Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

by Irina Reyfman

  As we revel in our domestic peace, having no enemies, taking society to the higher blessing of citizenly cohabitation, could we possibly remain such strangers to a feeling of humanity, strangers to feelings of pity, strangers to the tenderness of noble hearts, strangers to fraternal love, and abandon to our eternal discredit, to the disapproval of furthest posterity, an entire third of our fellows, our equal citizens, our brothers adored in nature, placed in the heavy shackles of slavery and captivity before our very eyes? The bestial custom of enslaving one’s fellow man, a custom that originated in the torrid regions of Asia, a custom suited to savage nations, a custom signifying a petrified heart and complete absence of soul, spread across the face of the earth, quickly, far, and wide. And we, the sons of glory, we, glorious by name and deeds among the peoples of the earth,70 stunned by the benightedness of ignorance, have adopted this practice; and have maintained it intact even to the present day to our shame, to the shame of past centuries, to the shame of this Age of Reason.

  You know from the deeds of your fathers, everyone knows from our chronicles, that the wise rulers of our people, incited by a genuine philanthropy and from having understood the natural tie of the social contract, attempted to place a limit on this hydra-headed evil. But their sovereign triumphs were then rendered useless by the hereditary nobility. Now being retrograde and sunk into scorn, they were known at the time for their arrogant privileges in the rank-based order of our government. Despite the might of the scepter’s power, our sovereign ancestors were powerless to destroy the chains of civic bondage. Far from realizing their good intentions—indeed, ensnared by the aforementioned rank-based order—they were induced to accept rules that were against their heart and mind. Our fathers viewed these wreckers with tears, perhaps heartfelt tears, as they tightened the bonds and weighed down the shackles of society’s most useful members. To the present day, landworkers are slaves among us; we do not acknowledge them as fellow citizens equal to us, have forgotten the human in them. O fellow citizens beloved of us! O true sons of the fatherland! Look around you and recognize your error. The servants of the eternal Divine One strove for the benefit of society and the benefaction of man following ideas similar to ours, explained to you in their sermons that were preached in the name of the all-beneficent God about how it contravened His wisdom and love to rule arbitrarily over one’s neighbor. They attempted through arguments drawn from nature and our heart to demonstrate to you your cruelty, falsehood, and sin. In the temples of the living God, their voice triumphantly continues to cry out loudly: “Come to your senses, misguided ones; relent, hard-hearted ones. Shatter the shackles of your brothers, open the dungeon of captivity, and grant your fellow humans to partake of the sweetness of communal life for which they have been readied by the Munificent One, just like you. On a par with you, they rejoice in the beneficial rays of the sun, their limbs and feelings are the same as yours, and their right to use them should be the same.”

  But if the servants of the Divine represented to your gaze the injustice of human enslavement, we consider it our duty to reveal to you its damage to society and the unfairness to the citizen. It would seem superfluous, at a time long marked by the philosophical spirit, to furnish or renew arguments about the essential equality of men and, therefore, of citizens. To one who grew up under the protection of freedom, filled with noble feeling rather than prejudices, the proofs of the primacy of equality are the ordinary motions of one’s heart. But here is the misfortune of mortal life on this earth: to blunder in the light and not to see what stands before one’s own eyes.

  When you were young, you were taught in school the foundations of natural law and civil law. Natural law showed you men conceived outside society, endowed with the same organism by nature and thereby possessing the same rights; consequently, equal in everything to one another and individually, not subordinated one to another. Civil law showed you men having exchanged unlimited freedom for a peaceful use of it. However, if everyone imposed a limit on their freedom and a rule to their own actions, since they are equal from the maternal womb in respect of natural freedom, they should then be equal in respect of its limitation. It follows, therefore, that here, too, the individual is not subservient to another. In society, the first sovereign is the law, since it is the same for all. But what was the motivation to enter into a social bond and fix arbitrary limits to actions? Reason will say: self-interest. The heart will say: self-interest. The uncorrupted civil law will say: self-interest. We live in a society that has already spanned many stages of improvement, and we have, therefore, forgotten its original state. But consider all young peoples and all societies in a state of nature (if one can put it that way). First, slavery is a crime; second, only the criminal or enemy experiences there the oppression of captivity. By looking at these attitudes, we recognize how far we have strayed from the goal of society, how far we still stand from the summit of social welfare. Everything said by us is familiar to you, and rules like these you have sucked with your mother’s milk. Only a momentary prejudice, only greed (may you not be stung by our utterances), only greed blinds us so we become akin to people going mad in the dark.

  But who among us wears chains, who feels the weight of servitude? The landworker! the nourisher of our wants, the feeder of our hunger, he who gives us health and sustains our life has not the right to utilize what he cultivates or what he produces. Who has the tightest claim to the field if not its cultivator? Let us imagine in our minds men who have arrived in the wilderness in order to set up a society. In considering their subsistence, they divide the land overgrown by grass. Who in the division receives a parcel of land? Is it not he who is able to plow, is it not he who has sufficient strength and desire? A land grant would be useless for a youngster or an old man, for the weak, infirm, and lazy. The land would remain fallow and the wind would not rustle its corn. If it is useless to its cultivator it will be just as pointless to society: its cultivator will have no surplus to give to society since he will not have enough for himself. This is why at the origin of society the person able to work the field had a right to own it and had exclusive use by means of that work. But how far have we strayed from that primordial position of society in respect of ownership! With us, not only is the person who has a natural right to ownership completely excluded but, while cultivating someone else’s land, he sees his subsistence depend on the power of another! To your enlightened minds, these verities cannot be unfathomable; however, your actions in the implementation of these truths, as we already said, have been impeded by prejudices and greed. Can it be that your hearts, full of love for mankind, prefer greed to the sensations that delight your heart? What gain is there in this for you? Can a state in which two-thirds of the citizens are deprived of civic status and are in part dead in the eyes of the law be called blessed? Can the civic condition of the peasant in Russia be called blessed? Only the insatiably bloodthirsty would say that the peasant is blessed since he has no idea of a better situation.

  We shall try now to refute these beastly rulers’ regulations, just as once upon a time our forerunners in their own actions sought unsuccessfully to refute them.

  Civic welfare can appear in various forms. Blessed is the state, they say, when peace and order reign. Blessed it seems when its fields are not barren and when in its cities proud buildings soar. Blessed they call it when the power of its arms extends far and it reigns beyond itself not only through force but also through the power of the word over the opinions of others. But all these forms of welfare can be called superficial, momentary, ephemeral, partial, and theoretical.

  Let us gaze upon the valley that spreads out before our eyes. What do we see? A vast military camp. Everywhere peace reigns there. All the warriors stand in their place. The greatest possible order is beheld in their ranks. A single command, a single wave of the hand of their leader, moves the entire camp and moves it harmoniously. But can we call the soldiers blessed? Turned into puppets by the accuracy of their martial regimentation, they forfeit e
ven the freedom to move that is intrinsic to living matter. They know only the command of the leader, think only as he wishes, and move headlong where he directs. Such is the omnipotence of the scepter over the mightiest force of the state. Together they achieve all things. When divided and on their own, they graze like cattle where the shepherd bids. Order at the expense of freedom is as contrary to our welfare as are very chains.—A hundred prisoners, fixed to the benches of their ships, moved on its course by their oars, live in peace and order. But look into their heart and soul. Torment, grief, despair. Often would they want to exchange life for death; but even this they are refused. The end of suffering is bliss for them; but bliss and bondage are incompatible, and so they live. Let us then not be blinded by the superficial calm and order of the state and for these reasons alone consider it to be fortunate. Always look into the hearts of fellow citizens. If you find in them calm and peace then will you be able to say in truth: they are blessed.

  The Europeans, having pillaged America, her fields fattened with the blood of her native inhabitants, ended their murders when there was a new form of gain. The barren fields of this hemisphere, renewed by strong shocks of nature, felt the plow tear up its entrails. Grass that grew on the rich meadows and dried out fruitlessly felt its stalks cut short by the blade of the scythe. Proud woods topple down on the hills whose heights they had shaded from time immemorial. Barren forests and bitter thickets develop into productive fields and grow covered by hundreds of crops unique to America or successfully transplanted there. Rich meadows are trampled on by many cattle destined for food and labor for man. Everywhere can be seen the creative hand of the maker, everywhere there is the appearance of prosperity and the outward sign of harmony. But who with a hand so mighty nudges scanty, lazy nature to yield its fruit in such abundance? Having slaughtered in one go the Indians, the enraged Europeans, those proponents of peace in the name of the True God, teachers of meekness and philanthropy, graft onto the root of furious murder the practice of the cold-blooded murder that is slavery through the purchase of captives. These unfortunate victims from the torrid banks of the Niger and Senegal, torn from their homes and families, transported to lands unknown to them, under the crushing scepter of orderliness within society, churn up the fertile lands of the America that despises their labor. And will we say of this land of devastation that it is blessed because its fields are not overgrown with weed and its tilled fields abound in various crops? How can we call a land blessed in which a hundred proud citizens wallow in luxury while thousands lack secure provision and their own shelter from heat and frost? Oh, if only these abundant lands could once again become desolate! If only weed and thistle, sinking deep their roots, could destroy all the expensive products of America! Tremble, my beloved ones, lest it be said of you: “Change your name and the story talks about you.”71

  Even now we are amazed by the scale of Egyptian buildings. The incomparable pyramids will for a long time demonstrate the bold architectural design of the Egyptians. But for what were these piles of ludicrous stones prepared? For the burial of the arrogant pharaohs. These haughty potentates, avid of immortality, wished even after death to be set apart in appearance from their people. And, thus, the colossal mass of socially useless buildings gives clear proof of the servitude of the latter. In the debris of lost cities, where the general welfare formerly settled, we find the ruins of schools, hospitals, hotels, aqueducts, theaters, and similar buildings; in those cities where an “I” rather than “we” was more famous, we find the debris of magnificent royal palaces, vast stables, the homes of beasts. Compare one and the other: our choice will not be hard to make.

  But what do we find in the very fame of conquests? Din, thunder, pomposity, and depletion. I compare this kind of fame to the balloons invented in the eighteenth century. Pieced together from silk, they rapidly fill with hot air and fly off at the speed of sound to the lofty heights of the ether. But the thing that comprises their force constantly seeps out from within through the finest chinks: the weight that was spinning upward takes the natural path of gravity downward; so that something whose fabrication took entire months of labor, effort, and expense affords the glances of spectators delight for barely a few hours.

  Inquire, then, what the conqueror craves, what he seeks, when devastating populated lands or by subjugating the deserts to his power? An answer is given to us by the most ferocious among them, Alexander, called the Great—but he, in truth, was great not in his deeds but in the force of his spirit and in the havoc he caused. “O Athenians!” he proclaimed, “how dear has your praise cost me.” Thoughtless one, gaze upon your path. In rampaging through your territory, the impetuous whirlwind of your ascent pulls the inhabitants into its vortex and, dragging the power of the state in its precipitancy, leaves behind it desert and dead space. You do not understand, O raging wild boar, that by laying waste victoriously to the land you conquer you will acquire nothing to give you pleasure after the conquest. If you acquire a desert, it will serve as a grave in which your citizens will disappear; if you populate a new desert, you will render abundant land infertile. What gain is there in turning deserts into villages if you empty other settlements to do so? If the land you acquired is inhabited, count up your murders and be horrified. You need to eliminate all the hearts that have learned to hate you for your thunder bearing, since you could not possibly think that they could love someone they have been forced to fear. After the extermination of brave citizens, timid souls will remain and be subjected to you, ready to accept the yoke of slavery; however, in them, too, hatred of your crushing victory will take root. The fruit of your conquest will be—do not flatter yourself—murder and hatred. You will remain in the memory of descendants as a scourge; you will be punished knowing that your new slaves revile you and seek from you your own death.

  Stooping to closer considerations about the condition of landworkers, how harmful we find it is to society. It is harmful to the increase of plants and people, it is harmful by way of example, and it is dangerous because of the insecurity it creates. Man, motivated in his initiatives by self-interest, undertakes what is of benefit to him, near or distant, and retreats from that in which he finds no immediate or future use. Following this natural instinct, everything we undertake for ourselves, everything that we do unforced, we do with dedication, care, well. Conversely, everything we do unwillingly, everything that we complete not for our good, we do shoddily, lazily, higgledy-piggledy. Landworkers in our state are this way. Their field is not their own, its produce does not belong to them. And this is why they cultivate it so lazily and are not concerned if it goes empty under their care. Compare this field with the one granted by an arrogant owner for the meagre subsistence of its cultivator. He does not stint on the effort he undertakes for it. Nothing distracts him from its cultivation. He overcomes shortage of time by not sleeping; hours set aside for rest he spends at work; on days designated for amusement, he shuns it. This is because he takes care of himself, works for himself, does everything for himself, and thus the field will give him an exceptional harvest; and this is how all the fruits of the labors of landworkers die or do not grow back; and yet they would have grown and survived to nourish citizens if the cultivation of the field were done carefully, if it were free.

  But because compulsory work gives a smaller yield, the earth’s productivity falls short of its goal, hindering population growth by the same amount. Where there is nothing to eat there will be no one since even if there were someone they would die of starvation. By not yielding a full harvest, serf cultivation kills off the citizens to whom surplus was allocated by nature. Is this, however, the only way in which slavery stymies high productivity? To the inadequate supply of subsistence food and clothing has been added an exhausting workload. Compound this with offenses of arrogance and abuses of power, which affect even the tenderest sensibilities of man, and then you will see with horror the incipient destructiveness of slavery, differing from victories and conquests only in that it does not allow to co
me about what victory will cut down in the first place. But serfdom is more pernicious. Everyone can see easily that the one devastates randomly and instantaneously; the other destroys for the long term and always. The one, when it has run its course, terminates its ferocity; the other only begins where the former leaves off and cannot change except perhaps only by the collapse, always dangerous, of its entire internal structure.

  But nothing is more damaging than having the objects of slavery always in view. On the one hand, arrogance is born; on the other, timidity. Between them there can be no connection except force. Concentrated within a small sphere, it ponderously exercises its oppressive power everywhere. The champions of slavery are not only those who hold power and a weapon in their hands, its most fanatical advocates can be those imprisoned in chains. It seems that the spirit of freedom becomes so atrophied in slaves that not only do they not wish to see their own suffering end, but they find it unbearable to watch others being free. They have come to love their chains if it is possible for a human being to love his destruction. I believe we see in them the serpent that brought about the fall of the first man.—Examples of power wielding are contagious. We our very selves, we must admit, armed with the cudgel of bravery and of nature to attack the hydra-headed monster that sucks dry the communal nourishment prepared for the sustenance of citizens—we have, perhaps, succumbed to the temptation to act tyrannically, and although our intentions have always been good and directed toward the general welfare, our imperious conduct cannot be justified by its usefulness. And we now implore you thus to pardon our unpremeditated audacity.