VII Years [1864]
Seven years ago, in July 1857, the first issue of The Bell appeared. Since that time we have often stopped to check our path against events, and have asked ourselves whether we are moving in the right direction and in the right way. Our goal, our fundamental beliefs were unaltered; our problem remained the same, but the means of solving it had to change. Whether a stream is small or large, its path depends not on itself, but on the general slopes and inclines of the land.
However, approaching the seventh anniversary, we were occupied with another question, namely, ought we in general continue or to come to a halt and await outbursts from the absurd forces of reaction?
Russia has clearly left the path on which it landed in 1855, and for the third year is rushing along with a series of crimes and absurdities toward a series of disasters, which may exhaust it, but for which, at any rate, it will pay.
The howl, the wail, the hissing sound of the person being executed—and of fierce patriotism—drown out all human speech. Educated Russia turned out to be much more barbarian than peasant Russia. Because of this barbarity, terrible deeds and terrible words became possible: executions in Poland, penal servitude in Russia [. . .] Chernyshevsky, placed in the pillory in broad daylight, and all the other savage acts of the government and society.
While this "addiction" to drinking blood continues, what is the point of our speech? Who is there for us to talk to, for whom would we write and publish?
If it were not so painful to be silent, we would have done it. To be silent means to turn away, to forget for a while, and that is beyond our strength. [. . .]
The past places obligations on us. We had sufficient opinions and daring to begin to speak. we continued amidst applause from above and below— we had to have the courage to continue speaking while the drunks sobered up. We had to continue so that the last word of protest did not fall silent, so the pangs of conscience did not subside, so that it would not be doubly shameful afterward. [. . .]
And so our ringing will, as before, summon the living until they come or until we convince ourselves that they no longer exist.
When we began our propaganda we never expected that such a terrible time would come that we would have to say something like this—but did anyone expect it?
In i855 and i857 an awakening Russia lay before us. Its tombstone was removed and carried to the Peter Paul Fortress.1 There were signs of the new age everywhere—in the government, in literature, in society, and in the people. Much of it was awkward, insincere, and vague, but everyone sensed that we had made a start, we had set off and would continue moving along. A mute nation became accustomed to speech, a nation of official secrecy got used to openness, a nation of serf slavery—to grumble about their chains. [. . .] The party of fools and the party of old men were in despair as serf owners pretended to be constitutional liberals.
In the second half of i862, the wind shifted direction. The incomplete emancipation of the serfs had exhausted the strength of the government and society, and the machine put the brakes on and began moving backward.
We ask every public figure who appeared after the death of Nicholas [. . .] let them put hand on heart and say whether any of them foresaw the bloody filth into which Russia has been mired thanks to a coachman like Mu- ravyov, and lackeys who urge him on, like Katkov?
Did they foresee that the death penalty would become for us an ordinary, everyday matter, that prisoners of war would be shot, that the wounded would be hung, and that on a single day as many as six people would be executed on the orders of a worthless general?
That for a secretly printed leaflet,2 full of youthful dreams and theoretical utopias, honest, pure young people would be sent away for hard labor and permanent exile, irrespective of their talent and good name? [. . .]
That among us a literature of denunciations would develop, and that it would become the literature of the day, that the language of journalists would descend to the language of quarreling policemen, and that, when opening the newspaper, we would enter the lobby of the Third Department and the office of a police station? [. . .]
No one could have foreseen this. Horrors that made your heart bleed and took your breath away happened all the time under Nicholas. A downtrodden and cowardly society was silent, displayed no concern, lied to themselves about empathizing, but they did not applaud. Self-interested officials became cold executioners. Now, society applauds, and the executioners punish with enthusiasm, becoming virtuosos as they exceed their orders.
We cannot accustom ourselves to this terrible, bloody, disgraceful, inhuman, insolent Russia, to a literature of informers, to butchers in generals' epaulets, to policemen at university lecterns. [. . .]
.Why, Russia, why must your history, having already gone through terrible misfortunes and the dead of night, continue to travel along the drainpipes? Why didn't you, on the day after the emancipation, when, for the first time since your birth, you could have shown to the world, with a joyously raised head, what a golden fleece you had preserved while poor, while under the landowner's rod, the policeman's stick, and the tsarist whip— why did you allow yourself to be dragged into this ditch, into this cesspool? Be patient now, Russian people. [. . .] You alone will emerge from this in a pure state. Lacking the leisure time for thought, you are not guilty of the path chosen by them; you were forced to shave your heads, forced to take up a rifle, and you set off, obeying unthinkingly, to kill and steal out of hunger. Just do not boast about it—on the same basis, the sea is right in having drowned a ship and the wolf in having killed a traveler.
But you non-people, who support the current order of things, sons of the fatherland, the intelligentsia, civilization, sound interests, the democratic gentry, commanders and teachers. you do not deserve the fate of the prisoner, you really cannot manage anything and will remain as you are. [. . .]
What have you achieved after a century and a half of training, paid for with the sweat, hunger, and cold of an entire people, with the scars on their backs?.. And wasn't even that taught to you by Germans, academies, military schools, lycees, institutes, Smolny Monasteries, tutors, and governesses? Isn't it clear that the stable in your parents' home was a more eloquent teacher, and that the nature of a lackey-slaveholder is not so easily tucked behind a sash of French grammar? I offer my congratulations—your day has come, only it will be a very short one. You do not even understand that you went toward one room but wound up in another.3 You don't know to whom you have given your hand—you never were very discriminating, just arrogant. [. . .] You will perish in the abyss that you are digging together with the police. [. . .]
And as for you, for goodness sake do not think that we pity you. Please, it is time for you to leave the stage, you have done what you were going to do. You did it reluctantly and for that you deserve no respect; you did it thinking only of yourself and for that deserve no thanks. You were that frivolous milieu, that transparent conduit, by means of which the light of Western science illuminated our ignorant life—the deed is done and life will advance without you. [. . .]
Why should you be pitied? Because Ivan the Terrible tortured you and you sang psalms to him? [. . .] Because your grandfathers in the time of Nicholas danced at his coronation, while their sons, in shackles, went on their way to penal servitude? Because of those sons?