THE COMMON FUND

Kelsiev had hardly passed out of our door when fresh people, driven out by the chill blasts of 1863, were knocking at it. These came not from the training-schools of the coming upheaval but from the devastated stage on which they had already played their parts. They were taking refuge from the storm without and seeking nothing within; all they needed was a temporary haven until the weather improved, until a chance presented itself to return to the fray. These men, while still very young, had done with ideas, with culture; theoretical questions did not interest them, partly because they had not yet arisen among them, partly because they were concerned with putting them into practice. Though they had been defeated, they had given proofs of their reckless daring. They had furled their flag, and their task was to preserve its honour. Hence their dry, cassant, raide, abrupt and rather elevated tone. Hence their martial, impatient aversion for prolonged deliberation, for criticism, their somewhat elaborate contempt for all intellectual superfluities, among which they put Art in the foreground. What need of music? What need of poetry? ‘The fatherland is in danger, aux armes, citoyens!’ In certain cases they were theoretically right, but they did not take into account the complex, intricate process of balancing the ideal with the actual, and, I need hardly say, assumed that their views and theories were the views and theories of all Russia. To blame our young pilots of the coming storm for this would be unjust. It is the common characteristic of youth; a year ago a Frenchman, a follower of Comte, assured me that Catholicism no longer existed in France, that it had complètement perdu le terrain, and pointed to the medical profession, to the professors and students who were not merely not Catholics but not even Deists. ‘Well, but that part of France,’ I observed, ‘which neither gives nor hears medical lectures?’

‘It, of course, keeps to religion and its rites—but more from habit and ignorance.’

‘Very true, but what will you do with it?’

‘What did they do in 1792?’

‘A little: at first the Revolution closed the churches, but afterwards opened them again. Do you remember Augereau’s answer to Napoleon when they were celebrating the Concordat? “Do you like the ceremony?” the consul asked as they came out of Notre-Dame. The Jacobin general answered: “Very much. I am only sorry that the two hundred thousand men who have gone to their graves to abolish such ceremonies are not present!”’

‘Ah bah, we have grown wiser, and we shall not open the church doors—or rather we shall not close them at all, but shall turn the temples of idolatry into schools.’

‘L’infâme sera écrasée,’ I wound up, laughing.

‘Yes, no doubt of it; that is certain!’

‘But that you and I will not see it—that is even more certain.’

It is to this looking at the surrounding world through a prism coloured by personal sympathies that half the revolutionary failures are due. The life of young people, spent as a rule in a noisy and limited seclusion of a sort, remote from the everyday and wholesale struggle for personal interests, though it grasps universal truths clearly, is almost always doomed to a false understanding of their application to the needs of the day.

At first our new visitors cheered us with accounts of the movement in Petersburg, of the wild pranks of the full-fledged reaction, of the trials and persecutions, of university and literary parties. Then, when all this had been told with the rapidity with which in such cases men hasten to tell all they know, a pause, a hiatus would follow; our conversations became dull and monotonous.

‘Can this really be,’ I thought, ‘old age divorcing two generations? Is it the chill induced by years, by weariness, by experience?’

Whatever it might be due to, I felt that our horizon was not widened, but narrowed, by the arrival of these new men. The scope of our conversations was more limited. Sometimes we had nothing to say to one another. They were occupied with the details of their circles, beyond which nothing interested them. Having once related everything of interest about them, there was nothing to do but to repeat it, and they did repeat it. They took little interest in learning or in public affairs; they even read little, and did not follow the newspapers regularly. Absorbed in memories and anticipations, they did not care to step forth into other spheres; while we had not air to breathe in that exhausted atmosphere. We, spoiled by wider horizons, were stifled.

Moreover, even if they did know a certain section of Petersburg, they did not know Russia at all, and, though sincerely desirous of coming into contact with the people, they only approached them bookishly and theoretically.

What we had in common was too general. Advance together, serve, as the French say, take action together we might, but it was hard to stand still with hands folded and live together. It was useless to dream of a serious influence on them. A morbid and very unceremonious vanity had long ago got the upper hand.⁠[34] Sometimes, it is true, they did ask for a programme, for guidance, but for all their sincerity there was no reality about that. They expected us to formulate their own opinions, and only assented when what we said did not contradict them in the least. They looked upon us as respectable veterans, as something past and over, and were naïvely surprised that we were not yet so very much behind themselves.

I have always and in everything dreaded ‘above all sorrows’ mésalliances; I have always endured them, partly through humanity, partly through carelessness, and have always suffered from them.

It was not hard to foresee that our new connections would not last long, that sooner or later they would be broken, and that, considering the churlish character of our new friends, this rupture would not come off without disagreeable consequences.

The subject upon which our unstable relations came to grief was that old subject upon which acquaintances tacked together with rotten threads usually come to grief. I mean money. Knowing absolutely nothing of my resources nor of my sacrifices, they made demands upon me which I did not think it right to satisfy. That I had been able through bad times without the slightest assistance to maintain the Russian propaganda for fifteen years was only because I had put a careful limit to my other expenses. My new acquaintances considered that all I was doing was not enough, and looked with indignation at a man who pretended to be a Socialist and did not distribute his property in equal shares among people who wanted money without working. Obviously they had not advanced beyond the impractical point of view of Christian charity and voluntary poverty, and mistook that for practical Socialism.

The efforts to collect a ‘Common Fund’ yielded no results of importance. Russians are not fond of giving money to any common cause, unless it includes the building of a church, and a banquet, a drinking-party, and the approval of the higher authorities.

When the impecuniosity of the exiles was at its height, a rumour circulated among them that I had a sum of money entrusted to me for purposes of propaganda.

It seemed perfectly right to the young people to relieve me of it.

To make the position clear, I must describe a strange incident that occurred in the year 1858. One morning I received a very brief note from an unknown Russian; he wrote to me that he ‘urgently desired to see me,’ and asked me to fix an hour.

I happened to be going to London at the time, and so instead of answering I went myself to the Sablonnière Hotel and inquired for him. He was at home. He was a young man who looked like a cadet, shy, very depressed, and with the peculiar rather rough-hewn appearance of the seventh or eighth son of a Steppe landowner. Very uncommunicative, he was almost completely silent; it was evident that he had something on his mind, but he could not come to the point of putting it into words.

I went away, inviting him to dinner two or three days later. Before that date I met him in the street. ‘May I walk with you?’ he asked.

‘Of course; there is no risk for me in being seen with you, though there is for you in being seen with me. But London is a big place.’

‘I am not afraid’—and then all at once, taking the bit between his teeth, he hurriedly burst out: ‘I shall never go back to Russia—no, no, I shall certainly never go back to Russia....’

‘Upon my word, and you so young?’

‘I love Russia—I love her dearly; but there the people ... I cannot live there. I want to found a colony on completely socialistic principles; I have thought it all over, and now I am going straight there.’

‘Straight where?’

‘To the Marquesas Islands.’

I looked at him in dumb amazement.

‘Yes, yes; it is all settled. I am sailing by the next steamer, and so I am very glad that I have met you to-day—may I put an indiscreet question to you?’

‘As many as you like.’

‘Do you make any profit out of your publications?’

‘Profit! I am glad to say that now the press pays its way.’

‘Well, but what if it should not?’

‘I shall make it up.’

‘So that no sort of commercial aim enters into your propaganda?’ said the young man.

I laughed heartily.

‘Well, but how are you going to pay all the expenses alone? And your propaganda is essential. You must forgive me, I am not asking out of curiosity: when I left Russia for ever, I had the thought in my mind of doing something useful for her, and I made up my mind to leave a small sum of money with you. Should your printing-press need it, or the Russian propaganda generally, then you must make use of it.’

Again I could do nothing but look at him with amazement.

‘Neither the printing-press nor Russian propaganda nor I are in need of money; on the contrary, things are going swimmingly. Why should I take your money? But though I refuse to take it, allow me to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind intention.’

‘No, it is all settled. I have fifty thousand francs. I shall take thirty thousand with me to the Islands, and I shall leave twenty with you for propaganda.’

‘What am I to do with it?’

‘Well, if you don’t need the money you can give it back to me if I return; but if I don’t return within ten years, or if I die—use it for the benefit of your propaganda. Only,’ he added, after a moment’s thought, ‘do anything you like ... but don’t give anything to my heirs. Are you free to-morrow morning?’

‘Certainly, if you like.’

‘Do me the favour to take me to the bank and to Rothschild; I know nothing about it, I can’t speak English, and speak French very badly. I want to make haste to get rid of the twenty thousand and be off.’

‘Very well, I will take the money—but on these conditions: I will give you a receipt.’

‘I don’t want a receipt.’

‘No, but I want to give you one—I won’t take your money without it. Listen. In the first place, it shall be stated in the receipt that your money is entrusted not to me alone, but to me and to Ogaryov. In the second, since you may get sick of the Marquesas Islands and begin to pine for your native country ...’ (he shook his head). ‘How can one tell of what one does not know?... There is no need to specify the object with which you give us the capital, we will only say that the money is put at the complete disposal of Ogaryov and myself; should we make no other use of it, we will invest the whole sum for you in securities at five per cent. or thereabouts, guaranteed by the English Government. Then I give you my word that we will not touch your money except in case of extreme necessity for propaganda purposes; you may reckon upon it in any case, except that of bankruptcy in England.’

‘If you insist on taking so much trouble, do so. And let us go to-morrow for the money!’

The following day was an extremely amusing and busy one. It began with the bank and with Rothschild. The money was paid in notes. B. at first announced the guileless intention of changing them into Spanish gold or silver. Rothschild’s clerks looked at him in amazement, but when, as though suddenly awakening, he said in broken Franco-Russian: ‘Well, then, a lettre de crédit to the Île Marquise,’ Kessner, the manager, bent an alarmed and anxious look upon me, which said better than any words: ‘He is not dangerous, is he?’ Never before in Rothschild’s bank had any one asked for a letter of credit to the Marquesas Islands.

We decided to take thirty thousand francs in gold and go home; on the way we went into a café. I wrote the receipt; B. for his part wrote for me that he put eight hundred pounds at the complete disposal of myself and Ogaryov; then he went home to get something and I went off to a bookshop to wait for him there; a quarter of an hour later he came in, pale as a sheet, and announced that of his thirty thousand francs two hundred and fifty, that is ten pounds, were missing.

He was utterly overwhelmed. How the loss of two hundred and fifty francs could so upset a man who had just given away twenty thousand without any secure guarantee is again a psychological riddle of human nature.

‘Had not you a note too much?’ he asked me.

‘I have none of the money with me, I gave it to Rothschild, and here is the receipt, precisely eight hundred.’ B., who had changed his French notes into pounds with no necessity to do so, scattered them on Tchorszewski’s counter; he counted them and counted them over again; ten pounds were missing, and that was all about it. Seeing his despair, I said to Tchorszewski: ‘I’ll somehow take that damned ten pounds on myself; here he has done a good deed and is punished for it.’

‘It is no use grieving and discussing it,’ I said to him. ‘I propose going straight to Rothschild’s.’

We drove there. It was by now after four and the bank was closed. I went in with B., who was overwhelmed with confusion. Kessner looked at him, and, smiling, took a ten-pound note from the table and handed it to me. ‘How did it happen?’ ‘Your friend when he changed the money gave me two ten-pound notes instead of two five-pound ones, and at first I did not notice it.’ B. stared and stared at it, and commented: ‘How stupid it is that ten-pound notes and five-pound notes are the same colour; who would notice the difference? You see what a good thing it is that I changed the money into gold.’

Comforted, he came to dine with me, and I promised to go and say good-bye to him next day. He was quite ready to start. A little shabby, battered trunk such as cadets or students carry, a greatcoat tied up in a strap, and ... and ... thirty thousand francs in gold tied up in a thick pocket-handkerchief, as people tie up a pound of gooseberries or nuts!

This was how the man was setting off for the Marquesas Islands.

‘Upon my soul!’ I said to him; ‘why, you will be robbed and murdered before you are afloat, you had better put your money in your trunk.’

‘It is full.’

‘I will get you a bag.’

‘No, I would not think of it.’

And so he went off.

At first I supposed that he would be killed for a certainty and I should incur the suspicion of having sent some one to kill him.

From that day no sign nor sound of him again.... I put his money in Consols with the firm intention of not touching it except in the case of the printing-press or propaganda being in the utmost straits.

For a long time no one in Russia knew of this incident; then there were vague rumours, for which we were indebted to two or three of our friends who had promised to say nothing about it. At last it was discovered that the money really existed and was in my keeping.

This news served as an apple of discord, as a chronic irritant and ferment. It appeared that every one needed the money—while I did not give it to them. They could not forgive me for not having lost the whole of my own property—and here I had a deposit given me for the propaganda; and who were ‘the propaganda’ if not they? The sum quickly grew from modest francs to silver roubles, and was still more tantalising for those who desired to consume it privately for the public benefit. They were indignant with B. for having entrusted the money to me and not to some one else; the boldest among them declared that it was an error on his part; that he really meant to give it not to me but to a Petersburg political circle, and that, not knowing how to do this, he had given it to me in London. The audacity of these opinions was the more remarkable since no one knew B.’s surname or had heard of his existence, and since he had not spoken to any one of his intention before his departure, nor had any one spoken with him since then.

One man needed the money to send emissaries; another for establishing centres on the Volga; a third for the publication of a journal. They were dissatisfied with the Kolokol, and did not readily respond to our invitation to work on it.

I resolutely refused to give the money; and let those who demanded it tell me what would have become of it if I had.

‘B. may return without a farthing,’ I said; ‘it is not easy to make a fortune by founding a socialist colony in the Marquesas Islands.’

‘He is sure to be dead.’

‘But what if to spite you he is living?’

‘Well, but he gave you the money for the propaganda.’

‘So far I do not need it.’

‘But we do.’

‘What for precisely?’

‘We must send some one to the Volga and some one to Odessa....’

‘I don’t think that is very necessary.’

‘So you don’t believe in the urgency of sending them?’

‘I do not.’

‘He is growing old and getting miserly,’ the most determined and ferocious said about me in different variations.

‘But why mind him? Just take the money from him and have done with it,’ the still more resolute and ferocious added, ‘and if he resists, we will show him up in the papers and teach him to keep other people’s money.’

I did not give them the money.

They did not show me up in the papers. I was abused in the press much later, and that was about money too....

These more ferocious ones of whom I have spoken were the extreme examples, the angular and uncouth representatives of the ‘New Generation,’ who may be called the Sobakevitches and Nozdryovs of Nihilism.

However superfluous it may be to make a reservation, yet I will do so, knowing the logic and the manners of our opponents. I have not the slightest desire in what I am saying to fling a stone at the younger generation or at Nihilism. Of the latter I have written many times. Our Sobakevitches of Nihilism are not its fullest expression, but only represent its exaggerated extremes.⁠[35]⁠

Who would judge of Christianity from the Flagellants, or of the Revolution from the September butchers, or the tricoteuses of Robespierre?

The conceited lads of whom I am speaking are worth studying, because they are the expression of a temporary type, very definitely marked and very frequently repeated, a transitional form of the sickness of our development from our old stagnation.

For the most part, they were lacking in the polish given by breeding, and the persistence given by scientific studies. In the first heat of emancipation they were in a hurry to cast off all the conventional forms and to push away all the rubber buffers which avert rough collisions. This made the simplest relations with them difficult.

Flinging off everything to the last rag, our enfants terribles proudly appeared as their mothers bore them, and their mothers had not borne them well, not as simple comely lads but as heirs of the evil and unhealthy life of our lower classes in Petersburg. Instead of athletic muscles and youthful nakedness, they displayed the melancholy traces of hereditary anaemia, the traces of old scars and fetters and manacles of all sorts. There were few among them who had come up from the people. The servants’ hall, the barrack-room, the seminary, the petty proprietor’s farm survived in their blood and their brains, and lost none of their characteristic features though twisted in an opposite direction. So far as I know, this fact has attracted no serious attention.

On the one hand, the reaction against the old narrow oppressive world was bound to throw the younger generation into antagonism and opposition to their hostile surroundings; it was useless to expect moderation or justice in them. On the contrary, everything was done in defiance, everything was done in resentment. You have been hypocrites, we will be cynics; you have been moral in words, we will be wicked in words; you have been polite to your superiors and rude to your inferiors, we will be rude to every one; you have bowed down to those you did not respect, we will shove others aside without apologising; your feeling of personal dignity consisted in nothing but decorum and external honour, we make it our point of honour to trample on every decorum and to scorn every point d’honneur.

But on the other hand, though disowning all the ordinary forms of social life, their character was full of its own hereditary failings and deformities. Casting off, as we have said, all veils, the most desperate played the dandy in the costume of Gogol’s Pyetuh⁠[36] and did not preserve the pose of the Venus of Medici. Their nakedness did not conceal, but revealed, what they were. It revealed that their systematic roughness, their rude and insolent talk, had nothing in common with the inoffensive and simple-hearted coarseness of the peasant, but a great deal in common with the manners of the low-class pettifogger, the shop-boy and the flunkey. The peasants no more considered such a Nihilist as one of themselves than they did a Slavophil in a murmolka. To the peasantry these men remain strangers, the lowest class of the enemies’ camp, inferior young masters, scribblers out of a job, Germans among Russians.

To be completely free, one must forget one’s freedom and that from which one has been set free, and cast off the habits of the environment one has outgrown. Until men have done this we cannot help being conscious of the servants’ hall, the barrack-room, the government-office or the seminary in every gesture they make and every word they utter.

To hit a man in the face at the first objection he advances—if not with a fist with a word of abuse—to call Stuart Mill a sneak, forgetting all the service he has done, is not that the same as the Russian master’s way of ‘punching old Gavrilo in the face for a crumpled cravat’? In this and similar rudeness, do we not recognise the policeman, the police officer, the village constable dragging the peasant by his grey beard? Do we not, in the insolent arrogance of their manners and answers, clearly recognise the insolence of the officers of the days of Nicholas? Do we not see in men who talk haughtily and disdainfully of Shakespeare and Pushkin, grandsons of Skalozub, reared in the house of their grandsire who wanted ‘to make a Voltaire of his corporal’?

The very curse of bribery has survived in the extortion of money by violence, by intimidation and threats on the pretext of a common cause, in the efforts to be kept at the expense of the service and to revenge a refusal by slanders and libels.

All this will be transformed and come right with time. But there is no blinking the fact that a strange subsoil has been prepared by the Tsar’s paternal Government and Imperial civilisation in our kingdom of darkness. It is a soil on which seedlings that promised much have grown, on the one hand, into the followers of the Muravyovs and the Katkovs, and, on the other, into the bullies of Nihilism and the lawless gang of Bazarovs.

Our black earth needs a good deal of drainage!