MOSCOW,
March 9.
About Sahalin we are both mistaken, but you probably more than I. I am
going in the full conviction that my visit will furnish no contribution
of value either to literature or science: I have neither the knowledge,
nor the time, nor the ambition for that. I have neither the plans of a
Humboldt nor of a Kennan. I want to write some 100 to 200 pages, and so
do something, however little, for medical science, which, as you are
aware, I have neglected shockingly. Possibly I shall not succeed in
writing anything, but still the expedition does not lose its charm for
me: reading, looking about me, and listening, I shall learn a great deal
and gain experience. I have not yet travelled, but thanks to the books
which I have been compelled to read, I have learned a great deal which
anyone ought to be flogged for not knowing, and which I was so ignorant
as not to have known before. Moreover, I imagine the journey will be six
months of incessant hard work, physical and mental, and that is essential
for me, for I am a Little Russian and have already begun to be lazy. I
must take myself in hand. My expedition may be nonsense, obstinacy, a
craze, but think a moment and tell me what I am losing if I go. Time?
Money? Shall I suffer hardships? My time is worth nothing; money I never
have anyway; as for hardships, I shall travel with horses, twenty-five to
thirty days, not more, all the rest of the time I shall be sitting on the
deck of a steamer or in a room, and shall be continually bombarding you
with letters.
Suppose the expedition gives me nothing, yet surely there will be 2 or 3
days out of the whole journey which I shall remember all my life with
ecstasy or bitterness, etc., etc.... So that’s how it is, sir. All that is
unconvincing, but you know you write just as unconvincingly. For instance,
you say that Sahalin is of no use and no interest to anyone. Can that be
true? Sahalin can be useless and uninteresting only to a society which does
not exile thousands of people to it and does not spend millions of roubles
on it. Except Australia in the past and Cayenne, Sahalin is the only place
where one can study colonization by convicts; all Europe is interested in
it, and is it no use to us? Not more than 25 to 30 years ago our Russians
exploring Sahalin performed amazing feats which exalt them above humanity,
and that’s no use to us: we don’t know what those men were, and simply sit
within four walls and complain that God has made man amiss. Sahalin is a
place of the most unbearable sufferings of which man, free and captive, is
capable. Those who work near it and upon it have solved fearful,
responsible problems, and are still solving them. I am not sentimental, or
I would say that we ought to go to places like Sahalin to worship as the
Turks go to Mecca, and that sailors and gaolers ought to think of the
prison in Sahalin as military men think of Sevastopol. From the books I
have read and am reading, it is evident that we have sent _millions_
of men to rot in prison, have destroyed them--casually, without thinking,
barbarously; we have driven men in fetters through the cold ten thousand
versts, have infected them with syphilis, have depraved them, have
multiplied criminals, and the blame for all this we have thrown upon the
gaolers and red-nosed superintendents. Now all educated Europe knows that
it is not the superintendents that are to blame, but all of us; yet that
has nothing to do with us, it is not interesting. The vaunted sixties did
_nothing_ for the sick and for prisoners, so breaking the chief
commandment of Christian civilization. In our day something is being done
for the sick, nothing for prisoners; prison management is entirely without
interest for our jurists. No, I assure you that Sahalin is of use and of
interest to us, and the only thing to regret is that I am going there, and
not someone else who knows more about it and would be more able to rouse
public interest. Nothing much will come of my going there.
* * * * *
There have been disturbances among the students on a grand scale here. It
began with the Petrovsky Academy, where the authorities forbade the
students to take young ladies to their rooms, suspecting the ladies of
politics as well as of prostitution. From the Academy it spread to the
University, where now the students, surrounded by fully armed and mounted
Hectors and Achilleses with lances, make the following demands: