some new views on Russia and the Slav world, and I made up my mind to
send it you. I confidently hope that you will forgive the passages in
which I have been carried away by my Scythian impetuosity. It is not for
nothing that the blood of the barbarians flows in my veins. I so longed
to change your opinion of the Russian people, it was such a grief, such
a pain to me to see that you were hostile to us that I could not conceal
my bitterness, my emotion, that I let my pen run away with me. But now
I see that you do not despair of us, that under the coarse smock of
the Russian peasant you discern the man. I see this, and in my turn
confess that I fully understand the impression the very name of Russia
must produce on every free man. We often ourselves curse our unhappy
Fatherland. You know it, you say yourself that everything you have
written of the moral worthlessness of Russia is feeble compared with what
Russians say themselves.
But the time for funeral orations on Russia is past for us too, and with
you we say ‘in that thought lies hid the spark of life.’ You have divined
that spark by the power of your love; but we see it, we feel it. That
spark will not be quenched by streams of blood, by the ices of Siberia,
nor the suffocating heat of mines and prisons. May it spread under its
layer of ashes! The cold, deadly breath which blows from Europe cannot
put it out.
For us the hour of action has not come; France may still be justly proud
of her foremost position. That painful privilege is hers until 1852.
Europe will doubtless before us reach the goal of the grave or of the
new life. The day of action is perhaps still far away for us; the day of
recognising the idea, the day of utterance, has already come. We have
lived long enough in sleep and silence; the time has come to tell what we
have dreamed, what conclusions we have reached.
And indeed whose fault is it that we have had to wait until 1847 for a
German (Haxthausen) to _discover_, as you express it, the Russia of the
peasantry, as unknown before his time as America before Columbus?
Of course, it is we who are to blame for it, we poor dumb creatures with
our cowardice, our halting words, our terrified imagination. Even abroad
we are afraid to confess the hatred with which we look upon our fetters.
Convicts from our birth up, doomed to the hour of death to drag the
chains riveted to our legs, we are offended when we are spoken of as
though we were voluntary slaves, as though we were frozen negroes, and
yet we do not openly protest.
Ought we to submit meekly to these denunciations, or to resolve to check
them, lifting up our voice for Russian freedom of speech? Better for us
to perish suspected of human dignity than to live with the shameful brand
of slavery on our brow, than to hear ourselves charged with voluntary
servility.
Unhappily, free speech in Russia arouses terror and amazement. I have
tried to lift only a corner of the heavy curtain that hides us from
Europe, I have indicated only the theoretical tendencies, the remote
hopes, the organic elements of our future development; and yet my book
of which you speak in such flattering phrases has made an unpleasant
impression in Russia. Friendly voices which I respect condemn it. In
it they see a denunciation of Russia, denunciation!... For what? for
our sufferings, our hardships, our desire to force our way out of this
hateful position.... Poor precious friends, forgive me this crime, I am
falling into it again.
Heavy and dreadful is the yoke of years of slavery with no struggle,
no hope at hand! In the end it crushes even the noblest, the strongest
heart. Where is the hero who is not overcome at last by weariness, who
does not prefer peace in old age to the everlasting fret of fruitless
effort?
No, I will not be silent! My words shall avenge those unhappy lives
crushed by the Russian autocracy which brings men to moral annihilation,
to spiritual death.
We are bound in duty to speak, else no one will know how much that is
fine and lofty is locked for ever in those martyrs’ breasts and perishes
with them in the snows of Siberia, where their criminal name is not even
traced upon their tombstone, but is only cherished in the hearts of
friends who dare not utter it aloud.
Scarcely have we opened our mouth, scarcely have we murmured two or
three words of our desires and hopes, when they try to silence us, try
to stifle free speech in its cradle! It is impossible. A time comes when
thought reaches maturity and can no longer be kept in fetters by the
censorship, nor by prudence. Then propaganda becomes a passion; can one
be content with a whisper when the sleep is so deep that it can scarcely
be awakened by an alarm-bell? From the mutiny of the Stryeltsy to the
conspiracy of the Fourteenth of December there has been no political
movement of consequence in Russia. The cause is easy to understand:
there were no clearly defined cravings for independence in the people.
In many things they were at one with the Government, in many things the
Government was in advance of the people. Only the peasants, who had no
share in the Imperial benefits and were more oppressed than ever, tried
to revolt. Russia from the Urals to Penza and Kazan was, for three
months, in the power of Pugatchov. The Imperial army was defeated, put
to flight by the Cossacks, and General Bibikov, sent from Petersburg to
take the command of the army, wrote, if I am not mistaken, from Nizhni:
‘Things are in a very bad way; what is most to be feared is not the
armed hordes of the rebels, but the spirit of the peasantry, which is
dangerous, very dangerous.’ After incredible efforts the insurrection
was at last crushed. The people relapsed into numbness, silence, and
submission....
Meanwhile the nobility had developed, education had begun to fructify
their minds, and like a living proof of that political maturity, of that
moral development which is inevitably expressed in action, those divine
figures appeared, those heroes as you justly call them, who ‘alone in
the very jaws of the dragon dared the bold stroke of the Fourteenth of
December.’
Their defeat and the terror of the present reign have crushed every idea
of success, every premature attempt. Other questions have arisen; no one
has cared to risk his life again in the hope of a Constitution; it has
been too clear that any stroke won in Petersburg would be defeated by
the treachery of the Tsar; the fate of the Polish Constitution has been
before our eyes.
For ten years no intellectual activity could betray itself by one word,
and the oppressive misery has reached the point when men ‘would give
their life for the happiness of being free for one moment’ and uttering
aloud some part of their thoughts.
Some, with that frivolous recklessness which is only met with in us
and in the Poles, have renounced their possessions and gone abroad to
seek distraction; others, unable to endure the oppressive atmosphere of
Petersburg, have buried themselves in the country. The young men gave
themselves up, some to Pan-Slavism, some to German philosophy, some to
history or political economy; in short, not one of those Russians whose
natural vocation was intellectual activity could or would submit to the
stagnation.
The case of Petrashevsky and his friends, condemned to penal servitude
for life, and exiled in 1849, because they formed some political
societies not two steps from the Winter Palace, proves by the insane
recklessness of the attempt, and the obvious impossibility of its
success, that the time for rational reflection had passed, that feeling
was beyond restraint, that certain ruin had come to seem easier to endure
than dumb agonising submission to the Petersburg discipline.
A fable very widely known in Russia tells how a Tsar, suspecting his wife
of infidelity, shut her and her son in a barrel, then had the barrel
sealed up and thrown into the sea.
For many years the barrel floated on the sea.
Meanwhile, the Tsarevitch grew not by days but by hours, and his feet
and his head began to press against the ends of the barrel. Every
day he became more and more cramped. At last he said to his mother:
‘Queen-mother, let me stretch in freedom.’
‘My darling Tsarevitch,’ answered the mother, ‘you must not stretch, the
barrel will burst and you will drown in the salt water.’
The Tsarevitch thought in silence for a while, then he said: ‘I will
stretch, mother; better stretch for once in freedom and die.’
That fable, sir, contains our whole history.
Woe to Russia if bold men, risking everything to stretch in freedom for
once, are no more to be found in her. But there is no fear of that....
These words involuntarily bring to my mind Bakunin. Bakunin has given
Europe the sample of a free Russian.
I was deeply touched by your fine reference to him. Unhappily, those
words will not reach him.
An international crime has been committed; Saxony has handed over the
victim to Austria, Austria to Nicholas. He is in the Schlüsselburg, that
fortress of evil memory where once Ivan, the grandson of the Tsar Alexis,
was kept caged like a wild beast, till he was killed by Catherine the
Second,[92] who, still stained by her husband’s blood, first ordered the
captive’s murder, then punished the luckless officer who carried out her
command.
In that damp dungeon in the icy waters of Lake Ladoga there is no place
for dreams or hopes! May he sleep the last sleep in peace, the martyr
betrayed by two Governments, whose hands are stained with his blood....
Glory to his name! And revenge! But where is the avenger?... And we too,
like him, shall perish with our work half done; but then lift up your
stern and majestic voice, and tell our children once more that there is a
duty before them....
I will close with the memory of Bakunin and warmly press your hand for
him and for myself.
NICE, _September 22, 1851_.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Ogaryov suffered from some form of epilepsy.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[2] Herzen lived twelve years in London, and during that time took no
less than seven different houses: (1) ‘a house in one of the remotest
parts of the town, near Primrose Hill’; (2) Chomley Lodge, Richmond; (3)
Peterborough Villa, Finchley Road; (4) Laurel House, Fulham; (5) Park
House, Putney Bridge; (6) Orsett House, Wimbledon; (7) Elmfield House,
Teddington.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[3] See vol. ii. p. 403.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[4] See vol. i. p. 67.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[5] Natalya Alexyevna’s version is slightly different. She gives Emma
Vogt’s age as sixteen, and says that when the girl’s parents were
returning to America Herzen begged them to leave her in London, ‘but
they insisted on taking her with them.’ Neither Madame Passek nor Madame
Ogaryov can be relied upon for perfect accuracy, but I think the latter
is the more trustworthy.
[6] This is how I interpret the cryptic passage on page 113, vol.
iv.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[7] See vol. v. p. 245.
[8] See vol. i. chapter iii.
[9] Yakovlyev was the surname of the two brothers, Ivan, Herzen’s father,
and Pyotr, Madame Passek’s father.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[10] See vol. v. p. 82.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[11] See vol. v. pp. 105 and 106.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[12] See vol. iv. chap. iv.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[13] The two children who died in Paris were buried at
Nice.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[14] The famous doctor.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[15] As a matter of fact, Natalya Alexandrovna Herzen’s illness was what
would now be called a ‘nervous breakdown,’ and was followed by a complete
and permanent recovery.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[16] Herzen’s elder daughter Natalie, also called Natasha.
[17] Madame Ogaryov.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[18] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[19] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[20] English in the original.
[21] The news that Tata had an attack of smallpox.
[22] Baby daughter who died.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[23] Natalya Alexyevna Tutchkov-Ogaryov.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[24] Tata’s nervous illness.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[25] Tata.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[26] Turgenev was the friend to whom these letters were
addressed.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[27] A character in the play _Woe from Wit_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[28] A famous singer who made his début in _La Caravane_ in 1813. He is
frequently mentioned in French memoirs of the period.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[29] A very intelligent man, Count Oscar Reichenbach, said to me once,
speaking of the better-class houses in London: ‘Tell me the rent and the
storey, and I will undertake to go on a dark night without a candle and
fetch a clock, a vase, decanters ... whatever you like of the things
that are invariably standing in every middle-class dwelling.’—(_Author’s
Note._)
[30] Lamé, Gabriel, born 1795, was a French mathematician who for
many years held an important post in the Transport Department of the
Russian Government. He published _Leçons sur la Théorie Mathématique de
l’Élasticité_, and many other works.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[31] A brewer who was in command of the ‘Garde Nationale’ in 1793.
[32] Members of the ‘Convention’ of 1792.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[33] A traditional hero of Russian legend.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[34] Vattel (1714-1767), a Swiss writer, author of _Traité du Droit des
Gens_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[35] I was so interested by _Arminius_ that I began writing a series of
similar scenes, and the chief police-master, Tsinsky, made a critical
analysis of them in my presence at the committee in 1834.
[36] This was written in 1855.—(_Author’s Notes._)
[37] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[38] Auguste Romieu, celebrated in Paris for his wit and droll
adventures, began by writing vaudevilles (1822-1834). The Government of
July turned him into _un homme politique_, appointing him prefect of
several places in succession, and in 1849 he wrote _De l’Administration
sous le Régime républicain_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[39] The Russian word for Sunday means Resurrection.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[40]
Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Herrn,
Denn Sie sind selber auferstanden
Aus niedrigern Häuser dumpfen Gemächer.—_Faust._
—(_Author’s Note._)
[41] The intensity with which cultivated people felt their isolation
at that time, and tried to devise a life, pursuits, and so on for
themselves, you can see clearly in Trelawney’s _Recollections of the Last
Days of Shelley and Byron_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[42] _A Family Chronicle_, by Aksakov. There is an excellent translation
by Mr. Duff.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[43] Onyegin, hero of Pushkin’s poem.
[44] Petchorin, hero of Lermontov’s novel, _A Hero of Our Time_.
[45] Oblomov, hero of Goncharov’s novel of that name.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[46] Ivan Ivanovitch Pushtchin was a great friend of the poet Pushkin.
[47] One of the Decembrists.
[48] See vol. i. page 193.
[49] A young poet of the greatest promise who died in 1827 at the age of
twenty-two.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[50] Of which Koshihin so picturesquely writes that the Boyars
sat silent with their eyes fixed on their beards to show their
profundity.—(_Author’s Note._)
[51] Polubotok was a candidate for the office of Hetman after Mazeppa’s
treason. Peter the Great appointed the weak Skuropadsky, saying that
Polubotok was ‘much too clever’ and might be another Mazeppa. He owned
more than two thousand peasant homesteads, and was one of the richest
men in Little Russia; he did his utmost to defend the interests of his
country against the encroachments of the Tsar’s officials, and for some
time with success, but in 1723 he was imprisoned in the Peter-Paul
fortress, where he died a year later.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[52] Diderot, in his extremely interesting account of his acquaintance
with Princess Dashkov, speaking of this interview, adds that Catherine
said to her: ‘You are either an angel or a demon.’ ‘Neither the one nor
the other,’ she answered; ‘but the Empress is dying and you must be
saved.’—(_Author’s Note._)
[53] Diderot in the above-mentioned essay relates that Princess Dashkov
told him of this rumour with the greatest resentment.—(_Author’s Note._)
[54] There are no grounds for supposing that Catherine knew of any plan
to murder Peter; there is strong evidence, indeed, that she did not know,
and that in fact there was no such plan. It is obvious that Peter was
killed in a drunken scrimmage.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[55] A mistress of Paul’s, and a friend of his wife’s.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[56] This is the drift of the letter; I cannot answer for the exact
words. I repeat what I heard long ago from memory.—(_Author’s Note._)
[57] Mirovitch plotted to rescue Ivan VI. from the Schlüsselburg and put
him on the throne. Ivan’s jailers had been instructed by the Empress
Elizabeth to kill him if any attempt were made to effect his escape—and
did so. For an impartial account of Catherine’s reign see Sir Bernard
Pares’ _History of Russia_.
[58] Princess Tarakanov was an adventuress who claimed to be one of the
natural children of the Empress Elizabeth (there were several). Alexey
Orlov captured her, by pretending to make love to her. She was imprisoned
in the Peter-Paul fortress, where she died of consumption.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[59] Madame Necker, wife of the great minister of finance and mother of
Mme. de Staël.
[60] Madame Geoffrin, a lady noted for her wit, whose salon was the
favourite resort of the philosophers of the day.
[61] Rulhière, Claude de (1735-1791), a French historian and poet.
[62] Hamilton, Elizabeth (1758-1816), a Scotswoman, authoress of _Letters
of a Hindoo Rajah_, _Letters on Education_, and also _On the Moral and
Religious Principle_, and _The Cottagers of Glenburnie_.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[63] An impartial reader of the Memoirs of both ladies will probably
be surprised at Catherine’s forbearance with Princess Dashkov, whose
tediously reiterated insistence on her own virtue and impeccability must
have been a severe tax on the quick-witted Empress’s patience and good
nature. Only on one occasion she permitted herself the gentle retort:
‘Dear princess, your reputation is better established than that of the
whole calendar of saints,’ the irony of which was probably not apparent
to Princess Dashkov.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[64] The duc de Biron, afterwards a general in the service of the
government of the Revolution, was beheaded in 1793.
[65] An Italian writer on philosophy, history, and economics
(1728-1789).—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[66] The former tutor of Peter III.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[67] An Italian writer of the school of the physiocrats.
[68] See Pares’ _History of Russia_, p. 241.
[69] The pamphlet referred to is _A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow_,
an impassioned protest against serfdom. (See vol. v. p. 313.)
[70] Knyazhnin translated tragedies from the French and wrote imitations
of them. This last one was called _Vadim of Novgorod_.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[71] Catherine’s own Memoirs make it clear that, though crazy, Paul was
not the son of Peter III.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[72] By their successful conspiracy to assassinate Paul.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[73] In 1770, Alexey Orlov, in command of the Russian fleet, defeated and
burnt the Turkish fleet at Chesme Bay.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[74] The archimandrite of the Yurev Monastery, famous for his fanaticism
and ascetic exploits. Alexander I. once had an interview with him, but
was repelled by his crassness.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[75] Miss Wilmot meant to say something biting, but paid us a compliment.
It is only a pity that she does not see how old the girl is now! It is
not something to be reckoned by years.—(_Author’s Note._)
[76] Youth is fond of expressing itself in all sorts of incommensurables,
and striking the imagination by images of infinite magnitude. The
last sentence reminds me vividly of Karl Moor, Ferdinand, and Don
Carlos.—(_Author’s Note._)
[77] The prophecy has now been fulfilled. This mutual interaction of men
on books, and books on men, is a curious thing. The book takes its whole
shape from the society in which it is conceived; it generalises, it makes
it more vivid and striking, and afterwards is outdone by reality. The
originals caricature their vividly drawn portraits, and actual persons
live in their literary shades. At the end of last century all young
Germans were a little after the style of Werther, while all their young
ladies resembled Charlotte; at the beginning of the present century the
university Werthers had begun to change into ‘Robbers,’ not real ones,
but Schilleresque robbers. The young Russians who have come on the scene
since 1862 are almost all derived from _What Is to be Done?_ with the
addition of a few Bazarov features.—(_Author’s Note._)
[78] The hero of Herzen’s novel, _Who Is to Blame?_—(_Translator’s Note._)
[79] The hero of _Woe from Wit_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[80] The reference is to the performance of Gogol’s _The Government
Inspector_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[81] Hegel’s dialectic is a terrible battering-ram, in spite of its
double-facedness and its Prussian Protestant cockade; it dissolved
everything existing and dissipated everything that was a check on
reason. Moreover, that was the period of Feuerbach, _der kritischen
Kritik_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[82] It appeared in a feuilleton of the journal _l’Événement_, 1851, and
was later on included in a volume entitled _Democratic Legends_.—(_Note
to Russian Edition._)
[83] A philanthropist, Baron de Montyon (1733-1820) endowed prizes for
virtue and literary distinction to be distributed by the Institut in
Paris.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[84] Hegel.
[85] A peasant commune belonging to Prince Kozlovsky bought their
freedom. The land was divided amongst the peasants in proportion to the
sum contributed by each to the purchase-money. This arrangement was
apparently most natural and just. The peasants, however, thought it so
inconvenient and inconsistent with their habits that they decided to
regard the purchase-money as a debt incurred by the commune and to divide
the lands according to their accepted custom. This fact is vouched for by
Baron von Haxthausen. The author himself visited the village in question.
In a book recently published in Paris and dedicated to the Emperor
Nicholas, the writer says that this system of the division of land
seems to him unfavourable to the development of agriculture (as though
the object of it were the success of agriculture!); he adds, however:
‘It is difficult to escape these disadvantages, because this system
of land division is bound up with the organisation of our communes,
which it would be _dangerous to touch_; it is established on the
fundamental idea of the unity of the commune, and the right of every
member of it to a share in the communal property in proportion to his
strength, and so it supports the communal spirit, that trusty prop of
the social order. At the same time it is the best defence against the
increase of the proletariat and the diffusion of communistic ideas.’
(We may well believe that for a people in actual fact possessing their
property in common, communistic ideas present no danger.) ‘The good
sense with which the peasants avoid the inconveniences of their system
where such are inevitable is extremely remarkable; so is the ease with
which they agree over the compensation for inequalities arising from
differences of soil, or the confidence with which every one accepts the
decisions of the elders of the commune. It might be expected that the
continual re-divisions would give rise to continual disputes, and yet
the intervention of the higher authorities is only necessary in the very
rarest cases. This fact, _very strange in itself_, can only be explained
through the system, with all its disadvantages, having so grown into the
morals and conceptions of the peasants that its drawbacks are accepted
without a murmur.’
‘The idea of the commune is,’ says the same author, ‘as natural to the
Russian peasant, and as fully embodied in all the aspects of his life, as
the corporate municipal spirit that has taken shape in the bourgeoisie of
Western Europe is distasteful to his character.’—(_Author’s Note._)