There were pressing reasons that prevented him from leaving earlier, namely, his

lack of a passport and the recovery of the trunk with his musical manuscripts
that he had brought with him from Berlin. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of Rubinsteins account of these events in his Autobiography, even though
he mistakenly attributes them to 1849. When he left Russia in 1844 he had been
registered on his mothers passport, but she had returned to Moscow with Lyuba
and Nikolay two years later. Fearing that the trunk full of musical manuscripts
that Rubinstein had brought with him from Berlin contained ciphers intended
to spread revolutionary ideas to Russia, the customs ofcials at the frontier immediately conscated it. If this were not misfortune enough, upon arriving in
St. Petersburg he found it impossible to register at a hotel as this required a passport. He located one of the few acquaintances he had in the city, Carl Lewy, a
musician whom he had known since childhood. Lewy provided him with lodgings, and together the two friends decided on a course of action. Rubinstein
went to see the chief of police in St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Galakhov, but despite
his protestations that he was well known to several prominent aristocratic families, Galakhov was implacable and gave the young man two weeks to obtain an
ofcial passport. Undeterred, Rubinstein referred the matter to the governorgeneral of St. Petersburg, Dmitry Shulgin, but he was received in a rude and
uncivil manner. Rubinstein wrote to his mother, and she in her turn wrote to
the town council in Berdichev in an attempt to get a passport issued. At the end
of two weeks Rubinstein was required to appear before Galakhov again and was
made to stand for two or three hours in the ofcials waiting room. The purpose
of this visit was to prove to Galakhov that he really was the same Rubinstein
who had once given concerts in the city. Subjected to this humiliating ordeal,
one can well imagine how the young virtuoso contemptuously hammered the
instrument that he was given to play. Nevertheless the audience with Galakhov
provided him the reprieve he needed, and within the next three weeks the passport nally arrived.

The Petrashevsky Incident

The reactionary government of Nicholas I had an obsessive fear that the
revolutionary movement which had engulfed Western Europe would spread
into the heart of Russia itself. His fears were not unfounded, for the old order
was being seriously challenged by dangerous ideas of social reform and national
sovereignty. Nicholass response was to tighten his grip on the press and to root
out all elements in society that were suspected of subversive views or seditious
activities. An oppressive censorship attempted to muzzle all free expression of
public opinion from wherever it came: the radicals, the liberals, even the Right.
The seven-year period from 1848 to 1855 has been called the era of censorship
terror and one of the darkest periods in the history of Russian thought.4 The
political situation in Russia was aggravated by a serious cholera epidemic that
was fanning the ames of public unrest, and Russian citizens returning home
in 1848 were subjected to close scrutiny from the secret police. If Rubinsteins
Return to Russia and First Opera 23