My Past and Thoughts

He would himself have gone over to Khomyakov or to us.

By 1 842 the sifting in accordance with natural affinity had long been complete, and our camp stood in battle array face to face with the Slavophils. Of that conflict we shall speak in another place. 16

In conclusion I shall add a few words about the clements of which Stankevich's circle was composed; this will throw a light of its own on the strange underground currents which were 16 Sec "Our 'Opponents,' " pp. 287-305. (D.M.)

Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 25 1

silently undermining the compact crust of the Russo-German regime.

Stankevich was the son of a v\·ealthy landowner of the province of Voronezh, and was at first brought up in all the ease and freedom of a landowner's life in the country; then he was sent to the school at Ostrogozhsk (and that was something quite out of the way) . For fine natures a wealthy and even aristocratic education is very good. A sufficiency gives unfettPred freedom and space Jor growth and development of every sort; it does not constrict the young mind with premature anxiety and apprehension of the future, and it provides complete freedom to pursue the subjects to which it is drawn.

Stankevich's development was broad and harmonious; his artistic, musical, and at the same time reflective and contemplative nature showed itself from the very beginning of his university career. His special faculty, not only for deeply and warmly understanding, but also for reconciling, or as the Germans say

'removing' contradictions, was based on his artistic temperament. The need for harmony, proportion and enjoyment makes such people indulgent as to the means; to avoid seeing the well, they cover it over with canvas. The canvas will not stand a push, but the eye is not bothered by a yawning gulf. In this way the Germans attained to pantheistic quietism and rested upon it; but such a gifted Russian as Stankevich could not remain 'at peace'

for long.

This is evident from the first question which involuntarily troubled him immediately after he left the university.

His pressing business was finished, he was left to himself, he was no longer led by others, but he did not know what he should do. There was nothing to go on with, there was no one and nothing around him that a ppealed to a lively man. A youth, when his mind had cleared and he had had time to look about him after school, found himself in the Russia of those days in the position of a traveller waking up in the steppe; one might go where one would-there were traces, there were bones of those who had perished, there WE're wild beasts and the empty desert on all sides with its dumb threat of danger, in which it is easy to perish and impossible to struggle. The one thing which could be pursued honourably and heartily was study.

And so Stankevich persevered in the pursuit of learning. He imagined that it was his vocation to be an historian, and began studying Herodotus; it could be foreseen that nothing would come of that pursuit.

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He would have liked to be in Petersburg, where there was such ebullition of activity of a sort and to which he was a ttracted by the theatre and- by nearness to Europe ; he would have liked to be an honorary superint<.'ndPnt of th!' school at Ostrogozhsk. He dct!'rmined to be of usc in that 'modest career'which \vas to be even less successful than Herodotus. He was in reality drawn to Moscow, to Germany, to his own university circle, to his own interests. He could not exist without intimate friends (another proof that there were at hand no interests very near to his heart) . The rwed for sympathy was so strong in Stankevich tha t he sometimes invented intellectual sympathy and talents, and saw and admired in people qualities in which they were completely lacking.I7

Rut-and in this lay his personal power-he did not often need to have recourse to such fictions; at every step he met wonderful people-he had the faculty of meeting them-and everyone to whom he opened his heart remained his passionate friend for life ; and to every such friend Stankevich's influence

\Vas !'ith<.'r an immf·nse bPnefit or an alleviation of his burden.

In Voronezh Stankevich used som!'times to go to the one local library for books. There hP usPd to meet a poor young man of humble station, modest and melancholy. It turned out that he

\Vas the son of a cattle-dealer who had business with Stankevich's fath!'r over supplies. Stankevich befriNidcd the young m<:m; the cattle-dealer's son was a great reader and fond of talking of books. Stankevich got to know him well. Shyly and timidly the youth confessed that he had himself tried his hand at writing verses and, blushing, ventured to show them. Stankevich was amazed at the immense talent not conscious nor confident of itself. From that minute he dicl not let him go until all Russia was reading Koltsov's songs with enthusiasm. It is quite likely that the poor cattle-dealer, oppressed by his relations. unwarmed by sympathy or r!'cognition, might have wasted his songs on the empty steppes beyond the Volga over which he drove his herds, and Russia would never have heard those wonderful, truly native songs, if Stankevich had not crossed his path.

When Bakunin finished his studies at the school of artillery, he received a commission as a n officPr in the Guards. It is said that his father was angry with him and himself asked that he should be transfcrrecl into the army of the line. Cast away in some 17 Klyushnikov vividly expressed this in the following image: 'Stankevich is a silver rouhle that envies the size of a copper piece.'-Annenkov, Biography of Stankevich, p. 1 33.

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God-forsaken village in White Russia with his guns, he grew farouche and unsociable, left off performing his duties, and would lie for whole days together on his bed wrapped in a sheepskin coat. His commanding officer was sorry for him; he had, however, no alternative but to remind him that he must either carry out his duties or go on the retired list. Bakunin had not suspected that he had a right to take the latter course and at once asked to be relieved of his commission. On receiving his discharge he came to Moscow, and from that date (about 1 836) for him life began in earnest. He had studied nothing before, had read nothing, and hardly knew any German. 'With great dialectical abilities, with a gift for obstinate, persistent thinking, he had strayed without map or compass into a world of fantastic projects and efforts at self-education. Stankevich perceived his talents and set him down to philosophy. Bakunin learnt German from Kant and Fichte and then set to work upon Hegel, whose method and logic he mastered to perfection-and to whom did he not preach it afterwards? To us and to Belinsky, to ladies and to Proudhon.

But Belinsky drew as much from the same source; Stankevich's views on art, on poetry and its relation to life, grew in Belinsky's articles into that powerful modern critical method, that new outlook upon the world and upon life which impressed all thinking Russia and made all the pedants and doctrinaires recoil from Belinsky with horror. It was Stankevich's lot to initiate Belinsky into the mysteries; but the passionate, merciless, fiercely intolerant talent that carried Belinsky beyond all bounds wounded the aesthetically harmonious temperament of Stankevich.

Petersbltrfj· arzd

tile Second B{tnisluneJzt

THoUGH W E WERE so comfortable i n Moscow, we had to move to Petersburg. My father insisted upon it. Count Strogonov, the Minister for Home Affairs, commanded me to enter his secretariat, and we set off there at the end of the summer of 1 840.

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was not long in the service. I got out of my duties in every possible \vay, and so I have not a great deal to tell about the service. The secretariat of the Ministry of Home Affairs had the same relationship to the secretariat of the Governor of Vyatka as boots that have been cleaned have to those who have not; the leather is the same, the sole is the same, but the one �ort show mud, and the others polish. I did not see clerks drunk in Petersburg. I did not see twenty kopecks taken for looking up a reference, but yet I someho\v fancied that under those close-fitting dress-coats and carefully combed heads there dwelt such vile, black, petty, envious, cowardly little souls tha t the head-clerk of my table at Vyatka seemed to me more of a man than any of them. As I looked at my new colleagues I recalled how, on one occasion, after having a drop too much at supper at the district surveyor's, he played a dance tune on the guitar, and at last could not rt>sist leaping up with his instrument and beginning to join in the dance ; but these Petersburg men are never carried away by anything: their blood never boils, and wine does not turn their heads. In some dancing class, in company with young Ge1·man ladies, they can walk through a French quadrille, pose as disillusioned_ rPpeot linPs from Timofeyev1 or Kukolnik2 • • .

they were diplomats, aristocrats, and Manfreds. It i s only a pity that Dashkov, the Minister, could not train these Childe Harolds not to stand at attention and bow even at the theatre, at church, and everywhere.

The PPtersburghers laugh at the costumes seen in Moscow; they a re outragPd by the caps and Hungarian jackets, the long hair and civilian moustaclws. Moscow certainly is an unmilitary city, rather dishevelled and unaccustomed to discipline, but whether that is a good quality or a ddect is a matter of opinion.

The harmony of uniformity ; the absence of variety, of what is personal, whimsical, and wayward ; the obligatory wearing of uniform, and outward good form-all develop to the h ighest degree in the most inhuman condition in which men live-in 1 Timofeyev, Alexey Vasill'virh ( 1 8 1 2-81 ) , a sixth-rate writer of forgotten poems. ( Tr.) 2 Kukol nik, 1\'cstor VasilPvich ( 1 809-68 ) , was a schoolfellow of Gogol's, and a vc>ry popular wri t<'r of stories and d ramas in the most extreme roman tic stylc-fc>arfully bombastic and unreal, and hyper-patriotic.

( Tr. )

Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 255

barracks. Uniforms and uniformity are passionately loved by despotism. Nowhere are fashions so respectfully observed as in Petersburg, and that shows the immaturity of our civilisation; our clothes are alien. In Europe people dress, but we dress up, and so are frightened if a sleeve is too full, or a collar too narrow. In Paris all that people are afraid of is being dressed without taste; in London all that they are afraid of is catching cold; in Italy everyone dresses as he likes. If one were to show him the battalions of exactly similar, tightly buttoned frockcoats of the fops on the Nevsky Prospect, an Englishman would take them for a squad of 'policemen.'

I had to do violence to my feelings every time I went to the Ministry. The chief of the secretariat, K. K. von Paul, a Herrnhuter,3 and a virtuous and lymphatic native of the island of Dago, induced a kind of pious boredom into all his surroundings.

The heads of the sections ran anxiously about with portfolios and -..vere dissatisfied with the head-clerks of the tables; the latter wrote and wrote and certainly were overwhelmed with work, and had the prospect before them of dying at those tables, or, at any rate, if not particularly fortunate, of sitting there for twenty years. In the Registry there was a clerk who for thirtythree years had been keeping a record of the papers that v••ent out, and sealing the parcels.

My 'literary exercises' gained me some exemption here too ; after experience of my incapacity for anything else the head of the section entrusted me with the composition of a general report on the Ministry from the various provincial secretariats.

The foresight of the authorities had found it necessary to propound certain findings in advance. not leaving them to the mercy of facts and ligures. Thus, for instance, in the draft of the proposed report appeared the statement: 'From the examination of the number and nature of crimes' (neither their number nor their nature was yet known) 'Your Majesty may be graciously pleased to perceive the progress of national morality, and the increased zeal of the officials for its improvement.'

Fate and Count Benckendorf saved me from taking part in this spurious report. It happened in this way.

At nine o'clock one morning, early in December, Matvey told me that the superintendent of the local police station wished to 3 The Moravian Brethren, called Herrnhuter from the little town of Herrnhut in Saxony, where they settled in 1 722, are a Protestant sect who abjure military service, the taking of oaths, and all distinctions of rank. (Tr.)

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see me. I could not guess what had brought him to me, and barle Matvey show him in. The superintendent showed me a scrap of paper on which was written that he invited me to be at the Third Division of His Majesty's Own Chancellery at ten o'clock that morning.

'Very well,' I answered. 'That is by Tsepnoy Bridge, isn't it?'

'Don't trouble yourself,' he answered. 'I have a sledge downstairs. I will go with you.'

It is a bad business, I thought, with a pang at my heart.

I went into the bedroom. My wife was sitting with the baby, who had only just begun to recover after a long i llness.

'What does he want?' she asked.

'I don't know, some nonsense. I shall have to go with him .

. . Don't worry.'

My wife looked at me and said nothing; she only turned pale as though a cloud had passed over her face, and handed me the child to say good-bye to it.

I felt at that moment how much heavier every blow is for a man with a wife and children; the blow does not strike him alone, he suffers for all, and involuntarily blames himself for their sufferings.

The feeling can be restrained, stifled, concealed, but one must recognise what it costs. I went out of the house in black misery.

Very different was my mood \vhen I had set off six years before with Miller, the politsmepter, to the Prechistensky police station.

We drove over the Tsepnoy Bridge and through the Summer Gard£-n and turned towards what had been Kochubey's house; in the lodge there the secular inquisition founded by Nicholas was installed: people who \Wnt in at its back gates, before which we stopped, did not always come out of them again, or if they did, it was perhaps to disappear in Siberia or perish in the Alexeyevsky fortress. Vle crossed all sorts of courtyards and little squares, and came nt last to the office. In spite of the presence of the commissar, the gendarme did not admit us, but summoned an official who, after r<>ading thP summons, left the policeman in the corridor and asked me to follow him. He took me to the Director's room. At a big tnblP n<>ar which stood sevPral arm-chairs n thin, grPy-headed old man, with a sinister fnce, was sitting quite alone. To maintain his importance he WPnt on reading a paper to the Pnd, and then got up and camP towards me. He had a star on his breast, from which I concluded that he was some sort of commanding offic<>r in the army of spies.

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25 7

'Have you seen General Dubelt?'4

'No.'

He paused. Then, frowning and knitting his brows, without looking me in the face, he asked me in a sort of threadbare voice (the voice reminded me horribly of the nervous, sibilant notes of Golitsyn junior at the Moscow commission of inquiry ) :

'I think you have not very long had permission t o visit Petersburg or Moscow?'

'I received it last year.'

The old man shook his head. 'And you have made a bad use of the Tsar's graciousness. I believe you'll have to go back again to Vyatka.'

I gazed at him in amazement.

'Yes,' he went on, 'you've chosen a fine way to show your gratitude to the government that permitted you to return.'

'I don't understand in the leas�,' I said, lost in surmises.

'You don't understand ? That's just what is bad, too ! What connections! What pursuits! Instead of showing your zeal from the first, effacing the stains left from your youthful errors, using your abilities to good effect-no ! not at all: it's nothing but politics and tattling, and all to the detriment of the government.

This is what your talk has brought you to! How is it that experience has taught you nothing? How do you know that among those who talk to you then• isn't each time some scoundrel5 who asks nothing better than to come here a minute later to give information?'

'If you can explain to me what all this means, you will greatly oblige me. I am racking my brains and cannot understand what your words are leading up to, or what they are hinting at.'

'What are they leading to? Hm . . . . Come, did you hear that a sentry at the Blue Bridge killed and robbed a man at night?'

'Yes, I did,' I ans\vered with great simplicity.

'And perhaps you repeated it?'

' I believe I did repeat i t.'

'With comments, I dare say?'

'Very likely.'

4 Dubeh, Leonty Vasilevich ( l i92-1862). Chief of Staff of the Corps of Gendarmes (from 1835 ) nnd Director of the Third Division ( 1 839-56 ) .

(A.S. )

5 I declare, on my word of honour. thnt the word 'scoundrel' was used by this worthy old gentleman.

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"\Yith what sort of comments? There it is: a propensity to censure the government. I tell you frankly, the one thing that does you credit is your sincere avowa l: it \viii certainly be taken into consideration by the Count.'

'Upon my word,' I said, 'what is there to avow? All the town was talking of the story; it was talked of in the secretariat of the Ministry of Home Affairs and in the shops. \Vhat's surprising i n my having spoken about the incident?'

'The (!iffusion of false and mischievous rumours is a crime that the laws do not tolerate.'

'You seem to be charging me with having invented the affair.'

'In the note of information to the Tsar it is merely stated that you assisted in the propagation of this mischievous rumour, upon which followed the decision of His Majesty concerning your return to Vyatka.'

'You arC' simply trying to frighten me,' I answered. 'How is it possible, for such a trivial business, to send a man with a family a thousand miles away, and, what's more, to condemn and sentence him without even inquiring whether it is true or not ? '

'You have admitted i t yourself.'

'But how was it the report was submitted and the matter settled bdore you spoke to me?'

'Read for yourself.'

The old man went owr to a table, fumbled among a small heap of papers, composedly pulled one out and handed it to me. I read it and could not believe my eyes: such complete absence of justice, such insolent, shameless disregard of the law was amazing, even in Russia.

I did not speak. I fancied that the old gentleman himsl:'lf felt tha t it \vas a very absurd and extremely silly business, so that he did not think it necessary to defend it further, but after a brief silence asked:

'I believe :-:ou said you were married? '

' I a m married.'

'It is a pity that we did not know that before. However, i f an:-.·thing can b e dorw tlw Count "·ill d o i t . I shall tell h i m o f our conversation. /rz arz_r casr you will be banished from Petersburg.'

l k looked at me. I did not speak, but felt tha t my facP was burning. E\·erything I could not uttPr. Pvcrything held back within me, could bP sePn in my facP.

ThE> old gPntlE>man dropp('(l his P)"PS, considPrPd for a momPnt, and suddenly, in an apathetic voice, with an a ffectation of urbane dP! icacy, s<•.id to me:

Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 259

'I shall not venture to detain you further. I sincerely wish you-however, you will hear later.'

I rushed home. My heart boiled with a consuming fury-that feeling of impotence; of having no rights, the condition of a caged beast, jeered at by a sneering street-boy, who knows that all the tiger's strength is not enough to break the bars.

I found my wife in a fever; she had been taken ill that day and, having another fright in the evening, was prematurely confined a few days later.6 The baby only lived a day, and after three or four years she had hardly recovered her strength.

They say that that tender paterfamilias, Nicholas Pavlovich, wept when his daughter died. . . .

And passionately fond they are of raising a turmoil, galloping hell for leather, kicking up a dust, and doing everything at headlong speed, as though the town were on fire, the throne were tottering, or the dynasty in danger-and all this without the slightest necessity! It is the romanticism of the gendarmes, the dramatic exercises of the detectives, the lavish setting for the display of loyal zeal . . . the oprichniki,i the whippers-in, the hounds !

O n the evening o f the day o n which I had been t o the Third Division we were sitting sorrowfully at a small table-the baby was playing with his toys on it, and we were saying little ; suddenly someone pulled the bell so violently that we could not help starting. Matvey rushed to open the door, and a second later an officer of g�>ndarmes dart£'d into the room, clashing his sabre and jingling his spurs, and began in choice language apologising to my wife. He could not have imagined, he had had no suspicion, no idea that there was a lady and children in the case. It was extremely unpleasant . . . .

Gendarmes arc the very flower of courtesy; if it were not for their duty, for the sacred obligations of the service, they would never make secret reports, or even fight with post-boys and drivers at departures. I know this from the Krutitsky Barracks where the desolc officer was so deeply distressed at the necessity of searching my pockets.

Paul Louis Courier8 observed in his day that executioners and 6 H. was summoned to the Third Di,·ision on 7 December 1 8-1-0: the child (Ivan) was born two months later, in February 1 84 1 . (A.S. ) i The lifeguards of Ivan IV. ('Inm the Terrible.') (R.) R Paul Louis Courier ( 1 772- 1 825) , a learned and brilliant writer of political pamphlets and letters, who discovered a complete manuscript of

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prosecutors are the most courteous of men. 'My dear executionPr,' writes the prosecutor, 'if it is not disturbing you too much, you will do me the greatest service if you will kindly take the trouble to chop off So-and-so's head to-morrow morning.'

And the executioner hastens to answer that 'he esteems himself fortunate indeed that hP can by so trifling a service do something agreeable for the prosecutor and remains, always his devoted and obedient servant. the executioner' ; and the other man, the third, remains devoted without his head.

·General Dubelt asks vou to see him.'

'When?'

'Upon my word 1 now, a t once, this minute.'

'l\'latvPy. gin• me my overcoat.'

I pressed my wife's hand-hl'r face was flushed, hPr hand \Va s burning. "'hy this hurry at ten o'clock in the evening? Had a plot bePll d i scovPrecP Had somPone run away? \Vas the precious lift' of :'\ icholas Pado\·ich in d anger? I really had bet'n unfair to that sPntry. I thought. I t was not surprising that with a governmPnt likE> th is ont> of i ts agents should murdPr two or thrPe pa s�Prs-by; were thP sentries of the SPcond and Third grades any bPtter than their comrade on the Bhw Bridgt>' And what about thP head sPntry of alP

DubPit had �Pnt for me in order to trll me that Count BenckPndorf required my presence at eight o'clock the next morning to inform nw of tlw (kci sion of His :\Iajesty!

Dubelt was an unusual person; he was probably more intelligent than the whole of the Third Divi sion-indeed, than all three divisions of His Majesty's Own ChancPll ery. His sunken face, sh

thP pale-bhiP uniform had conqtwrcd. or rathPr concealed. cwrything that was in it. His feature's had somPthing wolfish and PH'n foxy about thPm. that is. tlwy expressed the subtle intclligPnce of bPasts of prPy: there was at once evasiveness and arrogance' in them. l iP was always courtPous.

\Yhpn I wPnt into his stud:· he was sitting in a uniform coat without PpaulettPs, and smoking a pipe as he wrotP. He rose a t oncP, asked mp t o sit down facing h i m a n d began with the follo\ving surprising sentNlCP:

Longus's Daphnis and Clrlor. of which he published a French translation.

( Tr.)

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'Count Alexander Khristoforovich has given me the opportunity of making your acquaintance. I believe you saw Sakhtynsky this morning?'

'Yes, I did.'

'I am very sorry that the reason I have had to ask you to see me is not an entirely pleasant one for you. Your imprudence has once more brought His Majesty's anger upon you.'

'I will say to you, General, what I said to Count Sakhtynsky: I cannot imagine that I shall be exiled simply for having repeated a street rumour, which you, of course, heard before me, and possibly spoke of just as I did.'

'Yes, I heard the rumour, and I spoke of it, and so far we a re even; but this is where the difference begins: in n•peating the absurd story I swore that there was noth ing in it, while you made the rumour a ground for accusing the whole police force.

It is all this unfortunate passion de dcnigrcr lc gozwcrncmcnt-a passion that has developed in all of you gentlemen from the pernicious example of the West. It is not with us as in France, where the government is at daggers drawn with the parties, where it is dragged in the mud. Our government is paternal : everything i s done as privately a s possible . . . . W e d o our very utmost that everything shall go as quietly and smoothly as possible, and here mPn, who in spite of painful experience persist in a fruitless opposition, alarm public opinion by stating verbally and in writing that the soldiers of the police murder men in the streets. Isn't that true? You have written about it, haven't you?'

'I attach so little importance to the matter that I don't think it at all necessary to conceal that I have written about it, and I will add to whom-to my father.'

'Of course it is not an important matter, but see what it has brought you to. His Majesty at once remembered your name, and that you had been at Vyatka, and commanded that you should be sent back there, and so the Count has commissioned me to inform you that you are to go to him to-morrow at eight o'clock and he will announce to you the will of His Majesty.'

'And so it is left that I am to go to Vyatka with a sick wife and a sick child on account of something that you say is not important?'

'Why, are you in the service?' Dubelt asked me, looking intently at the buttons of my half-dress uniform coat.

'In the office of the Minister of Home Affairs.'

'Have you been there long?'

'Six months.'

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'And all the time in Petersburg? '

'All the time.'

'I had no idea of it.'

'You see,' I said. smiling, 'how discreetly I have behaved.'

Sakhtynsky did not know that I was married, Dubelt did not know that I was in the service, but both knew vvhat I said in my own room, \vhat I thought and wha t I \Vrote to my father . . . .

The trouble was that I was just beginning to be friendly with Petersburg literary men, and to publish articles and, worse still, had been transferred by Count Strogonov from Vladimir to Petersburg, the secret police having no hand in i t, and when I arrived in Petersburg I had not reported either to Dubelt or to the Third Division, which kindly persons had hinted that I should do.

'To be sure,' Dubelt interrupted me, 'all the information that has been collected about you is entirely to your credit. Only yesterday I was speaking to Zhukovsky �nd should be thankft;l to hear my sons spoken of as he spoke of you.'

'And yet I am to go to Vyatka?'

'You see it is your misfortune that the report had been handed in already. and that many circumstances had not been taken into consid,eration. Go you. must: there's no altering that, but I imagine that another tO\vn might be substituted for Vyatka . I will talk it over with the Count: he is going to the Palace again to-day. ·we will try and do all that can be done to make things

<'asier: the Count is a man of angelic kindness.'

I got up and Dubelt escorted me to the door of his study. At that point I could not restrain myself: I stopped and said to him :

'I have onp small favour to ask of you, General. If you want me, plPase do not sPnd constables or gendarmes. They are noisy and alarming, especially in thP PVPning. ·why should my sick wife be mor<' sev<'rPiy punished than any one on account of the sentry business?'

'Oh ! good hcawns. how unpleasant that is,' replied Dubelt,

'how clumsy thPv all arp l You may rest assured that I will not send a polic<'ma.n again. And so .till to-morrow; don't forget, Pight o'clock at the Count's; WP shall meet there.'

It wit's Pxactly as though we were agreeing to go to Smurov's to Pat oysters tog<'thcr.

At Pight o'clock next morning I was in Benckendorf's reception room. I found five or six pNitioners waiting there ; they stood gloomy and anxious by the \vall, started at every sound,

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squeezed themselves together even more closely, and bowed to every adjutant that passed. Among their number was a woman in deep mourning, with tear-stained eyes. She sat with a paper rolled up in her hand, and the roll trembled like an aspen leaf.

Three paces from her stood a tall, rather bent old man of seventy or so, bald and sallow, in a dark-green army great-coat, with a row of medals and crosses on his breast. From time to time he sighed, shook his head and whispered something under his breath.

Some sort of 'friend of the family,' a flunkey, or a clerk o n duty, s a t in the window, lolling a t h i s ease. He got up when I went in, and looking intently at his face I recognised him; that loathsome figure had been pointed out to me at the theatre as one of the chief street spies, and his name, I remember, was Fabre. He asked me:

'Have you come with a petition to the Count?'

'I have come at his request.'

'Your surname?'

I mentioned it.

'Ah,' he said, changing his tone

It was horribly still and unheimlich in the room; the daylight hardly penetrated through the fog and frozen window-panes, and no one said a word. The adjutants ran quickly to and fro, and the gendarme standing at the door sometimes jingled his accoutrements as he shifted from foot to foot. Two more petitioners came in. A clerk on duty ran to ask each what he had come about. One of the adjutants went up to him and began telling him something in a half-whisper, assuming a desperately roguish air as he did so. No doubt it was something nasty, for they frequently interrupted their talk with noiseless, flunkeyish laughter, during which the worthy clerk, affecting to be quite helpless and ready to burst, repeated: 'Do stop, for God's sake stop, I can't bear it.'

Five minutes later Dubelt appeared, with his uniform unbuttoned as though he were off duty, cast a glance at the petitioners, at which they all bowed, and seeing me in the distance sai d :

'Bonjour, Monsieur Hcr::.en. Votre affaire va parfaitement bien

.

. . very well indeed.'

They would let me stay, perhaps! I was on the point of asking, but before I had time to utter a word Dubelt had disappeared.

Nrxt there walked into the room a general, scrubbed and decorated, tightly laced and stiffly erect, in white breeches and a

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scarf: I have never seen a finer general . If ever there is an exhibition of generals in London, like the Baby Exhibition at Cincinnati at this moment, I advise sending this very one from Petersburg. The general went up to the door from which Benckendorf was to enter and froze in stiff immobility ; with great curiosity I scrutinised this sergeant's ideal. He must have flogged soldiers in his day for the way they paraded. Where do these people come from? He was born for military rules and regulations and files on parade. He was attended by the most elegant cornet in the world, probably his adjutant, with incredibly long legs, fair-haired, with a tiny face like a squirrel's, and that good-natured expression which often persists in mamma's darlings who have never studied anything, or at any rate have never succeeded in learning anything. This honeysuckle in uniform stood at a respectful distance from the model general.

Dubelt darted in again, this time assuming an air of dignity, and with his buttons done up. He a t once addressed the general, and asked him what he could do for him. The general, with the correctness with which orderlies speak when reporting to their superior officers, announced:

'Yesterday I received through Prince Alexander Ivanovich His Majesty's command to join the active army in the Caucasus, and esteemed it my duty to rl'port to His Excl'llency before leaving.'

Dubelt listened with religious attention to this speech, and with a slight bow as a sign of respect went out and returned a minute later.

'The Count,' he said to the general, 'sincerely regrets that he has not time to receive Your Excellency. HI' thanks you and has commissioned me to wish you a good j�urney.' Upon- this Dubelt flung wide his arms, embraced the general, and t\vice touched his cheeks \vith his moustaches.

The general retreated at a solemn march, the youth with a squirrel's face and the legs of a crane set off after him. This scene compensated me for much of the bitterness of that day.

The general's standing at att£'ntion, the farewell by proxy, and finally the sly face of Reineke Fuchs as he kissed the brainless countenancl' of His F.xc<>llencv-all this was so ludicrous that I could only just contain myself I fancied that Dubelt noticed this and began to respect me from that time.

At last the doors Wl'r<' flung op1'11 a deux battants and B<>nckl'ndorf came in. There was nothing unpleasant in the exterior of thl' chief of the gl'ndarmPs; his appearance was rather typical of the Baltic barons and of the German aristocracy generally. His face looked creased and tired, he had the deceptively good-

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natured expression which is often found in evasive and apathetic people.

Possibly Benckendorf did not do all the harm he might have done, being the head of that terrible police, being outside the law and above the law, and having a right to meddle in everything. I am ready to believe it, especially when I recall the vapid expression of his face. But he did no good either; he had not enough will-power, energy, or heart for that. To shrink from saying a word in defence of the oppressed is as bad as any crime in the service of a man as cold and merciless as Nicholas.

How many innocent victims passed through Benckendorf's hands, how many perished through his lack of attention, through his absent-mindedness, or because he was engaged in gallantry-and how many dark images and painful memories may have haunted his mind and tormented him on the steamer on which, having prematurely collapsed and grown decrepit, he sailed off to seek, in betrayal of his own religion, the intercession of the Catholic Church with its all-forgiving indulgences . . . .

'It has come to the knowledge of His Imperial Majesty,' he said to me, 'that you take part in the diffusion of rumours injurious to the government. His Majesty, seeing how little you have reformed, deigned to order that you should be sent back to Vyatka ; but I, at the request of General Dubelt, and relying upon information collected about you, have reported to His Majesty about the illness of your wife, and His Majesty has been pleased to alter his decision. His Majesty forbids you to visit Petersburg and Moscow, and you will be under police supervision again, but it is left to the Ministry

. of Home Affairs to

appoint the place of your residence.'

'Allo\v me to tell you frankly that even at this moment I cannot believe that there has been no other reason for exiling me. In 1 835 I was exiled on account of a supper-party at which I was not present! Now I am being punished for a rumour about which the whole town was talking. It is a strange fate! '

Benckendorf shrugged his shoulders and, turning out the palms of his hands like a man who has exhausted all the resources of argument, interrupted me.

'I make known to you the Imperial \vill, and you answer me with criticisms. \Yhat good will come of all that you say to me, or that I say to you? It is a waste of words. Nothing can be changed now. ·what will happen later partly depends on you, and, since you have referred to your first trouble, I particularly recommend you not to let there be :J third. You will certainly not get off so easily a third time.'

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Benckendorf gave me a benevolent smile and turned to the petitioners. He said wry little to them ; he took their petition, glanced at it, and then handed it to Dubclt, interrupting the petitioners' observations \vith the same graciously condescending smile. For months together these people had been pondering and preparing themselves for this interview, upon which their honour, their fortune, their family depended; what labour, what effort had been employed before they were received; how many times they had knocked at the closed door and been turned away by a gendarme or porter. And how great, how poignant must the necessities haw been that brought them to the head of the secret police ; no doubt all legal channels had been exhausted first. And this man gets rid of them with commonplaces, and in all probability some Head of a Table proposed some decision, in order to pass the case on to some other secretariat. And what was he so absorbed in) \Yhere was he in a hurry to go to?

·when Benckendorf went up to the old man \vith the medals, the latt!:•r fell on his knees and said:

'Your Excellency, put yourself in my place.'

'How abominable ' ' cried the Count; 'you arc disgracing your medals,' and full of noble indignation he passed by without taking his petition. The old man slowly got up, his glassy eyes

\verc full of horror and craziness, his lower lip quivered and he babbled something.

How inhuman these people arc when the whim takes them to be human !

Dubelt \vent up to the old man and said: '"Whatever did you do that for? Come, give me your petition. I'll look through it.'

Benckendorf had gone to see the Tsar.

'What am I to do?' I asked Dubelt.

'Settle on any town you choose with the Minister of Home Affairs; we shall not interfere. \\'e will send the whole case on there to-morrow. I congratulate you on its having been so satisfactorily settled.'

'I am very much obliged to you! '

From Benckendorf I went t o the Ministry. Our Director, a s I have mentioned, belonged to that class of Germans who have something of the lemur about them, lanky, sluggish, and dilatory. Their brains work slowly, they do not catch the point at once and they labour a long time if th<•y are to reach any sort of conclusion. My account unfortunately arrived before the communication from the Third Division; he had not expected it at all, and so was completely bewildered, uttered incoherent

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phrases, noticed this himself, and in order to recover himself said to me: 'Erlauben Sie mir deutsch zu sprechen.' Possibly his remarks came out more correct grammatically in German, but they did not become any clearer or more definite in meaning. I distinctly perceived two feelings struggling in him: he grasped all the injustice of the affair, but considered himself bound a s Director to justify the action o f the government; at the same time, he did not want to show himself a barbarian before me, nor could he forget the hostility which invariably reigned between the Ministry and the secret police. So the task of expressing all this jumble was in itself not easy. He ended by admitting that he could say nothing until he had seen the Minister, and by going off to see him.

Count Strogonov sent for me, inquired into the matter, listened attentively to the whole thing, and said to me in conclusion:

'It's a police trick, pure and simple-well, all right: I'll pay them out for it.'

I imagined, I confess, that he was going straight off to the Tsar to explain the business to him ; but ministers do not go so far as that.

'I have received His Majesty's command concerning you,' he went on: 'here it is. You see that it is left to me to select the place of your exile and to employ you in the service. Where v..-ould you like to go?'

'To Tver or Novgorod,' I answered.

'To be sure . . . . Well, since the choice of a place is left to me, and it probably does not matter to you to which of those towns I appoint you, I shall give you the first councillor's vacancy in the provincial government. That is the highest position that you can receive with your seniority, so get yourself a uniform made with an embroidered collar,' he added jocosely.

So that was how I recouped myself, though not in my own suit.

A week later Strogonov recommended me to the Senate for a n appointment as councillor at Novgorod.

It really is very funny to think how many secretaries, assessors, and district and provincial officials had been long soliciting, passionately and persistently soliciting, to get that post; bribes had been given, the most sacred promises had been received, and here, all at once, a Minister, to carry out His Majesty's will and at the same time to have his revenge on the secret police, punished me with this promotion and, by way of

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g ilding the pill, flung this post, the object of ardent desires and ambitious dreams, at the feet of a man who accepted it with the firm intention of thro,ving it up at the first opportunity.

Meanwhile the months passed, the winter was over, and no one reminded me about going away. I was forgotten and I gave up being sur le qui-t·ive, particularly after the following meeting.

Bolgovsky, the military governor of Vologda, was a t that time in Petersburg: being a very intimate friend of my father, he was rather fond of mP and I was sometimes a t his house. He had taken part in the killing of Paul, as a young officer in the Semenovsky Regiment, and was afterwards mixed up in the obscure and JmexplainPd SpPranskyn affair in 1 81 2. l-IP was at that time a colonel in the army at the front. liP was suddenly arrested, brought to Petf'rsbuq�. and then sent to Sibc>ria. Bef�rf' he had timf' to rPach his place> of Pxi le Al«:>xamler pardoned h i m, and he rc>turn,.d to his regiment.IO

OnP day in the spring I \Wilt to sf'e him ; a general was sitting in a big Pasy-chair "-ith his back towards the door so that I could not Sf'e his face, hut only one silver c>paulette.

'Let me introducp you,' said Bolgovsky, and then I recognised Dubelt.

'I haw long enjo:·pd the> pleasure of Lf'onty Vasilyevich's attention,' I said, smiling.

·Are you going to Novgorod soon?' he asked me.

'I supposed I ought to ask :vou abou t that.'

'Oh ! not at all 1 I had no idc>a of reminding you . I simply asked the question. \Ve haw handed you over to Count Strogonov. and \YP are not trying to hurry you, as you see. Besides,

\\·ith such a legiti mate reason as your wife's illness . . . .'

l-It:> really was the politt>st of mt>n!

At last. at the beginning of JunP, I rect>i\·f'd the Senate's ukaz., confirming my appointment as councillor in the Novgorod Pro

,·incia l Gowrnmc>nt. Count Strogonov thought i t was time for me to sPt off. ami about the 1 st of July I arrived in Novgorod, the

'City in tlw kPPping of God anrl of Saint Sophia,' and settled on thP bank of the Volkhov, opposite the very barrow from which

!I :\ likhail :\likhaylO\·irh Speransky ( 1 ii2- 1 839). a liberal and an able and trustPd rn inistPr of Alexander I, was suddenly dismissed and on 1 7

March 1 8 1 2, was rPiega tPrl to Nizhn)' Novgorod. ( R. ) H1 The biographical d!'lails o f Bolgovsky. giYCn by H . , are not accurate.

( A .S. )

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the Voltairians of the twelfth century threw the wonder-working statue of Perun11 into the river.

Cou11cillor at Nov13·orocl

BEFORE I WENT AWAY Count Strogonov told me that the military governor of Novgorod, Elpidifor Antiokhovich Zurov, was in Petersburg; he said that he had spoken to him about my appointment, and advised me to call upon him. I found him a rather simple and good-natured general, short, middle-aged and with a very military exterior. \Ve talked for half an hour, he graciously escorted me to the door and there we parted.

VVhen I arrived in Novgorod I went to see him, and the change of decor was amazing. In Petersburg the governor had been a visitor, here he was at home ; he actually seemed to me to be taller in Novgorod. \Vithout any provocation on my part, he thought it necessary to inform me that he did not permit councillors to voice their opinions, or put them in writing; that it delayed business, and that, if anything were not right, they could talk it over, but that if it came to giving opinions, one or another would have to take his discharge. I observed with a smile that it was hard to frighten me with a threat of discharge, since the sole object of my service was to get my discharge from it; and I added that while bitter necessity forced me to serve in Novgorod I should probably have no occasion for giving my opinion.

This conversation was quite enough for both of us. As I went away I made up my mind to avoid coming into close contact with him. So far as I could observe, the impression I made on the governor was much the same as that which he made uron me, that is, we could not bear each other, so far as this was possible on so brief and superficial an acquaintance.

\Vhen I looked a little into the work of the provincial government I saw that my position \vas not only very disagreeable bnt also extraordinarily dangerous. Every councillor was responsible for his own department and shared the responsibility for all the rest. To rear! the papers concerning all the departments was 11 Perun was the god of sky and of thunder. the chief god of the ancient Slavs. ( Tr.)

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absolutely impossible, so one had to sign them on trust. The governor, in accordance with his theory that a councillor should never give counsel, put his signature, contrary to the law and good sense, next after that of the councillor whose department the file concerned. For me personally this was excellent; in his signature I found something of a safeguard, since he shared the responsibility, and also because he often, with a peculiar expression, talked of his lofty honesty and Robespierre-like incornlptibility. As for the signatures of the other councillors, they were very little comfort to me. They were case-hardened old clerks who by dozens of years of service had worked their way up to being councillors, and lived only by the service, that is, only by bribes. There wa s nothing to blame them for in this; a councillor, I think, received one thousand two hundred paper roubles a year: a man with a family could not possibly live on that.

When they understood that I was not going to share with them in dividing the common spoil, nor to plunder on my own account, they began to look upon me as an uninvited guest and a dangerous witness. They did not become very intimate with me, especially

they had discovered tha t there was very slight friendship between the governor and myself. They stood by one another and watched over one another's interests, but they did not care about me.

l\1oreover, my worthy colleagues were> not afraid of big monetary penalties or of dt>ficiencies in their accounts, because they had nothing. They could risk it, and the more readily the more important the affair \Vas; whether the deficit was of five hundred roubles or of five hundred thousand, it was all the same to them.

In case of a deficit a fraction of their salary went to the reimbursement of the Treasury, and this might last for two or three hundred years, if the official lasted so long. Usually either the official died or the Tsar did, and then in his rejoicing the heir forgave the debts. Such manift:>stoes are also published during the life-time of the same Tsar, bv reason of a royal b irth or coming of age, and odds and ends like that; the offi�ials counted on them. In my case, on the contrary, the part of the family estate and the capital which my father had assignt:>d to me would have bet:>n seized.

If I could have relied on my own head-clerks, things wuuld have hPC'n PasiPr. I did a grPat dC'al to gain thPir attachment, treated them politely and helped them vd th money, but my efforts only restdtPd in thPir ceasing to obey me. They feared only thosP councillors who treated them as though they were schoolboys; and they took to coming to the office half-dn1nk.

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They were very poor men with no education and no expectations. All the imaginative side of their lives was confined to little pot-houses and strong drink, so I had to be on my guard in my own department, too.

At first the governor gave me Department Four, in which all business dealing with contracts and money matters was dealt with. I asked him to exchange me ; he would not, saying that he had no right to make an exchange without the consent of the other councillor. In the governor's presence I asked the councillor in charge of Department Two: he consented and we exchanged. My new department was less attractive; its work was concerned with passports, circulars of all sorts, cases of the abuse of power by landowners, schismatics, counterfeiters and people under the supervision of the police.

Anything sillier and more absurd cannot be imagined ; I am certain that three-quarters of the people who read this will not believe it,I and yet it is the downright truth that I, as a councillor in the provincial government, head of the Second Department, counter-signed every three months the politsmeyster's report on myself, as a man under police supervision. The politsmeyster from politeness made no entry in the column for

'behaviour,' and in the column for 'occupation' wrote: 'Engaged in the government service.' Such are the Hercules' pillars of insanity that can be reached \vhen there are two or three police forces antagonistic to one another, official forms instead of laws, and a sergeant-major's conception of discipline in place of a governing intelligence.

This absurdity reminds me of an incident that occurred a t Tobolsk some years ago. The civil gowrnor was o n bad terms

\vith the vice-governor. The quarrel was carried on on paper, and they wrote each other all sorts of biting and sarcastic things in official form. The vice-governor was a ponderous pedant, a formalist. a good-natured specimen of the divinity student; he composed his caustic answers himself with immense labour and, of comst>, made this quarrel his aim in life. It happened that the governor went to Petersburg for a time. The vice-governor took over his duties and, as governor, recrived an insolPnt document from himsPlf, sent the day before. \Vithout hesitation he ordered the secretary to answe1· it, signed the answer and, receiving it as 1 This is so true that a German who has ahus!'d me a dov:•n times in the Mornin{! Ad1·ertisrr I of 1\:ovembpr 29 and DC'cember 6. 1 8'5'51 adduced as proof that I had never hePn exiled the fact that I had the post of councillor in a prO\·incial government.

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vice-governor, set to work again to rack his brains and scribble an insulting letter to himself. He regarded this as a proof of the highest probity.

For six months I pulled in harness in the provincial govemment. It was disagreeable and extremely tedious. Every morning at eleven o'clock I put on my uniform, buckled on my civilian sword, and went to the office. At twelve o'clock the military governor arrived ; taking no notice of the councillors, he walked straight to a corner and stood his sword there. Then, after looking out of the window and straightening his hair, he went towards his arm-chair and bowed to those present. As soon as the sergeant, with fierce, grey moustaches that stood up at right angles to his lips, had solemnly opened the door and the clank of the sword had become audible in the office, the councillors got up and remained standing with backs bent until the governor bO\ved to them. One of my first acts of protest was to take no part in this collective rising and reverential expectation, but to sit quietly and to bow only when he bowed to us.

There were no great discussions or heated arguments; it rarely happened that a councillor asked the governor's opinion in advance, still more rarely tha t the governor put some business question to the councillors. Before everyone lay a heap of papers and everyone signed his name: it wa s a signature factory.

Remembering Talleyrand's celebrated injunction, I did not try to make any particular show of zeal and attended to business only so far as was necessary to escape reprimand or avoid getting into trouble. But there were two kinds of work in my department towards which I considered I had no right to take so superficial an attitude: these were matters relating to schismatics and to the abuse of power by the landO\vners.

Schismatics arc not consistently persecuted in Russia, but something suddenly comes over the Synod or the Ministry of Home Affairs, and they make a raid on some hermitage, or some community, plunder it, and then subside again. The schismatics usually have intelligent agents in Petersburg who warn them from there of coming danger; the others at once collect money, hide their books and their ikons, stand the Ot·thodox priest a drink, stand a drink to the Orthodox police-capta in and buy thcmsPlvPs off; and with that thP math•r Pnds for tt•n years or so.

In Novgorod Provine!' thPre were in the reign of Catherine a great many Dukhobors.� Tlwir leader, the old head of the post-

� I am not certain whether these were Dukhobors.

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ing drivers, in Zaitsevo, I think it was, enjoyed enormous respect. When Paul was on his way to Moscow to be crowned he ordered the old man to be summoned, probably with the object of converting him. The Dukhobors, like the Quakers, do not take off their caps, and the grey-headed old man went up to the Emperor of Gatchina3 with his head covered. This was more than the Tsar could bear. A petty, touchy readin!'ss to take offence is a particularly striking characteristic of Paul, and of all his sons except A lexander; having savage power in their hands, they have not even the wild beast's consciousness of strength which keeps the big dog from attacking the little on!'.

'Before whom are you standing in your cap?' shouted Paul, breathing hard, with all the marks of frenzied rage: 'do you know me?'

'I do,' answered th!' schismatic calmly; 'you are Pavel Petrovich.'

'Put him in chains! to penal servitude \Vith him! to the mines ! ' Paul continued.

The old man was seized and the Tsar ordered the village to be S!'t fire to on four sides and the inhabitants to b!' S!'nt to live in Siberia. At the next stopping-place one of the Tsar's intimates threw himself at his f!'et and said that h!' had ventured to delay the carrying out of His Majesty's will, and was waiting for him to rep!'at it. Paul, now somewhat sobered. perceived that setting fire to villag!'s and sending men to the mines without a trial was a strange way of recommending himself to tlw people. He commanded the Synod to investigate the peasants' case and ord!'red the old man to be incarc!'rated for l ife in the Spaso-Yefimyevsky Monastery; he thought that th!' Orthodox monks would torment him worse than p!'nal servitude; but h£' forgot that our monks are not merdy good Orthodox Christians but also men who an•

very fond of money and vodka; and the schismatics drink no vodka and are not sparing of their money.

The old man acquired among the Dukhobors th!' reputation of a saint. They cam!' from the !'nds of Russia to do homage to him, and paid with gold for admission to s!'e him. The old man snt in his cell, dressed all in white, and his friends draped the \valls and the ceiling with linen. Aft!'r his death they obtnined permission to bury his body with his kindred and solemnly carried him upon th!'ir shoulders from Vladimir to th!' province of Novgorod.

Only the Dukhobors know where he is buried. They are per-3 So the "mad tsar," Paul, was called, from one of his suburban palaces.

See p. 46, fn. 1 6. ( D.M.)

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suaded that he had the gift of working miracles in his life-time and that his body is incorruptible.

I heard all this partly from the governor of Vladimir, I. E.

Kuruta, partly from the post-drivers at Novgorod, and partly from a church-attendant in the Spaso-Yefimyevsky Monastery.

Now there are no more political prisoners in this monastery, although the prison is full of various priests and ecclesiastics, disobedient sons of whom their parents have complained, and so on. The archimandrite, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a fur cap, showed us the prison-yard. vVhen he went in, a non-commissioned officer with a rifle went up to him and reported: 'I have the honour to report to your Reverence that all is well in the prison and that there are so many prisoners.' The archimandrite in answer gave him his blessing-what a mix-up!

The business about the schismatics \vas of such a kind tha t it was much best not to stir them up again. I looked through the documents referring to them and left them in peace. On the contrary the cases of the abuse of landowners' pO\ver needed a thorough overhauling. I did all I could, and scored several victories in those sticky lists; I delivered one young girl from persecution and put her under the guardianship of a naval officer.

This I believe was the only service I did in my official career.

A certain lady \vas keeping a servant-girl in her house without any documentary evidence of ownership; the girl petitioned that her rights to freedom should be inquired into. My predecessor had very sagaciously thought fit to leave her, until her case should be decided, in complete bondage with the lady who claimed her. I had to sign the documents; I approached the governor and observed that the girl would not be in a very enviable situation in her lady's house after lodging this petition against her.

'What's to be done with her?'

'Keep her in the police station.'

'At whose expense?'

'At the expense of the lady, if the case is decided against her.'

'And if it is not ? '

Luckily at that moment the provincial prosecutor came i n . A prosecutor from his social position, from his official relationships, from the very buttons on his uniform, is bound to be an enemy of the governor, or at least to thwart him in everything. I purposely continued the conversation in his presence. The governor began to get angry and said that the whole question was not

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worth wasting a couple of words on. The prosecutor was quite indifferent to what would happen, and what became of the girl, but he immediately took my side and advanced a dozen different points from the code of laws in support of it. The governor, who in reality cared even less, said to me, smiling ironically:

'It's much the same whether she goes to her mistress or to prison.'

'Of course it's better for her to go to prison,' I observed.

'It will be more consistent with the intention expressed in the code,' observed the prosecutor.

'Let it be as you like,' the governor said, laughing more than ever. 'You've done your protegee a service: when she has been in prison for a few months she will thank you for it.'

I did not continue the argument; my object was to rescue the girl from domestic persecution; I remember tha t a couple of months later she was released and received her complete freedom.

Among the unsettled cases in my department there was a complicated correspondence which had lasted for several years, concerning acts of violence by a retired officer called Strugovshchikov and all sorts of wrongs committed on his estate. The affair began with a petition by his mother, and after that the peasants complained. He had come to some arrangement with his mother, and had himself accused the peasants of intending to kill him, without, however, adducing any serious testimony.

Meanwhile it was obvious from the evidence of his mother and his house-serfs that the man was guilty of all sorts of frantic actions. The business had been sleeping the sleep of the just for more than a year; it is always possible to drag a case out with inquiries and unnecessary correspondence and then, reckoning it to be settled, to file it in the archives. A recommendation had to be made to the Senate that he should be put under wardship, but for this purpose a declaration from the Marshal of Nobility was necessary. The Marshal of Nobility usually declines, not wishing to lose a vote. It rested entirely with me to get the case moving, but a coup de grace from the marshal was essential.

The marshal of the Novgorod Province, a nobleman who had served in the militia in 1 8 1 2 and had a Vladimir medal, tried to show me, when we met, that he was a well-read man, by talking in the bookish language of the period before Karamzin; once, pointing to a monument which the nobility of Novgorod had raised to itself in recognition of its patriotism in 1 81 2, he alluded with some feeling to the difficult, so to speak, and sacred, but none the less flattering, duties of a ma.rshal.

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All this was to my advantage.

The marshal came to the office about certifying the insan ity of some !'cclesiasti c ; \Yh!'n a ll the presidents of all the courts had exhaust!'d thP ir whole store of foolish questions, from wh i ch the lunatic might well have concluded that they too were not qui te i n their right minds, and he had finally b!'en elevatPd to the post of mndman, I drew th!' mnrshnl nsidP and told him nbout the cnse. Th!' marshal shrugged his shoulcl!'rs, a ssuming nn air of horror and indignntion, and ended by referring to the offic!'r as an arrant scoundrel 'who cnst a shadow over the well born commun ity of the nobility and gl'ntry of No...-gorod .'

'Probably,' I said, 'you would give ns th!' same answer in wri ting, if we a sked you ?'

Tlw marshal, caught unawares, promised to answer nccording to his conscience, adding that 'honour and truthfulness were the i nvar·iahle a ttrilnrtPS of the nobi lity of Russia.'

Though I had some doubt of the i nvariability of those attributes. I did set the business in motion, and the marshal kept his word. The case was brought before the Senate, and I remember very well the sweet moment ,...-hen the uka::. of the Senate was passed to my depa rtment, appointing trusteeship over the officer's estate nne! putting him under the supervision of the police. The officer had been convinced that the case was dosed, and after the uka::. he appeared at N ovgorod like one thunderstruck. He was at once told how it had happened ; the infuriat!'d officer was prepnred to iall upon me from behind a corner, to engage ruffians and have m!' a mbushed, but, being unaccustomed to campaigns on land, he quietly disappeared from sight in some district capital.

Unfortunatdy the 'a ttributes' of brutality, debauchery, and violence with house-serfs nnd peasants nre more 'invariable' than thos!' of 'honour and tmthfulness' among our nobility. Of course th!'re is a small group of cultured la ndowners who do not knock the ir sPrvants about from morning to night, do not thrash them every day; but even among them there are 'Penochkins'4 ; the rest ha...-e not yet a d...-anccd beyond the stage of Saltychikha6 and th!' AmPrican planters.

Rummaging about in the files, I found the correspondence of

·I The landowner in 'The Agent,' one of Turgene...-'s Sportsman's Sketches.

( Tr.)

5 Silltychikha was n Judy notorious in the reign of Catherine for her c ruelty to her serfs. She was eventunlly hrought to justice. ( Tr.)

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the provincial government of Pskov concerning a certain Madame Yaryzhkin, a landed lady. She had flogged two of her maids to death, was tried on account of a third, and was almost completely acqui tted by the Criminal Court, who based their verdict among other things on the fact that the third maid did not die.

This woman invented the most amazing punishments, hitting with a flat iron, with gnarled sticks or with a beetle.

I do not know \vhat the girl in question had done, but her mistress surpassed hersPlf. She made the girl kneel in filth, or_ on boards into which nails had been driven; in this position she beat her about the back and the head with a beetle and, when she had exhausted herself, called the coachman to take her place ; luckily he was not in the servants' quarters, and she went out to find him, while the girl, half frantic with pain and covered with blood, rushed out into the street with nothing on but her smock and ran to the police station. ThP police-inspector took her evidence and the case went its regular course. The police busied themselvf's and the Criminal Court busied itself over it for a year; at last the court, obviously bribed, very sagaciously decided to summon the lady's husband and suggest to him that he should restrain his wife from such punishments, and they obliged her, \vhile leaving her under suspicion of having brought about the death of two servants, to sign an undertaking not to inflict punishments in future. On this und<'rstanding the unfortunate girl, who had been kept somewhere else while the case was going on. was handed over to her mistress again.

The girl, terrified by what lay before her, began writing one petition after another; the matter reached the ears of the Tsar; he ordered it to be investigated, and sent an official from Petersburg. Probably l\1adame Yaryzhkin's means \Vere not equal to bribing the Petersburg, the ministerial and the political police investigators, and thf' case took a different turn. The lady was relegated to Siberia and her husband was put under ward. All the members of the Criminal Court were tried ; how their case Pnded I do not know.

In another placeG I have told the story of the man flogged to death by Prince Trubetskoy and of the Kammerherr Bazilevsky who was thrashed by his own S<'rvants. I will add one more story of a lady.

The maid of the wife of a colonel of gendarmes at Penza was carrying a tea-pot full of boili ng water. Her mistress's child ran G Property in Serfs.

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against the servant, vvho spilt the boiling water, and the child was scalded. The mistress, to exact her vengeance in the same coin, ordered the servant's child to be brought and scalded its hand from the samovar. . . .

Panchulidzev, the governor, hearing of this monstrous proceeding, expressed his heartfelt regret that his relations with the colonel of gendarmes were somewhat fragile, and that consequently he felt it improper to start proceedings which might be thought to be instiga ted by personal motives!

And then sensitive hearts wonder at peasants murdering landowners with their whole families, or at the soldiers of the military settlements at Staraya Russai massacring all the Russian Germans and all the German Russians.

In halls and maids' rooms, in villages and the torturechambers of the police, are buried whole martyrologies of frightful villainies; the memory of them works in the soul and in course of generations matures into bloody, merciless vengeance which it is easr to prevent, but will hardly be possible to stop once it has begun.

Staraya Russa, the military settlements! Frightful words! Can it be that history (bribed beforehand by Arakcheyev's pourboire8) will never pull away the shroud under which the government has concealed the series of crimes coldly and systematically perpetrated at the introduction of the military settlements?

There have been plenty of horrors everywhere, but here there was added the peculiar imprint of Petersburg and Gatchina, of German and Tatar. The beating with sticks and flogging with rods of the insubordinate went on for months together . . . the i In July 1 8 3 1 . ( A .S.) The military settlements were entirely the idea of Alexander I. They were foreshadowed in a manifesto of 1 8 1 4. [For the term of milita ry 'sprvice in Russia during his reign see p. 1 49, fn. 1 .

(D.M. ) l He wished the soldiers, i n peace time. to l ive with their famili!'s on thP l and and work it. The project started when one battalion of Grenadier Guards was settled in the Novgorod PrO\·ince in 1 8 1 5, but nothing was made public then about the settlements. 'It was a healthy, practical idea . . .' says E. l\1. Almedingen in Thr Emprror Alriandcr I (The Bodley Heacl. 1 964. p. 1 i6) . 'a mixture of humaneness and economic foresight. . . . A poisonous plant grew out of that good seed.' (R.)

" A mkcheyev left. I bcli<'w. a hundred thousand roubles in a bank to be paid a hundred years Iiller. togcthPr with the accumulated interest. to the man who should write the best history of the reign of Alexander I.

[ I t was '"iO.OOO roubles that Arakcheyev deposited in a bank for this purpose in 1 8.33. ( A .S. ) l

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blood was never dry on the floors of the village offices every

crime that may be committed by the people against their executioners on that small tract of land is justified beforehand.

The Mongolian side of the Moscow period \vhich distorted the Slav character of the Russians, the flat-of-the-sword inhumanity which d istorted the period of Peter were embodied in the full splendour of their hideousness in Count Arakcheyev. Arakcheyev was undoubtedly one of the most loathsome figures that rose after Peter I to the heights of the Russian government. That

'sneaking thrall of the crowned soldier,' as Pushkin said of him, was the model of an ideal corporal as he floated in the dreams of the father of Frederick the Second ; he \vas made up of inhuman devotion, mechanical correctness, the exactitude of a chronometer, routine and activity, a complete lack of feeling, just as much intelligence as was necessary to carry out orders, and just enough ambition, spleen and envy to prefer power to money.

Such men are a real treasure to Tsars. Only the petty resentment of Nicholas can explain the fact that he made no use of Arakcheyev, but confined himself to his underlings.

Paul had discowred Arakcheyev through sympathy. So long as Alexander's sense of shame lasted he kept him at some distance; but, carried away by the family passion for discipline and drill, he entrusted to him the secretariat of the army. Of the victories of thi s general of artillery we have heard little9; he rather performed civilian duties in the military service: his battles were fought on the soldiers' backs ; his enemies were brought to him in chains: they had been conquered beforehand. In the latter years of Alexander I, Arakcheyev governed all Russin.. He meddled in everything, he had a right to everything, carte blanrhe, in fact. As Alexander grev1; fePbler and sank into gloomy melancholy, he wavered a little between Prince A. N.

Golitsyn and Arakcheycv and in the end na turally inclined towards the latter.

At the time of Alexander's Taganrog visit the house-serfs on

!I Arakcheyev was a pitiful coward, as Count Toll tells us in his Memoirs, and the Secretary of State Marchenko in a l ittle story of the Fourteenth of December published in The Pole Star. I V. R. Marchenko's account appeared not in Pol)·amaya Zveda but in the lstoriclz('sky sbornik volnoy russkoy tipografii v Londone ( London. 1 859) . pp. 70- 1 . ( A .S.) ] I have heard that he was in hiding during the Staraya Russa rising, and was in deadly terror of Reikhel. the general oi Engineers.

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Arakcheyev's estate in Gruzino killed the Count's sweetheart; this murder gave rise to the investigation of which to this day, seventeen years later, that is, the officials and inhabitants of Novgorod speak with horror.

The sweetheart of Arakcheyev, an old man of sixty, was one of his serf-girls; she persecuted the servants, fought with them and told tales, and the Count thrashed them according to the information she laid. When their patience was completely exhausted, the cook killed her. The crime was committed so adroitly that there was no clue to the culprit.

But a culprit was needed for the vengeance of the doting old man ; he threw a side the affairs of the whole Empire a nd galloped to Gruzino. In the midst of tortures and blood, in the midst of groans and dying shrieks, Arakcheyev, with the blood-stained kerchief round his neck which had been taken from his concubine's body, wrote touching letters to Alexander, and Alexander replied : 'Come a nd find rest from your unhappiness on the bosom of your friend.'

The baronet Wylie10 must have been right when he declared that the Emperor had water on the brain before his death.

But the culprits were not discovered. The Russian is wonderfully good at holding his tongue.

Then, utterly infuriated, Arakcheyev appeared at Novgorod, where a crowd of martyrs was brought. With his face yellow and livid, with mad eyes, and still with the blood-stained kerchief round his neck, he began a new investigation, and here the affair assumes monstrous dimensions. Some eighty persons were seized once more. In the town people were arrested on the strength of one word, on the slightest suspicion, for a distant acquaintanceship vvith some lackey of Arakcheyev's, for an incautious word.

People passing through the town were seized and flung into prison. Merchants and clerks were kept waiting for weeks in the police station to be questioned . . . . The inhabitants hid in their houses and were afraid to go about the streets; the affair itself no one dared to refer to.

10 Sir James \Vylie ( I i68-1854) . a Scot who entered the Russ inn service.

He was suq�eon-in-ordinnry to Paul I whose houy he embalmed. certifying that he had died of apoplexy ; and physician-in-ordinary to Alexander I, whom he accompanied on his campaigns. He was knighted by the Prince Regent in 1 8 1 +, when Alexnnder visited England, and mnde a baronet later in the same yenr at the Tsnr's special request. He continued to enjoy the Imperial confidence under Nicholns I. (R.)

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Kleinmikhel, who served under Arakcheyev, took part in this investigation. . . .

The governor transformed his house into a torture chamber; people were tortured near his study from morning till night. The police-captain of Staraya Russa, a man accustomed to horrors, broke down a t last and, when he was ordered to question under the rods a young woman who was several months gone with child, he was not equal to the task. He went in to the governor (it took place in the time of old Popov, who told me about 'it) and told him that the woman could not be flogged, and it was clean against the law; the governor leapt up from his scat and, mad with fury, rushed at the police-captain brandishing his fist:

'I order you to be arrested a t once: I will have you tried: you are a traitor.' The police-captain was arrested and resigned his commission ; I am truly sorry I do not know his surname,11 but may his previous sins be forgiven him for the sake of that minute-! say it in all seriousness-of heroism; in dealing with these ruffians it \Yas no trifling matter to show human feeling.

The woman was tortured; she knew nothing about the crime

. . . but she died.l2

And Alexander 'of blessed memory' died too. Not knowing what was coming, these monsters made one last effort, and succeeded in tracing the culprit; he was condemned to the knout, of course. In the midst of this triumph for the investigators came an order from Nicholas that they should be tried and that the whole case should be stopped.

It was commanded that the governor13 should be tried by the Senate . . . even by them he could not be acquitted. Ni cholas issued a gracious manifesto after his coronation. The friends of Pestel and Muravcv did not come under it, but this scoundrel did. Two or three years later, the same man was tried at Tambov II The chief of the Novgorod rural police at this time was V_ Lyalin who, on the advice of A. F. Musin· Push kin, president of the Criminal Court, decided not to subject the thirty-year-old peasant woman, Darya Konstantinov, who was pregnant, to thP nin<'ty-five blows of the knout to which she had been sentenced. Both officials wen• relieved of their duties and arrested, and were suspectPd of interceding for the 'criminal woman' of malice prepense. (A.S. )

12 Darya Konstantinov, who was punished togetiH•r with five other

'ringleaders,' survived the torment and was to bP s!'nt to hard lahour-; three of those condemned diPd of their floggings_ ( A.S.) 13 I am extremely sorry that I have forgotten th<' Christian nanw of this worthy head of a province. I remember his surname was Zherebtsov.

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for the abuse of power on his own property. Yes, he came under Nicholas's manifesto: he was beneath it.

At the beginning of 1 842 I was hopelessly weary of provincial government and was trying to invent an excuse to get out of it.

While I was hesitating between one means and another, a quite extraneous incident decided in my favour.

One cold winter's morning as I reached the office I found a peasant woman of about thirty standing in the front hall ; seeing me in uniform she fell on her knees before me and bursting into tears besought my protection. Her master, Musin-Pushkin, was sending her with her husband to a settlement, while their son, a boy of ten, was to remain behind ; she begged to be allowed to take the child with her. While she was telling me this the military governor came in; I motioned her towards him and passed on her petition. The governor explained to her that children of ten or over are kept by the landowners. The mother, not understanding the stupid law, went on entreating him. He was bored; the woman, sobbing, clutched at his legs, and he pushed her away roughly, saying: 'What a fool you are; don't I tell you in plain Russian that I can do nothing? Why do you keep on so?' After this he went with a firm, resolute step to the corner, where he put his sword.

And I went too . . . I had had enough . . . . Did not that woman take me for one of them? It was high time to put an end to the farce.

'Are you unwell?' asked a councillor called Khlopin, who had been transferred from Siberia for some shortcomings or other.

'I am ill,' I answered, and I got up, took my leave and went away. The same day I sent in a declaration that I was i ll, and from that day never set foot in the office of the provincial government. Then I asked for my discharge on the ground 'of illness.' The Senate gave me my discharge accompanying it with promotion to the grade of Aulic Councillor; but Benckendorf at the same time informed the governor that I was forbidden to visit Petersburg or Moscow and was commanded to l ive at Novgorod.

When Ogarev returned from his first tour abroad, he did his utmost in Petersburg to procure permission for us to move to Moscow. I had little faith in the success of such a patron and was fearfully bored in the wretched little town with the great historical name. Meanwhile Ogarev managed our business for us.

On the 1 st of July, 1 842, the Empress, taking advantage of some family festivity, asked the Tsar to allow me to live in Moscow in

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consideration of my wife's illness and her desire to move there.

The Tsar agreed and three days later my wife received from Benckendorf a letter in which he informed her that I was permitted to accompany her to Moscow in consequence of the Tsaritsa 's intercession. He concluded the letter with the agreeable notification that I should remain under police supervision there also.

I felt no regret at leaving Novgorod and made haste to get away as soon as possible. Before I left it, however, there occurred almost the only pleasant event in my sojourn there.

I had no money! I did not want to wait for a remittance from Moscow and so I commissioned Matvey to try to borrow fifteen hundred paper roubles for me. An hour later Mah·ey appeared with an innkeeper called Gibin, whom I knew, and at whose hotel I had stayed for a week. Gibin, a stout merchant with a good-natured expression, bowed and handed me a packet of notes.

'How much interest do you want?' I asked him.

'"Well, you see,' answered Gibin, 'I don't do this sort of business and I don't lend money at interest, but since I heard from Matvey Savelyevich that you need money for a month or two, and we very much approve of you, and thank God have the money to spare, I've brought it along.'

I thanked him and asked him which he would like, a simple receipt for the money or a promissory note; but to this, too, Gibin answered: 'Extra work ; I trust your word more than a piece of stamped paper.'

'Upon my word, but I may die you know.'

'Well then, in my sorrow at your decease I shouldn't worry much about the loss of the money.'

I was touched and pressed his hand warmly instead of giving him a receipt. Gibin embraced me in the Russian fashion and said: 'We know it a ll, of course ; we know you were not serving of your own will and didn't behave yourself like the other officials, the Lord forgive them, but stood up for the likes of us and the ignorant people, so I am glad a chance has come to do you a good turn too.'

As we were driving out of the town late in the evening our driver pulled up the horses at the inn and Gibin gave me a pie the size of a cart-wheel as provision for the journey.

That was my 'medal for good service.'

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0Ltr J-?riends

WITH ouR VISIT to Pokrovskoye and the quiet summer [ 1 843 ] we spent there begins the gracious, grown-up, active part of our MoscO\v life, which lasted till my father's death and perhaps until \Ye went abroad.

Our nerves, overstrained in Petersburg and Novgorod, had relaxed, our inner storms had subsided. The agonising analysis of ourselves and of each other, the useless reopening with our words of recent wounds, the i nce5sant return to the same painful subjects were over ; and our shaken faith in our own infallibility gave a truer and more earnest quality to our lives. My article

'On a Drama' was the last \vord of the sickness we had passed through.

Externally the only restriction we suffered from was police supervision ; I cannot say it was very tiresome, but the unpleasant feeling of a cane of Damocles, wielded by the local police-constable, was very disagreeable.

Our new friends received us warmly, much better than two years before. Foremost among them stood Granovsky: to him belongs the chief place in those five years. Ogarcv was abroad almost all the time. Granovsky filled his place for us, and we are indebted to him for the happiest moments of that time. There was a wonderful power of love in his nature. With many I was more in agreement in opinion, but to him I was nearer-somewhere deep down in the soul.

Granovsky and all of us were very busy, all hard at work, one lecturing at the university, another contributing to reviews and magazines, another studying Russian history; the first beginnings of all that \vas done afterwards date from this time.

By now we were far from being children ; in 1 842 I was thirty; we knew only too well where our work was leading us, but we went on. We went along our chosen path, not rashly but deliberately, with the calm, even step to which experience and family life had trainf'd us. This did not mean that we had grown old : no, we \Wrf' still young, and that is how it was that some speaking in the university lecture-room, others publishing articles or editing a newspaper were every day in danger of being arrested, dismissf'd, exiled.

Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 285

Such a circle of talented, cultured, versatile and pure-hearted people I have met nowhere >ince, neither in the highest ranks of the political nor on the summits of the literary and artistic worlds. Yet I have travelled a great deal, I have lived everywhere and with all sorts of people. I have been thrust by revolution into the extremes of progress, beyond which there is nothing, and conscientiously I am bound to say the same thing.

The finished, self-contained personality of the Westem European, which surprises us at first by his specialisation, surprises us later by his one-sidedness. He is a lways satisfied with himself, and his suffisance offends us. He never forgets his personal views, his position is generally cramped and his morals only appropriate to paltry surroundings.

I do not think that men were always l ike this here ; the vVestern European is not in a normal condition, he is moulting.

Unsuccessful revolutions have been absorbed and none of them has transformed him, but each has left its trace and confused his ideas, while the natural surge of historical process has splashed up into the foreground the slimy stratum of the petit bourgeois, under which the fossilised aristocratic class is buried and the rising masses submerged. Petite bourgeoisie is incompatible with the Russian character-and thank God for it!

Whether it is due to our carelessness, or our lack of moral stability and of defined activity, or our youth in the matter of education, or the aristocratic way in which we are brought up, yet we a re in our living on the one hand more artists, and on the other far simpler than Western Europeans; we have not their specialised knowledge, but to make up for that we are more versatile than they. Well developed personalities are not common amongst us, but their development is richer, wider in its scope, free from hedges and barriers. It is quite different in Western Europe.

When you are talking to the most likeable people here1 you immediately reach contradictions where you and they have nothing in common, and it is impossible to convince. In this stubborn obstinacy and unintentional incomprehension you seem to be knocking your head against the frontier of a world that is completed.

Our theoretical differences, on the contrary, brought more living interest into our lives, and a need for active exchange of opinions kept our minds more vigorous and helped us to progress; we grew in this friction against each other, and in reality 1 Written in England. (Tr.)

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were the stronger thanks to that 'composite' workmen's association which Proudhon has so superbly described in the field of mechanical labour.

I love to dwell on that time of work in unison, of a full exalted pulse, of harmonious order and virile struggle, on those years in which we were young for the last time! . . .

Our little circle assembled frequently, a t the house sometimes of one, sometimes of another, and oftenest of all at mine. Together with chatter, jest, supper and wine, there was the most active, the most rapid exchange of ideas, news and knowledge; everyone handed on what he had read and learned. Opinion was disseminated through arguments and what had been worked out by each became the property of all. There was nothing of significance in any sphere of knowledge, in any literature or in any art, which did not come under the notice of some one of us, and was not at once communicated to all.

It was just this quality of our gatherings that dull pedants and tedious scholars failed to understand. They saw the meat and the bottles, but they saw nothing else. Feasting goes with fullness of life ; ascetic people are usually dry and egoistical. We were not monks: we lived on all sides and, sitting round the table, learnt rather more and did no less than those fasting toilers who grub in the backyards of science.

I will not have anything said against you, my friends, nor against that bright, splendid time; I think of it with more than love: almost with envy. We were not like the emaciated monks of Zurbaran; we did �ot weep over the sins of this world-we only sympathised with its sufferings, and were ready with a smile for anything, and not depressed by a foretaste of our sacrifices to come. Ascetics who are for ever morose have always excited my suspicion; if they are not pretending, either their mind or their stomach is out of order.

Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 28 7

Our 'OpponeJlts'

Yes, we were their opponents, but verr strange ones. We had the same love, but not the same war of loving--and like Janus or the two-headed eagle we looked in different directions, though the heart that beat within us was but one.

The Bell, p. go (On the death of K. S. Aksakov) SIDE BY SIDE with our circle were our opponents, nos amis les ennemis, or more correctly, nos ennemis les amis-the Moscow Slavophils.

The conflict between us ended long ago and we have held out our hands to each other; but in the early 'forties we could not but be antagonistic-without being so ,.;e could not have been true to our principles. We might have been able not to quarrel with them over their childish homage to the childhood of our history; but accepting their Orthodoxy as meant in earnest, seeing their ecclesiastical intolerance on both sides-in relation to learning and in relation to sectarianism-we were bound to take up a hostile attitude to them. We saw in their doctrines fresh oil for anointing the Tsar, new chains laid upon thought, new subordination of conscience to the servile Byzantine

·

Church.

The Slavophils are to blame for our having so long failed to understand either the Russian people or its history; their ikonpainter's ideals and incense smoke hindered us from seeing the realities of the people's existence and the foundations of village life.

The Orthodoxy of the Slavophils, their historical patriotism and over-sensitive, exaggerated feeling of nationality were called forth by the extremes on the other side. The importance of their outlook, what was true and essential in it, lay not in Orthodoxy, and not in exclusive nationalism, but in those elements of Russian life which they unearthed from under the manure of a n artificial civilisation.

The idea of nationality is in itself a conservative idea-the demarcation of one's rights, the opposition of self to another; it includes both the Judaic conception of superiority of race, and the aristocratic claim to purity of blood and to the right of primo-

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geniture. Nationalism as a standard, as a war-cry, is only surrounded with the halo of revolution when a people is fighting for its independence, when it is trying to throw off a foreign yoke. That is why national feeling with all its exaggerations is full of poetry in Italy and in Poland, while in Germany it is vulgar.

For us to display our nationalism would be even more absurd than it is for the Germans; even those who abuse us do not doubt it; they hate us from fear, but they do not refuse to recognise us, as Metternich did Italy. We have had to set up our nationalism against the Germanised government and our own renegades.

This domestic struggle could not be raised to the epic level. The appearance of the Slavophils as a school, and as a special doctrine, \Vas quite in place; but if the Slavophils had had no other standard than the banner of the Church, no other ideal than the Domostroy1 and the very Russian but extremely tedious life before Peter I, they v\·ould have passed away as an eccentric party of changelings and cranks belonging to another age. The strength and the future of the Slavophils did not lie in that.

Their treasure may have been hidden in the liturgical objects of their Church, with their old-fashioned workmanship ; but its value was to be found neither in vessels nor in forms. They did not distinguish them in the beginning.

To their own historical traditions were added the traditions of all the Slav peoples. Our Slavophils sympathised with the Western Panslavists for identity of cause and policy, forgetting that exclusive nationalism there was at the same time the cry of a people oppressed by a foreign yoke. Western Panslavism on its first appearance was taken by the Austrian government itself for a conservative movement. It developed at the melancholy epoch of the Congress of Vienna. It was a time of restorations and resurrections of all sorts, a period of every possible Lazarus, fresh or stinking. Alongside Teutschthum,2 which looked for the renaissance of the happy da.n of Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufens, Czech Panslavism made its appearance. The governments were pleased with this movement and at first encouraged the development of international hatreds; the masses once I The Domostroy was a sixteenth-century hook of moral precepts and practical advice \\Titten by the priest Sylvester, the a

2 Deutschthum was the nationalist mov!'ment in Germany. It was considered more patriotic to spell it Teutschthum. ( Tr.)

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more clung round the idea of racial kinship, the bond of which was drawn tighter, and were again turned aside from the general demands for the improvement of their lot. Frontiers became more impassable, ties and sympathies between peoples were brok�n. It need hardly be said that only among apathetic and feeble peoples was nationalism a llowed to awaken, and only so long as it confined itself to nrchaeological and linguistic disputes. In Milan and in Poland where nntionalism wns by no means confined to grammar, it was held i n with spiked gloves.

Czech Panslavism provoked Slavonic sympathies in Russia.

Slavanism, or Russianism, not as a theory, not ns a doctrine, but as a wounded national feeling, as an obscure memory and a true instinct, as antagonism to an exclusively foreign influence, had existed ever since Peter I cut off the first Russian beard.

There has never been any interval in the resistance to the Petersburg culture terrorism ; it reappears in the form of the mutinous Streltsy, executed, qunrtPred, hanged o!l the crPnellations of the Kremlin and there shot by Menshikov nnd other buffoons of the Tsar; in the form of the Tsarevich Alexey poisoned in the dungeons of the Petersburg fortress; ns the party of the Dolgorukys in the reign of Peter II ; as the hatred for the Germans at the time of Biron; as Pugachev in the time of Catherine I I ; ns Catherine herself, the Orthodox German in the reign of the Prussian Holsteiner, Peter III ; as Elizabeth who ascended the throne through the support of the Slavophils of those days (the people in Moscow expected all the Germans to be massacred at her coronation) .

All the schismatics are Slnvophils.

All the clergy, both white and black, are Slavophils of another sort.

The soldiers who demnnded the removal of Barclay de Tolly3

on account of his Germnn name \vere the precursors of Khomyakov and his friends.

The war of 1 8 1 2 grently developed the feeling of nntional consciousness and love for the Fatherland. But there was nothing of the Old Believers' Slavonic spirit in the patriotism of 1 8 1 2

which w e see in Karamzin and Pushkin, and i n the Emperor Alexander himself. Practically it wns the expression of tha t instinct of strength which all powerful nations feel when they are provoked by others; afterwards it was the triumphant feeling 3 Barclay de Tolly was one of the ablest of the Russian generals of 1 8 1 2.

He was, as a matter of fact. of Scottish, not of German, descent. ( Tr.)

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of victory, the proud sense of successful resistance. But it was

\veak on the theoretical side; in order to love Russian history the patriots adapted it to European manners; in general they translated Greek and Roman patriotism from French into Russian and did not go beyond the line 'Pour un coeur bien ne que la patrie est chere!'� Shishkov5 was raving even then, it is true, about the restoration of archaic forms of language, but his influence was limited. As for the real speech of the people, the only person who showed a knowledge of it was the Frenchified Count Rostopchin in his proclamations and manifestoes.6

As the war was forgotten this patriotism subsided and finally degenerated on the one hand into the mean cynical flattery of the Northern Bee, on the other into the vulgar patriotism of Zagoskin, which called Shuya Manchester, and Shebuyev7

Raphael, and boasted of bayonets and the distance from the ice of Torneo to the mountains of the Crimea.

In the reign of Nicholas patriotism became something associated with the knout, with the police, especially in Petersburg, where this savage movement ended, conformably to the cosmopolitan spirit of the town, in the invention of a national hymn after Sebastian BachS and in Prokopy Lyapunov9-after SchillerP0

� !\Iisquoted from Voltaire's Tancred ( Act III, scene 1 ) . (A.S.) 5 Shishko\·, Alexander Semenovich ( l i54-1 841 ) . began his career as a naval officer and attained the rank of vice-admiral but. disappro\·ing of the reforms of the early years of Alexander's reign, left the navy. From 1 8 1 2 be became prominent as a writer and president of the Academy, and from 1 824 to 1 828 was !\Iinister of Public Instruction. Intensely conservative and patriotic, he bitterly opposed every new movement i�

literature and politics. ( Tr. ) He was a leader of the 'Slavonic' party. (R.) G Herzen is referring ironically to the pseudo-homespun language of the patriotic proclamations issued in 1 8 1 2 by F. V. Rostopchin, Commanderin-Chief and Military Governor of l\loscow. ( A .S.)

� Shebuye\-. \'asily Kuz'mich ( 1 776- 1 855), was a well known painter of historical pictures in the pseudo-classical style. ( Tr. )

� At first the national hymn was very naiwly sung to the tune of 'God Save the King.' and indeed it was scarcely ewr sung. It was among the innovations of l\'icholas. From the time of the Polish "'ar the national hymn composed by Colonel Lvo\· of the Corps of Gendarmes was, by Imperial command, sung at all the royal festivities and at large concerts.

The Emperor Alexander was too well educated to like crude flattery; he listened with disgust in Paris to the Academicians' despicable speeches grovelling at the feet of the Conqueror. On one occasion meeting Chateaubriand in his front hall he showed him the latest number of the Journal des Debats, and added: 'I assure you I have ne\·er seen such dull abjectness in any Russian paper.' But in the time of Nicholas there

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To cut himself off from Europe, from enlightenment, from the revolution of which he had been frightened since the Fourteenth of December, 1825, Nicholas on his side raised the banner of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism, embellished after the fashion of the Prussian standard and supported by anything that came to hand-the barbaric novels of Zagoskin, barbaric ikonpainting, barbaric architecture, Uvarov,11 the persecution of the Uniats12 and 'The Hand of the Most High Saved the Fatherland.'13

The encounter of the Moscow Slavophils with the Petersburg Slavophilism of Nicholas was a great misfortune for the former.

Nicholas was simply flying to nationalism and Orthodoxy from revolutionary ideas. The Slavophils had nothing in common with him but words. Their extremes and absurdities were at a ll events disinterestedly absurd, and had no connection with the Third Division or with ecclesiastical jurisdiction; which of were literary men who justified his monarchical confidence, and beat into a cocked hat all the journalists of 1 8 1 4 and even some of the prefects of 1852. Bulgarin wrote in the Northern Bee that among the other advantages of the railway between Moscow and Petersburg, he could not think without emotion that the same man would be able to hear a service for the health of His Imperial Majesty in the morning in the Kazan Cathedral, and in the evening in the Kremlin! One would have thought it difficult to excel this awful absurdity, but there was found a literary man in Moscow who surpassed Bulgarin in elegance. On one of Nicholas's visits to Moscow a learned professor [M. P. Pogodin (A.S. ) ] wrote an article in which, speaking of the mass of people crowding before the palace, he added that the Tsar had but to express the faintest desireand those thousands who had come to gaze at him would gladly fling themselves into the River Moskva. The sentence was erased by Count S. G. Strogonov, who told me this nice anecdote.

9 Lyapunov, a national hero who fought the Poles in the 'Time of Troubles.' Several plays were written about him--one by Stepan Alexandrovich Gedeonov ( 1 8 1 6-78 ) , on which Turgenev wrote a criticism.

10 I was at the first performance of Lyapunov in Moscow and saw the hero tuck up his sleeves and say something like, 'I shall amuse myself with the shedding of Polish blood.' A hollow groan of repulsion broke from the whole body of the theatre: even the gendarmes, policemen, and people in the stalls, so undistinguished that even the numbers on their seats seemed to have been worn away. could not find the strength to applaud.

11 Uvarov, Sergey Semenovich ( 1 786--1 855 ) , president of the Academy of Sciences, 1 8 1 8-55 ; Minister for Public Enlightenment, 1 833--49. (R.) 12 The Uniats are members of the Greek Church who accept the supremacy of ;he Pope. ( Tr. ) 13 'The Hand of the Most High Saved th.:! Fatherland' is the title of a play by N. V. Kukolnik, 1 809-68. (Tr. )

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course did not in any way prevent their absurdities from br>ing extraordinarily absurd.

For instance there was staying in Moscow, on his way through, at the end of the 'thirties the Panslavist Gay v1rho afterwards playt:>d an obscure part as a Croatian agitator and was a t the same time closely connected with the Ban o f Croatia, Jdlachich. H lVfoscow pf'ople as a rule trust all foreigners: Gay was more than a foreigner, more than one of themselves; he was both at once ; so he had no difficulty in touching the hearts of our Slavophils with the fatt:> of tht:>ir sufft:>ring Orthodox brothers in Dalmatia and Croatia ; a hugt:> subscription was raised in a few days, and more than this, Gay was given a dinner in the name of all Serbian and Ruthenian sympathies. At the dinner one of the mildest of the Slavophils, both in voict:> and interests, a man of the reddest Orthodoxy, probably vext:>d by the toasts to the lVTontent:>grin prelatt:> and to various grt:>at Bosnians, Czechs and Slovaks, improvised some verst's in \vhich tht:> following not quite Christian exprt:>ssion occurred :

I shall slake nn· thirst with the blood

of 11/ag_rar and German.

All who \Wrt:> not deranged heard this phrase with repulsion.

Fortunately tht:> witty statistician Androsov rescued the bloodthirsty singer; he jumped up from his chair, clutched a dt:>ssert knife, and said: 'Excuse me, gentlemen: I'm going to leave you for a minutt:>: it occurs to me that my landlord Dietz, an old piano-tuner, is a German. I'll just run and cut his throat and be back directly.'

A roar of laughter drowned thf' indignation.

It was while we were in exile and when I was living in Petersburg and ;\'o,·gorod that the J\Toscow Slavophils formed themsPlves into a party that was so bloodthirsty in i ts toasts.

Their passionate and generally polemical character dt:>veloped spf'cially in consequence of the appearanct:> of Belinsky's critical articles; and even bt:>forP that tlwy had had to close their ranks and take a definite stand on the appearance of Chaadayev's Letter and the commotion it caused .

ThP Letter was in a st•nsP thP last word. the limit. It was a H Baron J oseph Jel larhich. an Austrian gen<'ral. "·ho \\"as also a poet and pol i tician. In 1 8·�8 hf' \\"aS appoint<'d Ban of Croatia, and took part in suppressing tlw r<'vol t of the H ungarians. (Tr. )

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shot that rang out in the dark night; whether it was something foundering that proclaimed its own wreck, whether it was a signal, a cry for help, whether it was news of the dawn or news that there would not be one-it was all the same: one had to wake up.

What, one may wonder, is the significance of two or three pages published in a monthly review? And yet such is the might of speech, such is the power of thP spoken word in a land of silence, unaccustomed to free speech, that Chaadayev's Letter shook all thinking Russia. And well it might. There had not been one literary work since Woe from Wit which made so powerful an impression. Between that play and the Letter there had been ten years of silence, the Fourteenth of December, the gallows, penal servitude, Nicholas. The Petrin(' period was brohn off at both ends. The empty place left by the powerful men who had been exiled to Siberia had not been filled. Thought languished: men's minds were working, but nothing was yet a ttained. To speak was dangerous, and indeed there was nothing to say; suddenly a mournful figure quietly rose and asked for a hearing in order calmly to utter his lasciate ogni speran::.a.

In the summer of 1 836 I was sitting quietly at my writingtable in Vyatka when the postman brought me the latest number of the Telescope. One must have lived in exile and in the wilds to appreciate a new book. I abandoned everything, of course, and set to work to cut the Telescope. I saw 'Philosophical Letters,'

written to a lady, unsigned. In a footnote it was stated that these letters had been written by a Russian in French, that is, that it was a translation. This put me against them rather than for them, and I proceeded to read the 'criticism' and the 'miscellany.'

At last the turn came for the Letter; from the second or third page I was struck by the mournfully earnest tone. Every word breathed of prolonged suffering, which by now was calmer, but was still bitter. It was written as only men write who have been thinking for many years, who have thought much and learned much from life and not from theory. . . . I read further: the letter grew and developed, it turned into a dark denunciation of Russia, the protest of one who, in return for all he has endured, longs to utter some part of what is accumulated in his heart.

Twice I stopped to take breath and collect my thoughts and feelings, and then. again I read on and on. And this was published in Russian by an unknown author . . . . I was afraid I had gone out of my mind. Afterwards I read the Letter aloud to

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Vitberg, then to Skvortsov, a young teacher in the Vyatka High School; then I read it again to myself.

It is most likely that exactly the same thing was happening in various provincial and district capitals, in Moscow and Petersburg and in country gentlemen's houses. I learned the author's name a few months later.

Long cut off from the people, part of Russia had been suffering in silence under the most incapable and prosaic yoke, which gave them nothing in return. Everyone felt the oppression of it, everyone had something weighing on his hPart, and yet all were silent; at last a man had come who in his own way told them what it was. He spoke only of pain; there was no ray of light in his words, nor indeed in his viPw. Chaadayev's Letter was a merciless cry of pain and reproach against PPtrine Russia, which deserved the indictment; had it shown pity or mercy to the author or any one else?

Of course such an utterance \vas bound to provoke opposition, or Chaadayev would have bePn perft'ctly right in saying that Russia's past was Pmpty, its present insufferable, and that there was no future for it at all ; that it was 'a lacuna of the intellect, a stt'rn lesson given to the nations of the plight to which a people can be brought by alienation and slavery.' This was both penitt'nce and accusation; to know beforehand the means of reconciliation is not the businPSS of penitence, nor the business of protest-or consciousness of guilt becomes a jest, and expiation insincert'.

But it did not pass unnoticed ; for a minute everyone, even the drowsy and the stunned, recoiled in alarm at this ominous voice.

All were astoundPd and most were offPndt'd, but a dozen men loudly and warmly applauded its author. Talk in the drawingrooms anticipated government measurt's-provoked them. The Russian patriot of G(•rman origin VigPl (wt'll known and not for the right side of him, from Pushkin's epigram) set them going.15

The review was at once prohibited; Boldyrev, the censor, an old man, and the Rector of Moscow University, was dismissed; 1\:adyezhdin the publisher was sent to Ust-Sysolsk ; Nicholas onlered Chaadayev himself to be dPclared insane, and to be oblig(•d to sign an undertaking to write nothing. Every Saturday lw was visi ted by the doctor and the politsmeptcr; they

� � Herzen was mis!Pd hv false rumours. The decision to close down thl'

Trlrscopr was takPn h�fon• \'igl'l's delation. Pushkin's epigram begins

'Curs<•d town of Kishiner.' ( A .S.)

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interviewed him and made a report, that is, gave out over their signature fifty-two false statements by the command of His Majesty-an intelligent and moral proceeding. It was they of course who were punished. Chaadayev looked with profound contempt on these tricks of the truly insane arbitrariness of power. Neither the doctor nor the politsmeyster ever hinted at what they had come for.

I had seen Chaadayev once before my exile. It was on the very day of Ogarev's arrest. I have mentioned already that on that day there was a dinner party at M. F. Orlov's. All the guests were assembled when a man, bowing coldly, walked into the room. His unusual appearance, handsome, with a striking air of independence, was bound to attract everyone's attention. Orlov took me by the hand and introduced me: it was Chaadayev. I remember little of that first meeting; I had no thoughts to spare for him ; he was as always cold, grave, clever, and malicious.

After dinner Madame Rayevsky, Orlov's mother-in-law, said to me:

'How is it you are so sad? Oh you young people! I don't know what has come over you in these days.'

'Then you do think,' said Chaadayev, 'that there still are young people in these days?'

That is all that has remained in my memory.

On my return to Moscow I made friends with him and from the time until I went away we were on the best of terms.

Chaadayev's melancholy and peculiar figure stood out sharply like a mournful reproach against the faded and dreary background of Moscow 'high life. ' 1 6 I liked looking at him among the tawdry aristocracy, feather-brained Senators, grey-headed scapegraces, and venerable nonentities. However dense the crowd, the eye found him at once. The years did not mar his graceful figure; he was very scrupulous in his dress, his pale, delicate face was completely motionless v�<·hen he was silent, as though made of wax or of marble-'a forehead like a bare skull,'1i -his greyblue eyes were melancholy and at the same time there was something kindly in them, though his thin lips smiled ironically.

For ten years he stood with folded arms, by a column, by a tree on the boulevard, in drawing-rooms and theatres, at the club and, an embodied veto, a living protest, gazed at the vortex of faces senselessly whirling round him. He became whimsical and 16 In English. (R.)

l i From Pushkin"s Polkovodets. (A.S.)

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eccentric, held himself aloof from society, yet could not leaYe it a ltogether, then uttered his message, which he had quietly concealed, just as in his features he concealed passion under a skin of ice. Then he was silent again, again showed himself whimsical, dissatisfied, irritated ; again he was an oppressive influence in Moscow society, and again he could not leave it. Old and young alike were awkward and ill at ease with him; they were abashed, God knows why, by his immobile face, his direct gaze, his mournful mockery, his malignant condescension. VVhat made them receive him, invite him . . . still more, visit him? It is a very difficult question.

Chaadayev was not wealthy, particularly in his later years; he was not eminent-a retired captain of cavalry with the iron Kulm crossl8 on his breast. It is true, as Pushkin writes, that he would

In Rome have been a Brutus,

In Athens Pericles,

But here, under the roke of Tsars,

Was only Captain of Hussars.19

Acquaintance with him could only compromise a man in the eyes of the ruling police. To what did he owe his influence? Why did the 'swells' of the English Club, and the patricians of Tverskoy Boulevard flock on Mondays to his modest little study in Old Basmannaya Street? VVhy did fashionable ladies gaze at the cell of the morose thinker? Why did generals who knew nothing about civilian affairs feel obliged to call upon the old man, to pretend awkwardly to be people of culture, and brag afterwards, garbling some phrase of Chaadayev's uttered at their expense? Why did I meet at Chaadayev's the savage Tolstoy 'the American,' and the savage Adjutant-General Shipov who destroyed culture in Poland?

Chaadayev not only made no compromise with them, but worried them and made them feel very clearly the difference between himself and them.2° Of course these people went to see I A It was not this decoration that Chaadayev received after thL• battle of Kulm, but the order of St Anna, fourth class. ( A .S. ) 19 A misquotation from Pushkin's lines 'To a Portrait of Chaadaye,·.'

( A .S. )

20 Chaadayev was often at the English Club. On one occasion Menshikov, Minister of 1\:aval Affairs, went up to him with the words: 'How is it, Petr Yakovlevich. you don't recognise your old acquaintances?' 'Oh, it is you.' answered Chaadayev. 'I really had not recognised you. But how is

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him and invited him to their gatherings from vanity, but that is not what matters; what is important is the involuntary recognition that thought had become a power, that it had its honoured place in spite of His Majesty's command. In so far as the authority of the 'insane' Captain Chaadayev was recognized, the 'insane' power of Nicholas Pavlovich was diminished.

Chaadayev had his eccentricities, his weaknesses: he was embittered and spoilt. I know no society less indulgent, or more exclusive than that of Moscow; it is just that which gives i t. a provincial flavour and reminds one that its culture is of recent growth. How could a solitary man of fifty who had been deprived of almost all his friends, who had lost his property, who lived a great deal in thought, and had suffered many mortifications, fail to have his whims and habits?

Chaadayev had been Vasilchikov's adjutant at the time of the celebrated Semenovsky affair.21 The Tsar was at the time, if I remember right, at Verona or Aachen for a congress. Vasilchikov sent Chaadayev to him with a report and he was somehow or other an hour or two behind time, and arrived later than a courier sent by the Austrian ambassador Lebzeltern. The Tsar, annoyed at the news, and at that time completely influenced towards reaction by Metternich, who was delighted at the news of the Semenovsky affair, received Chaadayev very harshly, reprimanded him, lost his temper and then, recovering himself, directed that he should be offered the post of an Imperial adjutant ; Chaadayev declined the honour and asked only one favour-his discharge. Of course this was not liked, but he received his discharge.

Chaadayev was in no haste to return to Russia; on relinquishing his gold-laced uniform he devoted himsl"lf to study. Alexander died-the Fourteenth of December came-Chaadayev's it you are wearing a black collar? I fancy that you used to wear a rt'd one.' '\\'hy, don't you know I am Minister of Naval Affairs?" 'You! why.

I imagine you have never steert'd a boa t.' 'You don't net'd much wit to bake a pot, you know,' answered l\IenshikO\·, a little bit displt'ased. 'Oh, well, if it is on that principle . . . .' answert'd Chaadaye,·.

A Senator was complaining vehemently of being \·cry busy. '\Yith what?' asked Chaadaye\'. 'Upon my soul. the m(•re reading of papers and files!' and the Senator made a gesture indicating a pile a yard from the floor. 'But you don't read them?' 'Oh yes, son)('tinH'S I do. quite a lot; and besides, it is often necessary to gin• my opinion on them.'

'\Yell, I don't S('e any necessity for that.' anS\H'red Chaadaye\'.

2! A ref('rence to the mutiny of the Semiinovsky Regiment of Guards in 1 820. I. V. Vasildnkov at that time COi!Hnanded the Corps of Guards.

(A.S. )

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absence saved him from almost certain persecution22-about 1 830

he returned.

In Germany Chaadayev made friends with Schelling; the acquaintance probably did a great deal to turn him towards mysticism. In his case it developed into revolutionary Catholicism to which he remained faithful all his life. In his Letter he attributes half the calamities of Russia to the Greek Church, to its severance from the all-embracing unity of the West.

On a Russian, such Catholicism was bound to have an even stronger effect. It formally contained all that was lacking in Russian life which \vas left to itself and oppressed only by the material power, and was seeking a way out by its own instinct alone. The strict ritual and proud independence of the Western Church, its consummate limitedness, its practical applications, its irreversible assurance and supposed removal of all contradictions by its higher unity, by its eternal fata Morgana, and its urbi ct orbi, by its contempt for the temporal power, must easily have dominated an ardent mind which began its education in earnest only after reaching maturity.

When Chaadayev returned to Russia he found there a different society and a different tone. Young as I was, I remember how conspicuously aristocratic society deteriorated and became nastier and more servile after the accession of Nicholas. The dash of the officers of the Guards, the aristocratic independence of the reign of Alexander. had all vanished from 1 826 onwards.

There were germs of a new life springing up, young creatures, not yet fully conscious of themselves, still wearing an open collar a l' enfant, or studying at boarding schools or in lycees. There were young literary men beginning to try their strength and their pen, but all that was still hidden, and did not exist in the world in which Chaadayev lived.

His friends were in penal servitude; at first he was left quite alone in Moscow, then he was joined by Pushkin, and there were two of them and later on Orlov made three. After the death of both these friends Chaadayev often used to point out hvo small patches on the wall above the sofa-back where they used to lean their heads!

22 \\'e now know for certain from Yakushkin's Diarr that Chaadayev was a member of the Decembrist society.

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It is infinitely sad to set side by side Pushkin's two epistles to Chaadayev, separated not only by their life but by a whole epoch, the life of a whole generation, racing hopefully forward and rudely flung back again. Pushkin as a youth writes to his friend:

Comrade, have faith. That dawn will break

Of deep intoxicating joy;

Russia will spring from out her sleep

And on the fragments of a fallen tyranny

Our names will be recorded,23

but the dawn did not rise; instead Nicholas rose to the throne, and Pushkin writes:

Chaadarev, dost thou call to mind

How in the past, by youthful ardour prompted,

I dreamt to add that fatal name

Unto the rest of those that lie in ruins?