‘The gradual emancipation of the peasants and the summoning of elected
persons from the whole of the nobility as representatives of public
opinion to the private councils of the Government.’ By this Duma Karazin
supposes ‘all will be saved and without detriment to the power of the
Monarch, if only the time has not passed. O my Country, unique in Thy
character, Thou mayest even on the threshold of Thy greatest catastrophe
be saved by a sincere, warm union of Thy Tsar with His nobility! But
God’s Will be done in this as in all!
‘... And, indeed, what can the Autocracy lose from trusting the class
whose fate is so closely bound up with it?... All the measures of the
police and ecclesiastical censorship are insufficient to check the growth
of opinion. Excessive severity only revolts men’s hearts. All at once
the strained cord will snap. Among the many freed serfs and men of no
definite class I foresee the miscreants who will surpass Robespierre.
There are noblemen, too, who have squandered their estates and been
reared in debauchery and evil principles, who are dissatisfied with their
lot and are consequently ready to join the ignorant mob. The times of
Pugatchov, of the Moscow mutiny in the time of Yeropkin,[107] and the
outbreaks of lawlessness at the invasion in 1812 in various parts of the
Moscow and Kaluga provinces have shown us already what our mob can be
when it has had too much to drink! Alas for us! the Throne will drown in
the blood of the nobility!’
In answer to this cry of horror and warning, the Emperor Alexander bade
V. P. Kotchubey demand from Karazin ‘details, proofs, names’—in other
words a denunciation. The ‘Trajan and Marcus Aurelius’ had developed in
the twenty years of his reign!
Karazin refused to give them. The Tsar ordered him to be thrown into the
fortress and afterwards to be banished to his estate in Little Russia.
What for?
For having meddled in what was not his business, but that Karazin was
quite unable to understand.
‘How long has the welfare of the country in which I live,’ he says,
‘in which my children and grandchildren will live, ceased to be my own
business?[108] From what Asiatic system is this idea borrowed? _Teaching_
the _Government_ is an expression purposely invented to mortify the
vanity of the persons who make up the Government. But must not the
authors of books on the best systems of legislation, of finance and so
on, be called even more guilty? We all teach and are taught up to the
day of our death. The Government is a centre, to which every thought
concerning the commonweal must flow. Woe to us if we begin passing
judgment in the market-place as other nations do!... And are there so
many of us now in Russia desirous and capable of saying something to the
Government and daring enough to do so? There is no need to be uneasy on
that score: there will not be enough to become wearisome!’
However that may be, Karazin was in the fortress and was able at his
leisure to ponder on the question whether there was more danger in saving
the mighty of this world, or in thrusting them into the abyss.
While Karazin in those sleepless nights was writing his political
rhapsodies to Kotchubey, there were other men, too, who could not
sleep: in the barracks of the Guards, in the staff of the Second army,
in old-fashioned signorial Moscow houses, there were men who did not
sleep. They grasped the fact that Alexander would not go beyond two or
three Liberal phrases, that there was no place in the Winter Palace
for a Marquis von Posa nor Struensee[109]; they knew that no salvation
for the people could come from the same source from which the military
settlements had come. They expected nothing from the Government and
tried to act independently of it; they brought all that was enlightened
lower down in the social pyramid; its summit had grown dim in the mist.
Culture, intelligence, the thirst for freedom, all now was to be found in
a different region, in different surroundings, away from the Palace! In
these were to be found youth, daring, breadth, poetry, Pushkin, the scars
of 1812, fresh laurels, and white crosses. Between 1812 and 1825 there
appeared a perfect galaxy of brilliant talent, independent character and
chivalrous valour (a combination quite new in Russia). These men had
absorbed everything of Western culture, the introduction of which had
been forbidden. The period of Petersburg Government produced nothing
better. They were its latest blossoms, and in spite of the fatal scythe
that mowed them down at once, their influence can be traced flowing far
into the gloomy Russia of Nicholas, like the Volga into the sea.
The story of the Decembrists becomes a more and more solemn prologue,
from which we all date our lives, our heroic genealogy. What Titans,
what giants, and what poetical, what sympathetic characters! Their glory
nothing could diminish or distort, neither the gibbet nor the prison, nor
the treachery of Bludov, nor the memorial words of Korf....
Yes, they were men!
When, thirty years afterwards, a few of the old ones who survived
Nicholas came back, bent and leaning on crutches, from their long, weary
exile—the generation of broken-spirited, splenetic, disillusioned men who
had lived under Nicholas looked at these _youthful_ figures, who, at the
fortresses, at the mines, in Siberia, had kept the old warmth of heart,
young enthusiasm, unconquerable will, unflinching convictions, at these
young figures with their silver hair that still bore traces of the crown
of thorns which had lain for more than a quarter of a century on their
heads. It was not they who sought support and comfort at the hearth that
had grown chill—no—they consoled the weak, they gave a hand to the sick
children, cheering them on, supporting their strength and their hopes!
As Faust, wearied, turned for peace and rest to the eternally beautiful
types of motherhood, so our younger generation turn for new energy and
strengthening example to these Fathers.
The Petersburg period was purified by the holy company of Decembrists;
the nobles could go no further without going out to the people, without
tearing up their patent of nobility.
It was their Isaac sacrificed for reconciliation with the people. The
crowned Abraham did not hear the voice of God and drew the noose....
The people did not weep for them.
The tragic element of the Petersburg period attained its furthest, most
heart-rending expression—further it could not go.
The sacrifice was complete, and the last touch to its completeness was
given by the indifference of the people.
Only now a way of escape and reconciliation became possible. The
separation from the people was truly expiated by so much love and
strength, purity and penitence, so much self-denial and devotion to
others. The readiness of this group of aristocrats and noblemen not only
to give up their unjust heritage, _se faire roturiers de gentilshommes_,
as Count Rostoptchin expressed it, but to face death, to go to penal
servitude, wipes out the sins of the fathers!
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