Free Russian Press
[1] It took several months for Hertzen, assisted by a group of the Polish emigres to purchase all the necessary printing facilities, including the typeface, small, sharp and clear, produced by the French firm Famille Didot initially for the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences which for some reasons had rejected it.
[3] In August 1855 Alexander Hertzen started to publish his first periodical, Polyarnaya Zvezda (Polar Star), the first issue of it still comprising the materials from the immigrant circles.
[5] In July 1856 Hertzen and Ogaryov launched another periodical, Voices from Russia (Голоса из России), moderate in its tone and appeal, and having little in common with the blatantly pro-revolutionary Polar Star.
It re-issued Alexander Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, as well as "The Thoughts" by Ryleyev, compiled a book called The Secret Russian Literature of the 19th Century (Русская потаённая литература XIX века), published numerous archive documents and fragments of diaries and memoirs of Russian state officials (to be compiled later in Istorichesky Sbornik, Historical Anthology), the assorted notes by the Decembrists, and the history of the 1825 Revolt, papers on the history of raskol and the Old Believers.
[5] The sensational confession by Catherine the Great concerning the birth of Pavel I (whose father, as she asserted, had been not Peter III, but Prince Sergei Saltykov), the document which had been sealed and hidden even from the members of the Imperial family, was also published by the Free Russian Press, as well as the revealing memoirs of Princess Dashkova and the senator Ivan Lopukhin.
"Tell Hertzen not to scold me or I'll stop subscribe to his paper," Alexander II once jokingly remarked, who was also said to have advised his ministers "in case of receiving the newspaper not to tell anybody put to keep it for private reading.
"[5] Secret correspondents included officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Holy Synod which resulted in several classified documents having been published by the Free Russian Press exclusively.
[8] In the years prior to the 1861 Emancipation Act the Free Russian Press succeeded in drawing Alexander II's attention to several alternative projects of the land reform, including the one by Valerian Panayev, which was published in Voices from Russia.
On the other hand, a huge section of liberal readership turned away from Kolokol after the 1862 Petersburg arsons, reputedly committed by 'nihilists', nurtured by 'the ideas of Hertzen and Chernyshevsky', as the conservative press was quick to maintain.
[4] In a desperate attempt to widen the range of its appeal the publishing house launched another paper, Obshcheye Veche (Common Council), written in simple language and aiming to cater for the semi-literate masses of Russians.
[4] In April 1865 Hertzen moved the Free Russian Press to Geneva and passed the ownership to the Polish emigre Ludvig Chernetsky, his closest associate, apart from Ogaryov, since 1853.
For a while it looked like the crisis could be stalled but after the 1866 Dmitry Karakozov's assassination attempt and the repressive measures undertaken by the Russian government all ties that the FRP had maintained with Russia got severed.
