:Jo The Varan�ians \vere Scnndinavian and N"orman trihPs whose rulers were, according to tradition. summoned in 862 hy the northern Sla,·s to rule over them. ( Tr.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
304
There was a time when the half-free West looked proudly at a Russia crushed under the throne of the Tsars, and cultivated Russia gazed sighing at the good fortune of its elder brothers.
That time has passed. The equality of slavery has been established.
We are present now at an amazing spectacle: even those lands in which free institutions have survived are offering themselves to despotism. Humanity has seen nothing like it since the days of Constantine, when free Romans sought to become slaves in order to escape civic burdens.
Despotism or socialism-there is no other choice.
Meanwhile Europe has shown a surprising incapacity for social revolution.
We believe that Russia is not so incapable of it, and in this we are at one with the Slavophils. On this our faith in its future is founded, the faith which I have been preaching since the end of 1 848.
Europe has chosen despotism, has preferred imperialism. Despotism means a military camp, empires mean ·war, the emperor is the commander-in-chief. Everyone is under arms, there will be war, but where is the real enero"yJ At home-down below in the depths-and yonder beyond the Niemen.
The war now beginning31 may have intervals of truce but will not end before the beginning of the general revolution which will shuffle a I I the cards and begin a new game. It is impossible that the two great historical powers, the two veteran champions of all \Vest EuropPan history, representatives of two worlds, two tr<Jditions. two principles-of the State and of personal freedom-should not check, should not shatter the third which, dumb, nameless. and bannerless comes forward so inopportunely with the rope of slavery on its neck and rudely knocks at the doors of Europe and the doors of history, with an insolent claim to Bvzantium, with one foot on Germany and the other on the
-
Paci.fic Ocean.
\Vhether these three will try their strength and shatter each other in thP trving: whethPr Russia will break up into pieces or Europe, cnfPebiPd, sink into Byzantine dotage ; whether they will giw each other tlwir hancls, reanimated for a new lease of life and for an amicable stPp forward, or will slaughter each otlwr pndlPsslv-onP thing WP havP clisconrPd for cPrtain nnd it will not lw Pradicntf'll from thP consciousnPss of thP coming generntions: this is: thn t thP frrc and rational drl'rlopmrnl of
:n \Yri tlC'll at the linw of tiH' CrimPan \\'ar.
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod
305
Russian national life coincides with the aspirations of Western socialism.
To PetersbuJ1S·for
a Passport
A FEW MONTHS before my father's death Count Orlov was appointed to succeed Benckendorf.l I then wrote to Olga Alexandrovna to ask .,vhether she could manage to procure me a passport for abroad or permission on some pretext or other to go to Petersburg to get one for myself. My old friend answered that the latter was easier to arrange and a few days later I received from Orlov His Majesty's permission to go to Petersburg for a short time to arrange my affairs. My father's illness, his death, the actual arrangement of my affairs, and some months spent in the country, delayed me till winter. At the end of November I set off for Petersburg, having first sent a request for a passport to the Governor-General. I knew that he could not grant it because I was still under strict police supervision: all I wanted was that he should send on the request to Petersburg.
On the day of my departure I sent in the morning for a permit from the police, but instead of a permit there came a policeman to say that there were certain difficulties and that the local policesuperintendent himself would come to me. He did come, and, asking me to see him alone, he mysteriously made known to me the news that five years before I had been forbidden to go to Petersburg, and, without His Majesty's orders he would not sign the permit.
'That won't stand in our way,' I said, laughing, and took the letter out of my pocket.
The police-superintendent was greatly astonished; he read it and asked permission to show it to the oberpolitsmeyster, and two hours later sent me my permit and the letter.
1 This happened in September 1844; i.tc., nearly two years before the death of H.'s father. ( A.S. )
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
306
I must mention that my police-superintendent carried on half the conversation in unusually polished French. How mischievous it is for a police-superintendent, or indeed any Russian policeman, to know French, he had learnt by very bitter experience.
Some years previously a French traveller, the Legitimist Chevalier Preaux, arrived in Moscow from the Caucasus. He had been in Persia and in Georgia, had seen a great deal, and was so incautious as to be severely critical of the military operations in the Causasus at that time, and especially of the administration.
Afraid that Preaux would say the same thing in Petersburg, the Governor-General of the Caucasus prudently wrote to the Minister of War that Preaux was a very dangerous military agent of the French government. Preaux was living with an easy mind in Moscow and had been well received by Prince D. V. Golitsyn, when suddenly the latter got an order to send the Frenchman from Moscow across the frontier accompanied by a police-officer.
To do anything so stupid and so rude is always more difficult to an acquaintance, and so after two days of hesitation Golitsyn invited Preaux to his house, and beginning with an eloquent introduction told him finally that reports of some sort, probably from the Caucasus, had reached the Tsar, who had ordered that he should leave Russia ; that he would, however, even be given an escort. . . .
Preaux was incensed and observed to Golitsyn that, seeing that the government had the right to eject him he was prepared to go, but that he would not accept an escort, since he did not consider himself a criminal who needed to be escorted.
Next day when the politsmcyster came to Preaux, that latter met him with a pistol in his hand and told him point-blank that he would not permit a police-officer to enter his room or his carriage, and that he would put a bullet through his head if he attempted to use force.
Golitsyn was, on the whole, a very decent man, which made it the more difficult for him; he sent for Weyer, the French consul, to ask his advice what to do. \'Veyer found an expedient; he asked for a police-officer who spoke French well and promised to present him to Preaux as a traveller who was asking Preaux to let him have a place in his carriage in return for half the travelling expenses.
From the consul's first words Preaux guessed what was up.
'I don't deal in seats in my carriage,' he said to the consul.
'This man will be desperate.'
'Vf!ry wPll,' said Prem1x, 'I'll take him for nothing, but he