A Herzen Reader

The cords with which the government entangled us are easy to sever; it is a matter of muscles, and not conscience, as in the West. The literary Mu- ravyovs want to tighten the noose, while still assuring us that it is all for our good; they want not only to overwhelm us with their power and corrupt us with their conviction. Now, at a time when we must lay out our plan and erect signposts, they want to narrow our thinking. [. . .] cultivate in us the conservative senility of Europe and wind up just cultivating its chronic dis­eases. [. . .] They themselves can easily do without free institutions, without freedom to publish, and congratulate themselves with their victory over the revolution of i862 in Petersburg, of which none of us has heard.

This unnecessary, boring page from our textbook must be torn out. We were drilled sufficiently during the Petrine era, and there is no need, while abolishing corporal punishments, to introduce ones that are spiritual.

For our part, however, much strength remains [. . .] we will keep the mandarin-spiders from weaving us into this web, we will oppose this sec­ond and superfluous German invasion. The fact that they will try to stop us with the hindquarters of their police horses, to the accompaniment of the approving neighs and brotherly help of their imitators, will not stop us. It is a shame, though, that prior to kicking they did not wipe off their hooves because there is already a lot of mud, but a la guerre comme a la guerre.

August 20,1863

POST SCRIPTUM

It is impossible to go any further, without glancing at the path we have traveled since the previous stage.

While we trudged along, laying down a modest road to our printing press, events moved on and came to some kind of turning point; the shad­ows obviously are falling in a different direction.

Ten years ago Russia was silent, and we faced a single enemy—the gov­ernment. It did not have defenders in literature and fierce partisans in so­ciety. Literature kept silent about it and society feared it. Literature—with the exception of police organs that were despised by everyone—was in op­position. Society was not in opposition: indifferent and sleepy, it had no opinion, and amused itself under the shelter of autocracy.

Then society split: one part hated the government for the emancipation of the serfs, while the other loved it for the same reason. On this issue, all literature stood with the government, and, once that had happened, backed the government on a few other issues. Men of letters for the first time saw the possibility and pleasure of keeping all the advantages of liberalism with­out any of the disadvantages of being in opposition. In that way, by degrees there began a system of hopes and expectations on the part of literature and a system of a little bit ofgood at a time (gradualness with the chronic delay of prog­ress) on the part of the government. Russia lived in a kind of optical illusion: the government did not yield a bit, while literature and a portion of society were convinced that they were getting everything. Even those trifles that the government allowed were not made law and could always be taken back. Literature, enjoying some openness and temporarily relaxed censorship, imagined that we were on the eve of radical change, that a constitution was being written, that freedom of the press est garantie, that only a few formali­ties remained, but the main business was already taken care of. The jour­nals which had come to believe this immediately took on an extraordinarily European character—a bit conservative, but not at all against progress; they began to speak about political parties, opposition pamphlets—democratic, federal, socialist—forgetting that we have a great many policemen and very few rights, that censorship really existed, and the court system existed only in a formal sense, making significantly easier, in that way, the work of the Third Department.

Journalism and the government during this honeymoon of government- sponsored liberalism behaved on terms of the most delicate civility. The journals displayed the greatest faith in a reforming government, while the government said how badly it felt that it could not improve and correct all institutions as fast as it would like, and it spoke of its love for open discus­sion and its hatred for monopolies.

They resembled two honorable people, competing with each other in politeness—one, in demanding a debt, said that he fully appreciates that his debtor intends to pay; the other puts it off, assuring him that he is making a sacrifice in postponing the delight of payment.