For Herzen, nothing leisurely or long-winded could be permitted in the printed messages sent back to Russia. In a letter to Ogaryov, Herzen insisted that in publitsistika "one must sharply cut, throw out, and, most importantly, one must compress phrases." This remark conveys the energy of Herzen's writing, by means of which he launched phrases like missiles in order to strike the enemy.57 Vasily Rozanov wrote bitterly in pre-revolutionary years of Herzen's introduction of "a whole stream of expressions into Russia," of being the "founder of political nonsense," and a bad influence on high- school students.58 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a newspaper article of i965, noted that in Herzen "we find a great number of bold formations which firmed the step of Russian letters and reached out for the unexpected, concise, and energetic control of words."59 Brevity and well-aimed wit become strategies, with each phrase and punctuation mark playing a role in his journalism. There is a decided preference for the exclamation, which appears in the titles of Herzen essays (e.g., "St. George's Day! St. George's Day!" "Forward! Forward!" "Down with Birch Rods!", "Russian Blood Is Flowing!" "A Giant is Awakening!" "Order Triumphs!"), and even more frequently within the body of his essays.60
Herzen's style is both emphatic and interrogative, as he poses numerous questions, some genuine, others with the goal of rhetorically engaging his readers. One feels the presence of a masterful prosecutor, arguing his case before the court of public opinion, as well as an inspired preacher trying to get the faithful to sit up in their seats and pay close attention, because the stakes were so high. To sustain a style whose essence was more oral than written, Herzen required "supporters, opponents, conversationalists, and readers."61 The author's acceptance of multiple voices and of dialogue over monologue was already evident in his essay From the Other Shore, something that had impressed the otherwise skeptical Dostoevsky. In the process of gathering material for what eventually became the novel Demons, Dostoevsky found Herzen to be essential reading.62 His own publication Diary of a Writer (i873-8i) carried on The Bell's practice of reacting to specific events in a passionately political, and yet still very literary voice.63 Dostoevsky lacked Herzen's gift for irony, but took his sarcasm to a much higher level.
Herzen mistrusted oratory and rhetoric, but he understood the power of direct address and saved its impact for his public letters to the tsar and, on one famous occasion, to the empress (Doc. i9). In these letters he exercised considerable control over his style, muting any strong emotion except deep concern for the Russian people. His conservative foes criticized the brazen inappropriateness of unsolicited advice to the imperial family, while radicals resented the respectful tone and the implication that reform was preferable to revolution. For his first letter to Alexander II (Doc. 5), Herzen took as his epigraph an i823 poem of encouragement to the five-year-old Alexander Nikolaevich, who would likely assume the throne one day. This was hardly an innocent gesture, since the poet, Kondraty Ryleev, had taken part in the Decembrist rebellion two years later and died as one of the five martyrs of i826. Despite this provocative beginning, the letter itself is conciliatory in tone.64
. . . there is one thing in common between your banner and mine— namely that love for the people about which we speak.
And in its name I am prepared to make a huge sacrifice. . . .
I am prepared to wait, to step back a bit, to speak about something else, as long as I have a real hope that you will do something for Russia.
Your majesty, grant freedom to the Russian word. . . .
Give land to the peasants. It already belongs to them. . . .
Hurry! Save the serf from future crimes, save him from the blood that he will have to spill. . . .
Your majesty, if these lines reach you, read them without malice, alone, and then think about them. You do not often get to hear the sincere voice of a free Russian man.
Ten years later, the letter of May 2, 1865 (Doc. 68), at first addressed the tsar with empathy on the death of the heir, Nikolay Alexandrovich; Herzen, after all, had ample experience of personal tragedy. After a few sentences, however, Herzen compares the tsar's loss to that of Polish families whose sons died in the 1863 rebellion. Alexander is praised for the emancipation, and then reminded of the sins he committed against his own and other peoples, for which he must atone.
Forgiveness is not needed for your innocent victims or the suffering martyrs. It is necessary for you. You cannot go forward in a humane way without an amnesty from them.
Sovereign, be worthy of it!
The following year saw a final letter to Alexander II (Doc. 84), prompted by the government's frenzied search for conspirators after Karakozov's attempt on the tsar's life.
. . . let them call me crazy and weak, but I am writing to you because it is so difficult for me to abandon the idea that you have been drawn by others to this . . . terrible injustice that is going on around you. . . .
In all likelihood this is my last letter to you, Sovereign. Read it. Only endless and agonizing grief about the destruction of youthful, fresh strength under the impure feet of profane old men . . . only this pain could make me stop you once more on the road and once more raise my voice.
The number of the "living" summoned by Herzen with The Bell fluctuated during the 1860s and the great bell went silent a few years before the writer's death, not, he explained, because of his enemies, but the result of being abandoned by his friends.65 In a civilization that responded to the bold gesture and the heroic deed (podvig), Herzen had reached across great distances to project his ideas back to Russia, and had "stylistically conquered fate."66 He wrote in Past and Thoughts that when he returned from administrative exile in 1839 "any action was impossible . . . but, to make up for this, great was the power of speech."67 In a 1938 letter, Isaiah Berlin speculated that "if anyone were alive now who talked as he must have done . . . one would never listen to anyone else."68 Herzen preferred discussions among a small circle of close associates and visitors at home and abroad, and spoke only infrequently in public. He was able, however, to bring not just his political analysis but his confident voice to the lead articles that made The Bell so controversial and so influential.
Despite the many decades it took before Herzen's works were easily and legally available in his homeland, interest in him never flagged for long, as each generation found new reasons to listen to his vigorous commentary on Russia. The greatest response to his 1861 call to the intelligentsia to "go to the people" (Doc. 39) came in 1873, three years after his death. Russians traveling to Europe took the opportunity to find his forbidden writings and immerse themselves in his thought before returning home to a still-authoritarian state. Once there had been a stream of visitors to his London residence; now the pilgrims went to his grave in Nice. Fyodor Rodi- chev (1854-1933), an aristocrat who became a liberal leader in the Duma, "discovered" Herzen in Berlin in 1872, and what he read inspired him for a lifetime.69 Characters in Russian novels were said to keep copies of The Bell at home in order to give themselves a progressive air; what could not be a subject of serious public debate could appear as a slightly risque object. The revolutionary year of 1905 and the four Dumas that followed brought his works before a more politicized public that was looking for immediate answers about Russia's future direction. In Tolstoy's opinion, the intelligentsia was so degraded that they were unfit to understand Herzen's writings.70 Trotsky gave Herzen his due for the emphasis on the peasants' "collectivist traditions," but any "cult" was out of the question, because all authority must be subject to "constant reexamination."71 Gorky was more enthusiastic, calling Herzen "an entire province, a country amazingly rich in ideas."72 The authors of the seminal Landmarks (Vekhi) anthology of 1909 found Herzen a frequent point of reference in charting the intelligentsia's political and spiritual evolution. The man who was deemed by many to be a guide for troubled times was excoriated by writer Vasily Rozanov as the villain who helped destroy a millennium-old civilization.