A Herzen Reader

It would be impossible to confer an award more awkwardly than the sov­ereign has done with Komissarov. But even here his loyal subjects tried to compete and not without success. The oppositional Shcherbatov found that saving the tsar demonstrated serious economic ability, particularly in the area of "agriculture," and proposed him as a member of the Economic Soci­ety.⁶ With this they went on to make Komissarov a member of clubs, schol­arly societies, assemblies, museums, lycees, and so on. Before you know it the corporation of privileged Moscow midwives will elect him an honorary mid-grandpa, and the society of spas will include him among the honorary sick and force him to drink free Ems mineral water and every other type, both sour and bitter... Why do you make such fools of yourselves? Have some pity on the man who saved the sovereign's life.

Notes

Source: "Irkutsk i Peterburg," Kolokol, l. 219, May 1, 1866; 19:58-65, 381-84.

Peter III was killed in Ropscha, near Peterhof, in 1762; Paul I was assassinated in the newly built Mikhailov Castle (zamok, not dvorets, as Herzen mistakenly calls it) in 1801. He also misstates the date of Serno-Solovyovich's death, which was February 14, not March 5, 1866.

A character in Schiller's historical drama Don Carlos (1787).

Officers in the engineering corps asked the authorities if they could show their gratitude for the tsar's safety by funding an "April 4, 1866" engineering scholarship, and, along with engineering students, commissioning icons of the Savior and those saints whose holy day falls on April 4.

A reference to the radical pamphlet "Young Russia," which circulated in 1862.

With the support of Muravyov the "Hangman," head of the investigative commis­sion, Katkov increased the attacks in The Moscow Gazette against not just revolutionaries but also Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and his liberal circle, and Skedo-Ferroti (pseudonym of Baron Fedor I. Firks, 1812-1872) for his brochure about Poland.

Grigory A. Shcherbatov (1819-1881) was a leader of the Petersburg nobility from 1861 to 1864, and after that served as a representative of the Petersburg assembly of rural landowners.

♦ 81 ♦

Gentry Benefactors (Countess Orlova-Denisova, Baron Ikskul, Count Sheremetev)

[1866]

People have written to us from Russia about the following beneficial and patriotic measures taken by various landowners to increase the well-being of the peasants. In relating these facts, we leave their trustworthiness to the conscience of our correspondent.

Countess Orlova-Denisova, at the time of apportioning the arable land with the peasants, took the best land for herself, and for her peasants in Kolomyagi (in which province?) assigned land consisting of moss and quagmire. In order to smooth this over, she won over several peasants, and, to the most important of them, who had influence on the others, she gave permission to open a shop.

Baron Ikskul has been trying for a long time to take away the homes of his former serfs in Gatobari, claiming that these houses belong to the manor: he owns a factory here. The residents had to literally move to a swamp. At first the case went in favor of the peasants, but then he managed the business very cleverly, and it went Ikskul's way. Now the case is being examined at the highest level.

Count Sheremetev had a very large number of house serfs.¹ Several of the house serfs had received land as a reward for their service. When the Febru­ary i9 manifesto went into effect, the count began to take back the land that he had given to the house serfs on the basis that according to the manifesto land was not assigned to house serfs. Several families of house serfs from the famous Ostankino estate began a lawsuit; it has dragged on until now with doubtful prospects of success for the house serfs, since they have no documents verifying the gift. Several peasants of that same Sheremetev acquired land under serfdom in the name of the radiant landowner. When the emancipation's provisions went into effect, these lands were considered as part of the landowner's portion. That last operation has already been re­ported on in The St. Petersburg Gazette.

Note

Source: "Blagodetel'nye pomeshchiki," Kolokol, l. 2i9, May i, i866; i9:66-67, 384.

i. This case would seem especially egregious since the Sheremetevs were known to be one of the greatest landowning families in Russia.

♦ 82 +

The Bell, No. 220, May i5, i866. Herzen offers additional comments on the attempted assassination. In his massive historical series The Red Wheel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said of the abdication of March i9i7 that it "happened almost instantaneously, but had been played out for 50 years, beginning with Karakozov's shot" (Publitsistika i995, 48i).

The News From Russia [1866]