The Decembrists
A Novel
First Fragment
I
This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II, in our days of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of vodka, and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of farsighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had distributed tea, other people’s money, and bedsheets to the wounded, without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in all branches of human activities, great men—generals, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial calling or purpose—sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when, at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion, confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals—when menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and punish the evildoers of the commissariat—when in all the cities dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper’s eloquence—when in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion of public matters—when periodicals sprang up under the most diversified standards—periodicals that evolved European principles on a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world conception—when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all names seemed to be exhausted—The Messenger, and The Word, and The Speaker, and The Observer, and The Star, and The Eagle, and many more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time, when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden, and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the year ’56 they called every concourse of circumstances, of which no one could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities, censorship, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emancipation, and many more:—everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in indescribable ecstasy.
That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia of the nineteenth century—the first time, when in the year ’12 we repulsed Napoleon I, and the second time, when in the year ’56 we were repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration of the Russian people! Like