For them, for our great guides, one could indeed forgive their predecessors a great deal.
But what can one say about their sons?
They had no real sons, but they did have adopted children, to whom they left a legacy. They bequeathed them the milieu in which would emerge and grow toward the light a New Russia, well fitted-out for the difficult journey, tempered by need, grief, and degradation, its life firmly bound to the people, to learning, and to science. It received only insults from above and mistrust from below. It inherited the great task of developing national life from its badly organized elements—with a mature way of thinking and the experience of foreigners. It had to save the Russian people from the emperor's autocracy and from itself. It possessed neither ancestral property nor ancestral memory, had little capital, and virtually no attachment to what currently exists. It is free of obligations and the chains of history. [. . .]
A milieu that is diverse and chaotic, a milieu for intellectual ferment and personal development, it is composed of everything on earth—of raznochintsy, and the children of priests, of gentry-proletarians, of urban and rural priests, of military-school cadets, students, teachers, and artists; infantrymen and the occasional child of a military family, clerks, young merchants, and stewards. in it there were examples and fragments of everything in Russia that was floating above the popular mixture. [. . .]
Blow after blow struck this milieu, and its head was smashed, but its cause was not damaged, it was less damaged than on December i4, and the plow went further and deeper. [. . .]
We want to write for this new milieu and add the words of distant pilgrims to what is taught them by Chernyshevsky from the heights of the tsarist pillory, to what underground voices from the imperial storerooms tell them, to what the tsarist fortress preaches day and night—our sacred dwelling place, our melancholy Peter and Paul Monastery on the Neva.
In the midst of the horrors that surround us, in the midst of the pain and degradation, we want to repeat again and again that we are on their side, that our spirit lives. and we no longer desire to correct the incorrigible, or cure the incurable, but to work with them on searching for the paths of Russian development, and the explanation of Russian questions.
June 1, 1864
Notes
Source: "VII let," Kolokol, l. 187, July 15, 1864; 18:238-45, 584-86.
In referring to the death of Nicholas I, who was buried in the cathedral in the fortress, Herzen uses an image from Matthew 28 of the stone removed from the tomb of Christ as a sign of the resurrection.
"To the Young Generation," by N. V. Shchelgunov and M. L. Mikhailov.
A paraphrase of a remark made by Sofya in act 1, scene 4 of Griboedov's Woe from Wit.
♦ 66 *
The Bell, No. 190, October 15, 1864. Herzen exposes the manipulations of both government officials and the writers who backed them with his satirical, punning subtitles. Katkov attacked Herzen in almost every issue of The Moscow Gazette for seeking the destruction of Russia. After completing this article, Herzen hoped to go to Nice to see the monument he had ordered for his wife's grave, but was prevented from doing so by the arrival there of the empress, Alexandra Fyodorovna (Let 4:40-41).
Government Agitation and Journalistic Police [1864]
herr katoff—le grand
Had Katkov not been spattered with Muravyov and with blood, had poison from his ink not fallen on sentences for penal servitude, he would have been the most amusing fool of our times. His foolish side is completely serious, completely naive, and for that reason has such an irresistible effect on one's nerves.
A terrible professor, he abandoned the lectern, taking from his scholastic activity a teacher's tone, an oppressive pedantry, a pompous arrogance, and, with all this, set off to preach constitutional liberalism.1 After the death of Nicholas, this was a novelty in the Russian press, and people began to read him. As soon as he realized this, he ceased writing, and began in a paternal way to suggest or in an imperious manner to upbraid. It was easy to guess that if some daring fellow did not take heed, the teacher would go to the authorities, i.e., with a denunciation, which is exactly what he did after the Petersburg fires.
That fire was the happiest day in Katkov's life. This is where his government career began. The government and society needed someone to blame for these fires, and Katkov accused his literary enemies. Such a brave man was a real treasure for the government.
The liberal publicist, promoted from the third or fourth rows to the very stage, began by throwing his liberalism, constitutionalism, worship of Europe, etc. overboard, and suddenly felt himself to be a frenzied patriot, a frenzied support of autocracy, and a terrorist, and started to preach Mu- ravyov, Russification, and confiscation.
[. . .] And with this came the crude flattery of the former serf owners. [. . .] Katkov, a demagogue in his criticism of the Polish gentry, felt himself to be a hereditary grandee and became a defender of the Russian landowners against the rabble.
All of this taken together drove him mad. He began [. . .] to use "we" when speaking of the empire and posed as Godunov, having relinquished the throne. [. . .]
But fame has its drawbacks. Katkov's fame resounded throughout the world, everyone looked at him, everyone asked who was higher than the pyramids, eclipsing Alexander and illuminating Mikhail?2 The Germans wrote brochures about him, Belgium published books about him ... his modesty suffered and our journalistic Saul took up his pen in a fury and wrote in issue No. i95 of The Moscow Gazette:
We must at last inform our readers about a very interesting phenomenon that has arisen on the political landscape of Europe—that phenomenon is us. For a while we have been a subject of attention, study, and agitation, open and secret, a subject of correspondence and editorials in the foreign press, and finally, the subject of books. Remarkable legends have appeared about us in serious foreign journals; the European public has been informed, for example, that in far-off, frozen Russia a dragon has been born, whose name is Herr Katkoff, and that he sits in Moscow and from there devises his devastating raids, that an entire nation languishes under his iron yoke and tearfully prays for deliverance from this constriction and let a Saint George appear from beyond the seas to strike down this monster for the pleasure and exultation of the Russian people. Readers might think that we are joking; we solemnly assure them that such legends have appeared in foreign journals. [. . .]
Brilliant. Why didn't he send this inspired article to The Bell? No one has written anything more vicious about him than this and no one ever will.
Notes
Source: "Pravitel'stvennaia agitatsiia i zhurnal'naia politsiia," Kolokol, l. i90, October i5, i864; I8:269-73, 598-99.
From i845 to i85i Mikhail Katkov was an adjunct professor of philosophy at Moscow University. In January Й56, Katkov began to publish Russkii vestnik (The Russian Herald), in which he printed a series of articles calling for the kind of broad self-government that existed in England.
The pyramid metaphor comes from Horace's poem "A Monument." Mikhail Niko- laevich was the tsar's brother and a prominent general.
67 ♦
The Bell, No. i93, January i, Й65. Herzen wrote this on the eve of a gathering of younger emigres in Geneva, as a public answer to their proposal to turn The Bell into an outlet for the radical Russian emigres, which would fundamentally alter a role that Herzen had defined as "words, advice, analysis, denunciation of evil [oblichenie], and theory" (Let 4:68). Nikolay Utin had written to Herzen in July i864, urging him to provide this crucial center for all the forces of change, which would prepare "missionaries" to carry out agitation amongst the people. For this to be effective, the publishing enterprise would have to move to Switzerland, where the majority of young revolutionaries were now located. Herzen had long been in favor of such a move, but did not agree with other suggestions in Utin's correspondence; a meeting was organized in Geneva to discuss these issues in late i864. Even before Herzen's arrival, a platform had been drawn up which insisted that the program of The Bell must be clearly defined, and that it must no longer consist of a random assortment of articles, arranged according to the tastes of Herzen and Ogaryov. Herzen offered to transfer the press to Switzerland, to include work by younger expatriates in The Bell, and to provide them some financial support, but he insisted that the main work of propaganda could take place only in Russia itself. In addition, he was loathe to turn over what had been a very literary journal to people who did not read literature. In a January 4, i865, letter to Ogaryov, Herzen said that he was terribly bored in this company where "no one is learning anything or reading anything" (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 28:9). While Ogaryov generally was more supportive of this group, he co-signed the article "i865" in solidarity with Herzen.