A Herzen Reader

Ivan Mazeppa (1639-1709) was a well-educated Ukrainian Cossack hetman who went over to the Swedish side during the Battle of Poltava, and was forever after seen as a traitor to the Russians and a hero of Ukraine.

Written by Dmitry V. Grigorovich (1822-1899) and published in The Contempo­rary in 1847, which, along with his earlier work The Village, gained recognition for their sympathetic description of the serfs.

Herzen: "A Russian diplomat at the time of Alexey, father of Peter I, who emi­grated to Sweden, fearing persecution by the tsar, and was beheaded in Stockholm for murder."

Herzen: "We have in mind the Petrashevsky society. Young people gathered at his place to debate social questions. This club had existed for several years, when, at the beginning of the Hungarian campaign, the government decided to declare it a major conspiracy and increase the number of arrests. Where they sought a criminal plot, they found only opinions, but this did not keep them from condemning all the accused to death in order to give themselves a merciful air. The tsar replaced execution with hard labor, exile, or conscription. Among the condemned are Speshnev, Grigoriev, Dosto- evsky, Kashkin, Golovinsky, Mombelli, and others."

A religious order founded in the late seventeenth century. It refused admission to priests with theological training, while offering a free education to the children of the poor.

A homespun coat.

Through dynastic alliances, the Romanov dynasty became highly Germanicized during the eighteenth century. Peter III (reigned 1761-1762) was the son of Peter the Great's daughter Anna and Duke Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gottorp.

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The announcement below was published as a separate lithographed sheet by the print­ing house that Herzen established in London in order to challenge the heavily censored press at home. It was also published in a Polish newspaper in May 1853 (where the Russian government took note of it) and in an abridged form in the French newspaper La Nation on June 19 of that year. Both a declaration of intent and a call for participa­tion, it stimulated little response until after Nicholas I died in 1855. Eagerly awaiting a response, and yet aware of the fear experienced in Russia even by liberals, Herzen asked a friend to tell him which of their acquaintances had burned the sheet to avoid com­promising themselves (Let 2:139). In an 1863 publication celebrating the first decade of the Free Press, Herzen refers to the year 1853 as the beginning of uncensored Russian- language publications abroad. This is an excellent example of the author's disciplined writing and barely suppressed emotion. A phrase that he borrowed from the 1830 Pol­ish rebellion—"For our freedom and yours"—appeared on banners displayed in Red Square by Soviet dissidents in August 1968 in support of Czechoslovakia after it was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops.

The Free Russian Press in London

[1853]

To Our Brothers in Russia

Why are we silent?

Do we really have nothing to say?

Or are we really silent because we dare not speak?

At home there is no place for free Russian speech, but it can ring out elsewhere if only its time has come.

I know how hard it is for you to keep silent, what it costs you to conceal every feeling, every thought, every impulse.

Open and free speech is a great thing; without free speech a man cannot be free. Not for nothing do people give their lives, leave their homeland and abandon their property. Only that which is weak, fearful, and immature hides itself. "Silence is a sign of consent" and it clearly speaks of renuncia­tion, hopelessness, a bowing of the head, an acknowledged desperation.

Openness of expression is a solemn declaration, a transition to action.

It seems to us that the time has come to publish in Russian outside of Russia. You will show us whether we are right or wrong.

I will be the first to remove the fetters of a foreign language and once again take up my native tongue.

The desire to speak with foreigners has passed. We told them as best we could about Rus and the Slavic world; what could be done was done.

For whom are we printing in Russian from abroad, and how can forbid­den works be sold in Russia?

If we are going to sit with our arms folded and be content with futile grumbling and noble indignation, if we wisely back down in the face of any sort of danger, and, having come up against an obstacle, stop without trying to either step over it or go around it, then it will be a long time before Russia sees any radiant days.

Nothing happens all by itself, without effort and will, without sacrifice and work. The human will, the will of a single steadfast person, is incred­ibly great.

Ask what is being done by our Polish brothers, who are more oppressed than us. Haven't they sent everything they wanted to Poland for the past twenty-five years, avoiding the lines of police and the nets of informers?