I shall slake nn· thirst with the blood
of 11/ag_rar and German.
All who \Wrt:> not deranged heard this phrase with repulsion.
Fortunately tht:> witty statistician Androsov rescued the bloodthirsty singer; he jumped up from his chair, clutched a dt:>ssert knife, and said: 'Excuse me, gentlemen: I'm going to leave you for a minutt:>: it occurs to me that my landlord Dietz, an old piano-tuner, is a German. I'll just run and cut his throat and be back directly.'
A roar of laughter drowned thf' indignation.
It was while we were in exile and when I was living in Petersburg and ;\'o,·gorod that the J\Toscow Slavophils formed themsPlves into a party that was so bloodthirsty in i ts toasts.
Their passionate and generally polemical character dt:>veloped spf'cially in consequence of the appearanct:> of Belinsky's critical articles; and even bt:>forP that tlwy had had to close their ranks and take a definite stand on the appearance of Chaadayev's Letter and the commotion it caused .
ThP Letter was in a st•nsP thP last word. the limit. It was a H Baron J oseph Jel larhich. an Austrian gen<'ral. "·ho \\"as also a poet and pol i tician. In 1 8·�8 hf' \\"aS appoint<'d Ban of Croatia, and took part in suppressing tlw r<'vol t of the H ungarians. (Tr. )
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 293
shot that rang out in the dark night; whether it was something foundering that proclaimed its own wreck, whether it was a signal, a cry for help, whether it was news of the dawn or news that there would not be one-it was all the same: one had to wake up.
What, one may wonder, is the significance of two or three pages published in a monthly review? And yet such is the might of speech, such is the power of thP spoken word in a land of silence, unaccustomed to free speech, that Chaadayev's Letter shook all thinking Russia. And well it might. There had not been one literary work since Woe from Wit which made so powerful an impression. Between that play and the Letter there had been ten years of silence, the Fourteenth of December, the gallows, penal servitude, Nicholas. The Petrin(' period was brohn off at both ends. The empty place left by the powerful men who had been exiled to Siberia had not been filled. Thought languished: men's minds were working, but nothing was yet a ttained. To speak was dangerous, and indeed there was nothing to say; suddenly a mournful figure quietly rose and asked for a hearing in order calmly to utter his lasciate ogni speran::.a.
In the summer of 1 836 I was sitting quietly at my writingtable in Vyatka when the postman brought me the latest number of the Telescope. One must have lived in exile and in the wilds to appreciate a new book. I abandoned everything, of course, and set to work to cut the Telescope. I saw 'Philosophical Letters,'
written to a lady, unsigned. In a footnote it was stated that these letters had been written by a Russian in French, that is, that it was a translation. This put me against them rather than for them, and I proceeded to read the 'criticism' and the 'miscellany.'
At last the turn came for the Letter; from the second or third page I was struck by the mournfully earnest tone. Every word breathed of prolonged suffering, which by now was calmer, but was still bitter. It was written as only men write who have been thinking for many years, who have thought much and learned much from life and not from theory. . . . I read further: the letter grew and developed, it turned into a dark denunciation of Russia, the protest of one who, in return for all he has endured, longs to utter some part of what is accumulated in his heart.
Twice I stopped to take breath and collect my thoughts and feelings, and then. again I read on and on. And this was published in Russian by an unknown author . . . . I was afraid I had gone out of my mind. Afterwards I read the Letter aloud to
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
294
Vitberg, then to Skvortsov, a young teacher in the Vyatka High School; then I read it again to myself.
It is most likely that exactly the same thing was happening in various provincial and district capitals, in Moscow and Petersburg and in country gentlemen's houses. I learned the author's name a few months later.
Long cut off from the people, part of Russia had been suffering in silence under the most incapable and prosaic yoke, which gave them nothing in return. Everyone felt the oppression of it, everyone had something weighing on his hPart, and yet all were silent; at last a man had come who in his own way told them what it was. He spoke only of pain; there was no ray of light in his words, nor indeed in his viPw. Chaadayev's Letter was a merciless cry of pain and reproach against PPtrine Russia, which deserved the indictment; had it shown pity or mercy to the author or any one else?
Of course such an utterance \vas bound to provoke opposition, or Chaadayev would have bePn perft'ctly right in saying that Russia's past was Pmpty, its present insufferable, and that there was no future for it at all ; that it was 'a lacuna of the intellect, a stt'rn lesson given to the nations of the plight to which a people can be brought by alienation and slavery.' This was both penitt'nce and accusation; to know beforehand the means of reconciliation is not the businPSS of penitence, nor the business of protest-or consciousness of guilt becomes a jest, and expiation insincert'.
But it did not pass unnoticed ; for a minute everyone, even the drowsy and the stunned, recoiled in alarm at this ominous voice.
All were astoundPd and most were offPndt'd, but a dozen men loudly and warmly applauded its author. Talk in the drawingrooms anticipated government measurt's-provoked them. The Russian patriot of G(•rman origin VigPl (wt'll known and not for the right side of him, from Pushkin's epigram) set them going.15
The review was at once prohibited; Boldyrev, the censor, an old man, and the Rector of Moscow University, was dismissed; 1\:adyezhdin the publisher was sent to Ust-Sysolsk ; Nicholas onlered Chaadayev himself to be dPclared insane, and to be oblig(•d to sign an undertaking to write nothing. Every Saturday lw was visi ted by the doctor and the politsmeptcr; they
� � Herzen was mis!Pd hv false rumours. The decision to close down thl'