A Herzen Reader

By that time Nicholas had somewhat recovered from the 14th of Decem­ber and had calmed down. [. . .] Suddenly the news of the Paris revolution of 1830 came crashing down on him and he became flustered. Like a guards officer in a time of complete peace, he announced that soon it would be necessary to mount up, and ordered the army put on a wartime footing. He was rude to Louis Philippe without any call.⁴ Perhaps only in 1848 did he surpass the year 1830 in his constraints on every declared thought and every word not in agreement with the foundations of an all-consuming ab­solutism. It was then that for the first time he hoisted his absurd banner of "autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality.";⁵ since then, in contrast to what was going on in Europe, there began to form in his head that deification of the tsarist title in his person. [. . .]

But if no one believed in the divinity of imperial state power, everyone believed in its strength, those who loved it and those who hated it, Russians and foreigners, the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Sebastiani, Metter- nich and Casimir Perier,⁶ the orators who attacked Russia, and Pushkin, who responded to them in verse.⁷

Thus, on the one side, a vague aspiration to throw off the despotic guard­ian who was paralyzed by the consciousness of alienation from the people. On the other side, there was the repressive specter of the imperial state's enormous power, against which it was possible to lay mines underground, but impossible to even think of fighting face to face.

What sort of protest on behalf of Poland was possible in i83i? Hidden sympathy—that existed, there were verses that burst forth with tears, there was the enthusiastic reception of exiles, and the university youth (at least in Moscow) were for Poland. The journals and literature had no political significance under the censorship of that time. Society, which had fallen into a serious decline, remained indifferent, although there was a minority who had been raised under Western influence and hated Nicholas for the cavalier nature of his despotism. [. . .]

After that followed years of the most prosaic epoch of the reign of Nicho­las. The Poland that survived went abroad, telling other nations of savage suppression [. . .] hatred toward Russia became the common sentiment of women, children, aristocrats, and plebeians. The London rabble grumbled aloud during the visit of Nicholas to England, and Lord Dudley Stuart sent him a note in support of the Poles.⁸ We had a drop of blood on us, and were marked by our victory over the Poles.

At home, the dreary despotism continued. [. . .]

But thoughts that had arisen within reached maturity, and the word that had been forcibly turned back ate away at the chest, undermined the prison walls, and, while the stockade's facade remained the same, within it a great deal had changed.

At first the pain, the loss of our dearest hopes, and the insults were too fresh, and the humiliations irritated us too much. Many energetic, noble natures were broken, and began to wither away physically or morally. Pecherin sought salvation in Catholicism, and Polezhaev in merrymaking and orgies.⁹

The question of a way out of this hell, out of this purgatory, became such a tormenting question for a man of reason that, finding no solution, some—as we just said—took flight or fell into a decline while others denied the possibility of a way out, like Chaadaev.¹⁰ The poison of profound thought went deeper and deeper, as skepticism and irony were the literary signs of an internally devouring flame. The Byronism of Pushkin and Lermontov was not simply imitation; it was as timely and national for Petrine Russia as Gogol's amazing laughter.

The level at which this work was going on was not accessible to the government—a whip doesn't cut that deeply. Nicholas was a completely uneducated and badly surrounded man; his secret police, compiled from card-sharps, broken-down officers, and petty thieves who had been caught stealing government money, floated on the surface. They were afraid of an impertinent word, a velvet beret a la Karl Sand, and cigars smoked outside; they sought classic conspirators with daggers, cloaks, and oaths, who make frightening sounds in the presence of highly strung women. They could not understand a huge, open conspiracy that had penetrated the soul with­out an oath and that walked the streets without a Calabrian hat; their fingers were too coarse.[1]