These outbreaks on the one side, and the profound aversion to serfdom which had grown up in the generation which came to the front with the advent of Alexander II to the throne, rendered the emancipation of the peasants more and more imperative. The Emperor, himself averse to serfdom, and supported, or rather influenced, in his own family by his wife, his brother Constantine, and the Grand Duchess Hélène Pávlovna, took the first steps in that direction. His intention was that the initiative of the reform should come from the nobility, the serf-owners themselves. But in no province of Russia could nobility be induced to send a petition to the Tsar to that effect. In March, 1856, he himself addressed the Moscow nobility on the necessity of such a step; but a stubborn silence was all their reply to his speech, so that Alexander II, growing quite angry, concluded with those memorable words of Hérzen: “It is better, gentlemen, that it should come from above than to wait till it comes from beneath.” Even these words had no effect, and it was to the provinces of Old Poland—Gródno, Wilno, and Kóvno—where Napoleon I had abolished serfdom (on paper) in 1812, that recourse was had. The governor-general of those provinces, Nazimov, managed to obtain the desired address from the Polish nobility. In November, 1857, the famous “rescript” to the governor-general of the Lithuanian provinces, announcing the intention of the Emperor to abolish serfdom, was launched, and we read, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful article of Hérzen, “Thou hast conquered, Galilean,” in which the refugees at London declared that they would no more look upon Alexander II as an enemy, but would support him in the great work of emancipation.
The attitude of the peasants was very remarkable. No sooner had the news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming than the insurrections nearly stopped. The peasants waited now, and during a journey which Alexander made in Middle Russia they flocked around him as he passed, beseeching him to grant them liberty—a petition, however, which Alexander received with great repugnance. It is most remarkable—so strong is the force of tradition—that the rumor went among the peasants that it was Napoleon III who had required of the Tsar, in the treaty of peace, that the peasants should be freed. I frequently heard this rumor; and on the very eve of the emancipation they seemed to doubt that it would be done without pressure from abroad. “Nothing will be done unless Garibaldi comes,” was the reply which a peasant made at St. Petersburg to a comrade of mine who talked to him about “freedom coming.”
But after these moments of general rejoicing years of incertitude and disquiet followed. Specially appointed committees in the provinces and at St. Petersburg discussed the proposed liberation of the serfs, but the intentions of Alexander II seemed unsettled. A check was continually put upon the press, in order to prevent it from discussing details. Sinister rumors circulated at St. Petersburg and reached our corps.
There was no lack of young men amongst the nobility who earnestly worked for a frank abolition of the old servitude; but the serfdom party drew closer and closer round the Emperor, and got power over his mind. They whispered into his ears that the day serfdom was abolished the peasants would begin to kill the landlords wholesale, and Russia would witness a new Pugachev uprising, far more terrible than that of 1773. Alexander, who was a man of weak character, only too readily lent his ear to such predictions. But the huge machine for working out the emancipation law had been set to work. The committees had their sittings; scores of schemes of emancipation, addressed to the Emperor, circulated in manuscript or were printed at London. Hérzen, seconded by Turgenev, who kept him well informed about all that was going on in government circles, discussed in his Bell and his Polar Star the details of the various schemes, and Chernyshévsky in the Contemporary (Sovreménnik). The Slavophiles, especially Aksakov and Belyaev, had taken advantage of the first moments of relative freedom allowed the press to give the matter a wide publicity in Russia, and to discuss the features of the emancipation with a thorough understanding of its technical aspects. All intellectual St. Petersburg was with Hérzen, and particularly with Chernyshévsky, and I remember how the officers of the Horse Guards, whom I saw on Sundays, after the church parade, at the home of my cousin (Dmitri Nikoláevich Kropotkin, who was aide-de-camp of the Emperor), used to side with Chernyshévsky, the leader of the advanced party in the emancipation struggle. The whole disposition of St. Petersburg, in the drawing-rooms and in the street, was such that it was impossible to go back. The liberation of the serfs had to be accomplished; and another important point was won—the liberated serfs would receive, besides their homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated for themselves.
However, the party of the old nobility were not discouraged. They centred their efforts on obtaining a postponement of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments, and on imposing upon the emancipated serfs so high a redemption tax for the land that it would render their economical freedom illusory; and in this they fully succeeded. Alexander II dismissed the real soul of the whole business, Nicholas Milútin (brother of the minister of war), saying to him, “I am so sorry to part with
