MOSCOW AFTER THE RISING
MOSCOW, _January 1, 1906_.
If it is difficult—and it seems to be difficult to the verge of
impossibility—for the historian of the present day to write impartially
about political movements which happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth
and of Mary Queen of Scots, how infinitely more difficult must it be to
arrive at an impartial view of events when one is oneself in the centre
of them and living among the actors who are contributing to what is
afterwards called history! The historian solves the question by frankly
affiliating himself to one side (like Froude or Macaulay or Taine), and
he is probably right in doing this; I notice, also, that our most
eminent correspondents do the same. Therefore I confess at once that I
am in no way free from prejudices, and I make no pretence of invincible
impartiality; only I have seen and heard enough of both sides to learn
one thing—that the two parties who are now engaged in strife in Russia
are both right or both wrong. I will try to the best of my ability to
stifle my own feelings, and, like a piece of blotting-paper which
absorbs red or black ink indiscriminately, try to reproduce as best I
can fragments of what I absorb.
The strike is over, although I believe some revolutionaries are still
holding out in a factory near the Zoological Gardens. The shops are
open, the electric light is shining on the hard, snowy, ice-cold
streets, and life is going on, in the Russian expression, in its old
rut. I suppose the first question which will present itself to people
abroad anxious for information is: What did it all amount to? The second
question: What is the result of it? The third is possibly: What do the
people in Moscow, the inhabitant, the man in the street, think of it?
Practically, it did not amount to very much; a general strike was
proclaimed which was to take place all over Russia with the object of
obtaining universal suffrage. The strike was not universal. It was
closely followed by an armed rising of the revolutionary party in Moscow
with the object of arresting the Governor-General and establishing a
temporary Government. It resulted in complete and utter failure; and
this seems to point to one of two things: either that the revolutionary
party is less well organised than we supposed it to be, or that it
wrongly gauged popular feeling and no longer found such strong support
in public opinion as it did before. If it be judged by its recent action
it cannot be said to have given proof of any good organisation, since it
was obviously a mistake to foment a movement among the military—using
economic needs and demands as a weapon—a week before the strike began.
The economic demands were made by the soldiers, and satisfied
immediately, and their mutiny ceased. It is nonsense to pretend that the
soldiers have any revolutionary tendencies, and the revolutionaries made
a great mistake in trying to undermine their belief in the Emperor. The
same thing holds good as regards the peasants; and only yesterday a
person with ultra-Radical convictions said to me: “The peasant, if he is
hungry, can easily be made to loot and burn; but if he is replete he
will send anybody who talks politics to him to the devil, and if any one
attacks the Emperor before him he will tear him to pieces; possibly in
twenty or thirty years things will be different and he will be an
enlightened man; at present he is not, and there is no use in not facing
the fact. The revolutionaries have made a cardinal error in attacking
the peasants’ and the soldiers’ only ideal—call it ideal, idol, or what
you like.” Therefore I say that in this case the behaviour of the
revolutionaries showed neither insight nor statesmanship nor good
organisation. It is possible, of course, that the strike may have been
brought about, as I wrote before, by the workmen forcing the leaders’
hands, being unwilling to starve for a month but ready to rise in arms
and fight for several days.
Now, as to what actually happened. With regard to the loss of life most
people seem to be agreed in thinking that neither the revolutionaries
nor the soldiers suffered very great losses, but that nine-tenths of the
people killed were the onlookers among the public. Sometimes, of course,
it was their own fault; sometimes it was not. When firing was going on
it was as a rule difficult to get anywhere near it because the police
warned you “off the course.” But then one must take into account that
the streets in which the firing happened were inhabited, and that
sometimes the unfortunate inhabitants were shot through no fault of
their own. I think it is quite evident that there was a great deal of
entirely unnecessary and absolutely futile bombarding of private houses.
No doubt the revolutionaries fired from such houses; but they fired and
went away, and then the house was battered and the revolutionaries were
not caught. It must not be thought that Moscow is a heap of cinders as
in 1812. For the most part the actual traces of bombardment are slight.
The damage done to Fielder’s School, for instance, which is in my
street, amounts to this: that the windows are broken and there is one
hole in the wall. On the other hand, several houses have been entirely
destroyed, and the printing offices of the _Russkoe Slovo_ and some
factories burnt—it is difficult to ascertain by which side, but possibly
by both. This afternoon I went to a hospital to see some wounded
soldiers, and in one of the wards the windows had been shattered by a
bullet which had lodged in the cornice. Nothing will prevent me from
believing that it must be possible to ascertain whether you are firing
at a hospital, which is in one of the big streets of the town, or not.
The complaints of the inhabitants are universal. Some blame the soldiers
and some blame the revolutionaries, and one hears bitter stories from
both parties about the conduct of their adversaries. Those on the
Government side say: “What can you do against guerilla bands who dart
round corners, shoot policemen, and run away?” The others say: “What can
you think of people who shoot down the Red Cross doctors and bombard
private houses?” Again, the supporters of the Government say the
revolutionaries use and exploit the Red Cross and, under the guise of
Red Cross men, do murder. The others say again “The Government hires a
Militia drawn from the Black Hundred to shoot indiscriminately from the
tops of church steeples.” Again you hear a story like this (I do not
vouch for its truth): A student was surrounded by a mob, and on the
point of being lynched, when he was rescued by a policeman, and on the
way to the police station he shot the policeman. Or you hear that a
number of peaceable citizens were walking up a street when the soldiery
suddenly appeared and fired up the street indiscriminately. It must be
borne in mind that the people of Moscow had been fully warned to stay at
home as much as possible, that after six o’clock it was dangerous to go
out, and that groups of three or more people would be fired on at sight,
since the revolutionaries, who wear no uniform and are indistinguishable
from the ordinary passer-by, took shelter among such groups. A man in a
fur coat may, for all you know, have his pockets full of bombs. I know
three cases of people being accidentally killed: a little boy ran out of
his house, not into the street, but into the yard of his house to make a
slide. As he did so he was shot by a stray bullet. The proprietor of the
Ermitage Restaurant was also shot on his doorstep by a stray bullet.
Thirdly, Metrofan, a kind of porter who was a friend of mine, and about
whom I wrote in my last letter, has disappeared, and is not to be found
in any of the hospitals. He was the man—an ex-soldier—who said that it
was impossible to walk about safely (I laughed at him as he said it),
and if he has been killed—which I trust is not true—he seems to have had
the clearest presentiment of his fate. He was sent with a letter to a
place where firing was going on. It is just this sort of people who
suffered most: door-keepers and commissionaires who had to go about
their ordinary business and take the risk of being in dangerous places.
One extraordinarily typical incident was told me by an eye-witness. A
man was walking up the Neglinii Proiesd, a big street, in which the
Ermitage Restaurant is situated; he was deaf and could not hear the
noise of the firing; after a time he was wounded in the leg. He saw the
blood trickling on the snow, and he made the sign of the cross and lay
down and folded his arms together, resigning himself to fate. After a
time a poodle came along the street and began sniffing at his head; this
was more than he could bear, and he jumped up again and, not noticing
anything particular going on, pursued his way quietly home. I think the
police behaved exceedingly well and the soldiers as well as could be
expected. They were not, of course, responsible for indiscriminate
bombardments, which were entirely due to the military in authority, and
not, as is loosely stated, to the Governor-General, Admiral Dubassov. In
some cases the authorities showed almost inspired ineptness. For
instance, there is a large weaving factory in Moscow, the workmen of
which had not struck. The police, with Cossacks, made a raid on it at
night to search for arms. They found none; they ransacked the barracks
of the men, and the men among whose chattels they found leaflets or any
papers they beat. On the next day two-thirds of these men went on
strike. This happened yesterday. Another case of the sort of thing which
happens is worth mentioning. There is a house in which a Jew, a Liberal
family, and a rich pork butcher dwell. The Liberal family have a boy of
twelve, who had been talking about the revolution with pardonable boyish
excess of zeal. The pork butcher said that the whole place was going to
be blown up. On the following day soldiers arrived and began to shoot at
the house. The owner, on inquiring the reason, received the reply: “You
have got a Jew in the house, and we shall go on firing till you give us
a nachai (a _pourboire_).” They did this every day. What the trouble
really amounted to was this: an organised street fight, which lasted a
week (nothing at all approaching either 1832 or 1848 or 1871 in Paris),
and which caused a vast deal of damage to the inhabitants, and inflicted
on them a considerable loss of life, besides pecuniary losses resulting
from the stoppage of trade, &c. In the Paris Commune it should be
remembered that a great many people were shot in cold blood after it was
over, as a punishment, quite apart from the losses which occurred during
the fighting.
I am perfectly convinced, perhaps wrongly, that the Government is in
reality responsible for the troubles, owing to its dilatoriness in
making laws. I know the answer to this. It is said: “How can you carry
out reforms when the people won’t let you do so—when the moment they are
undertaken a series of strikes and disturbances begin, and public
servants behave in a manner which would not for a moment be tolerated in
the most progressive of Western nations?” On the other hand it is
obvious that all the strikes and disturbances which occurred during last
year arose from the fact of the delay in the granting of reforms. And
now when the people see this delay still existing, and, rightly or
wrongly, argue that nothing has been given them till they extorted it,
it is perhaps natural that their frame of mind should be one of excited
exasperation. The Government expects them to behave reasonably, act
reasonably, and think reasonably. They are in a frame of mind when
reasonable action or thought is difficult of attainment, and the cause
of their demented attitude is the action of the Government in the past.
I do not defend them, but I understand them. My heart is with them; my
head is against them. Their situation seems to me to resemble that of a
man who for years has been kept on the verge of starvation, and is
suddenly given champagne (liberty of the Press), and is promised a fixed
and daily system of meals, consisting of wholesome food (Parliament).
Then the same people who starved him begin to be dilatory in starting
his new _régime_. Is it not easy to understand that the conduct of such
a man would not be likely to be reasonable? I hope that one of the
results of the events in Moscow will be to make the Government realise
the pressing necessity of taking some steps to win the confidence of all
that is “Moderate” in Russia. I hope also that it will impress on all
the “Moderates” the necessity of combination and co-operation; because
the revolutionaries declare that they will strike again in March if they
do not get what they wish, and that the events of Moscow will be
repeated in St. Petersburg. If they decide on this, no amount of arrests
and repression will prevent them, and if the private houses of St.
Petersburg are to be subjected to indiscriminate bombardment the outlook
is indeed serious. Other results are these. The soldiers have been
proved to be loyal, but a Government cannot subsist on bayonets alone.
Again, there will be a large number of workmen out of work; these men
when they go back to their villages will be met with some such remarks
as these: “No money. You struck? What for? Get out.”
These two last mentioned facts should make strikes in the future more
difficult. Some people say that nothing will pacify the revolutionaries;
possibly, but the important question is, how far will the
revolutionaries be supported by public opinion? That depends entirely on
the action of the Government. It is certainly untrue to say that public
opinion in Moscow was against the revolutionaries, if it is an
exaggeration to say that it supported them. This leads us to another
question: What do the people here think of it all? In answer I can only
repeat what I said in my last letter: there exists violent and bitter
partisanship on both sides; there exists also a large class of onlookers
which is half-indifferent, half-resigned, and half-sceptical—in the main
indifferent. But if one is to go by facts one can point to the small
crowd—a selected and, in some parts, I believe, a paid crowd of men—who
attended the manifestation for the Emperor’s birthday, the vast crowd
which attended Bauman’s funeral, and the great numbers of working men
and others who have been fighting against the Government these last few
days. When I was talking to the wounded soldiers to-day in the hospital
they told me that they had heard from men returning from the Far East
that the reports of a large mutiny in the Army there were untrue, that
there had been discontent about not coming home and a small rising, but
nothing like what was reported. One man said to me: “We may ask for more
soup and meat, but is it likely we are going to mutiny for that? They
will give us more if we ask for it; soldiers can’t strike, it is as if
the whole population were to strike.” I refrained from pointing out that
this is what exactly had occurred in October. I answered by my simile of
the starving man who is suddenly given champagne.
To-day I tried the Sortes Virgilianæ with regard to the present
situation and the chief actors of the drama of Russia. The result was as
follows:
1. (For Count Witte)
“dextra discedens impulit altam
Haud ignara modi puppim.”—Æ. x. 245.
2. (The general situation)
“Extemplo turbati animi, concussaque vulgi
Pectora, et arrectæ stimulis haud mollibus iræ.
Arma manu trepidi poscunt; fremit arma juventus,
Flent mæsti mussantque patres. Hic undique clamor
Dissensu vario magnus se tollit in auras.”
Æ. xi. 451.
_January 2nd._
I went this afternoon, for the second time to-day, to the Soldiers’
Hospital. One of them asked me whether Paris was in Turkey. He said the
Turks were nice. Another asked me whether there wasn’t a place where it
was all water. I described Venice as best I could. On my way to the
hospital I went to the Hôtel Dresden. Metrofan has been killed. His
sister and his wife arrived in tears and in a terrible state. He was
shot by a shell.
_January 3rd._
In the hospital a soldier told me two fairy tales; one was about a
wizard, and the other was in octosyllabic verse. It took twenty-five
minutes to tell. When he alluded to the “cloak of darkness” he called it
a “waterproof” cloak.
_January 4th._
A cabman who drove me home last night drove me again to-day. He said it
was lucky I had taken him yesterday, because he had not had another
fare; and that he had told his comrades all about it, and had said he
would have been lost had not the Lord sent him a Barine, and such a
Barine too! (I had heavily overpaid him.) I said, “I suppose you said,
‘God sent you a fool.’” “Oh! Barine, don’t offend God,” he answered. The
cabmen are a constant source of amusement to me here. The other day,
when I was driving, the cabman stopped and made another one stop to
admire his horse. After we drove on again, we kept on meeting again, and
every time we met we slowed down, and the conversation about the horse
and how much it had cost was continued.
_January 5th._
I taught a soldier at the hospital the Latin alphabet. He said he would
write me a letter soon in Latin letters; only he did not understand the
use of the letters W and X; but he added, I will somehow or other find
letters which will serve as equivalents to these in the Russian
alphabet.
From having had much conversation with people who defend the
revolutionaries with what seems to me nonsensical exaggeration, I feel a
wave of reaction coming over me. I can never resist this subtle spirit
of contradiction when I am with people who belong to a party, and hear
them express party feeling in unmeasured and exaggerated terms. If I am
with violent Conservatives a subtle spirit of Liberalism rises within
me, and _vice versâ_. Besides this, I hate political _parties_.