done, well done)." They could have cried out of very pride to see him. No man had earned his Cross better surely than he.

So the Major of the besieged post. got his letter with its urgent inscription, and read it. It was from the Macmillan's Magazine.

Commissariat Department asking him to forward at once a long outstanding: return that was required to make up. some accounts. That was the letter.. Of the greater ironies of life there is nothing to be said. One cannot even. laugh. Harold Fielding.

Very few Englishmen have come away from St. Petersburg of late without having paid at least one visit to the Narodni Dvorets, or People's Palace of Nicholas the 'Second, which was opened two years ago for the recreation and amusement of the working classes of the city. The building itself, with its great theatre, lecture halls, and diningrooms, with its accommodation for 6,000 persons, is imposing enough to attract the attention of any passer-by; and its apparently anomalous position in the capital of an autocratic country, where, as the legend goes, the people exist only to pay taxes and carry rifles, strikes the majority of visitors as something absurd. It is regarded as a matter of pride that London so early had its People's Palace, and in Berlin the Schiller People's Theatre is hailed as a triumph of social enterprise. That a backward capital like St. Petersburg should have an institution of the same kind, differing only in that it is, if anything, more successful than either, seems anomalous. But it would seem stranger still if it were generally known that this theatre, so far from being the first of its kind in Russia, is itself only the outcome of a very remarkable movement which has been going on in Russia for the last fifteen years, and which indeed has its roots

in a much greater antiquity. Thismovement, which may be summed up by saying that its object is to provide rational amusement for the working classes, has, of course, a parallel in all. parts of Europe. But it is very remarkable that in a shorter time and working upon much less fertile ground, the movement has developed. in Russia to a measure of success quite unparalleled anywhere else. At. the present time there are about 200People's Theatres, great and small, in Russia, and projects for the construction of fifty or sixty others are on foot. Accomplishments and projects alike are to be found in every part of the empire, from St. Petersburg to Odessa and from Warsaw to Vladivostock; and even the uncompleted town of Dalny, which has as yet no population, is building a theatre for the workmen with whom its unpeopled streets are soon to be thronged.

It is very remarkable to see a social movement springing up apparently from a common impulse among a people reputedly so apathetic as the Russians to all but material betterment, and not very enthusiastic even about that. The Russians themselves never cease lamenting the lack among their own influential classes of the civic spirit which finds in service of the locality the

best of all services to the State. They point with despair to the popular universities, the workmen's clubs, the free libraries and free lectures of the West. Casual visitors bring away from the country the idea of an inert mass of latent energy twitched into occasional spasmodic activity by the central government; the mass itself, they find, has neither volition nor operative energy. The popular Russian novelists confirm this impression, and sum up the inhabitants of the government and district town-the doctors, lawyers, schoolmasters, and that considerable class of manufacturers and merchants which has sprung up of late in the mechanism of an artificially stimulated industrial activity-as a sodden, undistinguished mass of inert ignorance, enamored of vodka and vint, made humorous only by a pathetic stupidity-a people among whom no lamp of civic patriotism or enlightening zeal has ever burned. The mob is bestial and incorrigible; the local intelligence narrow and vulgar; and officialdom so stupid as to be capable-as in one of Tchekhoff's masterpieces of tricking into the Zemstvo lunatic asylum a stray enthusiast of humanity whose civic zeal was limited to purging the district hospital of bribery and bugs. The grey shade of venality hangs all over the town; with the floods of spring, children are drowned in the abysses of unpaven streets; the postman opens letters for the amusement of his mistress; sordid love, aimless secretiveness, and barbarous insensibility make up the only tragedies, and the pride and ignorance of local magnates the only comedies of provin. cial life. In the capitals, a little ineffective, ill-cultivated intelligence struggles in a larger sea of similar squalor. But nowhere does the jealous, critical citizen exist as he exists in Western Europe. The irresponsible humanitarianism of Virgin Soil is dead,

and it has left nothing behind. Such is urban Russia, as portrayed by those who ought to know it best, and the grey picture is acclaimed as a masterpiece in all quarters of the empire.

How far the artist's license is responsible for the coloring, it is not easy to say, but it is certain that objective evidence, not colored by sentiment, might be adduced to prove that relatively to wealth and culture, there is as great a manifestation of civic vigor in Russia as in any country in Europe. For instance, we find that two years ago there were some 15,000 private societies in the country engaged in all kinds of educational, social, and charitable work, and covering everything, from the relief of famine to the sending of tired school children to seaside camps. This represents a very high level of social activity for a poor and unorganized country like Russia, especially if it be noted that many undertakings which are here regarded as work for private organizations are there maintained out of public funds. In Russia, hospitals, asylums, crêches, and Sunday schools (for secular education) are kept up by local authorities. The Zemstvos insure village buildings, publish cheap literature, carry on courses of free lectures, and provide medical aid. The peasant communes provide for their own aged and infirm. Most of these works have been carried on energetically ever since the Emancipation, so that it was not altogether in a milieu of social stagnation that the movement for providing recreation for working people originated and developed to its present remarkable stage of success.

The first People's Theatres in Russia sprang up in the larger cities; it is only within the last three or four years that they have spread to the provincial and district capitals, and still more

1 "Institutions de bienfaisance de l'Empire de Russie." St.-Petersbourg, 1900.

recently to the villages. Up till a recent time the urban proletariat in Russia was very small. The vast majority of the workers in the capitals and manufacturing towns were drawn from the neighboring villages, to which they remained bound by bonds which could be broken only by taking certain formal legal steps. These people worked all day, seldom for less than twelve hours, slept in the factory barracks, and only on Sundays and holidays returned to their families in the villages. The few thousands who came from distant localities, or who had been released from the communal bond, remained in town, drank and fought, and generally ended their holiday, according to Gogol's prescription, by going to sleep in the middle of the street. The fact that these men earned but a fourth of the wages of Western workmen, while living in towns where the cost of all the amenities of life is, if anything, higher than in the West, shut in their faces the doors of even the cheapest places of public amusement. A shilling was a hopeless charge to a man who earns on an average rather less than that sum in twelve uninterrupted hours of heavy toil. Drink, tossing for kopecks, fight ing, and an occasional orgy on some local Hampstead Heath, followed by the untroubled sleep of the habitually drunk, were the only holiday joys of the transplanted peasants in the Russian cities. In the country things were better, for the week's healthy labor in the field was followed by village sports, and gatherings for the singing of those miraculous choruses which turn rural Russia on holidays into a nest of song-birds. But this was only in the summer. In winter neither work nor play came to vary the icebound monotony which binds all the Russias in a common bond of stagnation throughout half the year. Mechanical competition has killed nearly

all village industries, and the simpler forms of open-air sport are impossible in winter. In default of work, no country ever wanted to be amused so badly. To this consciouness a great number of social reformers simultaneously and all over the country awoke, and among societies, individuals, and municipalities, a movement, soon afterwards attaining almost to a mania, for building theatres for the people began. This movement proved a complete success, not only financially, but in its educational and moral fruits; and it has developed in such a way as to offer to social reformers who have to grapple with the dulness of city life among the very poor, and the depopulation of the villages by the mentally active, a model well worthy of study.

It is probably the first time on record that Russia could boast of teaching the world anything in social reform; and it is an admirable illustration of the saying that "when Russia ceases to be a hundred years behind the times she will be a hundred years in advance." Indeed, a People's Theatre of a sort actually existed in Russia more than a hundred years before anything of the kind was thought of in Western Europe. As long ago as 1750 (a few years before the National Theatre proper was founded by the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) a Yaroslavl manufacturer named Volkhoff established a theatre in his works for the benefit of his employes. This was the first of the Russian "factory theatres," many of which exist in Russia to-day, their difference from the ordinary People's Theatres being that while the factory theatres are intended for the use only of the employes at the works to which they are attached, the People's Theatres are open to all working men. In this first factory theatre audience and actors alike were drawn from the ranks of the workmen. The

idea of training serfs to provide their own amusement seems strange to-day. But before the Emancipation, many of the great Russian nobles had private theatres at their country houses, and maintained vast numbers of servile actors, mimics, buffoons, dancers, and even opera singers. It is even related of a certain Count Kamensky, that he used to interrupt the performances, and publicly flog his opera artistes when they failed to sing in tune.

For

Thirty years ago an unsuccessful attempt was made to found a theatre for working people at Odessa, and two years later Moscow opened its "Everybody's (Obstchedostupni) Theatre." This latter was not, strictly speaking, a working man's theatre, being open to all classes, and distinguished from other theatres merely by its low charges for admission. It was left for the remote city of Tomsk in Siberia to make the first successful experiment in founding a genuine and successful workmen's theatre. This theatre, like nearly all similar institutions in Russia, had a directly educational origin, being founded by the local society of "Friends of Education." the first two years of its existence this society had contented itself with helping poor students, organizing lectures, and holding evening classes for workmen. But in 1884, owing to the beneficence of a local resident, M. Valgunoff -one of that remarkable class of merchants, not found outside Russia, who are able to draw cheques for millions of roubles to which they can hardly sign their names-the Friends of Education founded an institute, to which was attached a small theatre for working men. The experiment proved so successful that the revenue of the society was trebled, the theatre doubled in size, and a museum and a number of class-rooms added to the institute. While this experiment was in progress, a similar movement was being organLIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 919

ized in St. Petersburg. The Neva Society for Promoting Cheap Recreation was formed with the object of organizing holiday fêtes for the working classes. These fêtes were at first held in the suburbs, the chief attraction being an open-air stage, with clowns, story-tellers, and singers. Ten kopecks (22 d.) was the admission charge. The entertainments paid their expenses, some 67,000 persons, all be longing to the working class, being present at the first season's fêtes. After a year's trial the society had got so far as to be able to play Ostrovsky's comedies by professional actors. So. far these entertainments had been held only in summer-time; but after three years' experience a permanent stone theatre was opened in a park on the Schlüsselburg Road. By 1897 the suecess of the society was so great that they were able to pull down this theatre, and erect in its place a large building, costing 300,000 roubles and holding 1,600 persons. In 1900 the society had a reserve capital of 174,000 roubles, after paying all debts. They had begun fifteen years before with a capital of 1.370 roubles. In the fifteen years they had not only established themselves on a sound financial basis, but they had been enabled out of their profits to build as adjuncts to the theatre two free libraries and readingrooms; and they are at present considering a project for building cheap bathhouses and establishing river boats and skating-rinks on the Neva.

The success of this experiment was so great that the manufacturers on Vassili Ostrof took the hint and raised a fund for building a People's Theatre on the island for 800 persons. This theatre, when full, takes 360 roubles in admission fees, the prices of admission being from 12 kopecks to 14 rouble. The average price of nearly half a rouble is, however, much higher than is usual in Russia, and results

from the relatively high wages earned by the workmen in the capital. This theatre has always paid its expenses, and its success may be judged from the fact that a few years later the same manufacturers formed a subsidiary committee for providing dinners and teas for workmen at cost prices.

Both the Tomsk and the two St. Petersburg experiments were due to private initiative, although, it should be added, the Neva Society, in their second and enlarged undertaking, had been subsidized to the extent of 60,000 roubles by the Temperance Board of the St. Petersburg Government. But the greater number of the People's Theatres now springing up all over Russia are the direct result of municipal enterprise and civic enthusiasm, and in that respect are even more interesting and instructive than the private undertakings. The great People's Theatre in Odessa is an example in point. Most of the local governing bodies in Russia, though hedged round in regard to politics by administrative restriction, have a freedom quite without parallel in Western Europe in the disposition of public moneys. It is a common practice, for instance, for the Zemstvos and municipalities to celebrate anniversaries associated with the births and deaths of famous men by founding courses of lectures, building free libraries, publishing cheap literature, and opening cheap diningrooms for working men. The Pushkin Centenary, which was celebrated in 1899, was the origin of scores of such institutions all over Russia. The Odessa People's Theatre had a like origin, the municipality having decided to commemorate the millenary of the death of Methodius by founding an institute and lecture hall for the use of the poorest class. This project, decided upon in 1885, was not carried out until 1893, when a working men's theatre, holding 1,000 persons, was built, together with a lecture hall, a free li

brary, and a shop for the sale of good literature at nominal prices. The municipality, which devoted 100,000 roubles to the construction of this building, grants 8,000 roubles a year for its maintenance and improvement. But, like nearly all the popular theatres in Russia, the Odessa institution has been a financial success, the educational adjuncts contributing to the revenue. The Publication Committee sold in one year nearly 200,000 books and pamphlets at an average price of less than a penny. Here also, for the first time in Russia, was established a Poor Man's Law Bureau. In the first year of its existence the Odessa Theatre gave thirty-four performances attended by 28,000 persons, nearly all belonging to the working class.

The Odessa municipality is, however, only one of many who have regarded it as part of their civic duty to provide for the recreation of the working class. In some of the larger towns People's Theatres, founded by private individuals and educational societies, have been taken over by the town, while in other cases the municipality co-operates with individuals and societies by granting land or public buildings, or by voting money either in a lump sum or in the form of a yearly subsidy. In other cases, the Temperance Boards co-operate with the municipalities or with private societies. Co-operation of this kind was the origin of the fine People's Theatre which is now being built at Ekaterinoslav. This theatre, however, had an antecedent history, which is interesting as illustrating the growth of the movement. The local Committee for Promoting Lectures for the People, having outgrown its original programme, applied for and obtained a free grant of land from the municipality, and spent 40,000 roubles on a hall for lectures and the drama. In their small hall they carried out a programme of plays for working men, concerts, free panto