"Well, chaps, it's time for the axe. We won't be shut up in a fortress forever, or spend more time doing unpaid labor or as house serfs. Stand up for your sacred freedom; for too long the masters have had their fun with us, have defiled our daughters and broken sticks over the ribs of the old men... Well children, let's bring straw, straw to the master's house, and let the gents warm themselves for the last time!"
Instead of that speech we are telling you: prevent a great calamity while it is still in your power.
Save yourselves from serfdom and the serfs from the blood they will have to spill.
Have pity on your children and on the conscience of the poor Russian people.
But hurry—it is harvest time and there is not an hour to lose.
The feverish breath of a sick, weakened Europe is blowing revolution toward Rus. The tsar has fenced you off, but there are chinks in that government fence and the draft is stronger than the wind.
The coming upheaval is not so foreign to the Russian heart as it once was. Our people are still unfamiliar with the word socialism but its meaning is close to the soul of a Russian who has lived out his days in a rural commune or a workers' co-op.
In socialism Rus will meet up with the revolution.
Such an oceanic stream of water cannot be stopped by customs regulation and birch rods. If you do not want to be drowned, get out of the way or swim with the current.
.Maybe those of you who do not want the emancipation think that the tsar will help in case of a crushing defeat. They are accustomed to fierce military pacification, they are accustomed to the role of executioner, which the government so willingly takes on itself at the behest of the gentry. They are accustomed to the gentry's criminal deafness to the peasants' complaints and shameful pandering to illegal sales, extraordinary tax assessments, and the forcible settlement of peasants outside the village.
Maybe the tsar will help with such means as his blessed predecessor used to help introduce the military colonies, flogging to death every tenth or twentieth person. Maybe.
But if you make use of the tsar's protection, be sure to behave yourselves; forget about any kind of human dignity, about any sort of free speech, and about the dream of personal independence, for at that point you will be loyal subjects and only loyal subjects. [. . .]
Notes
Source: "Iur'ev den'! Iur'ev den'!", 1853; 12:80-86, 514-15.
Herzen lists four of the five Decembrists executed in 1826.
At first a court official in sixth place on the Table of Ranks, by 1850 it designated those in ranks three and four.
Herzen: "Every noble class in the West can refer to some sort of weak, transparent rights to own peasants; we don't even have that. The Russian nobility didn't acquire slaves by spilling its own blood, but through a series of police actions, base pandering by the tsars, tricks by the civil servants, and the shameless greed of their ancestors."
4- Herzen misstated the date; he meant August 4, 1789, when noble members of the Constituent Assembly renounced their feudal rights.
5. The Pugachev rebellion of 1773-75 was led by a Cossack adventurer, Emilyan Pugachev, who claimed to be Tsar Peter III, the latest in a series of pretenders to the Russian throne. His large band of followers, including escaped serfs, deserting soldiers, branded convicts, Old Believers, and Cossacks, achieved early success in the Volga and Ural regions and marched on Moscow until the rebellion was finally halted and Pugachev was executed. Alexander Pushkin wrote both a historical account based on archival research and a novel, The Captain's Daughter, concerning this historical episode. It was seen as a warning about the underlying violence in a repressed society.
♦ 4 *
Initially published as a separate sheet, the announcement of The Polestar was reprinted in its first issue, as well in the French newspaper L'Homme, where agents of the Foreign Ministry noticed it and sent it on to St. Petersburg (Let 2:238-41). Originally planned as a journal, the lack of fresh material from Russia in the early years led to its continuation as a series of eight almanacs (1855-59, 1861-62, and 1869), some consisting of several installments. Its contents included Past and Thoughts, banned poetry by Pushkin, Lermontov, Ryleev, and Ogaryov, and Decembrist memoirs. It was named in honor of the publication edited by Ryleev and A. Bestuzhev from 1823 to 1825, which was closed down by Nicholas; the cover of the revived Polestar bore an engraving by Charles Linton of the five executed Decembrists in profile. Herzen planned for the first issue to come out on the anniversary of their deaths, July 13 (O.S.), but it was delayed until the beginning of August 1855.
Herzen believed that readers would be moved by this title; a letter the exiled Decembrist I. Yakushkin wrote from Siberia (which Herzen evidently never received) said that The Polestar was read with joy and deep emotion; its appearance was a major event for the youth of the mid-i85os. Nikolay Dobrolyubov wrote in his diary for January 13, 1857: "At 10 I began reading the second volume of The Polestar and I didn't stop until five in the morning [. . .] And having closed the book I couldn't sleep for a while [. . .] A lot of heavy, melancholy, but proud thoughts coursed through my head" (Dobroliubov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 6:451).
An Announcement About The Polestar
[1855]
The Polar Star hid behind the clouds of the reign of Tsar Nicholas.
Nicholas has passed on, and The Polestar has appeared once more, on our Good Friday, the day when five gallows were erected for our five crucifixions.
A Russian periodic publication that appears without censorship and is exclusively dedicated to the question of Russian emancipation and spreading liberated thought throughout Russia, is taking this name to demonstrate the continuation of the legend and the work, the internal bond and the blood ties.
Russia has been severely shaken by recent events. No matter what, it cannot return to stagnation; thought will be more active, new questions will arise—must they really fade away and go silent? We do not think so. Official Russia has a voice and will find defenders even in London. And Young Russia, the Russia of the future and of hope, does not possess a single organ.
We offer it one.
Beginning on February 18 (March 2) Russia enters a new phase of its development. The death of Nicholas is more than the death of a person— it is the death of principles which were carried out with great strictness and which had reached their limit. While he was alive they could somehow stand firm, established by habit and resting on an iron will.
After his death it is impossible to continue his reign.
We do not fight the dead. From the moment that Dr. Mandt whispered to the heir: "The carotid artery beats no longer," the passion of our struggle changed to a cold analysis of the past reign.
Two principal thoughts, lacking any unity and interfering with each other, determine the character of Nicholaevan rule.
Continuing Peter's legend in external affairs.
Counteracting the Petrine line of internal development.
Expanding borders and influence in Europe and Asia, while constricting any kind of civil society in Russia.
Everything for the state, i.e., for the throne, and nothing for the people.
To return to the patriarchal-barbaric power of the Muscovite tsars, without losing any of the grandeur of the Petersburg emperor—that was the task Nicholas set himself.
The Muscovite tsar, that Byzantine despot, surrounded by priests and monks, dressed in some sort of gilded robe, restricted by exaggerated oriental ceremony and a bad government structure—is less than a soldier. The Petersburg emperor, as soon as he rejects the formative principles of Peter, is only a soldier.