A Herzen Reader

"I listened and listened to him, and when he had finished, I wanted to ask his blessing for life's journey, forgetting that it had already passed. [. . .] Between the gallows on the Kronverk rampart and the gallows in Poland and Lithuania, these milestones of the imperial highway, three columns had passed, relieving each other in the cold, dark twilight.soon their outlines fade and are lost in the distant blue sky." [. . .]

A remarkable group of people. Where did the 18th century get the cre­ative force to bring forth giants everywhere and in everything, from the Ni­agara and Amazon rivers to the Volga and Don?.. What remarkable fighters they were, what personalities, what people!

We hasten to pass on to our readers the obituary of S. G. Volkonsky, sent to us by Prince P. V. Dolgorukov.²

AN OBITUARY

Prince Sergey Grigorevich Volkonsky was remarkable for the firm­ness of his convictions and the selflessness of his character. He was born in 1787, and everything smiled upon him from birth: wealth, nobility, connections—fate gave him everything: he was the son of a holder of the St. Andrew's cross and a lady-in-waiting; he was the grandson of Field Marshal Repnin, in whose house he was raised until the age of 14, i.e., until the death of his grandfather; at 24 he was a colonel and an aide-de-camp; at 26 he was promoted to major general and a few weeks later, in recognition of the Battle of Leipzig, he was awarded a ribbon of the Order of Anna. He sacrificed all of this to his convictions, to his burning desire to see his homeland free, and at the age of thirty-nine he set off for hard labor in the Nerchinsk mines. just when Volkonsky had intended to quit the service com­pletely and travel, he was accepted into the secret society by Mik. Al. fon Vizin in the house of Count Kiselev, where Pestel read excerpts from his "Russian Justice." Pestel and other members of the society demanded that Volkonsky continue serving without fail, because there was the possibility that, due to his rank, he would receive a bri­gade and maybe even a division, and he could be useful to the society in case of an uprising.

The Emperor Alexander knew that Volkonsky was taking part in the schemes of the better part of contemporary youth; he com­manded the first brigade of the i9th Infantry Division, and when the commander-in-chief, Prince Wittgenstein, asked the sovereign in i823 about naming him a division commander, saying that Volkon- sky had excellent preparation for the service, Alexander answered: "If only he confined his activities to the service he would long ago have commanded a division!" One day, on maneuvers, Alexander, having summoned Volkonsky to congratulate him on the excellent condition of the Azovsky and Dneprovsky regiments, said: "Prince, I advise you to occupy yourself with your brigade and not with government affairs; it will be more useful for the service and for you."³

When Alexander died and Maiborod's denunciation was found among his papers, Chernyshev was sent from Taganrog to Tulchin [Tulcea], where Wittgenstein's headquarters were located, to arrest Pestel and the others. Passing through Uman, where Volkonsky was located, Chernyshev met with him, and, from his words and sev­eral questions, guessed that things were in a bad state. He himself went to Tulchin and found that Pestel had already been arrested and taken from his regimental quarters to Tulchin. Kind Wittgenstein, having known Volkonsky since childhood, warned him of the fate that awaited him. "Be careful," said Wittgenstein, "don't get caught: Pestel is already under arrest and tomorrow we will send him to Petersburg; be careful that you don't get in trouble as well!" Count­ess Kiseleva, nee Pototskaya, advised Volkonsky to flee abroad; she offered as a guide a Jew who was devoted to the Pototsky family, and who would undertake to accompany Volkonsky to Turkey, from where it would be easy for him to seek asylum in England. Volkonsky refused to flee, saying that he did not wish to abandon his comrades in time of danger. After dining with Wittgenstein, he went to the gen­eral on duty with the 2nd Army, Iv. Iv. Baikov, where Pestel was be­ing held, and found Baikov and Pestel having tea. Taking advantage of a minute when Baikov had to go to the window in order to speak with a courier from Taganrog, Pestel hastened to tell Volkonsky that "even if they torture me, they will learn nothing; the only thing that could destroy us is my 'Russian Justice.' Yushnevsky knows where it is; save it, for God's sake!"⁴

Returning to Uman, Volkonsky took his wife, who was near her time, to her father, Nik. Nik. Raevsky, in the countryside, where she gave birth on January 2, i826, to a son, Nikolay. On January 7 he left his wife with the Raevskys, having told her that he was instructed to go around to all the regiments; he ignored the advice of old Raevsky, who tried to convince him to flee abroad, and set off for Uman. On

the way, he encountered a faithful servant with the news that a spe­cial courier had arrived from Petersburg, that the prince's study had been sealed up, and a guard placed at his house. Volkonsky contin­ued his journey, arriving at his quarters in Uman late in the evening, and the following morning was arrested by his division commander Kornilov, the same person who, three weeks earlier, upon returning from Petersburg, had said to him: "Ah! Sergey Grigorevich, I saw the ministers and other such people there who are governing Russia: what a country! one ass sits on top of another and urges on the other asses!"

Taken by the courier to Petersburg, directly to the Winter Palace, brought to the study of Nikolay Pavlovich, he had extremely vulgar abuse and swearwords heaped on him by the most exalted mouth! He was then taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress and imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin. Upon entering the building, on the left were the rooms of the steward Lilienleker, a terrible bribe-taker, who fed those incarcerated miserably; to the right the solitary cells began, of which there were seventeen that round the entire ravelin, in the middle of which was a small courtyard with stunted greenery, and here was buried the false Tarakanova⁵ (she died after giving birth in December i775, and a made-up story was spread that she had drowned in a flood that took place two years later). In the first cell on the right sat Ryleev; next to him was Prince Yevgeny Obolensky; in the third corner cell was a Greek named Sevenis, who had stolen a pearl from another Greek, Zoya Pavlovich; Volkonsky was placed in the fourth cell; next to him was Ivan Pushchin; further along—although Volkon- sky couldn't recall the exact order—were Prince Trubetskoy, Pestel, Sergey and Matvey Ivanovich Muravyov, Prince Odoevsky, Vilhelm Kukhelbeker, Lunin, Prince Shchepin, Nikolay and Mikhail Alexan­drovich Bestuzhevy, Panov, and Arbuzov.

At the interrogations Volkonsky behaved with great dignity. Dibich, who, because of his passionate character was called the "samovar-pasha," at one session had the indecency to call him a traitor; the prince answered: "I was never a traitor to my fatherland, which I wish only good, which I served not for financial consider­ations, not for rank, but from the duty owed by a citizen!" Volkonsky, as we have said, commanded a brigade made up of the Azov and Dnepr regiments; of the nine officers of the Azov Regiment and the eight from the Dnepr who were brought into the plot by Volkonsky, only one staff-captain from the Azov Regiment, Ivan Fedorovich Fokht, was arrested and tried, and that as a result of his own care­lessness; the remaining sixteen completely escaped the government investigation thanks to the firm self-control of Volkonsky at the interrogations.

One day, during a confrontation between Volkonsky and Pestel, Pavel Vasilevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who in his youth was among the assassins of Paul I, said to him: "I am amazed, gentlemen, that you could decide on such a terrible business as regicide?" Pestel answered: "I am amazed at the amazement of your excellency; you should know better than us that this wouldn't be the first time!" Kutuzov not only turned pale, but turned green as well, while Pestel, turning to the other members of the commission, said with a smile: "It has happened in Russia that people were awarded Andreevsky rib­bons for this!"

Of the numerous members of the supreme criminal court only four were against capital punishment; Admiral Mordvinov, Infantry General Count Tolstoy, Lieutenant General Emmanuel, and Senator Kushnikov. As for Speransky, having taken part in the conspiracy, he agreed to everything and did not oppose capital punishment.⁶

Volkonsky was sent to the Nerchinsk mines, and you can read about the sojourn in this horrible place in the Notes of Pr. Yevgeny Obolensky. You can imagine what he endured at hard labor, where the officer in charge, Timofey Stepanovich Burnashov, once threat­ened to beat him and Prince Trubetskoy with a lash. He was joined by his wife, Princess Maria Nikolaevna, whom he had married at the beginning of 1825. The 17-year-old beauty did not want to marry a 38-year-old man; she yielded only to the advice and urging of her parents, but, once having married, throughout her entire life she behaved like a true heroine, earning the admiration of her contempo­raries and posterity. Her parents did not want to let her go to Siberia; she went, having escaped their watchfulness, and left behind her baby son (who died soon after). Arriving in Irkutsk, she was over­taken by a courier bringing her a letter from Benkendorf, who, in the name of the sovereign, tried to convince her to return, which she refused to do. The Irkutsk authorities presented her with the regula­tions concerning wives of convicts, where it was said that the factory authority could use them for private jobs, and might force them to wash floors. She announced that she was ready for anything—she had come to be with her husband and never to part from him again. In August 1827, Volkonsky and his comrades were transferred from the Nerchinsk mines to a fortress especially built for them at the con­fluence of the Chita and Ingoda rivers (and where the city of Chita is

now located), and where they found many Decembrists who had been brought from the Petersburg fortress. There were 75 people in all at Chita. They organized their household in common; it was decided that each one would contribute five hundred paper rubles annually; but, in order to relieve the burden of payment on poor comrades, Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, fon Vizin, and Nikita Muravyov each gave up to three thousand a year; Vadkovsky, Ivashev, Lunin, Svistunov, and several others also gave more than the assigned amount; the affluent ones pooled their resources together for books and journals for com­mon use. In August 1830 they were all taken to the Petrovsky factory settlement, 400 versts⁷ from Chita, and afterward, little by little, scat­tered about Siberia. In December 1834, Volkonsky's mother died, and on her deathbed she asked the sovereign to lighten her son's fate; he was allowed to live at Petrovsky as a settler and not a convict, i.e., live not in the fortress, but in his wife's house. In 1836 he was transferred to the settlement of Urikovskoe, 19 versts from Irkutsk. Several years later he was allowed to live in Irkutsk itself as a Urikovskoe settler, and he remained there until 1856. The Russian government, which knows how to execute, exile, and punish fiercely and incoherently, did not know how to forgive; they would not allow Volkonsky to live in Petersburg, and they only allowed him to spend time in Moscow because of the serious illness suffered by his in-law Molchanov. The years had taken their toll; Sergey Grigorevich had aged and he suffered from gout, but he was still in good spirits and took a lively part in everything happening around him; everything noble found an echo in him, and the years-long suffering did not diminish the limitless goodness in his heart, the distinctive feature of this attrac­tive man, who in his venerable old age had preserved all the warmth of his exalted youthful feelings. In August 1863 he lost his wife, and this blow struck him inexpressibly. Since that time his health began to fail, he lost a leg, and, on November 28, 1865, at the age of 78, he quietly died in his daughter's arms in the village of Voronki, in Koze- letsk region of the Chernigov province.

Every true Russian, to whom the Winter Palace kind of servility is alien, will remember with tender emotion this man, who sacrificed all his earthly blessings to his convictions, and his desire to see his homeland free: wealth, reputation, even his own freedom! May he rest in peace, this noble, venerable victim of a vile autocracy, who out of love for his fatherland exchanged a general's epaulets for a con­vict's shackles.

Prince Petr Dolgorukov

Notes

Source: "Kniaz' Sergei Grigor'evich Volkonskii," Kolokol, l. 2i2, January i5, i866; i9:i6- 2i, 369-70.

What follows is an excerpt from a long series of "Letters to a Future Friend," four of which appeared in The Bell in i864, and a fifth in i866, and which marked a deepening rift between Herzen and the liberals.

Prince Petr V. Dolgorukov (i8i6-i868), a historian and commentator, emigrated in i859, and from i860 to Й64 published newspapers and journals in Leipzig, Paris, Brussels, and London.

Herzen mentions in a footnote that Volkonsky related much of this story to him as well, but asked that any published work attributed to him be delayed until after his death. Volkonsky's account of the three traitors—Boshnyak, Maiborod, and Shervood— was published earlier in the ninth issue of Herzen's journal Listok but as the notes of "a deceased Decembrist."

Herzen adds that Yushnevsky had given the document to two others, Kryukov and Zaykin, who shared quarters in Tulchin. Hearing of Pestel's arrest, they buried it in the ground in a neighboring village. During the investigation, Zaykin was tortured into a confession, and was taken from Petersburg to the site to retrieve it.

The liaison and possibly secret marriage between Empress Elizabeth and the Cos­sack turned count Alexey Razumovsky gave rise to legends about offspring. The first false Princess Tarakanova retired to a convent; the woman mentioned here is the second pretender, who was brought from Italy in i775 by Count Orlov on orders of Catherine II and was imprisoned, dying soon afterward.

Speransky wrote a very liberal reform plan—a constitutional government based on a series of ascending dumas—for Alexander I in Й09, was dismissed on the eve of the i8i2 campaign, made governor-general of Siberia in i8i6, and asked by Nicholas I to codify all existing Russian laws. His role in i826 was a loyalty test set by the new tsar, which he passed.

A verst is slightly longer than a kilometer.

♦ 78 +

The Bell, No. 2i4, February i5, i866. The theme—harassment ofprogressive journalists— and the ironic tone are familiar, as are the government's misgivings about the zemstvos (institutions oflocal self-government), which were the products of its own reform program.

From Petersburg [1866]

There was a speech in the committee of ministers about closing the zemstvos, in light of the fact that the zemstvo assemblies are seeking more

and more to become independent of the administration, taking up issues that do not directly concern their mandate. Speeches are given that agitate people, and the development of these institutions is leading to a limitation of autocratic power.¹ The proposal to take repressive measures against the zemstvos came from Warsaw-Milyutin, as he is called, and the majority of ministers were on his side. Only Valuev defended the zemstvo institutions, and the matter ended in some sort of compromise.²

The bureaucrats were frightened by the first signs of a lively spirit in the zemstvo assemblies, and are conspiring in their departments against the zemstvos. They tremble over the financial support, the extraordinary sums, and the government quarters. They are frightened by the thought that maybe, one day, they will have to give an account of their actions not to the authorities, but to representatives of the people. With all their limita­tions, they understand that the present order of things will not remain for­ever and ever in Russia, that it will not always be in the grip of the limitless power of a spendthrift government and its thieving officials.

The bureaucrats will likely draw the government toward repressive mea­sures, and in that case they will themselves call forth and prepare the soil for a violent revolution.

The publisher of The Contemporary, after two warnings, asked Valuev to place The Contemporary under censorship control once more.³ Valuev re­fused, referring to the fact that to transfer The Contemporary, "that freedom- loving journal," back to the censorship would amount to directly admitting that the new, censorship-free situation for Russian journalism was worse than under the previous censorship. However, without fulfilling Nekrasov's request, Valuev reassured The Contemporary with the following advice: "Carry on your publication under the same conditions, and I give my word that I will not administer a third warning and will not close down the jour­nal. as long as the editors of The Contemporary agree to present me with articles for my preliminary examination."

The People's Chronicle will not be published.⁴ At first, there was permis­sion to launch this newspaper but its program was forbidden, and then Valuev asked for an approximate list of the contributors. The names of An- tonovich, Eliseev, Zhukovsky,⁵ and others were pointed out to him, after which Valuev politely answered that this was all fine, but upon the publica­tion of the first issue of the newspaper it would receive its first warning, the second issue would bring a second warning, and so forth. "While I am min­ister," he added, "I will not help any nihilistic dough to rise" (Antonovich, Eliseev, Zhukovsky—nihilists!!!).

In The Russian Gazette someone writes from Korsun: "As a consequence of all the difficulties in cultivating grain with hired labor and a minimal profit—or none at all—the landowners each year have reduced the amount of tillage, and, obviously, receiving from it even less income, have sold for a pittance their redemption certificates, have gone through the money they received from that and as a result have reached such a state that they are left like fish on a sandbar. Finding themselves in such a hopeless position, many of the landowners have decided with their last kopeck to set up in business, primarily the sale of liquor. After a brief period, very little promise has come of these ventures; hardworking people, look­ing after themselves, and, most importantly, leaving behind their gentry ways, have succeeded; those who are used to looking at business conde­scendingly and to use others to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, have been utterly ruined. The same has happened to the small landowners. They went through their redemption money, there was no further income, and it became necessary to sell the final bits of land for a pittance and with their last kopeck to set up a tavern. Lots of these establishments have sprung up in our province, up to almost five thousand. Careful people who didn't knock the price down too much, didn't get mixed up in vodka, and conducted their affairs in an orderly way, were able to earn enough on which to live. But the majority of these petty merchants went down another path."

Aksakov's The Day will not be published. What does that mean? One wonders whether private circumstances could have caused the publisher to curtail the journal, which he advertised a month ago. Our Valuev is up to something. [. . .]

Wouldn't it be simpler to instruct Katkov to publish five or six journals in both capitals with different names and a single direction? [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Iz Peterburga," Kolokol, l. 214, February 15, 1866; 19:31-33, 374-76.

The new provisions for local government were announced January 1, 1864, and went into effect the following year. While the zemstvos had responsibilities on the local level—in such areas as schools, health care, and road maintenance—without any mean­ingful power, the provincial administrations were uncomfortable with even a limited amount of autonomy. The zemstvos lasted until 1917, when the Bolsheviks abolished them.

Minister of the Interior Valuev took part in the planning for the zemstvos from 1861 to 1863, which explains his position in 1866.

Rather than risk a third post-publication warning, which would shut them down.

In April 1865 The People's Chronicle was ordered to cease publication for five months, but when the time was up it was not allowed to begin again.

Maxim A. Antonovich (1835-1918), Grigory Z. Eliseev (1821-1891), and Yuli G. Zhukovsky (1822-1907) worked for several progressive journals.

The Bell, No. 217, April 1, 1866. A correspondent from Switzerland (V. D. Skaryatin) wrote in The News (Vest') that, while remaining revolutionary, The Bell had adopted a more moderate tone. In reference to the article below, the same correspondent noted that the "family quarrel" between state and nobility was a source of great joy for the revolutionaries (Let 4:257).

1789 [1866]

Yet another step and we will see the Etats Generaux on the Neva.¹ We are moving directly toward 1789. We are not surprised—we talked about this from the very first issue of The Bell. For a long time we have assessed and understood the depth, the force, irresistibility of the movement, which arose after the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas. Sometimes this type of movement loses its way, sometimes it gets stuck in the mud, but it does not come to a stop, and it is certainly not stopped by police measures, acts of cruelty, and senseless banishment.

Petersburg despotism can only last by not noticing its own decrepitude, in the mute silence of slavery and the stagnation of all living forces. At the first oscillation, the Archimedes point slipped out of the government's hands, and they were left with only worn-out reins and a rusted brake. with every step the slope grows steeper and steeper. We do not know where we are headed, but it cannot be stopped!

.It seemed that the "heartfelt agreement" between the government and public opinion on the Polish question would swallow up the movement—not at all! The movement grew more powerful, and became convinced of the government's weakness and its own strength, it saw the government con­fused at the moment of danger and bloodthirsty from fear in the presence of people shouting. It saw the Winter Palace dependent on the two English clubs and ceased to respect it, and it saw the sovereign talking nonsense, weeping, wishing to stop, carried along against his will—and ceased to fear him. The man, who in the first moment of danger, called forth declarations of devotion, must accept another kind of declarations, as Prince Shcherba- tov rightly noted in his speech.

i7⁸9

The incident in the Petersburg noble assembly carries the significance of a historical event—a revolutionary, oppositional event, with the full flavor of '89 along with several original touches, as one might expect, with Suvo­rov, for example, who (according to Le Nord) with deep regret relayed the veto by "the executive branch," rushing to such a degree that he answered before the question had been officially asked, probably as a result of inform­ing carried out by some sort of spy.²

Readers know the details better than we do; thanks to the modesty of the free Russian newspapers we haven't even read the four points proposed by Shcherbatov.³ We await further correspondence. [. . .]

However, we do not consider it out of place to express our opinion of the new phase of the revolutionary movement.

We are not on the side of the nobility as a social class.

We are not on the side of the government in its Petrine form.

The government and the nobility have their own accounts to settle. Why did the former at the beginning try to win them over, giving them land and people? Why did it first make them a terror squad and courtiers, and then begin to take back from the children what had been illegally given to the fathers?

Why was the gentry so thick-headed when the government handed over the people to rob and beat, and became impatiently, feverishly liberal when a portion of their gain began to be taken away?

We will not involve ourselves in their family quarrel.

However, if we are not on the side of the nobility and not on the side of the government, then we are absolutely on the side of the movement.

Everything that can undermine and wash away the barracks and the gov­ernment offices, everything that can carry into the general flow—and there dissolve—the bureaucracy and class monopolies, the military administra­tion of civic affairs, the clerks who rob the treasury, the treasury which robs the people—all this we will accept with joy and delight, no matter by whose hands it is accomplished. Smash things, gentlemen, and smash each other most of all. With this smashing your lives and ours will disappear. Later on our children will settle accounts. Revolutions in general do not hand down an inheritance intact, but half-achieved ideals and newly opened horizons.

²75

It's an odd thing—two fighters went at it, and victory depends on a third: with whomever he makes an alliance, that one will prevail, and this third fighter is the wordless people, the silent majority. It still remains silent and holds onto the land.

Only by bringing them into the movement, making their affair into a common affair, a popular affair for a landed assembly, rejecting monopo­lies, can the nobility have a serious talk with the government.

And the government can only undermine the oligarchic claims by con­fronting them with the popular majority, with the popular will, which in­sists and will insist on its right to land.

Notes

Source: "1789," Kolokol, l. 217, April 1, 1866; 19:46-48, 379-80.

The Etats Generaux were summoned May 5, 1789, on the eve of the French Revolu­tion, to resolve the financial crisis which had arisen during the reign of Louis XVI, and became the National Assembly. Herzen ironically compared this to the meeting of the Petersburg Noble Assembly from February 27 to March 4, 1866. At the March 1 ses­sion, Grigory A. Shcherbatov (1819-1881), the leader of the nobility, spoke in favor of expanding the rights of the zemstvos and of permitting the zemstvo assemblies the right of petition. Shcherbatov's proposal passed by an overwhelming majority. On March 3, however, several members in the minority resolved to submit their own opinion, but the assembly turned them down, and the majority view was sent to the government. Five days later, it was reported in The St. Petersburg Gazette that the proposal had been rejected as incompatible with the zemstvo law.

Count Suvorov was the military governor-general of St. Petersburg from 1861 to 1866.

Shcherbatov's speech was not published and was only briefly mentioned in the newspapers.

♦ 80 ♦

The Bell, No. 219, May 1, 1866. Herzen reacts here to the first assassination attempt against Alexander II, as a member of the younger generation "answered accusations of 'nihilism' with a shot. [. . .] and action overtook words" (Ivanova, A. I. Gertsen, 189). Her­zen states his objection to individual acts of terror and "surprises" as a way of changing history, which brings to mind the Marquis de Custine's comment on the suppressed history of palace coups: "The Russian government is an absolute monarchy moderated by assassination" (de Custine, Letters from Russia, 126). Herzen himself had once char­acterized Russian history since Peter the Great as a "criminal affair" (Doc. 18).

The labeling of Karakozov as a "fanatic" angered the younger generation of Rus­sian radicals (Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov). Herzen received anonymous letters from Polish emigres with threats to publicly label Herzen a traitor for his negative atti­tude, while Mikhail Bakunin mourned the loss of The Bell's influence and urged his old comrade in arms to change direction and show the nihilists "where to go and where to lead the people" (Let 4:264-65, 283). "Irkutsk and Petersburg" takes note of the absurd honors shown the declared "savior" of the tsar, the peasant Komissarov, who was feted at banquets, and whose name and image appeared on everything from beer to candy and cigarettes, while the hero's wife used this instant fame to get discounts on her purchases (Let 4:66-84).

Irkutsk and Petersburg (March 5 and April 4, 1866) [1866]

We have no opportunity to even indirectly say something in favor of the rul­ing powers. The shot on April 4 was not to our liking. We expected from it calamity, and we were troubled by the responsibility that some fanatic took upon himself. In general we cannot stand surprises, whether at birthday celebrations or in the public square: the first kind never succeed, and the second kind are almost always harmful. It is only among wild and decrepit peoples that history changes through murders. Murders are useful only to those who gain by the dynastic change. Petersburg got used to the regular removal of anointed rulers, and forgot neither Ropscha nor the Mikhailov Palace.¹

We do not require bullets. we are moving at full strength along the high road; there are many traps and a great deal of mud, but our hopes are even greater; on our legs are heavy stocks, but in our heart there are colossal claims that cannot be removed. It is impossible to stop us—we can only be turned off the high road onto another, from the path of orderly develop­ment to the path of a general uprising.

While we prepared to express this in other words, our speech gave way to the terrible news from Irkutsk: Serno-Solovyovich died March 5.

.These murderers do not miss their mark!

The most noble, pure, and honest Serno-Solovyovich—and they killed him.

The reproachful shade of Serno-Solovyovich passed before us in melan­choly protest, the same kind of reminder as the news of the Warsaw kill­ings of April i0, i86i, rushed by like a terrible memento and covered with mourning our celebration of the emancipation.

The last Marquis Poza,² he believed with his innocent young heart that they could be brought around, and he spoke to the sovereign in ordinary language, and he moved him—and then he died in Irkutsk, exhausted by torture and three years in solitary. For what? Read the senate minutes and you will throw up your hands.

Our enemies, sworn conservatives and members of the State Council, were struck by the valor, simplicity, and heroism of Serno-Solovyovich. He was so unsullied that The Moscow Gazette did not berate him or denounce him during the investigation, and made no insinuations that he was either an arsonist or a thief. This was one of the best, most youthful proclaim- ers of a new age in Russia. And he has been killed. "But they did not desire his death." What nonsense! Mikhailov died, Serno-Solovyovich died, Chernyshevsky is sick. What are the conditions in which they place robust young people, so that they cannot last five years? In this method of torturing one's enemies a little bit at a time, without any direct responsibility, there is such a depth of lies, cowardice, hypocrisy, or such criminal negligence, which any upright tyranny feels itself above, as a brigand feels superior to a simple thief.

Are the lives of these people really not as sacred for Russia, really not as protected as the life of the emperor, are they really not among those, who together with him took part in the awakening of Russia, in the peasant question, in hopes for the future?..

No, our voice is not needed in the cathedral choir of exultation, indigna­tion, protestation, and demonstration. Let those awaiting a reward rejoice at the hints and weep over the denunciations, let the servile hypocrisy that is corrupting youth to the extent of sham idolatry, to the extent that engineer­ing students order an icon, and Moscow students are herded to the Iberian Mother of God to attend a public prayer service³—let them take part in the concert. The sound of our voice will not be in harmony with them.

We cannot understand each other.

Here's an example.

An insane fanatic or an embittered person from the nobility takes a shot at the sovereign; the unusual presence of mind of a young peasant, his quick calculation and dexterity save the sovereign. And how do they reward him? With elevation to the noble rank! To equal the social position of the shooter? [. . .] put a ribbon across his shoulder, but over a peasant coat, give him a medal on a diamond chain, give him the largest diamond from the crown on a chain full of medals, give him a million rubles (metal, not paper, by the way), only let him remain a peasant, do not turn him into von-Komissarov.

Taking Komissarov out of his environment is an insult to the peasantry; putting a noble uniform on him makes him ridiculous and vulgar. What understanding does the sovereign have of the peasantry, if he thinks that a man who performs an act of heroism should be wrenched out of that swamp? [. . .]

We have no doubt that the April 4 assassination attempt has once again—along with sincere concern—stirred up all the servility of Russian society, all the police mania of self-proclaimed spies, journalist-informers, literary executioners, all the clumsy baseness of the half-educated horde, and all the ungovernable behavior of the bureaucrats as they try to gain favor by humbling themselves. And yet we cannot read without blushing at the shamelessness of their actions and expressions. [. . .]

We are absolutely convinced that this mania for police is one of the most severe forms of insanity and that psychiatrists pay too little attention to it. It stands to reason that this sickness develops not in normal people, but in specially prepared and capable organisms, consumed by envy, pride, self- absorption, a desire for power, awards, an important place, and revenge. All that is true, and once having destroyed everything human in a subject, there is no holding back the sickness. Suspiciousness, denunciation, slander become a necessity, a hunger, a thirst. When there is no one to denounce, the patient becomes sad, and he invents a Young Georgia, and a Young Ar- menia⁴. And suddenly we are shot at. Katkov cannot separate himself from a unified Russia, or from the sovereign—he is at once the sovereign and Komissarov. Saving Russia is a familiar matter for him. On the eve of the assassination attempt (April 3) he revealed that he bore the oil of the tsar's anointing, declaring that he did not intend to obey ministerial directives, that he would submit to no one but the sovereign, that he knew his Alexan­der Nikolaevich, and had no wish to know anyone else. The humble minis­ters put up with this, and wisely so. or else things wouldn't be so different than they were with Konstantin Nikolaevich and Skedo-Ferronti. who were really catching it with the assistance of Muravyov.⁵ Having heard the bullet's whistle and having pushed aside the hand of the murderer, Katkov, still un­shaven, rushes about on a short leash like a bulldog who isn't allowed to run free—he jumps about, yelps, and barks, trying to bite everyone.

Having received a telegram from Petersburg, here is what he writes: "To­day at half past 4 in the afternoon, there was a shot. It is thought that this was a revolutionary emissary in plain clothes," and then "Not long ago the glow of fires illuminated the entire expanse of Russia; now there has been an attempt on the life of its sovereign. Will we now really be unable to find the means to penetrate the secret of this evil act and get to its roots?"

Who came up with this? And what is meant by an emissary in plain clothes? Do revolutionary emissaries really have their own uniforms, with braid and tabs, like the gendarmes? [. . .]

It would be impossible to confer an award more awkwardly than the sov­ereign has done with Komissarov. But even here his loyal subjects tried to compete and not without success. The oppositional Shcherbatov found that saving the tsar demonstrated serious economic ability, particularly in the area of "agriculture," and proposed him as a member of the Economic Soci­ety.⁶ With this they went on to make Komissarov a member of clubs, schol­arly societies, assemblies, museums, lycees, and so on. Before you know it the corporation of privileged Moscow midwives will elect him an honorary mid-grandpa, and the society of spas will include him among the honorary sick and force him to drink free Ems mineral water and every other type, both sour and bitter... Why do you make such fools of yourselves? Have some pity on the man who saved the sovereign's life.

Notes

Source: "Irkutsk i Peterburg," Kolokol, l. 219, May 1, 1866; 19:58-65, 381-84.

Peter III was killed in Ropscha, near Peterhof, in 1762; Paul I was assassinated in the newly built Mikhailov Castle (zamok, not dvorets, as Herzen mistakenly calls it) in 1801. He also misstates the date of Serno-Solovyovich's death, which was February 14, not March 5, 1866.

A character in Schiller's historical drama Don Carlos (1787).

Officers in the engineering corps asked the authorities if they could show their gratitude for the tsar's safety by funding an "April 4, 1866" engineering scholarship, and, along with engineering students, commissioning icons of the Savior and those saints whose holy day falls on April 4.

A reference to the radical pamphlet "Young Russia," which circulated in 1862.

With the support of Muravyov the "Hangman," head of the investigative commis­sion, Katkov increased the attacks in The Moscow Gazette against not just revolutionaries but also Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and his liberal circle, and Skedo-Ferroti (pseudonym of Baron Fedor I. Firks, 1812-1872) for his brochure about Poland.

Grigory A. Shcherbatov (1819-1881) was a leader of the Petersburg nobility from 1861 to 1864, and after that served as a representative of the Petersburg assembly of rural landowners.

♦ 81 ♦

Gentry Benefactors (Countess Orlova-Denisova, Baron Ikskul, Count Sheremetev)

[1866]

People have written to us from Russia about the following beneficial and patriotic measures taken by various landowners to increase the well-being of the peasants. In relating these facts, we leave their trustworthiness to the conscience of our correspondent.

Countess Orlova-Denisova, at the time of apportioning the arable land with the peasants, took the best land for herself, and for her peasants in Kolomyagi (in which province?) assigned land consisting of moss and quagmire. In order to smooth this over, she won over several peasants, and, to the most important of them, who had influence on the others, she gave permission to open a shop.

Baron Ikskul has been trying for a long time to take away the homes of his former serfs in Gatobari, claiming that these houses belong to the manor: he owns a factory here. The residents had to literally move to a swamp. At first the case went in favor of the peasants, but then he managed the business very cleverly, and it went Ikskul's way. Now the case is being examined at the highest level.

Count Sheremetev had a very large number of house serfs.¹ Several of the house serfs had received land as a reward for their service. When the Febru­ary i9 manifesto went into effect, the count began to take back the land that he had given to the house serfs on the basis that according to the manifesto land was not assigned to house serfs. Several families of house serfs from the famous Ostankino estate began a lawsuit; it has dragged on until now with doubtful prospects of success for the house serfs, since they have no documents verifying the gift. Several peasants of that same Sheremetev acquired land under serfdom in the name of the radiant landowner. When the emancipation's provisions went into effect, these lands were considered as part of the landowner's portion. That last operation has already been re­ported on in The St. Petersburg Gazette.

Note

Source: "Blagodetel'nye pomeshchiki," Kolokol, l. 2i9, May i, i866; i9:66-67, 384.

i. This case would seem especially egregious since the Sheremetevs were known to be one of the greatest landowning families in Russia.

♦ 82 +

The Bell, No. 220, May i5, i866. Herzen offers additional comments on the attempted assassination. In his massive historical series The Red Wheel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said of the abdication of March i9i7 that it "happened almost instantaneously, but had been played out for 50 years, beginning with Karakozov's shot" (Publitsistika i995, 48i).

The News From Russia [1866]

The news from Russia is endlessly sad.

The April 4 shot grows not by the day but by the hour, and by the hour into a general calamity which threatens to grow into more terrible and unde­served misfortunes for Russia.

The police fury has reached monstrous dimensions. Like a bone tossed to a savage pack of hounds, the shot once again stirred up the combatants and blew off the faint ash which was beginning to cover the smoldering fire; the dark forces raised their heads yet higher, and the frightened helmsman is steering Russia at full speed to such a terrible harbor that at the thought of it one's blood turns cold and the head grows dizzy.

The shot was insane, but what is the moral condition of a state when its fate can be altered by chance actions, which cannot be foreseen or pre­vented exactly because they are insane? We absolutely do not believe in a serious or vast conspiracy. [. . .] That kind of action could be the revenge of that which is passing away, or an act of personal despair, but it cannot be the establishment of something new. To whom would its success be use­ful? Perhaps to conservative landowners.

The shot was understood perfectly among the people. They turned it into a celebration. What kind of ovation, coronation, or anointing with holy oil could have done more to shore up the throne, to strengthen the sovereign's personal power than this shot, with the peasant's saving arm, with all the circumstances? If there and then the sovereign would have risen to his full height, in the fullness of his magnanimity. and would have turned the shooter over to an ordinary court, but an open one. He did not do that and could not do that—he is surrounded by a different kind of conspiracy, he is surrounded by a secret Russian cabal. A dark intrigue has turned this shot into a banner of destruction, the kind of banner that in ancient German illustrations we see in death's hand together with a scythe. Yes, this cabal will strike to the right and to the left, strike first of all its enemies, strike those who are freeing the word, strike independent thought, strike heads that proudly gaze forward, strike the people which it now flatters, and all this in the shadow of the banner proclaiming that they are saving the tsar, that they are avenging him. Woe to Russia if the tsar believes completely that this secret force is saving him. We will expe­rience the most terrible Biron-Arakcheev era, we will experience the tor­ture chamber sanctimony of new Magnitskys,¹ we will experience all the terrors of the secular inquisition of the Nicholaevan era but with all the improvements introduced with fake openness and a foul-mouthed police literature.

Under Nicholas they tormented and tortured people, threw them into solitary and sent them into exile silently. There was no insult. Now there is no punishment, no hard labor that can protect a person from the abuse and slander of the official howling dogs. Shameless, nasty, and base, they beat people lying on the ground, they insult corpses. for them there are no lim­its. once again it is our "riff-raff" put to the use of the police. From people they move on to ideas and institutions. and nothing can stand up to these nihilists of conservatism. Haven't we heard the cry raised against the educa­tion of the poor, against a too easy access to higher learning?.. Haven't we read the denunciations over the graves where the dead are buried, and over graves where they have buried the living?.. ² Don't they lead shadows in chains from hard labor and the mines?.. They wish to judge history and tie it to the pillory, like they tied Chernyshevsky.

Notes

Source: "Novosti iz Rossii," Kolokol, l. 220, May i5, i866; ^69-70, 386-87.

Mikhail Magnitsky served under Alexander I.

This is a reference to a criticism of authorities in Tobolsk for a slackening of their vigilance toward Mikhailov, who was already dead by the time the accusatory materials were released by the Senate.

♦ 83 +

The Bell, No. 220, May i5, i866. The Moscow Gazette was issued a warning on March 26, i866, and Katkov paid a fine, but he preferred to cease publication rather than publish the warning as instructed, as a result of which a second warning was proposed. This decision was overturned by Minister of the Interior Valuev, who saw a need for the newspaper in the wake of Karakozov's act. However, once Katkov began to vigorously at­tack the committee on the press, Valuev agreed to second and third warnings, followed by suspension of the paper for two months. Before the assassin's identity was released, Katkov insisted that it had to be a Pole. Even after the name became public, the press insisted that "Karakozov" was not from a Russian family registered with the Saratov nobility, but a Tatar agent of exiled Russian revolutionaries, acting in concert with Poles. Some Petersburg newspapers muted their comments, fearing the final triumph of reac­tionary forces in Russia, which led Katkov to ask "Since when does liberal politics mean allowing the terrorization of society by evildoers aiming at the destruction of the state?" (Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov, 45-47).

A Second Warning and a Second Godunov [1866]

The chief directorate for press affairs has received a second warning from Katkov. With its head hanging down it awaits a third warning and then a dismissal. The thoroughly frightened Valuev, who became so eloquent that the "halls of the noble assembly" call him "le prince de la parole,"¹ hurried to propitiate the ruling editor with humility and disparagement—and with a praiseworthy meekness. But that is insufficient for their agent, and, if the repentant administration fails to strike itself in the chest and on the cheek because of its warning, he threatens to give up his regency. We fore­see a great light, which will eclipse Komissarov. Noblemen, self-selected, will come from all corners of Russia on long-distance carriages and post- chaises to pay obeisance to the father-editor and autocrat. local police and gendarmes, agents of the secret police, priests, and opponents of reform will send telegrams. Russia will emerge exhausted by such addresses, as it was exhausted a few years back by jubilees. Katkov will refuse, like Bo­ris Godunov, like Ioann in Alexandrovsk, and the nobility will pay his fine and bring him another inkwell². The sovereign will be forgotten and Kara- kozov (a Tatar) will be executed³. Muravyov will soothe the heart of the editor-regent.

And it will be soothed, but on what conditions? They shouldn't stint on paying him for the second salvation of Russia: Konstantin Nikolaevich in retirement, all those connected to the warning in Siberia, the destruction of the entire Korsh family, Kraevsky to the gold mines in Kamchatka, Skedo- Ferroti to hard labor, the death penalty for three Poles of his choosing; fi­nally, he should be mentioned during Orthodox services: "Let us pray for the savior of Russia's unity, the warrior-journalist and arch-strategist of Moscow and all Russia, the boyar Mikhail and his spouse."

If he holds out he will get it all. Fear is very gracious and generous.

And as a matter of fact, if he left The Gazette, what would happen to Russia, to whom would the tsar be abandoned, to Muravyov alone? Anyone would be terrified to be left in a room alone with him.

Notes

Source: "Vtoroe predosterezhenie i vtoroi Godunov," Kolokol, l. 220, May i5, i866; i9:76-77, 389-90.

i. Herzen read an account of Valuev's speech at the April i0, i866, gathering of the St. Petersburg Noble Assembly in the April i3 issue of The News. He comments that while the minister's speech was empty, unclear, and full of cliches, Valuev knew how to flatter the audience by speaking in a style familiar and dear to them from their nannies and servants.

"Ioann" refers to Ivan the Terrible, who removed his family to Alexandrovsk in 1564 to await a delegation of Muscovites begging him to return to Moscow and rule and punish treason as he saw fit. Katkov was presented with an inkwell by the Moscow Noble Assembly.

Herzen has noted before the absurdity of referring to Karakozov as a non-Russian, because his surname, like that of many prominent families, was of Tatar origin.

♦ 84 ♦

The Bell, No. 221, June 1, 1866. Over the years Herzen had written and published several letters to the tsar (in 1855, on the ascension to the throne; in 1857, in connection with a publication about the Decembrists; and 1865, on the death of the heir), as well as one to the empress in 1858, about the education of the future tsar. Here he includes quota­tions from the three previous letters. Herzen assumes that this will be his final letter to Alexander II, as the expectation of serious political reform from above had faded. He wrote to his son as the issue was going to press that the letter "will create a lot of noise in both camps," and mentioned that he had mailed this issue of The Bell directly to the tsar (Let 4:267). Bakunin objected to the inference that anything beneficial to the people could come from the government, and his misgivings were echoed by other radicals who believed that The Bell was too personal an enterprise and its political orientation determined too much by chance (Let 4:282, 356-57).

A Letter to Emperor Alexander II [1866]

Sovereign,

There was a time when you read The Bell—now you do not read it. Which of the eras was better, the era of liberation and light, or the one of confine­ment and darkness? Your conscience will tell you. But whether or not you read us, you must read this sheet.

You are surrounded by deceit, and there is no honest person who would dare to tell you the truth. Torture is being carried out near you, despite your order, and you do not know this. You are assured that the unfortunate fel­low who shot at you was the instrument of a vast conspiracy, but there was no conspiracy at all, large or small; what they call a conspiracy is the aroused thought and untied tongue of Russia, its intellectual movement, your good name along with the emancipation of the serfs. You are led from one injus­tice to another, you will be led to destruction, if not in this life then in the future light of history. You will, in fact, be led to destruction by conspira­tors—the ones who surround you—not because that is what they wished, but because it is advantageous to them. They will sacrifice you the same way that they now sacrifice hundreds of innocent people of whose innocence they are aware, the way they sacrifice the honor of families, handing out prostitute tickets to honest women.¹

That this cannot please you I am certain, and that is why I resolved to write to you. But this is not enough. Find out the truth for yourself, and carry out your will, as you did at the time of the emancipation.

For the fourth time I have set out along the path that you are traveling, and have stopped on it, in order to turn your attention not to myself but to you.

"People expect from you mildness and a human heart," I wrote when you ascended the throne. "You are exceptionally lucky!" "And they are still waiting—faith in you has been maintained," I added two and a half years later.

Seven years went by, and how much happened during those seven years! I was in the south of France when your son expired. The first news that I heard in Geneva was news of his death. I did not hold back, and, although cursed by many, picked up my pen and wrote you a third letter, in which I said: "Fate has touched you inexorably, dreadfully; in human life there are moments of terrible solemnity. You are at such a moment, so seize it. Stop under the full weight of this blow and think, only without the Senate and the Synod, without ministers and the General Staff, think about what has happened and where you are heading. Decide now, do not await a second blow."

You did not make up your mind. Fate touched you a second time—let them call me crazy and weak, but I am writing to you because it is so dif­ficult for me to abandon the idea that you have been drawn by others to this historical sin, to this terrible injustice that is going on around you.

You cannot wish evil for Russia in return for its love for you. That would be unnatural. Stand up for it at full height, it is exhausted under the weight of slander and frightened by the secret court of law and by obvious arbitrariness.

In all likelihood this is my last letter to you, Sovereign. Read it. Only end­less and agonizing grief about the destruction of youthful, fresh strength under the impure feet of profane old men, having grown mean with their bribes, dirty tricks, and intrigues—only this pain could make me stop you once more on the road and once more raise my voice.

Pay attention, Sovereign, pay attention to matters at hand. Russia has the right to ask that of you.

Iskander

Geneva, May 31, 1866

Note

Source: "Pis'mo k Imperatoru Aleksandru II," Kolokol, l. 22i, June i, i866; i9:8i-82,

392-93.

i. Muravyov did this to discourage radical young women from continuing to display distinctive hair styles and wear unconventional clothes (Verhoeven, The Odd Man Kara- kozov, ii4-i7).

♦ 85 +

The Bell, No. 22i, June i, i866. The previous month Herzen had written an article on the atmosphere in Russia; however, as indicated below, he destroyed it when a letter full of fresh information arrived. He sent a French version of the article "From Petersburg" to his son for placement in other periodicals, so that the fact that Karakozov was not part of a conspiracy would become better known in Europe (Let 4:265). The case records were only made partially available to the public at the time, and some of the information from Herzen's correspondent appears to have been incorrect; Karakozov had received electro­therapy once in Botkin's St. Petersburg clinic in March i866, but having experienced great discomfort, he chose not to undergo further treatment (Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov, i4i).

From Petersburg [1866]

Finally, a letter from Petersburg. I relate its most important section:

The most outrageous and groundless arrests continue. No matter what the cost, they wish to frighten the sovereign and convince him that his meekness and placid nature have allowed a plot to mature that now encompasses all Russia, and that decisive measures are required. The evil caused by the denunciatory journals is boundless. At first the whole of society was ready to believe that if not today then tomorrow an immense conspiracy will be revealed; everyone was ready to aid the police, and at the forefront were the Guards officers. The secrecy with which the case is being handled, after Muravyov's promise of openness, dampened the ardor of many, and they began to suspect some intrigue. But the deed is done and the push has been given. Trepov¹ expels everyone from the police who, according to his understanding, is incapable of maliciously persecuting all that is young and lively, and teachers are being expelled from schools if their

students behave in an unduly familiar manner during lessons. There are a huge number of spies here, many have been sent to Moscow and to the provinces and abroad, especially to Switzerland (welcome!). Muravyov has doubled their salaries.

Karakozov does not acknowledge himself to be Karakozov and does not recognize his cousin who acknowledged him. Muravyov de­manded that Chernyshevsky be brought back from Siberia, to which the tsar did not agree. Among well-known people who have been ar­rested: Blagosvetlov, Eliseev, Evropeus with his wife and brother, Kova- levsky, Sleptsov; many young ladies and women have been arrested (nihilists). Among the latter several have been released and given a yellow ticket, which is given to prostitutes.

"Have signs of any society been uncovered?" Muravyov was asked by an acquaintance. There is no society, but there will be if the harm­ful tendencies are not destroyed. Muravyov searches for these tenden­cies everywhere, even abroad. He wishes to drag into the business of April 4/i6 not only the unmaskers, negators, and nihilists found here, but also those who are abroad. It is said that an auditor at the medical academy, Belsky (or Belgin), a healthy, handsome young man, while under arrest became ill, and was sent to a secret section of the military hospital. Last Saturday, April 30 (May i2), at 9 in the morn­ing, he hung himself in his cell. On the wall he had written: "On Muravyov's orders I was flogged."

They say that Karakozov has been tortured in many innovative ways. He answered firmly at the first session. At night the question­ing began again and went on without a break for three days. They do not dare torture him by surgical means; they claim that the sovereign had not ordered it, and therefore they have resorted to new means that do not leave a trace and to science. At first they placed him in some kind of case, but Doctor Edenkauer said that he would either die or go completely out of his mind, and therefore the learned doctor advised them to replace the case with an electrical shock. (Edenkauer was elevated on April i6/28 to the rank of privy councillor!) The unfor­tunate patient became ill, stopped eating, and they say he is close to death. Many insist that he died May 2/L4 (?). (What will Muravyov do, find a fresh Karakozov?).

On the day the shot was fired, Countess Ridiger said to the em­press that she had been hearing for some time there would be an at­tempt, that she had heard this from Pototsky and had told Annenkov, who did not believe it. Pototsky has been imprisoned and went out of his mind (this fact we read in The Times). Muravyov's party and The

Moscow Gazette are trying on the sly to cast suspicion on Konstantin Nikolaevich... Muravyov has already quarreled with Shuvalov.

P.S. The Kurochkins have been released.

In the presence of this letter we stopped in a kind of endless, burning pain. Here is where this reign of liberation has arrived, and it is not the tsar's fault (from the letter it is clear how he is struggling in the darkness which has been created around him), but society, which has turned into the police, and the immoral press, which has been society's informer and ac­cuser under Muravyov.

It is an unfortunate nation, in which such an insolent and distorted envi­ronment could arise and mature, teaching, applauding, and stirring up the executioners with impunity!

"We have yet to mature," said someone in Petersburg, and everyone was angry with him. "But have already decayed," we added, "decayed terribly..."

Our article was finished, but having read the letter, we tore it up—it was weak and poor, words failed us, and we felt it deeply!

But one cannot simply fold one's arms in idle bitterness, and one cannot simply remain silent with a curse on the lips! No, that would be a betrayal of our entire life, and there isn't much left of it. We will use what remains of it to expose to the world the historic crime taking place in Russia, and to sustain and comfort the unhappy younger generation, being martyred for its sacred love for truth and its youthful faith in Russia. We, the old men, stand at the bedside of those being persecuted, wiping away the stains of slander and blessing the lost prophets of a future Russia.

They will not torture it away, and Edenkauer will not cure it with his electric shock.

.But it is good that electricity was used. Science and the press, fulfilling the function of executioner and instrument of torture. Humanity cannot decline much further than this.

What, then, can one add? Perhaps the yellow tickets that were given to young ladies and women because they cut their hair and dreamed that it was better to live by their own labor than on someone else's account, and the journal that threw mud at them.

We were recently criticized that we laugh as we speak about the vileness and brutality now taking place in Russia.

Our laughter has not been understood.

Never mind; we will speak seriously, and, first, will pose a question about the origin of the vastly increased impatience in society that circles, like a wreath, the investigative factory, in which Muravyov weaves a nonexistent conspiracy? Whence this new frenzy against nihilism, by which is now meant every kind of free, independent thought, every kind of learning that does not resemble the preaching of the neo-serf owners?

Can it simply be out of love for Alexander Nikolaevich, who freed the majority of the most furious unmaskers from half their income?² They are not that sentimental: here the roots go much deeper.

.Two years ago, for the first time at the summit of the nobility in Russia, a demand appeared for mature institutions, and a wish was expressed for civic freedom and private control of one's affairs. That took place in Mos- cow—what could be better?

But here's what is not so good. The first word spoken by the Moscow as­sembly of the nobility was hostile to the independent press, and, following the expression of gratitude to the journalist-denouncer there was the feeble speech of Orlov-Davydov,³ who demanded limitations to autocracy and to book-publishing (among us!), cursing the arbitrariness of bureaucrats and the translation of Buckle.

An environment that cannot bear free speech has chemically combined with inquisitors and executioners. As for Karakozov—or whatever he is called, the matter is not about him and he was immediately pushed into the background—with denunciations in their journals and blame for the assas­sination attempt placed on all freethinking people in Russia, dating from the nihilists to Chernyshevsky, and from Chernyshevsky to Petrashevsky, reach­ing Belinsky, and so on. Whether Karakozov lives or dies is all the same to them: that is the reason for such secrecy with the public and even doubly so with the sovereign, who must at all costs believe in a universal conspiracy.

What kind of freedom was necessary to these Asiatic slaves with their fear of freedom of thought and speech? What use is it to them? They are permitted to weep for serfdom—they themselves do not know how to go on without livery: they grew used to it and it will be awful and cold for them in the open air. It's the same old landowners and the same old bureaucrats in a different form. Their weapons were taken from the jails and the criminal courts, and their literature is the investigative file; neither they nor their journals are interested in a serious debate. In a serious debate we were the first who were prepared to throw down the gauntlet; other locations could have been found if their objections did not carry a whiff of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They do not argue, but complain about the administration; they address themselves not to their adversaries, but denounce the disor­ders; they provoke not objections but executions, and wish not to convince but to suppress.

While the conservative-liberal gentry was united with its literary major- domos in weak-nerved opposition, it was ludicrous. Now that it is in unison with Russia's fears, with Muravyov, with three police forces, the army, and electric shocks—even Valuev consenting to be on their side—it is no laugh­ing matter.

Together they represent that dark force which leads the weak sovereign from one crime to another and pushes Russia toward its former chaos.

.Why does the sovereign lack the energy to break free of these con­straints? Why can he not do what Napoleon I and Sully managed, and ques­tion Karakozov himself, in order to learn the truth not only about the shot but with that the truth about how investigations are carried out in Russia in the second half of the XIX century?

Why?..

Notes

Source: "Iz Peterburga," Kolokol, l. 22i, June i, i866; ^84-88, 393.

Fyodor F. Trepov (i8i2-i889) became chief of police in St. Petersburg in April i866.

Journals that received warnings, like The Contemporary and The Russian Word, saw their subscriptions decline.

Orlov-Davydov spoke at the January 9, Й65, meeting of the Moscow Assembly of the Nobility.

♦ 86 ♦

The Bell, No. 222, June i5, i866. Herzen predicted that this article would delight every­one, and Ogaryov judged it one of the best that had appeared in The Bell. In a June i3, i866, letter to Natalya Tuchkova-Ogaryova, Herzen said that he himself sensed "two flames coursing through it: irony and faith together." (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, i9:397). In contrast to this juxtaposition, Andrey Sinyavsky (writing as Abram Tertz) observed almost a century later that such "flames" were incompatible: "Irony is the faithful companion of unbelief and doubt; it vanishes as soon as there appears a faith that does not tolerate sacrilege" (Tertz, On Socialist Realism, i99). Herzen reproduces here, with slight changes, the rescript issued after Karakozov's attempt that was pub­lished in The Northern Post for April i4, i866; he follows this with his own comments. As expected, not everyone was delighted, and the editor of The News, while crediting Herzen with a "brilliantly witty pen," declared that comparing the persecution of early Christians and present-day socialists was a sign of mental derangement. Herzen was well advised, the editor continued, to rethink his position and turn away from socialism before it destroyed more young people (Let 4:280).

From the Sovereign to P. P. Gagarin [1866]

Prince Pavel Pavlovich,

The unanimous expression of loyal devotion by the people whose rule was entrusted to me by divine plan is a pledge of the sentiments in which I find the greatest reward for my efforts toward the good of Russia.

The more comforting is this realization for me, the more I fulfill my obligation to preserve the Russian people from those kernels of false teaching, which in time could shake the smooth functioning of society, if no obstacle was made to their development.

The event that summoned from all corners of Russia declarations of loyalty also served as an occasion for a more precise examina­tion of those paths by which these pernicious false teachings were promoted and spread. The investigation being carried out by the special commission I have ordered is already pointing to the root of the evil. In that way Providence was pleased to open the eyes of Rus­sia to the consequences that one can expect from the aspirations and philosophizing of those who would brazenly encroach on all that has been sacred to it from time immemorial, on religious beliefs, on the principles of family life, on property rights, on obedience to the law, and on respect for the powers that be.

My attention is already directed to the upbringing of young people. I have given instructions to the effect that it be organized in the spirit of religious truths, respect for property rights, and observance of the fundamental principles of the social order, and that in educational institutions of all types no overt or clandestine preaching will be allowed of those destructive concepts which are equally harmful to all aspects of the moral and material well-being of the people. But instruction which meets the true needs of youth would not bring the benefit expected from it if in private family life there was teaching not in accord with the rules of Christian piety and the obligations of loy­alty. For this reason I have the firm hope that my views on this sub­ject will be fervently acted upon in the sphere of domestic education.

No less important for the true benefit of the state in its totality and for every one of my subjects is the complete inviolability of the right to property in all its aspects, as determined by the general laws and by the Statutes of February 19, 1861. Independent of the legality of this right, one of the most fundamental principles of well-functioning civil societies, it is indissolubly tied to the development of private and

national wealth, which are tightly linked to one another. Any doubts about these relationships could only be raised by enemies of the social order.

The affirmation and preservation of these principles should be the aspiration of all those invested with the rights and responsibilities of government service. In a proper state system the first duty of all those called to serve me and the fatherland consists of precise and active fulfillment of their responsibilities without any deviation in any branch of government. The authorities' excessive behavior and their lack of action are equally harmful. Only with the steadfast fulfillment of these responsibilities can the unity of government actions, which is necessary for the realization of its views and the achievement of its goals, be guaranteed.

I am aware that some people in government service have participated in the disclosure of harmful rumors or judgments about the actions or intentions of the state and even in the dissemination of those teachings, contrary to social order, whose development should not be permitted. The very rank of civil servant renders, in such cases, greater weight to their words and in the same way facilitates the distortion of the state's views. This type of confusion cannot be toler­ated. All those in management positions must keep track of the actions of their subordinates and require of them the direct, exact, and un­swerving fulfillment of their assigned responsibilities, without which harmonious governance is impossible, and by which they themselves must set an example of respect for authority.

Finally, for the decisive success of the measures being taken against the ruinous teachings which have developed in the social sphere and which seek to shake the most fundamental bases of faith, morality, and social order, all heads of the separate branches of gov­ernment are required to keep in mind those other healthy, conservative, and reliable forces with which Russia has always been richly endowed, and which, to this day, thanks be to God, it has in abundance. These forces consist of all the classes in which property rights are valued, the right to landownership, guaranteed and defended in law, social rights founded in and determined by law, principles of social order and social security, principles of state unity and sound organization, the principles of morality and the sacred truths of our faith. In view of their important properties these strengths must be utilized and preserved when officials are appointed in all branches of govern­ment. In that way we will be saved from ill-intentioned reprimands in all levels of society concerning their confidence in the governing

authorities. Toward this goal, in accordance with my customary wishes and my frequently expressed desire, it behooves all branches of government to pay complete attention to the preservation of the rights of property and entreaty, in relation to its use and need (the right of petition!) by various districts and various sections of the popula­tion. It is important to curtail the repeated attempts to stir up enmity between various classes and particularly the stirring up of enmity against the nobility and against landowners in general, in which enemies of social order naturally see their immediate opponents. A firm and unswerving observance of these general principles will place a limit on those criminal aspirations, which have now been uncovered with suf­ficient clarity and must be subject to the just retribution of the law. I direct you to announce my rescript to the appropriate leadership, to all ministers and all heads of all the divisions.

I remain, etc.

Alexander

In Tsarskoe Selo, May 13/25, 1866

.There we have it, the final echo of the shot!

Fear in the face of something indeterminate, pious—but hardly new— thoughts, a poor style, nameless hints, a lesson learned by heart and a moral coup d'etat.

We decided to reprint in its entirety this gloomily thought-out and gloomily written dissertation,¹ because in it we see a kind of historic border post, a poorly made, poorly painted, clumsy boundary marker, but all the same a marker.

If this were a rhetorical exercise about the corruption of minds and hearts, about false teachings and theories of property [. . .] we would not pay it the slightest attention. We have read such marvels in the journals that stand in the way of Russian development. But a royal diatribe, cast down from the heights upon which the throne stands, is a completely different matter. No matter how little genuine substance there is, it must fly down to our low-lying fields like a cannonball and either smash something or get smashed itself.

Looking closely at this royal document, which reminds us—with its worldly philosophy—of the spiritual icon painting with which Metropoli­tan Filaret adorned the emancipation manifesto,² we are struck most of all by three things.

First, it is as clear as day that that there was no conspiracy linked to the shot on April 4/16 (as we have stated and repeated), to the extent that they could not draw one out no matter the shadows in which the investigation was carried out, nor the choice of an investigator, nor the methods which he employed. A conspiracy and Poles, the participation of nihilists and in­ternational revolution—all of this is intrigue, lies, and slander. They did not dare put this in the mouth of the sovereign. What remained was to exploit moral participation, i.e., immoral complicity morale, having intercepted cor­respondence between friends and family and having made note of certain thoughts, then confused them with all thinking people in the younger gen­eration, all those who awoke to intellectual life and breathed freely after the death of Nicholas. It is impossible to make out to what guilty people the letter refers. In the Karakozov case, the only guilty ones are those who participated with him, and not all those people who think that the Russian government is not the ideal of all forms of governance and who debate property rights. [. . .]

A single adversary was pointed out and identified, not by name, but as a living force, a rival with whom it is necessary to contend, which is growing and will continue to grow unless it is suppressed now. [. . .] The giant in the cradle, which the government fears and in which it senses its future suc­cessor, is social thought, the ideas of a few inconsequential writers, young people, nihilists, and, I am ashamed to say, us. The character of this move­ment, which seeks to break down the old forms of Russian life that prevent its new forces from taking shape, is instinctively recognized as social³. and for that reason the government stands on the eternal peaks of conserva­tism and reaction, in favor of landed property; it wishes to defend it and be defended by it. to its aid it summons the catechism, domestic education, spying by department heads, and all of its forces, i.e., all its police.

This tsarist adornment we see as a second victory.

The third victory—"not unto us, not unto us," but also not unto the Rus­sian people.⁴ Apropos of the people: one of the most remarkable facts about the letter to Gagarin is the utter absence of the people, who were so recently being flattered. not one tender word, not one greeting, not even a thank you for saving his life! They are tired of the paysans. [. . .] The third victory goes to the tsar's old childhood friend—the gentry landowner. Like a weak little chick, the two-headed eagle takes it under both wings, and the govern­ment, like Mitrofanushka's mama,⁵ is prepared to scratch out anyone's eyes for the sake of the perpetual young oaf. The letter puts an end to any open discussion of the great process involving landowners and peasants.

That's all.

Then the sovereign, through Gagarin, tells the people that he wants to lead Russia along a different path. Which one? It seems that he himself does not thoroughly understand but it is clear that it will be a nasty one. From this letter the irritation is obvious, the desire to govern more severely, to tighten the reins, to press harder, to trample more firmly. With this goal, Prince Gagarin's sovereign correspondent proposes turning all department heads into spies over their subordinates, and then instructs them to "keep in mind those other healthy, conservative and reliable forces with which Russia is richly endowed." [. . .]

.We imagine how the sovereign, bored by this lengthy missive from Gagarin to Gagarin, wiped the sweat from his powerful face and, throw­ing down the pen with which he had signed it, said: Well, thank God, the throne, altar, nobility, property, morality, and order have been saved. [. . .]

The sovereign lets out a sigh.

And the nobility, who since the year i860 have been trembling with fear and anger, also let out a sigh. [. . .]

Sleep, brothers, rest yourselves!..

And you, poor exiles, held in captivity, surviving in chains, toiling in the mines, persecuted friends—take heart. Together we lived to see a great age. You do not suffer in vain, and we have not worked a lifetime in vain. This is the dawn of the harvest, a day which we have long awaited.

...When the Emperor Trajan sent Pliny to investigate the false teaching of the Nazarines, when the Roman senate pondered the spread of the ab­surd and immoral sect of the executed Judean, while Tertullian defended it from the vile accusation of murders, when earlier Nero had heaped blame upon them as arsonists for a fire, and other caesars tormented them openly and publicly, like naive Muravyovs let out of a menagerie—the case of the Christians was won.

And we march forward holding caesar's most recent missive. The tsar's countersignature is there and we will not forget May 13/25, 1866.

It is the beginning of the battle... it is the beginning of the war.

We shall not see its end... it is unlikely that even the very youngest will see it. History develops slowly, and what is passing away defends itself stubbornly, and what is establishing itself comes into being slowly and dimly... but the process itself, the very drama of historical gestation, is full of poetry. Every generation has its own experience, and we do not grumble over our share, we have lived not only to see a red patch of light in the east, but also long enough for our enemy to see it. What more can one ex­pect from life, especially when a man, with his hand on his heart, can say with a clear conscience: "And I took part in this massive struggle, and I did my bit... "

...And you, Pavel Pavlovich, write another letter to yourself, some sort of commentary on the Tsarskoe Selo missive, or like Pliny the Younger, write to Caesar himself about bringing down the new Christians, about their in­significance, about your contempt for them... just keep writing!

Notes

Source: "Ot gosudaria Kniaziu P. P. Gagarinu," Kolokol, l. 222, June i5, i866; i9:95-i0i, 396-98.

Prince Pavel P. Gagarin (i789-i872), a senator, served on the commission investigat­ing the Petrashevsky circle, the emancipation committee, and was chairman of the court that tried Karakozov.

Herzen: "In all probability, Gagarin wrote this letter 'to himself.' This is all a con­tinuation of the system set up after the infamous fire in Petersburg, the system of in­timidation of the sovereign. He is assured and frightened, and he assures and frightens himself, and signs, like a future constitutional monarch, not knowing what it is—il regne, mais ne gouvernepas."

The initial draft of the manifesto by Yu. Samarin and N. Milyutin was profoundly altered by the Moscow metropolitan Filaret.

Herzen: "It stands to reason that not a single serious social teaching has ever at­tacked property rights from the viewpoint of theft." Herzen goes on to call Gagarin's view that serfs should not receive any post-emancipation allotment as an endorsement of theft as the foundation of landowners' rights.

This quote from Psalm ii3 (ii5 in the King James version) appeared on Russian coins under Paul I and later on i8i2 war medals.

In Denis Fonvizin's i782 play The Minor.

♦ 87 +

The Bell, No. 225, Aug. i, i866. This article focuses its sarcasm on the most prominent pro-government journalist.

Katkov and the Sovereign [1866]

The sovereign could not manage without Katkov and once again appointed him to look after the floodgates of the Moscow sewer, from which filth and sewage have flowed for the past four years, contaminating all Russia. Af­ter two weeks, the sovereign could wait no longer and, like a physiologist, decided that a six-week-long cleansing was sufficient for Katkov.¹ For his part, Katkov did not reconcile with the sovereign for free: he set conditions, and they were accepted. He won for himself the right to leave Russia to the whims of fate and separatism after the first subsequent warning. With this threat in the air let any sort of Valuev interfere with his committees and is­sue a warning.

[. . .] Now the Karakozov case will proceed very smoothly. Nekrasov will be satisfied:² they will get to the roots of the matter, and if there are none, they will grow some in The Moscow Gazette. Now a universal conspiracy will come to light, from London, Paris, Switzerland, and Sweden to Tulcea, Jassy, Bukhara, and Samarkand. "Evildoers of the world, tremble!"

They definitely needed Katkov on the eve of the execution. in order to whip up people's minds, in order for the government itself to believe that it had to feel rage. Without him, Muravyov was incomplete, unfinished— wasn't that the reason that he failed to discover a conspiracy, because he was deprived of the leadership of The Moscow Gazette?

But nothing was lost. Katkov, having rested in the summer sun, con­centrated his best poison on humiliation and malice, and issued one of his most priceless drops of it when he started up again with an article in issue No. 134 of The Moscow Gazette.

[. . .] He speaks of a certain nihilist who influenced Karakozov and brought back with him from abroad "a newly arisen doctrine in world-revolutionary circles about the need to exterminate all the crowned heads of Europe."³ What next? Judges will calmly sign off on sentences for every nihilist who has traveled abroad.

"World revolution"⁴ and a nihilist returning from abroad present a great opportunity for the restored detective to tie everything in the world to the Karakozov case, and, to do him justice, he did not forget anyone—not Ba­kunin, The Bell, our powerful agency in Tulcea, the Poles, or the fires. All this nonsense, mired in the filth of police reports and in the even greater filth of his own imagination, at another time would not have merited any attention, but at the present time, when it pushes people toward the gallows and hard labor, one cannot remain silent.

Where will our degradation end? Where will we touch bottom, the limit of our baseness and heartlessness? We go on sinking lower and lower. Recall the howl of indignation that greeted the doctrine of blind obedience, when it was expressed by a Moscow professor,⁵ but now—now what is be­ing preached is not the philosophy, but the poetry of slavery, the madness of slavery. Have you read anything in the basest excesses of Byzantine servility and Eastern self-abnegation that matches the following lines from the June 3/15 issue of The Moscow Gazette:⁶

For us, the state and the dynasty are not a matter of party, and the sovereign for us is not the leader of an armed force, but is desig­nated by birth to lead his entire people, in the calm and indisputable possession of supreme rights. For that reason not only officials, who have been placed in various positions in accordance with executive authority, but every honest citizen must, in good conscience, see

himself as a servant of the sovereign, and concern himself, as our an­cestors would say, with his sovereign's affairs, which for every person ought to be a vital matter to him as well.

. If you are eating, you are eating for the sovereign; if you have cholera, the sovereign is sick; if you marry, then the sovereign has married; if you take medicine, then you are treating his majesty!

Notes

Source: "Katkov i Gosudar'," Kolokol, l. 225, August i, i866; i9:ii7-20, 406-8.

Katkov was allowed to resume publication of The Moscow Gazette two weeks before the end of the official suspension.

A reference to Nikolay Nekrasov's appearance at the English Club in St. Petersburg on April i6, i866, where he read a poem he had written in honor of Count Mikhail Muravyov—who was at the time presiding over the Karakozov investigation—in an at­tempt to save The Contemporary from being permanently shut down (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, i9:388-89).

Herzen is partly quoting, partly paraphrasing the article "Nihilist" that appeared in issue no. i34 of The Moscow Gazette on June 28, i866. Katkov had in mind the folklor- ist and revolutionary Ivan A. Khudyakov (i842-i876), who was arrested in connection with the Karakozov case and sentenced to perpetual exile in Verkhoyansk. Khudyakov had traveled to Geneva in i865 to establish ties with Herzen, Ogaryov, and Bakunin, and when he returned to Russia at the end of the year he joined several radical circles in Moscow. Katkov was making use of information from the closed trial proceedings, which he saw before it was released publicly.

Herzen: "In the same issue of The Moscow Gazette Katkov himself says that world revolution is a fantasy." Katkov goes on to say that the danger comes from the Poles and their supporters, especially at The Bell, who curse Russian patriotism (Let 4:280).

In his October 28, i86i, inaugural lecture in a course on state law, Boris Chicherin set forth this theory.

What follows is a quote from the lead article in issue no. i38 of The Moscow Gazette, in which Katkov expresses his delight at Alexander's May i3 rescript (see Doc. 86).

♦ 88 ♦

A Frenzy of Denunciations (Kraevsky's First Warning) [1866]

We are overcome by the raging of denunciation—the wall separating the secret police from literature has fallen, and spies, informers, journalists, professors, and detectives have been merged into one family. The English Club has turned into an auxiliary chamber of the Third Department, the sovereign writes editorials in Gagarin's name, and Gagarin places them in the journal of the "committee of ministers." This is all fine, but our in­formers have begun to reach into the area of private life. in six months we will become accustomed to this, but at first it was startling. Two weeks ago in a feuilleton in The Voice, which Orthodoxy has sorely missed since the time of the missionary Count Tolstoy,¹ there were several stories about a cer­tain noblewoman-Old Believer who has a male friend, and about a certain male Old Believer who has a French lady. Various details were added, street names and so forth. We believe that like Heine, our brother in Christ An- drey has begun in his old age to fear death and his past sins, and, as a clever man, has begun to be zealous for the ministerial church, and not about any other. How else to explain that he has at once—like the petty Katkov— gone in for petty denunciations? Of course Kraevsky does not write them himself—even his enemies will not accuse him of excessive literacy—but if he has chosen for himself the place of honor as caretaker of two occasional journals,² then keep a watch out that there is no debauchery in them, and that everything proceeds in an orderly and proper manner.

As you grow older, Andrey, you should take more care!

It is the detention of Katkov that has caused all the trouble. The small-fry rag-and-bone dealers got going during the absence of the father of denun­ciations, with all sorts of gossip and hints. while "We, Katkov, will have a 'rendezvous' with the sovereign and with our inkwell and golden quill."

Notes

Source: "Beshenstvo donosov," Kolokol, l. 225, August i, 1866; 19:122, 409.

Count Dmitry A. Tolstoy (1823-1889), the head of the Holy Synod (1865-80), was also appointed minister of enlightenment (1866-80).

Andrey A. Kraevsky (1810-1889) was at this time editor of both The Voice (Golos) and Fatherland Notes.

♦ 89 ♦

The Bell, No. 227, September i, i866. This essay offers additional commentary on the Karakozov trial and on Katkov's shift from pro-constitutional liberal to darling of the reactionary camp.

A Quarrel Among Enemies Separatism at The Moscow Gazette [1866]

Within the darkness of the government, at the very focal point of the po­litical cancer that is eating away at Russia, a remarkable split has been re­vealed. The Moscow Gazette is turning into an organ of separatism, of the old enmity between Moscow and Petersburg. The publisher of The Moscow Gazette, having been forgiven by the sovereign, has not forgiven Valuev or an article on the Karakozov case printed in the official journal of the min­istry of internal affairs, which Valuev must have read ten or twenty times, and which sounded like it was written by a Pole, Konstantin Nikolaevich, or Golovin.¹

The thing is, The Moscow Gazette is not happy that the secret socialist groups about which the article speaks were organized in Moscow. They would like at all costs to ascribe them to poor, plague-infected Petersburg. They forget that, according to their doctrine, Petersburg possesses the alpha and omega of all Russia, its object of worship, the emperor—all power be to him—the law and the court system, the source of reason, truth, warmth, and light. We do not know by what right Moscow opposes itself to the city of the emperors. We do not understand why Moscow stands out from the monotony of the orthodox and faceless flock for whom the Petersburg tsar thinks and knows, freezes and sweats. Moscow's independent stand disturbs the impersonal unity of the sovereign's herd. Can the state move along one path, when the city of the Winter Palace pulls in one direction, while the city of the Palace of Facets pulls in another, when the Peter Paul Fortress goes this way, and the Kremlin goes that way? Won't this enor­mous empire—whose peripheries are held together by lead and blood, while in its heart hatred and the jealousy of one half toward the other take root—crack at its very center?

In order to shield Moscow, Katkov is sacrificing some of his false de­nunciations and some of the slander that he placed at the base of the tor­ture rack upon which his journal is published. In order to demonstrate that Karakozov has as his origin Petersburg ideas and world revolution, he mocks the importance given to Moscow high school and college students and the ideas ascribed to them:

Listen:

The author of the article in The Northern Post speaks about Mos­cow circles consisting of several high school and college students as if

this were a serious secret society of long standing, or a revolutionary organization extending over almost all Russia. But the investigative commission, which, of course, studied everything concerning these people down to the smallest detail, found no traces of participation by these revolutionary activists in the arson of 1864 and 1865. If these circles possessed even a hundredth part of the significance given them by the author of this article, then could it have happened that they stood idly by at the time of this arson, which destroyed so many cities and villages? It is obvious that other revolutionary elements were active then who bear no resemblance to the Moscow socialists, who are no more than the victims of these more secretive and serious enemy forces.

We do not know what conclusions the investigative commis­sion came to concerning these more secretive sources of evil in the Karakozov case. But one must think that in their further inquiries the investigative commission does not limit itself to the examination of teachings comprising the philosophy of nihilism, but has or will make use of all steps that could lead it to other areas. It is obvious that the tracks left by Karakozov and his comrades will not lead to the original source for the plan that was carried out in the assassination attempt on the 4th of April.

This is Katkov? Leontiev himself wouldn't recognize him in this new at­tire. Isn't he the one who since 1862 has talked of nothing but the fact that young people are all socialists, arsonists, and hasn't it been The Bell that has constantly said: "The investigation has revealed nothing"?

.Well done! He has distanced himself from the fires as he did from the theories of Gneist; now place your hopes in the Muravyovs and the tsars.

And what sort of irony is this on the analysis of the philosophy of nihil­ism? Who can fail to see that we were right in pointing out all the absurdity of bringing socialism, nihilism, positivism, realism, materialism, journal articles, student dissertations, etc., into the Karakozov case?

The truth is beginning to be uncovered ahead of the gallows.

Apropos of the gallows: Katkov is also dragging one of the accused² toward it. Did the gentleman write something against him or shoot his mouth off?

In the end, as one expects, there is an elusive hint. About whom, it is difficult to say; that's where the secret lies, and as the Germans say, Pass. One might think that he has in mind Suvorov, the Grand Duke, and la bete noire Golovin.³

Notes

Source: "Ssora mezhdu vragami, Separatizm 'Mosk. Vedomostei,' " Kolokol, l. 227, Sep­tember 1, 1866; 19:133-35, 414-15.

In the August 11, 1866, issue of The Moscow Gazette, Katkov responded to an article that had appeared in no. 167 of The Northern Post (Severnaiapochta).

In Doc. 87, Herzen mentioned Katkov's references to Ivan Khudyakov, a young revolutionary who had met with Russian radical circles in Europe, was arrested back in Russia, and sent into perpetual exile.

Suvorov's retirement as minister of enlightenment was seen as a sign of the in­creased strength of reactionary forces after Karakozov's attempt on the tsar's life.

^ 90 ♦

The Bell, No. 228, October 1, 1866. A year after this essay appeared, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward finalized the purchase of Alaska from Russia. In the early 1850s, Herzen had rejected a suggestion from his Moscow friends that he move to America until there was a new tsar, but he took a lively interest in America's affairs and in how it compared to Russia.

America and Russia [1866]

The Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the future.

All the Russian and non-Russian papers are full of news about rapproche­ment in the North American alliance with Russia.¹ Western commentators are angry and frowning (for good reason). The Russians are reprinting in ten different ways, with a number of variations, what we said somewhat earlier, namely eight years ago. This is what was published in our lead article in The Bell for December 1, 1858:²

We have not been spoiled by an excess of sympathy from other peoples, and have not been spoiled by their understanding either. There were a lot of reasons for this, most of all Petersburg policy since the year 1825. But Russia is emerging from this period—why is it America alone that guessed this and is the first to welcome it?

Because Russia and America are meeting on the other side. Because between them lies an entire saltwater ocean, but not an entire world

of outdated prejudices and concepts, envious precedence, and civili­zations that have ground to a halt.

It will soon be ten years since we expressed our thoughts about the mutual relations of these futures on the road of contemporary his­tory. We said that in the future Russia has one comrade, one fellow traveler—the Northern States; we have repeated this many times, and just a few months ago we had the opportunity to say: only empty, ir­ritated diplomatic pride—what's more, Germanic—causes Russia to get involved in all Western issues. In the forthcoming battle, toward which Europe is unwillingly being drawn, there is no need for Russia to take an active part. We have no legacy there, and we equally are not bound by memories or expectations with the fate of that world. If Russia will liberate itself from the Petersburg tradition, it has one ally only—the North American States.

Everything that we witnessed, raising the issue at our own risk in a hostile West, everything that we predicted—from the secretly roving forces, from the inevitable emancipation of the serfs with land to the electoral similarity with the North American States—all this is hap­pening before our eyes.

This chronological privilege is too precious for us to yield, espe­cially at a time when a page of history is turning, and, with a new page, those laborers who came to work, having anticipated the new morning, will be forgotten.

However, no special gifts of prophecy were required in order to say what we said; it was only necessary to free oneself from domestic and other prejudices, from the leaden Petersburg atmosphere, and from forgotten concepts of an old civilization. It was sufficient to take an independent look at the world. It was clear that America and Rus­sia were next in turn. Both countries have an abundance of strength, flexibility, an organizational spirit, persistence that knows no ob­stacle; both have a meager past, both begin with a complete break with tradition, both spread over endless valleys, seeking their borders, both—from different directions—reach across terrible expanses, ev­erywhere marking their path with cities, villages, and colonies, reach­ing the Pacific Ocean, this "Mediterranean Sea of the future" (as we once named it and then saw with joy that American journals repeated this many times).

The contrast between the Petersburg military dictatorship—which destroys all people in the person of the autocrat, and the American autocracy of each person—is enormous. And that's not all—isn't the most fateful contradiction, with which the history of the West is coming to an end, once again the way America breaks down into

individuals, on the one hand, and Russia into communal fusion, on the other?

Notes

Source: "Amerika i Rossiia," Kolokol, l. 228, October i, i866; i9:i39-40, 4i6.

Herzen first used this phrase in the opening epigraph in i853 in his essay "Baptized Property" (Doc. 8) and reused it in Past and Thoughts and other writings.

An American diplomatic mission visited Russia from the end of July to the begin­ning of September i866.

The rest of this document is a citation, with slight changes, from "America and Siberia."

♦ 91 ♦

The Bell, No. 229, November i, i866. In "The Gallows and Muravyov," which was written soon after Karakozov's execution and appeared in no. 228, Herzen reacted to the chaos that ensued from having "an absolute monarch who rules over nothing" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, i9:i37-38). He wondered whether a historian with the combined abilities of Tacitus and Dante could be found to capture this historical mo­ment. Here, Herzen continues to explore different aspects of the Karakozov theme, which dominated his lead articles for much of i866. At the top of the first page of issue no. 229, Herzen made his views clear with the words "THERE IS NO PLOT!" (ZAGOVORA NE BYLO!) in large capital letters. In chapter i2 of Past and Thoughts, Herzen told the story of another conspiracy, the one that was manufactured about an i834 gathering that he did not attend, but which nevertheless resulted for him in jail and years of exile.

The Question of a Plot [1866]

The conspiracy that many suspected after Karakozov's shot is revealing it­self more and more. Over and above the individual rumors, L'Independance and the Kolnishche Zeitunghave dropped two or three remarkable hints. It is clear that Muravyov stood at the head of the plot consisting of advocates of serfdom, old fools, and the reactionaries in general. The Kolnishche Zeitung says that he retired because the sovereign was displeased with police pranks and began to suspect the reason for the excessive zeal. A few days before the commission shut down, Muravyov left for the countryside, "where he was sent documents," say the Russian newspapers.¹ But how could he have dared to leave, not having completed a matter of such importance? To bless a church is hardly an urgent matter. He left in disfavor. One of his chief ac­complices was the first to untie his cart from the drowned beast. The Moscow Gazette was very modest in its laments over the grave of the new Pozharsky² (not even having become a prince, which Muravyov really wanted).

In this matter the sovereign behaved in as unsteady and foolish a way as in all other matters. Instead of naming another commission over Mu­ravyov's and following along fresh tracks all the tricks of the black Russian gang, he did not even order the publication of Muravyov's papers, and lim­ited himself to freeing the Perm infantry of the executioner's name. Now, of course, it is a bit late to learn about the entire intrigue, although it is still possible.

Notes

Source: "Po delu zagovora," Kolokol, l. 229, November i, i866; i9:i60, 423-24.

Muravyov had gone to his estate near Petersburg for the dedication of a new church, and died there the night of August 28, i866. His intention had been to declare the com­mission closed on the August 3i.

Prince Dmitry M. Pozharsky (i578-c. i64i), together with Minin, headed a force that liberated Muscovy in i6ii-i2 from Swedish and Polish invaders.

♦ 92 +

The Bell, No. 230, December i, i866 (Part I); Nos. 23i-32, January i, i867 (Part II); and No. 233-34, February i, Й67 (Part III). Herzen's notes indicate that he intended to con­tinue this essay in subsequent issues. The first part is devoted to Europe, and Herzen reveals a greater optimism about social and political change than he had expressed in the aftermath of i848, with its return to reactionary regimes and popular lethargy. The article below was written in October i866, under the influence of the founding congress of the First International held in Geneva, and the thoughts it stimulated in Herzen (Let 4:297). Part II is a transition from the situation in Europe and the ideas of the utopian socialist Blanqui to Russia, where the promise of Alexander II had gradually dissipated and any influence The Bell might have had on him had been greatly reduced. Part III continues the theme of Russia, ending with an embrace of the i862 Land and Liberty banner. Radicals objected to Herzen's characterization of St. Petersburg activists, and Serno-Solovyovich's brother Alexander answered "Order Triumphs!" with a brochure that called Herzen "a poet, artist, performer, storyteller, novelist, anything you want, only not a political activist and even less a theoretician and founder of a school" (Let 4^ 39^2-93⁾.

Order Triumphs!

[1866-1867]

L'ordre regne a Varsovie!

—Sebastiani, 1831

I

If Sodom and Gomorrah perished in as interesting a manner as the old or­der in Europe is perishing, then I am not at all surprised that Lot's wife did not turn back in time, knowing that she would be punished.

Having just come to the end of the year 1866, we are drawn to glance backward.

What a year!.. Both abroad and at home—it was a fine one, and it cannot be said that it was lacking in events.

We almost never speak about the West. [. . .] There was a time, inciden­tally, when we expressed our opinion in great detail. But developments are so substantial and abrupt, and are flowing by so rapidly, that by necessity you stop before them to verify what you have thought, alongside what is taking place. [. . .]

The decay of the old world is not an empty phrase, and it is difficult to doubt it now. The character of organic decay is that elements, entering into a given relationship with each other, do not do what they are supposed to do and what they wish to do, and that is what we are seeing in Europe. [. . .]

There was a sick man in Europe, and Nikolay Pavlovich, himself not very well, tried to obtain it;¹ now, all Europe is a hospital, a sick bay, and, most of all, a madhouse. It absolutely cannot digest the contradictions that it has lived to see. It cannot cope with the fractured revolution within, with its two-part civilization, one in science, one in religion, one almost of the twentieth century, and the other barely in the fifteenth. Is it so easy to fuse into a single organic development bourgeois freedom and monarchical ar­bitrariness, socialism and Catholicism, the right of thought and the right of force, criminal statistics that explain a case, and a criminal case that cuts off the head² so that it understands. [. . .]

In 1848, reaction revealed itself as reaction, and promised order, i.e., po­lice, and it established a police order. But ten years or so of an asylum with no amusements has gotten tedious and futile, and the negative banner of police action and a well-run state has worn out. And, little by little, a new banner has begun to appear, amphibious, if you can call it that; it has been hoisted between reaction and revolution, so that, like Caussidiere,³ it be­longs both to one and the other, both to order and disorder. The liberation of nationalities from a foreign yoke, but not at all from their own, has created a common thoroughfare of opposing principles. [. . .]

It is a fine mess to which the saving reaction of our Western elders has brought us:

Revolution—is defeated, The reds—are defeated, Socialism—is defeated, Order—triumphs, The throne—is strengthened, The police—make arrests, The court—puts to death, The church—gives its blessing.

Rejoice and give your blessing in turn!

. After all, it's become so simple—don't you just stick your head in your feathers and wait for trouble to break out?

And trouble will break out, there's no doubt of that, but there is no need to hide your head. Better to raise it selflessly, look directly at events and, by the way, look at your own conscience.

Events are as much created by people as people are created by events; this is not fatalism, but the interaction of elements in an ongoing process, the unconscious aspect of which can change one's consciousness. The busi­ness of history is only the business of the living understanding of existence. If ten people understand clearly what thousands vaguely wish for, then thousands will follow them. It doesn't follow that these ten will lead them toward something good. That is where the question of conscience enters in.

On what bases did Napoleon and Bismarck lead Europe? What did they understand?

Napoleon understood that France had betrayed the revolution, that it had come to a halt and had taken fright; he understood its miserliness, and that everything else must be subject to it. He understood that the old, estab­lished society in which the active forces of the country were concentrated, all the material and immaterial wealth, does not desire freedom, but its imposing scenery, with complete rights d'user et d'abuser. He understood that the new society, marching directly toward a socialist revolution, hated everything that is old, but impotently. He understood that the mass knows neither one thing nor the other, and that, outside of Paris and two or three other centers, they live with Gothic fantasies and childhood legends. He understood all of this, amidst the noise and exclamations of the republic that was coming to an end in 1848, amidst the arrogant claims of various parties and the indefatigable opposition; that is why he remained silent and waited for "the pear to ripen."

For his part, Bismarck, no less than Napoleon, knew the value of his philistines; on the benches of the Frankfurt parliament, he could assess them at his leisure. He understood that Germans needed as much freedom in politics as the Reformation had given them in religion, and that this freedom was necessary der Theorie nach, that they had become accustomed to obey authority, and had not become accustomed to a strict English self- governance. This would have been sufficient, but he understood more: he understood that at the present moment Germans were consumed by jeal­ousy of France and hatred for Russia, that they dreamed of being a powerful state, of uniting. but for what purpose?.. if they could have explained why, it would not have been lunacy. [. . .]

. If we renounce our sympathies and antipathies, if we forget what is dear and hateful to us, then we will hardly feel sorrow about what is going on in Europe. The military dictatorships and lawless empires are nearer to ending than the traditional kingdoms and lawful monarchies. Europe will not be bogged down by them, but will be led to a common denominator. or it will rot through, and, either by means of peace or war, come upon a terrible void. And this void will be the grave of all that is obsolete.

Proudhon—with a terrible lack of humanity—once reproached Poland because "it does not wish to die."⁴ We could say this more justly of old Europe. It is clinging to life with all its strength, but illness and death are coming closer and closer. Consciousness, thought, science and all its ap­plications long ago outgrew the Gothic and bourgeois forms of the old governance. The spirit is at odds with a body which is worn out, limited, and racked with ailments, and which keeps the soul in chains. The French revolution of ^89 feared this already and for that reason went astray with politics and war; it was happy to have an external occupation, and from the "rights of man" it developed the code of bourgeois rights.

No matter how unsteady and pale the revolution of i848, it raced power­fully to continue the interrupted political regeneration, and here is where the final battle began for the dying old man who had outlived his days, armed with an entire arsenal of ancient weapons, against an adolescent made strong by a single thought, a single belief, a single truth, who in the first clash released his sling and did not fall. It seems that it could have gone better: the Old Goliath was victorious, but he, and not the adolescent, is dying.

[. . .] Ideas are not sown in the earth. Science and thought are not glebae adscripti, are not tied to the soil.

.There was no place for the Gospel in Judea, so it was carried to Rome and preached to the barbarians; there is no room for a young worker in his father's house and his native fields, so he sets off for America. I do not know where.

We have said this not for the first time, but we think it necessary to sometimes repeat it, and especially necessary to repeat it now, when every­thing is covered with dark clouds and has so quickly become gloomy.

II

[. . .] Only two nations—among those who have entered the main chan­nel—enjoy special rights in history and are oriented differently toward the future.

Their task is a simpler one.

Their situation is less complex.

They are not troubled at present by "an unnecessary recollection and an unresolved quarrel."⁵

Nothing needs to be done on behalf of the North American union, for it is going full sail, au large.⁶

Russia could find its own channel even more easily, but it has lost its way in some kind of fog. It has dreamed up a compulsory past, drowned its old ships, and has cast stones into its own sea, but then is afraid to strike them with an oar.

Strength and time are being lost to no purpose.

The government lacks understanding, and we lack faith.

The success of our reactionary movement—newly baked from stale Eu­ropean flour—is based on this.

To explain anything to the government is a major feat, which we will not undertake; it would sooner come across it by blind instinct, or find it by touch, than comprehend anything.

We wish for something else: to cleanse our primary question from all the rubbish and silt and say to our friends whose faith is faltering what Sieyes said to his colleagues after Mirabeau's famous "Allez dire": "We are the same people today that we were yesterday—let us continue."⁷

.A few months ago I talked for a long time with an old man.⁸ He has spent half of his more than sixty years in prison; his entire life he has been persecuted, and he is being persecuted now, not just by his enemies but by his own people. This man, forgotten in prison, emerged in i848 from the graves of Mont Saint-Michel like an apparition amidst the jubilation of the February revolution, and when they expected him to offer a joyful greeting, a shout, and delight, he said loudly: "We are drowning," and the crowd which had let him out of jail moved away, as if from a villain, a holy fool, or someone infected with the plague. "And it is you who are drowning us, not our enemies," he continued. He was imprisoned once again, and, taking advantage of his incarceration, he made slanderous remarks about it, and the republic drowned, and they were the ones who drowned it.

For another fifteen years he watched from inside the prison walls at the destruction of all the initiatives and all the hopes; gray as the moon, he emerged again from prison; the old man was met by the former hatred, the former spite, and physically broken, in terrible poverty, completely alone, he disappeared into the mountains, away from his native land.

This old man is Auguste Blanqui.

[. . .] He depressed me, and something dark arose in my soul. A book lay on the table;⁹ I took it up, sure that I would find lies, filth, and slander, and I could not put it down: once more a series of martyrs, tireless activists, and young and old fighters rose before me. This official Vilna literature had erected a remarkable monument to the Polish emigration. . . . From 1831 to 1866 they labor on, and their work is destroyed; they begin anew, and it is once more destroyed; again they begin [. . .] from every place they return to their homeland, bearing in their chest an unquenchable faith in the libera­tion to come and a readiness to fall in battle for it.

Why do we have so little faith, why is our faith so weak? Why have so many of us hung our heads and lost heart at the first sign of failure, at the first unfortunate attempts, not even realizing that they may have been carried out mistakenly?

Is it possible that to believe with great faith a desperate situation or a mystical lunacy is required?

[. . .] Our battle is just beginning, and its lines are just being drawn.

The reactionary period has been ongoing for less than five years. [. . .]

Everything that has happened is sad, and half of it was not even needed from their point of view. But could one really have expected that this govern­ment, the last fruit cultivated in the hothouses of the Winter Palace, would act sensibly and dispassionately, that it would act wisely and humanely? Could one really have expected that a society consisting of people who were raised in the depravity of manor house life, having become accustomed from their childhood years to arbitrariness and slavery, to the spectacle of suffering and torture, that a society raised on bribes and slander, in gov­ernment offices and Shemyakin courts, consisting of characters out of Os- trovsky, from the menagerie of the "dark kingdom," would act wisely and humanely?¹⁰ That, like Saul, it would be blinded as a scoundrel and recover his sight as an apostle?

One should not have expected that Alexander Nikolaevich, having fallen asleep while reading What Is to Be Done? or The Bell, would wake up with a zealous desire to return land to the people and set up workshops for women and men in the Winter Palace.¹¹

Then there would be no need for a struggle, as a miracle would be sufficient. [. . .]

In Russian government life one new element has developed recently, and we value it highly—it is the tsar's tongue, which is constantly chatter­ing, the police, who go about satisfying their needs with a rattle in their hands, the literary dikasteria,¹² who uphold on an hourly basis tsarist gran­deur and Orthodox sanctity, freelance journalism on a temporary contract, which defends the throne and the fatherland.

It is a step in the mud—a huge step forward.

The mud will dry up and remain, but it is impossible to keep silent. The coarse and ignorant destruction of honest organs is a shame, but it would be twice the shame if these disgraceful organs were abolished.

It is not so important what the government says, but why it is speaking. It is speaking because it lacks faith. It feels the need to convince not only others, but itself, that it is as powerful as before, very powerful. If it possessed the Nicholaevan self-assurance, it would begin to strike out without open­ing its mouth. It speaks because it is afraid. In the dumb silence surround­ing it, something is not right, is not what it used to be; you can hear the mouse-like bustle of history.

And we remain silent, consumed in our turn by unbelief and fear.

It is necessary to get out of this awkward situation. Afraid of the sea, we suffer from the rocking motion, holding on to one spot in an impossible equilibrium. We are fortunate that our ship is not going backward, and is not running aground.

"Well, what is to be done? Speak more definitely, and make a formulation".

The demand made of us, that we formulate our thoughts about the case of Russia, is repeated fairly often. It is surprising, and causes us to invol­untarily smile at the naive proof of that inattention and carelessness with which people generally read. All of our activity, all our life has been nothing but a formulation of one thought, one conviction, and, namely, the one about which people ask. One can say that we have been mistaken our entire life, one can say that our idea is disastrous and our conviction absurd, but one cannot say that we have not formulated our point of view, with the logic com­mon to mankind and the memories in our head.

Perhaps by "formulas," our friends, like the French, have in mind pre­scriptions, i.e., drugs and orders, given in advance about how to act in this case or that. Indeed, we do not have those kinds of formulas. And there is no need for them. Serious prescriptions are improvised on the general principle of science and on the investigation of a given circumstance. [. . .]

History is what differentiates man from the animals: its character, in contrast to animal development, consists of the application of more or less conscious efforts for the organization of his way of life, for the hereditary, generic refinement of instinct, understanding, and reason with the help of memory. [. . .]

In the middle of the night following the i4th of December and the Polish rebellion of i83i, in the midst of the amazing ease with which the Nicho­laevan yoke crushed all the new shoots, the first people to cry out for "land" were the Moscow Slavophiles, and although they stood on actual soil with their left legs,¹³ they were still the first.

They understood our socioeconomic uniqueness in the allotment of land, in the repartition of land, in the rural commune and communal land- holdings; but, having understood one side of the question, they neglected the other side—the freedom sought by the individual enslaved by the village, tsar, and church. The admirers of the good old days—out of spite for the Petrine order—the true nationalists and premeditated Orthodox believers, with ingratitude forgot that it was the West that had given them an all- saving civilization, in the light of which they found a treasure house in the land, which they began to examine.

Europe, where bourgeois liberalism was going full sail, had no concept of how a mute Russia was living on the sidelines; the most educated of Rus­sians prevented them from seeing anything other than poor copies of their own paintings.

The first pioneer who set off to discover Russia was Haxthausen.¹⁴ Hav­ing by chance come upon the traces of the Slavic communal system some­where on the banks of the Elbe, the Westphalian baron set off for Russia and, fortunately, addressed himself to Khomyakov, K. Aksakov, the Kireevskys, et al. Haxthausen was genuinely one of the first to tell the Western world about the Russian rural commune and its profoundly autonomous and so­cial principles—and when was that?

It was on the eve of the February revolution,¹⁵ i.e., on the eve of the first broad but unsuccessful attempt to introduce social principles into state structure. Europe was very busy, and, because of its own sad fiasco, it failed to notice Haxthausen's book. Russia remained for them an in­comprehensible state, with an autocratic emperor at its helm, and with an enormous military that threatened every movement for freedom in Europe.

Our own attempts to acquaint the West with unofficial Russia followed almost directly upon Haxthausen.

For seven whole years we taught about Russia—as much as we could and where we could.¹⁶ Pythagorean theory didn't help very much. We were listened to absentmindedly before the Crimean War, with hatred during it, and inattentively before and after. [. . .]

III

With the death of Nicholas, tongues were loosened. The suppressed, se­cret, peevish thoughts that had accumulated came to light and told of their daydreams, each in its own way. In Russia at that time there was some­thing completely chaotic, but reminiscent of a holiday, of the morning and springtime.

A remarkable mixture of various ages of mankind, of various directions and views—ones that had long ago exhausted themselves and ones that had barely sprouted—appeared on the scene. It was an opera ball, in which every kind of costume colorfully flashed by, from liberal tailcoats with a collar up the back of the head, as in the time of the first restoration, all the way to democratic beards and hairstyles. The German doctrinaire approach to slavery and absolutism and forgotten platitudes on political economy walked alongside the Russian Orthodox socialism of the Slavophiles and Western social theory "from this world." And this was all reflected not only in public opinion, not only in somewhat uninhibited literature, but in the government itself. [. . .]

All of the Russia that was awakening sincerely craved independent speech—speech not made sore by the censor's collar—yet there was not a single free printing-press to answer this need, except for the one in Lon­don. We put the West aside, and turned all our strength to our native cause, toward which we have striven since childhood and throughout our whole life.

The Polestar and The Bell appeared when the move and the rearrangement of furniture were at their height, at that exciting time of endless ferment, in which each word could become an embryo and a point of departure. Hav­ing brought on ourselves the responsibility of the first free Russian speech, what in fact did we say? With what did we appear before the giant who was still wiping his eyes?

The entire positive and creative part of our propaganda comes down to those same two words which you will find on the pages of our first publica­tions and in the most recent issues—Land and Liberty, the development of the idea that there is no Liberty without Land and that the Land is not secure without Liberty. [. . .]

Right alongside the emancipation of the serfs we persistently demanded the emancipation of the word as the condition and the atmosphere without which there can be no popular advice about the common cause. Only open discussion and the press can replace the class-free assembly that was im­possible before the emancipation of the serfs; only a lively representation of the word—not bound by any forms or censorship—can clarify issues and point out what has actually matured in popular understanding and to what extent.

All around were private struggles and private incidents, issues arose from events and events took place which mixed up all the maps, provoking passionate rejections and attractions, but, while breaking away from the path, we constantly returned to it and constantly held onto our two funda­mental ideas.

And that is why, when the sovereign recognized in principle the eman­cipation of the serfs with land, without the slightest inconsistency and with complete sincerity we said: "You have conquered, Galilean!" for which we received reprimands from both sides.¹⁷

We will say in passing that neither the doctrinaires of loyalty nor the puritans of demagogy wanted to understand our unpretentious attitude to­ward the government. The oppositional and denunciatory character of our propaganda was a matter of practical necessity and not a goal or a founda­tion; strong in our faith, we had no fear of any kind of pacification, and, changing our weapon with ease, we continued the very same battle. It was impossible for us to lose our way. [. . .]

The idea of a bloodless coup was dear to us; everything that has been said of us to the contrary is just as much a lie as the statement that we assured the Poles that Russia was on the point of an uprising in 1862. There is, however, nothing fantastic in that; in Russian life there are none of the ir­reconcilable, stubborn, mutually destructive forces which have led Western life from one bloody conflict to another. If such irreconcilability did exist, then it is between the peasants and the landowners, but it was settled peace­fully, and would have been settled without any blood at all if the cowardly government and its agents, who are enemies of the peasant cause, had not strained the situation for no reason.

Our imperial system and our gentry have no roots and they know it. They had prepared to take the last rites in 1862 and came to life only when the Petersburg fire, Katkov's slander, and the Polish uprising came to their res­cue. The people love the tsar as the representative of defense and justice (a common factor in all undeveloped peoples); they do not love the emperor. The tsar for them is an ideal, and the emperor is the antichrist. Imperial power is maintained by the military and by the bureaucracy, i.e., by ma­chines. The military will beat anyone on orders, without distinction, and the bureaucracy will copy out and fulfill the will of the leadership without argument. That kind of government cannot be felled with an axe, but at the first spring warmth it will melt into the life of the people and drown in it.

We were firmly convinced of the latter. The landowning class was being wiped out before our eyes, and, like vanishing pictures, was turning pale and being transformed into various pale deformities. The Russian imperial sys­tem has external political goals of self-preservation and it has tremendous power, but it has no principles; the same can be said of the environment surrounding it, and this has been the case since Peter himself. Between the day Nicholas died and his funeral, the court and the general staff were able to turn themselves into liberals "superficially, hypocritically." But who said that before this they were deep and sincere absolutists?

The Russian government was on the path to some kind of transforma­tion, but, having taken fright, sharply turned off it. Our primary mistake was a mistake in timing, and, more than that, in imagining all the condi­tions and forces we forgot one of the most powerful forces—the force of stupidity. The old ways used it to gain strength.

The emancipation of the serfs, the grumbling of the landowners, the mood of society, of journalism, and of certain government circles... all of this inexorably led to the first step, i.e., the creation of a duma or an as­sembly. The experiences of the Moscow and Petersburg nobility obviously demonstrate this, but, as befits landowners, they were too late. When they raised their voices, the sovereign had been crowned a second time in all his autocracy by European threats and popular ovations.

We did not foresee the power of popular reaction. The animated spirit of 1612 and 1812 was only raised at a time of genuine danger to the fatherland; there was none this time but there was a desire for some kind of demon­stration, and the mute made use of their tongues.

We looked upon the reaction as a day's misfortune and proceeded fore­most with an analysis and consideration of the economic and administra­tive coup in the very spirit and direction of Russian socialism.

Keeping in the forefront the right to land, we advocated the development of elected self-government from the village to district, from the district to the region, and from the region to the province—we went no further, and did not need to—on the one hand, we pointed to the disgrace of personal arbitrariness, of the military-bureaucratic governance of the country, the excesses of the seraglio, and landowner brutality; on the other hand, we pointed to the assembly that could be seen in the distance, which would be chosen by a free alliance of provinces to discuss the land question.

One of the most difficult questions—not by its content but by the incor­rigibility of prejudices defending the opposing view—was the question of "communal ownership of land."

[. . .] By Russian socialism we mean socialism that proceeds from the land and from the peasant way of life, from the factual allotment and exist­ing repartition of fields, from communal possession and communal gov- ernance—and we advance together with the workers' cooperatives toward that economic justice for which socialism strives in general and which is affirmed by science.

This title is all the more necessary because, alongside our doctrine, a purely Western socialist doctrine has developed—with great talent and un­derstanding—namely in Petersburg. This division is completely natural, stemming from the concept itself, and constitutes no kind of antagonism. We wound up complementing each other.

The first representatives of social ideas in Petersburg were the Petra- shevtsy. They were even tried as "Fourierists." Behind them stood the strong personality of Chernyshevsky. He did not belong to any one social doctrine, but offered a profound social idea and a deep criticism of the contemporary order. Standing alone, a head taller than all the others, amidst the ferment in Petersburg over issues and forces, amidst the chronic vices and the in­cipient gnawing of conscience, amidst the youthful wish to live differently and to break loose from the usual filth and untruth, Chernyshevsky decided to grab the helm and try to point out to those who were thirsting and striv­ing what they should do. [. . .]

Chernyshevsky's propaganda was an answer to current suffering, a word of comfort and hope to those who were perishing in the harsh grip of life. It showed them a way out. It set a tone for literature and drew a line between the actual young Russia and the one that pretended to be that Russia, a bit liberal, while still slightly bureaucratic and serf-owning. Its ideals lay in joint labor, in the organization of workshops, and not in an empty hall in which the Sobakeviches and Nozdrevs¹⁸ would play at being "bourgeois gentry" and landowners in opposition.

The tremendous success of the social doctrine among the younger gen­eration, and the school that it stimulated, led not only to literary echoes and outlets, but the beginnings of practical applications with historical signifi­cance. The emancipation of the serfs with an acknowledgment of their right to land, with the preservation of the commune and the conversion to social­ism by young and active minds which had not yet been corrupted by life nor confused by doctrinaire thought, served as irrefutable proof of the benefits of our continual faith in the character of Russian development.

At the same time we followed step by step the debates inside the edito­rial commission and the introduction of the Statutes of February i9th; we examined the statutes themselves, as we sought to introduce to the rural revolution institutions closest to our views, while in Petersburg, Moscow, and even the provinces, phalanxes of young people were preaching in word and deed the general theory of socialism, of which the rural question pre­sented itself as a particular case. [. . .]

The serf reform, with all its contradictions and incompleteness, imme­diately led to its own economic, administrative, and judicial consequences, with the introduction of the zemstvo¹⁹ institutions, the new court system, etc. These were syllogisms, which were impossible to avoid.

All the reforms, beginning with emancipation, were not only incom­plete but were deliberately distorted. In not one of them could be found that breadth and candor, that passion for destruction and creation with which great men and great revolutions have done their breaking down and building up; in all of them the worthlessness and bankruptcy of the old gov­ernment of edicts and arbitrary rule could be recognized; but all of them con­tained an embryo, whose development was delayed, and perhaps deformed, but which was alive. [. . .]

Until the year i863 we were still trying, despite the muddy spring roads at home, to follow the unwieldy old government carriage, and the louder we rang the bell, the more it lost its way. If the coachmen did not listen, the crowd surrounding them listened and, heaping abuse on us, did a portion of what we had been talking about. Then they went deaf as well. Since then energetic speech has had to yield for a time to cries of denunciation and indignation, which provoked a society wallowing in blood and filth, along with a shallow, heartless, and faithless government.

The government retreated in all areas, and, with all this, its retreat had neither a serious justification nor a serious character. If it really thought by means of frivolous arrests and indiscriminate exile to stop history and an already unmasked national development, it would be boundlessly to be pit­ied, but we think that the Winter Palace's vision did not extend that far. The palace, maintained in fear and trembling by its eunuchs and rhetors, did not fear history, but something lurking in the corner, and this was at a time when it said publicly and loudly that the government had never felt itself to be more powerful and popular as it did then. It's no wonder. Patriotism made people forget all that was humane in their heart and everything that was inhumane in the imperial system; the newspapers were full of loyal lit­urgies. the serfs, free of the landowners, and the landowners, free of their status, the Old Believers and the Jews, the Cossacks and the Germans—all of them by word of mouth rushed to support the throne and the altar. It was expected that benefits would follow and an expansion of rights, but the government pointed with horror to several articles and several young people and answered the upsurge of loyalty with an upsurge of persecution and brutality. What exactly they were afraid of, they did not say.

There was something crazy in all of this, and that is the way it ended— with the shot on the 4th of April.

Those who had been hopeful became embittered at their unfulfilled hopes. The first fanatical character, full of a gloomy religious belief, grabbed a pistol.

The revenge did not succeed, but the pretext was established and seized upon with savage joy, the reaction was justified, and the tsarist scarecrows were justified. Nevertheless, if the revenge did not succeed, the terror also did not succeed. Having begun on false premises, it got confused and was bogged down in dirty tricks by the police.

What did Muravyov's roundup accomplish, and what did his royal trum­peter Katkov proclaim? Where is the universal conspiracy in which all the dark forces of this world—the English, bankers, emigrants in Switzerland, Mazzini's emissaries and missionaries,²⁰ the Poles, us and not us, and, fi­nally some kind of "worldwide revolutionary committee," unknown to the rest of the world?

From this entire affair only a corpse remains, a mute witness to nasty tsarist revenge and some unfortunate people, exiled without a trial or any defense, accused of not wanting a regicide.

To kill several people, some with a ready noose, others with long terms in prison, is not difficult; a locomotive can kill, so can the plague and a rabid dog. Terror reaches further: it is not enough to kill people, it wants to kill thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

[. . .] The echo of Karakozov's shot exposed a terrifying vacuum in the Winter Palace, the sad absence of serious thought and deliberation. and it was so on all our "mountaintops."

[. . .] It is not our business whether they understand or not, and what they understand; the question for us is to find out what exactly they are moving against, what they fear, the way that Catholics fear Protestantism, the way that French monarchists fear revolution. The great enemy, the antichrist, the final judgment that they fear and against which they move is socialism.

And isn't that a great step forward?

And does this mean bringing history to a halt and moving backward?

They are afraid. not of a constitution, not of a republic, not of democ­racy. they are afraid of socialism mixed up with some sort of nihilism.

Did they ever stop to think what—aside from blue glasses and short hair—is meant by this word?

We will have more to say about nihilism, but here we just want to turn the attention of people of good conscience who, like parrots, repeat a word without knowing its meaning [. . .] to them we say that nihilism in its serious sense means science and doubt, research in place of faith, and understanding in place of obedience.

Revealing itself in opposition to popular well-being and human thought, socialism and reason, the government has come out for barbarity, serfdom, and stupidity.

The most recent terror killed it more than it killed other people. It killed the moral significance of the government; walking unsteadily and talking non­sense, it descended from the platform on which it has paraded since the death of Nicholas, arm in arm with Osip Nikolaevich Komissarov-Kostromsky.²¹

Further action will take place outside it, without it.

Power which takes nothing into account can do a great deal of harm, but it cannot in fact stop a movement which it fears and which will carry the mainland away to another destiny. It will move along, inadvertently, uncon­sciously, like a man asleep on a ship.

And is it advancing? And are we as a whole advancing?

[. . .] The reaction is absurd and repulsive, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. but where is the mighty brake that would stop the movement? Are they really going to take land away from the peasants and exclude them from elections? Doesn't the investigation into the Karakozov case demon­strate that among Moscow youth there was an idea for propaganda among the peasant factory workers, the first attempt at an organic combination of these two social levels that we were talking about?

"Yes, but they grabbed the young people and exiled them. It's a pity, but the places of the exiled will not remain empty."

Let us remember what it was like under Nicholas. and wasn't it dur­ing his time that the volcanic and bloody underground work began, which came into the light when he left this earth?

During the past five years we have become a little spoiled and a little undisciplined, forgetting that what we were given were not rights, but indul­gences. It is time once again to focus.

It is vexing that history moves along such muddy and isolated country roads, but only conscious thought takes a direct route. Not changing our pro­gram, we will also take history's path, maneuvering with it, pressing along together with it. And how could it be otherwise, when the reaction solemnly recognized our program, which it actually became, according to the expres­sion of the Brussels Echo, "the banner that stands against the banner of the Winter Palace."²²

We will hold up this banner, or others will replace us—that is not the point—our banner, the banner of "Land and Liberty" taken up by us, has been acknowledged by the enemy camp.

Notes

Source: "Poriadok torzhestvuet!" Kolokol, l. 230, December i, i866 (I); l. 23^32, January i, i867 (II); l. 233-34, February i, i867 (III); i9:i66-99, 427-3!

The opening epigraph is French for "Order reigns in Warsaw": words from a speech by France's minister of foreign affairs, Horace Sebastiani, at a meeting of the French parliament concerning the suppression of the Polish uprising.

In i853, in conversation with the British ambassador, Hamilton Seymour, Nicholas I called Turkey the "sick man." Seymour reported back to Westminster, where the alarm was raised at possible Russian plans to carve up the Ottoman Empire.

Here, as elsewhere in the essay, Herzen indulges in puns that fail to translate. The adjective ugolovnyi (criminal) contains the same root as the noun golova (head).

Marc Caussidiere (i808-i86i) was in opposition to the July monarchy in France and, when that regime fell, briefly served as prefect of police in the provisional govern­ment before going into exile in England.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (i809-i865) stated this negative attitude toward national autonomy in chapter 6 of an i863 treatise, "Si les traits de i8i5 on cesse d'exister? Actes du futur congres."

Herzen has translated the followed verses from a poem by Goethe about America: "Dich stort nicht im Innern / Zu lebendiger Zeit / Unntitzes Erinnern / Und vergeblicher Streit."

Out into the open sea.

These statements were made on June 23, ^89, at a meeting of the Etats Generales, when deputies of the third estate (commoners), who had declared themselves the Na­tional Assembly on June i7, continued to meet despite the king's order for them to disperse. Count Honore Mirabeau (i749-i79i) informed the official who asked them to vacate the room that he should "go and tell" his master that they were there by the will of the people, after which the Abbe Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes urged them to return to the subject of their meeting.

Herzen met with Blanqui in October i866 in Freiburg.

The book in question is Polish Emigration Before and During the Last Uprising: 1831­1863, by Vasily F. Rach, published anonymously in Vilna in i866.

"Shemyakin courts" is a proverbial expression, dating from a fifteenth-century prince of Galicia, and implies arbitrary judgments. Alexander N. Ostrovsky (i823-i886) was a prolific playwright, who most famously depicted the life of the merchants in Mos­cow and the Volga regions; "the dark kingdom" refers to the setting and atmosphere of Ostrovsky's plays and to an influential Й59 essay about it by the radical critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov.

Herzen turns frequently to the issue of land, while Chernyshevsky's novel is cen­tered on the advantages of workshops.

In ancient Athens, a judicial body made up of volunteers.

This phrase implies they were on the wrong side, coming to this conclusion from incorrect principles.

Baron August Haxthausen (i792-i866), an economist, traveled through Russia in Й43-44 and wrote a three-volume study based on his travels, which was published between Й47 and i852.

i848.

Herzen lists the following works: Von anderen Ufer (i85o), Du development des idees revolutionaries en Russia (i85i), Le socialisme et le people russe, lettre a Jules Michelet (i85i), and articles in L'Homme, a periodical published in Jersey.

Г7. This phrase was used by Herzen in a number of earlier essays.

Sobakevich and Nozdrev are characters in Gogol's Dead Souls.

The introduction of the zemstvo in i864 transferred responsibility in areas such as taxation, medical care, education, and road repair to local councils. Widely believed— except by Russian revolutionaries—to have been one of the more successful reform measures, its powers were restricted between i890 and i905.

Herzen knew and admired Giuseppe Mazzini (i8o5-i872), a leading Italian nationalist, democrat, and active participant in European revolutionary circles, from Mazzini's several periods of exile in London.

Komissarov (i838-i892) is the peasant credited with saving Alexander II from the assassination attempt in i866 (Doc. 80).

Baron Fedor I. Firks (i8i2-i872), under the pseudonym Skedo-Ferroti, was the Brussels publisher of the newspaper L'Echo de la Presse Russe, which came out in Rus­sian, French, and German between i86i and Й67.

♦ 93 +

The Bell, Nos. 233-234, February i, Й67. Herzen greeted the New Year in Nice, "lying in bed with Prince Dolgorukov's Notes" (Let 4:336). He added the final two paragraphs to the piece below to encourage the author, who had seen and disliked the first ver­sion. The review provoked a negative reaction from the Russian revolutionary Serno- Solovyovich, who despised Herzen's "liberal" tolerance of the Russian aristocracy. This article makes a similar point to de Custine's Letters from Russia in 1839, that the Russian aristocracy bears little resemblance to other European elites.

A New "Velvet Book" of Russian Noble Families [1867]

A new "velvet book" of Russian noble families has been published in Geneva under the modest title The Notes of Prince Peter Dolgorukov.¹ The first volume, like the Book of Genesis and the Acts of the Apostles of the highest levels of the gentry, appears at a very appropriate time. Genealogi­cal trees in Russia were always prepared like fir trees before Christmas. depending on how much you paid, that's how many golden apples you got. But recently, in light of the imminent and not entirely honest end of serf-owning, people have begun to invent not separate trees, but an en­tire forest, a kind of valiant noble history, honorable in the present, hon­orable in the past, patriotic, historical, etc. In the past we used to hear from gray-haired butlers and various hangers-on: "Now that was a genuine Russian gentleman,² a Russian gentleman in the full sense of the word". But in our day these expressions have been elevated from the servants' hall to the front hall of literature and therefore it is very interesting to find out what was a genuine Russian gentleman, and what full sense of this word our government and gentry scribes on aristocratic affairs are talking about.

The first volume of the Notes of Prince Dolgorukov, a representative of one of our most ancient princely families, is completely devoted to an enu­meration of the principal families who surrounded the imperial throne at the beginning of the 18th century and helped to rule Russia. It amounts to just facts, detailed facts, carefully gathered and almost without commen­tary, ending with the regency of Biron, thus it takes in the honeymoon of the new empire. Reading this horrendous, frenzied, criminal carmen hor- rendum³ sometimes you have to set the book aside to recover from the horror and loathing. Here you abandon the human world: these are other creatures, other reptiles devoid of anything human except their talent for denunciation, kowtowing, stealing, and harming their fellow creatures. It is not the number of innocent victims, the rivers of blood and tears, or the tor­ture and hard labor that depress the reader. all chronicles are full of blood and injustice, [. . .] but in the childhood and youth of the gentry there is a whiff of meanness, the absence of any conviction, shame, or honor, the cynicism of servility, and the consciousness of transgressions. A Dominican with strong faith burning a heretic,⁴ or an Asian slave with his religion of obe­dience, is a thousand times more a human being than this entire gang of aristocrats—scoundrels, who sold themselves as a group to get serfdom, and individually for power and money.

And it is these informers, pimps, telltales and executioners, who tor­tured friends and family, who were beaten, flogged and spat upon by Biron, embezzlers, bribe takers, monsters toward their peasants, monsters toward their subordinates—these make up the basis of the genuine Russian gentle­men. And their descendants now dare to throw stones at the Polish gentry. The Polish gentry had the terrible vices of their time, they were savage and proud, they oppressed and robbed the people, but for all that they possessed the valor of feudal lords—not one king beat them with a stick, and not a single court favorite ran the gauntlet, like our lackeys with St. Andrew rib­bons, thieves in princely cloaks, and all the highwaymen of the Guards' ter­ror squads, who alternate between serving in the State Council and at hard labor. History has seen nothing like this: the same way that the filth from the London sewers formed a special layer at the mouth of the Thames, with a special population of infusoria,⁵ so from Russian life a layer of genuine Russian gentry—strata petropolitana⁶—has come to the surface and devel­oped, thanks to a false civilization and thorough depravity. It should be covered with earth as soon as possible to be redeemed by a renewed life and a series of human actions, and not summoned from a muddy grave, or summoned—as Pr. P. V. Dolgorukov has done—in a way that exposes it mercilessly to shame and embarrassment.

The sins of the fathers do not fall on their descendants only when the descendants do not pride themselves on their origins. A coat of arms comes with certain obligations and serves as a reminder: whoever holds it dear cannot sever ties with family legend; sometimes the light of past glory burns out. and the stains of past disgrace always show themselves.

We impatiently await the second installment of this great unmasking and exposure of our aristocratic servants and at that time we will make extracts from the extraordinarily interesting Notes of Prince Dolgorukov.

We have seen the great-grandfathers of our Petersburg and Moscow matadors—and we will see their grandfathers. and we sincerely ask the author to acquaint us with the fathers as soon as possible.

Notes

Source: "Novaia 'barkhatnaia kniga' russkikh dvorianskikh rodov," Kolokol, l. 233-34, February 1, 1867; 19:218-20, 441-42.

Memoires du Prince Pierre Dolgoroukow (Geneva, 1867), vol. 1. Herzen ironically compares Dolgorukov's critical work with an official genealogy of the most prominent noble families compiled at the end of the seventeenth century by a specially established office for genealogical affairs. The book issued at that time had a crimson velvet cover.

Barin.

A song or verse that horrifies those who hear it (Lat., from Livy). In Livy, this phrase characterized the punishment announced for a young man who had killed his sister; Herzen previously used it in reference to the investigation of the Decembrists.

Members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders were involved in the courts of the Inquisition.

Minute aquatic creatures.

The Petersburg layer.

Our System of Justice

The Bell, Nos. 233-234, February i, Й67. The first part of this article is based on notes sent by an anonymous correspondent. The title and editorial comments were added by Herzen.

Our System of Justice [1867]

All of the accused in the well-known case of the armed uprising in Kazan¹ have been condemned by the Kazan criminal court to hard labor for the fol­lowing period of time:

Ten years:

Vladimir Polinovsky (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Alexander Sergeev (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Semen Zhemanov (arrested at the end of April i863) Alexey Shcherbakov (arrested September i, i863)² Arkady Biryukov (arrested at the beginning of May i863)

Eight years:

Ivan Krasnopyorov (arrested at the beginning of March i863) Nikolay Orlov (arrested at the beginning of June i863) Vasily Dernov (arrested at the beginning of June i863)

Six years:

Egor Krasnopyorov (arrested at the beginning of June i863) Petr Allev (arrested in the middle of September i863)

Four years:

Rudolf Mitterman (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Viktor Lavrsky (arrested at the beginning of June i863)

The State Senate, despite the petition of the criminal chamber for a lessen­ing of the punishment, INCREASED THE DURATION OF THE PUNISH­MENT in the following manner:

For the first two, sentenced by the chamber to ten years of hard labor, the Senate fixed a period of i4 years.

3²5

For the two who escaped and one who remains (in the same category)—12 years of hard labor.

For those the chamber sentenced to eight and six years—the Senate fixed on i0.

Those who got four years—now get six.³

What's going on? Have the sons of the fatherland completely lost their minds and their conscience?

In December, Mitrofan Podkhalyuzin, a Cossack from the nobility, was shot in Warsaw for his part in the Polish uprising, more than a year after the suppression and pacification. Seeing this, Russian journalists still have no shame in pointing out the cruelty of Turkish rule. Where have the Turks executed someone a year after an offense? Austria betrayed Podkhalyuzin!⁴ There's character for you!

.I am Rosslav on the throne, and I am Rosslav in shackles.⁵

Russia is being beaten and beaten. it's all black eyes, bruises, and rags, the provinces and its reputation are being lost little by little, and everything is as vile as before, people are being handed over for punishment as in Ba- kunin's time⁶ . only then there were no executions.

Russian newspaper further inform us that in Ryazan Yurlov and Obno- vlensky have been sentenced to death . That in Omsk they shot the peasant Portnyagin, "who did not confess to the killing and who WAS NOT FOUND with the stolen belongings of the deceased, but clues in the case demonstrate that the murder must have been committed by him."

What a Hercules column ofcruelty, dullness, stupidity, and heartlessness!

In Orenburg the soldier Arkhip Mayorov was shot for impertinence to­ward a superior who was planning to flog him, for what reason the news­papers failed to say.

In the matter of the Polish outrage in eastern Siberia,⁷ the military field court in Irkutsk decided on death sentences for 7 men from the first cat­egory, namely Artsimovich (Kvyatkovsky), Sharamovich, Tselinskii, Illya- shevich, Bronsky, Reymer, and Kotkovsky, and, along with that, i9 more by a throw of the dice (one out of every ten) from the second and third catego­ries. An additional i94 were sentenced to one hundred strokes of the lash and an unlimited period of time working in the mines; 92 men, accused of consorting with the rebels, were sentenced according to statutes i99 and 830 relating to exiles; i33 remained under suspicion; 260 were freed out­right and four were turned over to a civilian court (The Moscow Gazette, December i5, i866, No. 264).

Notes

Source: "Nashe pravosudie," Kolokol, l. 233-34, February i, i867; i9:22i-23, 442-45.

i. The investigation into the insurrection began in i863; its leaders were tried by a military court and executed. The sentences passed down for the remaining defendants by the Kazan criminal court were affirmed—and the number of years increased—by the Senate in June 1866.

Herzen: "Zhemanov and Shcherbakov escaped in November 1866." The two young men were members of the Kazan branch of Land and Liberty, which conducted propa­ganda among the peasants. After their escape, both eventually made their way to Swit­zerland, and introduced themselves to Herzen and Ogaryov.

Herzen's additional comments begin at this point.

Podkhalyuzin was accused of deserting his regiment in 1863 to help the Poles, then hiding under an assumed name in Austria, until his 1865 arrest.

Herzen is paraphrasing the words of Rosslav from Knyazhnin's tragedy of the same name.

Austria handed Bakunin over to Russian authorities in 1851. In 1861, Bakunin escaped from Siberian exile and made his way east, eventually reaching Herzen and Ogaryov in London.

In 1865, Polish exiles staged an uprising in Siberia. Of the 680 people turned over to the military court, only 95 did not receive additional sentences.

♦ 95 ♦

Moscow—Our Mother and Stepmother [1867]

IT IS NOT FOR YOU, NOT FOR YOU¹ to hoist the banner for libera­tion—first cleanse yourselves, repent, acquire one language and one stan­dard, or openly remain the slaves that you are; in this status you can be the "scourges of Providence" but not liberators. A person who selfishly wants freedom for himself and others like him, and at the same time puts his neighbor in stocks, is unworthy of freedom. That is what it was like for Christianity—at the beginning a great thing—and then for the great revo­lution of 1789 (about which our pygmies now speak condescendingly); if they did not save and liberate the entire world, all the same they did believe in general salvation and liberation, and summoned everyone to their side without the bestial hatred of one species for another, without zoological biases and antipathies.

It is possible at one and the same time to be a loving mother and an evil stepmother, but then you cannot complain that in the eyes of any honest person your unjust love calls forth if not hatred, then revulsion.

For that reason we present the following two extracts from Moscow. Speak­ing of a spiritual-revolutionary demonstration (with which we fully sympa­thize) that took place in a Greek monastery in Moscow, the editor observes:

But this very requiem involuntarily summons us to melancholy reflection. We have heard that the fulfillment of such a simple and natural desire, like the desire to collectively remember in church martyrs who loved their fellow man and loved Christ, involved unanticipated difficulties, and it was necessary to get permission in Petersburg. How can that be! Even in order to gather together in an Orthodox church and pray for Orthodox believers, who have died for the sake of their faith, society must request permission from the authori­ties? In order to perform such a religious ritual, will the local spiritual authorities have to take into account diplomatic considerations and find out whether such an action is in agreement with the political views of the ministry, and the reaction in Petersburg? One cannot fail to regret the dependent state of the clergy and the strange confusion of rights and responsibilities by society and the government!

What is the result of such confusion? Society, adopting for itself the government's point of view, quite often takes upon itself the responsibilities of the Third Department and by this narrows its circle of activities and deviates from its calling. The government "reforms the function" of society, exceeding the limits where it, the government, is called upon to act and where it can be powerful, and extends itself to such areas of life where the external tools of state power cannot reach, and where the government, against its will, must seem ineffective. It weakens society, keeping it forever in swaddling clothes and on a leash.²

Alongside this sensible, intelligent speech of a mother, wouldn't it be a good idea to hear the endearments of a stepmother, wouldn't it be good to look at her nasty spite, which intoxicates a mind that nothing can satisfy— not the fact that she beat her stepchildren within an inch of their lives, not the fact that while covered with blood and bruises "they are still breathing and dare to speak their own language." Here it is!

A permanent resident of Kiev can't help noticing—says a Moscow correspondent—that recently Polish speech has begun to resound more boldly in Kiev: it is heard on the street, in restaurants, and in all public places, and that's not all—this Polish speech is accompanied— in relation to Russians—by that brazen, provocative glance which the high-born Pole is so good at. It is obvious that our Poles have raised their heads: the Goluchowski phenomenon and all sorts of chimeras have turned their heads. They say that in districts of Volynia that border Galicia, noble Polish landowners have recently begun to speak provocatively—in relation to Russian matters—with a very Polish

naivete: "Just wait," they threaten local authorities, "come spring and Goluchowski will arrive with Napoleon, and they will chase you right out of here."³

Gentlemen of the police, assert your rights.

What terrible and lasting depravity has come from three years of government-sponsored patriotism. People with no connection either to the police or The Moscow Gazette so easily make or spread denunciations, like Katkov, resting on his sky-blue laurels.⁴

Why should Poles have to whisper in Polish? Why should they look lov­ingly at the Russians? Only our grandfathers and forefathers kissed the hand that beat them on the mouth and flogged them on the back.

The lethargic state which the editor of The Day has been enjoying has restored his strength although it has not sobered him,⁵ but at one time— along with the sacred objects in the Faceted Palace and the Kremlin—didn't he hold dear the rights of man and not the hateful hand of the government, which was invading the last strongholds of the individual, shaming it with violence, shaving the beard of the gray-haired Khomyakov, knocking the ancient cap off his head, and forbidding, as indecency, our native peasant coat?.. ⁶

It is fortunate that, except for the Russian consul, nobody knows or reads Moscow in Turkey, because if Sadyk Pasha showed his pious sultan the newspaper, and the latter began, for the love of Turkey and Mohammed, to exterminate not only people, but also the Greek language and dress,⁷ and began to persecute points of view and punish clothing.

[. . .] Before you liberate others, begin with yourself, take a good steaming in the bathhouse, use a couple of birch twigs: you have too much from the Petrine and Arakcheev eras stuck on you. [. . .]

What can be said about the government when society, when free public opinion denounces Poles for speaking Polish and not casting loving glances at Russian officials?

This is the brake that is holding Russia back and keeping it from racing toward the great future that is being thrust upon it, preventing it from aton­ing for old sins and pushing fresh crimes into the background. No, it is not for you to hoist the banner of liberation: your love is filled with hatred!

Notes

Source: "Moskva—mat' i machekha," Kolokol, l. 235-36, March i, Й67; ^224-26, 445-46.

i. Once again paraphrasing Psalm ii3/ii5, Herzen criticizes the newspaper Moscow for the campaign—by Ivan Aksakov, Metropolitan Filaret, and others—in support of

uprisings by Orthodox Christians against the Turks on Crete, and in Serbian and Bul­garian territories. He was also irritated by Aksakov's anti-Polish polemic in The Day.

This citation is from an editorial by Aksakov in the January 11, 1867, issue of Mos­cow, which was devoted to the January 8, 1867, service in memory of those killed on Crete. This editorial led to a government warning to Moscow for its sharp views on the relations between church and state. Aksakov answered the warning in the January 22 edition, and Herzen reprinted this answer in the March 15 issue (no. 237) of The Bell.

Herzen quotes from a letter from Kiev published in Moscow on January 13, 1867. Count Agenor Goluchowski was appointed governor-general in Galicia in 1866 by Aus­tria. He sought to increase Polish influence in the region and decrease that of Russia.

Katkov was of course known for his denunciations in print. The gendarme uniform was sky-blue.

Aksakov was forced to suspend publication of The Day from mid-December 1865 until the beginning of January 1867.

In 1849 Yuri Samarin and Ivan Aksakov were briefly held under arrest. In April 1849, the minister of the interior, on the tsar's authority, ordered the gentry to refrain from having beards, since it could interfere with wearing uniforms. The Slavophiles saw this as a general prohibition on traditional Russian dress, which was worn as a sign of support for Russian principles. The police were vigilant in making sure that the Aksakov brothers observed the ban on beards. The garments Herzen refers to are, respectively, the murmolka and poddevka.

Sadyk Pasha was the Turkish name of Mikhailo Czaikovsky (Michal Czajkowski, 1804-1886), who fought for Poland in 1831-32, after which he fled to Paris and then to Turkey, where he converted to Islam, organized a Cossack brigade to fight the Russians during the Crimean War, and eventually accepted amnesty from Alexander II, converted to Orthodoxy, and lived in Ukraine from 1872 until his death.

♦ 96 ♦

The Bell, No. 239, April 15, 1867. The title makes obvious references to the large, non- functioning bell and cannon in the Kremlin, as well as to Herzen's newspaper.

Rivals of the Big Bell and the Big Cannon [1867]

A correspondent for Le Nord, talking about his three-week stay in Moscow, points out—like two great rarities—not the large bell and not the large cannon, but Filaret, the 84-year-old chief prelate, and Katkov, the much younger, but no less great, chief publisher.¹ Before the decline of one of

Katkov's predecessors, the emperor Nicholas, some American fool lied to the extent that he called the two lead bullets that Nicholas used for eyes as "mild," to the great delight of Punch. That is what Katkov is experienc­ing now. The correspondent visited him—as if crawling into Saltychikha's cage—and couldn't get over his admiration for the graciousness and meek­ness of the passionate editor-inquisitor. Is the great career of Muravyov's Homer coming to an end? He's growing a little paler and less visible, and the Belgian correspondents are beginning to exaggerate his importance, and, what is much worse, the nasty News accuses him not only of rivaling the big bell, but the smaller one, that is, us. One huntsman for the gentry is beginning to think that The Moscow Gazette and The Bell have a single edi­torial staff (quite a compliment for us!) and calls Katkov's articles chimes.²

[. . .] It is clear that the abyss into which he pushed Russia on a daily ba­sis has begun to terrify Katkov; he has stumbled at the very edge, and has found people who are more Katkov than he himself is.

But it is also impossible to turn back, Serafim-Abadonna, and he is forced to "wander sadly through the past," and, blushing for the present, receive from his fellow diggers insults and kicks.³

It's a bad business to be a renegade.

Notes

Source: "Soperniki bol'shogo kolokola i bol'shoi pushki," Kolokol, l. 239, April 15, 1867;

i9^:24i 454-55.

Le Nord was a political daily (1855-92), published in Brussels and subsidized by the Russian government. The report in question appeared in the March 28, 1867, issue un­der "Chronique de Moscou." The author spoke with reverence of the clarity of Filaret's mind and the sanctity of his way of life. Katkov was praised for the independence of his views and his position as the first genuine Russian commentator.

The reactionary News took issue with Katkov over the question of land reform; Her- zen was naturally amused by squabbles between two basically like-minded periodicals.

The image of Serafim-Abadonna wandering sadly through the past, repenting his sins, comes from the first part of the German poet Friedrich Klopstock's epic poem "Der Messias."

♦ 97 +

The Bell, No. 242, June 1, 1867. Conditions were worsening in Russia, although Herzen does not appear to be as shocked as his correspondent.

The Right to Congregate—New Restrictions [1867]

We received this from Petersburg:

Why have you omitted the outrageous measures that have placed every sort of gathering under police surveillance? According to the new law, not only secret political and non-political meetings are con­sidered "illegal," but in general any kind of meeting with any sort of goal that does not receive preliminary permission. The police are ordered to seek out criminal societies everywhere, harsh punish­ments are set for participants, and, finally, there is a promise of forgiveness and all kinds of leniency for informers.

Only that? Isn't there any payment, by the number of societies, or per person?

All this is vile, all this is pure Valuev and genuine Shuvalov, so why is the correspondent surprised? Don't these measures belong to a series of vile measures from the past five years? And before that did we really have some kind of right of assembly—droit de reunion?... Enough!

Notes

Source: "Pravo sobirat'sia—novye stesneniia," Kolokol, l. 242, June i, i867; ^265, 469.

♦ 98 ♦

The Bell, No. 243, June i5, Й67. A Polish emigre, Anton Berezovsky, a veteran of the i863 uprising against Russian rule, took a shot at Alexander II in Paris on June 6, i867, a crime for which he was given a life sentence by the French courts. Herzen delayed a trip to Nice to respond in print to this new assassination attempt. He wrote to a friend that "my head is spinning—news, gossip, bullets, tsars, horses—but I have to keep my wits about me and write" (Let 4:4^). He was likely unaware that the tsar's young mis­tress, Katya Dolgorukaya, had also traveled to Paris and that Alexander II ignored con­siderations of safety to secretly visit her. Herzen's disapproval of Karakozov's attempt the previous year to kill the tsar damaged the writer's relations with young Russian revolutionaries abroad, but he did not waver in his rejection of such acts of individual terror which only led to further repression, and he believed that his views would be bet­ter understood in the future.

The Shot of June 6 [1867]

Once more a shot rings out. We will not go on about it at great length. Our opinion about people who take such a path is well known, and neither the howl of crazy loudmouths,¹ nor abuse by the powerful of this world will cause us to extol this type of attempt, which brings with it terrible calami­ties, nor to pronounce words of judgement on the martyrs who condemn themselves to death and whose conscience is clear for the very reason that they are fanatics.

It goes without saying that the June 6 shot will exert no influence on the spirit of our publication. Our convictions were formed a long time ago, and no chance event can bend them to the right or to the left.

There is a great lesson for Russia in this.

Berezovsky will be judged in open court, not in a secret torture chamber the way Karakozov was judged, and he will be tried by judges, not by spe­cially selected generals.

The first investigator, looking at the poor-quality pistol Berezovsky used, noted that in all likelihood, he had no accomplices.² Hundreds of young people were brought into the Karakozov case, although their innocence was known. Just the mention by Limayrac in Le Constitutionnel about a moral connection between the shot and cries of "Long live Poland!" provoked a cry of disapproval not only in liberal journals but in those with a monarchist or religious point of view.³

In closing, we turn our readers' attention to Shuvalov's police trickery, in asking Berezovsky whether he had corresponded with his father.⁴ That is, he tried to entangle relatives, acquaintances, their relatives and their ac- quaintances—in both Poland and Russia—in this business, which so clearly stood on its own!

This should be a genuine cause for contemplation.

Notes

Source: "Vystrel 6 iiunia," Kolokol, l. 243, June i5, Й67; ^269, 472-74.

Herzen had received anonymous letters of abuse after his article "Irkutsk and Pe­tersburg" (Doc. 80).

The accused had pawned his coat in order to purchase this cheap weapon, which wound up injuring him instead of the tsar.

Paulin Limayrac, the chief editor of the newspaper, made note of pro-Polish dem­onstrators in Paris during the days leading up to the 6 th of June.

Chief of gendarmes Shuvalov, who had accompanied Alexander to Paris, took part in the first round of interrogations.

The Bell, No. 243, June 15, 1867. A decade earlier, Herzen had begun what he expected to be a continuing series about trips taken by members of the tsar's family (Doc. 11). "Venerable Travelers (Part Two)" has much more in common with the themes that interested him in 1867 than it has with his earlier satirical travelogue. Herzen started writing this article about the tsar's journey to Paris before the Berezovsky story broke, and completed it afterward. Bakunin thoroughly approved of this piece, which he said reminded him of the young Alexander Herzen, "whose wise and fresh laughter had such a powerful and beneficial impact on Russia. Remain our powerful Voltaire. In this lies your truth and your power" (Let 4:425). Herzen's comment that in the age of the telegram one need only travel for amusement—and never for business—remains remarkably fresh after 150 years.

Venerable Travelers (Part Two) [1867]

Nous sommes aujourd'hui ce que nous avons ete hier. continuons.

—Sieyes, 1789

We faced a question a la Shpekin,[2] to print or not to print our report on the first part of the sovereign's journey after the June 6th shot. The question was decided by the fact that, after the shot, the journey continued even more pleasantly than before. The genuine success of the journey began at that point: ovations, speeches, and open carriages. In addition, they are all military men—and what sort of military man worries the next day about a bullet that did not hit him, but hit the ear of a horse ridden by Mocquard's son-in-law?²

It is time, however, to stop shooting, or else a future Karamzin will have to deal with a new history so full of bullets, double-barreled pistols, and a nonsensical amount of speeches and telegrams, that he will have to ask Turgenev for the right to name it Stories About Unsuccessful Hunters.³

June 10

mother." Ten years later we are called upon to say a few words about the travels of the obviously "not widowed emperor." There is something mysti­cal in this: between us and the great traveler there is a mysterious connec­tion, about which we will definitely consult with Hume.⁴ We were both in Vyatka in i837,⁵ and in Paris he is staying on the same street where we lived in i847,⁶ so that the sovereign could write a final "Letter from Avenue Marigny" for The Contemporary if Valuev had not shut it down.⁷

But now to business. You are familiar with the beginning of the journey, or, as Russian newspaper disciplinarians say, of "the imperial procession," but what about its goal?

"It is not known!"

"Would you be interested in knowing?"

"Very much so."

"How can there not be any?"

First of all, we absolutely do not believe that the sovereign came to Paris on business. No one goes anywhere on business these days: with ministers and correspondence, with counts and telegrams,⁸ one can take care of not only every kind of business, but also every kind of idleness. Alexander Niko- laevich wanted to have a good time, and Napoleon wanted to show off a piece de resistance like the tsar—see, he says, "who we are entertaining". And with Turkey, what will be will be⁹—it was not accustomed to fatalism.

Second. we find the first reason sufficient, and, according to Leibniz, where one reason is sufficient, there is no point in looking for others.¹⁰

Alexander Nikolaevich did Napoleon a good deed, and unburdened himself of the tedium of Petersburg. The Byzantine-Darmstadt piety¹¹ had reached the point of suffocation in the Winter Palace, and instead of amusements, there were Austrian and Turkish Slavs, with whom one had to speak German¹² in order to understand their Russian feelings and their conversations with the devout subjects of Her Majesty. No matter how in­credibly pious an autocrat might be, there is only so much piety he can take. Life was unbearable.

The French got angry in vain that the sovereign did not bring the es­teemed empress with him—it was a bit of good luck and a tactful move. Let her pray for his health and preservation from all of France's intrigues and ailments, while he was able to relax a little in freedom. He had some mas­culine concerns to attend to. and he did not waste a second. [. . .]

The sovereign, to be fair, wanted—in the image and likeness of the late Alexander Pavlovich—to enter Paris on horseback.¹³ At the final station it seems he was already seated on his horse. It was, however, explained to him that Alexander I captured Paris with military troops, while now Paris was conquering Alexander II with kindness, so it followed that it was for Paris to approach him on horseback, but the numbers did not allow for that. There was nothing to be done, the emperor made haste, and a closed carriage raced to the Avenue Marigny. [. . .]

From the theater it was a short walk home. The next day it was off to the exhibition—here the Russian horses bore witness to the degree of per­fection achieved by their parents in this profession,¹⁴ and Russian stones spoke in favor of geological cataclysms in the earth, under the special direc­tion of the ministry of state property.¹⁵ From the stables the sovereign led Napoleon to an inn to have a bite to eat; all the food was Russian, even the champagne, which they say was brought for this purpose from Tver.

[. . .] Poles, for the most part, have left Paris, with Czartoryski¹⁶ en tete; one of them even left vertically, taking off in a hot-air balloon. That gave us the wonderful idea of starting a campaign in Siberia to get everyone— young and old alike, mullah and shaman, Votyak and Ostyak—to agitate for the sovereign to favor them with a visit. And then maybe the authorities would order all the Poles to leave.

II. A La Porte!¹⁷

In the peaceful era prior to the year i848, Nikolay Pavlovich, who loved to travel around various lands and amaze the Germans with his waistline, his elkskin pants, and his splendidly polished jackboots, was once in Vi- enna.¹⁸ At that time there ruled in Austria not the present sovereign, who so successfully began his reign by hanging captured generals who had sur­rendered to Paskevich, but his foolish and sickly predecessor.¹⁹ There was a parade. No matter where Nicholas went, no fewer than fifty thousand people were rounded up. Regiment after regiment marched by, and finally there was the Kaiser Nicholas regiment; the Austrian emperor was dozing on an enormous gray horse, with his Hapsburg lip sticking out even further than usual—suddenly there was a noise: having seen his regiment, Nicho­las, with his characteristic bravery, stood before them, received the report, skillfully led the toy soldiers, and went at full speed to inform the emperor that everything was in good order. In Austria things are done quietly and one rushes on foot. The dozing Ferdinand opened his eyes and was stupe­fied: Nicholas was racing toward him "with a gloomy and severe face,"²⁰ and with a bared saber—closer and closer. Ferdinand turned his horse and gave it the spur for the first time and took to his heels. Nicholas, turning pale with disgust, took off after him along the streets of Vienna. "Bruder," he cried out, "don't be afraid, treue Schwesterliebe widmet dir mein Herz."²¹ Finally he caught up with Ferdinand, who did not go back to the parade, but returned to his palace and went to bed. [. . .]

Who could have imagined that twenty-five years later the son of the late Nikolay Pavlovich would play out just such a scene on a more peaceful field, namely in the Palais de Justice, the palace of retribution. The sovereign came to the courthouse not on business, but to see whether everything was in order. Some of the lawyers raised the cry "Vive la Pologne!" They did this more as a compliment, knowing that in all manifestos and in various de­crees the sovereign speaks of his love for Poland and his truly parental care for it. The guards—those preservers of decorum—did not like this cry and they shouted to the friends of Poland: "A la porte!" The sovereign, imagin­ing that "a la porte!" referred to him and probably recalling that he too was a friend of Poland, turned and left with his entire suite [. . .] galloping to another place where they would also shout "Vive la Pologne!"²²

[. . .] The sooner he gets out of Poland, the sooner he would be able to peacefully stroll around the exhibition. Only not by means of such tricks like the Verzhbolovo customs amnesty. But how could they come up with something sensible when they still spend their time going through suit­cases? Evil tongues have said that this is not an amnesty, but a visa for Paris. That is how the French understood it.²³

P.S. On the 12th the newspapers said that on the way to Versailles there were more cries of "Long live Poland!" as Alexander II and Napoleon rode by. Napoleon said: "They are incorrigible," and the sovereign answered: "That is proof that they must be stopped." Then he requested (and this does him great honor) that they release the people who had been arrested for shouting this slogan. In Russia and Siberia there are thousands of Poles, who never shouted but had merely thought "Long live Poland!" We propose that they be liberated as well, since the tsar's opinion cannot change as a result of latitude and longitude.

Notes

Source: "Avgusteishie puteshestvenniki (Stat'ia vtoraia)," Kolokol, l. 243, June 15, 1867; 19:280-85, 481-86.

Regarding the opening epigraph, see Doc. 92, Part II for information about Abbe Sieyes. Herzen is using the quote above to emphasize his unchanging position toward autocracy, and to point out Alexander II's inability to draw the appropriate lessons from French revolutionary history.

Shpekin played the postmaster in Gogol's play The Inspector General; in act 5, scene 8, he must decide whether to open a letter or not. Herzen plays on the similarity of the Russian roots of the words pechatat' (to print) and raspechatat' (to unseal).

Napoleon III's equerry Ramboud, son-in-law of the French ruler's late personal secretary Mocquard, noticed Berezovsky with a gun and rode up to shield the emperor; the shot hit his own horse.

In a June 8, 1867, letter to Turgenev, author of Notes of a Hunter, Herzen jokingly suggested a title for a history of Alexander II's reign, with two botched assassination attempts to date: Notes of Unsuccessful Hunters by Successful Ones (Zapiski durnykh okhot- nikov khoroshimi).

Hume was an English spiritualist who visited St. Petersburg in the mid-i860s.

Herzen was in exile in Vyatka from May 1835 through December 1837; the heir to the throne visited the town on May 18-20, 1837, during his get-acquainted trip around Russia. As a result of this visit and the efforts of the poet Zhukovsky, who accompanied Alexander as a tutor, Herzen was transferred to Vladimir. Herzen described this meet­ing in letters and in Past and Thoughts.

During his stay, from May 20 (June 1) until May 30 (June 11), Alexander was given the use of an apartment in the Elysee Palace on Avenue Marigny, where Herzen lived from April to October i847.

Installments of Herzen's Letters from the Avenue Marigny appeared in two different issues of The Contemporary for 1847. The journal was banned in May 1866.

Grafy, telegraphy.

The announced purpose for the tsar's trip to Paris was to attend the World Exposi­tion, but rumor said that there were to be talks about getting French help in pressing Turkey to quit the Slavic regions of Europe. As Herzen predicted, little was accom­plished in the diplomatic arena.

Herzen jokingly refers to the "principle of sufficient reason" credited to the Ger­man philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716).

This is a reference to the devout posture of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, who converted to Orthodoxy upon her arrival in Russia in i840. Herzen saw as hypocritical the combination of barbaric state policy and imperial piety.

On May 14, 1867, in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexander had received a delegation of Slavs who had come to Russia for the Moscow Ethnographic Exposition.

After the defeat of Napoleon and the surrender of the French, Alexander I made a triumphal entry into Paris on March 19/31, 1814.

The achievements of Russian horse breeding were displayed at the exhibition, and on June 3, 1867, Alexander II was awarded a gold medal for improvements in this field.

Herzen appears to be referring, ironically as always, to the theft of state salt stores and landslides in the salt-mining region of Nizhny Novgorod.

Prince Czartoryski (1828-1894) was the leader of the Polish aristocracy in emigration.

Get out of here!

Nicholas visited Vienna in 1833 and 1835. During the first visit, the emperor made the tsar head of a regiment of hussars. The episode related here took place during the second trip.

In 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his nephew Franz Joseph. The latter began with a bloody suppression of the Hungarian uprising, with the aid of Rus­sian forces led by Prince Paskevich. On August 13, 1849, nine Hungarian generals were executed on orders of Franz Joseph.

The ironic paraphrase of a line from Pushkin's ballad about a pale knight.

"Brother, my heart pledges to you a sister's true love." Herzen places a paraphrase of lines from Schiller's ballad "The Knight of Toggenburg" in the mouth of Nicholas I.

Parisian newspapers reported that similar demonstrations greeted the tsar at the Musee de Cluny, Notre Dame, and at a parade in the tsar's honor in front of the Grand Opera.

On Alexander's way to France, an order was given "at the highest level" to finish up with all political cases connected to the Polish uprising and return home all exiled na­tives of the Kingdom of Poland who had behaved well, in the opinion of local authorities. European public opinion saw this as simply a way to assure the tsar a peaceful journey.

♦ 100 ♦

The Bell, Nos. 244-245, July i, i867. Herzen began to think about halting publication of The Bell for six months. A number of factors made it more difficult to carry on: reac­tion appeared to be triumphing in Russia, as progressive voices—including those who had supplied The Bell with information—were silenced, the newspaper's audience was greatly reduced, and there were tensions with Russian revolutionaries in Europe. Ba- kunin was one of the loudest voices raised in favor of continuing as before, writing to Herzen that readership had picked up again at home, and that even 500 copies could wield significant influence. He advised Herzen to change not the direction but the tone of the paper; there should be no further letters to the tsar and less caustic humor (Let 4:405). The Western and Russian reactionary press saw any hiatus as proof of the defeat of Herzen's ideas, a conclusion that is refuted below. As the title suggests, it is a sum­mary of the most significant period of Herzen's publishing activity, and, beyond that, of a "national project" that had begun in the i830s, in a circle of friends from Moscow University (Root, Gertsen i traditsii, 229).

This issue of The Bell included another excerpt from Past and Thoughts; although it refers to the year i862, it is evocative of many moments in Herzen's life. The folklore reference to Ilya Muromets had been used before to characterize Alexander II in i858, when he was moving to the right and away from the path toward "development, libera­tion, construction" (Doc. i8). Here it is Alexander Herzen himself who is unsure about the next step.

Like the knights in fairy tales who have lost their way, we had stopped at the crossroads. If you went to the right, you would lose your horse, but survive. If you went to the left, the horse would be fine but you would perish. If you went straight ahead, everyone would abandon you, and if you went back... but that was no longer possible, that road was overgrown with grass. If only some magician or hermit monk appeared, who could relieve us of the burden of this decision. (Kolokol, 8-9:2002)

Believing that the remaining audience for his journalism was European, a French edi­tion, Le Kolokol, with a Russian supplement, was published from January to December i868. Herzen died in January i870 and was buried beside his wife in Nice on a hill overlooking the sea.

On July i, i857 the first issue of The Bell was published in London. The cur­rent issue marks our tenth anniversary.

Ten years! We have stood firm, and, most importantly, we have stood firm for the past five years, which were very difficult.

Now we want to take a breath, wipe away the perspiration, and gather new strength, and, for that reason, we will stop publication for six months. The next issue of The Bell will come out on January i, i868, and with that we will begin a second decade.

Now we wish calmly, without the diversion of urgent work, to take a close look at what is going on at home, where the waves are headed and where the wind is pulling, and we want to check in which areas we were correct and in which we were mistaken.

We have taken a backward glance too often, especially in recent times, to have to repeat yet again our creed and the bases of the view that we have taken in The Bell; they were immutable, and at least our official enemies never doubted this. The Bell was and will be more than anything else an organ of Russian socialism and its development—socialism of the farm and the workers' cooperative, of the countryside and the city, of the state and the province.

For us, everything is subordinate to the social development of Russia: forms and individuals, doubts and mistakes—but since it is impossible without freedom of speech and assembly, without general discussion and counsel, with all our strength we called for and will continue to call for an Assembly of the Land. In it we see no more than a gateway, but an open gateway, and that is most important—until now Russian development has had to secretly come in over the fence, while the watchman was not looking or slept.

All the rest is mud and dust on the road, logs and stones under the wheels; all the rest could be left in the shade to decay on its own, if only these logs and stones did not crush the best people, if they didn't drown in this swamp the intrepid sowers of the early morn as they went out to work. For that reason, together with the "general part" there will again be a sec­tion on unmasking abuses.