A Herzen Reader

At one time you loved my writing. What I will tell you now is not as youthful nor so warmed by that radiant and joyous flame and that clear faith in the near future which broke through the censor's bars. An entire life has been buried between those times and the present; but after so much loss one's thought has become more mature, and though little faith re­mains, what is there is firm.

Meet me, as youthful friends meet a warrior returning from his service, aged, wounded, but who has honorably preserved his standard in captivity and abroad—and with the former boundless affection extends his hand to you in honor of our erstwhile alliance in the name of Russian and Polish

London, 21 February, 1853

Note

Source: "Vol'noe russkoe knigopechatanie v Londone. Brat'iam na Rusi," 1853; 12:62­64, 511-12.

1. Vladimir S. Pecherin (1807-1885) was a poet and professor of Greek philosophy at Moscow University in the 1830s, after which he emigrated, eventually entering a monastery.

♦ 3 +

Written in June 1853, this is the first proclamation issued by the Russian Free Press. It was sent directly to senior government officials in St. Petersburg, who informed the tsar; plans were quickly formulated to prevent its distribution, and to henceforth pay the strictest attention to books and other printed materials brought into Russia. Tsar­ist authorities in Poland received an anonymous letter from a Polish acquaintance of Herzen in London offering to serve as an informant. Nicholas I forwarded a copy of "St. George's Day!" to Count Orlov at the Third Department with a sarcastic note about what "nice" reading it made (Let 2:152-54, 163). Herzen received a letter from actor Mikhail Shchepkin—who was staying in Paris—lamenting that Herzen had summoned the rul­ing class to a sacred deed that they would prove unable and unwilling to perform. Her- zen believed that it was Shchepkin's past life as a serf that made him uncomfortable in the presence of free speech and prone to exaggerate its dangers (Let 2:167).

In Muscovite Russia, St. George's Day (November 26) was the only day of the year when dependent peasants had the right to move from one overlord to another, a right that was gradually restricted until it completely disappeared during the seventeenth cen­tury. This proclamation apparently marks the first time Herzen used the word topor

It is impossible to be a free person and have servants bought like a prod­uct and sold like a herd.

It is impossible to be a free person and have the right to flog peasants and send servants to jail.

It is impossible to even speak of human rights as the owner of human souls.

Might not the tsar say to you: "You want to be free, but whatever for? Take the quit-rent from your peasants, take their labor, take their children, assess their land, sell them, resettle them, flog them—and, if you tire of that, send them to me in the police station and I will be willing to flog them for you. Isn't that enough for you? Understand what's appropriate! Our ancestors ceded to you a portion of our autocracy; by placing free people in bondage to you they tore off the edge of their royal mantle and flung it over the poverty of your forefathers; you did not reject it, but covered yourself with it and lived under it—what kind of conversation can we have about freedom? Remain bound to your tsar while your orthodox peasants are bound to you. On what grounds would landowners be free people?"

And the tsar would be correct.

Many among you wanted the emancipation of the serfs; Pestel and his friends placed this freedom as their first item of business. They argued at first whether emancipation should be given with or without land. Then they all saw the absurdity of emancipation into hunger and vagrancy, and the question became only the amount of land and the possibility of compensa­tion for it.

In the provinces with the most estates—Penza, Tambov, Yaroslavl and Vladimir, Nizhny, and, finally, in Moscow, the question of emancipation found sympathy and never met that frenzy with which American landown­ers defended their rights over blacks.

The Tula nobility presented a plan, and in a dozen other provinces peo­ple deliberated and made proposals.

And then, suddenly, the nobility and the government had a falling out and all those wonderful initiatives fell from their trembling hands.

But there was nothing to fear; the flood of 1848 was too shallow to inun­date our steppe.

Since that time everything has fallen asleep.

Where is that minority who made so much noise in Petersburg and Mos­cow drawing rooms about the emancipation of the serfs?...

What came of all those committees, meetings, projects, plans, and proposals?.