Politics & Power Quote by Alexander Herzen

Herzen turns political progress into a domestic farce: history as a series of furnished rooms, nations as weary tenants dragging their trunks from one salon to the next. The metaphor is sly because it flatters the liberal fantasy of “upgrade culture” avant la lettre - that societies naturally trade cramped quarters for brighter, better-appointed ones. If the next room were already staged, dusted, and stocked, change would be mere logistics.

Then he snaps the illusion. “There is no one to prepare the new rooms” is a jab at both revolutionaries and reformers: everyone wants the keys, nobody wants the carpentry. It’s not just cynicism about leaders; it’s a warning about institutions. Comfort doesn’t materialize because the old regime fell or a new constitution got drafted. Someone has to build the boring infrastructure of the future - laws that work, norms people trust, a civic culture that doesn’t collapse under strain.

The ocean line is the dagger. The future isn’t merely uncertain; it’s indifferent, a blank expanse with no promised land shimmering on the horizon. Coming out of mid-19th-century Russia - censorship, failed revolts, exile, the long hangover after 1848’s dashed hopes - Herzen is pushing back against teleological history, the idea that time itself is a benevolent planner. Progress, he implies, is not destiny. It’s labor. Without that labor, “tomorrow” is just water: vast, cold, and empty enough to drown in.