Things assumed a very gloomy aspect. The question whether the liberation would take place at all was now asked. I feverishly followed the struggle, and every Sunday, when my comrades returned from their homes, I asked them what their parents said. By the end of 1860 the news became worse and worse. “The Valuev party has got the upper hand.” “They intend to revise the whole work.” “The relatives of the Princess X. [a friend of the Tsar] work hard upon him.” “The liberation will be postponed: they fear a revolution.”
In January, 1861, slightly better rumors began to circulate, and it was generally hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on the day of the Emperor’s accession to the throne, the 19th of February.
The 19th came, but it brought nothing with it. I was on that day at the palace. There was no grand levee, only a small one; and pages of the second form were sent to such levees in order to get accustomed to the palace ways. It was my turn that day; and as I was seeing off one of the grand duchesses who came to the palace to assist at the mass, her husband did not appear, and I went to fetch him. He was called out of the Emperor’s study, and I told him, in a half jocose way, of the perplexity of his wife, without having the slightest suspicion of the important matters that may have been talked of in the study at that time. Apart from a few of the initiated, no one in the palace suspected that the manifesto had been signed on the 19th of February, and was kept back for a fortnight only because the next Sunday, the 26th, was the beginning of the carnival week, and it was feared that, owing to the drinking which goes on in the villages during the carnival, peasant insurrections might break out. Even the carnival fair, which used to be held at St. Petersburg on the square near the winter palace, was removed that year to another square, from fear of a popular insurrection in the capital. Most terrible instructions had been issued to the army as to the ways of repressing peasant uprisings.
A fortnight later, on the last Sunday of the carnival (March 5, or rather March 17, New Style), I was at the corps, having to take part in the military parade at the riding-school. I was still in bed, when my soldier servant, Ivanov, dashed in with the tea tray, exclaiming, “Prince, freedom! The manifesto is posted on the Gostínoi Dvor” (the shops opposite the corps).
“Did you see it yourself?”
“Yes. People stand round; one reads, the others listen. It is freedom!”
In a couple of minutes I was dressed, and out. A comrade was coming in.
“Kropotkin, freedom!” he shouted. “Here is the manifesto. My uncle learned last night that it would be read at the early mass at the Issac Cathedral; so we went. There were not many people there; peasants only. The manifesto was read and distributed after the mass. They well understood what it meant. When I came out of the church, two peasants, who stood in the gateway, said to me in such a droll way, ‘Well, sir? now—all gone?’ ” And he mimicked how they had shown him the way out. Years of expectation were in that gesture of sending away the master.
I read and reread the manifesto. It was written in an elevated style by the old Metropolitan of Moscow, Philarète, but with a useless mixture of Russian and Old Slavonian which obscured the sense. It was liberty; but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to remain serfs for two years more, till the 19th of February, 1863. Notwithstanding all this, one thing was evident: serfdom was abolished, and the liberated serfs would get the land and their homesteads. They would have to pay for it, but the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be slaves no more; the reaction had not got the upper hand.
We went to the parade; and when all the military performances were over, Alexander II, remaining on horseback, loudly called out, “The officers to me!” They gathered round him, and he began, in a loud voice, a speech about the great event of the day.
“The officers … the representatives of the nobility in the army”—these scraps of sentences reached our ears—“an end has been put to centuries of injustice … I expect sacrifices from the nobility … the loyal nobility will gather round the throne” … and so on. Enthusiastic hurrahs resounded amongst the officers as he ended.
We ran rather than marched back on our way to the corps—hurrying to be in time for the Italian opera, of which the last performance in the season was to be given that afternoon; some manifestation was sure to take place then. Our military attire was flung off with great haste, and several of us dashed, lightfooted, to the sixth-story gallery. The house was crowded.
During the first entr’acte the smoking-room of the opera filled with excited young men, who all talked to one another, whether acquainted or not. We planned at once to return to the hall, and to sing, with the whole public in a mass choir, the hymn “God Save the Tsar.”
However, sounds of music reached our ears, and we all hurried back to the hall. The band of the opera was already playing the hymn, which was drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from all parts of the hall. I saw Bavéri, the conductor of the band, waving his stick, but not a sound could be heard from the powerful band. Then Bavéri stopped, but the hurrahs continued. I saw the stick waved again in
