Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich (1827-1892) was chair of the State Council from 1865 to 1881; Katkov spoke out against his liberalism.
Katkov's Moscow Gazette was published by Moscow University. Alexander Nikitenko recalls this episode in his memoirs.
Don't wake a sleeping cat!
* 73 +
Our Future Peers and Our Former Anglomaniacs
[1865]
Le Nord1 relates how a deputation from the English Club (we await with impatience to learn whether there will be a deputation from the Troitsky inn and the Krasny tavern) asked the governor-general of Moscow to ban Potekhin's play A Cut-off Piece, because it comes down hard on serf owners.2 The governor-general refused, and rightly so, but the "imperial theater and the imperial actors got a dressing-down" from the ex-Anglomaniacs, who have paid for rights to The Moscow Gazette.3
It's just as well that Fonvizin4 was able in good time to get his barnyard of wild landowners on the stage, and Gogol was able to publish his graveyard of Dead Souls. It is also fortunate that Turgenev, without going over to the fathers, narrated how when he was still a son, he used to go hunting. [. . .]
Notes
Source: "Nashi budushchie pery i nashi proshedshie anglomany," Kolokol, l. 209, December 1, 1865; 18:471, 677-78.
Le Nord was a political newspaper, published first in Brussels (1855-62, 1865-92) and Paris (1863-64, 1894-1907), and subsidized by the Russian government.
Alexey Potekhin's comedy was published in the October 1865 issue of The Contemporary. Nominated for the Uvarov literary prize, it was declared by Nikitenko to be subversive.
Mikhail Katkov and classics professor Pavel M. Leontiev (i822-i874) paid Moscow University for the right to run The Moscow Gazette. Katkov and Leontiev also edited The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik), a monthly, that over its fifty-year run (i856-i906), moved between liberal, conservative, and reactionary profiles.
The plays of Denis I. Fonvizin ^745^792) include The Brigadier and The Minor.
74 ♦
Nicholas the Orator [1865]
In the August issue of The Russian Herald there is an article about "Events in the Province of Novgorod During the First Cholera Epidemic."1 After a description of the unbelievably stupid and awkward measures taken by authorities in Novgorod province during the cholera epidemic of i830, and several episodes from the sad account of old Russian revenge by military settlers in i83i,2 the author, a witness to these events, includes a short, but eloquent speech given by Nicholas to the assembled settlers. The speech was such a chef d'oeuvre that we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of relating it in full. This is the real Nicholas, sincere, naive, natural, just as his mother bore him and the riding school raised him. "What are you doing, you fools? Where did you get the idea that you were being poisoned? This is God's punishment. On your knees, blockheads! Pray to God! I'll show you!" What sort of matchless line from Corneille is this "I'll show you!"
The artless eyewitness adds: "The military settlers were tried by a military court and all received worthy retribution for their deeds," however, he forgets that before the retribution they had received the tsar's forgiveness, but after their amnesty the guilty were forced to run the gauntlet.
We did not think that the Russian Herald would be the one to throw this heavy stone at the grave of Nicholas. On n'est trahi que par les siens!3
Notes
Source: "Nikolai kak orator," Kolokol, l. 209, December i, Й65; i8:472, 678.
The reference is to an article by staff writer G. F. Sokolov, who identifies himself as an eyewitness. Herzen's version of the title is essentially, if not completely, correct.
Military settlements existed in Russia between i8i0 and i857. They brought married soldiers and their families together with state peasants in newly constructed villages, so that the soldiers, when free, could help with farm work and the peasants could
help relieve the government of costs associated with the military. The misuse of power by officers and commanders and the difficulty of fulfilling both military and agricultural needs led to uprisings, low military readiness, and high costs. 3. One is only betrayed by one's friends.
♦ 75 ♦
The Bell, No. 210, December 15, 1865. This is Herzen's response to the government's repression of literature and journalism in November 1865, only two months after the introduction of new regulations on periodicals, which freed them from pre-publication censorship. The main target of the government's actions was The Contemporary.
The First Ban, the First Warning, the First Trial!
[1865]
I. The Ban on Potekhin's Play
A Cut-off Piece has been banned all the same! Long live the English Club! What a thoroughly dissolute government—there is neither self-control nor unity. It is like the drunken sailor whom Suvorov made to walk "the plank," but who, in his zeal, walked two of them.
II. The First Warning
Instructions from the Minister of the Interior, November 10, 1865. Taking into consideration:
that in the article "Modern Times," placed in the August issue of The Contemporary, especially on pp. 376, 383-4, the principle of the marital union is offended;2
that in the article "Notes of a Contemporary," appearing in the same issue, especially on pp. 308-2i, there is an indirect negation of the principle of private property as applied to capitalists, who supposedly unfairly appropriate for themselves the savings of the working class;
that in an article of the same name in the September issue of the same journal, in the section entitled "How Can One Measure the Approximate Debt of the Civilized Classes to the People?", especially on pp. 93-5, the principle of private property is directly subjected to dispute and negation, and
that in the same article, especially on pp. 97, 98, 103-12, there is a stirring-up of enmity toward the upper classes, particularly property owners, who, by the very principle of their existence, are immoral and harmful to the popular well-being,
the minister of the interior, on the basis of articles 29, 31, and 33, approved of at the highest level on the 6th of April of the current year by the State Council, and in accordance with the conclusion of the Council of the main department on publishing issues has determined: to announce a first warning to the journal The Contemporary, in the person of its publisher-editor Nikolai Nekrasov, and member of the landowning class, and its editor Alexander Pypin, who holds a civil rank in the VII class.3
Finally we can see with our own eyes the game of "warnings," this French disease of an unfree freedom of the press. [. . .]
The Contemporary has been doomed for a long time. Two more of Va- luev's "warnings" and the chronicle will be finished.4 We can neither harm nor help him; the edge of his clothing didn't get tangled up in the wheel of the Petersburg machinery just now, and this is not the case of Potiphar's wife—you can't escape her with a piece of your robe.5 On the day when Chernyshevsky was taken without any judicial basis, having been freed by the Senate from accusations made by the State Council, when he, completely innocent, was placed in the stocks and then sent into exile—without the government considering it necessary or even possible to tell its loyal subject what the case was about—on that day the fate of The Contemporary was decided. Valuev wanted to amuse himself with "warnings." It was a new toy, and a Parisian one at that, something liberal, legal, literal—but the end will be the same: they will decide the fate of The Contemporary without a trial.6