A Herzen Reader

Source: "Politicheskie obedy v Moskve," Kolokol, l. 49, August 1, 1859; 14:403-5, 618-19.

A farewell dinner was given for the governor-general of Moscow, on April 17, 1859. According to Petr Vyazemsky's memoirs, it was rumored that his dismissal had to do with his defense of gentry and landowner rights, and thousands of members of the gen­try from Moscow and other regions gathered to show support. Alexey Kaznacheev, direc­tor of government property in Pskov, organized a dinner in his honor and composed a speech in which he described Zakrevsky's service to the fatherland, which was delivered by Fedor Kornilov, who headed the chancellery of the Moscow governor-general.

Herzen: "During the Crimean campaign, Zakrevsky supplied low-quality cloth, etc., from his factory for the militia, and his officials enriched themselves; but one ought not thank him for this!"

Herzen: "On the peasant question, Zakrevsky pressed the committee's minority, who were sincerely attempting to change the serfs' way of life, delaying their activities and threatening them, but, in the end, seeing that the wind from Petersburg on the mat­ter of serfdom was blowing a bit more favorably for the minority, and wishing to please his master, he presented the minority's project with his own additions."

Count Sergey G. Stroganov (1794-1882) was a member of the State Council, trustee of the Moscow educational district, and military governor-general of Moscow in 1859-60; beginning in i860 he was chief tutor for the grand dukes Nikolay, Alexander, Vladimir, and Alexey.

Contemporary memoirs report that the more liberal members of Moscow society openly greeted the news of Zakrevsky's dismissal with undisguised joy.

Voeykov was leader of the Moscow nobility from 1856 to 1861 and a member of the Moscow committee to examine the peasant question.

Sergey M. Solovyov (1820-1879) was a historian and professor at Moscow Univer­sity from i847 to i877.

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The Bell, No. 55, November 1, 1859. In part 1 of Past and Thoughts, Herzen described his part in a March 1831 student rebellion at Moscow University against Professor Malov of the Politics Faculty. They succeeded in getting Malov dismissed, but Herzen and five other students were held for several nights in the university prison. During the fall of 1859, students in the first year of Moscow University's medical school rebelled against Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology N. A. Varnek. One of the students involved in this affair sent material to The Bell, which formed the basis of Herzen's ar­ticle, information that was included in the case file by the Third Department.

The Supreme Council of Moscow University Pharisees

[1859]

Yet another shooting star.

It appears that Moscow University has lived through its age of glory. It is as if the death of Granovsky drew a line. Was the weight of the Nicholaevan press necessary to forge the teachers and students into a unified family?

Now things are too free, and that is why professors, at least the majority of them, act like some kind of board of decency.

A year ago students stopped attending the lectures of some third-rate professor named Varnek; the university authorities inflated the incident, which ended with the expulsion of a dozen students, and it is through no fault of the academic high council that the affair didn't take a Nicholaevan turn. For some time we have known about this ugly story, but only recently did we obtain the details, which we will briefly convey to our readers.

The students chose as their deputy Zhokhov, who said to Varnek on their behalf: "Professor, we have not listened to your lecture, and in the future we will not cross the threshold of any auditorium where you are teaching. We ask you to allow us the possibility of having another professor."

The university authorities, whose academic-police dignity had been of­fended, resolved to break the will of the seditious students; they began their actions with the expulsion of Zhokhov, having announced that he was kicked out because of his ignoble verses by order of the late emperor, whose will had up to now not been carried out, because the trustee Nazimov had protected him, and another trustee, Kovalevsky, had somehow forgotten about him!..¹