The Enquiry—Golitsyn Senior—Golitsyn Junior—General Staal—The
Sentence—Sokolovski.
§1
BUT meanwhile what about the charge against us? and what about the
Commission of Enquiry?
The new Commission made just as great a mess of it as its predecessor.
The police had been on our track for a long time, but their zeal and
impatience prevented them from waiting for a decent pretext, and they
did a silly thing. They employed a retired officer called Skaryatka to
draw us on till we were committed; and he made acquaintance with nearly
all of our set. But we very soon made out what he was and kept him at a
distance. Some other young men, chiefly students, were less cautious,
but these others had no relations of any importance with us.
One of the latter, on taking his degree, entertained his friends on June
24, 1834. Not one of us was present at the entertainment; not one of us
was even invited. The students drank toasts, and danced and played the
fool; and one thing they did was to sing in chorus Sokolovski’s
well-known song abusing the Tsar.
Skaryatka was present and suddenly remembered that the day was his
birthday. He told a story of selling a horse at a profit and invited the
whole party to supper at his rooms, promising a dozen of champagne. They
all accepted. The champagne duly appeared, and their host, who had begun
to stagger, proposed that Sokolovski’s song should be sung over again.
In the middle of the song the door opened, and Tsinski appeared with his
myrmidons. It was a stupid and clumsy proceeding, and a failure as well.
The police wanted to catch us and were looking out for some tangible
pretext, in order to trap the five or six victims whom they had marked
down; what they actually did was to arrest a score of innocent persons.
§2
But the police are not easily abashed, and they arrested us a fortnight
later, as concerned in the affair of the students’ party. They found a
number of letters—letters of Satin’s at Sokolovski’s rooms, of Ogaryóv’s
at Satin’s, and of mine at Ogaryóv’s; but nothing of importance was
discovered. The first Commission of Enquiry was a failure; and in order
that the second might succeed better, the Tsar sent from Petersburg the
Grand Inquisitor, Prince A. F. Golitsyn.
The breed to which he belonged is rare with us; it included Mordvínov,
the notorious chief of the Third Section, Pelikan, the Rector of Vilna
University, with a few officials from the Baltic provinces and renegade
Poles.
§3
But it was unfortunate for the Inquisition that Staal, the Commandant of
Moscow, was the first member appointed to it. Staal was a brave old
soldier and an honest man; he looked into the matter, and found that two
quite distinct incidents were involved: the first was the students’
party, which the police were bound to punish; the second was the
mysterious arrest of some men, whose whole visible fault was limited to
some half-expressed opinions, and whom it would be difficult and absurd
to try on that charge alone.
Prince A. F. Golitsyn disapproved of Staal’s view, and their dispute
took a heated turn. The old soldier grew furiously angry; he dashed his
sword on the floor and said: “Instead of destroying these young men, you
would do better to have all the schools and universities closed, and
that would be a warning to other unfortunates. Do as you please, only I
shall take no part in it: I shall not set foot again in this place.”
Having spoken thus, the old man left the room at once.
This was reported to the Tsar that very day; and when the Commandant
presented his report next morning, the Tsar asked why he refused to
attend the Commission, and Staal told him the reason.
“What nonsense!” said Nicholas; “I wonder you are not ashamed to quarrel
with Golitsyn, and I hope you will continue to attend.”
“Sir,” replied Staal, “spare my grey hairs! I have lived till now
without the smallest stain on my honour. My loyalty is known to Your
Majesty; my life, what remains of it, is at your service. But this
matter touches my honour, and my conscience protests against the
proceedings of that Commission.”
The Tsar frowned; Staal bowed himself out and never afterwards attended
a single meeting.
§4
The Commission now consisted of foes only. The President was Prince S.
M. Golitsyn, a simple old gentleman, who, after sitting for nine months,
knew just as little about the business as he did nine months before he
took the chair. He preserved a dignified silence and seldom spoke;
whenever an examination was finished, he asked, “May he be dismissed?”
“Yes,” said Golitsyn junior, and then Golitsyn senior signified in a
stately manner to the accused, “You may go.”
§5
My first examination lasted four hours. The questions asked were of two
kinds. The object of the first was to discover a trend of thought
“opposed to the spirit of the Russian government, and ideas that were
either revolutionary or impregnated with the pestilent doctrine of
Saint-Simonianism”—this is a quotation from Golitsyn junior and Oranski,
the paymaster.
Such questions were simple, but they were not really questions at all.
The confiscated papers and letters were clear enough evidence of
opinions; the questions could only turn on the essential fact, whether
the letters were or were not written by the accused; but the
Commissioners thought it necessary to add to each expression they had
copied out, “In what sense do you explain the following passage in your
letter?”
Of course there was nothing to explain, and I wrote meaningless and
evasive answers to all the questions. Oranski discovered the following
statement in one of my letters: “No written constitution leads to
anything: they are all mere contracts between a master and his slaves;
the problem is not to improve the condition of the slaves but to
eliminate them altogether.” When called upon to explain this statement,
I remarked that I saw no necessity to defend constitutional government,
and that, if I had done so, I might have been prosecuted.
“There are two sides from which constitutional government can be
attacked,” said Golitsyn junior, in his excitable, sibilant voice, “and
you don’t attack it from the point of view of autocracy, or else you
would not have spoken of ‘slaves.’”
“In that respect I am as guilty as the Empress Catherine, who forbade
her subjects to call themselves slaves.”
Golitsyn junior was furious at my sarcasm.
“Do you suppose,” he said, “that we meet here to carry on academic
discussion, and that you are defending a thesis in the lecture-room?”
“Why then do you ask for explanations?”
“Do you pretend not to understand what is wanted of you?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“How obstinate they are, every one of them!” said the chairman, Golitsyn
senior, as he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Colonel Shubenski, of
the police. I smiled. “Ogaryóv over again,” sighed the worthy old
gentleman, letting the cat quite out of the bag.
A pause followed this indiscretion. The meetings were all held in the
Prince’s library, and I turned towards the shelves and examined the
books; they included an edition in many volumes of the _Memoirs_ of the
Duc de Saint-Simon.[74]
Footnote 74:
The author of the famous _Memoirs_ (1675-1755) was an ancestor of the
preacher of socialism (1760-1825).
I turned to the chairman. “There!” I said, “what an injustice! You are
trying me for Saint-Simonianism, and you, Prince, have on your shelves
twenty volumes of his works.”
The worthy man had never read a book in his life, and was at loss for a
reply. But Golitsyn junior darted a furious glance at me and asked,
“Don’t you see that these are the works of the Duc de Saint-Simon who
lived in the reign of Louis XIV?”
The chairman smiled and conveyed to me by a nod his impression that I
had made a slip this time; then he said, “You may go.”
When I had reached the door, the chairman asked, “Was it he who wrote
the article about Peter the Great which you showed me?”
“Yes,” answered Shubenski.
I stopped short.
“He has ability,” remarked the chairman.
“So much the worse: poison is more dangerous in skilful hands,” added
the Inquisitor; “a very dangerous young man and quite incorrigible.”
These words contained my condemnation.
Here is a parallel to the Saint-Simon incident. When the police-officer
was going through books and papers at Ogaryóv’s house, he put aside a
volume of Thiers’s _History of the French Revolution_; when he found a
second volume, a third, an eighth, he lost patience. “What a collection
of revolutionary works! And here’s another!” he added, handing to his
subordinate Cuvier’s speech _Sur les révolutions du globe terrestre_!
§6
There were other questions of a more complicated kind, in which various
traps and tricks, familiar to the police and boards of enquiry, were
made use of, in order to confuse me and involve me in contradictions.
Hints that others had confessed, and moral torture of various kinds,
came into play here. They are not worth repeating; it is enough to say
that the tricks all failed to make me or my three friends betray one
another.
When the last question had been handed out to me, I was sitting alone in
the small room where we wrote our replies. Suddenly the door opened, and
Golitsyn junior came in, wearing a pained and anxious expression.
“I have come,” he said, “to have a talk with you before the end of your
replies to our questions. The long friendship between my late father and
yours makes me feel a special interest in you. You are young and may
have a distinguished career yet; but you must first clear yourself of
this business, and that fortunately depends on yourself alone. Your
father has taken your arrest very much to heart; his one hope now is
that you will be released. The President and I were discussing it just
now, and we are sincerely ready to make large concessions; but you must
make it possible for us to help you.”
I saw what he was driving at. The blood rushed to my head, and I bit my
pen with rage.
He went on: “You are on the road that leads straight to service in the
ranks or imprisonment, and on the way you will kill your father: he will
not survive the day when he sees you in the grey overcoat of a private
soldier.”
I tried to speak, but he stopped me. “I know what you want to say. Have
patience a moment. That you had designs against the Government is
perfectly clear; and we must have proofs of your repentance, if you are
to be an object of the Tsar’s clemency. You deny everything; you give
evasive answers; from a false feeling of honour you protect people of
whom we know more than you do, and who are by no means as scrupulous as
you are; you won’t help them, but they will drag you over the precipice
in their fall. Now write a letter to the Board; say simply and frankly
that you are conscious of your guilt, and that you were led away by the
thoughtlessness of youth; and name the persons whose unhappy errors led
you astray. Are you willing to pay this small price, in order to redeem
your whole future and to save your father’s life?”
“I know nothing, and will add nothing to my previous disclosures,” I
replied.
Golitsyn got up and said in a dry voice: “Very well! As you refuse, we
are not to blame.” That was the end of my examination.
§7
I made my last appearance before the Commission in January or February
of 1835. I was summoned there to read through my answers, make any
additions I wished, and sign my name. Shubenski was the only
Commissioner present. When I had done reading, I said:
“I should like to know what charge can be based on these questions and
these answers. Which article of the code applies to my case?”
“The code of law is intended for crimes of a different kind,” answered
the colonel in blue.
“That is another matter. But when I read over all these literary
exercises, I cannot believe that the charge, on which I have spent six
months in prison, is really contained there.”
“Do you really imagine,” returned Shubenski, “that we accepted your
statement that you were not forming a secret society?”
“Where is it, then?” I asked.
“It is lucky for you that we could not find the proofs, and that you
were cut short. We stopped you in time; indeed, it may be said that we
saved you.”
Gógol’s story, in fact, over again, of the carpenter Poshlepkin and his
wife, in _The Revizor_.[75]
Footnote 75:
Gógol, _The Revizor_, Act IV, Scene ii.
After I had signed my name, Shubenski rang and ordered the priest to be
summoned. The priest appeared and added his signature, testifying that
all my admissions had been made voluntarily and without compulsion of
any kind. Of course, he had never been present while I was examined; and
he had not the assurance to ask my account of the proceedings. I thought
of the unprejudiced witness who stopped outside our house while the
police arrested me.
§8
When the enquiry was over, the conditions of my imprisonment were
relaxed to some extent, and near relations could obtain permission for
interviews. In this way two more months passed by.
In the middle of March our sentence was confirmed. What it was nobody
knew: some said we should be banished to the Caucasus, while others
hoped we should all be released. The latter was Staal’s proposal, which
he submitted separately to the Tsar; he held that we had been
sufficiently punished by our imprisonment.
At last, on the twentieth of March, we were all brought to Prince
Golitsyn’s house, to hear our sentence. It was a very great occasion:
for we had never met since we were arrested.
A cordon of police and officers of the garrison stood round us, while we
embraced and shook hands with one another. The sight of friends gave
life to all of us, and we made plenty of noise; we asked questions and
told our adventures indefatigably.
Sokolovski was present, rather pale and thin, but as humorous as ever.
§9
Sokolovski, the author of _Creation_ and other meritorious poems, had a
strong natural gift for poetry; but this gift was neither improved by
cultivation nor original enough to dispense with it. He was not a
politician at all, he lived the life of a poet. He was very amusing and
amiable, a cheerful companion in cheerful hours, a _bon-vivant_, who
enjoyed a gay party as well as the rest of us, and perhaps a little
better. He was now over thirty.
When suddenly torn from this life and thrown into prison, he bore
himself nobly: imprisonment strengthened his character.
He was arrested in Petersburg and then conveyed to Moscow, without being
told where he was going. Useless tricks of this kind are constantly
played by the Russian police; in fact, it is the poetry of their lives;
there is no calling in the world, however prosaic and repulsive, that
does not possess its own artistic refinements and mere superfluous
adornments. Sokolovski was taken straight to prison and lodged in a kind
of dark store-room. Why should he be confined in prison and we in
barracks?
He took nothing there with him but a couple of shirts. In England, every
convict is forced to take a bath as soon as he enters prison; in Russia,
precautionary measures are taken against cleanliness.
Sokolovski would have been in a horrible state had not Dr. Haas sent him
a parcel of his own linen.
§10
This Dr. Haas, who was often called a fool and a lunatic, was a very
remarkable man. His memory ought not to be buried in the jungle of
official obituaries—that record of virtues that never showed themselves
until their possessors were mouldering in the grave.
He was a little old man with a face like wax; in his black tail-coat,
knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes with buckles, he looked
as if he had just stepped out of some play of the eighteenth century. In
this costume, suitable for a wedding or a funeral, and in the agreeable
climate of the 59th degree of north latitude, he used to drive once a
week to the Sparrow Hills when the convicts were starting for the first
stage of their long march. He had access to them in his capacity of a
prison-doctor, and went there to pass them in review; and he always took
with him a basketful of odds and ends—eatables and dainties of different
kinds for the women, such as walnuts, gingerbread, apples, and oranges.
This generosity excited the wrath and displeasure of the ‘charitable’
ladies, who were afraid of giving pleasure by their charity, and afraid
of being more charitable than was absolutely necessary to save the
convicts from being starved or frozen.
But Haas was obstinate. When reproached for the foolish indulgence he
showed to the women, he would listen meekly, rub his hands, and reply:
“Please observe, my dear lady; they can get a crust of bread from
anyone, but they won’t see sweets or oranges again for a long time,
because no one gives them such things—your own words prove that. And
therefore I give them this little pleasure, because they won’t get it
soon again.”
Haas lived in a hospital. One morning a patient came to consult him.
Haas examined him and went to his study to write a prescription. When he
returned, the invalid had disappeared, and so had the silver off the
dinner-table. Haas called a porter and asked whether anyone else had
entered the building. The porter realised the situation: he rushed out
and returned immediately with the spoons and the patient, whom he had
detained with the help of a sentry. The thief fell on his knees and
begged for mercy. Haas was perplexed.
“Fetch a policeman,” he said to one of the porters. “And you summon a
clerk here at once.”
The two porters, pleased with their part in detecting the criminal,
rushed from the room; and Haas took advantage of their absence to
address the thief. “You are a dishonest man; you deceived me and tried
to rob me; God will judge you for it. But now run out at the back gate
as fast as you can, before the sentries come back. And wait a
moment—very likely you haven’t a penny; here is half a _rouble_ for you.
But you must try to mend your ways: you can’t escape God as easily as
the policeman.”
His family told Haas he had gone too far this time. But the incorrigible
doctor stated his view thus: “Theft is a serious vice; but I know the
police, and how they flog people; it is a much worse vice to deliver up
your neighbour to their tender mercies. And besides, who knows? My
treatment may soften his heart.”
His family shook their heads and protested: and the charitable ladies
said, “An excellent man but not quite all right _there_,” pointing to
their foreheads; but Haas only rubbed his hands and went his own way.
§11
Sokolovski had hardly got to an end of his narrative before others began
to tell their story, several speaking at the same time. It was as if we
had returned from a long journey—there was a running fire of questions
and friendly chaff.
Satin had suffered more in body that the rest of us: he looked thin and
had lost some of his hair. He was on his mother’s estate in the
Government of Tambóv when he heard of our arrest, and started at once
for Moscow, that his mother might not be terrified by a visit from the
police. But he caught cold on the journey and was seriously ill when he
reached Moscow. The police found him there in his bed. It being
impossible to remove him, he was put under arrest in his own house: a
sentry was posted inside his bedroom, and a male sister of mercy, in the
shape of a policeman, sat by his pillow; hence, when he recovered from
delirium, his eyes rested on the scrutinising looks of one attendant or
the sodden face of the other.
When winter began he was transferred to a hospital. It turned out that
there was no unoccupied room suitable for a prisoner; but that was a
trifle which caused no difficulty. A secluded corner _without a stove_
was discovered in the building, and here he was placed with a sentry to
guard him. Nothing like a balcony on the Riviera for an invalid! What
the temperature in that stone box was like in winter, may be guessed:
the sentry suffered so much that he used at night to go into the passage
and warm himself at the stove, begging his prisoner not to tell the
officer of the day.
But even the authorities of the hospital could not continue this
open-air treatment in such close proximity to the North Pole, and they
moved Satin to a room next to that in which people who were brought in
frozen were rubbed till they regained consciousness.
§12
Before we had nearly done telling our own experiences and listening to
those of our friends, the adjutants began to bustle about, the garrison
officers stood up straight, and the policemen came to attention; then
the door opened solemnly, and little Prince Golitsyn entered _en grande
tenue_ with his ribbon across his shoulder; Tsinski was in Household
uniform; and even Oranski had put on something special for the joyful
occasion—a light green costume, between uniform and mufti. Staal, of
course, was not there.
The officers now divided us into three groups. Sokolovski, an artist
called Ootkin, and Ibayev formed the first group; I and my friends came
next, and then a miscellaneous assortment.
The first three, who were charged with treason, were sentenced to
confinement at Schlüsselburg[76] for an unlimited term.
Footnote 76:
A prison-fortress on an island in the Neva, forty miles from
Petersburg.
In order to show his easy, pleasant manners, Tsinski asked Sokolovski,
after the sentence was read, “I think you have been at Schlüsselburg
before?” “Yes, last year,” was the immediate answer; “I suppose I knew
what was coming, for I drank a bottle of Madeira there.”
§13
Two years later Ootkin died in the fortress. Sokolovski was released
more dead than alive and sent to the Caucasus, where he died at
Pyatigorsk. Of Ibayev it may be said in one sense that he died too; for
he became a mystic.
Ootkin, “a free artist confined in prison,” as he signed himself in
replying to the questions put to him, was a man of forty; he never took
part in political intrigue of any kind, but his nature was proud and
vehement, and he was uncontrolled in his language and disrespectful to
the members of the Commission. For this they did him to death in a damp
dungeon where the water trickled down the walls.
But for his officer’s uniform, Ibayev would never have been punished so
severely. He happened to be present at a party where he probably drank
too much and sang, but he certainly drank no more and sang no louder
than the rest.
§14
And now our turn came. Oranski rubbed his spectacles, cleared his
throat, and gave utterance to the imperial edict. It was here set forth
that the Tsar, having considered the report of the Commission and taking
special account of the youth of the criminals, ordered that they should
not be brought before a court of justice. On the contrary, the Tsar in
his infinite clemency pardoned the majority of the offenders and allowed
them to live at home under police supervision. But the ringleaders were
to undergo corrective discipline, in the shape of banishment to distant
Governments for an unlimited term; they were to serve in the
administration, under the supervision of the local authorities.
This last class contained six names—Ogaryóv, Satin, Lakhtin, Sorokin,
Obolenski, and myself. My destination was Perm. Lakhtin had never been
arrested at all; when he was summoned to the Commission to hear the
sentence, he supposed it was intended merely to give him a fright, that
he might take thought when he saw the punishment of others. It was said
that this little surprise was managed by a relation of Prince Golitsyn’s
who was angry with Lakhtin’s wife. He had weak health and died after
three years in exile.
When Oranski had done reading, Colonel Shubenski stepped forward. He
explained to us in picked phrases and the style of Lomonossov,[77] that
for the Tsar’s clemency we were obliged to the good offices of the
distinguished nobleman who presided at the Commission. He expected that
we should all express at once our gratitude to the great man, but he was
disappointed.
Footnote 77:
_I.e._, an old-fashioned pompous style. Lomonossov (1711-1765) was the
originator of Russian literature and Russian science.
Some of those who had been pardoned made a sign with their heads, but
even they stole a glance at us as they did so.
Shubenski then turned to Ogaryóv and said: “You are going to Penza. Do
you suppose that is a mere accident? Your father is lying paralysed at
Penza; and the Prince asked the Emperor that you might be sent there,
that your presence might to some extent lighten the blow he must suffer
in your banishment. Do you too think you have no cause for gratitude?”
Ogaryóv bowed; and that was all they got for their pains.
But that good old gentleman, the President, was pleased, and for some
reason called me up next. I stepped forward: whatever he or Shubenski
might say, I vowed by all the gods that I would not thank them. Besides,
my place of exile was the most distant and most disgusting of all.
“So you are going to Perm,” said the Prince.
I said nothing. The Prince was taken aback, but, in order to say
something, he added, “I have an estate there.”
“Can I take any message to your bailiff?” I asked, smiling.
“I send no messages by people like you—mere _carbonari_,” said the
Prince, by a sudden inspiration.
“What do you want of me then?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Well, I thought you called me forward.”
“You may go,” interrupted Shubenski.
“Permit me,” I said, “as I am here, to remind you that you, Colonel,
said to me on my last appearance before the Commission, that no one
charged me with complicity in the students’ party; but now the sentence
says that I am one of those punished on that account. There is some
mistake here.”
“Do you mean to protest against the imperial decision?” cried out
Shubenski. “If you are not careful, young man, something worse may be
substituted for Perm. I shall order your words to be taken down.”
“Just what I meant to ask. The sentence says ‘according to the report of
the Commission’: well, my protest is not against the imperial edict but
against your report. I call the Prince to witness, that I was never even
questioned about the party or the songs sung there.”
Shubenski turned pale with rage. “You pretend not to know,” he said,
“that your guilt is ten times greater than that of those who attended
the party.” He pointed to one of the pardoned men: “There is a man who
sang an objectionable song under the influence of drink; but he
afterwards begged forgiveness on his knees with tears. You are still far
enough from any repentance.”
“Excuse me,” I went on; “the depth of my guilt is not the question. But
if I am a murderer, I don’t want to pass for a thief. I don’t want
people to say, even by way of defence, that I did so-and-so under the
influence of drink.”
“If my son, my own son, were as brazen as you, I should myself ask the
Tsar to banish him to Siberia.”
At this point the Commissioner of Police struck in with some incoherent
nonsense. It is a pity that Golitsyn junior was not present; he would
have had a chance to air his rhetoric.
All this, as a matter of course, led to nothing.
We stayed in the room for another quarter of an hour, and spent the
time, undeterred by the earnest representations of the police-officers,
in warm embraces and a long farewell. I never saw any of them again,
except Obolenski, before my return from Vyatka.
§15
We had to face our departure. Prison was in a sense a continuation of
our former life; but with our departure for the wilds, it broke off
short. Our little band of youthful friends was parting asunder. Our
exile was sure to last for several years. Where and how, if ever, should
we meet again? One felt regret for that past life—one had been forced to
leave it so suddenly, without saying good-bye. Of a meeting with Ogaryóv
I had no hope. Two of my intimate friends secured an interview with me
towards the end, but I wanted something more.
§16
I wished to see once more the girl who had cheered me before and to
press her hand as I had pressed it in the churchyard nine months
earlier. At that interview I intended to part with the past and greet
the future.
We did meet for a few minutes on April 9, 1835, the day before my
departure into exile.
Long did I keep that day sacred in memory; it is one of the red-letter
days of my life.
But why does the recollection of that day and all the bright and happy
days of my past life recall so much that is terrible? I see a grave, a
wreath of dark-red roses, two children whom I am leading by the hand,
torch-light, a band of exiles, the moon, a warm sea beneath a mountain;
I hear words spoken which I cannot understand, and yet they tear my
heart.[78]
Footnote 78:
Herzen’s wife, Natalie, died at Nice in 1852 and was buried there
under the circumstances here described.
All, all, has passed away!
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