Two years of terror, of tsarist demagogy, awash in blood and violence, two years of paid-for slander and official journalism.
This is the first fruit of that corruption of public opinion—so masterfully carried out by the government—of that bloodthirsty mood which the government's defenders had stirred up since the year 1862. These are the first laurels from the Polish victories, from the pillories in St. Petersburg, from the exiles, executions, torture.
The lack of ceremony with which serf owner reaction has appeared in our midst is rarely met with in history. Those who weep for the past ordinarily give it the appearance of a revered relic, a moral sense, and throw a cover over its disgraceful wounds and filthy nakedness. Nothing of the kind happened with our neo-serf owners: they regret their rights to the labor of others, and are angry at the obstacles in their way, as thieves are angry at the arm of the law that prevents them from stealing. In our time only one country achieved these Hercules columns of depravity of thought and word—these are the American southerners, who appeared in churches and journals to defend slavery. Birds of a feather flock together.
What calamities await Russia, if it can produce such poison and is not able to get rid of it? The rotten emaciation we inherited from entire generations who were born into the depravity of slaveholding ferments in our veins, deadening our heart, clouding our mind, and bringing sorrow for the loss of unjust gain to the point of a daring protest—as if mere passion for unearned profit could lead us out of our apathetic drowsiness and passive obedience.
The jubilee of the Free Economic Society afforded an occasion for our neo-serf owners. Everyone knows what this Free society really is, and anyone who does not know should read the account by V. Bezobrazov.3 This is one of those unskillful bits of window dressing with which Catherine II deceived Europe, like the cardboard villages with which Potemkin deceived her. Empty, frivolous, and lifeless, it lasted a hundred years with the same usefulness as parrots and ravens that live as long. Knowing with whom they were dealing, the government allowed the hundred-year-old free society to gather from all corners of Russia rural proprietors,4 to consult with them, and, if necessary, to make statements, i.e., the government gave them the right to organize a congress on the most important issue of national life and gave them the right of petition, which they had denied to the Moscow nobility.5
This conclave, this convention of rural masters, wanted to demonstrate that it was an active force, and it decided. what do you think?.. Guess!
Our dear drones, disguised as bees, decided to disturb the government. On the passing of legal measures promoting the collapse of the rural commune. The chairman of this division was himself ashamed, and he remarked to these utter slaves that these matters may be judged and debated, but that one does not request such arrangements from the government.6
Fortunately, there was a man in the auditorium who could not stand it and defended the commune. Mr. Panaev7 concluded his speech (which the Petersburg newspapers were careless enough to relate briefly) by saying that it would be unjust to decide the question about finding ways to destroy the commune at a meeting of representatives of capital without any representations of labor present. "Mr. Panaev himself sees the commune as the best resolution to the question of the relationship of capital and labor— a great principle, found only in our midst. This principle is the right of a person to land. 'The right to land is the same as the infamous right to work!' noted Mr. Bushen."8
With this hint the matter was not concluded, but only begun, a bouquet having been prepared by Mr. Skaryatin,9 the editor of The News: "Boldly, clearly and smugly he gave a long speech. in defense of serfdom. [. . .] Serfdom was a great productive force, said Mr. Skaryatin, enumerating the blessings of serfdom, which consist of the fact that the landowner kept an eye on the peasant's work and helped him, encouraging the hard-working peasants and reforming the careless ones. He concluded by saying that: 'Everyone benefited from this order of things, and this entire order collapsed on February 19, 1861.' The commune could not take its place, and therefore— given the proliferation of farm laborers—it made sense to dissolve it."
[. . .] What has happened to all the zealous, experienced friends and the defenders of their younger brothers, of the commune, and of communal landholding?..
Where is Ivan Aksakov?
Where is Yury Samarin?
Wouldn't it be better that in place of the spiritual "Day" to publish a worldly "Day" and to do battle over our right to the land than to spend unbearably dull pages answering some sort of Father Martynov,10 whose letters no one has or will read?
Wake up, Brutus! While you celebrated victory over the Poles and occupied yourself with the destruction of the Jesuits, look how the class of Orthodox landowners has raised its ugly head.
Notes
Source: "Krepostniki," Kolokol, l. 2ii, January i, i866; i9:7-i2, 365-67.
"Tu te reveilles, belle endormie!" This is the first line of a song by Charles Dufresny, which Pushkin quotes in the fifth chapter of Eugene Onegin.
On the night of December 2, i85i, Louis Bonaparte, president of the French Republic, dissolved the Parliament and the State Council and arrested leaders of all opposition parties.
The Free Economic Society was created in ^65, with the approval of Catherine II, and lasted, except for a brief closure in i900, until i9i9, when the Bolsheviks finally abolished it. Despite Herzen's disapproval, it is considered to have been a fairly liberal group, interested in acquiring the best machinery from abroad for the improvement of agriculture, and in stimulating new ideas about farm management and the peasantry through numerous essay contests on subjects of vital national interest. In the months after the emancipation, the Free Economic Society organized a literacy committee. A survey of the society's first century of activity was prepared by A. I. Khodnev (not Bezobrazov, as Herzen believed), and was published in The Northern Post in i865 (nos. 237-239). For more on the Free Economic Society, see Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia.
The meeting dedicated to the centenary of the Free Economic Society was ceremonially opened on October 3i, Й65, and went on for six days in the hall of the Petersburg Assembly of the Nobility.
On January ii, Й65, the Moscow nobility presented an "address" to Alexander II in which they asked permission to summon "a general assembly of chosen people from the Russian land to judge the needs common to the entire state." The text of this address and a report on meetings of the noble assembly was published in The News (Vest') on January i4, which led to the newspaper being closed down for eight months, while its editor was taken to court.
Herzen makes use of an account of the fourth meeting day, which was published in the November 7, Й65, issue of The St. Petersburg Gazette. At this meeting the resolution by some members to get the authorities to weaken the peasant communes was proposed by a government statistician and editor, Artur B. Bushen, and opposed by professor of economics Ivan V. Vernadsky (the chair mentioned by Herzen). The Bell goes on to discuss speeches by others present that day.