RUSSIA'S PROBLEM
The Social Problem, as it presents itself to thoughtful people in
Russia, really demands a book to itself. No doubt it will come before
long, and from some experienced pen. It is only possible for me just to
touch upon it in this chapter, which one must write; or else even this
very general view of Russia's life of to-day would be utterly inadequate
and incomplete. And, in so doing, I shall have to try and show how
different it is in Russia from the same problem as presented in other
countries in Europe.
It is well known, for instance, that the great question for ourselves
waiting for solution at some early date is the social question. What was
called for us the "Triple Alliance" in the world of labour, the Union of
the Railway, Transport, and Mining Workers was completed just before war
broke out; and, though with a patriotism beyond praise all needs and
desires of their own are put aside for the present, our workers will
give expression to their wishes at no distant day after peace comes.
Even before this book is in print the masses in Germany, grimly silent
so long except for the ever-increasing votes for their socialistic
representatives, silent even during the disillusionment which has come
to them these last six months, may have at last spoken out. We are told
that their leader, Herr Bebel, who is said to have known the German
character through and through, declared that the first serious defeat
experienced by Germany "would produce a miracle." Social unrest is still
universal.
[Illustration: _Russian Service at the Atbazar Mine._ (See page 178.)]
We find it, therefore, as we should expect to do, in Russia; and more
general, perhaps, and more acute than at any other previous time, just
before the war was declared. This, it may be remembered, is stated to
have been one of the reasons why the curt and hurried ultimatum was
presented at Petrograd, where it was thought that social troubles and
dangers were so serious that it would be impossible for the government
even to think of going to war. We have been told,[12] though it was
probably not known outside Russia at that time, what a good turn Germany
really did to the Russian government and the Russian people by turning
their thoughts from their own grave difficulties to the dangers which
threatened them from without. At that time, we are assured, not only
Petrograd, but every big manufacturing district of Russia, was shaking
with revolt of a peculiar kind, and civil war on the point of breaking
out. In Petrograd there were barricades already erected, at least
120,000 were on strike, tramcars had been broken up, attacks upon the
police had taken place, factories were garrisoned in expectation of
attack, the Cossacks were everywhere--openly in the streets, hidden away
in places most threatened. The police arrested those who were supposed
to be leaders, but it made no difference, for the people needed no
leading. They were all so thoroughly in the movement. Indeed, we are
told, "things seemed to the Russian government to be as bad as they
could very well be; and orders were actually given for the severest
possible repressive measures, which would, perhaps, have involved a
large-scale battle, probably a massacre, and certainly a state of war in
the capital." It would have been "Red Sunday" over again, only this time
infinitely and more ominously worse. A great calamity was narrowly
escaped.
Now there is this to be noticed about this Russian upheaval, and this
social bitterness and discontent expressing itself in the way with which
we are only too sadly familiar, and which claims our attention as being
so entirely different from similar movements of our own. The Russian
workers made no demands, had no special grievances nor complaints which
they wished to make known. In all strikes one has previously heard of
there has been some hardship or injustice to bring forward, some claim
or request to urge. Here there was nothing of the kind. "They were not
on strike," we are told, "for higher wages. In no single case did the
men make a demand from their masters. In no single case had a man gone
on strike because of a grievance which his master could put right. No
concessions by the masters could have brought the men back to work. The
only answer they returned when asked why there was a strike was that
they were dissatisfied with their lives, and that they intended to
disorganize the State until these things were altered." It is clear,
therefore, that the social unrest, and the activity which has so long
resulted from it, have not a very definite aim as yet. Hence the
Nihilist. He is dissatisfied, embittered, smarting under a sense of
wrong; and while he does not see how he can put things right, feels that
he must do something, and so destroys. "That at least will be
something," he feels, "then we can begin again."
This, we can further see, will be the youthful _student's_ view if
dissatisfied and discontented, and without either experience or
constructive and practical knowledge to suggest how the wrong may be put
right. Some of us, therefore, think that Russia's greatest social danger
arises from the _student_ part of her population, and that her great
problem--a vital one for her to solve, and soon--is how to deal fairly
and wisely with them, and, caring for them as paternally as she does for
her peasant population, incorporate them fully and intimately into her
national life.
It is from the educated classes that social unrest and discontent have
proceeded in Russia, and from them that those agents have come who have
spread wild and daring dreams of change and revolution amongst the
working classes of the towns, and, although that has not been so
successful, amongst the peasantry also.
To some extent their socialistic ideas have been echoes from Western
Europe. I remember being told, when I first went to Petrograd, "We
usually have your bad weather here about eight or ten days after you,
only we have it worse." It would seem that the rule holds good in other
ways also, for Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace tells us, in one of his
three deeply interesting chapters on social difficulties in Russia, that
during the last two centuries all the important intellectual movements
in Western Europe have been reflected in Russia, and that these
reflections have generally been what may fairly be called exaggerated
and distorted reflections of the earlier socialistic movements of the
West, but with local peculiarities and local colouring which deserve
attention.
He goes on to explain how the educated classes, absorbing these ideas
from abroad, just as ideas, and not as relating to the conditions of
life in Russia as closely as in England, France, and Germany, from which
they came, have quite naturally been less practical in the conclusions
they have drawn from them, if indeed they have pushed their ideas to any
conclusion at all. We are shown plainly by this lucid and well-informed
writer how natural it has been for Western Socialists to be constructive
and definite in their aims, while Russians could only be destructive.
Nihilism is made clear, and we understand its origin, while we can
equally well understand what we are so reassuringly told about its
present decline. This does not imply necessarily that Russian thinkers
and workers are becoming less socialistic in sympathy and aims, but more
practical; and that they are learning, just as the West has taught them,
that the only way in which they can hope to advance their own views is
to use all the legal means which their government, as it becomes ever
more democratic and constitutional, will increasingly give them.
But amongst all the different classes who may be called educated, the
university students of both sexes form the class which most claims our
sympathies, and constitutes, I consider, Russia's gravest problem. There
are ten universities in the empire, only one of which contains less than
1,300 students, while the leading ones far exceed this number--Moscow
having just under 10,000, and Petrograd about 8,500. We can hardly
realize what such numbers mean for the national life, when over 40,000
men and women are receiving university education and being prepared for
professional careers. Over 15,000 are studying law, nearly 10,000 are
receiving a scientific education before taking up work as chemists,
engineers, etc., another 10,000 are studying medicine, comparatively few
only being left for the teaching profession. There are only about a
hundred divinity students.
In addition to these there are Russian students in all the universities
of Europe. I have never been able to ascertain their actual numbers, but
at Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Leipzig, Berlin, and other great centres of
education I have always been told, not only that they were there in no
small numbers, but that they were the keenest and most attentive of all
the students in the class, the first to come, and the last to leave,
always in the front seats, and unflagging in their attention. They are
evidently most eager to learn, and are turned out from all the
universities of Europe and from their own, extremely well equipped and
prepared for professional work. Then a vast number of students of this
class are pitiably poor, straining every nerve, putting up with
privations undreamed of elsewhere, in order to get through the
preparation for their life's work.
Many of them, great numbers of them indeed, must be miserably
disappointed. Town and city life, upon which the professional classes
must rely chiefly in seeking the means of gaining their livelihood, has
not developed as yet in proportion to that of the agricultural
population; and certainly at nothing like the rate which would be
necessary if all those educated and trained at the universities were to
be provided with careers and given an adequate opportunity. The supply
is far, far greater than the demand.
Thus we have in Russia a large class of really competent, brainy, well
qualified young graduates of both sexes, naturally longing to take their
part in the life, work, and affairs of their country, urged on also by
their poverty to seek and even demand it; and yet many, it seems to me
sometimes that it must be far the greater number, must be unable to find
it. Here obviously are all the materials for a real social danger; and
students, therefore, always appear in stories of plots and conspiracies,
always fill an important place in plays of the same kind, and are always
to the fore in tumults and demonstrations. It must be so, for they are
the one really embittered class, and to them it must seem sometimes that
there can be no hope for them at all in the social order as it is, and
that its only possibility for them lies in its being destroyed and
reconstructed.
[Illustration: _A Class of Russian Students with their Teachers._]
In many of our centres of work abroad we have a _foyer_ where the
foreign students can meet, and at Geneva last year with great difficulty
we had opened a hostel for Russian students when the war broke out.
There one heard the most touching stories of their poverty, and yet of
their pride and independence, and also of the special temptations to
which their poverty exposed them. Some landlords, for instance, are not
slow to tell girls that they would live better and more cheaply if they
would temporarily "keep house" with one of the young men students, and
occupy one room! Our hostel was hurried on last year as we heard of many
instances of this kind, and a generous friend in Petrograd helped me
very largely in finding the money. Everything was to be supplied at cost
price, and no profits were to be made, the two English ladies in charge
giving their services. There was a restaurant also which supplied good
food at very moderate rates, and how moderate may be judged from the
charge made for afternoon tea of a halfpenny! It consisted of a cup of
tea and a small roll of bread without butter.
The first time I saw how cheaply the foreign students at Geneva lived
was one festival evening when they invited me to supper, and when we had
chicken salad with bread and butter followed by dessert, tea, and
coffee, for which the charge was about fivepence each. The year after
that I entertained them in return and gave them a Christmas party at
which there were fourteen nationalities present, mainly Slav. Nothing
could have been more interesting than that gathering, nor could any host
have had more grateful guests. Last year the Noel Fest could not be
held as there were no students; but I hope next Christmas may possibly
see the war over, and that we may have a Slav evening party in Geneva
once again.
It may be well to mention here how there comes to be a _foyer_ or club
for Russians and other students at Geneva. It is a part of the
organization connected with the World Student Christian Federation,
which had its beginning in the eighties in the United States of America,
as a movement to promote an interest in missionary work amongst
students. In 1887 a deputation came over to this country to tell the
student world what was going on across the Atlantic, and the student
foreign missionary union was the result. Next the Christian Student
Movement extended itself into all our European countries, and finally
the World's Federation was accomplished at Wadstena Castle in Sweden in
1895. It is directed by a committee consisting of two representatives
from each national movement, with Mr. John R. Mott, so well known, as
its general secretary. Its operations now extend into all the leading
countries of the world. There is a biennial conference, and it is
admitted that one of the most interesting of any yet held was the one at
Constantinople in 1911, which was attended by patriarchs representing
all the Orthodox Churches of the East. It is not an undenominational
movement, but exactly the opposite--a call rather to all the Churches of
the world to be consistent in their Christian profession and "walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called." It is not a society
nor a religious body, but a movement or union, and its basis, to be
accepted by all its voluntary members and officers, is the declaration,
"I desire, in joining this Union, to declare my faith in JESUS CHRIST as
my Saviour, my LORD, and my GOD." There is no reason why any Christian
in the world should not join it. Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans,
and members of other Churches the world over can have no possible
difficulty in making such a simple declaration if there is any reality
at all in their sense of membership in CHRIST'S Church; and there is
every reason _why_ a Christian student should join a movement which is
the only one of its kind to aim at work for CHRIST in those places where
it is most urgently and sorely needed, and where it is most likely to be
truly fruitful--the universities and colleges of the world.
There we have to-day those who have to lead and guide and guard the
course of the whole world to-morrow. It is in the universities of the
world that some of those influences which are most hostile and inimical
to true social well-being are first set in motion, and it is there most
certainly that we must begin if we wish to see the world made better and
won for GOD. The war has made us long, I hope, for better things in a
way the world has never dreamt of before, because there has never been
anything in all history which has so focussed attention for the watching
world upon a simple and direct question of right and wrong. The issue is
even more momentous and significant than that. This great question of
righteousness and unrighteousness must be answered by every one in the
world according to his belief or unbelief. It is just a question for us
all to settle whether our own interests, individual or national, or our
duty to GOD comes first. The issue has never been more simply stated,
and the Church of CHRIST has never in all her history had such a
magnificent opportunity of giving her message, and proclaiming her
mission. I hope, therefore, that all my readers will take an early
opportunity of learning all they can about the Christian Student
Movement, and satisfy themselves as to its fitness for helping the whole
Church of CHRIST to avail herself to the full of this GOD-given
opportunity and possibility.
A _foyer_ is a necessary centre for students wherever a branch of the
movement has been formed, and it would be difficult to speak too warmly
of its value for its members. I have mentioned this movement here,
briefly enough, I fear, of necessity, because I should think there is no
place where it is more needed, nor, as far as I can judge, more likely
to continue to succeed, than in Russia. In Petrograd there are already a
number of influential and wealthy Russians deeply interested in its work
amongst the men students. They include a near relation of the Emperor,
and the work is directed by a number of extremely competent and earnest
Americans. I had an opportunity of meeting and addressing them when in
Petrograd a year ago.
The work amongst the girl and women students is being carried forward
very quietly by our own country-women, who are full of hope. But up to
the present a great deal of caution and wisdom has had to be exercised,
both because the authorities have so long been accustomed to look
suspiciously at anything which seemed to promote associations amongst
students, and because students themselves, for reasons already given,
have naturally looked askance at anything which was obviously working in
the direction of law and order. The movement, more and more, it will be
seen, is one of the soundest of modern efforts in the direction of real
social improvement, because it begins at the right end, with those who
are thinking and pondering life's problems before launching out to try
their best to solve them. Nowhere has it been more needed, as I have
said, than in Russia, and nowhere has it made a better start. The
hopeful thing about Russia just now is that _every one_ is most keenly
and profoundly interested in the social well-being of the people--on the
one hand anxious to obtain it more fully for themselves, and on the
other really wishful to give and promote it, even if watchful and
cautious lest they should make mistakes and have to draw back.
And surely caution is very necessary in Russia. It is only a little over
fifty years since the emancipation of the serfs. Let any one think of
Russia with a servile population so short a time ago, and then think of
what she is to-day, and they will form some idea of the extraordinary
social improvement and transformation which has taken place. Yet with
all this caution the desire to see improvement is general, and no one is
satisfied with the lives of the working-classes in the large towns as
they are. It is well known indeed, as I have already said, that Russia
has been absorbed in plans for social improvement for the last few
years, and was meaning to launch out into great undertakings this very
year. Those plans are only deferred, we hope, and will be taken up with
greater zest and confidence than ever when peace comes. Perhaps the
delay will prove to have been an inestimable gain, if it has made it
clearer than before that there are certain examples it might be well to
avoid. A great deal has been said and written of late years of the vast
superiority of German municipal government and organization, and
certainly no cities in Europe approach those of Germany for
attractiveness and excellence of arrangements as to streets, parks,
public buildings, and imposing blocks of flats for private families of
all classes. Germans have been for many years now animated by the very
best spirit of municipal initiative and responsibility, and have shown a
really worthy civic pride. Railway stations, post offices, walks, and
squares in Germany are beyond comparison with those of any other
country. And yet I am assured that much is sacrificed for effect and
appearance; and I was astonished to hear, a little while ago, how
miserably inadequate was the accommodation that even a skilled artisan
in Berlin could afford to have.
A well-known social authority, Mr. T. C. Horsfall, writing in the
_Spectator_ last December, told us that there is terrible overcrowding
in nearly all large German towns, and that the overcrowded tall blocks
of buildings are themselves too closely crowded together, and the effect
is bad both for health and morality. The death-rate, including that of
infants, is much higher with them than with us. And I cannot help
thinking that the effect of giving families only two rooms and a small
scullery, one living-room and one bedroom for all, must have its effect
upon the morality of a population. Whatever the cause, we are told that
in Berlin 17 per cent. of the births are registered as illegitimate, in
Munich as many as 28 per cent., in Vienna over 40 per cent., while in
London they are only 5 per cent.
"The effect on German town populations," Mr. Horsfall states,
"especially on the poorer inhabitants of Berlin, of the conditions
existing in German towns is described in an appeal made in or about the
year 1886 by Professor Schmoller to his fellow-countrymen to deal
adequately and promptly with those conditions. The appeal has been
reprinted in an important Report published in 1911 by Dr. Werner
Hegemann:
'The circumstances are so terrible that one can only wonder
that the consequences have not been even worse. Only because a
large part of these poor people have brought from their
earlier life a store of good habits, of religious tradition, of
decent feeling, into these dens, has the worst not yet been
reached. But the children and young people who are now growing
up in these holes must necessarily lose the virtues of economy,
domesticity, family life, and all regard for law and property,
decency, and good habits. He who has no proper dwelling, but
only a sleeping-place, must fall a victim to the public-house
and to drink.... The community to-day is forcing the lower
strata of the factory proletariat of large towns by its
dwelling conditions with absolute necessity to fall back to a
level of barbarism and bestiality, of savagery and rowdiness,
which our forefathers hundreds of years ago had left behind
them. I maintain that there lies the greatest danger for our
civilization.'"
With such examples as this before her we must trust that Russia will set
about promoting the social well-being of her people with all her
characteristic independence, and determine that in their housing she
will have only those "great spaces" which are her characteristic
features in so many other ways. We have to tread this same road of
social reform also when the war is over, and it is good to think that we
may, perhaps, be able to take it, just as we have carried on the war,
without any party questions or party spirit connected with it, as will
be the case also in Russia. It is even more inspiring to think, again
let me say it, that we and our new friend may tread this path together:
comparing notes and making plans together as we go. That would be indeed
an _Entente_ worth the name, when it was not in order that we might
make war together, only that we had come to an agreement, but that we
might help each other's peoples in all the arts of peace. Mr. Baring
tells us that he was once drinking tea with a Russian landowner who
calls himself a moderate liberal, and when, in their conversation, the
Anglo-Russian agreement was mentioned, he exclaimed (and I have no doubt
he expressed the feelings of many others who desire the social good of
Russia as he did so), "This is the most sensible thing the Russian
government has done for the last forty years!"
[Illustration: _The English Church of S. Andrew, at Moscow, with the
Parsonage._]
FOOTNOTES:
[12] "Anglitchanin" in _The Contemporary Review_, Nov., 1914.