Emigrants for emigrants

There have been quite a few waves of emigration in the history of Russia, so comparisons must be looked for carefully. One cannot, for example, say that the current situation for the journalists who have left is somewhat similar to the situation of the white émigré newspapers and magazines in which the young Vladimir Nabokov collaborated.

Frankly speaking, there is practically nothing in common both in the everyday situation and in the model of work. White emigration made up a huge body of people who left Russia, who completely cut off ties with the country and began to boil in their own juice. This also applied to the fact that there was almost no connection with people within the USSR, and the fact that all publications (often published in tangible circulation - in Berlin, for example!) were made hermetically, that is, by emigrants for emigrants.

It cannot be ruled out, of course, that at some point in 2022 or 2023 such publications (emigrants for emigrants) will now appear in new centers of emigration - primarily in the Transcaucasus and the Baltic countries. But it is important to emphasize that in the first 100 days of the war they did not appear, despite the fact that, in addition to relocated well-known media, new names and brands appeared (usually small and compact media).

Why is this happening? Almost all modern emigre publications in Russian work remotely. On the principle of "body here, soul there" in Putin's Russia. Thanks to messengers and social networks, which, despite the blockages in Russia, somehow continue to work, this feeling is intensified. For some, little has changed since the pandemic.

All modern emigrant publications in Russian work remotely on the principle of “body here, soul there”

Therefore, perhaps the most accurate analogy would be the journalism of the Russian diaspora in the second half of the 19th century. It can also be described by the formula “body here, soul there” (at least in part). Let's look at the phenomenon of that journalism in order to understand its causes and prerequisites, find similarities and differences with today's situation and draw conclusions.

An atmosphere of hope and inspiration

To begin with, there was no relocation of free and independent media from Tsarist Russia. Free and independent media - and then in a very limited form - existed only for a short time after 1905. All publications within what was then Russia of all directions and views always (!) Worked under conditions of censorship. The same applies to our classical literature, which we study at school.

We do not know and will not know what that uncensored literature could have been, but the press files have been preserved - and yes, the differences are quite strong. If Dobrolyubov needed in Sovremennik to "admire" the police measures, trials and repressions in Aesopian language in a sugary-mocking way, then in London, if you print a newspaper in a free printing house, you can call a spade a spade. Translated into the realities of today - to call "war" "war", for example.

But back to the appearance of the phenomenon itself. The émigré Russian press of the 19th century was born in dramatically different circumstances than today, in an atmosphere of hope and general enthusiasm.

The last years of the reign of Nicholas I are indeed very similar to the current Putin regime - they are also called the gloomy seven years. It was a period of strangulation of any germs of freedom within the country, tightening the screws, revealingly cruel punishments for nothing (the fake execution of Dostoevsky for a copy of Belinsky's letter - this is then). This was the period when Russia entered the Crimean War, where instead of a weak Turkey, it found itself in conflict with almost all of Europe.

At the same time, Alexander Herzen, the godfather of Russian journalism in exile, left the country. It was a time of revolutions in European countries, and Herzen actively joined, as they would say today, "in the movement." For this, the tsar manually arrested the rather large fortune of Herzen in Russia. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? With the help of the banker Rothschild, however, our revolutionary managed, let's say, to unfreeze his accounts.

Anyway, there was money. But the Kolokol newspaper, the flagship of the future émigré press, came out only in July 1857. Two years after the death of the tyrant king and a year after the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War.

What was that time? To paraphrase Talleyrand, Leo Tolstoy recalled him as follows: "He who did not live in 1856 does not know what life is." Russia woke up from sleep, as Pushkin had promised, and everything pulsed and began to move. Society was expecting change, and it seemed more and more real.

“If we sit with folded hands and be content with fruitless grumbling and noble indignation (...) then bright days will not come for Russia for a long time,” Herzen wrote at the time. It is with this attitude that he creates the "Bell". As a lobbying tool that would make it possible to put pressure on the government of the new king and prevent him from evading the implementation of real reforms.

If we are content with noble indignation, then bright days will not come for Russia for a long time.

Kolokol, which was smuggled illegally, but en masse, to Russia, came out not only and not so much for the conditional opposition. It was also read in their offices by senior dignitaries who prepared drafts of peasant and other reforms. It was in fact, if not quite direct, but a dialogue. Moreover, more and more anonymous materials from Russia came to Kolokol - in fact, it was a platform for uncensored posting of any thoughts, a kind of discussion club for a country on the verge of reforms.

If you look at Herzen, his comrades and their newspaper in such an optics, it becomes more and more clear that the point is not in them and not in the fact that they created some kind of brilliant product. In the terminology of surfers, they simply rode a mighty wave that rose by itself - and then, for a while. After the liberation of the peasants, and especially after the Polish uprising of 1863, the Bell abruptly lost its relevance. Public opinion in Russia turned out to be unprepared for Polonophile rhetoric. Herzen published a newspaper in French for some time and then closed it altogether.

Replacement of the defunct State Duma

The well-known Russian-Soviet literary critic Svyatopolk-Mirsky (son of the tsarist Minister of the Interior) in his fundamental history of Russian literature, originally written for English students, has a very accurate observation: Russian journals of the 19th century and their literary critics like Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev and others should be perceived rather as a political phenomenon, as a substitute for the parliament, the future Duma, in the absence of it. Simply put, when Dobrolyubov wrote about Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm, he wrote not so much about the play itself as about his political views.

Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev should be perceived as a substitute for parliament

The same idea applies, and even more so, to newspapers and magazines published abroad. "The Bell" was the first sign, and, as mentioned above, its peak of popularity fell on a general request in the spirit of "change our hearts demand", and then the publishers could not decide where to pull the helm - to the ax or to the relatively calm change.

At the same time, in the 1860s and 1870s, other publications appeared that worked essentially on the same model worked out by Herzen. They simultaneously became the voices of certain political groups within Russia, their mouthpiece and lobbying tool, which made it possible to slightly correct public opinion and, if you were lucky, the course of the government.

Not all of them were left or centre-left like Kolokol. In fact, and here we again return to the analogy of Svyatopolk-Mirsky, the entire political spectrum of the future State Duma was represented there - from moderate liberals like Golovin's Strela and Blummer's Vesti to constitutional monarchists like Prince Dolgorukov's Future refused to return to Russia, but held very different views than Herzen. Here is a characteristic quotation from his newspaper: "We do not like revolutions or revolutionaries."

There were almost no ultra-conservative newspapers in emigration, because it was not difficult to publish them inside Russia.

Road to revolution

The ratio of the space of the possible and the impossible in Russian journalism has been constantly changing. During the period of reforms, there were counter-reforms, and after the assassination of Alexander II, the country was in for a freeze.

But one way or another, the diverse political spectrum of emigre journalism described above has been shrinking, consistently and steadily. In the 1880s and 1890s, it was possible to publish, albeit with some reservations, liberal and even more so constitutional-monarchist newspapers and magazines in Russia.

In the 1880s and 1890s, liberal newspapers and magazines could also be published in Russia.

The emigre press became almost exclusively leftist—anarchist, Marxist, in a word, revolutionary (Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, Volkhovsky, Chertkov, the notorious Plekhanov and others). It was more and more not just the press, it was the (future) party press, unambiguously calling to the barricades, to revolution and civil war.

All this, as you know, happened. And not everyone, including me, liked the result. So you have to be careful with what you call for even in a small emigrant leaflet. After all, your wishes can come true.