Could this be possible?
Who can say these days what is and isn't possible? The battle is not over, the struggle continues.
The future of Russia has never been more closely linked to the future of Europe than it is at present. Our hopes are well known to all, but our reluctance in answering does not come from childlike vanity, or from a fear of the future catching us in a lie, but because of the impossibility of seeing any aspect of this issue whose resolution does not depend completely on internal conditions.
On the one hand, the Russian government is not Russian, just generally despotic and retrograde. As the Slavophiles say, it is more German than Russian, and that explains the good disposition and love toward it shown by other states. Petersburg is a new Rome, the Rome of universal enslavement, and the capital of absolutism; that is why the Russian emperor fraternizes with the emperor of Austria and helps him to oppress Slavs. The principle of power is not national, and absolutism is more cosmopolitan than the revolution.
On the other hand, the hopes and aspirations of revolutionary Russia coincide with the hopes and aspirations of revolutionary Europe and anticipate their alliance in the future. The national element that Russia adds is the freshness of youth and a natural tendency toward socialist institutions.
The European states have clearly reached an impasse. They must make a decisive surge forward or they will fall even further back than now. The contradictions are too irreconcilable and the issues are too acute and have ripened too much through suffering and hatred to be able to stop at half- solutions and peaceful negotiations between power and freedom. But if there is no salvation for states in their current form of existence, the manner of their death can differ greatly. Death can come by means of rebirth or decay, through revolution or reaction. Conservatism, having no goal other than the preservation of an outdated status quo, is just as destructive as revolution. It annihilates the old order, not with the hot flame of rage, but with the slow flame of senility.
If conservatism gets the upper hand in Europe, imperial power in Russia will not only crush civilization, but will annihilate an entire class of civilized people, and then...
And then—here we find ourselves standing before an entirely new question and a mysterious future. Autocracy, having triumphed over civilization, finds itself face to face with a peasant insurrection, with an enormous revolt in the manner of Pugachev. Half of the strength of the Petersburg government is based on civilization and on the deep divide it has engendered between the civilized classes and the peasants. The government continually leans on the former, and it is primarily in the noble sphere that it finds the means, the people, and counsel. On breaking with his own hands such an essential instrument, the emperor has once again become the tsar, but it is not enough for him to let his beard grow and wear a zipoun2 The house of Holstein-Gottorp25 is too German, too pedantic, and too sophisticated to throw itself unreservedly into the arms of a half-savage nationalism in order to remain at the head of a popular movement which has wanted from the very beginning to settle accounts with the nobility and to spread the customs of the rural commune to all estates, cities, and the entire nation.
We have seen a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions, but our imagination cannot conceive of an emperor of Russia surrounded by communist institutions.
Before this distant future can be realized, a number of things must occur, and the influence of imperial Russia will be no less pernicious for reactionary Europe than the latter's influence will be for Russia. It is this barracks-room Russia that desires, by means of bayonets, to put an end to the questions that are agitating the world. It is this Russia that is roaring and moaning like the sea at the doors of the civilized world, always ready to overflow its banks, always trembling with a desire for conquest, as if it had nothing to do at home, as if pangs of conscience and bouts of madness disturb the minds of its rulers.
Only reaction can open these doors, with the Hapsburgs and Hohen- zollerns requesting fraternal assistance from the Russian army and leading it into the heart of Europe.
Then the great party of order will see what a strong government and respect for power are like. We advise the German princelings to acquaint themselves now with the fate of the grand dukes of Georgia, who were given a little money in Petersburg, the title of highness, and the right to have a royal crown on their carriage. But revolutionary Europe cannot be defeated by imperial Russia. It will save Russia from a terrible crisis, and will itself be saved from Russia.
The Russian government, after laboring for twenty years, has managed to link Russia by unbreakable ties with revolutionary Europe.
There are no borders between Russia and Poland.
Of course Europe knows about Poland, this nation that the entire world has abandoned to an unequal struggle, having shed since that time rivers of blood on all the fields of battle where there was any question of winning a people's freedom. Everyone knows this nation, which, having succumbed to numerical superiority, traveled across Europe, more like a conqueror than a victim, and has been dispersed among other peoples in order to teach them—alas, unsuccessfully—the art of bearing defeat without yielding, degrading themselves, or losing faith. One can destroy Poland, but not conquer it, one can carry out the threat made by Nicholas to leave only a sign and a pile of stones where Warsaw once stood, but it is impossible to turn them into slaves like the Baltic provinces.
Having united Poland with Russia, the government has erected an enormous bridge for the solemn passage of revolutionary ideas, a bridge that begins at the Vistula River and ends at the Black Sea.
Poland is thought to be dead, but every time the roll is called it answers "Present," as the speaker of a Polish deputation did in 1848. They should not take a step without assuring themselves of their western neighbors, because they have had enough of Napoleon's sympathy and the celebrated words of Louis-Philippe: "The Polish nationality will not perish."
We have no doubts about Poland or Russia. But we do have doubts about Europe. If we had some confidence in the peoples of Europe, we would enthusiastically tell the Poles:
"Brothers, your fate is worse than ours and you have suffered much, but be patient a little longer; there is a great future at the end of your misfortunes. You will extract a sublime revenge and will bring about the liberation of the people whose hands forged your chains. In your enemies—the tsar and autocracy—you will recognize your brothers in the name of independence and freedom."
Notes
Source: Du developpement des idees revolutionnaires en Russie. V. "La litterature et l'opinion publique apres le 14 decembre 1825," 1851; 7:79-100, 412-33; translation into Russian, 209-30.
The account by Astolphe, Marquis de Custine (1790-1857), remains one of the most powerful books written about Russia by a foreigner. Banned in Russia, it was read widely, including in the Winter Palace.
Count Pavel D. Kiselev (1788-1872), minister of government property, carried out a reform in the management of state peasants.
Herzen comments: "It is not without a degree of fear that I embark on this section of my survey. The reader will understand that I cannot say everything, or name all the people in many cases; to speak of a Russian one must be certain that he is buried or in Siberia. Only after serious reflection did I decide on this publication; silence sustains despotism, things one dare not express only half-exist."
Nikolay A. Polevoy (1796-1846), historian, writer, and editor of the progressive Moscow Telegraph, later became much more conservative in his views.
Nikolay I. Grech (1787-1867) and Faddey V. Bulgarin (1789-1859) were conservative journalists; the latter was, in addition, an agent of the Third Department.