A Herzen Reader

The French Terror is possible least of all with us. The revolutionary ele­ments in France flowed from other cities to Paris, and there they tripled in size in the clubs and the Convention, and marched with sword and axe in hand to preach philanthropic ideas and philosophical truths to every city rampart and every urban dweller, but rarely beyond that. Little bits reached the peasants, but by chance. The Revolution, like a swift stream, reached the edges of the fields and washed them away, but never lost its primarily municipal course.

Decentralization is the first condition of our revolution, which is com­ing from the rows of grain, from the fields, from the village, and not at all toward Petersburg, where until February 19, 1861 the people received nothing but troubles and humiliations. And not toward Moscow, where alongside holy relics dwell the living ones, who, like the righteous Simeon, are satisfied now that they have seen the newly born Rus.⁵ And the circumstances are completely different. Revolutionary France wanted to renounce traditional daily life, which had grown stronger over the centuries, blessed by the powerful church and engraved with the sword of the victor on the heart of the defeated. The Revolution proclaimed a new, unprecedented right, the right of a human being, and on this basis it sought to establish a rational social union. Break­ing with the past—whose representatives were very powerful—and up to its knees in blood, it hastened to proclaim to the world the news of earthly equality and brotherhood. It needed a republic gathered into one center, une et indivisible,

it needed a Committee of Social Salvation, uniting in a single will all the rays of the Revolution and forging them into lightning.

These lightning bolts routed monarchical France, but they did not create a republic. A centralized police sat down on a throne that was covered with blood. As for the revolutionary idea—the people were not up to it.

We have no new doctrines, no new catechisms to proclaim. Our revo­lution must begin with a conscious return to the national way of life, to principles recognized by national ways of thinking and by age-old custom. By strengthening the right of each person to land, i.e., by declaring the land for what it is—an inalienable element—we are only affirming and general­izing the popular understanding of the relationship of a person to the land. Renouncing forms that are alien to the people, which began pressing in on them a century and a half ago, we continue our interrupted and deflected development, introducing to it a new power of thought and science.

The instinctive feeling that suggested to the government the idea of emancipation is vaguely fermenting in it, but, incorrigible in its routines and prejudices, it cannot decide on one road to travel, and instead swings like a pendulum, touching first one side, then another. It is impossible to remain for very long in this state of vacillation; with such questions as are being raised, the people cannot sit with folded hands while waiting for the foundations of Petersburg government, which are rotting from below and weathering from above, to collapse on their own. Rotted scaffolding can stand for a very long time and, for the most part, will stand until there is a storm. But before there is some sort of storm, has anyone attempted, with a strong sense of purpose or a strong voice, to point out the way?

Imperial power for us is only power, that is force, organization, parapher­nalia; it has no content, it bears no responsibilities, it can turn into a Tatar khanate and a French Committee for Social Salvation—wasn't Pugachev the Emperor Peter III? What is there in common between Alexey Mikhailo- vich and Peter? Only limitless power, torture, and executions? By autocracy, Nicholas understood the combination of the powers of an Asian shah and a Prussian cavalry sergeant-major. The people under a tsar of the land are a kind of social republic covered with Monomakh's cap.