accomplices of this formidable and soul-killing régime of ours. They
will be oppressed all the same, whether meek or unruly. They will remain
under special legislation, simply because no one can stop the flow of
the official's unfailing spring of revenue--the ravaging of the Jews.
Moreover, the Jews have never received so much sympathy from us as since
they began to place themselves on the defensive and to make common cause
with our Radicals. Now for the first time they belong to us, and yet
really only those who actually fight with us and for us. This matter,
too, is misrepresented. Statistics, which show a percentage of
eighty-five Jews in every hundred revolutionaries, are falsified,
because gentiles are allowed to slip through in order to injure the
Radical--_i. e._, the constitutional--movement by representing it as
un-Russian and Jewish, and to mobilize foreign anti-Semitism against us.
But the Jews ought to be grateful to Plehve, for, thanks to his
machinations, all the intelligent opinion among us has become favorable
to the Jews, and recognizes the solidarity of its interest and those of
the Jews. The struggle conduces much, however, to the assimilation of
the Jews. They are our brothers; they suffer with us and for us, even if
also for themselves; for our whole Jewish legislation for twenty years
past has consisted only in the curtailing of the rights accorded them
under Alexander II. Why should they not become revolutionaries? But they
are enemies of the administration merely, not of the state; therefore,
we find ourselves on the same footing."
I closed my interview, as in all cases, with the question, "What hope is
there for the future?" and received the same answer as in all other
cases:
"Everything depends upon how this war ends. If God helps us and we lose
the war, improvement is possible; for then ruin, above all, the chronic
bankruptcy of the nation, can no longer be concealed. If a man should
enter my room now--at this hour only respectable persons enter my
room--and I should say to him, 'What do you hope and wish in regard to
the war?' his answer would be, 'Defeat; the only means to save us.' If
we calculate how many men are shot and exiled and how many families are
ruined every year by absolutism, the total equals the losses in war--a
more terrible one, however, for only a catastrophe can make an end of
this war, which has long been destroying us. Therefore, I say again, if
God helps us we shall lose the war in the East. Do not allow yourself to
be deceived by any official preparations. Every good Russian prays, 'God
help us and permit us to be beaten!'"
When I left the brilliant lawyer it was, as I have said, long after
midnight. It was "butter-week,"[6] and my sleigh had trouble in avoiding
the drunken men who staggered across our way, and the shrieking hussies,
who, with their companions with or without uniforms, carried on pastimes
suitable to the season.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Chief of the county council.--TRANSLATOR.
[6] "Butter-week" (maslyanitza) is in Russia the week preceding Lent.
Meat is forbidden, but milk, butter, and eggs are allowed as food. Like
the carnival, it is celebrated with popular amusements.--TRANSLATOR.
XX
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY AS THE PUBLIC SEES IT
"In no constitutional state is the practical influence of the head of
the government so slight as in the autocracy of Russia," was one of the
sayings I heard most often in St. Petersburg, when I endeavored to
inform myself in regard to the personality and the acts of the reigning
Czar. There are, to be sure, individual opinions to the contrary.
According to these it depends entirely upon the personality of the
autocrat whether he exerts a strong influence or not. The Conservatives
incline to the latter view. Prince Esper Ukhtomski held it; so did a
former high functionary in the department of finance, as well as a
conservative aristocrat in another department, all of whom I questioned
on this point. One of them said in so many words that the Czar needs
only to lift a finger to banish all the evil spirits which now rule the
land. The aristocrat believed the country might be delivered by an
emperor better trained for his functions. Prince Ukhtomski ascribes to
the leading statesmen, at least, influence enough to do good and to
prevent evil, and, therefore, to do the contrary, as has been done for
twenty years, especially under the régime of Plehve. The Liberals and
Radicals, however, who form the greater part of the so-called
"Intelligence," leave the personality of the ruler entirely out of the
question, perhaps from a premature comparison with their constitutional
model. They declare a change of conditions without a change of the
system to be impossible. To be sure, they say, if a suspicious,
inhumane, reactionary Czar like Alexander III. is on the throne, the
domination of the camorra of officials is made more oppressive. Yet the
present mild and benevolent autocrat cannot prevent the existence of
conditions which are more insupportable than ever. Only the press and a
parliament could amend matters, not the good intentions of a single man.
I do not undertake to judge which of the two parties is right. In any
case it seems worth while to sketch the Czar's personality, which is
certainly an element in the fate of Russia and of Europe. The portrait
is drawn from the reports of people who have had sufficient opportunity
to form a conception of him from their personal observation. It is, of
course, impossible for me to name my authorities, or to indicate them in
any but the most distant way. It must suffice to say that among them
were people who have known not only the present rulers, but also their
parents and grandparents, from intimate association. I myself have seen
the Czar only once. The current portraits of him are very good. The
only striking and noteworthy thing in the handsome and sympathetic face
is the expression of melancholy resignation. One authority alone--whose
statements on other matters I have found to be invariably careful and
accurate--expressed doubts of the good-nature of the Czar, and accused
him of designing and of rather petty malevolence. All others, including
Prince Ukhtomski, who had been the companion of the Czar for years,
agree in emphasizing the extraordinary, almost childlike lovableness and
kindliness of the Emperor, who is said to be actually fascinating in
personal intercourse. This agrees with the fact, which I know from one
unquestionably trustworthy source, that the Czar is intentionally deaf
to everything in the reports of his counsellors likely to disparage or
cast suspicion upon a colleague, while he immediately listens and asks
for details when he hears from one of his ministers a word favorable to
the action of another. It is an absolute necessity for him to do good,
and it is a constant source of fresh pain to him that he cannot prevent
the great amount of existing evil. Again, while the single authority
says he has found in the Czar indications of a subtle if not powerful
intellect, the others, while they praise his goodness of heart, do not
conceal the weakness of his judgment, which, according to them,
certainly has something pathological about it. Prince Ukhtomski alone
speaks of the Emperor with invariable respect and sympathy, without
limiting each hearty statement with an immediate "but." All others,
without exceptions, explain the Prætorian rule of Plehve by the mental
and moral helplessness of the Emperor, who is entirely uninformed, and
is treated by those about him in the most abominable way--under cover of
all outward signs of devotion. The things that people dare do to him,
presuming upon this helplessness, border upon the inconceivable. That
threatening letters can constantly be smuggled into the Czar's pockets,
and even into his bed, without his finally hitting upon the idea of
seizing his body-servant by the cravat, is a very strong proof of his
mental inactivity; the more so, incidentally, because he hears himself
ridiculed outside his own door. This police canard is told, moreover, of
Alexander III., who was a dreaded despot. The rôle, too, which Plehve
played, although the Czar did not esteem him in the least, shows how
successfully the latter has been intimidated and persuaded into the
entirely mistaken belief that Plehve alone could avert the threatening
revolution.
At the same time the Czar is said to be anything but confiding in regard
to his nearest counsellors. When a report is made to him he sits in the
shadow; the man who makes the report sits in the light. He tries to
decipher the man's expression and to control him, a thing which is, of
course, impossible, since a good Russian physiognomy is more
impenetrable than a Russian iron-clad. His lack of knowledge of affairs
is as marked as his lack of judgment. I will give an instance of this.
In the provinces a quarrel had broken out between the self-governing
corporation, the "zemstvos," and the governors. This difference between
self-government and autocracy was presented to the Czar as turning
merely on the question of centralization or decentralization, and as if
it were a matter for disagreement between the governors and the minister
of the interior, the governors striving against the same full authority
that is held by the ministers of the Czar. In this way the Czar was
successfully deceived in regard to the nature of the quarrel; he did not
learn at all that the provinces were making a demonstration against
autocracy. The result of the deception was, of course, that the Czar
declared himself for the ministry of the interior--that is, for Plehve,
the increase of whose power he by no means wished.
The rôle which certain adventurers like the hypnotist Philippe and the
promoter Bezobrazov are able to play at court is also certainly a
notable symptom. The former was to suggest to the Czaritza the birth of
a boy, while otherwise he carried through whatever he wished, since he
used the spirit of Alexander III. to secure a hearing for his
suggestions. His departure from court followed upon his impudently
having the spirits recommend a specific firm of contractors for the
building of a bridge. Bezobrazov, one of the agents who have the
Asiatic war on their consciences, is now living somewhere abroad, and
does not dare return, at least while the war lasts.
Still more significant, it seems to me, is the authenticated statement
that the Emperor has many times received publications upon the condition
of his empire, has carefully read them, and has praised them, without
taking the slightest step towards carrying out the reforms recommended
to him; indeed, after the lapse of a few days, he has ceased even to
refer in conversation to the suggestions. This would seem to indicate an
almost abnormal weakness of will, which makes it easy for a gifted,
inconsiderate, and self-confident reactionary like the Grand-Duke
Alexander Mikhailovitch to carry out his own ideas in everything.
According to these statements, which come directly in every case from
original sources, the Czar is to be regarded as a man upon the whole
good-natured and lovable, who is, perhaps, too modest and too conscious
of his insufficient knowledge to have the full courage of
responsibility, without which an autocrat is the least able of leaders
to endure his great burden. Inconsiderate and crafty people, who profit
by his weakness, govern him, and he may even be glad of this. In his
perplexity and helplessness, which are due to his human sympathy and
modesty, he is obliged to submit to others with whom he can at least
leave the responsibility for affairs, which in general, as in the
specific case of the war in eastern Asia, go contrary to his wishes.
His timid temperament is shown especially in his relations with his
mother, the dowager empress, who even now, supported by the reactionary
members of the family, plays the part of the actual empress, and cruelly
mortifies the young consort of the Czar. It is an open secret that the
relations between the two women are anything but untroubled, a condition
which reacts upon the relations of the imperial pair themselves. The
dowager empress has renounced none of her prerogatives in favor of her
daughter-in-law, who consequently feels herself in a very false
position, and complains bitterly of it. People assured me, moreover,
that according to Russian ideas none of the rights claimed by the young
Czaritza belong to her so long as the empress-mother lives. Hence it
vexes the Czaritza that she cannot curb her so-called ambition. The
empress-mother, however, is not at all popular, at least in Liberal
circles, where she is held responsible for the fact that her son cannot
free himself from the evil traditions of his father, who was a strictly
upright, but relentless and brutal despot. The young Czaritza was blamed
among the common people because she had borne no prince in spite of the
prayers of the archbishop John; she is blamed at court also because she
does not conceal her English sympathies.
One old friend of the imperial family, however, assured me that there
is no more charming, upright, and affectionate woman living than this
young Hessian princess. She is, he said, completely intimidated by the
enemies who surround her and shows them a lowering face. Where she feels
herself secure, however, her merry South-German nature comes to the top,
and she can even now romp like a little child. It speaks for the
innocence of her nature that she is prouder of nothing than of her
potato-salad. For the rest, the same authority asserts, she has a mind
of her own, and may be not always the most comfortable companion for a
husband.
Among the other members of the family the Grand-Duke Constantine is
called the poet. His interest in art and science is said to be sincere.
He has also great personal attractiveness. In sharp contrast with him
stands the Grand-Duke Sergius, governor-general of Moscow, and
brother-in-law and uncle of the Czar. The things commonly reported of
his private life are unsuitable for repetition here, since in general I
avoid giving space to scandal in a chronicle of important matters. The
things worthy of publicity and important for the weal or woe of
population are the opinions and abilities of princes, not their
liaisons. It is difficult, however, not to speak of the passions of the
Grand-Duke Sergius, since they form such a violent contrast to his
former bigotry. He is unanimously pronounced an unprincipled man with a
black record--a man whose pleasure consists in the sufferings of
others. His influence at court is second only to that of the Grand-Duke
Alexander Mikhailovitch.
I found in all Russia no trace of a dynastic sentiment. The loyalty to
the House of the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, or to the House of the
Hapsburgs in Austria has no counterpart in Russia. If the personal
influence of the occupants of the throne may be estimated, the Czar
means to the masses of the people the essence of temporal and spiritual
power, to the intelligent class an element of fate. The grand-dukes are
people who can aid and harm, and who are therefore persons of importance
for all Russians. The bond of loyalty between dynasty and people,
however, which in the West has assured the safe existence of the royal
houses through all revolutionary convulsions, does not exist in Russia.
On the contrary, people speak freely in private of the "Saltikov
dynasty," in unmistakable allusion to the well-known first lover of the
Empress Catherine II. Thus the many murders in the imperial house are
received by the people without great excitement. Only the inhabitants of
the Baltic provinces are faithful to the dynasty; the spirit of feudal
loyalty runs in their German blood. Even there, however, it is being
slowly but resolutely destroyed by the ruling anarchists.
In contemporary opinion Alexander II. and Alexander III. still live,
while Nicholas I. is practically forgotten. Alexander II. is surrounded
with the martyr's halo, and is thought of only as the emancipating Czar
who was got out of the way before he could sign the liberty-giving bill
for a constitution. Public opinion will not be dissuaded from finding
the fact remarkable that the nihilists succeeded for the first time in
reaching the Czar at the moment when all the privileges of the reigning
oligarchy were threatened. Therefore people will not remember any traits
in him except good ones, a thing not altogether consistent with the
picture of him left by Kropotkin in his memoirs. Of Alexander III., on
the contrary, only evil is heard, which I, however, must doubt for many
reasons. For I have been told little incidents of his most private life,
incidents which I cannot repeat, out of consideration for the incognito
of my informant, but which show a certain knightliness and uprightness,
and a truly princely kindness to the weak. Another man is answerable for
the pitilessness of his fatal policy--Pobydonostzev, the Torquemada of
Russia. It is, however, inevitable that history should preserve only
that picture which expresses the sum total of the effect of a
personality. Therefore the memory of Alexander III. is certainly
overloaded with sins of omission.
XXI
PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PRESS
The fine imperial library in St. Petersburg, which I was permitted
through the kindness of our legation to use, possesses a specialty in a
particular class of works, the collection of so-called "Russica"--_i.
e._, everything that has been written in foreign languages about Russia.
Polite attendants, speaking various languages, assist the visitor. One
learns from them that it is the business of special agents abroad to
report on publications which relate to Russia, and to send them in. So
it happens that probably nowhere in the world is there such an
accumulation of revolutionary literature as in this imperial collection.
For patriotic writings are for the most part in Russian, so that they
may be appreciated and quickly rewarded. The semi-official literature in
foreign languages is not to be compared in quantity or importance with
that which true patriots are forced to their sorrow to write in foreign
languages. I looked through piles of this forbidden literature. The
impression I received was desperately disheartening. There is nothing
which has not been said about Russia. The severest and best-attested
attacks on the régime, on persons, on conditions, stand there quietly,
volume by volume, in the imperial library, and have had exactly as much
effect as whip-strokes on water. The Russian political writer who wishes
to war upon the present system with the weapon of reckless criticism
must lose all hope in face of this library. What more can be said than
has already been said by Milyukov, by Lanin, by Leroy-Beaulieu? The
voice of the prophets does not penetrate to the ears of the rulers, or,
if it does, it is drowned by the whispers of parasites who know how to
protect their own interests, or it finds no echo in the too weak or too
hardened hearts of the rulers.
I had the same sensation when, in the course of my conversations with
leading persons in the service of the state, and with members of the
"Intelligence," I was more and more struck with the fact that in Russia
there is an unusually strong public opinion, which in its criticisms far
transcends anything that can be said in foreign papers about Russian
conditions, and that this criticism makes no impression whatever upon
the authorities. I was, of course, interested next in the problem as to
how it could be possible without newspapers--the Russian press is under
the most barbarous censorship--to disseminate from St. Petersburg to
Odessa with a truly uncanny rapidity, an almost monotonously uniform
idea of all the events and personalities of the day. I confess I have
not yet solved the riddle. It is only a hypothesis of mine to suppose
that there are three or four centres for the formation of opinion in
Russia, one of which is undoubtedly to be found in the ministry itself,
and another, perhaps, in the Noblemen's Club, or in other clubs of the
intelligent classes in Moscow, and that through the abundance of time
which every Russian allows himself for recreation, every newly coined
saying or opinion is spread throughout the whole realm by letters or by
word of mouth. I have heard from the lips of statesmen high in office
literally the same words I have heard at the table of Leo Tolstoï, in
Yasnaya Polyana, or in the study of the lawyer who gave me an interview.
After I had come to terms with this fact of the absolute uniformity of
public opinion, a fact not altogether gratifying to the collector of
information, it was no longer possible to ignore the question as to how
it is possible that such a unison of wishes and opinions meets only deaf
ears in the highest circles, although it has already become a historic
legend that Alexander II. was forced into the war with Turkey against
his will by public opinion. If public opinion at that time had so much
power for evil, why does it not have power now, and power for good?
An annoying question sooner or later finds an answer--whether a correct
one or not remains to be seen--no doubt because the mind does not rest
until it has found something plausible wherewith to quiet itself. I
finally explained the matter to myself in the following way. The husband
is the last to hear of the shame that his consort brings upon him.
People point at him, the servants snicker, even anonymous letters
flutter on his table, and still he is unsuspecting, or, at the most, is
disturbed without definitely knowing why. There is, except in the case
of treachery, which is extremely rare, or the taking in the act, which
is still rarer, only one possibility of enlightenment for him--namely,
that a very intimate friend or a near relative shall play the part of
the ruthless physician, and supply evidences which are irrefutable. An
autocrat is hardly less interested in the credit of his system than a
husband in the reputation of his wife. This system is apparently
identical with his personality. He bears all the responsibility. He has
reason for the most far-reaching suspicion of all who approach him,
because he seldom sees any one who does not wish something of him. Who,
then, has the courage, the credit, and the means to approach the Czar,
and to tell him the truth concerning what goes on about him and is done
in his name? A near friend? That would have to be a foreign monarch. It
is well known how carefully kings avoid seeming to advise, especially
when the excessively proud Russian dynasty is in question. What other
monarch, moreover, must not consider his own interests, which cannot be
identical with those of Russia? the German Emperor perhaps least of
all. Unfortunately, however, the relations between William II. and
Nicholas II. are none of the most intimate. Indeed, Nicholas openly
shuns too frequent intercourse with Emperor William, and prefers when he
is in Germany to play tennis with his brother-in-law of Hesse. There
remains, then, only near relatives. They, indeed, are much in evidence,
and they have the Czar entirely under their influence. They are public
opinion for him; and as long as they have no interest in placing
themselves on the side of the opposition, so long, according to
physico-psychological laws, will the voice of the real public opinion
decrease in proportion to the square of the approach to the Czar; and
all anonymous or unauthorized enlightenments and memorials by patriots
who willingly make themselves victims will make no more than a momentary
impression. The public opinion which forced the Czar Alexander II. into
the war with Turkey was the opinion of the belligerent grand-dukes; the
public opinion which rules the present Czar and thereby prevents the
counsels of the opposition from having a hearing is again that of the
grand-dukes, who move only in the narrowest court circles and in those
of the reactionary bureaucracy. The Czar knows this, but he cannot help
himself. He has just now had a new experience of it, when those about
him made him firmly believe that the Japanese affair was well on the way
towards a peaceful settlement, while at the same time, by dilatory
tactics and constant preparations, they provoked the Japanese to declare
war.