RUSSIA.
At the very name of Russia a kind of horror fills the souls of those
who love liberty, equality, and detest “caste” and oppression. Russia
is a veritable blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century.
She furnishes an example of all that was horrible under the old
monarchical governments of Europe. Russia’s social life is honeycombed
with anarchy, nihilism, and hatred. Beneath the surface, made smooth by
military despotism, there burns the fierce fires of inextinguishable
hatred. The people are deprived of those rights and liberties enjoyed
by the citizens of even those monarchical governments by which Russia
is surrounded, curtailed though those privileges may appear to the
free American citizen. Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy are almost
respectable in comparison with Russia. There can be, of course, but one
end to such a condition--we can hardly call it civilization--in that
tremendous empire. Revolution and anarchy in its worst form will sooner
or later drench the soil of Russia with blood.
Unfortunately for the future welfare and happiness of the Russians,
their autocratic master, the Czar, permits no existence of a vent-hole
or crater of the volcano upon which the nation slumbers. An election
like that of November 8th in America relieves the pressure. In Russia,
the discontent of the Common People, and all expression of it, are
suppressed by the iron hand that controls the vast horde of soldiers of
which he is master. Russia’s history and record present not one shining
spot to relieve the dark picture of crime, ignorance, oppression,
intolerance, and the suffering of the Common People.
Briefly, Russia contains one-sixth of the land of the entire globe
and one-quarter of the inhabitants. The government is an absolute and
strongly centralized monarchy. It is one of the most arbitrary and
merciless despotisms on the face of the earth.
As the positive and negative poles of an electric battery, or as like
and unlike attract, there has long been a strong friendship between
Russia and our country. The two represent the antipodes of government.
From the period of the appenages (small, petty States, 1054-1238) the
enmity has been in a state of smothered or open revolt. It was overrun
by the fierce Mongols and held under their iron yoke from 1238 to
1462. During that period Moscow and many other cities were burned and
the country devastated.
Ivan III. (1263), during his reign of 43 years, did much to consolidate
the empire, and introduced the knout as an agent of civilization.
Ivan IV., known as Ivan the Terrible, was a ferocious monster
(1533-1584), who first assumed the title of Czar (a Slavonic form of
the Latin Cæsar), committed numerous atrocities, and killed his eldest
son by a blow in a fit of anger.
Peter the Great (1689-1725) was remorseless in his punishment of those
who revolted, as in the case of the streltzi; the rebellion of the
Cossacks of the Don; that of Mazeppa, the hetman of the Little-Russian
Cossacks; he inaugurated serfdom, and tortured his own son, Alexis, to
death.
The rule of Paul was intolerable; he was won over by the artful
diplomacy of Napoleon, and assassinated in March, 1801. In the Polish
insurrection of 1831 the people were ground to powder.
Alexander II. (1855-1881) emancipated the serfs in 1861. It was freedom
only in name. Nihilism sprang up and flourished frightfully. Where his
father daily walked unattended, Alexander was in hourly peril. April
16, 1866, he was shot at by a Pole; the following year another Pole
shot at him while visiting Napoleon at Paris; April 14, 1879, another
Pole attempted to kill him. The same year saw the first attempt to
blow up the United Palace and to wreck the train upon which the Czar
was riding from Moscow to St. Petersburg. A similar conspiracy was
successful, March 13, 1881. Five of the conspirators, including a
woman, were executed. Alexander ruled twenty-six years, and left Russia
exhausted by wars and honeycombed by plots.
He was succeeded by the present Alexander, whose reign has been
characterized by conspiracies and the constant depredations of
suspected persons.
The mines of Siberia have been the living death of hundreds of
thousands of patriots. More than 50,000 Poles were transported thither
after the insurrection of 1863. Since the opening of the present
century more than 600,000 men, women, and children have been sent to
Siberia. All are in the depths of utter misery and despair. Out of
200,000, more than one-third have disappeared without being accounted
for. From 20,000 to 40,000 are living the life of _brodyaghi_--that is,
trying to make their way through the forests to their native provinces
in Russia.
And yet nihilism, socialism, the spirit of revolt, are more powerful
than ever, and ere long will come the upheaval, when all shall be
overturned and “the old shall pass away and all things become new.”
The Russian nobility, with the Czar at their head, as the high priest
of “caste,” are solely and entirely responsible for the spirit of
anarchy and nihilism which is abroad in the domain of immense Russia.
It is a fashion and the fancy of the sham aristocracy in this country
to inveigh against anything like socialism, nihilism, and anarchism in
America. Should the presence of this dread monster, called nihilism,
ever be felt in America, the blame would rest entirely upon the
shoulders of the sham aristocrats, just as the Czar and his nobles in
Russia are responsible for its presence in that country. There must be
a vent for the pent-up indignation of the people; this is, happily for
us, found in the ballot-box. It is to this source of relief that we are
indebted for the non-existence of socialism in America. It has not been
the prudence, wisdom, or consideration of the sham aristocrats which
prevents the growth of nihilism here.