Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

Are you ignorant of what is now passing on the Wolga?'

' I heard of serious troubles there, but they say that they were promptly repressed.'

'No doubt: but at what price? And what should you say, were I to tell you that these frightful disorders were the result of a word of the Emperor's?'

' Never will you induce me to believe that he can have approved such horrors.'

c? Neither do I say he has. Nevertheless, a word pronounced by him — innocently, I believe, has caused the evil. The fact is as follows: notwithstanding the injustice of the overseers of the crown, the lot of the peasants of the Emperor is still preferable to that of other serfs; and whenever the sovereign becomes proprietor of some new domain, its inhabitants are the envy of all their neighbours. The

* I would beg the reader to remember that it is not I who thus speak.

AN INSURRECTION.

81

crown lately purchased a considerable estate in the district that has since revolted. Immediately the peasants sent deputies from every part of the surrounding country to the new superintendants of the imperial lands, to supplicate the emperor to purchase them also. The serfs chosen as ambassadors were sent on to Petersburg. The Emperor received them and treated them with kindness ; but, to their great regret, he did not buy them. ' I cannot,' he said to them, ' purchase all Kussia, but a time will come, I hope, when each peasant of this empire will be free; if it depended only upon me, the Russians should enjoy from this day forth the independence which I wish for them; and to procure them which, at a future period, I am labouring with all my powers.''

' Well, this answer seems to me full of reason, candour, and humanity.'

' No doubt: but the emperor should have known to whom he addressed such words; and not have murdered his noblemen out of tenderness towards his serfs. These words, interpreted by barbarous and envious men, have set a whole province on fire; and thus has it become necessary to punish a people for crimes which they were instigated to commit. ' Our Father desires our deliverance,' cried the returned deputies on the borders of the TVolga ; ' he wishes for nothing but our happiness, he said so to us, himself: it is, then, only the nobles and their agents who are our enemies, and who oppose the good designs of Our Father! Let us avenge the Empei`or!' After this, the peasants believed they were performing a pious work in rising upon their masters, and thus all the nobles of a canton, and all their agents were massacred together E 5

82BLOODY SCENES ON THE WOLGA.

with their families. They spitted one and roasted him alive; they boiled another in a cauldron ; they disembowelled and killed in various other ways the stewards and agents of the estates; they murdered all they met, burnt whole towns, and, in short, devastated a province, not in the name of liberty, for they do not know what liberty means, but in the name of deliverance and of the emperor.'

i? It was perhaps some of these savages whom we saw passing in the prisoner's conveyance. How could such beings be influenced by the gentle means employed by the governments of Western Europe ?'

' It would be necessary gradually to change the ideas of the people; instead of which they find it more convenient to change their location. After every scene of this kind, villages and entire cantons are transported. No population is sure of preserving its territory, the result of which is, that men, attached as they become to the soil, are deprived, in their slavery, of the only compensation which could comport with their condition. By an infernal combination they are made moveable, without being made free. A word from the monarch roots them up as though they were trees, tears them from their native soil, and sends them to perish or to languish at the world's end. The peasant, exposed to these storms of supreme power, loves not his cabin, the only thing in this world that he could love ; he detests his life, and ill-understands its duties, for it is necessary to impart some happiness to a man in order to make him feel his obligations ; misery only instructs him in hypocrisy and revolt. If 8elf interest, when well understood, is not the foundation of morals, it is at least their .support.'1

THE POET POUSKINE.83

' Yet it is difficult to change the spirit of a people: it is the work neither of a day, nor of a reign.'

' Is it a work at which they sincerely labour ? '

' I think so, but with prudence.'

' What you call prudence, I call insincerity: you do not know the emperor.'

' Reproach him with being inflexible, but not with being false: in a prince, inflexibility is often a virtue.'

' Do you believe the character of the emperor to be sincere ? Remember his conduct at the death of Pouskine.'

' I do not know the circumstances of that event.'

Thus talking, we arrived at the Champ de Mars, a vast square which appears a desert, though it occupies the middle of the city. A man may converse there with less danger of being overheard than in hit-chamber. My cicerone continued : —

' Pouskine was, as you are aware, the greatest poet of Russia.'

' We are no judges of that.'

' We are, at least, of his reputation. Whether well founded or not, his reputation was great. He was yet young, and of an irascible temper. You know he had Moorish blood on his mother's side. His wife, a very handsome woman, inspired him with more passion than confidence. His poetical temperament and his African blood, made him easily jealous : and it was thus that, exasperated by appearances and by false reports envenomed with a perfidy which calls to mind the conception of Shakspeare, this Russian Othello lost all reason, and sought to foi`ce the man by whom he believed himself injured, to E 6

84

DEATH OF rOUSKINE :

fight with him. This person was a Frenchman, and, unfortunately, his brother-in-law ; his name was M. de Antes. A duel in Russia is a serious affair, the more so, because, instead of according, as among us, with ideas and customs in opposition to laws, it militates against all preconceived notions : this nation is more oriental than chivalrous. Duelling is illegal here as elsewhere, but, besides this, it is less supported by public opinion than in other lands. M. de Antes did all he could to avoid the difficulty. Urged vehemently by the unhappy husband, he refused him satisfaction, though in a manner that was dignified: but notwithstanding this, he continued his assiduities. Pouskine became almost mad. The constant presence of the man whose death he wished, appeared to him a permanent insult, and in order to rid himself of him, he acted in a way that made a duel inevitable. The two brothers-in-law7 fought, and M. de Antes killed Pouskine. The man whom public opinion accused, triumphed ; and the injured husband, the national poet, the innocent party, fell.

' This death excited public indignation. Pouskine, the Russian poet, par excellence, the author of the finest odes in the language, the glory of the country, the restorer of Slavonian poetry, in short, the pride of the age, the hope of the future, to fall by the hand of a Frenchman ! this was an event