A Herzen Reader

73. Our Future Peers and Our Former Anglomaniacs [1865]

Our Future Peers and Our Former Anglomaniacs 255 case and imprisoned for the first time. Polezhaev and Sokolovsky are discussed in Herzen ’s memoirs. 12. Count Alexander Khr. Benkendorf (1783–1844) became head of the political police and the Third Department in 1826; Leonty V. Dubelt (1792–1862) was the head of the Third Department from 1839 to 1856. 13. Count Fyodor V. Rostopchin (1763–1826) was the governor-general in charge of Moscow in 1812; Mikhail N. Vereshchagin (1789–1812), a merchant’s son and translator , was accused of treason and killed by a mob at the instigation of Rostopchin. 14. At the beginning of his reign, Alexander II had embraced the policy of glasnost’ (openness), to which Herzen makes a sarcastic reference. 15. Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich (1827–1892) was chair of the State Council from 1865 to 1881; Katkov spoke out against his liberalism. 16. Katkov’s Moscow Gazette was published by Moscow University. Alexander Nikitenko recalls this episode in his memoirs. 17. Don’t wake a sleeping cat!  73  Our Future Peers and Our Former Anglomaniacs [1865] Le Nord1 relates how a deputation from the English Club (we await with impatience to learn whether there will be a deputation from the Troitsky inn and the Krasny tavern) asked the governor-general of Moscow to ban Potekhin’s play A Cut-off Piece, because it comes down hard on serf owners .2 The governor-general refused, and rightly so, but the “imperial theater and the imperial actors got a dressing-down” from the ex-Anglomaniacs, who have paid for rights to The Moscow Gazette.3 It’s just as well that Fonvizin4 was able in good time to get his barnyard of wild landowners on the stage, and Gogol was able to publish his graveyard of Dead Souls… It is also fortunate that Turgenev, without going over to the fathers, narrated how when he was still a son, he used to go hunting. [. . .] Notes Source: “Nashi budushchie pery i nashi proshedshie anglomany,” Kolokol, l. 209, December 1, 1865; 18:471, 677–78. 1. Le Nord was a political newspaper, published first in Brussels (1855–62, 1865–92) and Paris (1863–64, 1894–1907), and subsidized by the Russian government. 2. Alexey Potekhin’s comedy was published in the October 1865 issue of The Contemporary . Nominated for the Uvarov literary prize, it was declared by Nikitenko to be subversive. 256 A Herzen Reader 3. Mikhail Katkov and classics professor Pavel M. Leontiev (1822–1874) paid Moscow University for the right to run The Moscow Gazette. Katkov and Leontiev also edited The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik), a monthly, that over its fifty-year run (1856–1906), moved between liberal, conservative, and reactionary profiles. 4. The plays of Denis I. Fonvizin (1745–1792) include The Brigadier and The Minor.  74  Nicholas the Orator [1865] In the August issue of The Russian Herald there is an article about “Events in the Province of Novgorod During the First Cholera Epidemic.”1 After a description of the unbelievably stupid and awkward measures taken by authorities in Novgorod province during the cholera epidemic of 1830, and several episodes from the sad account of old Russian revenge by military settlers in 1831,2 the author, a witness to these events, includes a short, but eloquent speech given by Nicholas to the assembled settlers. The speech was such a chef d’oeuvre that we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of relating it in full. This is the real Nicholas, sincere, naive, natural, just as his mother bore him and the riding school raised him. “What are you doing, you fools? Where did you get the idea that you were being poisoned? This is God’s punishment. On your knees, blockheads! Pray to God! I’ll show you!” What sort of matchless line from Corneille is this “I’ll show you!” The artless eyewitness adds: “The military settlers were tried by a military court and all received worthy retribution for their deeds,” however, he forgets that before the retribution they had received the tsar’s forgiveness, but after their amnesty the guilty were forced to run the gauntlet. We did not think that the Russian Herald would be the one to throw this heavy stone at the grave of Nicholas… On n’est trahi que par les siens!3 Notes Source: “Nikolai kak orator,” Kolokol, l. 209, December 1, 1865; 18:472, 678. 1. The reference is to an article by staff writer G. F. Sokolov...