SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
When I first went to Russia the Liberal movement that had been making
headway ever since the death of Nicholas I. was in full swing, and in
spite of such set-backs as the reaction caused by the abortive
attempt on the life of Alexander II. was perceptibly nearing a
climax. I came in contact with many of the eminent men of that
epoch, and also with the type of Nihilist described by
Turghenieff.[1] In the course of those years I also had ample
opportunities to study the Russian character in various types and in
various social layers, and despite its defects, some of which are
repellent, I felt drawn towards it irresistibly. The charm it
sometimes possesses is hardly definable and yet at its best is
positively captivating. Some Russians--Vladimir Solovieff was an
instance--carry with them a mystical and subtle atmosphere of the
marvellous, which throws work-a-day concerns wholly out of the
perspective, seems to melt solid obstacles, to shrivel up space, do
away with time, and imbue one with the airy spirit of a thaumaturge.
And yet the very essence of the spell is unaffected simplicity.
One of the first phenomena that pressed its unfamiliarity upon my
attention was the privileged status of educated women and the
sterling qualities by which some of them justified and maintained it.
Their minds were worthy of {62} their hearts, the true sources of
that natural religion of sympathy and pity which seldom fails to
captivate the foreigner. Another peculiarity that arrested my
attention was the political division of the population into classes
and castes, among which by far the worst off were the peasants and
the Jews. In the province of Kieff I was favourably situated to
study at close quarters the disabilities of both.
One of the phenomena that struck me most forcibly as characteristic
of the political regime was the sharp division between the classes
and the masses or, as the two were then termed, between
society--meaning the thinking and writing sections--and the people.
My first impression was that of a conquered race and its foreign
masters, the latter living upon the substance of the former and
giving little or nothing in return. This impression was deepened by
what I learned of the rôle of the bureaucracy which soon appeared as
what it really was--parasitic. A petty official was in some respects
a tsarlet. He could achieve certain difficult feats that were beyond
the power of the Emperor, and was often able to shield the guilty,
condemn the innocent, perpetuate crying abuses, and ignore the
commands of the Tsar. All these impressions were the results of
experiences at various times and places.
One of my first experiences illustrated the hapless lot of the
peasantry in one of the southern provinces where they were much
better off than in the north. The incident happened near the village
of Nabutoff, in the province of Kieff, many miles from a town. One
Sunday afternoon I was wandering alone in the steppe, resting between
whiles and dipping into a book, when I became aware all at once that
a group of half-sober peasants were at my heels. They yelled out
menacingly, called me a Turkish spy, and ordered me to halt. Instead
of complying, however, I moved rapidly towards the river that
separated me from the distant manor in which I resided, but finding
no boat to carry me across I surrendered to the peasants whose
numbers had grown considerably and whose hostility was no longer
masked. They charged me with being a Turkish spy, and some of {63}
them wanted to drown or hang me without further parley. And I
believe they would have done it on the spot but for the warning of
one individual who affirmed that he had seen me before, knew I was
English, and that none of them would escape severe punishment if they
harmed me. They then emptied my pockets, abstracted all the money I
had--some fifty roubles--and with great reluctance allowed me to send
a messenger to the owner of the house where I was staying. After a
couple of hours I was finally released, but the peasants had spent my
money and were unable or unwilling to refund it. Two days later the
village elder paid me a visit, offered his excuses, and informed me
that three of the villagers had been soundly flogged by his orders
and in his presence, and he wished to know whether I should like any
more of them subjected to the same punishment. If so, he would fix
the time to suit my convenience so that I could watch the execution
if I desired. I expostulated with him, told him that I disapproved
of flogging, and discoursed to him on human dignity, but he only
remarked that a mooshik who has never been flogged is good for
nothing.
In the following year I was at the University of St. Petersburg
studying Oriental languages and I had the good fortune to meet
prominent men of all classes and parties, including the novelists
Dostoyeifsky, Gontshareff, and Leskoff.[2] One afternoon, in the
interval between two sections of one of the fashionable open-air
concerts that were daily given at Pavloffsk, near Tsarskoye Selo, at
which several grand dukes and many court dignitaries and ministers
were present, I was in a group the centre of which was the Minister
of the Interior,[3] when an acquaintance of mine, Count A., came up,
took the minister aside, and in my presence complained of the
intractable disposition of his nephew, to whom I had given tuition.
"The long and short of it is," he concluded, {64} "that he is a
scapegrace and bids fair to become a criminal, and I can do nothing
with him. He borrows money from the servants, spends it in houses of
ill repute, drinks, gambles, and is not amenable to reason, and I
want you to help me.
"With pleasure," the minister replied. "Only tell me in what form
you wish for help. I can shut your nephew up if that would meet your
wishes, but I suppose you would draw the line at incarceration. If
so, I can bundle him off to Siberia, or Archangel, or the Caucasus,
or Central Asia."
"Central Asia! That's it. Send him there. But how will he live?"
"Oh, I'll put him into the army in Tashkent and his superior officer
will do the rest. He will certainly strike the fear of God into his
soul and see that his body is fed and clad, I answer for that. The
day after to-morrow then at nine in the morning a gendarme will fetch
him, and you need worry no more."
The uncle uttered his thanks and the conversation took another turn.
Two days later the prodigal youth was duly transferred to Tashkent
and I never had tidings of him again. I referred to the subject
later on, when I had come to know the minister better, and I asked
him whether the law really invested him with the power he had
invoked. He replied in the affirmative, quoted a clause of the
statute, and remarked that what with the code of laws and the vast
discretionary powers conferred on ministers to deal with persons
administratively, the liberty of the subject was no better guaranteed
in Russia than in France of Louis XIV. when _lettres de cachet_
opened the Bastille to so many members of the aristocracy. He added
that neither he nor, so far as he knew, his colleagues would employ
that power without first satisfying their consciences that they were
not the instruments of personal hatred or injustice.
I have little doubt that M. Timasheff was a conscientious official in
the Russian sense of the word, as was also the Minister of Justice,
Count Pahlen, who had recently resigned. But none the less the
system which they represented was weighing heavily on the nation.
Cases of crying {65} injustice perpetrated by provincial organs of
the central government occasionally came to my knowledge. At the
university espionage and its by-products were occasional phenomena.
It is fair to say, however, that I always found those ministers to
whom I had access ready to listen to any appeal on behalf of victims
if grounded on fact. Once when the "Liberals," as the revolutionary
students were then euphemistically termed, were hard pressed by the
police most members of the group with which I often mixed were
arrested one after the other. My card having been found on one of
the accused, he was plied with questions as to my opinions and
actions, and I was cautioned by my friends to make ready to be
arrested. But it was the unexpected that happened. One morning
professors and students were thunderstruck to learn that one of the
most promising students of the university had disappeared, nobody
knew how. Alexeyenko--that was his name--had never been suspected by
any of us. Apparently, and so far as we knew, his was the scholar's
temper of mind rather than the revolutionary's unmeasured zeal for
the welfare of his fellows. He had been regular in his attendance at
the mathematical faculty and successful in his special studies there.
He was in his fourth and last year and his professors were proud of
him. Yet he was spirited away so mysteriously that some days elapsed
before we learned that he had been kidnapped by the police in the
street when returning home after midnight. As it was known that I
was personally acquainted with the Minister of the Interior I was
asked by a colleague and friend, who has since become one of the
pillars of the autocracy, to appeal to him for the release of the
prisoner, and I accepted the mission. On this occasion, however, I
failed to see Timasheff himself, but I gave the message to his
brother-in-law, who shortly afterwards brought me this answer: "The
minister has no knowledge of the arrest. Give him details, and if
Alexeyenko be as innocent as you maintain he shall be restored to his
home and his studies." The students to whom I communicated these
tidings were delighted. A few days later came another message from
{66} Timasheff exhorting me to pursue the matter and let him know the
result. The idea that an all-powerful minister should apply to a
mere student for information about official acts amused me. But the
prisoner could not be traced. At last a smuggled missive reached one
of his university friends to the effect that he had been conveyed
from gaol to gaol and was in the prison of X in western Siberia at
the time of writing. I communicated this information to the minister
who certainly fulfilled his promise and opened an inquiry into the
facts, but with what result I never learned. Nor did I ever hear of
Alexeyenko any more.
Although at first things in the Tsardom attracted my attention less
in proportion to their specific weight than to the freshness of the
impressions they produced, I felt at every hand's turn the
consequence of Russia's long inaccessibility to western influences,
and was struck with the complete cultural separation of class from
class in the Empire. As for the lower orders their entire mental
structure seemed different from that of the "intellectuals." At that
time the merchants formed almost a close corporation of their own
with hallowed traditions, recognised customs, class jealousy, and
even a remarkable literary exponent in the person of the playwright
Ostroffsky, who has left a complete and realistic picture of their
every-day life then on the eve of its transformation. The secular
clergy, too, were still a caste, their very language being tinged
with mediævalism, and their principal sources of training were
ecclesiastical schools and seminaries where instruction was
superficial and theological. But the most isolated and peculiar of
all were the peasants. So long as they were serfs they had the
landlord's advice, which was a benefit when he was enlightened and
well disposed, but after their emancipation the villages were
proclaimed independent and "self-governing" and closed to all outside
influences. Thenceforth only a peasant might vote in the village
assembly. Representatives of the upper and better informed classes,
like the squire, the parish priest, the doctor, even though they had
resided for years in the village, were not {67} entitled to take hand
or part in arranging its affairs. Their moral influence was
rigorously excluded, and the ignorant soil-tillers became the wards
and the prey of their own more cunning and unscrupulous members, who
embezzled and cheated and committed every kind of enormity unchecked.
For the _Mir_ in those days had the power to deport any of its
members to Siberia without giving him the benefit of trial or
alleging any legal charge against him, and a clever Machiavellian
elder had but to supply his fellow-villagers with copious draughts of
vodka to get them to pronounce any decree within their competence.
This type of man was commonly termed a _Koolak_, or fist, to
symbolise his utter callousness to pity and ruth. And of all the
human monsters I have met in my travels I cannot recall any so
malignant and odious as the Russian _Koolak_. In the revolutionary
horrors of 1905 and 1917 he was the ruling spirit--a fiend incarnate.
At the university I found myself in contact with apostles of
revolution who talked as though society were a mass of clay capable
of being fashioned at will by the social potter. History they
despised without knowing, and the theory of evolution they treated as
a disembodied fancy of the pseudo-scientific brain. Crass ignorance,
ingrained prejudice, and inability to face adverse facts were
characteristics of the leaders of the movement at the university. I
remember one in particular who frankly admitted that he never opened
a book nor attended a lecture, but simply lived for and on the coming
revolution. This typical youth, who had entered the university from
an ecclesiastical seminary, had no fixed abode, nearly always carried
with him forbidden leaflets, proclamations, and newspapers hidden
inside his scanty clothing, yet he had the good fortune to be always
arrested when he chanced to have none of these compromising evidences
on his person. From time to time we met to discuss general
principles--I was not a member of the inner circle--to formulate the
ideals of the nation, and analyse the means proposed for attaining
them. Letters were then read from ardent spirits who had devoted
their lives to the people, {68} were living among them in isolation
and hardship, and fancied that they could fathom the ideas and divine
the real sentiments of the peasant. Several of these men, who were
always accompanied and keyed up by resolute, selfless, and
enthusiastic young women, were pale reflections of Turghenieff's
Rudin, but more than one yielded to temptation, turned against their
comrades, and delivered them up to the authorities. Many settled
down in time and became respected bureaucrats. Naturally I admired
the ardour and self-denial of the few, the champions of a popular
cause, who stirred in men and women a sense of the vast
potentialities of their nation and the human race, and for a time I
accepted their definition of Russia's aims as correct.
But it gradually dawned on me, and also on my close friend, the
future pillar of Panslavism and autocracy, that whatever one might
think about the social and political theories of the revolutionaries,
they were uniformly wrong in their facts and forecasts. Thus their
anticipation of the peasants' attitude towards the government were
invariably belied by events. Tshernyshevsky, for example, whose
writing we secretly read and warmly discussed, had staked his
reputation and also the fate of his scheme on the postulate that the
peasants would not accept their emancipation as offered by Alexander
II., but would rise in arms and overthrow the government. He next
believed that their calm resignation was but temporary, and that
within two years' time the long hoped for rebellion would convulse
the Empire. All the expectations and most of the assumptions of
Bakunin and Herzen had also vanished at the touch of reality, and the
Russian peasantry remained the impenetrable Sphinx it had been
before. Nobody then nor, indeed, for forty years longer could put
into words the ideals of the people--and had they divined them, no
apostle, no idealist, could have utilised them for the purpose of
arousing enthusiasm and generating the motive power for a revolution.
The groundwork of the peasants' own scheme for his well-being is
formed by what diplomatists would term "healthy robust egotism," and
his cherished method is expropriation. The picture which was {69}
commonly drawn of the tiller of the soil by the "intellectuals" was
the projection of a poetic brain, a synthesis of the qualities
adequate for the founders of a latter-day Utopia. In a word, the
so-called leaders of the nation had not the remotest conception of
the nation's world-philosophy, instincts, or strivings.
Looking back at their words and acts I can affirm that they created
an imaginary nation after their own heart, and worked by fits and
snatches and with unsuitable weapons for the welfare of that. And
from that day to this the chasm between the two has never been
bridged.
The abortive revolution of 1905-6, the failure of the constitutional
parties to hammer in the adamantine wedge which the defeat of the
bureaucracy by the Japanese had inserted into the State framework,
and finally the Kadets'[4] ignorance of the movement that culminated
in the outburst of March, 1917, their helplessness in face of a set
of circumstances which, rightly handled, would have kept the Empire
for a time intact and placed its social and political ordering in
their own hands, but, botched as it was, opened the sluice gates to
the floods of anarchy--are all object lessons on the difficulty of
interpreting aright the spiritual and material needs and longings of
the Russian people. These requirements and strivings are, to my
thinking, largely conditioned by the historical factors already
enumerated, and in especial by the numbing influence of ages of
cultural isolation. There is a thick substratum of primeval savagery
in the peasant's composition not at all far from the surface which
separates him widely, not only from western peoples, but also from
the intellectuals of his own race as they appear in their public
words and acts. The revolting behaviour of the soldiery and the
peasantry to their own kith and kin during the nation's _delirium
tremens_ after March, 1917, which even revolutionary history is too
prude to record, offers irrefragable evidence of the deplorable fact
that the bulk of the Russian people is still in that primitive stage
when {70} self-government, even in the diluted form in which it is
vouchsafed to some continental nations, would harm in lieu of helping
it. Education and careful training will in time qualify the people
for an ever larger share in the conduct of its affairs, but in the
meanwhile its spokesmen and trustees are tearing the political
organism into shreds. Under a wise and strong government the
peasants become as clay in the potter's hands--plasticity being one
of the racial traits common to them with all their race. But take
away the compelling force and they become human frenzies. The
Northern Slav is an amalgam of contradictions: he can put forth
stupendous efforts for a short while, but is incapable of sustaining
a moderate endeavour perseveringly until the object is achieved.
Some of the types of the rising generation with whom I was thrown
into contact at the university would have exercised the ingenuity of
the most experienced psychologist and tempted a literary portraitist
like Balzac. The procession of them that passed before my eyes kept
my mind constantly in an active mood ever seeking for labels and
sometimes finding none that were applicable. I remember in
particular the following incident characteristic of much. I had
asked a professor to read the book of Genesis with me in Hebrew and
to give me the benefit of his special knowledge of that subject. He
agreed to do this, provided that I found three other students willing
to join me, and that he might deliver the lectures every Monday
morning at nine in his own private dwelling. The hour was repellent
to many, considering that we were then in the height of the winter
season, but I contrived to persuade two students to join the class.
To get a third, however, seemed impossible. At last I besought one
of our comrades, a fine, tall, well-built youth who was studying
Chinese and Mongol and, unlike so many others, was well-to-do,
content with the world, and shy of politics. But when he learned the
hour of the lecture and the place--which was very remote from the
street in which his own rooms were situate--he refused categorically
to join the class. And all my suasion was in {71} vain. Somehow I
mentioned casually it would be only once a week, every Monday
morning, and he at once exclaimed, "Oh, Monday morning? Yes, of
course, I can come. Nothing easier. You see every Sunday I spend
the night in a house of--of--amusement a stone's throw from the
professor's place, and I get up about eight or half-past eight, so
that I can be at his rooms by nine without an effort. I will oblige
you." Accordingly he too came--straight from his dissipation--and we
had our lecture on Genesis. One day he was late and the professor,
in consequence of some jocular allusion of ours, the point of which
he missed, put a plain question and wormed the secret out of us, and
on learning the motives that had determined his fourth student to
frequent his lectures on Genesis he laughed heartily.
The oriental faculty was the least political section of the
university. Its students held aloof from revolutionary meetings, and
either worked very hard or enjoyed life to the top of their bent.
Our friend of the Monday morning lectures having burned the candle at
both ends and also in the middle, melted away rapidly and was buried
within a twelvemonth.
With the bureaucracy and its workings I became acquainted under the
guidance of a few of its gifted members, one, the celebrated Tertius
Philippoff, imperial comptroller, who took me into his department,
gave me a post there, and initiated me into the psychology of the
_tshinovnik_; another, Basil Grigorieff, Professor of Oriental
Languages and Director-General of the Censor's Department; and a less
exalted but more highly endowed censor, who had fought in the Crimea
and was one of the most gifted, typical, devil-may-care, captivating
Russians, and one of the most plausible Nihilists I ever met. S.K.
had witnessed the utter breakdown of the bureaucratic war machine
under Nicholas I. and had contemplated the misery it inflicted on the
soldiers whose heroism, unrequited and unrewarded, was unparalleled.
He had observed the progress of revolutionary propaganda in the army,
among Russian soldiers, in Bulgaria and in Warsaw; and in his
capacity of censor he was {72} continually reading revolutionary
leaflets, manifestos, newspapers, and books, and discussing them with
hardly veiled sympathies. He supplied me with the forbidden works of
Dobroliuboff, Tshernyshevsky, Herzen, and others, and gradually
filled me with pity for the victims of the autocratic Juggernaut and
with loathing for the idol and its priests. In speculative matters
there were no bounds to S.K.'s enterprise: he would call in question
the holiest institutions, attack the root dogmas of Christianity, or
the morality of remaining alive in this world of misery and squalor,
but he discharged the duties of censor efficiently and with a breadth
of view in which his colleagues were lacking, and always congruously
with the letter of the law. He was at once a most successful apostle
of Nihilism and one of the most efficient servants of the State.
In those days I used frequently to visit the palace of Tsarskoye
Selo, accompanied by a member of a family which, at that time, was
living on terms of close friendship with that of the heir apparent,
afterwards Alexander III. The Tsarevitch and his consort called
occasionally at the villa where the head of the family resides, and
it was there that I first saw and spoke to him. When S.K. heard of
my visits to the palace he exclaimed, "Look well at the children of
the Tsarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch. None of them will ever
reach the throne. Mark my words. I think I know my country." I
noted his prophecy which was not fulfilled, but it came very near to
the mark. I watched the children of the Tsarevitch and speculated in
my mind on their future. In particular I made inquiries respecting
the character and mental outfit of him who I afterwards saw crowned
as Nicholas II. As it happened I was present at every great event in
his life down to a short time before the outbreak of the war.
Echoes from the subterranean forge where seismic explosions were
being prepared reached us periodically in the halls of the
university, and more than once I arranged for a private meeting
(skhodka) to be held in the auditory of the oriental faculty which,
being somewhat distant from {73} the principal lecture rooms, was not
likely to be invaded by the authorities. We there listened to wordy
debates about the duty of patriots to forego their individual
life-schemes, settle down among the peasants and working men, and
discharge the function of leaven to raise them to the revolutionary
pitch;[5] about the relative merits of a social and a political
upheaval; about the separation of the working man from the
intellectuals; and about the part which terrorism should be made to
play in the coming purification of the Russian world. My friend the
student B. and I never actually joined any secret society, but we
listened to the general discussions with something more than mere
interest, and we never hesitated between a political change and the
social debacle preached by the uncompromising pioneers who quoted
Bakunin. S.K. on the other hand, ever uncompromising in theory,
favoured Bakunin's programme, and often quoted these words of the
master, "Let us put our faith in the eternal spirit which pulls down
and annihilates only because he is the inscrutable and creative
source of all life. The desire to destroy is at the same time a
creative desire." Among an extreme section of the party known as
"The People's Will" this doctrine was assimilated and when possible
practised with deep-reaching consequences. The seed sown in those
days produced the fruits we beheld in 1905-6 and in 1917.
The first attempt at terrorism that took place while I was in the
country was made by Vera Zassulitch who, belonging to no party,
travelled on her own initiative all the way from the Volga to the
capital, fired at the Prefect of St. Petersburg, General Trepoff, and
severely wounded him because, according {74} to statements published
in the daily paper, he had had a political prisoner flogged. This
audacious deed sent a thrill of satisfaction over the entire nation.
The girl was tried for the offence before a jury and acquitted,
whereupon excitement rose to white heat. The authorities ordered her
immediate re-arrest, but she was nowhere to be found. The Minister
of Justice, a conscientious German, Count Pahlen, had to resign. The
police arrested crowds of people, many were deported to Siberia
without trial, and terror from on high begot terror from below. I
well remember the August day when Stepniak stabbed Mezentseff in St.
Petersburg, and the flushed cheeks and flaming eyes of S.K. who
hastened to me with all the particulars at his fingers' ends and
assured me that this was but the overture. In effect the Tsar
himself was the next target of the terrorists and a student his
would-be assassin. Five shots from a revolver were fired at the
Emperor from a moderate distance, but Alexander's hour had not
struck. The attempt was not unforeseen. The revolutionists had
formally condemned the monarch to death, apprised him of the
sentence, and added that his only hope of escape was to bestow
constitutional government on the country. This move bespoke a change
of programme. Instead of social, political renovation was now
demanded. The terrorists who had been theretofore working
exclusively for a social burst-up won the support, by accepting the
aims, of the Liberals who clamoured for the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy. The Liberals testified their reconciliation
by a bootless effort to induce the government to commute the death
sentence on the would-be assassin of the Tsar into banishment to
Siberia.
For victory in the struggle that now ensued the secret police of the
"Third Section" relied on its spies, agents provocateurs, and its
power to punish the discontented administratively. But the
conspirators were dauntless and resourceful in their schemes against
the monarch's life, which, although baulked continually, were resumed
with unflagging ardour. Time after time a chance discovery, a {75}
precaution neglected, a trick of fate saved the Emperor--some
unforeseen accident always--who had been encouraged to believe that
the danger he ran was only apparent. But when one evening the
apartment under his dining-room in the Winter Palace was blown to
splinters at the moment when he would have been sitting at table had
he not been delayed unexpectedly, he awoke to the conviction that the
only way to ensure his safety and escape his enemies was to look into
their demands and see how far he could prudently go towards
satisfying them. This conclusion marked a turning point in his
policy. He promoted the Governor-General of Kharkoff, Loris
Melikoff, to be president of a committee to carry on the home
government, invested him with almost dictatorial powers, and ordered
him to elaborate a project of far-ranging reform. Unfortunately this
good resolution was unknown to the terrorists, who fancied that the
external change meant but greater intensity in coercion.
Loris Melikoff was well intentioned and fairly well informed, but the
revolutionary party knew of no reason why it should trust him. An
early and hasty attempt was even made on his life. I, who was living
on a footing of cordial friendship with the leading Armenians of St.
Petersburg, with Delyanoff, the Esoffs, Patkanoff, etc., etc.,
learned a good deal of what was going on behind walls and doors.
From the utterances of Professor Gradoffsky on the other hand, who
was spoken of as Melikoff's secretary, I could gauge the suspicions
of the Liberal party, and by S.K. I was apprised in a general way
that a wide web was believed to be woven by the terrorists round the
Tsar, in the meshes of which he would probably be caught.
Melikoff's conception was businesslike and his way of executing it
tactful. On the one hand he was loth to scare the Emperor by a
far-reaching project sprung upon him without warning, and on the
other hand neither the gist nor the details of his moderate scheme
must be allowed to leak out prematurely lest the reactionary press,
headed by the redoubted Katkoff, should organise a national
opposition. What the virtual dictator had in view was to increase
the {76} powers of the zemstvos, to authorise them to co-operate with
each other throughout the Empire, and thus to enable them to create
an intelligent representative assembly. That seemed to outsiders who
were free from bias to be the right step at that conjuncture. I
confess that my own mind was not quite made up at the time, partly
because I was not sure of the data, and partly because I was a reader
of the writings of Katkoff whom I knew personally. I also enjoyed
the advantage of listening occasionally to Dostoyeffsky's diatribes
and perusing his dull periodical, and S.K. was never tired of telling
me that nothing must be expected from the crown except decrees of
banishment to Siberia, nor from the revolutionists barring the
martyrdom of some and the treachery of others. One thing alone was
clear to me: a social upheaval would endanger the very existence of
the Empire. The utmost that the cultural level of the nation would
admit of was a moderate political change.
In the meantime, the two enemies went their respective ways, the
terrorists plotting the death of the Tsar, and the Tsar making up his
mind to yield what the terrorists had demanded, and even to
contemplate its corollary, a genuine parliament. At last Loris
Melikoff completed his project and secured the Emperor's assent to it
about the same time that the conspirators had put the final touch to
theirs. On Saturday, 12th March, 1881, I was sauntering down the
Nevsky Prospekt with my Professor of Armenian, Patkanian, and we were
about to cross the Morskaya, a street leading to the palace, when the
police suddenly stopped us in order to let the imperial sleigh glide
past. At close quarters we saluted Alexander II. Mechanically he
returned the greeting, looking pensive and weary as he glided
shadow-like from before our eyes. "I should feel sorry to be in that
man's shoes to-day," whispered Professor Patkanian to me, as we moved
out of ear-range of the police. "Why to-day?" I asked. "Don't you
know," he replied, "that Loris Melikoff is very anxious about the
Tsar's safety? They have discovered another plot, this time a
formidable affair, and have arrested the principal conspirators. But
the others are {77} still at large, and may yet carry out their
scheme unless Loris baffles it. He is all the more worried about it
that the Emperor refuses to submit to rational measures of
precaution. He has besought him to stay indoors for a few days, but
the Tsar is reckless. Loris is worried."
The next day I was in the mined house[6] which would have been blown
to smithereens had the Tsar, who had just signed and sanctioned the
desired reform, driven down the Nevsky. But instead he went along
the Moika. I reached the fatal spot a few minutes after the bombs
had exploded, the victims had fallen, and the dying Tsar had been
taken to the Winter Palace. I saw the blood on the snow and crowds
of old women dipping handkerchiefs or clothes in it and reverently
making the sign of the cross. I stood in front of the palace an hour
or two later in the midst of a dense throng waiting for the monarch
to show himself, for he was believed to have escaped intact or with a
slight wound. And I then had another opportunity to observe the
peasant's true character as it revealed itself when temporarily freed
from outside restraint. As I stood that memorable afternoon among
the crowd in the snow, my eyes fixed on the balcony from which the
monarch was wont on exceptional occasions to greet or address the
people, there were two students near me who were talking in a tone
that denoted indifference, callousness, or satisfaction. Now and
again they broke into a laugh. I could not hear anything they were
saying, but I noticed that the one nearest to me was particularly
light-hearted and blithe. All at once I heard the rasping tones of a
dvornik's[7] voice shouting, "What do you mean?" followed by the
subdued response of one of the students, then a chorus of angry
voices waxing louder and louder around the pair. A violent push past
me where the students stood, a hustling movement, some cynical
ejaculations, and {78} then a sequence of awful screams that froze
one's blood were the only sights and sounds that reached me of the
revolting tragedy that had been enacted almost by my side. The two
students had been seized first by the ears which were pulled away,
and then torn limb from limb. Sick at heart I returned home to learn
that a blood bath was apprehended, as the dvorniks and other peasants
had announced their intention of killing every well dressed person in
the capital. That was my first insight into what is connoted by the
elemental ferocity of the people. I began to understand how
essential are outward restraints to good, nay, to human behaviour in
those benighted masses. Neither the doctrines of Christ nor the
instincts of humanity had been cultivated by their leaders. The
people had for ages seen robbery, murder, in a word all kinds of
crime, political, private, and absolutely wanton outrages perpetrated
in the name of God, the Tsar, and the fatherland by their own
educated and spiritual guides. Is it to be wondered at that whenever
they had the chance in turn to rob and burn and torture and kill they
used it to the full relentlessly?
As soon as the Emperor's death became known, Petersburg fell into a
state of chaotic confusion. The city was surrounded by a military
cordon. Incongruous self-contradictory measures were framed,
discussed, adopted, and dropped. The brains of the rulers seemed
paralysed. But one official remained as cool and detached as if
nothing had happened. This man of nerve and resource was Plehve, the
public prosecutor, destined soon to become Director of the Police
Department, then Dictator of Russia and an instrument of Fate in her
downfall. A thousand tongues anathematised the regicides and
discussed ingenious measures of public safety. Students were badly
mauled in the streets of the cities and a publican mistaken for a
student was beaten to death before my eyes. From out of the din and
tumult two alternative policies took definite shape and presented
themselves to the new Emperor--the execution of his father's plan or
a fresh spell of "resolute government," and he unhesitatingly
announced his preference for the former.
{79}
Many of the eminent people whom I met most frequently in those days,
Katkoff, Pobiedonostseff, Philippoff, the Metropolitan Archbishop of
St. Petersburg, Delyanoff, Komaroff, were ranged on the side of the
autocracy and preached a crusade against the reform scheme which the
Tsar proposed to carry out. Impressed by their attitude he first
submitted it to his ministers in order to learn from their lips what
results they expected it to yield. A majority warmly declared for it
and, curiously enough, the Grand Duke Vladimir was one of its most
convinced spokesmen. I was personally acquainted with most of the
others,[8] but nearly half the votes were on the opposite side.
The leader of the dissentients, the celebrated K. Pobiedonostseff,
whose disinterested brooding over the cavernous deeps of human nature
impressed the Emperor, was a host in himself. It was my privilege to
meet this remarkable man over and over again during those historic
days and later. After the Council of Ministers[9] at which
Melikoff's reform project was debated, I heard him on the subject and
watched him intently while he talked. For he looked like a man
possessed. His eyes were wild and his voice hollow like that, say,
of Samuel raised from the dead. One such scene in particular made a
deep dent on my memory. He had been inveighing against Loris
Melikoff, and asserting that the outcome of his project would be to
turn over the Empire and its destinies to the scoundrels who had
slain its protector and Tsar, and would fain annihilate all checks
and restraints, divine and human. And clutching his head with his
hands he repeatedly exclaimed, "They are mad, stark mad." Bessarion
Komaroff who was present remarked, "It is for you to protect your
imperial pupil from their folly." "Ah! if only the Emperor would
listen to me." "Have you doubts about it then?" "I am sure of
nothing. The decision lies with him. He has heard my views and also
those of Milyutin & Co. And he is hesitating between the two
courses. At first he seemed ready to ratify the sinister scheme, but
{80} happily he postponed the execution. And now we can still hope,
but only hope." Then turning to Komaroff, the editor of the oldest
journal in St. Petersburg, and to myself, who was then one of its
leader writers, he said, "The press has much to answer for and much
to make good. You must go to work and help us. There is no time to
be lost." The press had already gone to work with vigour and, in the
case of the Moscow thunderer Katkoff, with virulence. Intrigues
increased and multiplied and were conducted with profound secrecy by
the reactionaries. The Liberal ministers were listless and
self-satisfied, relying upon the Tsar's approval of the reform,
expressed after his father's death and accompanied by his promise to
carry it out. He would not go back on his word after that, they
said. They also thought he needed time to accustom himself to the
concession. And they waited. The others worked.
While the Tsar was hesitating between two courses Fate in its
ironical mood played a trick which probably decided him. The reform
which had actually been assented to by Alexander II. had, as we saw,
been hindered by the very men who were sacrificing money, liberty,
life, to attain it--the revolutionists. And now again, just when it
was about to be confirmed, had, in fact, been confirmed in writing by
the Tsar[10] and the ministers, these same revolutionists through
their executive committee sent him a long-winded, arrogant, and
argumentative letter[11] taking credit for the murder of his father,
but assuming that the son would see eye to eye with them and concede
to vulgar threats what they fancied had been denied to reason. They
ended their missive with a demand for a representative body to be
chosen by free general election and, until the voting ceased, for
liberty of the press, of speech, and of meeting. I received a copy
of this curious document from S.K., who remarked that its effect on
the Emperor would be like that of the red cloth on the bull in the
ring. "There is now no hope of a {81} constitution," he added. "The
executive committee of the revolutionary party is composed of
downright fools."
Rumours which ran wild in those troublous days credited the
celebrated General Skobeleff with a sudden dictatorial impulse to
which he was said to be giving reinless scope when chance or design
removed him from the scene. There was no doubt that he was supremely
dissatisfied with the course things political were taking, and it was
known that he had sulkily refused a post offered to him by Loris
Melikoff. I, who was then one of the representatives of the
anti-German tendency in the Russian press, and was also in touch with
an officer who was Skobeleff's intimate friend and boon companion,
was well aware of that. According to the improbable story current,
he harboured a plan to march at the head of a body of devoted troops,
surround the Winter Palace, arrest the Tsar, and proclaim a
constitution. In order the better to execute this scheme he took
Count Nicholas Ignatieff, who had been Ambassador to Russia, into his
confidence, and Ignatieff first approached Melikoff on the subject,
but receiving no encouragement from that quarter, and fearing to be
compromised, he denounced the plot to the Tsar. Such was the rumour.
But the project was so utterly out of touch with all the
circumstances that in the absence of good evidence, which is lacking,
I shrink from ascribing it to a man like Skobeleff. For although
ambitious he was also shrewd, had everything to lose by the probable
failure of the scheme, and little or nothing to gain by its success
which was doubtful. His sudden death, attributed to poison, has been
instanced as a corroborative circumstance, but Skobeleff's life--a
life like that of my fellow-student at the lectures on
Genesis--explains his death quite as satisfactorily as the assumption
that he fell by the hand of a member of the Holy League.[12]
Nearly two months passed in doubt and hesitation before the new Tsar
made up his mind what course to strike out. {82} In the end
Pobiedonostseff won him over to autocracy and received the order to
draw up a manifesto to the nation announcing the fateful decision,
which was duly signed and promulgated.[13] Loris Melikoff and some
of his colleagues, who had not been informed of the Emperor's gradual
conversion to the old ideas and had no foreknowledge of the
manifesto, resigned and fell into disfavour. The revolutionists were
roused to fury by the new course which was entered upon after so much
deliberation, persevered in with firmness, and sustained with more
method and thoroughness than is usual in Russian politics. Their
anger was impotent, however, against the systematic precautions
adopted by the new government, and they no longer had the sympathy of
the people, without which no great Liberal movement could lead to
practical results. The terrorists had overshot the mark and defeated
their object, and new problems of absorbing interest in the economic
domain received actuality and diverted public attention to other
channels. Thus closed a thrilling chapter of Russian history which
may be epitomised as a waste of energy for lack of vision. The
government reproached the revolutionists with being out of touch with
the people whose aims and strivings they misunderstood, and the
revolutionists hurled back the taunt. Both were right. In the
meanwhile the people's attitude towards the two adversaries resembled
that of Candide towards Pangloss when he set forth his proofs that
this is the best of all possible worlds, "Cela est bien dit, mais il
faut cultiver notre jardin."
[1] By way of preparation I had studied Slav languages at the
University of Innsbruck, and afterwards under Leskien at the
University of Leipzig, and the first period of my sojourn in Russia
was spent on the Steppes of the Ukraine where I acquired the language
of the province. Since then I lived and worked for years in close
contact with the Liberal movement under three Tsars, and in various
capacities as a student, as a graduate of two Russian Faculties and
Universities, as Professor of Comparative Philology at the University
of Kharkoff, as the author of several literary and scientific works,
as leader-writer of two Russian newspapers and editor of one, as
representative of the Daily Telegraph, and adviser to my eminent
friend Count Witte.
[2] Others were Russia's only philosopher, Vladimir Solovieff, who
afterwards became a close friend of mine; Katkoff, the greatest
journalist Russia ever had, the editor of the principal Moscow daily
paper; and Bilbassoff, editor of the Petersburg _Goloss_.
[3] Timasheff.
[4] The "Kadets" are the Constitutional Democrats presided over by M.
Milyukoff. The name arose from the initial letters of the two
words--K.D.
[5] This injunction was religiously carried out by a number of ardent
spirits of both sexes who grudged no effort, shrank from no
sacrifices to reach the hearts and brains of the lower classes.
Sophia Perovskaya went among the working women of the capital,
subsequently joined the terrorists, and finally was hanged for the
murder of Alexander II. I looked upon her face as she was being
taken to the place of execution. Officers like Shishka abandoned the
army and became factory hands. Altogether no fewer than three
thousand apostles thus went among their own and their own received
them not. The peasants and the workers looked with contemptuous
wonder upon these political missionaries.
[6] In the same house there was a joint-stock concern of which
Patkanian was a director, and I had an appointment there with him at
the very hour when the whole place was to have been blown up had the
Tsar returned that way.
[7] A dvornik, literally the "gate keeper," is one of several house
janitors whose duties were to carry fuel to the flats, take the
passports to the police, watch at the gates all night, and spy on the
inmates of the house.
[8] Saburoff, Nabokoff, Solsky, Abaza, and Milyutin.
[9] Held on 30th March, 1881.
[10] By a remark penned on the project and by his announcement to the
Grand Duke Vladimir.
[11] Dated 10th/22nd March, 1881.
[12] A secret society for the protection of the person of the Tsar,
consisting of members of the nobility presided over by the Grand Duke
Vladimir, who agreed to adopt the methods of the terrorists, but
appear to have shrunk from redeeming their pledge.
[13] On 11th May.
{83}