From the first day of his accession, Nicholas declared war on every sort of education and every free aspiration. He roused a sluggish Orthodoxy, persecuted the Uniates, destroyed tolerance, forbade Russians to go abroad, imposed an outrageous tax on the right to travel, tormented Poland for its political development, displayed relics which Peter had forbidden, and boldly placed on his flag, as if to mock the great words on the banner of the French Revolution: autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality!
Autocracy as a goal. This is the naive philosophy of history of the Russian autocrat.
Everything went his way. Not because he had exceptional strength, but because the baseness of the world around him was exceptional.
The height of his grandeur was the moment when he read Paskevich's dispatch:1 "Hungary lies at the feet of your highness!" [. . .]
Nicholas triumphed. But near the Winter Palace, i.e., near the Peter Paul Fortress, the Petrashevsky2 society was founded. It seems that despite all efforts, revolutionary thought was not dead but was fermenting in minds and making hearts beat faster. The appearance of these noble, self-sacrificing, fine young men before the investigating commission was an ominous memento mori for Nicholas. It was not by chance that the ghost of the 14th of December appeared twenty-five years later, flourishing and youthful. What had been achieved by terrible oppression at home and universal baseness?
In addition, after the triumph there was a terrible emptiness. The futility of an autocracy with no goal but itself was fully apparent the day after the victory.
Not a single fruitful thought, not a single improvement, everything turned gray along with Nicholas, growing older and stiffer. There was one thing he could accomplish—to free the serfs, and he wanted to do it, but it is hard, terribly hard for an absolute monarch to give anyone freedom.
[. . .] Nicholaevan rule was lowered into the grave with him. Do not worry, it will not rise again; things may get worse, but they will not be the same.
We know almost nothing about his heir. But his wishes notwithstanding, the circumstances of his accession to the throne determine to some degree his situation.
What a difference!
In a shaky manner, Nicholas ascended the throne instead of his older brother. He was greeted by a rebellion that he defeated with grapeshot, but behind the fallen ranks of soldiers a colossal conspiracy came to light. All Russia was involved: the peasant was there as a soldier, the house of Ru- rik represented by princes, generals covered in glory, people covered with honor, literary figures, officers, civil servants in Petersburg, Moscow, and everywhere—all took part in the conspiracy. He was afraid to find out that his friend Adlerberg and Suvorov,3 the grandson of the Italian prince, were implicated, and freed them from prosecution; the emperor Alexander was almost part of the conspiracy—Speransky and Karamzin wrote charters on his order.4
Two roads lay ahead of Nicholas—to become the head of the movement, get control of it, and move forward, or to go against the current, while he still had the strength. He chose the latter and until the present war had kept up his role. But the movement which dragged him into war is the best proof that he had neither stopped it nor gained control, and the man who began by disarming everything—mind and hand—finished by calling all Russia, even the serfs, to arms.
What is there in the 18th of February that resembles the 14th of December? The new emperor could not answer the bravery at Sevastopol with grapeshot; he could not forbid every kind of speech, when some people were coming to him to say that they would give their blood and others their money for the defense of Russia. Russia did not want this war, is ravaged by it, and obviously did not need it. But the subject here is not what used to be or what one desires, but the salvation and the integrity of the state; the people set off to correct the tsar's mistake with their blood—will the new tsar answer them with Siberia and new oppression? Enough!
In 1825 all Europe stood behind Nicholas, and in 1855 all Europe stands against Alexander. It is easy to disregard the people's groaning when there is no external enemy, but it is difficult to send people to their death with insults and abuse in parting. They have woken up to the extent that it has become a people's war. Once again the people have something in common with the tsar—that is why the tsar will depend on them.
The fourteenth of December was also born in a moment of animation, when the people for the first time after Pozharsky5 walked hand in hand with the government. The thought of Russian liberation appeared on the earth that day, when a Russian soldier, tired after battles and long marches, rushed to finally rest in the Elysian Fields.
Can it be that after forty years a gigantic battle in the Tauride will take place with no effect?
Will the Sevastopol soldier, wounded and hard like granite, having tested his strength, present his back to the rod as before? Isn't an armed serf as apt to return peacefully to unpaid labor as a nomadic horseman from the Caspian shores—now guarding the Baltic border—is apt to go missing on his own steppe? Did Petersburg see the English fleet in vain? That is impossible. Everything is in motion, everything is shaken and strained. what would have to happen for a country that was so abruptly awoken to once again fall dead asleep?
It would be better that Russia perish!
But this will not happen. From far away another life is audible to us here, and a spring breeze wafts from Russia. We did not doubt the Russian people before, and everything written and said by us since 1849 testifies to that. The establishment of a printing-house is even more evidence. The question was about the best time, and it has been resolved in our favor.
Only let us not be mistaken about one matter; circumstances count for a great deal but they are not everything. Without personal participation, without willpower and without labor, nothing gets completed. This is what comprises the grandeur of man's action in history. He creates it, and the fulfillment of historical destiny depends on his supreme will. The more favorable the circumstances the more terrible the responsibility he bears to himself and to his descendants.
We summon you to work. It is not a lot, but it is physiologically important; we have made the first step, we have opened the gate—to walk through it is your job!
The first volume of The Polestar will appear on the twenty-seventh of July (August 7), and the second toward the New Year.
We don't want to start subscriptions before December; for subscriptions we need to know whether we will receive articles, and whether there will be support from Russia. Only then will we be able to determine whether we can publish three or four volumes a year.
Our plan is exceptionally simple. In each issue we would like to have one general article (philosophy of revolution, socialism), one historical or statistical article about Russia or the Slavic world, an analysis of some remarkable artistic work and one original literary article; after that, a mixture of letters, a chronicle, and so on.
The Polestar must be—and this is one of our most ardent desires—the refuge for all manuscripts drowning in the imperial censorship, all that have been mutilated by it. For the third time we are making a request to all literate people in Russia to obtain for us manuscript copies of Pushkin, Ler- montov et al., which are being passed around and are well-known ("An Ode to Freedom," "The Dagger," "The Village," omitted parts of Onegin and "Demon," "The Gavriliad," "The Triumph of Death," "Polikrat Samossky"...).
The manuscripts will eventually perish—they must be preserved in print.