A Herzen Reader

The crude government, frightened by a Stroganov who had lost his mind, alongside petty persecutions and humiliations, began to insult the universi­ties: with the appointment of Putyatin, with constraints on the schools, and with the heartless expulsion of the poor.⁵ The students of St. Petersburg University selected deputies and instructed them to carry their protest to the authorities. The authorities treated them as savages on the Sandwich Islands behaved toward members of Parliament, and the same way that Peter the large behaved with Polubotok, and Nicholas the long with deputies of the soldiers from Staraya Russa, i.e., contrary to any understanding of honor and moral shame, they were seized.⁶ The students resolved to ask that their comrades be freed, and that is why Bistrom-Santerre whipped up the soldiers, setting them against other social classes. Patkul wore out two horses, and Ignatiev-Malkovsky whispered to Filipson: "Everything is ready. We can begin!" Begin what? The slaughter of young people, carnage in the university courtyard?.. What can one add to that! [. . .]

In Russia the universities are closed down, and in Poland the churches closed themselves after being defiled by the police. There is neither the light of reason nor the light of religion! Where do they want to lead us in the dark? They have lost their minds—get them out of the driver's seat if you do not want to crash to the ground along with them!

But where can you go, young people, who have been barred from learn­ing? Shall I tell you where?

Listen carefully, since the darkness does not prevent you from hearing: from all parts of our vast homeland, from the Don and the Urals, from the Volga and the Dnepr, there is increased moaning and a rising murmur—it is the initial roar of a wave which is boiling up, fraught with storms, after an awfully tiresome period of calm. To the people! To the people!—that is your place, exiles from learning. Show these Bistroms that you will not turn into petty officials, but warriors, not homeless mercenaries, but warriors of the Russian people!

Glory to you! You are initiating a new era; you have understood that the time of whispering, distant hints, and banned books is passing. You still secretly print books at home, but you openly protest. Praise to you, younger brothers, and our distant blessing! Oh, if only you knew how the heart beats, how tears were ready to flow, when we read about the day of the stu­dents in Petersburg!

ISKANDER. October 22, i86i

P.S. This article was already written when we read in The Times (for Oc­tober 22) about such vile, such base villainy, that despite all our limitless faith in the immorality of the Petersburg administration, we were almost in doubt. The secret police sent out fake invitations to the students to gather on the square in order to catch them all, but the students figured this out and did not show up. After this, can one be surprised at Bistrom's Jaco­bin speech and the fact that he is not on trial for this speech, and that the Third Department toyed with the thought of kidnapping me from England; can one just despise from afar the fact that when Mikhailov⁷ was arrested, the gendarmes were busy with prostitutes (do not blush, Shuvalov, do not blush, Patkul, do not blush, Ignatiev, the word is not as shameful as the deed), women whom they had been instructed to search.

And these dregs of cheats, crooks, and whores we are obliged to accept as a government!

Notes

Source: "Ispolin prosypaetsia!" Kolokol, l. ii0, November i, i86i; i5:i73-76, 398-99.

The quotation is from a poem written by Derzhavin on the occasion of the capture of the fortress of Izmail from the Ottoman Empire in late i790-early i79i by General Suvorov.

Filaret ^783^867) was metropolitan of Moscow beginning in i826. The impe­rial law school was founded in i835 on the initiative of Prince Petr G. Oldenburgsky (i8i2-i88i), who was its longtime trustee.

Alexander II was in the Crimea at the time of student unrest in St. Petersburg. Grand dukes Nikolay (i83i-i89i) and Mikhail (i832-i909) were the tsar's younger brothers. Herzen ironically refers to Governor-General Ignatiev as "Ignatiev-Malkovsky" because of his "heroic" and unjustified arrest of the merchant E. Malkov in Й58, which had been publicized in previous issues of The Bell.

Baron Rodrig G. Bistrom (i8i0-i886) was a general who took part in suppressing the Poles in i830-3i and i863; Herzen later calls him "Bistrom-Santerre" after a French revolutionary general, Antoine Santerre. Major-General Alexander V. Patkul (i8i7- i877) was head of the police in St. Petersburg and a member of the Military Council.