nations possessed of all that Russia lacked, and as finally, it was
imposed upon her by force, and without those gradual transitions and
insensible modifications as necessary to a people as to an individual,
she could not accept it in the frank and cordial manner indispensable to
its beneficent action. A nation which receives a culture ready made, and
not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at
most it can only hope to imitate well. And so it happened with Russia.
Her development does not present the continuous bent, the gentle
undulations of European history in which yesterday creates to-day, and
to-day prepares for to-morrow, without an irregular or awkward halt, or
ever a trace broken. In the social order of Russia primitive
institutions coexist with products of our spick and span new sociology,
and we see the deep waters of the past mixed with the froth of the
Utopia that points out the route of the unknown future. This confusion
or inharmoniousness engenders Russian dualism, the cause of her
political and moral disturbances. Russia contains an ancient people,
to-day an anachronism, and a society in embryo struggling to burst its
bounds.
But above all it is evident there is a people eager to speak, to come
forth, to have a weight in the world, because its long-deferred time has
come; a race which, from an insignificant tribe mewed in around the
sources of the Dnieper, has spread out into an immense nation, whose
territory reaches from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the
borders of Turkey, Persia, and China; a nation which has triumphed over
Sweden, Poland, the Turks, the Mongols, and the French; a nation by
nature expansive, colonizing, mighty in extent, most interesting in the
qualities of the genius it is developing day by day, and which is more
astonishing than its material greatness, because it is the privilege of
intellect to eclipse force. Half a dozen brains and spirits who are now
spelling out their race for us, arrest and captivate all who contemplate
this great empire. Out of the poverty of traditions and institutions
which Russian history bewails, two characteristic ones appear as bases
of national life: the autocracy, and the agrarian commune,--absolute
imperial power and popular democracy.
The geography of Russia, which predisposes her both to unity and to
invasion, which obliges her to concentrate herself, and to seek in a
vigorous autocratic principle the consciousness of independent being as
a people, created the formidable dominion of the Muscovite Czars, which
has no equal in the world. Like all primordial Russian ideas, the plan
of this Cæsarian sovereignty proceeded from Byzantium, and was founded
by Greek refugee priests, who surrounded it with the aureole of divinity
indispensable to the establishment of advantageous superstitions so
fecund in historical results. Since the twelfth century the autocracy
has been a fixed fact, and has gone on assuming all the prerogatives,
absorbing all the power, and symbolizing in the person of one man this
colossal nation. The sovereign princes, discerning clearly the object
and end of these aims, have spared no means to attain to it. They began
by checking the proud Boyars in their train, reducing them from
companions and equals to subjects; later on they devoted themselves to
the suppression of all institutions of democratic character.
For the sake of those who judge of a race by the political forms it
uses, it should be observed that Russia has not only preserved latent in
her the spirit of democracy, but that she possessed in the Middle Ages
republican institutions more liberal and radical than any in the rest of
Europe. The Italian republics, which at bottom were really oligarchies,
cannot compare with the municipal and communist republics of Viatka,
Pskof, and especially the great city of Novgorod, which called itself
with pride Lord Novgorod the Great. The supreme power there resided in
an assembly of the citizens; the prince was content to be an
administrator or president elected by free suffrage, and above all an
ever-ready captain in time of war; on taking his office he swore
solemnly to respect the laws, customs, and privileges of the republic;
if he committed a perjury, the assembly convened in the public square at
the clang of an ancient bell, and the prince, having been declared a
traitor, was stripped, expelled, and _cast into the mud_, according to
the forcible popular expression. This industrious republic reached the
acme of its prosperity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after
which the rising principality of Moscow, now sure of its future, came
and took down the bells of Novgorod the Great, and so silenced their
voices of bronze and the voice of Russian liberties, though not without
a bloody battle, as witnesseth the whirlpool--which is still pointed out
to the curious traveller--under the bridge of the ancient republican
city, whose inhabitants were drowned there by Ivan the Terrible. Upon
their dead bodies he founded the unity of the empire. Nor are the free
towns the only tradition of autonomy which disturbed the growing
autocratic power. The Cossacks for a long time formed an independent and
warlike aristocracy, proud and indomitable; and to subdue and
incorporate these bellicose tribes with the rest of the nation it was
necessary to employ both skill and force.
We may say without vanity that although the Spaniards exalted
monarchical loyalty into a cult, they never depreciated human dignity.
Amongst us the king is he who makes right (_face derecho_), and if he
makes it not, we consider him a tyrant, a usurper of the royal
prerogative; in acknowledging him lord of life and property, we protest
(by the mouth of Calderon's honest rustic) against the idea that he can
arrogate to himself also the dominion over conscience and soul; and the
smallest subject in Spain would not endure at the king's hand the blows
administered by Peter the Great for the correction of his nobles,
themselves descendants of Rurik. In Russia, where the inequalities and
extremes of climate seem to have been communicated to its institutions,
there was nothing between the independent republics and the autocracy.
In Spain, the slightest territorial disaffection, the fruit of partial
conquests or insignificant victories, was an excuse for some upstart
princeling, our instinctive tendencies being always monarchical and
anything like absolute authority and Cæsarism, so odious that we never
allowed it even in our most excellent kings; a dream of imperial power
would almost have cost them the throne. In Russia, absolutism is in the
air,--one sole master, one lord omnipotent, the image of God himself.
Read the Muscovite code. The Czar is named therein _the autocrat whose
power is unlimited_. See the catechism which is taught in the schools of
Poland; it says that the subject owes to the Czar, not love or loyalty,
but adoration. Hear the Russian hymn; amid its harmonies the same idea
resounds. In all the common forms of salutation to the Czar we shall
find something that excites in us a feeling of rebellion, something that
represents us as unworthy to stand before him as one mortal before
another. Paul I. said to a distinguished foreigner, "You must know that
in Russia there is no person more important than the person to whom I
speak and while I speak." A Czar who directs by means of _ukases_ not
only the dress but even the words of the language which his subjects
must use, and changes the track of a railroad by a stroke of his pen,
frightens one even more than when he signs a sentence of proscription;
for he reaches the high-water mark of authority when he interferes in
these simple and unimportant matters, and demonstrates what one may call
the micrography of despotism. If anything can excuse or even commend to
our eyes this obedience carried to an absurdity, it is its paternal
character. There are no offences between fathers and sons, and the Czar
never can insult a subject. The serf calls him _thou_ and _Father_, and
on seeing him pass he takes off his cap though the snow falls, crossing
his hands over his breast with religious veneration. For him the Czar
possesses every virtue, and is moved only by the highest purposes; he
thinks him impeccable, sacred, almost immortal. If we abide by the
judgment of those who see a symbol of the Russian character in the call
of Rurik and the voluntary placing of the power in his hands, the
autocracy will not seem a secular abuse or a violent tyranny, but rather
an organic product of a soil and a race; and it will inspire the respect
drawn forth by any spontaneous and genuine production.
There exists in Russia a small school of thinkers on public affairs,
important by reason of the weight they have had and still have upon
public opinion. They are called Sclavophiles,--people enamoured of their
ancient land, who affirm that the essence of Russian nationality is to
be found in the customs and institutions of the laboring classes who are
not contaminated by the artificial civilization imported from the
corrupt West; who make a point of appearing on occasions in the national
dress,--the red silk blouse and velvet jacket, the long beard and the
clumsy boots. According to them, the only independent forces on which
Russia can count are the people and the Czar,--the immense herd of
peasants, and, at the top, the autocrat. And in fact the Russian empire,
in spite of official hierarchies, is a rural state in which the
sentiment of democratic equality predominates so entirely that the
people, not content with having but yesterday taken the Czar's part
against the rich and mighty Boyars, sustains him to-day against the
revolution, loves him, and cannot conceive of intermediaries between him
and his subjects, between lord and vassal, or, to put it still more
truly, between father and son. And having once reduced the nobles, with
the consent of the people, to the condition of inoffensive hangers-on of
the court, many thinkers believe that the Czar need only lean upon the
rude hand of the peasant to quell whatever political disaffection may
arise. So illimitable is the imperial power, that it becomes impotent
against itself if it would reduce itself by relegating any of its
influence to a class, such as, for instance, the aristocracy. If
turbulent magnates or sullen conspirators manage to get rid of the
person of the Czar, the principle still remains inviolate.
VI.
The Agrarian Communes.
At the right hand of the imperial power stands the second Russian
national institution, the municipal commune known as the _mir_, which is
arresting the attention of European statesmen and sociologists, since
they have learned of its existence (thanks to the work of Baron
Haxsthausen on the internal life of Russia). Who is not astonished at
finding realized in the land of the despots a large number of the
communist theories which are the terror of the middle classes in
liberal countries, and various problems, of the kind we call formidable,
there practically solved? And why should not a nation often called
barbarous swell with pride at finding itself, suddenly and without noise
or effort, safely beyond what in others threatens the extremity of
social revolution? Therefore it happens that since the discovery of the
_mir_, the Russians have one argument more, and not a weak one, against
the corrupt civilization of the Occident. The European nations, they
say, are running wildly toward anarchy, and in some, as England, the
concentration of property in a few hands creates a proletariat a
thousand times more unhappy than the Russian serf ever was, a hungry
horde hostile to the State and to the wealthy classes. Russia evades
this danger by means of the _mir_. In the Russian village the land
belongs to the municipality, amongst whose members it is distributed
periodically; each able-bodied individual receives what he needs, and is
spared hunger and disgrace.
Foreigners have not been slow to examine into the advantages of such an
arrangement. Mackenzie Wallace has pronounced it to be truly
constitutional, as the phrase is understood in his country; not meaning
a sterile and delusive law, written upon much paper and enwrapped in
formulas, but a traditional concept which came forth at the bidding of
real and positive necessities. What an eloquent lesson for those who
think they have improved upon the plan of the ages! History, scouting
our thirst for progress, offers us again in the _mir_ the picture of the
serpent biting his own tail. This institution, so much lauded by the
astonished traveller and the meditative philosopher, is really a
sociological fossil, remains of prehistoric times, preserved in Russia
by reason of the suspension or slow development of the history of the
race. Students of law have told me that in the ancient forms of
Castilian realty, those of Santander, for example, there have been
discovered traces of conditions analogous to the Russian _mir_. And when
I have seen the peasants of my own province assembled in the
church-porch after Mass, I have imagined I could see the remains of this
Saturnian and patriarchal type of communist partition. Common possession
of the land is a primitive idea as remote as the prehistoric ages; it
belongs to the paleontology of social science, and in those countries
where civilization early flourished, gave way before individual interest
and the modern idea of property. "Happy age and blessed times were
those," exclaimed Don Quixote, looking at a handful of acorns, "which
the ancients called golden, and not because gold which in our iron age
has such a value set on it, not because gold could be got without any
trouble, but because those who lived in it were ignorant of those two
words, _mine_ and _thine_! In that blessed age everything was in common;
nobody needed to take any more trouble for his necessities than to
stretch forth his hand and take from the great oak-trees the sweet and
savory fruit so liberally offered!" Gone long ago for us is the time
deplored by the ingenious knight, but it has reappeared there in the
North, where, according to our information, it is still recent; for it
is thought that the _mir_ was established about the sixteenth century.
The character of the _mir_ is entirely democratic; the oldest peasant
represents the executive power in the municipal assembly, but the
authority resides in the assembly itself, which consists of all the
heads of families, and convenes Sundays in the open air, in the public
square or the church-porch. The assembly wields a sacred power which no
one disputes. Next to the Czar the Russian peasant loves his _mir_,
among whose members the land is in common, as also the lake, the mills,
the canals, the flocks, the granary, the forest. It is all re-divided
from time to time, in order to avoid exclusive appropriation. Half the
cultivable land in the empire is subject to this system, and no
capitalist or land-owner can disturb it by acquiring even an inch of
municipal territory; the laborer is born invested with the right of
possession as certainly as we are all entitled to a grave. In spite of a
feeling of distrust and antipathy against communism, and of my own
ignorance in these matters which precludes my judgment of them, I must
confess to a certain agreement with the ardent apologists of the Russian
agrarian municipality. Tikomirov says that in Russia individual and
collective property-rights still quarrel, but that the latter has the
upper hand; this seems strange, since the modern tendency is decidedly
toward individualism, and it is hard to conceive of a return to
patriarchal forms; but there is no reason to doubt the vitality of the
_mir_ and its generation and growth in the heart of the fatherland, and
this is certainly worthy of note, especially in a country like Russia,
so much given to the imitation of foreign models. Mere existence and
permanence is no _raison d'être_ for any institution, for many exist
which are pernicious and abominable; but when an institution is found to
be in harmony with the spirit of the people, it must have a true merit
and value. It is said that the tendency to aggregate, either in agrarian
municipalities or in trades guilds and corporations, is born in the
blood and bred in the bone of the Sclavs, and that they carry out these
associations wherever they go, by instinct, as the bee makes its cells
always the same; and it is certainly true that as an ethnic force the
communistic principle claims a right to develop itself in Russia. It is
certain that the _mir_ fosters in the poor Russian village habits of
autonomous administration and municipal liberty, and that in the shadow
of this humble and primitive institution men have found a common home
within the fatherland, no matter how scattered over its vast plains.
"The heavens are very high, and the Czar is far off," says the Russian
peasant sadly, when he is the victim of any injustice; his only refuge
is the _mir_, which is always close at hand. The _mir_ acts also as a
counterbalance to a centralized administration, which is an inevitable
consequence of the conformation of Russian territory; and it creates an
advantageous solidarity among the farmers, who are equal owners of the
same heritages and subject to the same taxes.
Since 1861 the rural governments, released from all seignorial
obligations, elect their officers from among themselves, and the smaller
municipal groups, still preserving each its own autonomy, meet together
in one larger municipal body called _volost_, which corresponds to the
better-known term _canton_. No institution could be more democratic:
here the laboring man discusses his affairs _en famille_, without
interference from other social classes; the _mir_ boasts of it, as also
of the fact that it has never in its corporate existence known head or
chief, even when its members were all serfs. In fine, the _mir_ holds
its sessions without any presiding officer; rooted in the communist and
equal-rights idea, it acknowledges no law of superiority; it votes by
unanimous acclamation; the minority yields always to the general
opinion, to oppose which would be thought base obstinacy. "Only God
shall judge the _mir_" says the proverb; the word _mir_, say the
etymological students and admirers of the institution, means, "world,"
"universe," "complete and perfect microcosm," which is sufficient unto
itself and is governed by its own powers.
To what does the _mir_ owe its vitality? To the fact that it did not
originate in the mind of the Utopian or the ideologist, but was produced
naturally by derivation from the family, from which type the whole
Russian state organization springs. It should be understood, however,
that the peasant family in Russia differs from our conception of the
institution, recalling as it does, like all purely Russian institutions,
the most ancient or prehistoric forms. The family, or to express it in
the language of the best writers on the subject, _the great Russian
family_, is an association of members submitted to the absolute
authority of the eldest, generally the grandfather,--a fact personally
interesting to me because of the surprising resemblance it discloses
between Russia and the province of Gallicia, where I perceive traces of
this family power in the _petrucios_, or elders. In this association
everything is in common, and each individual works for all the others.
To the head of the house is given a name which may be translated as
administrator, major-domo, or director of works, but conveys no idea of
relationship. The laws of inheritance and succession are understood in
the same spirit, and very differently from our custom. When a house or
an estate is to be settled, the degree of relationship among the heirs
is not considered; the whole property is divided equally between the
male adults, including natural or adopted sons if they have served in
the family the same as legitimate sons, while the married daughter is
considered as belonging to the family of her husband, and she and the
son who has separated himself from the parent house are excluded from
the succession, or rather from the final liquidation or settlement
between the associates. Although there is a law of inheritance written
in the Russian Code, it is a dead letter to a people opposed to the idea
of individual property.
Intimately connected with this communist manner of interpreting the
rights of inheritance and succession are certain facts in Russian
history. For a long time the sovereign authority was divided among the
sons of the ruler; and as the Russian nobility rebelled against the
establishment of differences founded upon priority in birth, entail and
primogeniture took root with difficulty, in spite of the efforts made by
the emperors to import Occidental forms of law. Their idea of succession
is so characteristic that, like the Goths, they sometimes prefer the
collateral to the immediate branch, and the brother instead of the son
will mount the steps of the throne. It is important to note these
radical differences, because a race which follows an original method in
the matter of its laws has a great advantage in setting out upon genuine
literary creations.
But while the family, understood as a group or an association, offers
many advantages from the agrarian point of view, its disadvantages are
serious and considerable because it annuls individual liberty. It
facilitates agricultural labors, it puts a certain portion of land at
the service of each adult member, as well as tools, implements, fuel,
and cattle; helps each to a maintenance; precludes hunger; avoids legal
exactions (for the associated family cannot be taxed, just as the _mir_
cannot be deprived of its lands); but on the other hand it puts the
individual, or rather the true family, the human pair, under an
intolerable domestic tyranny. According to traditional usage, the
authority of the head of the family was omnipotent: he ordered his
house, as says an old proverb, like a Khan of the Crimea; his gray hairs
were sacred, and he wielded the power of a tribal chieftain rather than
of a head of a house. In our part of the world marriage emancipates; in
Russia, it was the first link in a galling chain. The oppression lay
heaviest upon the woman: popular songs recount the sorrows of the
daughters-in-law subjected to the maltreatment of mothers-in-law and
sisters-in-law, or the victims of the vicious appetites of the chief,
who in a literally Biblical spirit thought himself lord of all that
dwelt beneath his roof. Truly those institutions which sometimes elicit
our admiration for their patriarchal simplicity hide untold iniquities,
and develop a tendency to the abuse of power which seems inherent in the
human species.
At first sight nothing could be more attractive than the great Russian
family, nothing more useful than the rural communes; and nowadays, when
we are applying the laws and technicism of physiology to the study of
society, this primordial association would seem the cell from which the
true organism of the State may be born; the family is a sort of lesser
municipality, the municipality is a larger family, and the whole Russian
people is an immense agglomeration, a great ant-hill whose head is the
emperor. In the popular songs we see the Oriental idea of the nation
expressed as the family, when the peasant calls the Czar _father_. But
this primitive machinery can never prevail against the notion of
individualism entertained among civilized peoples. Our way of
understanding property, which the admirers of the Russian commune
consider fundamentally vicious, is the only way compatible with the
independence and dignity of work and the development of industries and
arts. The Russian _mir_ may prevent the growth of the proletariat, but
it is by putting mankind in bonds. It may be said that agrarian
communism only differs from servitude in that the latter provides one
master and the former many; and that though the laboring man
theoretically considers himself a member of a co-operative agricultural
society, he is in reality a slave, subject to collective
responsibilities and obligations, by virtue of which he is tied to the
soil the same as the vassals of our feudal epochs. Perhaps the new
social conditions which are the fruit of the emancipation of the serfs,
which struck at and violated the great associated family, will at last
undermine the _mir_, unless the _mir_ learns some way to adapt itself to
any political mutations. What is most important to the study of the
historical development and the social ideas as shown in modern Russian
literature, is to understand how by means of the great family and the
agrarian municipality, communism and socialism run in the veins of the
people of Russia, so that Leroy-Beaulieu could say with good reason,
that if they are to be preserved from the pernicious effects of the
Occidental proletariat it must be by inoculation, as vaccination exempts
from small-pox.
The socialist leaven may be fairly said to lie in the most important
class in the Russian State,--important not alone by reason of numerical
superiority, but because it is the depositary of the liveliest national
energies and the custodian of the future: I mean the peasants. There
are some who think that this _mitjik_, this _little man_ or _black man_,
tiller of still blacker soil, holds the future destinies of Europe in
his hands; and that when this great new Horde becomes conscious some day
of its strength and homogeneity, it will rise, and in its concentrated
might fall upon some portion of the globe, and there will be no defence
or resistance possible. In the rest of Europe it is the cities, the
urban element, which regulates the march of political events. Certainly
Spain is not ignorant of this fact, since she has a vivid remembrance of
civil wars in which the rustic element, representing tradition, was
vanquished. In Russia, the cities have no proportionate influence, and
that which demands the special attention of the governor or the
revolutionist is the existence, needs, and thoughts of the innumerable
peasant communities, who are the foundation and material of an empire
justly termed rural. From this is derived a sort of cult, an apotheosis
which is among the most curious to be found in Russian modern
literature. Of the peasant, wrapped in badly cured sheepskins, and
smelling like a beast; the humble and submissive peasant, yesterday
laden with the chains of servitude; the dirty, cabbage-eating peasant,
drunk with _wodka_, who beats his wife and trembles with fright at
ghosts, at the Devil, and at thunder,--of this peasant, the charity of
his friends and the poetic imagination of Russian writers has made a
demi-god, an ideal. So great is the power of genius, that without
detriment to the claims of truth, picturing him with accurate and even
brutal realism (which we shall find native to the Russian novel),
Russian authors have distilled from this peasant a poetic essence which
we inhale involuntarily until we, aristocratic by instinct, disdainful
of the rustic, given to ridicule the garlic-smelling herd, yield to its
power. And not content with seeing in this peasant a brother, a
neighbor, whom, according to the word of Christ, we ought to love and
succor, Russian literature discovers in him a certain indefinable
sublimity, a mysterious illumination which other social classes have
not. Not merely because of the introduction of the picturesque element
in the description of popular customs has it been said that Russian
contemporary literature smells of the peasant, but far rather because it
raises the peasant to the heights of human moral grandeur, marks in him
every virtue, and presupposes him possessed of powers which he never
puts forth. From Turguenief, fine poet as he is, to Chtchédrine, the
biting satirist, all paint the peasant with loving touch, always find a
ready excuse for his defects, and lend him rare qualities, without ever
failing to show faithfully his true physiognomy. Corruption, effeminacy,
and vice characterize the upper classes, particularly the employees of
government, or any persons charged with public trusts; and to make these
the more odious, they are attributed with a detestable hypocrisy made
more hateful by apparent kindliness and culture.
There is a humorous little novel by Chtchédrine (an author who merits
especial mention) entitled "The Generals[1] and the _Mujik_," which
represents two generals of the most ostentatious sort, transported to a
desert island, unable either to get food or to get away, until they meet
with a _mujik_, who performs all sorts of services for them, even to
_making broth in the hollow of his hand_, and then, after making a raft,
conveys them safely to St. Petersburg; whereupon these knavish generals,
after recovering back pay, send to their deliverer a glass of whiskey
and a sum amounting to about three cents. But this bitter allegory is a
mild one compared with the mystical apotheosis of the _mujik_ as
conceived by Tolstoï. In one of his works, "War and Peace," the hero,
after seeking vainly by every imaginable means to understand all human
wisdom and divine revelation, finds at last the sum of it in a common
soldier, imperturbable and dull of soul, and poor in spirit, a prisoner
of the French, who endures with calm resignation ill treatment and death
without once entertaining the idea of taking the life of his foreign
captors. This poor fellow, who, owing to his rude, uncouth mode of life,
suffers persecution by other importunate lesser enemies which I forbear
to name, is the one to teach Pierre Besukof the alpha and omega of all
philosophy, wherein he is wise by intuition, and, in virtue of his
condition as the peasant, fatalistic and docile.
I have had the good fortune to see with my own eyes this idol of Russian
literature, and to satisfy a part of my curiosity concerning some
features of Holy Russia. Twenty or thirty peasants from Smolensk who had
been bitten by a rabid wolf were sent to Paris to be treated by M.
Pasteur. In company with some Russian friends I went to a small hotel,
mounted to the fourth floor, and entered a narrow sleeping apartment.
The air being breathed by ten or twelve human beings was scarcely
endurable, and the fumes of carbolic acid failed to purify it; but while
my companions were talking with their compatriots, and a Russian
young-lady medical student dressed their wounds, I studied to my heart's
content these men from a distant land. I frankly confess that they made
a profound impression upon me which I can only describe by saying that
they seemed to me like Biblical personages. It gave me a certain
pleasure to see in them the marks of an ancient people, rude and rough
in outward appearance, but with something majestic and monumental about
them, and yet with a suggestion of latent juvenility, the grave and
religious air of dreamer or seer, different from really Oriental
peoples. Their features, as well as their limbs (which bearing the marks
of the wild beast's teeth they held out to be washed and dressed with
tranquil resignation), were large and mighty like a tree. One old man
took my attention particularly, because he presented a type of the
patriarchs of old, and might have served the painter as a model for
Abraham or Job,--a wide skull bald at the top, fringed about with
yellowish white hair like a halo; a long beard streaked with white also;
well-cut features, frontal development very prominent, his eyes half
hidden beneath bushy eyebrows. The arm which he uncovered was like an
old tree-trunk, rough and knotty, the thick sinuous network of veins
reminding one of the roots; his enormous hands, wrinkled and horny,
bespoke a life of toil, of incessant activity, of daily strife with the
energies of Mother Nature. I heard with delight, though without
understanding a word, their guttural speech, musical and harmonious
withal, and I needed not to heat my imagination overmuch to see in those
poor peasants the realization of the great novelists' descriptions, and
an expression of patience and sadness which raised them above vulgarity
and coarseness. The sadness may have been the result of their unhappy
situation; nevertheless it seemed sweet and poetic.
The attraction which _the people_ exercises upon refined and cultivated
minds is not surprising. Who has not sometimes experienced with terrible
keenness what may be called the æsthetic effect of collectivity? A
regiment forming, the crew of a ship about to weigh anchor, a
procession, an angry mob,--these have something about them that is epic
and sublime; so any peasant, if we see in him an epitome of race or
class, with his historic consequence and his unconscious majesty, may
and ought to interest us. The _payo_ of Avila who passes me
indifferently in the street; the beggar in Burgos who asks an alms with
courteous dignity, wrapped in his tattered clothes as though they were
garments of costly cloth; the Gallician lad who guides his yoke of oxen
and creaking cart,--these not only stir in my soul a sentiment of
patriotism, but they have for me an æsthetic charm which I never feel in
the presence of a dress-coat and a stiff hat. Perhaps this effect
depends rather on the spectator, and it may be our fancy that produces
it; for, as regards the Russian peasant, those who know him well say
that he is by nature practical and positive, and not at all inclined to
the romantic and sentimental. The Sclav race is a rich poetic
wellspring, but it depends upon what one means by poetry. For example,
in love matters, the Russian peasant is docile and prosaic to the last
degree. The hardy rustic is supposed to need two indispensable
accessories for his work,--a woman and a horse; the latter is procured
for him by the head or _old man_ of the house, the former by the _old
woman_; the wedding is nothing more than the matriculation of the
farmer; the pair is incorporated with the great family, the agricultural
commune, and that is the end of the idyl. Amorous and gallant conduct
among peasants would be little fitting, given the low estimation in
which women are held. Although the Russian peasant considers the woman
independent, subject neither to father nor husband, invested with equal
rights with men; and although the widow or the unmarried woman who is
head of the house takes part in the deliberations of the _mir_ and may
even exercise in it the powers of a mayor (and in order to preserve this
independence many peasant-women remain unmarried), this consideration is
purely a social one, and individually the woman has no rights whatever.
A song of the people says that seven women together have not so much as
one soul, rather none at all, for their soul is smoke. The theory of
marriage relations is that the husband ought to love his wife as he does
his own soul, to measure and treasure her as he does his sheepskin coat:
the rod sanctions the contract. In some provinces of Finnish or Tartar
origin the bride is still bought and sold like a head of cattle; it is
sometimes the custom still to steal her, or to feign a rape, symbolizing
indeed the idea of woman as a slave and the booty of war. So rigorous is
the matrimonial yoke, that parricides are numerous, and the jury,
allowing attenuating circumstances, generally pardons them.
Tikomirov, who, though a radical, is a wise and sensible man, says, that
far from considering the masses of the people as models worthy of
imitation, he finds them steeped in absolute ignorance, the victims of
every abuse and of administrative immorality; deprived for many
centuries of intercourse with civilized nations, they have not outgrown
the infantile period, they are superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan, as
shown by their legends and popular songs. They believe blindly in
witchcraft, to the extent that to discredit a political party with them
one has only to insinuate that it is given to the use of sorcery and the
black arts. The peasant has also an unconquerable propensity to
stealing, lying, servility, and drunkenness. Wherefore, then, is he
judged superior to the other classes of society?
In spite of the puerile humility to which the Russian peasant is
predisposed by long years of subjection, he yet obeys a democratic
impulse toward equality, which servitude has not obliterated; the
Russian does not understand the English peasant's respect for the
_gentleman_, nor the French reverence for the _chevalier_ well-dressed
and decorated. When the government of Poland ordered certain Cossack
executions of the nobility, these children of the steppes asked one
another, "Brother, has the shadow of my body increased?" Taught to
govern himself, thanks to the municipal regimen, the Russian peasant
manifests in a high degree the sentiment of human equality, an idea both
Christian and democratic, rather more deeply rooted in those countries
governed by absolute monarchy and municipal liberty, than in those of
parliamentary institutions. The Spaniard says, "None lower than the
King;" the Russian says the same with respect to the Czar. Primitive and
credulous, a philosopher in his way, the dweller on the Russian steppes
wields a dynamic force displayed in history by collectivities, be the
moral value of the individual what it may. In nations like Russia, in
which the upper classes are educated abroad, and are, like water,
reflectors and nothing more, the originality, the poetry, the epic
element, is always with the masses of the people, which comes out strong
and beautiful in supreme moments, a faithful custodian of the national
life, as for example when the butcher Minine saved his country from the
yoke of Sweden, or when, before the French invasion of 1812, they
organized bands of guerillas, or set fire to Moscow.
Hence in Russia, as in France prior to the Revolution, many thinkers
endeavor to revive the antiquated theory of the Genevan philosopher, and
proclaim the superiority of the natural man, by contact with whom
society, infected with Occidental senility, must be regenerated.
Discouraged by the incompatibility between the imported European
progress and the national tradition, unable to still the political
strife of a country where pessimist solutions are most natural and
weighty, their patriotism now uplifts, now shatters their hopes, even in
the case of those who disclaim and condemn individual patriotism, such
as Count Tolstoï; and then ensues the apotheosis of the past, the
veneration of national heroes and of the people. "The people is great,"
says Turguenief in his novel "Smoke;" "we are mere ragamuffins." And so
_the people_, which still bears traces of the marks of servitude, has
been converted into a mysterious divinity, the inspiration of
enthusiastic canticles.
[1] Voguié explains this title of "General" to be both in the civil and
military order with the qualification of "Excellency." Without living in
Russia one can hardly understand the prestige attached to this title, or
the facilities it gives everywhere for everything. To attain this
dignity is the supreme ambition of all the servants of the State. The
common salutation by way of pleasantry among friends is this line from
the comedy of Griboiëdof, which has become a proverb: "I wish you health
and the tchin of a General."--TR.
VII.
Social Classes in Russia.
Properly speaking, there are no social classes in Russia, a phenomenon
which explains to some extent the political life and internal
constitution; there is no co-ordinate proportion between the rural and
the urban element, and at first sight one sees in this vast empire only
the innumerable mass of peasants, just as on the map one sees only a
wide and monotonous plain. Although it is true that a rural and
commercial aristocracy did arise and flourish in old Moscow in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the era of invasions, yet the passions
of the wars that followed gave it the death-blow. The middle classes in
the rich and independent republics lost their wealth and influence, and
the people, being unable of themselves to reorganize the State,
sustained the princes, who soon became autocrats, ready at the first
chance to subdue the nobles and unite the disintegrated and war-worn
nation. With the sub-division into independent principalities and the
institution of democratic municipalities the importance of the cities
decreased, and the privileged classes were at an end. The middle class
is the least important. In the same districts where formerly it was most
powerful it has been dissolved by the continuous infusion of the
peasant element, owing to the curious custom of emigration, which is
spontaneous with this nomadic and colonizing people. Many farmers,
although enrolled in the rural villages, spend a large part of the year
in the city, filling some office, and forming a hybrid class between the
rural and artisan classes, thus sterilizing the natural instincts of the
laboring proletariat by the enervation of city life. The emperors were
not blind to the disproportion between the civic and rural elements, and
have endeavored to remedy it. The industrial and commercial population
fled from the cities to escape the taxes; therefore they promulgated
laws prohibiting emigration and the renunciation of civic rights, under
severe penalties. Yet with all these the cities have taken but a second
place in Russian history. Western annals are full of sieges, defences,
and mutinies of cities; in Russia we hear only of the insurrection of
wandering tribes or hordes of peasants. Russian cities exist and live
only at the mandate or protection of the emperor. Every one knows what
extraordinary means were taken by Peter the Great to build St.
Petersburg upon the swamps along the Neva; in twenty-three years that
remarkable woman called the Semiramis of the North founded no less than
two hundred and sixteen cities, determined to create a mesocratic
element, to the lack of which she attributed the ignorance and misery of
her empire. Whenever we see any rapid advancement in Russia we may be
sure it is the work of autocracy, a beneficence of despotism (that word
so shocking to our ears). It was despotism which created the modern
capital opposite the old Byzantine, legendary, retrogressive town,--the
new so different from the old, so full of the revolutionary spirit, its
streets undermined by conspirators, its pavements red with the blood of
a murdered Czar. These cities, colleges, schools, universities,
theatres, founded by imperial and autocratic hands, were the cradle of
the political unrest that rebels against their power; were there no
cities, there would be no revolutions in Russia. Although they do not
harbor crowds of famishing authors like those of London and Paris, who
lie in wait for the day of sack and ruin, yet they are full of a strange
element composed of people of divers extraction and condition, and of
small intellect, but who call themselves emphatically _the intelligence
of Russia_.
I have felt compelled to render justice to the good will of the
autocrats; and to be equally just I must say that whatever has advanced
culture in Russia has proceeded from the nobility, and this without
detriment to the fact that the larger energies lie with the masses of
the people. The enlightenment and thirst for progress manifested by the
nobility is everywhere apparent in Russian history. They are descended
from the retinues of the early Muscovite Czars, to whom were given
wealth and lands on condition of military service, and they are
therefore in their origin unlike any other European nobility; they have
known nothing of feudalism, nor the Germanic symbolism of blazons, arms,
titles, and privileges, pride of race and notions of caste: these have
had no influence over them. The Boyars, who are the remnants of the
ancient territorial aristocracy, on losing their sovereign rights,
rallied round the Czar in the quality of court councillors, and received
gold and treasure in abundance, but never the social importance of the
Spanish grandee or the French baron. Hence the Russian aristocracy was
an instrument of power, but without class interests, replenished
continually by the infusion of elements from other social classes, for
no barrier prevented the peasant from becoming a merchant and the
merchant from becoming a noble, if the fates were kind. There are
legally two classes of aristocracy in Russia,--the transmissible, or
hereditary, and the personal, which is not hereditary. If the latter
surprise us for a moment, it soon strikes us with favor, since we all
acknowledge to an occasional or frequent protest against the idea of
hereditary nobility, as when we lament that men of glorious renown are
represented by unworthy or insignificant descendants. In Russia, Krilof,
the Æsop of Moscow, as he is called, put this protest into words in the
fable of the peasant who was leading a flock of geese to the city to
sell. The geese complained of the unkindness with which they were
treated, adding that they were entitled to respect as being the
descendants of the famous birds that saved the Capitol, and to whom Rome
had dedicated a feast. "And what great thing have _you_ done?" asked the
peasant. "We? Oh, nothing." "Then to the oven!" he replied.
The only title of purely national origin in Russia is that of
prince;[1] all others are of recent importation from Europe; in the
family of the prince, as in that of the humblest _mujik_, the sons are
equals in rights and honors, and the fortune of the father, as well as
his title, descends equally to all. Feudalism, the basis of nobility as
a class, never existed in Russia: according to Sclavophiles, because
Russia never suffered conquest in those ancient times; according to
positivist historians, by reason of geographical structure which did not
favor seignorial castles and bounded domains, or any other of those
appurtenances of feudalism dear to romance and poetry, and really
necessary to its existence,--the moated wall, the mole overhanging some
rocky precipice washed by an angry torrent, and below at its foot, like
a hen-roost beneath a vulture's nest, the clustered huts of the vassals.
But we have seen that the Russian nobility acknowledges no law of
superiority; like the people, they hold the idea of divisible and common
property. Hence this aristocracy, less haughty than that of Europe,
ruled by imperial power, subject until the time of Peter III. to
insulting punishment by whip or rod, and which, at the caprice of the
Czar, might at any time be degraded to the quality of buffoons for any
neglect of a code of honor imposed by the traditions of their
race,--never drew apart from the life of the nation, and, on the
contrary, was always foremost in intellectual matters. Russian
literature proves this, for it is the work of the Russian nobility
mainly, and the ardent sympathy for the people displayed in it is
another confirmation. Tolstoï, a noble, feels an irrepressible
tenderness, a physical attraction toward the peasant; Turguenief, a
noble and a rich man, in his early years consecrated himself by a sort
of vow to the abolition of servitude.
The same lack of class prejudices has made the Russian nobility a quick
soil for the repeated ingrafting of foreign culture according to the
fancy of the emperors. Catherine II. found little difficulty in
modelling her court after that of Versailles; but the same aristocracy
that powdered and perfumed itself at her behest adopted more important
reforms to a degree that caused Count Rostopchine to exclaim, "I can
understand the French citizen's lending a hand in the revolution to
acquire his rights, but I cannot understand the Russian's doing the same
to lose his." They are so accustomed to holding the first place in
intellectual matters, that no privilege seems comparable to that of
standing in the vanguard of advanced thought. They had been urged to
frequent the lyceums and debating societies, to take up serious studies
and scientific education by the word of rulers who were enlightened, and
friends to progress (as were many of them), when all at once sciences
and studies, books and the press, began to be suspected, the censorship
was established, and the conspiracy of December was the signal for the
rupture between authority and the liberal thought of the country. But
the nobles who had tasted of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
did not resign themselves easily to the limited horizon offered by the
School of Pages or the antechamber of the palace; their hand was upon
the helm, and rather than let it go they generously immolated their
material interests and social importance. The aristocracy is everywhere
else the support of the throne, but in Russia it is a destroying
element; and while the people remains attached to the autocrat, the
nobles learn in the very schools founded by the emperors to pass
judgment upon the supreme authority and to criticise the sovereign.
Nicholas I. did not fail to realize that these establishments of
learning were focuses of revolutionary ardor, and he systematically
reduced the number of students and put limits to scientific education.
It follows that the most reactionary class, or the most unstable class
in Russia, the class painted in darkest colors by the novelists and used
as a target for their shafts by the satirists, is not the noble but the
bureaucratic, the office-holders, the members of the _tchin_ (an
institution Asiatic in form, comparable perhaps to a Chinese
mandarinate). Peter the Great, in his zeal to set everything in order,
drew up the famous categories wherein the Russian official microcosm is
divided into a double series of fourteen grades each, from
ecclesiastical dignitaries to the military. This Asiatic sort of
machinery (though conceived by the great imitator of the West) became
generally abhorred, and excited a national antipathy, less perhaps for
its hollow formalism than on account of the proverbial immorality of the
officers catalogued in it. Mercenariness, pride, routine, and indolence
are the capital sins of the Russian office-holder, and the first has so
strong a hold upon him that the people say, "To make yourself understood
by him you must talk of rubles;" adding that in Russia everybody robs
but Christ, who cannot because his hands are nailed down. Corruption is
general; it mounts upward like a turbid wave from the humblest clerk to
the archduke, generalissimo, or admiral. It is a tremendous ulcer, that
can only be cured by a cautery of literary satire, the avenging muse of
Gogol, and the dictatorial initiative of the Czars. In a country
governed by parliamentary institutions it would be still more difficult
to apply a remedy.
The contrast is notable between the odium inspired by the bureaucracy
and the sympathy that greets the municipal institutions,--not only those
of a patriarchal character such as the _mir_, but those too of a more
modern origin. Among the latter may be mentioned the _zemstvo_, or
territorial assembly, analogous to our provincial deputations, but of
more liberal stripe, and entirely decentralized. In this all classes are
represented, and not, as in the _mir_, the peasants merely. The form of
this local parliament is extremely democratic; the cities, the peasants,
and the property-holders elect separate representatives, and the
assembly devotes itself to the consideration of plain but interesting
practical questions of hygiene, salubrity, safety, and public
instruction. This offers another opportunity to the nobility, for this
body engages itself particularly with the well-being and progress of the
poorer classes, in providing physicians for the villages in place of the
ignorant herb-doctors, in having the _mujiks_ taught to read, and in
guarding their poor wooden houses from fire.
While the Russian nobility has never slept, the Russian clergy, on the
contrary, has been permanently wrapped in lethargy. The rôle accorded to
the Greek Church is dull and depressing, a petrified image, fixed and
archaic as the _icons_, or sacred pictures, which still copy the
coloring and design of the Byzantine epoch. Ever since it was rent by
schism from the parent trunk of Catholicism, life has died in its roots
and the sap has frozen in its veins. Since Peter the Great abolished the
Patriarchy, the ecclesiastical authority resides in a Synod composed of
prelates elected by the government. According to the ecclesiastical
statutes, the emperor is Head of the church, supreme spiritual chief;
and though there has been promulgated no dogma of his infallibility, it
amounts to the same in effect, for he may bind and loose at will. At the
Czar's command the church anathematizes, as when for example to-day the
_popes_ are ordered to preach against the growing desire for partition
of land, against socialism, and against the political enemies of the
government; the priest is given a model sermon after which he must
pattern his own; and such is his humiliation that sometimes he is
obliged by order of the Synod to send information, obtained through his
office as confessor, to the police, thus revealing the secrets of
confiding souls. What a loss of self-respect must follow such a
proceeding! Is it a marvel that some independent schismatics called
_raskolniks_, revivalists and followers of ancient rites and truths,
should thrive upon the decadence of the official clergy, who are
subjected to such insulting servitude and must give to Cæsar what
belongs to God?
In view of these facts it is in vain to boast of spiritual independence
and say that the Greek church knows no head but Christ. The government
makes use of the clergy as of one arm more, which, however, is now
almost powerless through corruption. The Oriental church has no
conception of the noble devotion which has honored Catholicism in the
lives of Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Cardinal Cisneros.
The Russian clergy is divided into _black_ and _white_, or regular and
secular; the former, powerful and rich, rule in ecclesiastical
administration; the latter vegetate in the small villages, ill paid and
needy, using their wits to live at the expense of their parishioners,
and to wheedle them out of a dozen eggs or a handful of meal. Is it
strange that the parishioner respects them but little? Is it strange
that the _pope_ lives in gross pride or scandalous immorality, and that
we read of his stealing money from under the pillow of a dying man, of
one who baptized a dog, of another who was ducked in a frozen pond by
his _barino_, or landlord, for the amusement of his guests? It is true
that a few occasional facts prove nothing against a class, and that
malice will produce from any source hurtful anecdotes and more or less
profane details touching sacred things; but to my mind, that which tells
most strongly against the Russian clergy is its inanity, its early
intellectual death, which shut it out completely from scientific
reflection, controversy, and apology, and therefore from all
philosophy,--realms in which the Catholic clergy has excelled. Like a
stripped and lifeless trunk the Oriental church produces no theologians,
thinkers, or _savants_. There are none to elaborate, define, and ramify
her dogmas; the human mind in her sounds no depths of mystery. If there
are no conflicts between religion and science in Russia, it is because
the Muscovite church weighs not a shadow with the free-thinkers.
Certainly the adherents and members of the earlier church bear away the
palm for culture and spiritual independence. At the close of the
seventeenth century, after the struggles with Sweden and Poland, the
schismatic church aroused the national conscience, and satisfied, to a
certain extent, the moral needs of a race naturally religious by
temperament It began to discuss liturgical minutiæ, and persecuted
delinquents so fiercely that it infused all dissenters with a spirit of
protest against an authority which was disposed to treat them like
bandits or wild beasts. Such persecution demonstrates the fact that not
only ecclesiastical but secular power is irritated by heterodoxy. In
Russia, whose slumbering church is unmoved even by a thunder-bolt, an
instinct of orderliness led the less devout of the emperors against the
schismatics. To-day there are from twelve to fifteen millions of
schismatics and sects; and many among them are given to the coarsest
superstitions, practise obscene and cruel rites, worship the Devil, and
mutilate themselves in their insane fervors. Probably Russia is the only
country in the civilized world to-day where superstition, quietism, and
mysticism, without law or limit, grow like poisonous trees; and in my
work on Saint Francis of Assisi I have remarked how the communist
heresies of the Middle Ages have survived there in the North. Some
authors affirm that the clergy shut their eyes and open their hands to
receive hush-money for their tolerance of heterodoxy. But let us not be
too ready always to believe the worst. Only lately there fell into my
hands an article written by that much respected author, Melchior de
Voguié, who assures us that he has observed signs of regeneration in
many Russian parishes.
From this review of social classes in Russia it may be deduced that the
peasant masses are the repository of national energies, while the
nobility has until now displayed the most apparent activity. The proof
of this is to be found in the consideration of a memorable historical
event,--the greatest perhaps that the present century has known,--the
emancipation of the serfs.
[1] "The term translated 'prince' perhaps needs some explanation. A
Russian prince may be a bootblack or a ferryman. The word _kniaz_
denotes a descendant of any of the hundreds of petty rulers, who before
the time of the unification of Russia held the land. They all claim
descent from the semi-mythical Rurik; and as every son of a _kniaz_
bears the title, it may be easily imagined how numerous they are. The
term 'prince,' therefore, is really a too high-sounding title to
represent it."--Nathan Haskell Dole.
VIII.
Russian Serfdom.
Russia boasts of never having known that black stain upon ancient
civilizations, slavery; but the pretension, notwithstanding many
allegations thereto in her own chronicles, is refuted by Herodotus, who
speaks of the inhuman treatment inflicted by the Scythians on their
slaves, even putting out their eyes that they might better perform
certain tasks; and the same historian refers to the treachery of the
slaves to their masters in raping the women while they were at war with
the Medes, and to the insurrection of these slaves which was put down by
the Scythians by means of the whip alone,--the whip being in truth a
characteristic weapon of a country accustomed to servitude. Herodotus
does say in another place that "among the Scythians the king's servants
are free youths well-born, for it is not the custom in Scythia to buy
slaves;" from which it may be inferred that the slaves were prisoners of
war. Howbeit, Russian authors insist that in their country serfs were
never slaves, and serfdom was rather an abuse of the power of the
nobility and the government than an historic natural result.
To my mind this is not so; and I must say that I think servitude had an
actual beginning, and that there was a cause for it. The Muscovite
empire was but sparsely populated, and the population was by
temperament adventurous, nomadic, restless, and expansive. We have
observed that the limitless plains of Russia offer no climatic
antagonisms, for the reason that there are no climatic boundaries; but
it was not merely the love of native province that was lacking in the
Russian, but the attachment to the paternal roof and to the home
village. It is said that the origin of this sentiment is embedded in
rock; where dwellings are built of wood and burn every seven years on an
average, there is no such thing as the paternal roof, there is no such
thing as home. With his hatchet in his belt the Russian peasant will
build another house wherever a new horizon allures him. But if the
scanty rural population scatters itself over the steppes, it will be
lost in it as the sand drinks in the rain, and the earth will remain
unploughed and waste; there will be nothing to tax, and nobody to do
military service. Therefore, about the end of the sixteenth century,
when all the rest of Europe was beginning to feel the stirrings of
political liberty and the breath of the Renaissance, the Regent, Boris
Godonof, riveted the chains of slavery upon the wrists of many millions
of human beings in Russia. It is very true that Russian servitude does
not mean the subjection of man to man, but to the soil; for the decree
of Godonof converted the peasant into a slave merely by abrogating the
traditional right of the "black man" to change his living-place on Saint
George's day. The peasant perceived no other change in his condition
than that of finding himself fastened, chained, bound to the soil. The
Russian word which we translate "serf" means "consolidated,"
"adherent."
It is easy to see the historical transition from the free state to that
of servitude. The military and political organization of the Russian
State in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries hedged in the peasant's
liberty of action, and his situation began to resemble that of the Roman
_colonus_, or husbandman, who was neither "bond nor free." When the
nation was constituted upon firmer bases, it seemed indispensable to fix
every man's limitation, to range the population in classes, and to lay
upon them obligations consistent with the needs of the empire. These
bonds were imposed just as the other peoples of Europe were breaking
away from theirs.
Servitude, or serfdom, did not succeed throughout the empire, however.
Siberia and the independent Cossacks of the South rejected it; only
passive consent could sanction a condition that was not the fruit of
conquest nor had as an excuse the right of the strongest. Even in the
rest of Russia the peasant never was entirely submissive, never
willingly bent his neck to the yoke, and the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries witnessed bitter and sanguinary uprisings of the serfs, who
were prompt to follow the first impostor who pronounced words of
promise; and, strange to say, what was most galling was his entail upon
the land rather than the deprivation of his own liberty. He imagined
that the lord of the whole earth was the Czar, that by his favor it was
temporarily in possession of the nobles, but that in truth and justice
it belonged to him who tilled it. Pugatchef, the pretender to the title
of Peter III., in order to rally to his standard an innumerable host of
peasants, called himself the rural emperor, and declared that no sooner
should he gain the throne of his ancestors than he would shower treasure
upon the nobles and restore the land to the tillers of it.
Those who forged the fetters of serfdom had little faith in the
stability of it, however. And although the abuses arising out of it were
screened and tacitly consented to,--and never more so than during the
reign of the humane philosopher, friend, and correspondent of Voltaire,
the Empress Catherine II.,--yet law and custom forever refused to
sanction them. Russian serfdom assumed rather a patriarchal character,
and this softened its harshness. It was considered iniquitous to
alienate the serfs, and it was only lawful in case of parting with the
land whereon those serfs labored; in this way was preserved the thin
line of demarcation between agrarian servitude and slavery.
There were, however, serfs in worse condition, true helots, namely, the
domestic servants, who were at the mercy of the master's caprice, like
the fowls in his poultry-yard. Each proprietor maintained a numerous
household below stairs, useless and idle as a rule, whose children he
brought up and had instructed in certain ways in order to hire them out
or sell them by and by. The players in the theatres were generally
recruited from this class, and until Alexander I. prohibited such
shameless traffic, it was not uncommon to see announced in the papers
the sale of a coachman beside that of a Holstein cow. But like every
other institution which violates and offends human conscience, Russian
serfdom could not exist forever, in spite of some political and social
advantages to the empire.
Certain Russian writers affirm that the assassination of masters and
proprietors was of frequent occurrence in the days of serfdom, and that
even now the peasant is disposed to quarrels and acts of violence
against the nobles. Yet, on the whole, I gather from my reading on the
subject that the relations in general between the serf and the master
were, on the one side, humble, reverent, and filial; on the other, kind,
gentle, and protecting. The important question for the peasant is that
of the practical ownership of the land. It is not his freedom but his
agrarian rights that have been restored to him; and this must be borne
in mind in order to understand why the recent emancipation has not
succeeded in pacifying the public mind and bringing about a new and
happy Russia.
Given the same problem to the peasant and the man of mind, it will be
safe to say that they will solve it in very different ways, if not in
ways diametrically opposed. The peasant will be guided by the positive
and concrete aspect of the matter; the man of mind by the speculative
and ideal. The peasant calculates the influence of atmospheric phenomena
upon his crops, while the other observes the beauty of the sunset or
the tranquillity of the night. In social questions the peasant demands
immediate utility, no matter how small it may be, while the other
demands the application of principles and the triumph of ideas. Under
the care of a master the Russian serf enjoyed a certain material
welfare, and if he fell to the lot of a good master--and Russian masters
have the reputation of being in general excellent--his situation was not
only tolerable but advantageous. On the other hand, the intelligent
could not put up with the monstrous and iniquitous fact of human liberty
being submitted to the arbitrary rule of a master who could apply the
lash at will, sell men like cattle, and dispose as he would of bodies
and souls. Where this exists, since Christ came into the world, either
there is no knowledge, or the ignominy must be stamped out.
We all know that celebrated story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the famous
Abolitionist novel by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. There were also
novelists in Russia who set themselves to plead for the emancipation of
the serfs. But there is a difference between them and the North American
authoress, in that the Russians, in order to achieve their object, had
no need to exaggerate the reality, to paint sensitive slaves and
children that die of pity, but, with an artistic instinct, they appealed
to æsthetic truth to obtain human justice. "Dead Souls," by Gogol, or
one of the poetical and earnest _brochures_ of Turguenief, awakens a
more stirring and permanent indignation than the sentimental allegory
of Mrs. Stowe; and neither Gogol nor Turguenief misrepresented the serf
or defamed the master, but rather they present to us both as they were
in life, scorning recourse to bad taste for the sake of capturing tender
hearts. The noblest sentiments of the soul, divine compassion, equity,
righteous vengeance, the generous pity that moves to sacrifice, rise to
the inspired voice of great writers; we see the abuse, we feel it, it
hurts us, it oppresses us, and by a spontaneous impulse we desire the
good and abhor the evil. This enviable privilege has been granted to the
Russian novelists; had they no greater glory, this would suffice to save
them from oblivion.
The Abolitionist propaganda subtly and surely spread through the
intelligent classes, created an opinion, communicated itself naturally
to the press in as far as the censor permitted, and little by little the
murmur grew in volume, like that raised against the administrative
corruption after the Crimean War. And it is but just to add that the
Czars were never behind in this national movement. Had it not been for
their omnipotent initiative, who knows if even now slavery would not
stain the face of Europe? There is reason to believe it when one sees
the obstacles that hinder other reforms in Russia in which the autocrat
takes no part. Doubtless the mind of the emperor was influenced by the
words of Alexander II., in 1856, to the Muscovite nobles: "It is better
to abolish serfdom by decrees from above than to wait for it to be
destroyed by an impulse from below." A purely human motive; yet in every
generous act there may be a little egotistical leaven. Let us not judge
the unfortunate Emancipator too severely.
The Crimean War and its grave internal consequences aided to undermine
the infamous institution of serfdom, at the same time that it disclosed
the hidden cancer of the administration, the misgovernment and ruin of
the nation. With the ill success of the campaign, Russia clearly saw the
need for self-examination and reorganization. Among the many and
pressing questions presented to her, the most urgent was that of the
serfs, and the impossibility of re-forming a prosperous State, modern
and healthy, while this taint existed within her. Alexander II., whose
variability and weakness are no bar to his claim of the honored title of
the Liberator, exhorted the aristocracy to consummate this great work,
and (a self-abnegation worthy of all praise, and which only a blind
political passion can deny them) the nobles coincided and co-operated
with him with perfect good faith, and even with the electrical
enthusiasm characteristic of the Sclavic race. One cannot cease to extol
this noble act, which, taken as a whole, is sublime, although, being the
work of large numbers, it may be overloaded with details and incidents
in which the interest flags. It may be easy to preach a reform whose
aims do not hurt our pride, shatter our fortunes, alter our way of
living, or conflict with the ideas inculcated upon us in childhood by
our parents; but to do this to one's own detriment deserves especial
recognition. The nobility on this occasion only put into practice
certain theories which had stirred in their hearts of old. The first
great Russian poet, Prince Kantemire, wrote in 1738, in his satires,
that Adam did not beget nobles, nor did Noah save in the ark any but his
equals,--humble husbandmen, famous only for their virtues. To my mind
the best praise to the Russian nobility is for having offered less
hindrance to the emancipation of the serfs than the North American
democracy to the liberation of the slaves; and I solicit especial
applause for this self-sacrificing, redeeming aristocracy.
The fruits of the emancipation were not what desire promised. The
peasants, from their positivist point of view, set little value on
liberty itself, and scarcely understood it. "We are yours," they were
accustomed to say to their masters; "but the soil is ours." When it
became known that they must go on paying even for the goods of the
community, they rebelled; they declared that emancipation was a farce, a
lie, and that true emancipation ought to abolish rent and distribute the
land in equal parts. Did not the proclamation of the Czar read that they
were free? Well, freedom, in their language, meant emancipation from
labor, and the possession of the land. One _mir_ even sent a deputation
to the governor, announcing that as he had been a good master he would
still be allowed the use and profit of his house and farm. The peasant
believed himself free from all obligation, and even refused to work
until the government forced him to do so; and the result was that the
lash and the rod were never so frequently laid across Russian shoulders
as in the first three years of emancipation and liberty.
What cared they--"the little black men"--for the dignity of the freeman
or the rights of citizenship? That which laid strongest hold of their
primitive imagination was the desire to possess the whole land,--the old
dream of what they called the _black partition_, the national Utopia.
One Russian revolutionary journal adopted the name of "Land and
Liberty," a magic motto to a peasant country, giving the former the
first place, or at least making the two synonymous. The Russian
people ask no political rights, but rather the land which is watered
by the sweat of their brow; and if some day the anarchists--the
agitators who go from village to village propagating their sanguinary
doctrines--succeed in awakening and stirring this Colossus to action, it
will be by touching this tender spot and alluring by the promise of this
traditional dream. The old serf lives in hopes of a Messiah, be he
emperor or conspirator, who shall deliver the earth into his hands; and
at times the vehemence of this insatiable desire brings forth popular
prophets, who announce that the millennium is at hand, and that by the
will of Heaven the land is to be divided among the cultivators thereof.
From his great love to the autocrat the peasant believes that _he_ also
desires this distribution, but being hampered by his counsellors and
menaced by his courtiers, he cannot authorize it yet. "For," says the
peasant, "the land never belonged to the lords, but first to the
sovereign and then to the _mir_." The idea of individual proprietorship
is so repugnant to this people that they say that even death is
beautiful shared in common.
All the schismatic sects in Russia preach community of possessions. Some
among them live better than the orthodox Greeks; some are voluntarily
consecrated to absolute poverty, such as characterized the early orders
of mendicants, and literally give their cloak to him who asks; but both
the more temperate and the fanatics agree in the faith of the general
and indisputable right of man to possess the land he cultivates.
With society as with the individual, after great effort comes
prostration, after a sudden change, inevitable uneasiness. So with
Russian emancipation. Although in some localities the condition of the
peasants was ameliorated, in others their misery and retrogression
seemed only to increase, and led them to pine for the old bonds. The
abuse, arbitrariness, and cruelty which are cited, and which shock the
nerves of Westerners, caused no alarm to the Russian peasant, who was
well used to baring his back in payment for any delinquency. The worst
extent to which the master allowed his anger to spend itself was an
unlimited number of stripes; and this very punishment, which to-day no
master would inflict, and which the law expressly forbids, is still
frequently imposed by the peasant tribunals of the _volost_ or
_canton_; their confidence in its efficacy is well grounded, and it is
well authorized by custom and experience. What the peasant fears and
hates most is not the rod or the whip, but the rent-collector, the
tax-gatherer, the burden of the taxes themselves, and hunger.
What must be the æsthetic and political determination of this race,
which prefers the possession of the soil to the liberty of the
individual? In literature, toward a plain and candid realism; in form of
government, a communist absolutism. The abstract constitutional idea,
which, in spite of its Anglo-Saxon origin, meets perfectly the ideal
entertained by Latin minds, has no charm for the Sclav. Yet at the same
time the Russian combines, with his practical and concrete notions of
life and his preponderating sense of realism, a dreamy and childlike
imagination, which acts upon him like a dangerous dose of opium.
In the next essay I propose to show how there has grown up within this
patient and submissive rural people, and has finally burst forth, that
most terrible of revolutionary volcanoes, nihilism.