A Herzen Reader

The Bell, No. 211, January 1, 1866. The behavior of unrepentant serf owners serves as a continuing source of material for Herzen.

Serf Owners [1866]

Wake up, sleeping beauty!¹

We do not know whether Russia will enter the New Year on its right or left leg; we think it is more likely to be on its left leg, but whatever happens, every step will be exceptionally interesting.

The dead, half-decayed, will leave their graves, not wishing to remain in the earth if it is to be turned over to the peasants.

The government foolishly lashes out at social theories, while serf owners stroll about with unfurled banners.

We have heard that just before death, scars from the whip show up on the prisoner, but we have never heard that they showed up on the executioners.

A year ago, Katkov himself, soiled with every kind of filth, having inso­lently smiled when he was called an "informer," rejected the accusation of serf ownership.

Now, completely to the contrary, an entire band of former slave own­ers openly weep over their lost serf rights. The 19th of February 1861 is remembered as a day of great misfortune, the way the French republicans remember the 2nd of December.² We do not doubt that they always had these feelings, but they were hiding them. What has untied their tongues?

Two years of terror, of tsarist demagogy, awash in blood and violence, two years of paid-for slander and official journalism.

This is the first fruit of that corruption of public opinion—so masterfully carried out by the government—of that bloodthirsty mood which the gov­ernment's defenders had stirred up since the year 1862. These are the first laurels from the Polish victories, from the pillories in St. Petersburg, from the exiles, executions, torture.

The lack of ceremony with which serf owner reaction has appeared in our midst is rarely met with in history. Those who weep for the past ordi­narily give it the appearance of a revered relic, a moral sense, and throw a cover over its disgraceful wounds and filthy nakedness. Nothing of the kind happened with our neo-serf owners: they regret their rights to the labor of others, and are angry at the obstacles in their way, as thieves are angry at the arm of the law that prevents them from stealing. In our time only one country achieved these Hercules columns of depravity of thought and word—these are the American southerners, who appeared in churches and journals to defend slavery. Birds of a feather flock together.

What calamities await Russia, if it can produce such poison and is not able to get rid of it? The rotten emaciation we inherited from entire gen­erations who were born into the depravity of slaveholding ferments in our veins, deadening our heart, clouding our mind, and bringing sorrow for the loss of unjust gain to the point of a daring protest—as if mere passion for unearned profit could lead us out of our apathetic drowsiness and passive obedience.

The jubilee of the Free Economic Society afforded an occasion for our neo-serf owners. Everyone knows what this Free society really is, and anyone who does not know should read the account by V. Bezobrazov.³ This is one of those unskillful bits of window dressing with which Catherine II deceived Europe, like the cardboard villages with which Potemkin deceived her. Empty, frivolous, and lifeless, it lasted a hundred years with the same usefulness as parrots and ravens that live as long. Knowing with whom they were dealing, the government allowed the hundred-year-old free society to gather from all corners of Russia rural proprietors,⁴ to consult with them, and, if necessary, to make statements, i.e., the government gave them the right to organize a congress on the most important issue of national life and gave them the right of petition, which they had denied to the Moscow nobility.⁵

This conclave, this convention of rural masters, wanted to demonstrate that it was an active force, and it decided. what do you think?.. Guess!

Our dear drones, disguised as bees, decided to disturb the government. On the passing of legal measures promoting the collapse of the rural commune. The chairman of this division was himself ashamed, and he remarked to these utter slaves that these matters may be judged and debated, but that one does not request such arrangements from the government.⁶