A dozen of the hundred essays in this volume are reflections on this first assassination attempt against Alexander II on April 4, 1866. Herzen's initial reaction (Doc. 80) was disapproval of such individual "surprises" as a way of changing history. "The shot was insane, but what is the moral condition of a state when its fate can be altered by chance actions, which cannot be foreseen or prevented, exactly because they are insane?" (Doc. 82). Three years earlier, a group of young Russians visiting England had offered to kill the tsar, but Herzen convinced them to abandon the plan.25 He called Karakozov a "fanatic" who did much more harm than good by bringing the reform era to an abrupt conclusion. That the peasant Komissa- rov, who reportedly deflected the shot, was elevated to the nobility seemed absurd to Herzen. He reminds his reader that while the tsar escaped harm, Nikolay Serno-Solovyovich, the founder of the first Land and Liberty group and a member of The Contemporary's editorial staff, lay dying in Siberian exile. Having resolved early on to put information-gathering above ideological abstractions, Herzen developed the ability to vividly juxtapose facts and events, which became one of his greatest strengths as a political analyst.
Herzen's main point in the essays on Karakozov from 1866 and 1867 is that there was no conspiracy, no matter how hard the Investigative Commission tried to manufacture one (Docs. 82, 84, 86, 91). Therefore, no justification existed for the widespread repression in the wake of the April 4 shot (Docs. 85, 88, 92). He deplored the efforts of the formerly liberal Mikhail Katkov to whip up enthusiasm for Karakozov's execution; the rhetoric in The Moscow Gazette may remind modern readers of Katkov's professional descendants during the 1930s (Docs. 87, 88). Herzen asks "who can fail to see that we were right in pointing out all the absurdity of bringing socialism, nihilism, positivism, realism, materialism, journal articles, student dissertations, etc. into the Karakozov case?" He even laments the split in the conservative forces, pitting Moscow against Petersburg, because political truth and national unity suffered as a result. "Won't this enormous em- pire—whose peripheries are held together by lead and blood . . . crack at its very center?" (Doc. 89).
At the time, only an incomplete record of the investigation and trial was available even to pro-government journalists; a more thorough recent study of the archives in Claudia Verhoeven's The Odd Man Karakozov adds interesting details to the picture painted by Herzen. While the lengthy secret dossier points to the Russian Free Press as one of the foreign stimuli for Karakozov's act, the condensed version published at the time left out Herzen's name; in Russia, he could not be mentioned officially even to cast blame.26 The Moscow Gazette still felt free to speculate on the failed assassin as an agent of the Russian revolutionaries Herzen, Ogaryov, and Bakunin, with their links to radical Polish circles, while government officials spread a rumor that Ogaryov was the young villain's relation.27 The numerous searches carried out in the hunt for co-conspirators turned up illegal Russian publications and photos of the heroic editors.28 At the end of her monograph, Verhoeven focuses on the "odd" nature of Karakozov's act. When asked by the tsar what he wanted, his answer was "Nothing," underscoring the terrorists' belief that the tsar had no power to act; Karakozov's vision on April 4, i866, was of "power's void."29 In "Order Triumphs!" one of Herzen's final essays on the subject, a similar observation is made: "The echo of Karakozov's shot exposed a terrifying vacuum in the Winter Palace" (Doc. 92).
The translated essays from The Bell are presented in chronological order, but out of their original context, since the biweekly issues carried material by Ogaryov and others, along with reports and letters from Russia. The commentary at the beginning of each essay addresses the question of reading in context, but for Herzen the articles were also contributions to an ongoing discussion with fellow Russians, a vigorous debate that began in student groups of the i830s, continued most famously in Moscow and its environs in the i840s, and never ceased while he drew breath. He even refused to have his memoir called a chronicle, insisting to Ivan Turgenev that it was a conversation, full of "facts, and tears, and theory."30 In an i868 letter he told his daughter Tata that "nothing is as boring as a monologue," and Herzen dreaded boredom most of all.31 He enjoyed leaping from topic to topic, from Russian peasants to Polish rebels, and from ridiculous government ceremonies to the censorship, all the while deftly parrying blows from the right and left. Along with the Russian government's weak commitment to reform, Herzen addressed the desert-like sterility of homegrown Russian journalism.32 Accused by some of trying to dominate political discourse, he responded that while demanding and exercising freedom of speech, he did not claim an exclusive "concession on Russian speech in foreign lands" (Doc. 2i).
The strength of the essays in A Herzen Reader comes from astute political commentary married to the formidable literary talent of a man with a deeply personal approach to history; Thomas Masaryk saw this as an unusual and unbeatable combination that could not fail to attract attention.33 Dostoevsky characterized Herzen as, in all things, first and foremost a poet.34 Herzen's "lyrical journalism" was sufficiently distinctive to make unworkable a proposal to publish several essays in Russia under a pseudonym; it was clear that the author's "voice" was easily recognizable, and everyone knew the identity behind the pseudonym Iskander.35 The unique Herzen style comes through in all genres, but it is perhaps strongest in his lead articles, where the goal is more immediate and the timing precise, resembling to a degree the telegrams that were altering the speed—and even the nature—of mid- nineteenth-century communication.36 He placed a great value on precision, even "terseness," which was for many a welcome change from the "opaque, intractable atmosphere of so much Russian thought."37 For Herzen, who funded the Free Russian Press from his inheritance, and who placed at risk himself and others involved in its publication and distribution networks, every word counted and cost; the editorial was never a leisurely literary form. Each comparison and ironic twist, each well-chosen foreign expression, was there to address a weighty matter.
"Vivos voco" (I summon the living) serves as the epigraph to Herzen's announcement in The Polestar of a supplement called The Bell that would commence in mid-1857 (Docs. 9, 10). The Polestar offered hitherto repressed manuscripts and had a retrospective orientation, looking back to the Nicholaevan era and, in particular, the martyred Decembrists; in 1855 Herzen called its goal "a continuation of the legend and the work" (Doc. 4). In contrast, The Bell was entirely forward-looking; the Russia of both the bullying Nicholas I and the soft-spoken historian Timofey Granovsky had passed away, and the possibilities for change were palpable, even from faraway London. Herzen's use of the phrase "Vivos voco" can stand on its own, but he could safely assume that educated readers would recognize this as a borrowing from Friedrich Schiller's 1798 poem "The Song of the Bell" ("Das Lied von der Glocke"). Schiller himself had appropriated the Latin phrase traditionally inscribed on church bells (he apparently knew it from a fifteenth-century church bell in Schaffhausen, Switzerland). In full, the inscription reads: