By Georg Brandes.
[From The Day, Nov. 29, 1914.]
Georg Brandes, Denmark's critic and man of letters, has lived
in many European countries and spent the year 1886-87 in
Russian Poland. His books on "Impressions of Poland" and
"Impressions of Russia" show his interest in the political and
social conditions of the Russian Empire.
The war raging in and out of Europe does not give the experienced much
reason to hope. The immense mischief daily caused by it is certain
enough. The benefits which are believed to be the result of it and of
which the various nations dream differently are so uncertain that they
cannot possibly be reckoned upon. Before those whose sympathy was with
the deep national misfortune of the Polish people, there rose the image
of the reunion and emancipation of this tripartited people under
extensive autonomy, and most probably under the protection and supremacy
of a great power.
For the present we are far away from that goal. Poles are compelled by
necessity to fight in the Prussian, Austrian and Russian armies, against
each other. Not the smallest attempt at emancipation has been made
either in Prussian Posen or in the Russian "Kingdom" or in Austrian
Galicia. We might even say that the dismemberment at present is going
deeper than ever, as it is now cleaving the minds as well.
The only indication of a future union is the manifesto of the Grand Duke
Nikolai, the Russian Field Marshal, to the Poles, issued in the middle
of August. It began: "Poles, the hour has struck in which the holy dream
of your fathers and grandfathers may be fulfilled. Let the borders
cutting asunder the Polish people be effaced; let them unite under the
sceptre of the Czar. Under this sceptre Poland will regenerate, free in
religion, language, and autonomy."
And it ended in the following way: "The dawn of a new life is beginning
for you. In this dawn let the sign of the cross, the symbol of the
sufferings and the resurrection of the people, shine."
How clearly this manifesto, with its surprising love of liberty, its
pious reference to the cross, bore the stamp of having been enforced by
circumstances, and how accustomed one had become to disregard promises
from the Russian Government of full constitutional liberty and the like,
as those given before had not meant very much either in Finland or in
Russia itself. Still the manifesto, as a sign of the time, was well apt
to make an impression on the great masses who had always heard the
authorities stamp as criminal plots, as high treason, what was now
suddenly called from the supreme place "the holy dream of the
forefathers."
The purpose of the proclamation was probably, above all, to prevent a
revolt in Russian Poland the moment hostile troops invaded it. On the
Austrian Poles the manifesto seems to have failed to produce its effect.
As these Poles enjoy full autonomy in Galicia, and for a century have
witnessed the severity and cruelty with which their kinsmen in Russian
Poland have been oppressed, they received the proclamation with loud
vows of faithfulness to the house of Hapsburg; nay, all the _sokol_
societies which in time of peace (keeping a decision in view) had
trained their members in games and the use of arms, placed themselves as
Polish legions at the disposal of the Government against the Russians.
But that was not all. The Ruthenian inhabitants of Galicia, one-half the
population of the country, founded _a League for the Release of Ukraine_
and flooded Europe from the 25th of August with notifications and
descriptions hostile to Russia. The founders did not withhold their
names. They are D. Donzow, W. Doroschenko, M. Melenewsky, A.
Skoropyss-Joltuchowsky, N. Zalizniak and A. Zuk.
And it has very soon proved that, in spite of the proclamation of the
independence of Poland, the Czar, at any rate, includes East Galicia in
Poland as little as the inhabitants are regarded or treated as Poles or
Ruthenians. The Russians were hardly in Lemberg, before this town and
the whole of East Galicia were called in the orders of the day old
Russian land and the inhabitants described as Russians, whom their
brothers had now come to set free.
What impression the imperial manifesto made in Posen can scarcely be
proved, as each hostile remark against Prussia would have been punished
as high treason.
The German Emperor has, however, no less than the Russian Czar, been
courting the favor of the Poles and trying to win them through promises.
One month after the issue of the Czar's manifesto, a proclamation from
von Morgen, the German Lieutenant General, was displayed in the
Governments of Lomza and Warsaw. In this the following sentences are to
be found: "Arise and drive away with me those Russian barbarians who
made you slaves; drive them out of your beautiful country, which shall
now regain her political and religious liberty. That is the will of my
mighty and gracious King." Knowing the passion with which the Poles have
hitherto been driven away from their soil and persecuted because of
their language, we learn from this proclamation that the German
Government has felt the necessity of outbidding the Czar.
As far as may be seen, the Czar's manifesto made very little impression
on the intellectual in Russian Poland, who, of course, received it with
much suspicion. The masses in Russian, as in Austrian, Poland have for
some time stood passionately against each other, hurling accusations of
treason to the holy cause of their native country, until a new party has
now been formed which is politically most unripe, but for that very
reason has an enormous extension. Its password is this: "We do not want
to hear of Russia or of Austria; we only want one thing: the Polish
State without guardianship from any side." In other words, we want the
quite impossible. Political oppression for almost one and one-half
centuries brings its own punishment to a people. In such a people
political skill too easily becomes local patriotism, or it remains in
the state of innocence.
Of what use is it to begin singing: _Polonia farà de sè_? That Poland
cannot become free by itself is evident to anybody who has any political
idea.
Still I am inclined to say, never mind the forms which the Polish
independence and thirst of liberty are taking: they seem to pass like a
purifying storm through all Polish minds. Many times before this has a
glorious future risen before the Poles--1812, when Napoleon began the
second Polish campaign; 1830, when the Poles were buoyed up by the
sympathy of Europe; 1848 and 1863. But hardly has a change of
established conditions appeared so possible and painful barriers so near
the point of falling, as in this great and dreadful crisis.
He who for a generation has been busy with Polish and Russian affairs
can therefore, without much difficulty, imagine how many young Polish
hearts are now beating and burning with hope, expectation and the most
noble aspirations.
Nevertheless, the state of affairs in Russian Poland is at present more
desperate than it has ever been before, during war and revolt; and this
is not due to the pressure of the conditions or the horror of the
situation, but is due to the Poles themselves, to the overstimulation
of the national feeling which sends forth its breath of madness all over
Europe and now whirls round in Polish brains to drive out magnanimity
and humanity, not to speak of reason, which, on the whole, has no
jubilee in Europe in the year 1914.
I dare truthfully say that for no other people have I felt the
enthusiasm that I have felt for the Poles. I have revealed this feeling
at a time when they were not the order of the day, and only very few
shared my sentiments. I pronounced this feeling long ago, but it had
slight effect in drawing the attention of the Poles to my writings about
them or in winning their thanks. The Poles did not discover my book
about them till ten years after it had appeared, and when it had been by
chance translated into German. To write in Danish is as a rule to write
in water.
It would be very ungrateful of me, on this occasion, when I am obliged
to use sharp words to the Poles, not to remember the indescribable
affection and kindness they have shown me in Russian Poland as well as
in Austrian Poland. Among them I have found quite incomparable friends.
For a long time I have therefore refused to say an unkind, not to
mention an offensive word. As far back as in 1898 I refused so
absolutely to make myself the advocate of the Ruthenians against them
that the Ruthenian leaders became my bitter enemies, who never tired of
attacking me, and I was mute as a fish when Björnstjerne Björnson, not
long before his death, upon application of the Ruthenians, attacked the
Poles, fortunately for them with such unreasonable exaggerations that
the attacks did no harm. (Björnson maintained that the Pole as such was
the devil himself as the Middle Ages had imagined him.) I knew better
than Björnson what might be said against electioneering and pressure on
electors in Galicia, but I remained silent because I considered it
unworthy to attack a people which was in such a difficult position and
which was able to defend many minor injustices committed by it as
self-defense. I considered it especially impossible for me to attack the
Poles to whom I was bound by honor and toward whom I bore the warmest,
most sincere sympathy.
It is therefore with no light heart that I write these lines.
Denial of the rights of man to Jewish subjects belongs to the nature of
Russia. Now and then Europe has been startled when an uncommon massacre
of innocent Jews has taken place, as in Kishineff, but all have known
and know that Russia stows her Jewish population together in the Polish
outskirts of the realm, stows them together so tightly that they can
neither live nor die, denies them the liberty of moving, the liberty of
studying, even the right of school--and university--education beyond a
certain (too small) percentage. Only such Jews who hold a university
degree are allowed to live in the capitals of the Empire. No young
Jewish woman is allowed to take up her abode near the universities in
Petrograd or Moscow, unless she has been enrolled as a prostitute, and
it has happened that the police have made their appearance and accused
her of forgery, complaining that she did not carry on her profession,
but was reading scientific books instead. If a man is, for instance, a
doctor of medicine, he may take up his abode in Moscow; in case he is
married his wife may live there with him. But if the couple has a
two-year-old child, the mother is not allowed to take it with her into
the railway carriage and let it live with her in the capital. For the
child has no right to live there. If this right is wanted a detailed
petition must be sent in to the Governor General, in whose power it is
to grant or refuse it.
In a few of the cases where plunder and murder of a Jewish population in
Russia have taken place, the outrages have partly been excused, or at
any rate explained, through the almost incomprehensible ignorance of the
peasants. Russia's most famous political economist, who at the same time
is a great estate owner, has told me himself that when the elections to
the First Duma took place he was informed that each of the peasants on
his estate had voted for himself. He asked them, surprised, what they
meant, and explained to them that in this way none of them could be
elected; but they answered with the question, "Does not each Deputy get
so many rubles a day? Yes. And do you think that we should let so much
money go to another if we, perhaps, might get it ourselves?"
The same prominent estate owner told me that one day he asked some of
his peasants if they really had partaken in a Pogrom which had taken
place in the neighboring parish--he could not believe it, as they looked
so good-natured. To his astonishment they answered yes, and when he
asked them about the reason they replied: "You know it very well." They
then explained that they had killed these Jews because the Jews had
killed their Saviour. He: "But that was so long ago and it was not they
who did it and it did not happen in this country." To which they, again
astonished, exclaimed: "Was it long ago? We thought it was last week."
It appeared that they had understood from the priest's explanation that
the crucifixion had taken place then and there.
Under such conditions one is not surprised by any outrage. But to see
the hatred of the Jews spread in Russian Poland, where people understand
how to read and write, that must surely fill one with wonder. The great
number of Jews in the old Polish Kingdom originated in the days of
Casimir the Great (1309-1370), who out of love for his concubine,
Esther, opened his country to the Jews and made conditions favorable for
them. Since then the number has increased, as the Czars locked up all
their Jewish subjects there. So they have been living separated and with
a special dress like the Jews of Denmark at the time of Holberg. They
have, however, felt and suffered as Polish patriots. As early as 1794 a
regiment of Jewish volunteers fought under Kosciusko; their Colonel fell
in 1809. In 1830 the shallow Polish national Government refused the
Jews' petition to be allowed to enter the army. As they then ventured to
apply for admission to the Polish public schools Nicholas I. punished
them, allowing 36,000 families to be carried away to the steppes of
South Russia, where the regulation for the enlistment of children
overtook them. All their small boys from the age of 6 years were sent to
Archangel in Cossack custody to be trained as sailors. They died in
multitudes on the way.
The evils which befell all the inhabitants of Poland regardless of their
creed for some time suppressed the hatred of the Jews which is always
lurking in the masses. The great men of Poland checked its development.
Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's greatest author, went so far that in his chief
work, Poland's national epic, "Pan Tadeusz" (1834) he makes a Jewish
innkeeper one of the most sympathetic leading characters. He is
introduced in the fourth canto as a genius in music, the great master of
the national instrument, the cymbal; and Mickiewicz makes the
culmination of his poem the moment when Jankiel before Dombrowski
himself plays the Dombrowski marche, symbolical of the whole history of
Poland from 1791-1812, the year in which the poem takes place, the
Napoleon year.
In the year 1860 the equalization of the Jews with the Catholics was a
reality in Warsaw, and when, in February, 1861, at two large public
places in Warsaw, the Russians had shot on the kneeling masses singing
the national anthem, ("Zdymem pozarow,") the Jews felt impelled to show
their national feeling through an unmistakable manifestation.
In masses they accompanied their rabbis into the Catholic churches just
as the Christians in crowds entered the synagogues to sing the same
hymn.
This last feature, the processions of the two creeds into each other's
churches singing the same song, made such an impression on Henrik Ibsen,
the great Scandinavian poet, that again and again he returned in his
conversations to this as one of the greatest and most beautiful
experiences he had ever had.
And now under the whirlstorm of madness which nationalism has driven
across Europe, all this is lost; nay, from a religious reconciliation it
has been turned into flaming hatred between the races.