THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I. AND V. N. KARAZIN⁠[79]

THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I. AND V. N. KARAZIN⁠[79]

To you, N. A., our latest Marquis von Posa, with all my heart I dedicate this sketch.

1 Don Carlos

During the first years of the reign of Alexander I., that is, when the lessons of Laharpe⁠[80] were still fresh in his memory and the lesson given to all the monarchs in Paris and to the Russian autocrats in particular in the Mihailovsky Palace⁠[81] had not been forgotten, the Emperor Alexander I. used to have literary soirées, and some of the persons of the Tsar’s circle, well known as capable of reading and writing, used to be invited to them.

At one of these evenings there was a reading which lasted a long time; they read aloud a new tragedy of Schiller’s.

The reader finished and stopped.

The Tsar sat silent with downcast eyes. Perhaps he was thinking of his own fate, which had so closely resembled the fate of Don Carlos, perhaps the fate of his Philip. A complete silence lasted for some minutes. The first to break it was Prince Alexandr Nikolayevitch Golitsyn; bending down to the ear of Count Victor Pavlovitch Kotchubey, he said to him in an under-tone, but so that every one could hear it: ‘We have our Marquis Posa!’ Kotchubey smiled and nodded. The eyes of all the company turned to a man of thirty who was sitting a little way off.

The Tsar started, looked at the circle about him, cast a distrustful, searching glance upon the man who had become the object of general attention, frowned, stood up, gloomy and displeased, took leave of his guests and went out.

Prince Alexandr Nikolayevitch, the future Minister of Education and Religion, the inquisitor and the freemason, the protector of Magnitsky and Runitch, the President of the Bible Society and the Post Office Department, the friend of the Emperor Alexander, who mercilessly sacrificed him to Araktcheyev, the friend of the Emperor Nicholas, who never gave him any commission of importance, smiled; he was satisfied. Knowing Alexander’s suspicious character, he was certain that his words had gone home—and he was not mistaken. Why he had injured the man he could not have said: that lay hidden in his courtier’s nature; it is never amiss to thrust aside a superfluous person.

There is no doubt that, at that moment, of all the company present only two had a sincere and ardent desire for the good of Russia—the Tsar and V. N. Karazin, who had been called the Marquis Posa.

These two personages—one ‘crowned and exalted’ in the Uspensky Cathedral by the Metropolitan Platon, the man who had crushed Napoleon and was himself crushed under the burden of glory and of helpless, hopeless autocracy; and the other, the inexhaustible worker for the common weal who undertook everything with extraordinary energy, pushing at every door and meeting everywhere opposition, hindrances, and the impossibility of doing anything real in those surroundings—these two personages cast two melancholy gleams of light on the frozen wastes of Russia, in which energy and character, talents and powers, were sunk, and are still sunk, lost, unrecorded, in the swampy bogs, like the piles on which Petersburg is built.

The character of the Emperor Alexander I. has never been fully explained. Our historians could not write of him, foreigners neither could nor can understand his tragic significance. This is not due either to his rank as Tsar or to his personal misfortunes; on the contrary, he was exceptionally fortunate as a Tsar, fortunate even after his death. No ruler could stand out in greater relief than he does. To succeed Paul was enough, apart from being succeeded by Nicholas. Between the tiger of Gatchina butchered like a wild beast and the boa-constrictor buttoned up to the chin who stifled Russia for thirty years, the stooping figure of the Emperor Alexander is strikingly humane and mild, now lighted up by the fire of Moscow, now by the illumination of Paris, now restraining the princely German thieves, now checking the wild vengeance of the conquerors when they had burst into their enemies’ capital.

And this figure of an Agamemnon, reconciling Europe, at the height of its grandeur grows dimmer, visibly fades, and is obliterated behind the awful shadow of Araktcheyev. It is lost in solitude on the shores of the Black Sea, giving the hand of belated reconciliation to the woman whose whole life, veiled in the Imperial purple, had been one humiliation, and who, kneeling a lonely figure before the dying man, closed his eyes.⁠[82]⁠

Every inch⁠[83] a heart-rending tragedy.

No need to seek the solution in the death of Paul; that may have added another thread of gloom to his life, but the background is broader, wider, deeper. Some implacable fatal element hovers over it and enfolds it far and wide. In the surroundings there is a feeling of an ominous breath, the presence of crime—not crime committed, not past, but crime persisting and inevitable; it is in the blood, the walls are saturated with it. Before birth, the blood has been poisoned in the veins. The air which people breathe here is full of corruption; every one who steps into it, whether he will or no, is sucked into a gulf of ineptitude, ruin, sin. The path to every evil is wide open. Good is impossible. Woe to the man who stops and thinks, who asks himself what he is doing, what people are doing about him: he will go mad; woe to the man who within these walls suffers a human feeling to enter his heart: he will be broken in the struggle.

Well, the Emperor Alexander I. was among the Russian crowned heads the first after Peter who did so stop and think. That is why he is the only one of all the Romanovs who has been punished, punished humanly, by inner struggle, punished before he was guilty, though he reached that guilt in the end.

Compare his fate with the fate of Peter III., of Paul, of Nicholas, if you like, and you will understand why that man, called the blessed, who died in his bed and was never conquered, was a far more tragic figure than all his predecessors. What is there tragic in the drunken idiot⁠[84] being killed and robbed by a dissolute woman? That is happening all the time in the grimy houses of the dark London by-streets. Or what is there tragic in the fact that a man defending himself from a madman⁠[85] brought a snuff-box down on the latter’s head and others finished him off? Those were not tragic catastrophes, but acts of the criminal court and houses of correction.

The tragic element is not given by pain nor bruises nor blows, but by those spiritual conflicts that are independent of the will and run counter to the reason, with which a man struggles but which he can never overcome; on the contrary, he almost always yields to them, crushed against the granite rocks of apparently insoluble contradictions. To be shattered in that way needs a certain degree of humane culture, needs a special grace of a sort. There are natures so commonplace, so conventional, so narrow and mediocre, that their happiness and unhappiness is trivial, or at any rate not interesting. The cold eyes, the deadly prose, of the drill and discipline of Nicholas’ despotism, his limited outlook continually fixed upon trifles and details, his subaltern’s precision and partiality for straight lines, for geometrical figures, exclude everything poetical. It is vain to try to make something majestically gloomy out of his latter days. The man never stopped at anything, never doubted of anything; he might hesitate, but he could not repent; he had no ideals, he knew that he reigned by the will of God, that the post of Emperor was a military officer’s, and he was completely satisfied with himself. He did not suspect that the moral life of the State was being degraded by him, that, shut in and robbed right and left, he was leaving Russia on the edge of the abyss. When he did discover this last fact, he saw with vexation that he was not equal to coping with his first failure, and at once died of impotent fury. That was a lesson, an example, a warning, but not a tragedy. If that is not so, one may make a tragic type not only of every robber who is punished, but even of the splenetic coward, Araktcheyev,⁠[86] dying at Gruzino, hated and abandoned by all, beside the foul grave soaked with the blood of a whole household of servants.

The Emperor Alexander was very different. The Empress Catherine, who concentrated upon him all the dynastic interest and the motherly feeling she had never had for her own son, gave him a very humane education and, as is common with old sinners, brought him up in ignorance of what was going on around him. Alexander was a dreamer, a youth of romantic ideas, with the vague philanthropy which was then in fashion, and which was a sort of Aurora Borealis or cold glimmering reflection of that other, warmer philanthropy preached in those days in Paris. But for all that, his education ended early, and with Laharpe’s teaching in his head he appears on the royal stage, surrounded by the grey-headed, putrefying corruption of the last years of the reign of Catherine.

‘I am greatly dissatisfied with my position,’ he writes as Grand Duke to Kotchubey on May 18, 1796, that is, when he was eighteen. ‘I am extremely glad that the subject has come up of itself, or I should have found it very hard to begin upon it. Yes, dear friend, I repeat: my position does not satisfy me at all. It is too conspicuous for my character, which finds pleasure exclusively in quietness and tranquillity. Court life is not made for me. I suffer every time I have to appear on the stage of the Court, and I am out of humour at the sight of the mean things done by others at every step for the sake of gaining external distinctions, in my eyes not worth a farthing. I feel unhappy in the company of such people, whom I should not care to have as lackeys; and yet here they fill the highest posts, as for instance, Z., P., B., both the S. M., and numbers of others not worth mentioning, who are haughty with their inferiors but cringe before those they are afraid of. In short, my dear friend, I am conscious that I was not born for the high position which I endure now, and still less for that destined for me in the future, which I have inwardly vowed to renounce in one way or another.

‘This, dear friend, is a grave secret which I have long meant to tell you. I think it unnecessary to beg you not to speak of it to any one, for you will understand of yourself how dearly I might have to pay for it. I have asked G. Garrick to burn this letter if he should not succeed in handing it to you in person, and not to give it to any one else to pass on to you.

‘I have considered the subject from every point of view. I must tell you that the first idea of it had arisen in my mind even before I came to know you, and that I was not long in reaching my present decision.

‘The disorder prevailing in our affairs is incredible; there is robbery on every side, all departments are badly governed; order seems to have been banished from everywhere—and in spite of that, all the energies of the Empire are devoted to nothing but widening its frontiers. When that is the position of things, it is scarcely possible for one man to govern the State, even less so to reform the deeply rooted abuses existing in it.... The task is beyond the powers not only of a man endowed like me with ordinary abilities, but even of a genius, and I have always clung to the principle that it is better not to undertake a task at all than to perform it badly. It is in accordance with that principle that I have taken the resolution I have mentioned to you above. My plan is, after renouncing this difficult career (I cannot yet with certainty fix the date of this renunciation), to settle with my wife on the banks of the Rhine, where I shall live quietly as a private man, finding my happiness in the society of my friends and in the study of nature.

‘You are at liberty to laugh at me and say that this design is impracticable; but wait till it has been carried out and then pronounce judgment. I know that you will blame me, but I can do nothing else, for I make the peace of my conscience my first rule, and it can not be at rest if I undertake a task beyond my strength. This, my dear friend, is what I have long wished to tell you. Now when it has all been uttered, there is nothing left for me, but to assure you that wherever I may be, whether happy or unhappy, rich or poor, your affection for me will always be one of my greatest comforts; mine for you, believe me, will end only with my life.’

Catherine died. Paul dragged the body of Peter III. into the Peter-Paul Fortress in a hard frost to bury it beside his dead mother, and made Count A. Orlov⁠[87] and Baryatinsky carry the former Tsar’s crown. Alexander was moved one step nearer to that pinnacle surrounded by the clouds of corruption of which he wrote. Everything was already transformed by one death, everything grew even viler, though in a different way. It was his lot to regret the courtiers ‘whom he would not have cared to have for his lackeys.’ The spoilt and sated household of the old mistress was filled with the army captains and kammerdieners of her successor, who brought the atmosphere of the barracks and servants’ hall into the palace. In place of the haughty palace robbers there were thieves who were police spies; in place of the lackeys there were hangmen. The palace was transformed from a brothel into a torture-chamber. The orgy of sensuality was followed by an orgy of ferocity and cruelty.

Overwhelmed with horror, the Tsarevitch stood in alarm and distress at the foot of the savage throne; powerless to help and unable to get away, Alexander wandered like Hamlet through the palace-halls, unable to decide on anything; others decided for him.

With the same alarm and distress, and with a black stain, moreover, on his conscience, he mounted to the dreadful pinnacle from which the mutilated corpse of his slain father had just been thrown down. He wanted the good of Russia and he was trusted. Men gazed on his mild and youthful features with ardent hope; he too hoped that he would make a paradise of Russia; he would give her his best years, his utmost strength, the people should bless him; he would expiate the sin of his share in the bloody deed, and then, like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, he would do what he had written to Kotchubey and retire to his vineyards on the banks of the Rhine.⁠[88]⁠

Alexander was sincere in these dreams; he believed in them, and not he alone, all Russia believed in them, that is, the Russia of decent people, the Russia recognised as human. The dark masses of Russia, the Russia of the poor, had nothing to do with it. As at all celebrations and holidays, they were excluded from the general rejoicing, and, indeed, made no effort to take part in it, remembering their Little Mother, the Empress, and seeming instinctively to divine that the new reign would only pay for the blood of every twelfth man among them with the gift of Araktcheyev’s military settlements.

It was easy to begin a new epoch supported by such love, such faith, such joy at the death of the miscreant....

Ten days had passed after the death of Paul. There was a great reception in the palace; people with joyous faces, clothed in deep mourning, came and went, bowing low, repeating slavish phrases. Alexander, shy, unaccustomed to this job and to playing the part of a god, before whom every one falls down, upon whom every one rests his hopes, went after the reception exhausted to his study, and sank into an easy-chair before his writing-table. On his table in his study, which no one dared to enter, there lay a thick letter, sealed and addressed to him.

He broke the seal and opened the letter; as he read it, his eyes filled with tears, his cheeks burned. He put down the letter, and big tears still rolled down his cheeks. They were seen by Count Pahlen and Troshtchinsky. ‘Gentlemen,’ the Tsar said to them, ‘some one unknown has put this letter on my table; there is no signature; you must find out for me who wrote it.’

2 The Letter

Here is what the Emperor read:—

‘With what a lovely day has Thy reign begun! It seemed as though Nature herself were greeting Thee with rapture!⁠[90] Alexander, beloved of our hearts! For ten days now the spring sun has been shining on Thy subjects, who are full of hopes, and day by day, hour by hour, Thou hast done more to justify those hopes. What a joyful future awaits us!

‘At this time of universal rejoicing, who would spare his life for Thy defence? But Thou hast no need of it.... Forgive me, then, if I, remote from Thy Court and all dreams of reward, an obscure Russian, seeking to bring Thee an offering, trace certain truths with audacious hand. Forgive, forgive me for this unworthy offering, an offering from the heart; accept it as a testimony of trust in Thy virtues, as a sign of the true love of Thy subjects. Doubtless all that I could say to Thee is more or less clearly printed already on Thy noble heart, or is well known in the counsels of the wise men with whom Thou surroundest Thyself. But this thought could not keep me from offering my widow’s mite to the treasury, even as the most dazzling conception of Thy glory will never keep me from zealously proclaiming it wherever I may go.

‘My Sovereign! Thou reignest over forty million men, from of old accustomed to pay boundless homage to authority, apart from which they cannot picture their weal. A mere glance from their Tsar is often enough to diffuse universal joy, and of course, a mere command is enough to give the greatest happiness man can enjoy on earth....

‘The Empire which will call Thee its own is not an ordinary State. There is no other like it either in the Europe of to-day or in the other parts of the earth, nor perhaps in the chronicles of past ages. It includes ten climates, and is inhabited by a people for the most part of one language and of one religion. From north to south and from west to east it abounds in innumerable riches of all kinds supplementing each other; and this gives it the possibility of complete independence in its relations with foreign countries. It has spacious lands for producing the materials peculiar to it, and the trusty hands of its sons for working upon them. Hence its wealth, resting on no chance foundations but on Nature herself, is bound to increase with time. It may be compared to a mine that has only been opened on the surface, the wealth of which is gradually revealed as it is sunk deeper. It abounds in rivers which, flowing from its centre into five seas, await only the protecting hand of government to unite them in order to carry the products of Europe to Asia and the products of Asia to Europe by the shortest ways. It is bounded for the most part by the Arctic Ocean or by lands as unapproachable; on its other frontiers it has neighbours accustomed to respect the might of Russia. What new thing can I say to Thee, Sire, of the civic virtues of Thy people, which even in the period of coarsest ignorance had already given evidence of its power; of the people, which in the present state of the moral world is perhaps less corrupted than any other nation?... I will only recall one of these virtues, which secures the stability of the Fatherland. The sacrifice of life for one’s country has at all times and in all places been deemed worthy of everlasting praise; but this sacrifice with no prospect of the glory which comforts dying heroes, this great devotion, is characteristic only of rare souls, and the Russian soldier is more capable of it than any warrior of ancient or modern times. The heroic leader goes to his death: I respect him; but I see that the glory which beyond the grave will strew its laurels on him fills his mind with the admiration of his fellow-countrymen and of posterity, and that glory softens the horrors of death. He is intoxicated by ambition, the desire of winning the highest distinction. The very necessity of acting in accordance with the traditions of the class to which he belongs leads him on. But the humble soldier who does not dream of laurels, who has none of the conventional ideas of noble birth that compel a man to distinguish himself, expects no reward; the soldier, whose lot is unchanged after twenty battles won, and who, with no thought of eye-witnesses, of posterity, of history, dies altogether, for whom his sacred duty is the one impelling force, is to my mind a great hero indeed! Such is the Russian soldier; and of such Thou hast hundreds of thousands. Time has developed the wisdom of man; time, which perfects all things, is making it possible for the lawgiver to be the benefactor of all mankind. If Catherine, if Marcus Aurelius himself had lived in the Iron Age of the reign of Ivan Vassilyevitch when all Europe was still shrouded in the darkness of superstition and oppressed by the tyranny of feudalism, could they have done much for the benefit of their subjects? Even assuming that they had evolved laws from their own benevolent hearts, from their own all-embracing wisdom, assuming that they could have found the possibility of vigorous action and of deep reflection, could, without any preliminary study, have fully understood the organisation of society and the hearts of the people, where could they have found men worthy to carry out their plans? Neither the men nor the means for public education had yet been evolved. In our day, Sire, legislation, together with other branches of learning and the progress of reason which has inevitably advanced in the course of ages, offers Thee in the works of the greatest minds a thousand new ideas. These ideas, embraced by Thy beneficent spirit, and tested by Thy religious ardour as gold by fire, may be the foundation of the happiness of the Russians. Great is the service of the sage who laboriously discovers the truth; but he who uses the power given him by Heaven to apply that truth to real life is deserving of an altar! He is like God Who gathers the mists that float profitless in the air into the fructifying rain that brings fertility to the plains and water to the rivers irrigating them. If earthly rulers may be likened to the Great Inconceivable Being Who has created millions of worlds, it can only be when they imitate Him in their beneficence....

‘Look at the present state of Europe; can there ever have been a time fitter for the raising of Thy “Russia to the pinnacle of glory and happiness” in accordance with Thy promise? The pretensions and aims of all the Powers are so different, so opposed to one another, that Thou canst never be forced to take up arms if Thou hast Thyself peaceful intentions, if the vain praises of idle minds (the so-called glory of conquerors) are never by Thee held worthy to be weighed beside the blessings of thousands and thousands of men whose fate depends on Thee. The French Revolution, so fatal in itself, so menacing to the stability of many Governments, far from doing harm to Russia, into which its principles could never penetrate, has brought it palpable advantage: in the first place, by turning away the envious attention of the Powers at the moment most critical for Russia, and then, by the new grouping of their alliances, freeing our Court from the necessity of adhering to one or the other party, both of whom now, regarding our alliance as the determining factor, are bound to compete for our goodwill. Through this unexpected concatenation of circumstances Russia has emerged from the state of concealed warfare with all the European Powers which has always existed since the days of Peter the Great. The very youth of Russia, which would hardly have been forgotten for another whole century, has been for ever effaced from the memory of man by the Revolution.

‘In this position of affairs, the internal and external debts of Thy Empire are not so great in comparison with the still unexhausted sources of Thy revenues that the Treasury could not be extricated from every difficulty in a few months by simply cancelling some proposed expenses.

‘Such are the means, Sire, which Thou hast at Thy disposal for becoming a great and happy monarch in the midst of the happiest people on earth....

‘At night as I passed by Thy palace I drew this picture of Thy blessed political position and pondered on what would be Thy ways.

‘Can it be, I said to myself, can it be that He will wantonly destroy the rare harmony of heaven and earth in His favour, and will leave uncompleted the blessed work that has been prepared by the last half-century? Can it be that for the pleasure—created for common souls—of despotic power He will coldly sacrifice the people’s hopes, the immortal glory and the reward which in the Land of Bliss awaits virtuous monarchs after a long untroubled life filled with domestic joys?

‘No! He will open the great book of our destiny and the destiny of our descendants to which Catherine only pointed with her finger. He will give us inviolable laws. He will confirm these laws for generations on generations with the oath of allegiance of his numerous subjects. He will say to Russia: “This is the limit of my autocratic power and that of my descendants, and is immutable for ever....” And Russia will at last become one of the monarchical powers; and the iron sceptre of arbitrary tyranny shall not be able to break the Tables of her Covenant.

‘Towards this goal He will move slowly, as Nature moves in the mysterious ways made ready for her by the Creator. He will call to His aid the Eternal Reason that can shed light on His soul; guided by that, He will examine the whole code of laws hitherto existing, that He may not without need or through mere love of novelty destroy what has been confirmed and justified by time. In the name of the Fatherland He will require advice from the wise men happily placed by destiny at His side, and from others whose voice from the remotest borders of His Empire may make the truth known to Him. Under vow of strictest discretion He will question them; with the light of His own pure conscience He will go through the works of the lawgivers of the world, ancient and modern, and will compare them with the circumstances of His people, with their manners, customs and religion, with their local conditions, with the true enlightenment promised us by the coming age after the cruel trials of the past.... He will compile in secret, but publish in the face of an attentive world, an Imperial Code, the basis of laws which may of themselves imperceptibly pave the way for the diffusion of its underlying principles. He will command throughout the expanse of Russia the election of elders, worthy of the unlimited confidence of their fellow-citizens; and, putting them beyond the sphere of ambition and fear, bestow upon them the excess of His authority—that they may preserve the Holy of Holies of the Fatherland.... He will take other measures too, drawn from the experience of ages, to confirm the rights of his subjects. He will be the first to use autocracy for the bridling of despotic power; He will be the first who from the purest impulse of the heart will sacrifice His own interests for humanity! And humanity, sobbing with joy, will raise His image higher than the images of other rulers, and multitudes of foreign people will flock to kiss its pedestal and to enjoy happiness in our midst!

‘Doubtless, our Alexander, the Friend of Humanity, knows that nothing but confidence in the Government, resting on the certainty of its immutable principles, begets mutual confidence among the citizens, that it alone is the life of commerce, the mother of public virtue and the source of social prosperity....

‘Beside confidence in the Government, and on a level with it, He will set faith in the justice of law. Without these two principles, the honoured words “Citizen” and “Fatherland” are empty sounds in our language!...

‘He will despise these new false politicians who maintain that private wrongs do no harm to society, that it makes no difference to the State “how property passes from hand to hand.” Leaving all the administration of justice to the elected of the people, He will remove the judges from temptation, not by laws, inevitably ineffectual, but by providing them with an abundant maintenance, commensurate with their disinterestedness and their zeal for the public service. To the same end He will subject the judges to the influence of public opinion. It has always been more impartial, more implacable than the higher authorities, which were not rarely moved by the same motives as their subordinates, to the still greater discredit of the laws! A court with open doors, the right for the litigants to publish the decisions, will be one of the most reliable guarantees of justice.

‘He will lay the State property on a firm basis once for all: He will reckon out the wealth of His spacious dominions; He will determine the powers and liabilities of His subjects upon an immovable scale, unaffected by the rise and fall of the currency, and will say: “Such are the dues of one class to another; such are the dues to the public Treasury; such are the means at the personal disposal of the Tsar.” Then only extraordinary needs of State that cannot be foreseen by any human wisdom will remain undetermined: but to meet these there will be the national—so to speak—natural riches of the country, which in a state of peace increase indefinitely.

‘He will not command steps to be taken for laying on new taxes in order to increase the nominal revenue indefinitely, but with goodwill will take steps tending to diminish expenditure. And by this surest of means He will, accompanied by the blessings of the citizens who toil in the sweat of their brow, secure a continual surplus in the Treasury of which no single Power can yet boast.

‘He will restrict particularly the expenditure which does not serve the welfare of His Empire, nor really exalt the glory of His crown. He will diminish His Court; He will dismiss from it the crowds of servitors and flatterers who shamelessly imagine that the property of the Empire belongs to them, and that they have a pre-eminent right to the Tsar’s favour, simply because chance has placed them in proximity to His person.

‘He will restrict vain display—the desire to adorn the streets and squares of the capitals while all the rest of the Empire presents the spectacle of roofless huts. He will not call art to His aid to provide monuments for Himself, but will find them in the wisdom of His institutions and the love of His people. These memorials will not perish with time, and will awaken not the wonder of idle curiosity but the reverence of all ages and all peoples!

‘He will not merely protect the arts capriciously and only in His own palace, on condition that they pay Him homage, but will truly encourage them, increasing the general welfare and setting free intellects and talents. In general, He will prize the toil, the bloody sweat of His subjects, that is devoted to the public benefit; and moral beauty will be His first care. He will not deign to occupy Himself with details, and waste on trifles the precious time which will barely, very barely, suffice for the all-embracing cares of the Ruler of the greatest Empire in the world. His glance will embrace whole masses. He will give the right direction to the chief wheels of the political machine, and all the rest will run their course rightly! As even the most perfect laws will remain useless to a corrupt people and will lack meaning for an ignorant people, He will doubtless turn all His attention to the education of His subjects in accordance with the local and personal needs of each. He will entrust the higher supervision of this to the class of the guardians of the law, and they will act through the men who have the most moral influence over the people. The clergy will be employed for the enlightenment of the people, and will first themselves be enlightened to that end; schools will be founded for the latter, free from the tedious principles of scholasticism; and distinctions will be given not to those preachers of the Word of God who with poetic enthusiasm glorify the Tsar in town churches, but to those who show in practice the good influence they have had on the morals of their flocks; to those who, founding schools, will faithfully preach in them the pure teaching of Christ and by their example will exhort the man and the citizen to his duties. In this way not the sword, wielded, day and night, by power, will compel the fulfilment of the law, but far more effectively the personal conviction of each man of his usefulness. In this way law will be preserved by morals and morals by law.

‘On the other hand, He will do something, too, for the moral improvement of those who are called the lowest. He will secure to the landowners’ serfs the rights of man; He will give them the rights of property; He will set limits to their dependence. And this not by a law which might dangerously shake the stability of the present bonds of society, but by the gradual influence of custom, which would strengthen them the more. To the simple peasants He will give the means of tasting at times the sweetness of life in reward for their toil, without resorting to wantonness, to beverages that deaden the sense, to other temptations of depravity, sometimes of despair, and of hopeless slavery....

‘Agriculture will flourish under His gentle rule. Little by little He will cover the wide steppes of Russia with settlements, not moving whole families by force over thousands of versts to lands terrible from being unknown and deadly from extreme contrast of climate, but by attracting them from adjacent over-populated parts and encouraging them with rewards and privileges.

‘The waterless but fertile mountain-ranges of favourable climates He will make habitable and will turn to blossoming gardens, cutting canals from neighbouring rivers, turning spacious lakes to advantage, or gradually clothing the slopes of mountains with forest. Is it only enlightened capital cities that have claims on government expenditure? Is it not bound to prepare dwellings for future generations and ... a refuge for those who will probably come one day from the West to seek a home among us?

‘He will not set crowds of greedy officials to take charge of the forests, those ornaments of the land and treasure-stores of water, but by judiciously distributing them as private property will preserve them for the country. Only the wild steppes and impassable forests should be the estate of the Government; they must become the property of private persons as soon as they are made fit for husbandry. Woe to the Governments whose institutions serve only as a source of temptation without eradicating the evil in its very foundation!

‘He will assign solemn rewards for peasants distinguished either by rare virtues or by industry or by the invention or introduction of anything new in agriculture or manufactures. He will not leave the decision of this and the like in the hands of local authorities swayed by partiality or narrow political considerations, but will organise occasional expeditions about the Empire of persons qualified by special knowledge in the department investigated and worthy to represent His Imperial Eye. He will Himself not infrequently abandon the monotony of Court life in order to see and hear in person; He will not confine the rule of the lovely and spacious realm entrusted Him by God within the narrow limits of work at the papers laid before Him. He will encourage handicrafts, not by sudden and arbitrary prohibition of the importation of foreign produce (it is possible to combine the welfare of the Fatherland with peace and goodwill towards foreign countries), but by privileges given to manufacturers and factories, and especially by the removal of oppressive taxes which discourage new enterprise. Russia can, however, without the slightest disadvantage to herself, generously yield many branches of industry and manufacture to nations more scantily provided with land. Is it for her, so lavishly endowed with essential riches, greedily to appropriate all the sources of existence? Is it for her to desire to make everything for herself, when she can incomparably more cheaply employ hired labour outside her frontiers? How long are we going to measure ourselves by foreign standards and to imitate like children?

‘Internal trade, strengthened by the progress of agriculture and handicrafts, will of itself in the course of a few years, with no artificial encouragement, increase our foreign trade to our advantage. Morality and love for everything belonging to one’s own country, encouraged by examples in high places, will also tend to diminish the demand for foreign produce. The price of essential Russian goods, and at the same time also the rate of exchange, will rise inevitably.

‘For the sake of internal and external trade, for the sake of completing the great work of legislative reform, He will, of course, strive to keep the peace with the Powers. To this end, He will employ the happy means furnished Him now by Providence, which is unmistakably extending to Russia a blessing hand. It will doubtless be His task to outline a bold plan of permanent policy appropriate to the Russian Government and peculiar to it. Has He not the most hopeful resources for keeping all the Courts respectful to Him, without swerving from one side or the other? Will He, in the present position of His Empire, with its unbroken frontiers and its strength, find the slightest reason for entering into their disputes? Is the population of Russia, still in its flower, such as to justify the sacrifice of men without the utmost necessity?... Oh, what a destiny, to draw upon oneself the grateful love and respect of all peoples! To have unlimited power and to do good.... If the Almighty loathes murder and the other abominable results of war, if it is pleasing to Him that there should ever be a truly Christian Power, it is most of all likely in Russia and in the reign of Alexander.

‘In that happy time the armed forces will not remain useless. On the contrary, then they will fulfil their true purpose, the preservation of public tranquillity. While waiting till some frantic foe really attacks, means will be found, without forcing them to shed blood in foreign lands and affairs that do not concern them, to occupy the millions of strong, healthy hands which cost annually more than a third of the Imperial revenues.... First of all, He will fence the western frontier of His Empire with a double shield of fortresses: and they will seem to neighbouring peoples like the terrible rows of teeth of a lion in repose. Then, after the example of the Romans, who, though they esteemed the trade of arms above all others, did not hesitate to employ soldiers on public works, building their splendid aqueducts and roads; after the example of some European sovereigns who in more modern times have undertaken similar experiments, and among them of the founder of this capital, who secured its welfare by the Ladoga Canal, He will employ part of our sturdy soldiers, accustomed from their youth to obedience and labour, on the tasks of the State. Some addition to their ordinary pay will stimulate their energy; and how many really profitable works there will be to show for it in the course of a few years! On all sides means of communication by water and by land will be opened. Rivers will be made navigable, marshes will be turned to fertile valleys.... Meanwhile the frontiers of the Empire will not remain undefended, and the force of Russia will be seen and understood by enemies.

‘He will unite the warrior with the peasant, and the peasant with other classes, by bonds of mutual profit, the feeling of which, together with brotherly love and allegiance to the Sovereign, will be the same feeling under three different aspects.

‘He ... but can I fathom the designs of God? Can I picture, can I enumerate, all the activities of which the seed lies in the humane heart of Alexander?...

‘Nations will always be what it pleases the Government they should be: the Tsar, Ivan Vassilyevitch, wanted to have submissive slaves—abject with him, brutal among themselves; he had them. Peter wanted to see us imitating foreigners; unhappily we have done so to excess. The wise Catherine began to educate the Russian. Alexander will complete that great work. Rejoicing in the fruits of His youth, He will be the most blessed of mortals. His glory, resting securely on the love of His subjects, passing down from generation to generation, based on the universal esteem of all races of the earth, will be the envy of the greatest monarchs!

‘I have heard that our young Ruler receives with indifference the hackneyed phrases of poets who shamelessly apply them to all monarchs, assuring each one that he is better than his predecessor: I have made bold to outline these thoughts....

‘O Thou whom my heart adores, do not reject this gift of it, offered Thee in simplicity and with disinterested feelings....

‘Sire! In my soul I throw myself at Thy feet, I water them with tears of the purest everlasting devotion.... Beneficent Genius of my beloved Fatherland!’

3 Marquis von Posa

Next day Troshtchinsky announced to the Tsar that he had brought the author of the letter, that he was a clerk in one of the offices of his department, called Vassily Nazarovitch Karazin. The Tsar, dismissing Troshtchinsky, invited Karazin into his study, and as soon as he was alone with him asked:—

‘You wrote that letter to me?’

‘Pardon, my Sovereign,’ answered Karazin.

‘Let me embrace you for it, I thank you; I should be glad if I had more subjects like you. Continue always to speak as frankly to me, continue always to tell me the truth!’

The Tsar pressed him to his heart, and Karazin, sobbing like a child, flung himself at his feet with the words: ‘I swear that I will always tell you the truth.’

Alexander made him sit down, had a long conversation with him, bade him write directly to him, the doors of his study were to be open to him....

‘Als der Marquis weggegangen, empfing ich den Befehl ihn künftighin unangemeldet vorzulassen.’

Our Marquis von Posa had begun his political career two years before. At five-and-twenty he had left the army. Well educated, of an unusually many-sided culture, he said good-bye to the Semyonovsky Regiment in order to study Russia and devote himself to the exact sciences. This was at the time when the frenzy of Paul’s reign was at its height. When the young man had looked into the position of luckless Russia, scourged at random by her torturer, he was overcome by such horror, such loathing, such despair, that he made up his mind at all costs to go away to another country. Foreign passports were forbidden. Karazin could not obtain permission to go. He determined to get over the frontier without a passport. As he was crossing the Niemen, he was caught by the dragoons and brought to Kovno. Karazin’s fate seemed inevitable. He clutched at the most risky and incredible means of saving himself, and it saved him. Before the official report had been despatched, he sent on the 14th of August 1798, by express messenger, the following letter to Paul:—

‘Sire,—A luckless criminal makes bold to write to Thee, a criminal against Thy commands, O Sovereign Ruler of Russia, not against honour, conscience, religion, or the laws of his country. Deign to listen before condemning. And may one ray of Thy clear vision be shed upon me before the lightnings of Thy wrath consume me!

‘I have tried to leave my country, the great land of Thy sovereign rule; I have transgressed Thy Will, doubly expressed, that is, for the whole people and for me personally. On the night of the third of this month, while crossing the Niemen to Kovno, I was seized by a patrol of the Ekaterininsky Grenadier Regiment; the official report will reach Thee shortly.

‘No doubt information will be collected about me in St. Petersburg, where I have spent a short time, and in the province of Ukraine, where I was born and have my estates. I make bold to assure Thee beforehand that they will in no wise prove me guilty. I had no need to take refuge in flight. It will be the only weapon for my prosecutors.

‘Receive my confession: I wanted to escape from Thy rule, dreading its cruelty. Many examples, carried by rumour over the expanse of Thy Empire, in all likelihood exaggerated tenfold by rumour, terrified my thoughts and my imagination day and night. I knew of no guilt in myself. In the solitude of my country life I could have neither opportunity nor occasion to offend Thee. But even the free turn of my thoughts might be a crime....

‘Now it is in Thy power to punish me—and justify my fears—or to forgive and make me shed tears of repentance that I have cherished thoughts so false of a great and merciful Sovereign.’

It was not often Paul’s lot to read such letters. The horror of his despotism, which had compelled the young man to flee, and the simple-hearted confession of it, took Paul by surprise. Standing in the third position of dancing, and leaning with intentional awkwardness on his cane, Paul said in his husky voice to the criminal who was brought before him: ‘I will show you, young man, that you are mistaken, that service in Russia under my rule may not be so bad; in whose department would you like to serve?’ Though Karazin’s design to escape over the frontier was no proof of a very strong desire to test the charms of service under Paul, there was no discussing the question. Karazin mentioned Troshtchinsky. Paul commanded that he should be given a post and left in peace.

For Alexander such a man was a treasure, and it seemed as though he understood that. Karazin’s inexhaustible energy and his broad scientific education were striking. He was an astronomer and a chemist, a statistician, a scientific agriculturalist, not a rhetorician like Karamzin, nor a pedant like Speransky, but a living man, who brought into every question a quite new point of view and advised exactly what was needed.

At first the Emperor was continually sending for him and writing notes to him with his own hand.⁠[91] The intoxication of success increased Karazin’s energy tenfold; he drew up programmes of reform, among others the plan of a Ministry of Education, sent in a note concerning the eradication of slavery (that is, of serfdom), in which he says plainly that after the nobles had been set free by special decree⁠[92] it was the peasants’ turn; at the same time, he wrote about elementary schools, himself composed two catechisms, one secular, one religious, and all at once, in the very heyday of his favour, asked for leave and was lost in his native district in Little Russia. It must not be imagined that he went for a rest to gather fresh energy; such men are never tired. No, he returned to Petersburg a few weeks later with six hundred and eighteen thousand roubles which he had wrung by tears and entreaties from the nobles and merchants of Harkov and Poltava for founding a university in Harkov. The Tsar wanted to reward him for it, but Karazin refused. ‘I have been on my knees, Sire, before the nobles and the merchants, I entreated the money from them with tears, and I will not have it said that I did all that hoping to gain a reward.’ Alexander was pleased with him and everything went well, but already a hostile force could be discerned which at times rolled a log under the wheel, at times put on the brake....

The plan for a Ministry of Education was ratified, but by now it was not the same; the scheme of the Harkov university was ratified too, but Karazin’s colossal plans were narrowed down to the commonplace proportions of a German provincial Hochschule. Karazin was dreaming of a great educational centre, not only for all Little Russia, but also for the south-eastern Slavs and even the Greeks. He wanted to attract to it the greatest celebrities of the world of learning. Laplace and Fichte agreed to go at his invitation, but the Government found them too expensive.

Scarcely noticing the failure of his success, Karazin summoned from foreign lands to Harkov at his own expense thirty-two families of printers, bookbinders and other workmen, visited the palace of the widowed Empress, wrote for her treatises concerning female education, articles on pedagogy, and so on. This did not in the least distract him from carrying out other commissions of Alexander’s and persisting with other labours he had undertaken. In a little more than two years he had, in addition to all we have mentioned, already succeeded in writing constitutions for an academy, for universities and for various educational institutions, collecting materials for the history of finance and for the history of medicine in Russia, superintending the collecting of the first statistical information, and bringing the State archives into order.

In 1804 Karazin returned from an inquiry which he had been conducting, in combination with Derzhavin, into the doings of the Governor Lopuhin. The misdeeds of this man, who was under powerful protection, were laid bare. Lopuhin was put on his trial. All that remained to do was to reward the investigators; but by now the rope that had been allowed Marquis von Posa was almost at its end.

Unaware of anything, he presented himself before the Tsar. The Tsar received him with knitted brows. Karazin stood as though struck by a thunderbolt.

‘You brag of my letters?’

‘Sire....’ But the Tsar would not let him answer.

‘Other people know what I have written to you alone and have shown to no one. You can go.’

Karazin withdrew, and all was over between them. Karazin asked to be relieved of his duties; the Tsar accepted his request.

And so in 1804 the Emperor did not know that the contents of letters become known through the Post Office.

One cannot help recalling the melancholy anecdote that used to be told by N. I. Turgenev, that at some congress Alexander, receiving the petition of a peasant who had been sold by his owner, asked Turgenev: ‘Surely the law does not permit the sale of men apart from land, and the sale of serfs individually?’ Turgenev, who knew the chaotic state of the law on that subject, tried to take advantage of the question to abolish such sale of serfs, and of course did not succeed. After the sitting of the Council at which Turgenev spoke heatedly on the subject, V. P. Kotchubey went up to him, and, smiling bitterly, said: ‘And do you imagine that anything will come of this?... What you should rather be surprised at is that after reigning twenty years the Tsar does not even know that serfs are sold individually in Russia!’

4 The Sins of the Fathers

The Russian Government since the days of Peter the Great has been exceptionally free. It has views, interests, relations, but no sort of moral obligations.

When it freed itself from the stagnant traditions of the parental home, it simultaneously severed all ties of blood, without assuming any others; it handed over its own mother into bondage to a stranger, but did not submit to him either.

The complex elements of Western life, derived from various different sources, were selected to suit its purposes. Of a whole phrase in which the very discords softened its one-sidedness, took the edge off its extremes and made a harmony of a sort, a few notes were retained, destroying the concord and the significance. All that exaggerated authority and all that oppressed the individual was adopted; every defence of personal liberty was laid aside; the casuistry of the inquisition was enriched by Tatar torture, German discipline, Byzantine servility.

Even speech, absolutely oppressed and despised, gained the power of fatal menace, of inflicting boundless misfortune, the power of action, only when ‘word and deed’⁠[93] meant denunciation!

There has never in history been such a Government, relieved from all moral principles, from every duty undertaken by authority except that of self-preservation and maintaining the frontiers. The Russian Government of this period is the most monstrous abstraction to which the German metaphysics eines Polizeistaates could rise. The Government exists for the sake of the Government, the people for the sake of the State: a complete disregard for history, for religion, for tradition, for the heart of man; material force in place of an ideal, material power in place of authority.

Had Russia been conquered by Poland, let us suppose, there would have been a struggle. The Polish nobility would have brought in their tradition of aristocratic freedom; it would, as in Little Russia, as in the time of the Pretenders, have called forth from outraged national feeling Lyapunovs,⁠[94] Minins,⁠[95] Pozharskys and Hmyelnitskys.⁠[96] The two elements would have measured their strength. The conqueror would have seen what the conquered was, what were his peculiarities, where his national characteristics lay. But the conquest of Russia by the Government of Petersburg, without an enemy of a different race, without a hostile flag, without an open battle, took the whole country unawares. The people only grasped that it was conquered by the time that all the strong places were in the hands of the enemy; for the conquerors the vanquished people had not even the interest of novelty, of the unknown; on the contrary, the estranged oppressor despised the ignorant Russian people, was convinced that it knew them and felt that it was the same flesh and blood, but purified by civilisation and called to rule the ignorant masses.

About Peter the Great there gathered a crowd of destitute nobles who forgot their birth, of foreigners who forgot their native land, of orderlies and sergeants, interspersed with the old Boyar aristocrats and the everlasting intriguers who crawl at the feet of any one in power and take advantage of any one’s favour. This circle grew and multiplied rapidly, sending out its parasitic branches in all directions. Little by little this blight spread all over Russia, it trailed through the mud and the snow carrying an officer’s commission, an appointment from the senate, or a deed of sale, hungry and greedy, ferocious with the common people and abject with the higher officials.

It formed a sort of net, maintained by soldiers, joined together at the top in the knot of the Winter Palace, and holding tight peasants and townsmen in every mesh below. This was a sort of fortuitous state made up of nobles and government functionaries, with a flavour of army discipline and serfdom. In it everything was shaved off: beard, regional independence, individuality. It wore German dress and tried to speak French. The people looked with horror and repulsion on the traitors, but power was on the side of the latter, and however the people moaned, and however they revolted, the census and the recruiting, the forced labour and pay in lieu of labour, knout and rods went on unchecked. The people murmured, made frequent efforts to revolt; joining with the Cossacks and the Tatars, a whole countryside rose in insurrection—but there were troops and troops of soldiers ... and order was restored by the knout. Stunned with pain, crushed by despair, the people were felled to the earth and lay stupefied for nearly a hundred years. It is only from that time that Russia has become that dead, dumb sea which no hurricane will stir.

Up to the ’seventies of last century the Petersburg orderlies and sergeants had not fallen into step. These people of haughty insolence and no feeling of honour, drunk with wine and blood, accustomed to the executioner’s axe and the moan of the tortured, after tasting the sweets of power and being beaten with the stick, remembered well how easy it is in a state without a people to put any worthless creature on the throne or turn it off again.

They knew that they too had their share in the Imperial ‘We.’ ... The far-sighted among them wanted to limit the power of the autocracy for their own benefit, but the true sergeants preferred simply to strangle Tsars and put their mistresses in their place. The insolent courtiers were dangerous, exacting. It was not enough for Prince Grigory Grigoryevitch Orlov to have Catherine, he wanted the title of her husband. Knowing how light are the chains of matrimony, Catherine consented, but the other orderlies and sergeants would not dream of allowing it. The name of Ivan Antonovitch⁠[97] was pronounced: she bade them kill him like a cat; the name of Princess Tarakanov⁠[98] was recalled: she bade them steal her as puppies are stolen.

All this was done from terror. Feverish, irresistible terror took possession of every one who sat on Peter’s blood-stained throne. It was hard to rely on such faithful subjects as the orderlies and sergeants, as the German adventurers; still more so to rely on the people, on the voiceless people, trampled in the mud, handed over as a gift to the nobility: they did not exist. Those who wore the crown kept up appearances, tried to forget themselves, but panic got the upper hand, and suddenly they would be overcome by the terror of the rope-walker: below, a black mass of downcast heads that never look up, no voice can reach it; near at hand ... it would be better if there were no one ... near at hand, sergeants, orderlies, and no one akin.... They were terrified by their own infertility, and sent seeking everywhere among German landgrafs and archbishops a drop of Peter’s blood in the fourth or fifth generation, or hurriedly ordered children, as Elizabeth did from Catherine, and kept looking about them, afraid that a drunken orderly would come ... with the ribbon of Saint Andrew on his breast and a rope in his hand.

Another figure appeared on the scene, and everything was changed. The storm-clouds had parted, men could see clear again. A picture of the greatest family happiness was displayed to the world: the god-like Felitsa,⁠[99] ‘the mother of her country,’ stood serenely at the pinnacle of power and authority, graciously smiling on her kneeling orderlies and sergeants, senators and cavaliers; every one worshipped her, every one did homage to her. Radiant with paste gems, after the manner of the encyclopaedic diamonds, she sparkled with the wisdom of Beccaria⁠[100] and the profound thought of Montesquieu, delivered classical speeches to the landowners of the steppes, put Roman helmets on her balafrés ... sent for legislators who took her will for law.... Her generals brought her victory on land and on sea, Derzhavin sang her praises in heavy verse, Voltaire exalted her in light prose, and she, drunken with power, weighed down with love, gave everything to her own people, everything: her body, the souls of the free Cossacks, the estates of the monasteries. ‘Glory, glory to you, Catherine!’

Who had performed this miracle, who had roped in the Russia of the renegades and the Germans? Who wedded the mutinous orderlies and blood-stained sergeants to Felitsa?

An unknown old lady, a landowner of the steppes after the style of Korobotchka,⁠[101] had bewitched them. What happened, it was said, was this.

Pugatchov came to her farm; the old woman was frightened and went out to offer His Majesty bread and salt.

‘Well, what sort of a mistress has she been to you, good Christians?’ the Tsar-Cossack asked the peasants.

‘We will not take a sin on our souls, Your Majesty; we have always been satisfied with our mistress, she has been a mother to us.’

‘Good! I will come to you, old lady, and drink your vodka, since the people praise you.’

The old lady regaled him as best she could. Pugatchov took leave of her and went to his sledge. The peasants stood waiting for him; their faces were dissatisfied.

‘If you have some favour to ask, speak boldly.’

‘Well, Your Royal Majesty, how is it left then for us?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, here, you see, Sire, you were at such a place and there you hanged the master and his children too, and at the other village, too ... and how about us?’

‘Why, you say yourselves your old woman is a very good one.’

‘That is so, Your Majesty, she is a good woman, but still, perhaps it would be better to do for her.’

‘Well, brothers, if you want to—as you like, we can do for her.’

‘It is a pity, it is a pity, but there is no help for it,’ said the peasants, going to fetch the old lady, who was calmly clearing away the plates and dishes, delighted at having been spared by the Tsar, and to her great surprise they hanged her from the crossbeam. It was she, they said, who cast a spell over the mutinous orderlies and sergeants of the Government.

They pondered, seeing such impartial justice. ‘Is that how we did for them? I say, but you know, might not this happen to any one of us? No, enough of mutiny; what could we do without the help of the Tsar?’

And the family feud was ended.

From that time forward the Government dared not hold out a hand to the peasants in any way. The nobles lost all sense of civic courage in face of the Government, and all feeling of moral shame in regard to the peasants. The two Russias completely ceased to recognise each other as human beings. There was no human tie, neither compassion nor justice between them. Their morality was different, what they held sacred was different. The terrified peasant crouched in his village, afraid of the landowner, afraid of the police-captain, afraid of the town where every one could beat him, where his full coat and jerkin were looked on with contempt, where he saw a beard only on the images of Christ. The landowner, who shed genuine tears over the novels of Marmontel, flogged the peasant in his stable for arrears with perfect equanimity; the peasant with untroubled conscience deceived the landowner and the judge. ‘Are you a gentleman?’ an old woman would say in the coach-house to Mitka or Kuzka, ‘that you eat meat in Lent? As for the master, it’s not expected of him, but why don’t you keep the law of God?’ The division could be no wider.

The people were broken. Without murmur, without revolt, without hope, they passed with clenched teeth through the next thousand blows,⁠[102] sank exhausted, died; their children were driven the same way, and so one generation followed another. Tranquillity prevailed, the masters’ tribute was paid, the forced labour was performed, the horn sounded for the hunt with hounds, the serfs’ band played, the motherly heart of the Empress rejoiced.

The Petersburg throne was made secure. It was supported on the graduated table of ranks, made fast to the earth with bayonets and butt-ends of guns; it was supported by the provincial nobility, who battened upon the peasants. The light from the West shed its pale, cold beams on the top of the pyramid, lighting up one side of it only; on the other, behind its shadow, nothing could be discerned—and, indeed, there was no need to look: there lay a scourged body covered with sacking, waiting for some one to come and decide whether it was dead or not. It seemed as though the conquest was complete.

But the revolution made by Peter the Great introduced a double-edged element into the life of the Russian nobility. Peter liked the material side of civilisation, practical science. The rich resources it provided increased the power of government tenfold. But he did not know what thorns lie hid in these West European roses, and, maybe, had too much contempt for his own people to dream that they could assimilate something else as well as constructing fortifications, building ships and establishing official routine. Science is as bad as any wood-worm which gnaws day and night until somewhere it comes forth into the light, struggles into consciousness. And some thought, like the gnawing of conscience, begins to ferment, until the whole dough rises.

In 1789 the following incident took place. A young man⁠[103] of no importance, after supping with his friends in Petersburg, drove in a postchaise to Moscow. He slept through the first station. At the second, Sofya, he was detained a long time before he could get horses, and consequently, it may be supposed, was so thoroughly awakened that when the fresh team carried him off with the bells ringing, instead of sleeping he listened to the driver’s song in the fresh morning air. Strange ideas came into the mind of the young man of no importance. Here are his words:—

‘My driver sang a song, as usual a mournful one. Any one who knows the airs of the Russian peasants’ songs will recognise that there is something suggestive of spiritual sadness. Almost every tune of these songs is in a minor key. The Government should be based on this peculiarity of the peasants’ musical taste. In it you will find the character of our people’s soul. Look at the Russian and you will find him melancholy. If he wants to shake off his dreariness, or, as he himself says, if he wants to enjoy himself, he goes to the pot-house.... The barge-hauler going with hanging head to the pot-house and coming back red with blood from blows in the face may provide the solution of much that has hitherto been enigmatic in the history of Russia.’

The driver went on wailing his song: the traveller went on thinking his thoughts, and before he had reached Tchudovo suddenly recalled how he had once in Petersburg struck his Petrushka for being drunk. And he burst out crying like a child, and, without blushing for his honour as a nobleman, had the shamelessness to write: ‘Oh, if only, drunk as he was, he had plucked up spirit enough to answer me in the same way!’

This song, these tears, these words, cast at hazard on the posting-road between two stations, must be regarded as one of the first signs of the turning tide. The seed always germinates in silence, and at the beginning there is no trace of it.

The Empress Catherine saw the point of it, and was graciously pleased ‘with warmth and feeling’ to say to Hrapovitsky: ‘Radishtchev is a rebel worse than Pugatchov!’

To wonder that she sent him in chains to Ilimsky Prison is absurd. It is much more wonderful that Paul brought him back, but he did that to spite his dead mother, he had no other object in it.

Thenceforward, from time to time, stray gleams of light flash on the horizon with no clap of thunder. Men appear on the stage who embody in themselves the historical gnawings of conscience, helpless and guiltless victims expiating the sins of their fathers. Many of them are ready to give up everything, sacrifice everything, but there is no altar, no one to accept their sacrifice. Some knocked at the palace doors, and on their knees besought their rulers to take heed to their ways; their words seemed to trouble the rulers, but nothing came of it. Others knocked at the hut but could say nothing to the peasant, since they spoke a different language. The peasant looked with sullen distrust at these ‘Greeks bearing gifts,’ and the conscience-stricken turned away bitterly, feeling that they had no fatherland.

Bereaved of all through thought, bereaved of all through love, foreigners at home, cut off from communication with each other, the five or six best men in Russia perished in idleness, surrounded by hatred, indifference, misunderstanding. Novikov⁠[104] was in the fortress, Radishtchev in Ilimsk. A fine place Russia must have seemed to them when Paul released them!

There is no wonder that all men looked with ecstatic hope to Alexander.

Young, handsome, with a mild and pensive expression, shy and extremely gracious, he might well fascinate them. Was he not suffering for the ills of Russia as they were? Was he not trying to heal them as they were? And, moreover, he could do it—so at least they fancied.

And Radishtchev, who had paid so dearly for his pity of the dark masses of Russia, went with the same faith as Karazin to offer his services to the young Emperor, and he too was accepted. Zealously Radishtchev plunged into work and drew up a series of legislative projects for the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment. But all at once, after a short discussion, not with the sledge-driver but with Count Zavadovsky, he stopped short, hesitated, was overcome by doubt and dread, pondered, poured himself out a glass of sulphuric acid and drank it. Alexander sent his own doctor, Villiers, but it was too late. Villiers only said, looking at his features as he lay in agony: ‘This man must have been very unhappy!’

He must have been!

This was in the autumn of 1802. Karazin was then in power. He knew Radishtchev very well, and indeed on one occasion lost the manuscript of his proposed reforms—but his alarming example had no effect on him. Dismissed from the palace, Karazin came back five years later, ten years later, twenty years later, thirty years later, with his plan for the emancipation of the serfs and a representative assembly of the nobles, his programme for a revolution from above. Not even observing that Nicholas was reigning, he knocked at his door too, and urged upon that dull-witted martinet that ‘storms were rising, there would be trouble; that to save the throne concessions must be made,’ and could not imagine why, in 1820, Alexander had ordered him to be put in the fortress, and the head gendarme Benckendorf ordered the gendarmes to turn him out of Nicholas’ anteroom. He should have asked Speransky how the ‘steep hills break the spirited steed’ even in flat Petersburg, and make of him a respectable harnessed nag, gravely jogging along in blinkers.

But how was it these people could be so deceived, or was it Alexander who deceived them? But that was not the case at all. We have not, at any rate before 1806 or 1807, the slightest right to doubt his genuine desire to alleviate the lot of his subjects: to protect his peasants from maltreatment by their owners, from maltreatment by officials, from the veniality of the law-courts and the injustice of the mighty. Alexander did not set before himself as the exclusive aim of his reign the futile preservation and increase of his power, as Nicholas did. It was not his desire that his word should have the effect of strychnine; he strove not only to be feared but to be loved. In his most passionate moments he could not only listen to another man’s opinion, but even accept it. When he had decided to shoot Speransky in 1812, he commuted the senseless sentence after talking to the academician, Parrot. All that is so, but he could not do anything real for the Russian people. That was just the tragedy of his position.

And who can tell whether he did not rush into foreign wars because he had begun to discern the magic circle which grew wider every time that he ordered a levy or increased the taxes on the peasants, and at once contracted when he undertook anything for the peasants? He became irresolute, he was oppressed by mistrust of others, lack of confidence in himself; his hesitation grew with defeat and grew with victory. From Paris he returned a gloomy mystic: he no longer wanted to transform or to improve; he brought back Speransky, but his projects of reform were pigeonholed in the archives. To Engelhart, who said something to him about bringing order into the civilian side of the Government, he answered gloomily: ‘There is no one to undertake it!’

He was accustomed to power, he had glory enough, all he wanted now was peace, and among all his ministers and grandees, among the generals covered with glory and courtiers about his person, he chose the heartless torturer, Araktcheyev, and handed Russia over to him, and, what is more, arranged that even after his death it should pass into the hands of another Araktcheyev.

He did not trust the nobles, the peasants he did not know—and that is no matter for wonder, since about him stood men like Speransky and his rival Karamzin; like Shishkov, the forerunner of Slavophilism, who might have known the peasants but did not know them; since the most intelligent statesmen, like Mordvinov, talked of the nobility as the one prop of the throne; since honest senators, like Lopuhin, were indignant at the idea of the emancipation of the serfs.

It is a pity that Alexander was rather deaf and did not drive about in a chaise alone on the high-roads. He too might have been awakened at dawn by the song of the sledge-driver and might have sought the key to the mysteries of the people in that instead of in Eckhartshausen.

To understand the Russian people it was not enough for Alexander to kill his father. He would have had to renounce his wise grandmother, to renounce Peter the Great, to renounce his whole family and kindred. He would have had—horrible to say—to renounce even Laharpe, who had made a man of him, but who could never have grasped that one could learn more of Russian history from the barge-hauler who goes gloomily into the pot-house and comes out of it covered with blood than from the records of Governments.

5 Faremo da se

When the doors of the Tsar’s study had been shut upon Karazin he still made an effort to write to the Tsar, taking advantage of the privilege that had been accorded him. But the Marquis von Posa had no further interest for the crowned Don Carlos; moreover, Alexander was now engrossed and absorbed by questions of far different importance, European questions; he was measuring himself against Napoleon, and blundering into the war which was to end in our defeat at Austerlitz.

Karazin, too, began to be engrossed with other tasks; like a rejected lover, he flung himself par dépit amoureux into amazingly many-sided activities. His ardent, restless brain was filled with ideas floating by in rapid succession—political plans, agricultural projects, learned theories, machines, observation, apparatuses, new and improved methods of distillery and of leather tanning, horticultural experiments with foreign seeds, easy ways of drying and preserving fruit, and so on. War broke out: Karazin wrote on the methods of increasing the output of saltpetre, he preserved meat, and at the same time was engaged in founding stations for meteorological observations in Russia. He absolutely clearly formulated in 1808 the scientific needs of that department, which have not been satisfied to this day, investigated the possibility of utilising the electricity in the atmosphere, founded a technological society in Ukraine, looked after his Harkov university, and so on.

But his chief thought, his chief anxiety, the leading note of his life, lay not in these things. While he was improving distilleries and trying to utilise the electricity of the atmosphere, Karazin was passionately watching other events and seeking other means of averting the storm. And meanwhile time was passing and passing.

Alexander had been reigning now for twenty years; all sorts of things had happened since, with tears in his eyes, he had read Karazin’s letter ... Tilsit and 1812 ... Moscow and Paris, the Congress of Vienna and St. Helena. Public opinion, stirred by so many shots and shocks, had moved forward while the Government had fallen back. Alexander had not carried out his promises. Dissatisfaction was growing. The people, who had given so much blood and received in return a manifesto written in Shishkov’s prose, murmured against the new levy of recruits, the more as there was talk of a senseless war in support of the Austrian yoke in Italy, of a repetition of the futile campaign of Suvorov.

The younger men of energy and education looked on sullenly. Karazin saw it all, but still believed that Alexander could and would prevent the gathering storm.

At the beginning of 1820 the Tsar forgave Karazin’s father-in-law some government debt. Karazin asked permission to offer his thanks in person, but was refused. He wrote a letter to the Tsar, in which among other things he said:—

‘I am not going to write anything special, but I only beg you, gracious Sovereign, ask Count Viktor Pavlovitch⁠[105] for the note of some pages I wrote for him on the 31st of March, apropos of a conversation with him, and also Prince Vyazemsky for the letter written to him from his Masalsky estate by the merchant Rogov on the 1st of April, which he read to me the other day. One cannot without horror see the striking similarity of the thoughts of a man (so far removed from me in every respect) with my thoughts and with all that has been filling my soul continually since the year 1817, when I had the audacity to reveal the same in my letter from Ukraine to Your Majesty. One cannot help remembering that just in the same way warnings from the well-disposed resounded from various parts of France before the coming of the fatal revolution, and that in just the same way they were neglected! “Il est singulier que dans ce siècle de lumières, les souverains ne voient venir l’orage que quand il éclate,” Napoleon said to Las Cases⁠[106] on the Island of St. Helena. Such striking agreement in the views of different minds that have nothing in common between them deserves attention. There must be something true in them; and the more so as similar feelings have been for some time past apparent in private conversations in both Petersburg and Moscow! It is quite enough if there are grounds for one half, for a fraction of what is thought!’

‘... Time,’ he says in a note given at the Tsar’s command to V. P. Kotchubey—‘time will strengthen the weakened framework of our State; time will replace the religious reverence for the Throne by another founded on the laws....

‘Of course it may linger on a year or two, perhaps more, but it is just for that reason I am writing now, it is for that reason that I am disregarding myself entirely. My fate is bound to be either exile beyond Lake Baikal, while there is still power to exile, or death with a weapon in my hand defending to the last the entrance to the Tsar’s apartments. Only then I shall write no more.’

Karazin beseeches the Tsar not to believe the sayings with which the governors meet him that ‘All is well, all is as before....’

‘A great change,’ he says, ‘has taken place and is daily taking place in men’s minds....’

In the Semyonovsky mutiny, in which he justifies the soldiers and admires them, he sees distinctly ‘the first step of the ladder which the spirit of the age is raising for us.’

But what were his means of averting the storm? Here they are:—

‘The gradual emancipation of the peasants and the summoning of elected persons from the whole of the nobility as representatives of public opinion to the private councils of the Government.’ By this Duma Karazin supposes ‘all will be saved and without detriment to the power of the Monarch, if only the time has not passed. O my Country, unique in Thy character, Thou mayest even on the threshold of Thy greatest catastrophe be saved by a sincere, warm union of Thy Tsar with His nobility! But God’s Will be done in this as in all!

‘... And, indeed, what can the Autocracy lose from trusting the class whose fate is so closely bound up with it?... All the measures of the police and ecclesiastical censorship are insufficient to check the growth of opinion. Excessive severity only revolts men’s hearts. All at once the strained cord will snap. Among the many freed serfs and men of no definite class I foresee the miscreants who will surpass Robespierre. There are noblemen, too, who have squandered their estates and been reared in debauchery and evil principles, who are dissatisfied with their lot and are consequently ready to join the ignorant mob. The times of Pugatchov, of the Moscow mutiny in the time of Yeropkin,⁠[107] and the outbreaks of lawlessness at the invasion in 1812 in various parts of the Moscow and Kaluga provinces have shown us already what our mob can be when it has had too much to drink! Alas for us! the Throne will drown in the blood of the nobility!’

In answer to this cry of horror and warning, the Emperor Alexander bade V. P. Kotchubey demand from Karazin ‘details, proofs, names’—in other words a denunciation. The ‘Trajan and Marcus Aurelius’ had developed in the twenty years of his reign!

Karazin refused to give them. The Tsar ordered him to be thrown into the fortress and afterwards to be banished to his estate in Little Russia.

What for?

For having meddled in what was not his business, but that Karazin was quite unable to understand.

‘How long has the welfare of the country in which I live,’ he says, ‘in which my children and grandchildren will live, ceased to be my own business?⁠[108] From what Asiatic system is this idea borrowed? Teaching the Government is an expression purposely invented to mortify the vanity of the persons who make up the Government. But must not the authors of books on the best systems of legislation, of finance and so on, be called even more guilty? We all teach and are taught up to the day of our death. The Government is a centre, to which every thought concerning the commonweal must flow. Woe to us if we begin passing judgment in the market-place as other nations do!... And are there so many of us now in Russia desirous and capable of saying something to the Government and daring enough to do so? There is no need to be uneasy on that score: there will not be enough to become wearisome!’

However that may be, Karazin was in the fortress and was able at his leisure to ponder on the question whether there was more danger in saving the mighty of this world, or in thrusting them into the abyss.

While Karazin in those sleepless nights was writing his political rhapsodies to Kotchubey, there were other men, too, who could not sleep: in the barracks of the Guards, in the staff of the Second army, in old-fashioned signorial Moscow houses, there were men who did not sleep. They grasped the fact that Alexander would not go beyond two or three Liberal phrases, that there was no place in the Winter Palace for a Marquis von Posa nor Struensee⁠[109]⁠; they knew that no salvation for the people could come from the same source from which the military settlements had come. They expected nothing from the Government and tried to act independently of it; they brought all that was enlightened lower down in the social pyramid; its summit had grown dim in the mist. Culture, intelligence, the thirst for freedom, all now was to be found in a different region, in different surroundings, away from the Palace! In these were to be found youth, daring, breadth, poetry, Pushkin, the scars of 1812, fresh laurels, and white crosses. Between 1812 and 1825 there appeared a perfect galaxy of brilliant talent, independent character and chivalrous valour (a combination quite new in Russia). These men had absorbed everything of Western culture, the introduction of which had been forbidden. The period of Petersburg Government produced nothing better. They were its latest blossoms, and in spite of the fatal scythe that mowed them down at once, their influence can be traced flowing far into the gloomy Russia of Nicholas, like the Volga into the sea.

The story of the Decembrists becomes a more and more solemn prologue, from which we all date our lives, our heroic genealogy. What Titans, what giants, and what poetical, what sympathetic characters! Their glory nothing could diminish or distort, neither the gibbet nor the prison, nor the treachery of Bludov, nor the memorial words of Korf....

Yes, they were men!

When, thirty years afterwards, a few of the old ones who survived Nicholas came back, bent and leaning on crutches, from their long, weary exile—the generation of broken-spirited, splenetic, disillusioned men who had lived under Nicholas looked at these youthful figures, who, at the fortresses, at the mines, in Siberia, had kept the old warmth of heart, young enthusiasm, unconquerable will, unflinching convictions, at these young figures with their silver hair that still bore traces of the crown of thorns which had lain for more than a quarter of a century on their heads. It was not they who sought support and comfort at the hearth that had grown chill—no—they consoled the weak, they gave a hand to the sick children, cheering them on, supporting their strength and their hopes!

As Faust, wearied, turned for peace and rest to the eternally beautiful types of motherhood, so our younger generation turn for new energy and strengthening example to these Fathers.

The Petersburg period was purified by the holy company of Decembrists; the nobles could go no further without going out to the people, without tearing up their patent of nobility.

It was their Isaac sacrificed for reconciliation with the people. The crowned Abraham did not hear the voice of God and drew the noose....

The people did not weep for them.

The tragic element of the Petersburg period attained its furthest, most heart-rending expression—further it could not go.

The sacrifice was complete, and the last touch to its completeness was given by the indifference of the people.

Only now a way of escape and reconciliation became possible. The separation from the people was truly expiated by so much love and strength, purity and penitence, so much self-denial and devotion to others. The readiness of this group of aristocrats and noblemen not only to give up their unjust heritage, se faire roturiers de gentilshommes, as Count Rostoptchin expressed it, but to face death, to go to penal servitude, wipes out the sins of the fathers!

6 On the Further Side

When in 1826 Yakubovitch saw Prince Obolensky with a beard and wearing the greatcoat of a soldier, he could not help exclaiming: ‘Well, Obolensky, if I am like Stenka Razin, you certainly must be like Vanka Kain!...⁠[110]⁠’ Then the officer came up, the convicts were put in fetters and sent to Siberia to penal servitude.

The common people did not recognise the likeness, and dense crowds of them looked on indifferently in Nizhni-Novgorod as the fettered prisoners were driven by at the time of the fair. Perhaps they were thinking: ‘Our poor dears go there on foot, but here the gentry are driven by the gendarmes!’

But on the other side of the Ural Mountains lies a mournful equality in face of penal servitude and in face of hopeless misery. Everything is changed. The petty official whom we knew here as a heartless, dirty bribe-taker, at Irkutsk, in a voice trembling with tears, begs the exiles to accept a gift of money from him; the rude Cossacks who escort them leave them in peace and freedom so far as they can; the merchants entertain them on their way. On the further side of Lake Baikal some of them stopped at the ford at Verhno-Udinsk; the inhabitants learnt who they were, and an old man at once sent them by his grandson a basket of white rolls, while he hobbled out himself to talk to them of the region beyond the Baikal and to question them about the wide world.

While Prince Obolensky was still at the Usolsky Works, he went out early in the morning to the place where he had been told to chop down trees. While he was at work, a man appeared out of the forest, looked at him intently with a friendly air, and then went on his way. In the evening, as he was going home, Obolensky met him again; he made signs to him and pointed to the forest. Next morning he came out from the bushes again and signed to Obolensky to follow him. Obolensky went. Leading him away into the forest, he stopped and said to him solemnly: ‘We have long known of your coming. We have been told of you in the prophecy of Ezekiel. We have been expecting you, there are many of us here, rely upon us, we will not betray you!’ It was an exiled Duhobor.

Obolensky had for a long time been fretted by the desire for news of his own people through Princess Trubetskoy who had come to Irkutsk. He had no means of forwarding a letter to her. Obolensky asked the help of the Duhobor. The latter did not waste time in deliberation. ‘At dusk to-morrow,’ he said, ‘I will be at a certain spot. Bring me the letter, it shall be taken....’ Obolensky gave him the letter, and the same night the man set off for Irkutsk; two days later the answer was in Obolensky’s hands.

What would have happened if he had been caught?

Among comrades one does not count the risk.

The Duhobor paid the people’s debt for Radishtchev.

And so in the forests and mines of Siberia the Russia of Petersburg, of the landowners, of the officials, of the officers, and the Russia of the ignorant peasants of the village, both exiled and fettered, both with an axe in the belt, both leaning on the spade, both wiping away the sweat, looked each other for the first time in the face, and recognised the long-forgotten traits of kinship.

It is time that this should take place in the light of day, aloud, openly, everywhere.

It is time that the nobility, artificially raised into a different channel by the German engineers, should mingle with the surrounding sea. Fountains are no marvel now, and Samson’s spout of water from the lion’s mouth is no wonder beside the infinity of the rippling sea.

The Peterhof fête is over, the court masque in fancy dress is played out, the lamps are smoking and going out, the fountains have almost run dry—let us go home.

‘All that is so, but ... but ... would it not be better to raise the people?’ Perhaps; only it is as well to grasp that the one sure method of doing so is the method of torture, the method of Peter the Great, of Biron, of Araktcheyev. That is why the Emperor Alexander accomplished nothing with the Karazins and the Speranskys—but when he got to Araktcheyey, he did not give him up again.

There are too many of the common people for it to be really possible to raise them all to the fourteenth grade,⁠[111] and indeed every people has a strongly defined physiological character which even foreign conquest rarely changes. So long as we take the common people as clay and ourselves as sculptors, and from our sublime height mould it into a statue à l’antique, in the French style, in the English manner, or on the German model, we shall find nothing in the people except stubborn indifference or mortifyingly passive obedience.

The pedagogic method of our civilising reformers is a bad one. It starts from the fundamental principle that we know everything and the peasantry knows nothing: as though we had taught the peasant his right to the land, communal ownership, organisation, the artel and the mir.

It goes without saying that we can teach the peasantry a great deal, but there is a great deal that we have to learn from it and to study in it. We have theories, absorbed by us and representing the worked-out results of European culture. To determine which to apply, and how to fit them to our national existence, it is not enough to translate word for word; the lexicon is not enough. One must try in the first place to do with it what social thinkers are trying to do in Western Europe—to make their institutions comprehensible to them.

The common people cling obstinately to their habits—they believe in them; but we cling as obstinately to our theories and we believe in them, and, what is more, imagine that we know them to be true, that the reality is so. Passing on after a fashion what we have learnt out of books in conventional language, we see with despair that the common people do not understand us, and we bewail the stupidity of the people, just as the schoolboy will blush for poor relations, because they do not know when to put ‘i’ and when ‘y,’ but never troubles to wonder why two different letters should be used for the same sound.

Genuinely desirous of the good of the people, we look for remedies for their ailments in foreign pharmacopœias; there the herbs are foreign, but it is easier to find them in a book than in the fields. We easily and consistently become liberals, constitutionalists, democrats, Jacobins, but not Russians, believers in the common people. All these political shades one can acquire from books: all that is understood, explained and written, printed, bound.... But here one must go without a track.... The life of Russia is like the forest in which Dante lost his way, and the wild beasts that are in it are worse than the Florentine ones, but there is no Virgil to show the way; there were some Moscow Susanins,⁠[112] but even those led one to the graveyard instead of to the peasants’ cottage....