THE PRIEST AND THE PEOPLE
The shallows of the Gulf of Finland were frozen hard, and from a
distance the sea looked like a huge flat plain covered with snow, while
wind and grey storms of drift raged over it, blotting out the horizon.
But when, almost imperceptibly, the sledge quitted the flat land for
the flat sea, the green ice sometimes lay bare upon the surface, or
threw up a sharp green edge, and sometimes the hollow rumble of the
runners told of the deeper water beneath. At one place a few planks had
been thrown across a gaping crack, where the current or the pressure
of ice had split the great field, and a dark line of water stretched
away on either hand till it was lost to sight in the storm. The track
was marked by the usual Christmas trees stuck in the ice, and by tall
signal posts as well. Yet, as the wind and driving snow increased, it
was impossible to see from one mark to the next, and the horse felt
his way along, like a man moving from lamp-post to lamp-post in a
London fog. Sometimes another sledge suddenly appeared out of limbo
two or three yards in front. At three points small wooden huts had
been erected as shelters for the lost or frozen. Huge lanterns on poles
glimmered through the dark flakes. Driven by the rushing wind, wheels
with wooden sails tugged at ropes, and out of the obscurity a deep bell
sounded, ominous as the bells rung by the waves around our cliffs. For
the dangerous tempest was blowing, which, I believe, the natives call
the “Vouga.”
On a sudden a shadowy rampart was seen, a bank of storm-twisted trees,
a dimly discerned church, and so we came to the island of Kronstadt,
famed for its fortress, its mutiny, and its living saint.
It was to visit the frozen sea and the miracle-working saint that I
had come, and of the few passers-by who struggled against the snow I
asked for Father John. At first I feared that the saint’s European
fame had hardly yet reached Kronstadt, where he lives, and from which
he takes his title. But after a time we were directed to a largish
modern house, which he has fitted up as a refuge, partly, I think,
for the poor, partly for the sick, or other unhappy people, who stand
in need of miracles. The rooms inside are large and very clean, all
filled with narrow iron bedsteads, covered with browny-grey blankets,
as in our barracks or superior doss-houses. A notice on the door gave
the price of a bed for the night at thirty kopecks--say sevenpence
halfpenny. That is about threepence halfpenny higher than the average
London doss, but it seems fair that those who seek a miracle should pay
something extra for it, and the tariff in our common lodging-houses is
not inclusive.
I had not time to make further observations when I was seized by an
eager crowd of women who thronged the rooms and passages--peasant women
from the mainland and work-people from the dockyards, all muffled
up in shawls and hoods and blankets. Excited benevolence shone in
their faces, as with cries and exhortations they clutched my clothing
and hurried me through one large dormitory, which appeared to be a
lying-in ward, into another where the crowd was thicker still. Being
thrust eagerly among the worshippers--for there is joy in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth--I perceived a small altar beneath a large
and brilliant icon hanging on the wall. The altar was made of a deal
table with a white cloth over it, and on the cloth stood a large
enamelled-iron soup-tureen. It was white with a blue edge, and filled
with a yellowish liquid, which I supposed to be holy. In front of the
altar, with his back towards us, stood a short, grey-haired figure, in
a robe of black flowered damask or brocade, with a crimson border round
the neck and halfway down the back.
He was just raising his hands in some act of adoration, when, becoming
aware of the religious tumult of my entrance, he faced smartly round,
abandoned the altar, and came, as it were, bounding in my direction.
Uncertain how to receive him, I stood my ground and held out my hand;
but entirely disregarding that, he sprang upon me, and raising himself
lightly upon his toes--for the top of his head did not reach to my
chin--with uplifted arm he began fumbling about in my hair with his
fingers. It was so sudden. In five seconds I had received his blessing.
He had blessed me by assault. For all I know, he had accomplished a
miracle upon me. The women stood round and sighed their pleasure. “He
never treats us to a blessing like that, never!” they murmured with
admiring envy.
When he came to rest before me, I perceived that he was a little
grey-bearded old gentleman, trim and lean and ruddy. He looked about
sixty, but his followers say he is seventy-seven, so that his very
activity is miraculous. One side of his forehead bulged with some
disease, but from his pale grey eyes looked a healthy spirit. Kindly
and innocent, practical, or even housewifely, I should say, rather
than intellectual or inspired. There was nothing of the rapt mystic
about him, nothing of the divine seer contemplating eternity. Indeed,
I was told that he himself makes no claim to prophetic vision, and
his gift of foretelling distant events must be unconscious. One of
his chief attributes in sanctity appears to be that he lived with the
same wife for fifty years, I believe all the time at Kronstadt; and I
see no cause to question his miraculous powers, especially as I have
known other people similarly endowed, though for qualifications of a
different kind.
He stood there, smiling up at me for a moment with innocent good will,
and I then perceived that the crimson border of his robe reached
halfway down his chest, as well as down his back, and that round his
neck, by a heavy silver chain, hung a large silver cross--the Russian
Orthodox cross, with a short bar nailed low down upon the shaft for
the feet of the Crucified to rest upon, and placed slantingly, so that
one end might be higher than the other, because by Eastern tradition
Christ was lame on the right foot. I also perceived that the saint’s
hand, though fine in itself, was worn, as though by the labour of
continual benediction. But observing that my eyes rested upon it, he
smiled, more benignly than ever, and did what is perfectly natural to
any Russian saint or lady--he held it up for me to kiss. It is a peril
one is sure to encounter among the priests of the Orthodox Church, and
over and over again I have resolved to go through with it manfully.
But when the final moment comes, the stubborn British blood begins to
jib and swerve, like a horse that cannot be brought up to his fences,
and grasping his hand in mine I shook it warmly. I am afraid the women
were grieved to think I should remain a heretic, in spite of all the
advantages they had so eagerly procured me, but there was no help.
The little saint then turned back to the altar and took up the service
where he had left off, just as a wood-pigeon takes up his comfortable
cadence at the note where last it was broken. The people renewed their
interrupted crossings and prostrations, and a young peasant beside me,
his dark red hair covering his shoulders, and his single outer garment
gathered round his waist with a rope, displayed incredible activity
in striking his forehead against the bare boards and springing up
again repeatedly almost without pause. I should like to have known
for what favour he was so urgent, and willingly would I have granted
it if it had been in my power, for no human being could have remained
obdurate to such importunity. But the service ended, and with a throng
accompanying him the saint, putting his great-coat over his robes and
his goloshes over his boots, departed down the street to some other
scene of hallowed beneficence.
It was hard to realize that this was Father John of Kronstadt, regarded
by revolutionists as among the most dangerous enemies of the Movement.
In the political cartoons he almost always figures among the leaders
of reaction. One sees pictures of him in his vestments standing beside
a cannon trained upon the crowd, or with the other Ministers admiring
a huge Christmas tree hung with skulls. His saying, at the time of
Father Gapon’s procession, that “only a sinner could strive against his
Tsar,” is well known. He is believed, perhaps truly, to possess great
influence in the Tsar’s family, especially over the women, such as the
Dowager Tsarina. According to rumour, his advice is invariably given
against every proposal of change or advancement, and the enthusiastic
women who procured me his blessing, are identified with the mothers and
wives of the most violent and merciless gang of the Black Hundred. That
is all very possible, and the recent scandals about a certain Virgin
of Kronstadt, who saw her way to making money out of the situation
by vicarious sanctitude, are only such as seem to arise inevitably
around a fellow mortal of much belauded virtue, whether they are true
or not. It is very probable also that the mothers of the Black Hundred
secure comparatively honest half-crowns by arranging special interviews
and privileges for visitors to the saint. To be sure, I had not to
pay a penny for my blessing, but I have known others, less favoured
by Heaven, who expended as much as two pound ten for very inferior
advantages. When all is said, the detraction of his opponents, and his
own abhorrence of progress appear to me the least miraculous things
about him. Take a man in youth, train him for years in a seminary
where he meets no one but young priests like himself, and hears no one
but old priests such as he is intended to become; give him no kind
of knowledge but ritual and dogma, which he must accept unquestioned
or perish; let him live many years with one woman in one small place,
among people who never contradict him, but either regard his words as
divine, or ignore them as parsonic; add a kindly simplicity to the
blank of ignorance; expose a rather small and finikin personality
to feminine adulation; and if you do not produce the very model of
priesthood as exemplified in Father John of Kronstadt, there will be a
miracle indeed.
I struggled back again across the frozen sea, where the storm raged
with increased violence, and on reaching St. Petersburg, I hastened
to a remarkable gathering in the great hall of the Conservatorium.
It was a concert given by a body which, with intentional vagueness,
called itself the Committee of the Working People, and its purpose
was to raise funds for the assistants at the Workmen’s Dining Rooms.
The performance was announced for eight o’clock, but I need not have
hastened; for, as I have already noticed, there is no pedantic and
inconsiderate punctuality in Russian affairs, and when I arrived,
some three quarters of an hour late, I found the huge audience still
pouring in, and I might have waited another half-hour without missing
any of the programme. But at concerts the audience is usually the most
interesting part, at all events to a foreigner, and I found myself
in the midst of the very people who, until quite lately, have been
the real revolutionists of Russia. Not very many actual work-people
were there, for the prices of seats kept them away; but the vast
concert-hall was soon packed with the educated, the professional men
and women, the “proletariat of intellect”--writers, journalists,
barristers, doctors, crowds of students, and a good many officers in
uniform, though I think that perhaps most of them were army doctors.
The scene was a fine example of the frank democracy that distinguishes
the Russian people--the enviable disregard of all the weary old
distinctions of rank, profession, wealth, or dress. It arises, perhaps,
from the ancient village communism, as I have already suggested, and
from the common use of Christian names and diminutives, which spreads a
brotherly feeling among all classes. Perhaps also from the comparative
unimportance of commercial people until lately; for in most countries
it is the commercial classes that maintain inequality. In no society,
outside savagedom, have I found such indifference to the nature and
distinctions of dress as in Russia. At this concert every class and
fashion of costume was to be seen, and no one was regarded as a queer
and dubious character if he dressed to please himself. It is quite
possible, no doubt, that the brains of many there stood above the
freezing point of British social sanity, but in all that I have seen
of Russian life, I have observed the same democratic ease, the same
disregard of the dress that marks a class distinction. It is this sense
of the equality of men that brings the Russians and the French together
and makes the monstrous alliance of their Governments appear almost
natural.
Of course, the whole audience was revolutionary, but in Russia
revolution is not thought to imply insanity so much as intelligence,
and large numbers had determined there should be no doubt as to their
opinions. Many of the students, with long hair all on end, wore the
Russian tunic, and no one stared. Some girl-students--those indomitable
“Kursistki,” on whom the soldiers have no mercy--were dressed in the
loose black blouse, fitting closely to the throat and buttoned along
the top of the shoulder instead of down the front or back. A few
gentler spirits had yielded to a tiny edge of white collar above the
black. But the blouse of the violent shone red, all gules from throat
to waist, and the more revolutionary a girl is by nature, the thicker
is her hair, and the lower it hangs over her eyes and ears. Her little
fur cap also has no brim, as others use, but is plain like a man’s; for
a brim is compromise, and at the bottom of the slope of compromise lies
ignoble peace.
In course of time the concert began. Perhaps concert is hardly the
right word, for I suppose no human soul in all that mass of people
had gone to hear music or singing, or cared very much what musical
sounds were made. Certainly, the musical performers were good, but
the interest lay with others--with the well-known young actress who
in a voice only slightly more emotional than common speech recited
some short poem which all could hear, while the piano played a hardly
perceptible accompaniment; or with the famous author who just sat in
a chair upon the stage, and read some vivid scene or parable from his
own works or another’s. As often as not he read it badly, but that made
no difference. This was no shrine of art for art’s sake. Behind those
quiet and halting words burned the whole fire of the revolution, and
the applause was not kept for the best performance, but for the most
daring passage, or for the hero who had been longest imprisoned for
the cause. Such applause as that I have never heard. There was a vital
intensity in the enthusiasm that no art could inspire. Time after time
the man or woman was recalled. Four times or five times the same piece
would be repeated, and still the applause seemed as if it could not
end. Eleven times one man was recalled, the whole audience standing up
and shouting his name in a tumult of admiration. Not that he recited
well, but it was his own work that he recited, and he had only just
come out of gaol.
The form of the recitations was almost invariably the parable. Some
simple scene or fable was narrated, so harmless and childlike on the
surface, that the enemy could find no handle for his rage, but inwardly
it was charged with a significance like hidden flame. It is a form very
natural to Russia, for it has grown out of the peasants’ folk-tale
and proverb, and the perpetual danger of open expression has kept it
alive. So in Gorky’s well-known parable, which was one of the many
recited, the falcon soars in freedom through the sunlit air, and the
snake remains coiled under the dark and chilly stones; but presently
the falcon falls to the ground wounded and dying, while the snake
congratulates himself upon the pleasing security of his own habits.
Sometimes it was but a common scene of military life that was narrated;
sometimes there came a brief outburst of triumph, “O sleepless nights,
your fruits are seen at last!” And in one poem the part of women in
Russia’s revolution was described almost without subterfuge.
In the souls of the audience only one thought lived. A suppressed
excitement breathed throughout the hall. As the words of the speakers
or singers rose and fell, the air trembled with the beat of all those
minds in unison. There was no sound. Each great word was awaited as
one awaits the notes of a solemn music. But it was not the words that
were the greatest thing, it was not the performers, not the martyrs,
nor even the audience. The greatest thing was the common faith of all.
Under that outward scene of gleaming lights and varied personality
one felt the secret touch of danger, and only in danger is the highest
community to be found. One felt the deep and passionate glow of a life
brief and insecure. One felt the spirit careless of everything--of joy,
of passion, of life itself--of everything, but the one great cause--the
only thing that counted, the soul of the crowd, the consciousness that
breathed through the air and kept us still. The words ceased. There was
a gasp while like one man the great assembly drew in its breath, and
then with a rushing wind rose the tempest of applause. And yet it was
not the words, nor even the speaker: it was the revolution that was
adored.
To have a cause like that, to dwell with danger for the sake of it
every day and night, to confront continually an enemy vital, pitiless,
almost omnipotent, and execrable beyond words--what other life can
compare to that, not only in grandeur, but in the satisfaction of
intellect and courage and love and every human faculty? So tyranny
brings its compensations.
At various intervals the audience trooped out from the hall, and walked
up and down the great ante-rooms and passages provided in all Russian
places of assembly. They greeted each other, they embraced, drank tea,
and buzzed with conversation. The intervals lasted about three-quarters
of an hour, and were of the highest interest to every one. The first
ended just before midnight, the second about two. Whether the third
ever ended I did not discover, for I was lost in memories of English
audiences, upon whose faces a real expression begins to dawn soon after
eleven--an expression of impatient anxiety whether they will catch the
last ‘bus home to bed.