Chapter XV: Appendix (7)

[75] Quoted from a poem of Pushkin’s.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[76] Reynaud, Jean (1806-1863), was a Utopian writer and follower of Saint-Simon.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[77] A Benedictine order founded by St. Romuald at Camaldoli in Italy in 1009.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[78] Napoleon sent troops to Italy in 1861 to support the Pope, whose temporal power was maintained by a French garrison in Rome from that date to 1870.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[79] In my early youth I saw Vassily Nazarovitch Karazin two or three times. I remember that my father used to talk of his letter to Alexander I., of his close association with the Tsar, and of his rapid fall. In 1860 I read a remarkable life of the man in the _Northern Bee_. In the impetuous, enterprising career of Karazin everything arrests attention, most of all what was not in the _Northern Bee_, that is, what was left on the other side of the censor’s shears. I happened to get hold of a letter of Karazin’s to the Emperor (it was published in the _Russian Messenger_ in 1810) and some other documents. At first I only thought of publishing the letter to complete the above-mentioned article. Then I felt inclined to make a few general observations regarding Alexander I.’s attitude to Karazin, and this I have done. The biography of V. N. Karazin is far from being covered by the article in the _Northern Bee_ and these notes; they are only materials for it. I have hardly touched upon Karazin’s life, I have only tried to sketch the surroundings and block in the background against which his figure stands out. This article was published in _The Polar Star_, vol. vii. page 7.—(_Author’s Note._)

[80] Laharpe, F. C. de (1754-1838), a Swiss politician, was the tutor of Alexander I.

[81] Where Paul I. was murdered.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[82] The Empress Elizabeth is meant.

[83] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[84] Peter III., who was murdered, possibly with the connivance of Catherine II., is meant.

[85] Paul I. and his assassination is meant.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[86] See Vol. II. page 202.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[87] Count Alexey Orlov was the murderer of Peter III.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[88] He dreamed of abdication up to the time of his death.—(_Author’s Note._)

[89] Quotation from Schiller’s tragedy, _Don Carlos_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[90] It happened that the 11th of March 1801 was a most unpleasant wintry day in Petersburg; on the 12th the weather turned mild, warm and bright, as though the spring had suddenly come.—(_Author’s Note._)

[91] How glad we should be to see these notes. Such historical materials should not be kept under lock and key.—(_Author’s Note._)

[92] A decree of Peter III. relieved the nobles from the obligations to serve the State introduced by Peter the Great.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[93] The reference is to the phrase ‘word and deed,’ which was the accepted form of denunciation to the police, introduced by Peter the Great.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[94] Lyapunov was one of the national heroes who fought against the Poles in 1610. The Rurik dynasty became extinct on the death of Fyodor, son of Ivan the Terrible, and Boris Godunov was elected Tsar by the people of Moscow. At his death, after a reign of eight years, a time of anarchy followed, when many pretenders claimed the throne. The Poles took advantage of this ‘Time of Trouble,’ as it is called by Russian historians, to attempt to annex Russia.

[95] Minin was a meat-merchant of Nizhni-Novgorod who roused the people to form a national army, deliver Russia from the Poles and elect a Tsar. At his suggestion the command of the army, to which men flocked from all parts of Russia, was entrusted to Pozharsky, a nobleman of good reputation and great military ability. Under his command the Russians succeeded in driving the Poles out of Moscow, and eventually out of Russia. A _zemsky sobor_ was summoned which elected Michael Romanov as Tsar.

[96] Hmyelnitsky was a Hetman of Little Russia who, seeing the only chance of peace and safety lay in union with Russia, secured the allegiance of the Little Russians to the Tsar Alexey (father of Peter the Great) in 1654.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[97] Ivan the Sixth was in 1740 proclaimed Tsar as a baby, and after a reign of six months was incarcerated in the Schlüsselburg till, in 1764, Mirovitch attempted to release him and he was shot by his guards.

[98] Princess Tarakanov, the morganatic daughter of the Empress Elizabeth, was living abroad when Count Orlov, at Catherine’s instigation, succeeded in decoying her to Russia, where she was put in prison and there died.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[99] The name given to Catherine II. by the court poet, Derzhavin.

[100] Beccaria, Cesare de (1738-1794), an Italian philosopher, was the author of a celebrated work on criminal law.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[101] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[102] The reference is to the punishment known as the ‘Green Street,’ in which the condemned man walked between two rows of soldiers, each of whom dealt him a blow. It was the favourite form of torture of Nicholas I. (hence nicknamed ‘the Stick’), and numbers of men died under it in his reign.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[103] Radishtchev, author of the famous _Journey from Petersburg to Moscow_, is meant.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[104] Novikov, one of the most learned and cultured men of Catherine’s reign, published satirical sketches and then historical researches, and did much for the promotion of education. He was a freemason and a mystic. Catherine, towards the end of her reign—frightened by the French Revolution—imprisoned him in the Schlüsselburg because he was opposed to serfdom. Paul released him.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[105] _I.e._ Kotchubey.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[106] Las Cases, Emmanuel, Comte de (1766-1842), a French historian who went with Napoleon to St. Helena and published the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[107] Yeropkin was a general who put down the mutiny in Moscow during the plague in 1776, when the people rose in revolt against the sanitary measures imposed by the Government. Catherine rewarded him with the ribbon of Saint Andrew and four thousand peasants. He accepted the ribbon but refused the peasants.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[108] Nicholas in his simplicity did not share Karazin’s opinion. This is how the Governor of Harkov informed the latter on November 24, 1826, of the Most High’s permission to leave his estate: ‘His Excellency, the commanding officer of the Chief Staff, has informed me that His Majesty the Emperor graciously grants you full right to live where you choose, with sanction to stay even in Moscow, saving, however, Saint Petersburg, until further commands, and with the condition that you refrain from every sort of opinion not concerning you!’—What a jargon and what a brain!—(_Author’s Note._)

[109] Struensee, Johann Friedrich, Count, was court physician to Christian VII. of Denmark and gained complete ascendancy over that monarch and his wife Caroline, sister of George III. of England. He used his power for the advancement of liberty and enlightenment and succeeded to some extent in abolishing serfdom (1771). Offending the nobility and clergy by his liberalism, he was accused of adultery with the Queen, and in 1772 he was beheaded.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[110] Vanka Kain (equivalent to Jack Cain—from Cain of the Bible) is a slang term of abuse for a desperate fellow, ready for anything.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[111] The Old Believers of the English school, bound by their creed to preserve all the historical gains of the ages, even indeed when they are pernicious, do not agree with this. They think that every sort of right, however wrongly obtained, must be preserved and others grafted on to it. For instance, instead of depriving the nobles of the right of flogging and beating the peasants, the same right should be given to the peasants. In old days they used to say it would be a good thing to promote all the common people into the fourteenth[*] grade so that they should not be beaten; would it not be better to promote them straight away to being captains in the guards or hereditary noblemen, since heredity among us is reckoned in opposite direction?[†] Yet the Ukrainians in the seventeenth century did not reason like that when there was a plan of ennobling them, and a plan not suggested by bookish scholars, but by the brilliant, gorgeous, exuberant nobility of Poland. They thought it better to remain Cossacks. There is something like that Cossack principle in organic development generally (which our doctrinaires are very fond of taking as an example). One side of the organism can under certain circumstances develop specially and get the upper hand, always to the detriment of all the rest. In itself the organ may be well developed, but it becomes a deformity which one cannot get rid of in the organism by artificially developing the remaining parts to the point of grotesqueness.

This reminds us of a remarkable instance from the religious-surgical practice of Prince Hohenlohe. Prince Hohenlohe was one of the last mortals endowed with miraculous powers. This was in those blessed days of our century when everything feudal and clerical was rising up again with powder and incense on the ruins of the French Revolution. The Prince was summoned to an invalid, one of whose legs was too short; his relations had failed to grasp that in fact the other leg was too long. The miracle-working Prince set to work praying ... the leg grew, but the Prince did not know where to stop and prayed too excessively—the short leg overdid it—how annoying; he began praying for the other and then that outdid the other—he went back to the first ... and it ended in the Prince leaving his patient still with legs of unequal length and both of them as long as living stilts.—(_Author’s Note._)

[*] The fourteenth is the lowest grade in the government table of ranks.

[†] In Russia an ‘hereditary nobleman’ (so-called) is one who has not inherited his noble rank, but whose heirs will inherit it. (_Translator’s Notes._)

[112] Susanin, a peasant, saved the elected Tsar Michael Romanov from the Poles who sought to assassinate him. Susanin undertook to lead them to the monastery in which the Tsar was concealed, but led them instead into the forest, where they killed him but were themselves frozen to death. It is the subject of Glinka’s opera, ‘Life for the Tsar.’—(_Translator’s Note._)