A Herzen Reader

Volkonsky was sent to the Nerchinsk mines, and you can read about the sojourn in this horrible place in the Notes of Pr. Yevgeny Obolensky. You can imagine what he endured at hard labor, where the officer in charge, Timofey Stepanovich Burnashov, once threat­ened to beat him and Prince Trubetskoy with a lash. He was joined by his wife, Princess Maria Nikolaevna, whom he had married at the beginning of 1825. The 17-year-old beauty did not want to marry a 38-year-old man; she yielded only to the advice and urging of her parents, but, once having married, throughout her entire life she behaved like a true heroine, earning the admiration of her contempo­raries and posterity. Her parents did not want to let her go to Siberia; she went, having escaped their watchfulness, and left behind her baby son (who died soon after). Arriving in Irkutsk, she was over­taken by a courier bringing her a letter from Benkendorf, who, in the name of the sovereign, tried to convince her to return, which she refused to do. The Irkutsk authorities presented her with the regula­tions concerning wives of convicts, where it was said that the factory authority could use them for private jobs, and might force them to wash floors. She announced that she was ready for anything—she had come to be with her husband and never to part from him again. In August 1827, Volkonsky and his comrades were transferred from the Nerchinsk mines to a fortress especially built for them at the con­fluence of the Chita and Ingoda rivers (and where the city of Chita is

now located), and where they found many Decembrists who had been brought from the Petersburg fortress. There were 75 people in all at Chita. They organized their household in common; it was decided that each one would contribute five hundred paper rubles annually; but, in order to relieve the burden of payment on poor comrades, Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, fon Vizin, and Nikita Muravyov each gave up to three thousand a year; Vadkovsky, Ivashev, Lunin, Svistunov, and several others also gave more than the assigned amount; the affluent ones pooled their resources together for books and journals for com­mon use. In August 1830 they were all taken to the Petrovsky factory settlement, 400 versts⁷ from Chita, and afterward, little by little, scat­tered about Siberia. In December 1834, Volkonsky's mother died, and on her deathbed she asked the sovereign to lighten her son's fate; he was allowed to live at Petrovsky as a settler and not a convict, i.e., live not in the fortress, but in his wife's house. In 1836 he was transferred to the settlement of Urikovskoe, 19 versts from Irkutsk. Several years later he was allowed to live in Irkutsk itself as a Urikovskoe settler, and he remained there until 1856. The Russian government, which knows how to execute, exile, and punish fiercely and incoherently, did not know how to forgive; they would not allow Volkonsky to live in Petersburg, and they only allowed him to spend time in Moscow because of the serious illness suffered by his in-law Molchanov. The years had taken their toll; Sergey Grigorevich had aged and he suffered from gout, but he was still in good spirits and took a lively part in everything happening around him; everything noble found an echo in him, and the years-long suffering did not diminish the limitless goodness in his heart, the distinctive feature of this attrac­tive man, who in his venerable old age had preserved all the warmth of his exalted youthful feelings. In August 1863 he lost his wife, and this blow struck him inexpressibly. Since that time his health began to fail, he lost a leg, and, on November 28, 1865, at the age of 78, he quietly died in his daughter's arms in the village of Voronki, in Koze- letsk region of the Chernigov province.

Every true Russian, to whom the Winter Palace kind of servility is alien, will remember with tender emotion this man, who sacrificed all his earthly blessings to his convictions, and his desire to see his homeland free: wealth, reputation, even his own freedom! May he rest in peace, this noble, venerable victim of a vile autocracy, who out of love for his fatherland exchanged a general's epaulets for a con­vict's shackles.

Prince Petr Dolgorukov

Notes

Source: "Kniaz' Sergei Grigor'evich Volkonskii," Kolokol, l. 2i2, January i5, i866; i9:i6- 2i, 369-70.

What follows is an excerpt from a long series of "Letters to a Future Friend," four of which appeared in The Bell in i864, and a fifth in i866, and which marked a deepening rift between Herzen and the liberals.

Prince Petr V. Dolgorukov (i8i6-i868), a historian and commentator, emigrated in i859, and from i860 to Й64 published newspapers and journals in Leipzig, Paris, Brussels, and London.