MOSCOW—THE DECEMBER RISING
MOSCOW, _December 12th_.
When one is in England it is very difficult to form an idea of what is
taking place in Russia, and this is not owing to the absence but to the
superabundance of news concerning Russian events. One cannot see the
wood for the trees. In Russia there is also a superabundance of news and
of rumours; but merely by walking about in the streets one is brought
face to face with certain facts, enabling one to check the news to some
extent. I have been in Russia a week, at St. Petersburg, and I arrived
here yesterday. In St. Petersburg the impression that a stranger
receives on arriving is that everything is going on exactly the same as
usual. The streets are crowded, the shops are all open, and there is
nothing to show that the country is in a state of revolution.
The postal strike was over in St. Petersburg when I arrived, and it is
now over here, although, owing to the dislocation and the arrears, the
postal service is at this moment almost imperceptible.
With regard to political matters, the main impression one receives is
that the revolutionary party is admirably organised, and although there
are dissensions among it—as, for instance, between the Social
Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats—they are willing if not ready
to coalesce at any given moment against the Government, whereas the body
of people who do not side with the revolutionaries are split up into
various groups, differing on some of the most important points of
policy. Perhaps the most important of these groups is the Constitutional
Democratic Party, which is in favour of universal suffrage and a
National Assembly.
Especially remarkable are the various shapes taken by the criticism
directed against Count Witte by the various parties. Roughly speaking,
this criticism may be divided into three heads:
1. The revolutionaries (including the Constitutional Democrats) say that
Count Witte is a Bureaucrat; that nothing good can come of him, and that
he and his _régime_ must go.
2. The Moderates—I call them Moderates for want of a better word—say
that Count Witte has not proved himself to be equal to his task; that
since the publication of the Manifesto he has not formulated a single
law save an ineffectual one with regard to the Press.
3. The reactionary Nationalists say that Count Witte is a traitor, that
he has been bought by the Jews and is playing for a Republic. There is a
sentence of Napoleon’s which perhaps may occur to Count Witte under the
present circumstances: “Un homme d’état est-il fait pour être sensible?
N’est-ce pas un personnage complètement excentrique, toujours seul d’un
côté, avec le monde de l’autre?” Count Witte is at this moment
completely “excentric.” If he succeeds—and by succeeding I mean
remaining in power until the Duma meets—his triumph will be great. To
give some idea of the atmosphere which we vaguely call public opinion, I
will quote some of the _obiter dicta_ I have heard since I have been
here. That Count Witte is a cunning old fox, worse than Plehve. That
Count Witte is not what he was; that he is merely incapable of executing
what he undertook. That Count Witte is the most far-seeing man in
Russia; that he centralised Russia in order to lead to a revolution, and
thus make radical changes easier; that he placed the railways in the
hands of the State and created the spirit monopoly in order to have no
private interests to deal with when the crash should come. That Count
Witte is a Radical of the type of Robespierre, and will only declare
himself to be on the side of popular representation when the upper
classes are entirely destroyed.
That the Government is too weak, and that it all comes from having been
too weak from the first and from not having hanged the Kronstadt
mutineers. That the Government was too reactionary from the first, and
that it destroyed the confidence of the people by establishing martial
law in Poland directly after the Manifesto. That the _régime_ of Plehve
was better than the present state of anarchy. That the present _régime_
is more reactionary than the system of Plehve. That with a Government as
revolutionary as the existing one nothing good can be expected; that the
Constitution should be withdrawn, the Emperor should be deposed and
another appointed, and that Count Witte should be hanged. That the
Government has not been explicit enough; that a programme including two
Legislative Chambers—an Upper and Lower Chamber—should be published and
sworn to by the Emperor, and that the utmost severity should be
employed, after that, in case of necessity. That no Government at all is
necessary in Russia; only a _Bund_, a Council of Empire, which should
meet once a year and manage the railways; that the Army should be
disbanded and the country entirely decentralised. That a Dictator should
be appointed at once, and 10,000 “intellectuals” arrested.
That the revolutionaries merely want to destroy any form of government
as an act of revenge; that they are as the Irish, “agin the Government”;
that this act of revenge is not surprising, considering they are
smarting under the monstrous wrong which has been done them for years,
_i.e._, misgovernment carried to the extreme. That nothing can possibly
restore peace to Russia except universal suffrage, and that Russia being
by nature more democratic than other European countries need not feel
herself bound to follow their example, but must proceed straight to
universal suffrage. That the Emperor should go to Moscow. That if the
Emperor goes to Moscow it would excite the peasants to kill the middle
and upper classes. That this would be a bad thing. That this would be a
good thing. That if the Emperor goes to Moscow he will be killed. That
it is nonsense to think the Emperor would be killed at Moscow; that his
position cannot be worse than it is, but might be improved by such a
step. That the Kremlin would be a safer residence than the Tsarskoe
Selo. That the Emperor must take an oath to the Constitution, and give
guarantees that it will not be withdrawn. That the Emperor should put
himself at the head of the peasants and the Army and snap his fingers at
the Socialists and the landlords and give the peasants the land.
All these opinions I have heard from Russians since I have been here. In
St. Petersburg considerable anxiety was felt as to what would happen in
Moscow on the occasion of the Emperor’s birthday (to-day), since the
reactionary party—the “Alliance of Russian People”—had requested and
been allowed to organise a demonstration opposite the Kremlin. These
fears, however, proved groundless. I was present at the demonstration.
The holy banners were carried in procession from the Kremlin to the
public place outside the Kremlin walls, where a service was held. The
procession then returned into the Kremlin at twelve o’clock. There was a
small crowd looking on, and one man (a butcher) made a speech, saying
that the Emperor had been terrorised into giving a Constitution, but
that he would be requested to take it back again. The crowd cheered, and
one policeman repeated five times that the speaker was a fine fellow.
The crowd then marched in procession to the Governor-General’s house,
and Admiral Dubassoff spoke to the crowd. This crowd was a ridiculously
small one; it dispersed at noon. The population of Moscow was
conspicuous by its absence.
A great deal is talked at present about the doings of the hooligans in
St. Petersburg and Moscow. In St. Petersburg the number of beggars in
the street is remarkable; here the doings of the hooligans are said to
take place mostly at night. One hears on all sides that the state of
things is impossible and that the streets are unsafe, yet they are
crowded with people all day long. There appears also to be some danger
from the reckless way in which the population toy with “Browning”
pistols in self-defence, but except for this and the hooligans there is
no kind of danger for foreigners here.
The state of the Army here has caused the Government a good deal of
alarm. The mutiny in the Rostov Regiment came to an abrupt end
yesterday, and to-day news has arrived of a manifesto granting the
soldiers extra pay, extra meat, and soap. The discontent among the
soldiers and sailors has been up to now in every case economical and not
political, therefore it is thought that if the economical demands are
satisfied the discontent will disappear. It will be well for the
Government if it does, for in the long run the ultimate issue of the
conflict must depend on the Army, and the symptoms which have declared
themselves up to now are not reassuring. It is quite possible, however,
that the soap and the blankets which are to be given to the men may
allay their political restlessness. The Cavalry is said to have been all
along thoroughly reliable.
MOSCOW, _December 28th_.
Wednesday, the 20th of December, punctually at midday the strike began
in Moscow. The lift ceased working in the hotel, the electric light was
turned off and I laid in a large store of books and cigarettes against
coming events. The strike was said to be an answer to the summary
proceedings of the Government and its action in arresting leaders of the
revolutionary committee, &c., and its watchword was to be: “A
Constituent Assembly based upon universal suffrage.” Beyond the electric
light going out nothing happened on this day. On Thursday, the 21st,
most of the shops began to shut. The man who cleaned the boots in the
hotel made the following remark: “I now understand that the people enjoy
great power.” I heard a shot fired somewhere from the hotel at nine
o’clock in the evening. I asked the hall porter whether the theatres
were open. He said they were shut, and added: “And who would dream of
going to the theatre in these times of stress?”
The next day I drove with a friend into the country to a village called
Chernaia, about 25 versts from Moscow on the Novgorod road, which before
the days of railways was famous for its highway robberies and assaults
on the rich merchants by the hooligans of that day. We drove in a big
wooden sledge drawn by two horses, the coachman standing up all the
while. We went to visit two old maids, who were peasants and lived in
the village. One of them had got stranded in Moscow, and owing to the
railway strike was unable to go back again and so we took her with us,
otherwise she would have walked home. We started at 10.30 and arrived at
1.30. The road was absolutely still—a thick carpet of snow, upon which
fresh flakes drifting in the fitful gusts of wind fell gently. Looking
at the drifting flakes which seemed to be tossed about in the air, the
first old maid said that a man’s life was like a snowflake in the wind,
and that she had never thought she would go home with us on her sister’s
name-day.
When we arrived at the village we found a meal ready for us, which,
although the fast of Advent was being strictly observed and the food
made with fasting-butter, was far from jejune. It consisted of pies with
rice and cabbage inside, and cold fish and tea and jam, and some vodka
for me—the guest. The cottage consisted of one room and two very small
ante-rooms—the walls, floors, and ceilings of plain deal. Five or six
rich ikons hung in the corner of the room, and a coloured oleograph of
Father John of Kronstadt on one of the walls. A large stove heated the
room. Soon some guests arrived to congratulate old maid No. 2 on her
name-day, and after a time the pope entered, blessed the room, and sat
down to tea. We talked of the strike and how quiet the country was and
of the hooligans in the town. “No,” said the pope with gravity, “we have
our own hooligans.” A little later the village schoolmaster arrived, who
looked about twenty years old, and was a little tiny man with a fresh
face and gold-rimmed spectacles, with his wife, who, like the æsthetic
lady in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience,” was “massive.” I asked the
pope if I could live unmolested in this village. He said, “Yes, but if
you want to work you won’t be quiet in this house, because your two
hostesses chatter and drink tea all day and all night.” At three o’clock
we thought we had better be starting home; it was getting dark, the snow
was falling heavily. The old maids said we couldn’t possibly go. We
should (1) lose our way, (2) be robbed by tramps, (3) be massacred by
strikers on the railway line, (4) not be allowed to enter the town, (5)
be attacked by hooligans when we reached the dark streets. We sent for
Vassili, the coachman, to consult with him. “Can you find your way
home?” we asked. “Yes, I can,” he said. “Shall we lose our way?” “We
might lose our way—it happens,” he said slowly, “it happens times and
again; but we might not—it often doesn’t happen.” “Might we be attacked
on the way?” “We might—it happens—they attack; but we might
not—sometimes they don’t attack.” “Are the horses tired?” “Yes, the
horses are tired.” “Then we had better not go.” “The horses can go all
right,” he said. Then we thought we would stay; but Vassili said that
his master would curse him if he stayed unless we “added” something.
So we settled to stay, and the schoolmaster took us to see the village
school, which was clean, roomy, and altogether an excellent home of
learning. Then he took us to a neighbouring factory which had not
struck, and in which he presided over a night class for working men and
women. From here we telephoned to Moscow and learned that everything was
quiet in the city. I talked to one of the men in the factory about the
strike. “It’s all very well for the young men,” one said, “they are
hot-headed and like striking; but we—we have to starve for a month.
That’s what it means.” Then we went to the school neighbouring the
factory where the night class was held. There were two rooms, one for
men presided over by the schoolmaster and one for women presided over by
his wife. They had a lesson of two hours in reading, writing, and
arithmetic. The men came to be taught in separate batches; one batch
coming one week, one another. This day there were five men and two boys
and six women. The men were reading a story about a bear—rather a
tedious tale. “Yes, we are reading,” one of them said to me, “and we
understand some of it.” That was, at any rate, consoling. They read to
themselves first, then aloud in turn, standing up, and then they were
asked to tell what they had read in their own words. They read
haltingly, with difficulty grasping familiar words. They related
fluently, except one man, who said he could remember nothing whatsoever
about the doings of the bear. One little boy was doing with lightning
rapidity those kind of sums which, by giving you too many data and not
enough—a superabundance of detail, leaving out the all that appears so
imperatively necessary—seem to some minds peculiarly insoluble. The sum
in question stated that a factory consisted of 770 hands—men, women, and
children, and that the men received half as much again as the women, &c.
That particular proportion of wages seems to exist in the arithmetic
books of all countries to the despair of the non-mathematical, and the
little boy insisted on my following every step of his process of
reckoning; but not even he with the wisdom and sympathy of babes
succeeded in teaching me how to do that kind of sum. He afterwards wrote
in a copybook pages of declensions of Russian nouns and adjectives. Here
I found I could help him and I saved him some trouble by dictating them
to him; though every now and then we had some slight doubt and
discussion about the genitive plural. In the woman’s class, one girl
explained to us, with tears in her eyes, how difficult it was for her to
attend this class. Her fellow-workers laughed at her for it, and at home
they told her that a woman’s place was to be at work and not to meddle
with books. Those who attend this school show that they are really
anxious to learn, as the effort and self-sacrifice needed are great.
We stayed till the end of the lesson and then we went home, where an
excellent supper of eggs, &c., was awaiting us. We found the two old
maids and their first cousin, who told us she was about to go to law for
a legacy of 100,000 roubles which had been left her, but which was
disputed by a more distant relation on the mother’s side. We talked of
law suits and politics and miracles, and real and false faith-healers,
till bedtime came. A bed was made for me alongside of the stove. Made is
the right word, for it was literally built up before my eyes. A sleeping
place was also made for the coachman on the floor of the small
ante-room; then the rest of the company disappeared to sleep. I say
disappeared, because I literally do not know where in this small
interior there was room for them to sleep. They consisted of the two old
maids, their niece and her little girl, aged three, and another little
girl, aged seven. My travelling companion slept in the room, but the
rest disappeared, I suppose on the top of the stove, only it seemed to
reach the ceiling; somewhere they were, for the little girl, excited by
the events of the day, sang snatches of song till a late hour in the
night. The next morning, after I got up, the room was transformed from a
bedroom into a dining-room and aired, breakfast was served, and at ten
we started back again in the snow to Moscow.
On the 23rd we arrived in the town at one o’clock. The streets of the
suburbs seemed to be unusually still. My companion said to me: “How
quiet the streets are, but it seems to me an uncanny, evil quietness.”
My companion lived in the Lobkovski Pereoolok, and I had the day before
sent my things from the hotel to an apartment in the adjoining street,
the Mwilnikov. When we arrived at the entrance of these streets we found
them blocked by a crowd and guarded by police and dragoons. We got
through the other end of the streets, and we were told that the night
before Fielder’s School, which is a large building at the corner of
these two streets, had been the scene of a revolutionary meeting; that
the revolutionaries had been surrounded in this house, had refused to
surrender, had thrown a bomb at an officer and killed him, had been
fired at by artillery, and had finally surrendered after killing one
officer and five men, with 17 casualties—15 wounded and two killed. All
this had happened in my very street during my absence. An hour later we
again heard a noise of guns, and the armed rising (of which some of the
leaders, who were to have seized the Governor-General of the town and
set up a provisional Government, had been arrested the night before in
my street) had nevertheless broken out in all parts of the town. A
little later I saw a crowd of people on foot and in sledges flying in
panic down the street shouting “Kazaki!” I heard and saw nothing else of
any interest during the day. There were crowds of people in the streets
till nightfall.
On Sunday, Christmas Eve, I drove to the hotel in the centre of Moscow
to see a friend. The aspect of the town was extraordinary. The streets
were full of people—_flâneurs_ who were either walking about or gathered
together in small and large groups at the street corners. Distant, and
sometimes quite near, sounds of firing were audible, and nobody seemed
to care a scrap; they were everywhere talking, discussing, and laughing.
Imagine the difference between this and the scenes described in Paris
during the street fighting in ’32, ’48, and ’71.
People went about their business just as usual. If there was a barricade
they drove round it. The cabmen never dreamt of not going anywhere,
although one said to me that it was very frightening. Moreover, an
insuperable curiosity seemed to lead them to go and look where things
were happening. Several were killed in this way. On the other hand, at
the slightest approach of troops they ran in panic like hares, although
the troops do not do the passers-by any mischief. Two or three times I
have been walking in the streets when dragoons galloped past, and come
to no harm. We heard shots all the time, and met the same groups of
people and passed two barricades. The barricades are mostly not like
those of the Faubourg St. Antoine, but small impediments made of
branches and an overturned sledge; they are put there to annoy and wear
out the troops and not to stand siege. The method of warfare that the
revolutionaries have adopted is a guerilla warfare of the streets. They
fire or throw bombs and rapidly disperse; they have made some attempts
to seize the Nikolaiev Railway Station, but have in all cases been
repulsed. The attitude of the man in the street is curious: sometimes he
is indignant with the strikers, sometimes indignant with the Government.
If you ask a person of revolutionary sympathies he will tell you that
sympathy is entirely with the revolution; if you ask a person of
moderate principles he will tell you that the “people” are indignant
with the strikers; but the attitude of the average man in the street
seems to me one of sceptical indifference in spite of all, in spite of
trade ceasing, houses being fired at, and the hospitals being full to
overflowing of dead and wounded. The fact is that disorders have lost
their first power of creating an impression; they have become everyday
occurrences.
Here are various remarks I heard. One man, a commissionaire, asked
whether I thought it was right to fire on the revolutionaries. I
hesitated, gathering my thoughts to explain that I thought that they
thoroughly deserved it since they began it, but that the Government
nevertheless had brought it about by their dilatoriness. (This is
exactly what I think.) Misunderstanding my hesitation, he said: “Surely
you, a _foreigner_, need not mind saying what you think, and you know it
is wrong.” (This was curious, because these people, commissionaires,
porters, &c., are often reactionary.) A cabman said to me: “Who do you
think will get the best of it?” I said, “I don’t know, what do you
think?” “Nothing will come of it,” he said. “There will still be rich
people like you and poor people like me, and whether the Government is
in the hands of the _chinovniks_ or the students is all one and the
same.” Another man, a porter, an ex-soldier, said it was awful. You
couldn’t go anywhere or drive anywhere without risking being killed.
Soldiers came back from the war and were killed in the streets. A bullet
came, and then the man was done for. Another man, a kind of railway
employee, said that the Russians had no stamina, that the Poles would
never give in, but the Russians would directly. Another man, fond of
paradox, said to me that he hoped all the fanatics would be shot, and
that then the Government would be upset. A policeman was guarding the
street which led to the hotel. I asked if I could pass. “How could I not
let a Barine with whom I am acquainted pass?” he said. Then a baker’s
boy came up with a tray of rolls on his head, also asking to pass—to go
to the hotel. After some discussion the policeman let him go, but
suddenly said, “Or are you a rascal?” Then I asked him what he thought
of it all. He said: “We fire as little as possible. They are fools.” The
fact is that among the wealthier and educated classes the feeling is
either one of intense sympathy or violent indignation with the
revolutionaries; among the lower classes it is a feeling of sceptical
resignation or indifference. “Things are bad—nothing will come of it for
us.”
_Christmas Day._
At midnight the windows of our house had been rattled by the firing of
guns somewhere near; but on Christmas morning (this is not the Russian
Christmas) one was able to get about. I drove down one of the principal
streets, the Kouznetski Most, into another large street, the Neglinii
Proiesd (as if it were down Bond Street into Piccadilly), when suddenly
in a flash all the cabs began to drive fast up the street. My cab went
on. He was inquisitive. We saw nothing. He shouted to another cab,
asking him what was the matter. No answer. We went a little further
down, when along the Neglinii Proiesd we saw a patrol and guns
advancing. “Go back,” shouted one of the soldiers, waving his rifle—and
away we went. Later, I believe there was firing there. Further along we
met more patrols and ambulances. The shops are not only shut but boarded
up.
Next day I walked to the Nikolaiev Station in the afternoon. It is from
here that the trains go to St. Petersburg; the trains are running now,
but how the passengers start I don’t know, for it was impossible to get
near the station. Cabs were galloping away from it, and the square in
front of it had been cleared by Cossacks. I think it was attacked this
afternoon. I walked into the Riansh Station, which was next door. It was
a scene of desolation: empty trains, stacked-up luggage, third-class
passengers encamped in the waiting-room. There was a perpetual noise of
firing. Practically the town is under martial law. Nobody is allowed to
be out of doors after nine o’clock under penalty of three months’
imprisonment or 3,000 roubles fine. Householders have been made
responsible for people firing out of their windows. The idea of
collective responsibility is a shock to some Russians. During the last
twenty years the system has led, through the perpetual shifting of
responsibility, to the annihilation of responsibility; and this in its
turn has produced a revolution of irresponsibility. Some people talk as
if the revolution were an evil element which had sprung from hell
without any cause, a sudden visitation like the plague, as if it were
not the absolutely logical and inevitable result of the particular form
of bad government which has obtained in Russia during the last twenty
years. These people pass a sponge over this fact. They say to people of
liberal ideas: “You have brought this about,” then, asked if they are in
favour of the Constitution, assent; which should prove them to be
opportunists. They do not like being called opportunists.
This morning, December 27th, there is considerable movement and traffic
in the streets; the small shops are open, and the tobacconists. News has
come from St. Petersburg of the Electorate Law. The question is now
whether it will satisfy the people. Firing is still going on; they say a
factory is being attacked. The troops who were supposed to be
disaffected have proved absolutely loyal. The one way to make them loyal
was to throw bombs at them. The policemen are now armed with rifles and
bayonets. I asked an educated man this afternoon if he thought the
Electorate Law would satisfy people. He said he thought not. He said
that the people demanded a far wider suffrage law. “Are you in favour
yourself of universal suffrage?” I asked. “No,” he answered; “but when I
see that the whole people demand it, I submit to the majority. The
Government has as yet _given_ nothing; everything has been torn from it,
and more will have to be torn from it.” One learns here at any rate not
to generalise and not to prophesy. A cabman said this afternoon: “There
is an illness abroad, we are sick, it will pass—but God remains.” I
agree with him.
I do not believe that it is a case of bricks falling out of a wall until
the wall falls down, but of a young tree shedding bark. The illness,
however, is a severe one, and it is idle to blame the patient for the
violence of his symptoms and the doctor for the inadequacy of his
remedies. The people to blame are those who made the patient ill by
feeding him on poison. And some of these have already met with their
just reward.