As there was nothing more to be done in the direction of reform,
I tried to do what seemed to be possible under the existing
circumstances--only to become convinced of the absolute uselessness of
such efforts. In my new capacity of attaché to the Governor-General for
Cossack affairs, I made, for instance, a most thorough investigation of
the economical condition of the Usurí Cossacks, whose crops used to be
lost every year, so that the government had every winter to feed them
in order to save them from famine. When I returned from the Usurí with
my report, I received congratulations on all sides, I was promoted,
I got special rewards. All the measures I recommended were accepted,
and special grants of money were given for aiding the emigration of
some and for supplying cattle to others, as I had suggested. But the
practical realization of the measures went into the hands of some
old drunkard, who would squander the money and pitilessly flog the
unfortunate Cossacks for the purpose of converting them into good
agriculturists. And thus it went on in all directions, beginning with
the winter palace at St. Petersburg and ending with the Usurí and
Kamchátka.
The higher administration of Siberia was influenced by excellent
intentions, and I can only repeat that, everything considered, it
was far better, far more enlightened, and far more interested in the
welfare of the people than the administration of any other province of
Russia. But it was an administration--a branch of the tree which had
its roots at St. Petersburg--and that was enough to paralyze all its
excellent intentions, enough to make it interfere with and kill all
the beginnings of local life and progress. Whatever was started for
the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and
was immediately paralyzed by hosts of difficulties which came, not so
much from the bad intentions of the administrators, but simply from
the fact that these officials belonged to a pyramidal, centralized
administration. The very fact of their belonging to a government which
radiated from a distant capital caused them to look upon everything
from the point of view of functionaries of the government, who think
first of all about what their superiors will say, and how this or that
will appear in the administrative machinery. The interests of the
country are a secondary matter.
Gradually I turned my energy more and more toward scientific
exploration. In 1865 I explored the western Sayáns, where I caught
a new glimpse of the structure of the Siberian highlands and came
upon another important volcanic region on the Chinese frontier; and
finally, the year following, I undertook a long journey to discover a
direct communication between the gold mines of the Yakútsk province
(on the Vitím and the Olókma) and Transbaikália. For many years the
members of the Siberian expedition (1860-1864) had tried to find
such a passage, and had endeavoured to cross the series of very wild,
stony parallel ridges which separate these mines from the plains of
Transbaikália; but when, coming from the south, they reached that
gloomy mountain region, and saw before them the dreary mountains
spreading for hundreds of miles northward, all of these explorers, save
one who was killed by natives, returned southward. It was evident that
in order to be successful the expedition had to move from the north
to the south--from the dreary unknown wilderness to the warmer and
populated regions. It so happened, also, that while I was preparing
for the expedition I was shown a map which a Tungus had traced with
his knife on a piece of bark. This little map--a splendid specimen,
by the way, of the usefulness of the geometrical sense in the lowest
stages of civilization, and one which would consequently interest A.
R. Wallace--so struck me by its seeming truth to nature that I fully
trusted to it, and began my journey from the north, following the
indications of the map.
In company with a young and promising naturalist, Polakóff, and a
topographer, we went first down the Léna to the northern gold mines.
There we equipped the expedition, taking provisions for three months,
and started southward. An old Yakút hunter, who twenty years before
had once followed the passage indicated in the Tungus map, undertook
to act for us as a guide and to cross the mountain region--250 miles
wide--following the river-valleys and gorges indicated by the Tungus
with his knife on the birch-bark map. He really accomplished that
astounding feat, although there was no track of any sort to follow,
and all the valleys that one saw from the top of a mountain pass,
all equally covered with wood, seemed to be absolutely alike to the
unpractised eye. This time the passage was found. For three months we
wandered in the almost totally uninhabited mountain deserts and over
the marshy plateau, till at last we reached our destination, Chitá. I
am told that this passage is now of value for bringing cattle from the
south to the gold mines; as for me, the journey helped me immensely
afterwards in finding the key to the structure of the mountains and
plateaus of Siberia--but I am not writing a book of travel, and must
stop.
* * * * *
The years that I spent in Siberia taught me many lessons which I
could hardly have learned elsewhere. I soon realized the absolute
impossibility of doing anything really useful for the masses of the
people by means of the administrative machinery. With this illusion
I parted for ever. Then I began to understand not only men and human
character, but also the inner springs of the life of human society.
The constructive work of the unknown masses, which so seldom finds
any mention in books, and the importance of that constructive work in
the growth of forms of society, appeared before my eyes in a clear
light. To witness, for instance, the ways in which the communities of
Dukhobórtsy (brothers of those who are now settling in Canada, and who
found such a hearty support in England and the United States) migrated
to the Amúr region; to see the immense advantages which they got from
their semi-communistic brotherly organization; and to realize what
a success their colonization was, amidst all the failures of State
colonization, was learning something which cannot be learned from
books. Again, to live with natives, to see at work the complex forms
of social organization which they have elaborated far away from the
influence of any civilization, was, as it were, to store up floods
of light which illuminated my subsequent reading. The part which the
unknown masses play in the accomplishment of all important historical
events, and even in war, became evident to me from direct observation,
and I came to hold ideas similar to those which Tolstóy expresses
concerning the leaders and the masses in his monumental work, ‘War and
Peace.’
Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s family, I entered active life,
like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the
necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like.
But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and
to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy
consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on
the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of
common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade,
but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned and the aim can
be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.
Although I did not then formulate my observations in terms borrowed
from party struggles, I may say now that I lost in Siberia whatever
faith in State discipline I had cherished before. I was prepared to
become an anarchist.
From the age of nineteen to twenty-five I had to work out important
schemes of reform, to deal with hundreds of men on the Amúr, to
prepare and to make risky expeditions with ridiculously small means,
and so on; and if all these things ended more or less successfully,
I account for it only by the fact that I soon understood that in
serious work commanding and discipline are of little avail. Men of
initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been
given, the enterprise must be conducted, especially in Russia, not in
military fashion, but in a sort of communal way, by means of common
understanding. I wish that all framers of plans of State discipline
could pass through the school of real life before they begin to frame
their State Utopias: we should then hear far less than at present of
schemes of military and pyramidal organization of society.
With all that, life in Siberia became less and less attractive for
me, although my brother Alexander had joined me in 1864 at Irkútsk,
where he commanded a squadron of Cossacks. We were happy to be
together; we read a great deal and discussed all the philosophical,
scientific, and sociological questions of the day; but we both longed
after intellectual life, and there was none in Siberia. The occasional
passage through Irkútsk of Raphael Pumpelly or of Adolph Bastian--the
only two men of science who visited our capital during my stay
there--was quite an event for both of us. The scientific and especially
the political life of Western Europe, of which we heard through the
papers, attracted us, and the return to Russia was the subject to
which we continually came back in our conversations. Finally, the
insurrection of the Polish exiles in 1866 opened our eyes to the false
position we both occupied as officers of the Russian army.