VIII
The years 1857–61 were years of rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia. All that had been whispered for the last decade, in the secrecy of friendly meetings, by the generation represented in Russian literature by Turgenev, Tolstoy, Hérzen, Bakúnin, Ogarev, Kavélin, Dostoévsky, Grigoróvich, Ostróvsky, and Nekrasov, began now to leak out in the press. Censorship was still very rigorous; but what could not be said openly in political articles was smuggled in under the form of novels, humorous sketches, or veiled comments on west European events, and everyone read between the lines and understood.
Having no acquaintances at St. Petersburg apart from the school and a narrow circle of relatives, I stood outside the radical movement of those years—miles, in fact, away from it. And yet, this was, perhaps, the main feature of the movement—that it had the power to penetrate into so “well meaning” a school as our corps was, and to find an echo in such a circle as that of my Moscow relatives.
I used at that time to spend my Sundays and holidays at the house of my aunt, mentioned in a previous chapter under the name of Princess Mírski. Prince Mírski thought only of extraordinary lunches and dinners, while his wife and their young daughter led a very gay life. My cousin was a beautiful girl of nineteen, of a most amiable disposition, and nearly all her male cousins were madly in love with her. She, in turn, fell in love with one of them, and wanted to marry him. But to marry a cousin is considered a great sin by the Russian Church, and the old princess tried in vain to obtain a special permission from the high ecclesiastical dignitaries. Now she brought her daughter to St. Petersburg, hoping that she might choose among her many admirers a more suitable husband than her own cousin. It was labor lost, I must add; but their fashionable apartment was full of brilliant young men from the Guards and from the diplomatic service.
Such a house would be the last to be thought of in connection with revolutionary ideas; and yet it was in that house that I made my first acquaintance with the revolutionary literature of that time. The great refugee, Hérzen, had just begun to issue at London his review, The Polar Star, which made a commotion in Russia, even in the palace circles, and was widely circulated secretly at St. Petersburg. My cousin got it in some way, and we used to read it together. Her heart revolted against the obstacles which were put in the way of her happiness, and her mind was the more open to the powerful criticism which the great writer launched against the Russian autocracy and all the rotten system of misgovernment. With a feeling near to worship I used to look on the medallion which was printed on the paper cover of The Polar Star, and which represented the noble heads of the five “Decembrists” whom Nicholas I had hanged after the rebellion of December 14, 1825—Bestuzhev, Kakhovsky, Péstel, Ryleyev, and Muravyov-Apostol.
The beauty of the style of Hérzen—of whom Turgenev has truly said that he wrote in tears and blood, and that no other Russian had ever so written—the breadth of his ideas, and his deep love of Russia took possession of me, and I used to read and reread those pages, even more full of heart than of brain.
In 1859, or early in 1860, I began to edit my first revolutionary paper. At that age, what could I be but a constitutionalist?—and my paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia. I wrote about the foolish expenses of the court, the sums of money which were spent at Nice to keep quite a squadron of the navy in attendance on the Dowager-Empress, who died in 1860; I mentioned the misdeeds of the functionaries which I continually heard spoken of, and I urged the necessity of constitutional rule. I wrote three copies of my paper, and slipped them into the desks of three comrades of the higher forms, who, I thought, might be interested in public affairs. I asked my readers to put their remarks behind the Scotch clock in our library.
With a throbbing heart, I went next day to see if there was something for me behind the clock. Two notes were there, indeed. Two comrades wrote that they fully sympathized with my paper, and only advised me not to risk too much. I wrote my second number, still more vigorously insisting upon the necessity of uniting all forces in the name of liberty. But this time there was no reply behind the clock. Instead the two comrades came to me.
“We are sure,” they said, “that it is you who edit the paper, and we want to talk about it. We are quite agreed with you, and we are here to say, ‘Let us be friends.’ Your paper has done its work—it has brought us together; but there is no need to continue it. In all the school there are only two more who would take any interest in such matters, while if it becomes known that there is a paper of this kind, the consequences will be terrible for all of us. Let us constitute a circle and talk about everything; perhaps we shall put something into the heads of a few others.”
This was so sensible that I could only agree, and we sealed our union by a hearty shaking of hands. From that time we three became firm friends, and used to read a great deal together and discuss all sorts of things.
The abolition of serfdom was the question which then engrossed the attention of all thinking men.
The revolution of 1848 had had its distant echo in the hearts of the
