A Herzen Reader

The news from Russia is endlessly sad.

The April 4 shot grows not by the day but by the hour, and by the hour into a general calamity which threatens to grow into more terrible and unde­served misfortunes for Russia.

The police fury has reached monstrous dimensions. Like a bone tossed to a savage pack of hounds, the shot once again stirred up the combatants and blew off the faint ash which was beginning to cover the smoldering fire; the dark forces raised their heads yet higher, and the frightened helmsman is steering Russia at full speed to such a terrible harbor that at the thought of it one's blood turns cold and the head grows dizzy.

The shot was insane, but what is the moral condition of a state when its fate can be altered by chance actions, which cannot be foreseen or pre­vented exactly because they are insane? We absolutely do not believe in a serious or vast conspiracy. [. . .] That kind of action could be the revenge of that which is passing away, or an act of personal despair, but it cannot be the establishment of something new. To whom would its success be use­ful? Perhaps to conservative landowners.

The shot was understood perfectly among the people. They turned it into a celebration. What kind of ovation, coronation, or anointing with holy oil could have done more to shore up the throne, to strengthen the sovereign's personal power than this shot, with the peasant's saving arm, with all the circumstances? If there and then the sovereign would have risen to his full height, in the fullness of his magnanimity. and would have turned the shooter over to an ordinary court, but an open one. He did not do that and could not do that—he is surrounded by a different kind of conspiracy, he is surrounded by a secret Russian cabal. A dark intrigue has turned this shot into a banner of destruction, the kind of banner that in ancient German illustrations we see in death's hand together with a scythe. Yes, this cabal will strike to the right and to the left, strike first of all its enemies, strike those who are freeing the word, strike independent thought, strike heads that proudly gaze forward, strike the people which it now flatters, and all this in the shadow of the banner proclaiming that they are saving the tsar, that they are avenging him. Woe to Russia if the tsar believes completely that this secret force is saving him. We will expe­rience the most terrible Biron-Arakcheev era, we will experience the tor­ture chamber sanctimony of new Magnitskys,¹ we will experience all the terrors of the secular inquisition of the Nicholaevan era but with all the improvements introduced with fake openness and a foul-mouthed police literature.

Under Nicholas they tormented and tortured people, threw them into solitary and sent them into exile silently. There was no insult. Now there is no punishment, no hard labor that can protect a person from the abuse and slander of the official howling dogs. Shameless, nasty, and base, they beat people lying on the ground, they insult corpses. for them there are no lim­its. once again it is our "riff-raff" put to the use of the police. From people they move on to ideas and institutions. and nothing can stand up to these nihilists of conservatism. Haven't we heard the cry raised against the educa­tion of the poor, against a too easy access to higher learning?.. Haven't we read the denunciations over the graves where the dead are buried, and over graves where they have buried the living?.. ² Don't they lead shadows in chains from hard labor and the mines?.. They wish to judge history and tie it to the pillory, like they tied Chernyshevsky.

Notes

Source: "Novosti iz Rossii," Kolokol, l. 220, May i5, i866; ^69-70, 386-87.

Mikhail Magnitsky served under Alexander I.

This is a reference to a criticism of authorities in Tobolsk for a slackening of their vigilance toward Mikhailov, who was already dead by the time the accusatory materials were released by the Senate.

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