We feel the cost of war, and know that it must be absolutely more
expensive to the Russian than it is to our own. How long is the Russian
pocket? how strong is the Russian arm? are very natural questions. A
German gentleman in the United States, long resident in Russia, has
published a report upon the subject not altogether tallying with some
other reports that come to us from the Old World by way of the New. The
account Mr. Donai gives is nearly to the following effect:
Fifty millions of Russian subjects yield to their Czar not more than a
revenue of twenty millions sterling. More cannot be extracted from the
people; and, out of this, a large army of soldiers is not, it stands
to reason, too liberally paid. Every member of the Russian population,
taking one with another, pays eight shillings a year for being ruled
imperially, with little or nothing more to pay for local government of
any kind. In the same way, every Austrian pays twelve shillings; every
Prussian eighteen shillings; every Frenchman forty-four shillings; and
every Englishman forty-eight shillings to the resources of the nation,
besides considerable sums towards local expenditure. Public expenses
suggest, roughly, a nation’s wealth, and Russia, judged by this
test, is inhabited by a people manifestly poor. Whenever war arises,
therefore, the Czar goes abroad to borrow, and there is, every year, a
deficiency in the imperial budget. If all the European money-lenders
buttoned up their pockets closely, Russian war must cease. How these
loan contractors will ever get back more than interest on capital, it
is not easy to see; for, if borrowing continues, even the receipt of
interest by them may become precarious.
The only direct tax in Russia is the poll tax, yielding less than
three-and-a-half millions sterling; add to it the license-duty paid by
merchants and tradesmen, and the sum becomes five millions. We speak
only of pounds sterling, because the value of sums stated in silver
roubles (the national denomination in which Russian accounts are
computed) is less clearly perceived. The customs’ duties yield five
millions more to the revenue; and these duties fall entirely on the
upper classes; as the Russian peasant does not make any appreciable
use of foreign goods. Crown estates yield less than three millions and
a half; and under the head crown estates are included mines, forests,
and gold-washings, with nearly half the estates in the empire, the real
annual profit obtained from each crown peasant being not more than
three shillings and fourpence. The rest of the imperial revenue is
extracted from the sale of brandy.
The Czar is the great brandy-merchant to his people. The brandy trade
is his monopoly, and his chief means of livelihood as a potentate.
Before he took to the spirit-trade, licenses for the distillation and
retailing of brandy used to be always sold to the same persons, who
acquired enormous wealth by their transactions. Government, aware
of this, reduced their profits by conditions and changes which at
last drove out of the market all but those persons who carried on
a wholesale business on the largest scale. A few hundred wholesale
distilling firms, too deeply concerned in their trade to bring it to
a stand-still, carried on their business at the mercy of the emperor;
who soon ordered that all brandy produced by the distillers should be
sold to the government, which then doubled its quantity with water, and
supplied it to licensed dealers for retail sale--of course, after more
dilution--at fixed prices to the public. Licenses are sold by auction,
and their prices are often run up by agents of the government; so that
speculators in them are almost as likely to be ruined as to thrive.
Much has been said of a mysterious treasure belonging to the crown,
yearly augmented by a procession of millions of roubles to the vaults
of the fortress of Saint Petersburg. Mr. Donai does not believe in this
problematical deposit of wealth; because its sources, being such as
have been here detailed including borrowed money, cannot accumulate.
Borrowers are not usually people whose coffers overflow with millions.
The real truth is that the Russian government gets money as savages
get fruit, by cutting down the tree; and lives upon capital as well
as interest. The loan of last year may have covered the interest of
former loans, and perhaps the cost of arms purchased in Belgium; but
even that is not certain, for six issues of paper money have already
been forced into currency; private contributions have been claimed and
urged upon the people from the pulpit with no very great result; and
this reminds us that one source of money to the Czar has not been named
in the preceding summary. It is the Russian church. There remains the
bag of money in the pocket of the church. When, in eighteen hundred
and forty-five, the empress was to go to Italy, the clergy paid a
contribution of two millions--the price of the forcible conversion of
the peasants in the Baltic provinces. The present war is set forth as
a holy war, and the church may be asked fairly to assist in paying for
it, and no doubt is asked very perseveringly, and for no small sums.
But how heavy is the purse of the Russian church? Its contents used
to be valued at twenty-six millions sterling; and, although the holy
fathers may contribute even to the last farthing, we unfortunately know
that twenty-six millions are soon swallowed up when a great war is
being waged.
Thus the case is said to stand as regards money. It is not any better
in respect of men. In time of war the Russians do not abhor military
service as they do in time of peace; because they are then better
treated, and have prospects of advancement. But it appears that the
Russians do not make a soldier fit to be led against the enemy until
after several years’ drilling. Deduct from the Czar’s million of men
four hundred thousand that can form lines only on paper, and three
hundred thousand destroyed in the present struggle, only three hundred
thousand old soldiers remain to cover the whole frontier, north, south,
east, and west. Another campaign will destroy them nearly all, and
there will remain nothing but an army of recruits. Fanaticism may be
infused into these by abolishing serfdom, and by other home appeals;
but their fighting powers will be very low indeed at the end of another
campaign. To urge on the war, therefore, without giving time for a
recovery of breath, is to destroy the attacking power of the Russian
empire; and all the arts and all the diplomacy at its command--and they
are both numerous and skilful--ever have been and ever will be to gain
time. Time is, with Russia, nearly synonymous with victory.
Its defensive power nobody is disposed to under-estimate. In this
matter, its real weakness gives it, in one sense, special strength.
Steppes, swamps, and vast regions almost destitute of roads, a bad
climate, a thin population barely civilised that vanishes before
approaching hosts and leaves only a desert for the enemy to traverse,
are obstacles that exist now as they existed in the days of Pultawa and
Moscow. Upon this the Czar reposes his last trust. But every condition
of the empire is such as to cause its vital parts to be rather upon
its western and southern borders than in its more central parts. Drive
the people into the inhospitable interior, and their difficulties
of subsistence will be only a little less insurmountable than those
of an enemy. Indeed, of the prodigious superficies over which the
empire extends--including, as it does, nearly one-seventh part of the
terrestrial globe--by far the greatest proportion is uninhabitable
to friend or foe. The enormous northern provinces, especially, are
destined to perpetual sterility, not only on account of the extreme
rigour of the climate, but because nearly all the great rivers by
which they are traversed fall into the Arctic Ocean; and are therefore
inaccessible for the whole or a greater part of the year. We may live
to see, therefore, that the Muscovite tradition of defence is quite as
vain a trust as most of the traditions blindly followed in these days,
unless the peace now in course of negotiation be lasting and secure.
The interruption--nay, the paralysis--of commerce occasioned by the
present war is another source of exhaustion. Except for ordinary
necessaries of life, Russia draws her supplies from foreign countries
in exchange for raw material produced from the estates of the nobles.
She has such endless supplies of timber that to give an idea of some
of her forests, it is said, as a specimen, that a squirrel might hop
from Saint Petersburg to Moscow from tree to tree without touching the
ground, and that she could, under a rational system, afford illimitable
tallow, hemp, and oil; but these sources of wealth are impeded and
crippled very naturally when nearly every port she possesses along her
limited sea-board is blockaded.