A Herzen Reader

We are not only on the eve of great upheaval, we have already entered into it. Necessity and public opinion carried the government to a new phase of development, change, and progress. Society and the government came up against questions that suddenly acquired the rights of citizenship and became urgent. This excitation of thought, agitation, and renewed striving to solve the main tasks of governmental life, and to dismantle the historical forms through which it has functioned—is the essential soil of every fun­damental period of upheaval.

But where are the signs that ordinarily precede revolutions? Everything in Russia is so quiet, and people look at the new government in such a beaten-down way and with such good nature, awaiting its assistance, that one is more likely to think that centuries will go by before Russia enters into a new life.

But what would be the purpose of these signs? In Russia everything has happened differently; it has only had one fundamental upheaval and that was achieved by one man—Peter I. Since 1789 we have been accustomed to see all upheavals proceeding by means of explosions and rebellions, every concession achieved by force, and every step forward come from battle—so that when there is talk of upheaval, we involuntarily look for the public square, barricades, blood, and the executioner's axe. Without doubt, an up­rising and open struggle is one of the most powerful means of revolution, but it is hardly the only means.

[. . .] We are just people who are deeply convinced that the current gov­ernmental structures in Russia do not work, and we wholeheartedly prefer a path of peaceful human development to a bloody path, but with all that, we sincerely prefer the stormiest and most unbridled development to the stagnancy of a Nicholaevan status quo.

The sovereign wants changes and improvements; instead of a useless rebuff, he wishes to listen to the voice of reason in Russia, to people of progress and science, practical people who live with the common folk. They will not only be able to clearly understand and formulate what they want— better than the Nicholaevan burgraves—but, more than that, they will be able to understand for the people their desires and strivings. Instead of faint-heartedly cutting off their speech, the government itself should under­take the work of social reconstruction together with them, the development of new forms and new outlets for Russian life. We do not yet know what they are, nor does the government, but we are moving toward discovering them, and in that lies the remarkable interest that our future holds.

Peter I alone carried within himself that unforeseen, new Russia, which he brought about with harshness and threats against the will of the people, relying on autocratic power and personal strength. The current government does not have to resort to any kind of progressive terror. There is an entire milieu, mature in thought, ready to move with or against the government, in the name of the people and for their benefit. This circle may not be very large, but we absolutely do not accept that it is inferior in consciousness and development to any circle in the West. If it is unaccustomed to the consideration of social issues, then it is freer of everything traditional, and is newer, simpler, and more youthful than Western society. It has also lived through the suffering, failures, and trials of European life, but survived by means of its education, ideas, and heart, not having exhausted all its strength, but carrying in its memory the dreadful lesson of recent events. Like a youth who has been defeated by some great unhappiness that took place before his eyes, it quickly matures and gazes with a grown-up look at life through this sad example.

But for this common task the government has to step over the palisades and fences of the table of ranks that prevent it from seeing and heeding this grown-up speech, which is timidly and half surreptitiously expressed in literature and educated circles.

Can the thought of moving forward an entire part of the world to redeem three gloomy decades, to unite the two Russias between whom Peter's ra­zor has passed¹—a matter of purification, emancipation, and development, touching along the way fearful and colossal questions about landowner- ship, labor and its reward, the commune and the proletariat, before whom all European governments tremble—is it possible that this huge historic mission, coming of its own accord, will flatter Alexander II less than the empty and solitary height of absolute imperial power, limited by bribes, relying on bayonets, serfdom, liquor taxes, the secret police, ignorance, and beatings, ruling amidst general silence and suppressed groans?