The payment of poll tax for the purpose of maintaining such a vast army, from the day this Manifesto is published onward, is abolished. We command that all soldiers returning from service, as well as all house serfs, factory workers, and urban dwellers be given without any charge an allotment of land from the public holdings of our vast empire.
In every region,2 as in every town, the people will choose four people who enjoy their confidence, who, after meeting in a district center, will choose in common the district representative and other district authorities, four from each district; in the provincial capital, they will choose a provincial representative and other provincial authorities. Deputies from every province, summoned to Moscow, will compose the State Council, which, with Our assistance, will govern the entire Russian land.
That is Our royal will.
Anyone who declares the contrary and does not fulfill this Our royal will is Our enemy. We trust that the devotion of the people will protect Our throne from the attacks of ill-intentioned people who do not justify Our royal trust.
We command all Our subjects to believe only Our royal words. If troops, deceived by their commanders, if generals, governors, and intermediaries dare to oppose with force this manifesto, then each person should rise up to defend the freedom given by Me, and, not sparing your life, enter into battle with all who dare to oppose this Our will.
May the Almighty Lord bless our undertakings!
God is with us! Come to your senses, heathens, and submit, for God is with us!
Issued in Moscow, on the thirty-first day of March, in the one thousand eight hundred and sixty-third year since the birth of Christ, and the ninth year of Our reign.
In the original copy signed by HRH
Alexander
Printed in St. Petersburg under the auspices of the senate.
The authors of such an appeal take a great responsibility upon themselves. This is a dangerous path: the people will stop believing in the printed word.
We are confident that the Land and Liberty group, who as a rule dismiss such isolated actions, have nothing to do with the composition of this manifesto.4 We do not doubt that this appeal was made by people who are decent, but who, meanwhile, do not understand that it maintains the old, unfortunate notion that the tsar wishes to bestow genuine liberty, but is always being prevented from doing so, while it is clear that not only are others hindering the tsar but he is hindering himself, because he himself does not wish to bestow genuine liberty.
If this manifesto was published by a particular circle, then they and others must be advised to join together with the main society and then act with a unified plan.
It is very nice for the government, who for the distribution of some kind of leaflet that involves no action of any kind, to have given all Russia and all Russians over to the caprice of provincial authorities, i.e., terrible governors like Perm's Lashkarev.5 "Such crimes cannot remain unpunished, even if the goal toward which they were directed was unattainable. Provincial officials have been given the duty on the highest authority to subject the distributors of the false manifesto and other provocative appeals to the military courts on the same principle6 on which in the previous year military courts were ordered in the matter of the arsonists."
Notes
Source: "Volzhskii manifest i Rossiia v osadnom polozhenii," Kolokol, l. i66, June 20, i863; i7:i98-200, 433-35.
In April i863, members of a pro-Polish group and students linked to the Kazan branch of Land and Liberty made attempts to distribute the manifesto in the Kazan, Nizhegorodsky, Tambov, and Vyatsk districts.
Volost', the smallest administrative division in tsarist Russia.
The Russian is "v. i v." (velikoe imperatorskoe velichestvo).
Herzen was correct in believing that the document was not the work of the Land and Liberty leadership. It was initiated by a Polish committee whose members decided to make use of strong feelings about land allotments for their own purposes, and composed in Moscow by member of Land and Liberty without the leaders' knowledge, then printed in Vilna (Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 3Ю, mentions another theory about it being printed in Norway and spirited into the empire through Finland), and given to the provincial Polish group for distribution in the volatile Volga region. When the Land and Liberty central committee learned of the false manifesto's imminent appearance, they rushed to issue their own proclamation to neutralize its effects.
Major-General Alexander G. Lashkarevich (i823-i898) was governor of Perm from i86i to i865. The quotation that follows is from an order given by Alexander II and published in the Northern Post newspaper on May i8, i863.
6. Herzen notes here that this means to shoot without justification, as had occurred with an unfortunate Jew in Odessa convicted of arson two years earlier. In the case of the Kazan group linked to the false manifesto, arrests were made in April and May Й63 and the accused were handed over to a military court; four ringleaders were executed in i864, one more in i865, while other participants were sentenced to hard labor.
57 *
The Bell, No. i69, August i5, i863. Ivan I. Kelsiev (i84i-i864) was an auditor at Moscow University and an active participant in the student demonstrations of October i86i that included a march to the home of Governor-General Tuchkov. As one of a three-student delegation hoping to negotiate with Tuchkov, Kelsiev was arrested, exiled to Perm, then arrested once more on suspicion of involvement in revolutionary propaganda, including articles intended for publication in The Bell. Held in a private dwelling in Moscow while awaiting sentencing, Kelsiev escaped to Constantinople with the help of Land and Liberty, only to die the following year. Nikolay I. Utin (i84i-i883), leader of the student movement at St. Petersburg University, was arrested in fall i86i and held for several months. After his father successfully lobbied for his release, Utin joined Land and Liberty in i862, but escaped to London when he learned that the police planned to arrest him again; after a search of his apartment, he was tried and sentenced to death in absentia. He later served as secretary for the Russian section of the First International. In this article, Herzen frequently employs puns in referring to jails and to Russia as a whole.
I. Kelsiev and N. Utin [1863]
Two energetic representatives of university youth—from two very different sides—have been saved from the St. Petersburg government's persecution.
I. Kelsiev, the brother of the publisher of Old Believer anthologies, was arrested in connection with the Moscow student affair and sent to Verkho- ture. From there he was sent for questioning in the matter of Argiropulo and Zaichnevsky.1 Argiropulo died in prison, and Zaichnevsky was sentenced to hard labor. Kelsiev was sentenced to six months of incarceration, after which he was to continue his exile in Verkhoture. [. . .] He preferred— and very wisely—to leave the private dwelling in which he was held, and then the common prison in which the whole of Russia is confined. He is now abroad.
N. Utin was at St. Petersburg University, and his name, like that of Kelsiev, is well known to our readers. He was among the instigators of the
Petersburg University demonstrations, was held in the Peter Paul Fortress and, when faced with a new arrest, decided to leave Russia. We enthusiastically welcome them to Europe.
Note
Source: "I. Kel'siev i N. Utin," Kolokol, l. 169, August 15, 1863; 17:234, 446-47.