CONCLUSION

1

I had ended this two years' labour, when, on the ninth of September,

I happened to travel on a train to a locality in the Governments

of Túla and Ryazán, where the peasants had been starving the year

before, and were starving still more in the present year. At one of

the stations the train in which I was travelling met a special train

which, under the leadership of the governor, was transporting troops

with guns, cartridges, and rods for the torture and killing of those

very famine-stricken peasants.

The torturing of the peasants with rods for the purpose of enforcing

the decision of the authorities, although corporal punishment was

abolished by law thirty years ago, has of late been applied more and

more freely in Russia.

I had heard of it, had even read in newspapers of the terrible

tortures of which the Governor of Nízhni-Nóvgorod, Baránov, is said

to have boasted, of the tortures which had taken place in Chernígov,

Tambóv, Sarátov, Astrakhán, Orél, but not once had I had a chance to

see men in the process of executing these deeds.

Here I saw with my own eyes good Russians, men who are permeated

with the Christian spirit, travelling with guns and rods, to kill

and torture their starving brothers.

The cause that brought them out was the following:

In one of the estates of a wealthy landowner the peasants had

raised a forest on a pasture which they owned in common with the

proprietor (had raised, that is, had watched it during its growth),

and had always made use of it, and so regarded this forest as

their own, at least as a common possession; but the proprietor,

appropriating to himself this forest, began to cut it down. The

peasants handed in a complaint. The judge of the first instance

irregularly (I say "irregularly," using the word employed by the

prosecuting attorney and the governor, men who ought to know the

case) decided the case in favour of the proprietor. All the higher

courts, among them the senate, though they could see that the case

had been decided irregularly, confirmed the decision, and the forest

was adjudged to the proprietor. The proprietor began to cut down the

forest, but the peasants, unable to believe that such an obvious

injustice could be done them by a higher court, did not submit to

the decree, and drove away the workmen who were sent to cut down the

forest, declaring that the forest belonged to them, and that they

would petition the Tsar, but would not allow the proprietor to cut

down the forest.

The case was reported to St. Petersburg, whence the governor was

ordered to enforce the decree of the court. The governor asked for

troops, and now the soldiers, armed with bayonets, ball-cartridges,

and, besides, a supply of rods, purposely prepared for this occasion

and carried in a separate car, were travelling to enforce this

decree of the higher authorities.

The enforcement of the decree of the higher authorities is

accomplished by means of killing, of torturing men, or by means of

a threat of doing one or the other, according as to whether any

opposition is shown or not.

In the first case, if the peasants show any opposition, the

following takes place in Russia (the same things happen wherever

there are a state structure and property rights): the chief makes a

speech and demands submission. The excited crowd, generally deceived

by its leaders, does not understand a word that the representative

of the power says in official book language, and continues to be

agitated. Then the chief declares that if they do not submit and

disperse, he will be compelled to have recourse to arms. If the

crowd does not submit even then, the chief commands his men to load

their guns and shoot above the heads of the crowd. If the crowd does

not disperse even then, he commands the soldiers to shoot straight

into the crowd, at haphazard, and the soldiers shoot, and in the

street fall wounded and killed men, and then the crowd generally

runs away, and the troops at the command of the chiefs seize those

who present themselves to them as the main rioters, and lead them

away under guard.

After that they pick up the blood-stained, dying, maimed, killed,

and wounded men, frequently also women and children; the dead are

buried, and the maimed are sent to the hospital. But those who are

considered to be the plotters are taken to the city and tried by a

special military court. If on their part there was any violence,

they are sentenced to be hanged. Then they put up a gallows and with

the help of ropes choke to death a few defenceless people, as has

many times been done in Russia and as is being done, and must be

done where the public structure is based on violence. Thus they do

in case of opposition.

In the second case, when the peasants submit, there takes place

something special and peculiarly Russian. What happens is this:

the governor arrives at the place of action, makes a speech to the

people, rebuking them for their disobedience, and either stations

troops in the farms of the village, where the soldiers, quartering

at times as much as a month at a time, ruin the peasants, or,

satisfied with threatening them, graciously pardons the people and

returns home, or, which happens more frequently than anything else,

announces to them that the instigators ought to be punished, and

arbitrarily, without trial, selects a certain number of men, who are

declared to be the instigators and in his presence are subjected to

tortures.

In order to give an idea as to how these things are done, I will

describe an affair which took place at Orél and received the

approval of the higher authorities.

What happened in Orél was this: just as here, in the Government of

Túla, a proprietor wanted to take away some property from certain

peasants, and the peasants opposed him, just as they did here. The

point was that the landed proprietor wanted without the consent

of the peasants to keep the water in his mill-pond at so high a

level that their fields were inundated. The peasants objected. The

proprietor entered a complaint before the County Council chief. The

County Council chief illegally (as was later declared by the court)

decided the case in favour of the proprietor, by permitting him to

raise the water. The proprietor sent his workmen to raise the ditch

through which the water ran down. The peasants were provoked by

this irregular decision, and called out their wives, to prevent the

proprietor's workmen from raising the ditch. The women went to the

dam, overturned the carts, and drove off the workmen. The proprietor

entered a complaint against the women for taking the law into their

hands. The County Council chief ordered one woman from each peasant

farm in the whole village to be locked up ("in the cold room"). The

decision could not well be carried out; since there were several

women on each farm, it was impossible to determine which of them was

liable to arrest, and so the police did not carry out the decree.

The proprietor complained to the governor of the inactivity of the

police, and the governor, without looking into the matter, gave the

rural chief the strict order immediately to enforce the decision

of the County Council chief. Obeying the higher authorities, the

rural chief arrived in the village and, with a disrespect for men

which is characteristic of the Russian authorities, commanded the

policemen to seize one woman from each house. But since there

was more than one woman in each house, and it was impossible to

tell which one of them was subject to incarceration, there began

quarrels, and opposition was shown. In spite of these quarrels

and this opposition, the rural chief commanded that one woman, no

matter who she be, be seized in each house and led to a place of

confinement. The peasants began to defend their wives and mothers,

did not give them up, and upon this occasion beat the police and the

rural chief. There appeared the first terrible crime,--an assault

on the authorities,--and this new crime was reported to the city.

And so the governor, like the Governor of Túla, arrived on a special

train with a battalion of soldiers, with guns and rods, having made

use of the telegraph, of telephones, and of the railway, and brought

with him a learned doctor, who was to watch the hygienic conditions

of the flogging, thus fully personifying Dzhingis Khan with the

telegraphs, as predicted by Herzen.

Near the township office stood the troops, a squad of policemen

with red cords, to which is attached the revolver, official persons

from among the peasants, and the accused. Round about stood a crowd

of one thousand people or more. Upon driving up to the township

office, the governor alighted from his carriage, delivered a speech

previously prepared, and called for the guilty and for a bench.

This command was not understood at first. But a policeman, whom the

governor always took with him, and who attended to the preparation

of the tortures, which had more than once been employed in the

Government, explained that what was meant was a bench for flogging.

A bench was brought, the rods, which had been carried on the train,

were piled up, and the executioners were called for. These had

been previously chosen from among the horse-thieves of the village,

because the soldiers refused to perform this duty.

When everything was ready, the governor commanded the first of the

twelve men pointed out by the proprietor as the most guilty to

step forward. The one that came out was the father of a family, a

respected member of society of about forty years of age, who had

bravely defended the rights of society and so enjoyed the respect of

the inhabitants. He was led up to the bench, his body was bared, and

he was ordered to lie down.

The peasant tried to beg for mercy, but when he saw that this was

useless, he made the sign of the cross and lay down. Two policemen

rushed forward to hold him down. The learned doctor stood near

by, ready to offer learned medical aid. The prisoners, spitting

into their hands, swished the rods and began to strike. However,

it turned out that the bench was too narrow and that it was too

difficult to keep the writhing, tortured man upon it. Then the

governor ordered another bench to be brought and to be cleated

to the first. Putting their hands to their visors and muttering:

"Yes, your Excellency," some men hurriedly and humbly fulfilled the

commands; meanwhile the half-naked, pale, tortured man, frowning

and looking earthward, waited with trembling jaws and bared legs.

When the second bench was attached, he was again put down, and

the horse-thieves began to beat him again. The back, hips, and

thighs, and even the sides of the tortured man began more and more

to be covered with wales and bloody streaks, and with every blow

there were heard dull sounds, which the tortured man was unable to

repress. In the surrounding crowd were heard the sobs of the wives,

mothers, children, relatives of the tortured man and of all those

who were selected for the punishment.

The unfortunate governor, intoxicated by his power, thought that

he could not do otherwise, and, bending his fingers, counted the

blows, and without stopping smoked cigarettes, to light which

several officious persons hastened every time to hand him a lighted

match. When fifty blows had been dealt, the peasant stopped crying

and stirring, and the doctor, who had been educated in a Crown

institution for the purpose of serving his Tsar and country with

his scientific knowledge, walked over to the tortured man, felt his

pulse, listened to the beating of his heart, and announced to the

representative of power that the punished man had lost consciousness

and that according to the data of science it might be dangerous to

his life to continue the punishment. But the unfortunate governor,

who was now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, commanded

the men to go on, and the torture lasted until they had dealt

seventy blows, to which number it for some reason seemed to him

necessary to carry the number of the blows. When the seventieth blow

was dealt, the governor said, "Enough! The next!" And the disfigured

man, with his swollen back, was lifted up and carried away in a

swoon, and another was taken up. The sobs and groans of the crowd

became louder; but the representative of the governmental power

continued the torture.

Thus they flogged the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,

eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth man,--each man receiving

seventy blows. All of them begged for mercy, groaned, cried.

The sobs and groans of the mass of women grew louder and more

heartrending, and the faces of the men grew gloomier and gloomier;

but the troops stood all about them, and the torture did not stop

until the work was accomplished in the measure which for some

reason appeared indispensable to the caprice of the unfortunate,

half-drunken, deluded man, called a governor.

Not only were officials, officers, soldiers present, but with their

presence they took part in this matter and kept this order of the

fulfilment of the state act from being impaired on the part of the

crowd.

When I asked one of the governors why these tortures are committed

on men, when they have already submitted and troops are stationed in

the village, he replied to me, with the significant look of a man

who has come to know all the intricacies of state wisdom, that this

is done because experience has shown that if the peasants are not

subjected to torture they will again counteract the decrees of the

power, while the performance of the torture in the case of a few men

for ever confirms the decrees of the authorities.

And so now the Governor of Túla was travelling with his officials,

officers, and soldiers, in order to perform just such a work. In

just the same manner, that is, by means of murder or torture, were

to be carried out the decree of the higher authorities, which

consisted in this, that a young fellow, a landed proprietor, who had

an income of one hundred thousand roubles per year, was to receive

another three thousand roubles, for a forest which he had in a

rascally manner taken away from a whole society of hungry and cold

peasants, and be able to spend this money in two or three weeks in

the restaurants of Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Paris. It was to do

such a deed that the men whom I met were travelling.

Fate, as though on purpose, after my two years' tension of thought

in one and the same direction, for the first time in my life brought

me in contact with this phenomenon, which showed me with absolute

obviousness in practice what had become clear to me in theory,

namely, that the whole structure of our life is not based, as men

who enjoy an advantageous position in the existing order of things

are fond of imagining, on any juridical principles, but on the

simplest, coarsest violence, on the murder and torture of men.

Men who own large tracts of land or have large capitals, or who

receive large salaries, which are collected from the working people,

who are in need of the simplest necessities, as also those who,

as merchants, doctors, artists, clerks, savants, coachmen, cooks,

authors, lackeys, lawyers, live parasitically about these rich

people, are fond of believing that those prerogatives which they

enjoy are not due to violence, but to an absolutely free and regular

exchange of services, and that these prerogatives are not only not

the result of assault upon people, and the murder of them, like what

took place this year in Orél and in many other places in Russia, and

continually takes place in all of Europe and of America, but has

even no connection whatsoever with these cases of violence. They

are fond of believing that the privileges which they enjoy exist in

themselves and take place and are due to a voluntary agreement among

people, while the violence exerted against people also exists in

itself and is due to some universal and higher juridical, political,

and economical laws. These men try not to see that they enjoy the

privileges which they enjoy only by dint of the same thing which now

would force the peasants, who raised the forest and who were very

much in need of it, to give it up to the rich proprietor, who took

no part in the preservation of the forest and had no need of it,

that is, that they would be flogged or killed if they did not give

up this forest.

And yet, if it is quite clear that the Orél mill began to bring

greater returns to the proprietor, and that the forest, which

the peasants raised, is turned over to the proprietor, only in

consequence of assaults or murders, or the threat of them, it must

be just as clear that all the other exclusive rights of the rich,

which deprive the poor of their prime necessities, are based on the

same thing. If the peasants, who are in need of the land for the

support of their families, do not plough the land which adjoins

their very farms, while this land, which is capable of supporting

something like one thousand families, is in the hands of one man,--a

Russian, Englishman, Austrian, or some large landed proprietor,--who

does not work on this land, and if the merchant, buying up the corn

from the needy agriculturists, can securely keep this corn in his

granaries, amidst starving people, and sell it at three times its

price to the same agriculturists from whom he bought it at one-third

its present worth, it is evident that this takes place from the same

causes. And if one man cannot buy cheap goods, which are sold to

him from beyond a conventional line called a border, without paying

customs dues to people who had no share whatsoever in the production

of the goods; and if people cannot help but give up their last cow

for taxes, which are distributed by the government to officials and

are used for the maintenance of soldiers who will kill these very

taxpayers, it would seem to be obvious that even this does not take

place in consequence of some abstract rights, but in consequence

of the same that happened in Orél and that now may happen in the

Government of Túla, and periodically in one form or another takes

place in the whole world, wherever there is a state structure and

there are the rich and the poor.

Because not all human relations of violence are accompanied by

tortures and murders, the men who enjoy the exclusive prerogatives

of the ruling classes assure themselves and others that the

privileges which they enjoy are not due to any tortures or murders,

but to other mysterious common causes, abstract rights, and so

forth. And yet, it would seem, it is clear that, if people, though

they consider this to be an injustice (all working people now do),

give the main portion of their work to the capitalist, the landed

proprietor, and pay taxes, though they know that bad use is made

of them, they do so first of all, not because they recognize any

abstract rights, of which they have never heard, but only because

they know that they will be flogged and killed, if they do not do so.

But if there is no occasion to imprison, flog, and kill men, every

time the rent for the land is collected by the landed proprietor,

and the man in need of corn pays to the merchant who has cheated him

a threefold price, and the factory hand is satisfied with a wage

which represents proportionately half the master's income, and if a

poor man gives up his last rouble for customs dues and taxes, this

is due to the fact that so many men have been beaten and killed for

their attempts to avoid doing what is demanded of them, that they

keep this well in mind. As the trained tiger in the cage does not

take the meat which is placed under his mouth, and does not lie

quiet, but jumps over a stick, whenever he is ordered to do so,

not because he wants to do so, but because he remembers the heated

iron rod or the hunger to which he was subjected every time he did

not obey,--even so men who submit to what is not advantageous for

them, what even is ruinous to them, do so because they remember what

happened to them for their disobedience.

But the men who enjoy prerogatives which are the result of old

violence, frequently forget, and like to forget, how these

prerogatives were obtained. We need, however, only think of history,

not the history of the successes of various dynasties of rulers, but

real history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a

small number of men, to see that the bases of all the prerogatives

of the rich over the poor have originated from nothing but switches,

prisons, hard labour, murders.

We need but think of that constant, stubborn tendency of men to

increase their well-being, which guides the men of our time, to

become convinced that the prerogatives of the rich over the poor

could not and cannot be maintained in any other way.

There may be oppressions, assaults, prisons, executions, which

have not for their purpose the preservation of the prerogatives of

the wealthy classes (though this is very rare), but we may boldly

say that in our society, for each well-to-do, comfortably living

man, there are ten who are exhausted by labour, who are envious and

greedy, and who frequently suffer with their whole families,--all

the prerogatives of the rich, all their luxury, all that superfluity

which the rich enjoy above the average labourer, all that is

acquired and supported only by tortures, incarcerations, and

executions.

2

The train which I came across the ninth of September, and which

carried soldiers, with their guns, cartridges, and rods, to the

starving peasants, in order to secure to the rich proprietor the

small forest, which he had taken from the peasants and which the

peasants were in dire need of, showed me with striking obviousness

to what extent men have worked out the ability of committing

acts which are most revolting to their convictions and to their

conscience, without seeing that they are doing so.

The special train with which I fell in consisted of one car of the

first class for the governor, the officials, and the officers, and

of several freight-cars, which were cram-full of soldiers.

The dashing young soldiers, in their clean new uniforms, stood

crowding or sat with dangling legs in the wide-open doors of the

freight-cars. Some smoked, others jostled one another, jested,

laughed, displaying their teeth; others again cracked pumpkin seeds,

spitting out the shells with an air of self-confidence. Some of them

were running up and down the platform, toward the water-barrel, in

order to get a drink, and, upon meeting an officer, tempered their

gait, went through the stupid gesture of putting their hands to

their brows, and with serious faces, as though they were doing

not only something sensible, but even important, walked past them,

seeing them off with their eyes, and then raced more merrily,

thumping with their feet on the planks of the platform, laughing,

and chattering, as is characteristic of healthy, good lads, who in

good company travel from one place to another.

They were travelling to slay their hungry fathers and grandfathers,

as though going to some very jolly, or at least very usual, piece of

work.

The same impression was conveyed by the officials and officers in

gala-uniform, who were scattered on the platform and in the hall

of the first class. At the table, which was covered with bottles,

dressed in his semi-military uniform, sat the governor, the chief

of the expedition, eating something, and speaking calmly about the

weather with an acquaintance whom he had met, as though the matter

which he was about to attend to were so simple and so common that

it could not impair his calm and his interest in the change of the

weather.

At some distance away from the table, not partaking of any food,

sat a general of gendarmes, with an impenetrable, but gloomy look,

as though annoyed by the tedious formality. On all sides moved and

chattered officers, in their beautiful, gold-bedecked uniforms:

one, sitting at the table, was finishing a bottle of beer; another,

standing at the buffet, munched at an appetizing patty, shaking

off the crumbs, which had lodged on the breast of his uniform, and

throwing the money on the table with a self-confident gesture; a

third, vibrating both legs, was walking past the cars of our train,

ogling the feminine faces.

All these men, who were on their way to torture or kill hungry,

defenceless men, the same that fed them, had the appearance of men

who know conclusively that they are doing what is right, and even

are proud, "stuck up," at what they are doing.

What is this?

All these men are one half-hour's ride away from the place where, to

secure to a rich fellow some three thousand useless roubles, which

he has taken away from a whole community of starving peasants, they

may be compelled to perform the most terrible acts that one can

imagine, may begin, just as in Orél, to kill or to torture innocent

men, their brothers, and they calmly approach the place and time

where and when this may happen.

It is impossible to say that these men, all these officials,

officers, and soldiers, do not know what awaits them, because they

prepared themselves for it. The governor had to give his orders

concerning the rods, the officials had to purchase birch switches,

to haggle for them, and to enter this item as an expense. The

military gave and received and executed commands concerning the

ball-cartridges. All of them know that they are on the way to

torture and, perhaps, to kill their famished brothers, and that they

will begin to do this, perhaps, within an hour.

It would be incorrect to say that they do this from conviction,--as

is frequently said and as they themselves repeat,--from the

conviction that they do this because it is necessary to maintain

the state structure, in the first place, because all these men

have hardly ever even thought of the state structure and of its

necessity; in the second place, they can in no way be convinced that

the business in which they take part maintains the state, instead

of destroying it, and, in the third place, in reality the majority

of these men, if not all, will not only never sacrifice their peace

and pleasure for the purpose of supporting the state, but will even

never miss a chance of making use, for their peace and pleasure, of

everything they can, even though it be to the disadvantage of the

state. Consequently they do not do so for the sake of the abstract

principle of the state.

What is it, then?

I know all these men. If I do not know them personally, I know

approximately their characters, their past, their manner of thought.

All of them have mothers, and some have wives and children. They

are, for the most part, good-hearted, meek, frequently tender

men, who despise every cruelty, to say nothing of the murder of

men, and many of them would be incapable of killing or torturing

animals; besides, they are all people who profess Christianity

and consider violence exerted against defenceless men a low and

disgraceful matter. Not one of these men would be able for the sake

of his smallest advantage to do even one-hundredth part of what the

Governor of Orél did to those people; and any of them would even be

offended, if it were assumed that in his private life he would be

capable of doing anything like it.

And yet, here they are, within half an hour's ride from the place,

where they may be led inevitably to the necessity of doing it.

What is it, then?

But, besides these people who are travelling on the train, and who

are ready to commit murder and tortures, how could those people with

whom the whole matter began,--the proprietor, the superintendent,

the judges, and those who from St. Petersburg prescribed this matter

and by their commands are taking part in it,--how could these

men, the minister, the emperor, also good men, who are professing

the Christian religion, have undertaken and ordered such a thing,

knowing its consequences? How can even those who do not take part

in this matter, the spectators, who are provoked at every special

case of violence or at the torture of a horse, admit the performance

of so terrible a deed? How can they help being provoked at it,

standing on the road, and shouting, "No, we shall not allow hungry

people to be killed and flogged for not giving up their property,

which has been seized from them by force"? But not only does no one

do so,--the majority of men, even those who were the instigators

of the whole thing, like the superintendent, the proprietor, the

judges, and those who were the participants in it and who gave the

orders, like the governor, the minister, the emperor, are calm,

and do not even feel any pangs of conscience. Just as calm are

apparently all those men who are travelling to commit this evil deed.

The spectators, too, it seemed, who were not in any way interested

in the matter, for the most part looked with sympathy, rather than

with disapproval, upon the men who were getting ready for this

execrable deed. In the same car with me there was travelling a

merchant, a lumber dealer from the peasant class, and he loudly

proclaimed his sympathy for those tortures to which the peasants

were about to be subjected: "It is not right not to obey the

authorities," he said; "that's what the authorities are for. Just

wait, they will have their fleas driven out of them,--they won't

think of rioting after that. Serves them right."

What is it, then?

It is equally impossible to say that all these men--the instigators,

participants, abettors of this matter--are such rascals that,

knowing all the baseness of what they are doing, they, either for a

salary, or for an advantage, or out of fear of being punished, do

a thing which is contrary to their convictions. All these men know

how, in certain situations, to defend their convictions. Not one

of these officials would steal a purse, or read another person's

letter, or bear an insult without demanding satisfaction from the

insulter. Not one of these officers would have the courage to cheat

at cards, not to pay his card debts, to betray a friend, to run away

from the field of battle, or to abandon his flag. Not one of these

soldiers would have the courage to spit out the sacrament or to eat

meat on Good Friday. All these men are prepared to bear all kinds

of privations, sufferings, and dangers, rather than do something

which they consider to be bad. Consequently, there is in these men

a counteracting force, whenever they have to do something which is

contrary to their convictions.

Still less is it possible to say that all these men are such beasts

that it is proper and not at all painful for them to do such things.

We need but have a talk with these men, to see that all of them, the

proprietor, the judges, the minister, the Tsar, the governor, the

officers, and the soldiers not only in the depth of their hearts do

not approve of such deeds, but even suffer from the consciousness of

their part in them, when they are reminded of the significance of

this matter. They simply try not to think of it.

We need but have a talk with them, with all the participants in this

matter, from the proprietor to the last policeman and soldier, to

see that all of them in the depth of their hearts know that this is

a bad thing and that it would be better not to take part in it, and

that they suffer from it.

A lady of liberal tendencies, who was travelling on the same train

with us, upon noticing the governor and the officers in the hall of

the first class, and learning of the purpose of their journey, began

on purpose in a loud voice, so as to be heard, to curse the orders

of our time and to put to shame the men who were taking part in this

matter. All persons present felt ill at ease. Nobody knew whither

to look, but no one dared to answer her. The passengers looked as

though it were not worth while to reply to such empty talk. But it

was evident from the faces and fugitive eyes that all felt ashamed.

This also I noticed in the case of the soldiers. They, too, knew

that the business for which they were travelling was a bad one, but

they did not wish to think of what awaited them.

When the lumber dealer began insincerely, as I thought, merely to

show his culture, to speak of how necessary such measures were, the

soldiers who heard it turned away from him, as though they did not

hear him, and frowned.

All these men, both those who, like the proprietor, the

superintendent, the minister, the Tsar, participated in the

performance of this act, and those who are just now travelling on

the train, and even those who, without taking part in this matter,

look on at the accomplishment of it, know every one of them that

this is a bad business, and are ashamed of the part which they are

taking in it and even of their presence during its execution.

Why, then, have they been doing and tolerating it?

Ask those who, like the proprietor, started this matter, and those

who, like the judges, handed down a formally legal, but obviously

unjust decision, and those who ordered the enforcement of the

decree, and those who, like the soldiers, the policemen, and the

peasants, will with their own hands carry it into execution,--who

will beat and kill their brothers,--all of them, the instigators,

and the accomplices, and the executors, and the abettors of these

crimes, and all will give you essentially the same answer.

The men in authority, who provoked the matter and coöperated in

it and directed it, will say that they are doing what they are

doing because such matters are necessary for the maintenance of

the existing order; and the maintenance of the existing order is

necessary for the good of the country and of humanity, for the

possibility of a social life and a forward movement of progress.

The men from the lower spheres, the peasants and the soldiers,

those who will be compelled with their own hands to exercise the

violence, will say that they are doing what they are doing because

this is prescribed by the higher authorities, and that the higher

authorities know what they are doing. That the authorities consist

of the very men who ought to be the authorities and that they know

what they are doing, presents itself to them as an incontestable

truth. If these lower executors even admit the possibility of an

error or delusion, they admit it only in the case of the lower

authorities; but the highest power, from whom all this proceeds,

seems to them to be unquestionably infallible.

Though explaining the motives for their activities in a different

manner, both the rulers and the ruled agree in this, that they do

what they do because the existing order is precisely the one which

is indispensable and which must exist at the present time, and

which, therefore, it is the sacred duty of every person to maintain.

On this recognition of the necessity, and so of the unchangeableness

of the existing order, is based the reflection, which has always

been adduced by all the participants in state violence in their

justification, that, since the present order is unchangeable, the

refusal of a single individual to perform the duties imposed upon

him will not change the essence of the matter, and will have no

other effect than that in place of the person refusing there will

be another man, who may perform the duty less well, that is, more

cruelly, more harmfully for those men against whom the violence is

practised.

This conviction that the existing order is indispensable, and

so unchangeable, and that it is the sacred duty of every man to

maintain it, is what gives to good people and, in private life, to

moral people the possibility of participating with a more or less

calm conscience in such affairs as the one which took place in Orél

and the one which the people who were travelling in the Túla train

were getting ready to act in.

But on what is this conviction based?

It is naturally agreeable and desirable for the proprietor to

believe that the existing order is indispensable and unchangeable,

because it is this very existing order which secures for him the

income from his hundreds and thousands of desyatínas, thanks to

which he leads his habitual idle and luxurious life.

Naturally enough, the judge, too, readily believes in the necessity

of the order in consequence of which he receives fifty times as much

as the most industrious labourer. This is just as comprehensible

in the case of the supreme judge, who receives a salary of six or

more thousand, and in the case of all the higher officials. Only

with the present order can he, as a governor, prosecutor, senator,

member of various councils, receive his salary of several thousands,

without which he would at once perish with all his family, because,

except by the position which he holds, he would not be able, with

his ability, industry, and knowledge, to earn one hundredth part

of what he is getting. In the same situation are the minister, the

emperor, and every higher authority, but with this difference,

that, the higher they are and the more exclusive their position is,

the more indispensable it is for them to believe that the existing

order is the only possible order, because outside of it they not

only cannot get an equal position, but will have to stand much

lower than the rest of mankind. A man who voluntarily hires himself

out as a policeman at a salary of ten roubles, which he can easily

get in any other position, has little need of the preservation of

the existing order, and so can get along without believing in its

unchangeableness. But a king or an emperor, who in his position

receives millions; who knows that all around him there are thousands

of men who are willing to depose him and take his place; who knows

that in no other position will he get such an income and such

honours; who in the majority of cases, with a more or less despotic

rule, knows even this, that, if he should be deposed, he would

be tried for everything he did while in possession of his power,

cannot help but believe in the unchangeableness and sacredness of

the existing order. The higher the position which a man occupies,

the more advantageous and, therefore, the more unstable it is, and

the more terrible and dangerous a fall from it is, the more does a

man who holds that position believe in the unchangeableness of the

existing order, and with so much greater peace of mind can such a

man, as though not for himself, but for the support of the existing

order, do bad and cruel deeds.

Thus it is in the case of all the men of the ruling classes who hold

positions that are more advantageous than those which they could

hold without the existing order,--beginning with the lowest police

officials and ending with the highest authorities. All these men

more or less believe in the unchangeableness of the existing order,

because, above all else, it is advantageous for them.

But what is it that compels the peasants, the soldiers, who stand on

the lowest rung of the ladder, who have no profit from the existing

order, who are in a condition of the most abject submission and

humiliation, to believe that the existing order, in consequence of

which they are in a most disadvantageous and humble state, is the

very order which must be, and which, therefore, must be maintained,

even by performing the basest and most unconscionable acts for it.

What is it that compels these men to make the false reflection that

the existing order is invariable and, therefore, must be maintained,

whereas it is evident that, on the contrary, it is unchangeable only

because it is maintained as such?

What is it that compels the men who were but yesterday taken from

the plough, and who are dressed up in these monstrous, indecent

garments with blue collars and gilt buttons, to travel with guns and

swords, in order to kill their hungry fathers and brothers? They

certainly have no advantages, and are in no danger of losing the

position which they hold, because their condition is worse than the

one from which they are taken.

The men of the higher ruling classes, the proprietors, ministers,

kings, officers, take part in these matters, thus supporting the

existing order, because it is advantageous for them. Besides, these

frequently good, meek men feel themselves able to take part in these

things for this other reason, that their participation is limited to

instigations, decrees, and commands. None of these men in authority

do themselves those things which they instigate, determine upon, and

order to be done. For the most part they do not even see how all

those terrible things which they provoke and prescribe are carried

out.

But the unfortunate people of the lower classes, who derive no

advantage from the existing order, who, on the contrary, in

consequence of this order are held in the greatest contempt, why do

they, who, for the maintenance of this order, with their own hands

tear people away from their families, who bind them, who lock them

up in prisons and at hard labour, who watch and shoot them, do all

these things?

What is it that compels these men to believe that the existing order

is unchangeable and that it is necessary to maintain it?

All violence is based only on them, on those men who with their own

hands beat, bind, lock up, kill. If these men did not exist,--these

soldiers and policemen,--the armed men in general, who are prepared

on command to commit violence and to kill all those whom they are

commanded to kill, not one of the men who sign the decrees for

executions, life imprisonment, hard labour, would ever have the

courage himself to hang, lock up, torture to death one thousandth

part of those whom now, sitting quietly in their studies, they order

to be hung and to be tortured in every way, only because they do

not see it and it is not done by them, but somewhere far away by

obedient executors.

All those injustices and cruelties which have entered into the

curriculum of the existing life, have entered there only because

there exist these people, who are always prepared to maintain these

injustices and cruelties. If these men did not exist, there would

not be any one to offer violence to all these enormous masses of

violated people, and those who give orders would never even dare

either to command or even to dream of what they now command with so

much self-assurance. If there were no people who would be ready at

the command of those whom they obey to torture or to kill him who

is pointed out to them, no one would ever dare to affirm, what is

with so much self-confidence asserted by the non-working landowners,

that the land which surrounds the peasants, who are dying for lack

of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, and that

the supply of corn, which has been garnered in a rascally manner,

ought to be kept intact amidst a starving population, because the

merchant needs some profit, and so forth. If there were no men who

would be ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill

every person pointed out to them, it could never occur to a landed

proprietor to take away from the peasants a forest which had been

raised by them, nor to the officials to consider legal the payment

to them of salaries, which are collected from the hungry masses,

for oppressing them, to say nothing of executing men, or locking

them up, or exiling them, because they overthrow the lie and preach

the truth. All this is demanded and done only because these ruling

people are firmly convinced that they have always at hand submissive

people, who will be ready to carry any of their demands into

execution by means of tortures and murders.

The only reason why they commit deeds like those committed by all

the tyrants from Napoleon down to the last commander of a company,

who shoots into a crowd, is because they are stupefied by the power

behind them, consisting of subservient men who are ready to do

anything they are commanded. The whole strength, therefore, lies in

the men who with their hands do acts of violence, in the men who

serve with the police, among the soldiers, more especially among the

soldiers, because the police do their work only when they have an

army behind them.

What is it, then, that has led these good men, who derive no

advantage from it, who are compelled with their hands to do all

these terrible things, men on whom the whole matter depends, into

that remarkable delusion that assures them that the existing

disadvantageous, pernicious, and for them painful order is the one

which must be?

Who has led them into this remarkable delusion?

They have certainly not assured themselves that they must do what is

not only painful, disadvantageous, and pernicious to them and their

whole class, which forms nine-tenths of the whole population, and

what is even contrary to their conscience.

"How are you going to kill men, when in God's law it says, 'Thou

shalt not kill'?" I frequently asked soldiers, and, by reminding

them of what they did not like to think about, I always made them

feel awkward and embarrassed. Such a soldier knew that there was

an obligatory law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and he knew that

there was an obligatory military service, but it had never occurred

to him that there was any contradiction there. The sense of the

timid answers that I always received to this question consisted

approximately in this, that murder in war and the execution of

criminals at the command of the government were not included in

the common prohibition of murders. But when I told them that no

such limitation was made in God's law, and reminded them of the

doctrine of brotherhood, of the forgiveness of offences, of love,

which are obligatory for all Christians and which could in no way be

harmonized with murder, the men of the people generally agreed with

me, and on their side put the question to me as to how it happened

that the government, which, according to their ideas, could not

err, commanded the armies, when necessary, to go to war, and ordered

the execution of prisoners. When I answered them that the government

acted incorrectly when it commanded these things to be done, my

interlocutors became even more embarrassed, and either broke off the

conversation or grew provoked at me.

"There must be such a law. I guess the bishops know better than we,"

I was told by a Russian soldier. And, having said this, the soldier

apparently felt his conscience eased, being fully convinced that

his guides had found a law, the same under which his ancestors had

served, and the kings and the kings' heirs, and millions of people,

and he himself served, and that what I was telling him was some

piece of cunning or cleverness, like a riddle.

All the men of our Christian world know, know firmly, from

tradition, and from revelation, and from the irrefutable voice of

conscience, that murder is one of the most terrible crimes which

a man can commit, as the Gospel says, and that this sin cannot be

limited to certain men, that is, that it is a sin to kill some men,

but not a sin to kill others. All know that if the sin of murder is

a sin, it is always a sin, independently of what men are the victims

of it, just like the sin of adultery and thieving and any other;

at the same time men have seen, since childhood, since youth, that

murder is not only admitted, but even blessed by all those whom

they are accustomed to respect as their spiritual guides, ordained

by God; they see that their worldly guides with calm assurance

institute murders, bear arms of murder, of which they are proud, and

demand of all, in the name of the civil and even the divine law,

that they shall take part in murder. Men see that there is here some

contradiction, and, being unable to solve it, they involuntarily

assume that this contradiction is due only to their ignorance. The

very coarseness and obviousness of the contradiction sustains them

in this conviction. They cannot imagine that their enlighteners,

learned men, should be able with such confidence to preach two such

seemingly contradictory propositions,--the obligatoriness for every

one of the law and of murder. A simple, innocent child, and later

a youth, cannot imagine that men who stand so high in his opinion,

whom he considers to be either holy or learned, should for any

reason be deceiving him so unscrupulously. But it is precisely this

that has been done to him all the time. This is accomplished, in the

first place, by impressing all the labouring people, who have not

themselves any time to solve moral and religious questions, from

childhood, and up to old age, by example and direct teaching, with

the idea that tortures and murders are compatible with Christianity,

and that, for certain purposes of state, tortures and murders are

not only admissible, but even peremptory; in the second place, by

impressing some of them, who are chosen by enlistment or levy, with

the idea that the performance of tortures and murders with their

own hands forms a sacred duty and even an act which is valorous and

worthy of praise and of reward.

The common deception, which is disseminated among all men, consists

in this, that in all the catechisms, or the books which have taken

their place and which are now the subject of obligatory instruction

for the children, it says that violence, that is, tortures,

imprisonments, and executions, as also murders in civil or external

wars for the purpose of maintaining and defending the existing order

of the state (whatever it be, autocratic, monarchical, a convention,

a consulship, an empire of either Napoleon or of Boulanger, a

constitutional monarchy, a commune, or a republic), is quite

legitimate, and does not contradict either morality or Christianity.

This it says in all the catechisms or books used in the schools. And

men are so convinced of it that they grow up, live, and die in this

conviction, without doubting it even once.

This is one deception, a common deception, which is practised on

all men; there is another, a private deception, which is practised

on soldiers or policemen, who are chosen in one way or another and

who perform the tortures and the murders which are needed for the

support and the defence of the existing order.

In all the military codes it says in so many words what in the

Russian military code is expressed as follows: "(Art. 87) Precisely

and without discussion to carry out the commands of the authorities

means to carry out precisely the command given by the authorities,

without discussing whether it is good or bad, and whether it

is possible to carry it out. The chief himself answers for the

consequences of a command given out by him. (Art. 88) The subject

may refuse to carry out the commands of his superior only when he

sees clearly that by carrying out his superior's command he"--one

involuntarily imagines that what will follow is "when he sees

clearly that by carrying out his superior's command he violates the

law of God;" but that is not at all the case: "when he sees clearly

that he is violating the oath of allegiance and fidelity, and his

service to the emperor."

It says that a man, being a soldier, must carry out all the commands

of his chief without any exception whatever, which for a soldier

mainly means murder, and so must violate all divine and human laws,

except his fidelity and service to him who at the given moment

happens to be in power.

Thus it says in the Russian military code, and precisely the same,

though in different words, is said in all the military codes,

as indeed it cannot be otherwise, because in reality upon this

deception of emancipating men from their obedience to God or to

their conscience, and of substituting for this obedience the

obedience to the accidental superior, is all the power of the army

and the state based.

So it is this on which is founded that strange conviction of the

lower classes that the existing order, which is pernicious for them,

is as it ought to be, and that they are, therefore, obliged to

support it with tortures and murders.

This conviction is based on a conscious deception, which is

practised upon them by the upper classes.

Nor can it be otherwise. To compel the lower, most numerous classes

of men to oppress and torment themselves, committing with this

such acts as are contrary to their conscience, it was necessary to

deceive these lower, most numerous classes. And so it was done.

The other day I again saw an open practice of this shameless deceit,

and I was again surprised to see with what boldness and freedom it

was practised.

In the beginning of November, as I was passing through Túla, I again

saw at the gate of the County Council Office the familiar dense

crowd of people, from which proceeded drunken shouts and the pitiful

wail of mothers and of wives. This was a levy of recruits.

As upon other occasions, I was unable to drive past this spectacle:

it attracts me as by some evil charm. I again entered among the

crowd, stood, looked, asked questions, and marvelled at the freedom

with which this most terrible crime is perpetrated in broad daylight

and in a populous city.

As in former years, the elders in all the villages of Russia, with

its one hundred millions of inhabitants, on the first of November

selected from lists a given number of lads, frequently their own

sons, and took them to the city.

On the way the recruits went on an uninterrupted spree, in which

they were not interfered with by their elders, who felt that going

to such a mad business as the one to which the recruits were going,

abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing everything

holy to them, in order to become somebody's senseless instruments

of murder, was too painful a matter, if they did not intoxicate

themselves with liquor.

And so they travelled, drinking, cursing, singing, fighting, and

maiming themselves. The nights they passed in inns. In the morning

they again became drunk and gathered in front of the County Council

Office.

One part of them, in new short fur coats, with knitted shawls about

their necks, with moist drunken eyes or with savage self-encouraging

shouts, or quiet and dejected, crowd at the gate amidst weeping

mothers and wives, waiting for their turns (I fell in with them

on the very day of the levy, that is, when those who were sent

up were to be examined); another part at this time crowds in the

waiting-room of the Office.

In the Office they are busy working. The door is opened, and the

janitor calls Peter Sídorov. Peter Sídorov is startled, makes the

sign of the cross, and enters into a small room with a glass door.

Here the prospective recruits undress themselves. A naked recruit, a

companion of Peter Sídorov, just accepted, comes in from the Office,

with trembling jaws, and puts on his clothes. Peter Sídorov has

heard and sees by his face that he is accepted. Peter Sídorov wants

to ask him something, but he is told to hurry and undress himself as

quickly as possible. He throws off his fur coat, pulls off his boots

with his feet, takes off his vest, draws his shirt over his head,

and with protruding ribs, naked, with shivering body, and emitting

an odour of liquor, tobacco, and perspiration, with bare feet,

enters into the Office, without knowing what to do with his bared

muscular arms.

In the Office there hangs in full sight and in a large gilt frame

the portrait of the emperor in a uniform with a sash, and in the

corner a small portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown of thorns.

In the middle of the room there stands a table covered with green

cloth, upon which lie papers and stands a triangular thing with an

eagle, which is called the Mirror of Laws. Around the table sit the

chiefs, with confident, calm looks. One of them smokes, another

examines some papers. The moment Sídorov has entered, a janitor

comes up to him, and he is put on the measuring-scale, receives

a knock under his chin, and has his legs straightened out. There

walks up a man with a cigarette. It is the doctor, and he, without

looking into the recruit's face, but somewhere past him, loathingly

touches his body, and measures and feels, and tells the janitor to

open the recruit's mouth wide, and commands him to breathe and to

say something. Somebody makes some notes. Finally, without looking

once into his eyes, the doctor says, "Able-bodied! Next!" and with a

fatigued expression again seats himself at the table. Again soldiers

push the lad and hurry him off. He somehow manages in his hurry to

pull the shirt over him, after missing the sleeves, somehow puts on

his trousers and leg-rags, draws on his boots, looks for his shawl

and cap, grasps his fur coat, and is led into the hall, where he

is placed behind a bench. Beyond this bench wait all the accepted

recruits. A village lad, like him, but from a distant Government, a

full-fledged soldier with a gun, with a sharp bayonet attached to

it, keeps watch on him, ready to run the bayonet through him, if he

should think of running away.

Meanwhile the crowd of fathers, mothers, wives, pushed by the

policemen, press close to the gate, to find out who is accepted,

and who not. There appears one of the rejected, and he announces

that Peter has been accepted, and there is heard the wail of

Peter's wife, for whom the word "accepted" means a separation of

four or five years, and the life of a soldier's wife as a cook, in

debauchery.

But just then a long-haired man in a special attire, which

distinguishes him from all other men, drives up and, getting down

from the carriage, walks up to the house of the County Council

Office. The policemen clear a path for him through the crowd. "The

father has come to administer the oath." And this father, who has

been assured that he is a special, exclusive servant of Christ, who

for the most part does not himself see the deception under which he

is, enters into the room where the accepted recruits are waiting,

puts on a gold-embroidered apron, draws his hair out from underneath

it, opens the very Gospel in which taking an oath is prohibited,

lifts up a cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified for

not doing what this His imaginary servant orders to be done, and

puts it on the pulpit, and all these defenceless and deceived lads

repeat after him the lie which he pronounces boldly and by habit.

He reads, and they repeat after him: "I promise and swear by the

Almighty God, before His holy Gospel ... etc., to defend, that is,

to kill all those whom I am commanded to kill, and to do everything

I am ordered to do by those people whom I do not know, and who need

me for nothing else but that I should commit the evil deeds by which

they are kept in their positions, and by which they oppress my

brothers." All the accepted recruits senselessly repeat these wild

words, and the so-called "father" drives away with the consciousness

of having correctly and scrupulously done his duty, and all these

deceived lads think that all those insipid, incomprehensible words,

which they have just pronounced, have now, for the whole time of

their military service, freed them from their human obligations and

have bound them to new, more obligatory military obligations.

And this is done publicly, and no one will shout to the deceivers

and to the deceived: "Bethink yourselves and scatter, for this is

the basest and meanest lie, which ruins not only our bodies, but

also our souls."

No one does so; on the contrary, when all are accepted, and it

becomes necessary to let them out, the military chief, as though to

scorn them, enters with self-confident, majestic mien into the hall

where the deceived, drunken lads are locked up, and boldly exclaims

to them in military fashion, "Your health, boys! I congratulate

you on your Tsar's service." And the poor fellows (somebody has

instructed them what to do) babble something with an unaccustomed,

half-intoxicated tongue to the effect that they are glad of it.

In the meantime, the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives stand

at the door and wait. The women look with tearful, arrested eyes

through the door. And the door opens, and out come, staggering,

and with a look of bravado, the accepted recruits,--Petrúkha, and

Vanyúkha, and Makár,--trying not to look at their relatives. The

wail of the mothers and wives is heard. Some embrace one another

and weep; others try to look brave; others again console their

people. Mothers and wives, knowing that now they will be orphaned

for three, four, or five years, without a supporter, wail and lament

at the top of their voices. The fathers do not speak much, and only

pitifully smack their tongues and sigh, knowing that now they will

no longer see their helpers, whom they have raised and instructed,

and that there will return to them, not those peaceful, industrious

agriculturists that they have been, but generally debauched,

dandyish soldiers, who are no longer used to a simple life.

And now the whole crowd take up seats in their sleighs and start

down the street, in the direction of inns and restaurants, and

still louder are heard, interfering with one another, songs, sobs,

drunken shouts, the laments of the mothers and wives, the sounds of

the accordion, and curses. All make for saloons and restaurants,

the revenue from which goes to the government, and they abandon

themselves to intoxication, which drowns in them the percepted

consciousness of the illegality of what is being done to them.

For two or three weeks they live at home, and for the most part are

having a good time, that is, are out on a spree.

On a set day they are collected, and driven like cattle to one

place, and are taught military methods and exercises. They are

instructed by just such deceived and bestialized men as they, who

entered the service two or three years ago. The means of instruction

are deception, stupefaction, kicks, vódka. And not a year passes but

that spiritually sound, bright, good fellows are turned into just

such wild beings as their teachers.

"Well, and if the prisoner, your father, runs away?" I asked a young

soldier.

"I can run the bayonet through him," he replied, in the peculiar,

senseless voice of a soldier. "And if he 'removes himself,' I must

shoot," he added, apparently proud of his knowledge of what to do

when his father "removes himself."

When he, the good young man, is brought to a condition lower than

an animal, he is such as those who use him as an instrument of

violence want him to be. He is all ready: the man is lost, and a new

instrument of violence has been created.

And all this takes place every year, every autumn, everywhere, in

the whole of Russia, in broad daylight, in a populous city, in the

sight of all men, and the deception is so clever, so cunning, that

all see it and in the depth of their hearts know all its baseness,

all its terrible consequences, and are unable to free themselves

from it.

3

When the eyes shall be opened to this terrible deception which is

practised on men, one must marvel how preachers of the religion

of Christianity and morality, educators of youth, simply good,

intelligent parents, who always exist in every society, can preach

any doctrine of morality amidst a society in which all the churches

and governments openly acknowledge that tortures and murders form an

indispensable condition of the life of all men, and that amidst all

men there must always be some special men, who are prepared to kill

their brothers, and that every one of us may be such.

How can children and youths be taught and men in general be

enlightened, to say nothing of the enlightenment in the Christian

spirit, how can they be taught any morality by the side of the

doctrine that murder is indispensable for the maintenance of the

common, consequently of our own, well-being, and so is legitimate,

and that there are men (any of us may be these men) whose duty it

is to torture and kill our neighbours and to commit all kinds of

crime at the will of those who have the power in their hands? If

it is possible and right to torture and kill and commit all kinds

of crimes by the will of those who have the power in their hands,

there is, and there can be, no moral teaching, but there is only the

right of the stronger. And so it is. In reality, such a teaching,

which for some men is theoretically justified by the theory of the

struggle for existence, does exist in our society.

Really, what kind of a moral teaching can there be, which would

admit murder for any purposes whatsoever? This is as impossible as

any mathematical doctrine, which would admit that two is equal to

three.

With the admission of the fact that two is equal to three there may

be a semblance of mathematics, but there can be no real mathematical

knowledge. With the admission of murder in the form of executions,

wars, self-defence, there may be a semblance of morality, but no

real morality. The recognition of the sacredness of every man's life

is the first and only foundation of all morality.

The doctrine of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for

a life was put aside by Christianity for the very reason that this

doctrine is only a justification of immorality, only a semblance

of justice, and is devoid of sense. Life is a quantity which has no

weight and no measure and which cannot be equalized to any other,

and so the destruction of one life for another can have no meaning.

Besides, every social law is a law which has for its purpose the

improvement of human life. But in what way can the destruction

of the lives of a few individuals improve the lives of men? The

destruction of life is not like its improvement, but an act of

suicide.

The destruction of another man's life for the purpose of preserving

justice is like what a man would do who, to mend the calamity which

consists in his having lost one arm, should for the sake of justice

cut off his other arm.

But, to say nothing of the sin of deception, with which the most

terrible crime presents itself to men as their duty; to say nothing

of the terrible crime of using Christ's name and authority for the

purpose of legalizing what is most denied by this same Christ, as is

done in the case of the oath; to say nothing of the offence by means

of which not only the bodies, but even the souls of "these little

ones" are ruined; to say nothing of all that, how can men, even in

view of their personal security, men who think highly of their forms

of life, their progress, admit the formation among them of that

terrible, senseless, cruel, pernicious force which is established by

every organized government that rests on the army? The most cruel

and terrible of robber bands is not so terrible as such a state

organization. Every leader of robbers is none the less limited in

his power, because the men who form his band retain at least a

small part of their human liberty and may oppose the performance

of acts contrary to their conscience. But for men forming a part

of a regularly organized government with an army, with discipline

carried to the point to which it is at the present time, there are

no barriers whatsoever. There are no crimes so terrible that they

would not be committed by men forming a part of the government

and of the army, by the will of him who accidentally (Boulanger,

Pugachév, Napoleon) may stand at its head.

Frequently, when I see, not only the levies of recruits, the

military exercises, the manœuvres, but also the policemen with

loaded revolvers, the sentries standing with guns and adjusted

bayonets; when I hear (as I do in the Khamóvniki, where I live) for

whole days the whistling and the pinging of bullets striking the

target; and when I see, in the very city where every attempt at

self-help and violence is prohibited, where there is a prohibition

against the sale of powder, medicines, fast driving, unlicensed

medical practice, and so forth, when I see in this same city

thousands of disciplined men, who have been taught to commit murder

and who are subject to one man,--I ask myself: "How can the men who

think so highly of their security bear all this?" To say nothing of

the harmfulness and immorality, nothing can be more dangerous than

this. How can all men, I do not say Christians, Christian pastors,

but all philanthropists, moralists, all those men who value their

lives, their security, their well-being, quietly look on? This

organization will certainly act in the same way, no matter in whose

hands it may be: to-day, let us say, this power is in the hands of

an endurable ruler; to-morrow a Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a

Pugachév, a Napoleon the First, a Napoleon the Third may usurp it.

And again, the man in whose hands is the power, and who to-day may

be endurable, may to-morrow turn into a beast, or his place may be

taken by an insane or half-witted heir of his, as was the case with

the King of Bavaria and Paul.

And not only these higher rulers, but also all those minor

satraps, who are distributed everywhere like so many Baránovs,

chiefs of police, even rural officers, commanders of companies,

under-officers, may commit terrible crimes before there has been

time to depose them, as happens constantly.

Involuntarily one asks himself: "How can men permit such things to

happen, if not for the sake of higher considerations of state, at

least for the sake of their security?"

The answer to this question is this, that it is not all men who

permit this to happen (one part of them,--the great majority of

men,--the deceived and the subjected, cannot help but permit

anything to be done), but those who with such an organization hold

an advantageous position; they permit it, because for them the

risk of suffering, because at the head of the government or the

army there may be a senseless or cruel man, is always less than

the disadvantages to which they would be subjected in case of the

destruction of the organization itself.

The judge, policeman, governor, officer will hold his position

equally under Boulanger, or a republic, or Pugachév or Catherine;

but he will certainly lose his position, if the existing order,

which secures for him his advantageous position, falls to pieces.

And so all these men are not afraid of who will stand at the

head of the organization of violence,--they adapt themselves to

anybody,--but only of the destruction of the organization itself,

and so they always support it, often unconsciously.

One often marvels why free men, who are not urged to it by anything,

the so-called flower of society, enter the army, in Russia, in

England, Germany, Austria, even France, and why they seek an

opportunity for becoming murderers. Why do parents, moral men, send

their children to institutions which prepare them for military

matters? Why do mothers buy their children helmets, guns, swords as

their favourite toys? (The children of peasants never play soldier.)

Why do good men, and even women, who are in no way connected

with military affairs, go into ecstasies over the exploits of a

Skobelévski and of others, and why do they take so much pains to

praise them? Why do men, who are not urged to do so, who do not

receive any salary for it, like the marshals of nobility in Russia,

devote whole months of assiduous work to performing a physically

hard and morally agonizing piece of business,--the reception of

recruits? Why do all the emperors and kings wear military costumes,

attend manœuvres and parades, distribute rewards to soldiers,

erect monuments to generals and conquerors? Why do free, wealthy men

consider it an honour to perform lackeys' duties to crowned heads,

why do they humble themselves, and flatter them, and pretend that

they believe in the special grandeur of these persons? Why do men,

who have long ago stopped believing in the mediæval superstitions

of the church, and who are unable to believe in them, seriously and

invariably pretend that they believe, thus maintaining the offensive

and blasphemous religious institution? Why is the ignorance of the

masses so zealously guarded, not only by the governments, but also

by the free men from the higher classes? Why do they with such fury

attack every attempt at destroying the religious superstitions, and

every true enlightenment of the masses? Why do men,--historians,

novelists, poets,--who can certainly receive nothing for their

flattery, describe as heroes long deceased emperors, kings, or

generals? Why do men who call themselves learned devote their whole

lives to the formation of theories, from which it follows that

violence which is exerted by the power against the nation is not

violence, but some especial right?

One often marvels why, for what reason a lady of the world or an

artist, who, it would seem, is interested neither in social, nor in

military questions, condemns labour strikes and preaches war, and

always definitely attacks one side and defends the other?

But one marvels at this only so long as one does not know that

this is all done so because all the men of the ruling classes feel

instinctively what it is that maintains and what destroys the

organization under which they can enjoy the privileges they are

enjoying.

The lady of the world has not even made the reflection that, if

there are no capitalists, and no armies to defend them, her husband

will have no money, and she will have no salon and no costumes; and

the artist has not made the reflection as to this, that he needs the

capitalists, who are protected by the armies, to buy his pictures;

but the instinct, which in this case takes the place of reason,

guides them unerringly. It is precisely the same instinct that with

few exceptions guides all those men who support all those political,

religious, economic establishments, which are advantageous to them.

But can the men of the upper classes maintain this order of things,

only because it is advantageous for them? These men cannot help but

see that this order of things is in itself irrational, no longer

corresponds to the degree of men's consciousness, not even to public

opinion, and is full of dangers. The men of the ruling classes--the

honest, good, clever men among them--cannot help but suffer from

these internal contradictions, and cannot help but see the dangers

with which this order threatens them. Is it possible the men of

the lower classes, all the millions of these people, can with a

calm conscience perform all these obviously bad acts, tortures, and

murders, which they are compelled to perform, only because they are

afraid of punishment? Indeed, that could not have been, and neither

the men of the one class nor of the other could help but see the

irrationality of their activity, if the peculiarity of the state

structure did not conceal from them the whole unnaturalness and

irrationality of the acts committed by them.

This irrationality is concealed by the fact that in the commission

of each of these acts there are so many instigators, accomplices,

abettors, that not one of the men taking part in it feels himself to

be morally responsible.

Murderers compel all the persons who are present at a murder

to strike the dead victim, so that the responsibility may be

distributed among the largest possible number of men. The same

thing, having assumed definite forms, has established itself in

the structure of the state in the commission of all those crimes,

without the constant commission of which no state organization is

thinkable. The rulers of the state always try to draw as large

a number of citizens as possible into the greatest possible

participation in all the crimes committed by them and indispensable

for them.

Of late this has found a most lucid expression in the drafting of

the citizens into the courts in the form of jurors, into the armies

in the form of soldiers, and into the local government and into the

legislative assembly in the form of electors and representatives.

In the structure of the state, in which, as in a basket made of

rods, all the ends are so concealed that it is not possible to find

them, the responsibility for crimes committed is so concealed from

men that they, in committing the most awful deeds, do not see their

own responsibility in them.

In olden times the tyrants were blamed for the commission of evil

deeds, but in our time most awful crimes, unthinkable even in the

time of a Nero, are committed, and there is no one to blame.

Some men demanded, others decreed, others again confirmed, others

proposed, others reported, others prescribed, others executed.

Women, old men, innocent people, are killed, hanged, flogged to

death, as lately happened in Russia in the Yúzov Plant, and as

happens everywhere in Europe and in America, in the struggle with

anarchists and all kinds of violators of the existing order;

hundreds, thousands of men will be shot to death, killed, and

hanged, or, as is done in wars, millions of men will be killed or

ruined, or, as is constantly done, the souls of men are ruined in

solitary confinement, in the debauched condition of militarism,--and

no one is to blame.

On the lowest stage of the social ladder, soldiers with guns,

pistols, swords, torture and kill men, and with the same tortures

and murders compel men to enter the army, and are fully convinced

that the responsibility for these acts is taken from them by those

authorities who prescribe these acts to them.

On the highest stage, kings, presidents, ministers, Chambers,

prescribe these tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers,

and are fully convinced that, since they are put into their places

by God, or since the society which they rule over demands from them

precisely what they prescribe, they cannot be blamed.

In the middle between the two are the intermediate persons, who

order the tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers, and

they are fully convinced that their responsibility has been taken

from them, partly by the commands from above, and partly because the

same orders are demanded of them by all those who stand on the lower

stages.

The administrative and the executive powers, which lie at the two

extremes of the structure of the state, meet like two ends that are

united into a ring, and one conditions and maintains the other and

all the intervening links.

Without the conviction that there exists such a person, or such a

number of persons, who take upon themselves the responsibility for

the acts committed, not one soldier would be able to raise his hands

for the purpose of torturing or killing. Without the conviction

that this is demanded by the whole nation, not one emperor, king,

president, not one assembly would be able to prescribe these same

tortures and murders. Without the conviction that there are persons

who stand above him and take upon themselves the responsibility for

his act, and men who stand below him and demand the fulfilment of

such acts for their own good, not one of the men who stand on the

stages intermediate between the ruler and the soldier would be able

to commit those acts which he is committing.

The structure of the state is such that, no matter on what rung of

the social ladder a man may stand, his degree of irresponsibility

is always one and the same: the higher he stands, the more is he

subjected to the influence of the demand for orders from below and

the less he is subjected to the influence of the prescriptions from

above, and vice versa.

Thus, in the case before me, every one who had taken part in the

matter was the more under the influence of the demand for orders

from below and the less under the influence of prescriptions from

above, the higher his position was, and vice versa.

But not only do all men who are connected with the structure of

the state shift their responsibility for deeds committed upon

others: the peasant who is drafted into the army, upon the nobleman

or merchant who has become an officer; and the officer, upon the

nobleman who holds the position of governor; and the governor, upon

the son of an official or nobleman who occupies the position of

minister; and the minister, upon a member of the imperial house who

holds the position of emperor; and the emperor again, upon all these

officials, noblemen, merchants, and peasants; not only do men in

this manner free themselves from the consciousness of responsibility

for acts committed by them,--they even lose the moral consciousness

of their responsibility for this other reason, that, uniting into a

political structure, they so constantly, continuously, and tensely

convince themselves and others that they are not all identical men,

but men who differ from one another as does "one star from another,"

that they begin themselves sincerely to believe so. Thus they

convince one set of men that they are not simple men, identical with

others, but a special kind of men, who have to be honoured, while

they impress others with the idea that they stand beneath all other

men and so must unflinchingly submit to what they are commanded to

do by their superiors.

On this inequality and exaltation of one class of men and the

annihilation of the other is mainly based the inability of men to

see the irrationality of the existing order and its cruelty and

criminality, and of that deception which is practised by some and to

which the others submit.

Some, those who are impressed with the idea that they are

vested with some supernatural significance and grandeur, are so

intoxicated by this imaginary grandeur that they stop seeing

their responsibility in the acts committed by them; the other

men, who, on the contrary, are impressed with the idea that they

are insignificant creatures, who must in everything submit to the

higher, in consequence of this constant condition of humiliation

fall into a strange condition of intoxication of servility, and

under the influence of their intoxication also fail to see the

significance of their acts, and lose the consciousness of their

responsibility for them. The intermediate people, who, partly

submitting to the higher, and partly considering themselves to

be superior, succumb simultaneously to the intoxication of power

and that of servility, and so lose the consciousness of their

responsibility.

We need but look in any country at a superior chief, intoxicated by

his grandeur, accompanied by his staff, all of them on magnificently

caparisoned horses, in special uniforms and signs of distinction, as

he, to the sound of the harmonious and festive music produced by

wind-instruments, rides past a line of soldiers stiffened up from a

sense of servility and presenting arms,--we need but look at him, in

order that we may understand that at these moments the highest chief

and the soldier and all the intermediate persons, being in a state

of intoxication, are equally capable of committing acts which they

would not think of committing under other circumstances.

But the intoxication experienced by men under such phenomena as

are parades, imperial receptions, church solemnities, coronations,

is a temporary and acute condition; there are also other, chronic,

constant conditions of intoxication, which are equally experienced

by all men who have any power, from the power of the emperor to that

of a policeman in the street, and by men who submit to power and who

are in a condition of intoxication through servility, and who in

justification of this their condition always ascribe, as has always

shown itself in the case of slaves, the greatest significance and

dignity to him whom they obey.

On this deception of the inequality of men and the resulting

intoxication of power and of servility is pre-eminently based the

ability of men united into a political structure to commit, without

experiencing any pangs of conscience, acts which are contrary to

their conscience.

Under the influence of such an intoxication, both of power and of

servility, men present themselves to themselves and to others, not

as what they are in reality,--men,--but as especial, conventional

beings,--noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers,

kings, ministers, soldiers, who no longer are subject to common

human obligations, but, above all else, and before all human, to

nobiliary, commercial, gubernatorial, judicial, military, royal,

ministerial obligations.

Thus, the proprietor who litigated concerning the forest did what he

did only because he did not present himself to himself as a simple

man, like any of the peasants who were living by his side, but as a

large landed proprietor and a member of the gentry, and so, under

the influence of the intoxication of power, he felt himself insulted

by the pretensions of the peasants. It was only for this reason

that, without paying any attention to the consequences which might

arise from his demand, he handed in the petition requesting the

restitution of his imaginary right.

Similarly, the judges who irregularly adjudged the forest to the

proprietor did so only because they do not imagine themselves to

be simple men, just like all other men, and so under obligation in

all cases to be guided only by what is the truth, but under the

intoxication of power they imagine themselves to be the guardians of

justice, who cannot err; but under the influence of the intoxication

of servility they imagine themselves to be men who are obliged to

carry out certain words which are written in a certain book and

are called the law. As just such conventional persons, and not as

what they are in reality, present themselves, under the influence

of the intoxication of power and of servility, to themselves and to

others, all the other participants in this matter, from the highest

representatives of power, who sign their approval on documents, from

the marshal, who drafts recruits at the levy of soldiers, and the

priest, who deceives them, to the last soldier, who is now getting

ready to shoot at his brothers. They all did what they did, and

are preparing themselves to do what awaits them, only because they

present themselves to themselves and to others, not as what they are

in reality,--men who are confronted with the question as to whether

they should take part in a matter which is condemned by their

conscience, or not,--but as different conventional persons,--one,

as an anointed king, a special being, who is called upon to care

for the well-being of one hundred million men; another, as a

representative of nobility; a third, as a priest, who with his

ordainment has received a special grace; a fourth, as a soldier,

who is obliged by his oath to fulfil without reflection what he is

commanded to do.

Only under the influence of the intoxication of power and servility,

which result from their imaginary positions, can all these men do

what they do.

If all these men did not have a firm conviction that the callings of

kings, ministers, governors, judges, noblemen, landed proprietors,

marshals, officers, soldiers, are something actually in existence

and very important, not one of these men would think without terror

and disgust of participating in the acts which he is committing now.

The conventional positions, which were established hundreds of years

ago, which have been recognized through the ages, and which are now

recognized by all men about us, and which are designated by especial

names and particular attires, and which, besides, are maintained by

means of every kind of magnificence and effects on the outer senses,

are to such a degree instilled in people that they, forgetting the

habitual conditions of life, common to all, begin to look upon

themselves and upon all men only from this conventional point of

view, and are guided by nothing but this conventional point of view

in the valuation of other men's acts.

Thus a mentally sound old man, for no other reason than that some

trinket or fool's dress is put over him, some keys on his buttocks,

or a blue ribbon, which is proper only for a dressed-up little girl,

and that he is on that occasion impressed with the idea that he is

a general, a chamberlain, a Cavalier of St. Andrews, or some such

silliness, suddenly becomes self-confident, proud, and even happy;

or, on the contrary, because he loses or does not receive a desired

trinket or name, becomes so sad and unhappy that he even grows

sick. Or, what is even more startling, an otherwise mentally sound,

free, and even well-to-do young man, for no other reason than that

he calls himself, and others call him, an investigating magistrate

or County Council chief, seizes an unfortunate widow away from her

minor children, and locks her up, or has her locked up in a prison,

leaving her children without a mother, and all that because this

unfortunate woman secretly trafficked in liquor and thus deprived

the Crown of twenty-five roubles of revenue, and he does not feel

the least compunction about it. Or, what is even more startling, an

otherwise intelligent and meek man, only because a brass plate or

a uniform is put on him and he is told that he is a watchman or a

customs soldier, begins to shoot with bullets at men, and neither

he nor those who surround him consider him blameworthy for it, and

would even blame him if he did not shoot; I do not even speak of the

judges and jurors, who sentence to executions, and of the military,

who kill thousands without the least compunction, only because they

have been impressed with the idea that they are not simply men, but

jurors, judges, generals, soldiers.

Such a constant, unnatural, and strange condition of men in the

life of the state is generally expressed in words as follows: "As a

man I pity him, but as a watchman, judge, general, governor, king,

soldier, I must kill or torture him," as though there can exist a

given position, acknowledged by men, which can make void duties

which are imposed upon each of us by a man's position.

Thus, for example, in the present case, men are travelling to commit

murder and tortures on hungry people, and they recognize that in the

dispute between the peasants and the proprietor the peasants are

in the right (all men in authority told me so), and know that the

peasants are unfortunate, poor, and hungry; the proprietor is rich

and does not inspire sympathy, and all these men none the less are

on their way to kill the peasants, in order thus to secure three

thousand roubles to the proprietor, for no other reason than that

these men at this moment do not consider themselves to be men, but

a governor, a general of gendarmes, an officer, a soldier, and

think that not the eternal demands of their consciences, but the

accidental, temporary demands of their positions as officers and

soldiers are binding on them.