Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia | Page 4

of serfdom which existed at that time, and
which cast a blight upon the energy and dignity of the Russian nation,
nourished feelings of grief and indignation in the noblest minds of the

educated classes, and, unable to struggle for their principles in the field
of practical politics, they strove towards abstract idealism. They
devoted their energies to philosophy, literature, and art. It was then that
Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoyevsky embarked upon their
phenomenal careers in fiction. It was then that the impetuous essayist,
Byelinsky, with his fiery and eloquent pen, taught the true meaning and
objects of literature. Nekrassov soon joined the circles of literary
people dominated by the spirit of Byelinsky, and he too drank at the
fountain of idealism and imbibed the gospel of altruistic toil for his
country and its people, that gospel of perfect citizenship expounded by
Byelinsky, Granovsky, and their friends. It was at this period that his
poetry became impregnated with the sadness which, later on, was
embodied in the lines:
My verses! Living witnesses of tears Shed for the world, and born In
moments of the soul's dire agony, Unheeded and forlorn, Like waves
that beat against the rocks, You plead to hearts that scorn.
Nekrassov's material conditions meanwhile began to improve, and he
actually developed business capacities, and soon the greatest writers of
the time were contributing to the monthly review Sovremenik (the
Contemporary) which Nekrassov bought in 1847. Turgenieff, Herzen,
Byelinsky, Dostoyevsky gladly sent their works to him, and Nekrassov
soon became the intellectual leader of his time. His influence became
enormous, but he had to cope with all the rigours of the censorship
which had become almost insupportable in Russia, as the effect of the
Tsar's fears aroused by the events of the French Revolution of 1848.
Byelinsky died in that year from consumption in the very presence of
the gendarmes who had come to arrest him for some literary offence.
Dostoyevsky was seized, condemned to death, and when already on the
scaffold, with the rope around his neck, reprieved and sent for life to
the Siberian mines. The rigours still increased during the Crimean War,
and it was only after the death of Nicholas I., the termination of the war,
and the accession of the liberal Tsar, Alexander II., that Nekrassov and
Russian literature in general began to breathe more freely. The decade
which followed upon 1855 was one of the bright periods of Russian

history. Serfdom was abolished and many great reforms were passed. It
was then that Nekrassov's activity was at its height. His review
Sovremenik was a stupendous success, and brought him great fame and
wealth. During that year some of his finest poems appeared in it: "The
Peasant Children," "Orina, the Mother of a Soldier," "The Gossips,"
"The Pedlars," "The Rail-way," and many others.
Nekrassov became the idol of Russia. The literary evenings at which he
used to read his poems aloud were besieged by fervent devotees, and
the most brilliant orations were addressed to him on all possible
occasions. His greatest work, however, the national epic, _Who can be
Happy in Russia?_ was written towards the latter end of his life,
between 1873 and 1877.
Here he suffered from the censor more cruelly than ever. Long extracts
from the poem were altogether forbidden, and only after his death it
was allowed, in 1879, to appear in print more or less in its entirety.
When gripped in the throes of his last painful illness, and practically on
his deathbed, he would still have found consolation in work, in the
dictation of his poems. But even then his sufferings were aggravated by
the harassing coercions of the censor. His last great poem was written
on his deathbed, and the censor peremptorily forbade its publication.
Nekrassov one day greeted his doctor with the following remark:
"Now you see what our profession, literature, means. When I wrote my
first lines they were hacked to pieces by the censor's scissors--that was
thirty-seven years ago; and now, when I am dying, and have written my
last lines, I am again confronted by the scissors."
For many months he lay in appalling suffering. His disease was the
outcome, he declared, of the privations he had suffered in his youth.
The whole of Russia seemed to be standing at his bedside, watching
with anguish his terrible struggle with death. Hundreds of letters and
telegrams arrived daily from every corner of the immense empire, and
the dying poet, profoundly touched by these tokens of love and
sympathy, said to the literary friends who visited him:

"You see! We wonder all our lives what our readers think of us,
whether they love us and are our friends. We learn in moments like
this...."
It was a bright, frosty December day when Nekrassov's coffin was
carried to