THE BEGINNING OF DISORDER
ST. PETERSBURG, _June 16th_.
There can be no doubt that the political atmosphere has in the last two
days become sultry. The tension of feeling in the Duma has ominously
increased, and the feeling of the country has manifested itself in
increasing disorders. Even among the troops mutinies have been reported
from five different towns, and the sailors at the various ports are said
to be in a dangerously excited state. It is now little more than a month
since the Duma met, and by looking back one can judge to a certain
degree of the effect its existence has had on the nation at large. Some
people say the Duma has done nothing but talk. It seems to me it would
be rather difficult for a Parliament, especially a new one, to pass
measures of a complicated and important nature in dumb show. Even the
House of Commons, after centuries of experience, has not arrived at
this. There are four Bills in committee at this moment. The agrarian
question is, it is true, being discussed at length before the committee
has drafted the Bill. But it should be borne in mind that the situation
of the present Duma is abnormal. It proposes to elaborate measures based
on certain principles which the Government have declared to be
inadmissible.
The Government morally deny the existence of the Duma. A Minister goes
so far as to request a newspaper correspondent to state in the
influential organ he represents that the Parliament which has been
summoned by his Sovereign is no better than a revolutionary meeting, and
that it is the result of the revolutionary machinations of his immediate
predecessor in office. Besides this, the official organ of the
Government publishes telegrams—which, even if they are not (as there is
strong reason to suppose) manufactured in St. Petersburg or written to
order by willing officials, can only be representative of a small
fraction of popular opinion—inciting the population against the Duma,
and begging the Emperor to dissolve it. When one reads these telegrams
one is convinced that they cannot represent a widely-spread opinion, for
they run somewhat after this fashion: “Great, unlimited autocrat, listen
to us true Russians, dissolve the herd of rebels, who by means of Jewish
money have usurped the position of representatives of the people. Pay no
attention to their seditious cries, but listen rather to us, whose only
wish is that thy Heaven-given, anointed, unlimited, multitudinous,
incarnadined autocratitude should remain unlimited. Give us less bread
and more taxes. We are perfectly contented. We have everything our heart
desires, so long as thou remainest unlimited.”
If the British Cabinet were to circulate among the Army an invitation to
destroy the House of Commons, full of insulting strictures on the
members of the House, we should not consider this action to be
constitutional. But this is what the Russian Government has been doing
during the last month. The situation of a Parliament which has to deal
with such a Ministry is abnormal. What guarantee is there that the
Ministry will not dissolve it at any minute and change the electoral
law? Not, certainly, the fact that this would be illegal and
unconstitutional. Therefore, on these grounds, and in these
circumstances, it seems to me that the action of the members of the
Duma, in insisting on having their “say out” on the land question before
anything else happens, is not so needless and not such a waste of time
as it at first appears to be. The speeches of the members are reported
in full, published in the newspapers, and read all over the country, and
therefore if the Duma is dissolved suddenly the country will be already
acquainted with the opinions and intentions of the Duma on the land
question. This is why the fact that the Duma has existed and spoken out
during a month is in itself one of paramount importance and likely to be
big with far-reaching results. When the Duma met the Russian people
echoed the French poet’s cry that “une grande espérance a traversé le
monde,” but they were doubtful as to its efficacy. Now that it has met
during a whole month, and that people within its walls have really been
able to speak their minds on burning topics without being arrested, and
have in no uncertain tones expressed their opinion of the present
Government, the effect has been enormous.
Last night I was driven home by a cabman who favoured me with his
political views. I attach far more importance to the views of any cabman
in St. Petersburg than to those of any of the Ministers, because they
are more intimately acquainted with popular opinion. The cabman first
expressed his appreciation of the fact that some people in Russia had
too much land and others too little. Count Ignatieff’s estate, he said,
was a hundred versts long, and he had eight estates. The Duma, he
continued, was demanding land and liberty. I objected that the Duma
might be dissolved. “They won’t dare,” he replied. “But if they do
dare?” I said. “Then we shall kill them,” he answered. “Kill whom?”
“Why, all the rich.” “But will the soldiers be on your side?” I asked.
“The soldiers are peasants, too,” he said. “But before they shot at the
people,” I said. “Before they did not understand what it was all about.
Now they know,” he said. “Go into any _tractir_ (public-house) you
like,” he continued, “and you will hear how the people are screaming.”
Some weeks ago a change in the spirit of the Army, owing to the
existence of the Duma, was not improbable. It appears to be now on the
way towards realisation. Some of the Guards regiments are said, on the
other hand, to be highly incensed against the Duma. One of the peasant
members told me that his brother, who is in a regiment here, informed
him that the strictest surveillance was being exercised on the movements
and on the correspondence of the soldiers. He said some of the regiments
in St. Petersburg would be for the Duma, but only the minority. I think
it must be difficult for people who have never been here, either in the
past or in the present, to realise that although the old _régime_ has
not yet been destroyed there is an enormous difference in the general
state of things owing to the fact that up to last year the expression of
public opinion was impossible, and that now it is not only re-echoed
under the protection of the Duma all over Russia but finds a vehicle in
innumerable newspapers and pamphlets, not one of which is without what
the Germans call a “Tendenz.” Every bit of fiction, verse, satire,
history, anecdote that is now published is definitely and purposely
revolutionary. The non-political part of every newspaper is therefore
practically devoted to politics. Every day, and twice a day, the same
string is sounded. Everything in Russia now is tinged with one colour,
and that colour is bright red.
_June 14th._
In the following dialogue I have tried to formulate the views of those
who have no sympathy with the Liberal movement in Russia:—
“I would prefer to hold my tongue,” said the cosmopolitan philosopher
who had just arrived at St. Petersburg, when he was asked for his
opinion on the political situation. “I do not want to have chairs thrown
at my head.”
“We never throw chairs,” said the ex-official. “Either bombs or nothing.
But before you say it I know what you are going to say. There are two
classes of people in the world: Liberals and Conservatives, if you like,
and there is also a third class. The third class consists of what I call
recalcitrant Liberals; they become Conservative not because they are
Conservative by nature but because they dislike Liberals and enjoy
disagreeing with them; but say what you think and confirm the truth of
my diagnosis.” “I will,” said the philosopher, “only don’t throw chairs
at my head. All that is going on in Europe at present seems to me to be
contained in the formula: Liberty is the tyranny of the rabble. The
equation may work itself out more or less quickly, but it is bound to
triumph. And as intelligent people favour liberty I have gone over to
the side of the idiots. They produced an opéra-bouffe in 1870, I think,
called ‘Le trône d’Écosse, ou la difficulté de s’asseoir dessus.’ The
title was pleasing, but the figure of the King of Scotland was more
delightful still. He was, I will not say troubled, for it did not
inconvenience him in the least, but let us say characterised, by
softening of the brain in an advanced stage, and whatever might be going
on he quietly slept through it, only waking up now and then to exclaim
emphatically ‘Pas de concessions!’ I entirely sympathise with him. I
feel exactly like the King of Scotland, and I don’t care a straw whether
I am right or wrong. Right or wrong concerns our judging faculty, which
is a poor affair at its best, if it concerns anything at all. Siding in
practice with one party or another concerns our passions, our habits,
our tastes, and our private interests. If we have privileges we are
there to defend them and not to bother, like clergymen and professors,
whether they are right or wrong. We may be beaten; at least let us be
beaten fighting. Vive la réaction!” “That is a point of view I can
understand,” said the man who belonged to no Party, “but let us ask our
friend (he pointed to the ex-official) who, although often accused by
his friends of having regicide principles, has never been insulted by
being called a Liberal, whether he feels like that with regard to Russia
now.” “Yes,” answered the philosopher, “please tell me if you think my
formula applies to the present situation, and whether you agree?” “Let
me start by saying that I entirely agree with your formula,” said the
ex-official; “at least I did until a fortnight ago, when I realised (I
was staying at the Savoy Hotel in London) that I had become (like Kips
at the Grand Hotel) a Socialist. My conversion, however, is so recent
and I have spent so many years in deriding Socialism that I can, without
any difficulty, speak from my ancient standpoint. Well, I think your
formula, with which I so deeply sympathise, is not applicable to Russia
at present. At least it is applicable, if you choose to apply it, but it
is as far removed from what I feel as the diametrically opposed view of
the English Liberal Press. I do not regard the existing struggle as
being one between aristocratic and democratic principles. It is the
struggle between one half of the middle class, the Mandarins, with the
Government and the higher Mandarins at their head, and the other half,
the professors, the doctors, the lawyers. Above this struggle the
aristocracy floats as a nebulous mist, like the gods when they returned
to the Twilight of Valhalla, and beneath it the proletariate and the
peasantry have been roused from their slumbers by the noise of the
fight. My point of view is very simple. I believe, as a statesman once
said, that the Russian Government is an autocracy tempered by
assassination. I hope that the professors will, with the help of the
peasantry and the proletariate, create a big enough disturbance to
destroy the existing Government and prepare the way for a real
autocracy. Then, and not until then, I shall cry ‘Vive la réaction!’
According to you I ought to die fighting for my higher Mandarins; but
you admit it is only a question of one’s passions; well, my passions are
turned against them. I hate them. Of course I would have fought for
Louis XVIII. or Charles II.; but I should have drawn the line at Charles
X., and I should have been rewarded by the result of the subsequent
revolution.” “I don’t think you either of you realise,” said the man who
belonged to no Party, “that just as the battle of Valmy (which didn’t
seem very important to contemporaries except to Goethe, who realised
what had happened in a flash) was the beginning of a new age, so was the
universal strike here in October last the beginning of another. I think
all your talk about autocrats, &c., is amusing, but so very
old-fashioned. I don’t think there will ever be such things—again.”
“But there are such things,” said the ex-official. “Mr. Balfour ruled
England far more despotically than the most unlimited autocrat.”
“Yes, but that is the kind of thing which I believe is on the eve of
disappearance,” said the man who belonged to no Party. “I believe, and
of course the wish is not only father to the thought—but I wish hard in
order that the thought may come true—I believe that we are on the eve of
a social revolution, and that besides this Russia will split up into
separate parts. I hope this will happen. Had I been an Englishman, I
should have been a little Englander with a vengeance. I should like to
go back to the Heptarchy. I admire the England of Shakespeare and Drake,
which was little, more than the England of Kipling and Rhodes, which is
big. I admire the Germany of Goethe and Beethoven more than the Germany
of William II.—and whom? There is no one else to mention. The same with
Russia. All that we have derived from ideals of expansion has ended in
disaster. If we split up, who knows what the Duchy of Transbaikalia and
the Kingdom of Kalouga, for instance, and the Republic of Morshansk may
not produce?” “But,” said the philosopher, “what will happen if the
power falls into the hands of angry demagogues of the Extreme Left? What
if they behave as the Convention behaved, and, more reasonably, what if
you have all the tyranny of a Convention and none of the terror? All the
inconvenience and none of the excitement? In Russia you boast of the
_liberté de mœurs_ you enjoy; don’t you think you run a risk of losing
it?” “It is true, of course,” said the man who belonged to no Party,
“that we run a risk of losing it, but I have a great faith in the
invincible plasticity of the Russian character. And liberty of manners
seems to me to depend on national characteristics and not on national
institutions. You can prove, of course, that liberty of manners and
liberty of thought flourish abundantly under autocratic _régimes_ such
as those of Nero and Nicholas II., but does it necessarily follow that
it cannot exist under lawful and disciplined administration? Ancient
Greece and Modern England are two cases in point where personal liberty
such as that which we enjoy in Russia is nonexistent. ‘Il ne faut pas
l’oublier,’ says Renan, ‘Athènes avait bel et bien l’inquisition.’ As to
Anglo-Saxon countries there is no more amusing spectacle in the world
than that which is offered to us when a member of the Slav race seeks
refuge in Anglo-Saxon countries burning with enthusiasm for the mothers
of freedom. Witness Maxim Gorky’s arrival in America. He soon finds out
that he is enclosed in a brick wall of prohibitions, and perhaps he
thinks with regret of his native country, where, although he was not
allowed to insult his Monarch at a public meeting, he could do exactly
what he liked. The rigidity of conventions in England seems to me to
arise from the English character, which is rigid and likes convention;
but the Russian character is not rigid; it is pliant and draws no line
anywhere. That is at once all its strength and all its weakness.
Whatever gets the upper hand in Russia, be it a convention, a board of
Socialists, or a committee of peasants, I am convinced of one thing,
that the members of this Government will never dress for dinner when
they feel disinclined or go to bed before they wish to do so.” “But,”
said the philosopher, “if you possess personal liberty why bother about
the rest? After all, free political institutions presuppose a certain
amount of order and discipline. If you are without this order and
discipline, and if you do not wish for the drawbacks of order and
discipline, why do you make a fuss to get what can only exist by order
and discipline?”
“If we had been properly governed,” said the ex-official, “nobody would
have thought about it.”
“The two things are not incompatible,” said the man who belonged to no
Party. “You can have free political institutions sufficiently ordered
and disciplined, and you can also have personal liberty. If these two
things have never been combined before, we will be the first people to
combine them.”
ST. PETERSBURG, _June 19th_.
On Sunday last I went by train to a place called Terrioki, in Finland,
where a meeting was to be held by the Labour Party of the Duma. The
train was crowded with people who looked more like holiday-makers than
political supporters of the Extreme Left—so crowded that one had to
stand up on the platform outside the carriage throughout the journey. It
is of no consequence in Russia how many people there are in a train or
what they do. In England there is an impressive warning in the railway
carriages about being fined a sum not exceeding forty shillings. In
Russia there is also a quantity of printed rules. The difference is
this—in England, if you infringed the rules, something would be sure to
happen. In Russia nobody pays the slightest attention to any rule and
nothing happens. You are not fined a sum not exceeding forty shillings;
on the other hand, a young man not long ago, owing to the habit he had
acquired—a habit universally practised by passengers on the line—of
jumping out of the train long before it had reached the station, slipped
on the step, and was nearly killed. This is a small instance of what
people mean when they allude to the personal liberty prevalent in
Russia. It is also an explanation of the existence of the quantity of
printed regulations you see in Russia. The authorities print a hundred
rules in the hope that one of them may meet with attention. None of them
commands attention. I will give another small instance. If a stranger to
Europe came to Europe and to England and tried to get into the House of
Commons without a ticket and without being acquainted with a member, he
would find it, I think, impossible to obtain admittance. If he went to
Russia he could, if he said nothing at all, walk into the Duma without
the slightest difficulty. The whole secret of avoiding bothers in Russia
is not to bother people who do not wish to be bothered. If you do what
you wish to do quietly nobody interferes with you. If you ask you will
probably be told it is impossible—it is in theory, but not in practice.
But to go back to the political meeting in Finland. After a journey of
an hour and a quarter we arrived at Terrioki. The crowd leapt from the
train and immediately unfurled red flags and sang the “Marseillaise.”
The crowd occupied the second line, and a policeman observed that, as
another train was coming in and would occupy that line, it would be
advisable if they were to move on. “What, police even here in free
Finland?” somebody cried. “The police are elected here by the people,”
was the pacifying reply, and the crowd moved on, formed into a
procession six abreast, and started marching to the gardens where the
meeting was to be held, singing the “Marseillaise” and other songs all
the way. The dust was so abundant that, after marching with the
procession for some time, I took a cab and told the driver to take me to
the meeting. We drove off at a brisk speed past innumerable wooden
houses, villas, shops (where Finnish knives and English tobacco are
sold) into a wood. After we had driven for twenty minutes I asked the
driver if we still had far to go. He turned round and, smiling, said in
pidgin-Russian (he was a Finn), “Me not know where you want go.” Then we
turned back, and, after a long search and much questioning of
passers-by, found the garden, into which one was admitted by ticket.
(Here, again, any one could get in.) In a large grassy and green garden,
shady with many trees, a kind of wooden semicircular proscenium had been
erected, and in one part of it was a low and exiguous platform not more
spacious than a table. On the proscenium the red flags were hung. In
front of the table there were a few benches, but the greater part of the
public stood and formed a large crowd. The inhabitants of the villas
were here in large numbers; there were not many workmen, but a number of
students and various other members of the “Intelligenzia”; young men
with undisciplined hair and young ladies in large _art nouveau_ hats and
_Reformkleider_. (I wonder whether this last mentioned garment has
penetrated to London.) M. Jilkin, the leader of the Labour Party in the
Duma, took the chair.
The meeting was opened by a man who laid stress on the necessity of a
Constituent Assembly. The speeches succeeded one another. Students
climbed up into the pine-trees and on the roof of the proscenium. Others
lay on the grass behind the crowd. “Land and Liberty” was the burden of
the speeches. There was nothing new or striking said. The hackneyed
commonplaces were rolled out one after another. Indignation, threats,
menaces, blood and thunder. And all the time the sun shone hotter and
“all Nature looked smiling and gay.” The audience applauded, but no
fierceness of invective, no torrent of rhetoric managed to make the
meeting a serious one. Nature is stronger than speeches, and sunshine
more potent than rant. It is true the audience were enjoying themselves;
but they were enjoying the outing, and the speeches were an agreeable
incidental accompaniment; they enjoyed the attacks on the powers that
be, as the Bank-holiday maker enjoys Aunt Sally at the seaside. Some
Finns spoke in Russian and Finnish, and then M. Aladin, the prominent
member of the Duma, made a real speech. As he rose he met with an
ovation. M. Aladin is of peasant extraction. He passed through the
University in Russia, emigrated to London, was a dock labourer, a
printer’s devil, a journalist, an electrical engineer, a teacher of
Russian; he speaks French and German perfectly, and English so well that
he speaks Russian with a London accent. M. Aladin has, as I have said, a
great contempt for the methods of the Russian revolutionaries, and he
expressed something of it on this occasion. He said that only people
without any stuff in them would demand a Constituent Assembly. “You
don’t demand a Constituent Assembly, you constitute it,” he said. “It
was humiliating,” he continued, “that citizens of a big country like
Russia should be obliged to come to Finland in order to speak their
minds freely. It was time to cease being a people of slaves, and time to
be a revolutionary people. The Russian people would never be free until
they showed by their acts that they meant to be free.” M. Aladin speaks
without any gesticulation. He is a dark, shortish man, with a small
moustache and grey serious eyes, short hair, and a great command of
incisive mordant language. His oratory is, as I have said before,
English in style. On this occasion it was particularly nervous and
pithy. He did not, however, succeed in turning that audience of
holiday-makers into a revolutionary meeting. The inhabitants of the
villas clapped. The young ladies in large hats chortled with delight. It
was a glorious picnic; an ecstatic game of Aunt Sally. And when the
interval came the public rushed to the restaurants. There was one on the
sea-shore, with a military band playing. There was a beach and a pier
and boats and bathers. Here was the true inwardness of the meeting. Many
people remained on the beach for the rest of the afternoon. The Social
Democrats who had been present were displeased with M. Aladin’s speech.
Groups formed in the garden. People lay down on the grass, and political
discussions were held by recumbent speakers. When they reached a certain
pitch of excitement they knelt.
Two men attracted my attention by the heated argument in which they were
engaged, kneeling opposite each other in a circle of recumbent
listeners. Presently a bell rang and the meeting was resumed. I said to
one of the arguers: “Why do you all quarrel so much? You are disunited,
and there is only one Government.” He took me aside and explained his
views. He was a tall, bearded, intelligent-looking man, a native of the
Urals; he had been a soldier and an engineer, and had had to leave the
country for his opinions. He had educated himself in France, Germany,
and Belgium, and had attended a Labour Congress in London. He was a
Social Democrat. He said this meeting was absurd. “You see the real
workmen can’t come to a meeting like this; it’s too expensive. I was
disappointed in Aladin’s speech. I think he is unfair in blaming us for
being feeble compared with the French revolutionaries. The circumstances
are different. We have the proletariate here, and that important fact
makes a great difference.” I asked him if he thought there would be a
social revolution in Russia. He said he thought Socialism must be
adopted by all countries at the same moment. He thought that the Russian
people were less capable of introducing it than any people. “When these
people talk the poverty of their thought appals me,” he said. “And then
the monotony of the tragic note—never a gleam of humour; never a touch
of irony. Count Heyden is the only man in the Duma who shows any signs
of it. Look at our Government, they lay themselves open to ridicule. By
ridicule one can pulverise them; nobody thinks of doing it, and the
strain of this long-drawn-out tragic emphasis is intolerable. Yes, I was
disappointed in Aladin. But the first time I saw him I was convinced
that he would play a part in the Russian Revolution. It is a good thing
that such men should be. Gapon, however much we may blame him, played a
great part.” I found he thoroughly disbelieved in the Cadets and
believed only in the proletariate. Later on other speeches were made
denouncing the Cadets and the foreign loan, and a resolution was passed
repudiating it. The meeting went on till past seven o’clock, and then
the mass of people returned to St. Petersburg, having thoroughly enjoyed
their picnic.
I went to the Duma yesterday afternoon and heard some of the speeches of
the much-abused Cadets. It was like listening to Mr. Asquith and Mr.
Haldane after a dose of Hyde Park oratory. But because people appear to
one to talk nonsense that is no proof that they will not get the upper
hand. “Vous êtes des verbiageurs,” said the Duc de Biron to the
revolutionary tribunal. They guillotined him nevertheless. And Danton
said that Robespierre was not capable “de faire cuire un œuf.” Yet
Robespierre played a part in the Revolution.