ST. PETERSBURG
In October 1906 I took up my duties as correspondent to the _Morning
Post_ at St. Petersburg. I took an apartment on the ground floor of a
little street running out of the Bolshaya Konioushnaya.
The situation which was created by the dissolution of the Duma was
aptly summed up by a Japanese, who said that in Russia an incompetent
Government was being opposed by an ineffectual revolution. Although no
active revolution followed the dissolution of the Duma, a sporadic civil
war spread all over the country, accompanied by anarchy, and an epidemic
of political and social crime. Governors of provinces were blown up;
Stolypin’s house was blown up, his daughter injured, and he himself
only narrowly escaped; banks were robbed; policemen were shot; and the
political crimes of the Intellectuals were imitated on a wider scale by
the discontented proletariat and the criminal class.
The professional criminals reasoned thus: “If University students can
rob a bank in a deserving public cause, why should not we tramps rob and
kill a banker in a deserving private cause?” “Expropriation” became a
fashionable sport among the criminals, and the prevalence of anarchy,
licence, and robbery under arms had the effect of disgusting the man
in the street with all things revolutionary; for all the disorder was
rightly or wrongly put down to the revolutionaries. Had it not been
for this reaction, this turn of the tide in public opinion, Stolypin
would have found it impossible to carry out his drastic measures. On
the other hand, the Government met the situation with martial law and
drumhead court-martials; revolutionary and other crimes were answered
by reprisals and summary executions; and daily the record of crime and
punishment increased, and Russia seemed to be caught in a vicious circle
of repression and anarchy.
The watchword of Stolypin’s policy was Order first, Reform afterwards.
He defended the nature of the steps taken to restore order by saying that
when a house is on fire, in order to save what can be saved, you are
obliged to hack down what cannot be saved, ruthlessly. He certainly did
restore order, and he also initiated certain large measures which made
for reform—his Land Bill and his Education Bill; but all the reforms that
were started during his administration were curtailed by his successors;
and the idea which ran through the policy of all Russian Governments like
a baleful thread from 1906 to 1907, was to take back with one hand what
had been given with the other.
Consequently the fire of discontent, instead of being extinguished, was
maintained in a smouldering condition.
The Manifesto of 30th October 1904 promised, firstly, the creation of
a deliberative and legislative Assembly, without whose consent no new
laws should be passed; and secondly, the full rights of citizenship—the
inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, freedom of the Press,
the right of organising public meetings, and founding associations.
Practically speaking, in the years which followed the granting of
this Charter until the revolution of 1917, these promises were either
not carried out at all, or were only allowed to operate in virtue of
temporary regulations which were (_a_) liable to constant amendment;
(_b_) could be interpreted by local officials.
Stolypin’s policy of “Order first, Reform afterwards,” had two results:
firstly, as soon as order was restored by Stolypin, all ideas of reform
were shelved by his successors. Stolypin himself was assassinated.
Secondly, in the eyes of the Administration criticism became the greatest
crime, because criticism was held to be subversive to the prestige of the
Government. The officials, and especially the secret police, throve and
battened on this situation. Accordingly, as order was restored material
prosperity increased; but this was a palliative and not a remedy to the
fundamental discontent. It only led to moral stagnation.
In the autumn of 1906, while this cycle of anarchy on the one hand and
repression on the other was setting in, elections were held for another
Duma. I had a long talk one day with Stolypin himself. He struck me as
a man of character, absolute integrity, _rigidæ innocentiæ_, and great
personal courage. But he had come too late on the scene of Russian
politics. He would have been an admirable minister in the reign of
Alexander the Second, or Alexander the Third. As it was, he was engaged
not in diverting a torrent into a useful and profitable channel, but in
damming it. He succeeded in damming it temporarily; but the dam was bound
to be swept away, and he paid for the work with his own life.
During the winter I saw a great many Russians; members of the Duma used
to come and dine with me, and I was in close touch with the political
life. But the most interesting experience I had that winter was a journey
I made to the north. I will describe it in detail.
I meant to go to Archangel, and I started for Vologda at night. The
battle for a place in the third-class carriage was fought and won for me
by a porter. When I stepped into the third-class carriage it was like
entering pandemonium. It was almost dark, save for a feeble candle that
guttered peevishly over the door, and all the inmates were yelling and
throwing their boxes and baskets and bundles about. This was only the
process of installation; it all quieted down presently, and everyone
seated himself with his bed unfolded, if he had one, his luggage stowed
away, his provisions spread out, as if he had been living there for
years, and meant to remain there for many years to come.
This particular carriage was full. The people in it were workmen going
home for the winter, peasants, merchants, and mechanics. Opposite to
my seat were two workmen (painters), and next to them a peasant with
a big grey beard. Sitting by the farther window was a well-dressed
mechanic. The painter lighted a candle and stuck it on a small movable
table that projected from my window; he produced a small bottle of vodka
from his pocket, a kettle for tea, and some cold sausage, and general
conversation began. The guard came to tell the people who had come to
see their friends off—there were numbers of them in the carriage, and
they were most of them drunk—to go. The guard looked at my ticket for
Vologda and asked me where I was ultimately going to. I said: “Viatka,”
upon which the mechanic said: “So am I; we will go together and get
our tickets together at Vologda.” The painter and the mechanic engaged
in conversation, and it appeared that they both came from Kronstadt.
The painter had worked there for twenty years, and he cross-questioned
the mechanic with evident pleasure, winking at me every now and then.
The mechanic went into the next compartment for a moment, and the
painter then said to me with glee: “He is lying; he says he has worked
in Kronstadt, and he doesn’t know where such and such things are.” The
mechanic came back. “Who is the Commandant at Kronstadt?” asked the
painter. The mechanic evidently did not know, and gave a name at random.
The painter laughed triumphantly and said that the Commandant was someone
else. Then the mechanic volunteered further information to show his
knowledge of Kronstadt; he talked of another man who worked there—a tall
man; the painter said that the man was short. The mechanic said that he
was employed in the manufacture of shells. They talked of disorders at
Kronstadt that had happened a year before. The painter said that he and
his son lay among cabbages while the fighting was going on. He added that
the matter had nearly ended in the total destruction of Kronstadt. “God
forbid!” said the peasant sitting next to me. No sympathy was expressed
with the mutineers. The painter at last told the mechanic that he had
lived for twenty years at Kronstadt, and that he, the mechanic, was a
liar. The mechanic protested feebly. He was an obvious liar, but why he
told these lies I have no idea. Perhaps he was not a mechanic at all.
Possibly he was a spy. He professed to be a native of a village near
Viatka, and declared that he had been absent for six years (the next
evening he said twelve years).
From this question of disorders at Kronstadt the talk veered, I forget
how, to the topic of the Duma. “Which Duma?” someone asked; “the town
Duma?” “No, the State Duma,” said the mechanic; “it seems they are
going to have a new one.” “Nothing will come of it,” said the painter;
“people will not go.” (He meant the voters.) “No, they won’t go,” said
the peasant, cutting the air with his hand (a gesture common to nearly
all Russians of that class), “because they know now that it means being
put in prison.” “Yes,” said the painter, “they are hanging everybody.”
And there was a knowing chorus of: “They won’t go and vote; they know
better.” Then the mechanic left his seat and sat down next to the painter
and said in a whisper: “The Government⸺” At that moment the guard came
in; the mechanic stopped abruptly, and when the guard went out, the topic
of conversation had been already changed. I heard no further mention of
the Duma during the whole of the rest of the journey to Vologda. The
people then began to prepare to go to sleep, except the peasant, who told
me that he often went three days together without sleep, but when he did
sleep it was a business to wake him. He asked me if his bundle of clothes
was in my way. “We are a rough people,” he said, “but we know how not to
get in the way. I am not going far.” I was just going to sleep when I
was wakened by a terrific noise in the next compartment. Someone opened
the door, and the following scraps of shouted dialogue were audible. A
voice: “Did you say I was drunk or did you not?” Second voice (obviously
the guard): “I asked for your ticket.” First voice: “You said I was
drunk. You are a liar.” Second voice: “You have no right to say I am a
liar. I asked for your ticket.” First voice: “You are a liar. You said I
was drunk. I will have you discharged.” This voice then recited a long
story to the public in general. The next day I learnt that the offended
man was a lawyer, one of the bourgeoisie (a workman explained to me),
and that the guard had, in the dark, asked him for his ticket, and then,
as he made no sign of life, had pinched his foot; this having proved
ineffectual, he said that the man was drunk; whereupon the man started
to his feet and became wide awake in a moment. Eventually a gendarme was
brought in, a “protocol” was drawn up, in which both sides of the story
were written down, and there, I expect, the matter will remain until the
Day of Judgment.
I afterwards made the acquaintance of two men in the next compartment;
they were dock labourers, and their business was to load ships in
Kronstadt. They were exactly like the people whom Gorki describes. One
of them gave me a description of his mode of life in summer and winter.
In summer he loaded ships; in winter he went to a place near Archangel
and loaded carts with wood; when the spring came, he went back, by water,
to St. Petersburg. He asked me what I was. I said that I was an English
correspondent. He asked then what I travelled in. I said I was not that
kind of correspondent, but a newspaper correspondent. Here he called a
third friend, who was sitting near us, and said; “Come and look; there
is a correspondent here. He is an English correspondent.” The friend
came—a man with a red beard and a loose shirt with a pattern of flowers
on it. “I don’t know you,” said the new man. “No; but let us make each
other’s acquaintance,” I said. “You can talk to him,” explained the dock
labourer; “we have been talking for hours; although he is plainly a man
who has received higher education.” “As to whether he has received higher
or lower education we don’t know,” said the friend, “because we haven’t
yet asked him.” Then he paused, reflected, shook hands, and exclaimed:
“Now we know each other.” “But,” said the dock labourer, “how do you
print your articles? Do you take a printing press with you when you go,
for instance, to the north, like you are doing now?” I said they were
printed in London, and that I did not have to print them myself. “Please
send me one,” he said; “I will give you my address.” “But it’s written
in English,” I answered. “You can send me a translation in Russian,” he
retorted.
“English ships come to Kronstadt, and we load them. The men on board do
not speak Russian, but we understand each other. For instance, we load,
and their inspector comes. We call him ‘inspector’ (I forget the Russian
word he used, but it was something like _skipador_); they call him the
‘Come on.’ The ‘Come on’ comes, and he says, ‘That’s no good’ (_‘Niet
dobrò_’[14]); he means not right (_nié horosho_), and then we make it
right. And when their sailors come, we ask them for matches. When we
have food, what we call _coshevar_, they call it ‘all right.’ And when
we finish work, what we call _shabash_ (it means ‘all over’), they call
‘seven o’clock.’ They bring us matches that light on anything,” and
here he produced a box of English matches and lit a dozen of them just
to show. “When we are raggèd, they say, ‘No clothes, plenty vodka,’ and
when we are well dressed, they say, ‘No plenty-vodka, plenty-clothes.’
Their vodka,” he added, “is very good.” Then followed an elaborate
comparison of the wages and conditions of life of Russian and English
workmen. Another man joined in, and being told about the correspondent,
said: “I would like to read your writings, because we are a rough people
and we read only the _Pieterbourski Listok_, which is, so to speak, a
‘black-gang’ (reactionary) newspaper. Heaven knows what is happening in
Russia! They are hanging, shooting, and bayoneting everyone.” Then he
went away. The dock labourer went on for hours talking about the “Come
on,” the “All right,” and the “Seven o’clock.”
I went back to my berth and slept, till the dock labourer came and
fetched me, and said that I had to see the soldiers. I went into the
next compartment, and there were two soldiers; one was dressed up,
that is to say he had put on spectacles and a pocket-handkerchief over
his head, and was giving an exhibition of mimicry, of recruits crying
as they left home, of mothers-in-law, and other stock jokes. It was
funny, and it ended in general singing. A sailor came to look on. He
was a non-commissioned officer, and he told me in great detail how a
meeting at Sveaborg had been put down. He said that the loyal sailors
had been given 150 roubles (£15) apiece to fight. I think he must have
been exaggerating. At the same time he expressed no sympathy with the
mutineers. He said that rights were all very well for countries such
as Finland. But in Russia they only meant disorder, and as long as the
disorder lasted, Russia would be a feeble country. He had much wanted to
go to the war, but he had not been able to. In fact, he was thoroughly
loyal and _bien pensant_.
We arrived at Vologda Station some time in the evening. The station was
crowded with peasants. While I was watching the crowd, a drunken peasant
entered and asked everybody to give him ten kopecks. Then he caught sight
of me, and said that he was quite certain I would give him ten kopecks.
I did, and he danced a kind of wild dance and finally collapsed on the
floor. A man was watching these proceedings, a fairly respectably dressed
man in a pea-jacket. He began to talk to me, and said that he had just
come back from Manchuria, where he had been employed at Mukden Station.
“In spite of which,” he added, “I have not yet received a medal.” I said
that I had been in Manchuria. He said he lived twenty versts up the line,
and came to the station to look at the people—it was so amusing. “Have
you any acquaintances here?” he asked. I said, “No.” “Then let us go and
have tea.” I was willing, and we went to the tea-shop, which was exactly
opposite the station. “Here,” said the man, “we will talk of what was,
of what is, and of what is to be.” As we were walking in, a policeman who
was standing by the door whispered in my ear: “I shouldn’t go in there
with that _gentleman_.” “Why?” I asked. “Well, he’s not quite reliable,”
he answered in the softest of whispers. “How?” I asked. “Well, he killed
a man yesterday and then robbed him,” said the policeman. I hurriedly
expressed my regret to my new acquaintance, and said that I must at all
costs return to the station. “The policeman has been lying to you,” said
the man. “It’s a lie; it’s only because I haven’t got a passport.” (This
was not exactly a recommendation in itself.) I went into the first-class
waiting-room. The man came and sat down next to me, and now that I
examined his face I saw that he had the expression and the stamp of
countenance of a born thief. One of the waiters came and told him to go,
and he flatly refused, and the waiter made a low bow to him. Then, gently
but firmly, I advised him to go away, as it might lead to trouble. He
finally said: “All right, but we shall meet in the train, in liberty.” He
went away, but he sent an accomplice, who stood behind my chair. He, too,
had the expression of a thief.
After waiting for several hours I approached the train for Yaroslav. Just
as I was getting in, a small boy came up to me and said in a whisper:
“The policeman sent me to tell you that the man is a well-known thief,
that he robs people every day, and that he gets into the train, even
into the first-class carriages, and robs people, and he is after you
now.” I entered a first-class carriage and told the guard there was a
thief about. I had not been there long before the accomplice arrived and
began walking up and down the corridor. But the guard, I am happy to say,
turned him out instantly, and I saw nothing more of the thief or of his
accomplice.
A railway company director, or rather a man who was arranging the
purchase of a line, got into the carriage and began at once to harangue
me about the Government and say that the way in which it had changed the
election law was a piece of insolence and would only make everybody more
radical. Then he told me that life in Yaroslav was simply intolerable,
because all newspapers and all free discussion had been stopped. We
arrived at Yaroslav on the next morning. I went on to Moscow in a
third-class carriage. The train stopped at every small station, and there
was a constant flow of people coming and going. An old gentleman of the
middle class sat opposite to me for a time, and read a newspaper in an
audible whisper. Whenever he came to some doings of the Government he
said: “Disgraceful, disgraceful!”
Later on in the day a boy of seventeen got into the train. He carried
a large box. I was reading a book by Gogol, and had put it down for a
moment on the seat. He took it up and said: “I am very fond of reading
books.” I asked him how he had learnt. He said he had been at school for
one year, and had then learnt at home. He could not stay at school as
he was the only son, his father was dead, and he had to look after his
small sisters; he was a stone quarrier, and life was very hard. He loved
reading. In winter the _mouzhiks_ came to him and he read aloud to them.
His favourite book was called _Ivan Mazeppa_. What that work may be, I
did not know. I gave him my Gogol. I have never seen anyone so pleased.
He began to read it—at the end—then and there, and said it would last for
several evenings. When he got out he said: “I will never forget you,” and
he took out of his pocket a lot of sunflower seeds and gave them to me.
As we neared Moscow the carriage was fuller and fuller. Two peasants had
no railway tickets. One of them asked me if I would lend my ticket to him
to show the guard. I said: “With pleasure; only, my ticket is for Moscow
and yours is for the next station.” When the guard came, one of the
peasants gave him 30 kopecks. “That is very little for two of you,” the
guard said. They had been travelling nearly all the way from Yaroslav;
but finally he let them be. We arrived at Moscow in the evening.
I travelled back to St. Petersburg in a third-class carriage, which was
full of recruits. “They sang all the way” (as Jowett said about the
poetical but undisciplined undergraduate[15] whom he drove home from a
dinner-party) “bad songs—very bad songs.” Not quite all the way, however.
They were like schoolboys going to a private school, putting on extra
assurance. In the railway carriage there was a Zemstvo “Feldsher,” a
hospital orderly, who had been through the war. We talked of the war.
While we were discussing it, a young peasant who was in the carriage
joined in, and startled us by his sensible and acute observations on the
war. “There’s a man,” said the Feldsher to me, “who has a good head. It
is sheer natural cleverness. That’s what a lot of the young peasants
are like. And what will become of him? If only these people could be
developed!” A little later I began to read a small book. “Are you
reading Lermontov?” asked the Feldsher, “No,” I answered, “I am reading
Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” “Ah,” he said, with a sigh, “you are evidently
not a married man, but perhaps you are engaged to be married?”
Just as I was preparing to sleep, the guard came and began to search
the corners and the floor of the carriage with a candle, as if he had
dropped a pin or a penny. He explained that there were twelve recruits
in the carriage, but that an extra man had got in with them and that he
was looking for him. He then went away. One of the recruits explained to
me that the man was under one of the seats, and hidden by boxes, as he
wished to go to St. Petersburg without a ticket. I went to sleep. But the
guard came back and turned me carefully over to see if I was the missing
man. Then he began to look again in the most unlikely places for a man to
be hid. He gave up the search twice, but the hidden man could not resist
putting out his head to see what was happening, and before he could get
it back the guard coming in at that moment caught sight of him. The man
was turned out, but he got into the train again, and the next morning it
was discovered that he had stolen one of the recruits’ boxes and some
article of property from nearly everybody in the carriage, including
hats and coats. This he had done while the recruits slept, for when
they stopped singing and went to sleep they slept soundly. Later in the
night, a huge and old peasant entered the train and crept under the seat
opposite to me. The guard did not notice him, and after the tickets had
been collected from the passengers who got in at that station, the man
crept out, and lay down on one of the higher berths. He remained there
nearly all night, but at one of the stations the guard said: “Is there
no one for this station?” and looking at the peasant, added: “Where are
you for, old man?” The man mumbled in pretended sleep. “Where is your
ticket?” asked the guard. No answer. At last when the question had been
repeated thrice, he said: “I am a poor, little, old man.” “You haven’t
got a ticket,” said the guard. “Get out, devil; you might lose me my
place—and I a married man. Devil! Devil! Devil!” “It is on account of my
extreme poverty,” said the old man, and he was turned out.
The next morning I had a long conversation with the young peasant who,
the Feldsher said, had brains. I asked him, among other things, if he
thought the Government was right in relying on what it called the innate
and fundamental conservatism of the great mass of the Russian people.
“If the Government says that the whole of the peasantry is Conservative,
it lies,” he said. “It is true that a great part of the people is
rough—uneducated—but there are many who know. The war opened our eyes.
You see, the Russian peasant is accustomed to be told by the authorities
that a glass (taking up my tumbler) is a man, and to believe it. The Army
is on the side of the Government. At least it is really on the side of
the people, but it feels helpless. The Government will never yield except
to force. There is nothing to be done.” We talked of other things. The
recruits joined in the conversation, and I offered a small meat patty to
one of them, who said: “No, thank you. I am greatly satisfied with you as
it is, without your giving me a meat patty.”
The theft which had taken place in the night was discussed from every
point of view. “We took pity on him and we hid him,” they said, “and he
robbed us.” They spoke of it without any kind of bitterness or grievance,
and nobody said:
“I told you so.” Then we arrived at St. Petersburg.