A Herzen Reader

What can be said about the government when society, when free public opinion denounces Poles for speaking Polish and not casting loving glances at Russian officials?

This is the brake that is holding Russia back and keeping it from racing toward the great future that is being thrust upon it, preventing it from aton­ing for old sins and pushing fresh crimes into the background. No, it is not for you to hoist the banner of liberation: your love is filled with hatred!

Notes

Source: "Moskva—mat' i machekha," Kolokol, l. 235-36, March i, Й67; ^224-26, 445-46.

i. Once again paraphrasing Psalm ii3/ii5, Herzen criticizes the newspaper Moscow for the campaign—by Ivan Aksakov, Metropolitan Filaret, and others—in support of

uprisings by Orthodox Christians against the Turks on Crete, and in Serbian and Bul­garian territories. He was also irritated by Aksakov's anti-Polish polemic in The Day.

This citation is from an editorial by Aksakov in the January 11, 1867, issue of Mos­cow, which was devoted to the January 8, 1867, service in memory of those killed on Crete. This editorial led to a government warning to Moscow for its sharp views on the relations between church and state. Aksakov answered the warning in the January 22 edition, and Herzen reprinted this answer in the March 15 issue (no. 237) of The Bell.

Herzen quotes from a letter from Kiev published in Moscow on January 13, 1867. Count Agenor Goluchowski was appointed governor-general in Galicia in 1866 by Aus­tria. He sought to increase Polish influence in the region and decrease that of Russia.

Katkov was of course known for his denunciations in print. The gendarme uniform was sky-blue.

Aksakov was forced to suspend publication of The Day from mid-December 1865 until the beginning of January 1867.

In 1849 Yuri Samarin and Ivan Aksakov were briefly held under arrest. In April 1849, the minister of the interior, on the tsar's authority, ordered the gentry to refrain from having beards, since it could interfere with wearing uniforms. The Slavophiles saw this as a general prohibition on traditional Russian dress, which was worn as a sign of support for Russian principles. The police were vigilant in making sure that the Aksakov brothers observed the ban on beards. The garments Herzen refers to are, respectively, the murmolka and poddevka.

Sadyk Pasha was the Turkish name of Mikhailo Czaikovsky (Michal Czajkowski, 1804-1886), who fought for Poland in 1831-32, after which he fled to Paris and then to Turkey, where he converted to Islam, organized a Cossack brigade to fight the Russians during the Crimean War, and eventually accepted amnesty from Alexander II, converted to Orthodoxy, and lived in Ukraine from 1872 until his death.

♦ 96 ♦

The Bell, No. 239, April 15, 1867. The title makes obvious references to the large, non- functioning bell and cannon in the Kremlin, as well as to Herzen's newspaper.

Rivals of the Big Bell and the Big Cannon [1867]

A correspondent for Le Nord, talking about his three-week stay in Moscow, points out—like two great rarities—not the large bell and not the large cannon, but Filaret, the 84-year-old chief prelate, and Katkov, the much younger, but no less great, chief publisher.¹ Before the decline of one of

Katkov's predecessors, the emperor Nicholas, some American fool lied to the extent that he called the two lead bullets that Nicholas used for eyes as "mild," to the great delight of Punch. That is what Katkov is experienc­ing now. The correspondent visited him—as if crawling into Saltychikha's cage—and couldn't get over his admiration for the graciousness and meek­ness of the passionate editor-inquisitor. Is the great career of Muravyov's Homer coming to an end? He's growing a little paler and less visible, and the Belgian correspondents are beginning to exaggerate his importance, and, what is much worse, the nasty News accuses him not only of rivaling the big bell, but the smaller one, that is, us. One huntsman for the gentry is beginning to think that The Moscow Gazette and The Bell have a single edi­torial staff (quite a compliment for us!) and calls Katkov's articles chimes.²

[. . .] It is clear that the abyss into which he pushed Russia on a daily ba­sis has begun to terrify Katkov; he has stumbled at the very edge, and has found people who are more Katkov than he himself is.

But it is also impossible to turn back, Serafim-Abadonna, and he is forced to "wander sadly through the past," and, blushing for the present, receive from his fellow diggers insults and kicks.³

It's a bad business to be a renegade.

Notes

Source: "Soperniki bol'shogo kolokola i bol'shoi pushki," Kolokol, l. 239, April 15, 1867;

i9^:24i 454-55.