A Herzen Reader

Herzen's correspondent uses the word potaplennik, which relates to the first para­graph of this article, where there is a description of literary figures who criticize others to gain the authorities' favor as potapstvuiushchie, that is, people who trample others in the dirt.

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The Bell, No. 141, August 15, 1862. Everyone on this list apparently visited Herzen in London during the spring and summer of 1862, and were observed by an agent of the Third Department, who kept watch on Herzen's house and was able to distinguish be­tween those who came out of curiosity and a smaller group assumed to have a genuine interest in his "criminal affairs." Most of the latter were, in fact, subject to rigorous searches when they crossed the border into the Russian Empire. The list got to Herzen through one of his Polish correspondents. Herzen wrote to Vladimir Stasov, who was staying in London at the time, that his Sunday and Wednesday open houses would have to stop because "the spying has increased to the point of insolence" (Let 3:352). In a letter from 1858 on surveillance of his visitors, Herzen repeated a rumor that Alexander had responded to the earlier report with the words "leave them in peace" (Let 2:398).

A List of People Subject to Arrest by the Government Upon Their Return from Abroad [1862]

We received from a Polish correspondent, whom we thank most sincerely, the names of people who are presently abroad, and whom our progressive

Petersburg government has ordered to be detained at the first Polish station on the railroad. Here is the list.

Stasov Vladimir Kalinovsky Balthazar Albertini Nikolay Kovalevsky Petr Kovalevsky Yulyan Kovalevsky Oskar Suzdaltsev Vladimir Plautin Fedor Botkin Sergey Korsh Valentin

."What a mix of garments and faces, tribes, dialects, and status!"² and what gigantic, colossal stupidity on the part of our government! [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Spisok lits, kotorykh pravitel'stvo velelo arestovat' po vozvrashchenii iz-za gra- nitsy," Kolokol, l. i4i, August i5, i862; i6:229, 426-27.

Pisemsky Alexander Betger Alexander Zagoskin Pavel Sovetov Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov Nikolay Rubinshtein Nikolay Davydov Pavel Davydov Denis Dostoevsky Fyodor¹

Aside from Dostoevsky, the other well-known names on this list include the writers Pisemsky (Alexey, not Alexander) and Zagoskin (Mikhail, not Pavel), the pianist Ru- binshtein, the art and music critic Stasov, professor of medicine Botkin, and the liberal journalist Korsh.

A line from Pushkin's poem "The Robber Brothers."

♦ 49 ♦

The Bell, No. i46, October i, i862. This is one of several articles by Herzen devoted to the tsarist regime's commemoration of the founding of Rus a thousand years earlier. While "Jubilee," from the February i issue (Doc. 43), focused on the Novgorod bell and the historical figures depicted on it, eight months later Herzen reported on the Sep­tember ceremony itself. Alexander II expended considerable energy on the unveiling of the Millennium statue in Novgorod, which was intended to be a moment of national joy and well-being (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:48-5^ 86). Helping to set the tone, the historian Kostomarov arrived from the capital to give a public lecture to a packed house on the significance of Novgorod the Great in Russian history (Smirnov, Gertsen v Nogorode, 42). After the threat of non-participation in the dedication ceremony (local nobles were angry about the terms of the emancipation) had passed, the event came off as planned, with warm words from the tsar about how, after i86i, the various estates in Russia were even more closely bound together. Alexander II expressed a wish to the

nobility that their descendants would continue to work with his descendants for the sake of the nation.

To emphasize the Russia-Romanov bond, the original suggestion by Minister of the Interior Lansky for a statue of the Varangian ruler Rurik was replaced by a sculptural ensemble on a much broader scale, covering the whole thousand years of Russian his­tory; the list of heroic figures to be included was the result of many hours of heated discussion in St. Petersburg. The ceremony was held on the anniversary of the Kulikovo battle, which coincided with the heir Nikolay Alexandrovich's birthday; flexibility was possible since the chronicles mentioned only the year 862. Newly written prayers were read and the dinner included Alexander's toasts to Russia; the nobility answered with toasts at their ball (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:86-87).