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+--------------------------------------------------------------+
THE SHIELD
+--------------------------------------------------+
| THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS |
| |
| ASPHALT |
| _By Orrick Johns_ |
| |
| BACKWATER |
| _By Dorothy Richardson_ |
| |
| CENTRAL EUROPE |
| _By Friedrich Naumann_ |
| |
| CRIMES OF CHARITY |
| _By Konrad Bercovici_ |
| |
| RUSSIA'S MESSAGE |
| _By William English Walling_ |
| |
| THE BOOK OF SELF |
| _By James Oppenheim_ |
| |
| THE BOOK OF CAMPING |
| _By A. Hyatt Verrill_ |
| |
| MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY |
| _By Alexander Kornilov_ |
| |
| THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING |
| _By Alexandre Benois_ |
| |
| THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI (1895-1899) |
| |
| THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPERTRAMP |
| _By William H. Davies_ |
| _With a Preface by Bernard Shaw_ |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------+
THE SHIELD
Edited by
MAXIM GORKY, LEONID ANDREYEV, and FYODOR SOLOGUB
With a Foreword by William English Walling
Translated from the Russian by A. Yarmolinsky
New York Alfred A. Knopf Mcmxvii
Copyright, 1917, by
Alfred A. Knopf
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
This is not merely a book about the Russian Jews. It is a marvellous
revelation of the Russian soul. It shows not only that the
overwhelming majority of the Russian intellectuals, including nearly
all of her brilliant literary geniuses, are opposed to the persecution
of the Jews or any other race, but that they have a capacity for
sympathy and understanding of humanity unequalled in any other land. I
do not know of any book where the genius and heart of Russia is better
displayed. Not only her leading litterateurs but also her leading
statesmen and economists are represented--and all of them speak as
with a single voice.
I am writing on the 16th of March. Yesterday the news reached the
world that Russia had probably at last succeeded in emancipating
itself from the German-sustained and German-supported autocracy which
so long has been renounced by practically all classes of the Russian
people. I have pointed out elsewhere that this Second Act of the great
drama of social transformation in Russia was to be expected in
connection with the present war. It is not surprising that this Act,
like the first--the Revolution of 1905--is accompanied by an
irresistible demand for the cessation of the persecution of the Jews
and other minority races. The first Duma, that of 1906, demanded
unanimously that all these races be given absolutely the same rights
as other Russians. The rise of Liberalism during the war, in
connection with military necessities, had already abolished a number
of Jewish disabilities. There is no longer any question that the Jews
will be given equality. Without exception the anti-Semitic
organisations were supported by the pro-German party, the money which
was alone responsible for the pogroms was furnished by these same
organisations, and now this Party and these organisations are forever
overthrown. It was Dr. Dubrovin, for example, who year by year carried
out the murders of the leading representatives of the Jews in the Duma
and who almost succeeded in having Milukov assassinated a few weeks
ago. Dubrovin was one of the most important of the sinister forces
supported by the money of the German Czarina's court party--which was
organised by Baron Fredericks and other notorious Germans masquerading
as Russians.
The re-birth of Russia which is now taking place cannot be understood
apart from the Jewish problem. As Russia's leading Liberal statesman,
Prof. Paul Milukov--who is well and favorably known in America because
of extended visits here--points out in the article he contributes to
the present volume, the anti-Semitic parties coincide with the
anti-constitutional parties. At first this seems a strange and
unaccountable fact, but a brief glance at the history of other
countries will show that the party standing for the persecution of weak
foreign neighbours and the oppression of minority races within and
without a country has always and everywhere been the party of reaction.
As Milukov says, there was no need for an anti-constitutional movement
until there was a constitutional movement. As soon as Liberalism
appeared, however, and gained support among the masses, it was
necessary to fabricate some counter movement, and the governmental
bureaucracy fixed upon anti-Semitism as a primitive means of appealing
to the masses, and so of bridling them. It may be further pointed out
that this systematic propaganda against democracy was almost
non-existent in Russia until it had become thoroughly organised and
successful in Germany. Both Kovalevsky and Milukov demonstrate in the
present volume that anti-Semitism became an important factor in Russian
life only after the middle of the Nineteenth Century--that is to say,
after the final victory of Prussian Reactionism over German Liberalism
in 1849 (a victory which has lasted to the present time)--and still
more, after the great military victories of Prussia from 1864 to 1870
had put Prussian militarism in the saddle and had made it the
dominating force in the Russian court and Russian bureaucracy.
However, the intelligence, energy, and courage of the Russian Liberals
has entirely thwarted this scheme to divide the Russian people. The
bureaucracy has gained almost no support among any section of the
Russian nation, except its own narrow circles, either for its
persecution of the Jews or its oppression of the Poles, Finns,
Tartars, Armenians and other races. On the contrary, the anti-Semitic
propaganda has reacted against its promoters. A considerable number,
though by no means a majority, of the Russian Liberals are Jews, and
Russian Liberals do not at all endeavour to hide this fact. The
consequence is that the union of the Russian Liberals with all the
persecuted races has been all the more firmly cemented. And just as
all Russian Liberals are ardent supporters of the war against Germany,
so practically all the leaders of the Russian Jews are equally
patriotic--in spite of the fact that many forms of persecution have
remained, and, furthermore, new forms of persecution have been
invented since the war. Though the German agitation in America has won
over a large part of the Russian Jews in this country to the German
cause, this agitation has had no such success in Russia, unless among
a relatively small proportion of the Jewish population.
It is known that the anti-Semitic agitation in Russia has taken hold
of only a small proportion of the Russian people among the
semi-criminal population of the cities and towns. It is notorious that
the pogroms were often organised and carried out by the secret police
and the cossacks, and that in other instances they were executed by
bands of a few hundred bribed toughs, called by educated Russians "the
black hundreds." This social element is what we would ordinarily call
in America the "mob," and it certainly does not constitute one per
cent. of the population in Russia or in any other country. Gorky
refers to it as "the populace": "In addition to the people, there is
also the 'populace,' something standing outside of social classes and
outside of civilisation, and united by the dark sense of hatred
against all that surpasses its understanding and is defenceless
against brute force. I speak of the populace which thus defines itself
in the words of Pushkin:
"'We are insidious and shameless,
Ungrateful, faint-hearted and wicked;
At heart we are cold, sterile eunuchs,
Traducers, born to slavery.'"
The refusal of the Russian people to be either bribed or deceived into
hostility to the Jews is clearly enough demonstrated by the feeling
of affection on the part of most intelligent Jews towards the Russian
people. The only exceptions are those Jews which come from the Polish
cities far within the Jewish Pale and do not know the Russian people
except by hearsay. Unfortunately, this is a considerable portion of
the total of the Jews in Russia, and it is from these cities and towns
in the heart of the Pale that most of our immigrants come. But all the
more educated Jews--and a very large part are educated--all those who
know Russia either by a travel or through Russian literature and
newspapers, feel a deep affection for their country, for in spite of
all, Russia belongs to them just as much as it does to other Russians.
One of the editors of the present volume, Fyodor Sologub, says:
"Whenever I met Russian Jews abroad, I always marvelled at the
strangely tenacious love for Russia which they preserve. They speak of
Russia with the same longing and the same tenderness as the Russian
emigrants; they are equally eager to return and equally saddened, if
the return is impossible. Wherefore should they love Russia, who is
so harsh and inhospitable toward them?"
It is useless for Americans to deceive themselves into thinking that
the Russian Jewish question is either unimportant or incomprehensible
from the point of view of our progress and democracy. Do we not have
our negro and Asiatic problems? Do not the English have their Irish
and Indian questions? I do not suggest that the parallel is complete,
but it is clear that the Russian writers in the present volume are
perfectly correct in referring both to our negro question and our
question of yellow labour as closely similar to their Jewish problem.
Both the brilliant and fascinating discussions by Andreyev and
Merezhkovsky will apply almost as well to any other so-called "race
question" as to that of the Russian Jews. Says Merezhkovsky:
"We would like very much to say that there is no such thing as the
Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, question; that there is
only one question--the Russian. Yes, we would like to, but we cannot;
the Russian people have yet to earn the right to say that, and therein
lies their tragedy...."
"'Judophilism' and 'Judophobia' are closely related. A blind denial of
a nationality engenders an equally blind affirmation of it. An
absolute 'Nay' naturally brings forth an absolute 'Yea.'"
"That is why we say to the 'Nationalists': 'Cease oppressing the
non-Russian element of our empire, so that we may have the right to be
Russians, and that we may with dignity show our national face, as that
of a human being, not that of a beast. Cease to be 'Judophobes' so
that we may cease to be 'Judophiles.''"
Is it not clear from the recent discussion in the British Parliament
that the Irish problem weighs like an almost intolerable burden just
as much upon the British Empire as it does upon Ireland? Is it not
equally clear from England's concession of a cotton tariff to India
that she will be obliged for her own sake to make further concessions
to justice in that country? And can America ever hope to have any
standing in the court of nations as long as our infamous persecution
of the negroes and our atrocious attitude towards Asiatics continues?
Nations can indulge themselves for a certain period in such gross and
stupid crimes, but the longer the settlement is postponed the greater
the blood-price that must be paid in the end--and in the meanwhile all
our civilisation is poisoned, if not actually rotted, by the network
of lies by which the persecutors are forced to defend their
infamies--lies which are necessarily more far-reaching and impudently
false in a democracy than they are in an autocracy where the existing
system maintains itself rather by force than by public opinion.
But few of us educated Americans have the intellectual and moral
courage of the educated classes of Russia. We feel that we can avoid
our moral and intellectual responsibilities by turning our back on
existing crimes. It has frequently been pointed out that in spite of a
government even more anti-democratic than that of Germany, the Russian
people have been infinitely more democratic than the Germans. In the
same way, while the institutions of America are much further developed
in the direction of general democracy than those of Russia, the very
reverse is the case with public opinion. The educated classes of
Russia have the courage and intelligence to call a spade a spade.
They realise that they are partly responsible for the sins committed
by the Russian nation, even though they have been powerless heretofore
to remedy these conditions in the face of an armed and organised
autocracy, backed by the moral, intellectual and military force of
Germany and by the money of France and England. Andreyev, for example,
regards the Jewish problem as primarily a Russian problem. It is one
of the chief burdens, if not the chief burden, which has been crushing
the Russian nation. In this book he says:
"When did the 'Jewish question' leap on my back?--I do not know. I was
born with it and under it. From the very moment I assumed a conscious
attitude towards life until this very day I have lived in its noisome
atmosphere, breathed in the poisoned air which surrounds all these
'problems,' all these dark, harrowing alogisms, unbearable to the
intellect.
"And yet I, a Russian intellectual, a happy representative of the
sovereign race, although fully conscious and convinced that the
'Jewish question' is no question at all,--I felt powerless and doomed
to the most sterile tribulation of spirit. For, all the clear-cut
arguments of my intellect, the most fervent tirades and speeches, the
sincerest tears of compassion and outcries of indignation unfailingly
broke against a dull, unresponsive wall. But all powerlessness, if it
is unable to prevent a crime, becomes complicity; and this was the
result: personally guiltless of any offence against my brother, I have
become in the eyes of all those unconcerned and those of my brother
himself, a Cain."
The new Russia is being born while I write these lines, and
intelligent Americans are discussing nothing else except this great
world event--comparable in importance even to the colossal war itself.
If we wish to understand educated Russia--which has brought about the
change--many-sided, large-hearted and intellectually more brilliant
perhaps than the educated class of any other nation, we cannot do
better than to read and think over what that galaxy of Russian genius
that has composed the present volume has written. We must not forget
that the educated class in Russia is almost as numerous as in the
other great nations, and perhaps plays an even more important rôle in
Russia than it does in other countries. What Russia has lacked has
been neither an educated class nor masses capable and ready to be
trained to any kind of modern employment, but a great technically
trained, free and organised "intellectual middle class"--an expression
I am forced to coin for my present purpose. It is hardly necessary to
prove this assertion. The world is well acquainted with Russian genius
in literature, art, music, philosophy, sociology, economics, history,
and the higher realms of science. Moreover Russia is not without
technological schools, but the proportion of her population employed
in the scientific organisation of industry and business is
insignificant in comparison with that of other countries--owing, of
course, to the backward state of Russian industry and Russian
government. But this fact, important as it is, must not obscure the
equally important fact that the educated and cultivated class in
Russia, speaking several languages, and personally familiar with the
civilisation of one or more foreign countries, exercises an influence
over Russian society and Russian public opinion undoubtedly stronger
than that of any other educated class whatever--with the possible
exception of that of Germany. We cannot hope to understand the new
Russia unless we understand the character and point of view of the
Russian "intellegentsia," and this is nowhere so clearly, succinctly
and interestingly set forth as in "The Shield."
WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING.
Greenwich, Connecticut.
PREFACE
Published by the Russian Society for the Study of Jewish Life under
the joint editorship of three eminent men-of-letters, Gorky, Andreyev,
and Sologub, the original Shield saw the light of day last year in
Petrograd. The book consists of numerous studies, essays, stories and
poems, all these contributions to the symposium on the Jewish question
coming exclusively from the pen of Russian authors of non-Jewish
birth. In making a selection for the present volume, I have thought it
advisable to give decided preference to the publicistic articles of
the original collection. Thus, the present version contains
practically all the various important studies and essays of the
Russian _Shield_, while most of the stories have been omitted, without
great detriment to the book. I have also had to sacrifice, for obvious
reasons, all the poetic contributions to the original, signed by such
great masters of modern Russian poetry as Balmont, Bunin, Z. Hippins,
Sologub, and Shchepkina-Kupernik.
My thanks are due to Dr. Louis S. Friedland and Professor Earle F.
Palmer for going over a considerable portion of the present volume.
A. YARMOLINSKY.
CONTENTS
MAXIM GORKY, Russia and the Jews 3
LEONID ANDREYEV, The First Step 19
VLADIMIR KOROLENKO, Mr. Jackson's Opinion on the
Jewish Question 37
PAUL MILYUKOV, The Jewish Question in Russia 55
M. BERNATZKY, The Jews and Russian Economic Life 77
PRINCE PAUL DOLGORUKOV, The War and the Status of the Jew 95
MAXIM KOVALEVSKY, Jewish Rights and Their Enemies 103
DMITRY MEREZHKOVSKY, The Jewish Question as a Russian
Question 115
VYACHESLAV IVANOV, Concerning the Ideology of the
Jewish Question 125
MAXIM GORKY, The Little Boy, a Story 133
FYODOR SOLOGUB, The Fatherland for All 143
VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV, On Nationalism 155
COUNT IVAN TOLSTOY, Concerning the Legal Status of
the Jews 159
LEONID ANDREYEV, The Wounded Soldier, a Story 165
CATHERINE KUSKOVA, How to Help? 171
S. YELPATYEVSKY, The Homeless Ones 181
MICHAEL ARTZIBASHEF, The Jew, a Story 193
RUSSIA AND THE JEWS
_Alexey Maksinovich Pyeshkov, better known under the assumed name
of Maxim Gorky, was born in 1869. In 1905 he was arrested and
imprisoned because of his political convictions. After the
revolutionary days of 1906 he left Russia and settled on the
island of Capri. At the beginning of the present war he returned
to Russia and took an active part in the public life of the
country. He is at present residing in Petrograd, where he edits a
monthly of distinctly radical tendencies._
THE SHIELD
RUSSIA AND THE JEWS
BY MAXIM GORKY
From time to time--more often as time goes on!--circumstances force
the Russian author to remind his compatriots of certain indisputable,
elementary truths.
It is a very hard duty:--it is painfully awkward to speak to grown-up
and literate people in this manner:
"Ladies and gentlemen! We must be humane; humaneness is not only
beautiful, but also advantageous to us. We must be just; justice is
the foundation of culture. We must make our own the ideas of law and
civil liberty: the usefulness of such an assimilation is clearly
demonstrated by the high degree of civilisation reached by the
Western countries, for instance, by England.
"We must develop in ourselves a moral tidiness, and an aversion to all
the manifestations of the brute principle in man, such as the wolfish,
degrading hatred for people of other races. The hatred of the Jew is a
beastlike, brute phenomenon; we must combat it in the interests of the
quicker growth of social sentiments and social culture.
"The Jews are human beings, just like others, and, like all human
beings, the Jews must be free.
"A man who meets all the duties of a citizen, thereby deserves to be
given all the rights of citizenship.
"Every human being has an inalienable right to apply his energy in all
the branches of industry and all the departments of culture, and the
broader the scope of his personal and social activities, the more does
his country gain in power and beauty."
There are a number of other equally elementary truths which should
have long since sunk into the flesh and blood of Russian society, but
which have not as yet done so.
I repeat--it is a hard thing to assume the rôle of a preacher of
social proprieties and to keep reiterating to people: "It is not good,
it is unworthy of you to live such a dirty, careless, savage
life--wash yourselves!"
And in spite of all your love for men, in spite of your pity for them,
you are sometimes congealed in cold despair and you think with
animosity: "Where then is that celebrated, broad, beautiful Russian
soul? So much was and is being said about it, but wherein does its
breadth, might and beauty actively manifest itself? And is not our
soul broad because it is amorphous? And it is probably owing to its
amorphousness that we yield so readily to external pressure, which
disfigures us so rapidly and radically."
We are good-natured, as we ourselves express it. But when you look
closer at our good-naturedness, you find that it shows a strange
resemblance to Oriental indifference.
One of man's most grievous crimes is indifference, inattention to his
neighbour's fate; this indifference is pre-eminently ours.
The situation of the Jews in Russia, which is a disgrace to Russian
culture, is one of the results of our carelessness, of our
indifference to the straight and just decrees of life.
In the interests of reason, justice, civilisation, we must not
tolerate that people without rights should live among us; we would
never have tolerated it, if we had a strong sense of self-respect.
We have every reason to reckon the Jews among our friends; there are
many things for which we must be grateful to them: they have done and
are doing much good in those lines of endeavour in which the best
Russian minds have been engaged. Nevertheless, without aversion or
indignation, we bear a disgraceful stain on our consciousness, the
stain of Jewish disabilities. There is in that stain the dirty poison
of slanders and the tears and blood of numberless pogroms.
I am not able to speak of anti-Semitism in the manner it deserves. And
this not because I have not the power or the right words. It is rather
because I am hindered by something that I cannot overcome. I would
find words biting, heavy, and pointed enough to fling them in the face
of the man-haters, but for that purpose I must descend into a kind of
filthy pit. I must put myself on a level with people whom I do not
respect and for whom I have an organic aversion.
I am inclined to think that anti-Semitism is indisputable, just as
leprosy and syphilis are, and that the world will be cured of this
shameful disease only by culture, which sets us free, slowly but
surely, from ailments and vices.
Of course, this does not relieve me of the duty to combat in every way
the development of anti-Semitism and, according to my powers, to
preserve people from getting infected by it. The Jew of to-day is dear
to me, and I feel myself guilty before him, for I am one of those who
tolerate the oppression of the Jewish nation, the great nation, whom
some of the most prominent Western thinkers consider, as a psychical
type, higher and more beautiful than the Russian.
I think that the judgment of these thinkers is correct. To my mind,
Jews are more European than the Russians are, because of their
strongly developed feeling of respect for work and man, if not for any
other reason. I admire the spiritual steadfastness of the Jewish
nation, its manly idealisms, its unconquerable faith in the victory
of good over evil, in the possibility of happiness on earth.
The Jews--mankind's old, strong leaven,--have always exalted its
spirit, bringing into the world restless, noble ideas, goading men to
embark on a search for finer values.
All men are equal; the soil--is no one's, it is God's; man has the
right and the power to resist his fate, and we may stand up even
against God,--all this is written in the Jewish Bible, one of the
world's best books. And the commandment of love for one's neighbour is
also an ancient Jewish commandment, just as are all the rest, "thou
shalt not kill" among them.
In 1885 the German-Jewish Union in Germany published "The Principles
of the Jewish Moral Doctrine." Here is one of these principles:
"Judaism teaches: 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' and announces this
commandment of love for all mankind to be the fundamental principle of
Jewish religion. It, therefore, forbids all kinds of hostility, envy,
ill-will, and unkindly treatment of any one, without distinction of
race, nationality and religion."
These principles were ratified by 350 rabbis, and published just at
the time of the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia.
"Judaism teaches respect for the life, the health, the forces and the
property of one's neighbour."
I am a Russian. When, alone with myself, I calmly scrutinise my merits
and demerits,--it seems to me that I am intensely Russian. And I am
deeply convinced that there is much that we Russians can and ought to
learn from the Jews.
For instance, the seventh paragraph of the "Principles of the Jewish
Moral Doctrine" says: "Judaism commands us to respect work, to take
part by either physical or mental labour in the communal work, to seek
for life's goods in constant productive and creative work. Judaism,
therefore, teaches us to take care of our powers and abilities, to
perfect them and apply them actively. It, therefore, forbids all idle
pleasure not based on labour, all idleness which hopes for the help of
others."
This is beautiful and wise, and this is just what we Russians lack.
Oh, if we could educate our unusual powers and abilities, if we had
the will to apply them actively in our chaotic, untidy existence,
which is terribly blocked up with all kinds of idle clack and
home-spun philosophy, and which gets more and more saturated with
silly arrogance and puerile bragging. Somewhere deep in the Russian
soul--no matter whether it is the "master's" or the muzhik's--there
lives a petty and squalid demon of passive anarchism, who infects us
with a careless and indifferent attitude toward work, society, people,
and ourselves.
I believe that the morality of Judaism would assist us greatly in
overcoming this demon,--if only we have the will to combat him.
In my early youth I read--I have forgotten where--the words of the
ancient Jewish sage--Hillel, if I remember rightly:
"If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for
thyself alone--wherefore art thou?"[1]
The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound
wisdom, and I interpreted them for myself in this manner: I must
actively take care of myself, that my life should be better, and I
must not impose the care of myself on other people's shoulders; but if
I am going to take care of myself alone, of nothing but my own
personal life,--it will be useless, ugly and meaningless.
This thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with
conviction: Hillel's wisdom served me as a strong staff on my road,
which was neither even nor easy. It is hard to say with precision to
what one owes the fact that one kept on his feet on the entangled
paths of life, when tossed by the tempests of mental despair, but I
repeat--Hillel's serene wisdom assisted me many a time.
I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any
other, and this not only because of its immemorial age, not only
because it is the first-born, but also because of the powerful
humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man.
"The true Shekinah--is man," says a Jewish text. This thought I dearly
love, this I consider the highest wisdom, for I am convinced of this:
that until we learn to admire man as the most beautiful and
marvellous phenomenon on our planet, until then we shall not be set
free from the abomination and lies that saturate our lives.
It is with this conviction that I have entered the world, and with
this conviction I shall leave it, and in leaving it I will believe
firmly that the time will come when the world will acknowledge that
"The holy of holies is man!"
* * * * *
It is unbearably painful to see that human beings who have produced so
much that is beautiful, wise and necessary for the world, live among
us oppressed by unfair laws, which in all ways restrain their right to
life, work and freedom. It is necessary,--for it is just and
useful--to give the Jew equal rights with the Russians; it is
imperative that we should do so not only out of respect to the people
which has rendered and is constantly rendering yeoman service to
humanity and our own nation, but also out of self-respect.
We must make haste with this plain, human reform, for the animosity
against Jews is on the increase in our country, and if we do not make
an attempt to arrest the growth of this blind hatred, it will prove
pernicious to our cultural development. We must bear in mind that the
Russian people have hitherto seen very little good, and therefore,
believe all the evil things that man-haters whisper in their ears. The
Russian peasant does not manifest any organic hatred for the Jew,--on
the contrary, he shows an exceptional attraction for Israel's
religious thought, fascinating for its democratic spirit. As far as I
can remember, the religious sects of "judaizers" exist only in Russia
and Hungary. In late years, the sects of "Sabbathists" and "The New
Israel" have been developing rather rapidly in our country. In spite
of this, when the Russian peasant hears of persecutions of Jews, he
says with the indifference of an Oriental:
"No one sues or beats an innocent man."
Who ought to know better than the Russian peasant that in "Holy
Russia" the innocent are too often tried and beaten? But his
conception of right and wrong has been confused from time immemorial,
the sense of injustice is undeveloped in his dark mind, dimmed by
centuries of Tartardom, boyardom, and the horrors of serfdom.
The village has a dislike for restless people, even when that
restlessness is expressed in an aspiration for a better life. We
Russians are intensely Oriental by nature, we love quiet and
immobility, and a rebel, even if he be a Job, delights us in but an
abstract way. Lost in the depth of a winter six months long, and wrapt
in misty dreams, we love beautiful fairy-tales, but the desire for a
beautiful life is undeveloped in us. And when on the plane of our lazy
thought something new and disquieting makes its appearance,--instead
of accepting and sympathetically scanning it, we hasten to drive it
into a dark corner of our mind and bury it there, lest it disturb us
in our customary vegetative existence, amidst impotent hopes and grey
dreams.
In addition to the people, there is also the "populace," something
standing outside of social classes and outside of culture, and united
by the dark sense of hatred against everything surpassing its
understanding and defenceless against brute force. I speak of the
populace which thus defines itself in the words of Pushkin, our great
poet, who himself suffered so cruelly from the aristocratic populace:
"We are insidious and shameless,
Ungrateful, faint-hearted and wicked;
At heart we are cold, sterile eunuchs,
Traducers, born to slavery."
It is mainly this populace that is the bearer of the brute principles,
such as anti-Semitism.
The Jews are defenceless, and this is especially dangerous for them in
the conditions of Russian life. Dostoyevsky, who knew the Russian soul
so well, pointed out repeatedly that defencelessness arouses in it a
sensuous inclination to cruelty and crime. In late years there have
appeared in Russia quite a few people who have been taught to think
that they are the finest of the wheat, and that their enemy is the
stranger, above all--the Jew. For a long time these people were being
persuaded that all the Jews are restless people, strikers and rioters.
They were next informed that the Jews like to drink the blood of
thievish boys. In our days they are being taught that the Polish Jews
are spies and traitors.
If this preaching of hatred will not bring bloody and shameful fruits,
it will be only because it will clash with our Russian indifference to
life and will disappear in it; it will split against the Chinese
wall, behind which our still inexplicable nation is hidden.
But if this indifference be stirred up by the efforts of the hatred
preachers,--the Jews will loom up before the Russian nation as a race
accused of all crimes.
And it is not for the first time that all the troubles of Russian life
will be blamed on the Jew; time and again was he the scapegoat for our
sins. Only recently he paid with his life and goods for the help he
rendered us in our feverish struggle for freedom. I think no one has
forgotten the fact that our "emancipatory movements" strangely wound
up with anti-Jewish riots.
* * * * *
When the many-raced populace of Jerusalem demanded the death of the
defenceless Jew, Christ, Pilate, believing Christ innocent, washed his
hands, but allowed him to be put to death.
How then will honest Russian men and women act in Pilate's place?
Their judgment is awaited.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self,
what am I?" "Pirqe Aboth," I, 14.--Translator's Note.
* * * * *
THE FIRST STEP
_Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev, the author of impressive tales and
remarkable dramas, is well known both in America and in England.
Since the beginning of the Great War he has devoted himself to
the artistic portrayal of the war's effect on his country, and
also to purely publicistic tasks. He was born in 1871._
THE FIRST STEP
BY LEONID ANDREYEV
"O heavens, if within your blue,
Old God is still alive and mighty,
Unseen by me alone, ye pray
For me and for my doom e'er bleeding!
My lips no more are fraught with hymns,
No brawn in arm, no hope in heart....
How long, how long, how long?"
--H. BYALIK.
It is with deep emotion that I have read in the Polish _New Gazette_
an interview about the Jewish question with a personage of high
station who seems to be really well informed. According to this
personage, a number of measures are being proposed and planned, which
are intended to lighten the grievous lot of the Jews in Russia: the
abolition of the "Pale of Settlement" in relation to towns large and
small, the abrogation of the percentage "norm" in the secondary and
higher educational institutions, the establishment of special Jewish
schools, the reorganisation of Jewish emigration on a broad and
rational basis. I confess that I was not prompt in giving credence to
these good tidings. And those with whom I shared the news, although
excited no less than I, accepted them also with some degree of
diffidence, which is only natural in Russians: life indulges us so
rarely and so reluctantly. But private rumours corroborate this news,
and to persist in one's disbelief would mean to doubt the very meaning
of the present great "emancipatory" war, which is building a glorious
temple of renovated life on the blood of Russians, Poles, Jews and
Lithuanians. And finally, I simply cannot help believing, for my soul
is weary with waiting and repeating together with the great Jewish
poet: "How long, how long, how long?"
An aged journalist, who, it seems, has lost all fervour and faith, has
recently laughed in his sleeve at the word "miracle," which nowadays
comes so often to our lips: according to him, miracles, generally
speaking, do not exist. It is my opinion also that there are no
miracles, if we understand by a miracle an arbitrary violation of the
natural, logical, inevitable order of things. But to him who
contemplates life proper, not the table of multiplication,--logic
itself appears as the greatest of all miracles. Oh, if logic would
really reign supreme in life; oh, if in our cursed human existence,
where there are so many aimless and unnecessary sorrows and tears and
wild outrages, the simplest "two and two is four" would not be the
rarest of miracles, equal to the transubstantiation of water into
precious wine. Would millions of individually innocent human beings
perish in this most terrible of wars, if instead of a dark and
terrible _alogism_ a clear and lucid syllogism lay at the basis of our
intricate and enigmatical existence? It is logic that is the true
miracle, and "two and two is four" is that extraordinary happiness,
which falls so seldom to our lot!
And just as I rejoiced as at miracles, at Russia's achievement of
temperance, and Poland's rebirth in the same way, I now marvel at the
coming solution of the "Jewish question," the immemorial and darkest
of alogisms. There is something festive in it; it stirs up in me a
feeling of serene and immense joy, bordering on religious
exaltation.... And the fact that for me, as well as for many other
Russian writers, _all this_ was never even a problem, does not by any
means diminish the extraordinary character of what is going to happen;
for a plain brotherly kiss is almost a miracle and can move one to
tears at the time when the rule of life and its highest wisdom is a
fierce war of brother against brother.
And how can I help feeling this extraordinary import, I, a Russian
intellectual, if, together with the solution of the "question" my
soul, too, is suddenly set free. It is delivered from all the habitual
and harrowing experiences that, constant companions of my days and
nights as they have been, have acquired all the peculiarities of those
chronic and incurable ailments, to which the grave alone can bring
release. For, if to the Jews themselves the "Pale," the "norm," etc.,
were a fatal and impregnable fact, which deformed their entire life,
they were also for me, a Russian, something in the nature of a hump on
my back, a stationary and ugly growth, arising no one knows when or
under what circumstances. Wherever I went and whatever I did, the hump
was with me; at night it disturbed my sleep, and in my waking hours,
when I was among people, it filled me with feelings of confusion and
shame.
It is not my intention to demonstrate the soundness and justice of the
proposed measures and to force the door which to me was always open,
but I am going to take the liberty of adding a few more words about my
hump. When did the "Jewish question" leap on my back?--I do not know.
I was born with it and under it. From the very moment I assumed a
conscious attitude towards life until this very day I have lived in
its noisome atmosphere, breathed in the poisoned air which surrounds
all these "problems," all these dark, harrowing alogisms, unbearable
to the intellect.
Who needs it? Whom does it benefit? If all this exists and is
supported, if there are people who assert it fiercely and firmly,
there must be some definite sense in it; evidently, the Pale, the
educational norm, and the rest increase mankind's sum of joy, exalt
life, broaden the limits of human possibilities. Taking a logical
point of departure, that is what I thought, but this same logic
dictated to me an absolutely negative answer to all these questions:
no one needs it, it brings good to no one: all these discriminations
not only do not increase the sum of joy on this earth, but engender a
multitude of wholly unnecessary, aimless sufferings; some they
oppress, and others they badly corrupt. And yet I, a Russian
intellectual, a happy representative of the sovereign race, although
fully conscious and convinced that the "Jewish question" is no
question at all,--I felt powerless and doomed to the most sterile
tribulation of spirit. For, all the clear-cut arguments of my
intellect, the most fervent tirades and speeches, the sincerest tears
of compassion and outcries of indignation unfailingly broke against a
dull, unresponsive wall. But all powerlessness, if it is unable to
prevent a crime, becomes complicity; and this was the result:
personally guiltless of any offence against my brother, I have become
in the eyes of all those unconcerned and those of my brother himself,
a Cain.
The first consequence of my fatal powerlessness was that the Jew did
not trust me, which meant that I lost my self-confidence. Living
together with the Jews as my co-citizens, being in constant personal
and business relations with them, in the field of consorted social
work, I came face to face with the Jewish "problem" every single
day,--and every single day of my life I felt with intolerable keenness
all the falsehood and wretched ambiguity of my situation, that of an
oppressor against one's will. In the doctor's office, at my desk, in
the editorial room, in the street, finally in jail, where together
with the Jew I fulfilled the all-Russian prison duty--everywhere I
remained the privileged "Russian," the representative of the sovereign
race, the baron,--without the baronial blazon. And with horror I
noticed that even the eyes of a Jew-friend were dimmed with strange
shadows ... that terrible images surged behind my friendly Russian
shoulders and mingled wholly unsuitable noises and voices with my
sincere plea for "world citizenship." ... And yet he knew me well, he
knew my attitude toward the Jews,--how about those who know only that
I am a "Russian"?
I remember having spent one night in talking with a very gifted
writer, a Jew, who was my casual and most welcome guest. I was trying
to convince him that he, a great master of the word, ought to write,
but he repeated obstinately that although he loves the Russian
language with all his artist's heart, he cannot write in it, in the
language which has the word _zhid_.[1] Of course, logic was on my
side, but on his side there was some dark _truth_--truth is not always
lucid--and I felt, that my ardent arguments began, little by little,
to sound like false and cheap babbling. So that I have not succeeded
in convincing him, and when we parted I had not the courage to kiss
him: how many _unexpected_ meanings could be disclosed in this plain,
everyday token of friendship and affection?
Things are altogether bad when even a kiss becomes suspicious and can
be susceptible of "interpretation," as a complicated act of intricate
and enigmatic relations! That is exactly what happened. And how many
odd and nightmare-like misunderstandings were engendered by the
poisonous mist in which we all wandered, both friends and foes, and in
which the outlines of the plainest objects and feelings assumed the
dismal grotesqueness of phantoms. I cannot help recalling here the
case of E.A. Chirikov, which at the time excited much comment: the
noble and fervent champion of the persecuted race, the author of the
drama "Jews," which has more than any other Russian drama contributed
to the dispersion of the evil prejudice,--this man was suddenly, in a
most absurd manner, without a shadow of foundation, insulted by the
accusation of anti-Semitism; and--to think of it!--it was necessary to
furnish _proofs_ that the accusation was false. What a painful, what a
wholly disgraceful absurdity!
"Who needs all this? Who does not know it?" wearily thought every one
of us, again and again realising the harrowing necessity of convincing
some unbeliever, that two and two is four ... nothing but four!
And abroad? "What an injustice!"--thought I, when the cultured West,
having separated me from Tolstoy, as if I had stolen him, handed me on
the spot, a bill for the "excesses" known the world over, at the same
time frowning unambiguously upon my eternal hump. The West refused to
consider that I, too, am against _this_. I was considered a Russian,
and the question was put this way: "Tell me, why in your country, in
Russia?..."
It is ridiculous and utterly odd to think that our far-famed
"barbarism" of which our enemies accuse us and which puts our friends
out of countenance, is based wholly and exclusively on our Jewish
question and its bloody excesses. Take away from Russia these
excesses, leave, if you wish, the anti-Semitism, but in that
externally decorous form in which it still exists in the backward
portions of Europe,--and we shall become at once decent Europeans, and
not Asiatics and barbarians, whose proper place is beyond the Ural.
This is a fact the obviousness of which every new day of the present
war makes more strikingly evident.
Of course culturally we are far behind the world, our economic life is
undeveloped, our civic life is at a low level, and all the aspects of
our life show clearly that we have not as yet broken the shell of the
egg. But we are young, we are only beginning, and for a people who
abolished serfdom only half a century ago, we have done quite a good
deal,--so that, at the worst, lack of culture is the only reproach
which a European with a sense of justice will fling at us. But it is
enough to put side by side the words "Russian" and "Jew,"--and I
become at once a barbarian, a dark and terrible being, who chills and
darkens resplendent Europe. At once in America people begin to hate
me, in England and France to despise me; with the swiftness of
theatrical transformations Tolstoy's compatriot turns into the brother
of those who drive nails into their neighbours' heads,--I become a
_barbarian_. And even the German anti-Semite, a stupid and dull
creature, looks down at me and warns England: "See with whom you are
friends? Are they not the same people who...?"
"To whose interest is it that Europe should despise me, hate and fear
me?" I mused, perplexed, feeling that in the light of the European sun
my cursed hump assumes immense proportions and like a screen shuts off
the light which comes from the East, and in which the aged and weary
West is quite inclined to believe. To whom is it necessary for me to
ramble among the cultured nations like a leper, to conceal my race and
obtain the ironical bow so essential to my unacknowledged dignity, by
means of exorbitant "tips" flung right and left? A barbarian, a
barbarian!...
The war has opened our eyes to many things, and therein lies for us
Russians the sad advantages of it. And now when Germany brands France
and England for the union with "the Russian barbarians who...," when
the allies, while relying on our elemental force, tremble with doubts
and fear behind the screen of their noisy sympathies,--I begin to
understand in whose interests it was, who needed it, that in the
legion of European states we should remain all alone with our
barbarism. Whatever is a misfortune for us is favourable for Germany,
with her "well-tried" friendship for us, to which Wilhelm referred so
loudly from the balcony of his palace. As barbarians we are only an
excellent and indispensable market for the Germans' merchandise, a
two-hundred-million flock of sheep ready for the shears. As a cultured
nation we are a power dangerous to the Teuton's dream of world
dominion. And the Jewish question, with its excesses and nails driven
into heads, is that trump which our honest German neighbour has always
kept hidden in his cuff and which he throws out on the green table at
the necessary moment. And he was right from his standpoint. But why
had we to drink off the bitter cup? Losing our self-respect, having no
faith in our power, growing corrupted by an unnatural existence,
cutting down by means of the celebrated "norm" the number of our
educated and cultured men--a devilish joke!--our entire nation was
diligently performing the "Fools' Dance," which, under the name of a
drama from Russian life, has recently met with such a success in the
Berlin playhouses. It must not be forgotten that the ardent Polish
anti-Semitism, which frightens us so much and which seriously hinders
the upbuilding of a new life, as well as the cold Finnish
anti-Semitism, the power of which is still unknown to us,--that these
two phenomena are nothing but the logical development of the
fundamental absurdity, its natural and poisonous fruits. But the time
has not come yet to speak about that.