A Herzen Reader

Fortunately, there was a man in the auditorium who could not stand it and defended the commune. Mr. Panaev⁷ concluded his speech (which the Petersburg newspapers were careless enough to relate briefly) by saying that it would be unjust to decide the question about finding ways to destroy the commune at a meeting of representatives of capital without any repre­sentations of labor present. "Mr. Panaev himself sees the commune as the best resolution to the question of the relationship of capital and labor— a great principle, found only in our midst. This principle is the right of a person to land. 'The right to land is the same as the infamous right to work!' noted Mr. Bushen."⁸

With this hint the matter was not concluded, but only begun, a bouquet having been prepared by Mr. Skaryatin,⁹ the editor of The News: "Boldly, clearly and smugly he gave a long speech. in defense of serfdom. [. . .] Serfdom was a great productive force, said Mr. Skaryatin, enumerating the blessings of serfdom, which consist of the fact that the landowner kept an eye on the peasant's work and helped him, encouraging the hard-working peasants and reforming the careless ones. He concluded by saying that: 'Everyone benefited from this order of things, and this entire order collapsed on February 19, 1861.' The commune could not take its place, and therefore— given the proliferation of farm laborers—it made sense to dissolve it."

[. . .] What has happened to all the zealous, experienced friends and the defenders of their younger brothers, of the commune, and of communal landholding?..

Where is Ivan Aksakov?

Where is Yury Samarin?

Wouldn't it be better that in place of the spiritual "Day" to publish a worldly "Day" and to do battle over our right to the land than to spend un­bearably dull pages answering some sort of Father Martynov,¹⁰ whose let­ters no one has or will read?

Wake up, Brutus! While you celebrated victory over the Poles and oc­cupied yourself with the destruction of the Jesuits, look how the class of Orthodox landowners has raised its ugly head.

Notes

Source: "Krepostniki," Kolokol, l. 2ii, January i, i866; i9:7-i2, 365-67.

"Tu te reveilles, belle endormie!" This is the first line of a song by Charles Dufresny, which Pushkin quotes in the fifth chapter of Eugene Onegin.

On the night of December 2, i85i, Louis Bonaparte, president of the French Repub­lic, dissolved the Parliament and the State Council and arrested leaders of all opposition parties.

The Free Economic Society was created in ^65, with the approval of Catherine II, and lasted, except for a brief closure in i900, until i9i9, when the Bolsheviks finally abolished it. Despite Herzen's disapproval, it is considered to have been a fairly liberal group, interested in acquiring the best machinery from abroad for the improvement of agriculture, and in stimulating new ideas about farm management and the peas­antry through numerous essay contests on subjects of vital national interest. In the months after the emancipation, the Free Economic Society organized a literacy commit­tee. A survey of the society's first century of activity was prepared by A. I. Khodnev (not Bezobrazov, as Herzen believed), and was published in The Northern Post in i865 (nos. 237-239). For more on the Free Economic Society, see Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia.

The meeting dedicated to the centenary of the Free Economic Society was ceremo­nially opened on October 3i, Й65, and went on for six days in the hall of the Petersburg Assembly of the Nobility.

On January ii, Й65, the Moscow nobility presented an "address" to Alexander II in which they asked permission to summon "a general assembly of chosen people from the Russian land to judge the needs common to the entire state." The text of this address and a report on meetings of the noble assembly was published in The News (Vest') on January i4, which led to the newspaper being closed down for eight months, while its editor was taken to court.

Herzen makes use of an account of the fourth meeting day, which was published in the November 7, Й65, issue of The St. Petersburg Gazette. At this meeting the resolution by some members to get the authorities to weaken the peasant communes was proposed by a government statistician and editor, Artur B. Bushen, and opposed by professor of economics Ivan V. Vernadsky (the chair mentioned by Herzen). The Bell goes on to dis­cuss speeches by others present that day.

Valerian A. Panaev (i824-i899) was a railway engineer, a commentator, and the au­thor of a plan to free the serfs that was published in the i858 collection Voices from Russia.