Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - IV
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a general and then a pale man, dressed as a civilian.
The latter ascended the scaffold, where two men with
red caps took him by the arms, hung a black plate over
his neck, on which his sentence was written in white
letters. Then one of the executioners took his hat off
his head so that he should listen reverently to what was
to be read to him.
It was his indictment. It was long enough; closely
printed, it fills over six hundred lines; it took more
than an hour to read. But it would be difficult to find
a legal document with less foundation for its charges.
“Several circumstances,” it says, “have pointed out
to the government the said Tchernuishevski as an agitator
dangerous to the State.” These circumstances are:
first, an anonymous letter sent to the Third Section (the
secret police). This letter, which is quoted at length
with all its vulgarity and stupidity, calls upon the
government to free the people from Tchernuishevski. In
the second place, an intercepted letter from the exile
Alexander Herzen, in which is found, “We intend to
publish Sovremennik here or in London with
Tchernuishevski.” For these two things Tchernuislievski was
imprisoned. Now follows in the indictment the list of
the papers “belonging to the case,” that is, a letter from
the accused to his wife, in which he says that they both
belong to history, so that their names will be known for
centuries, and the production of a newspaper article
from 1853, which was now in 1862 found to be
dangerous.
In all this, however, there is no foundation for any
legal proceedings. But while the accused is in prison,
in March, 1863, they were fortunate enough in the Third
Section to obtain possession of a letter from a certain
Kostomarof to one of his friends, in which it is said
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