A Herzen Reader

You are aware that the sovereign has sent his aides-de-camp and adjutant-generals to all the provinces.¹ The adjutants are carrying out their missions. In several provinces, birch rods and troops are in action and blood is flowing. I know for certain that the day before yesterday three new adjutant-generals (along with the ones already in action) were sent to the Kazan, Tambov—and in addition, it seems— to the Ryazan provinces. These new envoys are provided with the authority to hang and shoot people at their discretion. In Kazan a Pretender has appeared (in the Spassky district) claiming to be Alex­ander Nikolaevich, having been driven away by the gentry.² Seventeen villages have dug in and are joining battle with forces under the banner of that gentleman. It is not known who he is. But the clashes were terrible: 70 peasants have already fallen victim, and members of the forces taken prisoner by the peasants include a company com­mander, a local officer, and a few men of lower rank. No matter how much this resembles a fairy tale, it is a truth that will not be in the newspaper today or tomorrow. Efrimovich, a specialist on pacifica­tion, has raced there.

In one place, I don't know whether it is the Kazan or Tambov province, in the midst of a crowd into which the troops were firing, a peasant stood holding a manifesto above his head with his two hands—the rumor spread among the people that he was unharmed, although next to him was a pile of bodies.

From a second letter

The peasants almost everywhere are terribly dissatisfied with the new, temporarily obligatory "Law," and in many places they refuse to believe that the manifesto that has been announced is genuine; thus, for example, the aide-de-camp Count Olsufiev, who was sent to one of the western provinces,³ met with a similar objection, and when— in order to persuade the peasants—referred to the fact that he was an aide to the sovereign, someone in the crowd began to say that they didn't know whether he was a real aide-de-camp or was in disguise. Olsufiev thought that the best argument against this was an order to his soldiers to beat the peasants with rifle butts and then whip them with birch rods.

In the Petersburg province, on General Olkhin's estate, military force was used against peasants generally believed to be in the right, and the unfortunate ones were treated roughly.

In the Chembarsky district of the Penza province there was a rebellion by peasants numbering in the thousands on the ancestral lands of Count Uvarov.⁴ The military company that was sent to put

them down was forced to retreat; the peasants were holding a repre­sentative of the local administration, the chief of police, a cadet, and several soldiers. Two battalions were sent to suppress it.

In the Spassky region of the Kazan province, a prophet who claimed to be the sovereign appeared in the midst of the schismatics; entire districts of up to i0,000 peasants, most of them belonging to the state, were up in arms; nothing came of the military forces that were sent and there was no battle. General Kozlyaninov and Apraksin, a general in the emperor's suite, set off with i2 companies. Apraksin ordered them to shoot as if on the battlefield: 70 bodies lay there, while the prophet remained at some distance from the peasants, kneeling and holding over his head a new "Law." Apraksin acted in this case on the basis of the authority to act in the sovereign's name in the case of disorder and to deal with the guilty according to the military field com­mander's criminal code, i.e., to shoot and hang at his own discretion.⁵

In the Perm province there have been powerful instances of dis­satisfaction at factories.⁶