Do you not see, in men who talk haughtily and disdainfully of 7 A character in Gog:ol"s Drad Souls, who was naked when he mel Chichikov, the hero of the story. ( Tr.)
s N. V. Sokolov, the Pronomist of 1/usskoyr Slo�·o, applied the word
'rascal" in English, to John Stuart Mill in an article in the issue of July 1 865. (A.S.)
!J From D. V. Davydov's poem, 'A Contemporary Song.' ( A .S.)
The Free Russian Press and "The Bell"
565
Shakespeare and Pushkin, the grandsons of Skalozub, reared in the house of their grandsire who wanted 'to make a Voltaire of his corporal'?10
The very leprosy of bribery has survived in high-handed importunity for money, by bias and threats under pretext of common causes, in the feeble impulse towards being fed at the expense of the service and towards avenging a refusal by slander and libel.
All this will be transformed and thrashed out with time. But there is no blinking the fact that a strange soil has been prepared by the Tsar's paternal government and imperial civilisation in our 'kingdom of darkness.' It is a soil on which seedlings of great promise have grown, on the one hand, into worshippers of the Muravevs and the Katkovs and, on the other, into the bullies of Nihilism and the impudent Bazarov free-lances.
Our black earth needs a good deal of drainage!
1Vl. Bakltllirt and
tile Cause of Pola11d
AT THE END of November we received the following letter from Bakunin:
San Francisco, October 1 6, 1861 .
Friends,-! have succeeded in escaping from Siberia, and after long wanderings on the Amur, on the shores of the Gulf of Tartary and across Japan, I arrived to-day in San Francisco.
Friends, I long to coml' to you with my whole being, and as soon as I arrive I shall set to work; I shall work with you on the Polish-Slavonic question, which has been my idee fixe since 1 846 and was in practice my speciality in 1 848
and 1 849.
The destruction, the complete destruction, of the Austrian empire will be my last word; I don't say deed: that IO A reference to A. S. Griboyedov: Woe from Wit, IV, 5. (A.S.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
566
would be too ambitious; to promote it I am ready to become a drummer-boy or even a scoundrel,1 and if I should succeed in advancing it by one hair's-breadth I shall be satisfied.
And beyond that there appears the glorious, free Slav Federation, the one way out for Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, and the Slavonic peoples generally . . . .
We had known of his intention to escape from Siberia some months before. By the New Year Bakunin in his own exuberant person was clasped in our arms.
Into our work, into our closed shop of two, a new element had entered, or rather an old element, perhaps a risen shade of the
'forties, and most of all of 1 848. Bakunin was just the same; he had grown older in body only, his spirit was as young and enthusiastic as in the days of the all-night arguments with Khomyakov in Moscow. He \vas just as devoted to one idea, just as capable of being carried away by it, and seeing in everything the fulfilment of his dPsires and idPals, and evPn more ready for every experience, every sacrifice, feeling that he had not so much life before him, and that consequently he must make haste and not let slip a single chance. He was fretted by prolonged study, by the weighing of pros and cons and, confident and theoretical as ever, he longed for any action if only it were in the midst of the storms of revolution, in the midst of destruction and danger.
Now, too, as in the articles signed 'Jules Elizard,'2 he repeated :
'Die Lust der Zerstorung ist eine schaffende Lust.' The fantasies and ideals \vith which he was imprisoned in Konigstem3 in 1 849
he had preserved, and had carried them complete across Japan and California in 1 86 1 . Even his language recalled the finer articles of La Reforme and La vraie Republique, the striking speeches in La Constituante and at Blanqui's Club. The spirit of the parties of that period, their exclusiveness, their personal sympathies and antipathies, above all their faith in the second coming of the revolution-it \'\·as all here.
Strong characters, if not destroyed at once by prison and exile, are preserved by them in an extraordinary way; they come out of them as though out of a faint and go on with what they were I The word used by Bakunin is 'prokhvost,' which is the German 'Profoss'
( Eng. 'provost' ) , a military policeman: sometimes an executioner. (R.)
� Under this pseudonym Bakunin published articles on the reaction i n Germany in the lahrbiichcr o f 1 842, which were brought o u t under the e<litorshrp of Arnold Ruge. ( Tr.)
: 1 A fortress in Saxony where political offenders were imprisoned. ( A .S.)
The Free Russian Press and "The Bell"
567
about when they lost consciousness. The Decembrists came back from being buried in the snows of Siberia more youthful than the young people who met them, who had been trampled down before ripening. While two generations of Frenchmen changed several times, turned red and white by turns, advancing with the flood and borne back by the ebb, Barbes and Blanqui remained steady beacons, recalling from behind prison bars and distant foreign lands the old ideals in all their purity.
'The Polish-Slavonic question . . . the destruction of the A�strian empire . . . the glorious free Slav Federation . . .' and all this is to happen straight off, as soon as he arrives in London!
And it is written from San Francisco when he has one foot on the ship !
The European reaction did not exist for Bakunin, the bitter years from 1 848 to 1 858 did not exist for him either; of them he had but a brief, far-away, faint knowledge. He had read them in Siberia, just as he had read at Kaydanov about the Punic Wars and of the fall of the Roman Empire. Like a man who has returned after the plague, he heard 'vho had died, and sighed for them all; but he had not sat by the bedside of the dying, had not hoped that they would be saved, had not followed them to the grave. The events of 1 848, on the contrary, were all about him, near to his heart, vivid and in detail; the conversations with Caussidiere, the speeches of the Slavs at the Prague Conference,4
discussions with Arago or Ruge-to Bakunin all these were affairs of yesterday; they were all still ringing in his ears and flashing before his eyes.
There is nothing to wonder at in this, however, even over and above his imprisonment.
The first days after the February Revolution were the best days in Bakunin's life. Returning from Belgium, to which he had been driven by Guizot for his speech at the Polish anniversary of the 29th of November, 1 847, he cast prudence to the winds and plunged head over ears into the revolutionary sea. He never left the barracks of the Montagnards, he slept with them, ate with them and preached, preached continually, communism and l' egalite du salaire, levelling-down in the name of equality, the e'mancipation of all the Slavs, the destruction of all the Austrias, 4 30th May-1 2th J une, 1 848. B. adhered to the radical Left. The leading part in the conference was played by the Czech Liberal bourgeoisie who put forward an idea for the transformation of the Austrian empire into a federation of Slav states under the aegis of the Habsburg monarchy.