A Herzen Reader

This was the end of the dark Petersburg reign. [. . .] The dismally suppressed dissatisfaction raised its head, and the whis­pering was replaced by a murmur: "What is this? After the blood, after the money, after being deprived of all human rights, they cannot defend the land from an enemy who lives at the other end of the world and sailed here on ships." This could not be printed—manuscript notebooks passed from person to person, were read aloud, because the former fear was gone. He is dead—what is there to fear? Everyone forgot that another he is alive. And through the burst dam rushed a cloudy foaming stream of liberal and con­servative slops, carrying with it all kinds of things: shards of philosophical systems, the debris of social ideas, the corpses of drowned economic doc­trines, the skeletons of constitutions, in a word, everything that had come up against the wall of censorship and had lain there for years rose to the surface in its old clothes, covered in slime and moss. This made respectable people angry because they wanted Russia to leave the embraces of Nicholas and emerge like Minerva, with an owl, a globe, and a compass. [. . .]

As soon as a person sees the possibility of taking part, of acting, action becomes a physiological necessity for him. It may be premature, not well thought out, even false, but it cannot fail to take place. No religion, no social theory can reach its full consciousness before the beginning of its imple­mentation. [. . .]

The nonsense that rose to the surface floated away, but the movement of the waves remains. The habit of participating and declaring one's will and ideas—that will not pass away. [. . .]

Freeing ourselves surreptitiously from the idol worship of autocracy, without noticing it we came upon the path to another church, to another form of idol worship, but in it we did not find faith in ourselves. For every Western people the transition from a theological monarchy to a theologi­cally liberal orthodoxy was easy. Our happiness and unhappiness lie in the fact that we are satisfied with less than they were, but demand much more. If you give us Protestantism, we will become spirit wrestlers.²³ If you touch serfdom, we will demand the land as well. Our senses tell us, who have lagged behind, who are slaves, that the social religion that has outstripped us is not ours. What is surprising about the fact that it was all expressed awk­wardly, chaotically, with desperate nihilism and hopeless Orthodoxy? The idea made itself understood with all the extremes of going from an infantile state of instinct to the possibility of consciousness.

Whether or not the results were correct, whether there was in them more maturity than seeds, or the other way around, of one thing there can be no doubt: this was a new movement of life, a new splashing of a liberated wave; while remaining in the same fetters, under the same bolts, we became freer people.

In confirmation of this I introduce the following fact, to which little at­tention was paid. Alongside the corrupted literature, with journals on gov­ernment contracts, and with the Third Department at university lecterns, there was an extraordinary rise in social morality. The courage of one's convictions, which was completely lost in the previous reign, appeared once again, unafraid of the consequences.

Along with the Decembrists, our civic valor disappeared. The heroic period of opposition ends with the struggle ofthese conquered—but not dethroned— titans. During Nicholas's entire reign the tone of political defendants was evasive and based on denial. Society's indifference killed off futile bravery.

That has changed recently.

Once more, a man who was persecuted for his opinions and his words stood proudly before the court; he sensed the sympathy of the choir on the other side of the wall, he knew that his words were listened to avidly, he knew that his example would be a mighty homily.

Sadly, but firmly, Mikhailov appeared before the Senate.²⁴ The alms­house of old men who judged him were stupefied and listened with their mouths open; during their long military and civilian service they had never heard anything like it. The zealous Buturlin demanded the death sentence because of the insolence of the accused.²⁵

Calmly and steadfastly stood the three youths—Arngoldt, Slivetsky, and Rostovsky—before the military authorities, who had been ordered to sen­tence them to death.

"Did you write this unsigned letter to Liders?" Arngoldt was asked.

"I did," answered Arngoldt, "but I didn't have a chance to complete it," and he took a pen and signed his name.

And these are not isolated examples, not exceptions; they have become the norm. Other officers behaved this way, Obruchev, for example. [. . . ]²⁶