RUSSIA KNOUTED INTO CIVILIZATION--PETER DEAD
While Peter was absorbing more territory on the Baltic, and while he
was with frenzied haste building his new city, Charles XII. was still
hiding in Poland. The Turks were burning with desire to recapture
Azof, and the Khan of Tartary had his own revenges and reprisals at
heart urging him on; so, at the instigation of Charles and the Khan,
the Sultan declared war against Russia in 1710.
It seemed to the Russian people like a revival of their ancient glories
when their Tsar, with a great army, was following in the footsteps of
the Grand Princes to free the Slav race from its old infidel enemies.
Catherine, from whom Peter would not be separated, was to be his
companion in the campaign. But the enterprise, so fascinating in
prospect, was attended with unexpected disaster and suffering; and the
climax was finally reached when Peter was lying ill in his tent, with
an army of only 24,000 men about to face one of over 200,000--Tatars
and Turks--commanded by skilled generals, adherents of Charles XII.
This was probably the darkest hour in Peter's career. The work of his
life was about to be overthrown; it seemed as if a miracle could not
save him. Someone suggested that the cupidity of the Grand Vizier,
Balthazi, was the vulnerable spot. He loved gold better than glory.
Two hundred thousand rubles were quickly collected--Catherine throwing
in her jewels as an added lure. The shining gold, with the glittering
jewels on top, averted the inevitable fate. Balthazi consented to
treat for peace upon condition that Charles XII. be permitted to go
back to Sweden unmolested, and that Azof be relinquished (Treaty of
Pruth). Peter's heart was sorely wrung by giving up Azof, and his
fleet, and his outlet to the Southern seas. The peace was costly, but
welcome; and Catherine had earned his everlasting gratitude.
The Tsar now returned to the task of reforming his people. There were
to be no more prostrations before him: the petitioner must call himself
"subject," not "slave," and must stand upright like a man in his
presence, even if he had to use his stick to make him do so! The
Asiatic caftan and the flowing robes must go along with the beards; the
_terem_, with its "twenty-seven locks," must be abolished; the wives
and daughters dragged from their seclusion must be clothed like
Europeans. Marriage must not be compelled, and the betrothed might see
each other before the wedding ceremony.
If it is difficult to civilize one willing barbarian, what must it have
been to compel millions to put on the garment of respectability which
they hated! Never before was there such a complete social
reorganization, so entire a change in the daily habits of a whole
people; and so violently effected. It required a soul of iron and a
hand of steel to do it; and it has been well said that Russia was
knouted into civilization. A secret service was instituted to see that
the changes were adopted, and the knout and the ax were the
accompaniment of every reforming edict. This extraordinary man was by
main force dragging a sullen and angry nation into the path of
progress, and by artificial means trying to accomplish in a lifetime
what had been the growth of centuries in other lands. Then there must
be no competing authorities--no suns shining near to the Central Sun.
The Patriarchate--which, after Nikon's attempt in the reign of his
grandfather, had been shorn of authority--was now abolished, and a Holy
Synod of his own appointing took its place. For the _Sobor_ or
States-General there was substituted a Senate, also of his own
appointing. The _Streltsui_, or militia, was swept out of existence;
the military Cossacks were deprived of their _Hetman_ or leader; and a
standing army, raised by recruiting, replaced these organizations.
Nobility meant service. Every nobleman while he lived must serve the
state, and he held his fief only upon condition of such service; while
a nobleman who could not read or write in a foreign tongue forfeited
his birthright. This was the way Peter fought idleness and ignorance
in his land! New and freer municipal organizations were given to the
cities, enlarging the privileges of the citizens; schools and colleges
were established; the awful punishment for debtors swept away. He was
leveling up as well as leveling down--trying to create a great plateau
of modern society, in which he alone towered high, rigid, and
inexorable.
If the attempt was impossible and against nature, if Peter violated
every law of social development by such a monstrous creation of a
modern state, what could have been done better? How long would it have
taken Russia to _grow_ into modern civilization? And what would it be
now if there had not been just such a strange being--with the nature
and heart of a barbarian joined with a brain and an intelligence the
peer of any in Europe, capable of seeing that the only hope for Russia
was by force to convert it from an Asiatic into a European state?
One act bore with extreme severity upon the free peasantry. They were
compelled to enroll themselves with the serfs in their Communes, or to
be dealt with as vagrants. Peter has been censured for this and also
for not extending his reforming broom to the Communes and overthrowing
the whole patriarchal system under which they existed--a system so out
of harmony with the modern state he was creating. But it seems to the
writer rather that he was guided by a sure instinct when he left
untouched the one thing in a Slavonic state, which was really Slavonic.
He and the long line of rulers behind him had been ruling by virtue of
an authority established by aliens. Russia had from the time of Rurik
been governed and formed after foreign models. Peter was at least
choosing better models than his predecessors. If it was an apparent
mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century
upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be
that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew. May
it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day,
from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never
been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the
vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia?
The _Raskolniks_, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller
merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous
changes--some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding
from persecution and from this reign of Satan. The more they studied
the Apocalypse the plainer became the signs of the times. Satan was
being let loose for a period. They had been looking for the coming of
Antichrist and now he had come! The man in whom the spirit of Satan
was incarnate was Peter the Great. How else could they explain such
impious demeanor in a Tsar of Russia--except that he was of Satanic
origin, and was the Devil in disguise? By his newly invented census
had he not "numbered the people"--a thing expressly forbidden? And his
new "calendar," transferring September to January, was it not clearly a
trick of Satan to steal the days of the Lord? And his new title
_Imperator_ (Emperor), had it not a diabolic sound? And his order to
shave, to disfigure the image of God! How would Christ recognize his
own at the Last Day?
Hunted like beasts, these people were living in wild communities, dying
often by their own hands rather than yield the point of making the sign
of the cross with two fingers instead of three--2700 at one time
voluntarily perishing in the flames, in a church where they had taken
refuge. Peter put an end to their persecution. They were permitted to
practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without
molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.
The millions of _Raskolniks_ in Russia to-day still consider New Russia
a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist. They yield a
sullen compliance--pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the
handle of door if a heretic has touched it. It is a conservative
Slavonic element which every Tsar since Mikhail Romanoff has had to
deal with.
Not one of the reforms was more odious to the people than the removal
of the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It violated the most
sacred feelings of the nation; and many a soul was secretly looking
forward to the time when there would be no Peter, and they would return
to the shrine of revered associations. But the new city grew in
splendor--a city not of wood, to be the prey of conflagrations like
Moscow; but of stone, the first Russia had yet possessed. The great
Nevski was already there lying in a cathedral bearing his name, and the
Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul was ready to entomb the future Tsars.
And Peter held his court, a poor imitation of Versailles, and gave
great entertainments at which the shy and embarrassed ladies in their
new costumes kept apart by themselves, and the attempt to introduce the
European dances was a very sorry failure. In 1712 Peter planned a
visit to Paris, with two ends in view--a political alliance and a
matrimonial one. He ardently desired to arrange for the future
marriage of his little daughter Elizabeth with Louis XV., the infant
King of France. Neither suit was successful, but it is interesting to
learn how different was the impression he produced from the one twelve
years before. Saint-Simon writes of him: "His manner was at once the
most majestic, the proudest, the most sustained, and at the same time
the least embarrassing." That he was still eccentric may be judged
from his call upon Mme. de Maintenon. She was ill in bed, and could
not receive him; but he was not to be baffled. He drew aside the
bed-curtains and stared at her fixedly, while she in speechless
indignation glared at him. So, without one word, these two historic
persons met--and parted! He probably felt curious to see what sort of
a woman had enthralled and controlled the policy of Louis XIV. Peter
did not intend to subject his wife to the criticism of the witty
Frenchwomen, so prudently left her at home.
Charles XII. died in 1718, and in 1721 there was at last peace with
Sweden. But the saddest war of all, and one which was never to cease,
was that in Peter's own household. His son Alexis, possibly embittered
by his mother's fate, and certainly by her influence, grew up into a
sullen, morose, and perverse youth. In vain did his father strive to
fit him for his great destiny. By no person in the empire--unless,
perhaps, his mother--were Peter's reforms more detested than by the son
and heir to whom he expected to intrust them. He was in close
communication with his mother Eudoxia, who in her monastery, holding
court like a Tsaritsa, was surrounded by intriguing and disaffected
nobles--all praying for the death of Peter. Every method for reaching
the head or heart of this incorrigible son utterly failed. During
Peter's absence abroad in 1717, Alexis disappeared. Tolstoi, the
Tsar's emissary, after a long search tracked him to his hiding place
and induced him to return. There was a terrible scene with his father,
who had discovered that his son was more than perverse, he was a
traitor--the center of a conspiracy, and in close relations with his
enemies at home and abroad, betraying his interests to Germany and to
Sweden.
The plan, instigated by Eudoxia, was that Alexis, immediately upon the
death of his father--which God was importuned to hasten--should return
to Moscow, restore the picturesque old barbarism, abandon the territory
on the Baltic, and the infant navy, and the city of his father's love;
in other words, that he should scatter to the winds the prodigious
results of his father's reign! It was monstrous--and so was its
punishment! Eudoxia was whipped and placed in close confinement, and
thirty conspirators, members of her "court," were in various ways
butchered. Then Alexis, the confessed traitor, was tried by a tribunal
at the head of which was Menschikof--and sentenced to death.
On the morning of the 27th of June, 1718, the Tsar summoned his son to
appear before nine of the greatest officers of the state. Concerning
what happened, the lips of those nine men were forever sealed. But the
day following it was announced that Alexis, the son of the emperor, was
dead; and it is believed that he died under the knout.
The question of succession now became a very grave one. Alexis, who
had under compulsion married Charlotte of Brunswick, left a son Peter.
The only other heirs were the Tsar's two daughters Anna and Elizabeth,
the children of Catherine. Shortly after the tragedy of his son's
death, Peter caused Catherine to be formally crowned Empress, probably
in anticipation of his own death, which occurred in 1725.