THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM
ON an earlier page I remarked that the element of romance passed out of
the story of the Romanoffs with the last lovers of Catherine and the
murder of Paul. This is true of what we may call personal romance, but
it will have been apparent that a larger, impersonal romance now opens.
Not individual Romanoffs, but the Romanoff dynasty, must fight for
existence. Life at court is now too earnest for bibulous companions of
monarchs, and handsome lovers of queens, and plots of the anteroom. The
comedy is over; if one may call a comedy the enthronement of a selfish
and profligate monarchy upon the poverty and ignorance of millions of
human beings. The play now assumes the sombre note of tragedy. The
people, represented by a few of the educated few, begin to awaken and
claim their rights. The rest of the story is a ghastly record of the
efforts of the Romanoffs to prevent the spread of that awakening.
Nicholas I, who succeeded Alexander, represents the struggle of the
dynasty in a form which might be reconciled with conscience. He differed
materially from Alexander in two respects. First, although he was, like
Alexander, moderately endowed in intellect, he had great strength of
character and would stubbornly pursue any policy which he adopted. In
the second place, that policy was inevitably shaped by the accident that
he was born many years after Alexander. The eldest son of Paul I had
received his education at a time when Catherine was under the influence
of the French humanitarians. Nicholas came to the years of discretion
during her second phase, when the Revolution had soured her taste of all
things French and liberal. His chief tutor had been a French emigrant,
an incompetent teacher and a bitter enemy of liberal ideas. Nicholas had
grown up a rough and conceited boy. Later he had had abler teachers, but
he had yawned over their lessons. He had in 1817 married a daughter of
the King of Prussia, and, like almost all the Romanoffs, he thought a
minute acquaintance with military drill the first equipment for life. In
spite of hints from Alexander he refused to prepare for the serious task
of governing a great nation. By an unfortunate accident his vague
despotic mood was at the very opening of his reign hardened into an
attitude of fierce hostility to the new culture.
His elder brother Constantine had, as I said, forfeited his right to the
throne. He had fallen in love with a charming Polish lady, the Countess
Jeannette Grudzinsky, after divorcing his first wife. As no amount of
personal charm, not associated with royal blood, fitted a woman to
occupy the throne of Elizabeth and Catherine, the Tsar had, in 1822,
given him the alternative of losing either the lady or his right to the
throne. Constantine had not a regal disposition. He married Jeannette
and abdicated the right he had to the throne on the restored principle
of inheritance.
Nicholas knew of this abdication, though it was otherwise known only to
a few intimate councillors. But he knew that there was much feeling
against him in St. Petersburg, and he proceeded diplomatically. He
proclaimed Constantine Tsar. Prince Golitzin and others who knew of the
abdication begged him to refrain until the Council had opened a certain
sealed letter which Alexander had left, but Nicholas persisted and sent
word to his brother at Warsaw. Constantine refused the throne, and for
several weeks letters went backward and forward. Nicholas was very much
attached to his brother, but it is probable that he wanted time to study
the threatening situation in St. Petersburg and secure the stability of
his throne. He yielded on December 13th, and fixed the following day for
the taking of the oath of allegiance.
On the 14th a large body of troops and the customary crowd of citizens
assembled in the square, and suddenly the cry “Long Live
Constantine” rang from the lips of various companies of the
soldiers. “Long Live the Constitution” was also shouted; and
it is said that the ignorant troops, who had been told to add this,
thought that it was the name of Constantine’s Polish wife.
Nicholas, who did not lack courage, came out of the palace and
endeavoured quietly to convince the soldiers that his brother had
abdicated. They repeated their cries, and the nucleus of mutineers began
to grow and form a compact body. It is thought that if those who had
arranged the plot had had more courage it might have succeeded. But
Prince Trubetzkoi, the leader, kept out of sight, and there was no
vigorous direction. General Miloradovitch approached the soldiers to
reason with them, and was shot. The Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, his
golden cross lifted high in the air, next addressed them, and he was
contemptuously told to go home and mind his own business. The night was
falling, and it was feared that under its cover a serious riot would
occur. Nicholas ordered blank firing and, when the rebels jeered,
ordered grape-shot; and the rebellion was over.
After the burial of the victims came the inquiry, and it was thorough
and protracted. Two hundred and forty were arrested, and they included
men of the highest rank in St. Petersburg and many officers of the army.
Princes, counts, barons, and generals were on the list of the condemned.
The five ringleaders, including two colonels of military distinction,
were sentenced to be quartered, but the Tsar commuted the sentence to
hanging. The death-sentence had become so unusual in Russia that a
bungling amateur made a horrible tragedy of the business; but those five
first martyrs of the Russian people met their death with impressive
dignity and courage. Thirty-one were sentenced to be beheaded, and were
sent to the mines for life. Seventeen were condemned to the mines, and
had their sentences changed to twenty years’ imprisonment. Others
went, with their wives and families, to Siberia or to remote provinces.
And Tsar Nicholas I went to Moscow to be crowned.
Nicholas was sufficiently intelligent to realise that this conspiracy of
soldiers and nobles and intellectuals was a new thing in the annals of
Russia. He had a very candid memorandum drawn up from the subversive
literature which was taken with the conspirators, and he carefully
studied the condition of Russia as they had seen it. The new Tsar had a
type of mind entirely different from that of his brother. He had a
clear, robust, and narrow intelligence, unclouded either by mysticism or
moral hypocrisy. He seriously considered the evils of the Empire: the
corruption of officials, the arrears of payment which led to extortion,
the heavy taxes, the parody of justice, the general squalor and
ignorance, the State-monopoly of drink, the shocking condition of the
serfs, and so on. These things must be remedied; and they must be
remedied by the god-appointed person--the Tsar. That was his
attitude. In his Coronation-Manifesto he said:
“The statutes of the land are gradually perfected, the faults corrected,
the abuses remedied, not by insolent dreams of destruction, but from
above.”
The new Tsar was for “true enlightenment.” Any other enlightenment, any
unauthorised enlightener, must look out.
That was the note of the early part of the reign of Nicholas I.
Speranski was brought from his retirement and told to carry out the
reforms he had projected. His older code of laws was not passed, but he
was directed to codify the existing laws of Russia; which was something.
There were not competent lawyers in Russia to ensure the proper
administration of justice, and young men were sent abroad to study law.
But no youth must go and acquire education abroad for any other purpose.
No foreign teachers or tutors must be tolerated any more in Russia. No
foreign ideas must be permitted to taint the purity of the docile
Russian soul. No noble could remain abroad more than five years, and no
commoner more than three years.
A very rigorous and complete censorship was set up. All manuscripts,
even the manuscripts of journalistic copy, must be revised before they
reached the printer. Any that ventured to recommend the ideas which were
in France leading up to the Revolution of 1830, and in England to the
Reform Bill of 1832, were suppressed. Intellectual life must concern
itself with the native contents of the Russian tradition. It was
stifled. Russia was just at the stage of a literary renaissance, but it
was directed into this channel, and, as it was mainly artistic, it
contrived to thrive on nationalist soil. Pushkin and Gogol wrote their
famous stories and poems. Karamsin founded Russian history--of the
dynastic type. Young men like Turgenieff, Dostoievski, and Tolstoi
began, at the end of the reign, to take up the artistic tradition. The
national drama was advanced. But it was all genuinely Russian. The new
theologies and philosophies and sciences of the west were banned.
The censorship was moderated a little in 1830, when Prince Lieven, a
religious but cultivated man, became minister of education. For a time
the anathema was confined to matters which had a plain political import.
But after a few years a reactionary succeeded Prince Lieven, and the
task of preventing enlightenment was rigorously resumed. The second
revolutionary wave was slowly spreading over Europe. The stupid and
harsh dynasty of the French kings went forever. The reform of the
parliamentary franchise was now won in England. An historic fight
for freedom and knowledge was raging in Austria, Italy, Spain, and
Portugal.
[IMAGE: img290.jpg Winder Palace, Petrograd]
Everywhere it was this detestable new middle class which was assailing
the old traditions. Young men of the working class to-day have little
conception in how overwhelming a proportion the champions and martyrs of
“the people” in those sanguinary days belonged to the middle class. The
task of rulers plainly was to check literature and the university-life,
which were manufacturing this intellectual middle class. Literature of a
modern kind was entirely suppressed. The universities were watched by the
police--the new secret police which Nicholas created as an instrument of
the threatened autocracy--and controlled after a time by the clergy. The
Slavophile creed was elevated to the rank of a philosophy. Against this
bold scheme of human development which the liberals were basing upon the
philosophy of Hegel, the “sound” teachers pitted a very plausible static
creed. It was, they said, the peculiar gift of the Russian soul to
reconcile the jarring elements of life, which in the west created only
discord. These new notions of democracy and evolution (which was just
emerging from the pit in England) and rationalism only increased the
misery of life. Look at the contrast of the restless proletariate of
England or France and the Russian peasant! Self-absorption in love, as
taught by Russian Christianity, not self-assertion, as taught by
religious and political rationalism, was the creed to make people happy.
The influence of the Church was ardently enlisted. Nicholas was
sincere--he read a page of the Bible every night to his wife--and liked
to have sincere people about him. He got rid of Arakcheeff and the
converted atheist Magnitski, and he upheld the abbot Photi. The Bible
Society was directed to return to England, and its property was
confiscated. The Roman Catholic Church had made progress under the
liberal Alexander. It was checked, and its property confiscated. The
secret police penetrated study and boudoir in search of traces of
heresy. In Poland four and a half million Roman Catholics were
“converted” to the Orthodox Church. In Protestant Livonia the Russian
priests and officials did almost as they willed. School-children were
damped with holy water and oil, and counted members of the Orthodox
Church. Presents of money or land settled the hesitating consciences of
their parents. The Russian Church supported the autocracy and
anathematised culture: all Russians must therefore belong to the Russian
Church.
It must not be supposed that this drastic campaign extinguished the
light in Russia. It merely compelled men to hide their light
underground, or to speak and write with discretion. A sullen and stern
fight went on all the time. Once the Catholics of Poland and Hungary had
tried to shut off Russia from the culture of the west and they had
eventually failed. Now the Tsars, who had torn down the barrier, would
set up a barrier of their own. It had no greater chance of lasting
success, though it did postpone the awakening of Russia. In the end,
when a third revolutionary wave spread over Europe, Nicholas doubled his
precautions. Not more than three hundred students were allowed at each
university. This was “true enlightenment.” But a nobler race
was rising amidst the densely ignorant mass, and Nicholas I could not
crush it.
It may be asked what he did for the honest improvement of the country
which he had sincerely regarded as the task of the autocracy. Very
little. To educate the mass of the people was, of course, a mischievous
delusion in the creed of Nicholas I. The spread of elementary education
was either arrested or carefully controlled. Under Speranski’s early
influence he appointed an official, Count Kisseleff, to look after the
eighteen million serfs on the Crown Estates, and the official was a good
man. Schools of a kind were established. The filthy and unhealthy habits
of the people were partly corrected. In 1842 a serf was enabled by
statute to purchase his freedom. In 1848 it was enacted that the serfs
of an insolvent landowner might collectively purchase the estate.
Nicholas encouraged nobles to free their serfs. Then came the French
Revolution of 1848, with its echoes all over Europe, and Nicholas
abandoned reform. Even within the limits of his own plan he had rendered
insignificant service, in comparison with the task which the papers of
the conspirators had impressed on him. The thirty years of his reign
were occupied in fighting the light which from all sides now sought to
penetrate the darkness of Russia.
The wars which interrupted or accompanied the Emperor’s efforts do not
properly concern us, but in some features they illustrate his
personality and work. On this side also the new morality of the
Romanoffs was degenerating rapidly into casuistry. Alexander had sought
neither war nor territory. The dynasty was converted from the brutal
attitude which had put the quintessence of glory in conquest by the
sword. Alexander interfered in European affairs only in the lofty
interests of justice and civilisation. Nicholas also was a lover of
peace and justice, and on this plea he started, or resumed, the Russian
policy of expansion southward which has since cost Europe so much blood.
As is well-known, Nicholas had provocation; indeed, until some other
force can secure protection for the weak, it remains an act of chivalry
for the strong to do battle for them. That at least was the almost
universal sentiment in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, and
we saw that the people of St. Petersburg bitterly blamed Alexander for
not interfering on behalf of the Greeks. Nicholas at once took up the
task that his brother had declined. Greeks and Serbs were trying to
throw off the brutal tyranny of the Turk, and the Sultan had sent the
most fanatical and least civilised of his soldiers to chastise the
insolent Christians. Europe rang with the horror of the massacres, the
mutilations, the rapes and burnings. It was assuredly the place of a
monarch who was of like creed to the Greeks and of the same blood as the
Serbs to demand justice for them, and Nicholas promptly demanded it. He
bade the Sultan evacuate the Balkans and grant autonomy to his Christian
provinces. England and France were equally moved by the outrages, and
not a little jealous of any action of Russia, and the three Powers gave
the Sultan an ultimatum. His refusal to comply led to the destruction of
his fleet at Navarino in 1828, and Greece won its independence.
It was the beginning of the abominable international jealousy which has
so long suffered the Turk to play the savage in Europe. The Sultan knew
that Austria was sufficiently jealous of Russia to support him, and he
believed that England was in the same frame of mind. He therefore sent
a pompous complaint to Russia, and demanded an indemnity. Nicholas,
knowing well the jealousy of the other Powers, baffled them by a
straightforward inquiry whether he would not be justified in chastising
the Turks. He would, he said, seize no territory in Europe, and would be
content to reduce the Sultan merely to a decent sense of his duty to his
Christian subjects. Austria trimmed in its reply, but England, France,
and Prussia consented, and Nicholas led his legions southward. Again I
refer to histories of Russia for the details of the eighteen
months’ war. It ended with the victory of Russia and the Treaty of
Adrianople (September 14th, 1829). Moldavia and Wallachia (now Rumania)
and Serbia were declared autonomous. The Dardanelles was opened to
Russian commerce. Russia secured an indemnity and the right to protect
Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
In the meantime a new page had opened in the relations of Russia and
Poland. The Grand Duke Constantine ruled the kingdom with more force
than wisdom, and he begged his brother, who had not been crowned King of
Poland, to come and impress the people of Warsaw by that ceremony.
Nicholas went, and swore to maintain the constitution which Alexander
had granted the Poles in 1818. He made matters worse, however, by his
arbitrariness. It was with difficulty that he could be induced to
tolerate a service of thanksgiving in the Roman Catholic cathedral; he
opened the Diet with a speech in French; and he usurped a function
of the Diet in nominating Senators. The discontent of the Poles, who had
absorbed western ideas, was greatly increased. It is said that there was
a plot to kidnap the Tsar. At all events, the complaints in the Diet
became so bitter that he closed it, in violation of the constitution,
and the discontent ran to underground conspiracy.
This plot was another element in the autocratic education of Nicholas I
and his successors. In July (1830) occurred the second French
Revolution, followed by an insurrection at Berlin. Nicholas was so
indignant that he thought of declaring war upon France, and he did offer
troops to the King of Prussia. But at the end of September he was
infuriated to learn that the spirit of revolt had spread to his own
kingdom of Poland. Pro-Russians had been massacred, and an attempt had
been made to capture the person of the Grand Duke, who had fled to
Russia with his few troops. General Chlopicki and the Polish regiments
had joined the revolutionaries. A Provisional Government, including
Princes Czartoriski and Radziwill, had been established.
In his sternest mood Nicholas sent 120,000 men against the Poles, who
hastily closed their intestine differences and gathered an army of
90,000 men. They fought with magnificent bravery, but the superior
Russian forces wore them down and entered Warsaw (September 7th, 1831).
It suited the humour of Nicholas to suppress a rebellion; and the
suppression, like the earlier partition, is one of the grim memories
which lie between Poland and Russia to-day. After punishing the captured
rebels, Nicholas went on to remove the very soil in which another
rebellion might grow. He destroyed almost the last remnant of Polish
nationality. The flag of the white eagle was abolished, the constitution
torn up, the higher schools and universities closed. On February 26th
Poland was declared to be henceforth a province of Russia.
At the other end of the Empire trouble in Georgia and Circassia gave
occasion to strengthen in that direction the rule of the Tsar. He now
reigned over the largest Empire in Europe, and almost every other Power,
but especially England and France, regarded the growth of Russia with
apprehension. Nicholas got the Dardanelles closed against foreign
warships, and so secured his Black Sea coast against attack. He had
assisted the Sultan to chastise one of _his_ rebels--Mehemed Ali, of
Egypt--and was rewarded with this concession. Europe moved toward the
Crimean War.
First, however, Nicholas had an opportunity of crushing another revolt
and chastising the supporters of the new ideas. The third revolutionary
wave, which was definitely to destroy the old political order in Europe,
began in 1848; and it began, as usual, in France. Louis Napoleon, who
was destined to give that country its last and not most fortunate
experiment in kingship, made an appeal to Nicholas for friendship, if
not alliance. But Nicholas liked neither an authority which was set up
by the will of the people nor a programme that pandered to the will of
the people. He rejected Napoleon’s appeal, and turned rather to
Austria, where insurrection seemed to be well on the way to shake even
the Hapsburgs from the throne. The Hungarians were on the point of
securing their independence, and the mediæval system which Metternich
had so long maintained was about to be destroyed. Nicholas gladly
supported his brother-autocrat. It was the Russian army of 190,000 men
which propped up once more the tottering throne of the Hapsburgs and
prolonged the struggle of darkness against light. Nicholas would learn
presently the utter selfishness and ungratefulness of Austrian policy,
as his last successor would learn at a later date.
The eyes of Nicholas were still upon the south, and the eyes of Europe
were upon Nicholas. There can be very little doubt that the whole of the
moralising Romanoffs of the nineteenth century had, behind their
professions of disinterested regard for the victims of the Turk, a more
or less clearly conceived design of gaining Constantinople and passing
over the Balkans, to the Mediterranean. Whatever sincerity there was in
their zeal for the protection of the Christian subjects of the Sultan,
they were far from insensible to the fact that these helpless Greek
Christians occupied territory which would, if it were annexed, bring
Russia at last to a free and warm sea. In Alexander this motive was so
far checked by an effort at sincerity, that he would not interfere
between the Greek and the Turk; he would be true to his later resolution
to help no insurgents. Nicholas held an even sterner attitude toward
insurgents, but the moment Christian subjects of the Sultan rose against
_their_ ruler he entirely forgot that they were rebels against an
hereditary autocracy. We shall find his successors equally lenient to
rebellion in the Balkans; and it is scarcely a diplomatic secret that
the Serbs, when they received the brotherly support of the last of the
Romanoffs in 1914, looked silently and anxiously for a less
disinterested purpose in the act of that monarch.
Nicholas now had the Sultan almost in a state of vassalage, and it
seemed to him that he had so far raised the prestige of Russia, and won
the gratitude of Austria, that he need hardly consider the western
Powers. Hence in 1853 he made a pompous objection when the Sultan
granted the French certain privileges in regard to the Christians of
Palestine. He sent Prince Menshikoff to Constantinople to establish a
definite Russian protectorate over all the Greek Christians in the
Ottoman Empire. Secretly, however, Menshikoff was to arrange an alliance
with Turkey against France, in case that Power gave trouble, and the
secret mission became known to the other Powers. It has been the
diplomatic pastime of the Sultans for several generations to take
advantage of the mutual jealousy of the Christian Powers which read them
such admirable lessons in virtue. Supported, behind the scenes, by the
English ambassador, the Sultan refused the Russian proposals, and
Nicholas decided upon war. He so little knew the secret action of
England that he discussed with the English ambassador at St. Petersburg
a plan for the division of the Ottoman Empire: England should, in the
teeth of France, occupy Egypt, and Russia should take Constantinople. He
at least expected England to be neutral.
It may at least be said for England, which naturally did not care to see
the Russian giant cast his shadow over Egypt and the route to India,
that it tried earnestly to avert war. France was less pacific. It would
like to see Russia in difficulties with England, and it secured an
alliance with England to the extent of pressing upon the Tsar a
round-table conference on the matters in dispute. The conference was
held at Vienna and a scheme of settlement was drawn up. This scheme the
Sultan, supported by a growing feeling in his own country and an astute
perception of the international jealousy, declined to accept without
modification; and Russia refused to admit the modifications he
suggested. Austria had played the Tsar false. In January (1854) the
English and French fleets had entered the Black Sea. The Sultan had at
the last moment signed the Vienna Note, and the Tsar had agreed to sign
it with certain modifications. It was Austria that procured the
rejection of these reserves. What came to be known as the Crimean War
opened.
Nicholas has been severely judged by some historians for his policy.
This censure is easy for the historian who has before his eyes the issue
as well as the commencement of the war. Russia was beaten and
humiliated. After appalling sacrifices she was compelled to sign a very
disadvantageous peace, and her new prestige in Europe fell considerably.
It is, perhaps, unfair to judge the man by the issue. But we may very
well surmise that Nicholas did little more than cloak an aggressive
design in the new mantle of righteousness which the Tsars affected. It
was, as usual, the people who paid.
The course of the war need not be described here. By a rapid
assault--which was represented in France and England as a premature
outrage, and did much to influence popular passion--the Russian fleet
destroyed the Turkish, and the Russian armies descended south once more.
Before the end of March England and France declared war on Russia in
alliance with the monarch who had for years reddened the soil of Greece
and the Balkans with Christian blood. The language of the time reads
curiously to-day. Nicholas issued a manifesto in which he warmly
disclaimed any idea of conquest; he drew the sword, he said, only in
defence of Christianity, and he was outraged to find France and England
supporting the Mohammedan murderer. They must, he said, be jealous of
Russia’s prosperity and eager to destroy it. England frankly sang
in its streets that it would never let the Russians get Constantinople.
France openly used the same language; though there were those who said
that Napoleon was personally irritated at the Tsar’s haughty
disdain of his credentials.
The war soon centred upon the Crimea, and its historic milestones--Alma,
Balaclava, Inkermann, Sevastopol--are well known. It entered upon a
second year, 1855, and the Russian people murmured bitterly. Nicholas
himself must have felt the sting of many of the criticisms. During the
long reign of his censors, when public opinion could not be brought to
bear upon the administration, official corruption had increased, and
both army and navy were far below the required standard of efficiency.
Nicholas had isolated Russia from the west; yet from the west had come
every stimulus to the improvement of the Russian forces. He had reversed
the policy of Peter and Catherine, and he seemed to be in danger of
losing the lands they had taken. A terrible fire of criticism and
invective was maintained at St. Petersburg. The censors controlled the
press--men circulated their views in manuscript. Nicholas was
honest, and it is said that he at times doubted if the policy to which
he had devoted his life was sound. But he was stubborn, and he thrust
aside all suggestions of peace. In the midst of the struggle he caught a
chill which led to pneumonia. He died on March 3rd, 1855.
Such was the opening of the last phase of the romance of the Romanoffs.
The dynasty is sobered, not merely by the spirit of the age into which
it has passed, but by the very impossibility of sustaining its gaieties.
No monarch who showered the precious national revenues upon lovers or
drinking comrades could long hold the throne in such an age.
Insurrection has taken a new form. It is no longer the work of a coterie
who would place a new monarch on the throne in order that they, the
conspirators, may take the place of the late favourites in the golden
rain. A new phrase, the rights of the people, is born, or re-born, in
the world. A monarchy by the grace of God must do the work of God, not
the work of the devil. Nicholas tries to reconcile the new and the old:
the new idea of service and the old idea of autocracy. He will better
the lot of the people, not because it is their will, but because it is
his divine mission. And in order to protect his scheme he constructs a
new machinery of despotism: secret police, and Cossacks, and priests,
and censors, and sophists. Against this machinery we have now to see the
Russian people bruise and crush their limbs until it and its autocratic
makers are destroyed. First, however, one more effort will be made to
pose as autocratic dispenser of Justice and Charity.