We return now to our difficult path with precipices on either side. No ascetic monk in the wilderness was so persecuted, so tempted from the right and from the left sides.
This did not begin just yesterday. When CH attacked us in i858 with his doctrinaire-administrative indictment, we already possessed several purple- red letters,3 accusing us of moderation,4 and there was a lot of abuse for socialism, Jacobinism, various kinds of disrespect, impertinence, etc. Since that time, some people have consistently regarded us as anarchists, others—as pro-bureaucracy, [. . .] some—as bloodthirsty terrorists, others—as gradualist progressives,
some have said in horror: "They summon people to use axes and write appeals!"
others say while gnashing their teeth: "They do not call people to use axes and write not only to the emperor but to the empress as well."
We received two letters recently, one from an old friend and the other from an old enemy.5 "You're exhausted," writes the friend, "you are perishing, you have run aground because you lack the courage to go full sail; you think that development should follow a peaceful path, but it will not follow a peaceful path; in this unhappy eleventh hour you still place your hopes in the government, but it can only do harm; you have stumbled on the Russian hut, which itself has stumbled and has stood for centuries in oriental immobility, with its insistence on the right to land; summon people, gather them together, issue a call, a great time is approaching, it is near."
"You are drowning," writes the enemy, "in some kind of mud, and I pity you. At times a Promethean howl bursts forth from you, but all the same you sink further and further into your abyss. You should change the atmosphere and forget the past, revive and restore yourself, and acquire a different language. At present it is difficult for us Russians to read your speech, because we do not hear a single kind word from you. You do not encounter in our homeland even the slightest positive trait, as if Russians are some kind of nation of outcasts. Twenty-five million private serfs and twenty million owned by the government are receiving freedom and land. Members of the landowning class are enduring their privation with patience and calm, while free voices are heard in the councils, the landed assemblies, and in the press. The troops are unrecognizable. The clergy is undergoing a renewal. does none of this find any response in the soul of one who truly loves the fatherland? No, your Bell has cracked, you cannot spread good news, and it is a crime to spread bad tidings. Ring out the De Profundis and write an epilogue."
In reading this, you so much want to sprinkle ash on your head and go off to the Solovetsky Monastery, and then hand yourself over to the worldly authorities. [. . .]
We were tormented by the knowledge that a great transformation was "so close, so possible,"6 and was for no reason slipping out of our hands. We pursued the emperor, we grabbed at his coat, we stood in his path with The Bell hidden in our jacket (at that point he was still reading us), and pointed out to him briefly and boldly, pleading and growing irritated, that he was turning off the path. [. . .]
We felt sorry for him. We did not represent any systematic opposition, nor a demagogic, forced hatred; we were the first to greet him with a free Russian word when he ascended the throne, and, together with the old world's exiles and the leaders of European revolution, we wanted to drink to the liberator of the serfs, and we would certainly have done that, if the terrible news of April i0, i86i, from Warsaw had not filled our glasses and vessels with Polish blood.
We grew thoughtful over this blood and sadly asked ourselves: "In the end, who is he and where is he going?" Of course, the Polish question had become urgent, and they feared Poland. All the same, to tease them with promises and then shoot unarmed people. that is too much!
Suddenly there was a shot from a different direction—Anton Petrov fell, executed, on a pile of dead peasants.
Could a mistake or fear really lead to this?.. He was deceived—this was the slander of serf owners, their revenge.
There was another flash of lightning—Arngoldt, Slivitsky, Rostovsky. This was no longer a mistake, but a crime.
And so it went, one incident after another. the case of Mikhailov, Ob- ruchev,7 the students, the persecution of journals, the support for corrupt literature. No, none of this was a mistake, but some kind of absurd and immoral conspiracy.
"Yes, but what about i862!"
"What really happened during that notorious i793 on the Neva?8 Four years have passed since then, and it is time for people who closed their eyes in fear to open them and blush. One would need all the nasty spite of a pedant laughed at by young people, all the vindictiveness of puffed- up mediocrity, raised by unfortunate events to the level of the police and the out-of-control prosecutor, to persuade anyone that the government and society were treading on an underground constructed by "Young Russia," and that two more days and a handful of students along with a couple of officers would proclaim—on Admiralty Square—a republic circumscribed by nihilism and Pugachevism.9
The government put on a frightened face—it wanted to be frightened. It had begun to be disturbed by free speech, it had toyed with liberalism but the joke had begun to wear off, and, seizing upon the fire, which had nothing to do with the secretly printed leaflet, organized a general investigation.
[. . .] No matter how closely we looked and scrutinized the situation, we did not see in the Russia of 1862 a single element that was sufficiently strong and mature, nor a single topic sufficiently elaborated and of general importance, that one could—in its name—amass power, and sufficient power, to throw down the gauntlet to the government. [. . .]
Of all the problems that had been raised, not a single one was elaborated or generalized or clarified in a way that would allow it to serve as a banner. A purely political question was not of interest. The question of peasant land allotment and the commune did not coincide with the exotic socialism in literature or with gentry liberalism—it went against both one and the other. The government was imperceptibly shaky, in the absence of any kind of firm attributes. [. . .] It attacked the younger generation and would have collapsed if not for the help of its most vicious, most legitimate, and ancient enemy—a Polish insurrection.
A Polish insurrection, relying on Europe, halted in an instant the intellectual ferment and the growth of forces eating away at the dilapidated organism of the Russian imperial government, and gave the government a rallying point and a justification.
The opinion of The Bell about Poland and the Polish question had been expressed in a series of letters (1859-1860), and we never changed it one iota: Poland is fully entitled to an independent state, and no person of good conscience can have any doubt of that. They can trample Poland, kill it, transport it to Siberia, and force it in to Europe—all that depends on force. [. . .]
But in recognizing Poland's right, the question remains whether the claim was made at the best time. We think and we thought that they could not have picked a worse moment. [. . .]