness lay ahead, that beneath her heart beat that of an unborn child, our younger brother. [. . .]

Such was our family quarrel fifteen years ago.² A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then; we have encountered mountain air that stopped our ascent, while they, instead of a world of relics, stumbled upon living Russian questions. To settle accounts seems strange to us because there is no patent on understanding; time, history, and experience brought us closer together not because they were drawn closer to us or we to them, but because we and they are closer to a true outlook than before, when we relentlessly tore each other to pieces in journal articles, although even then I do not recall that we doubted their ardent love for Russia or they ours.³

Based on this faith in each other and this common love even we have the right to bow to their graves and throw our handful of earth on their deceased with a sacred wish that on their graves and on ours young Russia will flourish powerfully and widely!

January 1/13,1861

Notes

Source: "Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov," Kolokol, l. 90, January 15, 1861; 15:9-11,

294-96.

Ivan V. Kireevsky (1806-1856), literary critic, editor of The European, and, along with his older brother Petr (1808-1856), one of the founders of the Slavophile movement.

Herzen refers to the years 1844-47.

Herzen: "Only once N. Yazykov insultingly 'lashed out' at Chaadaev, Granovsky, and me. K. Aksakov could not stand it and answered this poet in his own party with sharp verses in our defense. [. . .] Aksakov remained an eternally enthusiastic and infinitely noble youth. He got carried away, was distracted, but was always pure of heart. In 1844, when our quarrels had reached the point where neither we nor the Slavophiles wanted to have any further meetings, I was walking along the street as K. Aksakov went by in a sleigh. I bowed to him in a friendly way. He was about to pass me by when he suddenly stopped the coachman, got out of the sleigh and came up to me. 'It was too painful for me,' he said, 'to go past you without saying goodbye. You understand that after all that has passed between your friends and mine, I won't be coming to see you; it is such a pity but nothing can be done about it. I wanted to shake your hand and bid you farewell.' He rapidly walked back to his sleigh, but sud­denly turned; I stood in the same spot because I was feeling sad; he ran toward me, embraced and kissed me. I had tears in my eyes. How I loved him at that moment of quarreling!"

^31 +

The Bell, No. 93, March 1, 1861. In this article, Herzen is most likely taking into account information he received in a February i86i letter from Ivan Turgenev, who said that the emancipation announcement would come soon, perhaps on the sixth anniversary of the death of Nicholas I (February i8). Turgenev believed that the main opponents of this act were Gagarin (either Ivan Vasilevich, Voronezh governor and author of an infamous project to defraud the serfs, or Prince Pavel Pavlovich, a member of the Main Committee on emancipation), Minister of State Properties Count Mikhail N. Muravyov, Minister of Finance Knyazhevich, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Gorchakov. In the following issue of The Bell, Herzen urged Russian tourists to return home to wit­ness this civilizational change, a message he also sent privately to Turgenev, saying that for men of the forties "this is our moment, our last moment—the epilogue" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 27:bk. i, 138-40).

On the Eve [1861]

Holy Saturday has come and soon the bell will begin to ring for the morning service. and the soul feels frightened and oppressed. Why would we poi­son this festive moment? Like our poor peasants, we stand deep in thought, with incomplete faith, with a deep desire for love and with an insurmount­able feeling of hate.

If only we could say once more: "You have conquered, Galilean!" how loudly and enthusiastically we would have said it, and let any one-sided doc­trinaire and immobile front-line soldier of schoolboy science, while mock­ing us, produce proof that we do not continually repeat one and the same thing.

Russia did not have this much at stake either in i6i2 or in i8i2.

It is good that on the anniversary of the death of Nicholas they will lay to rest the Petrine era. We would like to say: "many thanks to it for a difficult lesson and for consigning to oblivion the evil caused by it!" But for this the evil must die, and it has not died out in the criminal, dishonest old men who do not repent of the money-grubbing and greed.

Foreign journals talk about the plantation owner opposition by the in­valids. The grave will be an unquiet place for these gray-haired eunuchs if they succeed in disfiguring the Rus that is being born. This is not just about bribes and theft, this is a knife being driven into the future. Watch out, Mu- ravyovs and Gagarins,¹ double traitors—of the people, whom you are pillag­ing, and of the tsar, whom you are robbing—if you manage to make your way to the swampy Petersburg cemeteries, your descendants will answer before the Russian people.

There are sacred, solemn moments in the life of people and nations dur­ing which wrongs are not forgiven!

Note

Source: "Nakanune," Kolokol, l. 93, March i, i86i; ^33-34, 3i0-ii.

i. Ivan V. Gagarin was head of the nobility in the province of Voronezh from i853 to i859, a member of the province's committee on peasant issues, and author of a proposal to deprive serfs of any estate lands upon their emancipation and credit landowners with half the value of peasant dwellings.

This pamphlet was printed, but never distributed. Herzen awaited the imminent an­nouncement about the serfs' fate with keen anticipation and regret that he could not be in Moscow himself (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 27:bk. i, i39-40). This is the speech, dated March 24, that Herzen intended to give at an April i0, i86i, celebration of the emancipation in his London home, to which Russians in London and other sympathiz­ers were invited. Part of the evening's festivities would be the premier performance of Prince Yury Golitsyn's "Fantasia on the Emancipation" (Let 3:i98, 2i7). Herzen reminds his audience that reaching this milestone has been the primary focus of his life's work.

Herzen's speech was to be published immediately afterward in The Bell, with a French translation to be placed in Parisian newspapers, but it was never given. On the day of the celebration, he received news from a Polish colleague at the Russian printing house in London that Russian troops had once more attacked a peaceful demonstration in War­saw. It was now unthinkable to offer a toast in honor of the tsar who permitted this attack (on March 27 [April 8]). During an evening that he later described as more "like a fu­neral" he did offer a brief toast to Russia's success, prosperity, and further development (Let 3:i98). One memoir account says that prepared copies of the speech in Russian, Pol­ish, English, and French were thrown into the fire instead of being distributed to guests, but Herzen's handwritten copy was preserved (Literaturnoe Nasledtsvo, 63:59-70).

Friends and Comrades!

[1861]

Today we have stepped away from our printing press for the free Russian word in order to celebrate in a fraternal manner the beginning of the emanci­pation of the serfs in Russia. You know what this emancipation means for us. In the emancipation of the serfs with land lies the entire future of a Rus that is not autocratic, manor-house, aggressive, Moscow-Tatar, not Petersburg- German, but national, communal—and free!

The first word from our printing house was a word about St. George's Day.

The first booklet issued by it was about baptized property.

The Polestar and The Bell set as their motto: the liberation of the serfs and of the word!

And now its beginning has been declared—timidly, with equivocations— but declared!

Events have undergone major changes since we printed the first issues in i853. Everything around us was gloomy and hopeless. An oppressive orgy of reaction reached the final stage, it was time to give up the struggle, but we began a strange kind of work, sowing, on the stony debris of foreign ruins, seeds meant for the far-off homeland from which we were cut off. What did we hope for? I don't know, and I will speak just for myself— whether it was because I was not then in Russia and did not experience the direct effect of arbitrary rule or for another reason—but I believed in Russia at a time when everyone had doubts!

Much water has flowed under the bridge since that time.

I turn to those who witnessed our beginning and ask you to think about anyone who had said in i853 that in eight years we would be gathering at a friendly feast and that the hero of that feast would be the Russian tsar! You would have thought that such a person was crazy or worse. For my part I frankly confess that such a thing never entered my head.

Fortunately, gentlemen, none of us are guilty—there is only one guilty party, the man himself.

For giving him credit I will be scolded by revolutionary ascetics and rig­orous thinkers—I have been scolded for many things I have said. But if I expressed my opinion when for that you could be imprisoned and exiled to Vyatka, if I was not afraid of irritating the haughty aristocratic spirit of a decrepit and self-satisfied civilization, then why would I stop at the opposite prejudices?

It is all the easier for me to acknowledge Alexander II's great deed be­cause that acknowledgment is a guarantee of our sincerity, and we need people's confidence, as much confidence as possible!

The February i9 manifesto is a milestone; the whole road still lies ahead, and the mail is in the hands of the most savage Tatar coachmen and Ger­man riding-masters. They will do everything to overturn or to tie up the cart. But it is impossible to expose their machinations in Russia. The word has fallen behind—as before it is firmly censored at home—that is why publishing abroad is essential and we know our duty.

And let them not be anxious—their business affairs will not disappear: we will follow them with great fervor step by step, bribe after bribe, crime after crime, with the tireless attention coming from a hatred that senses its own rightness. We will lead them out to the place of punishment, we will bind them up in their own filth to the pillory—all these Muravyov- the-hangmen, prince-deacons, like Gagarin, and radiant gendarmes, like Dolgorukov; these soulless hoarders and embezzlers, rebels in the name of slavery, knights of the birch rod—not ashamed to steal from the people the first day of their celebration!

Our work really only begins now. Therefore, friends, let us go to the printing presses, to our service for the Russian people and for human free­dom! But first let us drain our glasses for the health of our liberated broth­ers and in honor of Alexander Nikolaevich, their liberator!

For the Polish people, for their freedom and equality, for their complete independence from Russia and for the friendly union ofRussians and Poles!

A toast to the tsar Notes

Source: Druz'ia i tovarishchi!.." April 10, 1861, 15:217-19, 419-21.

♦ 33 +

The Bell, No. 96, April i5, i86i. Kovalevsky is the minister of education who banned the speech about the late Konstantin Aksakov at a St. Petersburg University assembly on February 8, 1861. At the conclusion of the assembly, the students' loud demand for a public reading of the speech caused the university authorities present to quickly vanish. Several days later, Kostomarov gave the speech; it was received with great en­thusiasm and students lifted the professor up in his chair and carried him out of the auditorium.

The Bell, Kovalevsky, Kostomarov, a Copy, and Cannibals

[1861]

In London, one is forbidden to hang indecent posters on walls; at Peters­burg University there is so much freedom that some naughty fellow named Pletnev posted the following announcement:

By order of the minister of education and the trustee of the St. Pe­tersburg educational district, a proposal in my name, dated February ii, i86i, No. 782, directed that the following announcement be made throughout the university.

University Rector Pletnev

(^{a co}py⁾

Every educated person is aware that lawful requests must be ad­dressed to the authorities in a prescribed way. On this basis, students of St. Petersburg University, as they have been told repeatedly, should declare every request of theirs to the authorities through their chosen colleagues.

Meanwhile, the incident at the university assembly on February 8, most unfortunately, showed that students did not follow the sole legal path for an explanation of their quandary.

This sad incident, which demeaned the dignity of the university, although carried out by a minority of the students, nevertheless brings infamy to the entire student body.

People who consider themselves for the most part educated gave a clear example of their lack of respect for the law and a crude indecency.

To prevent similar actions in the future, in addition to the an­nouncement of December i8, i858, forbidding any demonstration on penalty of the expulsion of the guilty parties from the university, irrespective of their numbers, by order of the highest authority it is an­nounced that:

If disturbances of the type mentioned above are carried out by students as a group at lectures then students of that school and year, who, according to the schedule, were obliged to be at this lecture, will immediately be dismissed, with the exception of those who can offer absolute proof that they were not present at the university at that time.

If a similar disturbance is carried out by a group of students at an assembly or other public university gathering, then all students as a whole are subject to dismissal from the university unless they can offer the absolute evidence mentioned in point i that at the time of the incident in the assembly they were not present.

Certified true copy: Council secretary A. Savinsky

After a few days, the authorities ordered that this announcement—which we take as authentic on the counter-signature of the secretary Savinsky—be taken down.

If it were possible to take this as more than the espieglerie¹ of Pletnev and Kovalevsky,² then, based on the enlightened order of such a ministry, it fol­lows that if all Russia organizes some kind of demonstration, they will expel all of Russia, with the exception of those Russians who can offer absolute proof that they live abroad.

All of this commotion ensued from Kostomarov's desire to give a speech about the work of the late K. Aksakov, but the fathers of the enlightenment along with the fathers of the Third Department found it impossible that in the university a professor publicly praised a man about whom The Bell had written positively. From this emerged the ban on the speech, from this came the displeasure of the students, from this the threat of expulsion of several hundred members of the audience who attended the university and the retention of those who could prove that they did not attend it.

It is remarkable that in all of this the loser was not Kovalevsky, Kostoma- rov, The Bell, the Copy, or the Cannibals, but Alexander Nikolaevich. Now the censorship will not allow a single word about him. We did him more justice than Aksakov, and even without that, we allowed no abuse of him.

So when is Pletnev's jubilee?

Notes

Source: " 'Kolokol,' Kovalevskii, Kostomarov, kopiia, kannibaly," Kolokol, l. 96, April i5, i86i; i5:72-73, 336.

Mischief.

Petr A. Pletnev (i792-i865), critic, poet, professor, friend of Pushkin, editor of The Contemporary from i838 to i846, and rector of St. Petersburg University from Й40 to i86i.

♦ 34 *

The Bell, No. 96, April i5, i86i. Herzen reacts to the new fashion of celebrating the jubi­lees of reactionary officials. This essay displays the familiar use of puns and unexpected descriptive phrases.

The Abuse of a Fiftieth Anniversary [1861]

For us every kind of public declaration of joy, grief, sympathy, and repug­nance is still so new that like children, we do not know when to stop and we make the most innocent game offensive. After the imperial journey through Russia of Alexander Dumas and the election of Molinari into the company of genuinely secret great men¹—we have flung ourselves into fiftieth anni­versaries. Grech imitates the old men, Grech reads to the old men, with old lips Grech chews the jubilee victuals, and then describes the dishes and the old men in his own gray speeches.² The appearance of Grech at the table will soon inspire horror in a family, reminding them that someone is past seventy. We hardly had time to recover from the delightful feelings aroused in us by Grech's story of how, fifty years earlier, at the entry guardhouse to St. Petersburg, there arrived a young student from Kazan, poor in money but rich in pure mathematics, how he became a professor, despite the fact that he knew what his field was, that he—more an artist and poet—could not for long be satisfied with pure mathematics and entered the ministry of impure mathematics, and now has himself become minister and is now celebrating his jubilee, and all the same—the old Nestor of jubilees could have said—he is repelled by everything pure and because of that hindered the emancipation of the serfs.³

Thus we hardly had time to recover from the story of the young student from Kazan arriving fifty years ago at the entry guardhouse to St. Peters­burg, when Grech presented a new old fellow, P. A. Vyazemsky, for a jubi­lee. What did he do fifty years ago with no Petersburg guardhouse? What is meant by the beginning of his literary activity fifty years ago?⁴ But this ques­tion would have been unimportant, had he done anything sensible during these fifty years. His literary activity, as well as his service record, is known to everyone except the troubadour singing his praises in frightfully poor verse. What thought or thoughts did this anniversary prince give to the younger generation, what task did he accomplish in his half-century? To be "Karamzin's brother and Pushkin's friend" and the deputy Minister of Education does not give one the right to such recognition. We don't know what kind of brother or friend he was but he did a poor job as the deputy Minister of Education. Why all this agitation—the man barely had time to eat his dinner and listen to the singing poet, when he, the old man, was summoned to tea at Yelena Pavlovna's where the tsar drank to his health. Pogodin himself came from Moscow. What could be added for the fiftieth anniversary of Pushkin—would they really only add Grech's prose and Sol- logub's verse?⁵

Notes

Source: "Zloupotreblenie piatidesiatiletiia," Kolokol, l. 96, April i5, i86i; i5:74-75, 336-39.

The elder Dumas traveled to Russia in i858 and published a book of his impres­sions; the Third Department kept an account of honors bestowed on him by aristocrats and local officials. Gustave de Molinari, the Belgian editor of Journal des Economistes, contributed to the reactionary journalist Mikhail Katkov's publications; in i860, he trav­eled to Moscow and was received with great honor by Katkov and his circle.

Nikolay I. Grech's own fiftieth jubilee was celebrated in Й54.

Herzen is referring to Minister of Finance Knyazhevich (i792-i870), whose an­niversary was celebrated in the Petersburg assembly of the nobility on January i9, i86i. Grech's speech on the occasion was published in The Northern Bee two days later. Her- zen made his own use of Grech's lofty rhetoric in a number of articles, and publicized Knyazhevich's minority stance against emancipation as a member of the Main Commit­tee. Grech is compared to Nestor, a monk and chronicler from the Kiev Monastery of the Caves (late eleventh to early twelfth centuries).

Prince Peter A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878), a poet and critic and from 1855 to 1858 deputy minister of education, beginning in 1861 was a member of the Main Censorship Committee.

Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna (1806-1873), widow of Grand Duke Mikhail Pav- lovich and the tsar's aunt, was famous for her salon, which was frequented by moder­ately liberal forces at court and in the government. Mikhail P. Pogodin (1800-1875) was a historian and journalist, and professor of history at Moscow University from 1826 to 1844. Count Vladimir A. Sollogub (1813-1882) was a writer.

♦ 35 +

The Bell, Nos. 98-99, May 15, 1861. Herzen was disturbed by violence against the Poles, Russian peasants, and students in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and wrote several es­says on this topic. The first letter quoted in this article was sent to Herzen by Stepan S. Gromeka (1823-1877), a journalist and government official in Russia and Poland. The authors of the other two letters are not known.

Russian Blood Is Flowing!

[1861]

Yes, Russian blood is flowing like a river!.. And there are vapid souls and timid minds who reproach us for our pained words of damnation and indignation!

The government could have prevented all of this, both the Polish blood and the Russian blood, but now—because of their unsteadiness, lack of understanding, and inability to carry anything through to the end—they are killing multitudes of our brothers.

The news coming from all quarters fills us with horror and tears. Those poor peasants! In Europe they do not even suspect what is meant in our country by pacification by soldiers, by adjutant-generals, and by aides-de­camp. Our only hope lies with soldiers and young officers. It is difficult to carry a weapon with the blood of your dear ones—fathers, mothers, and brothers—clotted on it.

We will stop; it is dark before our eyes, we are afraid to give voice to ev­erything that groans within us, and we are afraid to express everything that is fermenting in our heart.

First we will present the facts.

Here are extracts from letters, without any alterations:

You are aware that the sovereign has sent his aides-de-camp and adjutant-generals to all the provinces.¹ The adjutants are carrying out their missions. In several provinces, birch rods and troops are in action and blood is flowing. I know for certain that the day before yesterday three new adjutant-generals (along with the ones already in action) were sent to the Kazan, Tambov—and in addition, it seems— to the Ryazan provinces. These new envoys are provided with the authority to hang and shoot people at their discretion. In Kazan a Pretender has appeared (in the Spassky district) claiming to be Alex­ander Nikolaevich, having been driven away by the gentry.² Seventeen villages have dug in and are joining battle with forces under the banner of that gentleman. It is not known who he is. But the clashes were terrible: 70 peasants have already fallen victim, and members of the forces taken prisoner by the peasants include a company com­mander, a local officer, and a few men of lower rank. No matter how much this resembles a fairy tale, it is a truth that will not be in the newspaper today or tomorrow. Efrimovich, a specialist on pacifica­tion, has raced there.

In one place, I don't know whether it is the Kazan or Tambov province, in the midst of a crowd into which the troops were firing, a peasant stood holding a manifesto above his head with his two hands—the rumor spread among the people that he was unharmed, although next to him was a pile of bodies.

From a second letter

The peasants almost everywhere are terribly dissatisfied with the new, temporarily obligatory "Law," and in many places they refuse to believe that the manifesto that has been announced is genuine; thus, for example, the aide-de-camp Count Olsufiev, who was sent to one of the western provinces,³ met with a similar objection, and when— in order to persuade the peasants—referred to the fact that he was an aide to the sovereign, someone in the crowd began to say that they didn't know whether he was a real aide-de-camp or was in disguise. Olsufiev thought that the best argument against this was an order to his soldiers to beat the peasants with rifle butts and then whip them with birch rods.

In the Petersburg province, on General Olkhin's estate, military force was used against peasants generally believed to be in the right, and the unfortunate ones were treated roughly.

In the Chembarsky district of the Penza province there was a rebellion by peasants numbering in the thousands on the ancestral lands of Count Uvarov.⁴ The military company that was sent to put

them down was forced to retreat; the peasants were holding a repre­sentative of the local administration, the chief of police, a cadet, and several soldiers. Two battalions were sent to suppress it.

In the Spassky region of the Kazan province, a prophet who claimed to be the sovereign appeared in the midst of the schismatics; entire districts of up to i0,000 peasants, most of them belonging to the state, were up in arms; nothing came of the military forces that were sent and there was no battle. General Kozlyaninov and Apraksin, a general in the emperor's suite, set off with i2 companies. Apraksin ordered them to shoot as if on the battlefield: 70 bodies lay there, while the prophet remained at some distance from the peasants, kneeling and holding over his head a new "Law." Apraksin acted in this case on the basis of the authority to act in the sovereign's name in the case of disorder and to deal with the guilty according to the military field com­mander's criminal code, i.e., to shoot and hang at his own discretion.⁵

In the Perm province there have been powerful instances of dis­satisfaction at factories.⁶

Ivan Gavrilovich Bibikov (the former military governor-general) was sent to Kazan to restore order. Efimovich, already well known for his many achievements in pacification, was sent to Penza. One should not have expected different results; that much was clear to sensible people who rebelled against this transitional era. The flowers and fruit would come when the "Law" was fully applied. It contained so much that was Jesuitical, so many loopholes for the swindling, robbing, and oppression of the peasants! Joint obligations were not mentioned in the section on bringing the "Law" into effect, where only two kinds of obligations were mentioned, quitrent and corvee; referring to that, peasants who had fulfilled joint obligations (i.e., the vast majority of those in the quitrent areas of the northern and central zones) considered themselves freed from everything except quitrent, but landowners referred to art. 70 of the "Law," quietly giving them the right to mixed obligations until the introduction of the statutory document. This alone would cost blood. And there were a lot of ambiguities like that. The wording of many articles was am­biguous, and for that reason Butkov had such power! He is in charge of the entire peasant question and is deceptive, pretending to be a liberal. According to the peasants, the manifesto is such that it will be worse than before for them and that in two years the landowners will ruin them completely. The right to complain far from satisfies them: "Their brother the landowner really likes to complain." In the words of the landowners, the valuation of the estates is terribly high.

From a third letter

In the Odessa district, 60 miles from the city of Odessa, on the estates of Kiryakov, Kuris, and Svechin (the district leader of the no­bility), in the villages of Tashino, Novo-Kiryakovo, Malashevka, Tuzly, and Sakharovo, the peasants, through a misunderstanding, refused to work for the landowner, considering themselves completely free. Local authorities demanded military force to put down the revolt. Two companies of the Volynsk regiment were sent in carts from Odessa and another two from their location in the countryside. As soon as they arrived in the village of Tashino, by order of the district leader Svechin (who had by his side Khristiforovich, who had been attached by special assignment to Kherson's civilian governor), surrounded the peasants and began to read the manifesto. I continue with an ex­tract from the official report presented by the company commander: "... having listened to the manifesto, the peasants flatly refused to work for the landowner and to be under his authority. The leader of the nobility made every effort to convince the peasants to obey the will of the sovereign emperor as it appeared in the manifesto, but all these efforts were in vain; then the leader of the nobility gave or­ders to the lower ranks to take those peasants who were the primary cause of the unrest to be beaten with rods, and, when one peasant was seized, all the peasants without exception fell to the ground and began to shout: 'Beat us all.' This force (of up to 140 people) drove back the lower ranks who held the peasant; when the peasant was once more seized, then again they fell to the earth and cried out the same thing: 'Beat us all.' Having freed the peasant from punishment a second time, they all rushed straight through the chain of soldiers, from time to time using their fists; the soldiers closed ranks in a rather tight square and were thus able to restrain the peasants. In this crush, when the soldiers restrained the peasants, the latter, in trying to break free, jostled the soldiers and scratched their weapons. When the peasants had been caught, there followed flogging only of the chief disturbers of peace and order, after which all the peasants submitted and were sent home." With slight variations, the same thing hap­pened in other villages. Sechin says he did not administer more than 30 strokes, but, according to the soldiers' stories, there were harsh punishments—from 300 to 400 strokes; the officers don't say this, but one cannot rely on them. In Tashina alone up to 80 people were punished.

Svechin was in charge, although he acted for his own goals like a landowner, forgetting, that before using the rod, according to the

"Law," there are fines and arrests; the rod can only be administered by the police and no more than 20 strokes.

They say that Stroganov, who has heard the rumors of Svechin's zeal, wants to carry out an investigation.⁷

Notes

Source: "Russkaia krov' l'etsia!" Kolokol, l. 98-99, May i5, i86i; ^90-93, 350-52.

Alexander II issued this order at the beginning of February i86i to prepare for pos­sible disorders surrounding the emancipation announcement.

The Pretender was Anton Petrov, who claimed to be an emissary of Alexander II and was executed on April i9, i86i.

Vilna.

The Kandeevskoe uprising included twenty-six villages and spread to the neighbor­ing Kerensky region.

Herzen will discuss Count Apraksin's role in what came to be known as the Bezdna massacre in Doc. 37: "April i2, i86i (The Apraksin Murders)."

These factories were owned by the entrepreneurial Stroganov family.

Count Alexander G. Stroganov (i795-i89i) held many high government positions before becoming the governor-general of Bessarabia and Novorossiisk in i855.

♦ 36 +

The Bell, No. i00, June i, i86i. Herzen frequently wrote on the subject of regulations governing such matters as beards and beardlessness, smoking in public, and the fanati­cal attention to buttons on uniforms, all of which bordered on the ludicrous at a time of momentous change and daunting problems.

The Smell of Cigars and the Stench of the State Council

[1861]

The State Council, which displayed its cleverness in the emancipation of the serfs, is taking ses revanches. It is sufficient to have liberated the serfs— we will not liberate the smoking of cigars! These cripples decided that it is impossible to allow smoking on the streets, first of all, because it makes it more difficult for officers of lower rank to salute their superiors; second, there will be a nasty smell on the streets.

Pitiful orangutans of the first two ranks! What utter stupidity!

Notes

Source: "Dukh sigar i von' gosudarstvennogo soveta," Kolokol, l. i00, June i, i86i; i5:i06, 36i-62.

♦ 37 ^

The Bell, No. i0i, June i5, i86i. This essay is devoted to the April i86i massacre of peasants by government forces at Bezdna in the province of Kazan, already mentioned in "Russian Blood Is Flowing!" (Doc. 35). The Russian government hid information about this unrest from the public for a month, and only released an official announce­ment in the St. Petersburg Gazette after news began to appear elsewhere. Herzen and Ogaryov included "A Peasant Martyrology," in the June i, i86i, Bell, and returned to the subject in i862, when the peasants arrested in this incident were released from custody. Professor Afanasy Shchapov (i830-i876), mentioned by Herzen in a foot­note, spoke sympathetically about the Bezdna victims at a memorial service attended by more than 400 students in Kazan's Kratinsky Cemetery four days after the tragic events (Let 3:204). What happened to Shchapov next demonstrates the government's confusion; the professor was sent by Kazan officials to Petersburg to offer an explana­tion, was arrested en route and turned over to the Third Department, then released to Minister of the Interior Valuev, who set him to work on matters concerning the Old Believers. Late in i86i the Synod tried to have Shchapov exiled to Solovki, but public opinion in his favor prevented this. He wound up being tried in i862 along with other accused followers of the "London propagandists," but managed to prove his innocence, although he had in fact sent Herzen articles and had received at least one very support­ive letter in return, praising him as "a fresh voice, pure and powerful" who stood out amidst so many other writers who had become "jaded and hoarse" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, i5:370-7i).

April 12, 1861 (The Apraksin Murders) [1861]

Our "Muette de Portici" has finally admitted to the spilling of peasant blood in Bezdna.¹ The official story is even viler and more repulsive than what was written to us.

The brain goes to pieces and blood freezes in the veins while reading the naive-ingenuous story of such villainy, the likes of which we have not seen since the days of Arakcheev.²

Where did these bloodthirsty aides-de-camp come from? Where were these impromptu butchers brought up? How were they schooled in such heartless villainy?

The government tolerates murders that are due to its inarticulateness, ignorance, and duplicity.³ Didn't the new pedant Valuev⁴ clearly distinguish serfdom's obligatory labor from obligatory labor in anticipation of eman­cipation? And because the people do not understand, and believe that the government is not deceiving them, five salvos are fired.

We do not recognize Russia. steaming blood, corpses all over the place! [. . .]

Fifty victims, according to the criminals themselves, and on this occa­sion the genial monarch was so used to this sort of thing that he did not ask Apraksin: "And how many soldiers were killed or wounded?"

The article states directly that the peasants' military actions consisted in the fact that some of them went to get wooden stakes.

And what was the rush in punishing Anton Petrov?⁵ Who tried him? What was he tried for? Obviously the bloody traces should be hidden! What sort of instructions were given by the tender-hearted tsar?

Pugachev was tried in a court before Catherine and not quietly shot.

To hell with them—the bloody executioners!

And you, unfortunate brother schismatics, having greatly suffered but never having meddled with the Russia of landowners, executioners, and those who shoot the unarmed—preserve the day of new horrors, April i2, in your memory. The times of biblical persecutions are beginning; you know from the Lives of Saints⁶ about the slaughter of Christians undertaken by the emperors, and you know who prevailed. But prevailing doesn't come without faith and without action. Be strong in spirit and remember the cry with which the peasants of Bezdna perished: Freedom! Freedom!

Isk—r.⁷

We received three additional letters about details of the business in Ka­zan. The principal outlines of the events are the same and we will not repeat them, particularly after the confession in the St. Petersburg Gazette. But there are details too precious not to be preserved in The Bell for posterity and for our contemporaries.

From one of the letters. Apraksin did not approach the peasants, but dispatched someone to tell them to send eight people elected to carry out negotiations. They refused. Then a second time he sent the leader of the nobility Molostov⁸ to try to convince them, and then a priest.

The priest asked them if they believed in God and in the Orthodox Church. They said that they did believe. Then the priest demanded that they hand over the prophet, but they refused to do this, and the priest and official witness returned; neither he nor the witnesses experienced the slightest show of violence.

After this, Apraksin decided to speak to the crowd; he got on his horse and, having ridden about 20 steps further away from his soldiers, who were 100 feet behind him, shouted: "Hand over the prophet, or you will be shot." At this time the prophet was calming them, saying that no more than three volleys would be fired and that the bullets would then turn back upon the soldiers. Then they rather calmly replied to Apraksin: "Shoot, little father, you won't be shedding our blood, but the tsar's." Apraksin shouted to the soldiers: "Fire." Two aides-de-camp of the governor—sent there to find out what was going on—rushed in vain to try and persuade him. In vain they told him that if these were insurgents, they would be armed with something and would have long ago surrounded them, and that, finally, nothing had prevented them from attacking the soldiers while the priest and official witnesses were returning, because it would have been impossible to fire at the priest.

To all of these objections Apraksin cried out: "Officers, stand at attention, fire!" Four salvos were given. Until the fourth salvo the crowd stood motionless, crossing themselves; several covered their faces with their work gloves. After the fourth salvo the crowd began to scatter; one group simply began to run, while another moved closer to the group around the prophet in order to find out why the bullets had not been turned back against the soldiers. Apraksin imag­ined that they were running to get wooden stakes and ordered five salvos one right after another. The rest is known: when the smoke cleared and the hero saw the heap of dead and wounded (these canni­bals didn't even have a doctor with them!), Apraksin said: "Oh, there are a lot of them—well it will be possible to make it seem fewer, it's always done that way." But one local official pointed out to him that maybe that is what happens in wartime, but that here all the names would have to be written down.

The Kazan nobility wanted to give Apraksin a dinner, when he was up to his ears in peasant blood. Trubnikov, a member of the pro­vincial administration, restrained these carnivorous freaks with the observation that "it is somewhat awkward to wash away blood with champagne!"

It's a shame that this was prevented; masks, away with masks, it is better to see the animals' teeth and the wolves' snouts than feigned humaneness and cheap liberalism.⁹

The names, the names—we implore you for the names of the officers who took part in the handling of the bodies and the maggots who gathered to feast on the corpses.

Notes

Source: "i2 aprelia i86i (Apraksinskie ubiistva)," Kolokol, l. i0i, June i5, i86i; i5:i07-9, 362-64.

"The Mute Girl of Portici," an i828 opera by French composer Daniel Auber (i782- i87i). Herzen is ironically referring to the official government newspaper St. Petersburg Gazette.

Count Alexey A. Arakcheev (i769-i834), artillery general, war minister from i808 to i8i0, who later organized the infamous military colonies. He is believed to have brought out the worst side of Alexander I.

Herzen has in mind ambiguity in the emancipation law, which allowed differing interpretations of several key points.

Herzen: "Valuev had already revealed himself in other ways. Maltsov (a plantation owner) put eight peasants in shackles and sent them to Kaluga as insurgents. Gover­nor Artsimovich released them and wanted to conduct an investigation. The plantation owner [. . .] brought this matter all the way to Petersburg, and the new minister took the side of the serf-owner. Јelapromet! (That's very promising!)."

Anton Petrov was executed a week after the events at Bezdna.

Herzen refers to the Cheti Minei, a book of readings including lives of the saints arranged by month and day, information about holy days, and teachings for Orthodox believers.

Iskander is Herzen's most frequent pseudonym.

Herzen: "He received an amazing reward for his services. He was a retired staff- captain, and was awarded the rank of retired captain. For Russian tsars time does not ex­ist—the past is not the past, and it would be wonderful if for them there were no future."

Herzen: "The Kazan students behaved differently; they held a funeral service for their dead brothers and the executed Anton Petrov. Professor Shchapov spoke, a gen­darme denounced him (to each his own), the ministry dismissed him and the police arrested him. As least some of the clean-shaven Russian people will not be considered Germans and serf owners."

♦ 38 +

The Bell, No. i09, October i5, i86i. This issue opens with a message to the Russian ambassador in London, revealing that Herzen and Ogaryov have received anonymous letters which suggest that the Third Department would try to either kidnap or kill them. Herzen warns the ambassador that if any harm comes to them, the Russian government

will be blamed. As regards the closing of the university, Herzen wrote to Turgenev that this was a sign that Alexander II was "going to the devil."

Petersburg University Is Shut Down!

[1861]

.The new administration has taken a sharp turn: students will be admitted to lectures by ticket, and non-students are forbidden to attend lectures, student assemblies are forbidden, they wanted to eliminate the library, and so on. Students gathered in the auditorium despite the fact that the doors were locked, invited the vice-rector Sreznevsky, and expressed their dissatisfaction.¹ On September 24 (October 6) it was announced that the university would be closed until further notice. The next day all the students (up to i,500 people) gathered on Vladimirskaya street in front of Filipson's apartment and demanded that he appear, but suddenly Ignatev showed up with a platoon of guards.² Filipson emerged in full uniform and suggested to the students that they set off for the university, with him following on foot. A large crowd attached itself to them. Filipson, having got­ten tired, rode ahead. When they arrived at the university, mounted gendarmes appeared, along with a fire brigade carrying axes, and the police. The students behaved with complete calm. An officer of the gendarmerie unsheathed his saber, and two gendarmes prepared to plunge into the crowd. Shuvalov and the brotherhood stopped them.³ Student deputies approached them. At this moment Ignatiev showed up, saying: "Everything is ready, the operation may begin." Filipson answered that he knew from the Caucasus how with such means you can cause misfortune but you will not stop the young people. One of the students said: "There is no need for troops, I will be respon­sible for keeping order." Ignatiev insisted that Filipson had no right to negotiate with the students, but the latter took the responsibility on himself and promised that the library would open immediately, and that lectures would begin on October 2/L4, and by that time new rules would be announced. The students promised to remain calm. The orderliness on the part of the students was remarkable, and the crowd showed them sympathy. There were a great number of officers and there was one person they wanted to arrest but they held back. One soldier in the guards unit shoved a student, who said: "Aren't you ashamed—you're armed and you shove someone who is unarmed?".

the soldier blushed. One field officer violently shook a policeman's arm: "Hey you, did you come to do battle?"—"What can I do, your honor, they gave an order!" answered the policeman. One peasant said to another: "The blue caps are rebelling!" and heard in answer: "What should they do when their institution is shut down?" There were al­most no military forces in the capital, and the soldiers were dispersed to their regular duties; they had been summoned by telegraph.

Thus, the university is closed! The government opposes enlightenment and freedom and doesn't know enough to yield in good time. We prophesied its downfall during the second part of this transitional era; it seems we were mistaken—it will happen much earlier.

Notes

Source: "Peterburgskii universitet zakryt!" Kolokol, l. Ю9, October i5, i86i; i5:i64-65,

394.

Ismail I. Sreznevsky (i8i2-i880) was a philologist who taught in Kharkov, and, beginning in Й47, a professor at St. Petersburg University.

Grigory I. Filipson (Й09-Й83) was a lieutenant-general, senator, and in i86i- 62, trustee of the Petersburg education district; Count Pavel N. Ignatiev (i797-i879), governor-general of Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Smolensk, and from i854 to i86i, military governor-general of St. Petersburg.

Count Petr A. Shuvalov (i827-i889) was an adjutant-general who held high of­fices in the St. Petersburg police, the Ministry of the Interior, and in i86i in the Third Department.

♦ 39 *

The Bell, No. ii0, November i, i86i. Herzen's call "To the people!" was answered a dozen years later, after the author's death, by the great populist pilgrimage of i873-74. The tone of this essay differs from many others by Herzen; when speaking to Russia's young people, he dropped his characteristic irony and his enthusiasm bordered on eu­phoria. Since Alexander II was no longer Russia's hope, only Russia's youth could fulfill the promise of a brighter future. In the postscript, where he reacted to additional news from Petersburg, the irony returned. The "Great Russia" (Velikorus) affair concerns a radical pamphlet that circulated in Petersburg, terrifying the government and Russian conservatives. Critic Vladimir Stasov (i824-i906) recalled getting together with com­poser Mily Balakirev (i837-i9i0) to read this article, which is said to have inspired Bala- kirev's overture "i000 Years," especially its image of a wave rising up across the Russian expanse after years of calm (Let 3:623; Gurvich-Lishchiner, "Gertsen," i85).

A Giant Is Awakening!

[1861]

Yes, a sleeping "Northern Colossus"—"A giant, the tsar's obedient ser- vant"—is awakening and he is not at all as obedient as in the time of Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin.¹

Good morning to you—it's time, it's time! You slept like a hero—now wake up like a hero! Stretch out to your full youthful length, breathe in the fresh morning air, and sneeze so that you can scare off the whole flock of owls, ravens, and vampires, the Putyatins, Muravyovs, Ignatievs and other bats. You are awakening and it is time for them to retire. It is filth in motion— all these cockroaches, wood lice, insects, deprived of their wings but not of their appetite, who are not compatible with the daylight. Sneeze, giant, and not a trace of them will remain, except for the spots of Polish and peasant blood that cannot be eradicated!

Lord, what a pitiful and ludicrous sight this terrible government makes! What happened to its cavalry officer aspect, its sergeant-major bearing, where is its husky army voice, which it used for thirty years to shout: "I will drive Demosthenes into his grave!" Well, soldier, it is clear that the times are different and so are the military forces, the uniform is too big for you, the helmet has been pushed down over your eyes. Go off, knight, to the hospital, or onto invalid status!

Well what happened, why was it struck dumb? Was there a revolution? Did Filaret incite Moscow to rebellion? Was Petr Oldenburgsky proclaimed emperor in the law school?² Guess! And then pick up The Times and read his superb correspondence.

The emperor is in Livadia. Petersburg is being governed by a committee of public salvation, consisting of Nikolay Nikolaevich and Mikhail Nikolae- vich, and so that Gorchakov does not give them any sensible advice, that intelligence-deflector Ignatiev-Malkovsky has been installed by their side.³ On the streets there are soldiers, gendarmes, Shuvalovs, and the Jacobin gen­eral Bistrom is angering the soldiers with a speech of the reddest sanscullot- ism: "From these people," he said, pointing to the unarmed students, "will emerge petty officials, the petty officials who rob you, who rob the people— we will teach them a lesson!" Patkul⁴ gallops to the right, then gallops to the left, one horse is worn out and another is fetched. Mikhail Nikolaevich asks Nikolay Nikolaevich: why is Patkul galloping about? Nikolay Nikolaevich, having risen with the first cock's crow due to his general love of chickens, tells Mikhail Nikolaevich that he does not know why Patkul is galloping about, but it must be that this is an uprising. One (or the other) says—ten regiments and he will pacify. Whom? Where are the enemy forces?

In the university courtyard.

The crude government, frightened by a Stroganov who had lost his mind, alongside petty persecutions and humiliations, began to insult the universi­ties: with the appointment of Putyatin, with constraints on the schools, and with the heartless expulsion of the poor.⁵ The students of St. Petersburg University selected deputies and instructed them to carry their protest to the authorities. The authorities treated them as savages on the Sandwich Islands behaved toward members of Parliament, and the same way that Peter the large behaved with Polubotok, and Nicholas the long with deputies of the soldiers from Staraya Russa, i.e., contrary to any understanding of honor and moral shame, they were seized.⁶ The students resolved to ask that their comrades be freed, and that is why Bistrom-Santerre whipped up the soldiers, setting them against other social classes. Patkul wore out two horses, and Ignatiev-Malkovsky whispered to Filipson: "Everything is ready. We can begin!" Begin what? The slaughter of young people, carnage in the university courtyard?.. What can one add to that! [. . .]

In Russia the universities are closed down, and in Poland the churches closed themselves after being defiled by the police. There is neither the light of reason nor the light of religion! Where do they want to lead us in the dark? They have lost their minds—get them out of the driver's seat if you do not want to crash to the ground along with them!

But where can you go, young people, who have been barred from learn­ing? Shall I tell you where?

Listen carefully, since the darkness does not prevent you from hearing: from all parts of our vast homeland, from the Don and the Urals, from the Volga and the Dnepr, there is increased moaning and a rising murmur—it is the initial roar of a wave which is boiling up, fraught with storms, after an awfully tiresome period of calm. To the people! To the people!—that is your place, exiles from learning. Show these Bistroms that you will not turn into petty officials, but warriors, not homeless mercenaries, but warriors of the Russian people!

Glory to you! You are initiating a new era; you have understood that the time of whispering, distant hints, and banned books is passing. You still secretly print books at home, but you openly protest. Praise to you, younger brothers, and our distant blessing! Oh, if only you knew how the heart beats, how tears were ready to flow, when we read about the day of the stu­dents in Petersburg!

ISKANDER. October 22, i86i

P.S. This article was already written when we read in The Times (for Oc­tober 22) about such vile, such base villainy, that despite all our limitless faith in the immorality of the Petersburg administration, we were almost in doubt. The secret police sent out fake invitations to the students to gather on the square in order to catch them all, but the students figured this out and did not show up. After this, can one be surprised at Bistrom's Jaco­bin speech and the fact that he is not on trial for this speech, and that the Third Department toyed with the thought of kidnapping me from England; can one just despise from afar the fact that when Mikhailov⁷ was arrested, the gendarmes were busy with prostitutes (do not blush, Shuvalov, do not blush, Patkul, do not blush, Ignatiev, the word is not as shameful as the deed), women whom they had been instructed to search.

And these dregs of cheats, crooks, and whores we are obliged to accept as a government!

Notes

Source: "Ispolin prosypaetsia!" Kolokol, l. ii0, November i, i86i; i5:i73-76, 398-99.

The quotation is from a poem written by Derzhavin on the occasion of the capture of the fortress of Izmail from the Ottoman Empire in late i790-early i79i by General Suvorov.

Filaret ^783^867) was metropolitan of Moscow beginning in i826. The impe­rial law school was founded in i835 on the initiative of Prince Petr G. Oldenburgsky (i8i2-i88i), who was its longtime trustee.

Alexander II was in the Crimea at the time of student unrest in St. Petersburg. Grand dukes Nikolay (i83i-i89i) and Mikhail (i832-i909) were the tsar's younger brothers. Herzen ironically refers to Governor-General Ignatiev as "Ignatiev-Malkovsky" because of his "heroic" and unjustified arrest of the merchant E. Malkov in Й58, which had been publicized in previous issues of The Bell.

Baron Rodrig G. Bistrom (i8i0-i886) was a general who took part in suppressing the Poles in i830-3i and i863; Herzen later calls him "Bistrom-Santerre" after a French revolutionary general, Antoine Santerre. Major-General Alexander V. Patkul (i8i7- i877) was head of the police in St. Petersburg and a member of the Military Council.

Count Sergey G. Stroganov was one of three members of a commission set up in i86i to look at university regulations. Count Efim V. Putyatin (i803-i883), admiral and diplomat, was for a few months in i86i the minister of education.

In i723, hetman P. L. Polubotok was suspected of wanting to separate Ukraine from Russia; he was lured to St. Petersburg and imprisoned, dying the following year. In i83i there was an uprising at military settlements in Staraya Russa; the soldiers were promised negotiations with Nicholas I, but instead were harshly punished.

Herzen: "Mikhailov, Pertsov and the officer Kostomarov were arrested in connection with the 'Great Russia' affair and the secret typography. The Times says that Kraevsky, Count Kushelev-Bezborodko, and Gromeka staged some sort of protest against the illegal detention of Mikhailov; we would very much like to know the details of this matter." Mikhail I. Mikhailov (i829-i865), revolutionary, poet, journalist, was arrested in i86i, based on a denunciation by Vsevolod D. Kostomarov (whose brother Nikolay and the journalist Erast Pertsov were also arrested) and sentenced to hard labor for distributing a proclamation written by him and N. V. Shelgunov called "To the Younger Generation."

♦ 40 *

The Bell, No. П3, November 22, i86i. In October, Herzen received a letter from Bakunin after he had escaped from Siberia and had gotten as far as San Francisco. This informa­tion was passed on to Proudhon and to acquaintances in Russia. Bakunin arrived in London on December 27, i86i. Herzen wrote the first biography of the anarchist in i85i for a French audience, and dedicated his book On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia to Bakunin. While this is a very brief notice, its importance would expand in the readers' minds and in discussion—the empire's borders were obviously not secure, and, based on Bakunin's previous exploits, it was a good bet that he would continue his revolutionary activities in the future. In the meantime, the Echo de Bruxelles published a rumor that Herzen had made a secret trip to Russia, where he had been arrested and sent to Siberia. Herzen had actually put off traveling outside of England, due to threats reaching him that he would be kidnapped or killed (Let 3:250-53, 266, 27i).

Bakunin Is Free [1861]

MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH BAKUNIN is in San Francisco. HE IS FREE! Bakunin left Siberia by way of Japan and is on his way to England. We are spreading news of this with delight to all Bakunin's friends.

Notes

Source: "Bakunin svoboden," Kolokol, l. П3, November 22, i86i; i5:i94, 408-9.

♦ 41 *

The Bell, No. ii3, November i, i86i. Herzen compiled information on the treatment of students which included letters from readers of The Bell and other information that came his way, framed by his own commentary. The Bell continued to publish materials the editors received on this topic in subsequent issues. Herzen's premonition about attacks on the tsar was later realized, beginning with Karakozov's attempt in i866 and ending with the successful assassination of Alexander II in i88i, long after Herzen's own death. The image of Alexander II as a fairy-tale prince at a crossroads—offered three possibilities rather than the more familiar two choices in the West—has become a favorite of Russian political analysts (See Billington and Parthe, Search for a New Rus­sian National Identity, 27-30, 92-3). In the original tale, Ilya Muromets sets out on a quest, only to find at the top of a mountain a sign pointing in three directions: the first way promised food for Ilya but not for his horse, taking the second meant that the horse would eat but not its rider, and the third warned that the champion would die. Strangely enough, Ilya "followed the third road, although the inscription said that on this road he would be slain; for he had confidence in himself" (Afanas'ev, Russian Fairy Tales, 571). According to Herzen, the new tsar is trying to travel all three at once, a path that is, liter­ally, not viable. This motif recurs in the final issue of The Bell, in an excerpt from Past and Thoughts, but by this point, the knight at the crossroads is Herzen himself (Doc. 100).

Concerning the Assaults on Students [1861]

One of the most difficult moments for a person investigating a criminal act is that moment when he enters a room where an evil deed has taken place: everything is quiet and peaceful. the drops of blood, the broken furniture, an overturned chair, broken glass. noise can be heard from outside where wheels are creaking, a barrel organ is playing, children laugh, and peddlers shout—while just a few hours earlier, here, in this place, muffled blows, a howl, swearing, moaning, and a heavy fall could be heard. and inside you experience a hysterical tremor. Meanwhile there is no choice, the investi­gation must be carried out while the tracks are fresh. If only one can find sufficient peace of mind to avoid heaping on the shoulders of the criminal even more guilt than he in fact ought to be carrying.

We are those investigators.

Before us sadly stand massive buildings that have lost their significance, cold, empty auditoriums, mute lecterns: a senseless force passed through here, blindly crushed young lives, then unrepentantly quieted down, and everything went back to its old routine, only there are no students and there is no learning.

Who is to blame? Where are the guilty parties? The good-humored em­peror or the soulless Putyatin? Shuvalov or Stroganov? The Moscow police or those from the Preobrazhensky district?

Everyone is guilty, they all played the role of voluntary executioners, cruel executioners; but with that they enjoy the benefits connected with the title of masters of the rod: they are only responsible for carrying out the sen­tence. Let their conscience torment them, let society's contempt torment them. Finally, let them be punished on the same basis on which in England beasts that cause a person's death are punished. To hell with them. Neither their guilt nor their punishment explains the matter.

The university incident is not an accident, not a whim, but the beginning of an inevitable battle. This battle must arise in one place or another, and it arose on the most natural soil. The contradictions that lie at the basis of our political life have moved so far apart that [. . .] either the established order in Petersburg will perish or Russia will perish.

That feverish feeling of being not quite right, which has taken control of all Russia—above, below, in the peasant hut and in the Winter Palace itself, directly reveals how the organism works and by what means it seeks to get rid of something dead, something poisonous and rotting.

The battle will come out one way or another, but eliminating the battle is impossible. The inhuman efforts made by Nicholas delayed its discovery for thirty years.

[. . .] For the Petrine empire, which survived, there remained one liv­ing matter, and with this matter it can redeem the past, heal the wounds suffered by the people, and be revitalized—with this matter it tied a rope around its neck. "You cannot force anyone to be saved," said Marshal Bugeaud to Louis Philippe.¹

First there was a loss of strength, and then of sense. The optical illu­sion of indestructibility dispersed along with the smoke of Sevastopol as everyone saw that this was the scenery of power, but not power itself.² The government was horrified by its own insignificance and its own absurdity; that accounts for its frantic readiness to change everything, to do repairs and restructuring, and, together with this, to desperately defend itself by every possible means—the shooting of peasants, the bayoneting of wor­shippers, the Preobrazhensky rifle butts, by gendarmes dressed like peas­ants, by the police use of public women. this is a sick person's internal fear of death, the overwhelming realization that there is insufficient reason for his existence. That is why they rush in one direction then another, that is why there is this uneasy feeling. that is why the empress prays at night before a Byzantine icon and reads the story of Marie Antoinette, that is why they tremble for their dynasty when hundreds of young people do not want to submit to wearing humiliating uniforms, that is why they hold onto their Preobrazhensky troops and their gendarmes, like a loaded revolver under a pillow. They know—and this is the worst thing that a person can know—that they are no longer needed!

Eight or ten years ago I preached to a frightened Europe, which gazed at the gloomy figure of an emperor in jackboots and the uniform of a cavalry guards officer, who stood like some kind of snowy scarecrow on the other side of the Baltic ice floes, and were horrified that this snow was melting, that the Petersburg throne was not at all as strong as people thought, that it had outlived its reason for being and had not had anything creative or construc­tive going for it since the war of i8i2, that Nicholas, from an instinct of self- preservation, had gathered all his forces together for a single negative move against the foundations of a new life that were arising.

No one believed me—it was before the Crimean War.

It's an old story, that people are convinced only by piles of corpses, captured burial mounds, and burnt cities. MacMahon was more fortunate than me.³

But it was not only Europe that saw the light due to the Crimean War; Nicholas also saw the light and, when he looked about him and saw the chaos and emptiness he had nurtured, his lungs ceased to breathe.

His entire reign was a mistake. A despot of limited abilities, uneducated, he didn't know Europe and he didn't know Russia. More ferocious than clever, he ruled with only the police, with only oppression. Frightened by December i4th, he recoiled from the nobility, from the single milieu linked in life and death to the Petersburg throne by the criminal mutual surety of serf law. He wanted to crush those simple, necessary strivings toward civil rights on which every Prussian and Austrian crown had yielded, at no loss to themselves. But, while surreptitiously untying the imperial barge from the landowners' raft, he did nothing for the people. He would have liked to take away serfdom from the gentry in order to weaken that class without giving freedom to the peasants. He saw them from an ordinary officer's point of view and was not afraid of them, because the people didn't know the word "constitution," did not demand rights, and considered only the land that was due to them; in any case it was easy to control them and the mute masses could be crushed noiselessly, without an echo.

The successor to Nicholas received a difficult inheritance: an unneces­sary and inglorious war, shattered finances, widespread theft, grumbling, mistrust, and expectation. Before him—as in our fairy tales—lay three roads: to give genuine rights to the nobility and begin to resolve with them the lunar freedom of representative government; to free the serfs with land and begin a new era of popular and economic freedom; or, instead of one or the other of these, to continue trampling every manifestation of life until the muscles of the one who is trampling or the one who is being trampled are exhausted. What road did our Ivan Tsarevich travel?⁴

All three.

This unsteadiness, this uncertainty of a man only half-awake is the dis­tinguishing feature of the new reign. In it there is something weak-willed, feeble, lisping, and—by virtue of that—compromising on everything, be­traying everything. Literature, the nobility, the universities are all given some privileges, but not real ones. The serfs are given freedom, but without land. Poland is given back its national identity, but without any autonomy. [. . .]

The story of the universities is a common occurrence, in which that same blundering, dissolute government thinking is expressed at full strength; they treated the young people the same way as the Poles, and the same way as the peasants, and the same way they will behave another ten times, if this foolish government is free to do its will.

Does experience really teach us nothing? Should we really wait for a fourth and fifth bloodletting?.. If we do nothing we will end up with terrible misfortunes: a single knife in the hands of a lunatic could cause terrible harm—what about five hundred thousand bayonets in the hands of a fright­ened and foolish government?.. The salvation of society, the salvation of the people, demands that the government must not be allowed to do its will, it demands that it be restrained.

Well—swing the lasso!

Notes

Source: "Po povodu studenskikh izbienii," Kolokol, l. H3, November 22, i86i; i5:i95-99, 409-i0.

This popular saying was used by Herzen in several articles; it was uttered when the enraged Marshal Bugeaud was refused permission by King Louis Philippe to bomb the Faubourg St. Antoine in Й48.

Tsarist Russia suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Й53-56 Crimean War.

French Marshal Patrice MacMahon (i808-i893) distinguished himself in the Crimean War with the taking of the Malakhov burial mound at the cost of many lives during the siege of Sevastopol. He served as president of the Third Republic from i873 to i879.

A frequent hero of Russian fairy tales is Ivan the Tsar's Son (Ivan Tsarevich).

♦ 42 *

The Bell, No. i2i, February i, i862. Herzen revived an idea he raised most famously in From the Other Shore, that for theorists of all political stripes, the popular masses serve as inert, experimental material, sacrificial offerings on the altar of one or another abstract idea (Woehrlin, Chernyshevskii, 257). Isaiah Berlin discussed Herzen's views on this subject in a number of essays, emphasizing that Herzen developed this thesis early on and never altered his position. "No distant ends, no appeals to overriding principles or abstract nouns can justify the suppression of liberty, or fraud, violence and tyranny." Berlin calls this message "Herzen's ultimate sermon" (Russian Thinkers, Ю3, i97).

Herzen demands that theorists stop and listen to the people; by this he does not only mean revolutionaries like Chernyshevsky, who believe that the people are too backward to lead themselves. It is a sign of Herzen's evolution from the time when he saw a pos­sibility for change in the efforts of the enlightened gentry and a well-intentioned tsar. The article below was influenced by Herzen's correspondence with the Slavophile Yuri F. Samarin in which Herzen rejected the charge that he saw revolution as a goal in itself, and he recalled his frequent printed statements in French, German, and Russian on this subject. "The Cannon Fodder of Liberation" is also a response to criticism in Fatherland Notes over Herzen's support for the revolutionary ideas of the younger generation.

The Cannon Fodder of Liberation [1862]

[. . . ] Many times we have heard the reproach: why, instead of a critique of the present, we have no program for the future; why, instead of disapprov­ing of what exists, we do not lecture about what should happen. In a word, why do we tear down without building up. We have indirectly answered these attacks several times and were not at all prepared to speak about them now. But the reproaches have traveled abroad. [. . .]¹

We did not pay particular attention to this, not because we did not value opinion in the West, but because we were convinced that the journalists knew nothing about Russia and did not seriously want to know anything.² Besides, we have interests that are much closer and dearer to us than the desire to justify ourselves to them.

When Paris, and Cologne, and the rustle of oaks Were still very new to us,³

and when public opinion rustled in printed sheets, imagining that our call­ing was to teach Russia, we did answer.

Helas, ce temps n'est plus, Il reviendra peut-etre, En attendant.⁴

we will speak with and for our own people and for them we will begin our speech. The traveling reproach quickly returned home from Paris, having increased its strength tenfold. [. . .] In deflecting this ricochet effect we de­cided to say a few words.

First of all, this reproach is unjust: you have before you the two-volume work After Five Years, before you is The Bell for last year, and they do not contain legal dissertations or doctrinaire scholasticism, but you will find in them our opinion of what is needed by the people, the military, the land­owners, and so forth.

"But that is not the same thing. Why didn't you simply propose a com­plete legal code, or, at the very least, the criminal statutes of a Code Penal?"

"We would have loved to do that, but we know nothing about either of those things."

"Well, if you do not know, then do not criticize the existing ones; sixty million people cannot live without institutions, without a court, in expecta­tion of future blessings."

[. . .] No, gentlemen, stop representing yourselves as throwers of thun­derbolts and as Moses, calling down noise and lightning through the will of God, stop presenting yourselves as the wise shepherds of human herds! The methods of enlightenment and liberation thought up behind the backs of the people and constricting their inalienable rights and their well-being by means of the axe and the whip were already exhausted by Peter I and the French Terror.

Manna does not fall from heaven—that is a child's fairy tale—it grows in the soil; summon it, learn to listen to how grass grows, and do not lecture the mature grain, but help it develop, remove the obstacles in its way. That's all that a person can do, and that is evidently sufficient. One should be more modest, and stop trying to educate entire peoples, stop boasting about your enlightened mind and abstract understanding. Did France accomplish very much with its decrees on equality and liberty, and did Germany accomplish very much with its a priori structured state and doctrinaire legal dogmatism?

We have inherited a sad treasure, but still a treasure, of the bitter experi­ence of others; we are rich in the painfully acquired wisdom of our elders. [. . .] The great, fundamental idea of revolution, despite its philosophical attributes and the Roman-Spartan ornaments of its decrees, quickly went too far toward the police, the inquisition, and terror; in wishing to restore freedom to the people and to recognize its coming of age, a desire for speed led to treating them like the material of well-being, like the human flesh of liberation, chair au bonheur publique,⁵ like Napoleonic cannon-fodder.

But here, unfortunately, it turns out that the people had very little meat on their bones, to the point that to all reforms, revolutions, and declaration of rights it answered:

We are hungry, wanderer, very hungry!

We are cold, dear one, very cold!⁶

And the lawgivers did not just break things, they also built them up, they not only unmasked, but also lectured, and more important than lecturing, they made people study, and maybe, the saddest thing of all in most cases, they were right.

Behind their own noise and their own speeches, the good neighborhood policemen of human rights and the Peter the Firsts of freedom, equality, and brotherhood for a long time did not hear what the sovereign people were saying; then they became angry over its rampant materialism. However, here as well they did not ask what was going on.

They were convinced that it was better to lecture the people than to learn from them, that it was better to build things up than to break them down, that it was better to work in the study on an account in the absence of the proprietor than to ask him about it. Sieyes and Speransky⁷ weren't the only ones who wrote all sorts of pale constitutions, but the Germans, what did they write and elevate to a science!? And the abyss between them and the people not only did not shrink, but expanded, and this is the conse­quence of tragic, inevitable necessity. Every success, every step forward car­ries away the radiant shore; it moves more and more quickly and becomes more and more distant from the gloomy shore and the ignorant people.⁸ With what can one fill the abyss, what doctrinaire scholasticism can be used to help, what dogmatic regulation and what kind of academic exercise can bridge it? An experiment was tried, it did not succeed, again because the socialists gave lectures before they knew what they were talking about, and organized phalansteries⁹ without having found anywhere the type of person who would want to live in workers' hotels.

And from this very abyss there will emerge, there will come to the sur­face guillotines, red hats on pikes, Napoleons, armies, more armies, legit­imists, Orleanists, a second republic, and, finally, June days¹⁰—days that created nothing, established nothing, days in which the best and unluckiest of peoples, driven by need and despair, went out into the street without a sound, without a plan, without a goal, out of despair and said to their guard­ians, lawmakers, and teachers: "We do not know you! We were hungry, and you gave us parliamentary chatter; we were naked, and you sent us across the border to kill other cold and naked people; we asked for advice, we asked you to teach us how to get out of our situation, and you taught us rhetoric. We are returning to the darkness of our damp cellars, a portion of us will fall in an unequal battle, but, before doing this, we are telling you, scribes of the revolution, loudly and clearly:

The people are not with you!"

Notes

Source: "Miaso osvobozhdeniia," Kolokol, l. i2i, February i, i862; i6:25-29, 356-58.

Herzen then alludes to remarks made in such newspapers as the Allgemeine Zei- tung, Kolnische Zeitung, and Siecle.

Herzen: "We are mostly speaking about journals whose inclination is pseudo- republican, administratively democratic, or Germanically Russophobic. In serious pe­riodicals there are remarkable articles about Russia. As recently as the January 2 issue of Revue des Deux Mondes there was a very interesting article by Charles de Mazade, 'La Russie sous le regne d'Alexandre II.' [. . .]"

A quote from Pushkin's "Demon," which Herzen has altered.

Herzen: "Alas, that time has passed. It will, perhaps, return, and while we wait."

Herzen: "The meat (or flesh) of social well-being."

From Nikolay Nekrasov's "Songs of the Poor Wanderer."

Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836) was an eloquent social and political theorist from the beginning of the French Revolution until Napoleon's coup d'etat: his best-known pamphlet is What Is the Third Estate? (1789).

For both words, Herzen employs the adjective temnyi (lit. "dark") in different, but related, senses.

According to utopian socialist theories of Charles Fourier (1771-1837).

These references are all to France from the Revolution of 1789 to that of 1848. In June 23-25, 1848 (the June Days), there was an uprising caused by the closure of work­shops set up by the Second Republic.

^ 43 +

The Bell, No. 121, February 1, 1862. Herzen was dissatisfied with the September 1862 millennium ceremony staged in Novgorod, the city to which he had been exiled in 1841. He had requested Odessa, "the newest city in Russia, and they transferred me to Novgorod, the oldest city" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 22:96). In an ill-tempered letter to friends, he had described "this city of worn inscriptions, reconstructed monasteries, Hanseatic memories, and Russian Orthodox liberalism" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 22:97). Other than the ninth-century Varangian leader Rurik and the current governor, no one would go there willingly "since, like all provincial capitals, it is uninhabitable" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 22:102).

Herzen particularly disliked the monument commissioned from the artist Mikeshin. That in the age of great reforms so much money and energy were wasted on jubilees was unfortunate, but what most offended Herzen were the heroes chosen for the very large and mute Novgorod bell, after he found out about the details for the design in a supplement to the official spiritual-cultural calendar (mesiatseslov) for 1862. Well aware of the mercurial nature of official favor in Russia, he suggested, tongue in cheek, that removable plaques should be made to celebrate "temporarily important people," and be changed every five years.

Jubilee [1862]

. The jubilee of Knyazhevich, the jubilee of Vyazemsky, the jubilee of Adlerberg, the jubilee of Sukhozanet,¹ and, finally, Russia's jubilee! How ridiculous in itself to mark the exact moment of the conception of a state, especially when it took place in such a remote location that people are still arguing about the identity of the father,² but we will not attack this, as it is an innocent affair. One could object that any sort of excess expense is now out of place, but, taking into consideration that the jubilee of any kind of useless, utterly insignificant person, whose total services consisted in, a la Maniloff,³ a tender friendship with Nicholas, costs more than ten monu­ments, we are prepared to reconcile ourselves even to this expense. What offends us is the continuation of lies in the past, and we are offended by sculptural deceptions. There is something faint-hearted and obtuse in a de­liberate distortion of history on the highest authority. Did Nicholas hide the participation of Ermolov and Tol⁴ in the Battle of Borodino by omitting their names from a monument, did he hide from posterity the fact that Warsaw was captured by Tol and not Paskevich? Why have Rtishchev, Betskoy, Po- temkin, Kochubey, Vorontsov, Paskevich, Lazarev, Kornikov, Nakhimov,⁵ et al., et al. been elevated as temporarily important people?

We are not even talking about the crowd of every kind of high clergy­men, these official enlighteners, whose carved faces appear in the list of his­toric celebrities. Among them are people of whom no one has heard, like Gury and Varsonofy, and there are those of whom we are accustomed to hearing about the negative side, like the schemer Feofan Prokopovich.⁶

If the deed is done and the carved likenesses have been commissioned, then we propose bas-reliefs for temporarily important people on removable plaques, so that they can be replaced as required by necessity and by the departure of new celebrities to join their forefathers.

Tikhon Zadonsky, keeper of fasts—with Adlerberg-the-elder.⁷ Mitrofan Voronezhky, the virgin—with Baryatynsky.⁸ The least talented of soldiers Paskevich—with the even less talented states­man Panin.

Gury and Varsonofy—with Putyatin and Askochensky.⁹ Rtishchev, who in 1648 organized a group to translate from the Greek— with Pokhitonov, who in 1858 organized a group to translate from all languages.

After five years these could also be discarded and new plaques installed. changed before opinions settle and legal measures for important people are established. Then the Russian people will in turn finally cry out: The front or back of the head!¹⁰

Notes

Source: "Iubilei," Kolokol, l. 121, February 1, 1862; 16:30-31, 358-59.

1. Vladimir F. Adlerberg (1790-1884) headed the Postal Department from 1842 to 1856, and then served as minister of the Imperial Court until 1872; Nikolay O. Sukho- zanet (1794-1871) was an adjutant-general who took part in the suppression of the Poles in 1830-31 and later was war minister (1856-61).

Herzen: "Probably taking advantage of the fact that with us la recherche de la pater- nite (the clarification of fatherhood) is not forbidden, as it is in the French law code."

A character in Gogol's Dead Souls.

Alexey P. Yermolov was an artillery general, and in i8i2 chief of staff for the west­ern flank of the army; Count Karl F. Tol was adjutant general in i8i2, and chief of staff during the suppression of the Polish uprising in i83i. Nicholas was believed to be jeal­ous of these two generals due to the distinguished nature of their military service.

Rtishchev (i625-i673) was a government official interested in education in the time of Tsar Alexey; Betskoy (i704-i795) was president of the Academy of Arts and founder of what became the Smolny Institute; Potemkin (i739-i79i) was a favorite of Catherine II; Kochubey (i768-i834) was a diplomat and minister under Alexander I; Vorontsov (i782-i856) headed civilian and military administrations in Bessarabia and the Caucasus; Lazarev (i788-i85i) was an Antarctic explorer; Kornikov (i806-i854) and Nakhimov (i802-i855) were both admirals who took part in the defense of Sevastopol.

Gury was a sixteenth-century bishop who was canonized; Varsonofy was a sixteenth- century monastic leader, later canonized; Feofan Prokopovich (i68i-i736) was a preacher, writer, vice-president of the Holy Synod, and the person Peter I most relied upon in spir­itual matters.

Tikhon Zadonsky was an important eighteenth-century bishop canonized in i86i.

Mitrofan was a seventeenth-century bishop canonized in i832; Prince Baryatinsky led Russian military operations in the Caucasus from i856 to i862.

Askochinsky was a reactionary journalist and editor of Domestic Chats for Popular Reading from Й58 to Й77.

Herzen: "The monument's form has really gratified us: a huge bell, placed so that it cannot ring. But all the same a bell! But—which one? The town council [veche] bell, or ours in London? It seems to us that it is neither one nor the other, but a bell that is very sweet [sladkii]; it was plastered over with all kinds of figures in immense quantities, among them one was plastered with wings and so ardently strains to get away that on its head is some sort of lamp. (See The St. P. Calendar for 1862.)"

♦ 44 *

The Bell, No. i25, March i5, i862. The Bell gave extensive coverage to the student dis­turbances that flared up at Moscow University during September and October i86i in connection with new rules set forth by Minister of Education Putyatin. Students asked that the rise in tuition costs be rescinded along with the ban on the student bank, and that they be allowed to send representatives to talk to university authorities. After several students were arrested, there was a march to the governor-general's home to ask for the students' release and to submit an address outlining their concerns to the tsar. There they were set upon by regular policemen, gendarmes in disguise, and shopkeepers who had been told that the students were opposed to the emancipation. Herzen was troubled by support for the government's repressive measures among university administrators and a number of once-liberal professors like Sergey Solovyov and Boris Chicherin. Un­derstanding that this marked a further break with his former acquaintances in Moscow,

Herzen claimed that he wrote this article with tears in his eyes, but that some things were more sacred to him than any person. Kavelin sent a letter from Paris, saying that the article told the truth and that "for us, Moscow is a cemetery" (Let 3:290, 296).

Academic Moscow [1862]

We have received three additional letters about Moscow University—dark, sad letters... Let them mock us for having a humane heart, but we will not hide the deep pain with which we read these letters. We do not slander ourselves with either feelings or a lack of feelings. The memory of Moscow University and our Moscow circle is very dear to us. We preserve a feel­ing of reverence for the friends of youth and for our Moscow alma mater. We spent the most sacred moments of youth in its auditoriums, and we endured all the insults of Nicholaevan despotism. [. . .] It is there that the idea of struggle to which we have remained faithful first formed and was strengthened. From there we dispersed to various places of exile and there we gathered a few years later around Granovsky's podium—Granovsky.¹ how hard it is to hear his name. It is now our turn to say of him what he said of Belinsky: "Blessed is he who dies in good time!" In i849 the oppres­sion was external; over there, where neither the ear of the gendarme nor the arm of the local police could reach, there things were pure. but now?..

And did friends, colleagues, and proteges of Granovsky really take part in these vile actions?

Who are they?.. Those who blush upon reading our words, those who feel that no matter how much you shout, you cannot drown out something troubling your conscience!

And if such people are not to be found?

Blessed is he who dies in good time!

The letters under discussion were seriously delayed. One of them sets out the complete history of the university business, and it will appear in the next issue; from the two remaining letters we will copy out a few small excerpts.

We hope that the writers are sure of the facts they are reporting to us. And once more we remind our correspondents that each time they supply us with incorrect rumors, news taken from the street and exaggerated by party spirit (as happened quite recently), they do us much greater harm than all the Shuvalovs with their various free and temporary agents.²

From the first letter.

.A few days ago I read an account by Moscow professors of matters relating to the students' address to the tsar. The thought expressed in it is the following: the government itself is guilty of the fact that such incidents, like the one with the address, are possible at the university, and it follows that at the very first signs of university agitation greater attention should be paid to the willfulness of the students and to seriously punishing the instigators.

From the second letter.

. Finally The Bell reached us that talks about university events. Not everything in the story you placed there is correct, and many de­tails are missing. Your correspondent, for example, praised professor Yeshovsky, but on October 11, when students entered the professors' room for an explanation with the trustee, he barred their way, and talked about dissension between students and professors. When the students remarked that they had come not to see the professors but Isakov, he answered: "While Isakov is here, we will not betray him!"³ In general our professors have distinguished themselves. Lents and Nikitenko, the generals of St. Petersburg University, were struck by the zeal for order shown by Solovyov and Babst, who were called before a commission to examine the university statutes.⁴

You know about Chicherin's inaugural lecture—you probably know his philosophy of slavery, i.e., the obedience to evil laws, and how he offended the students who were under arrest. At first he got away with it. But when the students being held were released, they decided to hiss him on December 9th. Having found out about this, the section of those enrolled who sympathized with the scholarly professor sent Solovyov's students and Sukhodolsky to warn him. Chicherin showed up at the lecture along with N. F. Pavlov and Korsh (one letter names the editor of Moscow News and another his brother). When one group of students began to whistle, another group under the leadership of Solovyov shouted: "Whistlers get out!" This cry at­tracted even the distinguished guest, Mr. Korsh, who with complete selflessness shouted: "Whistlers get out!"⁵

At the following lecture, a group of about twenty-five students asked Chicherin to listen to a few words from them. The learned professor said that he could not stop during the lecture, but after the lecture he would ask permission of the university inspector to speak with the students. Evidently the inspector agreed because the learned professor returned to the auditorium. There began a long explana­tion, which ended with the professor fearlessly saying: "I stand for an unlimited monarchical form of government. I hold to those convic­tions which I consider to be true, and it is not my fault if they are not ones that appeal to you". You can read what opinions appeal to the learned professor in Our Times.

To this not entirely favorable account the second letter adds more comfort­ing news for the conservative professor and his friends:

Mr. Chicherin's inaugural lecture met with loud approval in government circles. On October 30, Putyatin came in the tsar's name to thank the Moscow professors for conducting themselves so wisely while those in Petersburg were misbehaving, and he especially thanked Mr. Chicherin. After this, the censorship forbade any com­ments in writing against his lectures!

Notes

Source: "Akademicheskaia Moskva," Kolokol, l. 125, March 15, 1862; 16:80-82, 375-77.

Timofey N. Granovsky (1813-1855) was a charismatic professor of history at Moscow University and a key figure in Moscow intellectual circles from the 1830s until his death.

Working for the Third Department abroad.

Yeshovsky was a professor of general history in Kazan and from 1858 to 1865 in Moscow; Isakov was an official at court and a trustee of the Moscow educational district from 1859 to 1863.

Lents was a senior official in the Senate; Nikitenko, born into serfdom, was a lit­erary historian, memoirist, professor, and censor; Babst was a political economist in Kazan and Moscow.

Sukhodolsky was a Moscow student; N. F. Pavlov was a writer and newspaper editor.

♦ 45 ♦

The Bell, No. 139, July 15, 1862. This is a polemic against positions taken by authors of the radical proclamation "Young Russia," which was generated by a group of Moscow University students and widely distributed in mid-May 1862 in Moscow, Petersburg, and provincial Russia. The pamphlet, written by Petr G. Zaichnevsky (1842-1896) while he was under arrest for anti-government propaganda, began with the declaration that Russia had entered the revolutionary phase of its development and that society had split into two enemy camps. It called for a seizure of power and the establishment of a minor­ity dictatorship and a new social structure, with the agricultural commune as its foun­dation. It dismissed liberalism and declared itself in opposition to The Bell, accusing Herzen of having retreated from radical positions after the upheaval of 1848. "Young

Russia" shocked many progressive voices in Russia, and, coinciding with a higher in­cidence of arson, gave the government ample reason to increase repressive measures.

Herzen wrote "in a mood of despairing sarcasm," as he witnessed—albeit from afar—the suppression of journals, arrests, printing houses placed under Ministry of Interior control, and all lectures and meetings subject to authorization by the Interior Ministry and the Third Department (Lampert, Sons Against Fathers, 47). He was discour­aged, but defiant, declaring that if Sunday literacy instruction for peasants was banned "I will become the Sunday school" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 27:bk. i, 243-44).

In the same issue of The Bell, Herzen included news of an attempt on the life of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich by an "ultra-Catholic." Although it was the Russian government that brought people to this madness, Herzen said that he hated "any kind of bloody retaliation," a point that he would make even more forcefully after Karakozov's attempt on the tsar's life in i866.

Young and Old Russia [1862]

In Petersburg there is terror, the most dangerous and senseless of all its manifestations, the terror of dumbfounded cowardice, not leonine terror, but calf-like terror,¹ terror in which a government—poisoned by fumes, not knowing where the danger comes from, knowing neither its strength nor its weaknesses and therefore prepared to fight to no purpose—gives aid to society, to literature, to the people, to progress and regress...

The Day has been banned, The Contemporary and The Russian Word have been banned, Sunday schools are closed, the chess club is closed,² reading rooms are closed, money intended for needy students has been taken away, printing presses are under extra surveillance, two ministers and the Third Department must agree to the reading of public lectures. There are con­tinual arrests, officers, aides-de-camp in prison cells, the inquisitor Golit­syn (called "junior" in an earlier time) is summoned to the Winter Palace together with Liprandi ... who was pushed away with loathing by the same Alexander II three years ago.³

[. . .] Evidently Nicholaevism was buried alive and is now rising up from the damp earth in a shroud-uniform, all buttoned up—and the State Coun­cil, the archdeacon Panin, Annenkov-Tversky, Pavel Gagarin, and Filaret with a birch rod are rushing round the corner to sing out: "Nicholas is risen!"⁴

"Verily he is risen!"—even we say this to the undead corpse. It's a holi­day on your street, only your street leads not from the grave but toward the grave.

"Excuse me, excuse me—and who's guilty in this matter? On the one hand, the Shchukin yard is burning, and on the other hand, there is 'Young Russia'."

"And when in Russia wasn't something or other burning? [. . .] Arson in our country is as infectious as the plague. [. . .]"

"Okay, fine, we know that arson has always been around, but 'Young Russia'?"

"What is this 'Young Russia'?" we asked with unease.⁵

"Oh, it is a terrible Russia! You know—the rejection of everything, where nothing is sacred, nothing at all: neither power, nor property, nor the fam­ily, nor any kind of authority. For them, 'Great Rus' hasn't gone much be­yond The Northern Bee, and you are a backward commentator."

Finally, this document, which horrified the government and the literary realm, the progressives and the reactionaries, civilized supporters of a par­liament, and civilizing bureaucrats, reached even us.

We read it once, twice, three times. with a great deal we are very much not in agreement (and we will talk about this in another article), but we must in good conscience confess that we do not understand the delirium tremens of the government, the whining of the conscientious journals, or the emotional confusion of the platonic lovers of progress.

[. . .] We address ourselves to genuinely honest, but weak, people and ask them: why were they frightened of "Young Russia"? Did they really believe that the Russian people would—just like that—grab an axe at the first cry of "All hail the Russian socialist and democratic republic!" No, they will an­swer in a chorus that this is impossible, that the people do not understand these words, and on the contrary, embittered by the arson, they would be prepared to tear to pieces those who pronounce these words. And yet every honest person feels obligated to abuse these young people, showering them with reproaches and curses, and feels obliged to be horrified, raising their eyes to the mountains.

Gentlemen, look more deeply at your feelings, and you will see with shame that what struck you was neither the danger, nor the lie, nor any damage, but the audacity of free speech. Your sense of hierarchical discipline has been offended—they are speaking way beyond their years and status.

If these young people (and we have no doubt that this flysheet was writ­ten by very young people) in their arrogance talked a lot of nonsense, then stop them, enter into argument with them, answer them, but do not call out for help, do not push them into prison cells because the Third Department fara da se.⁶ And if they run out of spies there is auxiliary literature, which can be used to implicate them as incendiaries after a Russian-style, secret, torture-chamber investigation.

Thus this whole terrible affair, which has placed the Russian Empire and Nevsky Prospect on the brink of social cataclysm, having broken the last link between gradual and abrupt progress, is based on a youthful upsurge, incautious, unrestrained, but which did no harm and could not have done any harm. It is a shame that the young people issued this proclamation, but we will not blame them. [. . .] Where is the criminality?

If the government were capable of understanding and did not retain the self-important seriousness of a commissionaire with a mace, what a big laugh they would have now, looking at the alarm of the brave liberals, the tough progressives, the courageous defenders of rights and of a free press, the intrepid denouncers of police chiefs and local supervisors—seeing how they, the dear ones, ran under the wings of those very same police, that very same government. [. . .]

"Young Russia" seems to us doubly mistaken. First, it is not at all Rus­sian, but one of the variations on a theme of Western socialism, the meta­physics of the French Revolution, sociopolitical desiderata in the form of a call to arms. The second mistake is its inappropriateness: the accident of its coincidence with the fires intensified this.

It is clear that the young people who wrote this lived more in the world of comrades and books than in the world of facts, more in the algebra of ideas—with their easy and universal formulas and conclusions—than in a workshop, where friction, heat, bad casting, and internal flaws can alter the simplicity of a mechanical law and put the brakes on its rapid advance. That's how their speech appeared; in it there is none of that internal restraint that you get either from your own experience or the structure of an organized party.

But having said this, we will add that their fearless consistency is one of the most characteristic aspects of the Russian genius, which is estranged from the people. History has left us nothing cherished; we have none of those esteemed objects of respect, which hamper the Western man but which are dear to him. After the slavery in which we lived, the alienation from oth­ers like us, the break with the people, the inability to take action, we were left with a melancholy consolation, but a consolation nevertheless, in the starkness of the negation, in its logical relentlessness, and with some joy we pronounced those last extreme words, which our teachers, turning pale and glancing furtively around them, could barely pronounce. Yes, we pro­nounced them loudly, and it is as if it became easier in the expectation of the storm that they would provoke. We had nothing to lose.

Circumstances changed. The Russian land struggle began. Each strug­gle proceeds not according to the laws of abstract logic, but by a complex process of embryogeny. To help in our struggle we need the West's ideas and its experience. But to the same degree we do not need its revolutionary declamation, just like the French did not need the Roman-Spartan rhetoric with which it spoke at the end of the last century. To speak in someone else's images, to call something by a foreign name—that shows a lack of understanding of both the matter at hand and of the people, and a lack of respect for both as well. Is there a shadow of probability that the Russian people would rise up in the name of Blanqui's socialism, shouting out four words, among which three long ones are unfamiliar to them?⁷

You consider us backward, and we do not get angry; if we have lagged behind you in our opinions, we have not lagged behind in our heart, and the heart sets the pace. And don't you become angry when, in a friendly matter, we turn around your reprimand and say that your costume a la Karl Moor and Gracchus Babeuf⁸ on the Russian square is not only old, but resembles masquerade dress. The French are a comical but deferential people; it was possible to confuse them with a Roman latiklave and the language of Seneca's heroes, while our people demanded the head of the unfortunate Obruchev.⁹

. And again a chorus can be heard—not underground, but from the second floor—a chorus of cowards, weak and hoping for only a slightly progressive movement.

"Yes, yes," they cry, "look what the celebrated people, that wild beast, is doing—this is what awaits us. Go explain to them that we are now not serf-owners but landowners, and that we do not demand the corvee, but a representative assembly, not quitrent, but the rights of citizens."

The people are a little slow to understand and cannot so quickly imagine that their age-old, bloody enemy who robbed them, disgraced their family, and wore them out with hunger and humiliated them, suddenly fell into such repentance—"my brother," he said, and that's all.

There are terrible historical misfortunes, the dark fruits of dark deeds; just before they occur, as before a storm, human wisdom falls silent and covers eyes full of bitter tears with its hands.

Our sacrificial victims, like Mikhailov and Obruchev, must endure a double martyrdom [. . .] the people will not know them—even worse, it will know them as members of the gentry, as enemies. They will not pity them and do not want their sacrifice.

This is where the split has led us. The people do not have faith in—and are prepared to stone—those who gave their lives for them. In the dark night in which they were raised they are prepared, like the giant in a fairy tale, to slaughter their children for wearing foreign clothing.

Our martyrs are bearing the terrible punishment of popular hate not for their own transgressions, but for those of others. These others rush to receive an amnesty; for their part, they were not so generous, and what did they really do—having lost the oyster, they decided to throw away the shell! Did the gentry Magdalenes in their own hearts really achieve repentance? Was the word emancipation really said by them—didn't they dig their heels in while they thought it was still possible to dig their heels in? Atonement is not achieved nor ancient scars forgiven so easily and with such a dissatis­fied expression.

The scene on the Petersburg square was very sad, infinitely sad, but you, poor martyrs, should not give in to despair. Complete your noble act of devotion, fulfill your great sacrifice of love, and from the height of your Golgotha and from your underground mine pits forgive the people their unintentional sense of grievance, and say to those others, that the people have the right to this mistake, and that you give them your blessing!

Notes

Source: "Molodaia i staraia Rossiia," Kolokol, l. i39, July i5, i862; i6:i99-205, 4i0-i5.

An adjective formed from the word telenok, "calf," which implies that the emotion is "foolish."

Sunday schools were a project of the intelligentsia to take advantage of the peas­ants' sole day off to spread literacy; in a number of cases, progressive political ideas were spread as well. The same was said of the popular reading rooms that had been set up. A chess club was organized in Petersburg in i862 by writers in opposition to the govern­ment, including Chernyshevsky and Lavrov.

Prince A. F. Golitsyn (i796-i864) took part in the investigation of Herzen and Ogaryov in Й34-35, and in the Petrashevsky case in Й49. Liprandi's proposal to recruit spies among gymnasia students had been rejected by the tsar.

Herzen is mocking the Easter exclamation and response exchanged by Orthodox believers: "Christ is risen!" "Verily He is risen!" This is supposedly uttered by three high government officials and the Moscow metropolitan. Annenkov-Tversky was chief of the St. Petersburg police, and Prince Gagarin was a reactionary member of several state committees.

Herzen: "Unfortunately, we received it not before July ist."

Will manage them itself.

Louis A. Blanqui (i805-i88i), a French utopian revolutionary, participated in the i830 and i848 uprisings.

Karl Moor is the hero of Schiller's The Robbers. Fran5ois-Noёl Babeuf (i760-i797) was a French political activist and journalist whose nickname comes from his use of Ro­man democratic models and claim to be a true tribune of the people and enemy of the bourgeois; he was executed in i797.

The latiklave was a broad purple band worn on a tunic by senators. Vladimir A. Ob- ruchev (i836-i9i2) was arrested in i86i for distributing the proclamation "Great Rus"; to make the greatest possible impression on the public, his civil execution (breaking a sword over the head before being sent to Siberia) took place right after the May i862 fires in St. Petersburg.

The Bell, No. i4i, August i5, i862. Herzen develops ideas previously raised in "The Can­non Fodder of Liberation" (Doc. 42). He retains some faint hope that the tsarist regime can distance itself from the support of the elite and meet more of the people's needs, and that socialism can be achieved through a nonviolent process. Ivan Aksakov wrote a response to the ideas expressed in "Journalists and Terrorists," but its publication in The Day was blocked by the censorship (Let 3:436).

Journalists and Terrorists [1862]

[. . .] One of the oddest of all the oddities in the war being waged against us is that "Aging Russia" accuses us of a thirst for explosions, violent revolu­tions, terrorist impulses, and just about accuses us of arson, and, at the same time, "Young Russia" scolds us for having lost our revolutionary fer­vor and for having lost "all faith in violent revolutions."

Until unforeseen circumstances change, we will not answer "Aging Rus­sia." What could you use to convince people who talk about chair a canon¹ after "the sacrificial offerings to liberation"? What can you say to people, who naively declare that if we were to scold those people and learn to love these ones, that everything would be fine? What can be done about the fact that an impertinent child who throws a stone at a street lamp is less repul­sive to us than the self-satisfied lymphatic bedbug who reprimands him.

Why do we address "Young Russia"? They think that "we have lost all faith in violent revolutions."

We have not lost our faith in them, but our love for them. Violent revolu­tions can be unavoidable, and maybe that is how it will be with us; it is a desperate measure, the ultima ratio² of peoples and of tsars, and one must be ready for this, but to call for it at the beginning of the working day, not having made a single effort, not having exhausted any means, to settle on this seems to us as juvenile and immature as it is improvident and harmful to use it as a threat.

Those who are familiar with the maturing of ideas and expressions will recognize in the bloody words of "Young Russia" the age of the people say­ing them. Revolutionary terror with its threatening atmosphere and its scaf­folds appeals to the young, the way that the terror in fairy tales with their sorcerers and monsters appeals to children.

Terror is easy and quick, much easier than labor [. . .] it liberates through despotism and convinces by means of the guillotine. Terror gives free rein to the passions, cleansing them by means of the common good and the absence of individual views. That's why it appeals to more people than does self-restraint on behalf of the cause. [. . .]

We long ago ceased to love either chalice full of blood, both the civil and the military, and in like manner do not wish to drink from the skull of our enemies in battle, nor see the head of the Duchess of Lamballe on a pike³. Whatever blood is flowing, tears are flowing somewhere, and if sometimes it is necessary to cross this threshold, then let it be done without blood­thirsty mockery, but with a melancholy, anxious feeling of a terrible duty and a tragic necessity.

Moreover, the May of death, like the May of life, flowers only once und nicht wieder.⁴ The terror of the nineties will not be repeated; it had a kind of naive purity of ignorance, an unconditional faith in its innocence and suc­cess, which the terror that follows it will not have. [. . .]

The French Terror is possible least of all with us. The revolutionary ele­ments in France flowed from other cities to Paris, and there they tripled in size in the clubs and the Convention, and marched with sword and axe in hand to preach philanthropic ideas and philosophical truths to every city rampart and every urban dweller, but rarely beyond that. Little bits reached the peasants, but by chance. The Revolution, like a swift stream, reached the edges of the fields and washed them away, but never lost its primarily municipal course.

Decentralization is the first condition of our revolution, which is com­ing from the rows of grain, from the fields, from the village, and not at all toward Petersburg, where until February 19, 1861 the people received nothing but troubles and humiliations. And not toward Moscow, where alongside holy relics dwell the living ones, who, like the righteous Simeon, are satisfied now that they have seen the newly born Rus.⁵ And the circumstances are completely different. Revolutionary France wanted to renounce traditional daily life, which had grown stronger over the centuries, blessed by the powerful church and engraved with the sword of the victor on the heart of the defeated. The Revolution proclaimed a new, unprecedented right, the right of a human being, and on this basis it sought to establish a rational social union. Break­ing with the past—whose representatives were very powerful—and up to its knees in blood, it hastened to proclaim to the world the news of earthly equality and brotherhood. It needed a republic gathered into one center, une et indivisible, it needed a Committee of Social Salvation, uniting in a single will all the rays of the Revolution and forging them into lightning.

These lightning bolts routed monarchical France, but they did not create a republic. A centralized police sat down on a throne that was covered with blood. As for the revolutionary idea—the people were not up to it.

We have no new doctrines, no new catechisms to proclaim. Our revo­lution must begin with a conscious return to the national way of life, to principles recognized by national ways of thinking and by age-old custom. By strengthening the right of each person to land, i.e., by declaring the land for what it is—an inalienable element—we are only affirming and general­izing the popular understanding of the relationship of a person to the land. Renouncing forms that are alien to the people, which began pressing in on them a century and a half ago, we continue our interrupted and deflected development, introducing to it a new power of thought and science.

The instinctive feeling that suggested to the government the idea of emancipation is vaguely fermenting in it, but, incorrigible in its routines and prejudices, it cannot decide on one road to travel, and instead swings like a pendulum, touching first one side, then another. It is impossible to remain for very long in this state of vacillation; with such questions as are being raised, the people cannot sit with folded hands while waiting for the foundations of Petersburg government, which are rotting from below and weathering from above, to collapse on their own. Rotted scaffolding can stand for a very long time and, for the most part, will stand until there is a storm. But before there is some sort of storm, has anyone attempted, with a strong sense of purpose or a strong voice, to point out the way?

Imperial power for us is only power, that is force, organization, parapher­nalia; it has no content, it bears no responsibilities, it can turn into a Tatar khanate and a French Committee for Social Salvation—wasn't Pugachev the Emperor Peter III? What is there in common between Alexey Mikhailo- vich and Peter? Only limitless power, torture, and executions? By autocracy, Nicholas understood the combination of the powers of an Asian shah and a Prussian cavalry sergeant-major. The people under a tsar of the land are a kind of social republic covered with Monomakh's cap.

In the midst of the uncertainty and disorder of the present, when no one has said their final word, when everything is fermenting, everything is in a state of expectation—some for an assembly, others for land—when the people, no matter what the sovereign announces, no matter how the gover­nors speechify in Russian and Ukrainian, stubbornly believe in another kind of freedom, you summon them to rise against the tsar and the nobility, i.e., against despised social groups in which they include you, and against state power in which they see their protector. Whether they are mistaken or not, it is all the same. They are sure that they are not mistaken, and for that rea­son they will not follow you and you will perish. No minority from among the educated can carry out an invincible revolution without state power and without the people—that is how the questions stand; as long as the country­side, the village, the steppe, the Volga and Ural regions are quiet, the only possible revolutions are those led by oligarchs and guards officers. [. . .]

Up until now the people have been deaf and dumb to all revolutionary aspirations, because they have not understood what the masters lacked. But in the current struggle the people are mixed in as a living force; the ques­tion of emancipation became a cross-border question for both Russias—the one at the summit and the one in the fields; the people and the gentry un­derstood it that way. A clash was unavoidable. Until now it was not clear whether the people were prepared to yield on the land or whether the gentry were prepared to sell it cheaply. Both turned to the same mediator—the government. What did it do? Give the land? No. Take it away? No. There is a feeble impulse to do both one and the other. Let it try to take the land from under the peasants' feet, that is, to do what neither Peter I nor serf­dom was able to do. The people have already announced their passive veto. There's a good reason why they have not subscribed to either the statutory documents or moved from corvee to quitrent; they are waiting for the land.

While the land is to all intents and purposes theirs, the people will not rise up. It is difficult for the people to rise up; it is not the risk to themselves, or hard labor, or the executioners, but the complete ruin of their family, the unplowed field, hungry children, the descent of locusts. That is why the peasant is patient, is patient for a terribly long time, and only rarely, when the cup overflows, he turns up in some kind of gloomy despair and kills en masse not only his enemies but also his own children, so they will not be sent to military colonies.

A call to arms is possible only on the eve of battle. Any premature call is a hint, a piece of news given to the enemy, and an exposure of one's own weakness to them.

For that reason, leave off the revolutionary rhetoric and get to work. Unite more closely amongst yourselves, so that you are a force, so that you possess both unity and good organization; unite with the people, so that they forget your origins; do not preach Feuerbach and Babeuf to them, but the religion of the land that they understand. and be prepared. The fateful day will come; stand up, fall in battle, but do not call for it as a longed-for day. If the sun rises without bloody storm clouds, so much the better, and if it wears Monomakh's cap or a Phrygian one, it's all the same. Surely the French have shown that a translation from a feudal-monarchic language of gestures and ranks to a Roman-republican language is not worth the spill­ing of blood or even of ink. [. . .]

All that is now dissatisfied and noisy in our midst, from the vieux boyards moscovites⁶ to the Russian Germans, from Nicholaevan generals to small­time plantation owners, will disappear, will be shaken off. How? Where? Where do mice and rats disappear with the first rays of the sun, where do crickets go during the day? [. . .]

In order for tsarist power to become popular power, it must understand that the wave that is washing away at its foundations and wishes to lift it up is in fact a wave from the sea, that it can neither be stopped nor sent to Siberia, that the rising tide has begun and that—a little earlier or a little later—it will have to choose between being at the helm of a popular state or in the silt at the bottom of the sea. [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Zhurnalisty i terroristy," Kolokol, l. i4i, August i5, i862; i6:220-26, 424-25.

Cannon fodder.

A final argument.

A reference to the murder of the Princess de Lamballe during the "September Days" of i792. Her head was paraded through the streets in a celebration of the defeat of the counterrevolution.

And never again. Herzen is quoting Schiller's poem "Resignation."

Herzen compares Moscow liberals, who find the emancipation a source of new hope for Russia, with the righteous Simeon, called in Russian bogopriimets (the God- Receiver), of whom prophecy said that he would not die until he had seen the Christ child, which, according to Luke, is what indeed took place.

Old Russian boyars (member of the hereditary nobility, whose origins could be traced back to Kievan and Muscovite Russia).

♦ 47 *

The Bell, No. i4i, August i5, i862. The Tver arbitrators (mirovyeposredniki) mentioned in the letter are thirteen members of the nobility who addressed the tsar in writing about the inadequacies of the emancipation and the need for peasants to receive an allotment of land along with their freedom. This address was published in The Bell on March 22, i862. They also requested the convening of an assembly of representatives of all the Russian people. Alexander II's answer was to send General Nikolay Annenkov to Tver, where everyone who had signed the document was arrested. The Tver case was men­tioned in another Herzen article, "To the Senators and Secret Advisors for Journalism," in the April 22, i862, issue of The Bell. The prisoners were released, but were forbidden to enter government service or participate in any future elections.

A Chronicle of Terror [1862]

We received a long letter from Petersburg. The terror is not abating; con­stant arrests, prizes for the informers, gratitude to men of letters who tram­ple people in the dirt, the bribery of soldiers. all the ugliness of fear that is not inhibited by anything—the fear of a young ignoramus and Nero put together.

Here are excerpts from the letter:

The zeal in searching out incendiaries is not slackening and the Third Department recently started a rumor that the government has in its possession the handwritten proclamations of Russian publishers and arsonists living abroad.¹

Every day one hears about new detentions. Every person return­ing from abroad is searched at the border, shoes and stockings are removed. On Saturday, July 7/19 Chernyshevsky and Serno- Solovyovich were arrested.² There are two active commissions in St. Petersburg: one concerning the arson, whose composition has been known for a while; the other concerning the distribution of the proclamation, under the chairmanship of Prince Golitsyn. Here the members are Gedda, a senior Senate official, aide-de-camp Sleptsov, and the former governor of Perm Ogaryov, a harmful and empty man.

During the first days of July (between the 1st and the 8th), the case of the Tver arbitrators was decided. Their sentence was an­nounced and drawn up so absurdly, in such a repulsively foolish way, that one can't remember anything even vaguely approaching this level of stupidity for a very long time. The senators, for no reason at all, in a completely distorted way, doing the best they could, relied on article 319 of the "Sentencing Code." The Tver arbitrators were accused of spreading works whose goal was to make unlawful judgments about the government; they were sentenced to two and a half years con­finement, with some loss of class privileges. Suvorov³ was struck by the absurdity of the senate's conclusions, and, it is said, has already asked the sovereign that this sentence not be carried out. [. . .]

While in residence in Peterhof, the sovereign requested a list of all the residents of Peterhof; finding on it two students, he ordered that their parents be obliged, by signed statements, to remove these stu­dents from Peterhof. "This is a joke," said one government supporter,⁴

"could this really be possible?" Allow us to supply the names of the students: Meshchersky and Nabokov. [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Khronika terrora," Kolokol, l. 141, August 15, 1862; 16:227-28, 425-26.

Herzen: "Is it really necessary to say that this is a despicable slander and a foul lie?"

Nikolay G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) was editor of The Contemporary and a well- known progressive journalist; after this arrest he spent his time in jail writing What Is to Be Done?, which, after being published through an oversight, became a bible of the Rus­sian revolutionaries and Lenin's favorite literary work. Chernyshevsky spent the rest of his life in prison and exile. Nikolay A. Serno-Solovyovich worked for The Contemporary and helped organize "Land and Liberty."

Prince Alexander Suvorov was at this time the military governor-general of St. Petersburg.

Herzen's correspondent uses the word potaplennik, which relates to the first para­graph of this article, where there is a description of literary figures who criticize others to gain the authorities' favor as potapstvuiushchie, that is, people who trample others in the dirt.

♦ 48 ♦

The Bell, No. 141, August 15, 1862. Everyone on this list apparently visited Herzen in London during the spring and summer of 1862, and were observed by an agent of the Third Department, who kept watch on Herzen's house and was able to distinguish be­tween those who came out of curiosity and a smaller group assumed to have a genuine interest in his "criminal affairs." Most of the latter were, in fact, subject to rigorous searches when they crossed the border into the Russian Empire. The list got to Herzen through one of his Polish correspondents. Herzen wrote to Vladimir Stasov, who was staying in London at the time, that his Sunday and Wednesday open houses would have to stop because "the spying has increased to the point of insolence" (Let 3:352). In a letter from 1858 on surveillance of his visitors, Herzen repeated a rumor that Alexander had responded to the earlier report with the words "leave them in peace" (Let 2:398).

A List of People Subject to Arrest by the Government Upon Their Return from Abroad [1862]

We received from a Polish correspondent, whom we thank most sincerely, the names of people who are presently abroad, and whom our progressive

Petersburg government has ordered to be detained at the first Polish station on the railroad. Here is the list.

Stasov Vladimir Kalinovsky Balthazar Albertini Nikolay Kovalevsky Petr Kovalevsky Yulyan Kovalevsky Oskar Suzdaltsev Vladimir Plautin Fedor Botkin Sergey Korsh Valentin

."What a mix of garments and faces, tribes, dialects, and status!"² and what gigantic, colossal stupidity on the part of our government! [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Spisok lits, kotorykh pravitel'stvo velelo arestovat' po vozvrashchenii iz-za gra- nitsy," Kolokol, l. i4i, August i5, i862; i6:229, 426-27.

Pisemsky Alexander Betger Alexander Zagoskin Pavel Sovetov Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov Nikolay Rubinshtein Nikolay Davydov Pavel Davydov Denis Dostoevsky Fyodor¹

Aside from Dostoevsky, the other well-known names on this list include the writers Pisemsky (Alexey, not Alexander) and Zagoskin (Mikhail, not Pavel), the pianist Ru- binshtein, the art and music critic Stasov, professor of medicine Botkin, and the liberal journalist Korsh.

A line from Pushkin's poem "The Robber Brothers."

♦ 49 ♦

The Bell, No. i46, October i, i862. This is one of several articles by Herzen devoted to the tsarist regime's commemoration of the founding of Rus a thousand years earlier. While "Jubilee," from the February i issue (Doc. 43), focused on the Novgorod bell and the historical figures depicted on it, eight months later Herzen reported on the Sep­tember ceremony itself. Alexander II expended considerable energy on the unveiling of the Millennium statue in Novgorod, which was intended to be a moment of national joy and well-being (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:48-5^ 86). Helping to set the tone, the historian Kostomarov arrived from the capital to give a public lecture to a packed house on the significance of Novgorod the Great in Russian history (Smirnov, Gertsen v Nogorode, 42). After the threat of non-participation in the dedication ceremony (local nobles were angry about the terms of the emancipation) had passed, the event came off as planned, with warm words from the tsar about how, after i86i, the various estates in Russia were even more closely bound together. Alexander II expressed a wish to the

nobility that their descendants would continue to work with his descendants for the sake of the nation.

To emphasize the Russia-Romanov bond, the original suggestion by Minister of the Interior Lansky for a statue of the Varangian ruler Rurik was replaced by a sculptural ensemble on a much broader scale, covering the whole thousand years of Russian his­tory; the list of heroic figures to be included was the result of many hours of heated discussion in St. Petersburg. The ceremony was held on the anniversary of the Kulikovo battle, which coincided with the heir Nikolay Alexandrovich's birthday; flexibility was possible since the chronicles mentioned only the year 862. Newly written prayers were read and the dinner included Alexander's toasts to Russia; the nobility answered with toasts at their ball (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:86-87).

However much planning went into the Millennium celebration, it was criticized across the political spectrum. The poet Tyutchev found it lacking in a "religious feeling of the past" and thus untrue to Russia's history, and Fyodor Buslaev saw the bell-shaped monument as honoring only the Russian state. Ivan Aksakov labeled it an official occa­sion to which the Russian people were not invited. In any case, said Aksakov, the people experience their history differently, and "do not share the Western jubilee sentimental­ity," implying that this was a practice borrowed from Europe and, like many such bor­rowings, one that soon reached a hypertrophied state in Russia (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:84, 87).

Herzen railed against the emptiness and bad taste of the entire jubilee enterprise. In the course of those September days, the government announced the latest recruit­ing goals, a cause of great misery in the countryside, and the tsar made a stern speech to representatives of the peasants about their unrealistic hopes (Tatishchev, Imperator Aleksandr II, K404-5). To add to the absurdity, Minister of the Interior Valuev made sure that news of his own sixtieth birthday got into the papers, leading Herzen to con­fess that the stupidity of all this left him almost speechless.

The Celebration of the Millennium [1862]

The absurdity of the celebration in Novgorod has exceeded all expectations of even the fiercest admirers of the earthly tsar. What vulgarity and shal- lowness, what obstinacy and formalism, what awkwardness and lack of ability in all things, from the announcement of the recruitment misfor- tune—on the very day when good news had been expected—to the warning to Novgorod peasants not to expect a more genuine emancipation in the future!..¹ No, gentlemen of the Winter Palace, you have received no modern anointing, you don't know how to do anything right, no matter in what uni­form you appear—as Sobakeviches or Manilovs²—you can't even organize a celebration. It's the prose, the pitiful prose of the Petrine era, which has retained its heavy Germanic style, but the thoughts have vanished! Perhaps

a very foolish-looking Rus will understand this lesson, and one can thank Valuev³ for that. He alone raised his voice in order—in his turn—to make the millennium look ridiculous; he sent the following malicious gibe to all the newspapers:

"The sixtieth birthday of the Minister of the Interior. On the day of the dedication of the monument to the millennium of Russia, September 8, the minister of the interior marked his sixti­eth birthday." (St. P. September 10)

Since we cannot presume to come up with anything stupider and more comical, this is a good place to stop.

Notes

Source: "Prazdnik tysiacheletiia," Kolokol, l. 146, October 1, 1862; 16:247-48, 440-41.

The recruitment targets for the first part of 1863 were published in a manifesto from Alexander II on September 8. The tsar accepted the congratulations of Novgorod area peasants on September 9; his scolding speech to the peasantry was published in Russia.

Sobakevich and Manilov are characters in Gogol's novel Dead Souls.

Petr A. Valuev was minister of the interior from 1861 to 1868.

♦ 50 ♦

The Bell, No. 157, March 1, 1863. Since 1861, Herzen and Ogaryov had been in communi­cation with organizers of the secret circle that became the first Land and Liberty (Zemlia i volia). While Ogaryov worked more closely with them, it was Herzen who suggested the name, which was taken from his essay "What Do the People Need?" and this idea was accepted in 1862. Herzen did not agree to closer ties with radical groups, but he was still willing to help with producing and distributing propaganda and agitation materials. By mid-1863, Herzen recognized the movement's weakness and the unlikelihood of its program being realized, but he maintained his support until the group dissolved the fol­lowing year. The essay below emphasizes the socialist essence of the peasant commune, and the links between a free Poland and a free Russia.

Land and Liberty [1863]

While the Petersburg eagle, having lowered one of its heads, tears apart the bosom of the unfortunate Poland, clouds—its own, domestic ones—gather around the other head. Let it wait and conduct a prayer service with its

Brandenburg hawk, which it summoned to the feast of the suppression of a great people.¹

1863 is not 1831.

Europe may be the same, but Russia is not!

We know for certain that circles in the capitals and the provinces, united amongst themselves and together with officers' committees, have formed a single society.

This society has adopted the name "LAND AND LIBERTY."

And under this name they shall prevail!

Land and Liberty—are words that are very close to us, for with them we spoke out in the wintry Nicholaevan night, and with them we proclaimed the early dawn of the present day.² Land and Liberty were the basis of every one of our articles, Land and Liberty were on our foreign banner and on every page that issued forth from the London printing press.

Land and Liberty are two great testaments of two incomplete evolutions, two essential reinforcements of perennially dissolved hemispheres which join together, perhaps, the destiny of Russia. Russia has experienced the depths of what it means to have land without liberty, and it has seen enough of what it means to have liberty without land.

We greet you, brothers, on our common path! We will greedily follow your every step, with trepidation we will await news from you, with love we will pass it on, the unselfish love of people who rejoice at the evolution of their lifelong goals.

With your sacred banner it will be easy for you to serve the cause of the Russian people!

March 1, 1863

Notes

Source: "Zemlia i volia," Kolokol, l. 157, March 1, 1863; 17:56, 371-73.

The Brandenburg coat of arms, which also depicted a two-headed eagle, was adopted by the rulers of Prussia.

In Doc. 52, "1853-1863," Herzen reminds readers that he had kept these demands in mind from his earliest publications abroad up to the present.

♦ 51 ♦

The Bell, No. 158, March 8, 1863. Like other articles written by Herzen at the time of the Polish uprising, "A Lament" is a sharp expression of his love for Russia, a love which made him work for its liberation, but which was inseparable from the freedom of other nations under Russian control. He summons the Russian public to protest against the tsarist suppression of Poland, to feel shame for the behavior of their government, and his habitual irony is replaced by sarcasm and anger. In a letter to Ivan Turgenev, Herzen urgently requested the novelist's reaction, even if it was negative (Gertsen, Sobranie so­chinenii, 27:bk. i, 306-7). The historian Nikolay Karamzin's son, a state official with the Ministry of Justice, was so incensed by this article that he wrote to Katkov, deriding the man who compared the tsar to Stenka Razin and raised money for wounded Poles, and he suggested various humiliating punishments if Herzen were to fall into the govern­ment's hands (Let 3:489).

A Lament [1863]

Brothers, brothers, what are these Germans doing to us? What are they do­ing to our soldiers, what are they doing to our fatherland?

Will you really cover this all with faint-hearted silence. after the latest call-up for recruits?

These are arsonists and highwaymen who do not recognize property rights, these are his imperial majesty's own communists! [. . .]

This is how Alexander Nikolaevich decided to become the earthly tsar— the tsar and Stenka Razin rolled into one!¹

An imperially approved Jacquerie!² The beating—organized by the police and the military—of landowners and the confiscation of their homes! [. . .] Well, if you are going to become Stenka Razins, then become Stenka Razins, but then it's no good to play at being a German general and the first nobleman of the land—a beard, a wide sash, an axe in hand, and land and liberty for the Russian people. that makes sense. But to represent at one go, for one's own advantage, Peter I, a serf, and a Moscow landowner— that's an old trick.³

You see that we were right when we said that they lack any moral com­pass; Nicholas, when he cynically placed autocracy on his banner, was just being naively candid.

A leftover from the history of the Merovingians, it is time either for them to perish, or for Russia to perish. Only the fall of this dynasty of German Tatars can wash away the soot from the fires, the innocent blood, and the guilt-ridden obedience.

For that reason, do not be silent. It will be terrible if you remain silent— one can be silent from fear, from indifference, or from obtuseness, without noticing that our Garrick⁴ promises with one half of his face privileges and freedom, and with the other half he winks at his troops, a signal for them to burn, steal, and execute .If no one pays for the Polish massacre, then,i853-i863

having at hand "the army in all its glory," steeped in blood and hardened by robbery and murder once again, the Romanovs will teach you a lesson!

There was a time when a high value was placed on a quiet tear in sym­pathy, a handshake, and a whispered word of concern during a tete-a-tete.

This is no longer enough. [. . .]

A slave is silent when someone speaks. Speech belongs equally to me and to him. Speech belongs to everyone; speech is the basis of freedom. Speak out, speak because you must not remain silent. We await your orations! [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Plach," Kolokol, l. i58, March 8, i863; ^65-69, 377-78.

In i670 the Cossack Stenka Razin mounted a rebellion in the south of Russia against the nobility and the imperial government; he was defeated and executed in i67i.

A general term for a bloody peasant revolt, which stems from an uprising in fourteenth-century France.

Alexander II used the phrase "the first nobleman" (pervyi dvorianin) in a September 4, i859, speech to deputies from the provincial committees that were considering the serf question. In a November 28, i862, speech to noble deputies from Moscow and adjoining regions, the tsar described the honor he felt at being "a Moscow landowner" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, ^342, 345).

David Garrick (i7i7-i779), English, the best Shakespearean actor of his day.

♦ 52 *

This first appeared as a preface to the volume that marked the tenth anniversary of the Free Russian Press in London; an excerpt was later reprinted in the March i5, i863, issue of The Bell (No. i59). Herzen traces the ideological journey made by the Free Press dur­ing its first decade, while emphasizing its "living tie" to progressive opinion in Russia.

1853-1863 [1863]

Ten years ago, at the end of February, an announcement was sent out about the opening of the Free Russian Press in London.¹ The first printed mate­rial came out in May, and since then the Russian printing press has never stopped working.²

¹79

That was a difficult time: it was as if Russia had died, and entire months went by without any word about it in the magazines. From time to time there appeared news of the death of some decrepit old official, or that oneor another grand duchess had successfully given birth. more rarely a sup­pressed groan reached as far as London, which made one's heart sink and one's chest ache. There were almost no private letters, as fear caused all contacts to cease.

In Europe it was different, but not better. It was the five-year period after 1848, and there was not even the slightest ray of light. it was shrouded on all sides by a dark, cold night.

I became more and more distant from the milieu into which I had been thrown.

An involuntary force pulled me homeward. There were moments when I regretted having cut off any return trip, a return to that Siberia and to that jail, in front of which marched for the twenty-eighth year a fierce sentry in Hessian boots. [. . .] As a maelstrom and deep waters entice a man in the dark of night toward unknown depths, I longed for Russia.

It seemed to me that so much strength could not be crushed so stupidly, and get used up so absurdly. And, more and more vividly, I imagined the people, sadly standing to the side and alien to everything that was happen­ing, and the proud handful, full of valor and courage, the Decembrists, and our enthusiastically youthful circle, and life in Moscow after exile. Familiar images and views passed before me: meadows, forests, dark huts against the white snow, faces, the sounds of songs, and . and I believed in the near future of Russia, I believed when all others doubted, and when there was no justification for faith.

Maybe I believed because I was not in Russia at that time and did not ex­perience for myself the insulting contact with the whip and with Nicholas, and maybe it was something else, but I held firmly to my belief, feeling that were I to let it out of my hands, I would have nothing left.

With the Russian printing press I returned home, and around it a Rus­sian atmosphere was sure to form. could it possibly be that no one would respond to that first vivos voco?³

However, the "living person" did not rush to respond.

The news that we would be printing in Russian from London frightened people. The free word discomforted people and filled with horror not only people from whom we were distant but also those who were close to us, sounding so sharp to an ear that had grown used to whispering and silence. Uncensored speech caused pain, and seemed like an act of carelessness, almost a denunciation. Many advised us to stop and not publish anything; one person close to us came to London for that purpose.⁴ It was very dif­ficult. I was not prepared for this.

"Well, if they do not respond, others will!" and I went my own way, with­out the slightest greeting or a single affectionate word, i.e., without an af­fectionate word from Russia; in London there was a man who understood the idea of our printing press quite differently, one of the noblest represen­tatives of the Polish exiles.

The prematurely aged and sickly Stanislav Worcell was roused by the news of a Russian printing house, and he helped me with the orders, counted the number of letters, and set up the press in the Polish printing house.⁵ I remember how he picked up from my desk the first proof sheets, looked at them for a long time, and, deeply moved, said to me: "Oh my God! Oh my God! I've lived to see a free Russian printing press in London! How many terrible recollections from the recent past have been washed away from my soul by this scrap of paper, smeared with ash from the stove!"

As he faded away, the saintly old man saw the printing house's success and, before his death, blessed our work once more with his dying hand.

That first article that we were talking about was addressed to "the Rus­sian nobility," and reminded them that it was time to free the serfs, and, moreover, with land, or there would be trouble.

The second article was about Poland.

The peasant issue and the Polish question were the very basis of Russian propaganda.

And since that time, dear Czarnecki, for ten years together with you we have printed without weariness or rest, and our press already has a consid­erable biography and a considerable pile of books.⁶

[. . .] Our beginning was slow and meager. For three years we were print­ing, not only without selling a single copy, but almost without the possibil­ity of sending a single copy to Russia, except for the first leaflets, which were dispatched by Worcell and his friends to Warsaw. We still had every­thing we printed on our hands or in the basement storerooms of the pious Paternoster Row.⁷

We did not get depressed. and kept on printing and printing.

A bookseller on Berner Street once sent for ten copies of "Baptized Prop­erty" and I took that for success. I gave the young boy a shilling tip and with a certain bourgeois joy I found a special place for that first half sovereign earned by the Russian printing press.

Sales in the propaganda business are just as important as in any other. Even simple material labor is impossible to carry out with love knowing that it is done in vain. You can place the best actors in the world in an empty hall—they will perform very badly. The church authorities, whose rank re­quires them to know the subtleties of moral torture, sentence priests for theft, drunkenness, and other earthly weaknesses to mill the wind.¹⁸

But we did not mill the wind after all, my dear Czarnecki—our day fi­nally came.

It began solemnly.

On the morning of March 4, I went as usual into my study at eight o'clock and opened The Times. I read, and read ten times more, and did not understand, did not dare to understand the grammatical meaning of the words placed at the head of the news received by telegraph: "The death of the emperor of Russia."

Beside myself, I rushed with The Times to the dining room, looking for the children and the servants, to announce this important news, and with tears of true joy in my eyes I handed them the paper. I felt years younger. It was impossible to remain at home. At that time Engelson⁹ was living in Richmond, and I quickly dressed to go see him, but he had anticipated me and was already in the front hall. We heartily embraced each other and could not say anything except the words: "Finally, he is dead!"

As was his habit, Engelson pranced about, kissed everyone in the house, sang and danced. We had not had time to calm down when a carriage sud­denly stopped at my front door and someone rang the bell in a frenzied manner; it was three Poles who, not waiting for the train, had galloped from London to Twickenham to congratulate me.

I ordered champagne to be served, and no one considered the fact that it was still only eleven in the morning, or even earlier. And then, for no reason at all, we went to London. On the streets, at the stock exchange, in the eating houses all talk was about the death of Nicholas, and I did not encounter a single person who did not breathe more easily knowing that this thorn had been removed from the flesh of humankind, and was not overjoyed that this oppressive tyrant in Hessian boots was a matter for the embalmers.

On Sunday, from the morning onwards, my house was full: French peo­ple, Polish refugees, Germans, Italians, and even English acquaintances came and went with radiant faces. The day was clear and warm and after dinner we went out into the garden.

Young boys were playing on the banks of the Thames; I called them to my gate and told them that we were celebrating the death of their enemy and ours. I tossed them a handful of silver coins to get beer and candy, and they cried out "Hurrah! Hurrah! Impernikel is dead! Impernikel is dead!" The guests also began to throw sixpences and three pence pieces; the boys brought ale, pies, and cakes, and a barrel organ, and began to play it and dance. After that, for as long as I lived in Twickenham, every time they saw me on the street, the boys would lift their caps and shout: "Impernikel is dead! Hurrah!"

The death of Nicholas increased our strength and our hopes tenfold. I immediately wrote a letter to the emperor Alexander—which was later printed—and I decided to publish The Polestar. [. . .]

The beginning of Alexander II's reign was a joyous period. All of Russia breathed more easily, raised up its head, and, were they able to, would have shouted wholeheartedly along with the Twickenham boys: "Impernikel is dead! Hurray!"

Under the influence of the spring thaw, people even took a more af­fectionate view of our printing press in London. Finally, we were noticed. There was demand for dozens of copies of The Polestar and in Russia it was being sold for the fabulous price of i5 to 20 silver rubles. The banner of The Polestar, the demands that it made, coincided with the desire of the entire Russian people, and that is why it began to gain sympathy. And, when I ad­dressed the newly enthroned sovereign, I repeated to him: "Grant freedom to the Russian word, our minds are constricted by the fetters of censorship; grant freedom and land to the peasants and wipe away from us the shameful stain of serfdom; grant us an open court system and do away with the of­ficial secrecy about our fate!" When I added to this simple demand: "Hurry up so that you can save the people from bloodshed!" I felt and I knew that this was not at all my personal opinion, but an idea that was in the Rus­sian air, exciting every mind and every heart—the mind and heart of the tsar and of the serf, of the young officer just out of military school and the student, no matter what university he attended. No matter how they un­derstood the question and what side they took, they all saw that the Petrine autocracy had lived out its days, that it had reached a limit, after which the government had to either be regenerated or the people would perish. If there were exceptions, then they were only in the mercenary circles of rich scoundrels or on the sleepy summits of members of the gentry who had lost their minds.

Half of our program was carried out by the tsar himself. But—and this was the Russian in him—he stopped at the very introduction and came up with a transition period, the brakes of gradualness, and thought that every­thing had been accomplished.

With the same candor with which the Russian printing press in London addressed the sovereign in i855, a few years later it addressed the people and said to its readers: "You see, the government has acknowledged the fair­ness of your demands, but it cannot carry out what it has acknowledged, it cannot break out of the rut of the barracks-like order and the bureaucratic uniforms. It has reached the end of its understanding and is moving back­ward. [. . .] It is losing its head, behaving cruelly, making mistakes, and is clearly afraid. Fear, combined with power, provokes a bitter rebuff—a rebuff without respect and without deliberation. From there it is one step to a rebellion. There is no point in waiting any longer for the government's own recognition of the rightness of what is being asked. [. . .]"

And in saying this we feel that this is not a personal opinion—the idea of an Assembly of the Land is in the Russian air. The Milyutins and Valuevs¹⁰ exchange it for small provincial dumas; the assemblies of the nobility keep silent about it; but, even nameless, the Assembly of the Land, like Marie An­toinette in the matter of the necklace, is greatly implied.¹¹ The merchantry and the people speak about it, and the military insist that it be summoned.

No, the living tie between Russia and its small vedeta¹² in London has not been broken. and the very abuse of the greyhounds and the second- rate hunting dog journalists who work for the Third Department, which the dwarfs of enlightenment and roues of internal affairs use to hunt us down, convinces us even more that our printing press is not alienated from

Russia.¹³

Let us return to it.

The demand for The Polestar hardly extended to the books we printed in the past. Only Prison and Exile somehow sold out, as well as some small brochures like "Baptized Property" and "Humor."

In May 1856 the second issue of The Polestar appeared and it sold out, taking with it all the rest. The entire mass of books moved out. At the begin­ning of 1857 there were no more books in the printing house and Trubner undertook at his own expense second printings of everything we had issued.¹⁴

There was so much work that our little press could not satisfy the de­mand, and in 1858 one of our fellow exiles, Zeno Swentoslowski, opened a Russian section in his own printing house and began printing Trubner's editions.

By the second half of 1857 the printing house's expenses began to be covered, and toward the end of 1858 there was a small profit, and about the same time two or three Russian presses opened in Germany.

Our press felt like a grandfather.

The time of trial and testing for our press was over, and the time of weak, fruitless efforts, and apathy on the Russian side had passed.

At the beginning of 1857 Ogaryov suggested publishing The Bell.

Its first issue appeared on July 1, 1857.

With the publication of The Bell began the period of growth of our print­ing press.

We will not speak about it here. The articles that came out in Czarnecki's Anthology relate to the first years of Russian publishing in London. The leaflets gathered there had been forgotten and scattered, becoming almost bibliographic rarities, and their republication seems very useful to us.

For us, these leaflets have the special character of an accounting, verifi­cation, and cleansing of the past. Much in them is immature, there is the imprint of another age, and the stern shadow of Nicholas casts a shadow on every page, obscuring every bright thought, irritating to the point of hatred every feeling, showing the dark lining of every hope. The major part of what has now become an incontestable event, was then only a premonition. As a result of these premonitions being fulfilled, we more and more have the right to conclude that we were not mistaken about the other ones.

Russia will have freedom,

The peasants will have land.

And Poland will have independence!

Notes

Source: "1853-1863," Desiatiletie Vol'noi Russkoi Tipografii v Londone, 1863; 17:74-81, 380-84.

The announcement, written by Herzen on February 21, 1853, was lithographed by members of the Polish democratic movement and smuggled into Russia (see Doc. 2).

The first pamphlet after the announcement of the press was "St. George's Day! St. George's Day!" (Doc. 3).

"I summon the living," the phrase from Schiller that Herzen used as his motto for The Bell from the beginning.

At the request of mutual friends, the actor Mikhail Shchepkin visited Herzen dur­ing a trip to Europe in September 1853 (see Doc. 60).

Count Stanislav Worcell (1799-1857) took part in the Polish uprising of 1830-31 and was a leader of the Polish exiles.

Ludvik Czarnecki (1828-1872) was a Polish emigre who ran the Free Russian Press in London.

Sales of Free Russian Press publications were handled by the publisher and book­seller Trtibner and Company, whose firm was located on Paternoster Row; Herzen plays on the street name's meaning of "Our Father."

The Russian phrase is toloch' vodu, "to beat water" in a mortar.

Vladimir A. Engelson (1821-1857) was a Russian journalist and revolutionary activ­ist living abroad.

In 1863, Dmitry A. Milyutin was war minister and Nikolay A. Milyutin was the former minister of the interior; Petr A. Valuev was the latter's successor in the ministry and head of the special committee on the reform of local government.

In 1785, the French queen ordered a pearl necklace and then refused to pay for it, causing a scandal.

Sentry post (in Italian).

Herzen refers to the fact that Minister of the Enlightenment Golovin was very short.

Herzen: "N. Trtibner in general was of great benefit to Russian propaganda, and his name ought not to be forgotten in the Almanac of the Russian Printing House. Aside from second editions of The Polestar and all our books, he undertook an entire series of editions in Russian: the poems of Ogaryov, the notes of Catherine II, the notes of Prin­cess Dashkova, Lopukhina, Pr. Shcherbatov and Radishchev et al."

The Bell, No. i60, April i, Й63. The Allgemeine Zeitung (No. Ю7) reported that Herzen had gone further than ever before by allying himself with a group whose goal was to replace Russia's thousand-year-old empire. However, in his correspondence with Oga- ryov, Herzen was already talking about loosening his ties to members of "Land and Liberty," who did not appear to be ready for the work they had undertaken. He declared the role of The Bell to be propaganda without compromise, "a deep, truthful sermon" (Let 3:486). Herzen intimated that he, too, would not reach the promised land of a liberated Russia.

The Proclamation "Land and Liberty" [1863]

At last a word of active sympathy toward the Polish affair was proclaimed in Russia—it was proclaimed by means of underground literature, as one would expect in a country where journalists are held in detention for their opinions for more than half a year, and then are sent away for hard labor¹— and it was proclaimed by "Land and Liberty." The proclamation, distributed on the i9th of February (March 3) in Moscow and Petersburg (whose text we have not yet received), concerned Poland. The authors extend the hand of young Russia to the Poles, and appeal to soldiers and officers to refrain from criminal acts.

This voice was essential, and with it begins the rehabilitation of Russia, and for that reason one is deeply grateful to those who made it possible.

The lackeys of the word, literary oprichniki and police messengers, both homegrown and those living abroad,² call both them and us betrayers of Russia, and say that we stand in the ranks of its worst enemies, etc.³

We will not answer them. They have gone beyond a moral boundary, beyond which there is neither insult nor offense. They enjoy special privi­leges, like people who have declared themselves bankrupt, like legal pros­titutes, and like their passive colleagues, who while not writing openly in favor of the government, do pay close attention to it for their own benefit.

It's no use to talk to them.

But perhaps among our friends there are people who are not completely free from the traditional prejudices, who do not clearly separate in their consciousness one's native land and the state, who mix up a love for their own people—and a willingness to suffer for them and contribute their la­bor and their lives—with a willingness to mindlessly follow every govern­ment. To them we wish to say a few words.

We are for Poland because we are for Russia. We are on the side of the Poles because we are Russians. We want independence for Poland because we want freedom for Russia. We are with the Poles, because we are chained by a single set of fetters. We are with them because we are firmly convinced that the absurdity of an empire that stretches from Sweden to the Pacific and from the White Sea to China cannot bring any blessings to the peoples who are kept on a leash by Petersburg. The vast monarchies of the Chin- gizes and Tamerlanes belong to the most elementary and wildest periods of development, to those times when the entire glory of a state consists of force and a great expanse. They are only possible when there is hopeless slavery below and unlimited tyranny above. Whether our imperial forma­tion was necessary or not has nothing to do with us at this moment—it is a fact. But it has lived out its time and has one foot in the grave—that is also a fact. We are trying with all our heart to help it with the other leg.

Yes, we are against the empire because we are for the people!

Notes

Source: "Proklamatsiia 'Zemlia i voli,' " Kolokol, l. i60, April i, i863; i7:90-9i, 388.

M. L. Mikhailov was arrested in i86i as a cowriter (with N. V. Shchelgunov) of the proclamation "To the Young Generation," and was sentenced to six years, a sentence which was publicly announced on the 35th anniversary of the Decembrist uprising, and which he did not live to complete.

The Russian word oprichniki, which has come into usage in English, refers to spe­cial units set up by Ivan the Terrible after the worst of his crises; in the guise of rooting out treason, they terrorized their fellow Russians from ^65 to i572. For Russian offi­cials "abroad" Herzen uses the Latin phrase in partibus, which refers to Catholic bishops sent to predominantly non-Catholic lands.

Katkov lashed out against Russian supporters of Poland in the first issue of The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) for Й63, and similarly critical articles were placed by Russian authorities in Le Nord.

♦ 54 *

The Bell, No. i60, April i, Й63 (Part I); No. i6i, April i5, Й63 (Part II); No. i63, May i, i863 (Part III). Herzen wrote this article soon after receiving news of the distribution in Moscow and Petersburg of a proclamation called "Polish Blood Is Flowing, Polish Blood Is Flowing.." He saw the call for widespread sympathy with the Polish cause as historically significant, a turning point in the life of Russian society. While Herzen misjudged the long-term impact of this proclamation on Russian politics and society, his continued public defense of Poland—despite his private feeling that the Poles had acted in haste—diminished respect for Herzen's political journalism in Russia, with even liberals seeing his pro-Polish stance as unpatriotic. Along with its topical inter­est, this essay continues Herzen's exploration of skepticism and irony as appropriate responses to the political realities of Russia. His ironic tone is in full force in a brief note in issue No. 160 about a report that two peasants had snatched a beaver hat off the head of a pedestrian on Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect. The crime was reported to the tsar, who ordered that they be immediately conscripted and sent to serve far from the capitals. Herzen asks whether or not there are laws covering theft, which would make it unnecessary to inform the sovereign every time such an outrage occurred. One did not have to look hard to find absurdities in "reform-era" Russia.

1831-1863 [1863]

I

"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." said Macbeth.

"What, will this blood n'er be washed away! Water!.. give me water!.. " said his wife.¹

There are, in fact, old men who not only have a lot of blood in them, but whose blood is young. and so indelible that there is no possibility of wash­ing it away.

Russia is experiencing all this. and God forbid there would be a mur­dered man in the woods, whose ghost would begin to appear at every feast.²

The Polish uprising has drawn a profound line. In future textbooks it will mark the end of one chapter of Russian history and the beginning of another. This is a turning point—it is possible to go on as before, but the break will be felt, and the line cannot be erased. The very same life on the other side of the line will not be the same. Russia will remember that the old man had a lot of blood in him, that this blood kept pouring down its arms. and that it did nothing to wipe it away.

"But was there really any less blood in Poland in 1831?"

"No, but Russia had less of a conscience, i.e., consciousness." History does not punish a half-conscious crime, a transgression done while half- asleep, it hands down an English verdict of "temporary insanity." The ques­tion is whether the Russia of 1863 has as much right to that verdict as the Russia of 1831?

We absolutely reject that.

The Polish uprising that followed five years after December 14th caught Russia off guard, dispirited and deep in thought. For almost the first time, Russians were then actually thinking about themselves. Nations come to a serious understanding rather late, the fruit of major ordeals, upheavals, and failures; the most developed nations can be in error for entire centuries under the influence of dreams and fantasies. For close to a century France believed itself to be liberal and even republican. Russia's thoughtful mood was completely appropriate. Boasting state significance and influence in European affairs, Petrine Russia imagined that it would be as easy to bor­row political freedom from its neighbors as it was to borrow a military- police empire. Despotism increased tenfold, causing those who were not utterly crushed to fall into thought, and they began to doubt their path; their striving was sincere, but it was satisfied with ready solutions not appropri­ate to the phenomena of Russian life. The oppressive feeling of the lack of roots weighed as much upon what was being thought and what had been awakened as did the government's oppression. The way out of this was un­clear and the weakness was obvious.

The Polish question was vaguely understood at that time. The leading people—people who were marching off to hard labor for their intention of curbing imperial despotism—were mistaken about it and came to a halt, without noticing it, at the narrowly official patriotic point of view of Karamzin. [. . .] ³

There was nothing to be said about the people; they were a sleeping lake, of whose currents flowing under the snow no one knew, and on whose frozen surface stood country estates, offices, and every sort of sentry box and barracks.

By that time Nicholas had somewhat recovered from the 14th of Decem­ber and had calmed down. [. . .] Suddenly the news of the Paris revolution of 1830 came crashing down on him and he became flustered. Like a guards officer in a time of complete peace, he announced that soon it would be necessary to mount up, and ordered the army put on a wartime footing. He was rude to Louis Philippe without any call.⁴ Perhaps only in 1848 did he surpass the year 1830 in his constraints on every declared thought and every word not in agreement with the foundations of an all-consuming ab­solutism. It was then that for the first time he hoisted his absurd banner of "autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality.";⁵ since then, in contrast to what was going on in Europe, there began to form in his head that deification of the tsarist title in his person. [. . .]

But if no one believed in the divinity of imperial state power, everyone believed in its strength, those who loved it and those who hated it, Russians and foreigners, the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Sebastiani, Metter- nich and Casimir Perier,⁶ the orators who attacked Russia, and Pushkin, who responded to them in verse.⁷

Thus, on the one side, a vague aspiration to throw off the despotic guard­ian who was paralyzed by the consciousness of alienation from the people. On the other side, there was the repressive specter of the imperial state's enormous power, against which it was possible to lay mines underground, but impossible to even think of fighting face to face.

What sort of protest on behalf of Poland was possible in i83i? Hidden sympathy—that existed, there were verses that burst forth with tears, there was the enthusiastic reception of exiles, and the university youth (at least in Moscow) were for Poland. The journals and literature had no political significance under the censorship of that time. Society, which had fallen into a serious decline, remained indifferent, although there was a minority who had been raised under Western influence and hated Nicholas for the cavalier nature of his despotism. [. . .]

After that followed years of the most prosaic epoch of the reign of Nicho­las. The Poland that survived went abroad, telling other nations of savage suppression [. . .] hatred toward Russia became the common sentiment of women, children, aristocrats, and plebeians. The London rabble grumbled aloud during the visit of Nicholas to England, and Lord Dudley Stuart sent him a note in support of the Poles.⁸ We had a drop of blood on us, and were marked by our victory over the Poles.

At home, the dreary despotism continued. [. . .]

But thoughts that had arisen within reached maturity, and the word that had been forcibly turned back ate away at the chest, undermined the prison walls, and, while the stockade's facade remained the same, within it a great deal had changed.

At first the pain, the loss of our dearest hopes, and the insults were too fresh, and the humiliations irritated us too much. Many energetic, noble natures were broken, and began to wither away physically or morally. Pecherin sought salvation in Catholicism, and Polezhaev in merrymaking and orgies.⁹

The question of a way out of this hell, out of this purgatory, became such a tormenting question for a man of reason that, finding no solution, some—as we just said—took flight or fell into a decline while others denied the possibility of a way out, like Chaadaev.¹⁰ The poison of profound thought went deeper and deeper, as skepticism and irony were the literary signs of an internally devouring flame. The Byronism of Pushkin and Lermontov was not simply imitation; it was as timely and national for Petrine Russia as Gogol's amazing laughter.

The level at which this work was going on was not accessible to the government—a whip doesn't cut that deeply. Nicholas was a completely uneducated and badly surrounded man; his secret police, compiled from card-sharps, broken-down officers, and petty thieves who had been caught stealing government money, floated on the surface. They were afraid of an impertinent word, a velvet beret a la Karl Sand, and cigars smoked outside; they sought classic conspirators with daggers, cloaks, and oaths, who make frightening sounds in the presence of highly strung women. They could not understand a huge, open conspiracy that had penetrated the soul with­out an oath and that walked the streets without a Calabrian hat; their fingers were too coarse.[1]

Everyone took part in this conspiracy, not only without having made any deals, but without even suspecting anything—that is how buds ripen, in­dependently of each other and under the influence of the very same atmo­sphere, making up the general character of spring. Who was not its agent? The student who knew Ryleev's and Polezhaev's verse by heart, going off to be a temporary tutor in a manor house, a physician setting off to serve in a remote part of the country,¹² a seminary student coming back to his na­tive village for the vacation, a teacher who read literature to military school students, and all universities, lycees, spiritual and military academies, the­aters, corps, Westernizers and Slavophiles—Chaadaev and Polevoy, Belin- sky and Gogol, Granovsky and Khomyakov.

Only native—not Petrine—Russia stood outside this movement. It did not know the Rus in which this movement was taking place, and it was not known there. Until this intellectual effort, until this inner protest, until these pangs of remorse, they had no business with it, and that is only natu­ral. The people had not broken with their way of life in order to rise above it, it was not in their midst that there could or should arise doubts about their path; they continued their spontaneous way of life under the heavy yoke of their serf status, bureaucratic theft, and poverty. [. . .]

After the conquest of Poland, Russia settled in for five years of Nicho- laevan ways in gloomy silence. Society declined more and more, literature remained silent or made distant allusions; only within university walls a living word was sometimes heard and an ardent heart was beating. yes, from time to time the mighty song of Pushkin, contradicting everything that was happening, seemed to prophesy that such a young and broad chest could shoulder a great deal.

People saved themselves individually—some with scholarship, some with art, some with imaginary activity. People individually turned away from everything that surrounded them and observed in the unattainable distance the movement of heavenly bodies in the west, but their inner pain and bewilderment could not quiet down, and they had to suffer through it until they reached the truth and found in themselves a means of expres­sion. Chaadaev's letter represents the first tangible point at which two di­vergent interpretations branched off.

"Look around you. It's as if everything is on the move, as if we are all wanderers. No one has a fixed sphere of existence, there are no good cus­toms, not only no rules but not even any family focus; there is nothing that would win over or awaken your sympathy or your aspirations; there is noth­ing constant or indispensable; everything passes and flows by without leav­ing a trace. It is as if we are billeted at home, like strangers in our families, like migrants in cities."

Genuine social development has not yet begun for the people if the con­ditions of its life have not been made right; our moral world is in chaotic ferment, in the type of cataclysms that preceded the actual formation of the planet."

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

This negative consciousness could go no further—this nihilism is almost as tragic as the newer kind. What could be done after such an acknowl­edgment? Sigh, fold one's arms, and meekly bear the cross of one's native land. [. . .]

Chaadaev's gloomy confession met with a strong rebuff, the rebuff of a man who had been buried alive, the rebuff instinctive faith makes to one­sided doubt. The once-again departing Russian thought, like tsar Ivan Vasi- levich, afflicted by illness and weak, listened behind the doors as Chaadaev read a prayer for the dying, and, quitting its deathbed, rushed to declare its right to live.

In the name of what? In the name of the people's way of life and pre- Petrine Russia, i.e., proceeding from the same aversion that their opponent had for the empire. "This is a temporary growth," they said, "foreign rags which have adhered to the body, but only to the skin, so they can be ripped off."

[. . .] The boundaries of the tournament were drawn.

Up until 1848 the pulse of a living heart was felt only in this literary battle.

two or three hundred people, of whom half were very young. But this arith­metic weakness—when the rest were not occupied with anything—meant nothing. A minority, with excited thoughts, faith, and doubt, split off from the drowsy and indifferent masses without having any precise direction, be­coming by necessity a secular priesthood, i.e., beginning with propaganda and preaching, they often finish with power and lead their flock along the same path.