Konstantin Kavelin, a professor at Petersburg University, wrote to a Moscow friend on March 4, 1855, “That Kalmyk demigod, that fiend of clerical-uniform enlightenment, who had cut out the face of thought, who had destroyed thousands of characters and minds, has kicked the bucket.” He added, as if echoing the formula of Benkendorf, chief of the secret police, on Russia’s “past, present, and future”: “If the present were not so horrible and grim, and the future so mysterious and enigmatic, one could go mad with joy.”24 Petersburg’s residents feared that things would be even worse under the new emperor, Alexander II.
Alexander, tall like his father, was handsome and blue-eyed. Despite Tyutchev’s crack that when the emperor spoke with an intelligent person, he looked like a rheumatic standing in a draft, he gradually loosened the reins. It began with trifles. Under Nicholas, beards were definitely frowned upon. Now, when the clerks of a ministry asked for permission to grow at least mustaches, the new emperor replied, “Let them wear beards, as long as they don’t steal.”
Tyutchev called the new period “a thaw,” one hundred years before Ilya Ehrenburg used the same term for Khrushchev’s reforms after Stalin’s death. Alexander II pardoned the surviving Decembrists and members of the Petrashevsky circle, including Dostoyevsky. The writer returned to Petersburg wearing a martyr’s halo. He quickly published the novel
It presents the same picture of the capital, viewed by an attentive observer, with the familiar, almost stereotypical details: the inky black vault of the northern sky, beneath which grim, angry, and soaked passersby vanish in the foggy distance of a Petersburg street, illuminated by weakly flickering lights.
The reading public greeted
The historic and far-reaching decision to repeal serfdom was taken against the advice of most of Alexander’s entourage. Gendarmes on horseback patrolled Nevsky Prospect from early morning on the day of the announcement, expecting agitation and possibly rebellion.
The capital was unusually excited, but happily so: people gathered in all parts of the city, discussing the staggering news, embracing and weeping in joy. Someone would start reading the proclamation aloud, and others would chime in with cries of “Long live the Emperor!” and sing the national anthem, “God Save the Tsar.” A relieved Alexander II recorded in his diary, “The day was absolutely calm, despite all anxieties.”25
Waves of freed serfs invaded the capital to earn a living. In 1858, with a population of almost half a million, Petersburg was the fourth-largest city in Europe after London, Paris, and Constantinople. In 1862, Petersburg had 532,000 residents, and in 1869, according to the first major census, 667,000.26 Factories and plants were mushrooming outside the city and the capital’s new residents settled there. Drinking, brawling, crime, and prostitution flourished in these neighborhoods. Taverns and brothels popped up all over the city.
Another newspaper described the “mecca” of the Petersburg alcoholics thus: “Stolyarny Alley has 16 houses (8 on each side of the street). These 16 houses have 18 drinking establishments, so that those wishing to enjoy merry-making liquids and who come to Stolyarny Alley do not even need to look at the signs: come into any house, even any porch—and you’ll find wine.” On neighboring Voznesensky Prospect there were six taverns, 19 bars, 11 beer halls, and 16 wine cellars.28
Cheap prostitutes, drunk and heavily made up, patrolled the streets. These were the loners, the most worn and derelict of the lot. Their more successful young colleagues worked on Ligovsky and Nevsky Prospects, while the most enterprising joined the more respectable of the city’s 150 brothels.
Nicholas I, with his mania for order in all areas, tried to control prostitution as well. In 1843 he created a system of police and medical supervision of the oldest profession, twenty years before England did. In Dostoyevsky’s day around two thousand prostitutes were registered in Petersburg, more than in Berlin or Marseilles, but fewer than in Paris or New York.29 Naturally, there were many more unregistered prostitutes, without the official “yellow” passports.
