A Herzen Reader

The Bell, No. 228, October 1, 1866. A year after this essay appeared, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward finalized the purchase of Alaska from Russia. In the early 1850s, Herzen had rejected a suggestion from his Moscow friends that he move to America until there was a new tsar, but he took a lively interest in America's affairs and in how it compared to Russia.

America and Russia [1866]

The Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the future.

All the Russian and non-Russian papers are full of news about rapproche­ment in the North American alliance with Russia.¹ Western commentators are angry and frowning (for good reason). The Russians are reprinting in ten different ways, with a number of variations, what we said somewhat earlier, namely eight years ago. This is what was published in our lead article in The Bell for December 1, 1858:²

We have not been spoiled by an excess of sympathy from other peoples, and have not been spoiled by their understanding either. There were a lot of reasons for this, most of all Petersburg policy since the year 1825. But Russia is emerging from this period—why is it America alone that guessed this and is the first to welcome it?

Because Russia and America are meeting on the other side. Because between them lies an entire saltwater ocean, but not an entire world

of outdated prejudices and concepts, envious precedence, and civili­zations that have ground to a halt.

It will soon be ten years since we expressed our thoughts about the mutual relations of these futures on the road of contemporary his­tory. We said that in the future Russia has one comrade, one fellow traveler—the Northern States; we have repeated this many times, and just a few months ago we had the opportunity to say: only empty, ir­ritated diplomatic pride—what's more, Germanic—causes Russia to get involved in all Western issues. In the forthcoming battle, toward which Europe is unwillingly being drawn, there is no need for Russia to take an active part. We have no legacy there, and we equally are not bound by memories or expectations with the fate of that world. If Russia will liberate itself from the Petersburg tradition, it has one ally only—the North American States.

Everything that we witnessed, raising the issue at our own risk in a hostile West, everything that we predicted—from the secretly roving forces, from the inevitable emancipation of the serfs with land to the electoral similarity with the North American States—all this is hap­pening before our eyes.

This chronological privilege is too precious for us to yield, espe­cially at a time when a page of history is turning, and, with a new page, those laborers who came to work, having anticipated the new morning, will be forgotten.

However, no special gifts of prophecy were required in order to say what we said; it was only necessary to free oneself from domestic and other prejudices, from the leaden Petersburg atmosphere, and from forgotten concepts of an old civilization. It was sufficient to take an independent look at the world. It was clear that America and Rus­sia were next in turn. Both countries have an abundance of strength, flexibility, an organizational spirit, persistence that knows no ob­stacle; both have a meager past, both begin with a complete break with tradition, both spread over endless valleys, seeking their borders, both—from different directions—reach across terrible expanses, ev­erywhere marking their path with cities, villages, and colonies, reach­ing the Pacific Ocean, this "Mediterranean Sea of the future" (as we once named it and then saw with joy that American journals repeated this many times).

The contrast between the Petersburg military dictatorship—which destroys all people in the person of the autocrat, and the American autocracy of each person—is enormous. And that's not all—isn't the most fateful contradiction, with which the history of the West is coming to an end, once again the way America breaks down into

individuals, on the one hand, and Russia into communal fusion, on the other?

Notes

Source: "Amerika i Rossiia," Kolokol, l. 228, October i, i866; i9:i39-40, 4i6.

Herzen first used this phrase in the opening epigraph in i853 in his essay "Baptized Property" (Doc. 8) and reused it in Past and Thoughts and other writings.

An American diplomatic mission visited Russia from the end of July to the begin­ning of September i866.

The rest of this document is a citation, with slight changes, from "America and Siberia."

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