A Herzen Reader

The Bell, No. i60, April i, Й63 (Part I); No. i6i, April i5, Й63 (Part II); No. i63, May i, i863 (Part III). Herzen wrote this article soon after receiving news of the distribution in Moscow and Petersburg of a proclamation called "Polish Blood Is Flowing, Polish Blood Is Flowing.." He saw the call for widespread sympathy with the Polish cause as historically significant, a turning point in the life of Russian society. While Herzen misjudged the long-term impact of this proclamation on Russian politics and society, his continued public defense of Poland—despite his private feeling that the Poles had acted in haste—diminished respect for Herzen's political journalism in Russia, with even liberals seeing his pro-Polish stance as unpatriotic. Along with its topical inter­est, this essay continues Herzen's exploration of skepticism and irony as appropriate responses to the political realities of Russia. His ironic tone is in full force in a brief note in issue No. 160 about a report that two peasants had snatched a beaver hat off the head of a pedestrian on Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect. The crime was reported to the tsar, who ordered that they be immediately conscripted and sent to serve far from the capitals. Herzen asks whether or not there are laws covering theft, which would make it unnecessary to inform the sovereign every time such an outrage occurred. One did not have to look hard to find absurdities in "reform-era" Russia.

1831-1863 [1863]

I

"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." said Macbeth.

"What, will this blood n'er be washed away! Water!.. give me water!.. " said his wife.¹

There are, in fact, old men who not only have a lot of blood in them, but whose blood is young. and so indelible that there is no possibility of wash­ing it away.

Russia is experiencing all this. and God forbid there would be a mur­dered man in the woods, whose ghost would begin to appear at every feast.²

The Polish uprising has drawn a profound line. In future textbooks it will mark the end of one chapter of Russian history and the beginning of another. This is a turning point—it is possible to go on as before, but the break will be felt, and the line cannot be erased. The very same life on the other side of the line will not be the same. Russia will remember that the old man had a lot of blood in him, that this blood kept pouring down its arms. and that it did nothing to wipe it away.

"But was there really any less blood in Poland in 1831?"

"No, but Russia had less of a conscience, i.e., consciousness." History does not punish a half-conscious crime, a transgression done while half- asleep, it hands down an English verdict of "temporary insanity." The ques­tion is whether the Russia of 1863 has as much right to that verdict as the Russia of 1831?

We absolutely reject that.

The Polish uprising that followed five years after December 14th caught Russia off guard, dispirited and deep in thought. For almost the first time, Russians were then actually thinking about themselves. Nations come to a serious understanding rather late, the fruit of major ordeals, upheavals, and failures; the most developed nations can be in error for entire centuries under the influence of dreams and fantasies. For close to a century France believed itself to be liberal and even republican. Russia's thoughtful mood was completely appropriate. Boasting state significance and influence in European affairs, Petrine Russia imagined that it would be as easy to bor­row political freedom from its neighbors as it was to borrow a military- police empire. Despotism increased tenfold, causing those who were not utterly crushed to fall into thought, and they began to doubt their path; their striving was sincere, but it was satisfied with ready solutions not appropri­ate to the phenomena of Russian life. The oppressive feeling of the lack of roots weighed as much upon what was being thought and what had been awakened as did the government's oppression. The way out of this was un­clear and the weakness was obvious.

The Polish question was vaguely understood at that time. The leading people—people who were marching off to hard labor for their intention of curbing imperial despotism—were mistaken about it and came to a halt, without noticing it, at the narrowly official patriotic point of view of Karamzin. [. . .] ³

There was nothing to be said about the people; they were a sleeping lake, of whose currents flowing under the snow no one knew, and on whose frozen surface stood country estates, offices, and every sort of sentry box and barracks.