A Herzen Reader

The first representatives of social ideas in Petersburg were the Petra- shevtsy. They were even tried as "Fourierists." Behind them stood the strong personality of Chernyshevsky. He did not belong to any one social doctrine, but offered a profound social idea and a deep criticism of the contemporary order. Standing alone, a head taller than all the others, amidst the ferment in Petersburg over issues and forces, amidst the chronic vices and the in­cipient gnawing of conscience, amidst the youthful wish to live differently and to break loose from the usual filth and untruth, Chernyshevsky decided to grab the helm and try to point out to those who were thirsting and striv­ing what they should do. [. . .]

Chernyshevsky's propaganda was an answer to current suffering, a word of comfort and hope to those who were perishing in the harsh grip of life. It showed them a way out. It set a tone for literature and drew a line between the actual young Russia and the one that pretended to be that Russia, a bit liberal, while still slightly bureaucratic and serf-owning. Its ideals lay in joint labor, in the organization of workshops, and not in an empty hall in which the Sobakeviches and Nozdrevs¹⁸ would play at being "bourgeois gentry" and landowners in opposition.

The tremendous success of the social doctrine among the younger gen­eration, and the school that it stimulated, led not only to literary echoes and outlets, but the beginnings of practical applications with historical signifi­cance. The emancipation of the serfs with an acknowledgment of their right to land, with the preservation of the commune and the conversion to social­ism by young and active minds which had not yet been corrupted by life nor confused by doctrinaire thought, served as irrefutable proof of the benefits of our continual faith in the character of Russian development.

At the same time we followed step by step the debates inside the edito­rial commission and the introduction of the Statutes of February i9th; we examined the statutes themselves, as we sought to introduce to the rural revolution institutions closest to our views, while in Petersburg, Moscow, and even the provinces, phalanxes of young people were preaching in word and deed the general theory of socialism, of which the rural question pre­sented itself as a particular case. [. . .]

The serf reform, with all its contradictions and incompleteness, imme­diately led to its own economic, administrative, and judicial consequences, with the introduction of the zemstvo¹⁹ institutions, the new court system, etc. These were syllogisms, which were impossible to avoid.

All the reforms, beginning with emancipation, were not only incom­plete but were deliberately distorted. In not one of them could be found that breadth and candor, that passion for destruction and creation with which great men and great revolutions have done their breaking down and building up; in all of them the worthlessness and bankruptcy of the old gov­ernment of edicts and arbitrary rule could be recognized; but all of them con­tained an embryo, whose development was delayed, and perhaps deformed, but which was alive. [. . .]

Until the year i863 we were still trying, despite the muddy spring roads at home, to follow the unwieldy old government carriage, and the louder we rang the bell, the more it lost its way. If the coachmen did not listen, the crowd surrounding them listened and, heaping abuse on us, did a portion of what we had been talking about. Then they went deaf as well. Since then energetic speech has had to yield for a time to cries of denunciation and indignation, which provoked a society wallowing in blood and filth, along with a shallow, heartless, and faithless government.