A Herzen Reader

Power which takes nothing into account can do a great deal of harm, but it cannot in fact stop a movement which it fears and which will carry the mainland away to another destiny. It will move along, inadvertently, uncon­sciously, like a man asleep on a ship.

And is it advancing? And are we as a whole advancing?

[. . .] The reaction is absurd and repulsive, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. but where is the mighty brake that would stop the movement? Are they really going to take land away from the peasants and exclude them from elections? Doesn't the investigation into the Karakozov case demon­strate that among Moscow youth there was an idea for propaganda among the peasant factory workers, the first attempt at an organic combination of these two social levels that we were talking about?

"Yes, but they grabbed the young people and exiled them. It's a pity, but the places of the exiled will not remain empty."

Let us remember what it was like under Nicholas. and wasn't it dur­ing his time that the volcanic and bloody underground work began, which came into the light when he left this earth?

During the past five years we have become a little spoiled and a little undisciplined, forgetting that what we were given were not rights, but indul­gences. It is time once again to focus.

It is vexing that history moves along such muddy and isolated country roads, but only conscious thought takes a direct route. Not changing our pro­gram, we will also take history's path, maneuvering with it, pressing along together with it. And how could it be otherwise, when the reaction solemnly recognized our program, which it actually became, according to the expres­sion of the Brussels Echo, "the banner that stands against the banner of the Winter Palace."²²

We will hold up this banner, or others will replace us—that is not the point—our banner, the banner of "Land and Liberty" taken up by us, has been acknowledged by the enemy camp.

Notes

Source: "Poriadok torzhestvuet!" Kolokol, l. 230, December i, i866 (I); l. 23^32, January i, i867 (II); l. 233-34, February i, i867 (III); i9:i66-99, 427-3!

The opening epigraph is French for "Order reigns in Warsaw": words from a speech by France's minister of foreign affairs, Horace Sebastiani, at a meeting of the French parliament concerning the suppression of the Polish uprising.

In i853, in conversation with the British ambassador, Hamilton Seymour, Nicholas I called Turkey the "sick man." Seymour reported back to Westminster, where the alarm was raised at possible Russian plans to carve up the Ottoman Empire.

Here, as elsewhere in the essay, Herzen indulges in puns that fail to translate. The adjective ugolovnyi (criminal) contains the same root as the noun golova (head).

Marc Caussidiere (i808-i86i) was in opposition to the July monarchy in France and, when that regime fell, briefly served as prefect of police in the provisional govern­ment before going into exile in England.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (i809-i865) stated this negative attitude toward national autonomy in chapter 6 of an i863 treatise, "Si les traits de i8i5 on cesse d'exister? Actes du futur congres."

Herzen has translated the followed verses from a poem by Goethe about America: "Dich stort nicht im Innern / Zu lebendiger Zeit / Unntitzes Erinnern / Und vergeblicher Streit."

Out into the open sea.

These statements were made on June 23, ^89, at a meeting of the Etats Generales, when deputies of the third estate (commoners), who had declared themselves the Na­tional Assembly on June i7, continued to meet despite the king's order for them to disperse. Count Honore Mirabeau (i749-i79i) informed the official who asked them to vacate the room that he should "go and tell" his master that they were there by the will of the people, after which the Abbe Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes urged them to return to the subject of their meeting.

Herzen met with Blanqui in October i866 in Freiburg.

The book in question is Polish Emigration Before and During the Last Uprising: 1831­1863, by Vasily F. Rach, published anonymously in Vilna in i866.

"Shemyakin courts" is a proverbial expression, dating from a fifteenth-century prince of Galicia, and implies arbitrary judgments. Alexander N. Ostrovsky (i823-i886) was a prolific playwright, who most famously depicted the life of the merchants in Mos­cow and the Volga regions; "the dark kingdom" refers to the setting and atmosphere of Ostrovsky's plays and to an influential Й59 essay about it by the radical critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov.

Herzen turns frequently to the issue of land, while Chernyshevsky's novel is cen­tered on the advantages of workshops.

In ancient Athens, a judicial body made up of volunteers.

This phrase implies they were on the wrong side, coming to this conclusion from incorrect principles.