A Herzen Reader

51. A Lament [1863]

Land and Liberty 177 Brandenburg hawk, which it summoned to the feast of the suppression of a great people.1 1863 is not 1831. Europe may be the same, but Russia is not! We know for certain that circles in the capitals and the provinces, united amongst themselves and together with officers’ committees, have formed a single society. This society has adopted the name “LAND AND LIBERTY.” And under this name they shall prevail! Land and Liberty—are words that are very close to us, for with them we spoke out in the wintry Nicholaevan night, and with them we proclaimed the early dawn of the present day.2 Land and Liberty were the basis of every one of our articles, Land and Liberty were on our foreign banner and on every page that issued forth from the London printing press. Land and Liberty are two great testaments of two incomplete evolutions, two essential reinforcements of perennially dissolved hemispheres which join together, perhaps, the destiny of Russia. Russia has experienced the depths of what it means to have land without liberty, and it has seen enough of what it means to have liberty without land… We greet you, brothers, on our common path! We will greedily follow your every step, with trepidation we will await news from you, with love we will pass it on, the unselfish love of people who rejoice at the evolution of their lifelong goals. With your sacred banner it will be easy for you to serve the cause of the Russian people! March 1, 1863 Notes Source: “Zemlia i volia,” Kolokol, l. 157, March 1, 1863; 17:56, 371–73. 1. The Brandenburg coat of arms, which also depicted a two-headed eagle, was adopted by the rulers of Prussia. 2. In Doc. 52, “1853–1863,” Herzen reminds readers that he had kept these demands in mind from his earliest publications abroad up to the present.  51  The Bell, No. 158, March 8, 1863. Like other articles written by Herzen at the time of the Polish uprising, “A Lament” is a sharp expression of his love for Russia, a love which made him work for its liberation, but which was inseparable from the freedom of other nations under Russian control. He summons the Russian public to protest against the 178 A Herzen Reader tsarist suppression of Poland, to feel shame for the behavior of their government, and his habitual irony is replaced by sarcasm and anger. In a letter to Ivan Turgenev, Herzen urgently requested the novelist’s reaction, even if it was negative (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii , 27:bk. 1, 306–7). The historian Nikolay Karamzin’s son, a state official with the Ministry of Justice, was so incensed by this article that he wrote to Katkov, deriding the man who compared the tsar to Stenka Razin and raised money for wounded Poles, and he suggested various humiliating punishments if Herzen were to fall into the government ’s hands (Let 3:489).  A Lament [1863] Brothers, brothers, what are these Germans doing to us? What are they doing to our soldiers, what are they doing to our fatherland? Will you really cover this all with faint-hearted silence… after the latest call-up for recruits? These are arsonists and highwaymen who do not recognize property rights, these are his imperial majesty’s own communists! [. . .] This is how Alexander Nikolaevich decided to become the earthly tsar— the tsar and Stenka Razin rolled into one!1 An imperially approved Jacquerie!2 The beating—organized by the police and the military—of landowners and the confiscation of their homes! [. . .] Well, if you are going to become Stenka Razins, then become Stenka Razins, but then it’s no good to play at being a German general and the first nobleman of the land—a beard, a wide sash, an axe in hand, and land and liberty for the Russian people… that makes sense… But to represent at one go, for one’s own advantage, Peter I, a serf, and a Moscow landowner— that’s an old trick.3 You see that we were right when we said that they lack any moral compass ; Nicholas, when he cynically placed autocracy on his banner, was just being naively candid. A leftover from the history of the Merovingians, it is time either for them to perish, or for Russia to perish. Only the fall of this dynasty of German Tatars can wash away the soot from the fires...