A flickering streak of pale light caught fire on the Russian horizon. We had a premonition, and made a prediction in the midst of the dark night, but did not expect it to happen that quickly—on it we focused all our remaining hopes and fragments of all our expectations. We were already so alien to the West that its fate was no longer a vital question for us. With deep interest, with a sympathetic melancholy, we followed its darkly developing tragedy, but, strengthened by what we had found out and, blessing the great past, we gathered ourselves together, like Fortinbras after Horatio's tale, to continue our journey.
We did not get very far—we were stopped by some sort of endless swamp which we had not expected and which threatened without any great noise to steal our last strength with its swampy, tedious filth, softening our despair with expectations and diluting our hatred with pity. [. . .]
Once again we were wrong about the timing, overjoyed by the pale dawn, not taking into consideration those uncontrolled, dark, insurmountable clouds over which light has no power, or with which entire generations must battle.
The fateful power of contemporary reaction in Russia—senseless, unnecessary reaction—is crushed with such difficulty because it relies on two strong points of the granite fortress, the obtuseness of the government and the underdevelopment of the people.
Slowness in understanding is a power, a force, and the greatest irony over reason and logic. Underdevelopment is not as stubborn, but it only yields to time, a very long period of time. This is what sends us into de- spair—we would sooner give up all things—our property, our freedom— rather than time. "Time is money," as the English say, and it is as expensive and as big a thing as possible: time is us!
But no matter how natural the annoyance that gnaws at a person when he sees that "happiness was so possible, so close," and is slipping away because of the clumsiness of his fingers, no matter how natural the horror that overcomes us when we cry out to our fellow traveler—who does not notice the abyss beneath our feet—and we feel that our voice is not reaching him, we must nevertheless submit to the truth. Instead of stubbornness and a waste of strength in defending paths that have been covered over by reactionaries, we must travel the path along which it is possible to get through. It is in this flexibility during a period of constant striving that all the creativity of nature consists, all the rich variety of its forms, notwithstanding a unity and simplicity of principles and goals.
We must get our bearings in the new situation. It is true that we are emerging poorer from these five years of good hopes, but, to make up for it, with less of a burden on our swampy journey.
We thought that the autocracy in Russia could still perform the noble deed of freeing the serfs with land. [. . .] But what did happen? Autocracy, which never gives anything careful thought, spilling blood and tears with the callousness of a locomotive encountering obstacles, shyly stopped as it pronounced the words "emancipation with land," and began to consult with generals and bureaucrats, with young scholars and old men "decrepit" in their ignorance. As if that were not enough, they summoned prominent people and ordered them to keep their advice to themselves. All of this taken together—the involuntary realization that the imperial house has no more faith in its moral power and in its blood ties with the people, leads both the government and the revolutionary to sense that they have the right to act boldly!
Our article from April i, i860, was the final effort to convince ourselves of the possibility of "the improvement of the imperial way of life" with its liberation from crude and ignorant nobles and the pernicious, numbing bureaucracy.
But already Alexander II, frightened by some kind of apparitions, held onto the endless tails of Panin's coat and said to him: "Do not deceive me!"
That is a kind of abdication.
Alexander II released his bow, and in this lies his historical significance; where the arrow lands is out of his control, and it does not even depend on whether Panin deceives him or not. Isn't this tsarist vacillation another kind of vivos voco?3 Isn't it a bell reminding the minority of adults that it is time to do things themselves, that there has been enough of relying completely on the government? Let us leave administrative matters and diplomatic gossip to it. Let us withdraw from its place on the parade ground and take up our own affairs, and let it stand, like a Neva pyramid, like a mansion in which a dead person lives.
Be assured that there is nothing to expect from the government. Without an Achilles heel for reason, engaged in the preservation of old rituals and official uniforms, satisfied with magnificent robes and material power, it will sometimes, under the influence of the current flow of ideas, convulsively extend its hand to progress, and every time will take fright halfway there... This all may continue for a long time, at least until someone more daring peeps under the curtain and sees not that the emperor is dead but that the government had given the order: "long live the people!"
Who has not happened to see old citadels gloomily standing for centuries on end? Since the time when they poured death down on enemies, a new life has surrounded them with a garland of streets, gardens, palaces, stretching further and further into the fields and coming closer and closer to the embrasures with their rusty cannon, along which a watchman walks in businesslike idleness, while within, sparrows build their nests. Generations go by, and suddenly the question presents itself to everyone: what is the point of these walls, which are not defending us from anyone, why maintain a garrison, with an idle prankster with gray whiskers reporting
every evening to the commandant? The city finds it ridiculous: the ancient fortress is reduced to rubble, and life quickly covers over the scars with its own little swellings and ditches.
Such a threatening fortress is our government. Everything is requisitioned by the commandant, everything, as is expected in a state of siege, willing or not, does its duty. Russia offers the fantastic spectacle of a state in which everything acknowledged to be a human being consists wholly of officials, military and civilian.
Only literature, the universities, and the peasant hut took no positive part in the establishment and maintenance of the autocratic official order, accepted as the government's goal. No attention was paid to the dispirited hut; only schismatic groups were being harassed by officials from time to time for violations of church form. Literature and the universities were roundly hated by Nicholas, an expert on these matters.
The entire people were under a guardianship, like some sort of adolescent. The late guardian had gone to the Herculean extent that he did not allow private individuals to build railroads with their own money!
After that, it remained for the people to finally conclude that they were adolescents, to assume a zoological form and quietly dwell in the company of residents of Khiva, beavers, Kirgiz, and lemurs. But it was precisely here that there proved to be some signs of life. A slave, constrained hand and foot, tied and bound to the "job," without a voice, tangled up in the bureaucracy's nets, sent to be a soldier and flogged, flinched at the incursion of a foreign enemy,4 stretched his muscles, and on the edge of disgrace felt his own power. [. . .]
The tsar also flinched and he also opened his eyes. the silence of the steppe, theft nearby, theft far away, neither a friendly glance nor a human face nor devotion, all buttoned-up collars and properly sewn and fitted uniforms. while below are groans, armies perishing, the thunder of cannon, the fire's glow, ships sinking, blood flowing. a dispatch from Eupatoria fell from his hand and he died.5