CIVILIZATION IN RUSSIA.
It may be a little startling to set out with the general proposition
that Russia is not only very far from being a civilized country, but
that it never can be one in the highest sense of the term. The remark
of Peter the Great, that distance was the only serious obstacle to be
overcome in the civilization of Russia, was such as might well be made
by a monarch of iron will and unparalleled energy, at whose bidding a
great city arose out of the swamps of Courland, where Nature never
intended a city to stand. But the remark is not true in point of fact.
Distance can be annihilated, or nearly so; and although Peter the
Great was probably aware of that fact, he might well have reasoned
that facility of intercommunication is not so much the cause as the
result of civilization. The wilderness may be made to blossom as the
rose through human agency, but it can only be done by divine
permission. I think that permission has been withheld in the case of a
very considerable portion of Russia. No human power can successfully
contend against the depressing influences of a climate scarcely
paralleled for its rigor. Where there are four months of a summer, to
which the scorching heats of Africa can scarcely bear a comparison,
and from six to eight months of a polar winter, it is utterly
impossible that the moral and intellectual faculties of man can be
brought to the highest degree of perfection. There must, of course,
always be exceptions to every general rule; but even in the dark and
bloody history of Russia we find that the exceptions of superior
intelligence and enlightenment have been chiefly confined to those who
availed themselves of the advantages afforded by more temperate
climes. Peter himself, the greatest of the Czars, and certainly the
most gifted of his race in point of intellect, perfected his education
in other countries, and in all his grand enterprises of improvement
availed himself of the intellect and experience of other races. Every
important improvement introduced into Russia during his reign was the
product of some other country, executed under foreign supervision.
This, perhaps, more than any thing else, may be said to afford the
most striking evidence of the enlarged and progressive character of
his mind. Yet the very same practice has been followed to a greater or
less extent by all his successors, and still, with the exception of a
railroad built by Americans, a telegraph system, a few French
fashions, and a movement professing to have for its object the
emancipation of the serfs, the country, beyond the limits of the
sea-port districts and those parts bordering on the States of Germany,
has advanced but little toward civilization since the reign of Peter.
With such a vast extent of territory, and such a variety of climates
as it must necessarily embrace, it may seem rather a broad assertion
to say that climate can be any obstacle to Russian civilization; but
let us glance for a moment at the general character of the country.
Between the sixtieth and seventy-eighth degrees of north latitude,
embracing a considerable portion of European and Asiatic Russia, the
winters are exceedingly long and severe, the summers so short that but
little dependence can be placed upon crops. The greater part of this
region consists of lakes, swamps, forests of pine, and extensive and
barren plains. The mines of Siberia may be regarded as the most
valuable feature in this desolate region. The production of flax and
hemp in the province of Petersburg, and the lumber products of the
forests which are accessible to the capital, give some importance to
such portions as border on the southern and European limit of this
great belt; but its general features are opposed to agricultural
progress. Whatever of civilization can exist within it must be of
forced growth, and be maintained under the most adverse circumstances.
South of this, between the fifty-fifth and sixtieth degrees of
latitude, comes a still wider and more extensive region, comprising
St. Petersburg, Riga, Moscow, Smolensk, and a portion of Irkutsk and
Nijni Novgorod. Here the summers are longer and the winters not quite
so severe; but a large portion of the country consists of forests,
sterile plains, and extensive marshes, and much of it is entirely
unfit for cultivation. The European portions are well settled, and
corn, flax, and hemp are produced wherever the land is available, and
large bands of cattle roam over many parts of the country. In its
general aspect, however, considering the duration and severity of the
winters, and the large proportion of unavailable lands, I do not think
it can ever become very productive in an agricultural point of view.
Between fifty and fifty-five degrees latitude, embracing the valley of
the Volga, is a more favored region, abounding in fertile lands, and
the summers are longer, but the winters are still severe, especially
in the eastern portions. From latitude forty-three to fifty, embracing
portions of Kief, the Caucasus, and other southern possessions of the
empire, the winters are comparatively temperate, and the summers warm
and long; but here, again, a great portion of this country consists of
mountains, arid plains, and deserts, and it is subject to extreme and
terrible droughts. Here is a vast extent of territory, comprising
about one hundred and sixty-five degrees of longitude and thirty-five
of latitude, which contains within its limits a greater variety of bad
climates, and a greater amount of land unavailable for any purposes of
human life, than any equal compass of territory upon the globe, if we
except Africa, which is at least doubtful. Within the limits of this
vast, and, for the most part, inhospitable region, we find nearly all
the races who, as far back as the history of mankind dates, have been
the most addicted to predatory wars, and the indulgence of every
savage propensity growing out of an untamable nature--Tartars,
Cossacks, gipsies, Turks, Circassians, Georgians, etc., and the
Russians proper, whose wild Sclavonic blood contains very nearly all
the vices and virtues that circulate through the veins of all these
races, besides many enterprising and unscrupulous traits of character
to which the inferior tribes could never aspire. Here we have a mixed
population, estimated in 1856 at seventy-one millions, including North
American possessions and tributary tribes, a great part of it composed
of totally incongruous elements, and with a variety of religions,
embracing about nine millions of Roman, Armenian, and irregular Greek
Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Israelites, and Buddhists--the
national creed being the Greco-Russe, which, it is estimated, is
professed by about fifty millions of the inhabitants, including, of
course, infants and young children, and many others who know nothing
about it. To keep all these incongruous elements in order, and provide
against foreign invasion, requires a standing army of 577,859 troops
"for grand operations," as the last almanac expresses it, besides
various _corps de reserve_, and a navy of 186 from steamers, 41 large
sailing vessels, and numerous gun-boats and smaller vessels, in the
Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the White Sea, and the Sea of
Azof. More than seven eighths of these are frozen up and totally
unavailable for six months every year. It is estimated that, after
allowing for the forces necessary to protect the home possessions of
the empire, of which Russian Poland is the most troublesome, the
number of troops that can be brought into active offensive operation
does not, under ordinary circumstances, exceed two hundred thousand
men, and it must be obvious, considering that Russia has but little
external sea-board, and must submit to the rigors of a climate which
locks up the best part of her navy at least half of every year, that
she can never attain any great strength as a naval power. I am
inclined to believe, therefore, that while this great nation, or
combination of nations, is, from the very nature of its climate and
topography, almost impregnable to foreign invasion, it can never
become a very formidable power at any great distance from home; and
there are considerations connected with its form of government, and
the difficulty or impracticability of changing it, which, in my
opinion, forms an insuperable obstacle to the education of the people,
and such general dissemination of intelligence among the masses as
will entitle them to take the highest rank among civilized nations.
Nor does the history of Russia during past ages afford much
encouragement for a different view of the future. Democracy existed
for several centuries before the country became subject to despotic
rule, and from the ninth to the fifteenth century the aristocracy
possessed no hereditary privileges; the offices of state were
accessible to all, and the peasantry enjoyed personal liberty. It was
not until the reign of Peter the Great--the high-priest of
civilization--that the serfs became absolute slaves subject to sale,
with or without the lands upon which they lived. In respect to
political liberty, there has been little, if any advance since the
reign of the Empress Catherine, who accorded some elective privileges
to certain classes of her subjects in the provinces, and reduced the
administration of the laws to something like a system. The absurd
pretense of Alexander I. in according to the Senate the right of
remonstrating against imperial decrees is perfectly in keeping with
all grants of power made by the sovereigns of Russia to their
subjects. There is not, and can not be in the nature of things, a
limited despotism. As soon as the subjects possess constitutional
rights at all binding upon the supreme authority, it becomes another
form of government. The great difficulty in Russia is, that the
sovereign can not divest himself of any substantial part of his power
without adding to that of the nobles and the aristocracy, who are
already, by birth, position, and instinct, the class most to be
feared, and most inimical to the process of freedom. It is not
altogether the ignorance of the masses, therefore, that forms an
insuperable barrier to the introduction of more liberal institutions,
but the wealth, intelligence, and influence of the higher classes, who
neither toil nor spin, but derive their support from the labor of the
masses whom they hold in subjection. It is natural enough they should
oppose every reform tending to elevate these subordinate classes upon
whom they are dependent for all the powers and luxuries of their
position. Admitting that the present emperor may have a leaning toward
free institutions, and possibly contemplate educating forty or fifty
millions of his subjects to run him into the Presidency of Russia, it
is obvious that the path is very thorny, and that the position will be
well earned if ever he gets there. But these acts of sovereign
condescension, although they read very well in newspapers, and serve
to entertain mankind with vague ideas of the progress of freedom, are
generally the essence of an intense egotism, and amount to nothing
more than cunning devices to subvert what little of liberty their
subjects may be likely to extort from them by the maintenance of their
rights. I do not say that Alexander II. is governed by these motives,
but, having no faith in kings or despots of any kind, however good
they may be, I can see no reason why he should prove any better than
his predecessors. Upon this point let me tell you an anecdote. You are
aware, perhaps, that the Finns have a Constitution which allows them
to do what they please, provided it be pleasing to the emperor. Like
the ukase of Alexander I. to the Senate, and all similar grants of
authority, it is not worth the parchment upon which it is written, and
in its practical operation is no better than a practical joke. The
Finns, however, are a brave, simple minded, and rather superstitious
people, and take some pride in this Constitution. It is the ghost of
liberty at all events, and they indulge in the hope that some day or
other it will fish up the dead body. Not more than a few weeks ago, a
small party of these worthy people, on their way to Stockholm for
purposes of business or pleasure, were arrested and put in prison by
the Russian authorities on the supposition that they differed from the
emperor in his interpretation of this liberal Constitution, and were
going to Sweden to lay their grievances before their old compatriots.
It is quite possible that this was true. I heard complaints made when
I was in Helsingfors that there was quite a difference of opinion on
the subject. But it is a marvel how they could misunderstand their
right under the Constitution, when there is a strong military force
stationed at the principal cities of Finland to make it intelligible.
So thought the emperor or his subordinates, and put them in jail to
give them light. The point in the transaction which strikes me most
forcibly is, that a power like that of Russia, after having wrested
the province of Finland from Sweden, with an army and navy far
inferior to what she now possesses, should be afraid that a handful of
Finns should tell a pitiful tale to the King of Sweden, and prevail
upon him to take their country back again. If this be the freedom
granted under the free Constitution of Finland, the restraints upon
personal liberty must be pretty stringent in dependencies where no
Constitutions at all exist.
By a natural law, the waves of despotism gather strength and volume as
they spread from the central power. It is scarcely an exaggeration to
say that the Autocrat of Russia is the least despotic of all the
despots in authority. The landed proprietors in the remote provinces
too often rule their dependents with an iron rod, and the strong arm
of the supreme authority is more frequently exercised in the
protection than in the oppression of the lower classes. The tribunals
of justice in these districts are corrupt, and the laws, as they are
administered by the subordinate officers of the government, afford but
little chance of justice to the ignorant masses. The landed
proprietors are subjected to various exactments and oppressions from
the governors, and these again are at the mercy of the various
colleges or departments above them, and so on up to the imperial
council and imperial presence. Each class or grade becomes
independent, despotic, and corrupt in proportion as they recede from
the central authority, having a greater latitude of power, and being
less apprehensive of punishment for its abuse. In truth, the nobles
and aristocracy are the immediate oppressors of the ignorant masses,
who are taught to regard them as demigods, and bow down before them in
slavish abasement. Now and then, in extreme cases, where the autocrat
discovers abuses which threaten to impair his authority, he sends some
of these aspiring gentlemen on a tour of pleasure to Siberia, and thus
practically demonstrates that there is a ruling power in the land. As
all authority emanates from him, and all responsibility rests with
him, so all justice, liberality, fair dealing, and humanity are apt to
find in a good sovereign, under such a system, their best friend and
most conscientious supporter. The success of his government, the
prosperity and happiness of his people, even the perpetuity of the
entire political system, depend upon the judicious and equitable use
which he makes of his power. There are limits to human forbearance, as
sovereigns have discovered by this time. The Czar is but a man, a mere
mortal, after all, and can only hold his authority through the
consent, indifference, or ignorance of his subjects; but should he
oppress them by extraordinary punishments or exactions, or withdraw
from them his protection against the petty tyranny of his
subordinates, he would find, sooner or later, that the most degraded
can be aroused to resentment. It is the belief on the part of the
peasantry, of which the population of Russia is in so large a part
formed, that the emperor is their friend--that he does not willingly
or unnecessarily deprive them of their liberties. This tends to keep
them in subjection. Indeed, they have but faint notions of liberty, if
any at all, born as they are to a condition of servitude, and reared
in abject submission to the governing authorities. They are generally
well satisfied if they can get enough to eat; and, when they are not
subjected to cruel and unusual abuses, are comparatively happy.
The unreasonable assumptions of power on the part of their immediate
governing authorities present a trait common to mankind. We know from
experience in our own country that the negro-driver on a Southern
plantation--a slave selected from slaves--is often more tyrannical in
the use of authority than the overseer or owner. We know that there
are hard and unfeeling overseers on many plantations, where the owner
is comparatively mild and humane. So far as he knows any thing of the
details of his own affairs, his natural disposition accords with his
interest, and he is favorable to the kind treatment of his slaves. But
he can not permit them to become intelligent beings. They may study
all the mechanical arts which may be useful to him--become
blacksmiths, carpenters, or machinists, but they must not learn that
they are held in servitude, and that the Almighty has given him no
natural right to live upon their earnings, or enjoy his pleasure or
power at the expense of their labor and their freedom. The same
condition of things, with some variation, of course, arising from
differences of climate and races, exists in Russia, and the results
are not altogether dissimilar. We find idleness, lack of principle,
overbearing manners, ignorance, and sensualism a very common
characteristic of the superior classes, mingled though it may be with
a show of fine manners, and such trivial and superficial
accomplishments as may be obtained without much labor. It is a great
negro plantation on a large scale, in which the gradation of powers
has a depressing tendency, causing them to increase in rigor as they
descend, like a stone dropped from a height, which at first might be
caught in the open hand, but soon acquires force enough to brain an
ox.
One of the effects of the strong coercive powers of the government is
perceptible in this, that the greatest latitude prevails in every
thing that does not interfere with the maintenance of political
authority; and although it is difficult, in such a country, to find
much that comes within that category, occasional exceptions may be
found. Thus drunkenness, debauchery, indecency, and reckless,
prodigal, and filthy habits, are but little regarded, while the
slightest approach to the acquisition of a liberal education, or the
expression of liberal opinions on any subject connected with public
polity, is rigidly prohibited. Most of the English newspapers are
excluded from the empire, although if admitted they would have but few
general readers among the Russians--certainly not many among the
middle or lower classes. No publication on political economy, no work
of any kind relating to the science of government or the natural
rights of man; nothing, in short, calculated to impair the faith of
the people in the necessity of their political servitude, is permitted
to enter the country without a most careful examination. A rigid
censorship is exercised over the press, the libraries, the public
colleges, the schools, and all institutions having in view the
education of the people and the dissemination of intelligence. The
Censorial Bureau is in itself an important branch of the government,
having its representatives diffused throughout every province, in
every public institution, and even extending its ramifications into
the sacred realms of private life; for it is a well-known fact that a
family can not employ a private tutor whose antecedents and political
proclivities have not undergone the scrutiny and received the official
sanction of the censorial authorities.
How can a country, under such circumstances, be expected to take a
high rank among the enlightened nations of the earth? The very germ of
its existence is founded in the suppression of intelligence. It may
enjoy a limited advancement, but there can be no great progress in any
direction which does not tend at the same time to the subversion of a
despotic rule. Even the theatres, operas, _cafes_, and all places of
public amusement, are under the same rigid surveillance. No play can
be performed, no opera given, no _cafe_ opened, no garden amusements
offered to the public, unless under the supervision and with the
sanction of the censorial authorities. In all well-regulated
communities there must be, of course, some local or municipal
restrictions respecting popular amusements, based upon a regard for
public morals, but in this case the question of morality is not taken
into much account. Provided there is nothing politically objectionable
in the performance, and it has no tendency to make the people better
acquainted with the rottenness of courts, the selfishness, wickedness,
and insincerity of men in authority, and their own rights as human
beings--provided the theme be _Jishn za Zara_--"Your life for your
Czar," or the exhibition a voluptuous display--provided it be merely a
matter of abject adulation or fashionable sensation, the most
fastidious censor can find no fault with it. What, then, does the
education of the masses amount to? We read of lectures for the
diffusion of knowledge among the people; of colleges for young men; of
various institutions of learning; of a liberal system of common
schools for the poor. All this is very well in its way. A little light
is better than none when the road is crooked, and the country abounds
in ruts and deep pitfalls. But the lights shed by these institutions
are much obscured by the official glasses through which they shine.
The building of fortifications; the manufacture of gunpowder; the use
of guns and swords; the beauties of rhetoric abounding in the drill
manual; the eloquence of batteries and broadsides; the poetry of
ditching and draining; the ethics of primary obedience to the
authorities, and afterward to God and reason; all that pertains to
rapine, bloodshed, and wholesale murder--the noble art of mutilating
men in the most effective manner, and the best method of cutting them
up or putting them together again when that is done; the horrid sin of
using one's own lights on any internal problem of right or wrong,
religion or public policy, when the emperor, in the plenitude of his
generosity, furnishes light enough out of his individual head for
sixty-five millions of people--these are the principal themes upon
which the intellects of the rising generation of Russia are nourished.
In the primary schools a select and authorized few are taught reading,
writing, and arithmetic, but they seldom get much farther, and not
always that far, before subordinate positions in the army or navy are
found for them. Their education is indeed very limited, and may be set
down as an exception to the general ignorance.
It will thus be seen that the whole system of education has but one
object in view, the maintenance of a military despotism. In this it
would scarcely be reasonable to search for cause of complaint.
Doubtless the acquisition of knowledge is encouraged as far as may be
consistent with public security and public peace. But it is obvious
that under such a system these people can never emerge from their
condition of semi-barbarism. They must continue behind the spirit of
the age in all that pertains to the highest order of civilization.
Science, in a limited sense, may find a few votaries; the arts may be
cultivated to a certain degree; a feeble school of literature may
attain the eminence of a national feature; but there can be no general
expansion of the intellectual faculties, no enlarged and comprehensive
views of life and of human affairs. Whatever these people do must be
subservient to military rule; beyond that there can be little advance
save in what is palpable to the grosser senses, or what panders to the
savagery of their nature. A statesman or a philosopher, with
independence enough to think and speak the truth if his views differed
from those of the constituted authorities, would be a very dangerous
character, and be very apt to pursue his career, in company with all
who have hitherto aspired to distinction in that way, beyond the
confines of Siberia. Russia may produce many Karasmins to write
glowing histories of her wars and conquests, but her Burkes, her
Pitts, and her Foxes will be few, and her Shakspeares and her Bacons
fewer still. Her Pascal's Reflections will be tinged with Siberian
horrors; her Young's Night Thoughts will be of the dancing damsels of
St. Petersburg; her Vicars of Wakefield will abound in the genial
humor of devils and dragons, saints and tortures; and the wit of her
Sidney Smiths will have a crack of the knout about it, skinning men's
back's rather than their backslidings; effective only when it draws
human blood, and best approved by the censors when it strikes at human
freedom.
We find the results of such a system strongly marked upon the general
character. While equals are jealous of each other, inferiors are
slavish and superiors tyrannical. It is often the case that
overbearing manners and abject humility are centred in the same class
or person. Thus the Camarilla are overbearing to the bureaucracy, the
bureaucracy to the provincial nobility, and the provincial nobility to
the inferior classes. As I said before, it is a sliding-scale of
despotism. The worst feature of it is seen in the treatment of women.
Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat
meliorated their condition. Absolute physical cruelty would be,
perhaps, a violation of etiquette and good breeding; but neglect,
selfishness, innate coarseness of thought, and a general want of
chivalrous appreciation, are too common in the treatment of Russian
women not to strike the most casual observer. Certainly the
impressions of one who has been taught from infancy to regard the
gentler sex as entitled to the most profound respect and chivalrous
devotion--to look upon them as beings of a more delicate essence than
man, yet infinitely superior in those moral attributes which rise so
high above intellect or physical power--are not favorable to the
assumptions of Russian civilization. Yet, since the condition of woman
is but little better in any part of Europe, it may be that this is one
of the fashions imported from France or Germany, and since these two
claim to be the most polite and cultivated nations in existence, it is
even possible that the Americans--a rude people, who have not yet had
time to polish their manners or perfect their customs--may be mistaken
in their estimate of the ladies, and will, some day or other, become
more Europeanized.
But, in all fairness, if the Russians be a little uncouth in their
way, they possess, like bears, a wonderful aptness in learning to
dance; if the brutal element is strong in their nature, so also is the
capacity to acquire frivolous and meretricious accomplishments. Like
all races in which the savage naturally predominates, they delight in
the glitter of personal decoration, the allurements of music, dancing,
and the gambling-table, and all the luxuries of idleness and sensuous
folly--traits which they share pretty generally with the rest of
mankind. Tropical gardens, where the thermometer is twenty degrees
below zero; feasts and frolics that in a single night may leave them
beggars for life; military shows; the smoke and carnage of battle; the
worship of their saints and Czars--these are their chief pleasures and
most genial occupations.
But, with all this folly and prodigality, there is really a great deal
of native generosity in the Russian character. Liberal to a fault in
every thing but the affairs of government, they freely bestow their
wealth upon charitable institutions, and, whether rich or poor, are
ever ready to extend the hand of relief to the distresses of their
fellow-creatures. It is rarely they hoard their gains. There are few
who do not live up to the full measure of their incomes, and most of
them very far beyond. Whether they spend their means for good or for
evil, they are at least free from the groveling sin of stinginess. I
never met more than one stingy Russian to my knowledge; but let him
go. He reaped his reward in the dislike of all who knew him. Toward
each other, even the beggars are liberal. There is nothing little or
contemptible in the Russian character. Overbearing and despotic they
may be; deficient in the gentler traits which grace a more cultivated
people; but meanness is not one of their failings. In this they
present a striking contrast to a large and influential portion of
their North German neighbors, for whose sordid souls Beelzebub might
search in vain through the desert wastes that lie upon the little end
of a cambric needle.
In some respects the Russians evince a more enlarged appreciation of
the world's progress than many of their European neighbors. They have
no fixed prejudices against mechanical improvements of any kind. Quick
to appreciate every advance in the useful arts, they are ever ready to
accept and put in practical operation whatever they see in other
countries better than the product of their own. Thus they adopt
English and American machinery, railways, telegraphs, improvements in
artillery, and whatever else they deem beneficial, or calculated to
augment their prosperity and power as a nation. While in Germany it
would be almost an impossibility to introduce the commonest and most
obvious improvement in the mechanical arts--if we except railways and
telegraphs, which have become a military and political necessity,
growing out of the progress of neighboring powers--while many of their
fabrics are still made by hand, and their mints, presses, and
fire-engines are of almost primeval clumsiness, the Russians eagerly
grasp at all novelties, and are wonderfully quick in the comprehension
of their uses and advantages. A similar comparison might be made in
reference to the freedom of internal trade, and the encouragement
given to every industrial pursuit among the people, being the exact
reverse of the policy pursued by the German governments. Thus, while
we find them backward in the refinements of literature and
intellectual culture, it is beyond doubt that they possess wonderful
natural capacity to learn. They lack steadiness and perseverance, and
are not always governed by the best motives; but in boldness of
spirit, disregard of narrow prejudice, ability to conceive and
execute what they desire to accomplish, they have few equals and no
superiors. Combined with these admirable traits, their wild Sclavonic
blood abounds in elements which, upon great occasions, arise to the
eminence of a sublime heroism. Brave and patriotic, devoted to their
country and their religion, we search the pages of history in vain for
a parallel to their sacrifices in the defense of both. Not even the
wars of the Greeks and Romans can produce such an example of heroic
devotion to the maintenance of national integrity as the burning of
Moscow. When an entire people, devoted to their religion, gave up
their churches and their shrines to the devouring element; when
princes and nobles placed the burning brands to their palaces; when
bankers, merchants, and tradesmen freely yielded up their hard-earned
gains; when women and children joined the great work of destruction to
deliver their country from the hands of a ruthless invader, it may
well be said of that sublime flame--
"Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd, till the fire,
To come, in which all empires shall expire."
Truly, when we glance back at the national career of the Russians,
they can not but strike us as a wonderful people. While we must
condemn their cruelty and rapacity; while we can see nothing to excuse
in their ferocious persecution of the Turks; while the greater part of
their history is a bloody record of injustice to weaker nations, we
can not but admire their indomitable courage, their intense and
unalterable attachment to their brave old Czars, and their sublime
devotion to their religion and their nationality.