CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION--REPENT YE, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.

1. Chance Meeting with a Train Carrying Soldiers to

Restore Order Among the Famishing Peasants--Reason of the

Expedition--How the Decisions of the Higher Authorities

are Enforced in Cases of Insubordination on Part of the

Peasants--What Happened at Orel, as an Example of How the

Rights of the Propertied Classes are Maintained by Murder and

Torture--All the Privileges of the Wealthy are Based on Similar

Acts of Violence.

2. The Elements that Made up the Force Sent to Toula, and

the Conduct of the Men Composing it--How these Men Could

Carry Out such Acts--The Explanation is Not to be Found in

Ignorance, Conviction, Cruelty, Heartlessness, or Want of

Moral Sense--They do these Things Because they are Necessary to

Support the Existing Order, which they Consider it Every Man's

Duty to Support--The Basis of this Conviction that the Existing

Order is Necessary and Inevitable--In the Upper Classes this

Conviction is Based on the Advantages of the Existing Order for

Themselves--But what Forces Men of the Lower Classes to Believe

in the Immutability of the Existing Order, from which they

Derive no Advantage, and which they Aid in Maintaining, Facts

Contrary to their Conscience?--This is the Result of the Lower

Classes being Deluded by the Upper, Both as to the Inevitability

of the Existing Order and the Lawfulness of the Acts of Violence

Needed to Maintain it--Deception in General--Special Form of

Deception in Regard to Military Service--Conscription.

3. How can Men Allow that Murder is Permissible while they

Preach Principles of Morality, and How can they Allow of the

Existence in their Midst of a Military Organization of Physical

Force which is a Constant Menace to Public Security?--It is only

Allowed by the Upper Classes, who Profit by this Organization,

Because their Privileges are Maintained by it--The Upper Classes

Allow it, and the Lower Classes Carry it into Effect in Spite of

their Consciousness of the Immorality of the Deeds of Violence,

the More Readily Because Through the Arrangements of the

Government the Moral Responsibility for such Deeds is Divided

among a Great Number of Participants in it, and Everyone Throws

the Responsibility on Someone Else--Moreover, the Sense of Moral

Responsibility is Lost through the Delusion of Inequality, and

the Consequent Intoxication of Power on the Part of Superiors,

and Servility on the Part of Inferiors--The Condition of these

Men, Acting against the Dictates of their Conscience, is Like

that of Hypnotized Subjects Acting by Suggestion--The Difference

between this Obedience to Government Suggestion, and Obedience

to Public Opinion, and to the Guidance of Men of a Higher Moral

Sense--The Existing Order of Society, which is the Result of

an Extinct Public Opinion and is Inconsistent with the Already

Existing Public Opinion of the Future, is only Maintained by

the Stupefaction of the Conscience, Produced Spontaneously by

Self-interest in the Upper Classes and Through Hypnotizing in

the Lower Classes--The Conscience or the Common Sense of such

Men may Awaken, and there are Examples of its Sudden Awakening,

so that one can Never be Sure of the Deeds of Violence they are

Prepared for--It Depends Entirely on the Point which the Sense

of the Unlawfulness of Acts of Violence has Reached, and this

Sense may Spontaneously Awaken in Men, or may be Reawakened by

the Influence of Men of more Conscience.

4. Everything Depends on the Strength of the Consciousness of

Christian Truths in Each Individual Man--The Leading Men of

Modern Times, however, do not Think it Necessary to Preach or

Practice the Truths of Christianity, but Regard the Modification

of the External Conditions of Existence within the Limit Imposed

by Governments as Sufficient to Reform the Life of Humanity--On

this Scientific Theory of Hypocrisy, which has Replaced the

Hypocrisy of Religion, Men of the Wealthy Classes Base their

Justification of their Position--Through this Hypocrisy they

can Enjoy the Exclusive Privileges of their Position by Force

and Fraud, and Still Pretend to be Christians to One Another

and be Easy in their Minds--This Hypocrisy Allows Men who

Preach Christianity to Take Part in Institutions Based on

Violence--No External Reformation of Life will Render it Less

Miserable--Its Misery the Result of Disunion Caused by Following

Lies, not the Truth--Union only Possible in Truth--Hypocrisy

Hinders this Union, since Hypocrites Conceal from themselves

and Others the Truth they Know--Hypocrisy Turns all Reforms

of Life to Evil--Hypocrisy Distorts the Idea of Good and

Evil, and so Stands in the Way of the Progress of Men toward

Perfection--Undisguised Criminals and Malefactors do Less

Harm than those who Live by Legalized Violence, Disguised by

Hypocrisy--All Men Feel the Iniquity of our Life, and would

Long Ago have Transformed it if it had not been Dissimulated

by Hypocrisy--But Seem to have Reached the Extreme Limits of

Hypocrisy, and we Need only Make an Effort of Conscience to

Awaken as from a Nightmare to a Different Reality.

5. Can Man Make this Effort?--According to the Hypocritical

Theory of the Day, Man is not Free to Transform his Life--Man

is not Free in his Actions, but he is Free to Admit or to Deny

the Truth he Knows--When Truth is Once Admitted, it Becomes

the Basis of Action--Man's Threefold Relation to Truth--The

Reason of the Apparent Insolubility of the Problem of Free

Will--Man's Freedom Consists in the Recognition of the Truth

Revealed to him. There is no Other Freedom--Recognition of Truth

Gives Freedom, and Shows the Path Along which, Willingly or

Unwillingly by Mankind, Man Must Advance--The Recognition of

Truth and Real Freedom Enables Man to Share in the Work of God,

not as the Slave, but as the Creator of Life--Men Need only Make

the Effort to Renounce all Thought of Bettering the External

Conditions of Life and Bend all their Efforts to Recognizing and

Preaching the Truth they Know, to put an End to the Existing

Miserable State of Things, and to Enter upon the Kingdom of God

so far as it is yet Accessible to Man--All that is Needed is

to Make an End of Lying and Hypocrisy--But then what Awaits us

in the Future?--What will Happen to Humanity if Men Follow the

Dictates of their Conscience, and how can Life go on with the

Conditions of Civilized Life to which we are Accustomed?--All

Uneasiness on these Points may be Removed by the Reflection that

Nothing True and Good can be Destroyed by the Realization of

Truth, but will only be Freed from the Alloy of Falsehood.

6. Our Life has Reached the Extreme Limit of Misery and Cannot

be Improved by any Systems of Organization--All our Life and

all our Institutions are Quite Meaningless--Are we Doing what

God Wills of us by Preserving our Privileges and Duties to

Government?--We are put in this Position not Because the World

is so Made and it is Inevitable, but Because we Wish it to be

so, Because it is to the Advantage of Some of us--Our Conscience

is in Opposition to our Position and all our Conduct, and the

Way Out of the Contradiction is to be Found in the Recognition

of the Christian Truth: Do Not unto Others what you Would

Not they should Do unto You--As our Duties to Self Must be

Subordinated to our Duties to Others, so Must our Duties to

Others be Subordinated to our Duties to God--The Only Way Out

of our Position Lies, if not in Renouncing our Position and our

Privileges, at Least in Recognizing our Sin and not Justifying

it nor Disguising it--The Only Object of Life is to Learn the

Truth and to Act on it--Acceptance of the Position and of State

Action Deprives Life of all Object--It is God's Will that we

should Serve Him in our Life, that is, that we should Bring

About the Greatest Unity of all that has Life, a Unity only

Possible in Truth.

I was finishing this book, which I had been working at for two years,

when I happened on the 9th of September to be traveling by rail

through the governments of Toula and Riazan, where the peasants were

starving last year and where the famine is even more severe now. At

one of the railway stations my train passed an extra train which was

taking a troop of soldiers under the conduct of the governor of the

province, together with muskets, cartridges, and rods, to flog and

murder these same famishing peasants.

The punishment of flogging by way of carrying the decrees of the

authorities into effect has been more and more frequently adopted of

late in Russia, in spite of the fact that corporal punishment was

abolished by law thirty years ago.

I had heard of this, I had even read in the newspapers of the

fearful floggings which had been inflicted in Tchernigov, Tambov,

Saratov, Astrakhan, and Orel, and of those of which the governor of

Nijni-Novgorod, General Baranov, had boasted. But I had never before

happened to see men in the process of carrying out these punishments.

And here I saw the spectacle of good Russians full of the Christian

spirit traveling with guns and rods to torture and kill their

starving brethren. The reason for their expedition was as follows:

On one of the estates of a rich landowner the peasants had common

rights on the forest, and having always enjoyed these rights,

regarded the forest as their own, or at least as theirs in common

with the owner. The landowner wished to keep the forest entirely

to himself and began to fell the trees. The peasants lodged a

complaint. The judges in the first instance gave an unjust decision

(I say unjust on the authority of the lawyer and governor, who ought

to understand the matter), and decided the case in favor of the

landowner. All the later decisions, even that of the senate, though

they could see that the matter had been unjustly decided, confirmed

the judgment and adjudged the forest to the landowner. He began to

cut down the trees, but the peasants, unable to believe that such

obvious injustice could be done them by the higher authorities, did

not submit to the decision and drove away the men sent to cut down

the trees, declaring that the forest belonged to them and they would

go to the Tzar before they would let them cut it down.

The matter was referred to Petersburg, and the order was transmitted

to the governor to carry the decision of the court into effect.

The governor asked for a troop of soldiers. And here were the

soldiers with bayonets and cartridges, and moreover, a supply of

rods, expressly prepared for the purpose and heaped up in one of the

trucks, going to carry the decision of the higher authorities into

effect.

The decisions of the higher authorities are carried into effect by

means of murder or torture, or threats of one or the other, according

to whether they offer resistance or not.

In the first case if the peasants offer resistance the practice is in

Russia, and it is the same everywhere where a state organization and

private property exist, as follows:

The governor delivers an address in which he demands submission. The

excited crowd, generally deluded by their leaders, don't understand a

word of what the representative of authority is saying in the pompous

official language, and their excitement continues. Then the governor

announces that if they do not submit and disperse, he will be obliged

to have recourse to force. If the crowd does not disperse even on

this, the governor gives the order to fire over the heads of the

crowd. If the crowd does not even then disperse, the governor gives

the order to fire straight into the crowd; the soldiers fire and the

killed and wounded fall about the street. Then the crowd usually runs

away in all directions, and the troops at the governor's command

take those who are supposed to be the ringleaders and lead them off

under escort. Then they pick up the dying, the wounded, and the dead,

covered with blood, sometimes women and children among them. The dead

they bury and the wounded they carry to the hospital. Those whom they

regard as the ringleaders they take to the town hall and have them

tried by a special court-martial. And if they have had recourse to

violence on their side, they are condemned to be hanged. And then

the gallows is erected. And they solemnly strangle a few defenseless

creatures. This is what has often been done in Russia, and is and

must always be done where the social order is based on force.

But in the second case, when the peasants do submit, something quite

special, peculiar to Russia, takes place. The governor arrives on the

scene of action and delivers an harangue to the people, reproaching

them for their insubordination, and either stations troops in the

houses of the villages, where sometimes for a whole month the

soldiers drain the resources of the peasants, or contenting himself

with threats, he mercifully takes leave of the people, or what is

the most frequent course, he announces that the ringleaders must be

punished, and quite arbitrarily without any trial selects a certain

number of men, regarded as ringleaders, and commands them to be

flogged in his presence.

In order to give an idea of how such things are done I will describe

a proceeding of the kind which took place in Orel, and received the

full approval of the highest authorities.

This is what took place in Orel. Just as here in the Toula province,

a landlord wanted to appropriate the property of the peasants and

just in the same way the peasants opposed it. The matter in dispute

was a fall of water, which irrigated the peasants' fields, and

which the landowner wanted to cut off and divert to turn his mill.

The peasants rebelled against this being done. The landowner laid

a complaint before the district commander, who illegally (as was

recognized later even by a legal decision) decided the matter in

favor of the landowner, and allowed him to divert the water course.

The landowner sent workmen to dig the conduit by which the water was

to be let off to turn the mill. The peasants were indignant at this

unjust decision, and sent their women to prevent the landowner's men

from digging this conduit. The women went to the dykes, overturned

the carts, and drove away the men. The landowner made a complaint

against the women for thus taking the law into their own hands. The

district commander made out an order that from every house throughout

the village one woman was to be taken and put in prison. The order

was not easily executed. For in every household there were several

women, and it was impossible to know which one was to be arrested.

Consequently the police did not carry out the order. The landowner

complained to the governor of the neglect on the part of the police,

and the latter, without examining into the affair, gave the chief

official of the police strict orders to carry out the instructions

of the district commander without delay. The police official, in

obedience to his superior, went to the village and with the insolence

peculiar to Russian officials ordered his policemen to take one

woman out of each house. But since there were more than one woman

in each house, and there was no knowing which one was sentenced

to imprisonment, disputes and opposition arose. In spite of these

disputes and opposition, however, the officer of police gave orders

that some woman, whichever came first, should be taken from each

household and led away to prison. The peasants began to defend their

wives and mothers, would not let them go, and beat the police and

their officer. This was a fresh and terrible crime: resistance was

offered to the authorities. A report of this new offense was sent to

the town. And so this governor--precisely as the governor of Toula

was doing on that day--with a battalion of soldiers with guns and

rods, hastily brought together by means of telegraphs and telephones

and railways, proceeded by a special train to the scene of action,

with a learned doctor whose duty it was to insure the flogging being

of an hygienic character. Herzen's prophecy of the modern Ghenghis

Khan with his telegrams is completely realized by this governor.

Before the town hall of the district were the soldiery, a battalion

of police with their revolvers slung round them with red cords, the

persons of most importance among the peasants, and the culprits.

A crowd of one thousand or more people were standing round. The

governor, on arriving, stepped out of his carriage, delivered a

prepared harangue, and asked for the culprits and a bench. The latter

demand was at first not understood. But a police constable whom the

governor always took about with him, and who undertook to organize

such executions--by no means exceptional in that province--explained

that what was meant was a bench for flogging. A bench was brought as

well as the rods, and then the executioners were summoned (the latter

had been selected beforehand from some horsestealers of the same

village, as the soldiers refused the office). When everything was

ready, the governor ordered the first of the twelve culprits pointed

out by the landowner as the most guilty to come forward. The first to

come forward was the head of a family, a man of forty who had always

stood up manfully for the rights of his class, and therefore was held

in the greatest esteem by all the villagers. He was led to the bench

and stripped, and then ordered to lie down.

The peasant attempted to supplicate for mercy, but seeing it was

useless, he crossed himself and lay down. Two police constables

hastened to hold him down. The learned doctor stood by, in readiness

to give his aid and his medical science when they should be needed.

The convicts spit into their hands, brandished the rods, and began

to flog. It seemed, however, that the bench was too narrow, and it

was difficult to keep the victim writhing in torture upon it. Then

the governor ordered them to bring another bench and to put a plank

across them. Soldiers, with their hands raised to their caps, and

respectful murmurs of "Yes, your Excellency," hasten obediently to

carry out this order. Meanwhile the tortured man, half naked, pale

and scowling, stood waiting, his eyes fixed on the ground and his

teeth chattering. When another bench had been brought they again made

him lie down, and the convicted thieves again began to flog him.

The victim's back and thighs and legs, and even his sides, became

more and more covered with scars and wheals, and at every blow there

came the sound of the deep groans which he could no longer restrain.

In the crowd standing round were heard the sobs of wives, mothers,

children, the families of the tortured man and of all the others

picked out for punishment.

The miserable governor, intoxicated with power, was counting the

strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes, while

several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to offer him

a burning match to light them. When more than fifty strokes had been

given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe, and the doctor, who

had been educated in a government institution to serve his sovereign

and his country with his scientific attainments, went up to the

victim, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, and announced to the

representative of authority that the man undergoing punishment had

lost consciousness, and that, in accordance with the conclusions

of science, to continue the punishment would endanger the victim's

life. But the miserable governor, now completely intoxicated by the

sight of blood, gave orders that the punishment should go on, and

the flogging was continued up to seventy strokes, the number which

the governor had for some reason fixed upon as necessary. When the

seventieth stroke had been reached, the governor said "Enough! Next

one!" And the mutilated victim, his back covered with blood, was

lifted up and carried away unconscious, and another was led up. The

sobs and groans of the crowd grew louder. But the representative of

the state continued the torture.

Thus they flogged each of them up to the twelfth, and each of them

received seventy strokes. They all implored mercy, shrieked and

groaned. The sobs and cries of the crowd of women grew louder and

more heart-rending, and the men's faces grew darker and darker. But

they were surrounded by troops, and the torture did not cease till

it had reached the limit which had been fixed by the caprice of the

miserable half-drunken and insane creature they called the governor.

The officials, and officers, and soldiers not only assisted in it,

but were even partly responsible for the affair, since by their

presence they prevented any interference on the part of the crowd.

When I inquired of one of the governors why they made use of this

kind of torture when people had already submitted and soldiers were

stationed in the village, he replied with the important air of a man

who thoroughly understands all the subtleties of statecraft, that

if the peasants were not thoroughly subdued by flogging, they would

begin offering opposition to the decisions of authorities again. When

some of them had been thoroughly tortured, the authority of the state

would be secured forever among them.

And so that was why the Governor of Toula was going in his turn with

his subordinate officials, officers, and soldiers to carry out a

similar measure. By precisely the same means, _i. e._, by murder and

torture, obedience to the decision of the higher authorities was to

be secured. And this decision was to enable a young landowner, who

had an income of one hundred thousand, to gain three thousand rubles

more by stealing a forest from a whole community of cold and famished

peasants, to spend it, in two or three weeks in the saloons of

Moscow, Petersburg, or Paris. That was what those people whom I met

were going to do.

After my thoughts had for two years been turned in the same

direction, fate seemed expressly to have brought me face to face for

the first time in my life with a fact which showed me absolutely

unmistakably in practice what had long been clear to me in theory,

that the organization of our society rests, not as people interested

in maintaining the present order of things like to imagine, on

certain principles of jurisprudence, but on simple brute force, on

the murder and torture of men.

People who own great estates or fortunes, or who receive great

revenues drawn from the class who are in want even of necessities,

the working class, as well as all those who like merchants, doctors,

artists, clerks, learned professors, coachmen, cooks, writers,

valets, and barristers, make their living about these rich people,

like to believe that the privileges they enjoy are not the result of

force, but of absolutely free and just interchange of services, and

that their advantages, far from being gained by such punishments and

murders as took place in Orel and several parts of Russia this year,

and are always taking place all over Europe and America, have no kind

of connection with these acts of violence. They like to believe that

their privileges exist apart and are the result of free contract

among people; and that the violent cruelties perpetrated on the

people also exist apart and are the result of some general judicial,

political, or economical laws. They try not to see that they all

enjoy their privileges as a result of the same fact which forces the

peasants who have tended the forest, and who are in the direct need

of it for fuel, to give it up to a rich landowner who has taken no

part in caring for its growth and has no need of it whatever--the

fact, that is, that if they don't give it up they will be flogged or

killed.

And yet if it is clear that it was only by means of menaces, blows,

or murder, that the mill in Orel was enabled to yield a larger

income, or that the forest which the peasants had planted became

the property of a landowner, it should be equally clear that all

the other exclusive rights enjoyed by the rich, by robbing the

poor of their necessities, rest on the same basis of violence. If

the peasants, who need land to maintain their families, may not

cultivate the land about their houses, but one man, a Russian,

English, Austrian, or any other great landowner, possesses land

enough to maintain a thousand families, though he does not cultivate

it himself, and if a merchant profiting by the misery of the

cultivators, taking corn from them at a third of its value, can

keep this corn in his granaries with perfect security while men are

starving all around him, and sell it again for three times its value

to the very cultivators he bought it from, it is evident that all

this too comes from the same cause. And if one man may not buy of

another a commodity from the other side of a certain fixed line,

called the frontier, without paying certain duties on it to men who

have taken no part whatever in its production--and if men are driven

to sell their last cow to pay taxes which the government distributes

among its functionaries, and spends on maintaining soldiers to murder

these very taxpayers--it would appear self-evident that all this does

not come about as the result of any abstract laws, but is based on

just what was done in Orel, and which may be done in Toula, and is

done periodically in one form or another throughout the whole world

wherever there is a government, and where there are rich and poor.

Simply because torture and murder are not employed in every instance

of oppression by force, those who enjoy the exclusive privileges

of the ruling classes persuade themselves and others that their

privileges are not based on torture and murder, but on some

mysterious general causes, abstract laws, and so on. Yet one would

think it was perfectly clear that if men, who consider it unjust (and

all the working classes do consider it so nowadays), still pay the

principal part of the produce of their labor away to the capitalist

and the landowner, and pay taxes, though they know to what a bad use

these taxes are put, they do so not from recognition of abstract laws

of which they have never heard, but only because they know they will

be beaten and killed if they don't do so.

And if there is no need to imprison, beat, and kill men every time

the landlord collects his rents, every time those who are in want of

bread have to pay a swindling merchant three times its value, every

time the factory hand has to be content with a wage less than half of

the profit made by the employer, and every time a poor man pays his

last ruble in taxes, it is because so many men have been beaten and

killed for trying to resist these demands, that the lesson has now

been learnt very thoroughly.

Just as a trained tiger, who does not eat meat put under his nose,

and jumps over a stick at the word of command, does not act thus

because he likes it, but because he remembers the red-hot irons or

the fast with which he was punished every time he did not obey; so

men submitting to what is disadvantageous or even ruinous to them,

and considered by them as unjust, act thus because they remember what

they suffered for resisting it.

As for those who profit by the privileges gained by previous acts of

violence, they often forget and like to forget how these privileges

were obtained. But one need only recall the facts of history, not the

history of the exploits of different dynasties of rulers, but real

history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a small

number of men, to see that all the advantages the rich have over the

poor are based on nothing but flogging, imprisonment, and murder.

One need but reflect on the unceasing, persistent struggle of all to

better their material position, which is the guiding motive of men

of the present day, to be convinced that the advantages of the rich

over the poor could never and can never be maintained by anything but

force.

There may be cases of oppression, of violence, and of punishments,

though they are rare, the aim of which is not to secure the

privileges of the propertied classes. But one may confidently assert

that in any society where, for every man living in ease, there are

ten exhausted by labor, envious, covetous, and often suffering with

their families from direct privation, all the privileges of the rich,

all their luxuries and superfluities, are obtained and maintained

only by tortures, imprisonment, and murder.

The train I met on the 9th of September going with soldiers, guns,

cartridges, and rods, to confirm the rich landowner in the possession

of a small forest which he had taken from the starving peasants,

which they were in the direst need of, and he was in no need of at

all, was a striking proof of how men are capable of doing deeds

directly opposed to their principles and their conscience without

perceiving it.

The special train consisted of one first-class carriage for the

governor, the officials, and officers, and several luggage vans

crammed full of soldiers. The latter, smart young fellows in their

clean new uniforms, were standing about in groups or sitting swinging

their legs in the wide open doorways of the luggage vans. Some were

smoking, nudging each other, joking, grinning, and laughing, others

were munching sunflower seeds and spitting out the husks with an air

of dignity. Some of them ran along the platform to drink some water

from a tub there, and when they met the officers they slackened their

pace, made their stupid gesture of salutation, raising their hands to

their heads with serious faces as though they were doing something of

the greatest importance. They kept their eyes on them till they had

passed by them, and then set off running still more merrily, stamping

their heels on the platform, laughing and chattering after the

manner of healthy, good-natured young fellows, traveling in lively

company.

They were going to assist at the murder of their fathers or

grandfathers just as if they were going on a party of pleasure, or at

any rate on some quite ordinary business.

The same impression was produced by the well-dressed functionaries

and officers who were scattered about the platform and in the

first-class carriage. At a table covered with bottles was sitting

the governor, who was responsible for the whole expedition, dressed

in his half-military uniform and eating something while he chatted

tranquilly about the weather with some acquaintances he had met,

as though the business he was upon was of so simple and ordinary a

character that it could not disturb his serenity and his interest in

the change of weather.

At a little distance from the table sat the general of the police.

He was not taking any refreshment, and had an impenetrable bored

expression, as though he were weary of the formalities to be gone

through. On all sides officers were bustling noisily about in their

red uniforms trimmed with gold; one sat at a table finishing his

bottle of beer, another stood at the buffet eating a cake, and

brushing the crumbs off his uniform, threw down his money with a

self-confident air; another was sauntering before the carriages of

our train, staring at the faces of the women.

All these men who were going to murder or to torture the famishing

and defenseless creatures who provide them their sustenance had the

air of men who knew very well that they were doing their duty, and

some were even proud, were "glorying" in what they were doing.

What is the meaning of it?

All these people are within half an hour of reaching the place where,

in order to provide a wealthy young man with three thousand rubles

stolen from a whole community of famishing peasants, they may be

forced to commit the most horrible acts one can conceive, to murder

or torture, as was done in Orel, innocent beings, their brothers. And

they see the place and time approaching with untroubled serenity.

To say that all these government officials, officers, and soldiers

do not know what is before them is impossible, for they are prepared

for it. The governor must have given directions about the rods, the

officials must have sent an order for them, purchased them, and

entered the item in their accounts. The military officers have given

and received orders about cartridges. They all know that they are

going to torture, perhaps to kill, their famishing fellow-creatures,

and that they must set to work within an hour.

To say, as is usually said, and as they would themselves repeat,

that they are acting from conviction of the necessity for supporting

the state organization, would be a mistake. For in the first place,

these men have probably never even thought about state organization

and the necessity of it; in the second place, they cannot possibly

be convinced that the act in which they are taking part will tend to

support rather than to ruin the state; and thirdly, in reality the

majority, if not all, of these men, far from ever sacrificing their

own pleasure or tranquillity to support the state, never let slip an

opportunity of profiting at the expense of the state in every way

they can increase their own pleasure and ease. So that they are not

acting thus for the sake of the abstract principle of the state.

What is the meaning of it?

Yet I know all these men. If I don't know all of them personally,

I know their characters pretty nearly, their past, and their way

of thinking. They certainly all have mothers, some of them wives

and children. They are certainly for the most part good, kind, even

tender-hearted fellows, who hate every sort of cruelty, not to speak

of murder; many of them would not kill or hurt an animal. Moreover,

they are all professed Christians and regard all violence directed

against the defenseless as base and disgraceful.

Certainly not one of them would be capable in everyday life, for his

own personal profit, of doing a hundredth part of what the Governor

of Orel did. Every one of them would be insulted at the supposition

that he was capable of doing anything of the kind in private life.

And yet they are within half an hour of reaching the place where they

may be reduced to the inevitable necessity of committing this crime.

What is the meaning of it?

But it is not only these men who are going by train prepared for

murder and torture. How could the men who began the whole business,

the landowner, the commissioner, the judges, and those who gave the

order and are responsible for it, the ministers, the Tzar, who are

also good men, professed Christians, how could they elaborate such a

plan and assent to it, knowing its consequences? The spectators even,

who took no part in the affair, how could they, who are indignant at

the sight of any cruelty in private life, even the overtaxing of a

horse, allow such a horrible deed to be perpetrated? How was it they

did not rise in indignation and bar the roads, shouting, "No; flog

and kill starving men because they won't let their last possession

be stolen from them without resistance, that we won't allow!" But

far from anyone doing this, the majority, even of those who were

the cause of the affair, such as the commissioner, the landowner,

the judge, and those who took part in it and arranged it, as the

governor, the ministers, and the Tzar, are perfectly tranquil and do

not even feel a prick of conscience. And apparently all the men who

are going to carry out this crime are equally undisturbed.

The spectators, who one would suppose could have no personal

interest in the affair, looked rather with sympathy than with

disapproval at all these people preparing to carry out this infamous

action. In the same compartment with me was a wood merchant, who had

risen from a peasant. He openly expressed aloud his sympathy with

such punishments. "They can't disobey the authorities," he said;

"that's what the authorities are for. Let them have a lesson; send

their fleas flying! They'll give over making commotions, I warrant

you. That's what they want."

What is the meaning of it?

It is not possible to say that all these people who have provoked

or aided or allowed this deed are such worthless creatures that,

knowing all the infamy of what they are doing, they do it against

their principles, some for pay and for profit, others through fear of

punishment. All of them in certain circumstances know how to stand

up for their principles. Not one of these officials would steal a

purse, read another man's letter, or put up with an affront without

demanding satisfaction. Not one of these officers would consent to

cheat at cards, would refuse to pay a debt of honor, would betray a

comrade, run away on the field of battle, or desert the flag. Not one

of these soldiers would spit out the holy sacrament or eat meat on

Good Friday. All these men are ready to face any kind of privation,

suffering, or danger rather than consent to do what they regard as

wrong. They have therefore the strength to resist doing what is

against their principles.

It is even less possible to assert that all these men are such brutes

that it is natural and not distasteful to them to do such deeds. One

need only talk to these people a little to see that all of them, the

landowner even, and the judge, and the minister and the Tzar and

the government, the officers and the soldiers, not only disapprove

of such things in the depth of their soul, but suffer from the

consciousness of their participation in them when they recollect

what they imply. But they try not to think about it.

One need only talk to any of these who are taking part in the affair

from the landowner to the lowest policeman or soldier to see that in

the depth of their soul they all know it is a wicked thing, that it

would be better to have nothing to do with it, and are suffering from

the knowledge.

A lady of liberal views, who was traveling in the same train with

us, seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class saloon

and learning the object of the expedition, began, intentionally

raising her voice so that they should hear, to abuse the existing

order of things and to cry shame on men who would take part in such

proceedings. Everyone felt awkward, none knew where to look, but

no one contradicted her. They tried to look as though such remarks

were not worth answering. But one could see by their faces and their

averted eyes that they were ashamed. I noticed the same thing in the

soldiers. They too knew that what they were sent to do was a shameful

thing, but they did not want to think about what was before them.

When the wood merchant, as I suspect insincerely only to show that

he was a man of education, began to speak of the necessity of such

measures, the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him,

scowling and pretending not to hear.

All the men who, like the landowner, the commissioner, the minister,

and the Tzar, were responsible for the perpetration of this act, as

well as those who were now going to execute it, and even those who

were mere spectators of it, knew that it was a wickedness, and were

ashamed of taking any share in it, and even of being present at it.

Then why did they do it, or allow it to be done?

Ask them the question. And the landowner who started the affair, and

the judge who pronounced a clearly unjust even though formally legal

decision, and those who commanded the execution of the decision, and

those who, like the policemen, soldiers, and peasants, will execute

the deed with their own hands, flogging and killing their brothers,

all who have devised, abetted, decreed, executed, or allowed such

crimes, will make substantially the same reply.

The authorities, those who have started, devised, and decreed the

matter, will say that such acts are necessary for the maintenance

of the existing order; the maintenance of the existing order is

necessary for the welfare of the country and of humanity, for the

possibility of social existence and human progress.

Men of the poorer class, peasants and soldiers, who will have to

execute the deed of violence with their own hands, say that they

do so because it is the command of their superior authority, and

the superior authority knows what he is about. That those are in

authority who ought to be in authority, and that they know what they

are doing appears to them a truth of which there can be no doubt. If

they could admit the possibility of mistake or error, it would only

be in functionaries of a lower grade; the highest authority on which

all the rest depends seems to them immaculate beyond suspicion.

Though expressing the motives of their conduct differently, both

those in command and their subordinates are agreed in saying that

they act thus because the existing order is the order which must and

ought to exist at the present time, and that therefore to support it

is the sacred duty of every man.

On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore immutability of the

existing order, all who take part in acts of violence on the part of

government base the argument always advanced in their justification.

"Since the existing order is immutable," they say, "the refusal of a

single individual to perform the duties laid upon him will effect no

change in things, and will only mean that some other man will be put

in his place who may do the work worse, that is to say, more cruelly,

to the still greater injury of the victims of the act of violence."

This conviction that the existing order is the necessary and

therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for every man

to support, enables good men, of high principles in private life, to

take part with conscience more or less untroubled in crimes such as

that perpetrated in Orel, and that which the men in the Toula train

were going to perpetrate.

But what is this conviction based on? It is easy to understand

that the landowner prefers to believe that the existing order is

inevitable and immutable, because this existing order secures him an

income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by means of which he

can lead his habitual indolent and luxurious life.

It is easy to understand that the judge readily believes in the

necessity of an order of things through which he receives a wage

fifty times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and

the same applies to all the higher officials. It is only under the

existing _régime_ that as governor, prosecutor, senator, members of

the various councils, they can receive their several thousands of

rubles a year, without which they and their families would at once

sink into ruin, since if it were not for the position they occupy

they would never by their own abilities, industry, or acquirements

get a thousandth part of their salaries. The minister, the Tzar,

and all the higher authorities are in the same position. The only

distinction is that the higher and the more exceptional their

position, the more necessary it is for them to believe that the

existing order is the only possible order of things. For without it

they would not only be unable to gain an equal position, but would be

found to fall lower than all other people. A man who has of his own

free will entered the police force at a wage of ten rubles, which he

could easily earn in any other position, is hardly dependent on the

preservation of the existing _régime_, and so he may not believe in

its immutability. But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for

his post, and knows that there are thousands of people round him who

would like to dethrone him and take his place, who knows that he will

never receive such a revenue or so much honor in any other position,

who knows, in most cases through his more or less despotic rule,

that if he were dethroned he would have to answer for all his abuse

of power--he cannot but believe in the necessity and even sacredness

of the existing order. The higher and the more profitable a man's

position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more terrible and

dangerous a fall from it for him, the more firmly the man believes in

the existing order, and therefore with the more ease of conscience

can such a man perpetrate cruel and wicked acts, as though they were

not in his own interest, but for the maintenance of that order.

This is the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions more

profitable than they could occupy except for the present _régime_,

from the lowest police officer to the Tzar. All of them are more or

less convinced that the existing order is immutable, because--the

chief consideration--it is to their advantage. But the peasants,

the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social scale, who have

no kind of advantage from the existing order, who are in the very

lowest position of subjection and humiliation, what forces them to

believe that the existing order in which they are in their humble and

disadvantageous position is the order which ought to exist, and which

they ought to support even at the cost of evil actions contrary to

their conscience?

What forces these men to the false reasoning that the existing order

is unchanging, and that therefore they ought to support it, when it

is so obvious, on the contrary, that it is only unchanging because

they themselves support it?

What forces these peasants, taken only yesterday from the plow and

dressed in ugly and unseemly costumes with blue collars and gilt

buttons, to go with guns and sabers and murder their famishing

fathers and brothers? They gain no kind of advantage and can be in

no fear of losing the position they occupy, because it is worse than

that from which they have been taken.

The persons in authority of the higher orders--landowners, merchants,

judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and officers--take

part in such doings because the existing order is to their advantage.

In other respects they are often good and kind-hearted men, and they

are more able to take part in such doings because their share in

them is limited to suggestions, decisions, and orders. These persons

in authority never do themselves what they suggest, decide, or

command to be done. For the most part they do not even see how all

the atrocious deeds they have suggested and authorized are carried

out. But the unfortunate men of the lower orders, who gain no kind

of advantage from the existing _régime_, but, on the contrary, are

treated with the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people

with their own hands from their families, handcuffing them, throwing

them in prison, guarding them, shooting them.

Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the existing

order is unchanging and they must support it?

All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the

handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own hands.

If there were no soldiers or armed policemen, ready to kill or

outrage anyone as they are ordered, not one of those people who sign

sentences of death, imprisonment, or galley-slavery for life would

make up his mind to hang, imprison, or torture a thousandth part

of those whom, quietly sitting in his study, he now orders to be

tortured in all kinds of ways, simply because he does not see it nor

do it himself, but only gets it done at a distance by these servile

tools.

All the acts of injustice and cruelty which are committed in the

ordinary course of daily life have only become habitual because there

are these men always ready to carry out such acts of injustice and

cruelty. If it were not for them, far from anyone using violence

against the immense masses who are now ill-treated, those who now

command their punishment would not venture to sentence them, would

not even dare to dream of the sentences they decree with such easy

confidence at present. And if it were not for these men, ready to

kill or torture anyone at their commander's will, no one would dare

to claim, as all the idle landowners claim with such assurance, that

a piece of land, surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from

want of land, is the property of a man who does not cultivate it, or

that stores of corn taken by swindling from the peasants ought to

remain untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger because

the merchants must make their profit. If it were not for these

servile instruments at the disposal of the authorities, it could

never have entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants of

the forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they are

entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing people, the

price of their oppression; least of all could anyone dream of killing

or exiling men for exposing falsehood and telling the truth. All this

can only be done because the authorities are confidently assured that

they have always these servile tools at hand, ready to carry all

their demands into effect by means of torture and murder.

All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the lowest

commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can only be explained

by the intoxicating effect of their absolute power over these

slaves. All force, therefore, rests on these men, who carry out the

deeds of violence with their own hands, the men who serve in the

police or the army, especially the army, for the police only venture

to do their work because the army is at their back.

What, then, has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the whole

thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do these

atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought them to accept

the amazing delusion that the existing order, unprofitable, ruinous,

and fatal as it is for them, is the order which ought to exist?

Who has led them into this amazing delusion?

They can never have persuaded themselves that they ought to do what

is against their conscience, and also the source of misery and ruin

for themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-tenths of the

population.

"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment:

'Thou shalt not kill'?" I have often inquired of different soldiers.

And I always drove them to embarrassment and confusion by reminding

them of what they did not want to think about. They knew they were

bound by the law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and knew too that

they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had never reflected

on the contradiction between these duties. The drift of the timid

answers I received to this question was always approximately this:

that killing in war and executing criminals by command of the

government are not included in the general prohibition of murder.

But when I said this distinction was not made in the law of God, and

reminded them of the Christian duty of fraternity, forgiveness of

injuries, and love, which could not be reconciled with murder, the

peasants usually agreed, but in their turn began to ask me questions.

"How does it happen," they inquired, "that the government [which

according to their ideas cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and

orders criminals to be executed." When I answered that the government

does wrong in giving such orders, the peasants fell into still

greater confusion, and either broke off the conversation or else got

angry with me.

"They must have found a law for it. The archbishops know as much

about it as we do, I should hope," a Russian soldier once observed to

me. And in saying this the soldier obviously set his mind at rest,

in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law

which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants,

and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the

question I had put him was a kind of hoax or conundrum on my part.

Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by

revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of the

most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us, and

that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons, that is,

murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others. Everyone

knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin, whoever are the

victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery, theft, or any other.

At the same time from their childhood up men see that murder is not

only permitted, but even sanctioned by the blessing of those whom

they are accustomed to regard as their divinely appointed spiritual

guides, and see their secular leaders with calm assurance organizing

murder, proud to wear murderous arms, and demanding of others in the

name of the laws of the country, and even of God, that they should

take part in murder. Men see that there is some inconsistency here,

but not being able to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this

apparent inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance. The

very grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in

this conviction.

They cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the educated

classes, could so confidently preach two such opposed principles

as the law of Christ and murder. A simple uncorrupted youth cannot

imagine that those who stand so high in his opinion, whom he regards

as holy or learned men, could for any object whatever mislead him

so shamefully. But this is just what has always been and always is

done to him. It is done (1) by instilling, by example and direct

instruction, from childhood up, into the working people, who have

not time to study moral and religious questions for themselves, the

idea that torture and murder are compatible with Christianity, and

that for certain objects of state, torture and murder are not only

admissible, but ought to be employed; and (2) by instilling into

certain of the people, who have either voluntarily enlisted or been

taken by compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of

murder and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a

glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.

The general delusion is diffused among all people by means of the

catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in use for the

compulsory education of children. In them it is stated that violence,

that is, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder in civil or

foreign war in the defense and maintenance of the existing state

organization (whatever that may be, absolute or limited monarchy,

convention, consulate, empire of this or that Napoleon or Boulanger,

constitutional monarchy, commune or republic) is absolutely lawful

and not opposed to morality and Christianity.

This is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools. And men

are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up, live and die in

that conviction without once entertaining a doubt about it.

This is one form of deception, the general deception instilled into

everyone, but there is another special deception practiced upon the

soldiers or police who are picked out by one means or another to do

the torturing and murdering necessary to defend and maintain the

existing _régime_.

In all military instructions there appears in one form or another

what is expressed in the Russian military code in the following words:

_Article 87._ To carry out exactly and without comment the orders

of a superior officer means: to carry out an order received from a

superior officer exactly without considering whether it is good or

not, and whether it is possible to carry it out. The superior officer

is responsible for the consequences of the order he gives.

_Article 88._ The subordinate ought never to refuse to carry out the

orders of a superior officer except when he sees clearly that in

carrying out his superior officer's command, he breaks [the law of

God, one involuntarily expects; not at all] _his oath of fidelity and

allegiance to the Tzar_.

It is here said that the man who is a soldier can and ought to carry

out all the orders of his superior without exception. And as these

orders for the most part involve murder, it follows that he ought to

break all the laws of God and man. The one law he may not break is

that of fidelity and allegiance to the man who happens at a given

moment to be in power.

Precisely the same thing is said in other words in all codes of

military instruction. And it could not be otherwise, since the whole

power of the army and the state is based in reality on this delusive

emancipation of men from their duty to God and their conscience, and

the substitution of duty to their superior officer for all other

duties.

This, then, is the foundation of the belief of the lower classes that

the existing _régime_ so fatal for them is the _régime_ which ought

to exist, and which they ought therefore to support even by torture

and murder.

This belief is founded on a conscious deception practiced on them by

the higher classes.

And it cannot be otherwise. To compel the lower classes, which are

more numerous, to oppress and ill treat themselves, even at the cost

of actions opposed to their conscience, it was necessary to deceive

them. And it has been done accordingly.

Not many days ago I saw once more this shameless deception being

openly practiced, and once more I marveled that it could be practiced

so easily and impudently.

At the beginning of November, as I was passing through Toula, I

saw once again at the gates of the Zemsky Court-house the crowd of

peasants I had so often seen before, and heard the drunken shouts

of the men mingled with the pitiful lamentations of their wives and

mothers. It was the recruiting session.

I can never pass by the spectacle. It attracts me by a kind of

fascination of repulsion. I again went into the crowd, took my stand

among the peasants, looked about and asked questions. And once again

I was amazed that this hideous crime can be perpetrated so easily in

broad daylight and in the midst of a large town.

As the custom is every year, in all the villages and hamlets of the

one hundred millions of Russians, on the 1st of November, the village

elders had assembled the young men inscribed on the lists, often

their own sons among them, and had brought them to the town.

On the road the recruits have been drinking without intermission,

unchecked by the elders, who feel that going on such an insane

errand, abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing all they

hold sacred in order to become a senseless instrument of destruction,

would be too agonizing if they were not stupefied with spirits.

And so they have come, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting and

scuffling with one another. They have spent the night in taverns. In

the morning they have slept off their drunkenness and have gathered

together at the Zemsky Court-house.

Some of them, in new sheepskin pelisses, with knitted scarves round

their necks, their eyes swollen from drinking, are shouting wildly

to one another to show their courage; others, crowded near the

door, are quietly and mournfully waiting their turn, between their

weeping wives and mothers (I had chanced upon the day of the actual

enrolling, that is, the examination of those whose names are on the

list); others meantime were crowding into the hall of the recruiting

office.

Inside the office the work was going on rapidly. The door is opened

and the guard calls Piotr Sidorov. Piotr Sidorov starts, crosses

himself, and goes into a little room with a glass door, where the

conscripts undress. A comrade of Piotr Sidorov's, who has just been

passed for service, and come naked out of the revision office, is

dressing hurriedly, his teeth chattering. Sidorov has already heard

the news, and can see from his face too that he has been taken. He

wants to ask him questions, but they hurry him and tell him to make

haste and undress. He throws off his pelisse, slips his boots off his

feet, takes off his waistcoat and draws his shirt over his head, and

naked, trembling all over, and exhaling an odor of tobacco, spirits,

and sweat, goes into the revision office, not knowing what to do with

his brawny bare arms.

Directly facing him in the revision office hangs in a great gold

frame a portrait of the Tzar in full uniform with decorations, and

in the corner a little portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown

of thorns. In the middle of the room is a table covered with green

cloth, on which there are papers lying and a three-cornered ornament

surmounted by an eagle--the zertzal. Round the table are sitting the

revising officers, looking collected and indifferent. One is smoking

a cigarette; another is looking through some papers. Directly Sidorov

comes in, a guard goes up to him, places him under the measuring

frame, raising him under his chin, and straightening his legs.

The man with the cigarette--he is the doctor--comes up, and without

looking at the recruit's face, but somewhere beyond it, feels his

body over with an air of disgust, measures him, tests him, tells the

guard to open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to speak. Someone

notes something down. At last without having once looked him in the

face the doctor says, "Right. Next one!" and with a weary air sits

down again at the table. The soldiers again hustle and hurry the lad.

He somehow gets into his trousers, wraps his feet in rags, puts on

his boots, looks for his scarf and cap, and bundles his pelisse under

his arm. Then they lead him into the main hall, shutting him off

apart from the rest by a bench, behind which all the conscripts who

have been passed for service are waiting. Another village lad like

himself, but from a distant province, now a soldier armed with a gun

with a sharp-pointed bayonet at the end, keeps watch over him, ready

to run him through the body if he should think of trying to escape.

Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives, hustled by the

police, are pressing round the doors to hear whose lad has been

taken, whose is let off. One of the rejected comes out and announces

that Piotr is taken, and at once a shrill cry is heard from Piotr's

young wife, for whom this word "taken" means separation for four

or five years, the life of a soldier's wife as a servant, often a

prostitute.

But here comes a man along the street with flowing hair and in a

peculiar dress, who gets out of his droskhy and goes into the Zemsky

Court-house. The police clear a way for him through the crowd. It is

the "reverend father" come to administer the oath, And this "father,"

who has been persuaded that he is specially and exclusively devoted

to the service of Christ, and who, for the most part, does not

himself see the deception in which he lives, goes into the hall where

the conscripts are waiting. He throws round him a kind of curtain of

brocade, pulls his long hair out over it, opens the very Gospel in

which swearing is forbidden, takes the cross, the very cross on which

Christ was crucified because he would not do what this false servant

of his is telling men to do, and puts them on the lectern. And all

these unhappy, defenseless, and deluded lads repeat after him the

lie, which he utters with the assurance of familiarity.

He reads and they repeat after him:

"I promise and swear by Almighty God upon his holy Gospel," etc.,

"to defend," etc., and that is, to murder anyone I am told to, and

to do everything I am told by men I know nothing of, and who care

nothing for me except as an instrument for perpetrating the crimes by

which they are kept in their position of power, and my brothers in

their condition of misery. All the conscripts repeat these ferocious

words without thinking. And then the so-called "father" goes away

with a sense of having correctly and conscientiously done his duty.

And all these poor deluded lads believe that these nonsensical and

incomprehensible words which they have just uttered set them free for

the whole time of their service from their duties as men, and lay

upon them fresh and more binding duties as soldiers.

And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out to the

deceiving and the deceived: "Think what you are doing; this is the

basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies only, but souls too, are

destroyed."

No one does this. On the contrary, when all have been enrolled,

and they are to be let out again, the military officer goes with a

confident and majestic air into the hall where the drunken, cheated

lads are shut up, and cries in a bold, military voice: "Your health,

my lads! I congratulate you on 'serving the Tzar!'" And they, poor

fellows (someone has given them a hint beforehand), mutter awkwardly,

their voices thick with drink, something to the effect that they are

glad.

Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives is standing at the

doors waiting. The women keep their tearful eyes fixed on the doors.

They open at last, and out come the conscripts, unsteady, but trying

to put a good face on it. Here are Piotr and Vania and Makar trying

not to look their dear ones in the face. Nothing is heard but the

wailing of the wives and mothers. Some of the lads embrace them and

weep with them, others make a show of courage, and others try to

comfort them.

The wives and mothers, knowing that they will be left for three,

four, or five years without their breadwinners, weep and rehearse

their woes aloud. The fathers say little. They only utter a clucking

sound with their tongues and sigh mournfully, knowing that they

will see no more of the steady lads they have reared and trained to

help them, that they will come back not the same quiet hard-working

laborers, but for the most part conceited and demoralized, unfitted

for their simple life.

And then all the crowd get into their sledges again and move away

down the street to the taverns and pot-houses, and louder than ever

sounds the medley of singing and sobbing, drunken shouts, and the

wailing of the wives and mothers, the sounds of the accordeon and

oaths. They all turn into the taverns, whose revenues go to the

government, and the drinking bout begins, which stifles their sense

of the wrong which is being done them.

For two or three weeks they go on living at home, and most of that

time they are "jaunting," that is, drinking.

On a fixed day they collect them, drive them together like a flock

of sheep, and begin to train them in the military exercises and

drill. Their teachers are fellows like themselves, only deceived and

brutalized two or three years sooner. The means of instruction are:

deception, stupefaction, blows, and vodka. And before a year has

passed these good, intelligent, healthy-minded lads will be as brutal

beings as their instructors.

"Come, now, suppose your father were arrested and tried to make his

escape?" I asked a young soldier.

"I should run him through with my bayonet," he answered with the

foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; "and if he made off, I ought

to shoot him," he added, obviously proud of knowing what he must do

if his father were escaping.

And when a good-hearted lad has been brought to a state lower than

that of a brute, he is just what is wanted by those who use him as an

instrument of violence. He is ready; the man has been destroyed and

a new instrument of violence has been created. And all this is done

every year, every autumn, everywhere, through all Russia in broad

daylight in the midst of large towns, where all may see it, and the

deception is so clever, so skillful, that though all men know the

infamy of it in their hearts, and see all its horrible results, they

cannot throw it off and be free.

When one's eyes are opened to this awful deception practiced upon

us, one marvels that the teachers of the Christian religion and

of morals, the instructors of youth, or even the good-hearted and

intelligent parents who are to be found in every society, can teach

any kind of morality in a society in which it is openly admitted (it

is so admitted, under all governments and all churches) that murder

and torture form an indispensable element in the life of all, and

that there must always be special men trained to kill their fellows,

and that any one of us may have to become such a trained assassin.

How can children, youths, and people generally be taught any

kind of morality--not to speak of teaching in the spirit of

Christianity--side by side with the doctrine that murder is necessary

for the public weal, and therefore legitimate, and that there are

men, of whom each of us may have to be one, whose duty is to murder

and torture and commit all sorts of crimes at the will of those who

are in possession of authority. If this is so, and one can and ought

to murder and torture, there is not, and cannot be, any kind of moral

law, but only the law that might is right. And this is just how it

is. In reality that is the doctrine--justified to some by the theory

of the struggle for existence--which reigns in our society.

And, indeed, what sort of ethical doctrine could admit the legitimacy

of murder for any object whatever? It is as impossible as a theory of

mathematics admitting that two is equal to three.

There may be a semblance of mathematics admitting that two is equal

to three, but there can be no real science of mathematics. And there

can only be a semblance of ethics in which murder in the shape of war

and the execution of criminals is allowed, but no true ethics. The

recognition of the life of every man as sacred is the first and only

basis of all ethics.

The doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth has been

abrogated by Christianity, because it is the justification of

immorality, and a mere semblance of equity, and has no real meaning.

Life is a value which has no weight nor size, and cannot be compared

to any other, and so there is no sense in destroying a life for a

life. Besides, every social law aims at the amelioration of man's

life. What way, then, can the annihilation of the life of some men

ameliorate men's life? Annihilation of life cannot be a means of the

amelioration of life; it is a suicidal act.

To destroy another life for the sake of justice is as though a man,

to repair the misfortune of losing one arm, should cut off the other

arm for the sake of equity.

But putting aside the sin of deluding men into regarding the most

awful crime as a duty, putting aside the revolting sin of using the

name and authority of Christ to sanction what he most condemned,

not to speak of the curse on those who cause these "little ones"

to offend--how can people who cherish their own way of life, their

progress, even from the point of view of their personal security,

allow the formation in their midst of an overwhelming force as

senseless, cruel, and destructive as every government is organized on

the basis of an army? Even the most cruel band of brigands is not so

much to be dreaded as such a government.

The power of every brigand chief is at least so far limited that

the men of his band preserve at least some human liberty, and can

refuse to commit acts opposed to their conscience. But, owing to the

perfection to which the discipline of the army has been brought,

there is no limit to check men who form part of a regularly organized

government. There are no crimes so revolting that they would not

readily be committed by men who form part of a government or army, at

the will of anyone (such as Boulanger, Napoleon, or Pougachef) who

may chance to be at their head.

Often when one sees conscription levies, military drills and

maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at

their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for whole

days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the whistle

of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when one sees in

the midst of a town where any effort at violence in self-defense is

forbidden, where the sale of powder and of chemicals, where furious

driving and practicing as a doctor without a diploma, and so on, are

not allowed, thousands of disciplined troops, trained to murder,

and subject to one man's will; one asks oneself how can people who

prize their security quietly allow it, and put up with it? Apart from

the immorality and evil effects of it, nothing can possibly be more

unsafe. What are people thinking about? I don't mean now Christians,

ministers of religion, philanthropists, and moralists, but simply

people who value their life, their security, and their comfort. This

organization, we know, will work just as well in one man's hands as

another's. To-day, let us assume, power is in the hands of a ruler

who can be endured, but to-morrow it may be seized by a Biron, an

Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pougachef, a Napoleon I., or a Napoleon III.

And the man in authority, endurable to-day, may become a brute

to-morrow, or may be succeeded by a mad or imbecile heir, like the

King of Bavaria or our Paul I.

And not only the highest authorities, but all little satraps

scattered over everywhere, like so many General Baranovs, governors,

police officers even, and commanders of companies, can perpetrate the

most awful crimes before there is time for them to be removed from

office. And this is what is constantly happening.

One involuntarily asks how can men let it go on, not from higher

considerations only, but from regard to their own safety?

The answer to this question is that it is not all people who do

tolerate it (some--the greater proportion--deluded and submissive,

have no choice and have to tolerate anything). It is tolerated by

those who only under such an organization can occupy a position of

profit. They tolerate it, because for them the risks of suffering

from a foolish or cruel man being at the head of the government or

the army are always less than the disadvantages to which they would

be exposed by the destruction of the organization itself.

A judge, a commander of police, a governor, or an officer will keep

his position just the same under Boulanger or the republic, under

Pougachef or Catherine. He will lose his profitable position for

certain, if the existing order of things which secured it to him is

destroyed. And so all these people feel no uneasiness as to who is at

the head of the organization, they will adapt themselves to anyone;

they only dread the downfall of the organization itself, and that is

the reason--though often an unconscious one--that they support it.

One often wonders why independent people, who are not forced to do

so in any way, the so-called _élite_ of society, should go into the

army in Russia, England, Germany, Austria, and even France, and seek

opportunities of becoming murderers. Why do even high-principled

parents send their boys to military schools? Why do mothers buy their

children toy helmets, guns, and swords as playthings? (The peasant's

children never play at soldiers, by the way). Why do good men and

even women, who have certainly no interest in war, go into raptures

over the various exploits of Skobeloff and others, and vie with one

another in glorifying them? Why do men, who are not obliged to do

so, and get no fee for it, devote, like the marshals of nobility in

Russia, whole months of toil to a business physically disagreeable

and morally painful--the enrolling of conscripts? Why do all kings

and emperors wear the military uniform? Why do they all hold military

reviews, why do they organize maneuvers, distribute rewards to the

military, and raise monuments to generals and successful commanders?

Why do rich men of independent position consider it an honor to

perform a valet's duties in attendance on crowned personages,

flattering them and cringing to them and pretending to believe in

their peculiar superiority? Why do men who have ceased to believe

in the superstitions of the mediæval Church, and who could not

possibly believe in them seriously and consistently, pretend to

believe in and give their support to the demoralizing and blasphemous

institution of the church? Why is it that not only governments but

private persons of the higher classes, try so jealously to maintain

the ignorance of the people? Why do they fall with such fury on

any effort at breaking down religious superstitions or really

enlightening the people? Why do historians, novelists, and poets, who

have no hope of gaining anything by their flatteries, make heroes

of kings, emperors, and conquerors of past times? Why do men, who

call themselves learned, dedicate whole lifetimes to making theories

to prove that violence employed by authority against the people is

not violence at all, but a special right? One often wonders why a

fashionable lady or an artist, who, one would think, would take no

interest in political or military questions, should always condemn

strikes of working people, and defend war; and should always be found

without hesitation opposed to the one, favorable to the other.

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher

classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain

and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which

they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly not

reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to defend

them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not have her

entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist certainly does

not argue that he needs the capitalists and the troops to defend

them, so that they may buy his pictures. But instinct, replacing

reason in this instance, guides them unerringly. And it is precisely

this instinct which leads all men, with few exceptions, to support

all the religious, political, and economic institutions which are to

their advantage.

But is it possible that the higher classes support the existing order

of things simply because it is to their advantage? Cannot they see

that this order of things is essentially irrational, that it is

no longer consistent with the stage of moral development attained

by people, and with public opinion, and that it is fraught with

perils? The governing classes, or at least the good, honest, and

intelligent people of them, cannot but suffer from these fundamental

inconsistencies, and see the dangers with which they are threatened.

And is it possible that all the millions of the lower classes can

feel easy in conscience when they commit such obviously evil deeds

as torture and murder from fear of punishment? Indeed, it could

not be so, neither the former nor the latter could fail to see the

irrationality of their conduct, if the complexity of government

organization did not obscure the unnatural senselessness of their

actions.

So many instigate, assist, or sanction the commission of every one

of these actions that no one who has a hand in them feels himself

morally responsible for it.

It is the custom among assassins to oblige all the witnesses of

a murder to strike the murdered victim, that the responsibility

may be divided among as large a number of people as possible. The

same principle in different forms is applied under the government

organization in the perpetration of the crimes, without which no

government organization could exist. Rulers always try to implicate

as many citizens as possible in all the crimes committed in their

support.

Of late this tendency has been expressed in a very obvious manner

by the obligation of all citizens to take part in legal processes

as jurors, in the army as soldiers, in the local government, or

legislative assembly, as electors or members.

Just as in a wicker basket all the ends are so hidden away that it is

hard to find them, in the state organization the responsibility for

the crimes committed is so hidden away that men will commit the most

atrocious acts without seeing their responsibility for them.

In ancient times tyrants got credit for the crimes they committed,

but in our day the most atrocious infamies, inconceivable under the

Neros, are perpetrated and no one gets blamed for them.

One set of people have suggested, another set have proposed, a third

have reported, a fourth have decided, a fifth have confirmed, a sixth

have given the order, and a seventh set of men have carried it out.

They hang, they flog to death women, old men, and innocent people, as

was done recently among us in Russia at the Yuzovsky factory, and is

always being done everywhere in Europe and America in the struggle

with the anarchists and all other rebels against the existing order;

they shoot and hang men by hundreds and thousands, or massacre

millions in war, or break men's hearts in solitary confinement, and

ruin their souls in the corruption of a soldier's life, and no one is

responsible.

At the bottom of the social scale soldiers, armed with guns, pistols,

and sabers, injure and murder people, and compel men through these

means to enter the army, and are absolutely convinced that the

responsibility for the actions rests solely on the officers who

command them.

At the top of the scale--the Tzars, presidents, ministers, and

parliaments decree these tortures and murders and military

conscription, and are fully convinced that since they are either

placed in authority by the grace of God or by the society they

govern, which demands such decrees from them, they cannot be held

responsible. Between these two extremes are the intermediary

personages who superintend the murders and other acts of violence,

and are fully convinced that the responsibility is taken off their

shoulders partly by their superiors who have given the order, partly

by the fact that such orders are expected from them by all who are at

the bottom of the scale.

The authority who gives the orders and the authority who executes

them at the two extreme ends of the state organization, meet together

like the two ends of a ring; they support and rest on one another and

inclose all that lies within the ring.

Without the conviction that there is a person or persons who will

take the whole responsibility of his acts, not one soldier would ever

lift a hand to commit a murder or other deed of violence.

Without the conviction that it is expected by the whole people not a

single king, emperor, president, or parliament would order murders or

acts of violence.

Without the conviction that there are persons of a higher grade who

will take the responsibility, and people of a lower grade who require

such acts for their welfare, not one of the intermediate class would

superintend such deeds.

The state is so organized that wherever a man is placed in the social

scale, his irresponsibility is the same. The higher his grade the

more he is under the influence of demands from below, and the less he

is controlled by orders from above, and _vice versa_.

All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the

responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier

on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on

the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the

nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on

the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar, and

the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and

peasants. But that is not all. Besides the fact that men get rid

of the sense of responsibility for their actions in this way, they

lose their moral sense of responsibility also, by the fact that in

forming themselves into a state organization they persuade themselves

and each other so continually, and so indefatigably, that they are

not all equal, but "as the stars apart," that they come to believe

it genuinely themselves. Thus some are persuaded that they are not

simple people like everyone else, but special people who are to be

specially honored. It is instilled into another set of men by every

possible means that they are inferior to others, and therefore must

submit without a murmur to every order given them by their superiors.

On this inequality, above all, on the elevation of some and the

degradation of others, rests the capacity men have of being blind to

the insanity of the existing order of life, and all the cruelty and

criminality of the deception practiced by one set of men on another.

Those in whom the idea has been instilled that they are invested with

a special supernatural grandeur and consequence, are so intoxicated

with a sense of their own imaginary dignity that they cease to feel

their responsibility for what they do.

While those, on the other hand, in whom the idea is fostered

that they are inferior animals, bound to obey their superiors in

everything, fall, through this perpetual humiliation, into a strange

condition of stupefied servility, and in this stupefied state do not

see the significance of their actions and lose all consciousness of

responsibility for what they do.

The intermediate class, who obey the orders of their superiors on the

one hand and regard themselves as superior beings on the other, are

intoxicated by power and stupefied by servility at the same time and

so lose the sense of their responsibility.

One need only glance during a review at the commander-in-chief,

intoxicated with self-importance, followed by his retinue, all

on magnificent and gayly appareled horses, in splendid uniforms

and wearing decorations, and see how they ride to the harmonious

and solemn strains of music before the ranks of soldiers, all

presenting arms and petrified with servility. One need only glance

at this spectacle to understand that at such moments, when they are

in a state of the most complete intoxication, commander-in-chief,

soldiers, and intermediate officers alike, would be capable of

committing crimes of which they would never dream under other

conditions.

The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews,

religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute

and temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic,

permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any kind

of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest police

officer at the street corner, and also those who are in subjection

to authority and in a state of stupefied servility. The latter, like

all slaves, always find a justification for their own servility, in

ascribing the greatest possible dignity and importance to those they

serve.

It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the

intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men

associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed

to their conscience without the least scruple or remorse.

Under the influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no

longer simply men as they are, but some special beings--noblemen,

merchants, governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or

soldiers--no longer bound by ordinary human duties, but by other

duties far more weighty--the peculiar duties of a nobleman, merchant,

governor, judge, officer, tzar, minister, or soldier.

Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only

because he fancied himself not a simple man, having the same rights

to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone else, but a

great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under the influence

of the intoxication of power he felt his dignity offended by the

peasants' claims. It was only through this feeling that, without

considering the consequences that might follow, he sent in a claim to

be reinstated in his pretended rights.