A Herzen Reader

Having democratically spent some time with various Piedmontese of­ficials and advisers to the authorities in Nice, our Orthodox Protestant went to see the pope. Pius IX recalled his youth, how he himself had served in the Guardia Nobile, so he put on his best cassock and, like a polite gentle­man, assumed a dignified air and went off to visit her himself. No one knows anything about their pious tete-a-tete; maybe he asked the empress to convert Russia to Catholicism, and maybe he explained the benefit and advantage of his discovery of the immaculate conception!⁶

We are most pleasantly surprised that in Rome, in this oldest of cit­ies, the venerable invalid flutters about like a butterfly. We are, it is true, beginning to think that devotion and blind love dreamed up danger to the health of the imperial widow—after all, where is the proof? In Petersburg until the age of fifty she danced, got dressed, laced herself up, and had her hair curled. In Nice there were picnics, breakfast on yachts, music, pleasurable strolls—and I do not know what else. In Rome she went here and there, vanity of vanities: whether it was the same old illumination of St. Peter's or the lighting of fireworks, our Alexandra Fyodorovna was there. [. . .]

When Nicholas was in Rome, after leaving his comrade-in-arms and friend the Neapolitan king,⁷ he inspected St. Peter's Basilica, found every­thing in order, and wrote on the cupola: "I was here on such-and-such a date and prayed for Mother Russia." Although it was not entirely appropri­ate and not at all good form for the head of the Eastern church to disturb God in someone else's quarters, evidently he prayed fervently, and not just about Mother Russia but also about the mother of his children, and God heard his royal prayer! [. . .]

Notes

Source: "Avgusteishie puteshestvenniki," Kolokol, l. 1, July 1, 1857; 13:13-18, 489-93.

Justus von Liebig was a German scientist interested in the soil, and Jacob Mole- schott was a Dutch physiologist. The dowager empress Alexandra Fyodorovna spent the winter season of 1856-57 in Nice, renting three villas for her large entourage, which included many German nobles.

A symbol of liberty in ancient Rome, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, Ireland, and in the Americas.

Herzen is being ironic; S. S. Lanskoy quit a Decembrist group long before the up­rising, and N. O. Sukhozanet was a member of the guards unit that mounted a defense against the Decembrists on Senate Square. The former was appointed minister of the interior in 1855 and the latter became minister of war the following year. The "Anglo- French assistance" was that by defeating the Russians in the Crimea, emancipation became a necessity for Alexander II.

On August 10, 1792, the French monarchy was overthrown, and on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed. Alexander II ordered new uniforms for the military and dismissed several of his father's ministers. His mother left on a year-long trip to Europe in May 1856.

In place of the deceased Nicholas I.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX had announced the doctrine of Mary's immaculate conception.

The tsar visited Italy in 1845 and met with the king of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand II.

^ 12 +

The Bell, No. 2, August 1, 1857. A French translation of "Revolution in Russia" appeared in the Brussels newspaper La Cloche on October 1, 1862. As fundamental reform began to be discussed in his homeland, Herzen expressed a strong preference for a peaceful path forward over any kind of revolution, something he had already made clear in From the Other Shore. Nevertheless, he had no patience for reactionary forces, who threatened further delay and stagnation. Herzen knew relatively little about the new tsar, but was willing to place his hopes in anyone who was not Nicholas, as well as in the inevitable consequences for the country of the unsuccessfully fought Crimean War. For Russia, the time for change had come.

In the same issue, Herzen included the essay "Moscow and Petersburg" (1842), which he wrote in Novgorod during his second period of exile. Although his views had somewhat altered, he felt it would be wrong to censor himself. "I left the article as it was, through a sense of respect for the past." The satirical juxtaposition of the two capi­tals ends with feigned excitement over the railroad that is soon to join them. Herzen predicted that in the future, caviar would be cheaper in Petersburg, and Moscow would find out two days sooner which foreign periodicals had been banned (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:33-42).

Gentlemen, it is better that these changes came from above than from below.

—Alexander II, a speech to the Moscow nobility