The Bell is their organ and their voice; on the barren, stony heights there is no one to listen to it, but in the valleys its pure sound rings out all the more powerfully.
Notes
Source: "1 iulia 1858," Kolokol, l. 18, July 1, 1858; 13:293-98, 569-70.
From a poem called "The Old Barrel Organ (Remembering the Unforgettable One)" ("Staraia Sharmanka. K vospominaniem o Nezabvennom"), probably by V. R. Zotov, which circulated in Petersburg and Moscow, and was published in The Bell on November 1, 1857. The "Unforgettable One" is the late tsar, Nicholas I.
Count Viktor N. Panin (1801-1874), minister of justice from 1841 to 1862.
Prince Alexey F. Orlov (i786-i86i), head of the Third Department from i844 to i856, from i856 chair of the State Council and Committee of Ministers, and from i857 chair of the Secret and then Main Committee to examine the question of serfdom.
While still heir to the throne, Alexander II traveled to the Caucasus and visited military units actively engaged in combat, for which he was awarded the Order of St. George, fourth degree.
Konstantin I. Arseniev (i789-i865) was a statistician, historian, and geographer, who tutored the future tsar from i828 to i835.
In November i857, the tsar instructed Vladimir I. Nazimov (governor of Vilna, Kovno, and Grodno) to allow local gentry to form committees to discuss how the serfs might be freed; copies of the rescript were sent to all the other governors and it was published. The "Secret Committee" Alexander set up in January i857 to examine the emancipation question was renamed the Main Committee early the following year.
Herzen: "There are many who reproach The Bell, among them the Prussian Kreuz- Zeitung, with a disrespectful tone and familiar air toward people who, although they stand in the way of any improvement and are major scoundrels, still belong to the highest ranks. [. . .] In the ringing of our Bell there is a howl that arises from the jail cells, barracks, and stables, from the landowners' fields and the censor's slaughterhouse—The Bell definitely belongs to bad society, which is why it lacks the clerk's manners and the secretary's courtesy."
Grigory B. Blank (1811-1889), a Tambov landowner, strongly supported serfdom. Nikolay A. Bezobrazov (1816-1867), leader of the St. Petersburg gentry, wrote brochures about gentry rights.
Herzen refers to articles published in The Bell in 1857 and 1858, exposing crimes against serfs and others, and the absence of punishment for their tormenters.
♦ 19 ♦
The Bell, No. 27, November i, i858. While this public letter to the empress caused a stir, it was not without precedent. In i826, poet Vasily Zhukovsky wrote to Maria Alexan- drovna's mother-in-law, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, whom he had earlier tutored in Russian. Zhukovsky believed that then eight-year-old Alexander Nikolaevich should receive more than just a military education, because Russia needed enlightenment and new laws (Wortman, Development of Russian Legal Consciousness, 138-39). In his memoirs, Herzen claimed that Maria Alexandrovna wept when she read this open letter about the education of her children. Anna Tyutcheva, lady-in-waiting to the empress (and future wife of the Slavophile journalist Ivan Aksakov) wrote in her diary that the scoundrel Herzen was right, and not for the first time; Tyutcheva firmly believed that the empress understood better than anyone else the weaknesses in the education arranged for her sons (Let 2:455-56). The letter was well received by many close to the court for the intelligent and polite tone it adopted (Let 2:458), although at least one historian of Russia later found the entire idea of writing to the empress on such a subject "ridiculous" (Ulam, Ideologies and Illusions, 23). At the end of this issue of The Bell, Herzen invited the tsar to send him any royal speeches—like the one made to the Moscow nobility—that could not be published in Russia.
In Scenarios of Power, Richard Wortman described Nikolay Alexandrovich's tutor, August Theodore Grimm (1805-1878), as a man "whose pedagogy created a scandal that quickly went beyond the bounds of the court and brought the heir's education into debates on Russia's destiny." Wortman went on to say that "Herzen's letter reached its mark. Within a month it was circulating in the court." In 1859, Count Sergey Stro- ganov was chosen to supervise the heir; since the universities were undesirable centers of anti-monarchist politics, he invited respected scholars to read lectures at the palace (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:95-99). Nikolay Alexandrovich, fifteen years old when the letter below was written, grew into a well-educated and promising young man, but tragically died from meningitis in 1865, which prompted Herzen to write another letter to the emperor (Doc. 68). The next in line, Alexander Alexandrovich, to whose education little attention had been paid, assumed the role of heir, and in 1881 succeeded his father as tsar.
A Letter to the Empress Maria Alexandrovna [1858]
Your Highness,
We lack a present, and therefore it is not surprising that we are particularly concerned with the future of our country. The first dawns after a grim and prolonged winter have paled, having barely commenced. and we have grown poorer than we were before, without the hatred that we have lost and the indignation which has softened. We have given ourselves up to the spring breezes, and exposed our long-hardened hearts to feelings unknown since childhood. but we were not fated to see the fulfillment of these or other dreams. People and tsars in our transitional age are left with appeals and placards. To the next generation, perhaps, will belong action and drama.
We do not envy them. Our activity is coming to an end . soon we will pass away, exhausted—but not defeated—by our thirty-year struggle. Let the new generation that comes to replenish our ranks find a better use for their strength. And you, Highness, can be in the forefront of this.
Unfortunately, the fate of autocratic monarchies depends to a great extent on the personality of the tsar. It was not for nothing that Peter I sacrificed dynastic interests and the life of his own son to his reforms.1 Alexander I, who said of himself "Je ne suis qu'un heureux hazard," has passed into history.2 It is in this game of chance that you can increase the possibility of winning in the near future, for the good of Russia.
Until now, the upbringing of the heir has been in your hands, but in a year or two it will slip out of them.
Think of this, when you are alone—when the noise of the court settles down, when all that unnecessary whirlwind of receptions, empty speeches, and empty responses abates, when all those Andreevsky and Vladimirsky stars take a seat and you—a woman and a mother—are left alone with your conscience. Think then about your great responsibility, and the great duty that lies with you.
It is said that you are intelligent, and that not for nothing has the current trend in ideas penetrated the double window-frames of the Winter Palace. It is said that you desire the liberation of the serfs. That means a great deal.
You love Russia—it could not be otherwise. How could you not love the country that, surrounding you with all possible blessings, has placed on you the imperial mantle? And that is not all; another link has been forged between you and the people. The crown which fell on your head during a gloomy year of war and internal desolation constituted for the people an exodus to a new life. With childlike faith they greeted the new reign. With the sovereign you shared those outbursts of popular delight that had not been heard in Russia since Alexander I, wearied by his triumph, returned in 1815 to a burnt-out Moscow. How could you not love Russia! In this country pulses beat strongly; in its very disorder and awkward movements one senses youthful strength, one senses that in this cradle and in these tightly bound swaddling-clothes our future history is straightening out its limbs. To take part in the growth and fate of such a people is a great and tremendous matter.