A Herzen Reader

However much planning went into the Millennium celebration, it was criticized across the political spectrum. The poet Tyutchev found it lacking in a "religious feeling of the past" and thus untrue to Russia's history, and Fyodor Buslaev saw the bell-shaped monument as honoring only the Russian state. Ivan Aksakov labeled it an official occa­sion to which the Russian people were not invited. In any case, said Aksakov, the people experience their history differently, and "do not share the Western jubilee sentimental­ity," implying that this was a practice borrowed from Europe and, like many such bor­rowings, one that soon reached a hypertrophied state in Russia (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 2:84, 87).

Herzen railed against the emptiness and bad taste of the entire jubilee enterprise. In the course of those September days, the government announced the latest recruit­ing goals, a cause of great misery in the countryside, and the tsar made a stern speech to representatives of the peasants about their unrealistic hopes (Tatishchev, Imperator Aleksandr II, K404-5). To add to the absurdity, Minister of the Interior Valuev made sure that news of his own sixtieth birthday got into the papers, leading Herzen to con­fess that the stupidity of all this left him almost speechless.

The Celebration of the Millennium [1862]

The absurdity of the celebration in Novgorod has exceeded all expectations of even the fiercest admirers of the earthly tsar. What vulgarity and shal- lowness, what obstinacy and formalism, what awkwardness and lack of ability in all things, from the announcement of the recruitment misfor- tune—on the very day when good news had been expected—to the warning to Novgorod peasants not to expect a more genuine emancipation in the future!..¹ No, gentlemen of the Winter Palace, you have received no modern anointing, you don't know how to do anything right, no matter in what uni­form you appear—as Sobakeviches or Manilovs²—you can't even organize a celebration. It's the prose, the pitiful prose of the Petrine era, which has retained its heavy Germanic style, but the thoughts have vanished! Perhaps

a very foolish-looking Rus will understand this lesson, and one can thank Valuev³ for that. He alone raised his voice in order—in his turn—to make the millennium look ridiculous; he sent the following malicious gibe to all the newspapers:

"The sixtieth birthday of the Minister of the Interior. On the day of the dedication of the monument to the millennium of Russia, September 8, the minister of the interior marked his sixti­eth birthday." (St. P. September 10)

Since we cannot presume to come up with anything stupider and more comical, this is a good place to stop.

Notes

Source: "Prazdnik tysiacheletiia," Kolokol, l. 146, October 1, 1862; 16:247-48, 440-41.

The recruitment targets for the first part of 1863 were published in a manifesto from Alexander II on September 8. The tsar accepted the congratulations of Novgorod area peasants on September 9; his scolding speech to the peasantry was published in Russia.

Sobakevich and Manilov are characters in Gogol's novel Dead Souls.

Petr A. Valuev was minister of the interior from 1861 to 1868.

♦ 50 ♦

The Bell, No. 157, March 1, 1863. Since 1861, Herzen and Ogaryov had been in communi­cation with organizers of the secret circle that became the first Land and Liberty (Zemlia i volia). While Ogaryov worked more closely with them, it was Herzen who suggested the name, which was taken from his essay "What Do the People Need?" and this idea was accepted in 1862. Herzen did not agree to closer ties with radical groups, but he was still willing to help with producing and distributing propaganda and agitation materials. By mid-1863, Herzen recognized the movement's weakness and the unlikelihood of its program being realized, but he maintained his support until the group dissolved the fol­lowing year. The essay below emphasizes the socialist essence of the peasant commune, and the links between a free Poland and a free Russia.

Land and Liberty [1863]

While the Petersburg eagle, having lowered one of its heads, tears apart the bosom of the unfortunate Poland, clouds—its own, domestic ones—gather around the other head. Let it wait and conduct a prayer service with its

Brandenburg hawk, which it summoned to the feast of the suppression of a great people.¹

1863 is not 1831.

Europe may be the same, but Russia is not!

We know for certain that circles in the capitals and the provinces, united amongst themselves and together with officers' committees, have formed a single society.

This society has adopted the name "LAND AND LIBERTY."

And under this name they shall prevail!