CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION--REPENT YE, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.

1. Chance Meeting with a Train Carrying Soldiers to Restore Order

Among the Famishing Peasants--Reason of the Expedition--How the

Decisions of the Higher Authorities are Enforced in Cases of

Insubordination on Part of the Peasants--What Happened at Orel, as

an Example of How the Rights of the Propertied Classes are

Maintained by Murder and Torture--All the Privileges of the

Wealthy are Based on Similar Acts of Violence.

2. The Elements that Made up the Force Sent to Toula, and the Conduct of

the Men Composing it--How these Men Could Carry Out such Acts--The

Explanation is Not to be Found in Ignorance, Conviction, Cruelty,

Heartlessness, or Want of Moral Sense--They do these Things Because they

are Necessary to Support the Existing Order, which they Consider it

Every Man's Duty to Support--The Basis of this Conviction that the

Existing Order is Necessary and Inevitable--In the Upper Classes this

Conviction is Based on the Advantages of the Existing Order for

Themselves--But what Forces Men of the Lower Classes to Believe in the

Immutability of the Existing Order, from which they Derive no Advantage,

and which they Aid in Maintaining, Facts Contrary to their

Conscience?--This is the Result of the Lower Classes being Deluded by

the Upper, Both as to the Inevitability of the Existing Order and the

Lawfulness of the Acts of Violence Needed to Maintain it--Deception in

General--Special Form of Deception in Regard to Military

Service--Conscription.

3. How can Men Allow that Murder is Permissible while they Preach

Principles of Morality, and How can they Allow of the Existence in their

Midst of a Military Organization of Physical Force which is a Constant

Menace to Public Security?--It is only Allowed by the Upper Classes, who

Profit by this Organization, Because their Privileges are Maintained by

it--The Upper Classes Allow it, and the Lower Classes Carry it into

Effect in Spite of their Consciousness of the Immorality of the Deeds of

Violence, the More Readily Because Through the Arrangements of the

Government the Moral Responsibility for such Deeds is Divided among a

Great Number of Participants in it, and Everyone Throws the

Responsibility on Someone Else--Moreover, the Sense of Moral

Responsibility is Lost through the Delusion of Inequality, and the

Consequent Intoxication of Power on the Part of Superiors, and Servility

on the Part of Inferiors--The Condition of these Men, Acting against the

Dictates of their Conscience, is Like that of Hypnotized Subjects Acting

by Suggestion--The Difference between this Obedience to Government

Suggestion, and Obedience to Public Opinion, and to the Guidance of Men

of a Higher Moral Sense--The Existing Order of Society, which is the

Result of an Extinct Public Opinion and is Inconsistent with the Already

Existing Public Opinion of the Future, is only Maintained by the

Stupefaction of the Conscience, Produced Spontaneously by Self-interest

in the Upper Classes and Through Hypnotizing in the Lower Classes--The

Conscience or the Common Sense of such Men may Awaken, and there are

Examples of its Sudden Awakening, so that one can Never be Sure of the

Deeds of Violence they are Prepared for--It Depends Entirely on the

Point which the Sense of the Unlawfulness of Acts of Violence has

Reached, and this Sense may Spontaneously Awaken in Men, or may be

Reawakened by the Influence of Men of more Conscience.

4. Everything Depends on the Strength of the Consciousness of

Christian Truths in Each Individual Man--The Leading Men of Modern

Times, however, do not Think it Necessary to Preach or Practice

the Truths of Christianity, but Regard the Modification of the

External Conditions of Existence within the Limit Imposed by

Governments as Sufficient to Reform the Life of Humanity--On this

Scientific Theory of Hypocrisy, which has Replaced the Hypocrisy

of Religion, Men of the Wealthy Classes Base their Justification

of their Position--Through this Hypocrisy they can Enjoy the

Exclusive Privileges of their Position by Force and Fraud, and

Still Pretend to be Christians to One Another and be Easy in their

Minds--This Hypocrisy Allows Men who Preach Christianity to Take

Part in Institutions Based on Violence--No External Reformation of

Life will Render it Less Miserable--Its Misery the Result of

Disunion Caused by Following Lies, not the Truth--Union only

Possible in Truth--Hypocrisy Hinders this Union, since Hypocrites

Conceal from themselves and Others the Truth they Know--Hypocrisy

Turns all Reforms of Life to Evil--Hypocrisy Distorts the Idea of

Good and Evil, and so Stands in the Way of the Progress of Men

toward Perfection--Undisguised Criminals and Malefactors do Less

Harm than those who Live by Legalized Violence, Disguised by

Hypocrisy--All Men Feel the Iniquity of our Life, and would Long

Ago have Transformed it if it had not been Dissimulated by

Hypocrisy--But Seem to have Reached the Extreme Limits of

Hypocrisy, and we Need only Make an Effort of Conscience to Awaken

as from a Nightmare to a Different Reality.

5. Can Man Make this Effort?--According to the Hypocritical Theory

of the Day, Man is not Free to Transform his Life--Man is not Free

in his Actions, but he is Free to Admit or to Deny the Truth he

Knows--When Truth is Once Admitted, it Becomes the Basis of

Action--Man's Threefold Relation to Truth--The Reason of the

Apparent Insolubility of the Problem of Free Will--Man's Freedom

Consists in the Recognition of the Truth Revealed to him. There

is no Other Freedom--Recognition of Truth Gives Freedom, and Shows

the Path Along which, Willingly or Unwillingly by Mankind, Man

Must Advance--The Recognition of Truth and Real Freedom Enables

Man to Share in the Work of God, not as the Slave, but as the

Creator of Life--Men Need only Make the Effort to Renounce all

Thought of Bettering the External Conditions of Life and Bend all

their Efforts to Recognizing and Preaching the Truth they Know, to

put an End to the Existing Miserable State of Things, and to Enter

upon the Kingdom of God so far as it is yet Accessible to Man--All

that is Needed is to Make an End of Lying and Hypocrisy--But then

what Awaits us in the Future?--What will Happen to Humanity if Men

Follow the Dictates of their Conscience, and how can Life go on

with the Conditions of Civilized Life to which we are Accustomed?

--All Uneasiness on these Points may be Removed by the Reflection

that Nothing True and Good can be Destroyed by the Realization of

Truth, but will only be Freed from the Alloy of Falsehood.

6. Our Life has Reached the Extreme Limit of Misery and Cannot be

Improved by any Systems of Organization--All our Life and all our

Institutions are Quite Meaningless--Are we Doing what God Wills of us by

Preserving our Privileges and Duties to Government?--We are put in this

Position not Because the World is so Made and it is Inevitable, but

Because we Wish it to be so, Because it is to the Advantage of Some of

us--Our Conscience is in Opposition to our Position and all our Conduct,

and the Way Out of the Contradiction is to be Found in the Recognition

of the Christian Truth: Do Not unto Others what you Would Not they

should Do unto You--As our Duties to Self Must be Subordinated to our

Duties to Others, so Must our Duties to Others be Subordinated to our

Duties to God--The Only Way Out of our Position Lies, if not in

Renouncing our Position and our Privileges, at Least in Recognizing our

Sin and not Justifying it nor Disguising it--The Only Object of Life is

to Learn the Truth and to Act on it--Acceptance of the Position and of

State Action Deprives Life of all Object--It is God's Will that we

should Serve Him in our Life, that is, that we should Bring About the

Greatest Unity of all that has Life, a Unity only Possible in Truth.

I was finishing this book, which I had been working at for two

years, when I happened on the 9th of September to be traveling by

rail through the governments of Toula and Riazan, where the

peasants were starving last year and where the famine is even more

severe now. At one of the railway stations my train passed an

extra train which was taking a troop of soldiers under the conduct

of the governor of the province, together with muskets,

cartridges, and rods, to flog and murder these same famishing

peasants.

The punishment of flogging by way of carrying the decrees of the

authorities into effect has been more and more frequently adopted

of late in Russia, in spite of the fact that corporal punishment

was abolished by law thirty years ago.

I had heard of this, I had even read in the newspapers of the

fearful floggings which had been inflicted in Tchernigov, Tambov,

Saratov, Astrakhan, and Orel, and of those of which the governor

of Nijni-Novgorod, General Baranov, had boasted. But I had never

before happened to see men in the process of carrying out these

punishments.

And here I saw the spectacle of good Russians full of the

Christian spirit traveling with guns and rods to torture and kill

their starving brethren. The reason for their expedition was as

follows:

On one of the estates of a rich landowner the peasants had common

rights on the forest, and having always enjoyed these rights,

regarded the forest as their own, or at least as theirs in common

with the owner. The landowner wished to keep the forest entirely

to himself and began to fell the trees. The peasants lodged a

complaint. The judges in the first instance gave an unjust

decision (I say unjust on the authority of the lawyer and

governor, who ought to understand the matter), and decided the

case in favor of the landowner. All the later decisions, even

that of the senate, though they could see that the matter had been

unjustly decided, confirmed the judgment and adjudged the forest

to the landowner. He began to cut down the trees, but the

peasants, unable to believe that such obvious injustice could be

done them by the higher authorities, did not submit to the

decision and drove away the men sent to cut down the trees,

declaring that the forest belonged to them and they would go to

the Tzar before they would let them cut it down.

The matter was referred to Petersburg, and the order was

transmitted to the governor to carry the decision of the court

into effect. The governor asked for a troop of soldiers. And

here were the soldiers with bayonets and cartridges, and moreover,

a supply of rods, expressly prepared for the purpose and heaped up

in one of the trucks, going to carry the decision of the higher

authorities into effect.

The decisions of the higher authorities are carried into effect by

means of murder or torture, or threats of one or the other,

according to whether they offer resistance or not.

In the first case if the peasants offer resistance the practice is

in Russia, and it is the same everywhere where a state

organization and private property exist, as follows. The governor

delivers an address in which he demands submission. The excited

crowd, generally deluded by their leaders, don't understand a word

of what the representative of authority is saying in the pompous

official language, and their excitement continues. Then the

governor announces that if they do not submit and disperse, he

will be obliged to have recourse to force. If the crowd does not

disperse even on this, the governor gives the order to fire over

the heads of the crowd. If the crowd does not even then disperse,

the governor gives the order to fire straight into the crowd; the

soldiers fire and the killed and wounded fall about the street.

Then the crowd usually runs away in all directions, and the troops

at the governor's command take those who are supposed to be the

ringleaders and lead them off under escort. Then they pick up the

dying, the wounded, and the dead, covered with blood, sometimes

women and children among them. The dead they bury and the wounded

they carry to the hospital. Those whom they regard as the

ringleaders they take to the town hall and have them tried by a

special court-martial. And if they have had recourse to violence

on their side, they are condemned to be hanged. And then the

gallows is erected. And they solemnly strangle a few defenseless

creatures.

This is what has often been done in Russia, and is and must always

be done where the social order is based on force.

But in the second case, when the peasants do submit, something

quite special, peculiar to Russia, takes place. The governor

arrives on the scene of action and delivers an harangue to the

people, reproaching them for their insubordination, and either

stations troops in the houses of the villages, where sometimes for

a whole month the soldiers drain the resources of the peasants, or

contenting himself with threats, he mercifully takes leave of the

people, or what is the most frequent course, he announces that the

ringleaders must be punished, and quite arbitrarily without any

trial selects a certain number of men, regarded as ringleaders,

and commands them to be flogged in his presence.

In order to give an idea of how such things are done I will

describe a proceeding of the kind which took place in Orel, and

received the full approval of the highest authorities.

This is what took place in Orel. Just as here in the Toula

province, a landlord wanted to appropriate the property of the

peasants and just in the same way the peasants opposed it. The

matter in dispute was a fall of water, which irrigated the

peasants' fields, and which the landowner wanted to cut off and

divert to turn his mill. The peasants rebelled against this being

done. The land owner laid a complaint before the district

commander, who illegally (as was recognized later even by a legal

decision) decided the matter in favor of the landowner, and

allowed him to divert the water course. The landowner sent

workmen to dig the conduit by which the water was to be let off to

turn the mill. The peasants were indignant at this unjust

decision, and sent their women to prevent the landowner's men from

digging this conduit. The women went to the dykes, overturned the

carts, and drove away the men. The landowner made a complaint

against the women for thus taking the law into their own hands.

The district commander made out an order that from every house

throughout the village one woman was to be taken and put in prison.

The order was not easily executed. For in every household there

were several women, and it was impossible to know which one was to

be arrested. Consequently the police did not carry out the order.

The landowner complained to the governor of the neglect on the

part of the police, and the latter, without examining into the

affair, gave the chief official of the police strict orders to

carry out the instructions of the district commander without

delay. The police official, in obedience to his superior, went to

the village and with the insolence peculiar to Russian officials

ordered his policemen to take one woman out of each house. But

since there were more than one woman in each house, and there was

no knowing which one was sentenced to imprisonment, disputes and

opposition arose. In spite of these disputes and opposition,

however, the officer of police gave orders that some woman,

whichever came first, should be taken from each household and led

away to prison. The peasants began to defend their wives and

mothers, would not let them go, and beat the police and their

officer. This was a fresh and terrible crime: resistance was

offered to the authorities. A report of this new offense was sent

to the town. And so this governor--precisely as the governor of

Toula was doing on that day--with a battalion of soldiers with

guns and rods, hastily brought together by means of telegraphs and

telephones and railways, proceeded by a special train to the scene

of action, with a learned doctor whose duty it was to insure the

flogging being of an hygienic character. Herzen's prophecy of the

modern Ghenghis Khan with his telegrams is completely realized by

this governor.

Before the town hall of the district were the soldiery, a

battalion of police with their revolvers slung round them with red

cords, the persons of most importance among the peasants, and the

culprits. A crowd of one thousand or more people were standing

round. The governor, on arriving, stepped out of his carriage,

delivered a prepared harangue, and asked for the culprits and a

bench. The latter demand was at first not understood. But a

police constable whom the governor always took about with him, and

who undertook to organize such executions--by no means exceptional

in that province--explained that what was meant was a bench for

flogging. A bench was brought as well as the rods, and then the

executioners were summoned (the latter had been selected

beforehand from some horsestealers of the same village, as the

soldiers refused the office). When everything was ready, the

governor ordered the first of the twelve culprits pointed out by

the landowner as the most guilty to come forward. The first to

come forward was the head of a family, a man of forty who had

always stood up manfully for the rights of his class, and

therefore was held in the greatest esteem by all the villagers.

He was led to the bench and stripped, and then ordered to lie

down.

The peasant attempted to supplicate for mercy, but seeing it was

useless, he crossed himself and lay down. Two police constables

hastened to hold him down. The learned doctor stood by, in

readiness to give his aid and his medical science when they should

be needed. The convicts spit into their hands, brandished the

rods, and began to flog. It seemed, however, that the bench was

too narrow, and it was difficult to keep the victim writhing in

torture upon it. Then the governor ordered them to bring another

bench and to put a plank across them. Soldiers, with their hands

raised to their caps, and respectful murmurs of "Yes, your

Excellency," hasten obediently to carry out this order. Meanwhile

the tortured man, half naked, pale and scowling, stood waiting,

his eyes fixed on the ground and his teeth chattering. When

another bench had been brought they again made him lie down, and

the convicted thieves again began to flog him.

The victim's back and thighs and legs, and even his sides, became

more and more covered with scars and wheals, and at every blow

there came the sound of the deep groans which he could no longer

restrain. In the crowd standing round were heard the sobs of

wives, mothers, children, the families of the tortured man and of

all the others picked out for punishment.

The miserable governor, intoxicated with power, was counting the

strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes,

while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to

offer him a burning match to light them. When more than fifty

strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe,

and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution

to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific

attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to

his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that

the man undergoing punishment had lost consciousness, and that, in

accordance with the conclusions of science, to continue the

punishment would endanger the victim's life. But the miserable

governor, now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, gave

orders that the punishment should go on, and the flogging was

continued up to seventy strokes, the number which the governor had

for some reason fixed upon as necessary. When the seventieth

stroke had been reached, the governor said "Enough! Next one!"

And the mutilated victim, his back covered with blood, was lifted

up and carried away unconscious, and another was led up. The sobs

and groans of the crowd grew louder. But the representative of

the state continued the torture.

Thus they flogged each of them up to the twelfth, and each of them

received seventy strokes. They all implored mercy, shrieked and

groaned. The sobs and cries of the crowd of women grew louder and

more heart-rending, and the men's faces grew darker and darker.

But they were surrounded by troops, and the torture did not cease

till it had reached the limit which had been fixed by the caprice

of the miserable half-drunken and insane creature they called the

governor.

The officials, and officers, and soldiers not only assisted in it,

but were even partly responsible for the affair, since by their

presence they prevented any interference on the part of the crowd.

When I inquired of one of the governors why they made use of this

kind of torture when people had already submitted and soldiers

were stationed in the village, he replied with the important air

of a man who thoroughly understands all the subtleties of

statecraft, that if the peasants were not thoroughly subdued by

flogging, they would begin offering opposition to the decisions of

authorities again. When some of them had been thoroughly

tortured, the authority of the state would be secured forever

among them.

And so that was why the Governor of Toula was going in his turn

with his subordinate officials, officers, and soldiers to carry

out a similar measure. By precisely the same means, i. e., by

murder and torture, obedience to the decision of the higher

authorities was to be secured. And this decision was to enable a

young landowner, who had an income of one hundred thousand, to

gain three thousand rubles more by stealing a forest from a whole

community of cold and famished peasants, to spend it, in two or

three weeks in the saloons of Moscow, Petersburg, or Paris. That

was what those people whom I met were going to do.

After my thoughts had for two years been turned in the same

direction, fate seemed expressly to have brought me face to face

for the first time in my life with a fact which showed me

absolutely unmistakably in practice what had long been clear to me

in theory, that the organization of our society rests, not as

people interested in maintaining the present order of things like

to imagine, on certain principles of jurisprudence, but on simple

brute force, on the murder and torture of men.

People who own great estates or fortunes, or who receive great

revenues drawn from the class who are in want even of necessities,

the working class, as well as all those who like merchants,

doctors, artists, clerks, learned professors, coachmen, cooks,

writers, valets, and barristers, make their living about these

rich people, like to believe that the privileges they enjoy are

not the result of force, but of absolutely free and just

interchange of services, and that their advantages, far from being

gained by such punishments and murders as took place in Orel and

several parts of Russia this year, and are always taking place all

over Europe and America, have no kind of connection with these

acts of violence. They like to believe that their privileges

exist apart and are the result of free contract among people; and

that the violent cruelties perpetrated on the people also exist

apart and are the result of some general judicial, political, or

economical laws. They try not to see that they all enjoy their

privileges as a result of the same fact which forces the peasants

who have tended the forest, and who are in the direct need of it

for fuel, to give it up to a rich landowner who has taken no part

in caring for its growth and has no need of it whatever--the fact,

that is, that if they don't give it up they will be flogged or

killed.

And yet if it is clear that it was only by means of menaces, blows, or

murder, that the mill in Orel was enabled to yield a larger income, or

that the forest which the peasants had planted became the property of a

landowner, it should be equally clear that all the other exclusive

rights enjoyed by the rich, by robbing the poor of their necessities,

rest on the same basis of violence. If the peasants, who need land to

maintain their families, may not cultivate the land about their houses,

but one man, a Russian, English, Austrian, or any other great landowner,

possesses land enough to maintain a thousand families, though he does

not cultivate it himself, and if a merchant profiting by the misery of

the cultivators, taking corn from them at a third of its value, can keep

this corn in his granaries with perfect security while men are starving

all around him, and sell it again for three times its value to the very

cultivators he bought it from, it is evident that all this too comes

from the same cause. And if one man may not buy of another a commodity

from the other side of a certain fixed line, called the frontier,

without paying certain duties on it to men who have taken no part

whatever in its production--and if men are driven to sell their last cow

to pay taxes which the government distributes among its functionaries,

and spends on maintaining soldiers to murder these very taxpayers--it

would appear self-evident that all this does not come about as the

result of any abstract laws, but is based on just what was done in Orel,

and which may be done in Toula, and is done periodically in one form or

another throughout the whole world wherever there is a government, and

where there are rich and poor.

Simply because torture and murder are not employed in every

instance of oppression by force, those who enjoy the exclusive

privileges of the ruling classes persuade themselves and others

that their privileges are not based on torture and murder, but on

some mysterious general causes, abstract laws, and so on. Yet one

would think it was perfectly clear that if men, who consider it

unjust (and all the working classes do consider it so nowadays),

still pay the principal part of the produce of their labor away to

the capitalist and the landowner, and pay taxes, though they know

to what a bad use these taxes are put, they do so not from

recognition of abstract laws of which they have never heard, but

only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they

don't do so.

And if there is no need to imprison, beat, and kill men every time

the landlord collects his rents, every time those who are in want

of bread have to pay a swindling merchant three times its value,

every time the factory hand has to be content with a wage less

than half of the profit made by the employer, and every time a

poor man pays his last ruble in taxes, it is because so many men

have been beaten and killed for trying to resist these demands,

that the lesson has now been learnt very thoroughly.

Just as a trained tiger, who does not eat meat put under his nose,

and jumps over a stick at the word of command, does not act thus

because he likes it, but because he remembers the red-hot irons or

the fast with which he was punished every time he did not obey; so

men submitting to what is disadvantageous or even ruinous to them,

and considered by them as unjust, act thus because they remember

what they suffered for resisting it.

As for those who profit by the privileges gained by previous acts

of violence, they often forget and like to forget how these

privileges were obtained. But one need only recall the facts of

history, not the history of the exploits of different dynasties of

rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the

majority by a small number of men, to see that all the advantages

the rich have over the poor are based on nothing but flogging,

imprisonment, and murder.

One need but reflect on the unceasing, persistent struggle of all

to better their material position, which is the guiding motive of

men of the present day, to be convinced that the advantages of the

rich over the poor could never and can never be maintained by

anything but force.

There may be cases of oppression, of violence, and of punishments,

though they are rare, the aim of which is not to secure the

privileges of the propertied classes. But one may confidently

assert that in any society where, for every man living in ease,

there are ten exhausted by labor, envious, covetous, and often

suffering with their families from direct privation, all the

privileges of the rich, all their luxuries and superfluities, are

obtained and maintained only by tortures, imprisonment, and

murder.

The train I met on the 9th of September going with soldiers, guns,

cartridges, and rods, to confirm the rich landowner in the

possession of a small forest which he had taken from the starving

peasants, which they were in the direst need of, and he was in no

need of at all, was a striking proof of how men are capable of

doing deeds directly opposed to their principles and their

conscience without perceiving it.

The special train consisted of one first-class carriage for the

governor, the officials, and officers, and several luggage vans

crammed full of soldiers. The latter, smart young fellows in

their clean new uniforms, were standing about in groups or sitting

swinging their legs in the wide open doorways of the luggage vans.

Some were smoking, nudging each other, joking, grinning, and

laughing, others were munching sunflower seeds and spitting out

the husks with an air of dignity. Some of them ran along the

platform to drink some water from a tub there, and when they met

the officers they slackened their pace, made their stupid gesture

of salutation, raising their hands to their heads with serious

faces as though they were doing something of the greatest

importance. They kept their eyes on them till they had passed by

them, and then set off running still more merrily, stamping their

heels on the platform, laughing and chattering after the manner of

healthy, good-natured young fellows, traveling in lively company.

They were going to assist at the murder of their fathers or

grandfathers just as if they were going on a party of pleasure, or

at any rate on some quite ordinary business.

The same impression was produced by the well-dressed functionaries

and officers who were scattered about the platform and in the

first-class carriage. At a table covered with bottles was sitting

the governor, who was responsible for the whole expedition,

dressed in his half-military uniform and eating something while he

chatted tranquilly about the weather with some acquaintances he

had met, as though the business he was upon was of so simple and

ordinary a character that it could not disturb his serenity and

his interest in the change of weather.

At a little distance from the table sat the general of the police.

He was not taking any refreshment, and had an impenetrable bored

expression, as though he were weary of the formalities to be gone

through. On all sides officers were bustling noisily about in

their red uniforms trimmed with gold; one sat at a table finishing

his bottle of beer, another stood at the buffet eating a cake, and

brushing the crumbs off his uniform, threw down his money with a

self-confident air; another was sauntering before the carriages of

our train, staring at the faces of the women.

All these men who were going to murder or to torture the famishing

and defenseless creatures who provide them their sustenance had

the air of men who knew very well that they were doing their duty,

and some were even proud, were "glorying" in what they were doing.

What is the meaning of it?

All these people are within half an hour of reaching the place

where, in order to provide a wealthy young man with three thousand

rubles stolen from a whole community of famishing peasants, they

may be forced to commit the most horrible acts one can conceive,

to murder or torture, as was done in Orel, innocent beings, their

brothers. And they see the place and time approaching with

untroubled serenity.

To say that all these government officials, officers, and soldiers

do not know what is before them is impossible, for they are

prepared for it. The governor must have given directions about

the rods, the officials must have sent an order for them,

purchased them, and entered the item in their accounts. The

military officers have given and received orders about cartridges.

They all know that they are going to torture, perhaps to kill,

their famishing fellow-creatures, and that they must set to work

within an hour.

To say, as is usually said, and as they would themselves repeat,

that they are acting from conviction of the necessity for

supporting the state organization, would be a mistake. For in the

first place, these men have probably never even thought about

state organization and the necessity of it; in the second place,

they cannot possibly be convinced that the act in which they are

taking part will tend to support rather than to ruin the state;

and thirdly, in reality the majority, if not all, of these men,

far from ever sacrificing their own pleasure or tranquillity to

support the state, never let slip an opportunity of profiting at

the expense of the state in every way they can increase their own

pleasure and ease. So that they are not acting thus for the sake

of the abstract principle of the state.

What is the meaning of it?

Yet I know all these men. If I don't know all of them personally,

I know their characters pretty nearly, their past, and their way

of thinking. They certainly all have mothers, some of them wives

and children. They are certainly for the most part good, kind,

even tender-hearted fellows, who hate every sort of cruelty, not

to speak of murder; many of them would not kill or hurt an animal.

Moreover, they are all professed Christians and regard all

violence directed against the defenseless as base and disgraceful.

Certainly not one of them would be capable in everyday life, for

his own personal profit, of doing a hundredth part of what the

Governor of Orel did. Every one of them would be insulted at the

supposition that he was capable of doing anything of the kind in

private life.

And yet they are within half an hour of reaching the place where

they may be reduced to the inevitable necessity of committing this

crime.

What is the meaning of it?

But it is not only these men who are going by train prepared for

murder and torture. How could the men who began the whole

business, the landowner, the commissioner, the judges, and those

who gave the order and are responsible for it, the ministers, the

Tzar, who are also good men, professed Christians, how could they

elaborate such a plan and assent to it, knowing its consequences?

The spectators even, who took no part in the affair, how could

they, who are indignant at the sight of any cruelty in private

life, even the overtaxing of a horse, allow such a horrible deed

to be perpetrated? How was it they did not rise in indignation

and bar the roads, shouting, "No; flog and kill starving men

because they won't let their last possession be stolen from them

without resistance, that we won't allow!" But far from anyone

doing this, the majority, even of those who were the cause of the

affair, such as the commissioner, the landowner, the judge, and

those who took part in it and arranged it, as the governor, the

ministers, and the Tzar, are perfectly tranquil and do not even

feel a prick of conscience. And apparently all the men who are

going to carry out this crime are equally undisturbed.

The spectators, who one would suppose could have no personal

interest in the affair, looked rather with sympathy than with

disapproval at all these people preparing to carry out this

infamous action. In the same compartment with me was a wood

merchant, who had risen from a peasant. He openly expressed aloud

his sympathy with such punishments. "They can't disobey the

authorities," he said; "that's what the authorities are for. Let

them have a lesson; send their fleas flying! They'll give over

making commotions, I warrant you. That's what they want."

What is the meaning of it?

It is not possible to say that all these people who have provoked

or aided or allowed this deed are such worthless creatures that,

knowing all the infamy of what they are doing, they do it against

their principles, some for pay and for profit, others through fear

of punishment. All of them in certain circumstances know how to

stand up for their principles. Not one of these officials would

steal a purse, read another man's letter, or put up with an

affront without demanding satisfaction. Not one of these officers

would consent to cheat at cards, would refuse to pay a debt of

honor, would betray a comrade, run away on the field of battle, or

desert the flag. Not one of these soldiers would spit out the

holy sacrament or eat meat on Good Friday. All these men are

ready to face any kind of privation, suffering, or danger rather

than consent to do what they regard as wrong. They have therefore

the strength to resist doing what is against their principles.

It is even less possible to assert that all these men are such

brutes that it is natural and not distasteful to them to do such

deeds. One need only talk to these people a little to see that

all of them, the landowner even, and the judge, and the minister

and the Tzar and the government, the officers and the soldiers,

not only disapprove of such things in the depth of their soul, but

suffer from the consciousness of their participation in them when

they recollect what they imply. But they try not to think about

it.

One need only talk to any of these who are taking part in the

affair from the landowner to the lowest policeman or soldier to

see that in the depth of their soul they all know it is a wicked

thing, that it would be better to have nothing to do with it, and

are suffering from the knowledge.

A lady of liberal views, who was traveling in the same train with

us, seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class saloon

and learning the object of the expedition, began, intentionally

raising her voice so that they should hear, to abuse the existing

order of things and to cry shame on men who would take part in

such proceedings. Everyone felt awkward, none knew where to look,

but no one contradicted her. They tried to look as though such

remarks were not worth answering. But one could see by their

faces and their averted eyes that they were ashamed. I noticed

the same thing in the soldiers. They too knew that what they were

sent to do was a shameful thing, but they did not want to think

about what was before them.

When the wood merchant, as I suspect insincerely only to show that

he was a man of education, began to speak of the necessity of such

measures, the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him,

scowling and pretending not to hear.

All the men who, like the landowner, the commissioner, the

minister, and the Tzar, were responsible for the perpetration of

this act, as well as those who were now going to execute it, and

even those who were mere spectators of it, knew that it was a

wickedness, and were ashamed of taking any share in it, and even

of being present at it.

Then why did they do it, or allow it to be done?

Ask them the question. And the landowner who started the affair,

and the judge who pronounced a clearly unjust even though formally

legal decision, and those who commanded the execution of the

decision, and those who, like the policemen, soldiers, and

peasants, will execute the deed with their own hands, flogging and

killing their brothers, all who have devised, abetted, decreed,

executed, or allowed such crimes, will make substantially the same

reply.

The authorities, those who have started, devised, and decreed the

matter, will say that such acts are necessary for the maintenance

of the existing order; the maintenance of the existing order is

necessary for the welfare of the country and of humanity, for the

possibility of social existence and human progress.

Men of the poorer class, peasants and soldiers, who will have to

execute the deed of violence with their own hands, say that they

do so because it is the command of their superior authority, and

the superior authority knows what he is about. That those are in

authority who ought to be in authority, and that they know what

they are doing appears to them a truth of which there can be no

doubt. If they could admit the possibility of mistake or error,

it would only be in functionaries of a lower grade; the highest

authority on which all the rest depends seems to them immaculate

beyond suspicion.

Though expressing the motives of their conduct differently, both

those in command and their subordinates are agreed in saying that

they act thus because the existing order is the order which must

and ought to exist at the present time, and that therefore to

support it is the sacred duty of every man.

On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore immutability of

the existing order, all who take part in acts of violence on the

part of government base the argument always advanced in their

justification. "Since the existing order is immutable," they say,

"the refusal of a single individual to perform the duties laid

upon him will effect no change in things, and will only mean that

some other man will be put in his place who may do the work worse,

that is to say, more cruelly, to the still greater injury of the

victims of the act of violence."

This conviction that the existing order is the necessary and

therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for every man

to support, enables good men, of high principles in private life,

to take part with conscience more or less untroubled in crimes

such as that perpetrated in Orel, and that which the men in the

Toula train were going to perpetrate.

But what is this conviction based on? It is easy to understand

that the landowner prefers to believe that the existing order is

inevitable and immutable, because this existing order secures him

an income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by means of

which he can lead his habitual indolent and luxurious life.

It is easy to understand that the judge readily believes in the

necessity of an order of things through which he receives a wage

fifty times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and

the same applies to all the higher officials. It is only under

the existing RÉGIME that as governor, prosecutor, senator, members

of the various councils, they can receive their several thousands

of rubles a year, without which they and their families would at

once sink into ruin, since if it were not for the position they

occupy they would never by their own abilities, industry, or

acquirements get a thousandth part of their salaries. The

minister, the Tzar, and all the higher authorities are in the same

position. The only distinction is that the higher and the more

exceptional their position, the more necessary it is for them to

believe that the existing order is the only possible order of

things. For without it they would not only be unable to gain an

equal position, but would be found to fall lower than all other

people. A man who has of his own free will entered the police

force at a wage of ten rubles, which he could easily earn in any

other position, is hardly dependent on the preservation of the

existing RÉGIME, and so he may not believe in its immutability.

But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for his post, and

knows that there are thousands of people round him who would like

to dethrone him and take his place, who knows that he will never

receive such a revenue or so much honor in any other position, who

knows, in most cases through his more or less despotic rule, that

if he were dethroned he would have to answer for all his abuse of

power--he cannot but believe in the necessity and even sacredness

of the existing order. The higher and the more profitable a man's

position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more terrible and

dangerous a fall from it for him, the more firmly the man believes

in the existing order, and therefore with the more ease of

conscience can such a man perpetrate cruel and wicked acts, as

though they were not in his own interest, but for the maintenance

of that order.

This is the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions

more profitable than they could occupy except for the present

RÉGIME, from the lowest police officer to the Tzar. All of them

are more or less convinced that the existing order is immutable,

because--the chief consideration--it is to their advantage. But

the peasants, the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social

scale, who have no kind of advantage from the existing order, who

are in the very lowest position of subjection and humiliation,

what forces them to believe that the existing order in which they

are in their humble and disadvantageous position is the order

which ought to exist, and which they ought to support even at the

cost of evil actions contrary to their conscience?

What forces these men to the false reasoning that the existing

order is unchanging, and that therefore they ought to support it,

when it is so obvious, on the contrary, that it is only unchanging

because they themselves support it?

What forces these peasants, taken only yesterday from the plow and

dressed in ugly and unseemly costumes with blue collars and gilt

buttons, to go with guns and sabers and murder their famishing

fathers and brothers? They gain no kind of advantage and can be

in no fear of losing the position they occupy, because it is worse

than that from which they have been taken.

The persons in authority of the higher orders--landowners,

merchants, judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and

officers--take part in such doings because the existing order is

to their advantage. In other respects they are often good and

kind-hearted men, and they are more able to take part in such

doings because their share in them is limited to suggestions,

decisions, and orders. These persons in authority never do

themselves what they suggest, decide, or command to be done. For

the most part they do not even see how all the atrocious deeds

they have suggested and authorized are carried out. But the

unfortunate men of the lower orders, who gain no kind of advantage

from the existing RÉGIME, but, on the contrary, are treated with

the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people with their

own hands from their families, handcuffing them, throwing them in

prison, guarding them, shooting them.

Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the existing

order is unchanging and they must support it?

All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the

handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own hands. If

there were no soldiers or armed policemen, ready to kill or outrage

anyone as they are ordered, not one of those people who sign sentences

of death, imprisonment, or galley-slavery for life would make up his

mind to hang, imprison, or torture a thousandth part of those whom,

quietly sitting in his study, he now orders to be tortured in all kinds

of ways, simply because he does not see it nor do it himself, but only

gets it done at a distance by these servile tools.

All the acts of injustice and cruelty which are committed in the

ordinary course of daily life have only become habitual because

there are these men always ready to carry out such acts of

injustice and cruelty. If it were not for them, far from anyone

using violence against the immense masses who are now ill-treated,

those who now command their punishment would not venture to

sentence them, would not even dare to dream of the sentences they

decree with such easy confidence at present. And if it were not

for these men, ready to kill or torture anyone at their

commander's will, no one would dare to claim, as all the idle

landowners claim with such assurance, that a piece of land,

surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from want of land,

is the property of a man who does not cultivate it, or that stores

of corn taken by swindling from the peasants ought to remain

untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger because the

merchants must make their profit. If it were not for these

servile instruments at the disposal of the authorities, it could

never have entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants

of the forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they

are entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing people,

the price of their oppression; least of all could anyone dream of

killing or exiling men for exposing falsehood and telling the

truth. All this can only be done because the authorities are

confidently assured that they have always these servile tools at

hand, ready to carry all their demands into effect by means of

torture and murder.

All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the lowest

commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can only be

explained by the intoxicating effect of their absolute power over

these slaves. All force, therefore, rests on these men, who carry

out the deeds of violence with their own hands, the men who serve

in the police or the army, especially the army, for the police

only venture to do their work because the army is at their back.

What, then, has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the

whole thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do

these atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought them

to accept the amazing delusion that the existing order,

unprofitable, ruinous, and fatal as it is for them, is the order

which ought to exist?

Who has led them into this amazing delusion?

They can never have persuaded themselves that they ought to do what is

against their conscience, and also the source of misery and ruin for

themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-tenths of the

population.

"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment:

'Thou shalt not kill'?" I have often inquired of different

soldiers. And I always drove them to embarrassment and confusion

by reminding them of what they did not want to think about. They

knew they were bound by the law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and

knew too that they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had

never reflected on the contradiction between these duties. The

drift of the timid answers I received to this question was always

approximately this: that killing in war and executing criminals by

command of the government are not included in the general

prohibition of murder. But when I said this distinction was not

made in the law of God, and reminded them of the Christian duty of

fraternity, forgiveness of injuries, and love, which could not be

reconciled with murder, the peasants usually agreed, but in their

turn began to ask me questions. "How does it happen," they

inquired, "that the government [which according to their ideas

cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and orders criminals to be

executed." When I answered that the government does wrong in

giving such orders, the peasants fell into still greater

confusion, and either broke off the conversation or else got angry

with me.

"They must have found a law for it. The archbishops know as much

about it as we do, I should hope," a Russian soldier once observed

to me. And in saying this the soldier obviously set his mind at

rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a

law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their

descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing

himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or

conundrum on my part.

Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by

revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of

the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us,

and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons,

that is, murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others.

Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin,

whoever are the victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery,

theft, or any other. At the same time from their childhood up men

see that murder is not only permitted, but even sanctioned by the

blessing of those whom they are accustomed to regard as their

divinely appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders

with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear murderous

arms, and demanding of others in the name of the laws of the

country, and even of God, that they should take part in murder.

Men see that there is some inconsistency here, but not being able

to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this apparent

inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance. The very

grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in

this conviction.

They cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the

educated classes, could so confidently preach two such opposed

principles as the law of Christ and murder. A simple uncorrupted

youth cannot imagine that those who stand so high in his opinion,

whom he regards as holy or learned men, could for any object

whatever mislead him so shamefully. But this is just what has

always been and always is done to him. It is done (1) by

instilling, by example and direct instruction, from childhood up,

into the working people, who have not time to study moral and

religious questions for themselves, the idea that torture and

murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain

objects of state, torture and murder are not only admissible, but

ought to be employed; and (2) by instilling into certain of the

people, who have either voluntarily enlisted or been taken by

compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of murder

and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a

glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.

The general delusion is diffused among all people by means of the

catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in use for the

compulsory education of children. In them it is stated that

violence, that is, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder

in civil or foreign war in the defense and maintenance of the

existing state organization (whatever that may be, absolute or

limited monarchy, convention, consulate, empire of this or that

Napoleon or Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, commune or

republic) is absolutely lawful and not opposed to morality and

Christianity.

This is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools. And

men are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up, live and

die in that conviction without once entertaining a doubt about it.

This is one form of deception, the general deception instilled

into everyone, but there is another special deception practiced

upon the soldiers or police who are picked out by one means or

another to do the torturing and murdering necessary to defend and

maintain the existing RÉGIME.

In all military instructions there appears in one form or another

what is expressed in the Russian military code in the following

words:

ARTICLE 87. To carry out exactly and without comment the orders

of a superior officer means: to carry out an order received from a

superior officer exactly without considering whether it is good or

not, and whether it is possible to carry it out. The superior

officer is responsible for the consequences of the order he gives.

ARTICLE 88. The subordinate ought never to refuse to carry out

the orders of a superior officer except when he sees clearly that

in carrying out his superior officer's command, he breaks [the law

of God, one involuntarily expects; not at all] HIS OATH OF

FIDELITY AND ALLEGIANCE TO THE TZAR.

It is here said that the man who is a soldier can and ought to

carry out all the orders of his superior without exception. And

as these orders for the most part involve murder, it follows that

he ought to break all the laws of God and man. The one law he may

not break is that of fidelity and allegiance to the man who

happens at a given moment to be in power.

Precisely the same thing is said in other words in all codes of

military instruction. And it could not be otherwise, since the

whole power of the army and the state is based in reality on this

delusive emancipation of men from their duty to God and their

conscience, and the substitution of duty to their superior officer

for all other duties.

This, then, is the foundation of the belief of the lower classes

that the existing RÉGIME so fatal for them is the RÉGIME which

ought to exist, and which they ought therefore to support even by

torture and murder.

This belief is founded on a conscious deception practiced on them

by the higher classes.

And it cannot be otherwise. To compel the lower classes, which

are more numerous, to oppress and ill treat themselves, even at

the cost of actions opposed to their conscience, it was necessary

to deceive them. And it has been done accordingly.

Not many days ago I saw once more this shameless deception being

openly practiced, and once more I marveled that it could be

practiced so easily and impudently.

At the beginning of November, as I was passing through Toula, I

saw once again at the gates of the Zemsky Courthouse the crowd of

peasants I had so often seen before, and heard the drunken shouts

of the men mingled with the pitiful lamentations of their wives

and mothers. It was the recruiting session.

I can never pass by the spectacle. It attracts me by a kind of

fascination of repulsion. I again went into the crowd, took my

stand among the peasants, looked about and asked questions. And

once again I was amazed that this hideous crime can be perpetrated

so easily in broad daylight and in the midst of a large town.

As the custom is every year, in all the villages and hamlets of

the one hundred millions of Russians, on the 1st of November, the

village elders had assembled the young men inscribed on the lists,

often their own sons among them, and had brought them to the town.

On the road the recruits have been drinking without intermission,

unchecked by the elders, who feel that going on such an insane

errand, abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing all they

hold sacred in order to become a senseless instrument of

destruction, would be too agonizing if they were not stupefied

with spirits.

And so they have come, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting and

scuffling with one another. They have spent the night in taverns.

In the morning they have slept off their drunkenness and have

gathered together at the Zemsky Court-house.

Some of them, in new sheepskin pelisses, with knitted scarves

round their necks, their eyes swollen from drinking, are shouting

wildly to one another to show their courage; others, crowded near

the door, are quietly and mournfully waiting their turn, between

their weeping wives and mothers (I had chanced upon the day of the

actual enrolling, that is, the examination of those whose names

are on the list); others meantime were crowding into the hall of

the recruiting office.

Inside the office the work was going on rapidly. The door is

opened and the guard calls Piotr Sidorov. Piotr Sidorov starts,

crosses himself, and goes into a little room with a glass door,

where the conscripts undress. A comrade of Piotr Sidorov's, who

has just been passed for service, and come naked out of the

revision office, is dressing hurriedly, his teeth chattering.

Sidorov has already heard the news, and can see from his face too

that he has been taken. He wants to ask him questions, but they

hurry him and tell him to make haste and undress. He throws off

his pelisse, slips his boots off his feet, takes off his waistcoat

and draws his shirt over his head, and naked, trembling all over,

and exhaling an odor of tobacco, spirits, and sweat, goes into the

revision office, not knowing what to do with his brawny bare arms.

Directly facing him in the revision office hangs in a great gold

frame a portrait of the Tzar in full uniform with decorations, and

in the corner a little portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown

of thorns. In the middle of the room is a table covered with

green cloth, on which there are papers lying and a three-cornered

ornament surmounted by an eagle--the zertzal. Round the table are

sitting the revising officers, looking collected and indifferent.

One is smoking a cigarette; another is looking through some

papers. Directly Sidorov comes in, a guard goes up to him, places

him under the measuring frame, raising him under his chin, and

straightening his legs.

The man with the cigarette--he is the doctor--comes up, and without

looking at the recruit's face, but somewhere beyond it, feels his body

over with an air of disgust, measures him, tests him, tells the guard to

open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to speak. Someone notes something

down. At last without having once looked him in the face the doctor

says, "Right. Next one!" and with a weary air sits down again at the

table. The soldiers again hustle and hurry the lad. He somehow gets into

his trousers, wraps his feet in rags, puts on his boots, looks for his

scarf and cap, and bundles his pelisse under his arm. Then they lead him

into the main hall, shutting him off apart from the rest by a bench,

behind which all the conscripts who have been passed for service are

waiting. Another village lad like himself, but from a distant province,

now a soldier armed with a gun with a sharp-pointed bayonet at the end,

keeps watch over him, ready to run him through the body if he should

think of trying to escape.

Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives, hustled by the

police, are pressing round the doors to hear whose lad has been

taken, whose is let off. One of the rejected comes out and

announces that Piotr is taken, and at once a shrill cry is heard

from Piotr's young wife, for whom this word "taken" means

separation for four or five years, the life of a soldier's wife as

a servant, often a prostitute.

But here comes a man along the street with flowing hair and in a

peculiar dress, who gets out of his droskhy and goes into the

Zemsky Court-house. The police clear a way for him through the

crowd. It is the "reverend father" come to administer the oath.

And this "father," who has been persuaded that he is specially and

exclusively devoted to the service of Christ, and who, for the

most part, does not himself see the deception in which he lives,

goes into the hall where the conscripts are waiting. He throws

round him a kind of curtain of brocade, pulls his long hair out

over it, opens the very Gospel in which swearing is forbidden,

takes the cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified

because he would not do what this false servant of his is telling

men to do, and puts them on the lectern. And all these unhappy,

defenseless, and deluded lads repeat after him the lie, which he

utters with the assurance of familiarity.

He reads and they repeat after him:

"I promise and swear by Almighty God upon his holy Gospel," etc.,

"to defend," etc., and that is, to murder anyone I am told to, and

to do everything I am told by men I know nothing of, and who care

nothing for me except as an instrument for perpetrating the crimes

by which they are kept in their position of power, and my brothers

in their condition of misery. All the conscripts repeat these

ferocious words without thinking. And then the so-called

"father" goes away with a sense of having correctly and

conscientiously done his duty. And all these poor deluded lads

believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible words which

they have just uttered set them free for the whole time of their

service from their duties as men, and lay upon them fresh and more

binding duties as soldiers.

And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out to the

deceiving and the deceived: "Think what you are doing; this is the

basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies only, but souls too, are

destroyed."

No one does this. On the contrary, when all have been enrolled,

and they are to be let out again, the military officer goes with a

confident and majestic air into the hall where the drunken,

cheated lads are shut up, and cries in a bold, military voice:

"Your health, my lads! I congratulate you on 'serving the Tzar!'"

And they, poor fellows (someone has given them a hint beforehand),

mutter awkwardly, their voices thick with drink, something to the

effect that they are glad.

Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives is standing at

the doors waiting. The women keep their tearful eyes fixed on the

doors. They open at last, and out come the conscripts, unsteady,

but trying to put a good face on it. Here are Piotr and Vania and

Makar trying not to look their dear ones in the face. Nothing is

heard but the wailing of the wives and mothers. Some of the lads

embrace them and weep with them, others make a show of courage,

and others try to comfort them.

The wives and mothers, knowing that they will be left for three,

four, or five years without their breadwinners, weep and rehearse

their woes aloud. The fathers say little. They only utter a

clucking sound with their tongues and sigh mournfully, knowing

that they will see no more of the steady lads they have reared and

trained to help them, that they will come back not the same quiet

hard-working laborers, but for the most part conceited and

demoralized, unfitted for their simple life.

And then all the crowd get into their sledges again and move away

down the street to the taverns and pot-houses, and louder than

ever sounds the medley of singing and sobbing, drunken shouts, and

the wailing of the wives and mothers, the sounds of the accordeon

and oaths. They all turn into the taverns, whose revenues go to

the government, and the drinking bout begins, which stifles their

sense of the wrong which is being done them.

For two or three weeks they go on living at home, and most of that

time they are "jaunting," that is, drinking.

On a fixed day they collect them, drive them together like a flock

of sheep, and begin to train them in the military exercises and

drill. Their teachers are fellows like themselves, only deceived

and brutalized two or three years sooner. The means of

instruction are: deception, stupefaction, blows, and vodka. And

before a year has passed these good, intelligent, healthy-minded

lads will be as brutal beings as their instructors.

"Come, now, suppose your father were arrested and tried to make

his escape?" I asked a young soldier.

"I should run him through with my bayonet," he answered with the

foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; "and if he made off, I

ought to shoot him," he added, obviously proud of knowing what he

must do if his father were escaping.

And when a good-hearted lad has been brought to a state lower than

that of a brute, he is just what is wanted by those who use him as

an instrument of violence. He is ready; the man has been

destroyed and a new instrument of violence has been created. And

all this is done every year, every autumn, everywhere, through all

Russia in broad daylight in the midst of large towns, where all

may see it, and the deception is so clever, so skillful, that

though all men know the infamy of it in their hearts, and see all

its horrible results, they cannot throw it off and be free.

When one's eyes are opened to this awful deception practiced upon

us, one marvels that the teachers of the Christian religion and of

morals, the instructors of youth, or even the good-hearted and

intelligent parents who are to be found in every society, can

teach any kind of morality in a society in which it is openly

admitted (it is so admitted, under all governments and all

churches) that murder and torture form an indispensable element in

the life of all, and that there must always be special men trained

to kill their fellows, and that any one of us may have to become

such a trained assassin.

How can children, youths, and people generally be taught any kind

of morality--not to speak of teaching in the spirit of

Christianity--side by side with the doctrine that murder is

necessary for the public weal, and therefore legitimate, and that

there are men, of whom each of us may have to be one, whose duty

is to murder and torture and commit all sorts of crimes at the

will of those who are in possession of authority. If this is so,

and one can and ought to murder and torture, there is not, and

cannot be, any kind of moral law, but only the law that might is

right. And this is just how it is. In reality that is the

doctrine--justified to some by the theory of the struggle for

existence--which reigns in our society.

And, indeed, what sort of ethical doctrine could admit the

legitimacy of murder for any object whatever? It is as impossible

as a theory of mathematics admitting that two is equal to three.

There may be a semblance of mathematics admitting that two is

equal to three, but there can be no real science of mathematics.

And there can only be a semblance of ethics in which murder in the

shape of war and the execution of criminals is allowed, but no

true ethics. The recognition of the life of every man as sacred

is the first and only basis of all ethics.

The doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth has been

abrogated by Christianity, because it is the justification of

immorality, and a mere semblance of equity, and has no real

meaning. Life is a value which has no weight nor size, and cannot

be compared to any other, and so there is no sense in destroying a

life for a life. Besides, every social law aims at the

amelioration of man's life. What way, then, can the annihilation

of the life of some men ameliorate men's life? Annihilation of

life cannot be a means of the amelioration of life; it is a

suicidal act.

To destroy another life for the sake of justice is as though a

man, to repair the misfortune of losing one arm, should cut off

the other arm for the sake of equity.

But putting aside the sin of deluding men into regarding the most

awful crime as a duty, putting aside the revolting sin of using

the name and authority of Christ to sanction what he most

condemned, not to speak of the curse on those who cause these

"little ones" to offend--how can people who cherish their own way

of life, their progress, even from the point of view of their

personal security, allow the formation in their midst of an

overwhelming force as senseless, cruel, and destructive as every

government is organized on the basis of an army? Even the most

cruel band of brigands is not so much to be dreaded as such a

government.

The power of every brigand chief is at least so far limited that

the men of his band preserve at least some human liberty, and can

refuse to commit acts opposed to their conscience. But, owing to

the perfection to which the discipline of the army has been

brought, there is no limit to check men who form part of a

regularly organized government. There are no crimes so revolting

that they would not readily be committed by men who form part of a

government or army, at the will of anyone (such as Boulanger,

Napoleon, or Pougachef) who may chance to be at their head.

Often when one sees conscription levies, military drills and

maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at

their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for

whole days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the

whistle of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when

one sees in the midst of a town where any effort at violence in

self-defense is forbidden, where the sale of powder and of

chemicals, where furious driving and practicing as a doctor

without a diploma, and so on, are not allowed; thousands of

disciplined troops, trained to murder, and subject to one man's

will; one asks oneself how can people who prize their security

quietly allow it, and put up with it? Apart from the immorality

and evil effects of it, nothing can possibly be more unsafe. What

are people thinking about? I don't mean now Christians, ministers

of religion, philanthropists, and moralists, but simply people who

value their life, their security, and their comfort. This

organization, we know, will work just as well in one man's hands

as another's. To-day, let us assume, power is in the hands of a

ruler who can be endured, but to-morrow it may be seized by a

Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pougachef, a Napoleon I., or a

Napoleon III.

And the man in authority, endurable to-day, may become a brute

to-morrow, or may be succeeded by a mad or imbecile heir, like the King

of Bavaria or our Paul I.

And not only the highest authorities, but all little satraps

scattered over everywhere, like so many General Baranovs,

governors, police officers even, and commanders of companies, can

perpetrate the most awful crimes before there is time for them to

be removed from office. And this is what is constantly happening.

One involuntarily asks how can men let it go on, not from higher

considerations only, but from regard to their own safety?

The answer to this question is that it is not all people who do

tolerate it (some--the greater proportion--deluded and submissive,

have no choice and have to tolerate anything). It is tolerated by

those who only under such an organization can occupy a position of

profit. They tolerate it, because for them the risks of suffering

from a foolish or cruel man being at the head of the government or

the army are always less than the disadvantages to which they

would be exposed by the destruction of the organization itself.

A judge, a commander of police, a governor, or an officer will

keep his position just the same under Boulanger or the republic,

under Pougachef or Catherine. He will lose his profitable

position for certain, if the existing order of things which

secured it to him is destroyed. And so all these people feel no

uneasiness as to who is at the head of the organization, they will

adapt themselves to anyone; they only dread the downfall of the

organization itself, and that is the reason--though often an

unconscious one--that they support it.

One often wonders why independent people, who are not forced to do so in

any way, the so-called ÉLITE of society, should go into the army in

Russia, England, Germany, Austria, and even France, and seek

opportunities of becoming murderers. Why do even high-principled parents

send their boys to military schools? Why do mothers buy their children

toy helmets, guns, and swords as playthings? (The peasant's children

never play at soldiers, by the way). Why do good men and even women, who

have certainly no interest in war, go into raptures over the various

exploits of Skobeloff and others, and vie with one another in glorifying

them? Why do men, who are not obliged to do so, and get no fee for it,

devote, like the marshals of nobility in Russia, whole months of toil to

a business physically disagreeable and morally painful--the enrolling of

conscripts? Why do all kings and emperors wear the military uniform? Why

do they all hold military reviews, why do they organize maneuvers,

distribute rewards to the military, and raise monuments to generals and

successful commanders? Why do rich men of independent position consider

it an honor to perform a valet's duties in attendance on crowned

personages, flattering them and cringing to them and pretending to

believe in their peculiar superiority? Why do men who have ceased to

believe in the superstitions of the mediaeval Church, and who could not

possibly believe in them seriously and consistently, pretend to believe

in and give their support to the demoralizing and blasphemous

institution of the church? Why is it that not only governments but

private persons of the higher classes, try so jealously to maintain the

ignorance of the people? Why do they fall with such fury on any effort

at breaking down religious superstitions or really enlightening the

people? Why do historians, novelists, and poets, who have no hope of

gaining anything by their flatteries, make heroes of kings, emperors,

and conquerors of past times? Why do men, who call themselves learned,

dedicate whole lifetimes to making theories to prove that violence

employed by authority against the people is not violence at all, but a

special right? One often wonders why a fashionable lady or an artist,

who, one would think, would take no interest in political or military

questions, should always condemn strikes of working people, and defend

war; and should always be found without hesitation opposed to the one,

favorable to the other.

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher

classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain

and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which

they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly

not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to

defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not

have her entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist

certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the

troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures. But

instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them

unerringly. And it is precisely this instinct which leads all

men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political,

and economic institutions which are to their advantage.

But is it possible that the higher classes support the existing

order of things simply because it is to their advantage? Cannot

they see that this order of things is essentially irrational, that

it is no longer consistent with the stage of moral development

attained by people, and with public opinion, and that it is

fraught with perils? The governing classes, or at least the good,

honest, and intelligent people of them, cannot but suffer from

these fundamental inconsistencies, and see the dangers with which

they are threatened. And is it possible that all the millions of

the lower classes can feel easy in conscience when they commit

such obviously evil deeds as torture and murder from fear of

punishment? Indeed, it could not be so, neither the former nor

the latter could fail to see the irrationality of their conduct,

if the complexity of government organization did not obscure the

unnatural senselessness of their actions.

So many instigate, assist, or sanction the commission of every one

of these actions that no one who has a hand in them feels himself

morally responsible for it.

It is the custom among assassins to oblige all the witnesses of a

murder to strike the murdered victim, that the responsibility may

be divided among as large a number of people as possible. The

same principle in different forms is applied under the government

organization in the perpetration of the crimes, without which no

government organization could exist. Rulers always try to

implicate as many citizens as possible in all the crimes committed

in their support.

Of late this tendency has been expressed in a very obvious manner

by the obligation of all citizens to take part in legal processes

as jurors, in the army as soldiers, in the local government, or

legislative assembly, as electors or members.

Just as in a wicker basket all the ends are so hidden away that it

is hard to find them, in the state organization the responsibility

for the crimes committed is so hidden away that men will commit

the most atrocious acts without seeing their responsibility for

them.

In ancient times tyrants got credit for the crimes they committed,

but in our day the most atrocious infamies, inconceivable under

the Neros, are perpetrated and no one gets blamed for them.

One set of people have suggested, another set have proposed, a

third have reported, a fourth have decided, a fifth have

confirmed, a sixth have given the order, and a seventh set of men

have carried it out. They hang, they flog to death women, old

men, and innocent people, as was done recently among us in Russia

at the Yuzovsky factory, and is always being done everywhere in

Europe and America in the struggle with the anarchists and all

other rebels against the existing order; they shoot and hang men

by hundreds and thousands, or massacre millions in war, or break

men's hearts in solitary confinement, and ruin their souls in the

corruption of a soldier's life, and no one is responsible.

At the bottom of the social scale soldiers, armed with guns,

pistols, and sabers, injure and murder people, and compel men

through these means to enter the army, and are absolutely

convinced that the responsibility for the actions rests solely on

the officers who command them.

At the top of the scale--the Tzars, presidents, ministers, and

parliaments decree these tortures and murders and military

conscription, and are fully convinced that since they are either

placed in authority by the grace of God or by the society they

govern, which demands such decrees from them, they cannot be held

responsible. Between these two extremes are the intermediary

personages who superintend the murders and other acts of violence,

and are fully convinced that the responsibility is taken off their

shoulders partly by their superiors who have given the order,

partly by the fact that such orders are expected from them by all

who are at the bottom of the scale.

The authority who gives the orders and the authority who executes

them at the two extreme ends of the state organization, meet

together like the two ends of a ring; they support and rest on one

another and inclose all that lies within the ring.

Without the conviction that there is a person or persons who will

take the whole responsibility of his acts, not one soldier would

ever lift a hand to commit a murder or other deed of violence.

Without the conviction that it is expected by the whole people not

a single king, emperor, president, or parliament would order

murders or acts of violence.

Without the conviction that there are persons of a higher grade

who will take the responsibility, and people of a lower grade who

require such acts for their welfare, not one of the intermediate

class would superintend such deeds.

The state is so organized that wherever a man is placed in the

social scale, his irresponsibility is the same. The higher his

grade the more he is under the influence of demands from below,

and the less he is controlled by orders from above, and VICE

VERSA.

All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the

responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier

on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on

the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the

nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on

the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar, and

the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and

peasants. But that is not all. Besides the fact that men get rid

of the sense of responsibility for their actions in this way, they

lose their moral sense of responsibility also, by the fact that in

forming themselves into a state organization they persuade

themselves and each other so continually, and so indefatigably,

that they are not all equal, but "as the stars apart," that they

come to believe it genuinely themselves. Thus some are persuaded

that they are not simple people like everyone else, but special

people who are to be specially honored. It is instilled into

another set of men by every possible means that they are inferior

to others, and therefore must submit without a murmur to every

order given them by their superiors.

On this inequality, above all, on the elevation of some and the

degradation of others, rests the capacity men have of being blind

to the insanity of the existing order of life, and all the cruelty

and criminality of the deception practiced by one set of men on

another.

Those in whom the idea has been instilled that they are invested

with a special supernatural grandeur and consequence, are so

intoxicated with a sense of their own imaginary dignity that they

cease to feel their responsibility for what they do.

While those, on the other hand, in whom the idea is fostered that

they are inferior animals, bound to obey their superiors in

everything, fall, through this perpetual humiliation, into a

strange condition of stupefied servility, and in this stupefied

state do not see the significance of their actions and lose all

consciousness of responsibility for what they do.

The intermediate class, who obey the orders of their superiors on

the one hand and regard themselves as superior beings on the

other, are intoxicated by power and stupefied by servility at the

same time and so lose the sense of their responsibility.

One need only glance during a review at the commander-in-chief,

intoxicated with self-importance, followed by his retinue, all on

magnificent and gayly appareled horses, in splendid uniforms and wearing

decorations, and see how they ride to the harmonious and solemn strains

of music before the ranks of soldiers, all presenting arms and petrified

with servility. One need only glance at this spectacle to understand

that at such moments, when they are in a state of the most complete

intoxication, commander-in-chief, soldiers, and intermediate officers

alike, would be capable of committing crimes of which they would never

dream under other conditions.

The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews,

religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and

temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic,

permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any

kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest

police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in

subjection to authority and in a state of stupefied servility.

The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their

own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and

importance to those they serve.

It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the

intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men

associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to

their conscience without the least scruple or remorse. Under the

influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no longer simply

men as they are, but some special beings--noblemen, merchants,

governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or soldiers--no longer

bound by ordinary human duties, but by other duties far more

weighty--the peculiar duties of a nobleman, merchant, governor, judge,

officer, tzar, minister, or soldier.

Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only

because he fancied himself not a simple man, having the same

rights to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone

else, but a great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under

the influence of the intoxication of power he felt his dignity

offended by the peasants' claims. It was only through this

feeling that, without considering the consequences that might

follow, he sent in a claim to be reinstated in his pretended

rights.

In the same way the judges, who wrongfully adjudged the forest to

the proprietor, did so simply because they fancied themselves not

simply men like everyone else, and so bound to be guided in

everything only by what they consider right, but, under the

intoxicating influence of power, imagined themselves the

representatives of the justice which cannot err; while under the

intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves bound

to carry out to the letter the instructions inscribed in a certain

book, the so-called law. In the same way all who take part in

such an affair, from the highest representative of authority who

signs his assent to the report, from the superintendent presiding

at the recruiting sessions, and the priest who deludes the

recruits, to the lowest soldier who is ready now to fire on his

own brothers, imagine, in the intoxication of power or of

servility, that they are some conventional characters. They do

not face the question that is presented to them, whether or not

they ought to take part in what their conscience judges an evil

act, but fancy themselves various conventional personages--one as

the Tzar, God's anointed, an exceptional being, called to watch

over the happiness of one hundred millions of men; another as the

representative of nobility; another as a priest, who has received

special grace by his ordination; another as a soldier, bound by

his military oath to carry out all he is commanded without

reflection.

Only under the intoxication of the power or the servility of their

imagined positions could all these people act as they do.

Were not they all firmly convinced that their respective vocations

of tzar, minister, governor, judge, nobleman, landowner,

superintendent, officer, and soldier are something real and

important, not one of them would even think without horror and

aversion of taking part in what they do now.