The sins of the fathers do not fall on their descendants only when the descendants do not pride themselves on their origins. A coat of arms comes with certain obligations and serves as a reminder: whoever holds it dear cannot sever ties with family legend; sometimes the light of past glory burns out. and the stains of past disgrace always show themselves.
We impatiently await the second installment of this great unmasking and exposure of our aristocratic servants and at that time we will make extracts from the extraordinarily interesting Notes of Prince Dolgorukov.
We have seen the great-grandfathers of our Petersburg and Moscow matadors—and we will see their grandfathers. and we sincerely ask the author to acquaint us with the fathers as soon as possible.
Notes
Source: "Novaia 'barkhatnaia kniga' russkikh dvorianskikh rodov," Kolokol, l. 233-34, February 1, 1867; 19:218-20, 441-42.
Memoires du Prince Pierre Dolgoroukow (Geneva, 1867), vol. 1. Herzen ironically compares Dolgorukov's critical work with an official genealogy of the most prominent noble families compiled at the end of the seventeenth century by a specially established office for genealogical affairs. The book issued at that time had a crimson velvet cover.
Barin.
A song or verse that horrifies those who hear it (Lat., from Livy). In Livy, this phrase characterized the punishment announced for a young man who had killed his sister; Herzen previously used it in reference to the investigation of the Decembrists.
Members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders were involved in the courts of the Inquisition.
Minute aquatic creatures.
The Petersburg layer.
Our System of Justice
The Bell, Nos. 233-234, February i, Й67. The first part of this article is based on notes sent by an anonymous correspondent. The title and editorial comments were added by Herzen.
Our System of Justice [1867]
All of the accused in the well-known case of the armed uprising in Kazan1 have been condemned by the Kazan criminal court to hard labor for the following period of time:
Ten years:
Vladimir Polinovsky (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Alexander Sergeev (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Semen Zhemanov (arrested at the end of April i863) Alexey Shcherbakov (arrested September i, i863)2 Arkady Biryukov (arrested at the beginning of May i863)
Eight years:
Ivan Krasnopyorov (arrested at the beginning of March i863) Nikolay Orlov (arrested at the beginning of June i863) Vasily Dernov (arrested at the beginning of June i863)
Six years:
Egor Krasnopyorov (arrested at the beginning of June i863) Petr Allev (arrested in the middle of September i863)
Four years:
Rudolf Mitterman (arrested at the beginning of May i863) Viktor Lavrsky (arrested at the beginning of June i863)
The State Senate, despite the petition of the criminal chamber for a lessening of the punishment, INCREASED THE DURATION OF THE PUNISHMENT in the following manner:
For the first two, sentenced by the chamber to ten years of hard labor, the Senate fixed a period of i4 years.
325
For the two who escaped and one who remains (in the same category)—12 years of hard labor.
For those the chamber sentenced to eight and six years—the Senate fixed on i0.
Those who got four years—now get six.3
What's going on? Have the sons of the fatherland completely lost their minds and their conscience?
In December, Mitrofan Podkhalyuzin, a Cossack from the nobility, was shot in Warsaw for his part in the Polish uprising, more than a year after the suppression and pacification. Seeing this, Russian journalists still have no shame in pointing out the cruelty of Turkish rule. Where have the Turks executed someone a year after an offense? Austria betrayed Podkhalyuzin!4 There's character for you!
.I am Rosslav on the throne, and I am Rosslav in shackles.5
Russia is being beaten and beaten. it's all black eyes, bruises, and rags, the provinces and its reputation are being lost little by little, and everything is as vile as before, people are being handed over for punishment as in Ba- kunin's time6 . only then there were no executions.
Russian newspaper further inform us that in Ryazan Yurlov and Obno- vlensky have been sentenced to death . That in Omsk they shot the peasant Portnyagin, "who did not confess to the killing and who WAS NOT FOUND with the stolen belongings of the deceased, but clues in the case demonstrate that the murder must have been committed by him."
What a Hercules column ofcruelty, dullness, stupidity, and heartlessness!
In Orenburg the soldier Arkhip Mayorov was shot for impertinence toward a superior who was planning to flog him, for what reason the newspapers failed to say.
In the matter of the Polish outrage in eastern Siberia,7 the military field court in Irkutsk decided on death sentences for 7 men from the first category, namely Artsimovich (Kvyatkovsky), Sharamovich, Tselinskii, Illya- shevich, Bronsky, Reymer, and Kotkovsky, and, along with that, i9 more by a throw of the dice (one out of every ten) from the second and third categories. An additional i94 were sentenced to one hundred strokes of the lash and an unlimited period of time working in the mines; 92 men, accused of consorting with the rebels, were sentenced according to statutes i99 and 830 relating to exiles; i33 remained under suspicion; 260 were freed outright and four were turned over to a civilian court (The Moscow Gazette, December i5, i866, No. 264).
Notes
Source: "Nashe pravosudie," Kolokol, l. 233-34, February i, i867; i9:22i-23, 442-45.
i. The investigation into the insurrection began in i863; its leaders were tried by a military court and executed. The sentences passed down for the remaining defendants by the Kazan criminal court were affirmed—and the number of years increased—by the Senate in June 1866.
Herzen: "Zhemanov and Shcherbakov escaped in November 1866." The two young men were members of the Kazan branch of Land and Liberty, which conducted propaganda among the peasants. After their escape, both eventually made their way to Switzerland, and introduced themselves to Herzen and Ogaryov.
Herzen's additional comments begin at this point.
Podkhalyuzin was accused of deserting his regiment in 1863 to help the Poles, then hiding under an assumed name in Austria, until his 1865 arrest.
Herzen is paraphrasing the words of Rosslav from Knyazhnin's tragedy of the same name.
Austria handed Bakunin over to Russian authorities in 1851. In 1861, Bakunin escaped from Siberian exile and made his way east, eventually reaching Herzen and Ogaryov in London.
In 1865, Polish exiles staged an uprising in Siberia. Of the 680 people turned over to the military court, only 95 did not receive additional sentences.
♦ 95 ♦
Moscow—Our Mother and Stepmother [1867]
IT IS NOT FOR YOU, NOT FOR YOU1 to hoist the banner for liberation—first cleanse yourselves, repent, acquire one language and one standard, or openly remain the slaves that you are; in this status you can be the "scourges of Providence" but not liberators. A person who selfishly wants freedom for himself and others like him, and at the same time puts his neighbor in stocks, is unworthy of freedom. That is what it was like for Christianity—at the beginning a great thing—and then for the great revolution of 1789 (about which our pygmies now speak condescendingly); if they did not save and liberate the entire world, all the same they did believe in general salvation and liberation, and summoned everyone to their side without the bestial hatred of one species for another, without zoological biases and antipathies.