A Herzen Reader

25. The Year 1860 [1860]

102 A Herzen Reader Notes Source: “Sinkhedron Moskovskikh universitetskikh fariseev,” Kolokol, l. 55, November 1, 1859; 14:191–97, 521–22. The opening epigraph is a refrain from a song by the French poet Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857). 1. Vladimir I. Nazimov (1802–1874) was a trustee of the Moscow educational district from 1849 to 1855, military governor of Vilna, and governor-general of Kovno, Minsk, and Grodno from 1855 to 1863. Evgraf P. Kovalevsky (1790–1867), also a trustee of the Moscow educational district from 1856 to 1858, was minister of education from 1858 to 1861. 2. Alexey N. Bakhmetev (1801–1861) was a trustee of the Moscow educational district in 1858–59. 3. Arkady A. Alfonsky (1796–1869) was a professor, a surgeon, and rector of Moscow University in 1842–48 and 1850–53; Sergey I. Barshev (1808–1882) was a professor of criminal law and rector from 1863 to 1870; Vasily N. Leshkov (1810–1881) was a lawyer and professor of police law at Moscow University; Nikita I. Krylov (1807–1879) taught Roman law, while Alexander O. Armfeld (1806–1868) taught forensic medicine. 4. Ilinsky was police inspector for the medical school at Moscow University from 1857 to 1860. 5. Here Herzen attaches an internal university council document about the case that outlines their deliberations in greater detail. 6. Count Nikolay N. Novosiltsev (1761–1836) held a number of senior government positions, including chairman of the Government Council and Committee of Ministers, and trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district. Ventseslav V. Pelikan (1790–1873) was professor of anatomy and surgery in Vilna, and chair of the military-medical academic council; he helped to judge participants in the 1831 Polish uprising. Herzen alludes to the approximately five years since Nicholas I died.  25  The Bell, No. 60, January 1, 1860. Herzen later said that this essay, with which he was very pleased, was his final effort to free the tsar from the influence of the gentry oligarchs , who were agitating for a greater role in governance in return for the imminent loss of their serfs. To his earlier requests for emancipation, an end to corporal punishment , and freedom of expression, he added a plea for openness in judicial proceedings. In November 1859, Herzen gained access to the records of fifty meetings of the Editorial Commission of the Main Committee on the peasant question, which rejected emancipation without land, proof of the influence of Nikolay Milyutin.1 However, news of the illness of Yakov Rostovtsev, the Editorial Commission chair, led to concerns over a retreat from the progress that had already been made; conservative gentry opposition had increased and there was growing support for asking the tsar to convene an aristocratic assembly before emancipation plans were finalized. For the March 15, 1860, edition of The Bell (nos. 65–66), Herzen used a black border to highlight news of General Rostovtsev ’s death, and the appointment of Count Viktor Nikitich Panin to succeed him. The Year 1860 103  The Year 1860 [1860] I Without exaggerated hope or despair we enter the new decade with the firm, even step of an old warrior who has known defeat, and who knows most of all difficult marches through the sandy, dusty, and joyless steppe. [. . .] …No matter what, things cannot be worse than they were ten years ago. That was the honeymoon of reaction, and with a frozen tear in our eye and anger boiling up in our heart, we looked at the unsuccessful campaign and cursed the shameful age in which we had to live. [. . .] The gloomy cloud of which we had a premonition from the sharp pain in our mind and heart, obscured more and more as it grew darker and darker, and everything became confused, twisted, and began to sink… heroes arose who served no purpose; words full of wisdom were spoken, but no one understood them. [. . .] II Later we felt relieved and could breathe again!2 Morning had come. Tamed by experience and memory, we greeted with tender emotion the brightly burning dawn of a new day in Russia. We rejoiced not because of what this did for us, but, like people recovering after the crisis in an illness, we rejoiced in the right to hope. Wearied by everything that surrounded us, we gazed at this strip of light in our native sky without arrogant demands or youthful utopias. We limited ourselves to the desire that the coarse iron chains were removed from...