A Herzen Reader

The government retreated in all areas, and, with all this, its retreat had neither a serious justification nor a serious character. If it really thought by means of frivolous arrests and indiscriminate exile to stop history and an already unmasked national development, it would be boundlessly to be pit­ied, but we think that the Winter Palace's vision did not extend that far. The palace, maintained in fear and trembling by its eunuchs and rhetors, did not fear history, but something lurking in the corner, and this was at a time when it said publicly and loudly that the government had never felt itself to be more powerful and popular as it did then. It's no wonder. Patriotism made people forget all that was humane in their heart and everything that was inhumane in the imperial system; the newspapers were full of loyal lit­urgies. the serfs, free of the landowners, and the landowners, free of their status, the Old Believers and the Jews, the Cossacks and the Germans—all of them by word of mouth rushed to support the throne and the altar. It was expected that benefits would follow and an expansion of rights, but the government pointed with horror to several articles and several young people and answered the upsurge of loyalty with an upsurge of persecution and brutality. What exactly they were afraid of, they did not say.

There was something crazy in all of this, and that is the way it ended— with the shot on the 4th of April.

Those who had been hopeful became embittered at their unfulfilled hopes. The first fanatical character, full of a gloomy religious belief, grabbed a pistol.

The revenge did not succeed, but the pretext was established and seized upon with savage joy, the reaction was justified, and the tsarist scarecrows were justified. Nevertheless, if the revenge did not succeed, the terror also did not succeed. Having begun on false premises, it got confused and was bogged down in dirty tricks by the police.

What did Muravyov's roundup accomplish, and what did his royal trum­peter Katkov proclaim? Where is the universal conspiracy in which all the dark forces of this world—the English, bankers, emigrants in Switzerland, Mazzini's emissaries and missionaries,²⁰ the Poles, us and not us, and, fi­nally some kind of "worldwide revolutionary committee," unknown to the rest of the world?

From this entire affair only a corpse remains, a mute witness to nasty tsarist revenge and some unfortunate people, exiled without a trial or any defense, accused of not wanting a regicide.

To kill several people, some with a ready noose, others with long terms in prison, is not difficult; a locomotive can kill, so can the plague and a rabid dog. Terror reaches further: it is not enough to kill people, it wants to kill thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

[. . .] The echo of Karakozov's shot exposed a terrifying vacuum in the Winter Palace, the sad absence of serious thought and deliberation. and it was so on all our "mountaintops."

[. . .] It is not our business whether they understand or not, and what they understand; the question for us is to find out what exactly they are moving against, what they fear, the way that Catholics fear Protestantism, the way that French monarchists fear revolution. The great enemy, the antichrist, the final judgment that they fear and against which they move is socialism.

And isn't that a great step forward?

And does this mean bringing history to a halt and moving backward?

They are afraid. not of a constitution, not of a republic, not of democ­racy. they are afraid of socialism mixed up with some sort of nihilism.

Did they ever stop to think what—aside from blue glasses and short hair—is meant by this word?

We will have more to say about nihilism, but here we just want to turn the attention of people of good conscience who, like parrots, repeat a word without knowing its meaning [. . .] to them we say that nihilism in its serious sense means science and doubt, research in place of faith, and understanding in place of obedience.

Revealing itself in opposition to popular well-being and human thought, socialism and reason, the government has come out for barbarity, serfdom, and stupidity.

The most recent terror killed it more than it killed other people. It killed the moral significance of the government; walking unsteadily and talking non­sense, it descended from the platform on which it has paraded since the death of Nicholas, arm in arm with Osip Nikolaevich Komissarov-Kostromsky.²¹

Further action will take place outside it, without it.