A Herzen Reader

77. Prince Sergey Grigorevich Volkonsky [1866]

264 A Herzen Reader 4. The meeting dedicated to the centenary of the Free Economic Society was ceremonially opened on October 31, 1865, and went on for six days in the hall of the Petersburg Assembly of the Nobility. 5. On January 11, 1865, the Moscow nobility presented an “address” to Alexander II in which they asked permission to summon “a general assembly of chosen people from the Russian land to judge the needs common to the entire state.” The text of this address and a report on meetings of the noble assembly was published in The News (Vest’) on January 14, which led to the newspaper being closed down for eight months, while its editor was taken to court. 6. Herzen makes use of an account of the fourth meeting day, which was published in the November 7, 1865, issue of The St. Petersburg Gazette. At this meeting the resolution by some members to get the authorities to weaken the peasant communes was proposed by a government statistician and editor, Artur B. Bushen, and opposed by professor of economics Ivan V. Vernadsky (the chair mentioned by Herzen). The Bell goes on to discuss speeches by others present that day. 7. Valerian A. Panaev (1824–1899) was a railway engineer, a commentator, and the author of a plan to free the serfs that was published in the 1858 collection Voices from Russia. 8. Herzen notes that he is citing The St. Petersburg Gazette. 9. Vladimir D. Skaryatin was an arch-conservative nobleman, one of whose family members had participated in the assassination of Paul I. 10. Ivan M. Martynov was a Russian emigrant and Jesuit whose letter published in the March 4, 1864, issue of The Day was an answer to an article criticizing the Jesuits. The answer by the prominent Slavophile writer Yury Samarin, as abstract as Martynov’s, was spread over four issues and also published separately. Herzen’s own published political criticisms of material in The Day remained unanswered.  77  The Bell, No. 212, January 15, 1866. Herzen’s interest in the Decembrists dates back to 1825; the uprising was without doubt one of the most decisive influences in his life. He used the Free Russian Press to publish materials by and about the Decembrists, and the title Polestar was a tribute to the five martyrs. For all these reasons, to speak with a survivor was an exciting and deeply moving experience. After being released from exile in 1856, the Decembrist Sergey Volkonsky traveled abroad for his health, meeting with Herzen in Paris in late June–early July 1861. The two got along very well and met on several occasions, allowing Herzen to learn a great deal more about the Decembrists. He found Volkonsky an admirable and fascinating figure, an example of righteousness and resilience in a progressive cause; one witness to their meetings said that Herzen’s affection for Volkonsky was that of a son (Let 3:224–26). Friends and family members of the last prince were not entirely happy with the tribute below, which they claimed was a “distorted view” of the old prince, who was highly unlikely to have revealed so much information in the presence of strangers. The Decembrist legacy was problematic for Prince Sergey Grigorevich Volkonsky 265 the prince’s son, M. S. Volkonsky, a rising figure in government service in the 1860s, and for grandson S. M. Volkonsky, who in spring 1917 was horrified by the thought that Decembrist memoirs might wind up in a museum of the revolution (Eidel’man, Svobodnoe slovo, 390–91). In Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, Orlando Figes adds substantially (72–146) to the biographical details presented in the document below. Volkonsky’s ancestors include the fourteenth-century prince Mikhail Chernigorsky, whose service to Muscovy against the Mongols led to his canonization. By Alexander I’s reign, this ancient family was closer than any other to the tsar, with more than a few Volkonskys serving at court, including the young Sergey Grigorevich, who was awarded the right to enter the emperor’s private apartments unannounced. He even spent time with the much younger Nikolay Pavlovich—the future Nicholas I—playing with toy soldiers. After more than fifty real-life battles, including Borodino, and the triumphal march to Paris and Vienna, Sergey Volkonsky returned to Russia convinced of two things: Russia could not realize its potential without civil rights, and the serfs had shown beyond any doubt the depth of their...