THE TOWNS AND THE MERCANTILE CLASSES
General Character of Russian Towns--Scarcity of Towns in Russia--Why
the Urban Element in the Population is so Small--History of
Russian Municipal Institutions--Unsuccessful Efforts to Create a
Tiers-etat--Merchants, Burghers, and Artisans--Town Council--A Rich
Merchant--His House--His Love of Ostentation--His Conception of
Aristocracy--Official Decorations--Ignorance and Dishonesty of the
Commercial Classes--Symptoms of Change.
Those who wish to enjoy the illusions produced by scene painting and
stage decorations should never go behind the scenes. In like manner he
who wishes to preserve the delusion that Russian provincial towns are
picturesque should never enter them, but content himself with viewing
them from a distance.
However imposing they may look when seen from the outside, they will be
found on closer inspection, with very few exceptions, to be little more
than villages in disguise. If they have not a positively rustic, they
have at least a suburban, appearance. The streets are straight and wide,
and are either miserably paved or not paved at all. Trottoirs are
not considered indispensable. The houses are built of wood or brick,
generally one-storied, and separated from each other by spacious yards.
Many of them do not condescend to turn their facades to the street. The
general impression produced is that the majority of the burghers have
come from the country, and have brought their country-houses with them.
There are few or no shops with merchandise tastefully arranged in the
window to tempt the passer-by. If you wish to make purchases you must
go to the Gostinny Dvor,* or Bazaar, which consists of long, symmetrical
rows of low-roofed, dimly-lighted stores, with a colonnade in front.
This is the place where merchants most do congregate, but it presents
nothing of that bustle and activity which we are accustomed to associate
with commercial life. The shopkeepers stand at their doors or loiter
about in the immediate vicinity waiting for customers. From the scarcity
of these latter I should say that when sales are effected the profits
must be enormous.
* These words mean literally the Guests' Court or Yard. The
Ghosti--a word which is etymologically the same as our
"host" and "guest"--were originally the merchants who traded
with other towns or other countries.
In the other parts of the town the air of solitude and languor is
still more conspicuous. In the great square, or by the side of the
promenade--if the town is fortunate enough to have one--cows or horses
may be seen grazing tranquilly, without being at all conscious of the
incongruity of their position. And, indeed, it would be strange if they
had any such consciousness, for it does not exist in the minds either
of the police or of the inhabitants. At night the streets may be lighted
merely with a few oil-lamps, which do little more than render the
darkness visible, so that cautious citizens returning home late often
provide themselves with lanterns. As late as the sixties the learned
historian, Pogodin, then a town-councillor of Moscow, opposed the
lighting of the city with gas on the ground that those who chose to
go out at night should carry their lamps with them. The objection was
overruled, and Moscow is now fairly well lit, but the provincial towns
are still far from being on the same level. Some retain their old
primitive arrangements, while others enjoy the luxury of electric
lighting.
The scarcity of large towns in Russia is not less remarkable than their
rustic appearance. According to the last census (1897) the number of
towns, officially so-called, is 1,321, but about three-fifths of them
have under 5,000 inhabitants; only 104 have over 25,000, and only 19
over 100,000. These figures indicate plainly that the urban element of
the population is relatively small, and it is declared by the official
statisticians to be only 14 per cent., as against 72 per cent. in Great
Britain, but it is now increasing rapidly. When the first edition of
this work was published, in 1877, European Russia in the narrower sense
of the term--excluding Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Lithuania, Poland,
and the Caucasus--had only 11 towns with a population of over 50,000,
and now there are 34; that is to say, the number of such towns has more
than trebled. In the other portions of the country a similar increase
has taken place. The towns which have become important industrial and
commercial centres have naturally grown most rapidly. For example, in
a period of twelve years (1885-97) the populations of Lodz, of
Ekaterinoslaf, of Baku, of Yaroslavl, and of Libau, have more than
doubled. In the five largest towns of the Empire--St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa and Lodz--the aggregate population rose during
the same twelve years from 2,423,000 to 3,590,000, or nearly 50 per
cent. In ten other towns, with populations varying from 50,000 to
282,000, the aggregate rose from 780,000 to 1,382,000, or about 77 per
cent.
That Russia should have taken so long to assimilate herself in this
respect to Western Europe is to be explained by the geographical and
political conditions. Her population was not hemmed in by natural
or artificial frontiers strong enough to restrain their expansive
tendencies. To the north, the east, and the southeast there was a
boundless expanse of fertile, uncultivated land, offering a tempting
field for emigration; and the peasantry have ever shown themselves ready
to take advantage of their opportunities. Instead of improving their
primitive system of agriculture, which requires an enormous area and
rapidly exhausts the soil, they have always found it easier and more
profitable to emigrate and take possession of the virgin land beyond.
Thus the territory--sometimes with the aid of, and sometimes in spite
of, the Government--has constantly expanded, and has already reached the
Polar Ocean, the Pacific, and the northern offshoots of the Himalayas.
The little district around the sources of the Dnieper has grown into a
mighty empire, comprising one-seventh of the land surface of the globe.
Prolific as the Russian race is, its power of reproduction could not
keep pace with its territorial expansion, and consequently the country
is still very thinly peopled. According to the latest census (1897) in
the whole empire there are under 130 millions of inhabitants, and the
average density of population is only about fifteen to the English
square mile. Even the most densely populated provinces, including Moscow
with its 988,610 inhabitants, cannot show more than 189 to the English
square mile, whereas England has about 400. A people that has such
an abundance of land, and can support itself by agriculture, is not
naturally disposed to devote itself to industry, or to congregate in
large cities.
For many generations there were other powerful influences working in the
same direction. Of these the most important was serfage, which was not
abolished till 1861. That institution, and the administrative system of
which it formed an essential part, tended to prevent the growth of the
towns by hemming the natural movements of the population. Peasants, for
example, who learned trades, and who ought to have drifted naturally
into the burgher class, were mostly retained by the master on his
estate, where artisans of all sorts were daily wanted, and the few who
were sent to seek work in the towns were not allowed to settle there
permanently.
Thus the insignificance of the Russian towns is to be attributed mainly
to two causes. The abundance of land tended to prevent the development
of industry, and the little industry which did exist was prevented by
serfage from collecting in the towns. But this explanation is evidently
incomplete. The same causes existed during the Middle Ages in Central
Europe, and yet, in spite of them, flourishing cities grew up and played
an important part in the social and political history of Germany. In
these cities collected traders and artisans, forming a distinct
social class, distinguished from the nobles on the one hand, and the
surrounding peasantry on the other, by peculiar occupations, peculiar
aims, peculiar intellectual physiognomy, and peculiar moral conceptions.
Why did these important towns and this burgher class not likewise come
into existence in Russia, in spite of the two preventive causes above
mentioned?
To discuss this question fully it would be necessary to enter into
certain debated points of mediaeval history. All I can do here is to
indicate what seems to me the true explanation.
In Central Europe, all through the Middle Ages, a perpetual struggle
went on between the various political factors of which society was
composed, and the important towns were in a certain sense the products
of this struggle. They were preserved and fostered by the mutual rivalry
of the Sovereign, the Feudal Nobility, and the Church; and those who
desired to live by trade or industry settled in them in order to enjoy
the protection and immunities which they afforded. In Russia there was
never any political struggle of this kind. As soon as the Grand Princes
of Moscow, in the sixteenth century, threw off the yoke of the Tartars,
and made themselves Tsars of all Russia, their power was irresistible
and uncontested. Complete masters of the situation, they organised the
country as they thought fit. At first their policy was favourable to the
development of the towns. Perceiving that the mercantile and industrial
classes might be made a rich source of revenue, they separated them from
the peasantry, gave them the exclusive right of trading, prevented
the other classes from competing with them, and freed them from the
authority of the landed proprietors. Had they carried out this policy in
a cautious, rational way, they might have created a rich burgher class;
but they acted with true Oriental short-sightedness, and defeated their
own purpose by imposing inordinately heavy taxes, and treating the urban
population as their serfs. The richer merchants were forced to serve
as custom-house officers--often at a great distance from their
domiciles*--and artisans were yearly summoned to Moscow to do work for
the Tsars without remuneration.
* Merchants from Yaroslavl, for instance, were sent to
Astrakhan to collect the custom-dues.
Besides this, the system of taxation was radically defective, and
the members of the local administration, who received no pay and were
practically free from control, were merciless in their exactions. In a
word, the Tsars used their power so stupidly and so recklessly that the
industrial and trading population, instead of fleeing to the towns to
secure protection, fled from them to escape oppression. At length this
emigration from the towns assumed such dimensions that it was found
necessary to prevent it by administrative and legislative measures;
and the urban population was legally fixed in the towns as the rural
population was fixed to the soil. Those who fled were brought back as
runaways, and those who attempted flight a second time were ordered to
be flogged and transported to Siberia.*
* See the "Ulozhenie" (i.e. the laws of Alexis, father of
Peter the Great), chap. xix. 13.
With the eighteenth century began a new era in the history of the
towns and of the urban population. Peter the Great observed, during his
travels in Western Europe, that national wealth and prosperity reposed
chiefly on the enterprising, educated middle classes, and he attributed
the poverty of his own country to the absence of this burgher element.
Might not such a class be created in Russia? Peter unhesitatingly
assumed that it might, and set himself at once to create it in a simple,
straightforward way. Foreign artisans were imported into his dominions
and foreign merchants were invited to trade with his subjects; young
Russians were sent abroad to learn the useful arts; efforts were made to
disseminate practical knowledge by the translation of foreign books
and the foundation of schools; all kinds of trade were encouraged, and
various industrial enterprises were organised. At the same time the
administration of the towns was thoroughly reorganised after the model
of the ancient free-towns of Germany. In place of the old organisation,
which was a slightly modified form of the rural Commune, they received
German municipal institutions, with burgomasters, town councils, courts
of justice, guilds for the merchants, trade corporations (tsekhi)
for the artisans, and an endless list of instructions regarding the
development of trade and industry, the building of hospitals, sanitary
precautions, the founding of schools, the dispensation of justice, the
organisation of the police, and similar matters.
Catherine II. followed in the same track. If she did less for trade
and industry, she did more in the way of legislating and writing
grandiloquent manifestoes. In the course of her historical studies she
had learned, as she proclaims in one of her manifestoes, that "from
remotest antiquity we everywhere find the memory of town-builders
elevated to the same level as the memory of legislators, and we see
that heroes, famous for their victories, hoped by town-building to give
immortality to their names." As the securing of immortality for her own
name was her chief aim in life, she acted in accordance with historical
precedent, and created 216 towns in the short space of twenty-three
years. This seems a great work, but it did not satisfy her ambition.
She was not only a student of history, but was at the same time a
warm admirer of the fashionable political philosophy of her time.
That philosophy paid much attention to the tiers-etat, which was then
acquiring in France great political importance, and Catherine thought
that as she had created a Noblesse on the French model, she might
also create a bourgeoisie. For this purpose she modified the municipal
organisation created by her great predecessor, and granted to all the
towns an Imperial Charter. This charter remained without essential
modification until the publication of the new Municipality Law in 1870.
The efforts of the Government to create a rich, intelligent tiers-etat
were not attended with much success. Their influence was always more
apparent in official documents than in real life. The great mass of the
population remained serfs, fixed to the soil, whilst the nobles--that
is to say, all who possessed a little education--were required for the
military and civil services. Those who were sent abroad to learn the
useful arts learned little, and made little use of the knowledge which
they acquired. On their return to their native country they very soon
fell victims to the soporific influence of the surrounding social
atmosphere. The "town-building" had as little practical result. It was
an easy matter to create any number of towns in the official sense of
the term. To transform a village into a town, it was necessary merely to
prepare an izba, or log-house, for the district court, another for the
police-office, a third for the prison, and so on. On an appointed day
the Governor of the province arrived in the village, collected the
officials appointed to serve in the newly-constructed or newly-arranged
log-houses, ordered a simple religious ceremony to be performed by the
priest, caused a formal act to be drawn up, and then declared the town
to be "opened." All this required very little creative effort; to create
a spirit of commercial and industrial enterprise among the population
was a more difficult matter and could not be effected by Imperial ukaz.
To animate the newly-imported municipal institutions, which had no
root in the traditions and habits of the people, was a task of equal
difficulty. In the West these institutions had been slowly devised in
the course of centuries to meet real, keenly-felt, practical wants. In
Russia they were adopted for the purpose of creating those wants which
were not yet felt. Let the reader imagine our Board of Trade supplying
the masters of fishing-smacks with accurate charts, learned treatises
on navigation, and detailed instructions for the proper ventilation of
ships' cabins, and he will have some idea of the effect which Peter's
legislation had upon the towns. The office-bearers, elected against
their will, were hopelessly bewildered by the complicated procedure, and
were incapable of understanding the numerous ukazes which prescribed
to them their multifarious duties and threatened the most merciless
punishments for sins of omission and commission. Soon, however, it was
discovered that the threats were not nearly so dreadful as they seemed;
and accordingly those municipal authorities who were to protect and
enlighten the burghers, "forgot the fear of God and the Tsar," and
extorted so unblushingly that it was found necessary to place them under
the control of Government officials.
The chief practical result of the efforts made by Peter and Catherine
to create a bourgeoisie was that the inhabitants of the towns were more
systematically arranged in categories for the purpose of taxation, and
that the taxes were increased. All those parts of the new administration
which had no direct relation to the fiscal interests of the Government
had very little vitality in them. The whole system had been arbitrarily
imposed on the people, and had as motive only the Imperial will. Had
that motive power been withdrawn and the burghers left to regulate their
own municipal affairs, the system would immediately have collapsed.
Rathhaus, burgomasters, guilds, aldermen, and all the other lifeless
shadows which had been called into existence by Imperial ukaz would
instantly have vanished into space. In this fact we have one of the
characteristic traits of Russian historical development compared with
that of Western Europe. In the West monarchy had to struggle with
municipal institutions to prevent them from becoming too powerful; in
Russia, it had to struggle with them to prevent them from committing
suicide or dying of inanition.
According to Catherine's legislation, which remained in force until
1870, and still exists in some of its main features, the towns were
divided into three categories: (1) Government towns (gubernskiye
goroda)--that is to say, the chief towns of provinces, or governments
(gubernii)--in which are concentrated the various organs of provincial
administration; (2) district towns (uyezdniye goroda), in which resides
the administration of the districts (uyezdi) into which the provinces
are divided; and (3) supernumerary towns (zashtatniye goroda), which
have no particular significance in the territorial administration.
In all these the municipal organisation is the same. Leaving out of
consideration those persons who happen to reside in the towns, but
in reality belong to the Noblesse, the clergy, or the lower ranks of
officials, we may say that the town population is composed of three
groups: the merchants (kuptsi), the burghers in the narrower sense of
the term (meshtchanye), and the artisans (tsekhoviye). These categories
are not hereditary castes, like the nobles, the clergy, and the
peasantry. A noble may become a merchant, or a man may be one year a
burgher, the next year an artisan, and the third year a merchant, if he
changes his occupation and pays the necessary dues. But the categories
form, for the time being, distinct corporations, each possessing a
peculiar organisation and peculiar privileges and obligations.
Of these three groups the first in the scale of dignity is that of the
merchants. It is chiefly recruited from the burghers and the peasantry.
Any one who wishes to engage in commerce inscribes himself in one of the
three guilds, according to the amount of his capital and the nature of
the operations in which he wishes to embark, and as soon as he has paid
the required dues he becomes officially a merchant. As soon as he ceases
to pay these dues he ceases to be a merchant in the legal sense of the
term, and returns to the class to which he formerly belonged. There
are some families whose members have belonged to the merchant class for
several generations, and the law speaks about a certain "velvet-book"
(barkhatnaya kniga) in which their names should be inscribed, but in
reality they do not form a distinct category, and they descend at once
from their privileged position as soon as they cease to pay the annual
guild dues.
The artisans form the connecting link between the town population
and the peasantry, for peasants often enrol themselves in the
trades-corporations, or tsekhi, without severing their connection
with the rural Communes to which they belong. Each trade or handicraft
constitutes a tsekh, at the head of which stands an elder and two
assistants, elected by the members; and all the tsekhi together form
a corporation under an elected head (remeslenny golova) assisted by a
council composed of the elders of the various tsekhi. It is the duty of
this council and its president to regulate all matters connected with
the tsekhi, and to see that the multifarious regulations regarding
masters, journeymen, and apprentices are duly observed.
The nondescript class, composed of those who are inscribed as permanent
inhabitants of the towns, but who do not belong to any guild or tsekh,
constitutes what is called the burghers in the narrower sense of the
term. Like the other two categories, they form a separate corporation,
with an elder and an administrative bureau.
Some idea of the relative numerical strength of these three categories
may be obtained from the following figures. Thirty years ago in European
Russia the merchant class (including wives and children) numbered about
466,000, the burghers about 4,033,000, and the artisans about 260,000.
The numbers according to the last census are not yet available.
In 1870 the entire municipal administration was reorganised on modern
West-European principles, and the Town Council (gorodskaya duma),
which formed under the previous system the connecting link between the
old-fashioned corporations, and was composed exclusively of members
of these bodies, became a genuine representative body composed of
householders, irrespective of the social class to which they might
belong. A noble, provided he was a house-proprietor, could become Town
Councillor or Mayor, and in this way a certain amount of vitality and a
progressive spirit were infused into the municipal administration. As a
consequence of this change the schools, hospitals, and other benevolent
institutions were much improved, the streets were kept cleaner and
somewhat better paved, and for a time it seemed as if the towns in
Russia might gradually rise to the level of those of Western Europe. But
the charm of novelty, which so often works wonders in Russia, soon wore
off. After a few years of strenuous effort the best citizens no longer
came forward as candidates, and the office-bearers selected no longer
displayed zeal and intelligence in the discharge of their duties. In
these circumstances the Government felt called upon again to intervene.
By a decree dated June 11, 1892, it introduced a new series of reforms,
by which the municipal self-government was placed more under the
direction and control of the centralised bureaucracy, and the attendance
of the Town Councillors at the periodical meetings was declared to be
obligatory, recalcitrant members being threatened with reprimands and
fines.
This last fact speaks volumes for the low vitality of the institutions
and the prevalent popular apathy with regard to municipal affairs. Nor
was the unsatisfactory state of things much improved by the new reforms;
on the contrary, the increased interference of the regular officials
tended rather to weaken the vitality of the urban self government, and
the so-called reform was pretty generally condemned as a needlessly
reactionary measure. We have here, in fact, a case of what has often
occurred in the administrative history of the Russian Empire since the
time of Peter the Great, and to which I shall again have occasion to
refer. The central authority, finding itself incompetent to do all that
is required of it, and wishing to make a display of liberalism, accords
large concessions in the direction of local autonomy; and when it
discovers that the new institutions do not accomplish all that was
expected of them, and are not quite so subservient and obsequious as
is considered desirable, it returns in a certain measure to the old
principles of centralised bureaucracy.
The great development of trade and industry in recent years has of
course enriched the mercantile classes, and has introduced into them
a more highly educated element, drawn chiefly from the Noblesse, which
formerly eschewed such occupations; but it has not yet affected very
deeply the mode of life of those who have sprung from the old merchant
families and the peasantry. When a merchant, contractor, or manufacturer
of the old type becomes wealthy, he builds for himself a fine house, or
buys and thoroughly repairs the house of some ruined noble, and spends
money freely on parquetry floors, large mirrors, malachite tables, grand
pianos by the best makers, and other articles of furniture made of the
most costly materials. Occasionally--especially on the occasion of a
marriage or a death in the family--he will give magnificent banquets,
and expend enormous sums on gigantic sterlets, choice sturgeons, foreign
fruits, champagne, and all manner of costly delicacies. But this lavish,
ostentatious expenditure does not affect the ordinary current of his
daily life. As you enter those gaudily furnished rooms you can perceive
at a glance that they are not for ordinary use. You notice a rigid
symmetry and an indescribable bareness which inevitably suggest that
the original arrangements of the upholsterer have never been modified or
supplemented. The truth is that by far the greater part of the house is
used only on state occasions. The host and his family live down-stairs
in small, dirty rooms, furnished in a very different, and for them more
comfortable, style. At ordinary times the fine rooms are closed, and the
fine furniture carefully covered.
If you make a visite de politesse after an entertainment, you will
probably have some difficulty in gaining admission by the front door.
When you have knocked or rung several times, some one will come round
from the back regions and ask you what you want. Then follows another
long pause, and at last footsteps are heard approaching from within. The
bolts are drawn, the door is opened, and you are led up to a spacious
drawing-room. At the wall opposite the windows there is sure to be a
sofa, and before it an oval table. At each end of the table, and at
right angles to the sofa, there will be a row of three arm-chairs. The
other chairs will be symmetrically arranged round the room. In a few
minutes the host will appear, in his long double-breasted black coat
and well-polished long boots. His hair is parted in the middle, and his
beard shows no trace of scissors or razor.
After the customary greetings have been exchanged, glasses of tea, with
slices of lemon and preserves, or perhaps a bottle of champagne, are
brought in by way of refreshments. The female members of the family
you must not expect to see, unless you are an intimate friend; for the
merchants still retain something of that female seclusion which was in
vogue among the upper classes before the time of Peter the Great. The
host himself will probably be an intelligent, but totally uneducated and
decidedly taciturn, man.
About the weather and the crops he may talk fluently enough, but he will
not show much inclination to go beyond these topics. You may, perhaps,
desire to converse with him on the subject with which he is best
acquainted--the trade in which he is himself engaged; but if you make
the attempt, you will certainly not gain much information, and you may
possibly meet with such an incident as once happened to my travelling
companion, a Russian gentleman who had been commissioned by two learned
societies to collect information regarding the grain trade. When
he called on a merchant who had promised to assist him in his
investigation, he was hospitably received; but when he began to speak
about the grain trade of the district the merchant suddenly interrupted
him, and proposed to tell him a story. The story was as follows:
Once on a time a rich landed proprietor had a son, who was a thoroughly
spoilt child; and one day the boy said to his father that he wished all
the young serfs to come and sing before the door of the house. After
some attempts at dissuasion the request was granted, and the young
people assembled; but as soon as they began to sing, the boy rushed out
and drove them away.
When the merchant had told this apparently pointless story at great
length, and with much circumstantial detail, he paused a little, poured
some tea into his saucer, drank it off, and then inquired, "Now what do
you think was the reason of this strange conduct?"
My friend replied that the riddle surpassed his powers of divination.
"Well," said the merchant, looking hard at him, with a knowing grin,
"there was no reason; and all the boy could say was, 'Go away, go away!
I've changed my mind; I've changed my mind'" (poshli von; otkhotyel).
There was no possibility of mistaking the point of the story. My friend
took the hint and departed.
The Russian merchant's love of ostentation is of a peculiar
kind--something entirely different from English snobbery. He may delight
in gaudy reception-rooms, magnificent dinners, fast trotters, costly
furs; or he may display his riches by princely donations to churches,
monasteries, or benevolent institutions: but in all this he never
affects to be other than he really is. He habitually wears a costume
which designates plainly his social position; he makes no attempt
to adopt fine manners or elegant tastes; and he never seeks to gain
admission to what is called in Russia la societe. Having no desire to
seem what he is not, he has a plain, unaffected manner, and sometimes
a quiet dignity which contrasts favourably with the affected manner of
those nobles of the lower ranks who make pretensions to being highly
educated and strive to adopt the outward forms of French culture. At his
great dinners, it is true, the merchant likes to see among his guests as
many "generals"--that is to say, official personages--as possible, and
especially those who happen to have a grand cordon; but he never dreams
of thereby establishing an intimacy with these personages, or of being
invited by them in return. It is perfectly understood by both parties
that nothing of the kind is meant. The invitation is given and accepted
from quite different motives. The merchant has the satisfaction of
seeing at his table men of high official rank, and feels that the
consideration which he enjoys among people of his own class is thereby
augmented. If he succeeds in obtaining the presence of three generals,
he obtains a victory over a rival who cannot obtain more than two. The
general, on his side, gets a first-rate dinner, a la russe, and acquires
an undefined right to request subscriptions for public objects or
benevolent institutions.
Of course this undefined right is commonly nothing more than a mere
tacit understanding, but in certain cases the subject is expressly
mentioned. I know of one case in which a regular bargain was made. A
Moscow magnate was invited by a merchant to a dinner, and consented
to go in full uniform, with all his decorations, on condition that the
merchant should subscribe a certain sum to a benevolent institution in
which he was particularly interested. It is whispered that such bargains
are sometimes made, not on behalf of benevolent institutions, but simply
in the interest of the gentleman who accepts the invitation. I cannot
believe that there are many official personages who would consent to let
themselves out as table decorations, but that it may happen is proved by
the following incident, which accidentally came to my knowledge. A
rich merchant of the town of T---- once requested the Governor of the
Province to honour a family festivity with his presence, and added that
he would consider it a special favour if the "Governoress" would
enter an appearance. To this latter request his Excellency made
many objections, and at last let the petitioner understand that her
Excellency could not possibly be present, because she had no velvet
dress that could bear comparison with those of several merchants' wives
in the town. Two days after the interview a piece of the finest velvet
that could be procured in Moscow was received by the Governor from
an unknown donor, and his wife was thus enabled to be present at the
festivity, to the complete satisfaction of all parties concerned.
It is worthy of remark that the merchants recognise no aristocracy but
that of official rank. Many merchants would willingly give twenty pounds
for the presence of an "actual State Councillor" who perhaps never heard
of his grandfather, but who can show a grand cordon; whilst they would
not give twenty pence for the presence of an undecorated Prince without
official rank, though he might be able to trace his pedigree up to the
half-mythical Rurik. Of the latter they would probably say, "Kto ikh
znact?" (Who knows what sort of a fellow he is?) The former, on the
contrary, whoever his father and grandfather may have been, possesses
unmistakable marks of the Tsar's favour, which, in the merchant's
opinion, is infinitely more important than any rights or pretensions
founded on hereditary titles or long pedigrees.
Some marks of Imperial favour the old-fashioned merchants strive to
obtain for themselves. They do not dream of grand cordons--that is far
beyond their most sanguine expectations--but they do all in their power
to obtain those lesser decorations which are granted to the mercantile
class. For this purpose the most common expedient is a liberal
subscription to some benevolent institution, and occasionally a regular
bargain is made. I know of at least one instance where the kind of
decoration was expressly stipulated. The affair illustrates so well the
commercial character of these transactions that I venture to state the
facts as related to me by the official chiefly concerned. A merchant
subscribed to a society which enjoyed the patronage of a Grand Duchess
a considerable sum of money, under the express condition that he
should receive in return a St. Vladimir Cross. Instead of the desired
decoration, which was considered too much for the sum subscribed, a
cross of St. Stanislas was granted; but the donor was dissatisfied with
the latter and demanded that his money should be returned to him. The
demand had to be complied with, and, as an Imperial gift cannot be
retracted, the merchant had his Stanislas Cross for nothing.
This traffic in decorations has had its natural result. Like paper money
issued in too large quantities, the decorations have fallen in value.
The gold medals which were formerly much coveted and worn with pride by
the rich merchants--suspended by a ribbon round the neck--are now
little sought after. In like manner the inordinate respect for official
personages has considerably diminished. Fifty years ago the provincial
merchants vied with each other in their desire to entertain any great
dignitary who honoured their town with a visit, but now they seek rather
to avoid this expensive and barren honour. When they do accept the
honour, they fulfil the duties of hospitality in a most liberal spirit.
I have sometimes, when living as an honoured guest in a rich merchant's
house, found it difficult to obtain anything simpler than sterlet,
sturgeon, and champagne.
The two great blemishes on the character of the Russian merchants as
a class are, according to general opinion, their ignorance and their
dishonesty. As to the former of these there cannot possibly be any
difference of opinion. Many of them can neither read nor write, and are
forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious
hieroglyphics, intelligible only to the inventor. Others can decipher
the calendar and the lives of the saints, can sign their names with
tolerable facility, and can make the simpler arithmetical calculations
with the help of the stchety, a little calculating instrument, composed
of wooden balls strung on brass wires, which resembles the "abaca"
of the old Romans, and is universally used in Russia. It is only the
minority who understand the mysteries of regular book-keeping, and of
these very few can make any pretensions to being educated men.
All this, however, is rapidly undergoing a radical change. Children are
now much better educated than their parents, and the next generation
will doubtless make further progress, so that the old-fashioned type
above described is destined to disappear. Already there are not a few
of the younger generation--especially among the wealthy manufacturers
of Moscow--who have been educated abroad, who may be described as tout
a fait civilises, and whose mode of life differs little from that of
the richer nobles; but they remain outside fashionable society, and
constitute a "set" of their own.
As to the dishonesty which is said to be so common among the Russian
commercial classes, it is difficult to form an accurate judgment. That
an enormous amount of unfair dealing does exist there can be no possible
doubt, but in this matter a foreigner is likely to be unduly severe. We
are apt to apply unflinchingly our own standard of commercial morality,
and to forget that trade in Russia is only emerging from that primitive
condition in which fixed prices and moderate profits are entirely
unknown. And when we happen to detect positive dishonesty, it seems to
us especially heinous, because the trickery employed is more primitive
and awkward than that to which we are accustomed. Trickery in weighing
and measuring, for instance, which is by no means uncommon in Russia,
is likely to make us more indignant than those ingenious methods of
adulteration which are practised nearer home, and are regarded by many
as almost legitimate. Besides this, foreigners who go to Russia and
embark in speculations without possessing any adequate knowledge of
the character, customs, and language of the people positively invite
spoliation, and ought to blame themselves rather than the people who
profit by their ignorance.
All this, and much more of the same kind, may be fairly urged in
mitigation of the severe judgments which foreign merchants commonly pass
on Russian commercial morality, but these judgments cannot be reversed
by such argumentation. The dishonesty and rascality which exist among
the merchants are fully recognised by the Russians themselves. In all
moral affairs the lower classes in Russia are very lenient in their
judgments, and are strongly disposed, like the Americans, to admire
what is called in Transatlantic phraseology "a smart man," though the
smartness is known to contain a large admixture of dishonesty; and yet
the vox populi in Russia emphatically declares that the merchants as a
class are unscrupulous and dishonest. There is a rude popular play in
which the Devil, as principal dramatis persona, succeeds in cheating all
manner and conditions of men, but is finally overreached by a genuine
Russian merchant. When this play is acted in the Carnival Theatre in St.
Petersburg the audience invariably agrees with the moral of the plot.
If this play were acted in the southern towns near the coast of the
Black Sea it would be necessary to modify it considerably, for here,
in company with Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, the Russian merchants seem
honest by comparison. As to Greeks and Armenians, I know not which of
the two nationalities deserves the palm, but it seems that both are
surpassed by the Children of Israel. "How these Jews do business,"
I have heard a Russian merchant of this region exclaim, "I cannot
understand. They buy up wheat in the villages at eleven roubles per
tchetvert, transport it to the coast at their own expense, and sell it
to the exporters at ten roubles! And yet they contrive to make a profit!
It is said that the Russian trader is cunning, but here 'our brother'
[i.e., the Russian] can do nothing." The truth of this statement I have
had abundant opportunities of confirming by personal investigations on
the spot.
If I might express a general opinion regarding Russian commercial
morality, I should say that trade in Russia is carried on very much on
the same principle as horse-dealing in England. A man who wishes to buy
or sell must trust to his own knowledge and acuteness, and if he gets
the worst of a bargain or lets himself be deceived, he has himself to
blame. Commercial Englishmen on arriving in Russia rarely understand
this, and when they know it theoretically they are too often unable,
from their ignorance of the language, the laws, and the customs of the
people, to turn their theoretical knowledge to account. They indulge,
therefore, at first in endless invectives against the prevailing
dishonesty; but gradually, when they have paid what Germans call
Lehrgeld, they accommodate themselves to circumstances, take large
profits to counterbalance bad debts, and generally succeed--if they have
sufficient energy, mother-wit, and capital--in making a very handsome
income.
The old race of British merchants, however, is rapidly dying out, and I
greatly fear that the rising generation will not be equally successful.
Times have changed. It is no longer possible to amass large fortunes
in the old easy-going fashion. Every year the conditions alter, and
the competition increases. In order to foresee, understand, and take
advantage of the changes, one must have far more knowledge of the
country than the men of the old school possessed, and it seems to me
that the young generation have still less of that knowledge than their
predecessors. Unless some change takes place in this respect, the German
merchants, who have generally a much better commercial education and are
much better acquainted with their adopted country, will ultimately, I
believe, expel their British rivals. Already many branches of commerce
formerly carried on by Englishmen have passed into their hands.
It must not be supposed that the unsatisfactory organisation of the
Russian commercial world is the result of any radical peculiarity of
the Russian character. All new countries have to pass through a similar
state of things, and in Russia there are already premonitory symptoms
of a change for the better. For the present, it is true, the extensive
construction of railways and the rapid development of banks and limited
liability companies have opened up a new and wide field for all kinds
of commercial swindling; but, on the other hand, there are now in every
large town a certain number of merchants who carry on business in the
West-European manner, and have learnt by experience that honesty is
the best policy. The success which many of these have obtained will
doubtless cause their example to be followed. The old spirit of caste
and routine which has long animated the merchant class is rapidly
disappearing, and not a few nobles are now exchanging country life and
the service of the State for industrial and commercial enterprises.
In this way is being formed the nucleus of that wealthy, enlightened
bourgeoisie which Catherine endeavoured to create by legislation; but
many years must elapse before this class acquires sufficient social and
political significance to deserve the title of a tiers-etat.