Now that the first series of papers on Russian Characteristics which bave appeared during the past two years in the pages of this Review have come to a close, I have been asked to remove one or two misconceptions that have arisen in some quarters respecting them, by offering a few remarks as to their scope and object. They were written without a trace of bitterness against the governing classes or the governed masses of Russian society, in the hope that they might prove a trustworthy contribution to Englishmen's knowledge of a truly remarkable people, who, in the opinion alike of sober friends and impartial enemies, seem destined at no very distant date to play a leading part in the politics of Europe, and it may be-I say it with all due respect for the authoritative and optimistic views of General Robertsin that part of Asia with the prosperity of which the interests of this country are so NEW SERIES.-VOL, LIV., No. 6. closely bound up. They aimed, therefore, at giving expression to ethnographical truths rather than political opinions. He would, indeed, be engaged on a wild goose chase, who should hopefully strive at the present moment to awaken an enlightened and fruitful interest in foreign politics, bristling with outlandish names of persons and places, among a peaceful domestic people like our own. Even our chosen representatives in the House of Commons, although possessed, no doubt, of an intimate knowledge of physical and political geography, modestly imitate the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and would fain be treated by the leaders on both sides as if they were unaware that Bucharest is not in Asia Minor, or Salonica on the coast of Chili. The best service that could be rendered to such a people under such circumstances, by their best friend, seemed that of introducing them in an easy, informal 46 way to their future neighbors and probable heirs. This I have honestly endeavored to do. My aim, as affecting the Russian people, was twofold; on the one hand to direct the attention of the Government to the miserable lot of the peasantry in the hope of obtaining for them some moderate measure of relief, and on the other, to show that the people, improvident, shiftless, superstitious, aud immoral though they appear from our lofty English point of view, are yet not undeserving of a certain subdued admiration for having steered clear of still greater abysses into which almost every other people in like circumstances would probably have fallen. And in neither of these respects, I am pleased to think, have my efforts been wholly thrown away. The articles, which to my own knowledge were carefully read by the highest dignitaries of the empire, were in due time followed by a few slight improvements; the paper on Finances, by a decree abolishing the premium on Russian sugar exported to Persia; that on Finland by a Ukase giving the assurance, which I had authority to state would satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the Finnish people (a solemn promise that the legislative independence of the Principality would be rigorously respected); the paper on Prisons, by the creation of a secret commission to report specially on the subject; that on the Racking of the Peasantry to a project of law which will probably receive the imperial signature in the autumn, the object of which is to abolish inhuman usury of the kind described in that paper, and by another proposal now under the consideration of the ministry to lessen the burden of local, as distinct from Imperial, taxation. If I have aroused less admiration for the endurance, or less pity for the sufferings, of the masses than seemed reasonable to hope, the explanation, I fancy, is to be found in the intellectual sluggishness of those readers who refuse to come down from their own lofty ethical plane to analyze the enormous forces which for centuries have been crushing out every moral sentiment and aspiration, every nascent germ of manhood that manifests itself in the Russian people, and to compare them with the marvellous resistance offered and the upshot of the unequal struggle. It is a terrible tale to which only a Goethe, a Dante, or a Shakespeare could hope to do justice. There was a time when the Russian people were as completely equipped for their part in the struggle for national existence as were most of those who are become the successful nations of to-day. It was when, split up into a number of petty principalities and republics, they were honest, believing Pagans. Centralization gave them Muscovy, which began by absorbing all the Russias, and may end by sucking in Sclavonic Austria and the Balkan Peninsula. Byzantine Christianity, which is a foul libel on Christ's teachings, a blasphemous mockery of His actions, sowed the seeds of irreligion, superstition, fatalism, and Nihilism, of which we have, as yet, only seen the flowers, the fruit being still immature. The result of these combined forces-Autocracy and Orthodoxy-is the Russian people of to-day. It is difficult for the most impartial historian to tell the story of a people's life without creating the chief actors in his own image and likeness, attributing to them intentions which they never harbored, and suggesting motives by which they were never actuated. The Russian governing classes have lost or gained more in this way than any body of men known to history. No Tsar or Minister, from the days of Ivan the Terrible, ever conceived a deliberate plan of centralization, ever meditated diabolical schemes of demoralization, or harbored Machiavellian designs to reduce an entire people to a common denominator of profligate imbecility-before the last quarter of the nineteenth century. And yet if all these immoral projects had been the realities they are supposed to have been, the results would not be appreciably different from what they are. Whether we term it accident or design, it is a fact vouched for by history that two strongly-marked tendencies characterize the policy of the governing classes since the reign of Ivan the Terrible one, to keep the bulk of the nation as near to the hunger line as seemed consistent with comparative tranquillity, and the other, to drive them as close to the verge of idiocy by means of alcoholism as was compatible with the continuation of agricultural labor. It would be cruel, and perhaps unveracious, to speak of these tendencies as the outcome of a deliberate system, but it matters very little to the wayfarer shot dead by a highwayman that his murderer intended only to disable in order the better to rob him, and never for a moment conceived the plan of causing death by internal hemorrhage. One need have no hesitation to declare that the Guyernment are at present pursuing a system of which the object is to prop up the autocracy, and the means include every conceivable act-whatever its ethical character-which promises to facilitate the attainment of this end. The peasantry, which for generations had been sleeping the natural sleep of ignorance, were beginning to show signs of waking up and growing restive toward the close of the last reign, but the Governmental nurse has dosed it with strong opiates, which may possibly kill, but will infallibly stupefy it. The difference between the condition of the people now and in the days of serfdom is one of degree, the latter state being worse than the former. They still continue to support the upper classes, not in harmless idleness, but in diabolical mischievousness, while they too frequently fail to support themselves. It is with blood withheld from the veins and whipped from the backs of the most miserable of mortals that that militarism is maintained which is a menace to Europe and a curse to mankind. 66 Tax-gathering was never better understood or more successfully practised in Russia than at the present day. A comparison between the methods in vogue then and now leaves no doubt on that score. About twenty years ago M. Obydenkoff, the Nikitinsky Elder, was wont to extract the taxes by the simple process of “ of "hanging up an impecunious peasant head downward until he had consented to pay the sum demanded. A fellow who had been thus hung up for a quarter of an hour and then come to himself, preferred a complaint against the officer; but the authorities, for all encouragement, condemned him to be knouted for his restiveness. That was in the old days, when the country was, comparatively speaking, prosperous. Now that hunger is taking more lives than a modern epidemic, "the representatives of the Government," we are credibly informed, never stop to inquire into the causes that have brought about the distress; they simply insist upon immediate payment. The means they employ are drastic, their zeal wholly misplaced, and they end by ruining whole villages, without satisfying the authorities or even shielding themselves from the charge of neglect of duty. Thus "in the Government of Kherson the police have in many places sold by auction all the movable property of the peasants to pay the taxes. This has been done, for instance, in Petrovka, Verbliushka, Vershinokamenka, Spassovo, Novostarodoob, etc.. agricultural implements and live-stock being the chief kinds of property knocked down under the hammer."t The authorities may possibly desire, though they cannot reasonably hope, that these peasants will soon recover from the effects of a blow like this. As well might one deprive a Siberian hunter of his gun and ammunition, and then condemn him to live exclusively on the produce of the chase. And yet this is a favorite method of procedure. For the last twelve months This being an exceptionally bad year for the peasantry, offers a favorable opportunity for testing the true character of that paternal care which the Government is said to lavish on its subjects. Famine, we are told by official newspapers, threatens to prove as intense as it will be widespread. In numerous districts of the Government of Penza the people cannot even now obtain any food but bread, and even that only every second day; and the bread which they thus wistfully long for is like the Psalmist's, mingled with tears, and with other ingredients incomparably more injurious-tree-bark, grasses, dung, etc. We read of women and children stalking in the highways, crouching in ditches and lanes, with bloodshot eyes, faces pinched and fleshless, the lower parts of the body swollen as with dropsy to monstrous dimensions. The heart of a Gradgrind or a Scrooge, in his unregenerate days, would have melted in pity at the sight of these gasping wretches perishing miserably in chenko, St. Petersburg, 1890, in 8vo, p. 279. the midst of the wealth which they and *Kama and Ural, by M. Nemirovitch-DantsThe Week, 8th February, 1891. all the newspapers and reviews in the Empire have been constantly advocating or condemning, as emphatically as seemed consistent with the retension of personal liberty, the systematic flogging by which the Government is striving to recover the taxes and support an army of idle men. No private misfortune or national calamity seems successfully to appeal for ruth or indulgence to a body which possesses no soul and knows no pity. The sun may refuse for weeks to give its heat, the rain may not moisten the soil till the grass is brown and the crops burned up, water and fire may destroy whole villages and impoverish tens of thousands of the inhabitants, but in spite of it all the victims are expected to have their taxes ready, as if gold sprang into existence at their touch. In one district the misfortunes caused by a failure of the crops were intensified by the ravages of fires, which destroyed several villages; and the peasants, abandoned as it seemed to them-by God, turned to their rulers, not for help but for human sympathy. Dives in hell had a better chance of being heard when he begged Lazarus to give him a few drops of cold water to moisten his tongue. The village Elder, inexorable as Fate, came and insisted on being paid to the last farthing. The trembling peasants sold everything salable in order to scrape together the needful sums, and the taxes were duly collected in all the villages but two, in which there was nothing left to sell. not even a metaphysical in:possibility scems to count in Russia when it is a question of gathering money into the State coffers. "More than fifty peasants were taken and flogged, and then sent to pris on. But This happened so very lately that their backs may still be smarting. "An exceptional case," I fancy I hear a Radical Tsarophile exclaim. "His Majesty the Emperor knows nothing of it," another may urge. "It occurred somewhere in the provinces and was never brought to the knowledge of the Government," a third may suggest. Truth compels me to admit that the governmental authority did not know of the occurrence at the time-not till a few days later, and that when duly informed they did not look on and treat the matter with indifference or approval. No; they had the cruel * Nedelya, 21st June, 1891. elder arrested and imprisoned-for undue leniency and neglect of duty; or to put it in official phraseology, "for lack of zeal." He should have whipped the blood from the louts' backs till it dropped down in the form of gold imperials. To Englishmen this will seem too horrible to be credible. And yet it is literally true. The story is taken from the Nedelya (21st June, 1891), and is capable of being verified by the sceptical or the curious. 66 The abject terror of the tschinovniks, which is a distinctive feature of the Russian peasantry, is perfectly intelligible to those who are cognizant of the mutual relations of these two classes. James I. is said to have threatened his horse that, if not quiet, he would send him to the five hundred kings of the Lower House, who would very soon tame him. No horse or man or wild beast that lives could live under the rule of the hundred thousand tsarlets who govern Russia among them, without losing every trace of independence and individuality. "The very bears, says M. Nemirovitch-Dantschenko, the most successful of Russian journalists now living, the very bears are not indifferent to conditions and are capable of being moved to pity; but the tschinovnik knows no ruth. He will skin you five times in succession, just as he would a bare."* And in the provinces there is no appeal from them, no remedy for the evils they create. As an instance-and by no means an extreme one-of what goes on in the country districts, I shall cite an authenticated case vouched for by a well-known Russian journalist actually living in St. Petersburg. "A certain man stole a cart with a load of hay and disappeared. His brother, a young boy, came to the city to look for him. The governor had the child arrested. 'Where's your brother?' he asked. 'I don't know,' was the reply, 'I've come myself to look for him. Mother sent me.' Flog him. Torture him! went forth the decree, and he was flogged and tortured. With the next day came the same punishment, the same torture. On the third day the programme was repeated. On the fourth day they found the child dead in jail-he had hanged himself! This governor, now a general on the retired list, is living in St. Petersburg in the enjoyment of well-merited repose, * Novoye Vremya, 7th March, 1890. * and punctually collects his rents. Is it absolutely impossible to awaken feeling in the breast of this miserable beast?" In the Dookhovtshinsky district, a woman about to become a mother was severely flogged because she suggested that the father of her child should contribute a little to its support; and the whole Mir, with the Starosta and the police, were present at the exccution.f The Government, which is obviously acting with the utmost deliberation, is resolved to reduce the people to a condition of abject unreasoning slavishness, which will permit them to be dealt with like cattle. This ideal, in the opinion of the authorities, has not yet been attained. That the goal is not very far off will perhaps seem probable, from the following fact, vouched for by one of the most loyal and reactionary crgans of the Russian press. During the review of the army recruits in Vilna, the general in command, turning to one of the new soldiers, asked him, What is military discipline?" "It is that a soldier has got to do just what he's told by his superior officer, only nothing against the Tsar,'' was the answer. "All right, then; you take your cap, bid your comrades good-by, and go and drown yourself in that lake there. Look sharp!" Tears glistened in the soldier's eyes; he gazed earnestly and prayerfully at his commander, turned suddenly right about, and rushed off to the lake. He was on the very brink before he was overtaken and stopped by the sergeant sent to prevent the involuntary suicide." If the nation were as ready to dispose of its soul, or the remnant of its soul, at the beck of its hundred thousand tsarlets, the ideal of the Russian Government might be considered realized. But between them and this goal stand a few millions of strong-minded, God-fearing men, known as Raskolniks, on whose victory or defeat depends the future of the Russian Empire. But before leaving this question of the material condition of the Russian peasantry, it is perhaps well to point out that the conclusions to which the facts narrated clearly point are not new, though to most English readers they possess all the novelty of a revelation, and on Russian *Kama and Ural, p. 282. † Novoye Vremya, 13th May, 1890. Vilna Messenger, April, 1891. The Week, 26th April, 1891. patriots they inflict the pain peculiar to the opening of old wounds. The most esteemed writers, like Saltykoff, Solovieff, Tolstoi, Aksakoff, have given as frequent and emphatic expression to the same views as seemed compatible with living outside a prison. "Why," asks Saltykoff, "does our peasant go in bast shoes instead of leather boots? Why does such dense, universal ignorance prevail in the country? Why does the peasant seldom or never eat meat, butter, or even animal fat? How does it happer that you seldom find a peasant who knows what a bed is? Why is it that in all the movements of a Russian mooshik we notice something fatalistic, something devoid of the impress of conscience? Why, in a word, do the peasants come into the world like insects and die like summer flies ?'' * "The common Russian man not only suffers, but his consciousness of his own suffering is extremely blunted and deadened. He looks upon it as a species of original sin with which it is out of the question to grapple, and which he needs must bear as long as his strength holds out. Test this by telling him that the duty of enduring, instead of satisfying his hunger, the duty of vegetating, of sinking and drowning in bogs and marshes, of straining his muscles till they are on the point of snapping asunder, is not necessarily his portion in life, is not the outcome of predestination, and you will notice that his features will at once settle into an expression of blank astonishment. Is it not clear that as long as that astonishment continues, no desire to better his lot can possibly prove effectual?" f The Russian authorities might appropriately sum up the results of their guidance from a material point of view, by telling the masses more truthfully than the Prince of Orange told the English mob at Portsmouth: "We are here for your goodfor all your goods," and adding as Dean Swift afterward suggested, by way of explanation, "For all your goods and chattels." It is needless to insist here upon the immediato fruits of this state of things, for which the Government must be held directly and indeed solely responsible; they are, *Signs of the Times, by M. Saltykoff, p. 257. † Letters about the Provinces, by M. Saltykoff, p. 260. |