My door is always open to you and to everyone, but I request that you not visit me, in order not to give credence to rumors that I am under the influence of one or another of you. Thus, gentlemen, I advise you to get to work. Gentlemen, in this regard I can offer my experience; there is no significant government business that cannot be concluded in fourteen days.
The nonsensical words of this count-bureaucrat have almost reconciled us to him, as we have begun to pity this lanky, sickly figure, whose brain had gone soft from the lofty heights (and, to be sure, it was not so firm before this). He is subject only to medical judgment; the court of public opinion is for those who placed him not in a madhouse but in the house of liberation.
Take note that every phrase is a plus-minus—which equals zero.
What can it mean that Panin has nothing to say that is either reassuring or favorable? What would he call reassuring? To leave things as they were? The rights to seize a dwelling, to receive one's quitrent in bed, to require six days labor, to the birch rod, to extortion? Why is the emancipation of the serfs a private and family matter, why must it be muted? This is a matter for an assembly of the land, it is historical, all-Russian, and not a family matter for rich landowners who feel the pain of the poor ones. And bragging about his own fortune is very nice! Imagine a judge who would say to a petitioner: "Despite the fact that I am rich and you are poor, I will defend you." For such a coarse bit of nonsense the minister of justice (if it weren't Panin) ought to have—through Topilsky—reprimanded him.1
The fear of The Bell is too flattering and we will stand on a chair and give him a kiss on the forehead for this. [. . .]
Note
Source: "Slovo grafa Viktora Panina k deputatam," Kolokol, l. 68-69, April 15, i860; i4:254-55, 547-48.
1. Mikhail I. Topilsky (1811-1873) was a department director in the Ministry of Justice prior to i862.
The Bell, Nos. 68-69, April 15, i860. The comparisons, parallels, puns, and the parodic use of elevated language are typical of Herzen. Several of this article's themes are developed more fully in the introduction to the volume After Five Years.
Letters from Russia [i860]
"It is very, very sad! Shouldn't Russia tell Alexander Nikolaevich what Ta- tyana told Onegin: But happiness was so possible, so close!"
One of the many letters we have received during the past ten days ends with these poetic but endlessly melancholy lines.
The letters are remarkable in and of themselves: frightened and surprised people have found the need to announce their indignation, their cry of pain, after the unexpected resurrection of Nicholaevan times.
We will steadfastly get through this time of terrible ordeals, we will become kinder and will not lose faith in Russia's development just because a weak tsar, tripping over Panin, has fallen into the slush and mud of Lu- zhin's denunciations.1 We are even sorrier that "after a five-year reign, which filled Roman hearts with hope, Caesar has changed for the worse!" This was said of Nero; we sincerely wish that these words of the Roman chronicler not be repeated by a future Karamzin.
One should not reproach us. We restrained ourselves up to the last instant, until there was open betrayal, until the criminal appointment of Panin, until the arbitrariness in the matter of Unkovsky and Evropeus, the police conspiracy as a result of which there were arrests of students, Professor Kachenovsky,2 and we don't know who else.3 We could draw back and yield when the mainstream was following the right channel, but now it is quite another matter!
Farewell, Alexander Nikolaevich, have a good journey! Bon voyage!.. Our path lies this way. [. . .]
We are grains of sand—physically cut off—of the awakening crowd, the Russian masses—we are strong only in our instinct, by which we guess how its heart beats, how it bleeds, what it wants to say but cannot.
We will return to that subject, but now we will look at the letters. We will relate only the factual parts and the rumors.
The myths and legends circulating about Panin's appointment are remarkable. One correspondent writes that "Muravyov and Panin were charged with sealing Rostovtsev's study. The sovereign himself appeared and found Panin alone; he waited one hour, and then another. 'Well, then I will name you the chair of the commission.' " Ben trovato! 4 Absurdities ought to be based on dumb chance. When people play blind man's bluff the amusing part is that they do not know ahead of time whom exactly they will catch hold of. And if the sovereign had caught Muravyov, he would not have gotten a bad deal. It's annoying that only courtiers are invited to these petit jeux,5 or maybe luck would have shone on the Parisian Kiselev—who understood the peasant collective even under Nicholas—or on the oldest fighter for peasant emancipation with land, N. I. Turgenev.6 They would have managed this business better than the previous chair. But with the whole embarrass du choix7—between old Adlerberg and young Adlerberg,8 between the tall Panin and the not-too-bright Dolgorukov—there is not much to choose. Diogenes with his lantern would not find anyone here except for Butkov.
There is another legend that is in no way inferior. Two correspondents write that the empress helped bring about Panin's appointment "as a result of her economic and religious ideas, which did not agree with the thought of the emancipation of the peasants with land!"
Indeed, neither pietism nor political economy will lead you to a land allotment. This is a purely German opinion, i.e., harmful, but logisch consequent.9 Christianity demands that we should all be poor and to some extent tramps; moreover, it teaches us to care more for our neighbor than for ourselves. For that reason it is no wonder that the empress, while herself remaining in worldly comfort, wished first to free the serfs from temporary land, making it easier for them to receive an eternal allotment—heavenly plowland—endless acres10 which have been sown for ages and, what's more, with seeds not from any granary.
We do not blame the empress for simultaneously following the teachings of the apostle Paul and the apostle Malthus and for not knowing the Russian situation. But why should she interfere in such foreign matters as the emancipation of our Russian serfs and the allotment of our Russian land to them?
According to a third legend, it is said that, as he was dying, Rostovtsev nominated Panin to the sovereign. That is difficult to believe; could he really have wished to end his career as he began it, or did he die in a state of delirium?11