THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I. AND V. N. KARAZIN[79] (continued 2)
Constance Garnett translation
Without knowing the people we may oppress the people, we may enslave them, we may conquer them, but we cannot set them free.
Without the help of the people they will be freed neither by the Tsar with his clerks, nor the nobility with the Tsar, nor the nobility without the Tsar.
What is happening now in Russia ought to open the eyes of the blind. The peasantry have borne the terrible burden of serfdom without ever acknowledging its lawfulness; seeing the force opposed to them they have remained dumb. But as soon as others attempted in their own way to set them free, they passed from murmuring, from passive resistance, almost to open mutiny, and yet they are obviously better off now. What new signs do the reformers wait for?
Only the man who when called to action understands the life of the people while keeping what science has given him; only one who voices its strivings and founds on the realisation of them his work for the common cause, will be the bridegroom that is to come.
This lesson is repeated to us alike by the mournful figure of Alexander with his crown; by Radishtchev with his glass of poison; by Karazin flying through the Winter Palace like a burning meteor; by Speransky who shone for years together with a glimmer like moonshine, with no warmth, no colour; and by our holy martyrs of the Fourteenth of December.
Who will be the predestined saviour?
Will it be an emperor who, renouncing all the traditions of the Petersburg Government, combines in himself Tsar and Stenka Razin? Will it be another Pestel? Or another Emelyan Pugatchov, Cossack, Tsar and heretic? Or will it be a prophet and a peasant, like Antony Bezdninsky?
It is hard to tell: these are details, des détails as the French say. Who ever it may be, it is our task to meet him with warm welcome!