A Herzen Reader

The Polestar, Bk. I, 1855. Exiled to the Russian interior, Herzen met Alexander Niko- laevich Romanov when the heir to the throne traveled throughout the empire to get to know more about his future subjects. A few years later, still under the spell of this meet­ing, Herzen admitted that his idee fixe was to serve in the grand duke's suite, even if it were as a lowly librarian, preferring that to a much higher-ranking ministerial position (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 22:85). This is the first of Herzen's open letters to the new tsar. The verses come from Ryleev's poem "The Vision: An Ode on the Name-Day of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich, August 30, 1823." Herzen re­fers to the fact that when Ryleev wrote this poem, it was believed that the next tsar would likely be Konstantin Pavlovich and not his younger brother Nicholas. As heir, Alexander II's tutor was the poet Vasily Zhukovsky. Herzen was mistaken about the easing of the conditions of the Decembrists' exile, which took place three years later, in 1837.

The liberals Kavelin and Chicherin found this letter more reasonable than many of Herzen's statements, and others went so far as to call it a noble deed (podvig), but the act of writing to the tsar was controversial across the political spectrum. Always willing to entertain other opinions, Herzen later published the objections he received to this docu­ment (Ulam, Ideologies and Illusions, 37). A member of the State Senate, K. N. Lebedev, wrote in his diary that the letter brought to mind the early stages of the French Revolu­tion, when the National Assembly received impertinent letters from those who sud­denly felt themselves equal in dignity to the government. Lebedev wondered whether the socialist Herzen knew what he really wanted, and whether he had active partners to help realize his agenda (Let 2:237, 268-73). Adam Ulam noted the "fantastic" quality of Russian politics in the late 1850s and early 1860s, when "the most radical people were never very far from petitioning or eulogizing the Tsar for this or that reform" (Ideologies and Illusions, 36).

Shortly after Herzen's death in 1870, an anonymous pamphlet ("A Few Words from a Russian to Other Russians"), possibly by V. A. Zaitsev, appeared abroad. Its author stressed the restraint and tact employed by Herzen in addressing those in whose hands lay the fate of the Russian people. "He did not disdain writing to the inhabitants of the Winter Palace, and there was a time when he was read even there—if only because it was the 'fashion'—and his words did not go to waste." But, the author laments, it was not yet an age when people like Herzen, Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov could ex­ercise a sustained influence. "In our North these are bright meteors, and the Polestar, which hid behind the clouds during the reign of Nicholas, reappeared only briefly, and with Herzen's death has vanished again for a long time" (Ivanova, A. I. Gertsen, 181).

A Letter to Emperor Alexander the Second

[1855]

Perhaps, my lad, the crown Was designated for you by the creator. Love the people, respect the rule of law, Learn ahead of time to be a tsar, Love the voice of freedom's truth, Love this for your own good, And destroy the ignoble spirit of Slavery and injustice...

—K. Ryleev, "Ode to the Grand Duke Alexander

Nikolaevich," August 30, 1823

Sovereign!

Your reign is commencing under a very lucky star. There are no blood­stains on you, and you feel no pangs of conscience.

The news of your father's death was not brought to you by his assassins. You did not have to cross a square bathed in Russian blood to reach the throne; you did not have to proclaim to the people your accession by means of executions.

The chronicles of your dynasty hardly offer a single example of such an unsullied beginning.

And that is not all.

People expect from you mildness and a human heart.—You are excep­tionally lucky!

Fate and chance have surrounded you with something that speaks in your favor. You alone of all your family were born in Moscow, and born at the time when it was awakening to a new life after the purifying fire. The cannons of Borodino and Tarutino¹ had scarcely returned from abroad and were still covered with Parisian dust when your birth was proclaimed from the Kremlin heights. I remember hearing it as a five-year-old boy.

Ryleev greeted you with advice—can you really withhold your respect for this powerful freedom fighter, this martyr to his convictions? Why was it that your cradle inspired in him this mild and peaceful verse? What pro­phetic voice told him that in time the crown would fall on your youthful head?

You were taught by a poet who loved Russia.²

On the day you came of age the fate of our martyrs was made easier.— Yes, you are very fortunate!