In January 1863 Poland rose against Russian rule. Insurrectionary bands
were formed, and a war began which lasted for full eighteen months. The
London refugees had implored the Polish revolutionary committees to
postpone the movement. They foresaw that it would be crushed, and would
put an end to the reform period in Russia. But it could not be helped.
The repression of the nationalist manifestations which took place
at Warsaw in 1861, and the cruel, quite unprovoked executions which
followed, exasperated the Poles. The die was cast.
Never before had the Polish cause so many sympathizers in Russia as
at that time. I do not speak of the revolutionists; but even among
the more moderate elements of Russian society it was thought, and was
openly said, that it would be a benefit for Russia to have in Poland a
friendly neighbour instead of a hostile subject. Poland will never lose
her national character, it is too strongly developed; she has, and will
have, her own literature, her own art and industry. Russia can keep her
in servitude only by means of sheer force and oppression--a condition
of things which has hitherto favoured, and necessarily will favour,
oppression in Russia herself. Even the peaceful Slavophiles were of
that opinion; and while I was at school St. Petersburg society greeted
with full approval the ‘dream’ which the Slavophile Iván Aksákoff had
the courage to print in his paper, ‘The Day.’ His dream was that the
Russian troops had evacuated Poland, and he discussed the excellent
results which would follow.
When the revolution of 1863 broke out, several Russian officers
refused to march against the Poles, while others openly took their
part, and died either on the scaffold or on the battlefield. Funds
for the insurrection were collected all over Russia--quite openly in
Siberia--and in the Russian universities the students equipped those of
their comrades who were going to join the revolutionists.
Then, amidst this effervescence, the news spread over Russia that
during the night of January 10 bands of insurgents had fallen upon
the soldiers who were cantoned in the villages, and had murdered them
in their beds, although on the very eve of that day the relations of
the troops with the Poles seemed to be quite friendly. There was some
exaggeration in the report, but unfortunately there was also truth in
it, and the impression it produced in Russia was most disastrous. The
old antipathies between the two nations, so akin in their origins but
so different in their national characters, woke up once more.
Gradually the bad feeling faded away to some extent. The gallant fight
of the always brave sons of Poland, and the indomitable energy with
which they resisted a formidable army, won sympathy for that heroic
nation. But it became known that the Polish revolutionary committee, in
its demand for the re-establishment of Poland with its old frontiers,
included the Little Russian or Ukraínian provinces, the Greek Orthodox
population of which hated their Polish rulers, and more than once in
the course of the last three centuries slaughtered them wholesale.
Moreover, Napoleon III. began to menace Russia with a new war--a vain
menace, which did more harm to the Poles than all other things put
together. And finally, the radical elements of Russia saw with regret
that now the purely nationalist elements of Poland had got the upper
hand, the revolutionary government did not care in the least to grant
the land to the serfs--a blunder of which the Russian government did
not fail to take advantage, in order to appear in the position of
protector of the peasants against their Polish landlords.
When the revolution broke out in Poland it was generally believed in
Russia that it would take a democratic, republican turn; and that the
liberation of the serfs on a broad democratic basis would be the first
thing which a revolutionary government, fighting for the independence
of the country, would accomplish.
The Emancipation Law, as it had been enacted at St. Petersburg in
1861, provided ample opportunity for such a course of action. The
personal obligations of the serfs towards their owners only came to
an end on February 19, 1863. Then a very slow process had to be gone
through in order to obtain a sort of agreement between the landlords
and the serfs as to the size and the locality of the land allotments
which were to be given to the liberated serfs. The yearly payments
for these allotments (disproportionately high) were fixed by law at
so much per acre; but the peasants had also to pay an additional sum
for their homesteads, and of this sum the maximum only had been fixed
by the statute--it having been thought that the landlords might be
induced to forgo that additional payment, or to be satisfied with only
a part of it. As to the so-called ‘redemption’ of the land--in which
case the Government undertook to pay the landlord its full value in
State bonds and the peasants receiving the land had to pay in return,
for forty-nine years, six per cent. on that sum as interest and
annuities--not only were these payments extravagant and ruinous for
the peasants, but no term was even fixed for the redemption: it was
left to the will of the landlord; and in an immense number of cases the
redemption arrangements had not been entered upon twenty years after
the emancipation.
Under such conditions a revolutionary government had ample opportunity
for immensely improving upon the Russian law. It was bound to
accomplish an act of justice towards the serfs--whose condition in
Poland was as bad as, and often worse than, in Russia itself--by
granting them better and more definite conditions of emancipation. But
nothing of the sort was done. The purely nationalist party and the
aristocratic one having obtained the upper hand in the movement, this
all-absorbing matter was left out of sight. It was thus easy for the
Russian Government to win the peasants to its side.
Full advantage was taken of this fault when Nicholas Milútin was sent
to Poland by Alexander II. with the mission to liberate the peasants in
the way he intended doing it in Russia. ‘Go to Poland; apply there your
Red programme against the Polish landlords,’ said Alexander II. to him;
and Milútin, together with Prince Cherkássky and many others, really
did their best to take the land from the landlords and give full-sized
allotments to the peasants.
* * * * *
I once met one of the Russian functionaries who went to Poland under
Milútin and Prince Cherkássky. ‘We had full liberty,’ he said to me,
‘to hold out the hand to the peasants. My usual plan was to go to a
village and convoke the peasants’ assembly. “Tell me first,” I would
say, “what land do you hold at this moment?” They would point it out
to me. “Is this all the land you ever held?” I would then ask. “Surely
not,” they would reply with one voice; “years ago these meadows were
ours; this wood was once in our possession; and these fields belonged
to us.” I would let them go on talking it all over, and then would
ask: “Now, which of you can certify under oath that this land or that
land has ever been held by you?” Of course there would be nobody
forthcoming--it was all too long ago. At last, some old man would be
thrust out from the crowd, the rest saying: “He knows all about it, he
can swear to it.” The old man would begin a long story about what he
knew in his youth, or had heard from his father, but I would cut the
story short.... “State on oath what you know to have been held by the
_gmina_ (the village community)--and the land is yours.” And as soon
as he took the oath--one could trust that oath implicitly--I wrote out
the papers and declared to the assembly: “Now, this land is yours. You
stand no longer under any obligations whatever to your late masters:
you are simply their neighbours; all you will have to do is to pay the
redemption tax, so much every year, to the Government. Your homesteads
go with the land: you get them free.”’
One can imagine the effect which such a policy produced upon the
peasants. A cousin of mine, Petr Nikoláevich, a brother of the
aide-de-camp whom I have mentioned, was in Poland or in Lithuania with
his regiment of uhlans of the Guard. The revolution was so serious
that even the regiments of the Guard had been sent against it from St.
Petersburg; and it is now known that when Mikhael Muravióff was ordered
to Lithuania, and came to take leave of the Empress Marie, she said to
him: ‘Save at least Lithuania for Russia.’ Poland was regarded as lost.
‘The armed bands of the revolutionists held the country,’ my cousin
said to me, ‘and we were powerless to defeat them, or even to find
them. Small bands over and over again attacked our small detachments,
and as they fought admirably, and knew the country and found support
in the population, they often had the best of the skirmishes. We were
thus compelled to march in large columns only. We would cross a region,
marching through the woods without finding any trace of the bands;
but when we marched back again we learned that bands had appeared in
our rear, that they had levied the patriotic tax in the country, and
if some peasant had rendered himself useful in any way to our troops
we found him hanged on a tree by the revolutionary bands. So it went
on for months, with no chance of improvement, until Milútin came and
freed the peasants, giving them the land. Then--all was over. The
peasants sided with us; they helped us to lay hold of the bands, and
the insurrection came to an end.’
I often spoke with the Polish exiles in Siberia upon this subject,
and some of them understood the fault that had been committed. A
revolution, from its very outset, must be an act of justice towards
the ‘down-trodden and the oppressed’--not a promise of making such
reparation later on--otherwise it is sure to fail. Unfortunately,
it often happens that the leaders are so much absorbed with mere
questions of military tactics that they forget the main thing. To be
revolutionists, and fail to prove to the masses that a new era has
really begun for them, is to ensure the certain ruin of the attempt.
The disastrous consequences for Poland of this revolution are known;
they belong to the domain of history. How many thousand men perished in
battle, how many hundreds were hanged, and how many scores of thousands
were transported to various provinces of Russia and Siberia, is not yet
fully known. But even the official figures which were printed in Russia
a few years ago show that in the Lithuanian provinces alone--not to
speak of Poland proper--that terrible man Mikhael Muravióff, to whom
the Russian Government has just erected a monument at Wílno, hanged
by his own authority 128 Poles, and transported to Russia and Siberia
9,423 men and women. Officials lists, also published in Russia, give
18,672 men and women exiled to Siberia from Poland, of whom 10,407 were
sent to East Siberia. I remember that the Governor-General of East
Siberia mentioned to me the same number, about 11,000 persons, sent to
hard labour or exile in his domains. I saw them there, and witnessed
their sufferings. Altogether, something like 60,000 or 70,000 persons,
if not more, were torn out of Poland and transported to different
provinces of Russia, to the Urals, to Caucasus, and to Siberia.
For Russia the consequences were equally disastrous. The Polish
insurrection was the definitive close of the reform period. True, the
law of provincial self-government (_Zémstvos_) and the reform of the
law courts were promulgated in 1864 and 1866; but both were ready in
1862, and, moreover, at the last moment Alexander II. gave preference
to the scheme of self-government which had been prepared by the
reactionary party of Valúeff, as against the scheme which had been
prepared by Nicholas Milútin; and immediately after the promulgation of
both reforms their importance was reduced, and in some cases destroyed,
by the enactment of a number of by-laws.
Worst of all, public opinion itself took a further step backward. The
hero of the hour was Katkóff, the leader of the serfdom party, who
appeared now as a Russian ‘patriot,’ and carried with him most of the
St. Petersburg and Moscow society. After that time, those who dared
to speak of reforms were at once classed by Katkóff as ‘traitors to
Russia.’
* * * * *
The wave of reaction soon reached our remote province. One day in March
a paper was brought by a special messenger from Irkútsk. It intimated
to General Kúkel that he was at once to leave the post of Governor of
Transbaikália and go to Irkútsk, waiting there for further orders, but
without reassuming there the post of commander of the general staff.
Why? What did that mean? There was not a word of explanation. Even the
Governor-General, a personal friend of Kúkel, had not run the risk of
adding a single word to the mysterious order. Did it mean that Kúkel
was going to be taken between two gendarmes to St. Petersburg, and
immured in that huge stone coffin, the fortress of St. Peter and St.
Paul? All was possible. Later on we learned that such was indeed the
intention; and so it would and have been done but for the energetic
intervention of Count Nicholas Muravióff, ‘the conqueror of the Amúr,’
who personally implored the Tsar that Kúkel should be spared that fate.
Our parting with Kúkel and his charming family was like a funeral. My
heart was very heavy. I not only lost in him a dear personal friend,
but I felt also that this parting was the burial of a whole epoch, full
of long-cherished hopes--‘full of illusions,’ as it became the fashion
to say.
So it was. A new Governor came--a good-natured, ‘leave-me-in-peace’
man. With renewed energy, seeing that there was no time to lose, I
completed our plans of reform of the system of exile and municipal
self-government. The Governor made a few objections here and there for
formality’s sake, but finally signed the schemes, and they were sent
to headquarters. But at St. Petersburg reforms were no longer wanted.
There our projects lie buried still, with hundreds of similar ones
from all parts of Russia. A few ‘improved’ prisons, even more terrible
than the old unimproved ones, have been built in the capitals, to be
shown during prison congresses to distinguished foreigners; but the
remainder, and the whole system of exile, were found by George Kennan
in 1886 in exactly the same state in which I left them in 1862. Only
now, after thirty-six years have passed away, the authorities are
introducing the reformed tribunals and a parody of self-government in
Siberia, and committees have been nominated again to inquire into the
system of exile.
When Kennan came back to London from his journey to Siberia he managed,
on the very next day after his arrival in London, to hunt up Stepniák,
Tchaykóvsky, myself, and another Russian refugee. In the evening we
all met at Kennan’s room in a small hotel near Charing Cross. We
saw him for the first time, and having no excess of confidence in
enterprising Englishmen who had previously undertaken to learn all
about the Siberian prisons without even learning a word of Russian, we
began to cross-examine Kennan. To our astonishment, he not only spoke
excellent Russian, but he knew everything worth knowing about Siberia.
One or another of us had been acquainted with the greater proportion of
all political exiles in Siberia, and we besieged Kennan with questions:
‘Where is So-and-So? Is he married? Is he happy in his marriage? Does
he still keep fresh in spirit?’ We were soon satisfied that Kennan knew
all about every one of them.
When this questioning was over, and we were preparing to leave, I
asked, ‘Do you know, Mr. Kennan, if they have built a watchtower for
the fire brigade at Chitá?’ Stepniák looked at me, as if to reproach me
for abusing Kennan’s good-will. Kennan, however, began to laugh, and I
soon joined him. And with much laughter we tossed each other questions
and answers: ‘Why, do you know about that?’ ‘And you too?’ ‘Built?’
‘Yes, double estimates!’ and so on, till at last Stepniák interfered,
and in his most severely good-natured way objected: ‘Tell us at least
what you are laughing about.’ Whereupon Kennan told the story of that
watchtower which his readers must remember. In 1859 the Chitá people
wanted to build a watchtower, and collected the money for it; but their
estimates had to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior. So they went
to St. Petersburg; but when they came back, two years later, duly
approved, all the prices for timber and work had gone up in that rising
young town. This was in 1862, while I was at Chitá. New estimates were
made and sent to St. Petersburg, and the story was repeated for full
twenty-five years, till at last the Chitá people, losing patience, put
in their estimates prices nearly double the real ones. These fantastic
estimates were solemnly considered at St. Petersburg, and approved.
This is how Chitá got its watchtower.
It has often been said that Alexander II. committed a great fault,
and brought about his own ruin, by raising so many hopes which later
on he did not satisfy. It is seen from what I have just said--and
the story of little Chitá was the story of all Russia--that he did
worse than that. It was not merely that he raised hopes. Yielding
for a moment to the current of public opinion around him, he induced
men all over Russia to set to work, to issue from the domain of mere
hopes and dreams, and to touch with the finger the reforms that were
required. He made them realize what could be done immediately, and how
easy it was to do it; he induced them to sacrifice whatever of their
ideals could not be immediately realized, and to demand only what was
practically possible at the time. And when they had framed their ideas,
and had shaped them into laws which merely required his signature to
become realities, then he refused that signature. No reactionist could
raise, or ever has raised, his voice to assert that what was left--the
unreformed tribunals, the absence of municipal government, or the
system of exile--was good and was worth maintaining: no one has dared
to say that. And yet, owing to the fear of doing anything, all was
left as it was; for thirty-five years those who ventured to mention
the necessity of a change were treated as ‘suspects;’ and institutions
unanimously recognized as bad were permitted to continue in existence
only that nothing more might be heard of that abhorred word ‘reform.’