THE DAWN IN RUSSIA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
NEIGHBOURS OF OURS
IN THE VALLEY OF TOPHET
THE THIRTY DAYS’ WAR BETWEEN GREECE AND TURKEY
LADYSMITH: THE DIARY OF A SIEGE
THE PLEA OF PAN
BETWEEN THE ACTS
A MODERN SLAVERY
[Illustration:
_Art Reproduction Co._
“PACIFICATION.”
THE KREMLIN OF MOSCOW, CHRISTMAS, 1905.
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_).]
THE
DAWN IN RUSSIA
OR
SCENES IN THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
BY
HENRY W. NEVINSON
[Illustration]
_ILLUSTRATED_
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS
45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1906
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
Summary of chief events since the outbreak of the Japanese
War, February 1904--Scandals of the War--Tolstoy’s
protest--The Königsberg case--Assassination of Bobrikoff
and Plehve--The Zemstvo Petition of Rights--The appearance
of the workman--Father Gapon--Petition to the Tsar--Bloody
Sunday--Trepoff--Assassination of Grand Duke Sergius--Promises
of a State Duma--Outbreak in the Caucasus--The
Moscow Zemstvoists--Death of Troubetskoy--End of the
Japanese War--The railway strike--The general strike--The
Manifesto of October 30, 1905--Restoration of Finland’s
liberties--Mutiny at Kronstadt--Refusal of Zemstvoists
to serve under Witte--Martial Law in Poland--Second
general strike declared--Its failure--Manifesto to
the Peasants 1
CHAPTER I
THE STRIKE COMMITTEE
The Hall of Free Economics--Description of Delegates--The
Women--The Executive--Khroustoloff--The Eight-hours’
Day--The Russian “Marseillaise”--Meeting against Capital
Punishment--Freedom in the balance--Beginnings of reaction--But
hope prevailed 25
CHAPTER II
THE WORKMEN’S HOME
The Schlüsselburg Road--The River--The People and the
Cossacks--Casual massacres--The Workmen’s Militia--The
Alexandrovsky ironworks--The mills--The hours of
labour--Wages--Prices and the standard of living--Standard
of work and food--Housing and rent--Washing--Holidays
and amusements--Connection of work-people
with villages--Passion for the land--The Peasant’s
Congress--The Sevastopol mutiny--The post and telegraph
strike 37
CHAPTER III
FATHER GAPON AGAIN
Meeting of December 4th--The Salt Town--Gapon’s
followers--Barashoff, the Chairman--The Hymn of the
Fallen--Russian music--Police spies--Russian
Oratory--Moderate demands of the Gaponists--Opposition
of the Social Democrats--Scarcity of Anarchists--Conversation
with Father Gapon--His apparent Nature--Charges of
Opportunism 50
CHAPTER IV
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORD
Effect of the post strike--Volunteer sorters--Epidemic of
strikes--Joy in public speaking--The power of speech--Sudden
outburst of newspapers--_The Russian Gazette_--_The New
Life_--_The Son of the Country_--_The Beginning_--_Our
Life_--_Russia_--The Jewish Papers--The Reactionary
Press--_Novoe Vremya_--_The Citizen_--_The Word_--The satiric
papers and Cartoons--Character of Russian satire--The Social
Revolutionists had no paper--Nor had the Radicals--The
dangers of division--The split in a Polish restaurant--The
joy of life--The assassination of Sakharoff--The protest
of the Strike Committee against Government finance--Arrest
of Khroustoloff and the Executive 60
CHAPTER V
THE OPEN LAND
The town of Toula--The road to the country--The travelling
peasant--The wayside inn--A country house--Landowners
at home--A typical village--A cottage
interior--The stove and the loom--Doubts on the Mir--A
beggar for scraps--Flogging for taxes--Tolstoy on the
End of an Age--How Empires will now cease--The aged
prophet--The restoration of the land--The rotting towns--New
ideals of statesmanship--Indifference to poets and
Shakespeare--The grace of sanctity and the limitations of
logic 81
CHAPTER VI
THE STATE OF MOSCOW
The return of the Army--How they were received--Fears and
hopes about their return--Would the soldiers obey?--The
Rostoff regiment--The Cossacks and the crowd--Instinct
of mutual aid--The post strike--Private assistance--Formation
of unions--The tea packers--The shop assistants--Failure
of gaiety--University closed--Lectures for
the Movement--Soldiers in revolt--The Zemstvoists--Miliukoff’s
paper--A Moscow factory--The barrack system--Wages--The post
strike and freedom of speech--Gorky on the rich and
educated--_The Children of the Sun_--The street murders 97
CHAPTER VII
THE OLD ORDER
St. Nicholas’ Day--Fears and expectations--The Black Hundred
Perils of night--The new Governor-General--The sacred
Banners--The crowd of worshippers--The procession--The
bishops and the Iberian Virgin--The Krasnaya--Incitements
to massacre--Appeal to Dubasoff--The stampede of the
patriots 120
CHAPTER VIII
THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--I
My start for the Caucasus--The railway strike begins--The
peasants on the train--General strike--Provisions cut
short--Friendly discussions with soldiers--A red flag
procession--A Cossack charge--Silence at night--Government
preparations--Revolutionists unwilling to rise--The
Government’s design to bring on the outbreak--The attack
on Fiedler’s house--Revolutionary force and arms--Reported
danger of English overseers--The guns begin--The district
of fighting--The revolutionary plan--The
barricades--Difficulties of the spectator in street
fighting--Interest of the crowd--Casualties begin--The red
cross--Assistance to the wounded--The Government guns 129
CHAPTER IX
THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--II
Reports of the revolution--Guns on the Theatre
Square--Explosion in a gun-shop--Increase in the
fighting--Sledges refuse the wounded--The merciful
soldier--A schoolboy killed--The revolutionist
position--The barricade forts--Barricades never held--The
revolutionist tactics--Varieties in barricade--The troops
protect their right flank--Barricades still growing--Police
in disguise 155
CHAPTER X
THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--III
The beginning of the end--My attempts at
photography--Unsuspected presence of revolutionists--Search
for revolvers--Labels for identification--Fresh fighting on
the Government’s left--But the main movement was
failing--Revolutionists appeal for volunteers--Official
estimate of casualties--Assassination of the chief of secret
police--The Sadovaya at dawn--The police receive rifles--The
barricades destroyed--Business resumed by order--Relief of
business people--Fighting continues in Presnensky
District--Mills held for the revolution--Arrival of the
Semenoffsky Guards--Bombardment of the district--The murder
of Dr. Vorobieff for assisting the wounded--The district from
the inside--Attempts to escape--End of the rising--Various
estimates of dead and wounded--The executions--The slaughter
of prisoners--The flogging of boys and girls--Christmas
Day--The ceremony in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour 169
CHAPTER XI
IN LITTLE RUSSIA
Results of the rising--Revolutionists claim some
success--Some gain in unity--But the movement lost
prestige--Hopes of winning over troops proved vain--Reasons
of this--Consequent elation of the Government--Hopes of a
new loan--Witte laments his lost faith--My journey to
Kieff--Harvest rotting on the platforms--Kieff as religious
centre--Pilgrimages to the catacombs--An intellectual
centre--Character of Little Russians--Their costume--No
thought of separation--Apprehension of Poles--The Little
Russian movement--The recent riots of Loyalists--Attack on
the British Consulate--Persecution of Jews--Crowded prisons
and typhus--The Black Earth--Grain as Russia’s chief
export--Poverty of the villages--Reasons for this--The
country districts quiet 198
CHAPTER XII
THE JEWS OF ODESSA
Joy over the Manifesto--Violent suppression--Trepoff and
Neidhart--The days of massacre--Present state of Jewish
quarters--Habits of Jews--Refusal of concealment--A type of
Israel--Attempts at relief--Difficulties of
organization--Flight of the rich and distress of their
parasites--Dockers and their poverty--The Constitutional
democrats--Their programme--The Jewish Bund--Jewish
disqualifications--The English Aliens Act 215
CHAPTER XIII
LIBERTY IN PRISON
Murder of the student Davidoff--Precautions for the
anniversary of Bloody Sunday--Strike Committee orders a
memorial of silence--The day on the Schlüsselberg
road--The Navy and telescopic sights--Silence in the
workmen’s districts--The Vampire and Freedom--Wholesale
arrests--Methods of imprisonment and sentence--The House of
Inquiry--A letter from prison--The Peter-Paul
fortress--Khroustoloff’s prison--The Cross
prison--Imprisonments and executions--Why Russia has no
Cromwell--The Schlüsselberg converted into a mint--Statistics
of suppression--The committee of ministers--Siberian exile
continued--Meetings of Constitutional Democrat
delegates--Their methods and programme--Their
leaders--Miliukoff still hopeful 228
CHAPTER XIV
THE PRIEST AND THE PEOPLE
Over the ice to Kronstadt--Father John and his shelter--The
service of the altar--His blessing--His miraculous life and
powers--His influence in reaction--A revolutionary
concert--The proletariat of intellect--Russian
democracy--The use of the parable--The bond of danger--The
advantage of tyranny 248
CHAPTER XV
A BLOODY ASSIZE
The Baltic Provinces--Lists of floggings and
executions--Vengeance of the German landowners--They are
weary of town life--Letts driven to execution--The Irish
of Russia--Character of the people--Their songs--Their
religion--Their buildings--Their isolated farms--Disaster
of Russification--The burning of country houses--“We have
condemned you to death”--Mixture of social and national
grievances--Refusal of Germans to appeal to Berlin--The
case of Pastor Bielenstein--A Lettish scholar--A rebel’s
funeral--The assize in the country--Executions ordered by
telephone--The case of a schoolmistress--Reprisals and
rescues 262
CHAPTER XVI
THE PARTIES OF POLAND
Polish tendency to division--The reactionary position
stated--Supposed beneficence of martial law--Suppression
good for Poles--Absurdities of Socialists and
Nationalists--Reconquest of Finland necessary--Poland
essential as barrier against Germany--The Polish
workman--Disasters in Polish trade--Loss of credit--The
landless labourers--Education--Wages--Rent--Polish
brides and demand for ancestral relics--The Realist
party--The National Democrats--A meeting to practice for
elections--A Nationalist programme--The Progressive
Democrats--The National Socialists--The Social
Democrats--The Proletariat Socialists--The Jewish
Bund--Attempts to influence the Army--Executions of
so-called Anarchists and Jews--The Warsaw citadel--Two
brave Jewesses 282
CHAPTER XVII
THE DRAMA OF FREEDOM
The struggle between Freedom and Oppression--The early
hopes--The Government’s uncertainty--The plot to overthrow
Freedom--Its apparent success--The new loan
secured--Difficulty of realizing the actual truth beneath
abstractions--Persistence of the revolution--Summary of
events--Finance and the elections--Execution of Lieutenant
Schmidt--Victory of the Constitutional Democrats--Germany
refuses to share in the loans, but France and England
subscribe largely--Resignation of Count Witte--Reported death
of Father Gapon--Attempt to assassinate Admiral
Dubasoff--Assassination of General Jeoltanowski--Fundamental
Law--New Ministers--Preparing for the Duma 301
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST PARLIAMENT
Baleful prophecies--Provocations--Meeting of Constitutional
Democrats broken up by police--Ministerial
figureheads--Birthday of freedom--Trepoff’s
precautions--Ceremony in Winter Palace--The Old Order
confronted by the New--The Church intervenes--The Tsar’s
address--“Unwavering firmness,” and the “Necessity of
Order”--No promise of amnesty--Officials applaud--The people
silent--The cry of the prisoners--The Duma assembles in the
Taurida Palace--President elected by 426 to 3--Petrunkevitch
speaks first--The demand for amnesty--A languid afternoon in
the “Nobleman’s Assembly”--Golitzin greeted with holy
kisses--Witte and Durnovo side by side--Prayers and
compliments--The Duma at work--Taurida Palace closely
guarded--Difficulties about procedure--Drafting the reply to
the Tsar’s speech--An honourable impatience--Congratulations
from many lands--Telegrams from imprisoned
“politicals”--Russia’s representatives unanimous for
amnesty--Freedom and Justice versus Tradition and the Sword 317
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“PACIFICATION.” THE KREMLIN OF MOSCOW, CHRISTMAS,
1905 _Frontispiece_
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_)
TO FACE PAGE
A DEMONSTRATION BY THE KAZAN CHURCH, ST. PETERSBURG 2
From _The Marseillaise_
“HOMUNCULUS” AND THE S.D. (SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC) RATS 12
From _Burelom_ (_The Storm_)
“AN AUTUMN IDYLL” 40
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_)
WITTE AND THE CONSTITUTION 72
From _Sprut_
PEASANT SLEDGES 80
A PRIVATE SLEDGE 80
TOLSTOY’S HOME 90
PEASANTS 90
TOLSTOY IN MIDDLE AGE 96
FIEDLER’S HOUSE 140
EFFECT OF SHELLS 140
A MINOR BARRICADE 146
A MILITARY POST AT MOSCOW 146
“GOD WITH US!” 152
From _Sprut_
BARRICADES ON THE SADOVAYA 162
“THE NEW ERA” 176
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_)
“INTERCOURSE IS RESUMED” 182
From _Streli_ (_Arrows_)
DUBASOFF’S ROLL CALL 194
From _Burelom_ (_The Storm_)
A LITTLE RUSSIAN 206
A TRAMP 206
A PEASANT’S HOME 212
THE LAVRA AT KIEFF 212
THE JEWS’ GRAVE AT ODESSA 216
AFTER THE MASSACRE 216
“I THINK SHE’S QUIET AT LAST” 232
From the _Vampyre_
1905–1906 300
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_)
PLAN OF MOSCOW 350
The design on the cover is from a cartoon in the Russian
revolutionary paper _Pulemet_ (_The Machine Gun_).
The illustrations are from Russian cartoons and from photographs,
most of which were taken by the author.
THE DAWN IN RUSSIA
OR
SCENES IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
INTRODUCTION
I have not attempted in this book to do more than describe some of the
scenes which I witnessed in Russia during the winter of 1905–1906,
while I was acting there as special correspondent for the _Daily
Chronicle_. For the most part, the descriptions are given in the
same words which I wrote down at the time, either for my own memory or
for the newspaper. But the whole has been re-arranged and rewritten,
while certain scenes have been added for which a daily paper has
no room. I have also inserted between the scenes a bare outline of
the principal events that were happening elsewhere, so that the
significance of what I saw may be more easily understood, and the dates
become something better than mere numbers.
But to realize the meaning of the earlier chapters, a further
introduction is necessary, and it is difficult to know where to begin.
For there is never any real break in a nation’s history from day to
day, and the movement of 1905 was not the first sign of change, but
only the brightest. The story of the undaunted struggle for freedom
in Russia during the last fifty years has been admirably told by
Stepniak, Kropotkin, Zilliacus, Miliukoff, and many other writers. In
books that are easily obtained, any one may learn the course of that
great movement--the changes in its aims and methods, the distinctions
in its parties, and the martyrdoms of its recorded heroes. So for this
present purpose of chronicling a few peculiar or unnoticed events and
situations which would hardly have a place in history at all, perhaps
it will be enough if I begin the skeleton annals with the outbreak of
the war between Russia and Japan in February, 1904.
[Illustration: A DEMONSTRATION BY THE KAZAN CHURCH, ST. PETERSBURG.
From _The Marseillaise_.]
It is true that for some time earlier the revolutionary movement
had obviously been gathering strength. Within two years there had
occurred outbreaks among the peasants, student risings in Moscow, and
a demonstration in front of the great classic building called the
Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Some soldiers at Toula had actually
refused to kill the work-people. The Zemstvos, or District Councils of
landowners and upper-middle classes, had ventured to recommend economic
reforms, and a student from Kieff had assassinated Sipiaguine, the
Minister of the Interior. To counteract these evils, heightened by
a period of industrial depression, Plehve had been promoted from the
Governorship of Finland to the Ministry of the Interior; a manifesto
had been issued (March 12, 1903), removing the responsibility of the
village communes for individual taxation, and promoting religious
toleration; and the Jews of Kishineff had been massacred, with the
connivance of the Government, and probably at its direct instigation
(April 20, 1903). The Armenian Church in the Caucasus was deprived
of £3,000,000 of its funds, the public debt of Russia rose to
£700,000,000, about half of the interest on which had to be paid to
foreign countries, and Witte was appointed President of the Committee
of Ministers, while his assistant Pleske succeeded him in what was then
regarded as the far more important position of the Ministry of Finance.
It was obvious that the Government--which we may call Tsardom or
Oligarchy as we please--had in any case entered upon the way to
destruction, and that the revolution was already at work. Indeed, the
Social Democrats had met in secret in 1903, and published a “minimum
programme” demanding a Republic under universal adult suffrage. But
still the disastrous war with Japan hastened these tendencies, and its
outbreak may conveniently be taken to mark a period, for the dates of
wars are definite and the results quick.
The course of that ruinous campaign, unequalled, I suppose, in history
for the uninterrupted succession of its disasters, need not concern
us now. It wasted many millions of money, borrowed by a country which
is naturally and inevitably poor. It revealed an incompetence in the
ruling classes worse than our own in South Africa, together with a
corruption and a heartlessness of greed compared to which even the
scandals of South Africa seemed rather less devilish. It kept from
their work in fields and factories about a million grown men, who had
to be fed and clothed, however badly, by the rest of the population,
and it killed or maimed some two or three hundred thousand of them.
Otherwise the war can hardly be said to have concerned the Russian
people any more than ourselves, so general was their indifference
both to its cause and to its failure. “It is not our war, it is the
Government’s affair,” was the common saying. Tolstoy is a prophet,
and the mark of a prophet is that he speaks with the voice of God
and not with the voice of the people; but in his protest against the
war (published in the _Times_ of June 27, 1904) he uttered a
denunciation of the Government with which nearly the whole of Russia’s
population would have agreed. Of the head of that Government himself,
he wrote:--
“The Russian Tsar, the same man who exhorted all the nations in
the cause of peace, publicly announces that, notwithstanding
all his efforts to maintain the peace so dear to his heart
(efforts which express themselves in the seizing of other
people’s lands and in the strengthening of armies for the
defence of those stolen lands), he, owing to the attack of the
Japanese, commands that the same should be done to the Japanese
as they had begun doing to the Russians--namely, that they
should be slaughtered; and in announcing this call to murder he
mentions God, asking the Divine blessing on the most dreadful
crime in the world. This unfortunate and entangled young man,
recognized as the leader of 130,000,000 of people, continually
deceived and compelled to contradict himself, confidently thanks
and blesses the troops which he calls his own for murder in
defence of lands which he calls his own with still less right.”
While the myth of Russia’s military and naval power--a myth which
for fifty years had misguided England’s foreign policy, checked any
generous impulse on the part of our statesmen, and driven them to
breach of national faith, callousness towards outrageous cruelty,
and every moral humiliation that a proud and ancient people can
suffer--while this overwhelming myth was being dissipated month by
month in the Far East, the characteristic methods by which the Russian
Tsar and Oligarchs sought to maintain their hold upon the wealth and
privileges of State were being revealed in the so-called Königsberg
case. It was discovered that even in a foreign capital like Berlin, the
Russian Government employed a little army of spies, under a recognized
and highly-paid official, to search the homes of Russian Liberals, to
watch their goings, and open their letters. It was also shown that,
even under a comparatively civilized government like the German,
the authorities were ready to bring their own subjects to trial for
alleged verbal attacks upon the Tsar; while a Russian Consul, probably
in obedience to orders from home, would tell any lie and garble any
document to support the charge.
On June 17th the air was cleared by the assassination of General
Bobrikoff, the Russian tyrant of Finland, and on July 8th that deed
was followed by the assassination of Plehve. In all the history of
political murder, I suppose, there has never been a case in which the
victim received less pity, or the crime less condemnation. The pitiless
hand of reaction was for the moment stayed. The birth of an heir to the
uneasy crown inspired the Tsar with such amiability that, as father
of his people, he abolished the punishment of flogging among his
grown-up subjects. Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, who was justly regarded as
something of a Liberal as princes go, succeeded Plehve at the Interior,
released some political prisoners, advocated decentralization with the
development of the Zemstvos, and promised better education, liberty of
conscience, and freedom of speech.
Again the Zemstvoists, taking their courage as moderate Liberals
in both hands, met secretly in St. Petersburg, and drew up a kind
of Petition of Rights to be presented to the Tsar. There were one
hundred and six members present at the secret conferences, thirty-six
of them belonging to the caste of the nobility, and their Petition
began with the complaint that the bureaucracy had alienated the people
from the Throne, and that by its distrust of self-government it had
shown itself entirely out of touch with the people. In place of the
bureaucratic system, the Petition demanded an elected Legislature of
two Houses, together with freedom of conscience, the press, meeting,
and association, equal civil and political rights for all classes and
races, and similar methods of justice for the peasants as for other men.
The Zemstvo petition was issued on November 22, 1904. A month later
(December 26th) it was repeated in still more direct and urgent terms
by the Moscow Zemstvo, which had always taken the lead in reform, being
inspired by its President, Prince Sergius Troubetzkoy, Professor of
Philosophy in the University since 1888. But, in the meantime, student
riots had again occurred in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the censorship
had been renewed, and on the same day as the Moscow petition there
appeared an Imperial manifesto proclaiming “the unshakable foundations
of the Russian State system, consecrated by the fundamental laws of
the Empire,” and announcing the Tsar’s determination to act always in
accordance with the revered will of his crowned predecessor, while he
thought unceasingly upon the welfare of the realm entrusted to him by
God. The manifesto went on to admit that when the need of this or that
change had been proved to be mature, the Tsar was willing to take it
into consideration, and upon this principle he undertook to maintain
the laws, to give local institutions as wide a scope as possible, to
unify judicial procedure throughout the Empire, to establish State
insurance of workmen, and to revise the laws upon political crime,
religious offences, and the press. But the tone of the whole manifesto
was felt to be reactionary, and there was no guarantee that its
promises would be observed. When our own Charles I. made concessions,
the people shouted, “We have the word of a King!” But they soon found
that assurance was a shifty thing to trust to, and since then the words
of kings have counted for no more than the words of men.
But the opening of the next year (1905) was marked by the appearance
of a new element in revolution. Certainly, there had been strikes and
riots in the great cities before; there had been peasant risings and
other forms of economic agitation in various parts. But as a whole the
revolutionary movement as such had been inspired, directed, and even
carried out by the educated classes--the students, the journalists, the
doctors, barristers, and other professional men. It had been almost
limited to that great division of society which in Russia is called
“The Intelligence.” The word is fairly well represented by our phrase
“educated classes”--a phrase which embodies our greatest national
shame. It includes all who are not workmen or peasants, and so is much
wider in significance than the French term “The Intellectuals,” with
which it is often confused. In England, for instance, it would include
the House of Lords, the clergy, army officers, country gentlemen, and
the leaders of society whom no Frenchman would dream of classing among
the intellectual.
It was “the Intelligence” who hitherto had fought for the revolution.
It was they who had suffered scourgings and exile and imprisonment and
madness and violation and the gallows in the name of freedom. It was
they who had endured the horror that most people feel in killing a man.
And, above all, it was they who had devoted their lives, their careers,
and reputations to going about among the peasants and working-people
to show them that the misery and terror under which they lived were
neither necessary nor universal. At length the firstfruits of their
toilsome propaganda, continued through forty years, were seen, and the
revolutionary workman appeared.
He was ushered in by Father George Gapon, at that time a rather
simple-hearted priest, with a rather childlike faith in God and the
Tsar, and a certain genius for organization. His personal hold upon the
working classes was probably due to their astonishment that a priest
should take any interest in their affairs, outside their fees. We have
seen the same thing happen in England, when Manning and Westcott won
the reverence due to saints because they displayed some feeling for the
flock which they were paid large sums to protect. Father Gapon, with
his thin line of genius for organization, had gathered the workmen’s
groups or trade unions of St. Petersburg into a fairly compact body,
called “The Russian Workmen’s Union,” of which he was President as
well as founder. In the third week in January the men at the Putiloff
iron works struck because two of their number had been dismissed for
belonging to their union. At once the Neva iron and ship-building
works, the Petroffsky cotton works, the Alexander engine works, the
Thornton cloth works, and other great factories on the banks of the
river or upon the industrial islands joined in the strike, and in two
days some 100,000 work-people were “out.”
With his rather childlike faith in God and the Tsar, Father Gapon
organized a dutiful appeal of the Russian workmen to the tender-hearted
autocrat whose benevolence was only thwarted by evil counsellors and
his ignorance of the truth. The petition ran as follows:--
“We workmen come to you for truth and protection. We have
reached the extreme limits of endurance. We have been exploited,
and shall continue to be exploited under your bureaucracy.
“The bureaucracy has brought the country to the verge of ruin
and by a shameful war is bringing it to its downfall. We have
no voice in the heavy burdens imposed on us. We do not even
know for whom or why this money is wrung from the impoverished
people, and we do not know how it is expended. This is contrary
to the Divine laws, and renders life impossible. It is better
that we should all perish, we workmen and all Russia. Then good
luck to the capitalists and exploiters of the poor, the corrupt
officials and robbers of the Russian people!
“Throw down the wall that separates you from your people. Russia
is too great and her needs are too various for officials to
rule. National representation is essential, for the people alone
know their own needs.
“Direct that elections for a constituent assembly be held by
general secret ballot. That is our chief petition. Everything is
contained in that.
“If you do not reply to our prayer, we will die in this square
before your palace. We have nowhere else to go. Only two paths
are open to us--to liberty and happiness or to the grave. Should
our lives serve as the offering of suffering Russia, we shall
not regret the sacrifice, but endure it willingly.”
On the morning of Sunday, January 22, 1905, about 15,000 working men
and women formed into a procession to carry this petition to the Tsar
in his Winter Palace upon the great square of government buildings.
They were all in their Sunday clothes; many peasants had come up from
the country in their best embroideries; they took their children with
them. In front marched Father Gapon and two other priests wearing
vestments. With them went the ikons, or holy pictures of shining
brass and silver, and a portrait of the Tsar. As the procession moved
along, they sang, “God save our people. God give our Orthodox Tsar the
victory.”
So the Russian workmen made their last appeal to the autocrat whom they
called their father. They would lay their griefs before him, they would
see him face to face, they would hear his comforting words.
But the father of his people had disappeared into space.
As the procession entered the square, the soldiers fired volley after
volley upon them from three sides. The estimate of the killed and
wounded was about 1500. That Sunday--January 9th in Russian style--is
known as Bloody Sunday or Vladimir’s Day, after the Grand Duke
Vladimir, who was supposed to have given the orders.
Next morning Father Gapon wrote to his Union: “There is no Tsar now.
Innocent blood has flowed between him and the people.”
[Illustration: “HOMUNCULUS” AND THE S. D. (SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC) RATS.
From _Burelom_ (_The Storm_).]
Innocent blood has flowed before and tyrants still have reigned. They
have been feared, they have won their way, and men have served them.
Mankind will endure much in the name of government, but to be
governed by a coward is almost beyond the endurance of man.
On January 24th a new office of Governor-General of St. Petersburg was
created, and Trepoff received the first appointment.
Disturbances continued in Warsaw, Lodz, and Sosnowice, the industrial
centres of Poland, and on January 31st 200 work-people were killed and
600 wounded in the streets of Warsaw.
On February 17th the Grand Duke Sergius, Governor-General of Moscow,
uncle to the Tsar, conspicuous for his cruelty, and, even among the
Russian aristocracy, renowned for the peculiarity of his vices, was
assassinated as he drove into the Kremlin.
This event and other outbreaks that were continually occurring in the
great centres of industry, inspired a remarkable manifesto and rescript
that appeared on March 3rd and were characteristic of the hesitating
fugitive in Tsarkoe Selo. The manifesto took the form of a pathetic
address to the people whom he had misgoverned with such disaster:--
“Disturbances have broken out in our country” (it said) “to the
joy of our enemies and our own deep sorrow. Blinded by pride,
the evil-minded leaders of the revolutionary movement make
insolent attacks upon the Holy Orthodox Church and the lawfully
established pillars of the Russian State....
“We humbly bear the trial sent us by Providence, and derive
strength and consolation from our firm trust in the grace
which God has always shown to the Russian power, and from the
immemorial devotion which we know our loyal people entertain for
the Throne....
“Let all those rally round the Throne who, true to Russia’s
past, honestly and conscientiously have a care for all the
affairs of the State such as we have ourselves.”
In the rescript that followed on the same day a form of Legislative
Assembly was promised in these words--
“I am resolved henceforth, with the help of God, to convene
the worthiest men, possessing the confidence of the people
and elected by them, to participate in the elaboration and
consideration of legislative measures.”
Buliguine, who had now succeeded Mirski as Minister of the Interior,
and was probably the author of the rescript, was appointed to organize
the elections. But a counterblast of reaction swept over the distracted
Tsar; Trepoff was made Assistant-Minister of the Interior and Chief of
the Police, with full power to forbid all congresses, associations,
or meetings, and Buliguine resigned, though he remained nominally in
office till the end of October.
Outbreaks in the country became continually more serious. In June there
was fierce rioting in Lodz, the great manufacturing town of Poland, and
in the Baltic port of Libau. In the same month the great battleship
_Potemkin_ of the Black Sea fleet mutinied at Odessa, threw two
big shells into the town, burnt the docks, and steamed away to the
mouth of the Danube for refuge.
Mid-August brought another manifesto, which began with the usual
precepts of maudlin falsehood--
“The Empire of Russia is formed and strengthened by the
indestructible solidarity of the Tsar with the people and the
people with the Tsar. The concord and union of the Tsar and the
people are a great moral force, which has created Russia in the
course of centuries by protecting her from all misfortunes and
all attacks, and has constituted up to the present time a pledge
of unity, independence, integrity, material well-being, and
intellectual development.
“Autocratic Tsars, our ancestors, constantly had that object in
view, and the time has come to follow out their good intentions
and to summon elected representatives from the whole of Russia
to take a constant and active part in the elaboration of laws,
attaching for this purpose to the higher State institutions
a special consultative body, entrusted with the preliminary
elaboration and discussion of measures, and with the examination
of the State Budget.
“It is for this reason that, while preserving the fundamental
law regarding autocratic power, we have deemed it well to form a
State Duma, and to approve regulations for the elections to this
Duma.”
This consultative Duma was to lay its proposals before the Council of
State, which might submit them to the Tsar if it approved. The Duma
was to meet not later than January, 1906, and was to consist of 412
members, representing 50 governments and the military province of the
Don, only 28 of the members representing towns. The members were to
be paid £1 a day and fares, and were to sit for five years, unless the
Tsar chose to dissolve them. Their meetings were to be secret, except
that the President might admit the Press if he chose.
On September 7th a race-feud broke out between the Mohammedan Tartars
and the Armenians at Baku, on the Caspian, and spread to Tiflis and
all along the southern slopes of the Caucasus. The destruction of the
great oil-works at Baku involved a loss of many millions of pounds, and
further embarrassed the railways and manufacturing districts, which
depended almost entirely on naphtha for their fuel.
On September 25th an assembly of 300 representatives of the Zemstvos of
the empire was gathered in a private house at Moscow to consider their
attitude towards the promised Duma, which was regarded as a concession
to their previous representations during the year. They recognized that
the Duma of the August manifesto would not be either a representative
or legislative assembly, but, regarding it as a possible rallying-point
for the general movement towards freedom, they agreed to obtain as many
seats as possible, so as to form a united group of advanced opinion.
They further drew up a programme of their political aims, including
the formation of a National Legislative Assembly; a regular budget
system; the abolition of passports; equal rights for all citizens,
including peasants; equal responsibility of all officials and private
citizens before the law; the liberation of the villager from the petty
official (natchalnik); inviolability of person and home; and freedom of
conscience, speech, press, meeting, and association.
The programme is important, as indicating what to the average Liberal
politician in England would appear the most obvious abuses of the
Russian system, because nothing is here demanded which has not long
ago been obtained for our own country by the efforts of our upper and
middle classes in the past.
As soon as the assembly broke up, Prince Sergius Troubetzkoy, the true
leader of these Liberal or Zemski delegates, the President of the
Moscow Zemstvo, and for a month past the Rector of the University, went
to St. Petersburg to urge the Government to allow public meetings,
and while speaking on behalf of free speech at the Ministry of Public
Education, he suddenly died. He was only forty-three, and it is
tempting to speak of him as the first of the Girondists to fall. But
all through what I have seen in Russia, I have avoided even a mental
reference to the French Revolution as carefully as I could. For history
is a great hindrance in judging the present or the future.
The manifesto of October 19th, announcing the final conclusion of the
peace with Japan, by which the Russian Government was compelled to
abandon all for which it had striven during many years in the Far East,
was hardly noticed in the gathering excitement of the days.
On October 21st, the workmen again appeared unexpectedly upon the
scene, and delivered their first telling blow by declaring a general
railway strike. The strength of the movement was that it disorganized
trade, made the capitalist and commercial classes very uncomfortable,
and, above all, that it prevented the Government from sending troops
rapidly to any particular point of disturbance. The weakness was that,
as in all strikes, the strikers were threatened with starvation while
their employers suffered only discomfort; that the peasants, being
unable to get their produce to market, began to regard the revolution
with suspicion; and that the Government succeeded in running a military
train between St. Petersburg and Moscow (only a ten hours’ journey)
nearly all the time.
The objects of the strikers were in the main political, as could be
seen from the demands presented to Witte by a deputation on October
24th--
“The claims of the working classes must be settled by laws
constituted by the will of the people and sanctioned by all
Russia. The only solution is to announce political guarantees
for freedom and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly,
elected by direct, universal, and secret suffrage. Otherwise the
country will be forced into rebellion.”
To this petition Witte’s reply was peculiarly characteristic--
“A Constituent Assembly is for the present impossible. Universal
suffrage would, in fact, only give pre-eminence to the richest
classes, because they could influence all the voting by their
money. Liberty of the press and of public meeting will be
granted very shortly. I am myself strongly opposed to all
persecution and bloodshed, and I am willing to support the
greatest amount of liberty possible.... But there is not in
the entire world a single cultivated man who is in favour of
universal suffrage.”
Undeterred by any fear of exclusion from the circle of culture,
the workmen continued their demands for universal suffrage and
a Constituent Assembly, and on October 26th the Central Strike
Committee--or Council of Labour Delegates, as it was properly
called--sitting in St. Petersburg, declared a general strike throughout
Russia. About a million workers came out.
This was the second workmen’s blow, and it shook Tsardom from top to
bottom.
Four days after the beginning of the strike, the famous Manifesto of
October 30th (17th in Old Style) was issued, promising personal freedom
and a constitution. The document began with the harmless necessary
cant--
“The troubles and agitations in our capitals and numerous other
places fill our heart with great and painful sorrow.... The
sorrow of the people is the sorrow of the sovereign.... We
therefore direct our Government to carry out our inflexible will
in the following manner:--
“I. To grant to our people the immutable foundations of civil
liberty, based on real inviolability of person, and freedom of
conscience, speech, union, and association.
“II. Without deferring the elections to the State Duma already
ordered, to call to participation in the Duma (as far as is
possible in view of the shortness of time before the Duma
assembles) those classes of the population now completely
deprived of electoral rights, leaving the ultimate development
of the principle of electoral right in general to the newly
established legislature.
“III. To establish it as an immutable rule that no law can ever
come into force without the approval of the State Duma, and that
it shall be possible for the elected of the people to exercise
a real participation in supervising the legality of the acts of
authorities appointed by us.”
This manifesto was greeted by an outburst of joy unequalled in the
melancholy annals of Russia. Righteousness and peace kissed each other
upon the streets; and so did professors, students, and even working
people. Red flags paraded the squares, generals saluted them, soldiers
joined in the Marseillaise of labour. But the Central Strike Committee
was not overcome by the general hallucination. They rightly refused to
trust the Tsar without guarantees, and they continued to press their
demands for a political amnesty and the convocation of a Constituent
Assembly. They also demanded the restoration of its old liberties to
Finland, and the dismissal of Trepoff. When anti-Jewish riots broke out
at Kieff, Warsaw, and especially at Odessa, they steadily and justly
maintained that the “Black Hundred” or “Hooligans” of the massacre and
pillage were encouraged by the police and the priests, who wished to
make out that the Russian people were opposed to political liberties.
The panic of the Government continued. They could not measure the
strength of this new force among the work-people, or of this new
instrument, the general strike. They were uncertain, also, about the
army, which, together with the police and officials, formed their sole
protection from ruin. Pobiedonostzeff, the aged Procurator of the Holy
Synod, and the embodiment of an obstinate and narrow tyranny in Church
and State, resigned. On November 4th, an amnesty was proclaimed for
political offenders, though certain qualifications and categories were
added.
On the same day a manifesto restored the old liberties of Finland,
abolishing the decree of February 15, 1899, by which the autocratic
principle, the dictatorship, and the employment of Russian gendarmes
had been imposed upon the duchy contrary to its original constitution,
and repealing also the military law of July 12, 1901, which compelled
recruits to serve outside their own country.
On November 9th Trepoff sent in his resignation, and Durnovo, since
infamous for his brutality, took office. The same day a violent but
ill-considered mutiny broke out among the sailors and gunners at
Kronstadt.
From that moment the Government began to recover courage, and we may
mark the gradual revival of reaction. Perhaps it was immediately due
to the refusal of the Liberal Zemstvoists to take part in a ministry
under Witte, unless the promises of the manifesto were guaranteed,
and a Constituent Assembly convened. In any case the change was quite
apparent in a manifesto of November 12th, declaring the present
situation unsuitable for the introduction of reforms, which would only
be possible when the country was pacified.
Next day a ukase proclaimed martial law in Poland, and excluded that
country from the manifesto, on the pretence that the Poles were
plotting against the integrity of the Russian Empire by establishing a
separate nation of their own.
The Central Strike Committee answered this ukase on the morrow
(November 14th) by declaring another general strike in sympathy with
Poland, and Witte, on his side, retaliated by posting an appeal to the
work-people, conceived in his most unctuous and fatherly style. It ran--
“Brothers! Workmen! Go back to your work and cease from
disorder. Have pity on your wives and children, and turn a deaf
ear to mischievous counsels. The Tsar commands us to devote
special attention to the labour question, and to that end has
appointed a Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which will
establish just relations between masters and men. Only give us
time, and I will do all that is possible for you. Pay attention
to the advice of a man who loves you and wishes you well.”
This appeal was immediately followed (November 17th) by a manifesto to
the peasants, reducing their payments for the use of land by one-half
after January, 1906, and abolishing it altogether after January,
1907. These payments were still being made under the land settlement
that followed the emancipation of the serfs in the early sixties, and
their nominal value to the Government was seven million pounds a year.
But the apparent generosity of the remission is diminished by the
consideration that the peasants had already paid the economic value of
the land many times over, and pressure could still be brought upon them
to make up the heavy arrears due to successive famines.
Three days later (November 20th), the Central Strike Committee declared
the strike at an end. This second general strike was felt to have
been a failure. People and funds were still exhausted by the first.
Comparatively few of the great factories came out; the object of the
strike was too remote from the workman’s daily life to persuade him to
endure the starvation of his family for it. So the strike failed. It
produced nothing; it did not frighten or paralyse the Government.
Nevertheless, the Strike Committee remained the most powerful body
of men in the Empire, and their order commanding the cessation of
the strike called hopefully upon the working classes to continue the
revolutionary propaganda in the army, and to organize themselves into
military forces “for the final encounter between all Russia and the
bloody monarchy now dragging out its last few days.”
Such was the situation when, on November 21st I landed at the
revolutionary little port of Reval, and went on to St. Petersburg by
the first train which had run since the strike ended.
CHAPTER I
THE STRIKE COMMITTEE
Away in the western quarter of St. Petersburg, at some distance from
the fashionable centre, stands a rather decrepit hall of debased
classic. In England one would have put it down to George II.’s time,
but in St. Petersburg everything looks fifty years older than it is,
because fashions used to travel slowly there from France. Among the
faded gilding of stucco pilasters and allegorical emblems of the
virtues and the arts, are hung the obscure portraits of long-forgotten
men--philosophers, governors, and generals--who were of importance
enough in their day to be painted for the remembrance of posterity.
Glaringly fresh among the others hangs the portrait of the hesitating
gentleman whom the accident of birth has left Autocrat of Russia,
whether he likes it or not. The hall was dedicated to the discussion
of “Free Economics” by some scientific body, but never before had
economics been discussed there with such freedom as during those
November nights when the Central Strike Committee, or Council of Labour
Delegates, chose it for their meetings.
Admission was by ticket only, and I obtained mine from a revolutionary
compositor, hairy as John the Baptist, and as expectant of a glory to
be revealed. On the first night that I went, the big chamber, with its
ante-room half separated by plaster columns, was crowded with working
people. So was the entrance hall, where goloshes are left, in Russian
fashion, so that the floors may not be dirtied. Some of the men wore
the ordinary dingy clothes of English or European factory-hands, making
all as like as earwigs. Some had come dressed in the national pink
shirt, with embroidered flowers or patterns down the front and round
the collar. But most wore the common Russian blouse of dark brown
canvas, buttoned up close to the neck, and gathered round the waist by
a leather belt.
Many women were there, too, but as a rule they were not working women
from the mills. Some may have been artisans or the wives of artisans,
but most were evidently journalists, doctors, or students, from the
intellectual middle classes, which in Russia produces the woman
revolutionist--the woman who has played so fine a part in the long
struggle of the past, and was now elated above human happiness by
the hope of victory. For Russian women enjoy a working equality and
comradeship with men, whether in martyrdom or in triumph, such as no
other nation has yet realized.
The workmen were delegates from the various trades of the capital
and some of the provinces--railway men, textile hands, iron workers,
timber workers, and others. About five hundred of them had been chosen,
and each delegate represented about five hundred other workers. But
round the long green table in the middle of that decrepit hall, under
the eyes of the hesitating little Tsar’s portrait, sat the chosen few
whom the delegates had appointed as their executive committee. Between
twenty and thirty of them were there--men of a rather intellectual type
among workers, a little raised above the average, either by education
or natural power. A few wore some kind of collar, a few showed the
finest type of Russian head--the strong, square forehead and chin, the
thoughtful and melancholy eyes, the straight nose, not very broad, and
the dense masses of long hair all standing on end. A few seemed to be
bred just a trifle too fine for their work, as dog-fanciers say. There
they sat and spoke and listened--the members of that Strike Committee
which had won fame in a month--just a handful of unarmed and unlearned
men, who had shaken the strongest and most pitiless despotism in the
world.
In the middle, along one side of the table, was their president, the
compositor Khroustoloff--or Nosar, as his real name was--a man of about
thirty-five, pale, grey-eyed, with long fair hair, not a strong-looking
man, but worn with excitement and sleeplessness. For there was no time
now for human needs, and his edge of collar was crumpled and twisted
like an old rag. Yet he controlled an excited and inexperienced meeting
with temper and ease, showing sometimes a sudden flicker of laughter
for which there is very little room in Russian life. Neither for
sleep, nor human needs, nor laughter, was there time, but in front of
Khroustoloff and of all those men lay the prison or the grave, and in
them there is always time enough.
That night, as long as I was there, the meeting was occupied with the
discussion of the eight-hours’ day. One of the executive read out
the reports received from all the factories represented by delegates
as to the hours of labour at present. In some cases, the masters had
conceded an eight-hours’ day after the first strike. In others, they
had come down to nine, in others to ten. Most had absolutely refused a
reduction. These reports, though monotonous and many, were listened to
with the silence that characterizes a Russian meeting. It was broken
only now and then by a little laughter or a murmur of anger. I have
never heard a Russian speaker interrupted even by applause.
The evening before I had attended a meeting where a dull but deserving
speaker, to whom no one wanted to listen, went on for an hour and
twenty minutes in a silence like an African forest’s, with only
an occasional whisper of breezy dresses as the audience changed
their position at the end of some uninteresting clause. Ages of
dumb suffering have given these people the interminable patience of
mountains, and a public meeting is so new to them that they find a
fearful pleasure in speeches which our free-born electors would howl
down in three minutes. Any meeting of British trade-unionists would
have polished off the Strike Committee’s business in an hour, but when
I came away, though it was past two in the morning and the meeting had
begun at six in the afternoon, the discussion was still proceeding
with healthy vigour, and there were plenty of other subjects of equal
importance still to be settled. The Committee, in fact, sat almost in
permanence night and day.
As soon as the reports were all read, the executive gathered up
their papers and adjourned into an upper room to consider their
decision. During their absence, the other delegates broke up into
groups according to trades, for the discussion of their own affairs.
Standing on a chair, a man would shout, “Weavers, this way, please!”
“Engineers, here!” or “Railway-men, this way!” and the various workers
clustered round in swarms. A fine hum of business arose, and a buzz
of conversation with outbursts of laughter too, for all spirits still
were high with success and the confidence of victory. At last, as
the executive remained over an hour in conference, a yellow-haired
young workman with a voice like the Last Trumpet, raised the Russian
“Marseillaise,” and in a moment the room was sounding to the hymn of
freedom. Russian words--rather vague and rhetorical words--have been
set to the old French tune, and even the tune has been altered at the
end of the chorus, to make room for the words, “Forward, forward,
forward!” which come in suddenly, like the beating of a drum. It was
sung in all the streets of all the cities, but I heard it first in the
midst of German territory, upon the Kiel canal. For as I was coming
over, the only passenger upon the Russian boat, we met an emigrant ship
bound for the refuge of freedom, as England still was at that time, and
at the sight of our Russian flag the emigrants all burst into the song,
the men waving their hats and the women their babes in defiance.
After the “Marseillaise,” the workmen turned to national songs, one
of which was almost as magnificent, and was touched with the immense
sorrow of Russia. All had one burden--the hatred of tyrants, the love
of freedom, the willingness to die for her sake. To us, such phrases
have come to bear an unreal and antiquated sound, for it is many
centuries since England enjoyed a real tyranny, and the long comfort
of freedom has made us slack and indifferent to evil. But in Russia
both tyranny and revolt are genuine and alive, and at any moment a man
or woman may be called upon to prove how far the love of freedom will
really take them on the road to death.
A few days before this workmen’s meeting, I had been at an assembly
of the educated classes to protest against capital punishment. One
speaker--a professor of famous learning--was worn and twisted by long
years of Siberian exile. He was the worst speaker present, but it
was he who received the deep thunder of applause. Another had, with
Russian melancholy, devoted his life to compiling an immense history of
assassination by the State. Before he began to speak, he announced that
he was going to read the list of those who had been executed for their
love of freedom since the time of Nicholas I. Instantly the whole great
audience rose in silence and remained standing in silence while a man
might count a hundred. It was as when a regiment drinks in silence to
fallen comrades. But few regiments have fought for a cause so noble,
and few for a cause in which the survivors still ran so great a risk.
The executive returned from their consultation, and at once the
meeting was quiet. President Khroustoloff, in a clear and reasonable
statement, announced that, in the opinion of the executive, a fresh
general strike on the eight-hours’ question would at present be a
mistake. The eight-hours’ day was an ideal to be kept before them;
they must allow no master who had once granted it to go back on his
word; they must urge the others forward, little by little, and in the
meanwhile organize and combine till they could confront both capitalism
and autocracy with assurance. Another member of the executive spoke
in support of this decision, and then the delegates of the opposite
party had their turn. It was the old difference between the responsible
opportunist, who takes what he can get, and the man of the ideal, who
will take nothing if he cannot have all. The idealists pointed to
the evident intention of Witte’s Government to thwart the workmen’s
advance. They pointed, with good reason, to the gradual renewal of
police persecution during the last few days, and to the encouragement
given to masters who declared a lock-out. They urged that it was best
to fight before the common enemy regained his full power, and that
the general strike, so efficient before, was still the only weapon
the workmen had. It was all true. Yet the recent strike had almost
failed, and it was just because a general strike was the workmen’s only
weapon that it should be sparingly used. A second failure within a
fortnight would show the Government that freedom’s only weapon was not
so dangerous after all. In the end the executive had its way; they were
supported by three hundred votes against twenty; and there could be no
question of the wisdom. The weapon of a general strike is too powerful
to be brought out, except for some special and all-important crisis. It
is like an ancient king, more feared when little seen.
Freedom at that moment was just hanging in the balance. One almost
heard the grating of the scales as very slowly the balance began to
swing back again. Already things were not quite so hopeful as they had
been, and many good revolutionists spoke of the future with foreboding.
The first fine rapture of liberty was over, and people who had eagerly
proclaimed themselves Liberals three weeks before, now began to feel in
their pockets, to hesitate and look round. In subdued whispers commerce
sighed for Trepoff back again, and the ancient security of a merchant’s
goods. They pretended terror of peasant outbreaks, and the violence of
“Black Hundred” mobs, organized by the police just to show the dangers
of reform. But it was reform itself that they dreaded, and the name of
Socialism was more terrible to them than the tyranny.
Day by day the police were becoming active again. As family men with
a stake in the country, they could not be expected to see their
occupation taken from them without a struggle. They had the same
interest in the ancient _régime_ as the Russian aristocracy in
Paris or Cannes; and for their livelihood the misery of the people was
equally essential. Whenever they dared, they planted themselves in
front of the doors and drove the audience away from a meeting; and
the audience had to go, for except to bombs and revolvers there was
no appeal. Every day I watched the police hounding groups of tattered
and starving peasants or workmen along the streets, because they had
ventured to come to St. Petersburg without passports, and had to be
imprisoned till a luggage train could take them back to their starving
homes. In spite of the manifesto, the censor of the post-office was
active again. It is a terrible thing for a civil servant to feel that
his work does not justify his pay. So the censor blacked out a cartoon
in _Punch_ representing the Tsar as hesitating between good and
evil, and then he felt he could look the world in the face.
Already the people recognized that as yet they had no guarantee of
freedom. As long as the Oligarchs controlled the police and the army,
freedom existed only on sufferance. No one knew what the army would do,
and no one knew what the fighting power of the revolution was. Those
unknown factors alone terrified the Oligarchs into reform. But all the
promises were only bits of paper. It had long been proved that the
Tsar’s word went for nothing. At the birth of his son he had abolished
flogging, but the taxes had been “flogged out” of the peasants just as
before. Manifesto after manifesto had been issued without the least
result, beyond winning the applause of an English writer or two. So
far the Tsar’s pledges of reform had been no more effectual than his
Conference of Peace and he could only become harmless if he had no
power to harm.
Yet the outward appearance of freedom surpassed all hope and
imagination. Nothing like this had ever been seen in Russia before.
Newspapers dared to tell the truth. Meetings were held which a few
weeks before would have sent every speaker to the cells. The Poles
gathered in a great assembly demanding the overthrow of absolutism and
solidarity for the revolution among all the states of the Empire. Women
and children taunted the patrols of Guards and Cossacks as they rode
the streets. Ladies threw open their nice clean rooms for workmen to
meet in. The students’ restaurants hummed with liberty. The air sounded
with the “Marseillaise.”
“In Russia now, everybody thinks,” said a revolutionist to me, “and
where people think, liberty must come.” Thought and liberty were to
bring him death in a few weeks, but for the moment it seemed impossible
that any reaction could bring the old order back. All the king’s
horses and all the king’s men could not restore that ancient tyranny.
The spring of freedom had come slowly up that way, but at last it was
greeted as certain, and so it seemed to me when in the darkness of
early morning I left that workmen’s meeting still hot with discussion
in the mouldering hall, and tramped home through slush and thawing
snow, watching the rough floes of drifting ice as they settled down
into their winter places upon the Neva.