Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖
- Author: Irina Reyfman
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“My venality they alleged on the grounds that the wife of the assessor did not wish to avenge the death of her husband, but rather, led by her own greed and following the practice of her husband, preferred to spare the peasants punishment in order, as she said, not to forfeit her estate. She also came to see me with a request along these lines. I agreed with her about forgiving the murder of her husband, but our motivations differed. She assured me that she would punish them quite enough, whereas I tried to persuade her that in acquitting her husband’s murderers it was important not to submit them to the same extreme punishment so that they wouldn’t again become evildoers—as they were wrongly called.
“The governor-general was soon informed of my view on this matter, learned that I had tried to win over my colleagues to my thoughts, and that they were beginning to waiver in their reasoning—wherein it was not the firmness and persuasiveness of my arguments that proved conducive but rather the money of the assessor’s wife. Being himself a product of the rules of unlimited power over the peasants, he does not agree with my judgments and, indignant on seeing this reasoning, begins to prevail in the deliberation of this affair albeit for other reasons. He sends for my colleagues, admonishes them, asserting the deplorable nature of such views as injurious to noble society, injurious to supreme power because they violate legal statutes; he promises reward to all those who fulfilled the law, threatening with sanction anyone who does not obey it; and he soon brings round to their previous views weak judges lacking principles in their reflections or firmness of spirit. I was not surprised to note the change, since their previous reversal caused me no surprise. It is natural for weak, timid, and base souls to shudder at the menace of power and to embrace its acceptance.
“Our governor-general, having reversed the opinions of my colleagues, perhaps planned, and flattered himself on this, to change mine, too. He had this goal in mind when he summoned me on the morning of what happened to be a holiday. He was obliged to summon me, since I was not in the habit of attending those mindless audiences that pride regards as the duty of subordinates, flattery regards as necessary, but the wise man regards as loathsome and offensive to humanity. He deliberately chose a day of celebration when a large number of people attended his gathering; he deliberately chose a public gathering for his speech, reckoning that this would convince me more conclusively. He counted on discovering in me either a timorous soul or mental weakness. He took aim at both of these in his speech. But I consider it unnecessary to paraphrase for you all that his arrogance, sense of power, and overweening confidence in his astuteness and learning imparted to his eloquence. To his arrogance I replied with indifference and calm; to his power—with firmness, matching logical argument for argument, and I spoke for a long time with icy control. But in the end a shaken heart spilled out its surplus of feeling. The clearer the audience’s acquiescence became, the more emotional my speech. In a firm voice and ringing enunciation I finally cried out: ‘Each person is born into this world the equal of any other. We all have similar limbs, we all have reason and will. Man considered, therefore, outside society is a being dependent on nobody else for his own deeds. But he puts a limit on these, consents not to subordinate himself to his own will alone, and becomes obedient to the commands of other human beings, in a word becomes a citizen. For the sake of what cause does he restrain his desires? For what purpose does he set a power over himself?
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