THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II
IT is said that in his last year Nicholas I observed that he would leave
a terrible burden to his son. He left a very costly war which turned
monthly against Russia. He left an empty treasury, and a privy purse
that was a million rubles in debt. He left a city and country that
bitterly murmured against the rule which he had intended to make so
benevolent. He left forty millions of his people in the condition of
serfdom which the whole of the remaining civilised world had outgrown.
He left a nation outpaced industrially and commercially by every other
Power because he could not admit into it the science which made the
others superior. As he brooded over his Bible at night he saw no
solution. He died in distress; and, as in the case of the death of
nearly every Romanoff, few mourned.
His soil, Alexander II, who confidently took over the legacy, was much
closer to Alexander I than to his father. He had the mediocre intellect
of the dynasty (after Peter I), but the sunny temperament
of Catherine, sobered. Unlike his father, who had listened only to the
wrong teachers, Alexander II had been an exemplary pupil, and he had had
good teachers. The new domestic atmosphere of the court is less
interesting than the old, and we need not linger over it. The picture of
Nicholas reading the Bible every night to his wife will suffice. The
Tsarina was a model German _Hausfrau_ on an imperial scale. Alexander
breathed this atmosphere easily. He was an exemplary youth. On the night
after the death of his father he took the Bible to his mother’s room and
read to her. His chief tutor had learned teaching from Pestalozzi, and
his lessons, which we have in part, were worthy of Marcus Aurelius. They
were exalted in principle, if vague in application. Alexander was to
make duty his star: his duty to his people and to civilisation. He had
travelled all over the Empire, even in Siberia; and the sight of the
exiles had so touched his warm heart that he had persuaded his stern
father to modify the treatment even of some of the conspirators at his
accession.
What would a young monarch--Alexander was thirty-seven years old--of
this type make of the formidable problem which his father had created?
We are quite prepared to hear that he is going to disarm rebellion and
win his subjects by kindness. He will make the autocracy so beneficent
that men will love it. A comparatively simple thing, the
young man thought. But the tragedy of the life of Alexander II is that
it was during his reign that Nihilism arose, dagger in hand, and he
himself fell by the bomb of an assassin who represented “the people.”
Russian funds rose in the European market when Alexander II mounted the
throne. He was well known: an amiable, kindly man, gently punctilious
about etiquette, very sober in meat and drink, very cold to flatterers.
Europe looked to him for peace; his people, who sank under their
burdens, looked to him for relief; liberals looked, not too confidently,
to him for justice. But Alexander felt that his first duty was to bring
the war, not merely to an end, but a successful end. He would not be
crowned until that was attained. A few weeks after the death of his
father he sent a representative to Vienna to take part in a
peace-conference. When France demanded that the Black Sea should be
neutralised and the naval strength of Russia limited by agreement, he
refused and he bade the war go on.
It went on, as is known, until Sevastopol fell, and Russia soothed her
feelings a little by taking Kars. Then the diplomats gathered round a
table to see what difference to the world the death of hundreds of
thousands of men and the squandering of three nations’ resources must
make. There was in Russia no chance of disguising the defeat. The Black
Sea _was_ neutralised. All the ships and forts on which so much had been
spent must go. Kars must be surrendered. The mouth of the Danube must be
yielded. The protectorate of the Christian subjects of the Sultan must
be abandoned. One war had put Turkey at the feet of Russia; another war
had put Turkey upon its own feet once more, and had set back Russia.
It was, however, peace, and the country looked eagerly for the domestic
programme of the young Tsar. He was crowned in August, 1856, and he at
once disclosed his policy. He would, of course, maintain the work of his
revered father; but it soon fell to pieces. An amnesty was granted, and
the rebels came back to the sunlight. The military colonies of
Arakcheeff were finally abandoned. Arrears of taxes to the extent of
twenty-four million rubles were remitted to the impoverished people. The
censorship was suspended, and St. Petersburg poured into liberalism like
a stream when the dam is broken. The manuscripts that had passed
stealthily from hand to hand, and been read behind locked doors, were
now sent to the press. Periodicals and pamphlets snowed upon the
metropolis. Unions and leagues for everything new and beneficent and
western sprang up like mushrooms. All the talk of English radicalism
filled the salons: self-government and emancipation of women, biblical
criticism and Darwinism, banks and railways and manufactures, education
and co-operation and political reform.
Presently the discussion would strike a deeper note. A certain Robert
Owen of England had advocated a scheme which he called Socialism.
Certain Germans were beginning to take the germ of Owen’s patriarchal
theory and make a “scientific system” of it. Russia was now free to
travel, and to import books. The mind which has been artificially
repressed will, if the process be not continued too long, expand more
rapidly than the mind which is suffered to grow normally.
In all this babel of humanitarian tongues, each reformer stridently
denouncing his brother as a charlatan, as is the way of reformers, there
was one steady and persistent note. Serfdom must be abolished. Here the
mass of the people agreed with the intellectuals. We are tempted to
picture the great body of the Russian people as too stunted in mind, too
dazed by labour and the stupefying conditions of their life, to
understand anything of this reform-language. But there is plenty of
evidence that they were quite alive to the idea of emancipation. They
had looked to each new Tsar, as he eloquently unfolded his lofty aims on
coronation-day, to abolish serfdom. They looked with particular
eagerness to Alexander. “Constitution” was too large a word for them.
But they knew what it meant to be free and to have their _Mir_ and their
bit of land.
Forty-two and a half million people in Russia were still serfs in the
year 1856: nine centuries after the establishment of the Russian Church,
two hundred years after the beginning of the rule of the Romanoffs. I
have, incidentally, given sufficient evidence in earlier chapters that
this serfdom differed little from slavery. The peasant was, in polite
phraseology, attached to the glebe. When a rich man ruined himself in
the dissipations of St. Petersburg and sold his estates, he sold the
peasants with the land. When a man opened new estates, he bought
peasants to work it. They had no liberty of movement, which is the
fundamental condition of liberty. They owned no land (except a small
number who secured the advantages offered by the last two Tsars) and
were therefore hot masters of their own labour. Half their labour must
be given gratuitously to their lord--this was the new, decent sort of
serfdom--who would then allow them to wring a miserable living for
themselves and family out of a fraction of his land with the other half
of their time. Not much earlier, we saw, great land-owners, even women,
could inflict on them such torture and death as few Romans are said to
have inflicted on their slaves in the worst days of the Empire. They
were still slaves, though humanely treated on the Crown Lands, much as a
wise farmer gives good conditions to his cattle. The lot of the peasant
of Russia to-day is hard enough. Imagine it sixty years ago with the
added yoke of serfdom.
Assuredly serfdom was the first and most monstrous evil to be removed,
and we saw that for fifty years or more the rulers of Russia had been
ashamed of this great stigma on their civilisation. At the very
beginning of the reign the rumour went out that Alexander would free the
serfs, and their wealthy owners were anxious. Alexander reassured them
to some extent. He would like to see an end of serfdom, but it was an
evil to be remedied gradually. He would like to see individuals reduce
it by freeing their Serfs. Soon after the close of the war the Tsar
again addressed the nobles, and begged them to give serious attention to
the emancipation of the serfs. It was plain that little would be done in
this fashion, and a few months later he appointed Provincial Committees
of land-owners to give practical consideration to the problem.
Historians seem to differ in discussing whether Alexander was moved by
his own idealism or by the pressure of the growing liberalism of St.
Petersburg and the clamours of the peasants. The point is of some
interest in forming a general estimate of the Tsar-Emancipator.
Professor Kornilov, while ascribing great reforms to Alexander II,
maintains that he was impelled from without rather than within: that his
moralising tutor had not been a liberal or a man of definite social
views, and had implanted in his mind only such general regard for
humanity and justice as a conservative may profess. Others would
represent the Tsar as a practical reformer of a liberal type, a little
soured in the end by the excesses and violence of “advanced”
people. Perhaps we are nearest to the truth if we picture Alexander II
as a man who united a real detestation of serfdom with a sincere regard
for justice in the abstract, yet would never have overcome the
conservatism of many of his advisers and the immense practical
difficulties but for the very effective pressure put upon him by the
rising impatience of educated Russians.
[IMAGE img312.jpg Cathedral Erected in Petrograd in Memory of
Alexander II]
The Provincial Committees wasted many months in futile discussion and
wrangling. Around them there now waged a great battle of amateur
sociologists, and half a dozen different theories of emancipation had
their schools of defenders. There was, to begin with, a vital difference
of views between the serfs and their owners. The peasant wanted land
even more than liberty; the owner felt that it was emancipation to give
liberty, and he was, as a rule, unwilling to part with land. There was
the question of compensation, which inspired endless discussion. A serf
was worth a hundred dollars. In short, the committees of local owners
did not want the work to proceed, and Alexander formed, at the beginning
of 1857, a Central Committee of twelve members under his own presidency.
The work was to be done “from on high.” Emancipation was
to be a voluntary gift from the Tsar.
The work still dragged. In 1855 Alexander had appointed the liberal
Lanskoi Minister of the Interior, and he zealously promoted the scheme
and secured the liberal Milyutin as colleague. But other ministers were
of the old school and unsympathetic. They pointed out that behind the
demand for emancipation other and more disturbing demands were becoming
articulate. Liberal nobles who were ready to emancipate their serfs
already claimed that this ought to be followed by their own political
emancipation. They demanded a Duma. However, even members of the
imperial family, like the Grand Duke Constantine, pressed for the
reform, and the Tsar at length formed an Imperial Commission, on which
the conservative opposition was checked. A law was drafted, and on
February 19th, 1861, Alexander announced to Russia and the world, with a
very natural exaltation, that the serfs were to be freed.
The serfs fell into three classes. Those on the Crown Lands were, as we
saw, already in an improved condition. The law of 1861 did not affect
them, but they were later (1866) put in the same position as the
emancipated serfs. Then there were a million and a half serfs who were
not on the land, but in personal service. These were ordered to continue
their service for two further years, and they would then be free. The
main body were the twenty-one million serfs on the estates of private
owners. Each was now to own his house, and the small strip of land
encircling it, and the entire community of peasants in a village were to
have, in common, a part of the arable land of the owner. The Slavophiles
had secured this reversion to the primitive custom of owning in common,
and one may justly suspect that they felt that the arrangement would
make the peasants more or less impervious to the new ideas about
property which were being imported from Germany. The _Mir_ was
re-established. But the land-owners were to sell, not give, their land;
and they were to be compensated for the loss of serf-labour. The entire
value was estimated, the State paid it, and the peasants were to refund
the sum within a space of forty-nine years. The _Mir_ was
responsible for the payments.
Alexander looked out upon his Empire for the signs of jubilation, and at
first he saw many. Even so drastic a rebel as Hertzen rejoiced. The
journals and pamphlets of the metropolis turned from acidity to a
temporary sweetness. Deputations of peasants, carefully chosen, were
brought to thank the Tsar, and in the tearful accents of the aged serfs
he thought that he heard the voice of twenty millions. But it was not
long before the reaction began, and a chill affected the liberalism of
the Tsar.
It was a very general belief of the peasants that the land belonged, by
ancient right, to them, and it had been in some way stolen from them by
the wealthy and noble. When, therefore, they heard of the scheme of
compensation, the payments which must be made annually until the death
of the youngest of them, they began to murmur. The officials, they said
in many places, must have falsified the words of the Tsar. There were
other grievances. The allowance of land to each had, in the heat of
discussion, been cut down to very small proportions. The owners were not
_bound_ to sell even this, and in many places they refused; and, where
they sold, they generally attempted to sell inferior land. Officials,
charged with the administration of the law, took bribes, and there was a
vast amount of foul play. In fine, the emancipated serfs now found that
a free man had to shoulder a burden of taxes heavier than they had
imagined.
In short, hopes had been improperly inflated, and the disillusion was
exasperating; nor was there now any lack of men imbued with the new
ideas who fostered the discontent. Lanskoi and Milyutin were dismissed
from office, through the intrigue of the conservatives, and the new
minister, Valuyeff, had not the same scrupulous regard for the success
of the law. In various places there were risings of the peasants, and
the troops had to use their muskets. In the government of Kazan ten
thousand peasants revolted, under the lead of Anton Petroff, and the new
era was stained heavily with blood. Petroff was executed; eighty of the
emancipated serfs were shot with arms in their hands. At the university
of Kazan the students boldly held a requiem service in honour of the
dead, and Alexander had to punish even the monks who celebrated it. The
“Tsar-Emancipator” did not long enjoy his popularity. The
clouds closed slowly, after the short burst of sunshine, and would cover
the skies of Russia henceforward until the last Romanoff quitted the
throne.
An even graver cause of distrust now arose. Alexander had visited Poland
soon after his accession and had paternally promised to make the Poles
happy, if they were good. “No more dreams,” he said genially to them.
His father’s work was to be maintained, he told them. Poland was to be a
province of Russia. He appointed a moderate governor, Prince Gorchakoff,
and declared an amnesty. Since the terrible repression of the rebellion
by Nicholas I a large number of Poles had lived in the various capitals
of Europe, and there they had been thoroughly educated in modern ideas.
In London, particularly, they had been steeped in the sober radicalism
that had followed the failure of the Chartist movement, the fervour for
the deliverance of Hungarians and Italians, the popular indignation
against Russia. Most of them would not return to a Poland which was not
free, but some did, and they assisted in the education of the Poles.
There arose a very general cry among the educated Poles for a
constitution; and Alexander believed no more than his fathers, or than
Pius IX, in giving a constitution that was asked as a right.
In November, 1860, a great demonstration was held in memory of the
revolution of 1830, and the authorities were annoyed. Demonstrations
increased for all kinds of undesirable objects, and the troops at Warsaw
fired and killed five Poles. A vast crowd of one hundred thousand
attended the funeral. The Tsar tried to conciliate them by small gifts.
He appointed a Polish Director of Public Instruction and Cults. He
created municipal councils for the large towns, and electoral councils
for each government and district. But he would not grant a constitution,
and the agitation increased. A great crowd went to the Viceroy’s palace
to formulate their demands, and soon two hundred of them lay dead upon
the pavement. The whole city went into mourning.
A new Viceroy, General Lambert, was appointed, and the Tsar instructed
him to carry out conscientiously the reforms he had promised. But the
officials who were to carry them out were Russians, and the greater
reforms were withheld. There were further demonstrations, and further
shootings. A reactionary soldier, Count Luders, was then made Viceroy.
His life was attempted. The Poles now openly demanded independence and a
restoration of Lithuania. Arrests and banishment were useless. The whole
educated nation seemed to be aflame. So on January 15th the authorities
decided to decimate the enthusiasts by an enforced recruiting for the
army, and Poland entered upon another futile rebellion. Those who
escaped the police fled to the country, secured arms, and formed
guerilla bands.
It was one of the most pathetic of rebellions. The insurgents had no
artillery, no transport or medical service. They moved about, often led
by priests, as they were hunted, living on the sympathetic gentry and
peasants, occasionally hanging or shooting a pro-Russian landowner. It
was not war, and the Russian troops hanged or shot all they captured.
The most curious feature of it was that a secret committee or council
guided the insurrection, levied taxes, and issued decrees from the
University of Warsaw itself without being detected by the police. Poles
abroad fierily preached the wrongs of their countrymen, and the English,
French, and Austrian governments formally requested the Tsar (1863) to
put an end to the anarchy. Two months later they formulated for the Tsar
what seemed to them the reasonable demands of the Poles; a general
amnesty, parliamentary representation, reform of the law of recruiting,
complete liberty of religion, admission of Poles to office, and so on.
Alexander indignantly refused. He did not add--one wonders if he
reflected--that it was precisely because the Sultan would not grant
such rights to his Christian subjects that Russia had made war upon the
Turk. Prussia supported, and promised assistance to, the Tsar.
The last sparks of the rebellion were stamped out in May (1864), and the
punishment began. The few traces that Nicholas had left of a Polish
nationality were now destroyed. The Polish language was banned from
schools and universities, and the chief rebels were executed. It was the
nobles, the educated class, that Alexander chiefly blamed; and it was on
that account that he granted the peasants of Poland the right to share
the land.
Alexander was less to blame in connection with another event, two years
later, which moved Europe to express its indignation. The settlement of
the Caucasic region was completed, and some hundreds of thousands of
Mohammedan Circassians and Georgians migrated from the occupied
territory and sought shelter in Turkey. The English Government again
made a protest at St. Petersburg, which was neatly countered by a
reminder that the state of Ireland hardly justified England in posing as
a moralist. The Circassians were, in fact, handsome ruffians with whose
ways the English were imperfectly acquainted. They freely sold their
daughters, the famous Circassian maids, to the harems of Constantinople,
and they were the most expert cattle-thieves and least industrious
workers of Europe or Asia. They were largely settled by the Turks on the
farms of the reluctant Bulgarians, and they willingly joined the
bashi-bazouks in cutting off Christian ears.
The brutality that was used in the suppression of the Polish
insurrection reacted upon the intellectuals of St. Petersburg, just as
the insurrection itself reacted upon the more or less benevolent designs
of the Tsar. But before we consider how the reign of Alexander II came
to inaugurate the terror which would for the next sixty years brood over
Russia, it is proper that we should briefly examine the remainder of his
reforms.
The emancipation of the serfs, though a measure of elementary justice
that had been too long denied, must nevertheless command our admiration
when we consider the stubborn opposition which the Tsar had to overcome.
It was not followed by the political emancipation of the nation at
large, but the Tsar created a popular institution which would, at a
later date, prove a valuable instrument of reform. The _Mir_ was
re-established by the communal ownership of the land. The district
council, the _Zemstvo_, was now established (1864). Each government (or
province) of Russia was already divided into districts, and there was to
be in each of these a Zemstvo, or popular council, formed of deputies
who were elected for a term of three years. They included
representatives of the landowners, the artisans, and the peasants, and
were to meet at least once a year, with a permanent executive committee.
A general Zemstvo for each province was also created.
At the time the Zemstvo had, in so far as it was obliged to act, few and
simple functions--the care of roads, bridges, sanitation, etc.--and the
imperial taxes were so heavy that it could not raise sufficient money
for other work. The Imperial Government, moreover, jealously watched,
and often interfered with, the work of the popular council. Yet it was
an important instalment of reform, and at a later date we shall find the
Zemstvo playing a greater part than the Tsar intended, in the
enlightenment and emancipation of Russia. Already it had the option of
building schools, and in many places it did so.
There was a corresponding improvement in the administration of justice.
The slovenly and corrupt traditional system was condemned, and an entire
series of new tribunals, framed on western models, was created. There
was a court for each district and a court of appeal, from which a final
appeal for revision might be made to the Senate. On the French model the
magistrates were to conduct the preliminary inquiry which had hitherto
been left, with disastrous results, to the police, and public trial by
jury was introduced. In the rural districts justices of the peace, who
were generally large landed proprietors, heard the petty cases which had
earlier been made a matter of rough justice, or injustice, between the
serf and his master. In such cases an appeal might be made to a bench of
justices if there was question of a fine of more than thirty rubles
(fifteen dollars) or more than three days’ imprisonment. Such
appeals were rare, as it was found that the hardy peasant preferred a
few strokes of the lash, as in the old days, to a loss of his money or
his time. In the higher courts, as well as in the army, flogging was
abolished.
Here again the demands of the liberals were, in theory, generously met;
and in practice they were largely evaded. Incompetence was inevitable at
the beginning of so large a reform, and some degree of ill-will and
abuse of power had to be expected. These defects do not detract from the
merit of the Tsar and his liberal ministers. But there was from the
first a tendency on the part of the imperial government to regard cases
as political and reserve them for the kind of treatment they had always
received. As the radical agitation grew, and the Tsar was driven into
the arms of the reactionaries at the court, this interference naturally
increased. Long before the end of Alexander’s reign the civil courts
were habitually ignored in precisely those cases which needed the most
impartial consideration, and men were detained and punished in thousands
at the whim of brutal and irresponsible servants of the autocracy.
These were the principal measures of reform granted by Alexander II in
his period of benevolence. With the fiscal improvements we are not much
concerned, but it may be noted that for a time a Budget was published.
Much was done in those early years (1861-1866) for education. The
restriction upon the number of students attending the universities was
removed, and there was a remarkable eagerness to obtain higher
education. Youths earned their living while they attended the classes,
and some scholarships were founded. Girls were excluded from the
universities, but we shall see presently how they broke through the
barriers and joined the youths of Russia in the demand for
enlightenment. A large number of secondary and elementary schools were
established. In 1877 it was claimed that there were 25,000 schools. The
press was offered the alternative of submitting its copy to a censorship
or risking the attentions of the police. The very name of Censor was
hated, after the experience under Nicholas I, and for a time periodicals
and books poured out upon an eager public. The restriction upon travel
also was removed, and men passed freely to the outer world which
terrified the Slavophiles, and came back with the language of Mazzini
and other apostles upon their lips. Foreigners in Russia received civil
rights for the first time. The restrictions upon the movements of the
Jews were modified, though “the Pale” was not abolished.
The history of that stirring period has been so frequently written in
the last thirty years that we no longer profess to find a mystery in the
fact that this reforming Romanoff fell by the hand of an assassin. Here
it is necessary only to give a short summary of the development after
1860 which entirely changed the character of his reign. We must remember
that from the first Alexander II did not recognise the rights of man. In
his best and most benevolent mood he was concerned only with the duties
of monarchs. The authority divinely entrusted to him was accompanied by
a divine mandate to make his people virtuous and happy. Within the
limits of a strict maintenance of the authority of the autocracy and of
the clergy he would do so. The more enlightened of his subjects might
respectfully offer suggestions, though that was properly the function of
the ministers he chose to guide him, but the correct attitude of the
people was to await, in patience and respect, the measures of reform
which the wisdom of his council sanctioned him in granting.
This was a fundamental anachronism, and, however generous the intentions
of the Tsar may have been and however misguided and exaggerated some of
the radicals, a conflict was as inevitable as the sunrise. Seeing that
the policy of his early liberal ministers did not pacify the country,
which became louder and bolder in its demands the more he gave it,
Alexander fell back upon the worn maxims of autocracy and surrounded
himself more and more with reactionaries. The wealth of the great
land-owners and the power of the clergy and monks were as much
threatened by the new spirit as was the autocracy of the Tsars. In the
recesses of the court there was, therefore, a complacent agreement upon
the kind of theory which has at all times reconciled the consciences of
good men with persecution. The “extremists,” it was said, were few in
number and morbid or perverse in sentiment. They must not be suffered to
abuse liberty to the detriment of the nation. Coercion was justified. To
coercion--which meant, in practice, the most wanton brutality and
violence on the part of baffled police--some replied with violence. In
effect, war was declared.
The crowd of young men who flocked to the University of St. Petersburg
when the restrictions were removed were the nucleus of the radical
movement which was gradually raised to a revolutionary heat. The
teaching of liberal professors, who were reconciled to gradual and
moderate reforms, only prepared them for a more highly seasoned
political diet, and there were powerful writers to purvey it. Hertzen,
who was in exile, sent his propaganda into the country much as Mazzini
taught the youth of Italy. His very radical organ, “The
Bell,” was the delight of the young folk who, in all ages, scorn
the timidity of age and are convinced that the immaturity of the
youthful mind is amply compensated by its superior candour. Bakunin, who
for a time joined Hertzen in London, and then settled in Switzerland,
taught a gospel which gradually approached, and finally reached,
anarchy. Tschaikovsky, who also was compelled to leave Russia, was the
inspiration of a “circle,” or discussion-society, at St.
Petersburg which had branches or affiliated societies in every town of
Russia. Bielinski and other radicals assisted the ferment of emotions
and philosophies. Krapotkin and Stepiak were coming upon the scene.
We have seen how the mind of Russian youth was prepared for these
advanced gospels. The monotonous misery and poverty of the country in
spite of every change of ruler, the corruption and brutality of
officials, the harsh measures of Nicholas I, the disastrous issue of the
Crimean War, the severity of the repression of the Poles, the
disappointing results of the emancipation of the serfs, and the
increasing perception that Russia lagged behind every other country in
Europe put a mass of inflammable material into the minds of the
educated. As early as 1862 a student was caught spreading a pamphlet in
which he advocated a bloody revolution against the dynasty, and was
exiled to Siberia. In the same year a series of mysterious fires in St.
Petersburg increased the agitation. Conservatives ascribed them to the
violent radicals: the radicals retorted that they were due to agents of
the reactionaries who wanted to provide a ground for stringent action.
The left wing of the reformers moved rapidly further west, and its
language increased in violence. The authorities raised the fees at the
universities and endeavoured to suppress the numerous students’
societies, but the agitation continued. Many of the nobles themselves
were in sympathy with the intellectual revolt. In 1862 several
gatherings of nobles and gentry passed a demand for parliamentary
institutions.
At the other end of the movement the conviction increased that no form
of centralised government would remain honest and disinterested, and the
philosophy of anarchy was framed. At first it was moral rather than
political, as it is in the minds of many Anarchists to-day. The
individual was to be relieved of the swathing bonds of all religious and
moral and other traditions, and the theory was that he would then
develop healthily. To this theory was first applied the name “Nihilism,”
which was afterwards, as Anarchy became more and more political
in complexion, extended to the whole revolutionary movement; though
Socialism gained considerably on Anarchy as time went on. It was the
period of Karl Marx and the early German Socialists, and the imposing
structure of Marx’s argument won large numbers of adherents.
One of the most disturbing features in the mind of conservatives was the
way in which young women adopted the advanced creed. The attempts of
Peter the Great to break down the barriers which confined the life of
women had almost ceased at his death. In the world of wealth, as
Tolstoi’s novels show, women kept the liberty of the reigns of Elizabeth
and Catherine. The new austerity of the court was not accompanied by any
general asceticism amongst the aristocracy. The philosophy of anarchy
provided a principle for what had hitherto been an inconsistent defiance
of religious traditions which were nominally respected. But the mass of
Russian women and girls, above the level of the peasantry, had hitherto
been unaffected by these liberties of the aristocracy. Now the cry of
the emancipation of woman penetrated remote country houses, and many a
girl broke loose from the control of a tearful mother or an infuriated
father, and sought the centre of enlightenment in the city. The
authorities refused to allow unmarried women to attend the higher
schools. They retorted, as Roman women had done nearly two thousand
years before, by entering into fictitious marriages. Gradually they won
the right to attend certain lectures at the university, and many of them
were found in the students’ circles where the reconstruction of
the universe was heatedly discussed.
The next development was that the intellectuals decided to educate the
workers. An officer of the army resigned his commission and turned
weaver. Sophia Perovskaia and other daughters of wealthy parents got
into touch with the working and domestic women. The police of the “Third
Section” (the secret police created by Nicholas) grew in numbers and
dogged the steps of these fiery young apostles. In 1866 a man named
Karakosoff, who had formed a society to promote the welfare of the
people, attempted to shoot the Tsar. An isolated fanatic, the Tsar was
told; and at that time there was certainly no real organisation of
assassination. But the pressure of the police and the daily risk of
arrest drove the agitation underground, and to their new quarters the
spies and informers and police followed them. There was now, plainly, no
question of persuading Alexander II to complete his scheme of reform.
There was increasing question of making war upon him and the autocracy.
It was the Russian tradition. When a Tsar was obnoxious you removed him;
but to do so in the name of justice, not in the name of a covetous group
of courtiers, was revolution of the worst order.
By this time, the early seventies, the Tsar saw that he had not merely
to deal with a few unbalanced individuals. The jails were full of
political prisoners. All the well-known leaders were in jail or exile,
yet the work proceeded amazingly. In 1874 there were 1,500 arrests. The
new courts were not called upon to decide the guilt of the prisoners.
They were knouted, or thrust into prison, or sent to Siberia. Large
numbers died in the overcrowded jails. Some went insane or committed
suicide. When the experiment of a public trial was at last made, in
1877, people were amazed at the calm courage and high idealism of the
young “criminals.” In 1878 nearly two hundred of them were tried. Many
received terms of imprisonment, or penal servitude, of from ten to
twenty years.
The rebels were now at war with the brutal ministers of the autocracy,
and they began to use the same weapons. A young girl from the country
came to St. Petersburg and shot the head of the police; and, amidst
great enthusiasm, she was acquitted by a jury. Another head of the
police was in the same year (1878) stabbed at Odessa. Spies were shot.
Groups of young men who were surprised in secret council by the police
produced revolvers and fought. The governor of Kharkoff, who treated
political prisoners with great brutality, was assassinated. Another
attempt was made to shoot the Tsar (1879).
In the meantime, it will be remembered, the Russo-Turkish war had
occurred, and it had the customary effect of increasing the people’s
burden and the discontent. The Slavophile party naturally gave birth to
a Pan-Slav party, and the traditional Russian ambition to spread over
the Balkans was revived. The Turks continued to treat their Balkan
subjects with great brutality, and in 1874 Bosnia and Herzegovina broke
into revolt, while Serbia and Montenegro, which were semi-independent,
joined with their compatriots in the war. The Pan-Slavs now pressed for
war, and there were those in the Tsar’s circle, such as his brother, the
Grand Duke Nicholas, who warmly supported the agitation. The financial
minister, on the other hand, who had carefully nursed the treasury into
something like prosperity, strongly opposed the adventure. The Tsar
wavered between his hope of getting the ignominous treaty of 1856 set
aside and his love of peace and dread of the costly chances of war.
There is now no doubt that Bismarck helped to urge him to war. Alexander
was pro-German, and had in 1870 secured the neutrality of Austria while
Prussia attacked France. It is true that, when the Germans meditated a
fresh attack upon the French in 1875, the Tsar interfered on behalf of
France and greatly angered Bismarck. That statesman, however, retained
influence at St. Petersburg, and, on the Frederician tradition of
encouraging rivals to wear out each other, he urged Russia to attack
Turkey. In 1877 (April) Russia entered the war, and its progress was so
rapid that in the following March it compelled Turkey to sign the
humiliating Treaty of San Stefano. Russia took from it very little
territory directly, but, besides securing the recognition of the
complete independence of Serbia and Rumania, it created a large
principality of Bulgaria in which it hoped to have a predominant
interest.
England was, unfortunately, still in its mood of favouring the Turk,
through jealousy of Russia, and Austria was less openly hostile. A
desultory war continued, and Bismarck astutely offered the services of
Germany as mediator, with the intention of curtailing its gains. By the
Treaty of Berlin (July 13th, 1878) the San Stefano Treaty was torn up,
and Bulgaria was cut down by half. Once more a costly war had, in the
eyes of the people, done little for Russia; and there was the customary,
and not unjust, cry that the course of the war had revealed a great deal
of official corruption. The tragedy of the reign of Alexander ran on to
its ghastly finale.
In 1878 it was decreed that in future political prisoners should be
tried by courts martial, and in the following year the Tsar appointed
Governors General of St. Petersburg, Kharkoff, and Odessa, and gave
additional and formidable powers to the Governors of Moscow, Warsaw, and
Kieff. The system of repression was to be drastically pursued. The
revolutionaries retorted by attempting to blow up the train in which
Alexander returned from a visit to the Crimea. Three mines were laid.
Near Moscow Sophia Perovskaia and a few associates had worked for two
months digging a tunnel to the line from a house they had taken. The
preparations were in this case perfect, but the Tsar escaped. The police
had arranged three trains, and, as the Tsar changed train on approaching
Moscow, leaving the middle for the first train, he was allowed to pass
unharmed, and it was the second train that was blown to pieces. Sophia
Perovskaia and her associates escaped and returned to their plotting.
The heads of the revolutionary movement had decreed the death of
Alexander II.
For the next fifteen months there was a thrilling war between the
revolutionaries and the “Third Section.” Time and again the Tsar’s
advisers declared that only a few dozen rebels were left, and the
country was substantially loyal. But, although hundreds were arrested
annually, though bribes and spies and all the ignominious machinery of
the police were brought into play, the “red terror” held the field
against the “white terror.” In February, 1880, not only the
Tsar, but all the imperial family, had a narrow escape. A revolutionary
named Halturin entered the service of the Winter Palace as waiter. He
discovered that the waiters’ quarters were, with an intervening
floor occupied by troops, directly underneath the dining-room, and he
proposed to fire a mine there. Day by day he smuggled into the palace
small quantities of dynamite and stored them with his belongings. The
police discovered a plan, on which the imperial dining-room was marked
with a cross, and they searched the floors beneath it. They did not find
the explosive, but from that day a stricter watch was kept, and no more
dynamite could be introduced. Halturin believed that he had enough, and
on February 17th he fired the mine at a time when the imperial family
ought to be assembled for a festive dinner. But the Tsar was late for
dinner, and again he escaped unhurt.
The closing scene is one of dramatic interest. It was decided to lay a
mine under a street through which the Tsar had frequently to pass, near
the palace, and at the same time station men with special bombs to throw
at the carriage, in case the mine failed. The conspirators hired a shop,
and, while some of them conducted a brisk and honest trade in eggs and
butter, others tunnelled beneath the street. The soil was removed in the
empty boxes, and, though the police several times visited the
shop, they detected nothing beyond a popular grocery business. The
tunnel was complete, and the mine ready, about the middle of March
(1881).
The dramatic feature is that meantime Alexander II was being induced to
consider proposals of reform. He had, after the outrage at the palace,
removed the Governor General of St. Petersburg and entrusted the
repression of anarchy to a Supreme Commanding Commission. The leading
spirit of this was General Loris Melikoff, who had had some success as
Governor General of Kharkoff. Melikoff’s method was to isolate the
terrorists by granting reforms which would conciliate the general body
of malcontents. He pressed this method upon the Tsar, as Alexander,
distracted and weary, perhaps a little anxious about his life, decided
to try it. The prisons and the settlements of Siberia were explored, and
large numbers were restored to their homes. About two thousand students
were permitted to return to the universities, and the scholarships were
restored. Melikoff then proposed a scheme of popular representation
which, though it did not exactly give Russia a constitution, might have
conciliated many. The reactionary ministers and courtiers now doubled
their efforts to restrain the Tsar, but he accepted Melikoff’s draft,
and kept it several days for revision. He probably wavered and postponed
the fatal decision. And it was during that week of delay that the
conspirators completed their preparations.
On March 16th Alexander read the draft to his ministers and approved it.
His relief at having reached a definite policy was great, and in happier
mood he drove out to review his troops. As he returned to the palace a
young woman in the street waved her handkerchief. She was the
redoubtable Sophia Perovskaia, and was giving the signal. A bomb was
thrown, and the carriage was wrapped in a cloud of smoke, while Cossacks
writhed on the ground. But out of the smoke and litter the Tsar again
emerged unhurt. Against the advice of his officers he lingered to say a
word to the wounded, and it is said that he congratulated himself on his
escape. “It is too early to congratulate yourself,” said a young man
who, through some oversight, had been permitted to approach. He flung
his bomb, and the Tsar fell, fearfully and mortally wounded. He died at
the palace two hours later. “They who draw the sword shall perish by the
sword,” the rebels grimly commented. The doctrine of the assassination
of tyrants--of men who stifled constitutional demands by the shedding of
blood--was then held by even moderate radicals in many lands. There were
others who pointed out that Alexander II, who had inherited an empty
purse, left many millions of rubles to be divided amongst his family.