peasant of his land, is perfectly groundless. There are many other
means whereby the tiller of the soil may be assured the possession of
a portion of land. In the West we have systems such as that of the
homestead, based on the inalienability of the family property (_bien
de famille_). Such systems may be traced back as far as the Middle
Ages. The mediæval law forbids the taking away from the peasant, even
for arrearage, of his agricultural implements and the cattle necessary
for his labour,--not to speak of his land, which, however, it would be
impossible to take away, since it is the suzerain that is its rightful
owner. The indivisibility of the family estate, which only a short
time ago was recognised by the Appellatory Division of our Senate,
with reference to the Western Section, was achieving the same results
because for the sale of such property the agreement of all the members
of the family was required. Such a protection of the interests of the
peasant landowner is essential in his relation to the capitalist,
whether it be a member of the landed gentry or a wealthy peasant,
known as a _Kulak_, or a Jew who lends money at interest, or an
Armenian or, for that matter, a usurer of the Orthodox faith. In order
that the land be retained by the peasant it is far more essential that
only members of the peasant class be allowed to attend the auction
sales of land sold because of the owner's arrears. And yet our law has
permitted outsiders to attend if not the first auction sale, at least
the second. I am strongly in favour of protecting the peasant's
property, but I cannot see that to achieve this goal, it is necessary
for a body politic based on law to limit any one's freedom of moving
about, settling or choosing a profession. This view is shared by some
of the political writers in Russia who, like the late B.N. Chicherin,
Professor of the University of Moscow, have identified their names
with the defence of the idea of equal rights for the Jews.
* * * * *
THE JEWISH QUESTION AS A RUSSIAN QUESTION
_Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky occupies an important place in
modern Russian letters and religious philosophy. He is
responsible for several books of poems and for a series of
ponderous historical novels. He is also the author of numerous
critical studies distinguished by an original method and an
extraordinary brilliancy. He was born in 1866._
THE JEWISH QUESTION AS A RUSSIAN QUESTION
BY DMITRY MEREZHKOVSKY
Russia ... Russia alone should be our deepest concern at present. The
destiny of the numerous races and nationalities that go to make Russia
is the destiny of the Russian Empire itself. One would ascertain the
attitude of these nationalities by asking them: "Are you with Russia
or is it your desire to exist apart from her? If you desire to exist
apart from her--why, then, do you appeal to us for help? If with
us--let us then, in this time of terror, disdain to consider our
personal fortunes and let our thoughts be with Russia and with her
alone. For without her your existence is inconceivable; her rise is
your rise and her fall is your fall."
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.... The moment Russian idealism ventures to
tackle any of those complicated national home problems,--it becomes
weak, impotent and therefore irresponsible.
The Jewish question is a striking illustration of what we have just
said. What do we owe the Jews? Indignation? Or the admission that
anti-Semitism is abominable? But we admitted that a long time ago, and
our indignation runs so high and is so clearly outspoken that it is
beyond one's power even to speak calmly of it. The only thing we can
do is to join our voice to that of the Jews. And we do.
But outcries, loud as they may be, are not sufficient, and it is the
consciousness of the fact, that the outcries are insufficient and that
at the present moment we possess no other weapons with which to fight
the evil that wearies and harrows us.
What misery, and pain, and shame!
But in spite of the pain and the shame we cry out and reiterate and
declare to the people around us, who are ignorant of the table of
multiplication, that two and two make four, that the Jews are human
beings like us; that they are neither enemies nor traitors to their
country; that they are as good citizens as we are; that they love
Russia no less than we do, and that anti-Semitism is a disgraceful
stigma upon Russia's face. But apart from our righteous indignation,
may we not be allowed calmly to utter one thought that occurs to us at
this moment?
"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."
Whom do we call a "Judophile" in Russia at the present time?
Presumably, it is he or she who loves the Jews with a singular love,
who finds in them greater values than in any other nationality. In the
eyes of the so-called "true Russians" we, the Intellectuals, are such
Judophiles.
"Why worry over the Jews all the time?" the Russian Nationalists say
to us.
Now, how on earth can we stop worrying over the Jews, and, for that
matter, over the Poles, Armenians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and so
forth? When in our presence some one is being outraged, we cannot
merely pass on; it is not humane. We must help him who is being
assailed. At least, we ought to join our voice with his in crying out
for help. This is precisely what we have been doing, and woe to us, if
we cease to do it, cease to be human beings in order to become
Russians.
A forest of national problems has grown around us, and the sounds of
the Russian language are being drowned by the voices of all the
numerous peoples that inhabit Russia. It is inevitable and just. We
are not well, but with them it is still worse. We have great pain, but
their's is greater. We must forget ourselves for their sake.
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.'
Here is an instance taken at random.
The Jewish question has a religious as well as a national aspect.
Between Judaism and Christianity, as between two poles, there are
strong attractions and equally strong repulsions. Judaism gave birth
to Christianity. The New Testament issued from the Old Testament. Paul
the Apostle, who more than any one else fought Judaism, wrote: "For I
could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
kinsmen according to the flesh."
But whereas we may speak of attractions, it is not well for us to
speak of repulsions. Indeed, how can we quarrel with him, who has no
voice? The disabilities of the Jews seal our lips. We must not
separate Christianity from Judaism, for it means, as one Jew put it,
the establishment of another, spiritual "Pale of Settlement." Let us
do away with the physical Pale, then we will be able to discuss the
spiritual one. Until then, all our protestations and declarations of
righteousness will only prove to the Jews our insincerity.
Why has the Jewish question become so keen in time of war? For the
same reason that the rest of the national problems have made
themselves felt.
We have called the present struggle a war of liberation. We entered
the war with the avowed purpose of liberating those who are situated
at a distance from us. While liberating distant strangers, why then do
we oppress those who live close by our side? We wage war against
tyranny outside of Russia, and we allow oppression to reign within
her. We pity everybody but the Jews. Why?
Are they not dying on the battlefields for our sake? Do they not love
us--who hate them? Do we not hate them--who love us? If we continue to
act as we have done in the past, would not everybody lose faith in us,
and would not the nations of the earth be justified in saying to us:
"You can love only from afar. You are liars!"
We believed our righteousness to be our strongest weapon. We wanted to
conquer brute force by the truth. If we persist in this desire, let us
not lie; let us not weaken our truth by falsehood.
The Teutons say: "We fight to be the rulers of the world,"--and they
act accordingly. We say: "We fight for universal peace, for the
emancipation of the world," but we do not act accordingly.
Let us begin then with the liberation of the Jews at home. Let the
oppressed nations in our land bear in mind, however, that only a free
Russian people will be able to give them freedom.
Let the Jews remember that the Jewish question is a Russian
question.
* * * * *
CONCERNING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE JEWISH QUESTION
_Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov was born in 1866. A poet of great
mastery and a refined critic, his thought, is steeped in
hellenism and in the most abstruse mystic lore._
CONCERNING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE JEWISH QUESTION
BY VYACHESLAV IVANOV
One of the wiliest and the most harmful doctrines of our times is, I
believe, the fashionable ideology of spiritual anti-Semitism. It
attributes to Aryanism, which by the way, is a quantity ethnically if
not linguistically enigmatical, many excellent and splendid qualities,
while in the Semitic influences and admixtures to the Aryan element it
sees nothing but negative energies, which have always hindered the
free unfolding of the creative powers of the Aryan genius.
This doctrine would deprive Hellenism of Aphrodite, who came to the
Hellenes from the Semites, and would cut the main and most profound
root of Christianity, namely its faith in a "transcendental," or,
plainly, living God. Spiritual anti-Semitism cuts the body of
Christianity into two halves, and keeps only that half whose forms
are justified by analogies borrowed from the Greek religious thought,
justified, in the eyes of learned dodgers who choose to play the part
of Romanticists of Aryanism.
This anti-religious and secretly anti-Christian theory, one of the
Trojan wooden horses made in Germany, was clearly intended to
"Indo-Germanize" the world, when suddenly the twilight of the Gods
swooped down upon the Berlin Valhalla. Nevertheless it has succeeded
in seducing many minds, obscured by prejudices. It was hailed by
"immanent" philosophers and anti-Semites out of political
considerations and psychological predispositions, as well as by
Christians mindless of their kin, by anti-church people of all kinds,
and even by atheists of Jewish birth, who are ashamed of their kin and
who are in the world like salt which has lost its strength.
The more vivid and profound the church consciousness is in a
Christian, the more vividly and profoundly does he feel himself, I
shall not say a philo-Semite, but truly a Semite in spirit. We have so
thoroughly confused, distorted and forgotten all the holy and true
traditions, we have so thoroughly lost the habit of applying our
reason to the lucid, old truths learned by heart, that this statement
may sound like a paradox.
Vladimir Solovyov's touching affection for Judaism is a plain and
natural manifestation of his love for Christ and of his inner
experience of being merged in the Church. The body of the Church is
for the mystic the true, although invisible body of Christ, and
through Christ it is the body begotten of Abraham's seed. The latter
body, like the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem in the hour of our
Saviour's death, was rent in twain, and that half of it which is
Judaism passionately seeks the whole, longs and yearns, and pours out
its wrath upon the second half, which in its turn longs for the
reunion and the integrity of mystic Israel.
Whoever is within the Church loves Mary; and whoever loves Mary loves
also Israel whose name together with those of the patriarchs and
prophets solemnly resounds in our liturgical hymns. The minds of those
who in various times represented the earthly organisation of the
Church could be poisoned by hatred of the Jews, in whom they suspected
Christ's enemies, precisely because it seemed to them that the Jewish
nation was already void of the true Jewish spirit and was not of
Abraham's seed. But what do all these errings mean in face of the
single testimony of the apostle Paul?
I have placed myself, in these lines, on the standpoint of religious
thought, and I wish to remind people of the truth that to be a
Christian means to be not a heathen, not simply an Aryan by blood, but
to become through baptism, which sacramentally includes also
circumcision, a child of Abraham, and, therefore, in a sacramental
sense a brother to Abraham's descendants, who, according to the word
of the apostle, are not deprived of inheritance, and whom, according
to Christ's word, we must bless even if they curse us. Personally, I
do not believe that the Jews hate Christ, unless it be that they hate
Him in spite of their secret, presensuous love for Him, hate Him with
that peculiar hatred which comes from jealousy and which the Hellenes
defined as the negative hypostase of Eros, as anti-Eros.
I think that Providence has appointed the Jews eternally to test the
Christian peoples in their love for Christ and in their faithfulness
to Him. And when His work will be consummated in us, then their
demands and expectations will be fulfilled and they will be convinced
that they need not wait for another Messiah. As for us, if we were
walking with Christ, we would not fear our examiners: for love
conquers fear.
The accounts the Russian soul has to settle with that of the Jew are
complex. In spite of the fact they have frequently and most completely
been united in suffering, the Jew is loath to love that which is most
sacred to the Russian soul. For the benefit of those in whom resound
the separate clashing voices of this spiritual dispute, I shall quote
in conclusion this final and irrevocable verdict of Dostoyevsky, who
had the reputation of being an anti-Semite:
"All that is demanded by humanity, justice and Christian law, must be
done for the Jews. I shall add to these words that in spite of the
considerations exposed above, I definitely stand for an increase of
the Jewish rights in formal legislation and, if possible, for the
removal of all the legal disabilities which stand in the way of their
equality with the rest of the population (although in some cases they
have already more rights than the aboriginal population, or, better,
they have greater possibilities to utilise the rights which they
enjoy)."
("A Writer's Journal," March, 1877, III, p. 4.)
* * * * *
THE LITTLE BOY
THE LITTLE BOY
(A STORY)
BY MAXIM GORKY
It is hard to tell this little story,--it is so simple. When I was a
youth, I used to gather the children of our street on Sunday mornings
during the spring and summer seasons and take them with me to the
fields and woods. I took great pleasure in the friendship of these
little people, who were as gay as birds.
The children were only too glad to leave the dusty, narrow streets of
the city. Their mothers provided them with slices of bread, while I
bought them dainties and filled a big bottle with cider, and like a
shepherd, walked behind my carefree little lambs, while we passed
through the town and the fields on our way to the green forest,
beautiful and caressing in its array of Spring.
We always started on our journey early in the morning when the church
bells were ushering in the early mass, and we were accompanied by the
chimes and the clouds of dust raised by the children's nimble feet.
In the heat of noon, exhausted with playing, my companions would
gather at the edge of the forest, and after that, having eaten their
food, the smaller children would lie down and sleep in the shade of
hazel and snow-ball trees, while the ten-year-old boys would flock
around me and ask me to tell them stories. I would satisfy their
desire, chattering as eagerly as the children themselves, and often,
in spite of the self-assurance of youth and the ridiculous pride which
it takes in the miserable crumbs of worldly wisdom it possesses, I
would feel like a twenty-year-old child in a conclave of sages.
Overhead is the blue veil of the spring sky, and before us lies the
deep forest, brooding in wise silence. Now and then the wind whispers
gently and stirs the fragrant shadows of the forest, and again does
the soothing silence caress us with a motherly caress. White clouds
are sailing slowly across the azure heavens. Viewed from the earth,
heated by the sun, the sky appears cold, and it is strange to see the
clouds melt away in the blue. And all around me--little people, dear
little people, destined to partake of all the sorrows and all the joys
of life.
These were my happy days, my true holidays, and my soul already dusty
with the knowledge of life's evil was bathed and refreshed in the
clear-eyed wisdom of child-like thoughts and feelings.
Once, when I was coming out of the city on my way to the fields,
accompanied by a crowd of children we met an unknown little Jewish
boy. He was barefooted and his shirt was torn; his eyebrows were
black, his body slim and his hair grew in curls like that of a little
sheep. He was excited and he seemed to have been crying. The lids of
his dull-black eyes, swollen and red, contrasted with his face, which,
emaciated by starvation, was ghastly pale.
Having found himself face to face with the crowd of children, he stood
still in the middle of the road, burrowing his bare feet in the dust,
which early in the morning is so deliciously cool. In fear, he half
opened the dark lips of his fair mouth,--the next second he leaped
right on to the sidewalk.
"Catch him!" the children started to shout gaily and in a chorus. "A
Jewish boy! Catch the Jew boy!"
I waited, thinking that he would run away. His thin, big-eyed face was
all fear; his lips quivered; he stood there amid the shouts and the
mocking laughter. Pressing his shoulders against the fence and hiding
his hands behind his back, he stretched and strangely appeared to have
grown bigger.
But suddenly he spoke,--very calmly and in a distinct and correct
Russian.
"If you wish,--I will show you some tricks."
I took this offer for a means of self-defence. But the children at
once became interested. The larger and coarser boys alone looked with
distrust and suspicion on the little Jewish boy. The children of our
street were in a state of guerilla warfare with the children of other
streets; in addition, they were deeply convinced of their own
superiority and were loath to brook the rivalry of other children.
The smaller boys approached the matter more simply.
"Come on, show us," they shouted.
The handsome, slim boy moved away from the fence, bent his thin body
backward, and touching the ground with his hands, he tossed up his
feet and remained standing on his arms, shouting:
"Hop! Hop! Hop!"
Then he began to spin in the air, swinging his body lightly and
adroitly. Through the holes of his shirt and pants we caught glimpses
of the greyish skin of his slim body, of his sharply bulging and
angular shoulder-blades, knees and elbows. It seemed to us as if with
one more twist of his body his thin bones would crack and break into
pieces.
He worked hard until the shirt grew wet with sweat about his
shoulders. After each especially daring feat he looked into the
children's faces with an artificial, weary smile, and it was
unpleasant to see his dull eyes, grown large with pain. Their strange
and unsteady glance was not like that of a child.
The lads encouraged him with loud outcries. Many imitated him, rolling
in the dust and shouting for joy, pain and envy. But the joyous
minutes were soon over when the boy, bringing his exhibition to an
end, looked upon the children with the benevolent smile of a
thoroughbred artist and stretching forth his hand said:
"Now give me something."
We all became silent, until one of the children said:
"Money?"
"Yes," said the lad.
"Look at him," said the children.
"For money, we could do those tricks ourselves."
The audience became hostile toward the artist, and betook itself to
the field, ridiculing and insulting him. Of course, none of them had
any money. I myself, had only seven kopecks about me. I put two coins
in the boy's dusty palm. He moved them with his finger and with a
kindly smile said: "Thank you."
He went away, and I noticed that his shirt around his back was all in
black blotches and was clinging close to his shoulder-blades.
"Hold on, what is it?"
He stopped, turned about, scrutinised me and said distinctly, with the
same kindly smile:
"You mean the blotches on my back? That's from falling off the
trapeze. It happened on Easter. My father is still lying in bed, but I
am quite well now."
I lifted his shirt. On his back, running down from his left shoulder
to the side, was a wide dark scratch which had now become dried up
into a thick crust. While he was exhibiting his tricks the wound broke
open in several spots and red blood was now trickling from the
openings.
"It doesn't hurt any more," said he with a smile. "It doesn't hurt, it
only itches."
And bravely, as it becomes a hero, he looked in my eyes and went on,
speaking like a serious grown-up person:
"You think--I have been doing this for myself? Upon my word--I have
not. My father ... there is not a crust of bread in the house, and my
father is lying badly hurt. So you see, I have to work hard. And to
make matters worse, we are Jews, and everybody laughs at us.
Good-bye."
He spoke with a smile, cheerfully and courageously. With a nod of his
curly head, he quickly went on, passing by the houses which looked at
him with their glass eyes, indifferent and dead.
All this is insignificant and simple, is it not?
Yet many a time in the darkest days of my life I remembered with
gratitude the courage and bravery of the little Jewish boy. And now,
in these sorrowful days of suffering and bloody outrages which fall
upon the grey head of the ancient nation, the creator of Gods and
religion,--I think again of the boy, for in him I see the symbol of
true manly bravery,--not the pliant patience of slaves, who live by
uncertain hopes, but the courage of the strong who are certain of
their victory.
* * * * *
THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL
_Fyodor Sologub is the pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov,
novelist and poet. A considerable portion of his prose works has
been recently made accessible to the English reader. Sologub's
poetic output includes lyrical pieces of rare beauty. He was born
in 1864._
THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL
BY FYODOR SOLOGUB
The great war, which we did not want, but which we are conducting with
intense fervour, exerting all our spiritual and material forces, has
put before our consciousness and our moral sense the fundamental
problems of our social and political organisation. Not in vain have
the newspapers hastened to style this war a Fatherland War. The
question of the Fatherland has suddenly acquired for us a peculiar
keenness and significance.
The war has taken Russian society and the Russian people by surprise,
but luckily it has come to us at the moment when the questions which
were confronting us had already been settled both in our reason and
conscience. The heroic labour of the Russian intellectual has not been
in vain. And now what we have to do is not to argue and demonstrate,
but to determine the meaning of events. And the meaning of what is
going on is such that we are forced to consider this war not only as
one of defence, but also as one of emancipation. It appears to us not
only as a struggle for the rights of small states threatened by large
ones, and as a war against German militarism, but also as a strife
against...[1] internal danger, whatever may be the various forms this
danger assumes.
The first and chief danger which threatened, and is still threatening
us, is the danger of internal division and disorder. The equal
readiness and zeal to stand up for her which all the peoples
inhabiting Russia have manifested has shown how unjust is the
preaching of hatred and of narrow nationalism. The peoples who bear
the same burdens of our state as the Russians do, who defend our
common fatherland just as faithfully as the Russians, thereby assert
that our fatherland is for all, that Russia is for every one who is
considered a Russian subject and meets his duties toward the state.
Russia is not only for those who are Russians by language and birth,
she is for all who live under her sovereign dominion. No one in Russia
is benefited by the unequal rights of her various peoples; this
inequality does not add to our political power, it only supports our
internal disorder. Its abolition by no means contradicts the
fundamental conceptions of Russian statehood.
You will say that Russia has been created by the Russian race. Well,
then, her policy must be determined by the qualities of the Russian
popular spirit,--but animosity and exclusiveness are things strange
and repulsive to it. The soul of the Russian people is trusting and
open to all influences. And this is only natural: only that nation can
become the basis of a great state which is able with ease and joy to
unite with all the races it meets on its historic road. The history of
Russia illustrates this. Besides, who has ever asserted that people
born unto the Russian tongue are racially pure Slavs?