The Russian Century

Catherine II once said that she set the well being of each and everyone as her goal. There is much wisdom in these words. The term “each and everyone” denoted Russia to her. We transferred the center of gravity onto the person, each individual, forgetting the dictum of another great sovereign, Peter I: If Russia were only to live . . . We forgot this, not that we wanted Russia’s destruction, but because of a childish, unthinking confidence in its stability.

The basis of our concern was a striving for universal well being, not for our personal bliss or enrichment, as was frequently the case with European politicians. Therefore, in the Russian opposition, there was much that was immature, naive, unreasoned and, what turned out to be most dangerous, much simple-mindedness about the nature of statecraft.

The more that I recall the past, the more surprised I am to observe that the European calamity and collapse of today is a continuum of what we Russians thought and acted on a half century ago. If at the end of the last century, and at the beginning of this one, the more active, determined, and ardent segment of Russian public opinion had not been blind to Russian reality and not possessed by the passion of protest, there would not have been two European wars or Asian unrest. I would be peacefully writing my memoirs at home in Russia, and not in an alien land. But things turned out otherwise.

That which we considered to be our Russian cause, our Russian struggle for a new life, was transformed into the preface which awaited Europe and which was reflected in the life of people on all the five continents. That of which I write became a part of their history. Marxism, which now has such an enormous influence on the world’s politics, became a real force thanks to the Russian Revolution, even though in the beginning it was only one of its components. It began on 14 December 1825. From that time on, revolutionary sparks either smoldered or flared in agitated minds until, in the XX century, they raced across all of Russia, and then the whole world, like fire in the steppe.

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Chapter Five

The underground revolutionary fervor was reflected in the lives of all thinking people, including those who fanned the flames and those who attempted to douse them. The flashes of this flame were reflected in everything that I had read, seen, thought, heard, and felt since my youth. In order to understand the Russian reality of the past one hundred years, one must be cognizant of this incessant, inflamed, irrepressible and rebellious agitation. It grew and strengthened until 1917, when it burst out in a crushing revolution, a fearful historical collapse, which initially destroyed the life of the cultured classes, and later shattered the life patterns of the peasants.

As for myself, the escalation of revolutionary rhythm coincided with a radical change in my personal life. It came to be that I had to support my children and myself. I was unprepared for this and did not envision the difficulties which life often presented to novices. I had no profession. Luckily, I seized onto journalism and made writing my craft. I serve it to this day. Later, this drew me closer to the active opposition. But, at the beginning, I felt myself very alone on the new road, the more so that I did not yet perceive social missions to pursue. In actuality, the clarification of these was just coming to the attention of public opinion. There were no beacons by which I could steer the course. This was practically the most difficult thing for me.

The only thing I recognized clearly was my responsibility for the children. I took them when I separated from my husband. One way or another, this had to be addressed. During the summers, I took the children to my mother in the country, and spent more time there than in the city. On the Vergezh River I was again immersed in my mother’s warm and radiant life which merged with the beauty of our native country spaces. When school began again in the fall, my children and I returned to St. Petersburg. We lived in a small, cheap apartment in the Peski district. Living was cheap and similar to what I, as a gim-nazium student, had seen in the life of my close friend Nadia Krupskaia [later to become Lenin’s wife]. At that time I had wondered how she and her mother managed in such cramped quarters. Now I was forced to understand. Even for this kind of life there frequently was not enough money. There was almost no work to be had. I tore my children away from a secure life, but what was I giving them in compensation?

Having no money weighed heavily on me. I did not know how to push my way through life, to move ahead. I was acquainted with some writers. It was pleasant to be with them, and conversation was cheery. But none of them ever had the thought of helping me find work. Perhaps the fact that I was a landowner’s daughter gave the illusion of material well being. The dresses which I had once bought in Paris, and which I somehow sewed up and wore down, also gave me the appearance of being wealthier than I was. My

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provocative and independent manner could also be deceptive—my ability to carry myself above my station.

The owner of Mir Bozhii, A.A. Davydova, with whose daughter I was great friends, once offered me a translation of a French book on the encyclopedists. This was then published as a supplement to Mir Bozhii. This gave me a breathing spell. Translating was not that easy for me. But newspaper work was immediately appealing. At that time, there were very few newspapers being published in Petersburg and I had no entry to them. I began by working for the provincial press, in the Iaroslavl newspaper called Severnyi Krai. There I sent my Petersburg Letters. It was easy to write them, even too easy and carefree. After a rather lengthy period of writing and social work, I took a look at my first satirical articles. I came upon the article on the Peredvizh-niki [realist painters, second half of 19th century] and was terrified. So much superficial bravado and so little knowledge and understanding! True, at that time, in the writing on art, the creative process was not analyzed. The content and the thematics held sway. This was the narrow path that I treaded as well.

My relationship with Severnyi Krai became instantly fraternal and colle-gial, at first via correspondence. But the newspaper was poor. They could not afford to pay me more than three kopeks per line, and late at that. I would write for them once a week, some 300–400 lines. In the best case scenario, I would earn forty rubles a month. My apartment rent was thirty-five rubles. I also received several hundred rubles a year from a small brick factory that had been built on land rented from my father. The summer months on the Vergezh did not cost me anything. Nevertheless, it was sometimes so difficult to maintain myself and my children that I was periodically at a loss.

My affairs started to improve when I commenced writing for a second provincial newspaper, Pridneprovskii Krai, published in Ekaterinoslav. But my prosperity did not last long. A situation occurred which was characteristic of the position of the press and the mood of journalists. Pridneprovskii Krai was larger and incomparably wealthier than the Iaroslavl newspaper. I knew no one in the editorial office. But they liked my articles, embraced me right away, and asked me to write more. I wrote them of everything that came to mind—theater, books, news of life abroad and foreign literature. My first stories were published in Pridneprovskii Krai. I did not, of course, touch on political themes. The censor’s office did not allow them. But no matter what we wrote about, the authorities sensed an obstinate oppositional spirit in our words and in those things which we passed over in silence. And they were right. But we were not at fault either for feeling constricted, for outgrowing the enclosures into which the government stubbornly forced Russian thought. The government did not wish to, did not know how to, provide an outlet for