A Herzen Reader

31. On the Eve [1861]

126 A Herzen Reader Based on this faith in each other and this common love even we have the right to bow to their graves and throw our handful of earth on their deceased with a sacred wish that on their graves and on ours young Russia will flourish powerfully and widely! January 1/13, 1861 Notes Source: “Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov,” Kolokol, l. 90, January 15, 1861; 15:9–11, 294–96. 1. Ivan V. Kireevsky (1806–1856), literary critic, editor of The European, and, along with his older brother Petr (1808–1856), one of the founders of the Slavophile movement. 2. Herzen refers to the years 1844–47. 3. Herzen: “Only once N. Yazykov insultingly ‘lashed out’ at Chaadaev, Granovsky, and me. K. Aksakov could not stand it and answered this poet in his own party with sharp verses in our defense. [. . .] Aksakov remained an eternally enthusiastic and infinitely noble youth. He got carried away, was distracted, but was always pure of heart. In 1844, when our quarrels had reached the point where neither we nor the Slavophiles wanted to have any further meetings, I was walking along the street as K. Aksakov went by in a sleigh. I bowed to him in a friendly way. He was about to pass me by when he suddenly stopped the coachman, got out of the sleigh and came up to me. ‘It was too painful for me,’ he said, ‘to go past you without saying goodbye. You understand that after all that has passed between your friends and mine, I won’t be coming to see you; it is such a pity but nothing can be done about it. I wanted to shake your hand and bid you farewell.’ He rapidly walked back to his sleigh, but suddenly turned; I stood in the same spot because I was feeling sad; he ran toward me, embraced and kissed me. I had tears in my eyes. How I loved him at that moment of quarreling!”  31  The Bell, No. 93, March 1, 1861. In this article, Herzen is most likely taking into account information he received in a February 1861 letter from Ivan Turgenev, who said that the emancipation announcement would come soon, perhaps on the sixth anniversary of the death of Nicholas I (February 18). Turgenev believed that the main opponents of this act were Gagarin (either Ivan Vasilevich, Voronezh governor and author of an infamous project to defraud the serfs, or Prince Pavel Pavlovich, a member of the Main Committee on emancipation), Minister of State Properties Count Mikhail N. Muravyov, Minister of Finance Knyazhevich, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Gorchakov. In the following issue of The Bell, Herzen urged Russian tourists to return home to witness this civilizational change, a message he also sent privately to Turgenev, saying that On the Eve 127 for men of the forties “this is our moment, our last moment—the epilogue” (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 27:bk. 1, 138–40).  On the Eve [1861] Holy Saturday has come and soon the bell will begin to ring for the morning service… and the soul feels frightened and oppressed. Why would we poison this festive moment? Like our poor peasants, we stand deep in thought, with incomplete faith, with a deep desire for love and with an insurmountable feeling of hate. If only we could say once more: “You have conquered, Galilean!” how loudly and enthusiastically we would have said it, and let any one-sided doctrinaire and immobile front-line soldier of schoolboy science, while mocking us, produce proof that we do not continually repeat one and the same thing. Russia did not have this much at stake either in 1612 or in 1812. It is good that on the anniversary of the death of Nicholas they will lay to rest the Petrine era. We would like to say: “many thanks to it for a difficult lesson and for consigning to oblivion the evil caused by it!” But for this the evil must die, and it has not died out in the criminal, dishonest old men who do not repent of the money-grubbing and greed. Foreign journals talk about the plantation owner opposition by the invalids . The grave will be an unquiet place for these gray-haired eunuchs if they succeed in disfiguring the Rus that is being born. This is not just about bribes and theft, this is a knife being driven into the future. Watch out, Muravyovs and Gagarins,1...