A Herzen Reader

We have inherited a sad treasure, but still a treasure, of the bitter experi­ence of others; we are rich in the painfully acquired wisdom of our elders. [. . .] The great, fundamental idea of revolution, despite its philosophical attributes and the Roman-Spartan ornaments of its decrees, quickly went too far toward the police, the inquisition, and terror; in wishing to restore freedom to the people and to recognize its coming of age, a desire for speed led to treating them like the material of well-being, like the human flesh of liberation, chair au bonheur publique,⁵ like Napoleonic cannon-fodder.

But here, unfortunately, it turns out that the people had very little meat on their bones, to the point that to all reforms, revolutions, and declaration of rights it answered:

We are hungry, wanderer, very hungry!

We are cold, dear one, very cold!⁶

And the lawgivers did not just break things, they also built them up, they not only unmasked, but also lectured, and more important than lecturing, they made people study, and maybe, the saddest thing of all in most cases, they were right.

Behind their own noise and their own speeches, the good neighborhood policemen of human rights and the Peter the Firsts of freedom, equality, and brotherhood for a long time did not hear what the sovereign people were saying; then they became angry over its rampant materialism. However, here as well they did not ask what was going on.

They were convinced that it was better to lecture the people than to learn from them, that it was better to build things up than to break them down, that it was better to work in the study on an account in the absence of the proprietor than to ask him about it. Sieyes and Speransky⁷ weren't the only ones who wrote all sorts of pale constitutions, but the Germans, what did they write and elevate to a science!? And the abyss between them and the people not only did not shrink, but expanded, and this is the conse­quence of tragic, inevitable necessity. Every success, every step forward car­ries away the radiant shore; it moves more and more quickly and becomes more and more distant from the gloomy shore and the ignorant people.⁸ With what can one fill the abyss, what doctrinaire scholasticism can be used to help, what dogmatic regulation and what kind of academic exercise can bridge it? An experiment was tried, it did not succeed, again because the socialists gave lectures before they knew what they were talking about, and organized phalansteries⁹ without having found anywhere the type of person who would want to live in workers' hotels.

And from this very abyss there will emerge, there will come to the sur­face guillotines, red hats on pikes, Napoleons, armies, more armies, legit­imists, Orleanists, a second republic, and, finally, June days¹⁰—days that created nothing, established nothing, days in which the best and unluckiest of peoples, driven by need and despair, went out into the street without a sound, without a plan, without a goal, out of despair and said to their guard­ians, lawmakers, and teachers: "We do not know you! We were hungry, and you gave us parliamentary chatter; we were naked, and you sent us across the border to kill other cold and naked people; we asked for advice, we asked you to teach us how to get out of our situation, and you taught us rhetoric. We are returning to the darkness of our damp cellars, a portion of us will fall in an unequal battle, but, before doing this, we are telling you, scribes of the revolution, loudly and clearly:

The people are not with you!"

Notes

Source: "Miaso osvobozhdeniia," Kolokol, l. i2i, February i, i862; i6:25-29, 356-58.

Herzen then alludes to remarks made in such newspapers as the Allgemeine Zei- tung, Kolnische Zeitung, and Siecle.

Herzen: "We are mostly speaking about journals whose inclination is pseudo- republican, administratively democratic, or Germanically Russophobic. In serious pe­riodicals there are remarkable articles about Russia. As recently as the January 2 issue of Revue des Deux Mondes there was a very interesting article by Charles de Mazade, 'La Russie sous le regne d'Alexandre II.' [. . .]"

A quote from Pushkin's "Demon," which Herzen has altered.

Herzen: "Alas, that time has passed. It will, perhaps, return, and while we wait."

Herzen: "The meat (or flesh) of social well-being."

From Nikolay Nekrasov's "Songs of the Poor Wanderer."

Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836) was an eloquent social and political theorist from the beginning of the French Revolution until Napoleon's coup d'etat: his best-known pamphlet is What Is the Third Estate? (1789).

For both words, Herzen employs the adjective temnyi (lit. "dark") in different, but related, senses.