[59] See "Russian Novelists" by Viscount Vogue. But the statements of
this virulent French reactionary must be received with extreme caution
as his perverted brains frequently prevent him from stating the truth.
For example, in speaking of Turgenev, he says, "But, tho always ready to
help others, he certainly never gave his aid to any political intriguer.
Was it natural that a man of his refinement and high culture should have
aided the schemes of wild and fruitless political conspiracies?" By
'political intriguer' he means an 'enemy to the empire, a revolutionist.
Now the facts are that no one was of greater use to Herzen the
arch-revolutionist and his thundering Kolokol, than Turgenev. Herzen was
in England and often it was impossible to explain how he knew some of
the events which he described. It was Turgenev who furnished him this
information. All this is revealed by the published correspondence of
Herzen and Turgenev. Turgenev was fully and entirely in sympathy with
the Russian Revolution. He earnestly desired to meet Ippolit Mishkin,
and begged Kropotkin to tell him all he knew about this defiant
revolutionary orator. Turgenev deeply loved his own Bazaroff, and in
explaining him says, "If the reader is not won by Bazaroff,
notwithstanding his roughness, absence of heart, pitiless dryness and
terseness, then the fault is with me--I have missed my aim; but to
sweeten him with syrup (to use Bazaroff's own language), this I did not
want to do, altho perhaps thru that I would have won Russian youth at
once to my side.... When he calls himself nihilist, you must read
revolutionist."
[60] This does not include obsequious authors like Derzhavin and
Karamzin. Masters are usually willing to fling a few crumbs to their
fawning dogs.
IN LATER LIFE
There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the
Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind,--Leo Tolstoy
and Peter Kropotkin.--GEORG BRANDES
A storm careered madly over the Northern Sea, its impatient waves
heaving and howling, leaping with a burning frenzy, the fuming raging
billows surging and swelling, calling and crying, roaring louder and
louder, vaulting higher and higher.
The steamer shook and swayed and struggled; the frightened passengers
sought shelter in their state-rooms, but one of them sat for hours upon
the stem of the deck, enjoying the tempest intensely, putting out his
face so it could be watered by the foam of the dashing waves. This was
Kropotkin. After the years he had spent in the charnel cell, no wonder
every fibre in his body was trembling and throbbing to meet the force
and passion of the sea-storm.
He landed safely in the country where Herzen founded _The Bell_, where
Lavrov edited _Forward_, where Felix Volkhovsky was to conduct _Free
Russia_, and where he himself was to start _Freedom_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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