A Herzen Reader

General Rostovtsev (1803-1860) was put in charge of all military schools in 1835. In an 1849 letter to Herzen, Granovsky described the new instructions as something that Jesuits would envy.

A reference to Ivan Turgenev's collection of stories called Notes of a Hunter (Za- piski okhotnika, 1852).

The article "The Anniversary of Borodino" appeared in Fatherland Notes (Oteche- stvennye zapiski) in October 1839, while Belinsky was under the influence of Hegel. The idea of reconciliation with reality was advanced in this and other Belinsky articles in 1839 and 1840.

Alexey Khomyakov (i8o4-i86o) was an influential Slavophile essayist.

In June i849, Granovsky wrote to Herzen that the situation was getting worse daily, with any attraction to the West stifled, and denunciations multiplying rapidly. There was every reason to go mad, and Belinsky had picked the right time to die.

Major-General Ivan P. Liprandi (i790-i88o) led the Interior Ministry's yearlong surveillance of the Petrashevtsy and compiled a list of everyone who could be linked to the group.

A reference to Dostoevsky's prison memoir Notes from the House of the Dead (Za- piski iz mertvogo doma, i86o-62).

Admiral Charles Napier (i786-i86o) commanded the British fleet in the Baltic during the Crimean War. On July 25, i854, Nicholas visited Kronshtadt.

Spirit wrestlers (dukhobortsy or dukhobory) are one of the many sects that arose in Russia in the eighteenth century; three decades after this essay was written, Leo Tolstoy helped the Dukhobors to immigrate to Canada in order to avoid further persecution by the tsarist government.

Mikhailov took responsibility for the pamphlet and its distribution upon himself and was sentenced to hard labor. In the May i, i862, issue of The Bell, Herzen described "Milhailov's Answers" to the Senate.

General Alexey P. Buturlin (i8o2-i863) helped to suppress the Polish uprising in i83i and peasant disorders in i84i, and served as a governor for fifteen years; he became a senator in i86i.

Arngoldt, Slivetsky, and Rostovsky were officers serving with the Russian army in Poland who were shot in June i862 for spreading revolutionary pamphlets and harmful ideas among the Russian forces. General Liders was the tsar's deputy in Poland. Ob- ruchev was a retired military officer who worked at The Contemporary, was arrested in i86i, and sentenced to hard labor for distributing the "Velikorus" proclamation.

Nikolay Serno-Solovyovich (i834-i866) was one of the organizers of "Land and Liberty" in i86i (not to be confused with a second, more radical, movement of the same name in the i87os), met with Herzen in London, was arrested in July i862, and sen­tenced to hard labor. His brochure, "The Final Resolution of the Peasant Question," came out in Berlin in i86i.

Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons, which had appeared in i862, stimulated a vigorous debate over the political portrayal of the generations.

55 *

The Bell, No. i63, May i5, i863. This polemic against Katkov and The Moscow Gazette (Moskovskie vedomosti) displays the familiar ironic style of Herzen's journalism, espe­cially with its abundance of rhetorical questions and punning.

What Kind of Government Does Russia Have?

[1863]

The Morning Post suddenly, without warning, reveals that the government in Russia is despotic.¹

Do you hear that? In Russia the government is despotic? What kind of lunacy is this!

So Paul I was a despot?

So Nicholas I was a despot?

So even Alexander II is a despot? It is true that since we have begun to forget the unforgettable one, the form of government has not changed.

No, these Jacobins do not understand the Russian government. [. . .]

If Poland rebelled, that is because the Russian autocracy had little free­dom to operate, being very much constrained by free institutions. If officers were shot, this is no despotism but Liders's doing.² If people are held in jails and exiled for their words, without a trial, well, it's all legal and according to the code of laws. chapter and verse, and not despotism. It was clear that The Moscow Gazette could not tolerate such an affront, despite the fact that it was written in the English alphabet, on English paper, in England. The head of The Moscow Gazette quite rightly says that he cannot say "just how painful it is for a Russian person to hear that a serious organ of public opinion in Europe feels it has the right to call our form of government despotic."³