Perhaps by "formulas," our friends, like the French, have in mind prescriptions, i.e., drugs and orders, given in advance about how to act in this case or that. Indeed, we do not have those kinds of formulas. And there is no need for them. Serious prescriptions are improvised on the general principle of science and on the investigation of a given circumstance. [. . .]
History is what differentiates man from the animals: its character, in contrast to animal development, consists of the application of more or less conscious efforts for the organization of his way of life, for the hereditary, generic refinement of instinct, understanding, and reason with the help of memory. [. . .]
In the middle of the night following the i4th of December and the Polish rebellion of i83i, in the midst of the amazing ease with which the Nicholaevan yoke crushed all the new shoots, the first people to cry out for "land" were the Moscow Slavophiles, and although they stood on actual soil with their left legs,13 they were still the first.
They understood our socioeconomic uniqueness in the allotment of land, in the repartition of land, in the rural commune and communal land- holdings; but, having understood one side of the question, they neglected the other side—the freedom sought by the individual enslaved by the village, tsar, and church. The admirers of the good old days—out of spite for the Petrine order—the true nationalists and premeditated Orthodox believers, with ingratitude forgot that it was the West that had given them an all- saving civilization, in the light of which they found a treasure house in the land, which they began to examine.
Europe, where bourgeois liberalism was going full sail, had no concept of how a mute Russia was living on the sidelines; the most educated of Russians prevented them from seeing anything other than poor copies of their own paintings.
The first pioneer who set off to discover Russia was Haxthausen.14 Having by chance come upon the traces of the Slavic communal system somewhere on the banks of the Elbe, the Westphalian baron set off for Russia and, fortunately, addressed himself to Khomyakov, K. Aksakov, the Kireevskys, et al. Haxthausen was genuinely one of the first to tell the Western world about the Russian rural commune and its profoundly autonomous and social principles—and when was that?
It was on the eve of the February revolution,15 i.e., on the eve of the first broad but unsuccessful attempt to introduce social principles into state structure. Europe was very busy, and, because of its own sad fiasco, it failed to notice Haxthausen's book. Russia remained for them an incomprehensible state, with an autocratic emperor at its helm, and with an enormous military that threatened every movement for freedom in Europe.
Our own attempts to acquaint the West with unofficial Russia followed almost directly upon Haxthausen.
For seven whole years we taught about Russia—as much as we could and where we could.16 Pythagorean theory didn't help very much. We were listened to absentmindedly before the Crimean War, with hatred during it, and inattentively before and after. [. . .]
III
With the death of Nicholas, tongues were loosened. The suppressed, secret, peevish thoughts that had accumulated came to light and told of their daydreams, each in its own way. In Russia at that time there was something completely chaotic, but reminiscent of a holiday, of the morning and springtime.
A remarkable mixture of various ages of mankind, of various directions and views—ones that had long ago exhausted themselves and ones that had barely sprouted—appeared on the scene. It was an opera ball, in which every kind of costume colorfully flashed by, from liberal tailcoats with a collar up the back of the head, as in the time of the first restoration, all the way to democratic beards and hairstyles. The German doctrinaire approach to slavery and absolutism and forgotten platitudes on political economy walked alongside the Russian Orthodox socialism of the Slavophiles and Western social theory "from this world." And this was all reflected not only in public opinion, not only in somewhat uninhibited literature, but in the government itself. [. . .]
All of the Russia that was awakening sincerely craved independent speech—speech not made sore by the censor's collar—yet there was not a single free printing-press to answer this need, except for the one in London. We put the West aside, and turned all our strength to our native cause, toward which we have striven since childhood and throughout our whole life.
The Polestar and The Bell appeared when the move and the rearrangement of furniture were at their height, at that exciting time of endless ferment, in which each word could become an embryo and a point of departure. Having brought on ourselves the responsibility of the first free Russian speech, what in fact did we say? With what did we appear before the giant who was still wiping his eyes?
The entire positive and creative part of our propaganda comes down to those same two words which you will find on the pages of our first publications and in the most recent issues—Land and Liberty, the development of the idea that there is no Liberty without Land and that the Land is not secure without Liberty. [. . .]
Right alongside the emancipation of the serfs we persistently demanded the emancipation of the word as the condition and the atmosphere without which there can be no popular advice about the common cause. Only open discussion and the press can replace the class-free assembly that was impossible before the emancipation of the serfs; only a lively representation of the word—not bound by any forms or censorship—can clarify issues and point out what has actually matured in popular understanding and to what extent.
All around were private struggles and private incidents, issues arose from events and events took place which mixed up all the maps, provoking passionate rejections and attractions, but, while breaking away from the path, we constantly returned to it and constantly held onto our two fundamental ideas.
And that is why, when the sovereign recognized in principle the emancipation of the serfs with land, without the slightest inconsistency and with complete sincerity we said: "You have conquered, Galilean!" for which we received reprimands from both sides.17
We will say in passing that neither the doctrinaires of loyalty nor the puritans of demagogy wanted to understand our unpretentious attitude toward the government. The oppositional and denunciatory character of our propaganda was a matter of practical necessity and not a goal or a foundation; strong in our faith, we had no fear of any kind of pacification, and, changing our weapon with ease, we continued the very same battle. It was impossible for us to lose our way. [. . .]
The idea of a bloodless coup was dear to us; everything that has been said of us to the contrary is just as much a lie as the statement that we assured the Poles that Russia was on the point of an uprising in 1862. There is, however, nothing fantastic in that; in Russian life there are none of the irreconcilable, stubborn, mutually destructive forces which have led Western life from one bloody conflict to another. If such irreconcilability did exist, then it is between the peasants and the landowners, but it was settled peacefully, and would have been settled without any blood at all if the cowardly government and its agents, who are enemies of the peasant cause, had not strained the situation for no reason.