TOLSTOI--ODESSA--CONSTANTINOPLE
A visit to Russia’s grand old man--An interesting
yamschik--Tolstoi’s views on the present struggle--His world-wide
interests--The varied and interesting Tolstoi household--On to the
Crimea--Odessa--The Black Hundred organization--Promoting
massacres--Quitting Odessa during a dock strike--A Black Hundred
crew--Difficulties at sea--Back to Odessa--A fresh start--A motley
cargo of passengers--Bokhara pilgrims bound for Mecca, Central Asia
Jews journeying to Jerusalem, German Lutherans--Crossing the Black
Sea--Arrival in Constantinople.
A sojourn in Russia seemed incomplete without a pilgrimage to Tolstoi.
Russia’s grand old man attracts travelers from all corners of the earth,
and though it seemed an unpardonable intrusion for an unheard-of citizen
of a distant country to call upon the seer in his own home, to draw upon
his strength and time, I was deeply grateful to receive an invitation to
visit a dear friend and disciple of his who lives on the estate of the
count’s eldest daughter; for I knew that this would mean a happy meeting
with the one man in all Russia I desired most to see.
The year had turned November when this invitation came, and I was
already looking forward to quitting the land of struggle and chaos.
Tula, the town of Tolstoi’s home is almost the exact center of European
Russia, and is reached from Moscow. “Yasnaya Poliana,” Tolstoi’s house,
is located something over two hours’ drive from Tula station. Yasnaya
Poliana, that is to say, “Pleasant Clearing in the Woods,” and never
did the home of the prophet seem more fittingly named than now, when
confusion and chaos roll unchanneled from the Baltic eastward, from
European frontiers northward, covering an empire. Tolstoi looks across
the seas of tumult, his hoary head towering above the wreckage, his
superbly discerning vision penetrating a beyond still hid from the
masses of his countrymen. And it is also true that the elements of
to-day are as clear before him as before other men. He sees them all: an
incompetent government, a struggling but thus far incapable revolution,
twenty-seven millions of starving peasants, a disloyal navy, an
untrustworthy army, a paper constitution and a reactionary régime. All
these things he sees, views them calmly, and picks out a clear line of
progress that leads to a goal where all of the black road will be
justified. Of him, surely, is it true, “he has a faith that meets a
thousand cheats, yet drops no jot of faith.” Tolstoi alone among
Russians to-day is able to see his country’s plight in perspective.
Snow softly blanketed the earth and coated the bare trees of Great
Russia when I said farewell to St. Petersburg and Moscow and made toward
the center of the country to the station called Tula. A simple muzhik
with a hand-made sledge, scarcely higher off the ground than a sled,
offered to drive me out to the home where I was to be a guest, adjoining
the count’s place. The horse did not look any too robust for the trip
but the _yamschik_ [peasant driver] assured me that the horse was the
best to be had, and strong enough to accomplish the distance. As soon as
we had left the streets of the town and struck the open country the man
opened a friendly conversation. He began by telling me he had only
recently come back from Manchuria, where he had served all through the
war. It was evident that he had not enjoyed the service particularly and
when I sympathized with him he told me how, after the first battle, he
and seven of his companions held a secret council. They were all agreed
that war was a bad job. In the first place not one of them knew just why
they were fighting, and the idea of shooting at people whom they did not
know, and in return being shot at, appeared to them as wrong. At the
same time the government and their officers made them do these things.
One soldier, from Tula, suggested writing to Tolstoi. A letter was
indited and sent to Yasnaya Poliana. In the course of time these
soldiers received their answer, in which Tolstoi told them that he
believed all war was wrong, that the army had no business in Manchuria,
and that if the consciences of the soldiers troubled them they should
not shoot. “After that,” continued my driver, “we always knew what to
do. We knew in our hearts that it was wrong to fight under such
circumstances. We marched into battle because we had to, but after a few
minutes our officers would all disappear, then we all ran away. We ran
every time afterward.”
I told this story to a Red Cross nurse later for the humor of it. She
laughingly said she was sure it was literally true, because one night
after the battle of Mukden, a young captain was brought into her ward
with an injured head. His wounds were not serious and shortly after they
had been bandaged the officer began to laugh loudly. She went over to
him and asked what amused him so greatly.
“The way I was wounded,” he replied. “Our regiment had not been long
exposed to the fire when I decided it was too hot for comfort. I looked
all about for some place of shelter. At last I espied a small gully or
ravine, so suddenly running toward it I leaped in--only to find my
general and my colonel there before me! Well--there wasn’t room for all
three of us, so we began to nudge and push each other, for none wanted
to get into the open again. Finally the general said to me: ‘Captain,
you are not showing becoming deference to your superior officers, sir.’
At that I had to crawl out. As I did so a shell exploded near by and a
piece of it hit me in the forehead causing my wound!”
* * * * *
The second night after my arrival at the house where I was a guest I was
taken over to Yasnaya Poliana. Tolstoi had been informed of my presence
in the neighborhood, and had graciously suggested to my friend that she
bring me to see him. The fast-falling, late autumn night was settling
over the snow-fields and silver woods as we climbed the knoll upon which
Yasnaya Poliana house stands. In summer the place must have a
fascinating charm, for all the elements of a beautiful country park are
there--flower-beds and wildwood, orchards, groves and arbored walks, a
bit of water, fields rolling toward distant horizons, broad sky and
vistas that hold one. Surmounting the knoll, a pleasant house, large
enough without being grand, comfortable without pretension. At the door
a black poodle barked a welcome. A man-servant helped us to unload the
heavy garments we wore against the cold of a Russian November night.
With not unexpected directness we were taken straight to the count’s
study. There he sat--near a table-desk which was littered with piles of
letters and papers. “Good evening,” he called cheerily and quite as
though I were an old friend. His hands, which were extended in welcome,
were warm as if the fires of his strong life and body still burned
fiercely, as when he commanded men on Sebastopol bastions, ranged over
the unconquered Caucasus, and hunted with the most daring of his
comrades through great Russian forests. He had been horseback-riding in
the afternoon, he told us. Surely few men carry the weight of
seventy-eight years with more vigor.
The first words of greeting over, he began to ask about his friends in
America, men whom he knows personally or by reputation. A conversation
with a neighbor from one’s own home town on a chance meeting in a
foreign land would scarcely have been different. There was a delightful
eagerness for word-of-mouth news. Names of men in New York slipped as
easily from his tongue as from one of their own circle.
Shelves of books in many languages walled the room from floor to eye
level, while above hung portraits of many thinkers who have, or should
have, influenced the world. Prominent among them Henry George and
William Lloyd Garrison.
“Do you read Garrison?” Tolstoi asked, as my wandering eyes rested on
the portrait of our own champion of liberty. “Do you read Channing,
Thoreau, Emerson? I always ask Americans about those four great men.
They should be read by the young men of to-day.”
A tall candle burning on the table by his right side threw its restless
gleams across the old man’s rugged face, and involuntarily my mind ran
incredulously over the intensely human career whose latter days are now
marked by such inspiring serenity.
We could not long keep off the subject of Russia and her troubles,
however, and at last I ventured to ask him what was his interpretation
of the movement of things in Russia at the moment.
Tolstoi pointed to an old volume of Rousseau’s “Émile” lying on a table
at the other side of the room, and asked me to bring it to him. Turning
over the pages of Book IV till he found the paragraph he sought, he
paused, then read very slowly and with emphasis, these sentences: “On
dit qu’il falloit une révélation pour apprendre aux hommes la manière
dont Dieu vouloit être servi; on assigne en préserve la diversité des
cultes bizarres qu’ils ont institué, et l’on ne voit pas que cette
diversité même vient de la fantaisie des révélations. Dès que les
peuples se sont avisés de faire parler Dieu, chacun l’a fait parler à sa
mode et lui a fait dire ce qu’il a voulu; si l’on n’eût écouté que ce
que Dieu dit au cœur de l’homme, il n’y auroit jamais eu qu’une religion
sur la terre.” The last sentence he read twice, and then handed the book
across the table that I might absorb the passage. “That is what we have
all got to learn,” he said, “to listen to the words God speaks to us in
our hearts. We need no other religion or philosophy than this. We need
no institution like a church. This message is for the people of America
as well as for Russia, and the whole significance of the present
terrible situation in Russia is that the Russian people are being
brought to the point where every other channel will be closed and only
by turning to God will they be able to save themselves.” In other words,
Tolstoi sees, as every one in Russia must see, that the drift of things
is toward an abyss, and Tolstoi reads into this tendency a deeply
religious meaning; he accepts it as part of a Divine plan, and he firmly
believes that the Russian people will come to look upon their situation
as a call from God to discard their ancient superstitions and to
inaugurate a new era in which each individual will endeavor to readjust
his life into conformity with the infinite.
Tolstoi appreciates, as does every one in Russia, that the Russian
liberal movement aims to effect a social revolution, and that a
successful political revolt will only mark the beginning of the
struggle. Tolstoi does not view this as do most Russian thinkers,
however. He does not accept the accomplishment of a socialistic state as
a goal at all, for he distrusts the economics of socialism, and as a
philosophy he rejects socialism vehemently. “It is not a second-rate,
but a hundredth-rate philosophy,” he says. “The present growth of
socialism,” he went on in explanation, “is to be accounted for in
precisely the same way as the present popularity of inferior literature,
poetry, drama, and art. It is all part of a passing phase.”
“Monsieur Leroy Beaulieu, the French writer,” said Tolstoy, “was here
not long ago, and he said to me: ‘The Russian revolution? It is for
fifty years.’ That may be. But in the end--whether ten years or fifty
years--a new era of righteousness will be established in Russia.”
Late in the evening we adjourned to the dining-room, where were the
countess and a party of about a dozen. A more varied group one seldom
meets under one roof. There was the count, strong in his faith,
confident in the truth of his own philosophy of “Christian anarchism.”
There was a son, who, during the Japanese War, was a patriot, a loyal
subject of the Czar, and as such volunteered for service in arms and
served in Manchuria. There was the eldest brother of this soldier son, a
Constitutional Democrat, or middle-of-the-road-man, and next him a
sister who is married to a man who is an “Octoberist,” a conservative
deputy to the first Duma, and she shares her husband’s political
opinions. Also there was a disciple of Count Tolstoi, who believes not
in war or parliaments at all; and a Social Revolutionist, who believes
ardently in revolution and even in terrorism. Each was true to his own
convictions and perfectly outspoken. When the count had drunk his glass
of tea, little heeding the babel of conversation around the board, he
pushed back his chair and for several moments slowly paced the room. The
huge dining-room, warm with hospitality, afforded a striking picture
that night. Against the high, dark walls stood out several life-size oil
portraits. In one corner a grand piano, near it a table on which were
strewn a pack of cards, and opposite a cozy-corner. In the center of the
room, the long dining-table around which were gathered the company; at
one end a steaming samovar. Slowly, back and forth, paced the count, now
in the shadow, now in the light, his shaggy gray beard against his
dark-blue peasant blouse. So stalwart, so vigorous, so keen to all
things he seemed. Above all, so serene in spirit; for he glories in the
present dark hour of his country, believing it harbingers the approach
of dawn--the awakening of the Russian people to a consciousness of a
grander destiny than they have dreamed of before, when as true sons of
God they shall realize that heaven of which the dogmatic preachers talk,
only not in a distant future, but here on earth.
However often it may be true that “a prophet is without honor in his own
country,” Tolstoi is honored and revered by the peasants in the villages
of Tula, and his own influence throughout Russia is very great.
Curiously enough, though, it is his unconscious influence which is
greatest. Tolstoi, above all living men, is the apostle of
“non-resistance” and “passive resistance.” But in Russia all resistance
of necessity becomes active resistance. Tolstoi pamphlets on the horrors
and evils of war perhaps more than any other influence have brought
army service into disrepute with the people. The Russian people hold
their enforced military service as one of their prime grievances, and to
avoid such service every ruse and device is resorted to from bribery and
perjury to open “passive resistance,” that is, stubborn refusal to carry
arms. But the government views this attitude as opposed to its interests
and consequently revolutionary. Refusal to bear arms in Russia is
punished by imprisonment. Tolstoi told me of a peasant thus imprisoned
who replied to the court that sentenced him: “Very well, imprison me. I
shall pray for you and my unhappy country, whose rulers make men do
evil.” The beginnings of resistance have been inspired by Tolstoi’s
“peaceful” and “Christian” writings in thousands of cases, and
eventually fruited in revolutionaryism and insurrection. This
unconscious influence, which Tolstoi has exerted during the last decade,
and more especially during the last two years, is enormous. Peasants in
every section of Russia knew more or less about Tolstoi, and while not
professing to be “Tolstoians,” nevertheless admit that the beginning of
their criticism of the government, and the first inspiration to trust to
their own thinking, came from one or another of Tolstoi’s writings.
Doubtless there are thousands of people all over the world who owe, even
if they do not recognize, a like debt to this great, restive spirit, the
dynamic of whose life has been both innate and conscious moral
earnestness. A moral leader of the force and caliber of Tolstoi can not
fail to impress a generation, and this is Tolstoi’s contribution to life
and the world: he has quickened men to thought and action, and he has
pointed a goal and standard above all others in the God which dwells
within each and every human being.
Upon leaving Tula I went south to the Crimea. On the train I read
Tolstoi’s “Sebastopol Sketches,” which contain about the most graphic
descriptions of war ever written. Curiously enough the season of the
year when I first saw Sebastopol was the same as Tolstoi describes upon
his arrival in the besieged city in 1854. During all my stay there I
could not get away from the remarkable coincidental similarity in
conditions--December, 1854, and December, 1906. To be sure, Sebastopol
was not besieged by alien foes from without, but it was besieged by
revolutionists from within. This, like most ports and all naval
stations, is a revolutionary stronghold. Only the day before my arrival
an admiral or port officer had been assassinated. Sentinels patrolled
the streets at intervals of one hundred feet. The Hotel Kist was
guarded. Small bodies of troops were moving in different parts of the
city, and when the early morning mist lifted, a half-dozen warships were
revealed lying at anchor. For several hours during the forenoon large
forces of cavalry and light artillery were kept manœuvering in the plain
across the narrow strip of water from the _pristan_. It might just as
well have been a besieged city. Save for the lack of wounded and dead
men, the outward aspects of the town were every whit as warlike, and
everywhere were the signs of martial law.
These indications of unrest and readiness for trouble did not deter me
from visiting Balaklava and lovely Yalta, or interesting Bakhtchi-Sarai,
the old Crimean Tartar capital, and Tchoufout-Kali, the two
thousand-year old Karaite[22] stronghold. After these visits I turned
toward Odessa, which I reached via Eupatoria.
Odessa being one third a Jewish city has long been a city of
trouble--not so much because of the Jews as on account of the powerful
Black Hundred organization made up of water-front laborers and the
lowest elements of a special city, who, under governmental tutelage,
from time to time break loose upon the Jews. Incipient and real
massacres are apt to break out there any time. The governor-general,
Kaulbars, is a notorious reactionary, and encourages every form of
repression.
I had studied the Jewish question in many other places, and in Odessa as
in Warsaw, Vilna, and other Jewish centers, I became convinced that the
Russian government, by its extraordinarily blind and stupid policy, has
itself created the Jewish problem. If the 5,000,000 Jews who are now in
Russia were scattered among the 140,000,000 people of the Russian
empire, they would scarcely be noticed. But Russia chose the arbitrary
part and closed to the Jews all but a tiny strip of the empire. In only
nine governments and in Poland many Jews live, and these are the
districts which constitute “the pale”--South Russia, Poland, and the
Baltic provinces. Having corralled all the Jews over whom it has
jurisdiction, the Russian government then proceeded to enact a long
series of special, discriminative laws, and to inaugurate special Jewish
taxes.
Stripped of every right and privilege of citizenship and manhood save
one--the right to pay taxes--the Jews of Russia have had no other
recourse than to develop their mental powers. This they have done most
creditably under circumstances quite as adverse as learning arithmetic
from a borrowed text-book, by the light of a rail fire during the hours
between the end of the workday and sleep time. And now, because he has
given himself devotedly up to the one thing left him and has been
successful, he is feared. Whatever may have been the original motives of
the czars in the restrictions they laid upon the Jews, the present
attitude of Jew-baiting Russians is based upon jealous fear.
One thing all observers mark--outspoken bitterness against the Jews on
the part of peasants flourishes in the parts where the Jews are not.
Within the pale most often does one find champions of the Jew. Nearly
every telegraph correspondent for the foreign press who hastened to
Bielostok at the time of the massacre commented on the testimony of the
townspeople that (to quote one of them) “the Jews and Christians had
always lived together like brothers.” The Jew is much more apt to be
suspicious of the Christian than is the non-Jew to nourish ill-will
against the Jews whom he comes into frequent contact with. If it is not
literally true that to know is to love, it at least may be said that to
know is to tolerate, with regard to the Jews in Russia. The persecution
of the Jews in Russia originates with official Russia, and the
bitterness which their weakness and fears inspire is passed on to the
people through the government’s agents--often the priests--through the
government press, and through the scapegoat, underling officials who are
immediately above the actual perpetrators of the dire deeds, and below
the higher officials who are morally responsible.
The massacre of Bielostok was executed as a diabolical and fantastic
orgy by the police and the soldiers. They deliberately shot little
children. They ravished, then murdered, young girls, they tortured men
by the wildest and most excruciating devices. And the police and
soldiers, incidentally, looted Jewish shops and carried away pockets
full of watches from jewelers, and cash when they could get it.
The governor of the district was removed, but not in disgrace. The
actual perpetrators of these deeds still administer the “law” in
Bielostok. The children and the families of the murdered see them every
time they go out. I saw them when I was there. They walked about with
heads in the air as if they had done a noble thing and were worthy, like
war-heroes. And the story of Bielostok is practically the very same as
the story of Gomel, of Kishineff and Odessa, save that in Odessa there
is a stronger Black Hundred element of “hooligans” and rowdies, who, for
a pittance, are glad to lend themselves to the unscrupulous and
murderous police.
Such conditions drive the older and weaker Jews to America, and the more
spirited of the younger generation to revolution. It is the height of
absurdity for the Russian government to excuse its Jewish oppression on
the ground that the Jews are revolutionary. By nature and by tradition
they are the opposite of aggressive and militant. They are revolutionary
because the Russian government is oppressive, and because they know no
other course.
The Russian Jew is docile, domestically inclined, and peace-loving
naturally, but when exasperated beyond endurance he becomes a daring
antagonist. Surely it is no reflection against the Jewish race that the
stronger men and women resent the endless insults that Russia heaps upon
them. Even the passport of a Jew is differentiated. Fifteen thousand
Jews gave up their lives in Manchuria during the course of the late
inglorious war, in which they had no interest and for which they had no
sympathy. Fifteen thousand more were wounded in the same ignominious
cause. And yet Manchuria remains closed to the Jews as a place of
settlement. Thirty thousand Jewish victims in one war! Yet no Jew may
[Illustration: Cossacks on patrol duty]
[Illustration: Victims of a Cossack _pogrom_]
be an officer in the army or navy. It is characteristic that Jewish
doctors should be called upon to combat epidemics of plague--and then
are expelled from the district after the conquering of the disease. No
Jew may take an active interest in any mining enterprise in Russia, nor
may he engage in the oil trade--which in the Caucasus offers large
possibilities. No Jew may buy or rent land. Only a very small
proportion--three to five per cent.--of the children in the middle
schools and universities may be Jews. The complete list of “exceptional”
laws designed to curb the Jews extends to extraordinary length, and when
they have been all gone through with and applied the Jew still has the
yet more terrible situation to face in the spirit of his civil
governors, who seek in every petty way to annoy him, to terrorize him,
and every now and again to impress all of the Jews with the stubborn
fact that they are Jews, and as such, liable to slaughter without
further notice. These are some of the reasons why the younger and braver
Jews have a personal interest in the Russian revolution, and why the
older ones hail America as a promised land.
The revolutionary movement is becoming less and less Jewish, not because
the Jews are becoming subdued as a result of their continual
persecution, but because the Russian population is increasing so much
faster than the Jewish. It is no class or party struggle, the
revolution. It is a dynastic revolt. The great mass of the Russian
people are done with the house of Romanoff, and they want a new régime.
Each different section of people has its own reasons, but none are more
potent than the reason of the Jews.
An appeal in the “Novoe Vremya,” the semi-official newspaper of St.
Petersburg, suggested that all trade should be interdicted to Jews;
that all Jewish schools should be closed, and that Jews should be
excluded from the secondary and higher schools; that all Jews who
returned to Russia should be interned in the northern part of Siberia;
that Jews should be debarred from work on all newspapers; and that all
Jewish property should be sold within five years. This appeal was
printed in the press of the City Prefect on March 4, 1906.[23]
On October 25, 1905, M. Lavroff, who was at that time an official of the
ministry of the interior, sent round a circular demanding a general
union of “all who love their country” against the Jews. An appeal freely
circulated amongst the local troops before the Bielostok “pogrom” runs
as follows:
A foreign enemy ... has roused up the Jap against Russia.... On the
quiet, across the seas and oceans, the foreign czars [meaning, of
course, more particularly, King Edward and the President] armed the
enormous Japanese people against us.... Then arose our strength of
Russia.... The foreign czars got scared; the hair bristled up on
their heads; their skins crinkled with chill. And they thought of a
mean idea--to undermine the heart of the Russian soldier, to shake
his ancient Christian faith and his love for our father Czar....
They brought into the soldiers’ ranks, almost wholly through Jews
and hirelings, whole mountains of print, ... and also heaps of
gold, that they might buy base souls.... But our army turned away
from these new Judases.... The foreign czars blushed.... There
began in Russia an internal confusion. Again the fierce foreign foe
sets his snares through his friends, always the Jews and the
hirelings.... that he may seize altogether the land of our fathers.
But ... he never put his own head in the way of our cannon, but
bought, through the Jews, the souls of Russians--Christians....
Brothers, tread in the steps of Christ. Cry out with one voice:
“Away with the Jewish kingdom! Down with the red flag! Down with
the red Jewish freedom!... At the foe, Russian soldiers! Forward!
forward! forward! They go! they go! they go!”
This appeal was printed by the military staff of Odessa.
Odessa is the headquarters, if not the cradle, of the Black Hundred, or
League of Russian Men. I had anticipated a certain reluctance on the
part of the members to impart to me the details of their program, but to
my surprise they told me about their “Jew-sticking” as if it were a most
ordinary plank for the platform of a political party.
The rooms of the organization were fitted up like a Salvation Army
tea-house, gay with bunting and Russian flags, and a great lot of gilded
icons in one corner. Several chromos of the Czar hung on the walls. The
rooms were crowded both times I visited them with men of precisely the
same type as the loungers who occupy Salvation Army
reading-rooms--casual laborers, the shiftless, the workless, life’s
derelicts. Among these were a score or more of young boys, ranging from
fourteen to twenty, of the type described as young roughs. I remarked
that most of these wore brand new student overcoats, so I asked one of
these boys pointedly where he got his overcoat.
“From the organization,” he answered.
“Why do you belong to this organization?” I then asked.
“Because of the benefits. We have socials, and private theatricals. And
sometimes we get presents like this overcoat.”
“What is the object of the organization?” I asked further.
“To kill the Jews,” he made answer.
“But why do you want to kill the Jews?”
“Oh, because the Jews are a bad people! They are against the Czar, and
they spit on the Russian flag.”
“And you kill them for those reasons?”
“Yes, certainly. They must all leave Russia, or they will be killed.”
Just then the “manager” of the rooms came up, and as I had overheard
something said about revolvers, I asked him if the members of the
organization carried arms.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “We have fifty men who always carry arms. We have
to here in Odessa--there are so many Jews here.” He then showed me his
own revolver, which was a regular army weapon. These arms, he said, were
given them by the police.
A circular was handed to me setting forth certain aims of the
organization. It began with the sentence:
“All nationalities are equal except Jews,” and then went on:
Jews, during several past years, and especially of late, have
showed themselves irreconcilable enemies to Russia and to all
Russians, through their impossible, man-hating spirit, their
complete estrangement from other nationalities, their own Jewish
mind, which understands only those neighbors who are Jewish. Toward
Christians they allow all manner of violence, killing included, as
it is known, and as Jews have said more than once in their
manifestos, that the present disturbances and revolutionary
movement in Russia with daily killing of honest servants of the
Czar who have remained true to their oath--all is nearly
exclusively done by Jewish hands, urged on by Jewish money.
The Russian nation, understanding this, and having the full
possibility of using its right of master of the Russian land, could
in one day put down the criminal tendencies of Jews and make them
bow under its will--the will of the crowned master of Russia, but
led by the higher principles of the Christian religion and too well
knowing its power to reply by way of violence, prefers another
solution to the Jewish question, the question which is equally
fatal for all civilized nationalities. Considering that in the last
year the Jews, with all their means, are aspiring toward emigration
into Palestine, and formation of their own state, and believing
that their emigration from all countries where they are now living
is the only true means of getting humanity rid of the evil, which
the Jews are, the League of Russian people will use all its means
to form a Jewish state and assist their emigration to the state,
regardless of whatever material sacrifices it may require from the
Russian nation.
The Duma deputies were then appealed to to ask the government to
deliberate with other governments, with a view to promising
international action along these lines.
In the meantime [the circular went on naively], all Jews in Russia
are to be regarded as foreigners, but with none of the rights or
privileges that other foreigners have. This attitude will doubtless
increase their desire to emigrate to their own state.
The man who gave me this circular then went on to say, that he himself
believed that an occasional _pogrom_ was a good thing, because it
increased the restlessness of the Jews, and he hoped that by continuing
this policy Russia would soon be rid of them.
In response to my request for some printed matter, setting forth the
aims and objects of the organization, I was given a brochure which
contained the following definitions:
I. Aim--To develop the Russian national self-consciousness and
strengthen the union of Russian people of all classes, for the
mutual work and prosperity of their dear country.
II. The welfare of the country depends upon the complete
preservation of Russian unlimited orthodoxy, autocracy, and
nationality.
III. The restoration of orthodoxy to its place of dominant
influence.
IV. Autocracy consists in the union of Czar with Russian people
Further:
The Russian language for all nations living within the Empire.
The League takes upon itself the development of the national
consciousness through the political life in the spirit of autocracy
and spreading among the population Christian principles which
strengthen patriotism, and awaken the sense of duty toward
government, society, and home.
This to be done through the usual methods of propaganda--schools,
lectures, books, brochures, and journals.
Then comes the catch line of the whole pamphlet:
_The League recognises it as a duty to assist brother-members in
need--moral and material._
Dues fifty copecks (25 cents) a year.
_Those who have no money may be relieved from annual dues._
Such is the League of Russian Men, to whom the Czar addressed himself in
December, 1905, when accepting for himself and the Czarevitch the badge
of the organization:
“Unite, Russian people! I reckon upon you. With your assistance I
believe I shall be able to conquer the enemies of Russia.”
These very words of the Czar are now used by “the League of Russian Men”
as a motto for their official electioneering platform, and there has
appeared no repudiation on the part of the imperial patron. This is a
most remarkable and quaint document. It consists of four pages set in
large type, but, curiously enough, one and a half pages thereof are
devoted to the Jewish question.
Although all other nationalities are to enjoy civic rights equally with
Russians, Jews are to be deprived of such rights and privileges. They
are, moreover, to be excluded from all professions (they can not be
doctors, lawyers, chemists, contractors, teachers, librarians, etc.)
and public or governmental services.
Under the heading _Commerce, Industry, and Finance_ we find such a
curiosity as this:
The Union will strive to increase the amount of currency by
abolishing gold, and by the reintroduction of national paper
currency.
Under the heading “Justice” stands a clause as follows:
All offenses against state and life; robbery and arson; preparing,
keeping, carrying, and being in possession of, explosives by
_anarchists and reactionaries_; participation in these crimes,
harboring offenders; also picketing in strikes, damaging roads,
bridges, or engines, with a view of arresting work or traffic; also
armed resistance to authorities; revolutionary agitation among
troops; instigating women and children to the above crimes--all
these offenses are to be made punishable by _death_.
At the time I was in Odessa, acquainting myself with this organization,
it enjoyed the distinction of being the only “legal” political party in
Russia, even the Constitutional Democrats and the Party of Peaceful
Regeneration being under the ban.
So long as such liberal inducements are made to membership--presents of
overcoats and firearms, tearooms, free shows--and no dues, the Black
Hundred will continue to exist. Under similar inducements a like
organization could be got together in London, New York, or Chicago,
within twenty-four hours. The organization employed by the Pennsylvania
coal operators during the anthracite strike, 1902, known as The Coal and
Iron Police, was made up of this class--thugs, exconvicts, the flotsam
and jetsam of our big towns, who for daily drink-money were prepared to
“preserve order,” defy the government, or commit murder--all of which
they did.
The morning of the day I was to set sail from Odessa a strike was
declared along the water-front, and stevedores and sailors alike quit
their work. Passengers were informed, however, that the boats of the
“Volunteer Fleet” would sail. I had taken passage on such a boat.
An hour before the scheduled time of departure I drove down to the
wharf. A troop of Cossacks clattered behind my carriage most of the way,
and upon arriving at the quay I found another troop of soldiers lined up
to preserve order and cover our departure.
The actual getting away took nearly two hours, owing to what looked to
me like the sheer clumsiness of the crew. The passengers on that ship
were the most motley lot imaginable. There were seven hundred
picturesque Moslems from Bokhara in central Asia on their way to Mecca;
a hundred or so orthodox Jews bound for Jerusalem; a lot of Persian
merchants, and a score of old German Lutheran colonists. All the way out
of Odessa harbor there was trouble with the ship, and about nine o’clock
at night our bow was turned back toward Odessa. It appeared that the
ship had been manned by a Black Hundred crew. Of the forty-eight men all
told in the ship’s company, forty-two had never been to sea before, and
not one man on the ship knew how to handle the wheel! We were unable to
get back into the harbor, and even if it had been possible the captain
feared to do so lest a riot break out, so he went ashore in a small
boat, returning some time after midnight with three or four officers
from other ships who were prepared to do seamen’s work. We learned later
that the five ships of the same line that followed ours to sea under
similar conditions all came to grief. Two were stranded, two were
burned, and one foundered.
The next morning at sunrise the decks presented a weird and memorable
picture. The several hundred Moslems in their long bright-colored
garments, their green, and brown, and white turbans, the women with long
horsehair veils covering their faces all but the eyes (many of them
having brought along three or four of their wives from their harems),
all kneeling on little strips of carpet, their faces toward Mecca, were
vigorously reciting their morning prayers. The Jews had donned their
black-and-white prayer shawls, and bound phylacteries to their foreheads
and arms, and they with their faces toward Jerusalem were droning their
prayers of thanksgiving and praise. The Germans, evidently touched by
the religiousness of their fellow-passengers, after much unpacking drew
forth a great family Bible, and while all the others gathered about in a
semi-circle on a hatch, one fat old _paterfamilias_ read aloud from the
New Testament, and when he had done, they all fell on their knees and
united in the Lord’s Prayer.
There was something tremendously impressive in the scene, and just a
touch of humor, too. The German united with his wife in prayer for
blessings to be bestowed upon them both; the Jew thanked God he was not
born a woman; and the Moslem called aloud upon Allah without thought of
his several wives who squatted near him, not during to approach even in
prayer the God of their husband! A breath of fragrant morning air from a
soft and pleasant clime wafted across the decks; the buoyant waters
danced in the glistening sunlight and one squared one’s shoulders in
sheer joy of being alive--and thankfulness that Russia and all her
darkness lay behind.
Thirty-six hours after leaving Odessa we passed out of the Black Sea
into the azure waters of the Bosphorus. Frowning cannon greeted us, on
either side of the beautiful shore, but we who were quitting sanguinary
Russia scarcely gave them a passing glance. The golden domes of Turkish
mosques began to glisten in the distance under the morning sunlight, and
soon we could descry the crescent-topped minarets that here supplant the
cross-capped onion domes of Russia’s churches and cathedrals. Shortly
before noon we rode at anchor close to the Golden Horn.