A Herzen Reader

A dozen of the hundred essays in this volume are reflections on this first assassination attempt against Alexander II on April 4, 1866. Herzen's initial reaction (Doc. 80) was disapproval of such individual "surprises" as a way of changing history. "The shot was insane, but what is the moral condition of a state when its fate can be altered by chance actions, which cannot be foreseen or prevented, exactly because they are insane?" (Doc. 82). Three years earlier, a group of young Russians visiting England had offered to kill the tsar, but Herzen convinced them to abandon the plan.²⁵ He called Karakozov a "fanatic" who did much more harm than good by bringing the reform era to an abrupt conclusion. That the peasant Komissa- rov, who reportedly deflected the shot, was elevated to the nobility seemed absurd to Herzen. He reminds his reader that while the tsar escaped harm, Nikolay Serno-Solovyovich, the founder of the first Land and Liberty group and a member of The Contemporary's editorial staff, lay dying in Siberian exile. Having resolved early on to put information-gathering above ideologi­cal abstractions, Herzen developed the ability to vividly juxtapose facts and events, which became one of his greatest strengths as a political analyst.

Herzen's main point in the essays on Karakozov from 1866 and 1867 is that there was no conspiracy, no matter how hard the Investigative Commis­sion tried to manufacture one (Docs. 82, 84, 86, 91). Therefore, no justifi­cation existed for the widespread repression in the wake of the April 4 shot (Docs. 85, 88, 92). He deplored the efforts of the formerly liberal Mikhail Katkov to whip up enthusiasm for Karakozov's execution; the rhetoric in The Moscow Gazette may remind modern readers of Katkov's professional descendants during the 1930s (Docs. 87, 88). Herzen asks "who can fail to see that we were right in pointing out all the absurdity of bringing social­ism, nihilism, positivism, realism, materialism, journal articles, student dissertations, etc. into the Karakozov case?" He even laments the split in the conservative forces, pitting Moscow against Petersburg, because politi­cal truth and national unity suffered as a result. "Won't this enormous em- pire—whose peripheries are held together by lead and blood . . . crack at its very center?" (Doc. 89).

At the time, only an incomplete record of the investigation and trial was available even to pro-government journalists; a more thorough recent study of the archives in Claudia Verhoeven's The Odd Man Karakozov adds in­teresting details to the picture painted by Herzen. While the lengthy se­cret dossier points to the Russian Free Press as one of the foreign stimuli for Karakozov's act, the condensed version published at the time left out Herzen's name; in Russia, he could not be mentioned officially even to cast blame.²⁶ The Moscow Gazette still felt free to speculate on the failed assassin as an agent of the Russian revolutionaries Herzen, Ogaryov, and Bakunin, with their links to radical Polish circles, while government of­ficials spread a rumor that Ogaryov was the young villain's relation.²⁷ The numerous searches carried out in the hunt for co-conspirators turned up illegal Russian publications and photos of the heroic editors.²⁸ At the end of her monograph, Verhoeven focuses on the "odd" nature of Karakozov's act. When asked by the tsar what he wanted, his answer was "Nothing," under­scoring the terrorists' belief that the tsar had no power to act; Karakozov's vision on April 4, i866, was of "power's void."²⁹ In "Order Triumphs!" one of Herzen's final essays on the subject, a similar observation is made: "The echo of Karakozov's shot exposed a terrifying vacuum in the Winter Palace" (Doc. 92).