The Telegraph was suspended that same year of 1834. Polevoy, having lost his journal, was quite at sea. His literary essays no longer enjoyed success; embittered and disappointed he quit Moscow to live in St. Petersburg. A sad astonishment greeted the first issues of his new journal (Son of the Fatherland). He became submissive and fawning. It was sad to see this bold fighter, this tireless worker, who was able to get through the most difficult times without deserting his post, come to terms with his enemies as soon as his journal was shut down. It was sad to hear the name of Polevoy coupled with those of Grech and Bulgarin, sad also to be present at the productions of his plays, which were applauded by secret agents and official lackeys.
Polevoy was aware of his own decline, he suffered because of it and was depressed. He wanted to escape his false position, to justify himself, but he lacked the strength and he merely compromised himself with the government, without gaining anything vis-a-vis the public. His nature was more noble than his conduct and could not sustain this struggle for very long. He died soon afterward, leaving his affairs in complete disarray. All his concessions had brought him nothing.
There were two men who continued Polevoy's work—Senkovsky and Belinsky.9
Senkovsky, a Russified Pole, an orientalist and academic, was a witty writer, a hard worker without any opinions of his own, unless one calls a profound disdain for people and things, convictions and theories, an opinion. Senkovsky was a true representative of the direction which the mentality of the public had taken since 1825, with a luster that was brilliant but cold, a disdainful smile which often hid remorse, a thirst for pleasure stimulated by the uncertainty which hovered over everyone's fate, a materialism that was mocking and therefore melancholy, the constrained jesting of a man in prison.
The antithesis of Senkovsky, Belinsky was a type of studious Moscow youth, a martyr to his doubts and thoughts, an enthusiast, a poet of dialectics, vexed by everything that surrounded him, consumed by torment. This man trembled with indignation and shook with rage at the eternal spectacle of Russian absolutism.
Senkovsky established his magazine as one establishes a commercial enterprise. All the same, we do not share the opinion of those who see a governmental tendency in it. It was read eagerly throughout Russia, which never happened with a journal or book written in the interests of power. The Northern Bee, enjoying the protection of the police, only seemed to be an exception to this rule: it was the sole unofficial political newspaper allowed, which explains its success; but as soon as the official newspapers had a tolerable staff, The Northern Bee was abandoned by its readers. There is no fame, no reputation that can withstand the deadly and degrading government connection. Everyone who reads in Russia detests power; all who love it do not read or only read French trifles. Russia's greatest celebrity— Pushkin—was at one point abandoned because of the congratulations he sent Nicholas after the cholera epidemic and for two political poems. Gogol, the idol of Russian readers, fell instantly into the most profound disgrace because of a servile pamphlet. Polevoy was eclipsed the day he made an alliance with the government. In Russia one does not forgive a turncoat.
Senkovsky spoke with disdain of liberalism and science, but then he had no respect for anything else. He imagined himself eminently practical because he preached a theoretical materialism but, like all theoreticians, he was surpassed by other theoreticians who were much more abstract but had intense convictions, which is infinitely more practical and closer to action than practology.
Ridiculing everything which men hold most sacred, Senkovsky, without wishing it, demolished monarchism in people's minds. Preaching comfort and sensual pleasures, he led people to the simple thought that it is impossible to enjoy oneself while constantly thinking about the secret police, denunciations, and Siberia, that fear is not comfortable, and that no man can dine well if he does not know where he will spend the night.
Senkovsky was wholly a man of his time; in sweeping near the entrance to a new era, he mixed together valuable objects with dust, but he cleared the ground for another age which he did not understand. He felt this himself, and as soon as something new and lively broke through in literature, Senkovsky furled his sails and soon completely faded away.
Senkovsky was surrounded by a circle of young men of letters whom he ruined by corrupting their taste. They introduced a style which seemed at first brilliant, but which was, at a second glance, dubious. In the poetry from Petersburg, or rather from Vassilevsky Island,10 there is nothing living or real in hysterical images that conjure up Kukolniks, Benediktovs, Timofeevs,11 and others. Such flowers can only bloom at the foot of the imperial throne and in the shadow of the Peter Paul Fortress.
In Moscow, the journal that replaced the suppressed Telegraph was The Telescope; this did not last as long as its predecessor, but its death was most glorious. This was the one that published the celebrated letter by Chaa- daev.12 The journal was immediately suppressed, the censor pensioned off, and the editor-in-chief exiled to Ust-Sysolsk. The publication of this letter was a momentous event. It was a challenge, a sign of an awakening; it broke the ice after the 14th of December. At last a man appeared whose soul overflowed with bitterness. He found a terrible language with which to express—with funereal eloquence, with an overwhelming serenity— everything acrimonious that had accumulated in the heart of civilized Russia during those ten years. This letter was the testament of a man who gave up his rights not out of love for his descendants, but from disgust; severe and cold, the author demanded an accounting from Russia for all the pain with which it drenched a man who dared to emerge from the savage state. He wanted to know what we had bought at that price, what we had done to merit this situation; he analyzed it with an inexorable, hopeless depth, and, having finished his vivisection, he turned away in horror, cursing the country in its past, in its present, and in its future. Yes, the somber voice sounded only to tell Russia that it had never existed in a normal human way, that it represented "only a gap in human intelligence, only an instructive example for Europe." He told Russia that its past was useless, its present superfluous, and that it had no future.
Without agreeing with Chaadaev, we understand perfectly what led him to this dark and despairing point of view, all the more so since up to the present the facts speak for him and not against him. We believe; for him it was enough to point a finger. We hope; for him it was enough to open the page of a journal to prove that he was right. The conclusion at which Chaadaev arrived could not hold up against any criticism, and that is hardly where one would find the importance of this publication; it is through the lyricism of its austere indignation, which shakes the soul and for a long time leaves it under a painful impression, that it maintains its significance. The author was reproached for his harshness, but it is that which is his greatest achievement. One must not humor us; we forget too quickly our position, we are too accustomed to be distracted within prison walls.