perpetrated by this disgraceful institution, would fill up many
volumes, before the contents of which the most sensational novels
would appear tame and shallow. There is scarcely any sphere of
public or private life which is exempted from the irresponsible
control of this Inquisition of the nineteenth century. The verdict
of a Court has no value whatever for the Third Section. Not only
acquitted political offenders are as a rule transported,
administratively, to some distant town of the Empire, but even the
judges themselves, when they are considered to have passed too
lenient a verdict, are liable to be forced into resigning their
office, and to be then _exiled in company with the very prisoners
who had stood before them_!"
Lest this description should appear to be overdrawn, I may quote from
the letter of the St. Petersburg correspondent of an English journal,
which is certainly not unfavourable to the Government of Alexander II.
The letter was written after the recent proclamation of a state of
siege. And the writer says:--
"As proofs and instances, not so much of martial law as of the
repressive measures adopted (in many cases by ordinary
administrative agency, without the machinery of martial law), I may
mention that at the present time, as I am well informed, _more than
600 persons of the privileged classes are under arrest, to be
deported to Siberia without trial_. In one of the temporary
governor-generalships in the south of the Empire (Odessa), sixty
privileged persons have been already sent to Siberia without trial,
and 200 persons of this class are under arrest to be judged. So
great is the number of persons of this category to be escorted that
a practical difficulty is said to have arisen in connection with
their deportation. A noble, or privileged person, who has not been
judicially sentenced, when sent to Siberia by 'administrative
process' (as it is called, _i.e._, by the orders of the Third
Section, or Secret Police), must be escorted by two gensdarmes, it
being against the laws to manacle a privileged person who is
uncondemned. It appears that there are not gensdarmes enough thus
to escort the number of persons to be deported, and the Ministry of
Secret Police has, I understand, proposed to get rid of this
difficulty by sending the privileged persons fettered like ordinary
criminals.... The Third Section, or Secret Police, which is in its
proceedings essentially _extra leges_, claims to act independently
of any other department of the Empire. This institution, which lays
hold of suspected persons, whether justly or unjustly suspected,
and consigns them to Siberia at its pleasure, savours more of
Asiatic lawlessness than of enlightened European rule, such as it
must be the desire of all in authority to see established
throughout the Empire.... I have myself met with respectable,
honourable men, who have been arrested and imprisoned, in some
cases for a few weeks, in other cases during months, _followed by
years of exile in Siberia, without any charge being brought against
them_; and it is the possibility of this recurring to them, or to
others, that constitutes a Reign of Terror."
The above description is from the correspondent of the _Daily News_.
Clearly it is a very pleasant position to be a "privileged person" in
Russia. It marks its occupant, by preference, as a possible candidate
for exile to Siberia; the more cultivated classes being essentially
those which constitute the active element of political dissatisfaction.
Of the treatment of political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carried
on for a long time past, I have before me a thrilling description from
the pen of Mr. Robert Lemke, a German writer, who has visited the
various penal establishments of Russia, with an official legitimation.
He had been to Tobolsk; after which he had to make a long, dreary
journey in a wretched car, until a high mountain arose before him. In
its torn and craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar
to the mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took
away his breath, ascended from it.
Pressing the handkerchief upon his lips, Mr. Lemke entered the opening
of the rock, when he found a large watch-house, with a picket of
Cossacks. Having shown his papers of legitimation, he was conducted by a
guide through a long, very dark, and narrow corridor, which, judging
from its sloping descent, led down into some unknown depth. In spite of
his good fur, the visitor felt extremely cold. After a walk of some ten
minutes through the dense obscurity, the ground becoming more and more
soft, a vague shimmer of light became observable. "We are in the mine!"
said the guide, pointing with a significant gesture to the high iron
cross-bars which closed the cavern before them.
The massive bars were covered with a thick rust. A watchman appeared,
who unlocked the heavy iron gate. Entering a room of considerable
extent, but which was scarcely a man's height, and which was dimly lit
by an oil-lamp, the visitor asked, "Where are we?" "In the sleeping-room
of the condemned! Formerly it was a productive gallery of the mine; now
it serves as a shelter."
The visitor shuddered. This subterranean sepulchre, lit by neither sun,
nor moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into
the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a
sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day's work.
Over each cell a cramp-iron was fixed, wherewith to lock-up the
prisoners like ferocious dogs. No door, no window anywhere.
Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed, and
whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to a large
vault, partly lit. This was the mine. A deafening noise of pickaxes and
hammers. There he saw some hundreds of wretched figures, with shaggy
beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids; clad in tatters, some of them
barefoot, others in sandals, fettered with heavy foot-chains. No song,
no whistling. Now and then they shyly looked at the visitor and his
companion. The water dripped from the stones; the tatters of the
convicts were thoroughly wet. One of them, a tall man, of suffering
mien, laboured hard with gasping breath, but the strokes of his pickaxe
were not heavy and firm enough to loosen the rock.
"Why are you here?" Mr. Lemke asked.
The convict looked confused, with an air almost of consternation, and
silently continued his work.
"It is forbidden to the prisoners," said the inspector, "to speak of the
cause of their banishment!"
Entombed alive; forbidden to say why!
"But who is the convict?" Mr. Lemke asked the guide, with low voice.
"It is Number 114!" the guide replied, laconically.
"This I see," answered the visitor; "but what are the man's antecedents?
To what family does he belong?"
"He is a count," replied the guide; "a well-known conspirator. More, I
regret to say, I cannot tell you about Number 114!"
The visitor felt as if he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere--as
if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked
his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the
commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly asked by that
officer--
"Well, what impression did our penal establishment make upon you?"
Mr. Lemke stiffly bowing in silence, the officer seemed to take this as
a kind of satisfied assent, and went on--
"Very industrious people, the men below; are they not?"
"But with what feelings," Mr. Lemke answered, "must these unfortunates
look forward to the day of rest after the week's toil!"
"Rest!" said the officer; "convicts must always labour. There is no rest
for them. They are condemned to perpetual forced labour; and he who once
enters the mine never leaves it!"
"But this is barbarous!"
The officer shrugged his shoulders, and said, "The exiled work daily for
twelve hours; on Sundays too. They must never pause. But, no; I am
mistaken. Twice a year, though, rest is permitted to them--at
Easter-time, and on the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor."
IX.
Can we wonder, when we see the ultra-Bulgarian atrocities practised in
Russia, that "Terror for Terror!" should at last have become the parole
of the men of the Revolutionary Committee?
I will not go over the harrowing details of the events of the last seven
or eight months; they are still fresh in every one's remembrance. The
only measures that could stay this destructive contest are
systematically withheld by the Czar, who will not permit the slightest
display of popular sentiments within the lawful domain of Representative
Government. Many years ago a distinguished French writer described the
Russian system as "a tyranny tempered by the dagger." Alexander, too,
himself is fully aware of this tragic concatenation of events. He is
even known to have often, in the very beginning of his reign, expressed
a feeling of fear lest his own end should be a violent one, like that of
so many of his predecessors. The attempts of Karakasoff and Berezowski
have lately been repeated by Solovieff. Whilst strongly condemning the
deed of the latter, even the Conservative _Standard_ felt called upon,
by the dangers of the situation at large, to make the following
comments, which possess a lasting interest:--
"It would be well if this painful incident could be disposed of by
a homily upon individual wickedness and individual perverseness.
Unhappily, it is but too certain that not only the deed itself, but
the peculiar circumstances attending it, are closely related with
the existing condition of a considerable section of Russian
society. We are obliged to add that this condition is closely
connected, in turn, with the form of government and the methods of
administration that prevail in that country.... In spite of the
emancipation of the serfs from the condition of territorial
slavery, the Russian people have made little visible progress in
the acquisition of political freedom. The Czar is still an absolute
Sovereign; his Ministers still remain responsible to no will but
his, and their agents have to answer only to their superiors for
the manner in which they exercise authority.... The sanguine youth
of the nation, eager for a career, and burning for activity, finds
itself debarred from any course of distinction save that of arms,
or that official existence which too often places men in Russia in
antagonism to their own countrymen.... The old method of
government--of police supervision, of private espionage, of
imprisonment, of exile, of political silence--has been tried, and
the result is discontent and extensive conspiracy. We fear that
even the confession of sensualistic atheism by Solovieff will not
prevent his memory from being cherished by thousands of his
countrymen. They will forget everything, save his desire to endow
them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider
that he perished in their cause, and _what they will be most
disposed to blame will be the unsteadiness of his hand and the
uncertainty of his aim_."
The _Times_ also, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution,
acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core,
in the following words:--"It cannot be disputed that whole classes in
Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social
oppression and wrong.... A social condition like this is the natural
soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in
assassination is nourished."
When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and
ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present
under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from
Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong,
must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are
set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the
Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also
been crossed--if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian
institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the
disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests
among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of
General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and
prints were discovered, and executions both of officers, like Lieutenant
Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent
activity. But perhaps the most significant feature--and a promising one
too--is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the
barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be
handed over to the police! This is the strongest sign of a suspicion
against the army itself; and on the army the whole power of Czardom
reposes.
When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial
Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third
Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the
nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we
are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of
repression, the autocratic system has become untenable--that it must
sooner or later fall. Like the Roman Emperor, Alexander II. might be
glad if revolt had but a single neck. But is it possible for him to
imagine that there exists but one party of malcontents? Do not the very
arrests just mentioned belie such an assertion?
Conspirators are laid hold of by the Czar's _sbirri_ together with men
who would not think of armed resistance. Despotism is frightened, in
fact, by the very shadows on the wall. Even the Slavophil and Panslavist
parties--still the ready instruments of aggressive policy--have both
become imbued with Constitutional ideas that look like sacrilege in the
eyes of the Pope-Czar. The revolutionists of _Land and Liberty_ ("Zemlja
i Wolja"); the Socialist Jacobins who follow the doctrines of the
_Tocsin_ ("Nabat"); the Nihilists, properly speaking; and the moderate
Constitutionalists, are all alike the enemies of the present form of
Government. In some districts the peasantry have risen; and, remarkable
to say, the first troop of Cossacks that was led against the insurgents,
refused to fight them. These are portents whose gravity cannot be
mistaken.
Ten years ago, when the Napoleonic Empire still stood erect, I said, in
an article on "The Condition of France," in the _Fortnightly Review_:--
"A mighty change is undoubtedly hovering in the air. There may be
short and sharp shocks and counter-shocks for a little while; but,
unless all signs deceive, the great issue cannot be long delayed.
The calmest observer is unable to deny the significance of the
electrical flashes occasionally shooting now across the atmosphere.
It is as if words of doom were traced in lurid streaks, breaking
here and there through the darkened sky. We are strongly reminded
of the similar incidents which marked the summer of 1868 in Spain.
Those incidents were then scarcely understood abroad; yet they
meant the subsequent great event of September. Even so there are
now signs and portents in France--only fraught with a meaning for
Europe at large."
This was published in December, 1869. In the following year, September,
1870, Bonapartist rule was a thing of the past.
Czardom, on its part, may play out its last card by embarking upon a
fresh war. It will only thereby hasten its doom. Though in Russia
concentrated action, for the sake of overthrowing a system of
Government, is surrounded with greater difficulties than in France, I
fully expect that the day is not far distant when Autocracy must either
bend by making a concession to the more intelligent popular will, or be
utterly broken and uprooted. "Terror for Terror!" is a war-cry of
despair; but on such a principle a nation's life cannot continue. The
moment may come when the Tyrant will be driven to bay in his own palace.
And loud and hearty will be the shout of freemen when that event
occurs--of the men striving for liberty in the great prison-house of the
Muscovite Empire itself, as well as of all those abroad who have still
some pity left in their hearts for the woes of a host of down-trodden
nations.
KARL BLIND.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] Russland unter Alexander II. Leipzig: 1870.
[48] "The day and night of the battle passed, and the sufferers received
no food or water, and their festering wounds were undressed. The
following morning the Russians entered and took possession, and made the
day one of rejoicing WITH THE VISIT OF THE CZAR AND THE IMPERIAL STAFF;
but this celebration of the event, however short it may have seemed to
the victors, was a long season of horrible suffering for the wretched,
helpless captives who stretched their skeleton hands in vain towards
heaven, praying for a bit of bread or a drop of water. Neither friend
nor foe was there to alleviate their sufferings, or to give the trifle
needed to save them from a painful death, and they died by hundreds; and
before the morning of the third day the dead crowded the living in every
one of those dirty, dimly-lighted rooms which confined the wounded in a
foul and fetid atmosphere of disease and death. It was only on the
morning of the third day that these wretched, tortured creatures had
been left to their fate, that the Russians began the separation of the
living from the dead."--_Daily News_ Letter from Plevna.
[49] There is a notion in this country that Herzen, at one time, was
banished to Siberia, and lived as an exile there. The idea is founded on
a book of his, published in German and English, under the title of "My
Exile in Siberia." Herzen, however, was never banished to Siberia, but
only interned for a time at Perm, which is several hundred miles from
the Siberian frontier, and later at Novgorod. There, as a Government
official, he had to sign the passport documents of those who were
transported to Siberia. He left Russia, and lived abroad in voluntary
exile when he wrote his works of Panslavistic propagandism under
Socialist colours.
THE FIRST SIN,
AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE AND IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL TRADITION.
The idea of the Paradisiacal happiness of the earliest human beings
constitutes one of the most universal of traditions. According to the
Egyptians, the terrestrial reign of the God Ra, by which the existence
of the world and of humanity was inaugurated, was an age of gold, to
which Egyptians ever recurred regretfully; so that in order to convey
the idea of any given thing transcending imagination, they were in the
habit of affirming that "nothing had ever been seen like unto it since
the days of the God Ra."
This belief in an age of innocence and bliss, by which the career of
humanity began, is also to be met with amongst all peoples of Aryan or
Japhetic race, and was theirs anterior to their separation, the learned
having long agreed that this is one of the points on which Aryan
traditions are most plainly derivable from one common source with those
of the Semitic race, of which last Genesis affords us the expression.
But with Aryan nations this belief was closely linked with a conception
specially their own--that, namely, of four successive ages of the world;
and we find this conception attain to fullest development in India.
Created things, and among them humanity, are destined to endure for
12,000 divine years, each of which contains 360 years as reckoned by
men. This enormous period of time is divided into four ages or epochs:
the age of perfection, or _Kritayuga_; the age of the threefold
sacrifice--that is, the perfect accomplishment of all religious duties,
or _Trêtayuga_; the age of doubt or of the obscuration of religious
notions, _Dvaparayuga_; finally, the age of perdition, or _Kaliyuga_,
which is the present age, only to be brought to a close by the
destruction of the world.[50] The Works and Days of Hesiod show us that
precisely the same succession of ages was held by the Greeks, but
without their duration being calculated by years, and with the
supposition of a new humanity being produced at the beginning of each;
the gradual degeneracy, however, which marks this succession of ages is
expressed by the metals after which they are named--gold, silver, brass,
and iron. Our present humanity belongs to the age of iron, and is the
worst of all, although it began with the heroes. Zoroastrian Mazdeism
also admits this theory of the four ages, and we find it expressed in
the _Bundehesh_,[51] but under a form less nearly akin to the Indian
conception than was Hesiod's, and without the same spirit of crushing
fatalism. Here the duration of the universe is fixed at 12,000 years,
divided into four periods of 3000. In the first all is pure; the good
God _Ahuramazda_ reigns over his creation, in which as yet evil has not
appeared; in the second, the evil spirit Angromainyus issues from the
darkness in which he had up to this time remained inert, and declares
war against Ahuramazda, and then begins their conflict of 9000 years,
which occupies three of the world's ages. During the first 3000 years
Angromainyus has but little power; during the second, the success of the
two principles remains pretty evenly balanced; finally, during the last
age, which is that of historic times, evil prevails, but this age is to
terminate with the final defeat of Angromainyus, to be followed by the
resurrection of the dead and the beatitude of the risen just. The advent
of the prophet of Iran, of Zarakhustra (Zoroaster) is placed at the
close of the third age, or exactly in the middle of that period of 6000
years which is assigned to the duration of the human race under their
actual conditions.
Certain learned authorities--as, for instance, Ewald and M. Maury--have
striven to discover in the general order of Biblical history traces of
this system of the four ages. But impartial criticism must admit that
they have not made out their case; the foundations on which they have
tried to establish their demonstration are so entirely artificial, so
opposed to the spirit of the Scripture narrative, that they break down
of themselves.[52] And, indeed, M. Maury is the first to allow that
there is a fundamental opposition between the Biblical tradition and
the legend of Brahminical India or of Hesiod. In this last, as he
himself remarks, we see "no trace of a predisposition to sin transmitted
by inheritance from the first man to his descendants, no vestige of
original sin."