The Year i860 [i860]
I
Without exaggerated hope or despair we enter the new decade with the firm, even step of an old warrior who has known defeat, and who knows most of all difficult marches through the sandy, dusty, and joyless steppe. [. . .]
.No matter what, things cannot be worse than they were ten years ago. That was the honeymoon of reaction, and with a frozen tear in our eye and anger boiling up in our heart, we looked at the unsuccessful campaign and cursed the shameful age in which we had to live. [. . .]
The gloomy cloud of which we had a premonition from the sharp pain in our mind and heart, obscured more and more as it grew darker and darker, and everything became confused, twisted, and began to sink. heroes arose who served no purpose; words full of wisdom were spoken, but no one understood them. [. . .]
II
Later we felt relieved and could breathe again!2 Morning had come. Tamed by experience and memory, we greeted with tender emotion the brightly burning dawn of a new day in Russia. We rejoiced not because of what this did for us, but, like people recovering after the crisis in an illness, we rejoiced in the right to hope.
Wearied by everything that surrounded us, we gazed at this strip of light in our native sky without arrogant demands or youthful utopias. We limited ourselves to the desire that the coarse iron chains were removed from the poor Russian people, making possible further development; the rest, it seemed to us, would take care of itself, most likely after we were gone. It didn't matter, as long as we got to see for ourselves that there were no obstacles on the path. Our thoughts and our speech went no further than: The freedom of serfs from landowners, The freedom of the word from censorship, The freedom of the courtroom from the darkness of official secrecy, The freedom of backs from the stick and lash.
While we thought and spoke about this, the famous rescript to the nobility of the three Polish provinces was issued.3
He who comprehends the depth of emotion and prayerfulness that filled Kant at the news of the proclamation of the French Republic, as he bared his head, and, lifting his eyes to heaven, repeated the words of Simeon, "Now let my soul depart in peace!"—he will understand what transpired in our soul when we heard the words softly proclaimed by the sovereign—but all the same proclaimed—the emancipation of the serfs!
We grew young again and believed in ourselves, and in the fact that our life had not been spent in vain. then the censorship was eased, along with an end to the shameful restrictions on traveling, the children's colonies and military settlements, and the introduction of projects concerning openness in the courts. We began to rest from our hatred.
Our program was being implemented, and it was easy for us to say: "You have conquered, Galilean!" (The Bell, no. 9).4 We wanted to be defeated in that fashion.
An autocratic revolution could have led Russia to a major development of all its inexhaustible strengths and unknown possibilities, without having spilled a single drop of blood or having erected a single scaffold, and having turned the Siberian highway into a path of wealth and communication instead of a path of tears and the gnashing of teeth.
Yes, we were right to say to Alexander II at the time of his ascent to the throne: "You are exceptionally lucky!"5
Why are we entering a new decade without that radiant hope or firm expectation with which we greeted the epoch of Russia's renaissance?
Alexander II, like Faust, called forth a spirit stronger than himself and was frightened. A kind of exhausting indecisiveness, an unsteadiness in all his actions, and by the end, completely retrograde behavior. It is obvious that he wishes to do good—and fears it.
What happened? Was there a war? An insurrection? Is the government collapsing? Are the provinces seceding? Nothing of the sort! The financial situation is poor, but that is just normal Russian management—everything looks splendid and yet we have not a penny to our names! Besides, reactionary moves do not help the financial situation.
What frightened the sovereign? What are people afraid ofin a cemetery?..
That is what human immaturity means, that people are afraid of nonsense and don't see the real danger, and that they lean against a rotten tree that is right next to a healthy one. Chasing fantasies, they let reality slip out of their hands; fearing ghosts in Jacobin caps, they pet jackals in a general's epaulets; fearing democratic pages in journals, they are unafraid of the oligarch's official document in a velvet cover.
You cannot travel two paths.
No matter what kind of Janus you are, it is impossible to go in two opposite directions at the same time, you can only move with one of your halves in reverse, getting in your own way and helplessly rocking in place.
You cannot desire open discussion and strengthen the censorship.
You cannot desire enlightenment and drive students away from the university gates.
You cannot respect your people as subjects and then not allow them to take their children abroad.
You cannot stand on the side of the people and call yourself "the first nobleman."6
You cannot desire open courts and keep as your thief of justice Panin.
You cannot desire the rule of law and have in your own chancellery an entire division of spies.
You cannot begin new construction and take your helpers from the workhouse of the past. [. . .]
This vacillation will make us lose patience and fall not into despair, but into deep sorrow, all the more because it is completely unnecessary and comes from taking decoration for the real thing, probably from a habit of seeing in a man first of all the kind of collar and buttons he is wearing.
If the sovereign would look carefully, he would notice that he is surrounded by an entire world of phantoms, and that Panin, for example, is not in fact the minister of justice, but a marionette, and made very poorly of sticks. Gorchakov7 does not exist at all—there is just a uniform with a hole in the back in which the conjurer Mukhanov has thrust his fingers, as he pretends that the deceased is still alive, to the distress of the Polish people.
And with whom could you replace these experienced, venerable servants of the throne? Experienced in what? In the emancipation of serfs or the establishment of open courts?..
Here's another example: was Moscow really worse after Zakrevsky? Surely Tuchkov is ten times better than him. If Zakrevsky8 had not read so many French novels and hadn't composed his own sentimental episode a la George Sand, he would still be oppressing Moscow, and the sovereign would believe that he was necessary to the tranquility of the ancient capital!
The cap of Monomakh is not only heavy, it is also large, and it can slip over one's eyes. If only it were possible for a moment to lift it up and show the sovereign—not in the manner of loyal subjects, but in a simple human way—all that is living and dead in Russia, all that will follow his lead if he himself does not abandon the path of development and liberation, and show everything that will oppose him... one would give a great deal for that to happen.