Our work really only begins now. Therefore, friends, let us go to the printing presses, to our service for the Russian people and for human freedom! But first let us drain our glasses for the health of our liberated brothers and in honor of Alexander Nikolaevich, their liberator!
For the Polish people, for their freedom and equality, for their complete independence from Russia and for the friendly union ofRussians and Poles!
A toast to the tsar Notes
Source: Druz'ia i tovarishchi!.." April 10, 1861, 15:217-19, 419-21.
♦ 33 +
The Bell, No. 96, April i5, i86i. Kovalevsky is the minister of education who banned the speech about the late Konstantin Aksakov at a St. Petersburg University assembly on February 8, 1861. At the conclusion of the assembly, the students' loud demand for a public reading of the speech caused the university authorities present to quickly vanish. Several days later, Kostomarov gave the speech; it was received with great enthusiasm and students lifted the professor up in his chair and carried him out of the auditorium.
The Bell, Kovalevsky, Kostomarov, a Copy, and Cannibals
[1861]
In London, one is forbidden to hang indecent posters on walls; at Petersburg University there is so much freedom that some naughty fellow named Pletnev posted the following announcement:
By order of the minister of education and the trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district, a proposal in my name, dated February ii, i86i, No. 782, directed that the following announcement be made throughout the university.
University Rector Pletnev
(a copy)
Every educated person is aware that lawful requests must be addressed to the authorities in a prescribed way. On this basis, students of St. Petersburg University, as they have been told repeatedly, should declare every request of theirs to the authorities through their chosen colleagues.
Meanwhile, the incident at the university assembly on February 8, most unfortunately, showed that students did not follow the sole legal path for an explanation of their quandary.
This sad incident, which demeaned the dignity of the university, although carried out by a minority of the students, nevertheless brings infamy to the entire student body.
People who consider themselves for the most part educated gave a clear example of their lack of respect for the law and a crude indecency.
To prevent similar actions in the future, in addition to the announcement of December i8, i858, forbidding any demonstration on penalty of the expulsion of the guilty parties from the university, irrespective of their numbers, by order of the highest authority it is announced that:
If disturbances of the type mentioned above are carried out by students as a group at lectures then students of that school and year, who, according to the schedule, were obliged to be at this lecture, will immediately be dismissed, with the exception of those who can offer absolute proof that they were not present at the university at that time.
If a similar disturbance is carried out by a group of students at an assembly or other public university gathering, then all students as a whole are subject to dismissal from the university unless they can offer the absolute evidence mentioned in point i that at the time of the incident in the assembly they were not present.
Certified true copy: Council secretary A. Savinsky
After a few days, the authorities ordered that this announcement—which we take as authentic on the counter-signature of the secretary Savinsky—be taken down.
If it were possible to take this as more than the espieglerie1 of Pletnev and Kovalevsky,2 then, based on the enlightened order of such a ministry, it follows that if all Russia organizes some kind of demonstration, they will expel all of Russia, with the exception of those Russians who can offer absolute proof that they live abroad.
All of this commotion ensued from Kostomarov's desire to give a speech about the work of the late K. Aksakov, but the fathers of the enlightenment along with the fathers of the Third Department found it impossible that in the university a professor publicly praised a man about whom The Bell had written positively. From this emerged the ban on the speech, from this came the displeasure of the students, from this the threat of expulsion of several hundred members of the audience who attended the university and the retention of those who could prove that they did not attend it.
It is remarkable that in all of this the loser was not Kovalevsky, Kostoma- rov, The Bell, the Copy, or the Cannibals, but Alexander Nikolaevich. Now the censorship will not allow a single word about him. We did him more justice than Aksakov, and even without that, we allowed no abuse of him.
So when is Pletnev's jubilee?
Notes
Source: " 'Kolokol,' Kovalevskii, Kostomarov, kopiia, kannibaly," Kolokol, l. 96, April i5, i86i; i5:72-73, 336.
Mischief.
Petr A. Pletnev (i792-i865), critic, poet, professor, friend of Pushkin, editor of The Contemporary from i838 to i846, and rector of St. Petersburg University from Й40 to i86i.
♦ 34 *
The Bell, No. 96, April i5, i86i. Herzen reacts to the new fashion of celebrating the jubilees of reactionary officials. This essay displays the familiar use of puns and unexpected descriptive phrases.
The Abuse of a Fiftieth Anniversary [1861]
For us every kind of public declaration of joy, grief, sympathy, and repugnance is still so new that like children, we do not know when to stop and we make the most innocent game offensive. After the imperial journey through Russia of Alexander Dumas and the election of Molinari into the company of genuinely secret great men1—we have flung ourselves into fiftieth anniversaries. Grech imitates the old men, Grech reads to the old men, with old lips Grech chews the jubilee victuals, and then describes the dishes and the old men in his own gray speeches.2 The appearance of Grech at the table will soon inspire horror in a family, reminding them that someone is past seventy. We hardly had time to recover from the delightful feelings aroused in us by Grech's story of how, fifty years earlier, at the entry guardhouse to St. Petersburg, there arrived a young student from Kazan, poor in money but rich in pure mathematics, how he became a professor, despite the fact that he knew what his field was, that he—more an artist and poet—could not for long be satisfied with pure mathematics and entered the ministry of impure mathematics, and now has himself become minister and is now celebrating his jubilee, and all the same—the old Nestor of jubilees could have said—he is repelled by everything pure and because of that hindered the emancipation of the serfs.3
Thus we hardly had time to recover from the story of the young student from Kazan arriving fifty years ago at the entry guardhouse to St. Petersburg, when Grech presented a new old fellow, P. A. Vyazemsky, for a jubilee. What did he do fifty years ago with no Petersburg guardhouse? What is meant by the beginning of his literary activity fifty years ago?4 But this question would have been unimportant, had he done anything sensible during these fifty years. His literary activity, as well as his service record, is known to everyone except the troubadour singing his praises in frightfully poor verse. What thought or thoughts did this anniversary prince give to the younger generation, what task did he accomplish in his half-century? To be "Karamzin's brother and Pushkin's friend" and the deputy Minister of Education does not give one the right to such recognition. We don't know what kind of brother or friend he was but he did a poor job as the deputy Minister of Education. Why all this agitation—the man barely had time to eat his dinner and listen to the singing poet, when he, the old man, was summoned to tea at Yelena Pavlovna's where the tsar drank to his health. Pogodin himself came from Moscow. What could be added for the fiftieth anniversary of Pushkin—would they really only add Grech's prose and Sol- logub's verse?5