THE
MAINSPRINGS OF RUSSIA
BY
MAURICE BARING
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN, LEEDS PARIS, LEIPZIG, AND NEW YORK
DEDICATION.
TO H. G. WELLS.
MY DEAR H. G.,
I dedicate this book to you in the hope that you will read it; for if
you do, I shall feel certain of having at least one reader who will
understand exactly what I have tried to say, however inadequate the
expression may have been, and who, at any rate, will not misunderstand
me.
Not long ago I was looking on at a play in London. The audience was, on
the whole, of that kind which the Americans call “high-browed,” with a
certain sprinkling of the semi-intelligent and the wholly elegant.
Behind me were sitting a young man and a young lady, who were discussing
intellectual topics suited to the rarer atmosphere of that interesting
theatre. Among other subjects, they talked about Mr. Stephen Grahame’s
books and articles on Russia. I do not know if you have read his books;
if not, I advise you to do so. But you probably know that they deal with
the Russian people; that Mr. Grahame walked on foot from Moscow to
Archangel; and travelled, as a pilgrim, with Russian pilgrims to
Jerusalem. It is therefore obvious that he came into close contact with
the Russian people, and that his knowledge was at first hand and derived
from direct experience.
Well, would you believe it, the highly educated young gentleman who was
sitting behind me, who had read Mr. Grahame’s books and articles, said—I
could hardly believe my ears, but he said it—that the trouble about Mr.
Grahame was his blind faith in _the Russian Bureaucracy_. I confess,
when these words caught my ear, I thought to myself what is the use of
writing books if intelligent people in reading them derive an impression
which is the exact opposite of that which you think you have expressed
with some clearness?
The young man in question went on to say that such was Mr. Grahame’s
fierce faith in political reaction that he dared to compare a
half-starved Russian peasant with a free American citizen, and here
again he revealed fresh vistas of misapprehension.
I have often had similar experiences myself since I began to write about
Russian things. I have at various times been accused of being a
revolutionary, a conservative, a liberal, a fanatical reactionary. But
these accusations have left me indifferent, since, as they contradict
themselves, they cancel out into nothingness.
As far as the subject of Russia is concerned, I have always, and only,
had one object in view: to stimulate in others an interest which I have
myself experienced. I know—I cannot explain why it is—but I know that
between the Russian and the English peoples there are curious
possibilities of sympathy, curious analogies, and still more curious
differences which complement one another. I know the Russians and the
English do get on well when they meet and get to know each other. I know
the sympathy I myself have felt, and do feel, for the Russians is a
sympathy which would, can, and could be felt by many of my countrymen.
This has been my whole and sole object in writing about Russia. I am
engaged on one more very short book on Russian literature, and then I
shall drop the subject for ever. I have said my say. I leave it to the
newer and better writers to say theirs.
But in the meantime, in regard to this book, I repeat I wish to secure
at least one reader who will understand and who will not misunderstand.
That is why I dedicate this book to you. At the same time I hope, even
if you do not read it, that it will remind you of the strenuous days and
the Attic nights which we spent together in St. Petersburg.
Yours ever,
MAURICE BARING.
ST. PETERSBURG,
_February 22-March 7, 1914_.
PREFACE.
I have endeavoured in this book to provide some kind of answer to the
questions which I found by experience are generally put by the traveller
who comes to Russia for the first time, and whose curiosity is
stimulated with regard to the way in which the people live and to the
manner of their government.
I have endeavoured to convey to the reader a single idea of the nature
of the more important factors in Russian life. I am only too well aware
that what I have to supply in the way of explanation and elucidation is
inadequate, incomplete, and superficial. My excuse is that the questions
of the average inquirer are, as a rule, neither profound nor
comprehensive; and that profound or comprehensive replies, were I
capable of giving them—which I am not—would be received neither with
attention nor interest. They would be like arrows shot into empty space.
For the average inquirer has neither time nor inclination for exhaustive
inquiry or minute research. He wishes to be told what he wishes to know
in a manner he can understand, and as briefly as possible. But my hope
is that I may stimulate the interest of the reader in the subject, and
in a manner which may lead him to seek for more exhaustive information
at the fountainhead, or at richer sources than mine. This is every day
becoming easier.
Some years ago books on Russia which had any serious value or
substantial interest were few and far between. Lately the interest in
Russian affairs has been stimulated by many causes: by the coming of
Russian artists, singers, and dancers to England; by the appearance in
the press of valuable articles written by Russian authors; by the
publication of adequate translations from Russian authors (Mrs.
Garnett’s translations of Dostoievsky, for instance); and by several
excellent books written by English authors on Russia, such as the books
of Mr. Stephen Grahame dealing with the Russian people, the admirable
and encyclopædic work of Mr. Harold Williams, and, in a somewhat lighter
vein, Mr. Reynold’s “My Russian Year.” All these books reveal a
standpoint, a mastery of the subject, that are far removed from the
fantastic, false, and melodramatic concoctions that were abundant some
years ago.
In calling this book the “Mainsprings” of Russia, I am conscious of
having omitted several of the most important mainsprings of Russian
life: chief among them its commerce and industry. The subject is so
large that, had I dealt with it at all, there would have been no room
for anything else in a book of this size. Also, as far as the actual
facts are concerned they are to be found clearly stated in Dr. Kennard’s
excellent “Russian Year Book.”
Nor have I attempted to deal with the Army and the Navy, which I
consider to be factors which are likely to be dealt with by experts,
since they cannot afford to be altogether neglected by foreigners. There
is another subject I have omitted—it is not, it is true, a mainspring of
Russian life; but it is a sore spot and a question of burning vital
interest—I mean the Jewish question.
In a book as short as this it would be impossible to devote sufficient
space to the matter without crowding out other things which concern the
greater majority; but it is most desirable that competent observers
should deal with the Jewish question in Russia, which at present, as far
as the rest of Europe is concerned, is almost entirely handled either by
bitter Anti-Semites, or by those who are the actors in the drama itself.
And there is no question in Modern Russia which is fraught with more
far-reaching effects, and probably none which is at present more
difficult of solution.
My thanks are due to A. J. Halpern of the Russian Bar for his valuable
help in regard to the chapter on “Justice,” to Mr. Dimitriev-Mamonov,
and to many other Russian friends for their criticism and advice.
CONTENTS.
I. RETROSPECT 13
II. THE RUSSIAN PEASANT 31
III. THE NOBILITY 72
IV. THE GOVERNMENT MACHINE 97
V. CAUSES OF DISCONTENT 129
VI. THE AVERAGE RUSSIAN 155
VII. THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS 183
VIII. THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 216
IX. EDUCATION 246
X. JUSTICE 269
XI. THE FASCINATION OF RUSSIA 299
THE MAINSPRINGS OF
RUSSIA.
CHAPTER I.
RETROSPECT.
I should like to set the reader’s mind at rest at once. I am not going
to ask him to read a historical treatise on the origins of the Russian
people, nor am I going to lead him into the obscure pathways and dim
shadows of the remote past.
Firstly, even if I wished to do so, I have not the necessary erudition,
nor the requisite powers of learned exposition. Secondly, the origin of
the Russian people is a debatable question; the theories with regard to
it are constantly changing, and vary with the fickle fashion of the day;
the orthodox views of forty, of thirty, of twenty years ago are now said
to be old-fashioned; and the orthodox views of to-day will probably be
considered old-fashioned before very long. The reason being that all
such views are highly conjectural, and that very little is known about
the shifting tides, eddies, and currents in the immeasurably far-off
floods of races and tribes out of which the Russian people emerged.
Thirdly, whenever I open a book that begins with a historical
retrospect, I feel that it is the reader’s duty to skip that chapter.
Why, then, write anything of the kind? The answer is that I am writing
on the assumption that the reader is an average reader, and that if he
has bought or borrowed a book about Russia, he will be sufficiently
interested in the subject to be able to stand a few simple facts to
begin with, even if they are historical. I also assume that, if he has
bought or borrowed this book, and has not gone to a public library to
get a more learned book, he is not a specialist—that is to say, he knows
as much or as little as the average Englishman knows about Russia who
has received an average English education, who reads _The Times_, and
takes a moderate but intelligent interest in international politics and
foreign countries, and who has perhaps read one or two standard books on
Russia, and not only _My Official Wife_ by Savage, _Michael Strogoff_ by
Jules Verne, and all that picturesque tribe of books called either Red
Russia, Scarlet Russia, Crimson Russia, Free Russia, the Real Russia,
Russia as she is, or Russia as she isn’t.
There is also another class of reader who may take up the book, also an
average reader, with an average education, but whose knowledge of Russia
is of a different and wider kind—the reader of translations of Russian
novels, the devotee of Tolstoy and Turgeniev and Gorky; the man or
woman—it is generally a woman—who has seen translations of Chekhov’s
plays at the Stage Society, and who is a fervent admirer of the Russian
ballet. He or she is interested in Russia, but has never been there; and
although familiar with Russian novels and plays, he or she is more
inclined to form an opinion of the Russian people on data derived from
English novels on Russian life than from Russian novels on Russian life.
I have often come across cases of this kind—I mean people who do not
appear to realize that the intensely realistic Russian fiction that they
so much admire probably has some basis and counterpart in real life, and
who, in spite of this documentary evidence with regard to Russian life,
with which they are familiar, still continue to form a picture of
Russian life based on English fiction such as is written by English
journalists and novelists.
Such readers, my experience is, if they come across certain historical
facts about Russia in the past or the present, meet them with a shock of
surprise and often with a smile of incredulity.
It is for the benefit of the average reader of every kind that I want to
try and make a few, a very few, historical facts clear, which I think
throw light on any attempt to deal with any aspects of Russian life. If
the reader knows them too well already, he will forgive me and skip,
proud of his superior knowledge; if he disbelieves them, he can dispute
them, and prove me wrong.
My first fact is geographical. It is that Russia is a flat country,
without an indented seacoast, and without sharp mountain ranges. It is
not only flat but uniform. Owing to this, the expansion of the Russian
people took place on land. The Russians were, and are, constantly
emigrating, at first from south to north, and afterwards from west to
east. Russia is therefore a country of colonists.
I remember once saying this to a man to whom the statement evidently
came as a shock of surprise, because he replied, “Really, I thought
Russia was an autocracy.”
Now, who are these colonists? Who are the Russians, in fact? I wonder if
one set this question to all the schoolboys and undergraduates, what the
most prevalent answer would be. I believe it would be something like
this: that the Russian was a man got up like a European except in
winter, but that if you scratched him you would find a Tartar, and that
a Tartar was a man with a yellow skin and a snub nose. I think you might
also often get the answer that Russians were Slavs; but that if you
asked what a Slav is, you would be told he was a kind of Tartar.
In Russia at the present day you will find representatives of every kind
of race and every kind of creed—Buriats who worship Buddha, and
disciples of the late Lord Radstock—and every kind of language; but out
of all these, three dominant races played a part in Russian history—the
Finns, the Tartars, and the Slavs. The Slavs got the best of it. They
absorbed the Finns and ousted the Tartars.
So we remain face to face with the question, What are the Slavs? As to
how, why, whence, and when the Slavs came to Russia hundreds of books
have been written, and the solution of the problem is, I believe, like
that of many historical questions, a matter of fashion.
One solid fact, however, rises before our grateful comprehension. The
Slavs are a white people like the Latins, the Celts, and the Germans;
they have nothing in common with anything Tartar, Mongol, or Semitic;
and there are traces of them having been in Southern Europe on the banks
of the Vistula and of the Dnieper from time immemorial.
Having got to Russia a long time ago, they overran the country and
absorbed it.
They began in the south, the capital being Kiev, and in the eleventh
century Russia was a part of the political system of Europe.
Russia, in the days before William the Conqueror—in the days of Harold,
who was related to one of the rulers of Kiev, Yaroslav—was not more
backward than France or England were at that time, and would probably
have developed in the same manner as the other European countries had it
not been for an unfortunate interruption in the shape of a Mongol or
Tartar invasion.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century Russia was under the
dominion of the Mongols.
The Slavs, as they gradually expanded and absorbed Russia, fell into two
natural divisions: the Great Russians and the Little Russians, which
correspond to the north and the south. When the Mongol invasion came
about, the Little Russians were cut off from the Great Russians.
The Great Russians continued to expand northward, southward, and
eastward. They were engaged in a perpetual struggle against the East.
They acted as a buffer for Europe against the East; and in the sixteenth
century they finally got rid of the Eastern yoke altogether and drove
them out of the country.
This is the big fact I have been leading up to: Russia saved Western
Europe from being overrun by hordes of barbarians.
“There is,” writes the late Mr. Stead, in the introduction to the
translation of Labaume’s narrative of Napoleon’s campaign, “a strange
and pestilent habit among some Englishmen of ignoring all the great
services which Russia has rendered to the cause of human progress and
the liberty of nations.”
That Russia acted as a buffer against the barbarian invasion from the
East is the first and not the least of these services.
In the sixteenth century the Great Russia was a kingdom centralized in
Moscow, chiefly engaged in fighting her neighbours, the most powerful of
which was Poland, and one of the most energetic and singular of her
rulers, Ivan the Terrible, began to negotiate with the West. Ivan, in
fact, wished to marry Queen Elizabeth; but Western Europe was not
vitally affected by Russia until the appearance on the stage of the
world of that extraordinary monarch, and still more extraordinary man,
called Peter the Great.
Peter the Great not only conceived and executed the idea of opening in
Russia a window on to the West, but he restored to Russia her place
among European nations—the place she had occupied in the eleventh
century, and which she had lost owing to the Mongol invasion.
It was no abnormal or unnatural mission that Peter the Great set out to
accomplish, otherwise his work would have died with him. He carried
Russia along the natural road of her career. Only, being a man of
abnormal genius, he gave to Russia a violent electric shock; he
accelerated to an extent, which seems little short of miraculous, the
natural progress of the country. He accomplished in a few years the work
of many generations. “Pierre I^{er},” says Montesquieu, “donnait les
mœurs et les manières de l’Europe à une nation de l’Europe.” He shifted
the capital of the country, built St. Petersburg on a swamp, created an
army, a fleet, enrolled quantities of foreigners into the service of
Russia. He sketched the outlines of a gigantic plan, which still remains
to be filled in to this day. The violence and fury with which he
compelled a reluctant people to adopt his changes had, of course, its
drawbacks. A nation has to pay for a man of genius, even when he is
working on the right lines, for what is for the good of his country, and
for what is, in the long run, in accordance with its national spirit.
Peter the Great was successful, but the methods which he had to employ
in order to bring about his swift and gigantic changes were not without
regrettable results, which are still visible in the machinery of Russian
administration and in the nature of many Russian institutions. He found
Russia a sleepy kingdom encrusted with Oriental habit and Byzantine
tradition; he hacked off that crust with an axe, and he left Russia open
to the influences of Europe, and ready to value the place which was her
due amongst the nations of Europe.
His work was carried on by Catherine II. on the same lines, and further.
She opened educated Russia to European ideas; she civilized Russia
intellectually; and Russia, under her guidance, took a leading part in
the European Concert.
But it was later that Russia was destined to play a part which vitally
affected every nation of Western Europe. This was in 1812. In 1812
Russia broke up the power of Napoleon.
“Leipzig and Waterloo were but the corollaries,” writes Mr. Stead, “of a
solved problem.”
“It is an incontestable fact,” writes M. Rambaud, the French historian
of Russia, “that of all the allies, Russia showed herself the least
grasping. It was she who had given the signal for the struggle against
Napoleon, and had shown most perseverance in pursuit of the common end.
Without her example the states of Europe would never have dreamed of
arming against him. Her skilful leniency towards France finished the
work begun by the war.”
So far, all these facts I have mentioned concern the relations of Russia
to Europe; they necessarily reacted on the internal conditions of the
country.
The fact that Russia was playing an important part abroad meant that the
means by which this part could be played had to be furnished at home,
and the finding of such means affected the administration of the country
and the whole of its population.
In order that Russia should be able to play a part in Europe, the first
thing that was necessary was an army.
Peter the Great made an army (and a fleet). How did he do it? Where did
the officers and men come from?
When Peter the Great came to the throne, the organization of the State
was patriarchal. There was practically no standing army except a kind of
corps of janissaries, the _streltsy_ (which he destroyed). There were
two classes: the nobility and the peasants. The nobility held the land
and the peasants tilled it; but the nobility held the land on one
condition only, and that was that they should render military service in
their own person when it was necessary.
The nobles were at the same time landowners and servants of the State,
but they were landowners only on condition of being State servants.
The peasants belonged to the land; they were attached to the land and
could not be separated from it. This is what serfdom meant in Russia.
Serfdom was not an immemorial institution in Russia. It was not a relic
of paganism or barbarism; it was founded neither on conquest, nor on the
habit of turning the captives made in inter-tribal wars into slaves, nor
on a difference of race or colour; and unless this be understood, unless
the true nature of this serfdom be realized, it is impossible to
understand the part which the Russian peasantry play in the Russian
nation.
Briefly, serfdom came about thus. The peasants cultivated the land which
the monarch conceded to the nobles as a salary or means of subsistence
in return for military service. But up till about the end of the
sixteenth century the peasants could choose and change their masters,
and pass from one estate to another. They used, in fact, to exercise
their right of transfer once a year, on St. George’s Day.
At the end of the sixteenth century labour was precious and rare, and
eagerly sought after by the nobles. The peasants were naturally inclined
to emigrate, and the more adventurous were attracted towards the regions
of the Don, the Kama, the Volga, and Siberia, and they thus avoided
paying taxes. Moreover, the larger landed proprietors attracted the
peasants to their estates to the detriment of the smaller landed
proprietors. The primitive fiscal system of that day suffered from all
this, and as a remedy to this state of things, in order to guarantee and
regularize the financial and military supplies of the State, the peasant
was attached to the soil. In 1593, in the reign of Feodor, the son of
Ivan the Terrible, and owing to the initiative of Boris Godonnov, the
right of transfer from one estate to another was first temporarily taken
away from the peasant. The prohibition to transfer their service on this
date was renewed by several sovereigns, and was finally crystallized in
the law of the country. Once attached to the soil the peasant gradually
lost his civil rights and became the chattel of the proprietor; thus
what began by being a simple police measure ended by becoming organized
slavery. Such was the state of things when Peter the Great came to the
throne. The peasant was attached to the soil, the nobility were the
army, for when an army was needed they had to fight themselves and to
supply so many men into the bargain.
Peter the Great wanted a standing army; and in order to get one, and at
the same time to carry on the administration of the country, he created,
or rather enlarged, the system of universal service. Every single
Russian became a public servant. Henceforward it became obligatory for
the noble to serve the State either in the military or the civil
service—always, and not only in times of war. Moreover, in order to be
an officer he had to pass an examination, and if he failed to pass it he
had to serve as a private soldier. Further, in order to get enough
soldiers, a system of conscription was introduced; that is to say, in
every place, out of so many thousand men, so many were taken.
Again, the nobility ceased to be a closed caste depending on hereditary
titles; it became a class of State servants, and was thrown open to all.
Rank depended on service. Instead of obtaining a post because you were a
noble, you became a noble for having attained by service to such and
such a post. Rank in service became the only rank. Thus Peter the Great,
in order to create a standing army, created a standing civil service; he
destroyed the principle of hereditary aristocracy; and both branches of
the universal service he created, military and civil, were divided into
its fourteen grades or _tchins_, hence the word _tchinnovnik_, the
ordinary Russian word for official. Again, as he was constantly going to
war, and constantly needed men, and the nobility had to supply so many
men from their land, he tightened the bonds which attached the peasants
to the soil. He strengthened the system of serfdom; and the rulers who
succeeded him carried on the same policy, because the revenue depended
on the State being administered by the landed gentry, which gradually
ceased to be an aristocratic caste, and kept on increasing in size,
until towards the end of the reign of Catherine II., when it had grown
to be a vast bureaucracy.
It is clear that, if the great majority of the landed proprietors were
engaged in administrating the country, they would have less and less
time to look after their estates after the old patriarchal fashion; and
it is also clear that as civilization progressed everything in the
machinery of the State necessarily increased in size. Men were needed to
deal with the more complicated machinery; with the administration of
finances, of justice, and of the police. The men who filled all the new
posts created by the ever increasing complication of the administration
of the State were the former landed proprietors, the actual officials.
The consequence was they ceased to be able to look after their land.
This being so, there was no defence left against the growing moral
sentiment which had risen against serfdom, namely: the moral principle
that it was wrong that peasants should be in the position of cattle and
chattels. This sentiment was expressed more than once by the peasants
themselves in mutinies. It was expressed from the outside by all that
was enlightened in the country.
The Emperor Alexander I. took the first steps towards the great reform
by liberating the serfs in the Baltic provinces. It is said that his
brother, the Emperor Nicholas, on his deathbed left the execution of the
reform as a solemn legacy to his son and successor, Alexander II. The
Crimean War was the actual shock which brought the reform about.
Literature was a powerful factor in pressing it on. Writers of genius,
such as Gogol and Turgeniev, by their descriptions; publicists, such as
Samarin and Herzen, by their pleading, played a large part in
accelerating its advent. They gave expression to what was the universal
and imperative opinion of thinking Russia, so that the reform when it
came about, and when the serfs were liberated in 1861, was the work of
the nation as well as of the Emperor.
This retrospect has brought us to the year 1861. Since then many
momentous things have happened to Russia. A war; the inauguration of a
system of local self-government; another war; and if not a revolution, a
revolutionary movement, a long and vital crisis, out of which rose the
beginnings of popular representation. But these events, in so far as
they deal with Russian life as it is to-day, will be dealt with in the
subsequent chapters.