A Herzen Reader

We read it once, twice, three times. with a great deal we are very much not in agreement (and we will talk about this in another article), but we must in good conscience confess that we do not understand the delirium tremens of the government, the whining of the conscientious journals, or the emotional confusion of the platonic lovers of progress.

[. . .] We address ourselves to genuinely honest, but weak, people and ask them: why were they frightened of "Young Russia"? Did they really believe that the Russian people would—just like that—grab an axe at the first cry of "All hail the Russian socialist and democratic republic!" No, they will an­swer in a chorus that this is impossible, that the people do not understand these words, and on the contrary, embittered by the arson, they would be prepared to tear to pieces those who pronounce these words. And yet every honest person feels obligated to abuse these young people, showering them with reproaches and curses, and feels obliged to be horrified, raising their eyes to the mountains.

Gentlemen, look more deeply at your feelings, and you will see with shame that what struck you was neither the danger, nor the lie, nor any damage, but the audacity of free speech. Your sense of hierarchical discipline has been offended—they are speaking way beyond their years and status.

If these young people (and we have no doubt that this flysheet was writ­ten by very young people) in their arrogance talked a lot of nonsense, then stop them, enter into argument with them, answer them, but do not call out for help, do not push them into prison cells because the Third Department fara da se.⁶ And if they run out of spies there is auxiliary literature, which can be used to implicate them as incendiaries after a Russian-style, secret, torture-chamber investigation.

Thus this whole terrible affair, which has placed the Russian Empire and Nevsky Prospect on the brink of social cataclysm, having broken the last link between gradual and abrupt progress, is based on a youthful upsurge, incautious, unrestrained, but which did no harm and could not have done any harm. It is a shame that the young people issued this proclamation, but we will not blame them. [. . .] Where is the criminality?

If the government were capable of understanding and did not retain the self-important seriousness of a commissionaire with a mace, what a big laugh they would have now, looking at the alarm of the brave liberals, the tough progressives, the courageous defenders of rights and of a free press, the intrepid denouncers of police chiefs and local supervisors—seeing how they, the dear ones, ran under the wings of those very same police, that very same government. [. . .]

"Young Russia" seems to us doubly mistaken. First, it is not at all Rus­sian, but one of the variations on a theme of Western socialism, the meta­physics of the French Revolution, sociopolitical desiderata in the form of a call to arms. The second mistake is its inappropriateness: the accident of its coincidence with the fires intensified this.

It is clear that the young people who wrote this lived more in the world of comrades and books than in the world of facts, more in the algebra of ideas—with their easy and universal formulas and conclusions—than in a workshop, where friction, heat, bad casting, and internal flaws can alter the simplicity of a mechanical law and put the brakes on its rapid advance. That's how their speech appeared; in it there is none of that internal restraint that you get either from your own experience or the structure of an organized party.

But having said this, we will add that their fearless consistency is one of the most characteristic aspects of the Russian genius, which is estranged from the people. History has left us nothing cherished; we have none of those esteemed objects of respect, which hamper the Western man but which are dear to him. After the slavery in which we lived, the alienation from oth­ers like us, the break with the people, the inability to take action, we were left with a melancholy consolation, but a consolation nevertheless, in the starkness of the negation, in its logical relentlessness, and with some joy we pronounced those last extreme words, which our teachers, turning pale and glancing furtively around them, could barely pronounce. Yes, we pro­nounced them loudly, and it is as if it became easier in the expectation of the storm that they would provoke. We had nothing to lose.