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Letters” about the insignificance of Russia to European
culture, its everlasting coming too late. To punish him
for this, he was declared and treated as insane by the
Tsar. Byelinski, “the Lessing of Russia,” already far
gone in consumption, which carried him off when only
thirty-eight years old, now began his impassioned
literary campaign with the official world and the official
literature. When “The Annals of our Fatherland,”
appeared on the 25th of each month, the whole
cultured youth were in a fever to get hold of the thick
volume. They were continually asking during the whole
forenoon, in the cafés, if the number had come; as soon
as it arrived, they tore it open with the question, “Is
there anything of Byelinski’s in it?” If only one page
was found of his, it was devoured eagerly and debated in
endless discussions.
His fire, his sarcasm, his sneers, his unmaskings
enchained all, and people flocked together where he
swung his whip, as if to see an execution. Almost on
his death-bed, he attacked his disciple Gogol for his
back-sliding. As the disciple of the culture of Western
Europe, he cut down pedants and Slavophiles.
When he died, his friends were forbidden to place an
epitaph at his grave. The newspapers were forbidden to
mention his name, and the prohibition has remained in
force for full eighteen years.
It fell to Herzen’s lot to carry Byelinski’s literary
purification and reformation into the political arena.
He was admirably constituted for such a contest, which
was to endure for many years. He was not spindling
and weak like his friend, but large and broad-shouldered,
a powerful frame, and not poor and therefore dependent,
but after his father’s death he was in possession of what,
even by Russian standards, would be regarded as a large
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