Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

by Irina Reyfman

  But do you know, our dear fellow citizens, how great the destruction is before us, how great the peril in which we find ourselves? All the coarsened sentiments of a slave, which even by a wave of the happy wand of freedom are not moved to action, will only intensify and lead this internal sensation to fulfilment. A stream, blocked in its course, becomes stronger the harder the resistance it finds. Once it breaks through the dam, nothing can oppose its overflow. Such are our brothers held in chains. They await chance and the moment. The bell sounds. And then ferocious destructiveness rapidly overflows. We will see ourselves surrounded by the sword and torch. Death and fire will be recompense for our harshness and inhumanity. And the slower and more stubborn we will have been in the dissolving of their bonds, the swifter they will be in their revenge. Remember for yourself recent history. Enticement incited even slaves to such violence directed at the destruction of their masters! Lured by some rude pretender, they streamed in his wake and want nothing more than to free themselves from the yoke of their overlords; in their ignorance they devised no better means for this than their murder.72 They spared neither sex nor age. They sought more the joy of revenge than the usefulness of the shaking off their shackles.

  This is what awaits us, this is what we must expect. Destruction gradually mounts and danger already hovers over our heads. Having already raised its scythe, time waits for the convenient moment, and the first flatterer or lover of mankind, arisen to stir the unfortunate, will hasten his blow. Beware.

  But if the horror of destruction and the threat of the forfeiture of property can move the weak among you, can we not be so brave as to suppress our prejudices and combat our greed; can we not free our brethren from the chains of slavery and resurrect the natural equality of all? Understanding the disposition of your hearts, I know that it is more pleasant for them to be reassured by arguments found in the human heart rather than in the enumeration of egotistical reasons and even less still in fear of danger. Go, my dear ones, go into the homes of your brethren, announce to them the change to their fate. Announce it with heartfelt feeling: “Moved to pity by your fate, empathizing with our peers, fathoming your equality with us, and convinced by the common good, we have come to kiss our brethren. We have forsaken the proud distinction that has for so long separated us from you, we have forgotten the inequality that used to exist between us. Now let us rejoice in our victory and this day on which the chains of our fellow dear citizens have crumbled, may this day remain as the most famous in our chronicles. Forget our former crime against you and let us love one another sincerely.”

  This will be your speech, this is already audible in the inner chambers of your hearts. Do not tarry, my beloved ones. Time flies, our days pass in inaction. Let us not finish our life having only arrived at a good idea and unable to implement it. May posterity not take the opportunity to remove our laurels and say of us disdainfully: they had their moment.

  This is what I read on the mud-spattered paper that I picked up in front of the postal station when I got down from my carriage.

  Having entered the station, I asked which travelers had arrived shortly before me. “The last of the travelers passing through,” said the station master, “was a man of about fifty. He was traveling on a post-horse voucher to Petersburg. He left behind here a bundle of papers that I shall now send after him.” I asked the postman to give me these papers to look at and from unbundling them learned that the paper I found belonged to that set. I persuaded him to hand over these papers by giving him a gratuity. On looking through them, I learned that they belonged to my true friend, and for that reason did not consider their acquisition to be theft. As of now, he has not asked them back from me and has left me to do as I wished with them.

  Meanwhile as they were harnessing afresh my horses, I grew curious as I examined the papers that I had acquired. I found many similar to the sheet I had already read. I consistently encountered the character of a philanthropic heart, consistently saw the citizen of future times. More than anything it was clear that my friend had been stunned by the inequality of civilian rankings. A large bundle of papers and legal sketches concerned the abolition of slavery in Russia. But my friend, knowing that the supreme power in Russia lacked sufficient strength to change opinion immediately, had sketched a way forward for incremental legislation toward the gradual emancipation of landworkers in Russia. I shall here demonstrate his train of thought. His first regulation concerns the distinction between rural serfdom and domestic serfdom. The latter is abolished first, and nobles are forbidden to take into their homes all rural dwellers and anyone registered in the census. Should a landowner take a landworker into his home as a servant or laborer then the landworker becomes free. Serfs should be permitted to enter into marriage without requiring the agreement of their master. A bride-price should not change hands in the process. The second regulation relates to property and the defense of landworkers. They should own as their property the parcel of land they cultivate since they pay their own poll tax. Property acquired by a peasant should belong to him; let no one deprive him of it on a whim. The landworker should be restored in the status of citizen. It is appropriate that he will be tried by his equals, in peasant courts, for which the jury selection be made from serfs as well. The peasant is to be permitted to acquire fixed property, that is to buy land. He will be permitted the unrestricted acquisition of freedom by paying the master an agreed sum for manumission. Arbitrary punishment without trial is to be forbidden. “Disappear barbaric custom, perish power of tigers!” proclaims our legislator…. The complete abolition of slavery follows this.

  Among the many decrees relating to the restoration, insofar as possible, of equality of citizens I found the Table of Ranks.73 How anachronistic it is in the present day, and inadequate, each can imagine himself. But presently the bell on the tracing rein of the middle horse rings and summons me for departure; and for that reason I decided that it would be better to think about what is more suitable for the traveler by coach: that his horses proceed at a trot or amble; or what is more suitable for the postal nag, whether to be an ambler or charger—better this than to get caught up in what does not exist.

  VYSHNY VOLOCHOK

  I have never driven past this new city without going to see the locks here. The first person who conceived the idea of imitating nature in its positive actions and to create an artificial river in order to establish a better nexus connecting all the ends of the region deserves a monument for most distant posterity. When for natural and moral reasons current powers collapse, when their gilded fields become overgrown by brambles, and grass snakes, serpents, and toads hide in the ruins of the magnificent palaces of their proud rulers, then the curious traveler will find eloquent remains of their magnificence in commerce. The Romans built great roads, aqueducts whose durability amazes to this day and rightly so. But they had no concept of the interconnected waterways that currently exist in Europe. Our roads will never be the like those of the Romans. Our long winter and the hard frosts prevent it, but even without lining canals will take a long time to disappear.

  More than a little delight was afforded me by the sight of the canal at Vyshny Volochok full of vessels loaded with grain and other merchandise being prepared to pass through the locks for their sailing onward to Petersburg. Here we could see the true abundance of the land and the surpluses of the landworker. Here, plain and visible in all its brilliance, was the powerful stimulus to human actions: the profit motive. But if at first glance my mind was pleased by the sight of prosperity, my rejoicing soon dissipated on the breaking down of my thoughts into parts. For I recalled that many landworkers in Russia do not work for themselves; and therefore in many regions of Russia the productivity of land demonstrates the oppressed lot of its inhabitants. My pleasure changed into indignation comparable to my feelings when in the summertime I walk on the pier at the customs station, gazing on the ships that transport to us America’s surpluses and her expensive products, like sugar, coffee, pigments, and other items in wh
ich the sweat, tears, and blood drenching them during their production have yet to dry out.

  “Imagine,” my friend said to me once, “that the coffee poured into your cup, and the sugar dissolved in it, deprived someone just like you of rest, that they caused him to make exertions beyond his strength, caused his tears, groans, punishment, and abuse. Hard-hearted one, go on, dare to slake your throat.” The look of disapproval accompanying this speech shook me to my inner core. My hand began to tremble and the coffee spilled.

  And you, O residents of Petersburg, who feed on the surpluses of the productive regions of our fatherland at magnificent feasts or at a friendly dinner, or on your own, when your hand picks up the first piece of bread designated for your satiety, stop and think. Might I not tell you the same thing that my friend told me about products of America? Might it not be through sweat, tears, and groaning that the fields on which it grew have been fattened? Blessed are you if the piece of bread you hunger after derives from grains originating in a field classified as state property; or at least in a field that pays quitrent to the landowner. But woe unto you if its dough is from grain collected in a granary belonging to a nobleman. Woe and despair resided there; it was branded with the curse of the Almighty who once in his wrath uttered: “Cursed is the ground in its needs.”74 Take care lest you be poisoned by the food you desire. The bitter tear of a pauper lies heavy on it. Cast it from your lips. Keep the fast, fasting can be true and useful.

  A tale about a certain landowner will show that man forgets about the humanity of his fellow men due to his greed and that for an example of hard-heartedness we have no need to go to distant lands nor to search for wonders at the end of the world. They are being perpetrated in our realm before our eyes.

  Mr. Someone, having not found in his government service what is commonly called happiness or not wishing to stoop to finding the like, left the capital, acquired a small estate, with, say, one hundred or two hundred souls, and decided to make his income in agriculture. He did not assign himself to the plow but intended in the most practical way conceivable to make all possible use of the natural vitality of his peasants and apply them to the cultivation of the land. He determined that the most reliable way to do this was to create out of his peasants instruments devoid of will and initiative; and he genuinely fashioned out of them in certain respects soldiers of a contemporary kind directed as a cohort—as a cohort racing headlong to war—who individually had no significance at all. To achieve his goal, he withdrew from them the small portion of plowland and meadows that noblemen normally give them for their essential subsistence in return for all the compulsory labors they require from their peasants. In a word, this landowner, Mr. Someone, forced all his peasants, their wives, and their children, to work all the days of the year for him. And lest they die of hunger he allocated them a fixed amount of bread known by the name of the monthly allocation.75 Those who did not have families did not receive the monthly allocation but, in the fashion of the Lacedaemonians, dined together in the manor house, for the maintenance of their digestion using cabbage soup without meat on meat days and on fast days bread and kvass. Reliable breakings of a fast used to take place probably during Easter week.76

  For peasants maintained this way, clothing was produced that was proper and suited their situation. They made their own footwear for winter, that is baste shoes; foot wraps they received from their master while in the summer they went barefoot. Consequently, such prisoners had neither a cow nor horse nor ewe nor ram. They were deprived by their master not of permission to keep them but of the means to do so. Anyone who was a bit more prosperous, anyone who was moderate in their food consumption, kept some poultry, which sometimes the master would take for himself, paying whatever price he felt like.

  Given this sort of arrangement, it is not surprising that tillage in Mr. Someone’s village was in a flourishing state. When everyone else had a poor harvest, his grain was four times more; when others had a good harvest his came to ten times or more. Within a short time, in addition to the two hundred souls he already possessed, he bought a further two hundred victims of his greed, and by treating them exactly as he had the first lot, he increased his property year by year, augmenting the number of people groaning in his fields. By now he counts them in the thousands and is famed as a land manager.

  Barbarian, you are unworthy of the name of citizen! What good is it to the state to have several thousand more units of grain generated if those who produce it are treated on a par with the ox assigned to plow a difficult furrow? Or do we think that the welfare of citizens consists in the granaries being full of grain while stomachs are empty so that a single person rather than thousands blesses the government? The wealth of this bloodsucker does not belong to him. It has been accumulated through robbery and by law deserves severe punishment. There are, indeed, people who when gazing upon the opulent fields of this executioner make out of him an example of advancement in tillage. And you would like to be known as lenient bearers of the name of the guardians of general prosperity. Instead of encouraging coercion of this kind, which is what you consider the source of the state’s wealth, visit upon this villain of society a philanthropic vengeance. Destroy his agricultural equipment, burn his haycocks, barns, granaries, and scatter the ashes in the fields where his brutality took place, brand him as a common thief so that everyone who sees him will not only feel revulsion but shall avoid his approach in order not to be contaminated by his example.

  VYDROPUSK

  Here I resumed looking at the papers of my friend. I happened upon the sketch of a proposal for the abolition of court ranks.

  Project for the Future

  When introducing gradually once again the natural and civic equality that had been destroyed in society, our ancestors considered the reduction of the privileges of the nobility to be not the least means thereto. Originally useful to the government owing to its personal merits, the nobility grew weak in its accomplishments due to its inherited status: sweet when first planted, its root at the end bore bitter fruit. Instead of bravery, arrogance and self-love set in; instead of nobility of the soul and generosity, servility and lack of self-confidence took root, genuine impediments to greatness. By living among these small souls, moved to perform petty deeds due to flattery of hereditary virtues and merits, many monarchs assumed that they were gods and that everything they touched would become blessed and luminous. This should be what our deeds are like but only for the public good. Such was their fantasy about the greatness of their power that Tsars imagined that their slaves and servants, by constantly coming before their gaze, assimilated their radiance; that royal splendor by being refracted, so to speak, in these new reflections, appears multiplied and more sparkling. Such was their deluded idea that Tsars erected idols of the court, who like little godlings of theater, obey a whistle or a rattle. Let us review the degrees of court ranks and let us with a pitying smile avert our gaze from those who are proud of their service; but let us weep when seeing them preferred over merit. My steward, stable boy, and even groom and driver, cook, waiter, bird catcher and the hunters supervised by him, my room servants, the man who shaves me, the man who combs the hair on my head, he who cleans the dust and dirt from my shoes, not to mention many others, are deemed equal or superior to those who serve the fatherland with their spiritual and physical strength and for the fatherland spare neither their well-being nor blood, loving even death for the sake of the glory of their state. What good is it to you that cleanliness and tidiness reign in my home? Will you be fed heartily if my meal is prepared better than yours and if wine from all parts of the world is in my goblets? Will you be protected in your travels from inclement weather if my chariot is gilded and my horses are fat? Will a field produce for you better fruit, will your meadows be greener if they are trampled upon when animals are hunted for the sake of my enjoyment? You will smile with a feeling of pity. But the person will not be rare who in righteous indignation says to us: he who cares for the condition of your palaces; he who w
arms them; he who combines the fiery spice of equatorial plants and cold stickiness of northern animal fat for the delight of your weakened digestion and jaded palate; he who makes the sweet juice of the African grape foam in your glass; he who lubricates the round part of your carriage wheel, feeds and waters your horses; he who in your name wages a bloody war against the beasts of the forest and birds of the sky—all these parasites, all these panderers to your arrogance, like many others, are superior to me who shed streams of blood on the battlefield; who lost the most essential limbs of my body when defending your cities and palaces in which your timidity was veiled by a curtain of pomposity disguised as bravery; who pass my days of joy, youth, and delights in the saving of the smallest mite to lighten insofar as possible the general burden of taxes; who did not take care of my estate, working day and night in the quest for means to achieve general welfare; who trample kinship, friendship, the union of heart and blood, by declaring in court the truth in your name so that you will be loved. Our hair turns white amid our exploits, our forces are exhausted in the labors we have undertaken, and on the brink of the grave we scarcely earn your approval, whereas all those calves fattened on the teats of leniencies and vice, those illegitimate sons of the fatherland, will inherit our property.

  This and even more, in fairness, is how many of you speak out. What shall we, holders of power, answer in return? Let us disguise our humiliation in indifference, but an enraged fury in our eyes will glare at those uttering in this manner. Often these are our answers to declarations of truth. And may no one be surprised when the best of us dares this sort of thing. He lives among flatterers, talks with flatterers, sleeps with flattery, walks in flattery. And flattery and toadying have made him deaf, blind, and dull.