CHAPTER V

RUSSIA

"God will save Russia as He has saved her many times. Salvation will come

from the people, from their faith and their meekness. Fathers and teachers,

watch over the people's faith, and this will not be a dream. I have been

amazed all my life in our great people by their dignity, their true and

seemly dignity. I have seen it myself, I can testify to it; I have seen

it and marvelled at it; I have seen it in spite of the degraded sins and

poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. They are not servile;

and, even after two centuries of serfdom, they are free in manner and

bearing,--yet without insolence, and not revengeful and not envious. 'You

are rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well be so, God bless you.

I respect you, but I know that I too am a man. By the very fact that I

respect you without envy I prove my dignity as a man....'

"God will save His people, for Russia is great in her humility. I dream of

seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. It will come to pass

that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his

riches before the poor; and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand

and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honourable

shame. Believe me that it will end in that; things are moving to that.

Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that

will only be understood among us. If we were brothers, there would be

fraternity; but before that they will never agree about the division of

wealth. We preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a

precious diamond to the whole world. So be it, so be it!"--DOSTOIEFFSKY,

_The Brothers Karamazov._

"The French are a decent civilised lot of people; but I wish we were not

allies of Russia." This, or something very like it, is the spoken or

unspoken thought of a very large number of persons, especially among the

working-classes in England at the present time. English suspicion of Russia

is no new thing, though there is no doubt that the suppression of the

revolution during the years 1906-1909 made it more general than ever

before. It was responsible, for example, for the Crimean War, and the

"crafty Russian" has become a catch-word almost as widely accepted in

England as the phrase "perfidious Albion" is upon the Continent. I have

seen Russia at her worst: I saw the revolution stamped out cruelly and

relentlessly; I have lived three years in Finland, and know the weariness

of spirit and aching bitterness of heart that comes to a fine and cultured

race in its perpetual struggle for liberty against an alien Government to

whom the word liberty means nothing but rebellion. And yet I am firmly

persuaded of the innate soundness of the Russian people, and of the

tremendous future which lies before it in the history of the world. I

believe too that the English are suspicious of Russia, not because Russia

is crafty or evil or barbaric, but because English people find it very

difficult to understand a race which is so extraordinarily different from

themselves. We fear the unknown; we suspect what is unlike ourselves; yet

we shall do well, in the present crisis, whether we are thinking of our

enemy Germany or our ally Russia, to remember the axiom laid down by Edmund

Burke, the greatest of English political thinkers: "It is impossible to

bring an indictment against a whole nation."

In any case, for good or ill, Russia is our ally, and if Germany is beaten,

Russia seems likely to play as great a part in the settlement as she did in

1815. It therefore behoves us, in our own self-interest if for no higher

motive, to try and understand the spirit and ideals of a great people, who,

as they did a century ago at the time of Napoleon, are once again coming

forward to assist Europe in ridding herself of a military despotism.

§1. _The Russian State._--Many of us do not realise the most obvious facts

about Russia. For example, our atlases, which give us Europe on one page

and Asia on another, prevent us from grasping the most elementary fact of

all--her vastness. Mr. Kipling has told us that "East is East and West

is West, and never the twain shall meet." But Russia confounds both Mr.

Kipling and the map-makers by stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific.

For her there is not Europe and Asia but one continent, and she is the

whole _inside_ of it. All Europe between the four inland seas, and all Asia

north of lat. 50° (and a good deal south of it too)--that is Russia, a

total area of 8-1/4 million square miles! This enormous country, which

comprises one-sixth of the land-surface of the globe, is at present thinly

populated; it has roughly 20 persons to the square mile as against 618 to

the square mile in England and Wales. Yet for all that it contains the

largest white population of any single state on earth, numbering in all

171 million souls. Moreover, this population is increasing rapidly; it

has quadrupled itself during the last century, and with the advent of

industrialism the increase is likely to be still more rapid. Many among us

alive to-day may see Russia's population reach and perhaps pass that of

teeming China. As yet, however, industrialism is only at its beginning in

Russia; more than 85 per cent of the inhabitants live in the country, as

tillers of the soil.

It will be at once evident that this fact gives her an immense advantage

over industrial nations in time of war. She has, on the one hand, an almost

inexhaustible supply of men to draw upon, while, on the other hand, her

simple economic structure is hardly at all affected. A great European war

may mean for a Western country dislocation of trade, hundreds of mills and

pits standing idle, vast masses of unemployed, leading to distress, poverty

and in the end starvation; for Russia it means little more than that the

peasants grow fat on the corn and food-stuffs which in normal times they

would have exported to the West. Furthermore, her geographical and economic

circumstances render Russia ultimately invincible from the military point

of view, as Napoleon found to his cost in 1812. She has no vital parts,

such as France has in Paris or Germany has in Silesia or Westphalia, upon

which the life of the whole State organism depends; she is like some vast

multi-cellular invertebrate animal which it is possible to wound but not

to destroy. Russia has much to gain from a great European war and hardly

anything to lose.

At first sight, therefore, there seems to be a great deal in favour of

the theory, somewhat widely held at the moment, that to crush Germany and

Austria will be to lay Europe at the feet of Russia, and that when Germany

has been driven out of France and Belgium, the Allies in the West might

have to patch up a peace with her in order to drive the Russians out

of Germany. Behind this theory lies the assumption that Russia is an

aggressive military state, inspired by the same ideals as have led Germany

to deluge the world with blood. This is an assumption which is, I believe,

absolutely unwarranted by anything in the history or character of the

nation.

Historically speaking, the Russian Empire is an extension of the old Roman

Empire; it is the direct heir of the Eastern Roman Empire, which had its

capital at Constantinople, as the mediaeval "Holy Roman Empire," founded by

Charlemagne in A.D. 800, was the heir of the Western Roman Empire, which

had its capital at Rome itself. But the Eastern Empire survived its Western

twin by a thousand years; the Goths deposed the last Roman emperor in 476,

the Turks took Constantinople in 1453. The Russian Empire, therefore,

which did not begin its political development until after the fall of

Constantinople, entered the field some six and a half centuries later than

the mediaeval empire of Charlemagne, which was indeed already falling

to pieces in the end of the fifteenth century. Thus Russia presents the

strange spectacle of a mediaeval State existing in the twentieth century,

and she is still in some particulars what Western Europe was in the Middle

Ages. She has, however, attained a unity, a strength and a centralisation

which the Holy Roman Empire never succeeded in acquiring. There is nothing

corresponding to the feudal system, with all the disruptive tendencies

which that system carried with it, in modern Russia; partly owing to the

constant danger of Mongolian invasion which threatened Russia for so many

centuries, partly as a result of Ivan the Terrible's destruction of the

_boyars_, who were analogous to the mediaeval barons, and of Peter the

Great's substitution of a nobility of service for that of rank, Russia

is politically more centralised than any mediaeval, and socially more

democratic than any modern, country. Russia has also solved that other

great problem which perpetually agitated the mediaeval world--the conflict

between the secular and the spiritual power. She is the most religious

nation in the world, but she has no Papacy; Peter the Great subordinated

the Church to the State by placing the Holy Synod, which controls the

former, under the authority of a layman, a minister appointed by the Tsar.

Yet, while she appears united and centralised when we think of her nebulous

prototype, the Holy Roman Empire, we have only to compare her with her

Western neighbours, and especially with that triumph of State-organisation,

Germany, to see how amorphous, how inefficient, how loose, how mediaeval is

the structure of this enormous State.

Peter the Great, who was more than any other man the creator of modern

Russia, saw clearly that the only way of holding this inchoate State-mass

together was to call into existence a huge administrative machine, and he

saw equally clearly that, if such a machine was not itself to become a

disruptive force through the personal ambition and self-aggrandisement

of its members, it must be framed on democratic and not aristocratic

principles. As Mr. Maurice Baring puts it, "Peter the Great introduced

the democratic idea that service was everything, rank nothing. He had it

proclaimed to the whole gentry that any gentleman, in any circumstances

whatsoever and to whatever family he belonged, should salute and yield

place to any officer. The gentleman served as a private soldier and became

an officer, but a private soldier who did not belong to the nobility, and

who attained the rank of a commissioned officer, became, _ipso facto_, a

member of the hereditary nobility.... In the civil service he introduced

the same democratic system. He divided it into three sections: military,

civil, and court. Every section was divided into fourteen ranks, or

_Chins_; the attainment of the eighth class conferred the privilege of

hereditary nobility, even though those who received it might have been

of the humblest origin. He hereby replaced the aristocratic hierarchy of

pedigree by a democratic hierachy of service. Promotion was made solely

according to service; lineage counted for nothing. There was no social

difference, however wide, which could not be levelled by means of State

service." This is partly what was meant when it was stated in the last

paragraph that Russia was socially the most democratic of modern countries.

The system established by Peter the Great exists to-day. Russia is

governed, not by a feudal nobility like that which ground the faces of

the poor in France before the revolution of 1789, nor by a number of

capitalists who live by exploiting the workers; for neither feudal nobility

nor capitalism (as yet) has any real power in Russia. She is governed by a

civil service, and by a civil service more democratic than our own, where

the higher posts are as a rule only open to members of the upper and middle

classes, less exclusive than that of India, where the higher officials are

nearly all recruited from the members of an alien race--a civil service,

in short, whose only close parallel is the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic

Church. Imagine the Roman Church as a secular institution, with a monarch

at its head ruling by hereditary right instead of an elected president like

the Pope, and you get a very fair idea of the Russian Government machine.

All that we associate with the word aristocracy in the West, the hereditary

principle, primo-geniture, the accumulation of the land and capital of the

country in the hands of a small class, the spirit of caste, the traditions

of nobility handed down with the title-deeds from father to son, are either

non-existent or of comparative unimportance in Russian society.

There is also none of the keen sensitiveness to minute social distinctions

and to the social proprieties which mark them that is so striking a feature

of the life in "democratic" England and to which we have given the name

"snobbery." There are of course social strata in Russia, but they are

broadly marked and there is no sense of competition between them. A peasant

is not ashamed of being a peasant, and when he meets a nobleman he meets

him on terms of spiritual equality while acknowledging his superior

position in the social scale. A twin-brother of English "snobbery" is

English "hypocrisy." This, as has been well said, is a kind of "social

cement," for it is a tribute to a standard of social conduct set up by the

dominant class in a nation. And since there exists no dominant class in

Russia, but only a dominant hierarchy drawn from all classes, hypocrisy is

absent from the Russian character. Mr. Stephen Graham, who was, I believe,

at one time a clerk in a London office, found our civilisation so

intolerable that one day he flung it off and escaped to Russia, where he

has lived as a peasant tramp for many years. To revolutionaries who met him

and expressed their astonishment that an Englishman should choose Russia of

all places to live in, he replied, "I came to Russia because it is the only

free country left in the world." There is, in truth, much to be said for

this startling remark. In no country on earth is there such unaffected

good-will, such open hospitality, such an instinctive respect for personal

liberty--liberty of thought and of manners--such tolerance for the

frailties of human nature, such an abundance of what the great Russian

novelist Dostoieffsky called "all-humanness" and St. Paul called "charity,"

as in Russia. All this, of course, did not come about as a result of

the bureaucratic system; it springs like that system itself from the

fundamentally democratic spirit of the Russian people.

§2. _Religion_.--The last paragraph will read strangely to those people

whose only ideas about Russia are gleaned from newspaper accounts of

the revolution of 1905. We shall come back to the revolution and its

significance later; but meanwhile we must notice another very striking fact

about Russian life--its all-pervading religious atmosphere. Russia is a

land of peasants. In England and Wales 78 per cent of the population live

in towns and the remaining 22 per cent in the country; in Russia something

like 87 per cent live in the country as against 13 per cent in the towns.

These figures are enough to show where the real centre of gravity of the

Russian nation lies. The peasant, or _moujik_, is a primitive and generally

an entirely illiterate person, but he possesses qualities which his more

sophisticated brothers in the West may well envy and admire, a profound

common-sense, a grand simplicity of life and outlook, and an unshakable

faith in the unseen world.

The interior of Russia is almost wholly unknown in the West; until a few

years back it was as much of a _terra incognita_ as Central Africa. But the

revolution led English writers and journalists to explore it, and when the

dust and smoke of that upheaval, which had obscured the truth from the eyes

of Europe, passed away, an astonished world perceived the real Russia for

the first time. "Russia," writes Mr. Stephen Graham, who has done more

than any other man to bring the truth home to us, "is not a land of

bomb-throwers, is not a land of intolerable tyranny and unhappiness, of

a languishing and decayed peasantry, of a corrupt and ugly church; the

Russians are an agricultural nation, bred to the soil, illiterate as the

savages, and having as yet no ambition to live in the towns; they are as

strong as giants, simple as children, mystically superstitious by reason

of their unexplained mystery." Russia is in fact 145 million

peasants--ploughing and praying. And here once again one is reminded of the

Middle Ages. Cross the Russian frontier and you enter the mediaeval world.

Miracles are believed in, holy men are revered as saints, thousands of

pilgrims journey on foot every year to Jerusalem, which is to every true

believer the centre of the universe and therefore becomes at Easter almost

a Russian city. Russia is the most Christian country in the world, and her

people are the most Christ-like. The turbulence and violence, so contrary

to the Christian spirit, which was an inseparable feature of mediaeval

feudalism is absent from Russia; and the gospel of non-resistance, of

brotherly love, of patience under affliction, of pity and mercy, which

Tolstoi preached so eloquently to the world at large, he learnt from

two teachers--the peasant of modern Russia and the Peasant of ancient

Palestine, who was crucified upon the Cross.

Yet it is a mistake to talk, as some do, of the power of the Russian

Church, or of "priestcraft." The Church has little political power or

social prestige. It is the power of religion, not that of ecclesiastical

institutions, which is the arresting fact about modern Russia. It is not

so much that Russia has a church, as that she _is_ a church. In England

we have narrowed religion down to one day of the week and shut it up in

special buildings which we call churches; in Russia it is impossible to

avoid religion. As you pass out of the gangway of the ticket-office at the

railway station, you find yourself in front of a sacred picture with a

lamp burning continually before it, and you are expected to utter a prayer

before beginning your journey. Every room in Russia has its _eikon_--is in

fact a chapel, every enterprise is sanctified by prayer and ceremony. All

English travellers in Russia have acknowledged this profound national sense

of religion, and contrasted it with the religious formalism of the West.

"Italy," wrote Mr. H.G. Wells, on his recent visit to Russia, "abounds

in noble churches because the Italians are artists and architects, and a

church is an essential part of the old English social system, but Moscow

glitters with two thousand crosses because the people are organically

Christian. I feel in Russia that for the first time in my life I am in a

country where Christianity is alive. The people I saw crossing themselves

whenever they passed a church, the bearded men who kissed the relics in the

Church of the Assumption, the unkempt grave-eyed pilgrim, with his ragged

bundle on his back and his little tea-kettle slung in front of him, who was

standing quite still beside a pillar in the same church, have no parallels

in England." Mr. Rothay Reynolds, in his interesting and sympathetic book

_My Russian Year_, writes in much the same strain: "In Russia God and His

Mother, saints and angels, seem near; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath

their gaze. The people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, perfumed

with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of the faith. Saints and

sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere; and so it

has come about that Russia is the land of lofty ideals." And Mr. Stephen

Graham, again, in his _Undiscovered Russia_, speaks with glowing admiration

of the Russian Church. "The Holy Church," he says, "is wonderful. It is the

only fervid living church in Europe. It lives by virtue of the people

who compose it. If the priests were wood, it would still be great. The

worshippers are always there with one accord. There are always strangers in

the churches, always pilgrims. God is the Word that writes all men brothers

in Russia and all women sisters. The fact behind that word is the fountain

of hospitality and friendship."

The religious aspect of Russian life has been dwelt upon at some length,

because it is the key to everything in Russia and has a direct bearing upon

the present war. "Religion in Russia," writes Mr. Maurice Baring, "is a

part of patriotism. The Russian considers that a man who is not Orthodox

is not a Russian. He divides humanity, roughly, into two categories--the

Orthodox and the heathen--just as the Greeks divided humanity into Greeks

and Barbarians. Not only is the Church of Russia a national church, owing

to the large part which the State, the Emperor, and the civil authority

play in it, but in Russia religion itself becomes a question of

nationality, nationalism, and patriotism." Russian Christianity, like

Russian Tsardom, is derived from the old Roman empire of Constantinople.

The Russian Church is a branch, and far the most important branch, of the

Greek Orthodox Church, which drifted apart from the Catholic Church, which

had its centre at Rome, and finally separated from it in the eleventh

century. As the greatest Orthodox Christian power in the world, Russia

naturally regards herself as the rightful protector of all Orthodox

Christians. Her mortal enemy, with whom so long as he remains in Europe any

lasting peace is impossible, is the Turk; and her eyes are ever directed

towards Constantinople, as the ancient capital of her faith. The spirit of

the Crusades is far from dead in the Russian people; the Crimean War, for

example, was fought in that spirit.

It will be at once apparent that Russia takes and must continue to take

a profound interest in the Christian peoples of the Balkans. Greeks,

Roumanians, Servians, Bulgarians and Montenegrins all belong to the

Orthodox Church; all have been engaged throughout the nineteenth century

in a struggle for existence against the common foe, Islam. Moreover, all

except the two first-mentioned peoples are allied to Russia by ties of race

as well as by religion, since they are members of the Slavonic stock. To

the average Russian, therefore, the bulk of the Balkan peninsula is as

much Russia Irredenta, as the north-east coast of the Adriatic is Italia

Irredenta to the average Italian; and as a matter of fact there is a good

deal more to be said for Russia's case than for Italy's. There is, however,

another great power which possesses interests in the Balkans and which

is viewed by Russia with a suspicion and dislike hardly inferior to that

entertained towards Turkey--I mean the empire of Austria-Hungary. A

Catholic state, controlled by Germans and Magyars, Austria-Hungary contains

in its southern portion a population of over seven million Slavs, some

three millions of whom are of the Orthodox faith. The Dual Monarchy has

constantly outraged national and religious feeling in Russia by her

treatment of this Slavonic population, and her annexation in 1908 of Bosnia

and Herzegovina, both of them Slavonic countries, was regarded as an open

challenge to Russia.

It is not therefore surprising that the Tsar has intervened in the present

crisis. Had it refused to come to the assistance of Servia when Austria

attacked her, the Russian Government would have been unable to face public

opinion. Even those who know Russia best are amazed at the complete

unanimity of the country in the matter of this war; and proof that it is

not merely a war of aggression inspired by Pan-Slavist sentiment may

be found in the fact that all political parties, revolutionaries,

constitutionalists and reactionaries, have enthusiastically approved it.

How far Germany misunderstood (or affected to misunderstand) the real state

of feeling in Russia may be seen in the despatch of July 26 by the British

Ambassador in Vienna, who, in talking the crisis over with the German

Ambassador and asking "whether the Russian Government might not be

compelled by public opinion to intervene on behalf of a kindred

nationality," was told that "everything depended on the personality of the

Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who could resist easily, if he

chose, _the pressure of a few newspapers._" England drew her sword in this

struggle on behalf of Belgium and in the name of civilisation and treaty

rights; Russia has done the same on behalf of Serbia and in the name of

common blood and a common altar. I, for one, firmly believe that her hands

are as clean as ours.

§3. _The Revolutionary Movement and its Significance._--It is now time to

say something of the revolutionary movement of 1905 and of its ruthless

suppression which gave Russia so evil a reputation in the eyes of Western

Europe. It was my good fortune to be a resident in the dominions of the

Tsar during the critical years of 1906-9, to be present at a session of the

first Duma and to mingle with the members of that historic assembly in the

lobby of the Parliament House, to catch something of the extraordinary

belief in the coming of the millennium which was prevalent among all

classes in Petrograd in the first charmed months of 1906, and finally

to have been acquainted with active revolutionaries and their friends

throughout the whole of my period of residence. I can therefore speak with

a certain amount of inner knowledge of the revolution; and though I do not

wish to claim any particular authority for the opinions stated below, which

are after all nothing but the opinions of a single individual who has lived

for three years in a corner of the Russian Empire, yet they have at least

this advantage over those entertained on the subject by the average

Englishmen, viz. that they are based not on newspaper reports but on

actual experience, and that they were arrived at gradually and--it may be

added--with considerable reluctance, since they had, as it were, to win

their way through a number of my own personal sympathies and political

prejudices. There is, of course, no room here for any detailed treatment of

a movement upon which a big book might be written, and I shall therefore

have to limit myself to a few rather bald generalisations which I must

ask the reader to accept not as the truth, but as what one man of limited

experience and vision conceives to be the truth about the Russian

revolution.

The main reason why English people get mistaken ideas about Russia is that

they imagine Russians to be nothing but Englishmen picturesquely disguised

in furs and top-boots, and because they interpret the political situation

in Russia in terms of English history and politics. As I have already tried

to show, Russians are built differently from English people, _from the soul

outwards_, while the political and social condition of the Russian Empire

is totally unlike anything that has ever existed in this country. If

therefore the real causes of the movement of 1905 and of its failure are to

be rightly understood, we must put away from our minds the desire to find

analogies in the English revolutions of 1642 and 1688, or the French

Revolution of 1789, or the social revolution of which Karl Marx dreamed;

Russia can only be interpreted in terms of Russian history and Russian

conditions. In one thing, however, the Russian revolution was like all

revolutions which have ever been or are ever likely to be, viz. that it was

concerned with two distinct issues, one a narrow question of political and

constitutional reform, and the other a far wider question involving an

attempt to reconstruct not merely the institutions of society but also to

transform the ideals and conceptions upon which society rested.

Let us first of all consider the narrower political issue. This was simple

enough; the outbreak of 1905 had as its primary object the setting up of

some form of representative government which would control the bureaucratic

machine. It has been already pointed out that the constitution of modern

Russia was largely due to the genius of Peter the Great. During the

nineteenth century, however, it became apparent to thinking Russians that

the constitution, for the sake both of stability and efficiency, needed

development in the direction of popular representation. The plea of

efficiency was really far the stronger of the two. Had Peter the Great been

eternal, he might possibly have continued to exercise an effective control

over the administrative system which he created; for he was a man of

superhuman energy and will-power. But most Tsars, who are men of ordinary

capacity, found it impossible to do so. The consequence was that

the bureaucracy acquired what amounted in practice to absolute

irresponsibility. Now irresponsibility is demoralising to any

administration, however democratic be the principles upon which its

officials are selected. A bureaucracy, ruling without proper external

control, becomes a prey to the demons of red tape, routine, officialdom and

place-hunting; it tends to stifle individual initiative and the sense

of moral responsibility, since it forgets the real object of its

existence--the good government of the country--in its passion for

self-preservation and its desire to secure the smooth-working of the

machine; it becomes inhuman, intensely conservative and corrupt. Above all

it develops a hyper-sensitiveness to lay criticism, which compels it to do

all in its power--and in Russia that power is unlimited--to crush freedom

of speech and freedom of the press. The problem, however, of devising some

popular check upon its action was an extremely difficult one for the simple

reason that the mass of the Russian people never have taken, and even

to-day do not take, any interest in political questions. Nevertheless the

Tsar, Alexander II., who was one of the most enlightened monarchs that

ever sat upon the Russian throne, determined to attempt a solution.

Unfortunately on March 1, 1881, the very day when Alexander had given his

approval to a scheme of constitutional reform, involving the establishment

of representative institutions, he was assassinated by revolutionaries.

This fatal act put back the clock for twenty-five years, the court and the

nation were thrown into the arms of the bureaucracy as their only protector

against terrorism, and reaction reigned supreme. Meanwhile the bureaucracy

grew more corrupt, more tyrannical, more inefficient every day, while on

the other hand the party of reform, thrust as it were underground and

hunted like rats, became more and more bitter in spirit and more and more

extreme in theory.

It is important to bear in mind that the struggle has never from beginning

to end been one which divided the nation as a whole into two hostile camps.

Public opinion, when it has not been indifferent, has swayed now to one

side and now to the other, according as it was stirred by some flagrant

act of oppression on the part of the bureaucracy or some outrageous act of

terrorism on the part of the revolutionaries. The truth is that the civil

war in Russia--for it was nothing less--was confined to quite a narrow

section of society. It has been said that there are practically speaking no

class distinctions in the English sense of the word, in Russia; there is,

however, a very real distinction between the _intelligentsia_ and the

peasants. The _intelligentsia_ are the few million educated Russians who

control, or seek to control, the destinies of the 145 million uneducated

tillers of the soil. There is nothing quite like them in this country,

though the expression "the professional class" describes them in part.

Broadly speaking, they are people who have passed through school and

university, and can therefore lay claim to a certain amount of culture;

their birth is a matter of no moment, they may be the children of peasants

or of noblemen. It is from this "class," if we can call it so, that both

the bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement draw their recruits. The

real tragedy of Russia is that neither the party of reform nor the party of

reaction shares, or even understands, the outlook and ideals of the people.

Russian culture is still so comparatively recent that it has not yet passed

out of the imitative stage; and, in spite of the work of Pushkin, Gogol,

and Dostoieffsky, the books that are read and studied in Russia are for

the most part translations from foreign authors. The result is that the

political and social ideas of the _intelligentsia_ are almost wholly

derived from countries whose structure is totally different from their

own. We shall presently see that this fact had an important bearing on the

development of the outbreak of 1905. It is sufficient here to notice

that the struggle was one between two sections of the _intelligentsia_,

political idealism against political stagnation, the Red Flag _versus_ Red

Tape.

After twenty years of bureaucratic government the country as a whole began

to grow once again restless. In this period a proletariate had come into

being. It was a mere drop in the bucket of 145 millions of peasants,

but its voice was heard in the towns, and it was steeped in the Marxian

doctrines of Social Democracy. Moreover the peasants themselves had their

grievances. They cared nothing and understood less of the political

theories which the revolutionaries assiduously preached among them, but

they pricked up their ears when the agitators began to talk about land and

taxation. Up to 1861 the peasants had been serfs, the property, with the

land on which they lived, of the landowner. At their emancipation it was

necessary to provide them with land of their own; the State, therefore,

bought what was considered sufficient for the purpose from the landowners,

handed it over to the peasants, and recouped itself by imposing a land-tax

on the peasants to expire after a period of forty-nine years. This tax was

felt to be exceedingly onerous, and in addition to this by the beginning of

the twentieth century it became clear that the land acquired in 1861 was

not nearly enough to support a growing population. These factors, together

with the disastrous Russo-Japanese war, which revealed an appalling state

of corruption and incompetency in the government of the country, furnished

the revolutionaries with an opportunity which was not to be missed. A rapid

series of military and naval mutinies, agrarian disorders, assassinations

of obnoxious officials, socialist risings in the towns, during the

year 1905, culminating in the universal strike of October, brought the

Government to its knees, and on the 17th of the same month the Tsar issued

his manifesto granting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and a

representative assembly. The revolution had, apparently, won on the

constitutional issue.

Yet what looked like the end of bureaucratic absolutism proved to be

the destruction of the revolutionary party. Had the reformers of 1905

concentrated their energies upon the task of turning the new legislature

into an adequate check upon the bureaucratic system, there is little doubt

they would have succeeded. As it was their success in this direction was

only partial. It is true that a Duma still sits at the Taurida Palace

at Petrograd, but it is elected on a narrow property franchise, and

its relations with the bureaucracy are as yet not properly defined; it

criticises but it possesses no real control. This failure of the revolution

was almost wholly due to the revolutionaries themselves, who, instead of

confining their attacks to the Government machine, sought to undermine the

entire structure of society and to overthrow the moral and religious ideals

of the nation. Moreover, their attitude was entirely negative, and they

possessed little or no constructive ability of any kind. Even the first

Duma, which contained the ablest politicians among the reformers, did

not succeed in passing acts of parliament, affirming the most elementary

principles of civil liberty; and it damaged itself irreparably in the

eyes of the country by refusing to condemn "terrorism" while demanding an

amnesty for all political offenders. The unique opportunity which the first

Duma afforded was frittered away in futile bickerings and wordy attacks

upon the Government.

Meanwhile, though a temporary truce was observed during the Duma's

sessions, its dissolution on July 21, 1906, two and a half months after

opening, was the signal for a fresh outburst of outrages on both sides. The

country was fast drifting into anarchy; agrarian risings, indiscriminate

bomb-throwing, _pogroms_, highway robberies carried out in the name of the

"social revolution" and euphemistically entitled expropriation, outbreaks

of a horrible kind of blood-lust which delighted in motiveless murder for

the sake of murder, were the order of the day. The revolution was

strong enough neither to crush the reactionaries nor to control the

revolutionaries themselves. The foundations of the social structure seemed

to be dissolving in a welter of blood and crime, and public opinion, which

in its hatred of bureaucracy had hitherto sided with the revolution,

suddenly drew back in horror from the abyss which opened out in front of

it. Stolypin, the Strafford of modern Russia, who condemned the extremists

of both sides, was called to the helm of the State; his watchword, "Order

first, reform afterwards," was backed by the force of public opinion; and,

as he stamped out the revolution with a heel of iron, the country shuddered

but approved. The peasants were pacified by the remission of the hated tax,

and by measures for providing them with more land; and Russia sank once

more into her normal condition.

But political incompetency is not a reason sufficiently weighty in itself

to account for the remarkable revulsion of public feeling against the

revolutionary party. Behind the narrow political issue lay the larger

philosophical and moral one; and it was the discovery by the country of the

real character and ultimate aims of the party which for a few months

in 1906 seized the reins of power that will alone provide a sufficient

explanation of one of the most astonishing political debacles of modern

history. The revolution was nothing less than an attempt by a small

minority of theorists and moral anarchists to force Western civilisation

upon Russia, and not Western civilisation as it actually is but a sort of

abstract "Westernism" derived from books. For the revolutionaries were far

more Western than the Westerns. They had not merely swallowed wholesale

the latest and most extreme political and social fads, picked up from the

literature of England, France, and Germany, but they possessed a courage of

their convictions and a will to carry them out to the logical conclusion

which many "advanced thinkers" of the West lack. They were not modernists

or new theologians but atheists, not Fabians or social reformers but

revolutionary socialists armed with bombs, not radicals but republicans,

not divorce-law-reformers but "free lovers." A remarkable book was

published in 1910 called _Landmarks_. It was written by a number of

disillusioned revolutionaries, and gives a vivid picture of the effect

which the foregoing principles had upon the lives of those who upheld them.

Here is one extract:

"In general, the whole manner of life of the _intelligentsia_ was terrible;

a long abomination of desolation, without any kind or sort of discipline,

without the slightest consecutiveness, even on the surface. The day passes

in doing nobody knows what, to-day in one manner, and to-morrow, as a

result of a sudden inspiration, entirely contrariwise--everyone lives his

life in idleness, slovenliness, and a measureless disorder--chaos and

squalor reign in his matrimonial and sexual relations--a naïve absence of

conscientiousness distinguishes his work; in public affairs he shows an

irrepressible inclination towards despotism, and an utter absence of

consideration towards his fellow-creatures; and his attitude towards the

authorities of the State is marked at times by a proud defiance, and at

others (individually and not collectively) by compliance."

As a set-off to this picture of moral chaos, it should be remembered that

these people when called upon to die for their revolutionary faith did so

with the greatest heroism. Nor is the picture true of all revolutionaries;

some of the noblest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet were

Russian revolutionaries. But these were the product of an earlier and

sterner school, the puritanical "Nihilism" of the 'eighties; and it is

impossible to deny the substantial truth of the above description as far as

the rank and file of the modern revolutionary school are concerned.[1] Such

people were divided by a whole universe from the peasants to whom they

offered themselves as leaders and saviours; and the schemes of regeneration

which they preached were not merely useless, because purely negative, but

were exotic plants which could never flourish on Russian soil. Thus the

revolution triumphed for about twelve months as a purely destructive force,

but when the necessity for construction arose its adherents found that they

were entirely ignorant of the elements of the problem before them.

This problem was the peasant, and the revolutionaries, though they had

worshipped the People (with a capital P) for years and had done their best

to convert them, had never made any attempt to understand them. And when

the peasant discovered what the revolutionary was like, he loathed and

detested him. "They hate us," a writer in _Landmarks_ confesses, "because

they fail to recognise that we are men. We are, in their eyes, monsters in

human shape, men without God in their soul; and they are right."

[Footnote 1: It is confirmed by all impartial observers, see _e.g._

Professor Pares' _Russia and Reform_, chap. ix., entitled "Lives of the

Intelligents."]

There is a characteristic story told by Mr. Maurice Baring about a certain

revolutionary who one day arrived at a village to convert the inhabitants

to socialism. "He thought he would begin by disproving the existence of

God, because if he proved that there was no God, it would naturally follow

that there should be no Emperor and no policeman. So he took a holy picture

and said, 'There is no God, and I will prove it immediately. I will spit

upon this _eikon_ and break it in pieces, and if there is a God He will

send fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is no God nothing will

happen to me at all.' Then he took the _eikon_ and spat upon it and broke

it to bits, and he said to the peasants, 'You see, God has not killed me.'

'No,' said the peasants, 'God has not killed you, but we will'; and they

killed him."

This story, whether true or not, is a parable, in which one may read the

whole meaning of the failure of the Russian revolution. It shows how an

attack upon what they hold sacred may rouse to acts of fury a people

who are admitted by all who know them to be the most tolerant, most

tender-hearted, and most humane in Europe. The notion that Russia is a

humane country may sound strange in English ears. Yet capital punishment,

which is still part of our legal system, was abolished in Russia as long

ago as 1753, except for cases of high treason. From 1855 to 1876 only one

man was executed in the whole of that vast empire; and from 1876 to 1903

only 114. On the other hand between the years 1905 and 1908 the total of

executions reached the appalling figure of 3629. This is but to translate

into criminal statistics the story just quoted; for the years 1905-8 were

the years when martial law reigned in Russia, the years of revolution.

The Tsar, it is true, wore the black cap, and the hangman's rope was

manipulated by the bureaucracy, but the jury who brought in the verdict was

a jury of 145 million peasants.

Such, in broad outline, is the history of the revolutionary movement which

is still so greatly misunderstood in England. It was not the uprising of an

oppressed nation, which successful for a brief while was finally crushed by

the brute force of reaction; it was a civil war between two sections of

a small educated class, in which the sympathies of the nation after

fluctuating for a time eventually came down heavily against the

revolutionaries. There is in truth every excuse for misunderstanding

amongst English people, especially if they belong to the party of progress

in English politics; for the obvious things about Russia are so deceptive.

All that one saw on the surface were, on the one hand, an irresponsible

bureaucracy using the knout, the secret agent, the _pogrom_, and Siberia

for the suppression of anything suspected of threatening existing

conditions; and, on the other, a band of devoted reformers and

revolutionaries risking all in the cause of political liberty, and dying,

the "Marseillaise" on their lips, with the fortitude of Christian martyrs.

But, beneath all this, something immensely bigger was in progress,

which can only be described as a conflict of two philosophies of life

diametrically opposed or, if you like, a life-and-death struggle between

two civilisations, so different that they can hardly understand each

other's language; it is a renewal of the Titanic contest, which was decided

in the West by the Renaissance and the Reformation, the contest between

the mediaeval and the modern world. To the modern mind no period is so

difficult to grasp as the Middle Ages; our dreams are of progress which is

another word for process, of success which implies perpetual change, in

either case of "getting on" somewhere, somehow, we know not where or how;

our very universe, from which we have carefully excluded the supernatural,

has become a development machine, a huge spinning-mill, and our religion,

if we have one, a matter of "progressive revelation." We look before and

after, forwards to some dim utopia, backwards to some ape-like ancestor who

links us with the animal world. Our outlook is horizontal, the mediaeval

outlook perpendicular. The mediaeval man looked upward and downward, to

heaven and hell, when he thought of the future, to sun and cloud, land

and crops, when he thought of the present. He lived in the presence of

perpetual miracle, the daily miracle of sunrise, sunset, and shower; and in

the constant faith in resurrection, whether of the corn which he sowed in

the furrow or of his body which his friends would reverently sow in that

deeper furrow, the grave. And his life was as simple and static as his

universe; the seasons determined his labours, the Church his holidays.

Books did not disturb his faith in the unseen world, for he was illiterate;

nor the lust of gold his contentment with his existence, for commerce was

still confined to a few towns. Russia to-day is in spirit what Europe was

in the Middle Ages.[1] The revolutionaries offered her Western civilisation

and Western philosophy, and she rejected the gift with horror.

[Footnote 1: This, of course, by no means implies that she is _behind_ the

West, or that she is of necessity bound to pass through the same process of

development. The problem of modern Russia is not to imitate the West but

to discover some way of coming to terms with Western ideals without

surrendering her own.]

Will she continue to maintain this attitude? "The Russian peasant," says

Mr. Maurice Baring, "as long as he tills the ground will never abandon his

religion or the observance of it.... Because the religion of the peasant is

the working hypothesis taught him by life; and by his observance of it he

follows what he conceives to be the dictates of common sense consecrated by

immemorial custom." The crucial point of this passage is the conditional

clause: "as long as he tills the ground." Of course, Russia, the granary of

Europe, must always be predominantly an agricultural country; yet she is at

the present moment threatened in many parts with an Industrial Revolution,

the ultimate effects of which may prove far more subversive than the

attempted revolution of 1905. For beneath her soil lie explosive materials

more deadly than any dynamite manufactured by _intelligentsia_. Her mineral

wealth, at present almost untouched, is incalculable in quantity and

amazing in variety. When her mines are opened up Russia will become,

according to the judgment of Dr. Kennard, editor of _The Russian

Year-Book,_ "without a doubt the richest Empire the world has ever seen."

Attracted by her vast mining possibilities, by her enormous virgin forests,

by her practically unlimited capacity for grain-production, the capital

of Europe is knocking at the doors of Russia. Factories are rising, mines

being started all over the country. Russia is about to be exploited by

European business enterprise, just as America and Africa have been. The

world has need of her raw materials, and is only interested in her people

as potential cheap labour. Thus within the last few years something

analogous to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of Europe has come into

existence in Russia. We may catch a glimpse of what these new classes are

like from a recent book by Mr. Stephen Graham, called _Changing Russia_. He

writes:

"The Russian bourgeois is of this sort; he wants to know the price of

everything. Of things which are independent of price he knows nothing,

or, if he knows of them, he sneers at them and hates them. Talk to him of

religion, and show that you believe the mystery of Christ; talk to him

of life, and show that you believe in love and happiness; talk to him of

woman, and show that you understand anything about her unsexually; talk

to him of work, and show that though you are poor you have no regard for

money--and the bourgeois is uneasy.... Instead of opera, the gramophone;

instead of the theatre, the kinematograph; instead of national literature,

the cheap translation; instead of national life, a miserable imitation of

modern English life.... It may be thought that there is little harm in the

commercialisation of the Russian, the secularising of his life; and that

after all the bourgeois population of England, France, and Germany is not

so bad as not to be on the way to something better. But that would be a

mistake; if once the Russian nation becomes thoroughly perverted, it will

be the most treacherous, most vile, most dangerous in Europe. For the

perverted Russian all is possible; it is indeed his favourite maxim,

borrowed, he thinks, from Nietzsche, that 'all is permitted,' and by 'all'

he means all abomination, all fearful and unheard-of bestiality, all

cruelty, all falsity, all debauch.... Selfish as it is possible to be,

crass, heavy, ugly, unfaithful in marriage, unclean, impure, incapable

apparently of understanding the good and the true in their neighbours and

in life--such is the Russian bourgeois."

Mr. Graham's picture of the new proletariat in the Ural mines is an equally

horrible one:

"Gold mining is a sort of rape and incest, a crime by which earth and man

are made viler. If I had doubted of its influence on man I needed but to

go to the Ural goldfields. A more drunken, murderous, brother-hating

population than that of this district I have not seen in all Russia. It was

a great sorrow to see such a delightful peasantry all in debauchery....

The miner has no culture, no taste, not even a taste for property and

squiredom, so that when at a stroke he gains a hundred or a thousand

pounds, it is rather difficult to know how to spend it. His ideal of

happiness has been vodka, and all the bliss that money can obtain for him

lies in that.... Mias is a gold-mining village of twenty-five thousand

inhabitants. It has two churches, four electric theatres, fifteen vodka

shops, a score of beer-houses, and many dens where cards are played and

women bought and sold to the strains of the gramophone. It is situated in a

most lovely hollow among the hills, and, seen from the distance, it is one

of the most beautiful villages of North Russia; but seen from within, it is

a veritable inferno."

Mr. Graham writes as a poet rather than as an economist or a sociologist,

but there is no doubt a grave danger to Russia in a sudden adoption of

industrial life.

_Intelligentsia_, bourgeoisie, and proletariate are all products of the

same forces, all belong to the same family; they are westernised Russians;

they have passed from the fourteenth to the twentieth century at one

stride, and the violent transition has cut them completely adrift from

tradition and from all moral and religious standards; books, commerce,

and industry, the three boasted instruments of our civilisation, have

not civilised such Russians, they have _de-civilised_ them. But, as yet,

Russians of this character form only a tiny fraction of the nation; and

there are happily signs that the dangers of an exotic culture are being

realised even by the _intelligentsia_ themselves. Since the failure of the

revolution there has been a remarkable revival of interest among Russian

thinkers in the native institutions, habits, and even the religion of the

country; and it may be that in time there will emerge from this chaos of

ideals a culture and a civilisation which will "make the best of both

worlds" by adopting Western methods without surrendering an inch of the

nation's spiritual territory, above which floats the standard of religion,

simplicity, and brotherly love. The present war, terrible as it is, may do

something towards bringing this about, for the Russian people, faced by a

common danger and united in a common purpose, are now of one mind and one

heart, in a way that they have not been since a century ago Napoleon was

thundering at the gates of Moscow.

And let this be said: if Russia should ever cease to be Russia, if she ever

loses those grand national characteristics which make her so different from

the West, and therefore so difficult for us Westerns to understand, the

world as a whole will be infinitely the poorer for that loss. We need

Russia even more than Russia needs us; for, while we have grasped the

trappings, she possesses the real spirit of democracy. Of the three

democratic ideals, proclaimed by France in 1789, the mystical trinity:

Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, how much has yet been realised by the

peoples of the West? And Russia is in the way of realising them all!

Fraternity and equality are, as we have seen, the distinctive features of

her national spirit and social structure, and, if her liberty is as yet

imperfect on the political side, it is far more complete than ours on the

side of moral tolerance and respect for the sanctity of human personality.

After all, the reason why Russia has not got complete political freedom is

because, as a nation, she has hitherto taken no interest in politics; for

the first time in 1905 she discovered the use of political action, and she

got out of it a solution of the agrarian distress and a representative

assembly; when she _wants_ more liberty in this direction, she will have no

difficulty in securing it.

§4. _The Subject Nationalities_.--It may fairly be objected at this

point that while Russia may possess these excellent qualities, she has

consistently refused to allow liberty to other peoples, to the Jews,

for example, the Poles, and the Finns. It is necessary therefore to say

something on the matter of Russia's subject nationalities before bringing

these remarks to a conclusion.

Out of the six or seven million Jews in the world, over five million live

within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. Russia is therefore the

motherland of the Children of Israel; though, perhaps, the phrase

step-motherland would express more truly the actual relationship, both

in its origin and its character. Russia has inherited her tremendous

responsibilities towards the Hebrew race from Poland, and her vexed "Jewish

question" is in part a just punishment for her complicity in the wicked

partitions of that country in the eighteenth century. The matter, however,

goes back much farther than the eighteenth century. In the Middle Ages

Poland was a more powerful state than Russia, and comprised territory

stretching from the Gulf of Riga to the Black Sea and from the Oder to the

Dnieper. She was also the one country in Europe which offered to the Jews

security from persecution and an opportunity of developing the commercial

instincts of the race without interference. The result was that Jews

settled in large numbers all over the King of Poland's possessions, and the

presence of Jews in any part of modern Russia is almost a sure sign that

that particular town or province has been Polish territory in former times.

The Russian Government has never, except for a short period, allowed the

Jews to live in Russia proper, and it is very rare to find Jews in north

or central Russia. Even in large cities like Petrograd and Moscow their

numbers are small, while it is interesting to note that the Finns have

copied the rest of Russia in this respect at least that they have always

resolutely refused to admit the Hebrew. Where Russia found Jews among the

new subjects which she acquired by her gradual encroachments upon Poland,

she had of course to let them remain, but she has confined them strictly to

these districts. The existence of this Jewish pale is one of the grievances

of the Jews of Russia, but it is not the heaviest. The liberal-minded

Alexander II. had shown himself lenient to them; but his assassination

in 1881 at the hands of terrorists and the accession of the reactionary

Alexander III. began a period of persecution which has continued until the

present day.

Alexander III. was much influenced by his tutor, Pobiedonostsev, who for

the next thirty years was the most prominent exponent of the philosophy of

Slavophilism. This, which in its modern form may be traced back to 1835,

was in fact nothing else than a perverted glorification of the Russian

national characteristics which have been dwelt upon above. The Slavophils

declared not only that the Russians were a great and admirable nation,

which few who really know them will be disposed to deny, but that their

institutions--and in particular, of course, autocracy and bureaucracy--were

a perfect expression of the national genius which could hardly be improved

upon. Furthermore, it was maintained that, since all other countries but

Russia had taken a wrong turn and fallen into decadence and libertinism, it

was Russia's mission to bring the world back into the paths of rectitude

and virtue by extending the influence of her peculiar culture--and in

particular again, of course, its special manifestations, autocracy

and bureaucracy--as widely as possible. A variant of Slavophilism is

Panslavism, which works for the day when all members of one great Slav race

will be united in one nation, presumably under the Russian crown. Both

these movements are examples of that nationalism run mad to which reference

has been made in the second chapter.[1] But the Slavophils, who are of

course ardent supporters of the Orthodox Church, were faced at the outset

with a great difficulty; the western provinces of Russia, from the Arctic

to the Black Sea, contained masses of population which were neither Russian

nor Orthodox. The Finns in the north were Lutherans; the Poles in the

centre, though Slavs, were Roman Catholic in religion and anti-Russian in

sentiment; and the Jews in the centre and south were--Jews. The first

step, therefore, towards the Slavophil goal was the "Russification" of the

subject peoples of Russia. In theory "Russification" means conferring the

benefits of Russian customs, speech, and culture upon those who do not

already possess them; in practice it amounts to the suppression of local

liberties and traditions.

[Footnote 1: See p. 57.]

It is obvious that it is no easier to make a Jew into a Russian by force

than to change the skin of the proverbial Ethiopian; nor is it likely that

the Russian Government ever entertained the idea of making such an

attempt. If it had any definite plan at all, it was to render things so

uncomfortable to the unfortunate Hebrews that they would gradually leave

the country. Real persecution began at the accession of Alexander III. in

1881, when it spread into Russia, significantly enough, from Germany, where

a violent anti-Semite agitation had sprung up at the beginning of the year.

Riots directed against the Jews, and winked at if not encouraged by the

authorities, broke out in the towns of Southern Russia. Edicts followed

which excluded the Jews from all direct share in local government, refused

to allow more than a small percentage of Jews to attend the schools and

universities, forbade them to acquire property outside the towns, laid

special taxes upon their backs, and so on. This attitude of the Government

encouraged the populace of the towns to believe that they might attack the

Jews with impunity. The Jews are regarded in modern Russia in much the same

light as they were regarded by our forefathers in the Middle Ages. They are

hated, that is to say, on two counts: as unbelievers and as usurers. The

condition of affairs in a township where the population is half-Jewish,

half-Christian, and where the Christians are financially and commercially

in the hands of the Jews, and the Jews are politically and administratively

in the hands of the Christians, is obviously an extremely dangerous one.

Add to this the presence of a large hooligan section which is found in

almost every Russian town of any size, the open disfavour shown towards

the Jews by the Government, and the secret intrigues and incitement of the

police, and you get a train of circumstances which lead inevitably to those

violent anti-Semitic explosions, known as _pogroms_, which have stained the

pages of modern Russian history. The revolutionary movement has complicated

matters still further; for Jews are naturally to be found in the

revolutionary ranks, and the bureaucracy and its hooligan supporters have

tended to identify the Jewish race with the Revolutionary Party. Nothing

can excuse the treatment of the Jews in Russia during the last thirty-five

years, and the guilt lies almost entirely upon the Government, which,

instead of leading the people and educating them by initiating an

enlightened policy towards the Jews, a policy which might in fact have done

more than anything else to "Russify" the latter, has persistently aided and

abetted the worst elements of the population in their acts of violence.

It has reaped its reward in the rise of one of the most formidable of the

revolutionary parties in modern Russia, the so-called Jewish "Bund." The

Governor of Vilna, in a confidential report written in 1903, declared that

"this political movement is undoubtedly a result of the abnormal position

of the Jews, legal and economic, which has been created by our legislation.

A revision of the laws concerning the Jews is absolutely urgent, and every

postponement of it is pregnant with the most dangerous consequences."

Yet when we condemn Russia for her _pogroms_ and her Jew-baitings, we must

not forget two facts: first, that these occurrences are the work, not of

the real Russian people, the peasantry which has been described above, but

of the dregs of the population which are to be found at the base of the

social structure in the towns of Russia as in towns nearer home; second,

that Russia is not the only country in the world that has these racial

problems to face. I once heard a Russian and an American discussing the

comparative demerits of their respective lands, and I am bound to say that

the former held his own very well. When, for example, the American said,

"What about the Jews?" the other answered, "Well, what about the negroes?"

and he parried the further question, "What about _pogroms_?" with another

of his own, "What about lynching?" The problems are not, of course, quite

on all fours, nor do two wrongs make a right, but a reminder that similar

problems exist in other parts of the world will perhaps be enough to show

that the Jewish question in Russia is neither unique nor at all easy to

solve. Let us, instead of visiting the sins of a few townships upon the

heads of the entire Russian nation, be thankful that we have no such

problems in our own islands. Recent riots outside the shops of German

pork-butchers in different parts of the country do not, it must be

confessed, lead one to hope that our people would behave much more calmly

and discreetly than the Whites of the Southern States or the Christians of

South-West Russia, were they placed in the same circumstances.

The Polish question is at once simpler and its story less damaging to the

Russian Government than that of the Jews. The partitions, an account of

which has already been given,[1] were of course iniquitous, but, as we have

seen, Prussia must bear the chief blame for them. In any case, the Tsar

Alexander I. did his utmost for Poland at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

He pleaded eloquently for a reunited Poland, and he almost won over Prussia

by making arrangements to compensate her for her Polish territory at the

expense of Saxony. But France, England, and Austria opposed his project,

and he was obliged to yield to the combined pressure of these powers.

Russia is, therefore, not more but less guilty of the present dismembered

state of Poland than her Western neighbours, among whom we must not forget

ourselves;[2] and she is to-day only attempting to carry out the promise

which she made, but was not allowed to fulfill, a century ago. Disappointed

as he was, Alexander I. made the best of a bad job by granting a liberal

constitution to that part of Poland which the Congress assigned to

Russia. Indeed he did everything possible, short of a grant of absolute

independence, which at that time would have been absurd, to conciliate

public opinion in the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. Unfortunately the experiment

proved a complete failure, largely owing to the factious and self-seeking

Polish nobility who have always been the worst enemy of their country.

Alexander after a time lost patience, and in 1820 he felt compelled to

withdraw some of the liberties which he had conferred in 1815. After this

the breach between the Russian Government and the Polish people began to

widen, partly owing to stupid and clumsy actions on the side of Russia,

partly to the incurable lack of political common-sense on the side of the

upper classes in Poland, partly to the fact that the country could never

be anything but restless and unsatisfied while it remained divided. The

history of Russian Poland since the time of Alexander is the history of two

great failures to throw off the Russian yoke, the failure of 1830 and of

1863. These risings were marked by heroism, disunion, and incapacity on the

one side, and by relentless repression on the other. The upshot was that

Poland was deprived of her constitutional rights one by one, until finally

she became nothing more than so many provinces of Russia itself. To some

extent, however, the failure of 1863 proved a blessing in disguise. The

rising had been almost entirely confined to the nobility; Russia therefore

turned to the peasants of Poland, released them from all obligations to

work upon the estates of the large landowners, and handed over to them at

least half the land of the country as freehold property. The result of

this measure, and of the removal of the customs barrier between the two

countries in 1877, was twofold: the power of the factious nobility was

shattered for ever, and a marvellous development of industry took place in

Poland which has united her to Russia "with chains of self-interest

likely to prove a serious obstacle to the realisation of Polish hopes of

independence."[3] It is indeed doubtful whether at this date the

Poles cherish any such hopes. What they desire is national unity and

self-government rather than sovereign independence, and they know that they

are at least as likely to receive these from Russia as from Prussia.

[Footnote 1: Pp. 24-27.]

[Footnote 2: As a matter of fact our representative, Lord Castlereagh, was

Alexander's chief opponent at the Congress in the question of Poland. See

_Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. x. p. 445.]

[Footnote 1: _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. xi. p. 629.]

While of late years the relations between Russia and Poland have steadily

improved, those between Russia and Finland, on the contrary, have grown

rapidly worse. Until 1809 Finland was a Grand-Duchy under the Swedish

crown, but in that year, owing to a war which had broken out between Russia

and Sweden, she passed into the control of the nearer and more powerful

State, after putting up a stubborn resistance to annexation which will

always figure as the most glorious episode in the annals of the country.

Alexander I., who was at that time Tsar, adopted the same policy towards

Finland as he did towards Poland. He refused to incorporate the new

province into the Russian State-system, he took the title of Grand-Duke

of Finland (thereby implying that she lay outside the Empire), and he

confirmed the ancient liberties of the Finns. Later on they even secured

greater liberty than they had possessed under Sweden by the grant of a

Finnish Diet, on the lines of the Swedish Diet in Stockholm, which should

have full control of all internal Finnish affairs. Finland, therefore,

gained much from the transfer; she possessed for the first time in her

history complete internal autonomy. This state of things lasted for

practically ninety years, during which period Finland made wonderful

progress both economic and intellectual, so that by the end of the

nineteenth century she was one of the happiest, most enlightened, and most

prosperous countries in Northern Europe. "As regards the condition of

Finland," Alexander I. had declared, "my intention has been to give

this people a political existence, so that they may not feel themselves

conquered by Russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage;

therefore, not only their civil but their political laws have been

maintained." This liberal policy was continued by the various Tsars

throughout the century, the reformer Alexander II. taking particular

interest in the development of the Grand-Duchy, which he evidently regarded

as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked

out that might later be applied to the rest of Russia. The weakness of

Finland's position lay in the fact that her liberties really depended upon

the personal whim of the Grand-Duke: in theory her constitutional laws were

only alterable by the joint sanction of monarch and people; in practice the

small but courageous nation had no means of redress should the Tsar,

swayed by bureaucratic reaction, choose to go back upon the policy of his

ancestors. And in 1894 a Tsar mounted the throne, Nicholas II., who did so

choose.

The word went forth for the "Russification" of Finland. After picking a

quarrel with the Diet on the military question, the Tsar on February 18,

1899, issued a manifesto suspending the Finnish Constitution and abolishing

the Diet. Finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the

Russian Empire. A rigorous Press censorship was established, the hated

governor-general Bobrikoff filled the country with gendarmes and spies,

native officials were dismissed or driven to resign, an attempt was made

to introduce the Russian language into the schools, and, though the Finns

could only oppose a campaign of passive resistance to these wicked and

short-sighted measures, at the end of seven years the nation which had for

almost a century been the most contented portion of the Tsar's dominions

was seething with ill-feeling and disloyalty. The inevitable outcome was

the assassination of General Bobrikoff by a young student in June 1904; and

when the Russian universal strike took place in October 1905, the entire

Finnish nation joined in as one man. Finland regained her liberties for

a time, and immediately set to work putting her house in order by

substituting for her old mediaeval constitution a brand new one, based on

universal suffrage, male and female, and employing such up-to-date

devices as proportional representation. The only result of seven years'

"Russification" was the creation of a united democracy, with a strong

socialistic leaven, in place of a nation governed by an antiquated

aristocratic Diet, and divided into two hostile political camps on the

question whether Swedish or Finnish should be the language of the national

culture. But the fortunes of Finland were accidentally but inextricably

bound up with those of the party of reform in Russia, and when the

bureaucracy, after the downfall of the revolutionaries, found itself once

more firmly seated in the saddle, it returned to the attack on the Finnish

Constitution, not indeed with the open and brutal methods of Bobrikoff, but

by gradual and insidious means no less effective. And it must be admitted

that the Russian Duma, as "reformed" by Stolypin, so far from being of

any help to Finland in the struggle, has been made the instrument of the

destruction of her liberties.

Finland is in a very unfortunate position. Geographically she is bound to

form part of the Russian Empire; even the extremest Russophobes in the

country have long ago given up hopes of re-union with Sweden; and yet the

frontier between Finland and Russia is one which divides two worlds, as all

who have made the journey from Helsingfors to Petrograd must have noticed.

In literature, art, education, politics, commerce, industry, and social

reform Finland is as much alive as any of the Scandinavian States from

whom she first derived her culture. In many ways indeed she is the most

progressive country in Europe, and it is her proud boast that she is

"Framtidsland," the land of the future. Lutheran in religion, non-Slavonic

in race, without army, court, or aristocracy, and consequently without

the traditions which these institutions carry with them, she presents the

greatest imaginable contrast to the Empire with which she is irrevocably

linked. Finland is Western of the Westerns, and keenly conscious of the

fact just because of this irrevocable link; Russia is--Russia! And yet, as

part of the Russian system, she must come to terms sooner or later with the

Empire; she cannot receive the protection of the Russian military forces, a

protection to the value of which, if reports be true, she is at the present

moment very much alive, and yet retain her claims to be what is virtually

an independent State. That these claims have been pitched on a high note

is no doubt largely the fault of the blundering and cruel policy of the

Russian bureaucracy. But it must be admitted that Finland has never tried

in the very least to understand her mighty neighbour; she has always sat,

as it were, with her back to Russia, looking westwards, and her statesmen

have not even taken the trouble to learn the Russian language. There has,

in fact, been something a little "priggish" in her superior attitude, in

her perpetually drawn comparison between Russian "barbarism" and Finnish

"culture." Though her capital, Helsingfors, is but twelve hours by rail

from Petrograd, Finland knows as little of the interior of Russia as people

do in England.

The policy of the Russian Government, on the other hand, has been marked

by that inconsistency, political blindness, and arbitrariness which one

expects from an irresponsible bureaucracy. For ninety years Finland was

left alone to work out her own salvation, entirely apart from that of the

rest of the Empire; and then suddenly it was discovered that her coasts

were of the highest strategical importance, and that she was developing a

commercial and industrial system in dangerous competition with the tender

plant of commerce and industry in Russia itself. The Slavophils raised an

outcry, and the decree went out that the Russian whale should swallow this

active and prosperous little Jonah. The former policy was really as stupid,

though less cruel, than the latter. Had there been anything like that

steady political tradition and wide political experience in Russia which we

can draw upon in England, the Imperial Government would have from the first

endeavoured to draw Finland closer to the Empire, not by bands of steel and

iron but by the more delicate and more permanent ties of considerateness,

affection, and self-interest. It is political stupidity, based upon

ignorance and inexperience, and not inhumanity, which is the real

explanation of Russia's unfortunate relations with her subject peoples

during the past century. Moreover, the political machinery which has

hitherto served her own internal needs is the worst possible instrument for

dealing with provinces which possess a full measure of Western political

consciousness together with the traditions of political liberty. Russia,

therefore, requires representative institutions not merely for the

political education of her own people and as a check upon bureaucratic

tyranny and incompetency, but also in order that she may adopt some fair

and _consistent_ policy towards her subject nationalities.

It may be optimistic, but I cannot help feeling that the present war will

do much for Russia, much for Finland, much for Poland. Russia is

fighting to defend a small nation against oppression, she is fighting

a life-and-death struggle with the military bureaucracy which we call

"Germany" for the moment, she is fighting on behalf of "liberty" and of the

"scraps of paper" upon which the freedom of States and individuals depends.

All this will leave a profound effect upon the national consciousness, and

may even bring home for the first time to the people at large the meaning

of political freedom. Russia is so vast, so loose in structure, so

undeveloped in those means of intercommunication such as roads, railways,

newspapers, etc., which make England like a small village-community in

comparison, that it takes the shock of a great war to draw the whole people

together. That it has done so, no one who has read the papers during the

last two months can doubt. War, as a historical fact, has always been

beneficial to Russia; the Crimean War led to the emancipation of the serfs,

the Japanese War led to the establishment of a Duma, and the present war

has already led to surprising results. The consumption of alcohol has been

abolished, concessions have been promised to a reunited Poland, and,

except against the unhappy Jews in the Polish war-area, there has been a

subsidence throughout the Empire of racial antagonism. It is the hope of

all who love Russia, and no one who really knows her can help loving her,

that these beginnings may be crowned not only with victory over Germany in

the field of battle but with victory over the German spirit in the world of

ideas, a victory of which the first-fruits would be the firm establishment

of representative government, a cleansing of the bureaucratic Augean

stables, and a settlement of the problem of subject nationalities upon

lines of justice and moderation.

But whatever the outcome may be, let us in England be fair to Russia.

The road to fairness lies through understanding; and we have grossly

misunderstood Russia because we have not taken the trouble to acquaint

ourselves with the facts, the real facts as distinct from the newspaper

facts, of her situation. When those facts are realised, is it for us to

cast the first stone? Russia needs political reform, the tremendous task

of Peter the Great needs completing, the bureaucracy must be crowned

with representative institutions; but is Russia's need in the sphere of

political reform greater than ours in the sphere of social reform?

Look at our vast miserable slums, our sprawling, ugly, aimless industrial

centres, inhabited by millions who have just enough education to be able to

buy their thinking ready-made through the halfpenny Press and just enough

leisure for a weekly attendance at the local football match and an annual

excursion to Blackpool or Ramsgate; who seldom, if ever, see the glorious

face of Nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising

eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony--monotonous toil,

monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and

mortar;--until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and

its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of

hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." And then look

at those other millions--the millions of Russia--look at the grand simple

life they lead in the fields, a life of toil indeed, but of toil sweet and

infinitely varied; Russia is their country, not merely because they live

there but because they--the peasants--now actually possess by far the

greater part of the arable land; God is their God, not because they have

heard of Him as some remote Being in the Sunday School, but because He

is very near to them--in their homes, in their sacraments, and in their

hearts; and so contentment of mind and soul is theirs, not because they

have climbed higher than their fellows, whether by the accumulation of

knowledge or wealth, but because they have discovered the secret of

existence, which is to want little, to live in close communion with nature,

and to die in close communion with God.

BOOKS

MAURICE BARING. _The Mainsprings of Russia._ 1914. Nelson. 2s. net.

This is an excellent introduction to the subject, recording as it does the

general impressions of an acute and sympathetic observer; it does not, of

course, pretend to be comprehensive, and says nothing, for example, of the

Jews, Poles, Finns, etc.

BERNARD PARES. _Russia and Reform._ 1907. 10s. 6d. net.

MILYOUKOV. _Russia and its Crisis._ 1905. 13s. 6d. net.

MAURICE BARING. _The Russian People._ 1911. 15s. net.

These three books may be consulted for the Revolution of 1905 and the

events which led up to it. Professor Milyoukov's book was actually

published before the Revolution, but its author was leader of the Cadet

party in the First Duma, and it is therefore something in the nature of

a liberal manifesto. Professor Pares' book, which is perhaps the most

penetrating and well-balanced of all and contains most valuable chapters

on the _Intelligentsia,_ does not, unfortunately, deal with the years of

reaction which followed the dissolution of the First Duma. Mr. Baring's

book may be recommended especially for the later chapters which deal with

the causes of the failure of the Revolution. All three contain a good deal

of sound historical matter.

H.W. WILLIAMS. _Russia of the Russians._ 1914. 6s. net.

ROTHAY REYNOLDS. _My Russian Year_. 1913. 10s. 6d. net.

Two good books dealing with life in contemporary Russia. The first is the

best and most comprehensive treatment of the new Russia which has emerged

from the revolutionary period, and gives one not merely the political

but also the social and artistic aspect. The other book is lightly and

entertainingly written.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _Undiscovered Russia_. 1911. 12s. 6d. net.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _Changing Russia_. 1913. 7s. 6d. net.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_. 1913. 7s. 6d.

net.

Mr. Stephen Graham may be said to have discovered the Russian peasant for

English people, and his books give an extraordinarily vivid and sympathetic

picture of Russian peasant-life by one who knows it from the inside. They

afford also the best account of religion in Russia as a living force, while

those who wish to know more of the Orthodox Church as an institution may be

referred to chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of Mr. Baring's _Russian People_; chap.

viii. of the same writer's _Mainsprings of Russia_; and chap. vi. of Sir

C. Eliot's (Odysseus) _Turkey in Europe_ (7s. 6d. net). The second of Mr.

Graham's books deals with the threatening industrial changes in Russia. The

third is a fine piece of literature as well as being the only account in

any language of one of the most characteristic figures in modern Russian

life--the peasant-pilgrim.

SIR D.M. WALLACE. _Russia_. 2 vols. 1905. 24s. net.

_Russia and the Balkan States._ Reprinted from the _Encyclopedia

Britannica._ 2s. 6d. net.

Both these accounts, though written many years ago, have now been brought

up to date in view of present events.

R. NISBET BAIN. _Slavonic Europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net.

F.H. SKRINE. _The Expansion of Russia, 1815-1900._ 1903. 4s. 6d. net.

W.R. MORFILL. _Russia_. 1890. 5s.

W.R. MORFILL. _Poland_. 1893. 5s.

Are all useful for the history of Russia, and of her relations with Poland,

and Finland. Readers may also be referred to the _Cambridge Modern History_

(vol. ix. chap. xvi.; vol. x. chaps. xiii., xiv.; vol. xi. chaps. ix.,

xxii.; vol. xii. chaps. xii., xiii.).

V O. KLUCHEFFSKY. _A History of Russia._ 3 vols. 1913. Dent. 7s. 6d. net

each.

The standard economic and social history of Russia up to the reign of Peter

the Great.

H.P. KENNARD. _The Russian Year-Book._ Eyre and Spottiswoode. 10s. 6d. net.

Excellent for facts and figures.

E. SÉMÉNOFF. _The Russian Government and the Massacres._ 1907. 2s. 6d. net.

An account of the _pogroms_ in Russia from the Jewish point of view.

J.R. FISHER. _Finland and the Tsars, 1800-1899._ 1899. 12s. 6d.

The best account in English of the history of Finland's relations with

Russia up to the beginning of the reactionary period.

K.P. POBIEDONOSTSEV. _Reflections of a Russian Statesman._ 1898. 6s. For

Slavophilism.

P. KHOPOTKIN. _Memoirs of a Revolutionist._ 1907. 6s.

MAURICE BARING. _Russian Literature._ (Home University Library.) 1s.

A. BRÜCKNER. _A Literary History of Russia._ 1908. 12s. 6d. net.

MAURICE BARING. _Landmarks in Russian Literature._ 1910. 6s. net.

The last-named are the best available books in English on Russian

literature. The works of the great Russian novelists are now accessible to

English readers. Nothing helps one to understand Russia so well as reading

the works of Tourgeniev, Tolstoi, and Dostoieffsky. The best translations

are those of Mrs. Garnett. The following are recommended to those who are

beginning the study of Russian literature and who are desirous of reading

novels which throw light on the springs of Russian life and thought:--

TOURGENIEV. _Fathers and Children._ Heinemann. 2s. net.

A study of Russian Nihilism in the 'eighties, which may be read and

compared with Kropotkin's _Memoirs_.

TOLSTOI. _War and Peace._ Heinemann. 3s. 6d. net. _Anna Karenin._

Heinemann. 3s. 6d. net.

The first of these is perhaps the finest treatment of war in modern

literature, the subject being the Russian campaign of Napoleon in 1812. No

other book gives one a better idea of the way the Russians make war and of

the essential greatness of the Russian national spirit.

DOSTOIEFFSKY. _The Brothers Karamazov._ Heinemann. 3s. 6d. net.

This, which is one of the greatest novels ever written, depicts, at once

relentlessly and with infinite tenderness, the spiritual conflict which has

agitated Russian society for at least fifty years past.

JOSEPH CONRAD. _Under Western Eyes._ 6s.

A powerful study of modern revolutionary types. Conrad, of course, is not a

Russian novelist, but he is of Polish origin.

GOGOL. _The Inspector-General._ Walter Scott. 1s. net.

A comedy first produced in Petrograd in 1836. Gogol is one of Russia's

classics. This play is a humorous treatment of bureaucratic corruption and

inefficiency.