BAKUNIN No. I ran out of revolutions. When the soldiers caught up with me, I was too tired to care. I only wanted to sleep. I had plenty of time to sleep after that … nine months in fetters in the fortress of Königstein, and when the Germans had done with me, as long againin Prague Castle. Thank you for the money you sent. I was allowed to order cigars and books. I learned English! (accented) ‘George and Mary go to the seaside.’ How is George? Thank him for me. Emma sent a hundred francs, too. Small sums of money came from democrats all over, from people I didn’t know. Brotherhood before bread, it’s not all bathwater.
HERZEN You’ve become a myth. I heard that society ladies were collecting funds for a rescue attempt.
BAKUNIN Word must have got back to Russia—there were twenty Cossacks waiting at the border to escort me to the Peter and Paul Fortress. No, it’s up to the revolution now.
HERZEN What revolution?
BAKUNIN The Russian revolution. It can’t be long coming now. Our Westerniser friends at home were waiting for a Russian bourgeoisie to make a revolution for their children, but—don’t you see?—not having a bourgeoisie is Russia’s good fortune!
HERZEN Don’t tell me, tell them.
BAKUNIN Our own revolution, Herzen! Not a bourgeois revolution like in Europe—they let us down very badly, the Germans and the French, they were all for getting rid of aristocratic privilege, but they closed ranks to defend their property.
HERZEN What did you expect?
BAKUNIN Well, why didn’t you tell me?
HERZEN You never listened.
BAKUNIN Why should I listen? There were more poor people with the vote than rich people … How could it turn out the way it did?
HERZEN It’s as Proudhon said, universal suffrage is counterrevolutionary.
BAKUNIN He kept coming out with those, Pierre-Joseph, didn’t he? I taught him Hegel. His wife would serve supper by the fire, go to bed, get up, and serve breakfast, and we’d still be sat there over the embers, going through the categories … Great days, Herzen!
HERZEN Oh … Bakunin!
BAKUNIN We were there for the February revolution. It was the happiest time of my life.
HERZEN I was in Italy. Ten days after I got back to Paris, I knew the revolution was dead … and now the Republic is dead, too. Vive la mort! Did you know? President Louis-Napoleon turned himself into Emperor Louis-Napoleon with only a few thousand arrests. People didn’t care. It was one way out of a Republic which was ashamed of itself. The Second Empire arrived just in time to finish the year off nicely. Expect important changes in furniture and ladies’ fashions. You’re right. It’s over with us Russians and the Western model. Civilisation passed us by, we belonged to geography, not history, so we escaped. We can now get on without being distracted. The West has nothing to teach us. It’s sinking under its weight of precious cargo which it won’t jettison—all those shackles for the mind. With us it’s all ballast. Over the side with it! We’re too oppressed to make do with half-liberty. We’re free to act because we have nothing.
BAKUNIN I couldn’t wait to get to the West! Twenty Cossacks couldn’t have held me back in my yearning for the other shore. But the answer was behind me all the time. A peasant revolution, Herzen! Marx bamboozled us. He’s such a townie, to him peasants are hardly people, they’re agriculture, like cows and turnips. Well, he doesn’t know the Russian peasant! There’s a history of rebellion there, and we forgot it.
HERZEN Stop—Stop.
BAKUNIN I don’t mean your hand-kissing, priest-fearing greybeards—the Slavophiles can have those. I mean men and women who are ready to burn everything in sight and string up the landlord!—with policemen’s heads on their pitchforks!
HERZEN Stop!—’Destruction is a creative passion!’ You’re such a … child! We have to go to the people, bring them with us, step by step. But Russia has a chance. The village commune can be the foundation of true populism, not Aksakov’s sentimental paternalism, and not the iron bureaucracy of a socialist elite, but self-government from the ground up. Russian socialism! After the farce of 1848, I was in despair. My life meant nothing. Russia saved me … and then fate had another trick up its sleeve … Are you there, Michael?
BAKUNIN Oh, yes. If it goes your way, I’ll be there for years. (Bakunin leaves.)
HERZEN Nobody’s got the map. In the West, socialism may win next time, but it’s not history’s destination. Socialism, too, will reach its own extremes and absurdities, and once more Europe will burst at the seams. Borders will change, nationalities break up, cities burn … the collapse of law, education, manufacture, fields left to rot—military rule and money in flight to England, America … And then a new war will begin between the barefoot and the shod. It will be bloody, swift and unjust, and leave Europe like Bohemia after the Hussites. Are you sorry for civilisation? I am sorry for it, too.
Natalie’s voice—from the past—is heard distantly calling repeatedly for Kolya. Distant thunder.
HERZEN (cont.) He can’t hear you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Natalie.
SUMMER 1846
Sokolovo as before: a continuation. Distant thunder. Sasha continues putting the fallen mushrooms into the basket. Natalie’s voice is still calling for Kolya. Sasha stops to look and listen. Men’s voices can be heard yet more distantly, calling to each other—i.e., Herzen and his friends directing each other in the search. Ogarev enters, calling to Natalie.
OGAREV Kolya’s here! He’s with me.
NATALIE (entering) Oh, thank God … thank God!
OGAREV No panic, no panic … he followed the ditch, he’s filthy.
Natalie runs across.
NATALIE (offstage) Mummy thought she’d lost you! Come on, let’s wash you in the stream. (receding) Alexander! … Here! …
Ogarev still has Sasha’s fishing cane and jam jar. Distantly, the men are heard shouting to each other, calling off the search. A final distant sound of thunder.
OGAREV Life, life … (to Sasha) I got to know your papa because of a man nearly drowning … in the river at Luzhniki.
SASHA (interested) Really?
OGAREV Yes, really! A Cossack who was grazing his horse on the Sparrow Hills came running down into the water and saved him, a real hero! Your father was playing by the river and saw it all, and he told his papa, who wrote to the Cossack’s commanding officer about it. The man who was saved came to your house to thank your grandpa for doing that, and so he became friends with your family. And where do I come in? Well, the man in the water later became my tutor, and one day when I was about twelve years old, he took me to meet a boy he’d come to know because of being nearly drowned, and that’s how I met your daddy, and we became best friends.