ПОГЛАВЈЕ VII
On 9 April 1856
a carriage drew up at Laurel Hause, Putney, where Herzen was now living. Out of
it stepped Ogaryov and his wife. From that day until Herzen’s death the
reunited friends remained together in exile, working on a Free Russian Press.
Ogaryov immediately became joint editor with Herzen of the Polar Star, and he and his wife were joyfully welcomed into the
Herzen’s household.
Ogaryov
reassured his friend that his publications, especially The Polar Star, were widely read at home, particularly among the
younger generation. But Russians now needed a shorter, regular newspaper, he
said, that would appear more frequently than the almanac – perhaps fortnightly
– and offer lively, up-to-date, uncensored information on Russian affairs and
short articles of a political nature. A newspaper would comment more quickly
than The Polar Star on the changing
situation following Alexander II’s accession.
The two friends
decided to start such newspaper together. It was to be called The Bell, since it was to call
contemporary Russia
to rouse itself from its apathy. The Bell
would promote no one political program, no theory. All professions de foi were to be ‘relegated to the background’. It was
to have a function rather than a political program. It was to be a forum for
the free expression of nearly any kind of opinion, although it did not intend
to disseminate the official Russian viewpoint.
Originally
intended as a supplement to The Polar
Star, the newspaper quickly became so successful that it began to appear as
an independent publication. From 1857 until 1861 sales of both The Polar Star and The Bell were large. Editions run to as many as three thousand
copies. Second editions were sometimes needed of these or other publications
that were still coming from the press – such as other serial publications (Voices from Russia and Historical Miscellany) or individual
volumes like The Memoirs of Catherine II
(whose unpublished manuscript Herzen had managed to acquire) and one of the
Herzen’s own most successful pamphlets, France
or England? The press itself had from the beginning been managed by a Pole,
Ludwig Cziernecky, and had typesetters of various nationalities and social
backgrounds. Herzen and Ogaryov divided their editorial duties on The Bell. Ogaryov accepted
responsibility for the financial, economic and juridical matters, while general
questions and the miscellany section were left for Herzen’s wide-ranging pen.
Everyone, including Ogaryov, accepted Herzen’s overall authority – and
responsibility.
The frankly
political orientation of The Bell
opened a new phase in the Free Russian
Press’s history – and in Russia’s.
From the outset Ogaryov seems to have envisaged the newspaper as eventually
serving as the organ of a secret political organization in Russia, whereas
Herzen saw its function of forum for political argument as its essential role
and a more effective weapon than conspiracy for moving history toward
socialism. From the time of inception until the Act of Emancipation of the
Serfs in 1861, for five years, the two friends were in complete agreement,
however, that the main effort must be concentrated on pressure for self
liberation with land. Whether or not the liberation should be with land and, if
so, how this should be done, had been the stumbling block causing the long
delay under Nicholas in bringing in legislations.
Through
informative articles, announcements, the exposure of the bad administration and
malpractices of serf-owners, The Bell
documented the evils of Russia’s
still feudal system. To an astonishing extent, the editors included readers, of
all shades of political opinion to participate actively, opening its pages to
political discussion through correspondence and articles even though these
often expressed opinions differed from their own. After 1861, The Bell carried material of an
increasingly political nature – confidential material leaked from government
departments, reports of secret denunciation to the Tsar, information about
proceedings against students, all of which found its way somehow to London.
Following
Alexander’s accession, the lifting of the ban on foreign travel which had been
imposed on all subjects by Nicholas had started a flood of Russian tourists
abroad. This meant that the Free Russian Press had only to distribute
publications to bookshops in Europe for them
to be eagerly purchased by Russians, the fact that the foreign correspondent of
The Times did not failed to notice:
Russia is being deluged with publications of highly revolutionary
character. Recent travelers in Germany must have observed that in Leipzig,
Berlin, Dresden where, under the reign of Nicholas no publications hostile to
Russian system was tolerated, works intended to prove that the system is
drawing to an end are sold at all the principal book-sellers. At Konigsberg,
the first town at which the Russian traveler to the West arrives after crossing
the frontier, he finds half a dozen shops in which Russian newspaper published
in London and Paris, and innumerable pamphlets on all subjects which it is
forbidden to discuss in St Petersburg and Moscow, stare him at face; and no
Russian, whether revolutionist, or aristocrat reformer, or a bureaucrat not
wholly discontent with the existing state of things, thinks of returning home
without taking with him a stock of incendiary prints.
Large
consignments of Free Russian Press publications were sent easily enough to the
Continent. But Herzen needed more regular, more reliable means of ensuring that
his contraband reached prearranged destinations within Russia. He
organized routes for doing so with characteristic energy, practical care and
originality. Perhaps he consulted Mazzini, about whose network for the secret
transmission of illegal publications he had learned in Switzerland. He
recruited his own agents, who smuggled material across the frontiers sometimes
simply in coat pockets and the like, sometimes in their luggage. Other
publications were dispatched in false-bottomed trunks to false addresses. Some
were filtered in by being sent openly through ordinary post boldly addressed to
unsuspecting government officials and ministers. Large consignments entered the
country stowed away on foreign boats. An English merchant in fire-briks and gas
retorts arranged for Herzen’s highly inflammable literature to be stowed on his
boat at Newcastle upon Tyne, whence they were carried across the Channel or
sometimes direct to Odessa.
Even ships of the Russian navy were commandeered (unsuspected by their
captains) for stowing pamphlets in the very cannon’s mouth. Agents found jobs
as stewards on steamers travelling down the Danube via Vienna
and Belgrade.
In such a way they could regularly, unsuspected, cross frontiers with cases
loaded with prohibited literature. There were even English Members of
Parliament who were persuaded to carry with them to Russia books from Herzen’s press,
making use of their diplomatic immunity.
The Russian
government became alarmed at the deluge but was powerless to stop it. Russian agents provocateurs were sent to London.
The British government was asked to extradite Herzen. It refused. He had not
violated the laws of the land and had a right to asylum. Numerous reviews and
articles appeared throughout Europe about Free
Russian Press and its founder, seeing him also as memoirist, literary critic,
novelist and thinker. The agents provocateurs and others of their
political persuasion themselves attacked Herzen openly in the European press,
raising controversy and attacking him personally. Herzen replied publicly.
By 1861 the
stream of Russian visitors to Herzen’s home in London – including Chernyshevsky, Dostoyevsky
and Turgenev – was never ending. A guidebook to Putney, where he lived at that
time, even mentioned him as one of the local attractions.
The press had
now been transferred to larger premises on Caledonia Road. (It had already, some
years earlier, separated from Polish Press.) Readers of The Saturday Review were told:
Not far from
King’s Cross station … stands a small house with a workshop attached to it,
decorated with the words ‘Vol`naya Russkaya Tipografya’ written in Russian
characters. With the exception of this strange inscription, there is nothing
remarkable in its appearance; but it presents considerable interest for those
who aware that it is the office of the Free Russian Press and that papers are
being printed there which are destined to circulate over the whole Continent,
and not only to be passed from hand to hand in every city of European Russia,
but perhaps to penetrate into farthest part of Asia, to be read by insurgents
in the forests of Poland and to cheer the hearts of exiles in the confines of
Tartary. The press furnishes little that is intended for home consumption. Their
sheets are adapted for Russian eyes alone, and the rooms which they occupy are
pervaded so thoroughly Slavonic an air that the visitor might imagine he has
been suddenly transported to Moscow or St Petersburg.
On 19 February
1861 the long anticipated statute of serf emancipation was officially
promulgated. There was great rejoicing in Herzen’s household when the news
reached London
that there was to be emancipation with land, but the rejoicing quickly
evaporated when the full text arrived some days later. A close reading of the
statute revealed so many provisions, conditions, alternative possible
interpretations as well as many grandiloquent statements which meant nothing,
that it could be barely comprehensible to the legal mind, let alone that of the
illiterate peasant. The clergy were required by the law to explain the statute
to the peasants from the pulpit. But since many of the clergy were themselves
illiterate this was hardly satisfactory answer to the problem of how the
complex situation could be communicated to those whom it affected most. In
simple terms the Act meant that the question of whether or not a serf could be higher
than the value of the land the peasant would receive. The serf was virtually
required to pay cash for his right to individual liberty.
The Bell reacted
immediately to this situation. Its editorial tone changed from persuasion and
argument to indignation and bitter attack. Ogaryov’s immediate response was an
article that began: ‘The old laws relative to serfdom have been replaced with
new ones. The laws, the principles, have not changed. The people have been
deceived by the Tsar’. A detailed analysis of the statute followed. Whereas
Ogaryov concentrated on spreading knowledge of the content of the Act and its
implications, Herzen ventilated his indignation on behalf of the insulted and
injured peasant in an article ‘The Giant Has Been Sleeping Too Long’, in which
he professed that, though inarticulate, the peasant would not remain silent
much longer.
‘Take Heed!’ he
warned his readers (among whom he expected might be government officials).
‘Your fortunate state of darkness does not prevent you at least from listening.
From all parts of your vast native land, from the Don and the Urals, from the
Volga and Dnieper, a roar is audible. It is
the beginning of a great wave heaving in a turbulent sea. This is the
enervating calm before the storm which will engulf everything.’
His lines of
communication with all regions of Russia were so well organized that
he often received information about the peasant revolts and disorders (they
were many at this time) before the government did. Concerned as always to
direct his energies toward the achievement of what was realistically possible
at the time, rather than theoretically, desirable in the distant future, he now
judged that the time had come to start an active campaign for translating into
reality the next stage he saw as essential for the achievement of socialism in
Russia – to persuade intellectuals and students (with whom he was now in close
contact) to assume the historic role that he had already explained (in The
Russian People and Socialism) should be theirs. They must hurry to the
countryside to inform the peasants, especially about the Act, and to encourage
them to recognize their own power to insist on living as free men, organizing
their own life in a socialist way based on their commune. For students and
intellectuals to go singly into the countryside and village was not enough. They
must go in sufficient numbers to constitute mass movement.
Much of his
writing was now directed towards bringing this about. For a movement of this
kind to be successful the teachers would need books, pamphlets and leaflets in
number that could not be supplied by the London
press. He had already begun, in the free atmosphere following the death of
Nicholas, to encourage Russians within Russia to print appeals and
leaflets on their own presses. ‘That is the next step forward’, he had written
from London’.
Print material on hand presses Set up presses!’
Following his
exhortations, student had begun lithographing material. In 1859, whila at Moscow University,
a certain Zaichnevsky had become interested in socialism as a result of reading
Herzen’s prohibited works and was deeply impressed by what he read. He began
printing lithographic copies of articles taken from The Bell and The Polar Star
as well as passages from Herzen’s memoirs and On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia. For three years he
produced censored works from his hand press without interference. Eventually he
was denounced, arrested and imprisoned; but he was soon at large once more. He
started up his press again. There were many others now. Zaichnevsky and his
friend began looking for ways of distributing their material and, as Herzen
exhorted, themselves went into the countryside to talk with the peasants and to
teach them. They were the first of many who came to be known as Populists or narodniks. A movement such as Herzen
visualized, the Populist or narodnik movement, developed and was important
until towards the end of the decade of the 1870’s, after Herzen’s death, when
it was overtaken by other events and forces of history. Herzen has continued to
encourage these early Populists with articles and announcements in The Bell.
In the autumn of
1861 Bakunin, whom Herzen has last seen in Paris
in 1847, also turned up on Herzen’s doorstep in London. Arrested for participation in the Dresden revolt of 1849, he had been handed over to the
Russian government in 1851, He had been imprisoned in the Fortress for many
years and then exiled to Siberia, whence he had escaped and made his way via Japan and America
to England.
He expected to be welcomed as a co-editor of The Bell, and Herzen did indeed welcome him as a collaborator (as
well as provide him with livelihood).
Bakunin
immediately attempted to involve The Bell
and its editors in active participation in the whole European socialist
movement – which was precisely what Herzen, since declining the invitation to
join Mazzini’s International Committee, had refused to do. Although Herzen
therefore would not accept a manifesto written by Bakunin and entitled To My Russian, Polish and Slav Friends for
inclusion in The Bell, he agreed,
though with misgivings, to its publication at the Free Russian Press as a
separate pamphlet. It soon become clear that the avowed objectives of Bakunin
and Herzen differed to much for them to be able to work together. The two men
agreed to differ and work independently. Bakunin moved to rooms of his own, but
continued to be a frequent visitor to the Herzen’s household.
Almost
immediately after the Act of emancipation reached Herzen in London,
news came of a riot in Warsaw
that had been brutally put down by the Russian occupation troops. Sympathetic
as he had always been to Polish people’s cause, had at once placed an article
in The Bell in which he supported the
Poles and bitterly attacked Alexander II, whom he held responsible for the
brutality used to suppress the riot. The riot had sparked off a fever of
revolutionary excitement that culminated in full-scale Polish insurrection.
,,,
(Monica
Partridge: ALEXANDER HERZEN 1812-1870; изд.UNESCO – Prominent figures of Slav culture,
printed in France 1984)
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