Alexey Khomyakov (i8o4-i86o) was an influential Slavophile essayist.
In June i849, Granovsky wrote to Herzen that the situation was getting worse daily, with any attraction to the West stifled, and denunciations multiplying rapidly. There was every reason to go mad, and Belinsky had picked the right time to die.
Major-General Ivan P. Liprandi (i790-i88o) led the Interior Ministry's yearlong surveillance of the Petrashevtsy and compiled a list of everyone who could be linked to the group.
A reference to Dostoevsky's prison memoir Notes from the House of the Dead (Za- piski iz mertvogo doma, i86o-62).
Admiral Charles Napier (i786-i86o) commanded the British fleet in the Baltic during the Crimean War. On July 25, i854, Nicholas visited Kronshtadt.
Spirit wrestlers (dukhobortsy or dukhobory) are one of the many sects that arose in Russia in the eighteenth century; three decades after this essay was written, Leo Tolstoy helped the Dukhobors to immigrate to Canada in order to avoid further persecution by the tsarist government.
Mikhailov took responsibility for the pamphlet and its distribution upon himself and was sentenced to hard labor. In the May i, i862, issue of The Bell, Herzen described "Milhailov's Answers" to the Senate.
General Alexey P. Buturlin (i8o2-i863) helped to suppress the Polish uprising in i83i and peasant disorders in i84i, and served as a governor for fifteen years; he became a senator in i86i.
Arngoldt, Slivetsky, and Rostovsky were officers serving with the Russian army in Poland who were shot in June i862 for spreading revolutionary pamphlets and harmful ideas among the Russian forces. General Liders was the tsar's deputy in Poland. Ob- ruchev was a retired military officer who worked at The Contemporary, was arrested in i86i, and sentenced to hard labor for distributing the "Velikorus" proclamation.
Nikolay Serno-Solovyovich (i834-i866) was one of the organizers of "Land and Liberty" in i86i (not to be confused with a second, more radical, movement of the same name in the i87os), met with Herzen in London, was arrested in July i862, and sentenced to hard labor. His brochure, "The Final Resolution of the Peasant Question," came out in Berlin in i86i.
Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons, which had appeared in i862, stimulated a vigorous debate over the political portrayal of the generations.
55 *
The Bell, No. i63, May i5, i863. This polemic against Katkov and The Moscow Gazette (Moskovskie vedomosti) displays the familiar ironic style of Herzen's journalism, especially with its abundance of rhetorical questions and punning.
What Kind of Government Does Russia Have?
[1863]
The Morning Post suddenly, without warning, reveals that the government in Russia is despotic.1
Do you hear that? In Russia the government is despotic? What kind of lunacy is this!
So Paul I was a despot?
So Nicholas I was a despot?
So even Alexander II is a despot? It is true that since we have begun to forget the unforgettable one, the form of government has not changed.
No, these Jacobins do not understand the Russian government. [. . .]
If Poland rebelled, that is because the Russian autocracy had little freedom to operate, being very much constrained by free institutions. If officers were shot, this is no despotism but Liders's doing.2 If people are held in jails and exiled for their words, without a trial, well, it's all legal and according to the code of laws. chapter and verse, and not despotism. It was clear that The Moscow Gazette could not tolerate such an affront, despite the fact that it was written in the English alphabet, on English paper, in England. The head of The Moscow Gazette quite rightly says that he cannot say "just how painful it is for a Russian person to hear that a serious organ of public opinion in Europe feels it has the right to call our form of government despotic."3
Surely if Palmerston's paper had been more thoughtful, they would not have made this mistake and it would not be "painful for a Russian person."4 The head of The Moscow Gazette "had distinguished himself" by preaching with a schoolboy's bitterness—following Gneist5 and other Germans—the English constitution, the English court, a bicameral legislature, the power of wealth, equality in the face of hunger—in a word, everything up to and including English medical plasters and English salt, and now, with even greater bitterness, defends the government which has entrusted him with such an important job. From that he concludes that the government he defends is parliamentary, free, and not despotic. [. . .]
Notes
Source: "Kakoe upravlenie v Rossii?" Kolokol, l. i63, May i5, Й63; iy:i45-46, 4i3-i4.
An editorial to this effect was published on April 9, i863.
The commander of the army in Poland was adjutant-general Count A. N. Liders (i790-i874), who had helped suppress the earlier rebellion in i83i and the Hungarian revolution in i849. Herzen mentioned the execution of the three officers—Arngoldt, Slivitsky, and Rostovsky—on June i6, i862, in several articles (see Docs. 54 and 72).
This is from a response published in The Moscow Gazette on April 5, 1863.
The Liberal Palmerston was at that time prime minister.
Rudolf von Gneist (1816-1895) was a jurist, legal reformer, and political theorist.
♦ 56 *
The Bell, No. 166, June 20, 1863. Herzen was well informed on activities in the Russian provinces; he saw the hand of some organization other than Land and Liberty in the appearance of a fake proclamation from the tsar to the serfs, and he felt a duty to criticize the ideological position and tactics of any group who, supposedly in Alexander II's name, summoned peasants to confiscate private and government-held lands. This kind of deception became an even more widespread tactic by the end of the 1860s. Despite Herzen's stand, Valuev believed that the manifesto was the work of "Herzen and Company" (Let 3:503).
The Volga Manifesto and Russia in a State of Siege
[1863]
Here is the text of a manifesto that was distributed in villages along the banks of the Volga.1 We are taking it from a printed copy.
By the grace of God, We, Alexander the Second, etc.
In Our unceasing concern for the well-being of all Our subjects, We, by an edict of the 19th of February 1861, acknowledged the desirability of removing the bonds of serfdom from the rural population of the Russia that has been entrusted to Us by God.
Yielding to the entreaties of the landowners, We, however heavily it weighed on our royal heart, ordered all serfs to remain in complete subservience to their former owners for a period of two years, that is, until the 19th of February of the current year, 1863.
Now, having called upon the Almighty for aid, We declare in this manifesto the complete freedom of all of Our subjects, no matter to which rank or status they belonged. Henceforth freedom to believe and practice one's faith will be the right of every person.
To all former serfs, both private and state, We give a fixed amount of land without any payment for it either to the landowners or to the state, for their full, inalienable, hereditary use.
Relying on the loyalty of our people and recognizing the benefit to the country of abolishing Our army, We, from this day forward and forever, free Our beloved subjects from every kind of recruiting and military obligations; for that reason, We are ordering the soldiers in Our army to return to their native regions.