THE
ECLIPSE OF
RUSSIA
BY
E. J. DILLON
AUTHOR OF
"OURSELVES AND GERMANY"
"RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS"
ETC., ETC.
1918
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FRIEND AND RUSSIA'S UNIQUE STATESMAN
S. I. WITTE
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA
II. THE RUSSIAN MIND
III. LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY
IV. THE TSARDOM
V. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
VI. THE RULE OF THE BUREAU
VII. THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II
VIII. THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II
IX. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT OF 1905
X. FATHER GAPON AND AZEFF
XI. WITTE CONDEMNED TO DIE
XII. RASPUTIN--A SYMBOL
XIII. RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Including _The Tsar's Plot to seize the Heights of the Upper
Bosphorus--The Story of Kiao Chow_
XIV. THE LAST STATESMEN OF THE TSARDOM
Including _The Hague Conference Mystification_
XV. RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST
XVI. THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--I.
XVII. THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--II.
XVIII. THE SECRET TREATY REVEALED
XIX. THE DOWNFALL OF THE TSARDOM
POSTSCRIPT
APPENDIX--DETAILS OF THE SECRET TREATY
INDEX
ERRATA
Page 2, line 18, _for_ "statesments" _read_ "statements."
Page 22, line 18, _for_ "have" _read_ "has."
Page 26, line 13, _for_ "and to observe" _read_ "and observed."
Page 28, line 22, _for_ "armoured" _read_ "armed."
Page 48, line 6 from foot, _for_ "moral" _read_ "a-moral."
[Transcriber's Note: the above Errata have been applied to this
ebook's text.]
{1}
THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA
The misfortunes of Russia and the disillusions of the nations that
trusted her promises and relied on her help are attributed to no one
circumstance more markedly than the failure of the interested
statesmen to grasp the purely predatory character of the Tsardom, its
incompatibility with the politico-social ordering of latter-day
Europe, the pressing necessity on the one hand and the almost
insuperable difficulty on the other of remodelling and adapting it to
its European environment. It is no exaggeration to affirm that the
history of drifting Europe--excluding the Central Empires--during the
past quarter of a century, and of the outbreak of the awful struggle
at its close, is the story of a tissue of deplorable mistakes--a
tragedy of errors culminating in a catastrophe. The delusion of
statesmen about the Tsardom, its origins and its drift, are the least
blameworthy. For Russia is a cryptic volume to Slav nations, and to
Britons a book with seven seals. Her own ruling class constantly
misread the workings of her peoples' mind. Even the close observer
who classified the strange phenomena that unfolded themselves to his
eye seldom traced them back to their causes or realised their various
bearings. Between Slav and Saxon, in particular, there yawns a
psychological abyss wide enough in places to sunder two different
species of beings not merely two separate races. And of all Slav
peoples the Russian is by far the most complex and pulling. He often
raises expectations which a supernatural entity could hardly fulfil,
and awakens apprehensions which only a miracle could lay, yet somehow
neither hopes nor fears are realised and, as they fade away, one
wonders how they could ever have been entertained. In truth,
Sarmatia is a {2} realm of illusions where the goddess Maya is hardly
less active or thaumaturgic than in the Buddhist world of shows.
Unsophisticated foreigners are bewildered by the contrasts,
subtleties, and contradictions that mark the thoughts and acts of the
articulate, to say nothing of the inarticulate, Russian nation. In
vain they strive to disentangle the skein of events and episodes in
which these utter themselves. Nor do they perceive their own errors
until it is too late. It is a noteworthy illustration of the
easy-going ways of the Entente Governments that they should have
accepted as adequate accounts of things Russian the fanciful pictures
reflected in the minds of foreigners ignorant of the country, the
history, the people, and the language. It fell to my lot more than
once to hear the wildest theories propounded by responsible ministers
during the war on the strength of such misleading reports, and I have
seen political measures adopted which were bound to defeat the
objects for which they were planned.
Even Russian statements have to be placed, so to say, in quarantine
and truth sifted carefully from fiction. I remember an interesting
illustration that came under my cognisance one evening soon after the
promulgation of the Constitution of October, 1905, which was extorted
from the Tsar by Count Witte. The press was discussing the question
of how the future Duma should be elected, by direct universal, equal,
and secret suffrage or otherwise. I was sitting in the Winter Palace
with Witte when Count B. and Prince U., both of whom were afterwards
elected to the first Duma, were announced. They were shown in. "We
are come," said Count B., "from the country where we enjoy the
confidence of the peasant population, and we wish you to know that we
are absolutely opposed to direct universal suffrage. Absolutely.
Under no conditions will we accept it, because it would lead to the
ruin of the Empire. So true is this and so firm is our resolve to
save the country from this calamity that if you make the suffrage
direct or universal we two will march to Petersburg at the head of
our armed peasants and will fight until the decree is rescinded.
Please communicate this respectfully to his Majesty."
{3}
Witte calmed the fiery passion of the count and the two visitors
left. A fortnight later there was a dispute among the cabinet
ministers on the subject of the suffrage. The Tsar displayed his
interest in the matter, and Witte decided to send for Count B. and
Prince U. and to give them an opportunity of laying before the
sovereign the views of the population in that province of Central
Russia. But when they arrived he stood aghast to hear Count B.
inveigh in unmeasured terms against those short-sighted individuals
who dared to restrict the suffrage and deprive the Tsar's loyal
subjects of their right to vote for, or against, a candidate. "But,"
expostulated Witte, "was it not you who fourteen days ago said the
very opposite and threatened to march on the capital at the head of
the armed peasants if we enacted what you now demand?" "Yes, yes, I
know all that. But during that fortnight I have been among the
peasants and asked them for their views. And what is more, I can
tell you that most Russians of the intelligentsia are of the same
mind. And I am anxious to tell his Majesty how they think and feel
on the subject."
As I was very well acquainted with Count B. I took him aside and
taunted him with his sudden change of front, but he defended himself,
urging quite seriously, "Most of my friends are for universal
suffrage. So is the general public. Surely that is a good reason
for yielding to the consensus of opinion." Down to the Revolution
Count B. played a prominent but not a helpful part in Russian
politics.
The struggle which, since the year 1904, has been going on in the
Tsardom was so tremendous, the interests involved were so many and
mixed, and the vicissitudes of the contest so frequent and sudden,
that to be understood even approximately they need to be approached
from more than one angle. The analyses made by the Russian people
themselves, which are among the most instructive, are not by any
means the most trustworthy. For class misunderstands class
hopelessly. Indeed, the extent to which Russian observers have gone
astray in their appreciation and forecast of events and situations,
and in their interpretation of the nation's ideas {4} and
aspirations, would astonish the reader if it could be set forth in
detail. A few of the more striking instances may here suffice.
In the 'seventies the two main parties that advocated a revolution
were anxious to get hold of the emancipated peasants and to energise
them. But they had no knowledge of the people, whose soul was, to
use a Russian saying, a dusky forest. They agreed, therefore, that
their best plan would be to merge themselves in the peasantry, to
live the unenviable life of the tiller of the soil, and to interest
them actively in the upheaval that would bring about the millennium.
Representative men and women of all the "intelligent" classes
accordingly swelled the ranks of these apostles, and with alternating
self-denial and self-indulgence, devoid of measure, self-discipline,
and coherency, took to the life of squalor and hardship to which the
_mooshik_[1] has for ages been inured and diversified it by bouts of
looseness and back-sliding. Adoration of the people whom they hoped
to indoctrinate and inspire was the new religion which the
"intellectuals" preached and for a time endeavoured to practise.
They looked upon the nation as a body mystical, somewhat as Roman
Catholics regard their Church, but they went further than the Roman
Catholic and worshipped the object of their veneration, sacrificed
their ease to it, and in some cases died for it. Yet they were
aggressive atheists withal, and atheists who took their dogmatic
negation second-hand from foreign writers without verification or
study. With no attainable goal, no lode star in their strivings, no
inspiring dogma to sustain them, no cleanliness, moral or ethical, in
their habits, with hardly a trace of conscience and no sense of
individual duty,[2] they fancied that having fashioned a deity they
could yoke it to their char-à-banc and drive to a marvellous Utopia.
Everybody who disagreed with them was anathema, and even those who
were not actually with them were under their ban. For they were the
most intolerant of despots. My friend Leskoff, one of Russia's most
gifted novelists, whose politics were colourless {5} rather than
reactionary, was systematically ignored by them, and none of the
Liberal reviews or newspapers would dare to publish a favourable
notice of his works. Vladimir Solovieff, Russia's unique
philosopher, was sneered at as a visionary, and Dostoyeffsky set down
as an obscurantist, because they reproached those self-made
missionaries with harbouring a fundamentally false idea of the
Russian people and with being ignorant of its aims and aspirations.
These courageous writers added that it was mischievous presumption in
men of unclean lives, changeful purpose, and misty notions of science
to hope to bring about the transfiguration of the masses and lead
them to an enchanted, unpromised land.
After a long series of disillusions, rebuffs, and humiliations, the
zeal of the revolutionary _Narodniki_[3] cooled. They were forced to
the conclusion that their reading of the peoples' strivings was
wrong, that their own impulsive action was distinctly baleful, and
that the success of the cause for which they had sacrificed so much
must lie in other directions.
Years after,[4] my friend Witte, together with several of his
colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first Duma, fell
into a like error. Regarding the peasants as the most conservative
element in the Empire he gave them the preponderance in the Chamber
and then found that he had wholly mistaken their temper and
misinterpreted their aims. The mistakes made by the Kadets[5] ever
since they organised their party were equally glaring and much more
sinister. More than once this influential party had their own object
and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their reach, but by
misreading the character of their people and shaping their tactics
congruously with this false conception they forfeited their chances.
The first of these missed opportunities occurred immediately after
Count Witte had jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power
and convoking a representative assembly.
{6}
Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate aim was to
establish on a solid basis constitutional government of a kind
adapted to the nation's needs as he understood them, and he agreed
with me in thinking that to give the peoples of Russia universal
suffrage and parliamentary government, such as obtains in Britain,
Belgium, and Italy, would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef
and plum pudding. A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most
German, constitution, but without universal suffrage, seemed to him
to meet the case adequately. But he could not hope to carry his
programme without the support of public opinion, and public opinion,
as he well knew, was eager for a democratic regime to be instituted
at once and was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the
Russian principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf. He
requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the Jews, and to
endeavour to secure their support. I was empowered to dangle before
their eyes the perspective--which was no will-o'-the-wisp--that the
power which his health would not allow him to retain more than eight
or ten months would immediately pass on to them and that they would
thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having thrown
open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed democracy.
I first addressed myself to the Jews, some among whom a couple of
months before had assured me that they would accept gratefully a
representative chamber, even if its functions were circumscribed,
provided it was a viable organism of growth. But now scarcely had I
opened my mouth when I received the emphatic answer, "No. The Jews
will give no support to Witte. He is not their man. He is a mere
bureaucrat, and no bureaucrat can play the rôle of reformer."
Thereupon I tried suasion and held up before the eyes of the Jewish
leaders the prospect of a Liberal cabinet after their own heart
taking over the seals of power from Witte within a twelvemonth. This
outlook soothed the hearts and sweetened the words of my friends, but
their message was still a refusal, only it now ended with the words,
"If Witte {7} had made his proposal sooner--it might have met with a
different reception. But now--now the Jewish cause is indissolubly
bound up with the revolutionary Bund. The Jews will owe their
emancipation to force, and they will see to it that the force is
sufficient to burst their bonds and give them all their rights."
"And if they fail and _pogroms_ recommence will the condition of the
Jews be better?" I asked. "That is an unlikely supposition, in the
Russia that has received the October Manifesto. Anyhow we are
willing to run the risk."
I next went to the Liberals, who afterwards became the Kadets, and
made my proposals to a group including MM. Petrunkevitch and
Roditcheff. The conversation moved over the same lines as when I had
reasoned with the Jewish leaders, with this difference, that the
Liberals were more curious and asked for greater details. They
finally said, "Witte is insincere. He is a bureaucrat. He is
playing for his own hand. He flatters now the Tsar and now the
intelligentsia. He has no programme; if he had, you would be able to
unfold it even though he might not be able to publish it. You cannot
give us any details. Therefore we will not support him. Let him
resign and people may believe in his sincerity." "He will resign
after the loan is floated next spring," I said. "And if in the
meanwhile you do not support him, you will then have reaction."
Never shall I forget the explosion of laughter produced by my words.
"Dr. Dillon, we thought that you, at least, knew Russia well enough
to grasp the fact that the days of reaction are over. Henceforth a
reactionary movement in Russia is inconceivable." "If your
assumption is correct," I retorted, "your decision is statesmanlike":
and I took my leave and went back to the Winter Palace to carry the
fatal message.
Witte, when I delivered the answers, said, "I am not altogether
surprised that the Jews have thrown in their lot with the
revolutionary gang, but I am pained. They received provocation
enough to make them impatient, but none the less they are only making
bad worse. They cannot win by force because the army is on the other
side. As for the Liberals they are a conceited, short-sighted,
unpractical lot. {8} You who know the situation are aware that I
cannot stand the strain of office much beyond April next, when I hope
to float the biggest loan recorded in history. After that I would
have retired in favour of the Liberals. But if in the meanwhile they
are against me I shall be thwarted and they will not be benefited.
What fools they are! They are of the same clay as the men who made
away with Alexander II. on the day when he had signed the decree
promulgating a constitution. As for reaction, if only they knew how
the high priests of the reaction are weaving their spells and
uttering their incantations in the palace even now, and how impatient
the Emperor is to give them their innings, salutary fear of the
reaction would, of itself, have sufficed to convert the Liberals into
supporters of my cabinet. But we shall all see how their attitude
works out--and then the experience will be of no avail. It is an
awful tragedy!" Not only did the Kadets not support Witte's domestic
policy, but a number of their adherents repaired to Paris and
endeavoured to dissuade the French government from advancing the
money demanded by the Russian Premier! And the Jews played the same
game in Berlin. On the part of candidates for power these tactics
are unintelligible to the Western mind.
In the following summer those same Liberals, who had since formed
themselves into a parliamentary party under the name of "Kadets,"
gave further proof of their lack not only of political sense but also
of practical acquaintance with the bulk of their own people. They
publicly promised the land to the peasants, whetting appetites and
stirring up tumultuous passions which made the country deaf to the
finer vibrations of the political voice, and ended by swamping all
political issues and their exponents. It was the evocation of a
spirit which they were unable to lay. Again, when the first Duma was
dissolved by a quaking cabinet and an irresolute Tsar who had decided
to entrust the reins to the Kadets, these amazing tacticians fled to
Vyborg in Finland, set the imperial decree at naught, and threatened
the government with penury, confident that the nation, whom it
exhorted to pay no taxes, would make good the threat at any {9} and
every cost. But this draft on the peoples' devotion was dishonoured.
Taxes were collected as successfully as before, and the main results
produced by the audacious move were the elimination of the Kadets
from the ranks of candidates for the government which was about to
have been handed over to them and the disqualification of some of
their best men for seats in the Duma.
Finally it was the Kadets and their parliamentary friends who, when
the March revolution of 1917 was in progress, weakly acquiesced in
the abolition of the monarchy and the extinction of the Duma,
reckoning upon the self-discipline and moderation of an anarchist
people which acknowledged no restraints and knew not what measure
means. But they knew not what they did.
It is hardly too much to affirm that if the parliamentary parties had
understood their own people better they would not have swept away the
regime root and branch, dissolved the Duma, which might conceivably
still have been able to keep the various Russians together, and
broken up the greatest political community in Europe.
The history of the revolution of 1917 in its technical aspect is the
tale of a fatal psychological error and its sequel. It was the
currency of the notion that the peasant was aware of the causal nexus
between his situation of inferiority in the community and the vicious
system of governance under which he lived that induced in the Duma
leaders the belief that the political revolution which they were
shaping and circumscribing would be welcomed as a boon by the masses.
In itself the change as projected by them would have been beneficial.
To free the country from the parasitical bureaucracy, to restrict the
power of the Tsar, establish parliamentary government, and admit the
people to a share in public affairs proportionate to their mental and
moral equipment were among the aims of the Duma leaders. But the
whole conception, elaborated by lawyers and professors, bore the
stamp of the legal rather than the psychological temper. It lost
sight of the peculiar workings of the peasants' psyche and of the
narrowness of their intellectual {10} horizon. Its authors forgot
that hardly one of the institutions of the Empire, economic or
political, was rooted in its essential fitness and utility, and that
the function by which society can assimilate what is helpful and
reject what is pernicious was long since atrophied. They had no
inkling of the decisive fact that the predatory character of the
State had long since been assimilated by the people who were
accustomed to rob the land of its fertility and were impatient to
deprive the nobles of the land.
The second error flowed from the first. It was taken for granted
that the masses were self-disciplined enough to accept just what was
offered them and be content with that. On this assumption, and by
way of winning their support, the Duma leaders promised them the land
belonging to the great landowners provided that they would wait until
the Constituent Assembly should meet and lay down the conditions of
expropriation and transfer. But the Bolsheviks at once outbid the
Kadets, took the people into partnership with themselves, and
practically offered it the situation of national parasite from which
the bureaucracy had just been ousted, the only difference being that
the body on which the people was to prey was that of the well-to-do
section of the community. This aspect of the revolution--which has
also other and nobler facets--may be aptly described as "the
democratisation of parasitism which had theretofore been confined to
the administration and its branches."[6] A glance at the work of
spoliation by beings who display no trace of conscience or moral
sense, who pounce like beasts upon their prey, torturing and slaying
the defenceless and the well meaning, deaf to pity and heedless of
the morrow, will suffice to justify that somewhat hard definition.
It is owing to the characteristics enumerated that "Russia is a poor
country in spite of her riches, uncultured notwithstanding her
talents, an amazing mixture of the sublime and the savage in which,
however, the simply civilised element is wholly absent."[7] It is a
land of cultural no less than climatic extremes.
[1] One of the Russian words for peasant.
[2] Cf. _Landmarks_, 1910.
[3] So called from the word _Narod_, a nation.
[4] In 1905.
[5] Constitutional Democrats.
[6] Cf. _Gazette de Lausanne_, 7th January, 1918.
[7] _Ibidem._
{11}