THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS.
In Russia the representatives of the liberal professions—lawyers,
doctors, professors, literary men, agricultural experts, statists,
schoolmasters, journalists—are denoted, as a rule, by the generic term
_intelligentsia_. The term is elastic, and its use, as I know by
experience, can easily lead to the greatest misunderstandings; the
reason of this being that the word is sometimes used in a broad sense,
and sometimes in a narrow sense, and sometimes in a still narrower
sense. That is to say, the word _intelligentsia_ is sometimes used by
Russians to denote anybody who can read or write, anybody who has
received a certain education. That is the broadest sense of the word. In
this, its largest sense, the word means the whole of the middle class,
from which nine-tenths of the officials and public servants are drawn.
But when Russians use the word _intelligentsia_, they generally mean the
members of the liberal professions, exclusive of officials.
Again, some Russians use the word _intelligentsia_ in a still narrower
sense, in order to denote not a class but a frame of mind; they use the
word as we use a phrase such as “Nonconformist conscience:” and in this
sense the member of the _intelligentsia_ could belong to any class, just
as in England a Liberal, a Nonconformist, or a vegetarian could belong
to any class. And it is the use of the word in this narrower sense that
leads to misunderstanding. For if you describe or speak of the
attributes and the characteristics of the _intelligentsia_ in this
narrower sense, you run the risk of labelling the whole middle class of
Russia with characteristics which do not apply to them; just as if in
England the word Nonconformist were used not only to denote the
Nonconformist sect, but the whole of the English middle class.
So, before going further, it is well to make one’s position quite clear.
In using the term _intelligentsia_ in this chapter, I mean to denote,
firstly, the representatives of the liberal professions—lawyers,
doctors, literary men, professors, schoolmasters, students, journalists,
statists, and agricultural experts—the educated middle class, the
intellectuals; and, secondly, the semi-intellectuals and the
half-educated.
The intellectuals form, at the present moment in Russia, a factor of
great interest and of great importance. They are largely represented by
a political party, called the Constitutional Democrats, the Kadets,
which played an important part in the revolutionary movement. The whole
mass of the newspapers, both in the provinces and in Moscow and St.
Petersburg, with the exception of some organs of a conservative and
reactionary tendency, are edited by the intellectuals among the
_intelligentsia_; and the ordinary staff of every newspaper, who make
the paper, are recruited from the semi-intellectuals of the
_intelligentsia_. It was the _intelligentsia_ which, in the struggle for
liberation, supplied the rank and file of the army, of which the county
councils were the spokesmen and the leaders.
There is, as Mr. Stephen Grahame, one of the most competent of modern
observers of modern life in Russia, says, an articulate part of the
_intelligentsia_, which he calls the higher _intelligentsia_, containing
a great number of cultured and educated people; and side by side with
this, there has sprung up lately a _bourgeoisie_ that calls itself
_intelligentsia_—a lower middle class, which takes to itself fifty per
cent. of the children born in the great towns to-day. Mr. Grahame calls
this the lower _intelligentsia_, and stigmatizes this latter class in
severe terms as being materialistic and cynical.
I propose, then, to divide the middle class into two divisions—the
educated and the half-educated.
Ever since the revolutionary movement the _intelligentsia_ as a whole
has come in for a large measure of abuse, not only from its enemies, but
from members of its own class. It has for the first time in its
comparatively brief history, if we except occasional indirect criticism,
been subjected to a fierce and systematic criticism from the inside; the
reason of this being that many Russian thinkers are convinced that the
course of the revolutionary movement and the action of the first two
Dumas showed that politically the Russian _intelligentsia_ was immature,
inexperienced, unfit for political leadership, incapable of
statesmanship, divorced in ideas and feelings from the people, and
incapable of heading a popular movement. Some of these critics have gone
further, and have dwelt on the religious indifferentism of the
_intelligentsia_ as a class as the explanation of the inability of the
_intelligentsia_ to act on the masses in Russia.
“The fact is,” M. Bulgakov writes in the _Russian Review_ of November
1912, “that educated or especially half-educated Russian society in its
average representatives is almost without exception atheistic, or, to
put it more correctly, indifferent to religion. A very superficial
religious indifferentism, expressed most naturally in atheism, is met
with on all sides, and everywhere in the Russian _intelligentsia_. The
various political tendencies and parties among the _intelligentsia_
carry on violent disputes with regard to various dogmas of sociological
and political catechism, but do not discuss the existence or
non-existence of God, or this or that religious belief. Here there are
no questions, for it is taken for granted that there can be no talk of
religion for the educated man, because religion is incompatible with
enlightenment.” He goes on to say that the dogma that science has once
and for all disposed of religion altogether is assimilated early in life
by the “intelligent,” and in most cases is not re-examined for the rest
of his life. “In religion the Russian _intelligentsia_ shows a kind of
mental deficiency; on the average it is not above but below ideas of
religion, for it has never properly experienced them.”
This being so, the critics of the _intelligentsia_ go on to say “that
this lack of religion condemns them to remain out of touch with the
people, for if they are divorced from the people in that which the
people hold most sacred, how can they come close to them at all?”
There is nothing new in such criticism and such strictures; nearly all
outside observers of Russia have said the same thing in the past. What
is new is the quarter whence the criticism proceeds—namely, from the
inside, from the _intelligentsia_ itself; and this signifies that a
reaction, or rather a revolt, is proceeding in some quarters amidst this
prevailing materialism and this superficial indifferentism.
These are questions which are of great interest to the Russian reader.
To the English reader, who probably has not the slightest idea of the
nature of the ordinary member of the _intelligentsia_, the question is
probably less interesting.
Again, such critics, in writing for a Russian audience or for an English
audience more or less acquainted with Russia, are not under the
obligation of qualifying their statements by pointing out the good
qualities and the merits of the _intelligentsia_, because they know that
their readers are well aware of them, and will take them for granted.
But as the English reader is unaware of their qualities, either good or
bad, it would be misleading to dwell greatly on defects to those who are
unacquainted with the general atmosphere and the main characteristics of
the people under discussion.
In the first place, the members of the _intelligentsia_ are Russians.
This fact, strangely enough, seems often to be lost sight of by their
opponents, who talk of them as if they were made of some totally
different substance from the remaining part of the Russian people. And
if this is true of the _intelligentsia_, it is still more true of the
official world. Writers, and especially English writers, talk of Russian
officials as if they too were made of some different stuff—as if they
were a race apart which had nothing in common with the rest of the
Russian people. This is not so. The _intelligentsia_ and the officials
are Russians; and being Russians, they have certain qualities and
certain defects which are probably common to all Russians, which are the
natural result of the Russian temperament. Where they differ from the
classes which are above them or beneath them is in their education—or
rather in the effect which that education has had upon them. The disease
is the same; it is the way of taking it which is different.
They are extremely well educated; infinitely, incomparably better
educated than the average Englishman. They are sometimes over-educated.
The Russian mind assimilates with ease; it apprehends with incredible
quickness; it is sensitive, receptive, plastic, agile. Such qualities in
the case of men who are naturally thoughtful, studious, and serious,
lead, of course, to a wide and deep culture. But in the case of the
half-educated—in the case of people who quickly assimilate a smattering
of the ideas that are in the air all over Europe—the result is a radical
immaturity, something that is immature in its very overripeness,
something shallow, thin, and superficial.
In spite of this, if you take the average Russian of the educated middle
class, he is extremely well educated—so much better educated than the
average educated Englishman that comparison would be silly. The average
Scotsman would compare favourably with him, and the average German: only
the Russian has a quicker, more adaptable mind; and he is more
inquisitive of what is going on outside the walls of his country than
the average Frenchman.
If you took an average schoolboy of thirteen, and put him at an English
public school, he would find the work given to an average English
schoolboy of thirteen not only easy, but childish.
Moreover, the educated Russian is far more catholic in his culture than
the average Englishman. A certain grasp of mathematics, of political
economy and physical science, a knowledge of European history, would be
looked upon by him as a matter of course, whereas the English public
schools and universities turn out not only undergraduates but dons who
have specialized in one subject—and sometimes not well in that—but
reveal an astounding ignorance in every other branch of human knowledge.
I remember once a Russian pointing out to me some remarks written in a
popular book by an English don, and remarking that a Russian child could
not possibly have written anything so silly. I, indeed, needed no
persuasion. On the other hand, I remember one of the more radical
members of the first Duma pointing out to me that in matters of
practical political organization an English child could give the Russian
political leaders points.
Most educated Russians are familiar with the works of Herbert Spencer,
Huxley, John Morley, Buckle, and John Stuart Mill. They are at the same
time not only familiar with, but acutely appreciative of, humorous and
serious English literature—of Dickens, Bret Harte, Wells, Jerome K.
Jerome, Conan Doyle, etc.
One of the stock things you constantly hear said about Russians is that
they are wonderful linguists. I believe this generalization to be
largely built on the prowess of Russian men and women who have had
foreign nurses and governesses. It is true that in St. Petersburg and
Moscow society every one talks French, and most people talk English, and
nearly every one knows German. It cannot be said that the English of St.
Petersburg is of the purest. It is a dialect peculiar to St. Petersburg,
and full of strange idioms translated from the French. Such phrases as,
for instance, “One says he is very frightful” (meaning, “They say he is
very frightening”), or, “I find her a bother” (meaning a bore), are
characteristic of that fluent dialect. However, if it is not pure, it is
at any rate fluent.
But if you take the average representative of the middle classes in
Russia, you will sometimes meet with a knowledge of French, more often
with a knowledge of German, and seldom with a conversational knowledge
of English; but not universally with either of these three. Nor will you
find that the average representative of the Russian middle class learns
these languages with more than average speed when he is abroad; although
the Russian is, as a rule, very quick to appreciate shades of meaning
and forms of humour which are peculiar to other languages than his own.
Taken as a whole, the middle class in Russia is cultivated, widely and
deeply cultured in its upper strata, and in its best representatives
more widely cultured than the average Frenchman or German. In its lower
strata, among the half-educated, the “little learning” that has been
rapidly assimilated has indeed proved a dangerous thing, and has
produced in the head of the individual a salad of half-baked philosophy
and superficial Nihilism which remains fixed for ever like a dogma.
In this sense the half-educated in Russia are in a state of adolescence.
They have cast aside what they regard as the superstitions of boyhood,
and they have accepted as incontrovertible dogma the ideas which they
believe to be the most advanced in Western Europe, and have poured them
into a fixed mould, where they remain stereotyped for the rest of their
lives.
This is what M. Bulgakov means when he says the half-educated in Russia
are not above religion, but below it; not superior to it, but inferior
to it.
In using the word half-educated, I am alluding to the larger class of
people in Russia who have just emerged above the surface of the
uneducated: members of the proletariat often, peasants sometimes who
have received half an education, clerks and minor public servants, and
students who have not passed any of the higher standards. It is amongst
this class that you find a chaos and welter of half-baked ideas; it is
here that you find a jumble, a salad of ill-assimilated and
strangely-assorted goods, a flotsam and jetsam of Western philosophies
and theories, crystallized and hardened into rigid dogma, and clung to
and paraded with a desperate _amour propre_ and a fierce tenacity. It
is, of course, the negative philosophies which are chosen. When a
schoolboy reaches the age of adolescence—when he first makes the
discovery in England, say, of Renan on the one hand, and of Swinburne,
Ibsen, and Nietzsche on the other—he is tremendously proud of what seems
to him his bold and rebellious “views:” he labels himself a
“freethinker” and a pagan. He is filled with iconoclastic zeal. He feels
like young Siegfried about to storm Walhalla, and bid its tottering
halls crumble before his sword. If he is at the university, he will
perhaps refuse to go to chapel from conscientious scruples, and he will
wear a red tie on Sunday to show he is a Socialist.
“I read the Gospel as an ordinary book,” said a young freethinker to the
late Dr. Jowett, the Master of Balliol. “Really, Mr. Smith,” said the
master, “you must find it a very extraordinary book.”
Later on he finds the question is not quite so simple as he imagined,
and that the old-fashioned superstitions are tougher than he imagined;
that science has not spoken the last word on religion; and that certain
facts and ideas had perhaps escaped his plausible philosophy. He makes
the discovery that the higher criticism is not always infallible, and
that disbelief is sometimes quite as intolerant as belief; that
freethinkers are not always free. In fact, he grows up.
But in the case of the Russian half-educated, they do not, as a rule,
grow up intellectually. They reach the stage of rebellious and
destructive denial, and remain there. Fragments of Nietzsche, Marx, and
Schopenhauer contribute to the intellectual salad which constitutes
their negative creed; and once that creed is formed, it no longer
develops—because the atmosphere in which the half-educated live in in
Russia they will meet with nothing to counterbalance this negative
influence. They regard this negative philosophy as a thing which is
taken for granted by all sensible and educated men, a thing about which
there can be no possible doubt. Atheism is a matter of course, like a
pair of trousers. There can be no other possible creed for an educated
man. If a man is not an atheist he is not educated. Intellectually he
wears his shirt outside his belt, and not tucked in. Socialism or
Anarchism is the only possible political creed. If a man is not a
Socialist or an Anarchist, he is obviously a member of the “black-gang”
of reaction. Any educated man who goes to church or is religious is, in
the eyes of the half-educated, a member of the black-gang—a fanatic, an
anti-Semite, an obscurantist.
He will remain stationary in this negative view, because this view is in
the air he breathes and amongst the people with whom he consorts. He
will never come across the contrary view; and he will consequently take
for granted that all views to the contrary, all religious belief, all
disbelief in disbelief, are confined to the uneducated, and that as soon
as the uneducated (the peasants) receive the “light,” they will free
themselves from these old-fashioned and cumbrous shackles of
superstition. He will be, moreover, immensely proud of his negative
creed, which he will regard as the hall-mark of culture and the password
which admits him to the intellectual parliament of man, the enlightened
federation of the world.
Mr. Belloc, in one of his essays, I think, tells the story of an
educated man who lived alone and isolated in a village in the Vosges,
far removed from towns, railways, and means of communication. Thither
Mr. Belloc wandered one day, and this man, who entertained him, unpacked
with pride the baggage of portable atheism which was current in the
’fifties. Mr. Belloc told him atheism was no longer thought to be an
indispensable hall-mark of education, and no longer regarded as the key
to all philosophies. He was distressed and bewildered. That is exactly
what the half-educated in Russia are now being told by many Russian
writers—Berdayev, Bulgakov, Ern, Rachinsky, Florensky, Kozhevnikov,
Samarin, Mansurov; but the news has not yet penetrated into their inner
consciousness.
It had already been proclaimed by greater men than these—by Dostoievsky,
Tyutchev, and Soloviev; but the message of these men of genius has not
reached the hearts of the half-educated in Russia. They are still in the
stage of the Oxford undergraduate who reads the Gospel as an “ordinary
book.”
But let us leave the half-educated and go back to the fully-educated. It
is, perhaps, needless to say that Russia is rich in men of European
reputation who have rendered noble service to science in many branches,
and especially in medicine. What is perhaps less well known to English
readers is that in the medical profession in Russia not only will you
find many names which enjoy a European reputation, but the standard of
competence, knowledge, and ability is almost universally high. All over
Russia, no matter how remote the place, you will be sure to find a
general practitioner who is not only highly competent, but highly
cultivated. Moreover, these doctors live the hardest and most
self-sacrificing of lives: they drive long distances in all weathers;
they have to struggle against the enormous odds imposed on them by the
rigorous climate, the poverty and the backwardness of the great mass of
the people; and often they have to deal with scourges, such as epidemics
of typhus, cholera, and even plague.
Socially, the average member of the Russian middle class is attractive,
expansive, and easy to get on with. He is completely devoid of
hypocrisy, and untainted by snobbishness and pretension. He is friendly,
good-humoured, and hospitable, and, when not afflicted by hypochondria,
a cheerful companion. He is fond of discussion. An Englishman living
with a Russian family is struck, as a rule, by the long conversations
that go on, sometimes far on in the night, generally about politics or
abstract questions. There is no conventional limit of hours. If these
people want to go on playing cards all night, they will go on playing
cards all night; they will not stop because they think “it is really
time to go to bed.”
In thinking over the characteristics of the educated middle class in
Russia and the educated middle class in England, the chief differences
are, of course, the same that differentiate the natural character of the
Russian and the Englishman. The Russian middle class is, if you take the
average, not only better educated, but more broad-minded, less
provincial, less pretentious, far less reserved and less self-satisfied,
and not at all hypocritical. It is also, I should say, less
self-disciplined; and it has often struck me that those members of the
_intelligentsia_ who are most violent and bitter in their denunciation
of the arbitrary behaviour and the irresponsible despotism of the
Government are, if one sees them on a committee, far more despotic and
arbitrary than the most despotic official. But that is perhaps the
logical law of human nature.
The average Russian is certainly less self-satisfied than the average
Englishman; although he is sometimes self-satisfied in some respects and
in a quite different fashion.
Self-praise is not a thing you often come across in the Russian
_intelligentsia_. On the contrary, you far oftener have its members
comparing themselves unfavourably with their neighbours. But this note
of self-depreciation sometimes exists side by side with one of pride and
vanity, which is sometimes pardonable and sometimes not. I came across
an instance of this lately in a large Russian newspaper—the _Russkoe
Slovo_.[12]
A writer in an article on English life and Englishmen, in which he makes
a number of interesting appreciations and criticisms, compares the two
countries, and after making the debatable statement that, in his
opinion, Russia and England are the only two countries which are now
playing a significant part in the historical arena, says, “Yet what a
gulf there is between us. How far more intelligent, how far more
talented, how far broader-minded, how far more sincere are we!” It is
difficult for either a Russian or an Englishman to settle such a
question. They are neither of them the best judges; yet I should say,
personally, that this writer is probably right, if you take the average.
On the other hand, my impression is—and it may very likely be a false
one—that this broad-mindedness, talent, cleverness, and sincerity is
spread in a certain even proportion more or less equally and uniformly
over a larger social stratum in Russia, producing a certain high level
and standard of general intelligence; whereas in England, where no such
high standard exists, you may encounter gulfs and precipices of
complacent ignorance and narrow-minded stupidity; but, on the other
hand, you will meet with high peaks and jagged rocks of originality,
imagination, and sometimes genius. In England, while the general
standard of intelligence is immeasurably lower, the exceptions are more
remarkable, and not merely because they are exceptions, but in
themselves. Contemporary literature affords a good example of what I
mean. In Russia, the average reading public and the novel-reading public
is on a much higher level than the average English-reading and
novel-reading public, and the average literature food supplied to it is
higher also: the average Russian novel or story never descends to the
level of silliness which you find in the great majority of English
magazines. On the other hand, contemporary English literature contains
more names that are famous, and whose fame has crossed the frontiers of
their country, than contemporary Russian literature. For instance, if we
put Gorky with Kipling as belonging to a past generation, there is in
Russia no imaginative writer of the present generation who can be
compared with H. G. Wells; no realistic novel as fine as Arnold
Bennett’s _Old Wives’ Tale_; no writer as original as G. K. Chesterton.
The Russian stage is on a far higher intellectual level than the English
stage, and the Russian theatre-going public is incomparably more
intelligent than the English theatre-going public; yet the Russians have
no dramatist whose plays (with the exception of one play by Gorky) are
acted all over Europe, such as those of Bernard Shaw. The ordinary
Russian intellectual may despise Bernard Shaw’s philosophy and drama—in
fact, the writer of the article I have just quoted cites as an instance
of the low level of the English stage, the fact that Bernard Shaw who,
he says, is “a back number” in Russia, is considered the first of
English dramatists. But is it certain the Russian has realized Shaw’s
humour to the full? This, moreover, does not prevent it being true that
Bernard Shaw’s plays are acted all over Europe, as well as in Russia;
that the French have called him the modern Molière; and that
contemporary Russia has produced no dramatist who can claim so large a
public, nor so wide an appreciation in Europe.
The writer of the article I have quoted says that the Russians and the
English are alike in possessing two faces. In generalizing on the
characteristics of a people, and especially the Russian and the English
people, one must always bear in mind the element of paradox and
contradiction that exists. With regard to the English people, this
writer notes the fact of the contrasts you meet with in England, and the
dual nature of the English character; but whereas he notes the naïveté
of the English public, its boisterous mirth in contrast to the serious
element in many phases of English life, the imaginative quality of the
English seems to have escaped him. “I think we are an imaginative
people,” writes Mr. Wells about the English in India, “with an
imagination at once gigantic, heroic, and shy; and also we are a
strangely restrained and disciplined people who are yet neither subdued
nor subordinated.... These are flat contradictions to state, and yet how
else can one render the paradox of the English character and the
spectacle of a handful of mute, snobbish, not obviously clever, and
quite obviously ill-educated men, holding together kingdoms, tongues,
and races, three hundred millions of them, in a restless, fermenting
peace?”
“Yes, it is true,” I would answer to this Russian journalist; “probably
true that you are far more intelligent, far more talented, more
broad-minded, and less hypocritical than we are.” And then I would ask
him to read some further words of Mr. Wells, which concern circles of
the official English in India, “conventional, carefully ‘turned out’
people, living gawkily, thinking gawkily, talking nothing but sport and
gossip, relaxing at rare intervals into sentimentality and levity as
mean as a banjo tune.” Among such, he says, “a kind of despairful
disgust would engulf me. And then, in some man’s work, in some huge
irrigation scheme, some feat of strategic foresight, some simple,
penetrating realization of deep-lying things, I would find an effect, as
if out of a thickly-rusted sheath one had pulled a sword and found it a
flame.”
The Russian writer has forgotten, or has never come across, the flame;
and that is not surprising, for the flame is not obvious to the casual
observer. But the Russian character has felt its heat, expressed as it
is in the phases and images of English writers of genius in the present
as well as in the past. The flame has left its marks on Russian
literature.
I can imagine a Russian brooding or reasoning over Russia—say the Russia
of the remoter provinces—much in the same way as Wells reasons over the
British in India. I can imagine him saying: “Again and again I would
find myself in little circles of minor official Russians, slovenly,
superficial, despotic in their disregard of other people, lax, casual,
cynical, carefully ‘educated’ people, living noisily, thinking noisily,
talking nothing but cheap philosophy and gossip, relaxing at frequent
intervals into fits of drunkenness, gambling, and extravagance, as
sordid as the tune of a barrel organ, and a kind of despairful disgust
would engulf me. And then in some man’s speech, in some sudden flash of
white-hot sincerity, some stripping naked of the soul, some gesture of
human charity, some evidence of sympathy and understanding, some simple,
penetrating realization of divine things, I would find an effect, as if
in a heap of mouldering refuse, festering weeds, and broken bottles I
had stumbled across a tin box, and forcing it open, found it filled with
precious balm and myrrh—celestial in its fragrance.” And then perhaps he
might have added: “I think we are a great-hearted people with a humanity
at once charitable, broad, and deep; and yet we are a tough, obstinate,
arbitrary, and undisciplined people, who are as yet neither socially
independent nor politically free. These are flat contradictions.” I am
certain of one thing. Any generalizations on the characteristics of any
people must include flat contradictions, and especially any
generalizations on the Russians of any class; for the whole of Russian
history is based like a fairy tale on a huge paradox—namely, the
survival of the weakest, and the triumph of the fool of the family; the
strength of the fool being that he has something divine in his folly
which outwits the wisdom of the wise.
In speaking of the prevailing dead level of a high standard in things
intellectual in Russia, I gave literature as an example. Perhaps I ought
to cite some of the sister arts as exceptions; but with the exception of
music, perhaps, the same rule applies here too. In the decorative arts
Bakst has attained a European reputation, and in stage design and stage
decoration Russia stands perhaps higher than any other European country
at present. But here it should be noted that one of the great pioneers
in advanced stage decoration in Russia was Gordon Craig, also a case in
point of the startling exception, startling in himself as well as an
exception to the encircling mediocrity. The Russian stage has felt not
only his influence, but his direct inspiration; and Aubrey Beardsley is
responsible in Russia for a whole chaos of decadent illustrators. Then
there is music, in which Russia is collectively and individually far
superior to England at present. These are questions which need separate
and more detailed treatment; but it is worth while mentioning here that
the greatest exception to the rule—if it is a rule—that in Russia you
will find a high standard and few towering exceptions, is to be found in
the operatic stage in the person of Shalyapin, who by common consent is,
besides being a magnificent singer, the greatest living actor and artist
on the operatic stage, and perhaps on any other stage either. On the
other hand, the first theatre in Moscow, the Art Theatre, furnishes an
example of the original rule—nowhere in Europe is the _ensemble_ so
perfect, the troupe so well disciplined, the production so harmonious;
yet the company contains no single actor or actress of genius.
It is, of course, the _intelligentsia_ who suffered most in the past,
since the epoch of the great reforms of the ’sixties, from the want of
political liberty in Russia, and it is from the ranks of the
_intelligentsia_ that the revolutionary movement started. They had,
until the creation of the first Duma, no means at all of taking part in
public life unless they became officials and entered the Government
service.
Those who did not play an active part in politics were not, it is true,
or were only indirectly, hampered by this state of things. They were
hampered, that is to say, by the censorship on certain books and on
certain ideas, by the caution of the press and the absence of public
debate, by the liability of falling under the suspicion of political
heterodoxy; whereas those who took a part in the revolutionary movement,
either directly or indirectly, were liable at any moment to suffer in
person for their opinions, and they did suffer. In their action as
active revolutionaries, in the manner in which they were ready to
undergo any sacrifices, however great and however tedious, the Russian
revolutionaries belong to the great and authentic martyrs of the world.
They sacrificed themselves without any fuss or ostentation. They were
willing to endure years and years of imprisonment or exile if they
thought that would benefit their cause. They went on hungerstrike when
the rules of their imprisonment were not being properly carried out, if
the quality of the food supplied to them was not up to the standard, or
if the prison regulations were not being properly fulfilled; but not
because they were put in prison. That they accepted as a rule of the
game. Nothing broke their indomitable and patient purpose. They were
ready to abandon everything which makes life worth living, and they
claimed neither the hero’s laurel wreath nor the martyr’s crown. They
were content to be anonymous; they gladly gave their bodies to be
crushed, if, they thought, they could thus make stepping-stones over
which future generations could walk. The Russian revolutionaries did not
go out of their way to seek to lose their lives; but they were ready, if
the occasion demanded it, to give their lives. But as far as their main
policy was concerned, they took the offensive against the Government;
and not being allowed to express their opinions in print or in public,
they expressed them with dynamite.
In looking back at the whole movement, one is struck by the absence of
cant in the methods, the writings, and the behaviour of the _active_
revolutionaries. They were as simple and as natural in their
assassinations and their martyrdom as they were in the rest of their
behaviour. They showed the same absence of hypocrisy. Some people call
this the Russian simplicity; others call it (Mr. Conrad, for instance)
Russian cynicism. It is, if you like, a kind of inverted cynicism; a
reckless way of looking facts in the face, and of stripping the soul of
all its decent trappings. And yet there is nothing Mephistophelian about
it—no mockery, no irony, but an inverted and inflexible logic which
leads people to disregard all barriers and to carry out in practice what
they preach in theory, though they should cause the pillars of the world
to fall crashing to the ground.
I have been speaking, of course, about the active and militant members
among the revolutionaries, not of its platonic and passive sympathizers.
Amongst those you may find the political cant which is common to that
species of mankind, of all races and in all countries.
But if you take the Russian middle class as a whole, absence of cant and
hypocrisy is certainly one of their chief characteristics. Uniformity of
education is certainly another. “Culture” is made into a fetish (and
this is true of all educated people in Russia). A certain stereotyped
form of culture, including a certain number of subjects, is looked upon
as being as indispensable as clothes. A man who is lacking in the
visible label and hall-mark of this so-called “culture” is looked upon
as if he were morally naked.
The worst of it is, the possession of this culture does not necessarily
mean that its possessor is cultivated. It is often skin-deep and a
random assortment of superficial ideas, confined sometimes to the
knowledge of certain names and catchwords, and to a second-hand
acquaintance with certain books, theories, and currents of thought.
The idea that this kind of “culture” is indispensable, and that a man
who does not possess it is uneducated, is undoubtedly a bureaucratic
idea, and the fruits of the long-standing existence of bureaucracy. Such
culture is a superstition, and has nothing necessarily to do with real
culture, which implies the assimilation and the thorough digestion of
any kind of knowledge.
But, as I have said before, it is more especially to the half-educated
that this applies. The truly well-educated middle class have revealed
their culture to the world in the shape of the men of science, the
historians, the economists they have produced, and the books they have
written.
But the Russian intellectual middle class is historically still young.
The greatest works of the Russian genius in the past were written before
it existed, when they were as nothing, and came from the nobility. The
future will show what the _intelligentsia_ in their turn will produce.
But such as it is at the present moment, it offers to the student of
Russia a field of surpassing interest; and the Englishman who goes to
Russia and lives among its members will come back, as a rule, with the
horizon of his mind widened, and in his heart a soft spot for the
Russian _intelligentsia_.