Gavrila R. Derzhavin (1743-1816) was a renowned pre-romantic poet and a government official. Nikolay M. Karamzin (1766-1826) wrote poetry, stories, and travel memoirs, all of which strongly influenced the evolution of Russian prose style, but is best known as the author of the officially praised History of the Russian State. Ivan I. Dmitriev (1760-1837) was a poet in the sentimentalist style who held a number of high government posts.
Herzen: "After the revolution of 1848, censorship became an obsession of Nicholas. Not content with the regular censorship and the two offices set up outside the country in Jassy and Bucharest, where Russian is not being written, he created a second censorship office in Petersburg; we are inclined to hope that this double censorship will be more useful than simple censorship. One will wind up printing books outside of Russia, which is already being done, and one will find out who is more the ingenious, free expression or the emperor Nicholas."
Herzen: "This episode is discussed at greater length in Past and Thoughts."
Osip I. Senkovsky (1800-1858) was a founding editor of The Library for Reading and also published under the name "Baron Brambeus." Vissarion G. Belinsky (1819-1848) was the most influential Russian critic of his age, intensely engaged with the political and social issues of the day.
Herzen: "A sort of Latin Quarter, mostly inhabited by literary and artistic people who are unknown in other parts of the city."
Nestor V. Kukolnik (1809-1868) was a dramatist and novelist on patriotic themes. Vladimir G. Benediktov (1807-1873) and Alexey V. Timofeev (1812-1883) were poets, the former popular for his highly ornamented verse, which was disparaged by Belinsky.
Petr Ya. Chaadaev (1794-1856) was an officer in the 1812 war, a friend and correspondent of Pushkin, and author of The Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman. Herzen speaks eloquently of Chaadaev in Past and Thoughts.
Count Alexander Khr. Benkendorf (1783-1844), from a Baltic German family, a hero of the 1812 war, warned Alexander I in 1821 about the growing danger from the secret societies; under Nicholas I he founded the political police and directed them from 1826 to 1844. Count Petr A. Kleinmikhel (1793-1869), another high tsarist official of German descent, was dismissed as minister of communications (which included the inadequate road system) by Alexander II at the beginning of the reform era.
Dmitry V. Venevitinov (1805-1827) was a romantic poet and philosopher and founder of the group "Lovers of Wisdom" (liubomudry).
Alexander S. Griboedov (1795-1829), diplomat and writer, is best known for his satiric play Woe from Wit, phrases from which became a staple of the language of the intelligentsia.
Mikhail Yu. Lermontov (1814-1841) wrote romantic poetry, sometimes with political implications, and a novel (A Hero of Our Time) as well as serving as a career officer in the Russian army; he is considered one of Russia's greatest nineteenth-century poetic talents. Alexey V. Koltsov (1809-1842) was a poet whose work received critical support from Pushkin, Belinsky, and others, as well as popular acclaim.
Pavel I. Pestel (1793-1826) and Kondraty F. Ryleev (1795-1826) were two of five executed Decembrists; Ryleev was a romantic poet who preferred historical themes and heroes. His almanac The Polestar inspired Herzen's publication of the same name.
Herzen: "Verses that Lermontov addressed to the memory ofPrince Odoevsky, who died as a soldier in the Caucasus, one of those sentenced after the 14 th of December."
Ivan Mazeppa (1639-1709) was a well-educated Ukrainian Cossack hetman who went over to the Swedish side during the Battle of Poltava, and was forever after seen as a traitor to the Russians and a hero of Ukraine.
Written by Dmitry V. Grigorovich (1822-1899) and published in The Contemporary in 1847, which, along with his earlier work The Village, gained recognition for their sympathetic description of the serfs.
Herzen: "A Russian diplomat at the time of Alexey, father of Peter I, who emigrated to Sweden, fearing persecution by the tsar, and was beheaded in Stockholm for murder."
Herzen: "We have in mind the Petrashevsky society. Young people gathered at his place to debate social questions. This club had existed for several years, when, at the beginning of the Hungarian campaign, the government decided to declare it a major conspiracy and increase the number of arrests. Where they sought a criminal plot, they found only opinions, but this did not keep them from condemning all the accused to death in order to give themselves a merciful air. The tsar replaced execution with hard labor, exile, or conscription. Among the condemned are Speshnev, Grigoriev, Dosto- evsky, Kashkin, Golovinsky, Mombelli, and others."
A religious order founded in the late seventeenth century. It refused admission to priests with theological training, while offering a free education to the children of the poor.
A homespun coat.
Through dynastic alliances, the Romanov dynasty became highly Germanicized during the eighteenth century. Peter III (reigned 1761-1762) was the son of Peter the Great's daughter Anna and Duke Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gottorp.
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The announcement below was published as a separate lithographed sheet by the printing house that Herzen established in London in order to challenge the heavily censored press at home. It was also published in a Polish newspaper in May 1853 (where the Russian government took note of it) and in an abridged form in the French newspaper La Nation on June 19 of that year. Both a declaration of intent and a call for participation, it stimulated little response until after Nicholas I died in 1855. Eagerly awaiting a response, and yet aware of the fear experienced in Russia even by liberals, Herzen asked a friend to tell him which of their acquaintances had burned the sheet to avoid compromising themselves (Let 2:139). In an 1863 publication celebrating the first decade of the Free Press, Herzen refers to the year 1853 as the beginning of uncensored Russian- language publications abroad. This is an excellent example of the author's disciplined writing and barely suppressed emotion. A phrase that he borrowed from the 1830 Polish rebellion—"For our freedom and yours"—appeared on banners displayed in Red Square by Soviet dissidents in August 1968 in support of Czechoslovakia after it was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops.
The Free Russian Press in London
[1853]
To Our Brothers in Russia
Why are we silent?
Do we really have nothing to say?
Or are we really silent because we dare not speak?
At home there is no place for free Russian speech, but it can ring out elsewhere if only its time has come.
I know how hard it is for you to keep silent, what it costs you to conceal every feeling, every thought, every impulse.
Open and free speech is a great thing; without free speech a man cannot be free. Not for nothing do people give their lives, leave their homeland and abandon their property. Only that which is weak, fearful, and immature hides itself. "Silence is a sign of consent" and it clearly speaks of renunciation, hopelessness, a bowing of the head, an acknowledged desperation.
Openness of expression is a solemn declaration, a transition to action.
It seems to us that the time has come to publish in Russian outside of Russia. You will show us whether we are right or wrong.
I will be the first to remove the fetters of a foreign language and once again take up my native tongue.
The desire to speak with foreigners has passed. We told them as best we could about Rus and the Slavic world; what could be done was done.