A Herzen Reader

What is there in common between that time, when Senkovsky clowned around under the name of Brambeus, and our time? Then it was impos­sible to do anything, even if you had the genius of Pestel and the mind of Muravyov—the ropes on which Nicholas hung people were stronger. It was only possible to martyr oneself, like Konarsky and Wollowicz.¹² Now everywhere there are calls for energetic people, everything is beginning, on the rise, and if nothing happens, then no one is to blame—not Alexan­der II, not his censorship trio, not the local policeman nor other powerful people—the fault will lie in your weakness, so blame yourself for the false direction you have taken, and have the strength to acknowledge yourselves a leaderless, transitional generation, the one of which Lermontov sang with such terrible truth!.. ¹³

That is why at such a time empty buffoonery is tedious and out of place; it becomes repulsive and nasty when it hangs donkey bells not on a troika called Adlerberg, Timashev, and Mukhanov¹⁴ from the tsar's stables, but on one that—sweaty, exhausted, and occasionally falling back—is dragging our cart out of the mud!

Gentlemen, isn't it a hundred times better, instead of hissing at clumsy experiments while sticking to the beaten path, to lend a hand and demon­strate how to make use of open discussion? [. . .]

Notes

Source: "VERY DANGEROUS!!!" Kolokol, l. 44, June 1, 1859; 14:116-21, 492-99.

Herzen refers to an 1859-60 government committee whose goal was to exert a moral influence on journalism so that it would support official views; its members, which included Alexander V. Adlerberg (1819-1889, member of the Main Censorship Administration), Alexander Timashev (1818-1893, head of the secret police), and Pavel A. Mukhanov (1798-1871, member of the governing council for the Kingdom of Poland, in charge of internal and spiritual matters), were frequently criticized in The Bell.

Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) was a German romantic writer with a taste for the humorous and grotesque.

Ludwig Bёrne (1786-1837) was a German critic; August von Platen (1796-1835) was a German poet. The woman in question was a friend of Bёrne.

Herzen has in mind "Petersburg Life," a series of feuilletons in The Contemporary by Ivan I. Panaev (1812-1862) describing the demimonde of the northern capital.

Herzen's remarks are a parody of common phrases from the poetry of Maykov and Fet, and have much in common with Dobrolyubov's criticism of "pure art" in The Contemporary.

"Transport" ("Perevoz"), by Ilya V. Selivanov (1810-1882), appeared in The Contem­porary in the third issue published in 1857. The "long odyssey" is Goncharov's Oblomov, which appeared in the first four issues of Fatherland Notes for 1859. Herzen takes issue with Druzhinin's praise of the novel in Readers' Library and Dobrolyubov's strongly posi­tive essay in The Contemporary, as well as Goncharov's role as a censor.

Panin was minister of justice. Count Peter A. Kleinmikhel (1793-1869) was direc­tor of transportation and public buildings from 1842 to 1855.

Herzen is challenging the basic argument of an article by Pollunsky in Readers' Library, 1859:3.

Nikolay Gogol was widely criticized for his i847 book Selected Passages from a Cor­respondence with Friends (Doc. 6). On Pushkin, see Chapter V of Herzen's 1850 essay "On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia" (Doc. 1).

St. Thomas Sunday is the first Sunday after Easter, and begins a week (fomina nedelia) devoted to the apostle who only believed the miracle after he had seen the risen Christ.

In his 1859 article "Russia and Poland," Herzen mentioned the "Pecherins, Gaga­rins, and Golitsyns" who lived as Catholics in emigration, Vladimir Pecherin becoming a monk, and Prince Ivan Gagarin a Jesuit priest.

Konarsky and Wollowicz were Polish revolutionaries executed by the tsarist government.

Herzen has in mind Lermontov's poem "Thought" ("Duma").

The three super-censors whom Herzen has previously mentioned.

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