Russia
by Donald Mackenzie Wallace
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2

Immediately below these three institutions stand the Ministries,
ten in number. They are the central points in which converge the
various kinds of territorial administration, and from which
radiates the Imperial will all over the Empire.

For the purpose of territorial administration Russia proper--that
is to say, European Russia, exclusive of Poland, the Baltic
Provinces, Finland and the Caucasus--is divided into forty-nine
provinces or "Governments" (gubernii), and each Government is
subdivided into Districts (uyezdi). The average area of a province
is about the size of Portugal, but some are as small as Belgium,
whilst one at least is twenty-five times as big. The population,
however, does not correspond to the amount of territory. In the
largest province, that of Archangel, there are only about 350,000
inhabitants, whilst in two of the smaller ones there are over three
millions. The districts likewise vary greatly in size. Some are
smaller than Oxfordshire or Buckingham, and others are bigger than
the whole of the United Kingdom.

Over each province is placed a Governor, who is assisted in his
duties by a Vice-Governor and a small council. According to the
legislation of Catherine II., which still appears in the Code and
has only been partially repealed, the Governor is termed "the
steward of the province," and is entrusted with so many and such
delicate duties, that in order to obtain qualified men for the post
it would be necessary to realise the great Empress's design of
creating, by education, "a new race of people."  Down to the time
of the Crimean War the Governors understood the term "stewards" in
a very literal sense, and ruled in a most arbitrary, high-handed
style, often exercising an important influence on the civil and
criminal tribunals. These extensive and vaguely defined powers
have now been very much curtailed, partly by positive legislation,
and partly by increased publicity and improved means of
communication. All judicial matters have been placed theoretically
beyond the Governor's control, and many of his former functions are
now fulfilled by the Zemstvo--the new organ of local self-
government. Besides this, all ordinary current affairs are
regulated by an already big and ever-growing body of instructions,
in the form of Imperial orders and ministerial circulars, and as
soon as anything not provided for by the instructions happens to
occur, the minister is consulted through the post-office or by
telegraph.

Even within the sphere of their lawful authority the Governors have
now a certain respect for public opinion and occasionally a very
wholesome dread of casual newspaper correspondents. Thus the men
who were formerly described by the satirists as "little satraps"
have sunk to the level of subordinate officials. I can confidently
say that many (I believe the majority) of them are honest, upright
men, who are perhaps not endowed with any unusual administrative
capacities, but who perform their duties faithfully according to
their lights. If any representatives of the old "satraps" still
exist, they must be sought for in the outlying Asiatic provinces.

Independent of the Governor, who is the local representative of the
Ministry of the Interior, are a number of resident officials, who
represent the other ministries, and each of them has a bureau, with
the requisite number of assistants, secretaries, and scribes.

To keep this vast and complex bureaucratic machine in motion it is
necessary to have a large and well-drilled army of officials.
These are drawn chiefly from the ranks of the Noblesse and the
clergy, and form a peculiar social class called Tchinovniks, or men
with Tchins. As the Tchin plays an important part in Russia, not
only in the official world, but also to some extent in social life,
it may be well to explain its significance.

All offices, civil and military, are, according to a scheme
invented by Peter the Great, arranged in fourteen classes or ranks,
and to each class or rank a particular name is attached. As
promotion is supposed to be given according to personal merit, a
man who enters the public service for the first time must, whatever
be his social position, begin in the lower ranks, and work his way
upwards. Educational certificates may exempt him from the
necessity of passing through the lowest classes, and the Imperial
will may disregard the restrictions laid down by law; but as
general rule a man must begin at or near the bottom of the official
ladder, and he must remain on each step a certain specified time.
The step on which he is for the moment standing, or, in other
words, the official rank or tchin which he possesses determines
what offices he is competent to hold. Thus rank or tchin is a
necessary condition for receiving an appointment, but it does not
designate any actual office, and the names of the different ranks
are extremely apt to mislead a foreigner.

We must always bear this in mind when we meet with those imposing
titles which Russian tourists sometimes put on their visiting
cards, such as "Conseiller de Cour," "Conseiller d'Etat,"
"Conseiller prive de S. M. l'Empereur de toutes les Russies."  It
would be uncharitable to suppose that these titles are used with
the intention of misleading, but that they do sometimes mislead
there cannot be the least doubt. I shall never forget the look of
intense disgust which I once saw on the face of an American who had
invited to dinner a "Conseiller de Cour," on the assumption that he
would have a Court dignitary as his guest, and who casually
discovered that the personage in question was simply an
insignificant official in one of the public offices. No doubt
other people have bad similar experiences. The unwary foreigner
who has heard that there is in Russia a very important institution
called the Conseil d'Etat," naturally supposes that a " Conseiller
d'Etat" is a member of that venerable body; and if he meets "Son
Excellence le Conseiller prive," he is pretty sure to assume--
especially if the word "actuel" has been affixed--that he sees
before him a real living member of the Russian Privy Council. When
to the title is added, "de S. M. l'Empereur de toutes les Russies,"
a boundless field is opened up to the non-Russian imagination. In
reality these titles are not nearly so important as they seem. The
soi-disant "Conseiller de Cour" has probably nothing to do with the
Court. The Conseiller d'Etat is so far from being a member of the
Conseil d'Etat that he cannot possibly become a member till he
receives a higher tchin.*  As to the Privy Councillor, it is
sufficient to say that the Privy Council, which had a very odious
reputation in its lifetime, died more than a century ago, and has
not since been resuscitated. The explanation of these anomalies is
to be found in the fact that the Russian tchins, like the German
honorary titles--Hofrath, Staatsrath, Geheimrath--of which they are
a literal translation, indicate not actual office, but simply
official rank. Formerly the appointment to an office generally
depended on the tchin; now there is a tendency to reverse the old
order of things and make the tchin depend upon the office actually
held.

* In Russian the two words are quite different; the Council is
called Gosudarstvenny sovet, and the title Statski sovetnik.

The reader of practical mind who is in the habit of considering
results rather than forms and formalities desires probably no
further description of the Russian bureaucracy, but wishes to know
simply how it works in practice. What has it done for Russia in
the past, and what is it doing in the present?

At the present day, when faith in despotic civilisers and paternal
government has been rudely shaken, and the advantages of a free,
spontaneous national development are fully recognised, centralised
bureaucracies have everywhere fallen into bad odour. In Russia the
dislike to them is particularly strong, because it has there
something more than a purely theoretical basis. The recollection
of the reign of Nicholas I., with its stern military regime, and
minute, pedantic formalism, makes many Russians condemn in no
measured terms the administration under which they live, and most
Englishmen will feel inclined to endorse this condemnation. Before
passing sentence, however, we ought to know that the system has at
least an historical justification, and we must not allow our love
of constitutional liberty and local self-government to blind us to
the distinction between theoretical and historical possibility.
What seems to political philosophers abstractly the best possible
government may be utterly inapplicable in certain concrete cases.
We need not attempt to decide whether it is better for humanity
that Russia should exist as a nation, but we may boldly assert that
without a strongly centralised administration Russia would never
have become one of the great European Powers. Until comparatively
recent times the part of the world which is known as the Russian
Empire was a conglomeration of independent or semi-independent
political units, animated with centrifugal as well as centripetal
forces; and even at the present day it is far from being a compact
homogeneous State. It was the autocratic power, with the
centralised administration as its necessary complement, that first
created Russia, then saved her from dismemberment and political
annihilation, and ultimately secured for her a place among European
nations by introducing Western civilisation.

Whilst thus recognising clearly that autocracy and a strongly
centralised administration were necessary first for the creation
and afterwards for the preservation of national independence, we
must not shut our eyes to the evil consequences which resulted from
this unfortunate necessity. It was in the nature of things that
the Government, aiming at the realisation of designs which its
subjects neither sympathised with nor clearly understood, should
have become separated from the nation; and the reckless haste and
violence with which it attempted to carry out its schemes aroused a
spirit of positive opposition among the masses. A considerable
section of the people long looked on the reforming Tsars as
incarnations of the spirit of evil, and the Tsars in their turn
looked upon the people as raw material for the realisation of their
political designs. This peculiar relation between the nation and
the Government has given the key-note to the whole system of
administration. The Government has always treated the people as
minors, incapable of understanding its political aims, and only
very partially competent to look after their own local affairs.
The officials have naturally acted in the same spirit. Looking for
direction and approbation merely to their superiors, they have
systematically treated those over whom they were placed as a
conquered or inferior race. The State has thus come to be regarded
as an abstract entity, with interests entirely different from those
of the human beings composing it; and in all matters in which State
interests are supposed to be involved, the rights of individuals
are ruthlessly sacrificed.

If we remember that the difficulties of centralised administration
must be in direct proportion to the extent and territorial variety
of the country to be governed, we may readily understand how slowly
and imperfectly the administrative machine necessarily works in
Russia. The whole of the vast region stretching from the Polar
Ocean to the Caspian, and from the shores of the Baltic to the
confines of the Celestial Empire, is administered from St.
Petersburg. The genuine bureaucrat has a wholesome dread of formal
responsibility, and generally tries to avoid it by taking all
matters out of the hands of his subordinates, and passing them on
to the higher authorities. As soon, therefore, as affairs are
caught up by the administrative machine they begin to ascend, and
probably arrive some day at the cabinet of the minister. Thus the
ministries are flooded with papers--many of the most trivial
import--from all parts of the Empire; and the higher officials,
even if they had the eyes of an Argus and the hands of a Briareus,
could not possibly fulfil conscientiously the duties imposed on
them. In reality the Russian administrators of the higher ranks
recall neither Argus nor Briareus. They commonly show neither an
extensive nor a profound knowledge of the country which they are
supposed to govern, and seem always to have a fair amount of
leisure time at their disposal.

Besides the unavoidable evils of excessive centralisation, Russia
has had to suffer much from the jobbery, venality, and extortion of
the officials. When Peter the Great one day proposed to hang every
man who should steal as much as would buy a rope, his Procurator-
General frankly replied that if his Majesty put his project into
execution there would be no officials left. "We all steal," added
the worthy official; "the only difference is that some of us steal
larger amounts and more openly than others."  Since these words
were spoken nearly two centuries have passed, and during all that
time Russia has been steadily making progress, but until the
accession of Alexander II. in 1855 little change took place in the
moral character of the administration. Some people still living
can remember the time when they could have repeated, without much
exaggeration, the confession of Peter's Procurator-General.

To appreciate aright this ugly phenomenon we must distinguish two
kinds of venality. On the one hand there was the habit of exacting
what are vulgarly termed "tips" for services performed, and on the
other there were the various kinds of positive dishonesty. Though
it might not be always easy to draw a clear line between the two
categories, the distinction was fully recognised in the moral
consciousness of the time, and many an official who regularly
received "sinless revenues" (bezgreshniye dokhodi), as the tips
were sometimes called, would have been very indignant had he been
stigmatised as a dishonest man. The practice was, in fact,
universal, and could be, to a certain extent, justified by the
smallness of the official salaries. In some departments there was
a recognised tariff. The "brandy farmers," for example, who worked
the State Monopoly for the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
liquors, paid regularly a fixed sum to every official, from the
Governor to the policeman, according to his rank. I knew of one
case where an official, on receiving a larger sum than was
customary, conscientiously handed back the change! The other and
more heinous offences were by no means so common, but were still
fearfully frequent. Many high officials and important dignitaries
were known to receive large revenues, to which the term "sinless"
could not by any means be applied, and yet they retained their
position, and were received in society with respectful deference.

The Sovereigns were well aware of the abuses, and strove more or
less to root them out, but the success which attended their efforts
does not give us a very exalted idea of the practical omnipotence
of autocracy. In a centralised bureaucratic administration, in
which each official is to a certain extent responsible for the sins
of his subordinates, it is always extremely difficult to bring an
official culprit to justice, for he is sure to be protected by his
superiors; and when the superiors are themselves habitually guilty
of malpractices, the culprit is quite safe from exposure and
punishment. The Tsar, indeed, might do much towards exposing and
punishing offenders if he could venture to call in public opinion
to his assistance, but in reality he is very apt to become a party
to the system of hushing up official delinquencies. He is himself
the first official in the realm, and he knows that the abuse of
power by a subordinate has a tendency to produce hostility towards
the fountain of all official power. Frequent punishment of
officials might, it is thought, diminish public respect for the
Government, and undermine that social discipline which is necessary
for the public tranquillity. It is therefore considered expedient
to give to official delinquencies as little publicity as possible.

Besides this, strange as it may seem, a Government which rests on
the arbitrary will of a single individual is, notwithstanding
occasional outbursts of severity, much less systematically severe
than authority founded on free public opinion. When delinquencies
occur in very high places the Tsar is almost sure to display a
leniency approaching to tenderness. If it be necessary to make a
sacrifice to justice, the sacrificial operation is made as painless
as may be, and illustrious scapegoats are not allowed to die of
starvation in the wilderness--the wilderness being generally Paris
or the Riviera. This fact may seem strange to those who are in the
habit of associating autocracy with Neapolitan dungeons and the
mines of Siberia, but it is not difficult to explain. No
individual, even though he be the Autocrat of all the Russias, can
so case himself in the armour of official dignity as to be
completely proof against personal influences. The severity of
autocrats is reserved for political offenders, against whom they
naturally harbour a feeling of personal resentment. It is so much
easier for us to be lenient and charitable towards a man who sins
against public morality than towards one who sins against
ourselves!

In justice to the bureaucratic reformers in Russia, it must be said
that they have preferred prevention to cure. Refraining from all
Draconian legislation, they have put their faith in a system of
ingenious checks and a complicated formal procedure. When we
examine the complicated formalities and labyrinthine procedure by
which the administration is controlled, our first impression is
that administrative abuses must be almost impossible. Every
possible act of every official seems to have been foreseen, and
every possible outlet from the narrow path of honesty seems to have
been carefully walled up. As the English reader has probably no
conception of formal procedure in a highly centralised bureaucracy,
let me give, by way of illustration, an instance which accidentally
came to my knowledge.

In the residence of a Governor-General one of the stoves is in need
of repairs. An ordinary mortal may assume that a man with the rank
of Governor-General may be trusted to expend a few shillings
conscientiously, and that consequently his Excellency will at once
order the repairs to be made and the payment to be put down among
the petty expenses. To the bureaucratic mind the case appears in a
very different light. All possible contingencies must be carefully
provided for. As a Governor-General may possibly be possessed with
a mania for making useless alterations, the necessity for the
repairs ought to be verified; and as wisdom and honesty are more
likely to reside in an assembly than in an individual, it is well
to entrust the verification to a council. A council of three or
four members accordingly certifies that the repairs are necessary.
This is pretty strong authority, but it is not enough. Councils
are composed of mere human beings, liable to error and subject to
be intimidated by a Governor-General. It is prudent, therefore, to
demand that the decision of the council be confirmed by the
Procureur, who is directly subordinated to the Minister of Justice.
When this double confirmation has been obtained, an architect
examines the stove, and makes an estimate. But it would be
dangerous to give carte blanche to an architect, and therefore the
estimate has to be confirmed, first by the aforesaid council and
afterwards by the Procureur. When all these formalities--which
require sixteen days and ten sheets of paper--have been duly
observed, his Excellency is informed that the contemplated repairs
will cost two roubles and forty kopecks, or about five shillings of
our money. Even here the formalities do not stop, for the
Government must have the assurance that the architect who made the
estimate and superintended the repairs has not been guilty of
negligence. A second architect is therefore sent to examine the
work, and his report, like the estimate, requires to be confirmed
by the council and the Procureur. The whole correspondence lasts
thirty days, and requires no less than thirty sheets of paper! Had
the person who desired the repairs been not a Governor-General, but
an ordinary mortal, it is impossible to say how long the procedure
might have lasted.*

* In fairness I feel constrained to add that incidents of this kind
occasionally occur--or at least occurred as late as 1886--in our
Indian Administration. I remember an instance of a pane of glass
being broken in the Viceroy's bedroom in the Viceregal Lodge at
Simla, and it would have required nearly a week, if the official
procedure had been scrupulously observed, to have it replaced by
the Public Works Department.

It might naturally be supposed that this circuitous and complicated
method, with its registers, ledgers, and minutes of proceedings,
must at least prevent pilfering; but this a priori conclusion has
been emphatically belied by experience. Every new ingenious device
had merely the effect of producing a still more ingenious means of
avoiding it. The system did not restrain those who wished to
pilfer, and it had a deleterious effect on honest officials by
making them feel that the Government reposed no confidence in them.
Besides this, it produced among all officials, honest and dishonest
alike, the habit of systematic falsification. As it was impossible
for even the most pedantic of men--and pedantry, be it remarked, is
a rare quality among Russians--to fulfil conscientiously all the
prescribed formalities, it became customary to observe the forms
merely on paper. Officials certified facts which they never
dreamed of examining, and secretaries gravely wrote the minutes of
meetings that had never been held! Thus, in the case above cited,
the repairs were in reality begun and ended long before the
architect was officially authorised to begin the work. The comedy
was nevertheless gravely played out to the end, so that any one
afterwards revising the documents would have found that everything
had been done in perfect order.

Perhaps the most ingenious means for preventing administrative
abuses was devised by the Emperor Nicholas I. Fully aware that he
was regularly and systematically deceived by the ordinary
officials, he formed a body of well-paid officers, called the
gendarmerie, who were scattered over the country, and ordered to
report directly to his Majesty whatever seemed to them worthy of
attention. Bureaucratic minds considered this an admirable
expedient; and the Tsar confidently expected that he would, by
means of these official observers who had no interest in concealing
the truth, be able to know everything, and to correct all official
abuses. In reality the institution produced few good results, and
in some respects had a very pernicious influence. Though picked
men and provided with good salaries, these officers were all more
or less permeated with the prevailing spirit. They could not but
feel that they were regarded as spies and informers--a humiliating
conviction, little calculated to develop that feeling of self-
respect which is the main foundation of uprightness--and that all
their efforts could do but little good. They were, in fact, in
pretty much the same position as Peter's Procurator-General, and,
with true Russian bonhomie, they disliked ruining individuals who
were no worse than the majority of their fellows. Besides this,
according to the received code of official morality insubordination
was a more heinous sin than dishonesty, and political offences were
regarded as the blackest of all. The gendarmerie officers shut
their eyes, therefore, to the prevailing abuses, which were
believed to be incurable, and directed their attention to real or
imaginary political delinquencies. Oppression and extortion
remained unnoticed, whilst an incautious word or a foolish joke at
the expense of the Government was too often magnified into an act
of high treason.

This force still exists under a slightly modified form. Towards
the close of the reign of Alexander II. (1880), when Count Loris
Melikof, with the sanction and approval of his august master, was
preparing to introduce a system of liberal political reforms, it
was intended to abolish the gendarmerie as an organ of political
espionage, and accordingly the direction of it was transferred from
the so-called Third Section of his Imperial Majesty's Chancery to
the Ministry of the Interior; but when the benevolent monarch was a
few months afterwards assassinated by revolutionists, the project
was naturally abandoned, and the Corps of Gendarmes, while
remaining nominally under the Minister of the Interior, was
practically reinstated in its former position. Now, as then, it
serves as a kind of supplement to the ordinary police, and is
generally employed for matters in which secrecy is required.
Unfortunately it is not bound by those legal restrictions which
protect the public against the arbitrary will of the ordinary
authorities. In addition to its regular duties it has a vaguely
defined roving commission to watch and arrest all persons who seem
to it in any way dangerous or suspectes, and it may keep such in
confinement for an indefinite time, or remove them to some distant
and inhospitable part of the Empire, without making them undergo a
regular trial. It is, in short, the ordinary instrument for
punishing political dreamers, suppressing secret societies,
counteracting political agitations, and in general executing the
extra-legal orders of the Government.

My relations with this anomalous branch of the administration were
somewhat peculiar. After my experience with the Vice-Governor of
Novgorod I determined to place myself above suspicion, and
accordingly applied to the "Chef des Gendarmes" for some kind of
official document which would prove to all officials with whom I
might come in contact that I had no illicit designs. My request
was granted, and I was furnished with the necessary documents; but
I soon found that in seeking to avoid Scylla I had fallen into
Charybdis. In calming official suspicions, I inadvertently aroused
suspicions of another kind. The documents proving that I enjoyed
the protection of the Government made many people suspect that I
was an emissary of the gendarmerie, and greatly impeded me in my
efforts to collect information from private sources. As the
private were for me more important than the official sources of
information, I refrained from asking for a renewal of the
protection, and wandered about the country as an ordinary
unprotected traveller. For some time I had no cause to regret this
decision. I knew that I was pretty closely watched, and that my
letters were occasionally opened in the post-office, but I was
subjected to no further inconvenience. At last, when I had nearly
forgotten all about Scylla and Charybdis, I one night unexpectedly
ran upon the former, and, to my astonishment, found myself formally
arrested! The incident happened in this wise.

I had been visiting Austria and Servia, and after a short absence
returned to Russia through Moldavia. On arriving at the Pruth,
which there forms the frontier, I found an officer of gendarmerie,
whose duty it was to examine the passports of all passers-by.
Though my passport was completely en regle, having been duly vise
by the British and Russian Consuls at Galatz, this gentleman
subjected me to a searching examination regarding my past life,
actual occupation, and intentions for the future. On learning that
I had been for more than two years travelling in Russia at my own
expense, for the simple purpose of collecting miscellaneous
information, he looked incredulous, and seemed to have some doubts
as to my being a genuine British subject; but when my statements
were confirmed by my travelling companion, a Russian friend who
carried awe-inspiring credentials, he countersigned my passport,
and allowed us to depart. The inspection of our luggage by the
custom-house officers was soon got over; and as we drove off to the
neighbouring village where we were to spend the night we
congratulated ourselves on having escaped for some time from all
contact with the official world. In this we were "reckoning
without the host."  As the clock struck twelve that night I was
roused by a loud knocking at my door, and after a good deal of
parley, during which some one proposed to effect an entrance by
force, I drew the bolt. The officer who had signed my passport
entered, and said, in a stiff, official tone, "I must request you
to remain here for twenty-four hours."

Not a little astonished by this announcement, I ventured to inquire
the reason for this strange request.

"That is my business," was the laconic reply.

"Perhaps it is; still you must, on mature consideration, admit that
I too have some interest in the matter. To my extreme regret I
cannot comply with your request, and must leave at sunrise."

"You shall not leave. Give me your passport."

"Unless detained by force, I shall start at four o'clock; and as I
wish to get some sleep before that time, I must request you
instantly to retire. You had the right to stop me at the frontier,
but you have no right to come and disturb me in this fashion, and I
shall certainly report you. My passport I shall give to none but a
regular officer of police."

Here followed a long discussion on the rights, privileges, and
general character of the gendarmerie, during which my opponent
gradually laid aside his dictatorial tone, and endeavoured to
convince me that the honourable body to which he belonged was
merely an ordinary branch of the administration. Though evidently
irritated, he never, I must say, overstepped the bounds of
politeness, and seemed only half convinced that he was justified in
interfering with my movements. When he found that he could not
induce me to give up my passport, he withdrew, and I again lay down
to rest; but in about half an hour I was again disturbed. This
time an officer of regular police entered, and demanded my
"papers."  To my inquiries as to the reason of all this
disturbance, he replied, in a very polite, apologetic way, that he
knew nothing about the reason, but he had received orders to arrest
me, and must obey. To him I delivered my passport, on condition
that I should receive a written receipt, and should be allowed to
telegraph to the British ambassador in St. Petersburg.

Early next morning I telegraphed to the ambassador, and waited
impatiently all day for a reply. I was allowed to walk about the
village and the immediate vicinity, but of this permission I did
not make much use. The village population was entirely Jewish, and
Jews in that part of the world have a wonderful capacity for
spreading intelligence. By the early morning there was probably
not a man, woman, or child in the place who had not heard of my
arrest, and many of them felt a not unnatural curiosity to see the
malefactor who had been caught by the police. To be stared at as a
malefactor is not very agreeable, so I preferred to remain in my
room, where, in the company of my friend, who kindly remained with
me and made small jokes about the boasted liberty of British
subjects, I spent the time pleasantly enough. The most
disagreeable part of the affair was the uncertainty as to how many
days, weeks, or months I might be detained, and on this point the
police-officer would not even hazard a conjecture.

The detention came to an end sooner than I expected. On the
following day--that is to say, about thirty-six hours after the
nocturnal visit--the police-officer brought me my passport, and at
the same time a telegram from the British Embassy informed me that
the central authorities had ordered my release. On my afterwards
pertinaciously requesting an explanation of the unceremonious
treatment to which I had been subjected, the Minister for Foreign
Affairs declared that the authorities expected a person of my name
to cross the frontier about that time with a quantity of false
bank-notes, and that I had been arrested by mistake. I must
confess that this explanation, though official, seemed to me more
ingenious than satisfactory, but I was obliged to accept it for
what it was worth. At a later period I had again the misfortune to
attract the attention of the secret police, but I reserve the
incident till I come to speak of my relations with the
revolutionists.

From all I have seen and heard of the gendarmerie I am disposed to
believe that the officers are for the most part polite, well-
educated men, who seek to fulfil their disagreeable duties in as
inoffensive a way as possible. It must, however, be admitted that
they are generally regarded with suspicion and dislike, even by
those people who fear the attempts at revolutionary propaganda
which it is the special duty of the gendarmerie to discover and
suppress. Nor need this surprise us. Though very many people
believe in the necessity of capital punishment, there are few who
do not feel a decided aversion to the public executioner.

The only effectual remedy for administrative abuses lies in placing
the administration under public control. This has been abundantly
proved in Russia. All the efforts of the Tsars during many
generations to check the evil by means of ingenious bureaucratic
devices proved utterly fruitless. Even the iron will and gigantic
energy of Nicholas I. were insufficient for the task. But when,
after the Crimean War, there was a great moral awakening, and the
Tsar called the people to his assistance, the stubborn, deep-rooted
evils immediately disappeared. For a time venality and extortion
were unknown, and since that period they have never been able to
regain their old force.

At the present moment it cannot be said that the administration is
immaculate, but it is incomparably purer than it was in old times.
Though public opinion is no longer so powerful as it was in the
early sixties, it is still strong enough to repress many
malpractices which in the time of Nicholas I. and his predecessors
were too frequent to attract attention. On this subject I shall
have more to say hereafter.

If administrative abuses are rife in the Empire of the Tsars, it is
not from any want of carefully prepared laws. In no country in the
world, perhaps, is the legislation more voluminous, and in theory,
not only the officials, but even the Tsar himself, must obey the
laws he has sanctioned, like the meanest of his subjects. This is
one of those cases, not infrequent in Russia, in which theory
differs somewhat from practice. In real life the Emperor may at
any moment override the law by means of what is called a Supreme
Command (vysotchaishiye povelenie), and a minister may "interpret"
a law in any way he pleases by means of a circular. This is a
frequent cause of complaint even among those who wish to uphold the
Autocratic Power. In their opinion law-respecting autocracy
wielded by a strong Tsar is an excellent institution for Russia; it
is arbitrary autocracy wielded by irresponsible ministers that they
object to.

As Englishmen may have some difficulty in imagining how laws can
come into being without a Parliament or Legislative Chamber of some
sort, I shall explain briefly how they are manufactured by the
Russian bureaucratic machine without the assistance of
representative institutions.

When a minister considers that some institution in his branch of
the service requires to be reformed, he begins by submitting to the
Emperor a formal report on the matter. If the Emperor agrees with
his minister as to the necessity for reform, he orders a Commission
to be appointed for the purpose of considering the subject and
preparing a definite legislative project. The Commission meets and
sets to work in what seems a very thorough way. It first studies
the history of the institution in Russia from the earliest times
downwards--or rather, it listens to an essay on the subject,
especially prepared for the occasion by some official who has a
taste for historical studies, and can write in a pleasant style.
The next step--to use a phrase which often occurs in the minutes of
such commissions--consists in "shedding the light of science on the
question" (prolit' na dyelo svet nauki). This important operation
is performed by preparing a memorial containing the history of
similar institutions in foreign countries, and an elaborate
exposition of numerous theories held by French and German
philosophical jurists. In these memorials it is often considered
necessary to include every European country except Turkey, and
sometimes the small German States and principal Swiss cantons are
treated separately.

To illustrate the character of these wonderful productions, let me
give an example. From a pile of such papers lying before me I take
one almost at random. It is a memorial relating to a proposed
reform of benevolent institutions. First I find a philosophical
disquisition on benevolence in general; next, some remarks on the
Talmud and the Koran; then a reference to the treatment of paupers
in Athens after the Peloponnesian War, and in Rome under the
emperors: then some vague observations on the Middle Ages, with a
quotation that was evidently intended to be Latin; lastly, comes an
account of the poor-laws of modern times, in which I meet with "the
Anglo-Saxon domination," King Egbert, King Ethelred, "a remarkable
book of Icelandic laws, called Hragas"; Sweden and Norway, France,
Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and nearly all the minor German States.
The most wonderful thing is that all this mass of historical
information, extending from the Talmud to the most recent
legislation of Hesse-Darmstadt, is compressed into twenty-one
octavo pages! The doctrinal part of the memorandum is not less
rich. Many respected names from the literature of Germany, France,
and England are forcibly dragged in; and the general conclusion
drawn from this mass of raw, undigested materials is believed to be
"the latest results of science."

Does the reader suspect that I have here chosen an extremely
exceptional case? If so, let us take the next paper in the file.
It refers to a project of law regarding imprisonment for debt. On
the first page I find references to "the Salic laws of the fifth
century," and the "Assises de Jerusalem, A.D 1099."  That, I think,
will suffice. Let us pass, then, to the next step.

When the quintessence of human wisdom and experience has thus been
extracted, the commission considers how the valuable product may be
applied to Russia, so as to harmonise with the existing general
conditions and local peculiarities. For a man of practical mind
this is, of course, the most interesting and most important part of
the operation, but from Russian legislators it receives
comparatively little attention. Very often have I turned to this
section of official papers in order to obtain information regarding
the actual state of the country, and in every case I have been
grievously disappointed. Vague general phrases, founded on a
priori reasoning rather than on observation, together with a few
statistical tables--which the cautious investigator should avoid as
he would an ambuscade--are too often all that is to be found.
Through the thin veil of pseudo-erudition the real facts are clear
enough. These philosophical legislators, who have spent their
lives in the official atmosphere of St. Petersburg, know as much
about Russia as the genuine cockney knows about Great Britain, and
in this part of their work they derive no assistance from the
learned German treatises which supply an unlimited amount of
historical facts and philosophical speculation.

From the commission the project passes to the Council of State,
where it is certainly examined and criticised, and perhaps
modified, but it is not likely to be improved from the practical
point of view, because the members of the Council are merely ci-
devant members of similar commissions, hardened by a few additional
years of official routine. The Council is, in fact, an assembly of
tchinovniks who know little of the practical, everyday wants of the
unofficial classes. No merchant, manufacturer, or farmer ever
enters its sacred precincts, so that its bureaucratic serenity is
rarely disturbed by practical objections. It is not surprising,
therefore, that it has been known to pass laws which were found at
once to be absolutely unworkable.

From the Council of State the Bill is taken to the Emperor, and he
generally begins by examining the signatures. The "Ayes" are in
one column and the "Noes" in another. If his Majesty is not
specially acquainted with the matter--and he cannot possibly be
acquainted with all the matters submitted to him--he usually signs
with the majority, or on the side where he sees the names of
officials in whose judgment he has special confidence; but if he
has strong views of his own, he places his signature in whichever
column he thinks fit, and it outweighs the signatures of any number
of Councillors. Whatever side he supports, that side "has it," and
in this way a small minority may be transformed into a majority.
When the important question, for example, as to how far classics
should be taught in the ordinary schools was considered by the
Council, it is said that only two members signed in favour of
classical education, which was excessively unpopular at the moment,
but the Emperor Alexander III., disregarding public opinion and the
advice of his Councillors, threw his signature into the lighter
scale, and the classicists were victorious.

CHAPTER XXV

MOSCOW AND THE SLAVOPHILS

Two Ancient Cities--Kief Not a Good Point for Studying Old Russian
National Life--Great Russians and Little Russians--Moscow--Easter
Eve in the Kremlin--Curious Custom--Anecdote of the Emperor
Nicholas--Domiciliary Visits of the Iberian Madonna--The Streets of
Moscow--Recent Changes in the Character of the City--Vulgar
Conception of the Slavophils--Opinion Founded on Personal
Acquaintance--Slavophil Sentiment a Century Ago--Origin and
Development of the Slavophil Doctrine--Slavophilism Essentially
Muscovite--The Panslavist Element--The Slavophils and the
Emancipation.

In the last chapter, as in many of the preceding ones, the reader
must have observed that at one moment there was a sudden break,
almost a solution of continuity, in Russian national life. The
Tsardom of Muscovy, with its ancient Oriental costumes and
Byzantine traditions, unexpectedly disappears, and the Russian
Empire, clad in modern garb and animated with the spirit of modern
progress, steps forward uninvited into European history. Of the
older civilisation, if civilisation it can be called, very little
survived the political transformation, and that little is generally
supposed to hover ghostlike around Kief and Moscow. To one or
other of these towns, therefore, the student who desires to learn
something of genuine old Russian life, untainted by foreign
influences, naturally wends his way. For my part I thought first
of settling for a time in Kief, the oldest and most revered of
Russian cities, where missionaries from Byzantium first planted
Christianity on Russian soil, and where thousands of pilgrims still
assemble yearly from far and near to prostrate themselves before
the Holy Icons in the churches and to venerate the relics of the
blessed saints and martyrs in the catacombs of the great monastery.
I soon discovered, however, that Kief, though it represents in a
certain sense the Byzantine traditions so dear to the Russian
people, is not a good point of observation for studying the Russian
character. It was early exposed to the ravages of the nomadic
tribes of the Steppe, and when it was liberated from those
incursions it was seized by the Poles and Lithuanians, and remained
for centuries under their domination. Only in comparatively recent
times did it begin to recover its Russian character--a university
having been created there for that purpose after the Polish
insurrection of 1830. Even now the process of Russification is far
from complete, and the Russian elements in the population are far
from being pure in the nationalist sense. The city and the
surrounding country are, in fact, Little Russian rather than Great
Russian, and between these two sections of the population there are
profound differences--differences of language, costume, traditions,
popular songs, proverbs, folk-lore, domestic arrangements, mode of
life, and Communal organisation. In these and other respects the
Little Russians, South Russians, Ruthenes, or Khokhly, as they are
variously designated, differ from the Great Russians of the North,
who form the predominant factor in the Empire, and who have given
to that wonderful structure its essential characteristics. Indeed,
if I did not fear to ruffle unnecessarily the patriotic
susceptibilities of my Great Russian friends who have a pet theory
on this subject, I should say that we have here two distinct
nationalities, further apart from each other than the English and
the Scotch. The differences are due, I believe, partly to
ethnographical peculiarities and partly to historic conditions.

As it was the energetic Great Russian empire-builders and not the
half-dreamy, half-astute, sympathetic descendants of the Free
Cossacks that I wanted to study, I soon abandoned my idea of
settling in the Holy City on the Dnieper, and chose Moscow as my
point of observation; and here, during several years, I spent
regularly some of the winter months.

The first few weeks of my stay in the ancient capital of the Tsars
were spent in the ordinary manner of intelligent tourists. After
mastering the contents of a guide-book I carefully inspected all
the officially recognised objects of interest--the Kremlin, with
its picturesque towers and six centuries of historical
associations; the Cathedrals, containing the venerated tombs of
martyrs, saints, and Tsars; the old churches, with their quaint,
archaic, richly decorated Icons; the "Patriarchs' Treasury," rich
in jewelled ecclesiastical vestments and vessels of silver and
gold; the ancient and the modern palace; the Ethnological Museum,
showing the costumes and physiognomy of all the various races in
the Empire; the archaeological collections, containing many objects
that recall the barbaric splendour of old Muscovy; the picture-
gallery, with Ivanof's gigantic picture, in which patriotic Russian
critics discover occult merits which place it above anything that
Western Europe has yet produced! Of course I climbed up to the top
of the tall belfry which rejoices in the name of "Ivan the Great,"
and looked down on the "gilded domes"* of the churches, and bright
green roofs of the houses, and far away, beyond these, the gently
undulating country with the "Sparrow Hills," from which Napoleon is
said, in cicerone language, to have "gazed upon the doomed city."
Occasionally I walked about the bazaars in the hope of finding
interesting specimens of genuine native art-industry, and was
urgently invited to purchase every conceivable article which I did
not want. At midday or in the evening I visited the most noted
traktirs, and made the acquaintance of the caviar, sturgeons,
sterlets, and other native delicacies for which these institutions
are famous--deafened the while by the deep tones of the colossal
barrel-organ, out of all proportion to the size of the room; and in
order to see how the common people spent their evenings I looked in
at some of the more modest traktirs, and gazed with wonder, not
unmixed with fear, at the enormous quantity of weak tea which the
inmates consumed.

* Allowance must be made here for poetical licence. In reality,
very few of the domes are gilt. The great majority of them are
painted green, like the roofs of the houses.

Since these first weeks of my sojourn in Moscow more than thirty
years have passed, and many of my early impressions have been
blurred by time, but one scene remains deeply graven on my memory.
It was Easter Eve, and I had gone with a friend to the Kremlin to
witness the customary religious ceremonies. Though the rain was
falling heavily, an immense number of people had assembled in and
around the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd was of the most
mixed kind. There stood the patient bearded muzhik in his well-
worn sheepskin; the big, burly, self-satisfied merchant in his long
black glossy kaftan; the noble with fashionable great-coat and
umbrella; thinly clad old women shivering in the cold, and bright-
eyed young damsels with their warm cloaks drawn closely round them;
old men with long beard, wallet, and pilgrim's staff; and
mischievous urchins with faces for the moment preternaturally
demure. Each right hand, of old and young alike, held a lighted
taper, and these myriads of flickering little flames produced a
curious illumination, giving to the surrounding buildings a weird
picturesqueness which they do not possess in broad daylight. All
stood patiently waiting for the announcement of the glad tidings:
"He is risen!"  As midnight approached, the hum of voices gradually
ceased, till, as the clock struck twelve, the deep-toned bell on
"Ivan the Great" began to toll, and in answer to this signal all
the bells in Moscow suddenly sent forth a merry peal. Each bell--
and their name is legion--seemed frantically desirous of drowning
its neighbour's voice, the solemn boom of the great one overhead
mingling curiously with the sharp, fussy "ting-a-ting-ting" of
diminutive rivals. If demons dwell in Moscow and dislike bell-
ringing, as is generally supposed, then there must have been at
that moment a general stampede of the powers of darkness such as is
described by Milton in his poem on the Nativity, and as if this
deafening din were not enough, big guns were fired in rapid
succession from a battery of artillery close at hand! The noise
seemed to stimulate the religious enthusiasm, and the general
excitement had a wonderful effect on a Russian friend who
accompanied me. When in his normal condition that gentleman was a
quiet, undemonstrative person, devoted to science, an ardent
adherent of Western civilisation in general and of Darwinism in
particular, and a thorough sceptic with regard to all forms of
religious belief; but the influence of the surroundings was too
much for his philosophical equanimity. For a moment his orthodox
Muscovite soul awoke from its sceptical, cosmopolitan lethargy.
After crossing himself repeatedly--an act of devotion which I had
never before seen him perform--he grasped my arm, and, pointing to
the crowd, said in an exultant tone of voice, "Look there! There
is a sight that you can see nowhere but in the 'White-stone City.'*
Are not the Russians a religious people?"

*Belokamenny, meaning "of white stone," is one of the popular names
of Moscow.

To this unexpected question I gave a monosyllabic assent, and
refrained from disturbing my friend's new-born enthusiasm by any
discordant note; but I must confess that this sudden outburst of
deafening noise and the dazzling light aroused in my heretical
breast feelings of a warlike rather than a religious kind. For a
moment I could imagine myself in ancient Moscow, and could fancy
the people being called out to repel a Tartar horde already
thundering at the gates!

The service lasted two or three hours, and terminated with the
curious ceremony of blessing the Easter cakes, which were ranged--
each one with a lighted taper stuck in it--in long rows outside of
the cathedral. A not less curious custom practised at this season
is that of exchanging kisses of fraternal love. Theoretically one
ought to embrace and be embraced by all present--indicating thereby
that all are brethren in Christ--but the refinements of modern life
have made innovations in the practice, and most people confine
their salutations to their friends and acquaintances. When two
friends meet during that night or on the following day, the one
says, "Christos voskres!" ("Christ hath risen!"); and the other
replies, "Vo istine voskres!" ("In truth he hath risen!"). They
then kiss each other three times on the right and left cheek
alternately. The custom is more or less observed in all classes of
society, and the Emperor himself conforms to it.

This reminds me of an anecdote which is related of the Emperor
Nicholas I., tending to show that he was not so devoid of kindly
human feelings as his imperial and imperious exterior suggested.
On coming out of his cabinet one Easter morning he addressed to the
soldier who was mounting guard at the door the ordinary words of
salutation, "Christ hath risen!" and received instead of the
ordinary reply, a flat contradiction--"Not at all, your Imperial
Majesty!"  Astounded by such an unexpected answer--for no one
ventured to dissent from Nicholas even in the most guarded and
respectful terms--he instantly demanded an explanation. The
soldier, trembling at his own audacity, explained that he was a
Jew, and could not conscientiously admit the fact of the
Resurrection. This boldness for conscience' sake so pleased the
Tsar that he gave the man a handsome Easter present.

A quarter of a century after the Easter Eve above mentioned--or, to
be quite accurate, on the 26th of May, 1896--I again find myself in
the Kremlin on the occasion of a great religious ceremony--a
ceremony which shows that "the White-stone City" on the Moskva is
still in some respects the capital of Holy Russia. This time my
post of observation is inside the cathedral, which is artistically
draped with purple hangings and crowded with the most distinguished
personages of the Empire, all arrayed in gorgeous apparel--Grand
Dukes and Grand Duchesses, Imperial Highnesses and High
Excellencies, Metropolitans and Archbishops, Senators and
Councillors of State, Generals and Court dignitaries. In the
centre of the building, on a high, richly decorated platform, sits
the Emperor with his Imperial Consort, and his mother, the widowed
Consort of Alexander III. Though Nicholas II. has not the colossal
stature which has distinguished so many of the Romanofs, he is well
built, holds himself erect, and shows a quiet dignity in his
movements; while his face, which resembles that of his cousin, the
Prince of Wales, wears a kindly, sympathetic expression. The
Empress looks even more than usually beautiful, in a low dress cut
in the ancient fashion, her thick brown hair, dressed most simply
without jewellery or other ornaments, falling in two long ringlets
over her white shoulders. For the moment, her attire is much
simpler than that of the Empress Dowager, who wears a diamond crown
and a great mantle of gold brocade, lined and edged with ermine,
the long train displaying in bright-coloured embroidery the
heraldic double-headed eagle of the Imperial arms.

Each of these august personages sits on a throne of curious
workmanship, consecrated by ancient historic associations. That of
the Emperor, the gift of the Shah of Persia to Ivan the Terrible,
and commonly called the Throne of Tsar Michael, the founder of the
Romanof dynasty, is covered with gold plaques, and studded with
hundreds of big, roughly cut precious stones, mostly rubies,
emeralds, and turquoises. Of still older date is the throne of the
young Empress, for it was given by Pope Paul II. to Tsar Ivan III.,
grandfather of the Terrible, on the occasion of his marriage with a
niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. More recent but not less
curious is that of the Empress Dowager. It is the throne of Tsar
Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, covered with countless and
priceless diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and surmounted by an
Imperial eagle of solid gold, together with golden statuettes of
St. Peter and St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker. Over each throne
is a canopy of purple velvet fringed with gold, out of which rise
stately plumes representing the national colours.

Their Majesties have come hither, in accordance with time-honoured
custom, to be crowned in this old Cathedral of the Assumption, the
central point of the Kremlin, within a stone-throw of the Cathedral
of the Archangel Michael, in which lie the remains of the old Grand
Dukes and Tsars of Muscovy. Already the Emperor has read aloud, in
a clear, unfaltering voice, from a richly bound parchment folio,
held by the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, the Orthodox creed; and
his Eminence, after invoking on his Majesty the blessing of the
Holy Spirit, has performed the mystic rite of placing his hands in
the form of a cross on the Imperial forehead. Thus all is ready
for the most important part of the solemn ceremony. Standing
erect, the Emperor doffs his small diadem and puts on with his own
hands the great diamond crown, offered respectfully by the
Metropolitan; then he reseats himself on his throne, holding in his
right hand the Sceptre and in his left the Orb of Dominion. After
sitting thus in state for a few minutes, he stands up and proceeds
to crown his august spouse, kneeling before him. First he touches
her forehead with his own crown, and then he places on her head a
smaller one, which is immediately attached to her hair by four
ladies-in-waiting, dressed in the old Muscovite Court-costume. At
the same time her Majesty is invested with a mantle of heavy gold
brocade, similar to those of the Emperor and Empress Dowager, lined
and bordered with ermine.

Thus crowned and robed their Majesties sit in state, while a proto-
deacon reads, in a loud stentorian voice, the long list of sonorous
hereditary titles belonging of right to the Imperator and Autocrat
of all the Russias, and the choir chants a prayer invoking long
life and happiness--"Many years! Many years! Many years!"--on the
high and mighty possessor of the titles aforesaid. And now begins
the Mass, celebrated with a pomp and magnificence that can be
witnessed only once or twice in a generation. Sixty gorgeously
robed ecclesiastical dignitaries of the highest orders fulfil their
various functions with due solemnity and unction; but the
magnificence of the vestments and the pomp of the ceremonial are
soon forgotten in the exquisite solemnising music, as the deep
double-bass tones of the adult singers in the background--carefully
selected for the occasion in all parts of the Empire--peal forth as
from a great organ, and blend marvellously with the clear, soft,
gentle notes of the red-robed chorister boys in front of the
Iconostase. Listening with intense emotion, I involuntarily recall
to mind Fra Angelico's pictures of angelic choirs, and cannot help
thinking that the pious old Florentine, whose soul was attuned to
all that was sacred and beautiful, must have heard in imagination
such music as this. So strong is the impression that the
subsequent details of the long ceremony, including the anointing
with the holy chrism, fail to engrave themselves on my memory. One
incident, however, remains; and if it had happened in an earlier
and more superstitious age it would doubtless have been chronicled
as an omen full of significance. As the Emperor is on the point of
descending from the dais, duly crowned and anointed, a staggering
ray of sunshine steals through one of the narrow upper windows and,
traversing the dimly lit edifice, falls full on the Imperial crown,
lighting up for a moment the great mass of diamonds with a
hundredfold brilliance.

In a detailed account of the Coronation which I wrote on leaving
the Kremlin, I find the following: "The magnificent ceremony is at
an end, and now Nicholas II. is the crowned Emperor and anointed
Autocrat of all the Russias. May the cares of Empire rest lightly
on him! That must be the earnest prayer of every loyal subject and
every sincere well-wisher, for of all living mortals he is perhaps
the one who has been entrusted by Providence with the greatest
power and the greatest responsibilities."  In writing those words I
did not foresee how heavy his responsibilities would one day weigh
upon him, when his Empire would be sorely tried, by foreign war and
internal discontent.

One more of these old Moscow reminiscences, and I have done. A day
or two after the Coronation I saw the Khodinskoye Polye, a great
plain in the outskirts of Moscow, strewn with hundreds of corpses!
During the previous night enormous crowds from the city and the
surrounding districts had collected here in order to receive at
sunrise, by the Tsar's command, a little memento of the coronation
ceremony, in the form of a packet containing a metal cup and a few
eatables; and as day dawned, in their anxiety to get near the row
of booths from which the distribution was to be made, about two
thousand had been crushed to death. It was a sight more horrible
than a battlefield, because among the dead were a large proportion
of women and children, terribly mutilated in the struggle.
Altogether, "a sight to shudder at, not to see!"

To return to the remark of my friend in the Kremlin on Easter Eve,
the Russians in general, and the Muscovites in particular, as the
quintessence of all that is Russian, are certainly a religious
people, but their piety sometimes finds modes of expression which
rather shock the Protestant mind. As an instance of these, I may
mention the domiciliary visits of the Iberian Madonna. This
celebrated Icon, for reasons which I have never heard
satisfactorily explained, is held in peculiar veneration by the
Muscovites, and occupies in popular estimation a position analogous
to the tutelary deities of ancient pagan cities. Thus when
Napoleon was about to enter the city in 1812, the populace
clamorously called upon the Metropolitan to take the Madonna, and
lead them out armed with hatchets against the hosts of the infidel;
and when the Tsar visits Moscow he generally drives straight from
the railway-station to the little chapel where the Icon resides--
near one of the entrances to the Kremlin--and there offers up a
short prayer. Every Orthodox Russian, as he passes this chapel,
uncovers and crosses himself, and whenever a religious service is
performed in it there is always a considerable group of
worshippers. Some of the richer inhabitants, however, are not
content with thus performing their devotions in public before the
Icon. They like to have it from time to time in their houses, and
the ecclesiastical authorities think fit to humour this strange
fancy. Accordingly every morning the Iberian Madonna may be seen
driving about the city from one house to another in a carriage and
four! The carriage may be at once recognised, not from any
peculiarity in its structure, for it is an ordinary close carriage
such as may be obtained at livery stables, but by the fact that the
coachman sits bare-headed, and all the people in the street uncover
and cross themselves as it passes. Arrived at the house to which
it has been invited, the Icon is carried through all the rooms, and
in the principal apartment a short religious service is performed
before it. As it is being brought in or taken away, female
servants may sometimes be seen to kneel on the floor so that it may
be carried over them. During its absence from its chapel it is
replaced by a copy not easily distinguishable from the original,
and thus the devotions of the faithful and the flow of pecuniary
contributions do not suffer interruption. These contributions,
together with the sums paid for the domiciliary visits, amount to a
considerable yearly sum, and go--if I am rightly informed--to swell
the revenues of the Metropolitan.

A single drive or stroll through Moscow will suffice to convince
the traveller, even if he knows nothing of Russian history, that
the city is not, like its modern rival on the Neva, the artificial
creation of a far-seeing, self-willed autocrat, but rather a
natural product which has grown up slowly and been modified
according to the constantly changing wants of the population. A
few of the streets have been Europeanised--in all except the
paving, which is everywhere execrably Asiatic--to suit the tastes
of those who have adopted European culture, but the great majority
of them still retain much of their ancient character and primitive
irregularity. As soon as we diverge from the principal
thoroughfares, we find one-storied houses--some of them still of
wood--which appear to have been transported bodily from the
country, with courtyard, garden, stables, and other appurtenances.
The whole is no doubt a little compressed, for land has here a
certain value, but the character is in no way changed, and we have
some difficulty in believing that we are not in the suburbs but
near the centre of a great town. There is nothing that can by any
possibility be called street architecture. Though there is
unmistakable evidence of the streets having been laid out according
to a preconceived plan, many of them show clearly that in their
infancy they had a wayward will of their own, and bent to the right
or left without any topographical justification. The houses, too,
display considerable individuality of character, having evidently
during the course of their construction paid no attention to their
neighbours. Hence we find no regularly built terraces, crescents,
or squares. There is, it is true, a double circle of boulevards,
but the houses which flank them have none of that regularity which
we commonly associate with the term. Dilapidated buildings which
in West-European cities would hide themselves in some narrow lane
or back slum here stand composedly in the face of day by the side
of a palatial residence, without having the least consciousness of
the incongruity of their position, just as the unsophisticated
muzhik, in his unsavoury sheepskin, can stand in the midst of a
crowd of well-dressed people without feeling at all awkward or
uncomfortable.

All this incongruity, however, is speedily disappearing. Moscow
has become the centre of a great network of railways, and the
commercial and industrial capital of the Empire. Already her
rapidly increasing population has nearly reached a million.*  The
value of land and property is being doubled and trebled, and
building speculations, with the aid of credit institutions of
various kinds, are being carried on with feverish rapidity. Well
may the men of the old school complain that the world is turned
upside down, and regret the old times of traditional somnolence and
comfortable routine! Those good old times are gone now, never to
return. The ancient capital, which long gloried in its past
historical associations, now glories in its present commercial
prosperity, and looks forward with confidence to the future. Even
the Slavophils, the obstinate champions of the ultra-Muscovite
spirit, have changed with the times, and descended to the level of
ordinary prosaic life. These men, who formerly spent years in
seeking to determine the place of Moscow in the past and future
history of humanity, have--to their honour be it said--become in
these latter days town-counsellors, and have devoted much of their
time to devising ways and means of improving the drainage and the
street-paving! But I am anticipating in a most unjustifiable way.
I ought first to tell the reader who these Slavophils were, and why
they sought to correct the commonly received conceptions of
universal history.

* According to the census of 1897 it was 988,610.

The reader may have heard of the Slavophils as a set of fanatics
who, about half a century ago, were wont to go about in what they
considered the ancient Russian costume, who wore beards in defiance
of Peter the Great's celebrated ukaz and Nicholas's clearly-
expressed wish anent shaving, who gloried in Muscovite barbarism,
and had solemnly "sworn a feud" against European civilisation and
enlightenment. By the tourists of the time who visited Moscow they
were regarded as among the most noteworthy lions of the place, and
were commonly depicted in not very flattering colours. At the
beginning of the Crimean War they were among the extreme
Chauvinists who urged the necessity of planting the Greek cross on
the desecrated dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and hoped to
see the Emperor proclaimed "Panslavonic Tsar"; and after the
termination of the war they were frequently accused of inventing
Turkish atrocities, stirring up discontent among the Slavonic
subjects of the Sultan, and secretly plotting for the overthrow of
the Ottoman Empire. All this was known to me before I went to
Russia, and I had consequently invested the Slavophils with a halo
of romance. Shortly after my arrival in St. Petersburg I heard
something more which tended to increase my interest in them--they
had caused, I was told, great trepidation among the highest
official circles by petitioning the Emperor to resuscitate a
certain ancient institution, called Zemskiye Sobory, which might be
made to serve the purposes of a parliament! This threw a new light
upon them--under the disguise of archaeological conservatives they
were evidently aiming at important liberal reforms.

As a foreigner and a heretic, I expected a very cold and distant
reception from these uncompromising champions of Russian
nationality and the Orthodox faith; but in this I was agreeably
disappointed. By all of them I was received in the most amiable
and friendly way, and I soon discovered that my preconceived ideas
of them were very far from the truth. Instead of wild fanatics I
found quiet, extremely intelligent, highly educated gentlemen,
speaking foreign languages with ease and elegance, and deeply
imbued with that Western culture which they were commonly supposed
to despise. And this first impression was amply confirmed by
subsequent experience during several years of friendly intercourse.
They always showed themselves men of earnest character and strong
convictions, but they never said or did anything that could justify
the appellation of fanatics. Like all philosophical theorists,
they often allowed their logic to blind them to facts, but their
reasonings were very plausible--so plausible, indeed, that, had I
been a Russian they would have almost persuaded me to be a
Slavophil, at least during the time they were talking to me.

To understand their doctrine we must know something of its origin
and development.

The origin of the Slavophil sentiment, which must not be confounded
with the Slavophil doctrine, is to be sought in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, when the Tsars of Muscovy were introducing
innovations in Church and State. These innovations were profoundly
displeasing to the people. A large portion of the lower classes,
as I have related in a previous chapter, sought refuge in Old
Ritualism or sectarianism, and imagined that Tsar Peter, who called
himself by the heretical title of "Imperator," was an emanation of
the Evil Principle. The nobles did not go quite so far. They
remained members of the official Church, and restricted themselves
to hinting that Peter was the son, not of Satan, but of a German
surgeon--a lineage which, according to the conceptions of the time,
was a little less objectionable; but most of them were very hostile
to the changes, and complained bitterly of the new burdens which
these changes entailed. Under Peter's immediate successors, when
not only the principles of administration but also many of the
administrators were German, this hostility greatly increased.

So long as the innovations appeared only in the official activity
of the Government, the patriotic, conservative spirit was obliged
to keep silence; but when the foreign influence spread to the
social life of the Court aristocracy, the opposition began to find
a literary expression. In the time of Catherine II., when
Gallomania was at its height in Court circles, comedies and
satirical journals ridiculed those who, "blinded by some externally
brilliant gifts of foreigners, not only prefer foreign countries to
their native land, but even despise their fellow-countrymen, and
think that a Russian ought to borrow all--even personal character.
As if nature arranging all things with such wisdom, and bestowing
on all regions the gifts and customs which are appropriate to the
climate, had been so unjust as to refuse to the Russians a
character of their own! As if she condemned them to wander over
all regions, and to adopt by bits the various customs of various
nations, in order to compose out of the mixture a new character
appropriate to no nation whatever!"  Numerous passages of this kind
might be quoted, attacking the "monkeyism" and "parrotism" of those
who indiscriminately adopted foreign manners and customs--those who

"Sauntered Europe round,
And gathered ev'ry vice in ev'ry ground."

Sometimes the terms and metaphors employed were more forcible than
refined. One satirical journal, for instance, relates an amusing
story about certain little Russian pigs that went to foreign lands
to enlighten their understanding, and came back to their country
full-grown swine. The national pride was wounded by the thought
that Russians could be called "clever apes who feed on foreign
intelligence," and many writers, stung by such reproaches, fell
into the opposite extreme, discovering unheard-of excellences in
the Russian mind and character, and vociferously decrying
everything foreign in order to place these imagined excellences in
a stronger light by contrast. Even when they recognised that their
country was not quite so advanced in civilisation as certain other
nations, they congratulated themselves on the fact, and invented by
way of justification an ingenious theory, which was afterwards
developed by the Slavophils. "The nations of the West," they said,
"began to live before us, and are consequently more advanced than
we are; but we have on that account no reason to envy them, for we
can profit by their errors, and avoid those deep-rooted evils from
which they are suffering. He who has just been born is happier
than he who is dying."

Thus, we see, a patriotic reaction against the introduction of
foreign institutions and the inordinate admiration of foreign
culture already existed in Russia more than a century ago. It did
not, however, take the form of a philosophical theory till a much
later period, when a similar movement was going on in various
countries of Western Europe.

After the overthrow of the great Napoleonic Empire a reaction
against cosmopolitanism took place and a romantic enthusiasm for
nationality spread over Europe like an epidemic. Blind,
enthusiastic patriotism became the fashionable sentiment of the
time. Each nation took to admiring itself complacently, to
praising its own character and achievements, and to idealising its
historical and mythical past. National peculiarities, "local
colour," ancient customs, traditional superstitions--in short,
everything that a nation believed to be specially and exclusively
its own, now raised an enthusiasm similar to that which had been
formerly excited by cosmopolitan conceptions founded on the law of
nature. The movement produced good and evil results. In serious
minds it led to a deep and conscientious study of history, national
literature, popular mythology, and the like; whilst in frivolous,
inflammable spirits it gave birth merely to a torrent of patriotic
fervour and rhetorical exaggeration. The Slavophils were the
Russian representatives of this nationalistic reaction, and
displayed both its serious and its frivolous elements.

Among the most important products of this movement in Germany was
the Hegelian theory of universal history. According to Hegel's
views, which were generally accepted by those who occupied
themselves with philosophical questions, universal history was
described as "Progress in the consciousness of freedom"
(Fortschritt im Bewusstsein der Freiheit). In each period of the
world's history, it was explained, some one nation or race had been
intrusted with the high mission of enabling the Absolute Reason, or
Weltgeist, to express itself in objective existence, while the
other nations and races had for the time no metaphysical
justification for their existence, and no higher duty than to
imitate slavishly the favoured rival in which the Weltgeist had for
the moment chosen to incorporate itself. The incarnation had taken
place first in the Eastern Monarchies, then in Greece, next in
Rome, and lastly in the Germanic race; and it was generally
assumed, if not openly asserted, that this mystical Metempsychosis
of the Absolute was now at an end. The cycle of existence was
complete. In the Germanic peoples the Weltgeist had found its
highest and final expression.

Russians in general knew nothing about German philosophy, and were
consequently not in any way affected by these ideas, but there was
in Moscow a small group of young men who ardently studied German
literature and metaphysics, and they were much shocked by Hegel's
views. Ever since the brilliant reign of Catherine II., who had
defeated the Turks and had dreamed of resuscitating the Byzantine
Empire, and especially since the memorable events of 1812-15, when
Alexander I. appeared as the liberator of enthralled Europe and the
arbiter of her destinies, Russians were firmly convinced that their
country was destined to play a most important part in human
history. Already the great Russian historian Karamzin had declared
that henceforth Clio must be silent or accord to Russia a prominent
place in the history of the nations. Now, by the Hegelian theory,
the whole of the Slav race was left out in the cold, with no high
mission, with no new truths to divulge, with nothing better to do,
in fact, than to imitate the Germans.

The patriotic philosophers of Moscow could not, of course, adopt
this view. Whilst accepting the fundamental principles, they
declared the theory to be incomplete. The incompleteness lay in
the assumption that humanity had already entered on the final
stages of its development. The Teutonic nations were perhaps for
the moment the leaders in the march of civilisation, but there was
no reason to suppose that they would always retain that privileged
position. On the contrary, there were already symptoms that their
ascendency was drawing to a close. "Western Europe," it was said,
"presents a strange, saddening spectacle. Opinion struggles
against opinion, power against power, throne against throne.
Science, Art, and Religion, the three chief motors of social life,
have lost their force. We venture to make an assertion which to
many at present may seem strange, but which will be in a few years
only too evident: Western Europe is on the highroad to ruin! We
Russians, on the contrary, are young and fresh, and have taken no
part in the crimes of Europe. We have a great mission to fulfil.
Our name is already inscribed on the tablets of victory, and now we
have to inscribe our spirit in the history of the human mind. A
higher kind of victory--the victory of Science, Art and Faith--
awaits us on the ruins of tottering Europe!"*

* These words were written by Prince Odoefski.

This conclusion was supported by arguments drawn from history--or,
at least, what was believed to be history. The European world was
represented as being composed of two hemispheres--the Eastern or
Graeco-Slavonic on the one hand, and the Western, or Roman Catholic
and Protestant, on the other. These two hemispheres, it was said,
are distinguished from each other by many fundamental
characteristics. In both of them Christianity formed originally
the basis of civilisation, but in the West it became distorted and
gave a false direction to the intellectual development. By placing
the logical reason of the learned above the conscience of the whole
Church, Roman Catholicism produced Protestantism, which proclaimed
the right of private judgment and consequently became split up into
innumerable sects. The dry, logical spirit which was thus fostered
created a purely intellectual, one-sided philosophy, which must end
in pure scepticism, by blinding men to those great truths which lie
above the sphere of reasoning and logic. The Graeco-Slavonic
world, on the contrary, having accepted Christianity not from Rome,
but from Byzantium, received pure orthodoxy and true enlightenment,
and was thus saved alike from Papal tyranny and from Protestant
free-thinking. Hence the Eastern Christians have preserved
faithfully not only the ancient dogmas, but also the ancient spirit
of Christianity--that spirit of pious humility, resignation, and
brotherly love which Christ taught by precept and example. If they
have not yet a philosophy, they will create one, and it will far
surpass all previous systems; for in the writings of the Greek
Fathers are to be found the germs of a broader, a deeper, and a
truer philosophy than the dry, meagre rationalism of the West--a
philosophy founded not on the logical faculty alone, but on the
broader basis of human nature as a whole.

The fundamental characteristics of the Graeco-Slavonic world--so
runs the Slavophil theory--have been displayed in the history of
Russia. Throughout Western Christendom the principal of individual
judgment and reckless individual egotism have exhausted the social
forces and brought society to the verge of incurable anarchy and
inevitable dissolution, whereas the social and political history of
Russia has been harmonious and peaceful. It presents no struggles
between the different social classes, and no conflicts between
Church and State. All the factors have worked in unison, and the
development has been guided by the spirit of pure orthodoxy. But
in this harmonious picture there is one big, ugly black spot--
Peter, falsely styled "the Great," and his so-called reforms.
Instead of following the wise policy of his ancestors, Peter
rejected the national traditions and principles, and applied to his
country, which belonged to the Eastern world, the principles of
Western civilisation. His reforms, conceived in a foreign spirit,
and elaborated by men who did not possess the national instincts,
were forced upon the nation against its will, and the result was
precisely what might have been expected. The "broad Slavonic
nature" could not be controlled by institutions which had been
invented by narrow-minded, pedantic German bureaucrats, and, like
another Samson, it pulled down the building in which foreign
legislators sought to confine it. The attempt to introduce foreign
culture had a still worse effect. The upper classes, charmed and
dazzled by the glare and glitter of Western science, threw
themselves impulsively on the newly found treasures, and thereby
condemned themselves to moral slavery and intellectual sterility.
Fortunately--and herein lay one of the fundamental principles of
the Slavophil doctrine--the imported civilisation had not at all
infected the common people. Through all the changes which the
administration and the Noblesse underwent the peasantry preserved
religiously in their hearts "the living legacy of antiquity," the
essence of Russian nationality, "a clear spring welling up living
waters, hidden and unknown, but powerful."*  To recover this lost
legacy by studying the character, customs, and institutions of the
peasantry, to lead the educated classes back to the path from which
they had strayed, and to re-establish that intellectual and moral
unity which had been disturbed by the foreign importations--such
was the task which the Slavophils proposed to themselves.

* This was one of the favourite themes of Khomiakof, the Slavophil
poet and theologian.

Deeply imbued with that romantic spirit which distorted all the
intellectual activity of the time, the Slavophils often indulged in
the wildest exaggerations, condemning everything foreign and
praising everything Russian. When in this mood they saw in the
history of the West nothing but violence, slavery, and egotism, and
in that of their own country free-will, liberty, and peace. The
fact that Russia did not possess free political institutions was
adduced as a precious fruit of that spirit of Christian resignation
and self-sacrifice which places the Russian at such an immeasurable
height above the proud, selfish European; and because Russia
possessed few of the comforts and conveniences of common life, the
West was accused of having made comfort its God! We need not,
however, dwell on these puerilities, which only gained for their
authors the reputation of being ignorant, narrow-minded men, imbued
with a hatred of enlightenment and desirous of leading their
country back to its primitive barbarism. What the Slavophils
really condemned, at least in their calmer moments, was not
European culture, but the uncritical, indiscriminate adoption of it
by their countrymen. Their tirades against foreign culture must
appear excusable when we remember that many Russians of the upper
ranks could speak and write French more correctly than their native
language, and that even the great national poet Pushkin was not
ashamed to confess--what was not true, and a mere piece of
affectation--that "the language of Europe" was more familiar to him
than his mother-tongue!

The Slavophil doctrine, though it made a great noise in the world,
never found many adherents. The society of St. Petersburg regarded
it as one of those harmless provincial eccentricities which are
always to be found in Moscow. In the modern capital, with its
foreign name, its streets and squares on the European model, its
palaces and churches in the Renaissance style, and its passionate
love of everything French, any attempt to resuscitate the old
Boyaric times would have been eminently ridiculous. Indeed,
hostility to St. Petersburg and to "the Petersburg period of
Russian history" is one of the characteristic traits of genuine
Slavophilism. In Moscow the doctrine found a more appropriate
home. There the ancient churches, with the tombs of Grand Princes
and holy martyrs, the palace in which the Tsars of Muscovy had
lived, the Kremlin which had resisted--not always successfully--the
attacks of savage Tartars and heretical Poles, the venerable Icons
that had many a time protected the people from danger, the block of
masonry from which, on solemn occasions, the Tsar and the Patriarch
had addressed the assembled multitude--these, and a hundred other
monuments sanctified by tradition, have kept alive in the popular
memory some vague remembrance of the olden time, and are still
capable of awakening antiquarian patriotism.

The inhabitants, too, have preserved something of the old Muscovite
character. Whilst successive sovereigns have been striving to make
the country a progressive European empire, Moscow has remained the
home of passive conservatism and an asylum for the discontented,
especially for the disappointed aspirants to Imperial favour.
Abandoned by the modern Emperors, she can glory in her ancient
Tsars. But even the Muscovites were not prepared to accept the
Slavophil doctrine in the extreme form which it assumed, and were
not a little perplexed by the eccentricities of those who professed
it. Plain, sensible people, though they might be proud of being
citizens of the ancient capital, and might thoroughly enjoy a joke
at the expense of St. Petersburg, could not understand a little
coterie of enthusiasts who sought neither official rank nor
decorations, who slighted many of the conventionalities of the
higher classes to which by birth and education they belonged, who
loved to fraternise with the common people, and who occasionally
dressed in the national costume which had been discarded by the
nobles since the time of Peter the Great.

The Slavophils thus remained merely a small literary party, which
probably did not count more than a dozen members, but their
influence was out of all proportion to their numbers. They
preached successfully the doctrine that the historical development
of Russia has been peculiar, that her present social and political
organisation is radically different from that of the countries of
Western Europe, and that consequently the social and political
evils from which she suffers are not to be cured by the remedies
which have proved efficacious in France and Germany. These truths,
which now appear commonplace, were formerly by no means generally
recognised, and the Slavophils deserve credit for directing
attention to them. Besides this, they helped to awaken in the
upper classes a lively sympathy with the poor, oppressed, and
despised peasantry. So long as the Emperor Nicholas lived they had
to confine themselves to a purely literary activity; but during the
great reforms initiated by his successor, Alexander II., they
descended into the arena of practical politics, and played a most
useful and honourable part in the emancipation of the serfs. In
the new local self-government, too--the Zemstvo and the new
municipal institutions--they laboured energetically and to good
purpose. Of all this I shall have occasion to speak more fully in
future chapters.

But what of their Panslavist aspirations? By their theory they
were constrained to pay attention to the Slav race as a whole, but
they were more Russian than Slav, and more Muscovite than Russian.
The Panslavist element consequently occupied a secondary place in
Slavophil doctrine. Though they did much to stimulate popular
sympathy with the Southern Slavs, and always cherished the hope
that the Serbs, Bulgarians, and cognate Slav nationalities would
one day throw off the bondage of the German and the Turk, they
never proposed any elaborate project for the solution of the
Eastern Question. So far as I was able to gather from their
conversation, they seemed to favour the idea of a grand Slavonic
Confederation, in which the hegemony would, of course, belong to
Russia. In ordinary times the only steps which they took for the
realisation of this idea consisted in contributing money for
schools and churches among the Slav population of Austria and
Turkey, and in educating young Bulgarians in Russia. During the
Cretan insurrection they sympathised warmly with the insurgents as
co-religionists, but afterwards--especially during the crisis of
the Eastern Question which culminated in the Treaty of San Stefano
and the Congress of Berlin (1878)--their Hellenic sympathies
cooled, because the Greeks showed that they had political
aspirations inconsistent with the designs of Russia, and that they
were likely to be the rivals rather than the allies of the Slavs in
the struggle for the Sick Man's inheritance.

Since the time when I was living in Moscow in constant intercourse
with the leading Slavophils more than a quarter of a century has
passed, and of those with whom I spent so many pleasant evenings
discussing the past history and future destinies of the Slav races,
not one remains alive. All the great prophets of the old Slavophil
doctrine--Jun Samarin, Prince Tcherkaski, Ivan Aksakof, Kosheleff--
have departed without leaving behind them any genuine disciples.
The present generation of Muscovite frondeurs, who continue to rail
against Western Europe and the pedantic officialism of St.
Petersburg, are of a more modern and less academic type. Their
philippics are directed not against Peter the Great and his
reforms, but rather against recent Ministers of Foreign Affairs who
are thought to have shown themselves too subservient to foreign
Powers, and against M. Witte, the late Minister of Finance, who is
accused of favouring the introduction of foreign capital and
enterprise, and of sacrificing to unhealthy industrial development
the interests of the agricultural classes. These laments and
diatribes are allowed free expression in private conversation and
in the Press, but they do not influence very deeply the policy of
the Government or the natural course of events; for the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs continues to cultivate friendly relations with the
Cabinets of the West, and Moscow is rapidly becoming, by the force
of economic conditions, the great industrial and commercial centre
of the Empire.

The administrative and bureaucratic centre--if anything on the
frontier of a country can be called its centre--has long been, and
is likely to remain, Peter's stately city at the mouth of the Neva,
to which I now invite the reader to accompany me.

CHAPTER XXVI

ST. PETERSBURG AND EUROPEAN INFLUENCE

St. Petersburg and Berlin--Big Houses--The "Lions"--Peter the
Great--His Aims and Policy--The German Regime--Nationalist
Reaction--French Influence--Consequent Intellectual Sterility--
Influence of the Sentimental School--Hostility to Foreign
Influences--A New Period of Literary Importation--Secret Societies--
The Catastrophe--The Age of Nicholas--A Terrible War on Parnassus--
Decline of Romanticism and Transcendentalism--Gogol--The
Revolutionary Agitation of 1848--New Reaction--Conclusion.

From whatever side the traveller approaches St. Petersburg, unless
he goes thither by sea, he must traverse several hundred miles of
forest and morass, presenting few traces of human habitation or
agriculture. This fact adds powerfully to the first impression
which the city makes on his mind. In the midst of a waste howling
wilderness, he suddenly comes on a magnificent artificial oasis.

Of all the great European cities, the one that most resembles the
capital of the Tsars is Berlin. Both are built on perfectly level
ground; both have wide, regularly arranged streets; in both there
is a general look of stiffness and symmetry which suggests military
discipline and German bureaucracy. But there is at least one
profound difference. Though Berlin is said by geographers to be
built on the Spree, we might live a long time in the city without
noticing the sluggish little stream on which the name of a river
has been undeservedly conferred. St. Petersburg, on the contrary,
is built on a magnificent river, which forms the main feature of
the place. By its breadth, and by the enormous volume of its
clear, blue, cold water, the Neva is certainly one of the noblest
rivers of Europe. A few miles before reaching the Gulf of Finland
it breaks up into several streams and forms a delta. It is here
that St. Petersburg stands.

Like the river, everything in St. Petersburg is on a colossal
scale. The streets, the squares, the palaces, the public
buildings, the churches, whatever may be their defects, have at
least the attribute of greatness, and seem to have been designed
for the countless generations to come, rather than for the
practical wants of the present inhabitants. In this respect the
city well represents the Empire of which it is the capital. Even
the private houses are built in enormous blocks and divided into
many separate apartments. Those built for the working classes
sometimes contain, I am assured, more than a thousand inhabitants.
How many cubic feet of air is allowed to each person, I do not
know; not so many, I fear, as is recommended by the most advanced
sanitary authorities.

For a detailed description of the city I must refer the reader to
the guide books. Among its numerous monuments, of which the
Russians are justly proud, I confess that the one which interested
me most was neither St. Isaac's Cathedral, with its majestic gilded
dome, its colossal monolithic columns of red granite, and its gaudy
interior; nor the Hermitage, with its magnificent collection of
Dutch pictures; nor the gloomy, frowning fortress of St. Peter and
St. Paul, containing the tombs of the Emperors. These and other
"sights" may deserve all the praise which enthusiastic tourists
have lavished upon them, but what made a far deeper impression on
me was the little wooden house in which Peter the Great lived
whilst his future capital was being built. In its style and
arrangement it looks more like the hut of a navvy than the
residence of a Tsar, but it was quite in keeping with the character
of the illustrious man who occupied it. Peter could and did
occasionally work like a navvy without feeling that his Imperial
dignity was thereby impaired. When he determined to build a new
capital on a Finnish marsh, inhabited chiefly by wildfowl, he did
not content himself with exercising his autocratic power in a
comfortable arm chair. Like the Greek gods, he went down from his
Olympus and took his place in the ranks of ordinary mortals,
superintending the work with his own eyes, and taking part in it
with his own hands. If he was as arbitrary and oppressive as any
of the pyramid-building Pharaohs, he could at least say in self-
justification that he did not spare himself any more than his
people, but exposed himself freely to the discomforts and dangers
under which thousands of his fellow-labourers succumbed.

In reading the account of Peter's life, written in part by his own
pen, we can easily understand how the piously Conservative section
of his subjects failed to recognise in him the legitimate successor
of the orthodox Tsars. The old Tsars had been men of grave,
pompous demeanour, deeply imbued with the consciousness of their
semi-religious dignity. Living habitually in Moscow or its
immediate neighbourhood, they spent their time in attending long
religious services, in consulting with their Boyars, in being
present at ceremonious hunting-parties, in visiting the
monasteries, and in holding edifying conversations with
ecclesiastical dignitaries or revered ascetics. If they undertook
a journey, it was probably to make a pilgrimage to some holy
shrine; and, whether in Moscow or elsewhere, they were always
protected from contact with ordinary humanity by a formidable
barricade of court ceremonial. In short, they combined the
characters of a Christian monk and of an Oriental potentate.

Peter was a man of an entirely different type, and played in the
calm, dignified, orthodox, ceremonious world of Moscow the part of
the bull in the china shop, outraging ruthlessly and wantonly all
the time-honored traditional conceptions of propriety and
etiquette. Utterly regardless of public opinion and popular
prejudices, he swept away the old formalities, avoided ceremonies
of all kinds, scoffed at ancient usage, preferred foreign secular
books to edifying conversations, chose profane heretics as his boon
companions, travelled in foreign countries, dressed in heretical
costume, defaced the image of God and put his soul in jeopardy by
shaving off his beard, compelled his nobles to dress and shave like
himself, rushed about the Empire as if goaded on by the demon of
unrest, employed his sacred hands in carpentering and other menial
occupations, took part openly in the uproarious orgies of his
foreign soldiery, and, in short, did everything that "the Lord's
anointed" might reasonably be expected not to do. No wonder the
Muscovites were scandalised by his conduct, and that some of them
suspected he was not the Tsar at all, but Antichrist in disguise.
And no wonder he felt the atmosphere of Moscow oppressive, and
preferred living in the new capital which he had himself created.

His avowed object in building St. Petersburg was to have "a window
by which the Russians might look into civilised Europe"; and well
has the city fulfilled its purpose. From its foundation may be
dated the European period of Russian history. Before Peter's time
Russia belonged to Asia rather than to Europe, and was doubtless
regarded by Englishmen and Frenchmen pretty much as we nowadays
regard Bokhara or Kashgar; since that time she has formed an
integral part of the European political system, and her
intellectual history has been but a reflection of the intellectual
history of Western Europe, modified and coloured by national
character and by peculiar local conditions.

When we speak of the intellectual history of a nation we generally
mean in reality the intellectual history of the upper classes.
With regard to Russia, more perhaps than with regard to any other
country, this distinction must always carefully be borne in mind.
Peter succeeded in forcing European civilisation on the nobles, but
the people remained unaffected. The nation was, as it were, cleft
in two, and with each succeeding generation the cleft has widened.
Whilst the masses clung obstinately to their time-honoured customs
and beliefs, the nobles came to look on the objects of popular
veneration as the relics of a barbarous past, of which a civilised
nation ought to be ashamed.

The intellectual movement inaugurated by Peter had a purely
practical character. He was himself a thorough utilitarian, and
perceived clearly that what his people needed was not theological
or philosophical enlightment, but plain, practical knowledge
suitable for the requirements of everyday life. He wanted neither
theologians nor philosophers, but military and naval officers,
administrators, artisans, miners, manufacturers, and merchants, and
for this purpose he introduced secular technical education. For
the young generation primary schools were founded, and for more
advanced pupils the best foreign works on fortification,
architecture, navigation, metallurgy, engineering and cognate
subjects were translated into the native tongue. Scientific men
and cunning artificers were brought into the country, and young
Russians were sent abroad to learn foreign languages and the useful
arts. In a word, everything was done that seemed likely to raise
the Russians to the level of material well-being already attained
by the more advanced nations.

We have here an important peculiarity in the intellectual
development of Russia. In Western Europe the modern scientific
spirit, being the natural offspring of numerous concomitant
historical causes, was born in the natural way, and Society had,
consequently, before giving birth to it, to endure the pains of
pregnancy and the throes of prolonged labour. In Russia, on the
contrary, this spirit appeared suddenly as an adult foreigner,
adopted by a despotic paterfamilias. Thus Russia made the
transition from mediaeval to modern times without any violent
struggle between the old and the new conceptions such as had taken
place in the West. The Church, effectually restrained from all
active opposition by the Imperial power, preserved unmodified her
ancient beliefs; whilst the nobles, casting their traditional
conceptions and beliefs to the winds, marched forward unfettered on
that path which their fathers and grandfathers had regarded as the
direct road to perdition.

During the first part of Peter's reign Russia was not subjected to
the exclusive influence of any one particular country. Thoroughly
cosmopolitan in his sympathies, the great reformer, like the
Japanese of the present day, was ready to borrow from any foreign
nation--German, Dutch, Danish, or French--whatever seemed to him to
suit his purpose. But soon the geographical proximity to Germany,
the annexation of the Baltic Provinces in which the civilisation
was German, and intermarriages between the Imperial family and
various German dynasties, gave to German influence a decided
preponderance. When the Empress Anne, Peter's niece, who had been
Duchess of Courland, entrusted the whole administration of the
country to her favourite Biron, the German influence became almost
exclusive, and the Court, the official world, and the schools were
Germanised.

The harsh, cruel, tyrannical rule of Biron produced a strong
reaction, ending in a revolution, which raised to the throne the
Princess Elizabeth, Peter's unmarried daughter, who had lived in
retirement and neglect during the German regime. She was expected
to rid the country of foreigners, and she did what she could to
fulfil the expectations that were entertained of her. With loud
protestations of patriotic feelings, she removed the Germans from
all important posts, demanded that in future the members of the
Academy should be chosen from among born Russians, and gave orders
that the Russian youth should be carefully prepared for all kinds
of official activity.

This attempt to throw off the German bondage did not lead to
intellectual independence. During Peter's violent reforms Russia
had ruthlessly thrown away her own historic past with whatever
germs it contained, and now she possessed none of the elements of a
genuine national culture. She was in the position of a fugitive
who has escaped from slavery, and, finding himself in danger of
starvation, looks about for a new master. The upper classes, who
had acquired a taste for foreign civilisation, no sooner threw off
everything German than they sought some other civilisation to put
in its place. And they could not long hesitate in making a choice,
for at that time all who thought of culture and refinement turned
their eyes to Paris and Versailles. All that was most brilliant
and refined was to be found at the Court of the French kings, under
whose patronage the art and literature of the Renaissance had
attained their highest development. Even Germany, which had
resisted the ambitious designs of Louis XIV., imitated the manners
of his Court. Every petty German potentate strove to ape the pomp
and dignity of the Grand Monarque; and the courtiers, affecting to
look on everything German as rude and barbarous, adopted French
fashions, and spoke a hybrid jargon which they considered much more
elegant than the plain mother tongue. In a word, Gallomania had
become the prevailing social epidemic of the time, and it could not
fail to attack and metamorphose such a class as the Russian
Noblesse, which possessed few stubborn deep-rooted national
convictions.

At first the French influence was manifested chiefly in external
forms--that is to say, in dress, manners, language, and upholstery--
but gradually, and very rapidly after the accession of Catherine
II., the friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, it sank
deeper. Every noble who had pretensions to being "civilised"
learned to speak French fluently, and gained some superficial
acquaintance with French literature. The tragedies of Corneille
and Racine and the comedies of Moliere were played regularly at the
Court theatre in presence of the Empress, and awakened a real or
affected enthusiasm among the audience. For those who preferred
reading in their native language, numerous translations were
published, a simple list of which would fill several pages. Among
them we find not only Voltaire, Rousseau, Lesage, Marmontel, and
other favourite French authors, but also all the masterpieces of
European literature, ancient and modern, which at that time enjoyed
a high reputation in the French literary world--Homer and
Demosthenes, Cicero and Virgil, Ariosto and Camoens, Milton and
Locke, Sterne and Fielding.

It is related of Byron that he never wrote a description whilst the
scene was actually before him; and this fact points to an important
psychological principle. The human mind, so long as it is
compelled to strain the receptive faculties, cannot engage in that
"poetic" activity--to use the term in its Greek sense--which is
commonly called "original creation."  And as with individuals, so
with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture a nation
inevitably condemns itself for a time to intellectual sterility.
So long as it is occupied in receiving and assimilating a flood of
new ideas, unfamiliar conceptions, and foreign modes of thought, it
will produce nothing original, and the result of its highest
efforts will be merely successful imitation. We need not be
surprised therefore to find that the Russians, in becoming
acquainted with foreign literature, became imitators and
plagiarists. In this kind of work their natural pliancy of mind
and powerful histrionic talent made them wonderfully successful.
Odes, pseudo-classical tragedies, satirical comedies, epic poems,
elegies, and all the other recognised forms of poetical
composition, appeared in great profusion, and many of the writers
acquired a remarkable command over their native language, which had
hitherto been regarded as uncouth and barbarous. But in all this
mass of imitative literature, which has since fallen into well-
merited oblivion, there are very few traces of genuine originality.
To obtain the title of the Russian Racine, the Russian Lafontaine,
the Russian Pindar, or the Russian Homer, was at that time the
highest aim of Russian literary ambition.

Together with the fashionable literature the Russian educated
classes adopted something of the fashionable philosophy. They were
peculiarly unfitted to resist that hurricane of "enlightenment"
which swept over Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth
century, first breaking or uprooting the received philosophical
systems, theological conceptions, and scientific theories, and then
shaking to their foundations the existing political and social
institutions. The Russian Noblesse had neither the traditional
conservative spirit, nor the firm, well-reasoned, logical beliefs
which in England and Germany formed a powerful barrier against the
spread of French influence. They had been too recently
metamorphosed, and were too eager to acquire a foreign
civilisation, to have even the germs of a conservative spirit. The
rapidity and violence with which Peter's reforms had been effected,
together with the peculiar spirit of Greek Orthodoxy and the low
intellectual level of the clergy, had prevented theology from
associating itself with the new order of things. The upper classes
had become estranged from the beliefs of their forefathers without
acquiring other beliefs to supply the place of those which had been
lost. The old religious conceptions were inseparably interwoven
with what was recognised as antiquated and barbarous, whilst the
new philosophical ideas were associated with all that was modern
and civilised. Besides this, the sovereign, Catherine II., who
enjoyed the unbounded admiration of the upper classes, openly
professed allegiance to the new philosophy, and sought the advice
and friendship of its high priests. If we bear in mind these facts
we shall not be surprised to find among the Russian nobles of that
time a considerable number of so-called "Voltaireans" and numerous
unquestioning believers in the infallibility of the Encyclopedie.
What is a little more surprising is, that the new philosophy
sometimes found its way into the ecclesiastical seminaries. The
famous Speranski relates that in the seminary of St. Petersburg one
of his professors, when not in a state of intoxication, was in the
habit of preaching the doctrines of Voltaire and Diderot!

The rise of the sentimental school in Western Europe produced an
important change in Russian literature, by undermining the
inordinate admiration for the French pseudo-classical school.
Florian, Richardson, Sterne, Rousseau, and Bernardin de St. Pierre
found first translators, and then imitators, and soon the loud-
sounding declamation and wordy ecstatic despair of the stage heroes
were drowned in the deep-drawn sighs and plaintive wailings of
amorous swains and peasant-maids forsaken. The mania seems to have
been in Russia even more severe than in the countries where it
originated. Full-grown, bearded men wept because they had not been
born in peaceful primitive times, "when all men were shepherds and
brothers."  Hundreds of sighing youths and maidens visited the
scenes described by the sentimental writers, and wandered by the
rivers and ponds in which despairing heroines had drowned
themselves. People talked, wrote, and meditated about "the
sympathy of hearts created for each other," "the soft communion of
sympathetic souls," and much more of the same kind. Sentimental
journeys became a favourite amusement, and formed the subject of
very popular books, containing maudlin absurdities likely to
produce nowadays mirth rather than tears. One traveller, for
instance, throws himself on his knees before an old oak and makes a
speech to it; another weeps daily on the grave of a favourite dog,
and constantly longs to marry a peasant girl; a third talks love to
the moon, sends kisses to the stars, and wishes to press the
heavenly orbs to his bosom! For a time the public would read
nothing but absurd productions of this sort, and Karamzin, the
great literary authority of the time, expressly declared that the
true function of Art was "to disseminate agreeable impressions in
the region of the sentimental."

The love of French philosophy vanished as suddenly as the
inordinate admiration of the French pseudo-classical literature.
When the great Revolution broke out in Paris the fashionable
philosophic literature in St. Petersburg disappeared. Men who
talked about political freedom and the rights of man, without
thinking for a moment of limiting the autocratic power or of
emancipating their serfs, were naturally surprised and frightened
on discovering what the liberal principles could effect when
applied to real life. Horrified by the awful scenes of the Terror,
they hastened to divest themselves of the principles which led to
such results, and sank into a kind of optimistic conservatism that
harmonised well with the virtuous sentimentalism in vogue. In this
the Empress herself gave the example. The Imperial disciple and
friend of the Encyclopaedists became in the last years of her reign
a decided reactionnaire.

During the Napoleonic wars, when the patriotic feelings were
excited, there was a violent hostility to foreign intellectual
influence; and feeble intermittent attempts were made to throw off
the intellectual bondage. The invasion of the country in 1812 by
the Grande Armee, and the burning of Moscow, added abundant fuel to
this patriotic fire. For some time any one who ventured to express
even a moderate admiration for French culture incurred the risk of
being stigmatised as a traitor to his country and a renegade to the
national faith. But this patriotic fanaticism soon evaporated, and
exaggerations of the ultra-national party became the object of
satire and parody. When the political danger was past, and people
resumed their ordinary occupations, those who loved foreign
literature returned to their old favourites--or, as the ultra-
patriots called it, to their "wallowing in the mire"--simply
because the native literature did not supply them with what they
desired. "We are quite ready," they said to their upbraiders, "to
admire your great works as soon as they appear, but in the meantime
please allow us to enjoy what we possess."  Thus in the last years
of the reign of Alexander I. the patriotic opposition to West
European literature gradually ceased, and a new period of
unrestricted intellectual importation began.

The intellectual merchandise now brought into the country was very
different from that which had been imported in the time of
Catherine. The French Revolution, the Napoleonic domination, the
patriotic wars, the restoration of the Bourbons, and the other
great events of that memorable epoch, had in the interval produced
profound changes in the intellectual as well as the political
condition of Western Europe. During the Napoleonic wars Russia had
become closely associated with Germany; and now the peculiar
intellectual fermentation which was going on among the German
educated classes was reflected in the society of St. Petersburg.
It did not appear, indeed, in the printed literature, for the
Press-censure had been recently organised on the principles laid
down by Metternich, but it was none the less violent on that
account. Whilst the periodicals were filled with commonplace
meditations on youth, spring, the love of Art, and similar innocent
topics, the young generation was discussing in the salons all the
burning questions which Metternich and his adherents were
endeavouring to extinguish.

These discussions, if discussions they might be called, were not of
a very serious kind. In true dilettante style the fashionable
young philosophers culled from the newest books the newest thoughts
and theories, and retailed them in the salon or the ballroom. And
they were always sure to find attentive listeners. The more
astounding the idea or dogma, the more likely was it to be
favourably received. No matter whether it came from the
Rationalists, the Mystics, the Freemasons, or the Methodists, it
was certain to find favour, provided it was novel and presented in
an elegant form. The eclectic minds of that curious time could
derive equal satisfaction from the brilliant discourses of the
reactionary jesuitical De Maistre, the revolutionary odes of
Pushkin, and the mysticism of Frau von Krudener. For the majority
the vague theosophic doctrines and the projects for a spiritual
union of governments and peoples had perhaps the greatest charm,
being specially commended by the fact that they enjoyed the
protection and sympathy of the Emperor. Pious souls discovered in
the mystical lucubrations of Jung-Stilling and Baader the final
solution of all existing difficulties--political, social, and
philosophical. Men of less dreamy temperament put their faith in
political economy and constitutional theories, and sought a
foundation for their favourite schemes in the past history of the
country and in the supposed fundamental peculiarities of the
national character. Like the young German democrats, who were then
talking enthusiastically about Teutons, Cheruskers, Skalds, the
shade of Arminius, and the heroes of the Niebelungen, these young
Russian savants recognised in early Russian history--when
reconstructed according to their own fancy--lofty political ideals,
and dreamed of resuscitating the ancient institutions in all their
pristine imaginary splendour.

Each age has its peculiar social and political panaceas. One
generation puts its trust in religion, another in philanthropy, a
third in written constitutions, a fourth in universal suffrage, a
fifth in popular education. In the Epoch of the Restoration, as it
is called, the favourite panacea all over the Continent was secret
political association. Very soon after the overthrow of Napoleon
the peoples who had risen in arms to obtain political independence
discovered that they had merely changed masters. The Princes
reconstructed Europe according to their own convenience, without
paying much attention to patriotic aspirations, and forgot their
promises of liberal institutions as soon as they were again firmly
seated on their thrones. This was naturally for many a bitter
deception. The young generation, excluded from all share in
political life and gagged by the stringent police supervision,
sought to realise its political aspirations by means of secret
societies, resembling more or less the Masonic brotherhoods. There
were the Burschenschaften in Germany; the Union, and the "Aide toi
et le ciel t'aidera," in France; the Order of the Hammer in Spain;
the Carbonari in Italy; and the Hetairai in Greece. In Russia the
young nobles followed the prevailing fashion. Secret societies
were formed, and in December, 1825, an attempt was made to raise a
military insurrection in St. Petersburg, for the purpose of
deposing the Imperial family and proclaiming a republic; but the
attempt failed, and the vague Utopian dreams of the romantic would-
be reformers were swept away by grape-shot.

This "December catastrophe," still vividly remembered, was for the
society of St. Petersburg like the giving way of the floor in a
crowded ball-room. But a moment before, all had been animated,
careless, and happy; now consternation was depicted on every face.
The salons, that but yesterday had been ringing with lively
discussions on morals, aesthetics, politics, and theology, were now
silent and deserted. Many of those who had been wont to lead the
causeries had been removed to the cells of the fortress, and those
who had not been arrested trembled for themselves or their friends;
for nearly all had of late dabbled more or less in the theory and
practice of revolution. The announcement that five of the
conspirators had been condemned to the gallows and the others
sentenced to transportation did not tend to calm the consternation.
Society was like a discomfited child, who, amidst the delight and
excitement of letting off fireworks, has had its fingers severely
burnt.

The sentimental, wavering Alexander I. had been succeeded by his
stern, energetic brother Nicholas, and the command went forth that
there should be no more fireworks, no more dilettante
philosophising or political aspirations. There was, however,
little need for such an order. Society had been, for the moment at
least, effectually cured of all tendencies to political dreaming.
It had discovered, to its astonishment and dismay, that these new
ideas, which were to bring temporal salvation to humanity, and to
make all men happy, virtuous, refined, and poetical, led in reality
to exile and the scaffold! The pleasant dream was at an end, and
the fashionable world, giving up its former habits, took to
harmless occupations--card-playing, dissipation, and the reading of
French light literature. "The French quadrille," as a writer of
the time tersely expresses it, "has taken the place of Adam Smith."

When the storm had passed, the life of the salons began anew, but
it was very different from what it had been. There was no longer
any talk about political economy, theology, popular education,
administrative abuses, social and political reforms. Everything
that had any relation to politics in the wider sense of the term
was by tacit consent avoided. Discussions there were as of old,
but they were now confined to literary topics, theories of art, and
similar innocent subjects.

This indifference or positive repugnance to philosophy and
political science, strengthened and prolonged by the repressive
system of administration adopted by Nicholas, was of course fatal
to the many-sided intellectual activity which had flourished during
the preceding reign, but it was by no means unfavourable to the
cultivation of imaginative literature. On the contrary, by
excluding those practical interests which tend to disturb artistic
production and to engross the attention of the public, it fostered
what was called in the phraseology of that time "the pure-hearted
worship of the Muses."  We need not, therefore, be surprised to
find that the reign of Nicholas, which is commonly and not unjustly
described as an epoch of social and intellectual stagnation, may be
called in a certain sense the Golden Age of Russian literature.

Already in the preceding reign the struggle between the Classical
and the Romantic school--between the adherents of traditional
aesthetic principles and the partisans of untrammelled poetic
inspiration--which was being carried on in Western Europe, was
reflected in Russia. A group of young men belonging to the
aristocratic society of St. Petersburg embraced with enthusiasm the
new doctrines, and declared war against "classicism," under which
term they understood all that was antiquated, dry, and pedantic.
Discarding the stately, lumbering, unwieldy periods which had
hitherto been in fashion, they wrote a light, elastic, vigorous
style, and formed a literary society for the express purpose of
ridiculing the most approved classical writers. The new principles
found many adherents, and the new style many admirers, but this
only intensified the hostility of the literary Conservatives. The
staid, respectable leaders of the old school, who had all their
lives kept the fear of Boileau before their eyes and considered his
precepts as the infallible utterances of aesthetic wisdom,
thundered against the impious innovations as unmistakable symptoms
of literary decline and moral degeneracy--representing the
boisterous young iconoclasts as dissipated Don Juans and dangerous
freethinkers.

Thus for some time in Russia, as in Western Europe, "a terrible war
raged on Parnassus."  At first the Government frowned at the
innovators, on account of certain revolutionary odes which one of
their number had written; but when the Romantic Muse, having turned
away from the present as essentially prosaic, went back into the
distant past and soared into the region of sublime abstractions,
the most keen-eyed Press Censors found no reason to condemn her
worship, and the authorities placed almost no restrictions on free
poetic inspiration. Romantic poetry acquired the protection of the
Government and the patronage of the Court, and the names of
Zhukofski, Pushkin, and Lermontof--the three chief representatives
of the Russian Romantic school--became household words in all ranks
of the educated classes.

These three great luminaries of the literary world were of course
attended by a host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all
in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad
absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of
composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with
torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration,
and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its
cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists
and novelists created heroes of immaculate character and angelic
purity, endowed with all the cardinal virtues in the superlative
degree; and, as a contrast to these, terrible Satanic personages
with savage passions, gleaming daggers, deadly poisons, and all
manner of aimless melodramatic villainy. These stilted
productions, interspersed with light satirical essays, historical
sketches, literary criticism, and amusing anecdotes, formed the
contents of the periodical literature, and completely satisfied the
wants of the reading public. Almost no one at that time took any
interest in public affairs or foreign politics. The acts of the
Government which were watched most attentively were the promotions
in the service and the conferring of decorations. The publication
of a new tale by Zagoskin or Marlinski--two writers now well-nigh
forgotten--seemed of much greater importance than any amount of
legislation, and such events as the French Revolution of 1830 paled
before the publication of a new poem by Pushkin.

The Transcendental philosophy, which in Germany went hand in hand
with the Romantic literature, found likewise a faint reflection in
Russia. A number of young professors and students in Moscow, who
had become ardent admirers of German literature, passed from the
works of Schiller, Goethe, and Hoffmann to the writing of Schelling
and Hegel. Trained in the Romantic school, these young
philosophers found at first a special charm in Schelling's mystical
system, teeming with hazy poetical metaphors, and presenting a
misty grandiose picture of the universe; but gradually they felt
the want of some logical basis for their speculations, and Hegel
became their favourite. Gallantly they struggled with the uncouth
terminology and epigrammatic paradoxes of the great thinker, and
strove to force their way through the intricate mazes of his
logical formulae. With the ardour of neophytes they looked at
every phenomenon--even the most trivial incident of common life--
from the philosophical point of view, talked day and night about
principles, ideas, subjectivity, Weltauffassung, and similar
abstract entities, and habitually attacked the "hydra of
unphilosophy" by analysing the phenomena presented and relegating
the ingredient elements to the recognised categories. In ordinary
life they were men of quiet, grave, contemplative demeanour, but
their faces could flush and their blood boil when they discussed
the all-important question, whether it is possible to pass
logically from Pure Being through Nonentity to the conception of
Development and Definite Existence!

We know how in Western Europe Romanticism and Transcendentalism, in
their various forms, sank into oblivion, and were replaced by a
literature which had a closer connection with ordinary prosaic
wants and plain everyday life. The educated public became weary of
the Romantic writers, who were always "sighing like a furnace,"
delighting in solitude, cold eternity, and moonshine, deluging the
world with their heart-gushings, and calling on the heavens and the
earth to stand aghast at their Promethean agonising or their
Wertherean despair. Healthy human nature revolted against the
poetical enthusiasts who had lost the faculty of seeing things in
their natural light, and who constantly indulged in that morbid
self-analysis which is fatal to genuine feeling and vigorous
action. And in this healthy reaction the philosophers fared no
better than the poets, with whom, indeed, they had much in common.
Shutting their eyes to the visible world around them, they had
busied themselves with burrowing in the mysterious depths of
Absolute Being, grappling with the ego and the non-ego,
constructing the great world, visible and invisible, out of their
own puny internal self-consciousness, endeavouring to appropriate
all departments of human thought, and imparting to every subject
they touched the dryness and rigidity of an algebraical formula.
Gradually men with real human sympathies began to perceive that
from all this philosophical turmoil little real advantage was to be
derived. It became only too evident that the philosophers were
perfectly reconciled with all the evil in the world, provided it
did not contradict their theories; that they were men of the same
type as the physician in Moliere's comedy, whose chief care was
that his patients should die selon les ordonnances de la medicine.

In Russia the reaction first appeared in the aesthetic literature.
Its first influential representative was Gogol (b. 1808, d. 1852),
who may be called, in a certain sense, the Russian Dickens. A
minute comparison of those two great humourists would perhaps show
as many points of contrast as of similarity, but there is a strong
superficial resemblance between them. They both possessed an
inexhaustible supply of broad humour and an imagination of singular
vividness. Both had the power of seeing the ridiculous side of
common things, and the talent of producing caricatures that had a
wonderful semblance of reality. A little calm reflection would
suffice to show that the characters presented are for the most part
psychological impossibilities; but on first making their
acquaintance we are so struck with one or two life-like
characteristics and various little details dexterously introduced,
and at the same time we are so carried away by the overflowing fun
of the narrative, that we have neither time nor inclination to use
our critical faculties. In a very short time Gogol's fame spread
throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, and many of his
characters became as familiar to his countrymen as Sam Weller and
Mrs. Gamp were to Englishmen. His descriptions were so graphic--so
like the world which everybody knew! The characters seemed to be
old acquaintances hit off to the life; and readers revelled in that
peculiar pleasure which most of us derive from seeing our friends
successfully mimicked. Even the Iron Tsar could not resist the fun
and humour of "The Inspector" (Revizor), and not only laughed
heartily, but also protected the author against the tyranny of the
literary censors, who considered that the piece was not written in
a sufficiently "well-intentioned" tone. In a word, the reading
public laughed as it had never laughed before, and this wholesome
genuine merriment did much to destroy the morbid appetite for
Byronic heroes and Romantic affectation.

The Romantic Muse did not at once abdicate, but with the spread of
Gogol's popularity her reign was practically at an end. In vain
some of the conservative critics decried the new favourite as
talentless, prosaic, and vulgar. The public were not to be robbed
of their amusement for the sake of any abstract aesthetic
considerations; and young authors, taking Gogol for their model,
chose their subjects from real life, and endeavoured to delineate
with minute truthfulness.

This new intellectual movement was at first purely literary, and
affected merely the manner of writing novels, tales, and poems.
The critics who had previously demanded beauty of form and elegance
of expression now demanded accuracy of description, condemned the
aspirations towards so-called high art, and praised loudly those
who produced the best literary photographs. But authors and
critics did not long remain on this purely aesthetic standpoint.
The authors, in describing reality, began to indicate moral
approval and condemnation, and the critics began to pass from the
criticism of the representations to the criticism of the realities
represented. A poem or a tale was often used as a peg on which to
hang a moral lecture, and the fictitious characters were soundly
rated for their sins of omission and commission. Much was said
about the defence of the oppressed, female emancipation, honour,
and humanitarianism; and ridicule was unsparingly launched against
all forms of ignorance, apathy, and the spirit of routine. The
ordinary refrain was that the public ought now to discard what was
formerly regarded as poetical and sublime, and to occupy itself
with practical concerns--with the real wants of social life.

The literary movement was thus becoming a movement in favour of
social and political reforms when it was suddenly arrested by
political events in the West. The February Revolution in Paris,
and the political fermentation which appeared during 1848-49 in
almost every country of Europe, alarmed the Emperor Nicholas and
his counsellors. A Russian army was sent into Austria to suppress
the Hungarian insurrection and save the Hapsburg dynasty, and the
most stringent measures were taken to prevent disorders at home.
One of the first precautions for the preservation of domestic
tranquillity was to muzzle the Press more firmly than before, and
to silence the aspirations towards reform and progress; thenceforth
nothing could be printed which was not in strict accordance with
the ultra-patriotic theory of Russian history, as expressed by a
leading official personage: "The past has been admirable, the
present is more than magnificent, and the future will surpass all
that the human imagination can conceive!"  The alarm caused by the
revolutionary disorders spread to the non-official world, and gave
rise to much patriotic self-congratulation. "The nations of the
West," it was said, "envy us, and if they knew us better--if they
could see how happy and prosperous we are--they would envy us still
more. We ought not, however, to withdraw from Europe our
solicitude; its hostility should not deprive us of our high mission
of saving order and restoring rest to the nations; we ought to
teach them to obey authority as we do. It is for us to introduce
the saving principle of order into a world that has fallen a prey
to anarchy. Russia ought not to abandon that mission which has
been entrusted to her by the heavenly and by the earthly Tsar."*

* These words were written by Tchaadaef, who, a few years before,
had vigorously attacked the Slavophils for enouncing similar views.

Men who saw in the significant political eruption of 1848 nothing
but an outburst of meaningless, aimless anarchy, and who believed
that their country was destined to restore order throughout the
civilised world, had of course little time or inclination to think
of putting their own house in order. No one now spoke of the
necessity of social reorganisation: the recently awakened
aspirations and expectations seemed to be completely forgotten.
The critics returned to their old theory that art and literature
should be cultivated for their own sake and not used as a vehicle
for the propagation of ideas foreign to their nature. It seemed,
in short, as if all the prolific ideas which had for a time
occupied the public attention had been merely "writ in water," and
had now disappeared without leaving a trace behind them.

In reality the new movement was destined to reappear very soon with
tenfold force; but the account of its reappearance and development
belongs to a future chapter. Meanwhile I may formulate the general
conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing pages. Ever since the
time of Peter the Great there has been such a close connection
between Russia and Western Europe that every intellectual movement
which has appeared in France and Germany has been reflected--albeit
in an exaggerated, distorted form--in the educated society of St.
Petersburg and Moscow. Thus the window which Peter opened in order
to enable his subjects to look into Europe has well served its
purpose.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE CRIMEAN WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The Emperor Nicholas and his System--The Men with Aspirations and
the Apathetically Contented--National Humiliation--Popular
Discontent and the Manuscript Literature--Death of Nicholas--
Alexander II.--New Spirit--Reform Enthusiasm--Change in the
Periodical Literature--The Kolokol--The Conservatives--The
Tchinovniks--First Specific Proposals--Joint-Stock Companies--The
Serf Question Comes to the Front.

The Russians frankly admit that they were beaten in the Crimean
War, but they regard the heroic defence of Sebastopol as one of the
most glorious events in the military annals of their country. Nor
do they altogether regret the result of the struggle. Often in a
half-jocular, half-serious tone they say that they had reason to be
grateful to the Allies. And there is much truth in this
paradoxical statement. The Crimean War inaugurated a new epoch in
the national history. It gave the death-blow to the repressive
system of the Emperor Nicholas, and produced an intellectual
movement and a moral revival which led to gigantic results.

"The affair of December," 1825--I mean the abortive attempt at a
military insurrection in St. Petersburg, to which I have alluded in
the foregoing chapter--gave the key-note to Nicholas's reign. The
armed attempt to overthrow the Imperial power, ending in the
execution or exile of many young members of the first families,
struck terror into the Noblesse, and prepared the way for a period
of repressive police administration. Nicholas had none of the
moral limpness and vacillating character of his predecessor. His
was one of those simple, vigorous, tenacious, straightforward
natures--more frequently to be met with among the Teutonic than
among the Slav races--whose conceptions are all founded on a few
deep-rooted, semi-instinctive convictions, and who are utterly
incapable of accommodating themselves with histrionic cleverness to
the changes of external circumstances. From his early youth he had
shown a strong liking for military discipline and a decided
repugnance to the humanitarianism and liberal principles then in
fashion. With "the rights of man," "the spirit of the age," and
similar philosophical abstractions his strong, domineering nature
had no sympathy; and for the vague, loud-sounding phrases of
philosophic liberalism he had a most profound contempt. "Attend to
your military duties," he was wont to say to his officers before
his accession; "don't trouble your heads with philosophy. I cannot
bear philosophers!"  The tragic event which formed the prelude to
his reign naturally confirmed and fortified his previous
convictions. The representatives of liberalism, who could talk so
eloquently about duty in the abstract, had, whilst wearing the
uniform of the Imperial Guard, openly disobeyed the repeated orders
of their superior officers and attempted to shake the allegiance of
the troops for the purpose of overthrowing the Imperial power! A
man who was at once soldier and autocrat, by nature as well as by
position, could of course admit no extenuating circumstances. The
incident stereotyped his character for life, and made him the sworn
enemy of liberalism and the fanatical defender of autocracy, not
only in his own country, but throughout Europe. In European
politics he saw two forces struggling for mastery--monarchy and
democracy, which were in his opinion identical with order and
anarchy; and he was always ready to assist his brother sovereigns
in putting down democratic movements. In his own Empire he
endeavoured by every means in his power to prevent the introduction
of the dangerous ideas. For this purpose a stringent intellectual
quarantine was established on the western frontier. All foreign
books and newspapers, except those of the most harmless kind, were
rigorously excluded. Native writers were placed under strict
supervision, and peremptorily silenced as soon as they departed
from what was considered a "well-intentioned" tone. The number of
university students was diminished, the chairs for political
science were suppressed, and the military schools multiplied.
Russians were prevented from travelling abroad, and foreigners who
visited the country were closely watched by the police. By these
and similar measures it was hoped that Russia would be preserved
from the dangers of revolutionary agitation.

Nicholas has been called the Don Quixote of Autocracy, and the
comparison which the term implies is true in many points. By
character and aims he belonged to a time that had passed away; but
failure and mishap could not shake his faith in his ideal, and made
no change in his honest, stubborn nature, which was as loyal and
chivalresque as that of the ill-fated Knight of La Mancha. In
spite of all evidence to the contrary, he believed in the practical
omnipotence of autocracy. He imagined that as his authority was
theoretically unlimited, so his power could work miracles. By
nature and training a soldier, he considered government a slightly
modified form of military discipline, and looked on the nation as
an army which might be made to perform any intellectual or economic
evolutions that he might see fit to command. All social ills
seemed to him the consequence of disobedience to his orders, and he
knew only one remedy--more discipline. Any expression of doubt as
to the wisdom of his policy, or any criticism of existing
regulations, he treated as an act of insubordination which a wise
sovereign ought not to tolerate. If he never said, "L'Etat--c'est
moi!" it was because he considered the fact so self-evident that it
did not need to be stated. Hence any attack on the administration,
even in the person of the most insignificant official, was an
attack on himself and on the monarchical principle which he
represented. The people must believe--and faith, as we know, comes
not by sight--that they lived under the best possible government.
To doubt this was political heresy. An incautious word or a
foolish joke against the Government was considered a serious crime,
and might be punished by a long exile in some distant and
inhospitable part of the Empire. Progress should by all means be
made, but it must be made by word of command, and in the way
ordered. Private initiative in any form was a thing on no account
to be tolerated. Nicholas never suspected that a ruler, however
well-intentioned, energetic, and legally autocratic he may be, can
do but little without the co-operation of his people. Experience
constantly showed him the fruitlessness of his efforts, but he paid
no attention to its teachings. He had formed once for all his
theory of government, and for thirty years he acted according to it
with all the blindness and obstinacy of a reckless, fanatical
doctrinaire. Even at the close of his reign, when the terrible
logic of facts had proved his system to be a mistake--when his
armies had been defeated, his best fleet destroyed, his ports
blockaded, and his treasury well-nigh emptied--he could not recant.
"My successor," he is reported to have said on his deathbed, "may
do as he pleases, but I cannot change."

Had Nicholas lived in the old patriarchal times, when kings were
the uncontrolled "shepherds of the people," he would perhaps have
been an admirable ruler; but in the nineteenth century he was a
flagrant anachronism. His system of administration completely
broke down. In vain he multiplied formalities and inspectors, and
punished severely the few delinquents who happened by some accident
to be brought to justice; the officials continued to pilfer,
extort, and misgovern in every possible way. Though the country
was reduced to what would be called in Europe "a state of siege,"
the inhabitants might still have said--as they are reported to have
declared a thousand years before--"Our land is great and fertile,
but there is no order in it."

In a nation accustomed to political life and to a certain amount of
self-government, any approach to the system of Nicholas would, of
course, have produced wide-spread dissatisfaction and violent
hatred against the ruling power. But in Russia at that time no
such feelings were awakened. The educated classes--and a fortiori
the uneducated--were profoundly indifferent not only to political
questions, but also to ordinary public affairs, whether local or
Imperial, and were quite content to leave them in the hands of
those who were paid for attending to them. In common with the
uneducated peasantry, the nobles had a boundless respect--one might
almost say a superstitious reverence--not only for the person, but
also for the will of the Tsar, and were ready to show unquestioning
obedience to his commands, so long as these did not interfere with
their accustomed mode of life. The Tsar desired them not to
trouble their heads with political questions, and to leave all
public matters to the care of the Administration; and in this
respect the Imperial will coincided so well with their personal
inclinations that they had no difficulty in complying with it.

When the Tsar ordered those of them who held office to refrain from
extortion and peculation, his orders were not so punctiliously
obeyed, but in this disobedience there was no open opposition--no
assertion of a right to pilfer and extort. As the disobedience
proceeded, not from a feeling of insubordination, but merely from
the weakness that official flesh is heir to, it was not regarded as
very heinous. In the aristocratic circles of St. Petersburg and
Moscow there was the same indifference to political questions and
public affairs. All strove to have the reputation of being "well-
intentioned," which was the first requisite for those who desired
Court favour or advancement in the public service; and those whose
attention was not entirely occupied with official duties, card-
playing, and the ordinary routine of everyday life, cultivated
belles-lettres or the fine arts. In short, the educated classes in
Russia at that time showed a complete indifference to political and
social questions, an apathetic acquiescence in the system of
administration adopted by the Government, and an unreasoning
contentment with the existing state of things.

About the year 1845, when the reaction against Romanticism was
awakening in the reading public an interest in the affairs of real
life,* began to appear what may be called "the men with
aspirations," a little band of generous enthusiasts, strongly
resembling the youth in Longfellow's poem who carries a banner with
the device "Excelsior," and strives ever to climb higher, without
having any clear notion of where he was going or of what he is to
do when he reaches the summit. At first they had little more than
a sentimental enthusiasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good,
and a certain Platonic love for free institutions, liberty,
enlightenment, progress, and everything that was generally
comprehended at that period under the term "liberal."  Gradually,
under the influence of current French literature, their ideas
became a little clearer, and they began to look on reality around
them with a critical eye. They could perceive, without much
effort, the unrelenting tyranny of the Administration, the
notorious venality of the tribunals, the reckless squandering of
the public money, the miserable condition of the serfs, the
systematic strangulation of all independent opinion or private
initiative, and, above all, the profound apathy of the upper
classes, who seemed quite content with things as they were.

* Vide supra, p. 377 et seq.

With such ugly facts staring them in the face, and with the habit
of looking at things from the moral point of view, these men could
understand how hollow and false were the soothing or triumphant
phrases of official optimism. They did not, indeed, dare to
express their indignation publicly, for the authorities would allow
no public expression of dissatisfaction with the existing state of
things, but they disseminated their ideas among their friends and
acquaintances by means of conversation and manuscript literature,
and some of them, as university professors and writers in the
periodical Press, contrived to awaken in a certain section of the
young generation an ardent enthusiasm for enlightenment and
progress, and a vague hope that a brighter day was about to dawn.

Not a few sympathised with these new conceptions and aspirations,
but the great majority of the nobles regarded them--especially
after the French Revolution of 1848--as revolutionary and
dangerous. Thus the educated classes became divided into two
sections, which have sometimes been called the Liberals and the
Conservatives, but which might be more properly designated the men
with aspirations and the apathetically contented. These latter
doubtless felt occasionally the irksomeness of the existing
system, but they had always one consolation--if they were oppressed
at home they were feared abroad. The Tsar was at least a thorough
soldier, possessing an enormous and well-equipped army by which he
might at any moment impose his will on Europe. Ever since the
glorious days of 1812, when Napoleon was forced to make an
ignominious retreat from the ruins of Moscow, the belief that the
Russian soldiers were superior to all others, and that the Russian
army was invincible, had become an article of the popular creed;
and the respect which the voice of Nicholas commanded in Western
Europe seemed to prove that the fact was admitted by foreign
nations. In these and similar considerations the apathetically
contented found a justification for their lethargy.

When it became evident that Russia was about to engage in a trial
of strength with the Western Powers, this optimism became general.
"The heavy burdens," it was said, "which the people have had to
bear were necessary to make Russia the first military Power in
Europe, and now the nation will reap the fruits of its long-
suffering and patient resignation. The West will learn that her
boasted liberty and liberal institutions are of little service in
the hour of danger, and the Russians who admire such institutions
will be constrained to admit that a strong, all-directing autocracy
is the only means of preserving national greatness."  As the
patriotic fervour and military enthusiasm increased, nothing was
heard but praises of Nicholas and his system. The war was regarded
by many as a kind of crusade--even the Emperor spoke about the
defence of "the native soil and the holy faith"--and the most
exaggerated expectations were entertained of its results. The old
Eastern Question was at last to be solved in accordance with
Russian aspirations, and Nicholas was about to realise Catherine
II.'s grand scheme of driving the Turks out of Europe. The date at
which the troops would arrive at Constantinople was actively
discussed, and a Slavophil poet called on the Emperor to lie down
in Constantinople, and rise up as Tsar of a Panslavonic Empire.
Some enthusiasts even expected the speedy liberation of Jerusalem
from the power of the Infidel. To the enemy, who might possibly
hinder the accomplishment of these schemes, very little attention
was paid. "We have only to throw our hats at them!" (Shapkami
zakidaem) became a favourite expression.

There were, however, a few men in whom the prospect of the coming
struggle awoke very different thoughts and feelings. They could
not share the sanguine expectations of those who were confident of
success. "What preparations have we made," they asked, "for the
struggle with civilisation, which now sends its forces against us?
With all our vast territory and countless population we are
incapable of coping with it. When we talk of the glorious campaign
against Napoleon, we forget that since that time Europe has been
steadily advancing on the road of progress while we have been
standing still. We march not to victory, but to defeat, and the
only grain of consolation which we have is that Russia will learn
by experience a lesson that will be of use to her in the future."*

* These are the words of Granovski.

These prophets of evil found, of course, few disciples, and were
generally regarded as unworthy sons of the Fatherland--almost as
traitors to their country. But their predictions were confirmed by
events. The Allies were victorious in the Crimea, and even the
despised Turks made a successful stand on the line of the Danube.
In spite of the efforts of the Government to suppress all
unpleasant intelligence, it soon became known that the military
organisation was little, if at all, better than the civil
administration--that the individual bravery of soldiers and
officers was neutralised by the incapacity of the generals, the
venality of the officials, and the shameless peculation of the
commissariat department. The Emperor, it was said, had drilled out
of the officers all energy, individuality, and moral force. Almost
the only men who showed judgment, decision, and energy were the
officers of the Black Sea fleet, which had been less subjected to
the prevailing system. As the struggle went on, it became evident
how weak the country really was--how deficient in the resources
necessary to sustain a prolonged conflict. "Another year of war,"
writes an eye-witness in 1855, "and the whole of Southern Russia
will be ruined."  To meet the extraordinary demands on the
Treasury, recourse was had to an enormous issue of paper money; but
the rapid depreciation of the currency showed that this resource
would soon be exhausted. Militia regiments were everywhere raised
throughout the country, and many proprietors spent large sums in
equipping volunteer corps; but very soon this enthusiasm cooled
when it was found that the patriotic efforts enriched the jobbers
without inflicting any serious injury on the enemy.

Under the sting of the great national humiliation, the upper
classes awoke from their optimistic resignation. They had borne
patiently the oppression of a semi-military administration, and for
this! The system of Nicholas had been put to a crucial test, and
found wanting. The policy which had sacrificed all to increase the
military power of the Empire was seen to be a fatal error, and the
worthlessness of the drill-sergeant regime was proved by bitter
experience. Those administrative fetters which had for more than a
quarter of a century cramped every spontaneous movement had failed
to fulfil even the narrow purpose for which they had been forged.
They had, indeed, secured a certain external tranquillity during
those troublous times when Europe was convulsed by revolutionary
agitation; but this tranquillity was not that of healthy normal
action, but of death--and underneath the surface lay secret and
rapidly spreading corruption. The army still possessed that
dashing gallantry which it had displayed in the campaigns of
Suvorof, that dogged, stoical bravery which had checked the advance
of Napoleon on the field of Borodino, and that wondrous power of
endurance which had often redeemed the negligence of generals and
the defects of the commissariat; but the result was now not
victory, but defeat. How could this be explained except by the
radical defects of that system which had been long practised with
such inflexible perseverance? The Government had imagined that it
could do everything by its own wisdom and energy, and in reality it
had done nothing, or worse than nothing. The higher officers had
learned only too well to be mere automata; the ameliorations in the
military organisation, on which Nicholas had always bestowed
special attention, were found to exist for the most part only in
the official reports; the shameful exploits of the commissariat
department were such as to excite the indignation of those who had
long lived in an atmosphere of official jobbery and peculation; and
the finances, which people had generally supposed to be in a highly
satisfactory condition, had become seriously crippled by the first
great national effort.

This deep and wide-spread dissatisfaction was not allowed to appear
in the Press, but it found very free expression in the manuscript
literature and in conversation. In almost every house--I mean, of
course, among the educated classes--words were spoken which a few
months before would have seemed treasonable, if not blasphemous.
Philippics and satires in prose and verse were written by the
dozen, and circulated in hundreds of copies. A pasquil on the
Commander in Chief, or a tirade against the Government, was sure to
be eagerly read and warmly approved of. As a specimen of this kind
of literature, and an illustration of the public opinion of the
time, I may translate here one of those metrical tirades. Though
it was never printed, it obtained a wide circulation:

"'God has placed me over Russia,' said the Tsar to us, 'and you
must bow down before me, for my throne is His altar. Trouble not
yourselves with public affairs, for I think for you and watch over
you every hour. My watchful eye detects internal evils and the
machinations of foreign enemies; and I have no need of counsel, for
God inspires me with wisdom. Be proud, therefore, of being my
slaves, O Russians, and regard my will as your law.'

"We listened to these words with deep reverence, and gave a tacit
consent; and what was the result? Under mountains of official
papers real interests were forgotten. The letter of the law was
observed, but negligence and crime were allowed to go unpunished.
While grovelling in the dust before ministers and directors of
departments in the hope of receiving tchins and decorations, the
officials stole unblushingly; and theft became so common that he
who stole the most was the most respected. The merits of officers
were decided at reviews; and he who obtained the rank of General
was supposed capable of becoming at once an able governor, an
excellent engineer, or a most wise senator. Those who were
appointed governors were for the most part genuine satraps, the
scourges of the provinces entrusted to their care. The other
offices were filled up with as little attention to the merits of
the candidates. A stable-boy became Press censor! an Imperial
fool became admiral! Kleinmichel became a count! In a word, the
country was handed over to the tender mercies of a band of robbers.

"And what did we Russians do all this time?

"We Russians slept! With groans the peasant paid his yearly dues;
with groans the proprietor mortgaged the second half of his estate;
groaning, we all paid our heavy tribute to the officials.
Occasionally, with a grave shaking of the head, we remarked in a
whisper that it was a shame and a disgrace--that there was no
justice in the courts--that millions were squandered on Imperial
tours, kiosks, and pavilions--that everything was wrong; and then,
with an easy conscience, we sat down to our rubber, praised the
acting of Rachel, criticised the singing of Frezzolini, bowed low
to venal magnates, and squabbled with each other for advancement in
the very service which we so severely condemned. If we did not
obtain the place we wished we retired to our ancestral estates,
where we talked of the crops, fattened in indolence and gluttony,
and lived a genuine animal life. If any one, amidst the general
lethargy, suddenly called upon us to rise and fight for the truth
and for Russia, how ridiculous did he appear! How cleverly the
Pharisaical official ridiculed him, and how quickly the friends of
yesterday showed him the cold shoulder! Under the anathema of
public opinion, in some distant Siberian mine he recognised what a
heinous sin it was to disturb the heavy sleep of apathetic slaves.
Soon he was forgotten, or remembered as an unfortunate madman; and
the few who said, 'Perhaps after all he was right,' hastened to
add, 'but that is none of our business.'

"But amidst all this we had at least one consolation, one thing to
be proud of--the might of Russia in the assembly of kings. 'What
need we care,' we said, 'for the reproaches of foreign nations? We
are stronger than those who reproach us.'  And when at great
reviews the stately regiments marched past with waving standards,
glittering helmets, and sparkling bayonets, when we heard the loud
hurrah with which the troops greeted the Emperor, then our hearts
swelled with patriotic pride, and we were ready to repeat the words
of the poet--

    "Strong is our native country, and great the Russian Tsar."

Then British statesmen, in company with the crowned conspirator of
France, and with treacherous Austria, raised Western Europe against
us, but we laughed scornfully at the coming storm. 'Let the
nations rave,' we said; 'we have no cause to be afraid. The Tsar
doubtless foresaw all, and has long since made the necessary
preparations.'  Boldly we went forth to fight, and confidently
awaited the moment of the struggle.

"And lo! after all our boasting we were taken by surprise, and
caught unawares, as by a robber in the dark. The sleep of innate
stupidity blinded our Ambassadors, and our Foreign Minister sold us
to our enemies.*  Where were our millions of soldiers? Where was
the well-considered plan of defence? One courier brought the order
to advance; another brought the order to retreat; and the army
wandered about without definite aim or purpose. With loss and
shame we retreated from the forts of Silistria, and the pride of
Russia was humbled before the Hapsburg eagle. The soldiers fought
well, but the parade-admiral (Menshikof)--the amphibious hero of
lost battles--did not know the geography of his own country, and
sent his troops to certain destruction.

* Many people at that time imagined that Count Nesselrode, who was
then Minister for Foreign Affairs, was a traitor to his adopted
country.

"Awake, O Russia! Devoured by foreign enemies, crushed by slavery,
shamefully oppressed by stupid authorities and spies, awaken from
your long sleep of ignorance and apathy! You have been long enough
held in bondage by the successors of the Tartar Khan. Stand
forward calmly before the throne of the despot, and demand from him
an account of the national disaster. Say to him boldly that his
throne is not the altar of God, and that God did not condemn us to
be slaves. Russia entrusted to you, O Tsar, the supreme power, and
you were as a God upon earth. And what have you done? Blinded by
ignorance and passion, you have lusted after power and have
forgotten Russia. You have spent your life in reviewing troops, in
modifying uniforms, and in appending your signature to the
legislative projects of ignorant charlatans. You created the
despicable race of Press censors, in order to sleep in peace--in
order not to know the wants and not to hear the groans of the
people--in order not to listen to Truth. You buried Truth, rolled
a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, placed a strong guard
over it, and said in the pride of your heart: For her there is no
resurrection! But the third day has dawned, and Truth has arisen
from the dead.

"Stand forward, O Tsar, before the judgment-seat of history and of
God! You have mercilessly trampled Truth under foot, you have
denied Freedom, you have been the slave of your own passions. By
your pride and obstinacy you have exhausted Russia and raised the
world in arms against us. Bow down before your brethren and humble
yourself in the dust! Crave pardon and ask advice! Throw yourself
into the arms of the people! There is now no other salvation!"

The innumerable tirades of which the above is a fair specimen were
not very remarkable for literary merit or political wisdom. For
the most part they were simply bits of bombastic rhetoric couched
in doggerel rhyme, and they have consequently been long since
consigned to well-merited oblivion--so completely that it is now
difficult to obtain copies of them.*  They have, however, an
historical interest, because they express in a more or less
exaggerated form the public opinion and prevalent ideas of the
educated classes at that moment. In order to comprehend their real
significance, we must remember that the writers and readers were
not a band of conspirators, but ordinary, respectable, well-
intentioned people, who never for a moment dreamed of embarking in
revolutionary designs. It was the same society that had been a few
months before so indifferent to all political questions, and even
now there was no clear conception as to how the loud-sounding
phrases could be translated into action. We can imagine the
comical discomfiture of those who read and listened to these
appeals, if the "despot" had obeyed their summons, and suddenly
appeared before them.

* I am indebted for the copies which I possess to friends who
copied and collected these pamphlets at the time.

Was the movement, then, merely an outburst of childish petulance?
Certainly not. The public were really and seriously convinced that
things were all wrong, and they were seriously and enthusiastically
desirous that a new and better order of things should be
introduced. It must be said to their honour that they did not
content themselves with accusing and lampooning the individuals who
were supposed to be the chief culprits. On the contrary, they
looked reality boldly in the face, made a public confession of
their past sins, sought conscientiously the causes which had
produced the recent disasters, and endeavoured to find means by
which such calamities might be prevented in the future. The public
feeling and aspirations were not strong enough to conquer the
traditional respect for the Imperial will and create an open
opposition to the Autocratic Power, but they were strong enough to
do great things by aiding the Government, if the Emperor
voluntarily undertook a series of radical reforms.

What Nicholas would have done, had he lived, in face of this
national awakening, it is difficult to say. He declared, indeed,
that he could not change, and we can readily believe that his proud
spirit would have scorned to make concessions to the principles
which he had always condemned; but he gave decided indications in
the last days of his life that his old faith in his system was
somewhat shaken, and he did not exhort his son to persevere in the
path along which he himself had forced his way with such obstinate
consistency. It is useless, however, to speculate on
possibilities. Whilst the Government had still to concentrate all
its energies on the defence of the country, the Iron Tsar died, and
was succeeded by his son, a man of a very different type.

Of a kind-hearted, humane disposition, sincerely desirous of
maintaining the national honour, but singularly free from military
ambition and imbued with no fanatical belief in the drill-sergeant
system of government, Alexander II. was by no means insensible to
the spirit of the time. He had, however, none of the sentimental
enthusiasm for liberal institutions which had characterised his
uncle, Alexander I. On the contrary, he had inherited from his
father a strong dislike to sentimentalism and rhetoric of all
kinds. This dislike, joined to a goodly portion of sober common-
sense, a limited confidence in his own judgment, and a
consciousness of enormous responsibility, prevented him from being
carried away by the prevailing excitement. With all that was
generous and humane in the movement he thoroughly sympathised, and
he allowed the popular ideas and aspirations to find free
utterance; but he did not at once commit himself to any definite
policy, and carefully refrained from all exaggerated expressions of
reforming zeal.

As soon, however, as peace had been concluded, there were
unmistakable symptoms that the rigorously repressive system of
Nicholas was about to be abandoned. In the manifesto announcing
the termination of hostilities the Emperor expressed his conviction
that by the combined efforts of the Government and the people, the
public administration would be improved, and that justice and mercy
would reign in the courts of law. Apparently as a preparation for
this great work, to be undertaken by the Tsar and his people in
common, the ministers began to take the public into their
confidence, and submitted to public criticism many official data
which had hitherto been regarded as State secrets. The Minister of
the Interior, for instance, in his annual report, spoke almost in
the tone of a penitent, and confessed openly that the morality of
the officials under his orders left much to be desired. He
declared that the Emperor now showed a paternal confidence in his
people, and as a proof of this he mentioned the significant fact
that 9,000 persons had been liberated from police supervision. The
other branches of the Administration underwent a similar
transformation. The haughty, dictatorial tone which had hitherto
been used by superiors to their subordinates, and by all ranks of
officials to the public, was replaced by one of considerate
politeness. About the same time those of the Decembrists who were
still alive were pardoned. The restrictions regarding the number
of students in each university were abolished, the difficulty of
obtaining foreign passports was removed, and the Press censors
became singularly indulgent. Though no decided change had been
made in the laws, it was universally felt that the spirit of
Nicholas was no more.

The public, anxiously seeking after a sign, readily took these
symptoms of change as a complete confirmation of their ardent
hopes, and leaped at once to the conclusion that a vast, all-
embracing system of radical reform was about to be undertaken--not
secretly by the Administration, as had been the custom in the
preceding reign when any little changes had to be made, but
publicly, by the Government and the people in common. "The heart
trembles with joy," said one of the leading organs of the Press,
"in expectation of the great social reforms that are about to be
effected--reforms that are thoroughly in accordance with the
spirit, the wishes, and the expectations of the public."  "The old
harmony and community of feeling," said another, "which has always
existed between the government and the people, save during short
exceptional periods, has been fully re-established. The absence of
all sentiment of caste, and the feeling of common origin and
brotherhood which binds all classes of the Russian people into a
homogeneous whole, will enable Russia to accomplish peacefully and
without effort not only those great reforms which cost Europe
centuries of struggle and bloodshed, but also many which the
nations of the West are still unable to accomplish, in consequence
of feudal traditions and caste prejudices."  The past was depicted
in the blackest colours, and the nation was called upon to begin a
new and glorious epoch of its history. "We have to struggle," it
was said, "in the name of the highest truth against egotism and the
puny interests of the moment; and we ought to prepare our children
from their infancy to take part in that struggle which awaits every
honest man. We have to thank the war for opening our eyes to the
dark sides of our political and social organisation, and it is now
our duty to profit by the lesson. But it must not be supposed that
the Government can, single-handed, remedy the defects. The
destinies of Russia are, as it were, a stranded vessel which the
captain and crew cannot move, and which nothing, indeed, but the
rising tide of the national life can raise and float."

Hearts beat quicker at the sound of these calls to action. Many
heard this new teaching, if we may believe a contemporary
authority, "with tears in their eyes"; then, "raising boldly their
heads, they made a solemn vow that they would act honourably,
perseveringly, fearlessly."  Some of those who had formerly yielded
to the force of circumstances now confessed their misdemeanours
with bitterness of heart. "Tears of repentance," said a popular
poet, "give relief, and call us to new exploits."  Russia was
compared to a strong giant who awakes from sleep, stretches his
brawny limbs, collects his thoughts, and prepares to atone for his
long inactivity by feats of untold prowess. All believed, or at
least assumed, that the recognition of defects would necessarily
entail their removal. When an actor in one of the St. Petersburg
theatres shouted from the stage, "Let us proclaim throughout all
Russia that the time has come for tearing up evil by the roots!"
the audience gave way to the most frantic enthusiasm. "Altogether
a joyful time," says one who took part in the excitement, "as when,
after the long winter, the genial breath of spring glides over the
cold, petrified earth, and nature awakens from her deathlike sleep.
Speech, long restrained by police and censorial regulations, now
flows smoothly, majestically, like a mighty river that has just
been freed from ice."

Under these influences a multitude of newspapers and periodicals
were founded, and the current literature entirely changed its
character. The purely literary and historical questions which had
hitherto engaged the attention of the reading public were thrown
aside and forgotten, unless they could be made to illustrate some
principle of political or social science. Criticisms on style and
diction, explanations of aesthetic principles, metaphysical
discussions--all this seemed miserable trifling to men who wished
to devote themselves to gigantic practical interests. "Science,"
it was said, "has now descended from the heights of philosophic
abstraction into the arena of real life."  The periodicals were
accordingly filled with articles on railways, banks, free-trade,
education, agriculture, communal institutions, local self-
government, joint-stock companies, and with crushing philippics
against personal and national vanity, inordinate luxury,
administrative tyranny, and the habitual peculation of the
officials. This last-named subject received special attention.
During the preceding reign any attempt to criticise publicly the
character or acts of an official was regarded as a very heinous
offence; now there was a deluge of sketches, tales, comedies, and
monologues, describing the corruption of the Administration, and
explaining the ingenious devices by which the tchinovniks increased
their scanty salaries. The public would read nothing that had not
a direct or indirect bearing on the questions of the day, and
whatever had such a bearing was read with interest. It did not
seem at all strange that a drama should be written in defence of
free-trade, or a poem in advocacy of some peculiar mode of
taxation; that an author should expound his political ideas in a
tale, and his antagonist reply by a comedy. A few men of the old
school protested feebly against this "prostitution of art," but
they received little attention, and the doctrine that art should be
cultivated for its own sake was scouted as an invention of
aristocratic indolence. Here is an ipsa pinxit of the literature
of the time: "Literature has come to look at Russia with her own
eyes, and sees that the idyllic romantic personages which the poets
formerly loved to describe have no objective existence. Having
taken off her French glove, she offers her hand to the rude, hard-
working labourer, and observing lovingly Russian village life, she
feels herself in her native land. The writers of the present have
analysed the past, and, having separated themselves from
aristocratic litterateurs and aristocratic society, have demolished
their former idols."

By far the most influential periodical at the commencement of the
movement was the Kolokol, or Bell, a fortnightly journal published
in London by Herzen, who was at that time an important personage
among the political refugees. Herzen was a man of education and
culture, with ultra-radical opinions, and not averse to using
revolutionary methods of reform when he considered them necessary.
His intimate relations with many of the leading men in Russia
enabled him to obtain secret information of the most important and
varied kind, and his sparkling wit, biting satire, and clear,
terse, brilliant style secured him a large number of readers. He
seemed to know everything that was done in the ministries and even
in the Cabinet of the Emperor,* and he exposed most mercilessly
every abuse that came to his knowledge. We who are accustomed to
free political discussion can hardly form a conception of the
avidity with which his articles were read, and the effect which
they produced. Though strictly prohibited by the Press censure,
the Kolokol found its way across the frontier in thousands of
copies, and was eagerly perused and commented on by all ranks of
the educated classes. The Emperor himself received it regularly,
and high-priced delinquents examined it with fear and trembling.
In this way Herzen was for some years, though an exile, an
important political personage, and did much to awaken and keep up
the reform enthusiasm.

* As an illustration of this, the following anecdote is told: One
number of the Kolokol contained a violent attack on an important
personage of the court, and the accused, or some one of his
friends, considered it advisable to have a copy specially printed
for the Emperor without the objectionable article. The Emperor did
not at first discover the trick, but shortly afterwards he received
from London a polite note containing the article which had been
omitted, and informing him how he had been deceived.

But where were the Conservatives all this time? How came it that
for two or three years no voice was raised and no protest made even
against the rhetorical exaggerations of the new-born liberalism?
Where were the representatives of the old regime, who had been so
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Nicholas? Where were those
ministers who had systematically extinguished the least indication
of private initiative, those "satraps" who had stamped out the
least symptom of insubordination or discontent, those Press censors
who had diligently suppressed the mildest expression of liberal
opinion, those thousands of well-intentioned proprietors who had
regarded as dangerous free-thinkers and treasonable republicans all
who ventured to express dissatisfaction with the existing state of
things? A short time before, the Conservatives composed at least
nine-tenths of the upper classes, and now they had suddenly and
mysteriously disappeared.

It is scarcely necessary to say that in a country accustomed to
political life, such a sudden, unopposed revolution in public
opinion could not possibly take place. The key to the mystery lies
in the fact that for centuries Russia had known nothing of
political life or political parties. Those who were sometimes
called Conservatives were in reality not at all Conservatives in
our sense of the term. If we say that they had a certain amount of
conservatism, we must add that it was of the latent, passive,
unreasoned kind--the fruit of indolence and apathy. Their
political creed had but one article: Thou shalt love the Tsar with
all thy might, and carefully abstain from all resistance to his
will--especially when it happens that the Tsar is a man of the
Nicholas type. So long as Nicholas lived they had passively
acquiesced in his system--active acquiescence had been neither
demanded nor desired--but when he died, the system of which he was
the soul died with him. What then could they seek to defend? They
were told that the system which they had been taught to regard as
the sheet-anchor of the State was in reality the chief cause of the
national disasters; and to this they could make no reply, because
they had no better explanation of their own to offer. They were
convinced that the Russian soldier was the best soldier in the
world, and they knew that in the recent war the army had not been
victorious; the system, therefore, must be to blame. They were
told that a series of gigantic reforms was necessary in order to
restore Russia to her proper place among the nations; and to this
they could make no answer, for they had never studied such abstract
questions. And one thing they did know: that those who hesitated
to admit the necessity of gigantic reforms were branded by the
Press as ignorant, narrow-minded, prejudiced, and egotistical, and
were held up to derision as men who did not know the most
elementary principles of political and economic science. Freely
expressed public opinion was such a new phenomenon in Russia that
the Press was able for some time to exercise a "Liberal" tyranny
scarcely less severe than the "Conservative" tyranny of the censors
in the preceding reign. Men who would have stood fire gallantly on
the field of battle quailed before the poisoned darts of Herzen in
the Kolokol. Under such circumstances, even the few who possessed
some vague Conservative convictions refrained from publicly
expressing them.

The men who had played a more or less active part during the
preceding reign, and who might therefore be expected to have
clearer and deeper convictions, were specially incapable of
offering opposition to the prevailing Liberal enthusiasm. Their
Conservatism was of quite as limp a kind as that of the landed
proprietors who were not in the public service, for under Nicholas
the higher a man was placed the less likely was he to have
political convictions of any kind outside the simple political
creed above referred to. Besides this, they belonged to that class
which was for the moment under the anathema of public opinion, and
they had drawn direct personal advantage from the system which was
now recognised as the chief cause of the national disasters.

For a time the name of tchinovnik became a term of reproach and
derision, and the position of those who bore it was comically
painful. They strove to prove that, though they held a post in the
public service, they were entirely free from the tchinovnik spirit--
that there was nothing of the genuine tchinovnik about them.
Those who had formerly paraded their tchin (official rank) on all
occasions, in season and out of season, became half ashamed to
admit that they had the rank of General; for the title no longer
commanded respect, and had become associated with all that was
antiquated, formal, and stupid. Among the young generation it was
used most disrespectfully as equivalent to "pompous blockhead."
Zealous officials who had lately regarded the acquisition of Stars
and Orders as among the chief ends of man, were fain to conceal
those hard-won trophies, lest some cynical "Liberal" might notice
them and make them the butt of his satire. "Look at the depth of
humiliation to which you have brought the country"--such was the
chorus of reproach that was ever ringing in their ears--"with your
red tape, your Chinese formalism, and your principle of lifeless,
unreasoning, mechanical obedience! You asserted constantly that
you were the only true patriots, and branded with the name of
traitor those who warned you of the insane folly of your conduct.
You see now what it has all come to. The men whom you helped to
send to the mines turn out to have been the true patriots."*

* It was a common saying at that time that nearly all the best men
in Russia had spent a part of their lives in Siberia, and it was
proposed to publish a biographical dictionary of remarkable men, in
which every article was to end thus: "Exiled to ---- in 18--."  I
am not aware how far the project was seriously entertained, but, of
course, the book was never published.

And to these reproaches what could they reply? Like a child who
has in his frolics inadvertently set the house on fire, they could
only look contrite, and say they did not mean it. They had simply
accepted without criticism the existing order of things, and ranged
themselves among those who were officially recognised as "the well-
intentioned."  If they had always avoided the Liberals, and perhaps
helped to persecute them, it was simply because all "well-
intentioned" people said that Liberals were "restless" and
dangerous to the State. Those who were not convinced of their
errors simply kept silence, but the great majority passed over to
the ranks of the Progressists, and many endeavoured to redeem their
past by showing extreme zeal for the Liberal cause.

In explanation of this extraordinary outburst of reform enthusiasm,
we must further remember that the Russian educated classes, in
spite of the severe northern climate which is supposed to make the
blood circulate slowly, are extremely impulsive. They are fettered
by no venerable historical prejudices, and are wonderfully
sensitive to the seductive influence of grandiose projects,
especially when these excite the patriotic feelings. Then there
was the simple force of reaction--the rebound which naturally
followed the terrific compression of the preceding reign. Without
disrespect, the Russians of that time may be compared to schoolboys
who have just escaped from the rigorous discipline of a severe
schoolmaster. In the first moments of freedom it was supposed that
there would be no more discipline or compulsion. The utmost
respect was to be shown to "human dignity," and every Russian was
to act spontaneously and zealously at the great work of national
regeneration. All thirsted for reforming activity. The men in
authority were inundated with projects of reform--some of them
anonymous, and others from obscure individuals; some of them
practical, and very many wildly fantastic. Even the grammarians
showed their sympathy with the spirit of the time by proposing to
expel summarily all redundant letters from the Russian alphabet!

The fact that very few people had clear, precise ideas as to what
was to be done did not prevent, but rather tended to increase, the
reform enthusiasm. All had at least one common feeling--dislike to
what had previously existed. It was only when it became necessary
to forsake pure negation, and to create something, that the
conceptions became clearer, and a variety of opinions appeared. At
the first moment there was merely unanimity in negation, and an
impulsive enthusiasm for beneficent reforms in general.

The first specific proposals were direct deductions from the
lessons taught by the war. The war had shown in a terrible way the
disastrous consequences of having merely primitive means of
communication; the Press and the public began, accordingly, to
speak about the necessity of constructing railways, roads and
river-steamers. The war had shown that a country which has not
developed its natural resources very soon becomes exhausted if it
has to make a great national effort; accordingly the public and the
Press talked about the necessity of developing the natural
resources, and about the means by which this desirable end might be
attained. It had been shown by the war that a system of education
which tends to make men mere apathetic automata cannot produce even
a good army; accordingly the public and the Press began to discuss
the different systems of education and the numerous questions of
pedagogical science. It had been shown by the war that the best
intentions of a Government will necessarily be frustrated if the
majority of the officials are dishonest or incapable; accordingly
the public and the Press began to speak about the paramount
necessity of reforming the Administration in all its branches.

It must not, however, be supposed that in thus laying to heart the
lessons taught by the war and endeavouring to profit by them, the
Russians were actuated by warlike feelings, and desired to avenge
themselves as soon as possible on their victorious enemies. On the
contrary, the whole movement and the spirit which animated it were
eminently pacific. Prince Gortchakof's saying, "La Russie ne boude
pas, elle se recueille," was more than a diplomatic repartee--it
was a true and graphic statement of the case. Though the Russians
are very inflammable, and can be very violent when their patriotic
feelings are aroused, they are, individually and as a nation,
singularly free from rancour and the spirit of revenge. After the
termination of hostilities they really bore little malice towards
the Western Powers, except towards Austria, which was believed to
have been treacherous and ungrateful to the country that had saved
her in 1849. Their patriotism now took the form, not of revenge,
but of a desire to raise their country to the level of the Western
nations. If they thought of military matters at all, they assumed
that military power would be obtained as a natural and inevitable
result of high civilisation and good government.

As a first step towards the realisation of the vast schemes
contemplated, voluntary associations began to be formed for
industrial and commercial purposes, and a law was issued for the
creation of limited liability companies. In the space of two years
forty-seven companies of this kind were founded, with a combined
capital of 358 millions of roubles. To understand the full
significance of these figures, we must know that from the founding
of the first joint-stock company in 1799 down to 1853 only twenty-
six companies had been formed, and their united capital amounted
only to thirty-two millions of roubles. Thus in the space of two
years (1857-58) eleven times as much capital was subscribed to
joint-stock companies as had been subscribed during half a century
previous to the war. The most exaggerated expectations were
entertained as to the national and private advantages which must
necessarily result from these undertakings, and it became a
patriotic duty to subscribe liberally. The periodical literature
depicted in glowing terms the marvellous results that had been
obtained in other countries by the principle of co-operation, and
sanguine readers believed that they had discovered a patriotic way
of speedily becoming rich.

These were, however, mere secondary matters, and the public were
anxiously waiting for the Government to begin the grand reforming
campaign. When the educated classes awoke to the necessity of
great reforms, there was no clear conception as to how the great
work should be undertaken. There was so much to be done that it
was no easy matter to decide what should be done first.
Administrative, judicial, social, economical, financial, and
political reforms seemed all equally pressing. Gradually, however,
it became evident that precedence must be given to the question of
serfage. It was absurd to speak about progress, humanitarianism,
education, self-government, equality in the eye of the law, and
similar matters, so long as one half of the population was excluded
from the enjoyment of ordinary civil rights. So long as serfage
existed it was mere mockery to talk about re-organising Russia
according to the latest results of political and social science.
How could a system of even-handed justice be introduced when twenty
millions of the peasantry were subject to the arbitrary will of the
landed proprietors? How could agricultural or industrial progress
be made without free labour? How could the Government take active
measures for the spread of national education when it had no direct
control over one-half of the peasantry? Above all, how could it be
hoped that a great moral regeneration could take place, so long as
the nation voluntarily retained the stigma of serfage and slavery?

All this was very generally felt by the educated classes, but no
one ventured to raise the question until it should be known what
were the views of the Emperor on the subject. How the question was
gradually raised, how it was treated by the nobles, and how it was
ultimately solved by the famous law of February 19th (March 3d),
1861,* I now propose to relate.

* February 19th according to the old style, which is still used in
Russia, and March 3d according to our method of reckoning.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SERFS

The Rural Population in Ancient Times--The Peasantry in the
Eighteenth Century--How Was This Change Effected?--The Common
Explanation Inaccurate--Serfage the Result of Permanent Economic
and Political Causes--Origin of the Adscriptio Glebae--Its
Consequences--Serf Insurrection--Turning-point in the History of
Serfage--Serfage in Russia and in Western Europe--State Peasants--
Numbers and Geographical Distribution of the Serf Population--Serf
Dues--Legal and Actual Power of the Proprietors--The Serfs' Means
of Defence--Fugitives--Domestic Serfs--Strange Advertisements in
the Moscow Gazette--Moral Influence of Serfage.

Before proceeding to describe the Emancipation, it may be well to
explain briefly how the Russian peasants became serfs, and what
serfage in Russia really was.

In the earliest period of Russian history the rural population was
composed of three distinct classes. At the bottom of the scale
stood the slaves, who were very numerous. Their numbers were
continually augmented by prisoners of war, by freemen who
voluntarily sold themselves as slaves, by insolvent debtors, and by
certain categories of criminals. Immediately above the slaves were
the free agricultural labourers, who had no permanent domicile, but
wandered about the country and settled temporarily where they
happened to find work and satisfactory remuneration. In the third
place, distinct from these two classes, and in some respects higher
in the social scale, were the peasants properly so called.*

* My chief authority for the early history of the peasantry has
been Belaef, "Krestyanye na Rusi," Moscow, 1860; a most able and
conscientious work.

These peasants proper, who may be roughly described as small
farmers or cottiers, were distinguished from the free agricultural
labourers in two respects: they were possessors of land in property
or usufruct, and they were members of a rural Commune. The
Communes were free primitive corporations which elected their
office-bearers from among the heads of families, and sent delegates
to act as judges or assessors in the Prince's Court. Some of the
Communes possessed land of their own, whilst others were settled on
the estates of the landed proprietors or on the extensive domains
of the monasteries. In the latter case the peasant paid a fixed
yearly rent in money, in produce, or in labour, according to the
terms of his contract with the proprietor or the monastery; but he
did not thereby sacrifice in any way his personal liberty. As soon
as he had fulfilled the engagements stipulated in the contract and
had settled accounts with the owner of the land, he was free to
change his domicile as he pleased.

If we turn now from these early times to the eighteenth century, we
find that the position of the rural population has entirely changed
in the interval. The distinction between slaves, agricultural
labourers, and peasants has completely disappeared. All three
categories have melted together into a common class, called serfs,
who are regarded as the property of the landed proprietors or of
the State. "The proprietors sell their peasants and domestic
servants not even in families, but one by one, like cattle, as is
done nowhere else in the whole world, from which practice there is
not a little wailing."*  And yet the Government, whilst professing
to regret the existence of the practice, takes no energetic
measures to prevent it. On the contrary, it deprives the serfs of
all legal protection, and expressly commands that if any serf shall
dare to present a petition against his master, he shall be punished
with the knout and transported for life to the mines of Nertchinsk.
(Ukaz of August 22d, 1767.**)

* These words are taken from an Imperial ukaz of April 15th, 1721.
Polnoye Sobranye Zakonov, No. 3,770.

** This is an ukaz of the liberal and tolerant Catherine! How she
reconciled it with her respect and admiration for Beccaria's humane
views on criminal law she does not explain.

How did this important change take place, and how is it to be
explained?

If we ask any educated Russian who has never specially occupied
himself with historical investigations regarding the origin of
serfage in Russia, he will probably reply somewhat in this fashion:

"In Russia slavery has never existed (!), and even serfage in the
West-European sense has never been recognised by law! In ancient
times the rural population was completely free, and every peasant
might change his domicile on St. George's Day--that is to say, at
the end of the agricultural year. This right of migration was
abolished by Tsar Boris Godunof--who, by the way, was half a Tartar
and more than half a usurper--and herein lies the essence of
serfage in the Russian sense. The peasants have never been the
property of the landed proprietors, but have always been personally
free; and the only legal restriction on their liberty was that they
were not allowed to change their domicile without the permission of
the proprietor. If so-called serfs were sometimes sold, the
practice was simply an abuse not justified by legislation."

This simple explanation, in which may be detected a note of
patriotic pride, is almost universally accepted in Russia; but it
contains, like most popular conceptions of the distant past, a
curious mixture of fact and fiction. Serious historical
investigation tends to show that the power of the proprietors over
the peasants came into existence, not suddenly, as the result of an
ukaz, but gradually, as a consequence of permanent economic and
political causes, and that Boris Godunof was not more to blame than
many of his predecessors and successors.*

* See especially Pobedonostsef, in the Russki Vestnik, 1858, No.
11, and "Istoritcheskiya izsledovaniya i statyi" (St. Petersburg,
1876), by the same author; also Pogodin, in the Russkaya Beseda,
1858, No. 4.

Although the peasants in ancient Russia were free to wander about
as they chose, there appeared at a very early period--long before
the reign of Boris Godunof--a decided tendency in the Princes, in
the proprietors, and in the Communes, to prevent migration. This
tendency will be easily understood if we remember that land without
labourers is useless, and that in Russia at that time the
population was small in comparison with the amount of reclaimed and
easily reclaimable land. The Prince desired to have as many
inhabitants as possible in his principality, because the amount of
his regular revenues depended on the number of the population. The
landed proprietor desired to have as many peasants as possible on
his estate, to till for him the land which he reserved for his own
use, and to pay him for the remainder a yearly rent in money,
produce, or labour. The free Communes desired to have a number of
members sufficient to keep the whole of the Communal land under
cultivation, because each Commune had to pay yearly to the Prince a
fixed sum in money or agricultural produce, and the greater the
number of able-bodied members, the less each individual had to pay.
To use the language of political economy, the Princes, the landed
proprietors, and the free Communes all appeared as buyers in the
labour market; and the demand was far in excess of the supply.
Nowadays when young colonies or landed proprietors in an outlying
corner of the world are similarly in need of labour, they seek to
supply the want by organising a regular system of importing
labourers--using illegal violent means, such as kidnapping
expeditions, merely as an exceptional expedient. In old Russia any
such regularly organised system was impossible, and consequently
illegal or violent measures were not the exception, but the rule.
The chief practical advantage of the frequent military expeditions
for those who took part in them was the acquisition of prisoners of
war, who were commonly transformed into slaves by their captors.
If it be true, as some assert, that only unbaptised prisoners were
legally considered lawful booty, it is certain that in practice,
before the unification of the principalities under the Tsars of
Moscow, little distinction was made in this respect between
unbaptised foreigners and Orthodox Russians.*  A similar method was
sometimes employed for the acquisition of free peasants: the more
powerful proprietors organised kidnapping expeditions, and carried
off by force the peasants settled on the land of their weaker
neighbours.

* On this subject see Tchitcherin, "Opyty po istorii Russkago
prava," Moscow, 1858, p. 162 et seq.; and Lokhvitski, "O plennykh
po drevnemu Russkomu pravu," Moscow, 1855.

Under these circumstances it was only natural that those who
possessed this valuable commodity should do all in their power to
keep it. Many, if not all, of the free Communes adopted the simple
measure of refusing to allow a member to depart until he had found
some one to take his place. The proprietors never, so far as we
know, laid down formally such a principle, but in practice they did
all in their power to retain the peasants actually settled on their
estates. For this purpose some simply employed force, whilst
others acted under cover of legal formalities. The peasant who
accepted land from a proprietor rarely brought with him the
necessary implements, cattle, and capital to begin at once his
occupations, and to feed himself and his family till the ensuing
harvest. He was obliged, therefore, to borrow from his landlord,
and the debt thus contracted was easily converted into a means of
preventing his departure if he wished to change his domicile. We
need not enter into further details. The proprietors were the
capitalists of the time. Frequent bad harvests, plagues, fires,
military raids, and similar misfortunes often reduced even
prosperous peasants to beggary. The muzhik was probably then, as
now, only too ready to accept a loan without taking the necessary
precautions for repaying it. The laws relating to debt were
terribly severe, and there was no powerful judicial organisation to
protect the weak. If we remember all this, we shall not be
surprised to learn that a considerable part of the peasantry were
practically serfs before serfage was recognised by law.

So long as the country was broken up into independent
principalities, and each land-owner was almost an independent
Prince on his estate, the peasants easily found a remedy for these
abuses in flight. They fled to a neighbouring proprietor who could
protect them from their former landlord and his claims, or they
took refuge in a neighbouring principality, where they were, of
course, still safer. All this was changed when the independent
principalities were transformed into the Tsardom of Muscovy. The
Tsars had new reasons for opposing the migration of the peasants
and new means for preventing it. The old Princes had simply given
grants of land to those who served them, and left the grantee to do
with his land what seemed good to him; the Tsars, on the contrary,
gave to those who served them merely the usufruct of a certain
quantity of land, and carefully proportioned the quantity to the
rank and the obligations of the receiver. In this change there was
plainly a new reason for fixing the peasants to the soil. The real
value of a grant depended not so much on the amount of land as on
the number of peasants settled on it, and hence any migration of
the population was tantamount to a removal of the ancient
landmarks--that is to say, to a disturbance of the arrangements
made by the Tsar. Suppose, for instance, that the Tsar granted to
a Boyar or some lesser dignitary an estate on which were settled
twenty peasant families, and that afterwards ten of these emigrated
to neighbouring proprietors. In this case the recipient might
justly complain that he had lost half of his estate--though the
amount of land was in no way diminished--and that he was
consequently unable to fulfil his obligations. Such complaints
would be rarely, if ever, made by the great dignitaries, for they
had the means of attracting peasants to their estates;* but the
small proprietors had good reason to complain, and the Tsar was
bound to remove their grievances. The attaching of the peasants to
the soil was, in fact, the natural consequence of feudal tenures--
an integral part of the Muscovite political system. The Tsar
compelled the nobles to serve him, and was unable to pay them in
money. He was obliged, therefore, to procure for them some other
means of livelihood. Evidently the simplest method of solving the
difficulty was to give them land, with a certain number of
labourers, and to prevent the labourers from migrating.

* There are plain indications in the documents of the time that the
great dignitaries were at first hostile to the adscriptio glebae.
We find a similar phenomenon at a much more recent date in Little
Russia. Long after serfage had been legalised in that region by
Catherine II., the great proprietors, such as Rumyantsef,
Razumofski, Bezborodko, continued to attract to their estates the
peasants of the smaller proprietors. See the article of Pogodin in
the Russkaya Beseda, 1858, No. 4, p. 154.

Towards the free Communes the Tsar had to act in the same way for
similar reasons. The Communes, like the nobles, had obligations to
the Sovereign, and could not fulfil them if the peasants were
allowed to migrate from one locality to another. They were, in a
certain sense, the property of the Tsar, and it was only natural
that the Tsar should do for himself what he had done for his
nobles.

With these new reasons for fixing the peasants to the soil came, as
has been said, new means of preventing migration. Formerly it was
an easy matter to flee to a neighbouring principality, but now all
the principalities were combined under one ruler, and the
foundations of a centralised administration were laid. Severe
fugitive laws were issued against those who attempted to change
their domicile and against the proprietors who should harbour the
runaways. Unless the peasant chose to face the difficulties of
"squatting" in the inhospitable northern forests, or resolved to
brave the dangers of the steppe, he could nowhere escape the heavy
hand of Moscow.*

* The above account of the origin of serfage in Russia is founded
on a careful examination of the evidence which we possess on the
subject, but I must not conceal the fact that some of the
statements are founded on inference rather than on direct,
unequivocal documentary evidence. The whole question is one of
great difficulty, and will in all probability not be satisfactorily
solved until a large number of the old local Land-Registers
(Pistsoviya Knigi) have been published and carefully studied.

The indirect consequences of thus attaching the peasants to the
soil did not at once become apparent. The serf retained all the
civil rights he had hitherto enjoyed, except that of changing his
domicile. He could still appear before the courts of law as a free
man, freely engage in trade or industry, enter into all manner of
contracts, and rent land for cultivation.

But as time wore on, the change in the legal relation between the
two classes became apparent in real life. In attaching the
peasantry to the soil, the Government had been so thoroughly
engrossed with the direct financial aim that it entirely
overlooked, or wilfully shut its eyes to, the ulterior consequences
which must necessarily flow from the policy it adopted. It was
evident that as soon as the relation between proprietor and peasant
was removed from the region of voluntary contract by being rendered
indissoluble, the weaker of the two parties legally tied together
must fall completely under the power of the stronger, unless
energetically protected by the law and the Administration. To this
inevitable consequence the Government paid no attention. So far
from endeavouring to protect the peasantry from the oppression of
the proprietors, it did not even determine by law the mutual
obligations which ought to exist between the two classes. Taking
advantage of this omission, the proprietors soon began to impose
whatever obligations they thought fit; and as they had no legal
means of enforcing fulfilment, they gradually introduced a
patriarchal jurisdiction similar to that which they exercised over
their slaves, with fines and corporal punishment as means of
coercion. From this they ere long proceeded a step further, and
began to sell their peasants without the land on which they were
settled. At first this was merely a flagrant abuse unsanctioned by
law, for the peasant had never been declared the private property
of the landed proprietor; but the Government tacitly sanctioned the
practice, and even exacted dues on such sales, as on the sale of
slaves. Finally the right to sell peasants without land was
formally recognised by various Imperial ukazes.*

* For instance, the ukazes of October 13th, 1675, and June 25th,
1682. See Belaef, pp. 203-209.

The old Communal organisation still existed on the estates of the
proprietors, and had never been legally deprived of its authority,
but it was now powerless to protect the members. The proprietor
could easily overcome any active resistance by selling or
converting into domestic servants the peasants who dared to oppose
his will.

The peasantry had thus sunk to the condition of serfs, practically
deprived of legal protection and subject to the arbitrary will of
the proprietors; but they were still in some respects legally and
actually distinguished from the slaves on the one hand and the
"free wandering people" on the other. These distinctions were
obliterated by Peter the Great and his immediate successors.

To effect his great civil and military reforms, Peter required an
annual revenue such as his predecessors had never dreamed of, and
he was consequently always on the look-out for some new object of
taxation. When looking about for this purpose, his eye naturally
fell on the slaves, the domestic servants, and the free
agricultural labourers. None of these classes paid taxes--a fact
which stood in flagrant contradiction with his fundamental
principle of polity, that every subject should in some way serve
the State. He caused, therefore, a national census to be taken, in
which all the various classes of the rural population--slaves,
domestic servants, agricultural labourers, peasants--should be
inscribed in one category; and he imposed equally on all the
members of this category a poll-tax, in lieu of the former land-
tax, which had lain exclusively on the peasants. To facilitate the
collection of this tax the proprietors were made responsible for
their serfs; and the "free wandering people" who did not wish to
enter the army were ordered, under pain of being sent to the
galleys, to inscribe themselves as members of a Commune or as serfs
to some proprietor.

These measures had a considerable influence, if not on the actual
position of the peasantry, at least on the legal conceptions
regarding them. By making the proprietor pay the poll-tax for his
serfs, as if they were slaves or cattle, the law seemed to sanction
the idea that they were part of his goods and chattels. Besides
this, it introduced the entirely new principle that any member of
the rural population not legally attached to the land or to a
proprietor should be regarded as a vagrant, and treated
accordingly. Thus the principle that every subject should in some
way serve the State had found its complete realisation. There was
no longer any room in Russia for free men.

The change in the position of the peasantry, together with the
hardships and oppression by which it was accompanied, naturally
increased fugitivism and vagrancy. Thousands of serfs ran away
from their masters and fled to the steppe or sought enrolment in
the army. To prevent this the Government considered it necessary
to take severe and energetic measures. The serfs were forbidden to
enlist without the permission of their masters, and those who
persisted in presenting themselves for enrolment were to be beaten
"cruelly" (zhestoko) with the knout, and sent to the mines.*  The
proprietors, on the other hand, received the right to transport
without trial their unruly serfs to Siberia, and even to send them
to the mines for life.**

* Ukaz of June 2d, 1742.

** See ukaz of January 17th, 1765, and of January 28th, 1766.

If these stringent measures had any effect it was not of long
duration, for there soon appeared among the serfs a still stronger
spirit of discontent and insubordination, which threatened to
produce a general agrarian rising, and actually did create a
movement resembling in many respects the Jacquerie in France and
the Peasant War in Germany. A glance at the causes of this
movement will help us to understand the real nature of serfage in
Russia.

Up to this point serfage had, in spite of its flagrant abuses, a
certain theoretical justification. It was, as we have seen, merely
a part of a general political system in which obligatory service
was imposed on all classes of the population. The serfs served the
nobles in order that the nobles might serve the Tsar. In 1762 this
theory was entirely overturned by a manifesto of Peter III.
abolishing the obligatory service of the Noblesse. According to
strict justice this act ought to have been followed by the
liberation of the serfs, for if the nobles were no longer obliged
to serve the State they had no just claim to the service of the
peasants. The Government had so completely forgotten the original
meaning of serfage that it never thought of carrying out the
measure to its logical consequences, but the peasantry held
tenaciously to the ancient conceptions, and looked impatiently for
a second manifesto liberating them from the power of the
proprietors. Reports were spread that such a manifesto really
existed, and was being concealed by the nobles. A spirit of
insubordination accordingly appeared among the rural population,
and local insurrections broke out in several parts of the Empire.

At this critical moment Peter III. was dethroned and assassinated
by a Court conspiracy. The peasants, who, of course, knew nothing
of the real motives of the conspirators, supposed that the Tsar had
been assassinated by those who wished to preserve serfage, and
believed him to be a martyr in the cause of Emancipation. At the
news of the catastrophe their hopes of Emancipation fell, but soon
they were revived by new rumours. The Tsar, it was said, had
escaped from the conspirators and was in hiding. Soon he would
appear among his faithful peasants, and with their aid would regain
his throne and punish the wicked oppressors. Anxiously he was
awaited, and at last the glad tidings came that he had appeared in
the Don country, that thousands of Cossacks had joined his
standard, that he was everywhere putting the proprietors to death
without mercy, and that he would soon arrive in the ancient
capital!

Peter III. was in reality in his grave, but there was a terrible
element of truth in these reports. A pretender, a Cossack called
Pugatchef, had really appeared on the Don, and had assumed the role
which the peasants expected the late Tsar to play. Advancing
through the country of the Lower Volga, he took several places of
importance, put to death all the proprietors he could find,
defeated on more than one occasion the troops sent against him, and
threatened to advance into the heart of the Empire. It seemed as
if the old troublous times were about to be renewed--as if the
country was once more to be pillaged by those wild Cossacks of the
southern steppe. But the pretender showed himself incapable of
playing the part he had assumed. His inhuman cruelty estranged
many who would otherwise have followed him, and he was too
deficient in decision and energy to take advantage of favourable
circumstances. If it be true that he conceived the idea of
creating a peasant empire (muzhitskoe tsarstvo), he was not the man
to realise such a scheme. After a series of mistakes and defeats
he was taken prisoner, and the insurrection was quelled.*

*Whilst living among the Bashkirs of the province of Samara in 1872
I found some interesting traditions regarding this pretender.
Though nearly a century had elapsed since his death (1775), his
name, his personal appearance, and his exploits were well known
even to the younger generation. My informants firmly believed that
he was not an impostor, but the genuine Tsar, dethroned by his
ambitious consort, and that he never was taken prisoner, but "went
away into foreign lands."  When I asked whether he was still alive,
and whether he might not one day return, they replied that they did
not know.

Meanwhile Peter III. had been succeeded by his consort, Catherine
II. As she had no legal right to the throne, and was by birth a
foreigner, she could not gain the affections of the people, and was
obliged to court the favour of the Noblesse. In such a difficult
position she could not venture to apply her humane principles to
the question of serfage. Even during the first years of her reign,
when she had no reason to fear agrarian disturbances, she increased
rather than diminished the power of the proprietors over their
serfs, and the Pugatchef affair confirmed her in this line of
policy. During her reign serfage may be said to have reached its
climax. The serfs were regarded by the law as part of the master's
immovable property*--as part of the working capital of the estate--
and as such they were bought, sold, and given as presents** in
hundreds and thousands, sometimes with the land, and sometimes
without it, sometimes in families, and sometimes individually. The
only legal restriction was that they should not be offered for sale
at the time of the conscription, and that they should at no time be
sold publicly by auction, because such a custom was considered as
"unbecoming in a European State."  In all other respects the serfs
might be treated as private property; and this view is to be found
not only in the legislation, but also in the popular conceptions.
It became customary--a custom that continued down to the year 1861--
to compute a noble's fortune, not by his yearly revenue or the
extent of his estate, but by the number of his serfs. Instead of
saying that a man had so many hundreds or thousands a year, or so
many acres, it was commonly said that he had so many hundreds or
thousands of "souls."  And over these "souls" he exercised the most
unlimited authority. The serfs had no legal means of self-defence.
The Government feared that the granting to them of judicial or
administrative protection would inevitably awaken in them a spirit
of insubordination, and hence it was ordered that those who
presented complaints should be punished with the knout and sent to
the mines.***  It was only in extreme cases, when some instance of
atrocious cruelty happened to reach the ears of the Sovereign, that
the authorities interfered with the proprietor's jurisdiction, and
these cases had not the slightest influence on the proprietors in
general.****

* See ukaz of October 7th, 1792.

** As an example of making presents of serfs, the following may be
cited. Count Panin presented some of his subordinates for an
Imperial recompense, and on receiving a refusal, made them a
present of 4000 serfs from his own estates.--Belaef, p. 320.

*** See the ukazes of August 22d, 1767, and March 30th, 1781.

**** Perhaps the most horrible case on record is that of a certain
lady called Saltykof, who was brought to justice in 1768.
According to the ukaz regarding her crimes, she had killed by
inhuman tortures in the course of ten or eleven years about a
hundred of her serfs, chiefly of the female sex, and among them
several young girls of eleven and twelve years of age. According
to popular belief her cruelty proceeded from cannibal propensities,
but this was not confirmed by the judicial investigation. Details
in the Russki Arkhiv, 1865, pp. 644-652. The atrocities practised
on the estate of Count Araktcheyef, the favourite of Alexander I.
at the commencement of last century, have been frequently
described, and are scarcely less revolting.

The last years of the eighteenth century may be regarded as the
turning-point in the history of serfage. Up till that time the
power of the proprietors had steadily increased, and the area of
serfage had rapidly expanded. Under the Emperor Paul (1796-1801)
we find the first decided symptoms of a reaction. He regarded the
proprietors as his most efficient officers of police, but he
desired to limit their authority, and for this purpose issued an
ukaz to the effect that the serfs should not be forced to work for
their masters more than three days in the week. With the accession
of Alexander I., in 1801, commenced a long series of abortive
projects for a general emancipation, and endless attempts to
correct the more glaring abuses; and during the reign of Nicholas
no less than six committees were formed at different times to
consider the question. But the practical result of these efforts
was extremely small. The custom of giving grants of land with
peasants was abolished; certain slight restrictions were placed on
the authority of the proprietors; a number of the worst specimens
of the class were removed from the administration of their estates;
a few who were convicted of atrocious cruelty were exiled to
Siberia;* and some thousands of serfs were actually emancipated;
but no decisive radical measures were attempted, and the serfs did
not receive even the right of making formal complaints. Serfage
had, in fact, come to be regarded as a vital part of the State
organisation, and the only sure basis for autocracy. It was
therefore treated tenderly, and the rights and protection accorded
by various ukazes were almost entirely illusory.

*Speranski, for instance, when Governor of the province of Penza,
brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who had caused one
of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a lady who had murdered a
serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife because he had neglected
to take proper care of a tame rabbit committed to his charge!--
Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago," II., p. 127, note.

If we compare the development of serfage in Russia and in Western
Europe, we find very many points in common, but in Russia the
movement had certain peculiarities. One of the most important of
these was caused by the rapid development of the Autocratic Power.
In feudal Europe, where there was no strong central authority to
control the Noblesse, the free rural Communes entirely, or almost
entirely, disappeared. They were either appropriated by the nobles
or voluntarily submitted to powerful landed proprietors or to
monasteries, and in this way the whole of the reclaimed land, with
a few rare exceptions, became the property of the nobles or of the
Church. In Russia we find the same movement, but it was arrested
by the Imperial power before all the land had been appropriated.
The nobles could reduce to serfage the peasants settled on their
estates, but they could not take possession of the free Communes,
because such an appropriation would have infringed the rights and
diminished the revenues of the Tsar. Down to the commencement of
the last century, it is true, large grants of land with serfs were
made to favoured individuals among the Noblesse, and in the reign
of Paul (1796-1801) a considerable number of estates were affected
to the use of the Imperial family under the name of appanages
(Udyelniya imteniya); but on the other hand, the extensive Church
lands, when secularised by Catherine II., were not distributed
among the nobles, as in many other countries, but were transformed
into State Domains. Thus, at the date of the Emancipation (1861),
by far the greater part of the territory belonged to the State, and
one-half of the rural population were so-called State Peasants
(Gosudarstvenniye krestyanye).

Regarding the condition of these State Peasants, or Peasants of the
Domains, as they are sometimes called, I may say briefly that they
were, in a certain sense, serfs, being attached to the soil like
the others; but their condition was, as a rule, somewhat better
than the serfs in the narrower acceptation of the term. They had
to suffer much from the tyranny and extortion of the special
administration under which they lived, but they had more land and
more liberty than was commonly enjoyed on the estates of resident
proprietors, and their position was much less precarious. It is
often asserted that the officials of the Domains were worse than
the serf-owners, because they had not the same interest in the
prosperity of the peasantry; but this a priori reasoning does not
stand the test of experience.

It is not a little interesting to observe the numerical proportion
and geographical distribution of these two rural classes. In
European Russia, as a whole, about three-eighths of the population
were composed of serfs belonging to the nobles;* but if we take the
provinces separately we find great variations from this average.
In five provinces the serfs were less than three per cent., while
in others they formed more than seventy per cent. of the
population! This is not an accidental phenomenon. In the
geographical distribution of serfage we can see reflected the
origin and history of the institution.

* The exact numbers, according to official data, were--

Entire Population                                 60,909,309
Peasantry of all Classes                          49,486,665

Of these latter there were--

State Peasants                                    23,138,191
Peasants on the Lands of Proprietors              23,022,390
Peasants of the Appanages and other Departments    3,326,084
                                                  ----------
                                                  49,486,665

If we were to construct a map showing the geographical distribution
of the serf population, we should at once perceive that serfage
radiated from Moscow. Starting from that city as a centre and
travelling in any direction towards the confines of the Empire, we
find that, after making allowance for a few disturbing local
influences, the proportion of serfs regularly declines in the
successive provinces traversed. In the region representing the old
Muscovite Tsardom they form considerably more than a half of the
rural population. Immediately to the south and east of this, in
the territory that was gradually annexed during the seventeenth and
first half of the eighteenth century, the proportion varies from
twenty-five to fifty per cent., and in the more recently annexed
provinces it steadily decreases till it almost reaches zero.

We may perceive, too, that the percentage of serfs decreases
towards the north much more rapidly than towards the east and
south. This points to the essentially agricultural nature of
serfage in its infancy. In the south and east there was abundance
of rich "black earth" celebrated for its fertility, and the nobles
in quest of estates naturally preferred this region to the
inhospitable north, with its poor soil and severe climate.

A more careful examination of the supposed map* would bring out
other interesting facts. Let me notice one by way of illustration.
Had serfage been the result of conquest we should have found the
Slavonic race settled on the State Domains, and the Finnish and
Tartar tribes supplying the serfs of the nobles. In reality we
find quite the reverse; the Finns and Tartars were nearly all State
Peasants, and the serfs of the proprietors were nearly all of
Slavonic race. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the
Finnish and Tartar tribes inhabit chiefly the outlying regions, in
which serfage never attained such dimensions as in the centre of
the Empire.

* Such a map was actually constructed by Troinitski ("Krepostnoe
Naseleniye v Rossii," St. Petersburg, 1861), but it is not nearly
so graphic as is might have been.

The dues paid by the serfs were of three kinds: labour, money, and
farm produce. The last-named is so unimportant that it may be
dismissed in a few words. It consisted chiefly of eggs, chickens,
lambs, mushrooms, wild berries, and linen cloth. The amount of
these various products depended entirely on the will of the master.
The other two kinds of dues, as more important, we must examine
more closely.

When a proprietor had abundance of fertile land and wished to farm
on his own account, he commonly demanded from his serfs as much
labour as possible. Under such a master the serfs were probably
free from money dues, and fulfilled their obligations to him by
labouring in his fields in summer and transporting his grain to
market in winter. When, on the contrary, a land-owner had more
serf labour at his disposal than he required for the cultivation of
his fields, he put the superfluous serfs "on obrok,"--that is to
say, he allowed them to go and work where they pleased on condition
of paying him a fixed yearly sum. Sometimes the proprietor did not
farm at all on his own account, in which case he put all the serfs
"on obrok," and generally gave to the Commune in usufruct the whole
of the arable land and pasturage. In this way the Mir played the
part of a tenant.

We have here the basis for a simple and important classification of
estates in the time of serfage: (1) Estates on which the dues were
exclusively in labour; (2) estates on which the dues were partly in
labour and partly in money; and (3) estates on which the dues were
exclusively in money.

In the manner of exacting the labour dues there was considerable
variety. According to the famous manifesto of Paul I., the peasant
could not be compelled to work more than three days in the week;
but this law was by no means universally observed, and those who
did observe it had various methods of applying it. A few took it
literally and laid down a rule that the serfs should work for them
three definite days in the week--for example, every Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday--but this was an extremely inconvenient
method, for it prevented the field labour from being carried on
regularly. A much more rational system was that according to which
one-half of the serfs worked the first three days of the week, and
the other half the remaining three. In this way there was, without
any contravention of the law, a regular and constant supply of
labour. It seems, however, that the great majority of the
proprietors followed no strict method, and paid no attention
whatever to Paul's manifesto, which gave to the peasants no legal
means of making formal complaints. They simply summoned daily as
many labourers as they required. The evil consequences of this for
the peasants' crops were in part counteracted by making the
peasants sow their own grain a little later than that of the
proprietor, so that the master's harvest work was finished, or
nearly finished, before their grain was ripe. This combination did
not, however, always succeed, and in cases where there was a
conflict of interests, the serf was, of course, the losing party.
All that remained for him to do in such cases was to work a little
in his own fields before six o'clock in the morning and after nine
o'clock at night, and in order to render this possible he
economised his strength, and worked as little as possible in his
master's fields during the day.

It has frequently been remarked, and with much truth--though the
indiscriminate application of the principle has often led to
unjustifiable legislative inactivity--that the practical result of
institutions depends less on the intrinsic abstract nature of the
institutions themselves than on the character of those who work
them. So it was with serfage. When a proprietor habitually acted
towards his serfs in an enlightened, rational, humane way, they had
little reason to complain of their position, and their life was
much easier than that of many men who live in a state of complete
individual freedom and unlimited, unrestricted competition.
However paradoxical the statement may seem to those who are in the
habit of regarding all forms of slavery from the sentimental point
of view, it is unquestionable that the condition of serfs under
such a proprietor as I have supposed was more enviable than that of
the majority of English agricultural labourers. Each family had a
house of its own, with a cabbage-garden, one or more horses, one or
two cows, several sheep, poultry, agricultural implements, a share
of the Communal land, and everything else necessary for carrying on
its small farming operations; and in return for this it had to
supply the proprietor with an amount of labour which was by no
means oppressive. If, for instance, a serf had three adult sons--
and the households, as I have said, were at that time generally
numerous--two of them might work for the proprietor whilst he
himself and the remaining son could attend exclusively to the
family affairs. By the events which used to be called "the
visitations of God" he had no fear of being permanently ruined. If
his house was burnt, or his cattle died from the plague, or a
series of "bad years" left him without seed for his fields, he
could always count upon temporary assistance from his master. He
was protected, too, against all oppression and exactions on the
part of the officials; for the police, when there was any call for
its interference, applied to the proprietor, who was to a certain
extent responsible for his serfs. Thus the serf might live a
tranquil, contented life, and die at a ripe old age, without ever
having been conscious that serfage was a grievous burden.

If all the serfs had lived in this way we might, perhaps, regret
that the Emancipation was ever undertaken. In reality there was,
as the French say, le revers de la medaille, and serfage generally
appeared under a form very different from that which I have just
depicted. The proprietors were, unfortunately, not all of the
enlightened, humane type. Amongst them were many who demanded from
their serfs an inordinate amount of labour, and treated them in a
very inhuman fashion.

These oppressors of their serfs may be divided into four
categories. First, there were the proprietors who managed their
own estates, and oppressed simply for the purpose of increasing
their revenues. Secondly, there were a number of retired officers
who wished to establish a certain order and discipline on their
estates, and who employed for this purpose the barbarous measures
which were at that time used in the army, believing that merciless
corporal punishment was the only means of curing laziness,
disorderliness and other vices. Thirdly, there were the absentees
who lived beyond their means, and demanded from their steward,
under pain of giving him or his son as a recruit, a much greater
yearly sum than the estate could be reasonably expected to yield.
Lastly, in the latter years of serfage, there were a number of men
who bought estates as a mercantile speculation, and made as much
money out of them as they could in the shortest possible space of
time.

Of all hard masters, the last-named were the most terrible.
Utterly indifferent to the welfare of the serfs and the ultimate
fate of the property, they cut down the timber, sold the cattle,
exacted heavy money dues under threats of giving the serfs or their
children as recruits, presented to the military authorities a
number of conscripts greater than was required by law--selling the
conscription receipts (zatchetniya kvitantsii) to the merchants and
burghers who were liable to the conscription but did not wish to
serve--compelled some of the richer serfs to buy their liberty at
an enormous price, and, in a word, used every means, legal and
illegal, for extracting money. By this system of management they
ruined the estate completely in the course of a few years; but by
that time they had realised probably the whole sum paid, with a
very fair profit from the operation; and this profit could be
considerably augmented by selling a number of the peasant families
for transportation to another estate (na svoz), or by mortgaging
the property in the Opekunski Sovet--a Government institution which
lent money on landed property without examining carefully the
nature of the security.

As to the means which the proprietors possessed of oppressing their
peasants, we must distinguish between the legal and the actual.
The legal were almost as complete as any one could desire. "The
proprietor," it is said in the Laws (Vol. IX, p. 1045, ed. an.
1857), "may impose on his serfs every kind of labour, may take from
them money dues (obrok) and demand from them personal service, with
this one restriction, that they should not be thereby ruined, and
that the number of days fixed by law should be left to them for
their own work."*  Besides this, he had the right to transform
peasants into domestic servants, and might, instead of employing
them in his own service, hire them out to others who had the rights
and privileges of Noblesse (pp. 1047-48). For all offences
committed against himself or against any one under his jurisdiction
he could subject the guilty ones to corporal punishment not
exceeding forty lashes with the birch or fifteen blows with the
stick (p. 1052); and if he considered any of his serfs as
incorrigible, he could present them to the authorities to be
drafted into the army or transported to Siberia as he might desire
(pp. 1053-55). In cases of insubordination, where the ordinary
domestic means of discipline did not suffice, he could call in the
police and the military to support his authority.

* I give here the references to the Code, because Russians commonly
believe and assert that the hiring out of serfs, the infliction of
corporal punishment, and similar practices were merely abuses
unauthorised by law.

Such were the legal means by which the proprietor might oppress his
peasants, and it will be readily understood that they were very
considerable and very elastic. By law he had the power to impose
any dues in labour or money which he might think fit, and in all
cases the serfs were ordered to be docile and obedient (p. 1027).
Corporal punishment, though restricted by law, he could in reality
apply to any extent. Certainly none of the serfs, and very few of
the proprietors, were aware that the law placed any restriction on
this right. All the proprietors were in the habit of using
corporal punishment as they thought proper, and unless a proprietor
became notorious for inhuman cruelty the authorities never thought
of interfering. But in the eyes of the peasants corporal
punishment was not the worst. What they feared infinitely more
than the birch or the stick was the proprietor's power of giving
them or their sons as recruits. The law assumed that this extreme
means would be employed only against those serfs who showed
themselves incorrigibly vicious or insubordinate; but the
authorities accepted those presented without making any
investigations, and consequently the proprietor might use this
power as an effective means of extortion.

Against these means of extortion and oppression the serfs had no
legal protection. The law provided them with no means of resisting
any injustice to which they might be subjected, or of bringing to
punishment the master who oppressed and ruined them. The
Government, notwithstanding its sincere desire to protect them from
inordinate burdens and cruel treatment, rarely interfered between
the master and his serfs, being afraid of thereby undermining the
authority of the proprietors, and awakening among the peasantry a
spirit of insubordination. The serfs were left, therefore, to
their own resources, and had to defend themselves as best they
could. The simplest way was open mutiny; but this was rarely
employed, for they knew by experience that any attempt of the kind
would be at once put down by the military and mercilessly punished.
Much more favourite and efficient methods were passive resistance,
flight, and fire-raising or murder.

We might naturally suppose that an unscrupulous proprietor, armed
with the enormous legal and actual power which I have just
described, could very easily extort from his peasants anything he
desired. In reality, however, the process of extortion, when it
exceeded a certain measure, was a very difficult operation. The
Russian peasant has a capacity of patient endurance that would do
honour to a martyr, and a power of continued, dogged, passive
resistance such as is possessed, I believe, by no other class of
men in Europe; and these qualities formed a very powerful barrier
against the rapacity of unconscientious proprietors. As soon as
the serfs remarked in their master a tendency to rapacity and
extortion, they at once took measures to defend themselves. Their
first step was to sell secretly the live stock they did not
actually require, and all their movable property except the few
articles necessary for everyday use; then the little capital
realised was carefully hidden.

When this had been effected, the proprietor might threaten and
punish as he liked, but he rarely succeeded in unearthing the
treasure. Many a peasant, under such circumstances, bore patiently
the most cruel punishment, and saw his sons taken away as recruits,
and yet he persisted in declaring that he had no money to ransom
himself and his children. A spectator in such a case would
probably have advised him to give up his little store of money, and
thereby liberate himself from persecution; but the peasants
reasoned otherwise. They were convinced, and not without reason,
that the sacrifice of their little capital would merely put off the
evil day, and that the persecution would very soon recommence. In
this way they would have to suffer as before, and have the
additional mortification of feeling that they had spent to no
purpose the little that they possessed. Their fatalistic belief in
the "perhaps" (avos') came here to their aid. Perhaps the
proprietor might become weary of his efforts when he saw that they
led to no result, or perhaps something might occur which would
remove the persecutor.

It always happened, however, that when a proprietor treated his
serfs with extreme injustice and cruelty, some of them lost
patience, and sought refuge in flight. As the estates lay
perfectly open on all sides, and it was utterly impossible to
exercise a strict supervision, nothing was easier than to run away,
and the fugitive might be a hundred miles off before his absence
was noticed. But the oppressed serf was reluctant to adopt such an
extreme measure. He had almost always a wife and family, and he
could not possibly take them with him; flight, therefore, was
expatriation for life in its most terrible form. Besides this, the
life of a fugitive was by no means enviable. He was liable at any
moment to fall into the hands of the police, and to be put into
prison or sent back to his master. So little charm, indeed, did
this life present that not infrequently after a few months or a few
years the fugitive returned of his own accord to his former
domicile.

Regarding fugitives or passportless wanderers in general, I may
here remark parenthetically that there were two kinds. In the
first place, there was the young, able-bodied peasant, who fled
from the oppression of his master or from the conscription. Such a
fugitive almost always sought out for himself a new domicile--
generally in the southern provinces, where there was a great
scarcity of labourers, and where many proprietors habitually
welcomed all peasants who presented themselves, without making any
inquiries as to passports. In the second place, there were those
who chose fugitivism as a permanent mode of life. These were, for
the most part, men or women of a certain age--widowers or widows--
who had no close family ties, and who were too infirm or too lazy
to work. The majority of these assumed the character of pilgrims.
As such they could always find enough to eat, and could generally
even collect a few roubles with which to grease the palm of any
zealous police-officer who should arrest them. For a life of this
kind Russia presented peculiar facilities. There was abundance of
monasteries, where all comers could live for three days without
questions being asked, and where those who were willing to do a
little work for the patron saint might live for a much longer
period. Then there were the towns, where the rich merchants
considered almsgiving as very profitable for salvation. And,
lastly, there were the villages, where a professing pilgrim was
sure to be hospitably received and entertained so long as he
refrained from stealing and other acts too grossly inconsistent
with his assumed character. For those who contented themselves
with simple fare, and did not seek to avoid the usual privations of
a wanderer's life, these ordinary means of subsistence were amply
sufficient. Those who were more ambitious and more cunning often
employed their talents with great success in the world of the Old
Ritualists and Sectarians.

The last and most desperate means of defense which the serfs
possessed were fire-raising and murder. With regard to the amount
of fire-raising there are no trustworthy statistics. With regard
to the number of agrarian murders I once obtained some interesting
statistical data, but unfortunately lost them. I may say, however,
that these cases were not very numerous. This is to be explained
in part by the patient, long-suffering character of the peasantry,
and in part by the fact that the great majority of the proprietors
were by no means such inhuman taskmasters as is sometimes supposed.
When a case did occur, the Administration always made a strict
investigation--punishing the guilty with exemplary severity, and
taking no account of the provocation to which they had been
subjected. The peasantry, on the contrary--at least, when the act
was not the result of mere personal vengeance--secretly sympathised
with "the unfortunates," and long cherished their memory as that of
men who had suffered for the Mir.

In speaking of the serfs I have hitherto confined my attention to
the members of the Mir, or rural Commune--that is to say, the
peasants in the narrower sense of the term; but besides these there
were the Dvorovuye, or domestic servants, and of these I must add a
word or two.

The Dvorovuye were domestic slaves rather than serfs in the proper
sense of the term. Let us, however, avoid wounding unnecessarily
Russian sensibilities by the use of the ill-sounding word. We may
call the class in question "domestics"--remembering, of course,
that they were not quite domestic servants in the ordinary sense.
They received no wages, were not at liberty to change masters,
possessed almost no legal rights, and might be punished, hired out,
or sold by their owners without any infraction of the written law.

These "domestics" were very numerous--out of all proportion to the
work to be performed--and could consequently lead a very lazy
life;* but the peasant considered it a great misfortune to be
transferred to their ranks, for he thereby lost his share of the
Communal land and the little independence which he enjoyed. It
very rarely happened, however, that the proprietor took an able-
bodied peasant as domestic. The class generally kept up its
numbers by the legitimate and illegitimate method of natural
increase; and involuntary additions were occasionally made when
orphans were left without near relatives, and no other family
wished to adopt them. To this class belonged the lackeys, servant-
girls, cooks, coachmen, stable-boys, gardeners, and a large number
of nondescript old men and women who had no very clearly defined
functions. If the proprietor had a private theatre or orchestra,
it was from this class that the actors and musicians were drawn.
Those of them who were married and had children occupied a position
intermediate between the ordinary domestic servant and the peasant.
On the one hand, they received from the master a monthly allowance
of food and a yearly allowance of clothes, and they were obliged to
live in the immediate vicinity of the mansion-house; but, on the
other hand, they had each a separate house or apartment, with a
little cabbage-garden, and commonly a small plot of flax. The
unmarried ones lived in all respects like ordinary domestic
servants.

* Those proprietors who kept orchestras, large packs of hounds,
&c., had sometimes several hundred domestic serfs.

The number of these domestic serfs being generally out of all
proportion to the amount of work they had to perform, they were
imbued with a hereditary spirit of indolence, and they performed
lazily and carelessly what they had to do. On the other hand, they
were often sincerely attached to the family they served, and
occasionally proved by acts their fidelity and attachment. Here is
an instance out of many for which I can vouch. An old nurse, whose
mistress was dangerously ill, vowed that, in the event of the
patient's recovery, she would make a pilgrimage, first to Kief, the
Holy City on the Dnieper, and afterwards to Solovetsk, a much
revered monastery on an island in the White Sea. The patient
recovered, and the old woman, in fulfilment of her vow, walked more
than two thousand miles!

This class of serfs might well be called domestic slaves, but I
must warn the reader that he ought not to use the expression when
speaking with Russians, because they are extremely sensitive on the
point. Serfage, they say, was something quite different from
slavery, and slavery never existed in Russia.

The first part of this assertion is perfectly true, and the second
part perfectly false. In old times, as I have said above, slavery
was a recognised institution in Russia as in other countries. One
can hardly read a few pages of the old chronicles without stumbling
on references to slaves; and I distinctly remember--though I cannot
at this moment give chapter and verse--that one of the old Russian
Princes was so valiant and so successful in his wars that during
his reign a slave might be bought for a few coppers. As late as
the beginning of last century the domestic serfs were sold very
much as domestic slaves used to be sold in countries where slavery
was recognised as a legal institution. Here is an example of the
customary advertisement; I take it almost at random from the Moscow
Gazette of 1801:--

"TO BE SOLD: three coachmen, well trained and handsome; and two
girls, the one eighteen, and the other fifteen years of age, both
of them good-looking, and well acquainted with various kinds of
handiwork. In the same house there are for sale two hairdressers;
the one, twenty-one years of age, can read, write, play on a
musical instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can dress
ladies' and gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos
and organs."

A little farther on in the same number of the paper, a first-rate
clerk, a carver, and a lackey are offered for sale, and the reason
assigned is a superabundance of the articles in question (za
izlishestvom). In some instances it seems as if the serfs and the
cattle were intentionally put in the same category, as in the
following announcement: "In this house one can buy a coachman and a
Dutch cow about to calve."  The style of these advertisements, and
the frequent recurrence of the same addresses, show that there was
at this time in Moscow a regular class of slave-dealers. The
humane Alexander I. prohibited advertisements of this kind, but he
did not put down the custom which they represented, and his
successor, Nicholas I., took no effective measures for its
repression.

Of the whole number of serfs belonging to the proprietors, the
domestics formed, according to the census of 1857, no less than 6
3/4 per cent. (6.79), and their numbers were evidently rapidly
increasing, for in the preceding census they represented only 4.79
per cent. of the whole. This fact seems all the more significant
when we observe that during this period the number of peasant serfs
had diminished.

I must now bring this long chapter to an end. My aim has been to
represent serfage in its normal, ordinary forms rather than in its
occasional monstrous manifestations. Of these latter I have a
collection containing ample materials for a whole series of
sensation novels, but I refrain from quoting them, because I do not
believe that the criminal annals of a country give a fair
representation of its real condition. On the other hand, I do not
wish to whitewash serfage or attenuate its evil consequences. No
great body of men could long wield such enormous uncontrolled power
without abusing it,* and no large body of men could long live under
such power without suffering morally and materially from its
pernicious influence. If serfage did not create that moral apathy
and intellectual lethargy which formed, as it were, the atmosphere
of Russian provincial life, it did much at least to preserve it.
In short, serfage was the chief barrier to all material and moral
progress, and in a time of moral awakening such as that which I
have described in the preceding chapter, the question of
Emancipation naturally came at once to the front.

* The number of deposed proprietors--or rather the number of
estates placed under curators in consequence of the abuse of
authority on the part of their owners--amounted in 1859 to 215. So
at least I found in an official MS. document shown to me by the
late Nicholas Milutin.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS

The Question Raised--Chief Committee--The Nobles of the Lithuanian
Provinces--The Tsar's Broad Hint to the Noblesse--Enthusiasm in the
Press--The Proprietors--Political Aspirations--No Opposition--The
Government--Public Opinion--Fear of the Proletariat--The Provincial
Committees--The Elaboration Commission--The Question Ripens--
Provincial Deputies--Discontent and Demonstrations--The Manifesto--
Fundamental Principles of the Law--Illusions and Disappointment of
the Serfs--Arbiters of the Peace--A Characteristic Incident--
Redemption--Who Effected the Emancipation?

It is a fundamental principle of Russian political organisation
that all initiative in public affairs proceeds from the Autocratic
Power. The widespread desire, therefore, for the Emancipation of
the serfs did not find free expression so long as the Emperor kept
silence regarding his intentions. The educated classes watched
anxiously for some sign, and soon a sign was given to them. In
March, 1856--a few days after the publication of the manifesto
announcing the conclusion of peace with the Western Powers--his
Majesty said to the Marshals of Noblesse in Moscow: "For the
removal of certain unfounded reports I consider it necessary to
declare to you that I have not at present the intention of
annihilating serfage; but certainly, as you yourselves know, the
existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is
better to abolish serfage from above than to await the time when it
will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen,
to consider how this can be put into execution, and to submit my
words to the Noblesse for their consideration."

These words were intended to sound the Noblesse and induce them to
make a voluntary proposal, but they had not the desired effect.
Abolitionist enthusiasm was rare among the great nobles, and those
who really wished to see serfage abolished considered the Imperial
utterance too vague and oracular to justify them in taking the
initiative. As no further steps were taken for some time, the
excitement caused by the incident soon subsided, and many people
assumed that the consideration of the problem had been indefinitely
postponed. "The Government," it was said, "evidently intended to
raise the question, but on perceiving the indifference or hostility
of the landed proprietors, it became frightened and drew back."

The Emperor was in reality disappointed. He had expected that his
"faithful Moscow Noblesse," of which he was wont to say he was
himself a member, would at once respond to his call, and that the
ancient capital would have the honour of beginning the work. And
if the example were thus given by Moscow, he had no doubt that it
would soon be followed by the other provinces. He now perceived
that the fundamental principles on which the Emancipation should be
effected must be laid down by the Government, and for this purpose
he created a secret committee composed of several great officers of
State.

This "Chief Committee for Peasant Affairs," as it was afterwards
called, devoted six months to studying the history of the question.
Emancipation schemes were by no means a new phenomenon in Russia.
Ever since the time of Catherine II. the Government had thought of
improving the condition of the serfs, and on more than one occasion
a general emancipation had been contemplated. In this way the
question had slowly ripened, and certain fundamental principles had
come to be pretty generally recognised. Of these principles the
most important was that the State should not consent to any project
which would uproot the peasant from the soil and allow him to
wander about at will; for such a measure would render the
collection of the taxes impossible, and in all probability produce
the most frightful agrarian disorders. And to this general
principle there was an important corollary: if severe restrictions
were to be placed on free migration, it would be necessary to
provide the peasantry with land in the immediate vicinity of the
villages; otherwise they must inevitably fall back under the power
of the proprietors, and a new and worse kind of serfage would thus
be created. But in order to give land to the peasantry it would be
necessary to take it from the proprietors; and this expropriation
seemed to many a most unjustifiable infringement of the sacred
rights of property. It was this consideration that had restrained
Nicholas from taking any decisive measures with regard to serfage;
and it had now considerable weight with the members of the
committee, who were nearly all great land-owners.

Notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of the Grand Duke
Constantine, who had been appointed a member for the express
purpose of accelerating the proceedings, the committee did not show
as much zeal and energy as was desired, and orders were given to
take some decided step. At that moment a convenient opportunity
presented itself.

In the Lithuanian Provinces, where the nobles were Polish by origin
and sympathies, the miserable condition of the peasantry had
induced the Government in the preceding reign to limit the
arbitrary power of the serf-owners by so-called Inventories, in
which the mutual obligations of masters and serfs were regulated
and defined. These Inventories had caused great dissatisfaction,
and the proprietors now proposed that they should be revised. Of
this the Government determined to take advantage. On the somewhat
violent assumption that these proprietors wished to emancipate
their serfs, an Imperial rescript was prepared approving of their
supposed desire, and empowering them to form committees for the
preparation of definite projects.*  In the rescript itself the word
emancipation was studiously avoided, but there could be no doubt as
to the implied meaning, for it was expressly stated in the
supplementary considerations that "the abolition of serfage must be
effected not suddenly, but gradually."  Four days later the
Minister of the Interior, in accordance with a secret order from
the Emperor, sent a circular to the Governors and Marshals of
Noblesse all over Russia proper, informing them that the nobles of
the Lithuanian Provinces "had recognised the necessity of
liberating the peasants," and that "this noble intention" had
afforded peculiar satisfaction to his Majesty. A copy of the
rescript and the fundamental principles to be observed accompanied
the circular, "in case the nobles of other provinces should express
a similar desire."

* This celebrated document is known as "The Rescript to Nazimof."
More than once in the course of conversation I did all in my power,
within the limits of politeness and discretion, to extract from
General Nazimof a detailed account of this important episode, but
my efforts were unsuccessful.

This circular produced an immense sensation throughout the country.
No one could for a moment misunderstand the suggestion that the
nobles of other provinces MIGHT POSSIBLY express a desire to
liberate their serfs. Such vague words, when spoken by an
autocrat, have a very definite and unmistakable meaning, which
prudent loyal subjects have no difficulty in understanding. If any
doubted, their doubts were soon dispelled, for the Emperor, a few
weeks later, publicly expressed a hope that, with the help of God
and the co-operation of the nobles, the work would be successfully
accomplished.

The die was cast, and the Government looked anxiously to see the
result.

The periodical Press--which was at once the product and the
fomenter of the liberal aspirations--hailed the raising of the
question with boundless enthusiasm. The Emancipation, it was said,
would certainly open a new and glorious epoch in the national
history. Serfage was described as an ulcer that had long been
poisoning the national blood; as an enormous weight under which the
whole nation groaned; as an insurmountable obstacle, preventing all
material and moral progress; as a cumbrous load which rendered all
free, vigorous action impossible, and prevented Russia from rising
to the level of the Western nations. If Russia had succeeded in
stemming the flood of adverse fortune in spite of this millstone
round her neck, what might she not accomplish when free and
untrammelled? All sections of the literary world had arguments to
offer in support of the foregone conclusion. The moralists
declared that all the prevailing vices were the product of serfage,
and that moral progress was impossible in an atmosphere of slavery;
the lawyers held that the arbitrary authority of the proprietors
over the peasants had no legal basis; the economists explained that
free labour was an indispensable condition of industrial and
commercial prosperity; the philosophical historians showed that the
normal historical development of the country demanded the immediate
abolition of this superannuated remnant of barbarism; and the
writers of the sentimental, gushing type poured forth endless
effusions about brotherly love to the weak and the oppressed. In a
word, the Press was for the moment unanimous, and displayed a
feverish excitement which demanded a liberal use of superlatives.

This enthusiastic tone accorded perfectly with the feelings of a
large section of the nobles. Nearly the whole of the Noblesse was
more or less affected by the newborn enthusiasm for everything
just, humanitarian, and liberal. The aspirations found, of course,
their most ardent representatives among the educated youth; but
they were by no means confined to the younger men, who had passed
through the universities and had always regarded serfage as a stain
on the national honour. Many a Saul was found among the prophets.
Many an old man, with grey hairs and grandchildren, who had all his
life placidly enjoyed the fruits of serf labour, was now heard to
speak of serfage as an antiquated institution which could not be
reconciled with modern humanitarian ideas; and not a few of all
ages, who had formerly never thought of reading books or
newspapers, now perused assiduously the periodical literature, and
picked up the liberal and humanitarian phrases with which it was
filled.

This Abolitionist fervour was considerably augmented by certain
political aspirations which did not appear in the newspapers, but
which were at that time very generally entertained. In spite of
the Press-censure a large section of the educated classes had
become acquainted with the political literature of France and
Germany, and had imbibed therefrom an unbounded admiration for
Constitutional government. A Constitution, it was thought, would
necessarily remove all political evils and create something like a
political Millennium. And it was not to be a Constitution of the
ordinary sort--the fruit of compromise between hostile political
parties--but an institution designed calmly according to the latest
results of political science, and so constructed that all classes
would voluntarily contribute to the general welfare. The necessary
prelude to this happy era of political liberty was, of course, the
abolition of serfage. When the nobles had given up their power
over their serfs they would receive a Constitution as an
indemnification and reward.

There were, however, many nobles of the old school who remained
impervious to all these new feelings and ideas. On them the
raising of the Emancipation question had a very different effect.
They had no source of revenue but their estates, and they could not
conceive the possibility of working their estates without serf
labour. If the peasant was indolent and careless even under strict
supervision, what would he become when no longer under the
authority of a master? If the profits from farming were already
small, what would they be when no one would work without wages?
And this was not the worst, for it was quite evident from the
circular that the land question was to be raised, and that a
considerable portion of each estate would be transferred, at least
for a time, to the emancipated peasants.

To the proprietors who looked at the question in this way the
prospect of Emancipation was certainly not at all agreeable, but we
must not imagine that they felt as English land-owners would feel
if threatened by a similar danger. In England a hereditary estate
has for the family a value far beyond what it would bring in the
market. It is regarded as one and indivisible, and any
dismemberment of it would be looked upon as a grave family
misfortune. In Russia, on the contrary, estates have nothing of
this semi-sacred character, and may be at any time dismembered
without outraging family feeling or traditional associations.
Indeed, it is not uncommon that when a proprietor dies, leaving
only one estate and several children, the property is broken up
into fractions and divided among the heirs. Even the prospect of
pecuniary sacrifice did not alarm the Russians so much as it would
alarm Englishmen. Men who keep no accounts and take little thought
for the morrow are much less averse to making pecuniary sacrifices--
whether for a wise or a foolish purpose--than those who carefully
arrange their mode of life according to their income.

Still, after due allowance has been made for these peculiarities,
it must be admitted that the feeling of dissatisfaction and alarm
was very widespread. Even Russians do not like the prospect of
losing a part of their land and income. No protest, however, was
entered, and no opposition was made. Those who were hostile to the
measure were ashamed to show themselves selfish and unpatriotic.
At the same time they knew very well that the Emperor, if he
wished, could effect the Emancipation in spite of them, and that
resistance on their part would draw down upon them the Imperial
displeasure, without affording any compensating advantage. They
knew, too, that there was a danger from below, so that any useless
show of opposition would be like playing with matches in a powder-
magazine. The serfs would soon hear that the Tsar desired to set
them free, and they might, if they suspected that the proprietors
were trying to frustrate the Tsar's benevolent intentions, use
violent measures to get rid of the opposition. The idea of
agrarian massacres had already taken possession of many timid
minds. Besides this, all classes of the proprietors felt that if
the work was to be done, it should be done by the Noblesse and not
by the bureaucracy. If it were effected by the nobles the
interests of the land-owners would be duly considered, but if it
were effected by the Administration without their concurrence and
co-operation their interests would be neglected, and there would
inevitably be an enormous amount of jobbery and corruption. In
accordance with this view, the Noblesse corporations of the various
provinces successively requested permission to form committees for
the consideration of the question, and during the year 1858 a
committee was opened in almost every province in which serfage
existed.

In this way the question was apparently handed over for solution to
the nobles, but in reality the Noblesse was called upon merely to
advise, and not to legislate. The Government had not only laid
down the fundamental principles of the scheme; it continually
supervised the work of construction, and it reserved to itself the
right of modifying or rejecting the projects proposed by the
committees.

According to these fundamental principles the serfs should be
emancipated gradually, so that for some time they would remain
attached to the glebe and subject to the authority of the
proprietors. During this transition period they should redeem by
money payments or labour their houses and gardens, and enjoy in
usufruct a certain quantity of land, sufficient to enable them to
support themselves and to fulfil their obligations to the State as
well as to the proprietor. In return for this land they should pay
a yearly rent in money, produce or labour over and above the yearly
sum paid for the redemption of their houses and gardens. As to
what should be done after the expiry of the transition period, the
Government seems to have had no clearly conceived intentions.
Probably it hoped that by that time the proprietors and their
emancipated serfs would have invented some convenient modus
vivendi, and that nothing but a little legislative regulation would
be necessary. But radical legislation is like the letting-out of
water. These fundamental principles, adopted at first with a view
to mere immediate practical necessity, soon acquired a very
different significance. To understand this we must return to the
periodical literature.

Until the serf question came to be discussed, the reform
aspirations were very vague, and consequently there was a
remarkable unanimity among their representatives. The great
majority of the educated classes were unanimously of opinion that
Russia should at once adopt from the West all those liberal
principles and institutions the exclusion of which had prevented
the country from rising to the level of the Western nations. But
very soon symptoms of a schism became apparent. Whilst the
literature in general was still preaching the doctrine that Russia
should adopt everything that was "liberal," a few voices began to
be heard warning the unwary that much which bore the name of
liberal was in reality already antiquated and worthless--that
Russia ought not to follow blindly in the footsteps of other
nations, but ought rather to profit by their experience, and avoid
the errors into which they had fallen. The chief of these errors
was, according to these new teachers, the abnormal development of
individualism--the adoption of that principle of laissez faire
which forms the basis of what may be called the Orthodox School of
Political Economists. Individualism and unrestricted competition,
it was said, have now reached in the West an abnormal and monstrous
development. Supported by the laissez faire principle, they have
led--and must always lead--to the oppression of the weak, the
tyranny of capital, the impoverishment of the masses for the
benefit of the few, and the formation of a hungry, dangerous
Proletariat! This has already been recognised by the most advanced
thinkers of France and Germany. If the older countries cannot at
once cure those evils, that is no reason for Russia to inoculate
herself with them. She is still at the commencement of her career,
and it would be folly for her to wander voluntarily for ages in the
Desert, when a direct route to the Promised Land has been already
discovered.

In order to convey some idea of the influence which this teaching
exercised, I must here recall, at the risk of repeating myself,
what I said in a former chapter. The Russians, as I have there
pointed out, have a peculiar way of treating political and social
questions. Having received their political education from books,
they naturally attribute to theoretical considerations an
importance which seems to us exaggerated. When any important or
trivial question arises, they at once launch into a sea of
philosophical principles, and pay less attention to the little
objects close at hand than to the big ones that appear on the
distant horizon of the future. And when they set to work at any
political reform they begin ab ovo. As they have no traditional
prejudices to fetter them, and no traditional principles to lead
them, they naturally take for their guidance the latest conclusions
of political philosophy.

Bearing this in mind, let us see how it affected the Emancipation
question. The Proletariat--described as a dangerous monster which
was about to swallow up society in Western Europe, and which might
at any moment cross the frontier unless kept out by vigorous
measures--took possession of the popular imagination, and aroused
the fears of the reading public. To many it seemed that the best
means of preventing the formation of a Proletariat in Russia was
the securing of land for the emancipated serfs and the careful
preservation of the rural Commune. "Now is the moment," it was
said, "for deciding the important question whether Russia is to
fall a prey, like the Western nations, to this terrible evil, or
whether she is to protect herself for ever against it. In the
decision of this question lies the future destiny of the country.
If the peasants be emancipated without land, or if those Communal
institutions which give to every man a share of the soil and secure
this inestimable boon for the generations still unborn be now
abolished, a Proletariat will be rapidly formed, and the peasantry
will become a disorganised mass of homeless wanderers like the
English agricultural labourers. If, on the contrary, a fair share
of land be granted to them, and if the Commune be made proprietor
of the land ceded, the danger of a Proletariat is for ever removed,
and Russia will thereby set an example to the civilised world!
Never has a nation had such an opportunity of making an enormous
leap forward on the road of progress, and never again will the
opportunity occur. The Western nations have discovered their error
when it is too late--when the peasantry have been already deprived
of their land, and the labouring classes of the towns have already
fallen a prey to the insatiable cupidity of the capitalists. In
vain their most eminent thinkers warn and exhort. Ordinary
remedies are no longer of any avail. But Russia may avoid these
dangers, if she but act wisely and prudently in this great matter.
The peasants are still in actual, if not legal, possession of the
land, and there is as yet no Proletariat in the towns. All that is
necessary, therefore, is to abolish the arbitrary authority of the
proprietors without expropriating the peasants, and without
disturbing the existing Communal institutions, which form the best
barrier against pauperism."

These ideas were warmly espoused by many proprietors, and exercised
a very great influence on the deliberations of the Provincial
Committees. In these committees there were generally two groups.
The majorities, whilst making large concessions to the claims of
justice and expediency, endeavoured to defend, as far as possible,
the interests of their class; the minorities, though by no means
indifferent to the interests of the class to which they belonged,
allowed the more abstract theoretical considerations to be
predominant. At first the majorities did all in their power to
evade the fundamental principles laid down by the Government as
much too favourable to the peasantry; but when they perceived that
public opinion, as represented by the Press, went much further than
the Government, they clung to these fundamental principles--which
secured at least the fee simple of the estate to the landlord--as
their anchor of safety. Between the two parties arose naturally a
strong spirit of hostility, and the Government, which wished to
have the support of the minorities, found it advisable that both
should present their projects for consideration.

As the Provincial Committees worked independently, there was
considerable diversity in the conclusions at which they arrived.
The task of codifying these conclusions, and elaborating out of
them a general scheme of Emancipation, was entrusted to a special
Imperial Commission, composed partly of officials and partly of
landed proprietors named by the Emperor.*  Those who believed that
the question had really been handed over to the Noblesse assumed
that this Commission would merely arrange the materials presented
by the Provincial Committees, and that the Emancipation Law would
thereafter be elaborated by a National Assembly of deputies elected
by the nobles. In reality the Commission, working in St.
Petersburg under the direct guidance and control of the Government,
fulfilled a very different and much more important function. Using
the combined projects merely as a storehouse from which it could
draw the proposals it desired, it formed a new project of its own,
which ultimately received, after undergoing modification in detail,
the Imperial assent. Instead of being a mere chancellerie, as many
expected, it became in a certain sense the author of the
Emancipation Law.

* Known as the Redaktsionnaya Komissiya, or Elaboration Commission.
Strictly speaking, there were two, but they are commonly spoken of
as one.

There was, as we have seen, in nearly all the Provincial Committees
a majority and a minority, the former of which strove to defend the
interests of the proprietors, whilst the latter paid more attention
to theoretical considerations, and endeavoured to secure for the
peasantry a large amount of land and Communal self-government. In
the Commission there were the same two parties, but their relative
strength was very different. Here the men of theory, instead of
forming a minority, were more numerous than their opponents, and
enjoyed the support of the Government, which regulated the
proceedings. In its instructions we see how much the question had
ripened under the influence of the theoretical considerations.
There is no longer any trace of the idea that the Emancipation
should be gradual; on the contrary, it is expressly declared that
the immediate effect of the law should be the complete abolition of
the proprietor's authority. There is even evidence of a clear
intention of preventing the proprietor as far as possible from
exercising any influence over his former serfs. The sharp
distinction between the land occupied by the village and the arable
land to be ceded in usufruct likewise disappears, and it is merely
said that efforts should be made to enable the peasants to become
proprietors of the land they required.

The aim of the Government had thus become clear and well defined.
The task to be performed was to transform the serfs at once, and
with the least possible disturbance of the existing economic
conditions, into a class of small Communal proprietors--that is to
say, a class of free peasants possessing a house and garden and a
share of the Communal land. To effect this it was merely necessary
to declare the serf personally free, to draw a clear line of
demarcation between the Communal land and the rest of the estate,
and to determine the price or rent which should be paid for this
Communal property, inclusive of the land on which the village was
built.

The law was prepared in strict accordance with these principles.
As to the amount of land to be ceded, it was decided that the
existing arrangements, founded on experience, should, as a general
rule, be preserved--in other words, the land actually enjoyed by
the peasants should be retained by them; and in order to prevent
extreme cases of injustice, a maximum and a minimum were fixed for
each district. In like manner, as to the dues, it was decided that
the existing arrangements should be taken as the basis of the
calculation, but that the sum should be modified according to the
amount of land ceded. At the same time facilities were to be given
for the transforming of the labour dues into yearly money payments,
and for enabling the peasants to redeem them, with the assistance
of the Government, in the form of credit.

This idea of redemption created, at first, a feeling of alarm among
the proprietors. It was bad enough to be obliged to cede a large
part of the estates in usufruct, but it seemed to be much worse to
have to sell it. Redemption appeared to be a species of wholesale
confiscation. But very soon it became evident that the redeeming
of the land was profitable for both parties. Cession in perpetual
usufruct was felt to be in reality tantamount to alienation of the
land, whilst the immediate redemption would enable the proprietors,
who had generally little or no ready money to pay their debts, to
clear their estates from mortgages, and to make the outlays
necessary for the transition to free labour. The majority of the
proprietors, therefore, said openly: "Let the Government give us a
suitable compensation in money for the land that is taken from us,
so that we may be at once freed from all further trouble and
annoyance."

When it became known that the Commission was not merely arranging
and codifying the materials, but elaborating a law of its own and
regularly submitting its decisions for Imperial confirmation, a
feeling of dissatisfaction appeared all over the country. The
nobles perceived that the question was being taken out of their
hands, and was being solved by a small body composed of bureaucrats
and nominees of the Government. After having made a voluntary
sacrifice of their rights, they were being unceremoniously pushed
aside. They had still, however, the means of correcting this. The
Emperor had publicly promised that before the project should become
law deputies from the Provincial Committees should be summoned to
St. Petersburg to make objections and propose amendments.

The Commission and the Government would have willingly dispensed
with all further advice from the nobles, but it was necessary to
redeem the Imperial promise. Deputies were therefore summoned to
the capital, but they were not allowed to form, as they hoped, a
public assembly for the discussion of the question. All their
efforts to hold meetings were frustrated, and they were required
merely to answer in writing a list of printed questions regarding
matters of detail. The fundamental principles, they were told, had
already received the Imperial sanction, and were consequently
removed from discussion. Those who desired to discuss details were
invited individually to attend meetings of the Commission, where
they found one or two members ready to engage with them in a little
dialectical fencing. This, of course, did not give much
satisfaction. Indeed, the ironical tone in which the fencing was
too often conducted served to increase the existing irritation. It
was only too evident that the Commission had triumphed, and some of
the members could justly boast that they had drowned the deputies
in ink and buried them under reams of paper.

Believing, or at least professing to believe, that the Emperor was
being deceived in this matter by the Administration, several groups
of deputies presented petitions to his Majesty containing a
respectful protest against the manner in which they had been
treated. But by this act they simply laid themselves open to "the
most unkindest cut of all."  Those who had signed the petitions
received a formal reprimand through the police.

This treatment of the deputies, and, above all, this gratuitous
insult, produced among the nobles a storm of indignation. They
felt that they had been entrapped. The Government had artfully
induced them to form projects for the emancipation of their serfs,
and now, after having been used as a cat's-paw in the work of their
own spoliation, they were being unceremoniously pushed aside as no
longer necessary. Those who had indulged in the hope of gaining
political rights felt the blow most keenly. A first gentle and
respectful attempt at remonstrance had been answered by a
dictatorial reprimand through the police! Instead of being called
to take an active part in home and foreign politics, they were
being treated as naughty schoolboys. In view of this insult all
differences of opinion were for the moment forgotten, and all
parties resolved to join in a vigorous protest against the
insolence and arbitrary conduct of the bureaucracy.

A convenient opportunity of making this protest in a legal way was
offered by the triennial Provincial Assemblies of the Noblesse
about to be held in several provinces. So at least it was thought,
but here again the Noblesse was checkmated by the Administration.

Before the opening of the Assemblies a circular was issued
excluding the Emancipation question from their deliberations. Some
Assemblies evaded this order, and succeeded in making a little
demonstration by submitting to his Majesty that the time had
arrived for other reforms, such as the separation of the
administrative and judicial powers, and the creation of local self-
government, public judicial procedure, and trial by jury.

All these reforms were voluntarily effected by the Emperor a few
years later, but the manner in which they were suggested seemed to
savour of insubordination, and was a flagrant infraction of the
principle that all initiative in public affairs should proceed from
the central Government. New measures of repression were
accordingly used. Some Marshals of Noblesse were reprimanded and
others deposed. Of the conspicuous leaders, two were exiled to
distant provinces and others placed under the supervision of the
police. Worst of all, the whole agitation strengthened the
Commission by convincing the Emperor that the majority of the
nobles were hostile to his benevolent plans.*

* This was a misinterpretation of the facts. Very many of those
who joined in the protest sincerely sympathised with the idea of
Emancipation, and were ready to be even more "liberal" than the
Government.

When the Commission had finished its labours, its proposals passed
to the two higher instances--the Committee for Peasant Affairs and
the Council of State--and in both of these the Emperor declared
plainly that he could allow no fundamental changes. From all the
members he demanded a complete forgetfulness of former differences
and a conscientious execution of his orders; "For you must
remember," he significantly added, "that in Russia laws are made by
the Autocratic Power."  From an historical review of the question
he drew the conclusion that "the Autocratic Power created serfage,
and the Autocratic Power ought to abolish it."  On March 3d
(February 19th, old style), 1861, the law was signed, and by that
act more than twenty millions of serfs were liberated.*  A
Manifesto containing the fundamental principles of the law was at
once sent all over the country, and an order was given that it
should be read in all the churches.

* It is sometimes said that forty millions of serfs have been
emancipated. The statement is true, if we regard the State
peasants as serfs. They held, as I have already explained, an
intermediate position between serfage and freedom. The peculiar
administration under which they lived was partly abolished by
Imperial Orders of September 7th, 1859, and October 23d, 1861. In
1866 they were placed, as regards administration, on a level with
the emancipated serfs of the proprietors. As a general rule, they
received rather more land and had to pay somewhat lighter dues than
the emancipated serfs in the narrower sense of the term.

The three fundamental principles laid down by the law were:--

1. That the serfs should at once receive the civil rights of the
free rural classes, and that the authority of the proprietor should
be replaced by Communal self-government.

2. That the rural Communes should as far as possible retain the
land they actually held, and should in return pay to the proprietor
certain yearly dues in money or labour.

3. That the Government should by means of credit assist the
Communes to redeem these dues, or, in other words, to purchase the
lands ceded to them in usufruct.

With regard to the domestic serfs, it was enacted that they should
continue to serve their masters during two years, and that
thereafter they should be completely free, but they should have no
claim to a share of the land.

It might be reasonably supposed that the serfs received with
boundless gratitude and delight the Manifesto proclaiming these
principles. Here at last was the realisation of their long-
cherished hopes. Liberty was accorded to them; and not only
liberty, but a goodly portion of the soil--about half of all the
arable land possessed by the proprietors.

In reality the Manifesto created among the peasantry a feeling of
disappointment rather than delight. To understand this strange
fact we must endeavour to place ourselves at the peasant's point of
view.

In the first place it must be remarked that all vague, rhetorical
phrases about free labour, human dignity, national progress, and
the like, which may readily produce among educated men a certain
amount of temporary enthusiasm, fall on the ears of the Russian
peasant like drops of rain on a granite rock. The fashionable
rhetoric of philosophical liberalism is as incomprehensible to him
as the flowery circumlocutionary style of an Oriental scribe would
be to a keen city merchant. The idea of liberty in the abstract
and the mention of rights which lie beyond the sphere of his
ordinary everyday life awaken no enthusiasm in his breast. And for
mere names he has a profound indifference. What matters it to him
that he is officially called, not a "serf," but a "free village-
inhabitant," if the change in official terminology is not
accompanied by some immediate material advantage? What he wants is
a house to live in, food to eat, and raiment wherewithal to be
clothed, and to gain these first necessaries of life with as little
labour as possible. He looked at the question exclusively from two
points of view--that of historical right and that of material
advantage; and from both of these the Emancipation Law seemed to
him very unsatisfactory.

On the subject of historical right the peasantry had their own
traditional conceptions, which were completely at variance with the
written law. According to the positive legislation the Communal
land formed part of the estate, and consequently belonged to the
proprietor; but according to the conceptions of the peasantry it
belonged to the Commune, and the right of the proprietor consisted
merely in that personal authority over the serfs which had been
conferred on him by the Tsar. The peasants could not, of course,
put these conceptions into a strict legal form, but they often
expressed them in their own homely laconic way by saying to their
master, "Mui vashi no zemlya nasha"--that is to say. "We are
yours, but the land is ours."  And it must be admitted that this
view, though legally untenable, had a certain historical
justification.*

* See preceding chapter.

In olden times the Noblesse had held their land by feudal tenure,
and were liable to be ejected as soon as they did not fulfil their
obligations to the State. These obligations had been long since
abolished, and the feudal tenure transformed into an unconditional
right of property, but the peasants clung to the old ideas in a way
that strikingly illustrates the vitality of deep-rooted popular
conceptions. In their minds the proprietors were merely temporary
occupants, who were allowed by the Tsar to exact labour and dues
from the serfs. What, then, was Emancipation? Certainly the
abolition of all obligatory labour and money dues, and perhaps the
complete ejectment of the proprietors. On this latter point there
was a difference of opinion. All assumed, as a matter of course,
that the Communal land would remain the property of the Commune,
but it was not so clear what would be done with the rest of the
estate. Some thought that it would be retained by the proprietor,
but very many believed that all the land would be given to the
Communes. In this way the Emancipation would be in accordance with
historical right and with the material advantage of the peasantry,
for whose exclusive benefit, it was assumed, the reform had been
undertaken.

Instead of this the peasants found that they were still to pay
dues, even for the Communal land which they regarded as
unquestionably their own. So at least said the expounders of the
law. But the thing was incredible. Either the proprietors must be
concealing or misinterpreting the law, or this was merely a
preparatory measure, which would be followed by the real
Emancipation. Thus were awakened among the peasantry a spirit of
mistrust and suspicion and a widespread belief that there would be
a second Imperial Manifesto, by which all the land would be divided
and all the dues abolished.

On the nobles the Manifesto made a very different impression. The
fact that they were to be entrusted with the putting of the law
into execution, and the flattering allusions made to the spirit of
generous self-sacrifice which they had exhibited, kindled amongst
them enthusiasm enough to make them forget for a time their just
grievances and their hostility towards the bureaucracy. They found
that the conditions on which the Emancipation was effected were by
no means so ruinous as they had anticipated; and the Emperor's
appeal to their generosity and patriotism made many of them throw
themselves with ardour into the important task confided to them.

Unfortunately they could not at once begin the work. The law had
been so hurried through the last stages that the preparations for
putting it into execution were by no means complete when the
Manifesto was published. The task of regulating the future
relations between the proprietors and the peasantry was entrusted
to local proprietors in each district, who were to be called
Arbiters of the Peace (Mirovuiye Posredniki); but three months
elapsed before these Arbiters could be appointed. During that time
there was no one to explain the law to the peasants and settle the
disputes between them and the proprietors; and the consequence of
this was that many cases of insubordination and disorder occurred.
The muzhik naturally imagined that, as soon as the Tsar said he was
free, he was no longer obliged to work for his old master--that all
obligatory labour ceased as soon as the Manifesto was read. In
vain the proprietor endeavoured to convince him that, in regard to
labour, the old relations must continue, as the law enjoined, until
a new arrangement had been made. To all explanations and
exhortations he turned a deaf ear, and to the efforts of the rural
police he too often opposed a dogged, passive resistance.

In many cases the simple appearance of the higher authorities
sufficed to restore order, for the presence of one of the Tsar's
servants convinced many that the order to work for the present as
formerly was not a mere invention of the proprietors. But not
infrequently the birch had to be applied. Indeed, I am inclined to
believe, from the numerous descriptions of this time which I
received from eye-witnesses, that rarely, if ever, had the serfs
seen and experienced so much flogging as during these first three
months after their liberation. Sometimes even the troops had to be
called out, and on three occasions they fired on the peasants with
ball cartridge. In the most serious case, where a young peasant
had set up for a prophet and declared that the Emancipation Law was
a forgery, fifty-one peasants were killed and seventy-seven were
more or less seriously wounded. In spite of these lamentable
incidents, there was nothing which even the most violent alarmist
could dignify with the name of an insurrection. Nowhere was there
anything that could be called organised resistance. Even in the
case above alluded to, the three thousand peasants on whom the
troops fired were entirely unarmed, made no attempt to resist, and
dispersed in the utmost haste as soon as they discovered that they
were being shot down. Had the military authorities shown a little
more judgment, tact, and patience, the history of the Emancipation
would not have been stained even with those three solitary cases of
unnecessary bloodshed.

This interregnum between the eras of serfage and liberty was
brought to an end by the appointment of the Arbiters of the Peace.
Their first duty was to explain the law, and to organise the new
peasant self-government. The lowest instance, or primary organ of
this self-government, the rural Commune, already existed, and at
once recovered much of its ancient vitality as soon as the
authority and interference of the proprietors were removed. The
second instance, the Volost--a territorial administrative unit
comprising several contiguous Communes--had to be created, for
nothing of the kind had previously existed on the estates of the
nobles. It had existed, however, for nearly a quarter of a century
among the peasants of the Domains, and it was therefore necessary
merely to copy an existing model.

As soon as all the Volosts in his district had been thus organised
the Arbiter had to undertake the much more arduous task of
regulating the agrarian relations between the proprietors and the
Communes--with the individual peasants, be it remembered, the
proprietors had no direct relations whatever. It had been enacted
by the law that the future agrarian relations between the two
parties should be left, as far as possible, to voluntary contract;
and accordingly each proprietor was invited to come to an agreement
with the Commune or Communes on his estate. On the ground of this
agreement a statute-charter (ustavnaya gramota) was prepared,
specifying the number of male serfs, the quantity of land actually
enjoyed by them, any proposed changes in this amount, the dues
proposed to be levied, and other details. If the Arbiter found
that the conditions were in accordance with the law and clearly
understood by the peasants, he confirmed the charter, and the
arrangement was complete. When the two parties could not come to
an agreement within a year, he prepared a charter according to his
own judgment, and presented it for confirmation to the higher
authorities.

The dissolution of partnership, if it be allowable to use such a
term, between the proprietor and his serfs was sometimes very easy
and sometimes very difficult. On many estates the charter did
little more than legalise the existing arrangements, but in many
instances it was necessary to add to, or subtract from, the amount
of Communal land, and sometimes it was even necessary to remove the
village to another part of the estate. In all cases there were, of
course, conflicting interests and complicated questions, so that
the Arbiter had always abundance of difficult work. Besides this,
he had to act as mediator in those differences which naturally
arose during the transition period, when the authority of the
proprietor had been abolished but the separation of the two classes
had not yet been effected. The unlimited patriarchal authority
which had been formerly wielded by the proprietor or his steward
now passed with certain restriction into the hands of the Arbiter,
and these peacemakers had to spend a great part of their time in
driving about from one estate to another to put an end to alleged
cases of insubordination--some of which, it must be admitted,
existed only in the imagination of the proprietors.

At first the work of amicable settlement proceeded slowly. The
proprietors generally showed a conciliatory spirit, and some of
them generously proposed conditions much more favourable to the
peasants than the law demanded; but the peasants were filled with
vague suspicions, and feared to commit themselves by "putting pen
to paper."  Even the highly respected proprietors, who imagined
that they possessed the unbounded confidence of the peasantry, were
suspected like the others, and their generous offers were regarded
as well-baited traps. Often I have heard old men, sometimes with
tears in their eyes, describe the distrust and ingratitude of the
muzhik at this time. Many peasants still believed that the
proprietors were hiding the real Emancipation Law, and imaginative
or ill-intentioned persons fostered this belief by professing to
know what the real law contained. The most absurd rumours were
afloat, and whole villages sometimes acted upon them.

In the province of Moscow, for instance, one Commune sent a
deputation to the proprietor to inform him that, as he had always
been a good master, the Mir would allow him to retain his house and
garden during his lifetime. In another locality it was rumoured
that the Tsar sat daily on a golden throne in the Crimea, receiving
all peasants who came to him, and giving them as much land as they
desired; and in order to take advantage of the Imperial liberality
a large body of peasants set out for the place indicated, and had
to he stopped by the military.

As an illustration of the illusions in which the peasantry indulged
at this time, I may mention here one of the many characteristic
incidents related to me by gentlemen who had served as Arbiters of
the Peace.

In the province of Riazan there was one Commune which had acquired
a certain local notoriety for the obstinacy with which it refused
all arrangements with the proprietor. My informant, who was
Arbiter for the locality, was at last obliged to make a statute-
charter for it without its consent. He wished, however, that the
peasants should voluntarily accept the arrangement he proposed, and
accordingly called them together to talk with them on the subject.
After explaining fully the part of the law which related to their
case, he asked them what objection they had to make a fair contract
with their old master. For some time he received no answer, but
gradually by questioning individuals he discovered the cause of
their obstinacy: they were firmly convinced that not only the
Communal land, but also the rest of the estate, belonged to them.
To eradicate this false idea he set himself to reason with them,
and the following characteristic dialogue ensued:--

Arbiter: "If the Tsar gave all the land to the peasantry, what
compensation could he give to the proprietors to whom the land
belongs?"

Peasant: "The Tsar will give them salaries according to their
service."

Arbiter: "In order to pay these salaries he would require a great
deal more money. Where could he get that money? He would have to
increase the taxes, and in that way you would have to pay all the
same."

Peasant: "The Tsar can make as much money as he likes."

Arbiter: "If the Tsar can make as much money as he likes, why does
he make you pay the poll-tax every year?"

Peasant: "It is not the Tsar that receives the taxes we pay."

Arbiter: "Who, then, receives them?"

Peasant (after a little hesitation, and with a knowing smite): "The
officials, of course!"

Gradually, through the efforts of the Arbiters, the peasants came
to know better their real position, and the work began to advance
more rapidly. But soon it was checked by another influence. By
the end of the first year the "liberal," patriotic enthusiasm of
the nobles had cooled. The sentimental, idyllic tendencies had
melted away at the first touch of reality, and those who had
imagined that liberty would have an immediately salutary effect on
the moral character of the serfs confessed themselves disappointed.
Many complained that the peasants showed themselves greedy and
obstinate, stole wood from the forest, allowed their cattle to
wander on the proprietor's fields, failed to fulfil their legal
obligations, and broke their voluntary engagements. At the same
time the fears of an agrarian rising subsided, so that even the
timid were tranquillised. From these causes the conciliatory
spirit of the proprietors decreased.

The work of conciliating and regulating became consequently more
difficult, but the great majority of the Arbiters showed themselves
equal to the task, and displayed an impartiality, tact and patience
beyond all praise. To them Russia is in great part indebted for
the peaceful character of the Emancipation. Had they sacrificed
the general good to the interests of their class, or had they
habitually acted in that stern, administrative, military spirit
which caused the instances of bloodshed above referred to, the
prophecies of the alarmists would, in all probability, have been
realised, and the historian of the Emancipation would have had a
terrible list of judicial massacres to record. Fortunately they
played the part of mediators, as their name signified, rather than
that of administrators in the bureaucratic sense of the term, and
they were animated with a just and humane rather than a merely
legal spirit. Instead of simply laying down the law, and ordering
their decisions to be immediately executed, they were ever ready to
spend hours in trying to conquer, by patient and laborious
reasoning, the unjust claims of proprietors or the false
conceptions and ignorant obstinacy of the peasants. It was a new
spectacle for Russia to see a public function fulfilled by
conscientious men who had their heart in their work, who sought
neither promotion nor decorations, and who paid less attention to
the punctilious observance of prescribed formalities than to the
real objects in view.

There were, it is true, a few men to whom this description does not
apply. Some of these were unduly under the influence of the
feelings and conceptions created by serfage. Some, on the
contrary, erred on the other side. Desirous of securing the future
welfare of the peasantry and of gaining for themselves a certain
kind of popularity, and at the same time animated with a violent
spirit of pseudo-liberalism, these latter occasionally forgot that
their duty was to be, not generous, but just, and that they had no
right to practise generosity at other people's expense. All this I
am quite aware of--I could even name one or two Arbiters who were
guilty of positive dishonesty--but I hold that these were rare
exceptions. The great majority did their duty faithfully and well.

The work of concluding contracts for the redemption of the dues,
or, in other words, for the purchase of the land ceded in perpetual
usufruct, proceeded slowly. The arrangement was as follows:--

The dues were capitalised at six per cent., and the Government paid
at once to the proprietors four-fifths of the whole sum. The
peasants were to pay to the proprietor the remaining fifth, either
at once or in installments, and to the Government six per cent. for
forty-nine years on the sum advanced. The proprietors willingly
adopted this arrangement, for it provided them with a sum of ready
money, and freed them from the difficult task of collecting the
dues. But the peasants did not show much desire to undertake the
operation. Some of them still expected a second Emancipation, and
those who did not take this possibility into their calculations
were little disposed to make present sacrifices for distant
prospective advantages which would not be realised for half a
century. In most cases the proprietor was obliged to remit, in
whole or in part, the fifth to be paid by the peasants. Many
Communes refused to undertake the operation on any conditions and
in consequence of this not a few proprietors demanded the so-called
obligatory redemption, according to which they accepted the four-
fifths from the Government as full payment, and the operation was
thus effected without the peasants being consulted. The total
number of male serfs emancipated was about nine millions and three-
quarters,* and of these, only about seven millions and a quarter
had, at the beginning of 1875, made redemption contracts. Of the
contracts signed at that time, about sixty-three per cent, were
"obligatory."  In 1887 the redemption was made obligatory for both
parties, so that all Communes are now proprietors of the land
previously held in perpetual usufruct; and in 1932 the debt will
have been extinguished by the sinking fund, and all redemption
payments will have ceased.

* This does not include the domestic serfs who did not receive
land.

The serfs were thus not only liberated, but also made possessors of
land and put on the road to becoming Communal proprietors, and the
old Communal institutions were preserved and developed. In answer
to the question, Who effected this gigantic reform? we may say that
the chief merit undoubtedly belongs to Alexander II. Had he not
possessed a very great amount of courage he would neither have
raised the question nor allowed it to be raised by others, and had
he not shown a great deal more decision and energy than was
expected, the solution would have been indefinitely postponed.
Among the members of his own family he found an able and energetic
assistant in his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, and a warm
sympathiser with the cause in the Grand Duchess Helena, a German
Princess thoroughly devoted to the welfare of her adopted country.
But we must not overlook the important part played by the nobles.
Their conduct was very characteristic. As soon as the question was
raised a large number of them adopted the liberal ideas with
enthusiasm; and as soon as it became evident that Emancipation was
inevitable, all made a holocaust of their ancient rights and
demanded to be liberated at once from all relations with their
serfs. Moreover, when the law was passed it was the proprietors
who faithfully put it into execution. Lastly, we should remember
that praise is due to the peasantry for their patience under
disappointment and for their orderly conduct as soon as they
understood the law and recognised it to be the will of the Tsar.
Thus it may justly be said that the Emancipation was not the work
of one man, or one party, or one class, but of the nation as a
whole.*

* The names most commonly associated with the Emancipation are
General Rostoftsef, Lanskoi (Minister of the Interior), Nicholas
Milutin, Prince Tchererkassky, G. Samarin, Koshelef. Many others,
such as I. A. Solovief, Zhukofski, Domontovitch, Giers--brother of
M. Giers, afterwards Minister for Foreign Affairs--are less known,
but did valuable work. To all of these, with the exception of the
first two, who died before my arrival in Russia, I have to confess
my obligations. The late Nicholas Milutin rendered me special
service by putting at my disposal not only all the official papers
in his possession, but also many documents of a more private kind.
By his early and lamented death Russia lost one of the greatest
statesmen she has yet produced.

CHAPTER XXX

THE LANDED PROPRIETORS SINCE THE EMANCIPATION

Two Opposite Opinions--Difficulties of Investigation--The Problem
Simplified--Direct and Indirect Compensation--The Direct
Compensation Inadequate--What the Proprietors Have Done with the
Remainder of Their Estates--Immediate Moral Effect of the Abolition
of Serfage--The Economic Problem--The Ideal Solution and the
Difficulty of Realising It--More Primitive Arrangements--The
Northern Agricultural Zone--The Black-earth Zone--The Labour
Difficulty--The Impoverishment of the Noblesse Not a New
Phenomenon--Mortgaging of Estates--Gradual Expropriation of the
Noblesse-Rapid Increase in the Production and Export of Grain--How
Far this Has Benefited the Landed Proprietors.

When the Emancipation question was raised there was a considerable
diversity of opinion as to the effect which the abolition of
serfage would have on the material interests of the two classes
directly concerned. The Press and "the young generation" took an
optimistic view, and endeavoured to prove that the proposed change
would be beneficial alike to proprietors and to peasants. Science,
it was said, has long since decided that free labour is immensely
more productive than slavery or serfage, and the principle has been
already proved to demonstration in the countries of Western Europe.
In all those countries modern agricultural progress began with the
emancipation of the serfs, and increased productivity was
everywhere the immediate result of improvements in the method of
culture. Thus the poor light soils of Germany, France, and Holland
have been made to produce more than the vaunted "black earth" of
Russia. And from these ameliorations the land-owning class has
everywhere derived the chief advantages. Are not the landed
proprietors of England--the country in which serfage was first
abolished--the richest in the world? And is not the proprietor of
a few hundred morgen in Germany often richer than the Russian noble
who has thousands of dessyatins? By these and similar plausible
arguments the Press endeavoured to prove to the proprietors that
they ought, even in their own interest, to undertake the
emancipation of the serfs. Many proprietors, however, showed
little faith in the abstract principles of political economy and
the vague teachings of history as interpreted by the contemporary
periodical literature. They could not always refute the ingenious
arguments adduced by the men of more sanguine temperament, but they
felt convinced that their prospects were not nearly so bright as
these men represented them to be. They believed that Russia was a
peculiar country, and the Russians a peculiar people. The lower
classes in England, France, Holland, and Germany were well known to
be laborious and enterprising, while the Russian peasant was
notoriously lazy, and would certainly, if left to himself, not do
more work than was absolutely necessary to keep him from starving.
Free labour might be more profitable than serfage in countries
where the upper classes possessed traditional practical knowledge
and abundance of capital, but in Russia the proprietors had neither
the practical knowledge nor the ready money necessary to make the
proposed ameliorations in the system of agriculture. To all this
it was added that a system of emancipation by which the peasants
should receive land and be made completely independent of the
landed proprietors had nowhere been tried on such a large scale.

There were thus two diametrically opposite opinions regarding the
economic results of the abolition of serfage, and we have now to
examine which of these two opinions has been confirmed by
experience.

Let us look at the question first from the point of view of the
land-owners.

The reader who has never attempted to make investigations of this
kind may naturally imagine that the question can be easily decided
by simply consulting a large number of individual proprietors, and
drawing a general conclusion from their evidence. In reality I
found the task much more difficult. After roaming about the
country for five years (1870-75), collecting information from the
best available sources, I hesitated to draw any sweeping
conclusions, and my state of mind at that time was naturally
reflected in the early editions of this work. As a rule the
proprietors could not state clearly how much they had lost or
gained, and when definite information was obtained from them it was
not always trustworthy. In the time of serfage very few of them
had been in the habit of keeping accurate accounts, or accounts of
any kind, and when they lived on their estates there were a very
large number of items which could not possibly be reduced to
figures. Of course, each proprietor had a general idea as to
whether his position was better or worse than it had been in the
old times, but the vague statements made by individuals regarding
their former and their actual revenues had little or no scientific
value. So many considerations which had nothing to do with purely
agrarian relations entered into the calculations that the
conclusions did not help me much to estimate the economic results
of the Emancipation as a whole. Nor, it must be confessed, was the
testimony by any means always unbiassed. Not a few spoke of the
great reform in an epic or dithyrambic tone, and among these I
easily distinguished two categories: the one desired to prove that
the measure was a complete success in every way, and that all
classes were benefited by it, not only morally, but also
materially; whilst the others strove to represent the proprietors
in general, and themselves in particular, as the self-sacrificing
victims of a great and necessary patriotic reform--as martyrs in
the cause of liberty and progress. I do not for a moment suppose
that these two groups of witnesses had a clearly conceived
intention of deceiving or misleading, but as a cautious
investigator I had to make allowance for their idealising and
sentimental tendencies.

Since that time the situation has become much clearer, and during
recent visits to Russia I have been able to arrive at much more
definite conclusions. These I now proceed to communicate to the
reader.

The Emancipation caused the proprietors of all classes to pass
through a severe economic crisis. Periods of transition always
involve much suffering, and the amount of suffering is generally in
the inverse ratio of the precautions taken beforehand. In Russia
the precautions had been neglected. Not one proprietor in a
hundred had made any serious preparations for the inevitable
change. On the eve of the Emancipation there were about ten
millions of male serfs on private properties, and of these nearly
seven millions remained under the old system of paying their dues
in labour. Of course, everybody knew that Emancipation must come
sooner or later, but fore-thought, prudence, and readiness to take
time by the forelock are not among the prominent traits of the
Russian character. Hence most of the land-owners were taken
unawares. But while all suffered, there were differences of
degree. Some were completely shipwrecked. So long as serfage
existed all the relations of life were ill-defined and extremely
elastic, so that a man who was hopelessly insolvent might contrive,
with very little effort, to keep his bead above water for half a
lifetime. For such men the Emancipation, like a crisis in the
commercial world, brought a day of reckoning. It did not really
ruin them, but it showed them and the world at large that they were
ruined, and they could no longer continue their old mode of life.
For others the crisis was merely temporary. These emerged with a
larger income than they ever had before, but I am not prepared to
say that their material condition has improved, because the social
habits have changed, the cost of living has become much greater,
and the work of administering estates is incomparably more
complicated and laborious than in the old patriarchal times.

We may greatly simplify the problem by reducing it to two definite
questions:

1. How far were the proprietors directly indemnified for the loss
of serf labour and for the transfer in perpetual usufruct of a
large part of their estates to the peasantry?

2. What have the proprietors done with the remainder of their
estates, and how far have they been indirectly indemnified by the
economic changes which have taken place since the Emancipation?

With the first of these questions I shall deal very briefly,
because it is a controversial subject involving very complicated
calculations which only a specialist can understand. The
conclusion at which I have arrived, after much patient research, is
that in most provinces the compensation was inadequate, and this
conclusion is confirmed by excellent native authorities. M.
Bekhteyev, for example, one of the most laborious and conscientious
investigators in this field of research, and the author of an
admirable work on the economic results of the Emancipation,* told
me recently, in course of conversation, that in his opinion the
peasant dues fixed by the Emancipation Law represented, throughout
the Black-earth Zone, only about a half of the value of the labour
previously supplied by the serfs. To this I must add that the
compensation was in reality not nearly so great as it seemed to be
according to the terms of the law. As the proprietors found it
extremely difficult to collect the dues from the emancipated serfs,
and as they required a certain amount of capital to reorganise the
estate on the new basis of free labour, most of them were
practically compelled to demand the obligatory redemption of the
land (obiazatelny vuikup), and in adopting this expedient they had
to make considerable sacrifices. Not only had they to accept as
full payment four-fifths of the normal sum, but of this amount the
greater portion was paid in Treasury bonds, which fell at once to
80 per cent. of their nominal value.

* "Khozaistvenniye Itogi istekshago Sorokoletiya." St. Petersburg,
1902.

Let us now pass to the second part of the problem: What have the
proprietors done with the part of their estates which remained to
them after ceding the required amount of land to the Communes?
Have they been indirectly indemnified for the loss of serf labour
by subsequent economic changes? How far have they succeeded in
making the transition from serfage to free labour, and what
revenues do they now derive from their estates? The answer to
these questions will necessarily contain some account of the
present economic position of the proprietors.

On all proprietors the Emancipation had at least one good effect:
it dragged them forcibly from the old path of indolence and routine
and compelled them to think and calculate regarding their affairs.
The hereditary listlessness and apathy, the traditional habit of
looking on the estate with its serfs as a kind of self-acting
machine which must always spontaneously supply the owner with the
means of living, the inveterate practice of spending all ready
money and of taking little heed for the morrow--all this, with much
that resulted from it, was rudely swept away and became a thing of
the past.

The broad, easy road on which the proprietors had hitherto let
themselves be borne along by the force of circumstances suddenly
split up into a number of narrow, arduous, thorny paths. Each one
had to use his judgement to determine which of the paths he should
adopt, and, having made his choice, he had to struggle along as he
best could. I remember once asking a proprietor what effect the
Emancipation had had on the class to which he belonged, and he gave
me an answer which is worth recording. "Formerly," he said, "we
kept no accounts and drank champagne; now we keep accounts and
content ourselves with kvass."  Like all epigrammatic sayings, this
laconic reply is far from giving a complete description of reality,
but it indicates in a graphic way a change that has unquestionably
taken place. As soon as serfage was abolished it was no longer
possible to live like "the flowers of the field."  Many a
proprietor who had formerly vegetated in apathetic ease had to ask
himself the question: How am I to gain a living? All had to
consider what was the most profitable way of employing the land
that remained to them.

The ideal solution of the problem was that as soon as the peasant-
land had been demarcated, the proprietor should take to farming the
remainder of his estate by means of hired labour and agricultural
machines in West European or American fashion. Unfortunately, this
solution could not be generally adopted, because the great majority
of the landlords, even when they had the requisite practical
knowledge of agriculture, had not the requisite capital, and could
not easily obtain it. Where were they to find money for buying
cattle, horses, and agricultural implements, for building stables
and cattle-sheds, and for defraying all the other initial expenses?
And supposing they succeeded in starting the new system, where was
the working capital to come from? The old Government institution
in which estates could be mortgaged according to the number of
serfs was permanently closed, and the new land-credit associations
had not yet come into existence. To borrow from private
capitalists was not to be thought of, for money was so scarce than
ten per cent. was considered a "friendly" rate of interest.
Recourse might be had, it is true, to the redemption operation, but
in that case the Government would deduct the unpaid portion of any
outstanding mortgage, and would pay the balance in depreciated
Treasury bonds. In these circumstances the proprietors could not,
as a rule, adopt what I have called the ideal solution, and had to
content themselves with some simpler and more primitive
arrangement. They could employ the peasants of the neighbouring
villages to prepare the land and reap the crops either for a fixed
sum per acre or on the metayage system, or they could let their
land to the peasants for one, three or six years at a moderate
rent.

In the northern agricultural zone, where the soil is poor and
primitive farming with free labour can hardly be made to pay, the
proprietors had to let their land at a small rent, and those of
them who could not find places in the rural administration migrated
to the towns and sought employment in the public service or in the
numerous commercial and industrial enterprises which were springing
up at that time. There they have since remained. Their country-
houses, if inhabited at all, are occupied only for a few months in
summer, and too often present a melancholy spectacle of neglect and
dilapidation. In the Black-earth Zone, on the contrary, where the
soil still possesses enough of its natural fertility to make
farming on a large scale profitable, the estates are in a very
different condition. The owners cultivate at least a part of their
property, and can easily let to the peasants at a fair rent the
land which they do not wish to farm themselves. Some have adopted
the metayage system; others get the field-work done by the peasants
at so much per acre. The more energetic, who have capital enough
at their disposal, organise farms with hired labourers on the
European model. If they are not so well off as formerly, it is
because they have adopted a less patriarchal and more expensive
style of living. Their land has doubled and trebled in value
during the last thirty years, and their revenues have increased, if
not in proportion, at least considerably. In 1903 I visited a
number of estates in this region and found them in a very
prosperous condition, with agricultural machines of the English or
American types, an increasing variety in the rotation of crops,
greatly improved breeds of cattle and horses, and all the other
symptoms of a gradual transition to a more intensive and more
rational system of agriculture.

It must be admitted, however, that even in the Black-earth Zone the
proprietors have formidable difficulties to contend with, the chief
of which are the scarcity of good farm-labourers, the frequent
droughts, the low price of cereals, and the delay in getting the
grain conveyed to the seaports. On each of these difficulties and
the remedies that might be applied I could write a separate
chapter, but I fear to overtax the reader's patience, and shall
therefore confine myself to a few remarks about the labour
question. On this subject the complaints are loud and frequent all
over the country. The peasants, it is said, have become lazy,
careless, addicted to drunkenness, and shamelessly dishonest with
regard to their obligations, so that it is difficult to farm even
in the old primitive fashion and impossible to introduce radical
improvements in the methods of culture. In these sweeping
accusations there is a certain amount of truth. That the muzhik,
when working for others, exerts himself as little as possible; that
he pays little attention to the quality of the work done; that he
shows a reckless carelessness with regard to his employer's
property; that he is capable of taking money in advance and failing
to fulfil his contract; that he occasionally gets drunk; and that
he is apt to commit certain acts of petty larceny when he gets the
chance--all this is undoubtedly true, whatever biassed theorists
and sentimental peasant-worshippers may say to the contrary.*  It
would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the fault is entirely
on the side of the peasants, and equally erroneous to believe that
the evils might be remedied, as is often suggested, by greater
severity on the part of the tribunals, or by an improved system of
passports. Farming with free labour, like every other department
of human activity, requires a fair amount of knowledge, judgment,
prudence, and tact, which cannot be replaced by ingenious
legislation or judicial severity. In engaging labourers or
servants it is necessary to select them carefully and make such
conditions that they feel it to be to their interest to fulfil
their contract loyally. This is too often overlooked by the
Russian land-owners. From false views of economy they are inclined
to choose the cheapest labourer without examining closely his other
qualifications, or they take advantage of the peasant's pecuniary
embarrassments and make with him a contract which it is hardly
possible for him to fulfil. In spring, for instance, when his
store of provisions is exhausted and he is being hard pressed by
the tax-collector, they supply him with rye-meal or advance him a
small sum of money on condition of his undertaking to do a
relatively large amount of summer work. He knows that the contract
is unfair to him, but what is he to do? He must get food for
himself and his family and a little ready money for his taxes, for
the Communal authorities will probably sell his cow if he does not
pay his arrears.**  In desperation he accepts the conditions and
puts off the evil day--consoling himself with the reflection that
perhaps (avos') something may turn up in the meantime--but when the
time comes for fulfilling his engagements the dilemma revives.
According to the contract he ought to work nearly the whole summer
for the proprietor; but he has his own land to attend to, and he
has to make provision for the winter. In such circumstances the
temptation to evade the terms of the contract is probably too
strong to be resisted.

* Amongst themselves the peasants are not addicted to thieving, as
is proved by the fact that they habitually leave their doors
unlocked when the inmates of the house are working in the fields;
but if the muzhik finds in the proprietor's farmyard a piece of
iron or a bit of rope, or any of those little things that he
constantly requires and has difficulty in obtaining, he is very apt
to pick it up and carry it home. Gathering firewood in the
landlord's forest he does not consider as theft, because "God
planted the trees and watered them," and in the time of serfage he
was allowed to supply himself with firewood in this way.

** Until last year (1904) they could use also corporal punishment
as a means of pressure, and I am not sure that they do not
occasionally use it still, though it is no longer permitted by law.

In Russia, as in other countries, the principle holds true that for
good labour a fair price must be paid. Several large proprietors
of my acquaintance who habitually act on this principle assure me
that they always obtain as much good labour as they require. I
must add, however, that these fortunate proprietors have the
advantage of possessing a comfortable amount of working capital,
and are therefore not compelled, as so many of their less fortunate
neighbours are, to manage their estates on the hand-to-mouth
principle.

It is only, I fear, a minority of the landed proprietors that have
grappled successfully with these and other difficulties of their
position. As a class they are impoverished and indebted, but this
state of things is not due entirely to serf-emancipation. The
indebtedness of the Noblesse is a hereditary peculiarity of much
older date. By some authorities it is attributed to the laws of
Peter the Great, by which all nobles were obliged to spend the best
part of their lives in the military or civil service, and to leave
the management of their estates to incompetent stewards. However
that may be, it is certain that from the middle of the eighteenth
century downwards the fact has frequently occupied the attention of
the Government, and repeated attempts have been made to alleviate
the evil. The Empress Elizabeth, Catherine II., Paul, Alexander
I., Nicholas I., Alexander II., and Alexander III. tried
successively, as one of the older ukazes expressed it, "to free the
Noblesse from debt and from greedy money-lenders, and to prevent
hereditary estates from passing into the hands of strangers."  The
means commonly adopted was the creation of mortgage banks founded
and controlled by the Government for the purpose of advancing money
to landed proprietors at a comparatively low rate of interest.

These institutions may have been useful to the few who desired to
improve their estates, but they certainly did not cure, and rather
tended to foster, the inveterate improvidence of the many. On the
eve of the Emancipation the proprietors were indebted to the
Government for the sum of 425 millions of roubles, and 69 per cent.
of their serfs were mortgaged. A portion of this debt was
gradually extinguished by the redemption operation, so that in 1880
over 300 millions had been paid off, but in the meantime new debts
were being contracted. In 1873-74 nine private land-mortgage banks
were created, and there was such a rush to obtain money from them
that their paper was a glut in the market, and became seriously
depreciated. When the prices of grain rose in 1875-80 the mortgage
debt was diminished, but when they began to fall in 1880 it again
increased, and in 1881 it stood at 396 millions. As the rate of
interest was felt to be very burdensome there was a strong feeling
among the landed proprietors at that time that the Government ought
to help them, and in 1883 the nobles of the province of Orel
ventured to address the Emperor on the subject. In reply to the
address, Alexander III., who had strong Conservative leanings, was
graciously pleased to declare in an ukaz that "it was really time
to do something to help the Noblesse," and accordingly a new land-
mortgage bank for the Noblesse was created. The favourable terms
offered by it were taken advantage of to such an extent that in the
first four years of its activity (1886-90) it advanced to the
proprietors over 200 million roubles. Then came two famine years,
and in 1894 the mortgage debt of the Noblesse in that and other
credit establishments was estimated at 994 millions. It has since
probably increased rather than diminished, for in that year the
prices of grain began to fall steadily on all the corn-exchanges of
the world, and they have never since recovered.

By means of mortgages some proprietors succeeded in weathering the
storm, but many gave up the struggle altogether, and settled in the
towns. In the space of thirty years 20,000 of them sold their
estates, and thus, between 1861 and 1892, the area of land
possessed by the Noblesse diminished 30 per cent.--from 77,804,000
to 55,500,000 dessyatins.

This expropriation of the Noblesse, as it is called, was evidently
not the result merely of the temporary economic disturbance caused
by the abolition of serfage, for as time went on it became more
rapid. During the first twenty years the average annual amount of
Noblesse land sold was 517,000 dessyatins, and it rose steadily
until 1892-96, when it reached the amount of 785,000. As I have
already stated, the townward movement of the proprietors was
strongest in the barren Northern provinces. In the province of
Olonetz, for example, they have already parted with 87 per cent. of
their land. In the black-soil region, on the contrary, there is no
province in which more than 27 per cent. of the Noblesse land has
been alienated, and in one province (Tula) the amount is only 19
per cent.

The habit of mortgaging and selling estates does not necessarily
mean the impoverishment of the landlords as a class. If the
capital raised in that way is devoted to agricultural improvements,
the result may be an increase of wealth. Unfortunately, in Russia
the realised capital was usually not so employed. A very large
proportion of it was spent unproductively, partly in luxuries and
living abroad, and partly in unprofitable commercial and industrial
speculations. The industrial and railway fever which raged at the
time induced many to risk and lose their capital, and it had
indirectly an injurious effect on all by making money plentiful in
the towns and creating a more expensive style of living, from which
the landed gentry could not hold entirely aloof.

So far I have dwelt on the dark shadows of the picture, but it is
not all shadow. In the last forty years the production and export
of grain, which constitute the chief source of revenue for the
Noblesse, have increased enormously, thanks mainly to the improved
means of transport. In the first decade after the Emancipation
(1860-70) the average annual export did not exceed 88 million puds;
in the second decade (1870-80) it leapt up to 218 millions; and so
it went up steadily until in the last decade of the century it had
reached 388 millions--i.e., over six million tons. At the same
time the home trade had increased likewise in consequence of the
rapidly growing population of the towns. All this must have
enriched the land-proprietors. Not to such an extent, it is true,
as the figures seem to indicate, because the old prices could not
be maintained. Rye, for example, which in 1868 stood at 129 kopeks
per pud, fell as low as 56, and during the rest of the century,
except during a short time in 1881-82 and the famine years of 1891-
92, when there was very little surplus to sell, it never rose above
80. Still, the increase in quantity more than counterbalanced the
fall in price. For example: in 1881 the average price of grain per
pud was 119, and in 1894 it had sunk to 59; but the amount exported
during that time rose from 203 to 617 million puds, and the sum
received for it had risen from 242 to 369 millions of roubles.
Surely the whole of that enormous sum was not squandered on
luxuries and unprofitable speculation!

The pessimists, however--and in Russia their name is legion--will
not admit that any permanent advantage has been derived from this
enormous increase in exports. On the contrary, they maintain that
it is a national misfortune, because it is leading rapidly to a
state of permanent impoverishment. It quickly exhausted, they say,
the large reserves of grain in the village, so that as soon as
there was a very bad harvest the Government had to come to the
rescue and feed the starving peasantry. Worse than this, it
compromised the future prosperity of the country. Being in
pecuniary difficulties, and consequently impatient to make money,
the proprietors increased inordinately the area of grain-producing
land at the expense of pasturage and forests, with the result that
the live stock and the manuring of the land were diminished, the
fertility of the soil impaired, and the necessary quantity of
moisture in the atmosphere greatly lessened. There is some truth
in this contention; but it would seem that the soil and climate
have not been affected so much as the pessimists suppose, because
in recent years there have been some very good harvests.

On the whole, then, I think it may be justly said that the efforts
of the landed proprietors to work their estates without serf labour
have not as yet been brilliantly successful. Those who have failed
are in the habit of complaining that they have not received
sufficient support from the Government, which is accused of having
systematically sacrificed the interests of agriculture, the
mainstay of the national resources, to the creation of artificial
and unnecessary manufacturing industries. How far such complaints
and accusations are well founded I shall not attempt to decide. It
is a complicated polemical question, into which the reader would
probably decline to accompany me. Let us examine rather what
influence the above-mentioned changes have had on the peasantry.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE EMANCIPATED PEASANTRY

The Effects of Liberty--Difficulty of Obtaining Accurate
Information--Pessimist Testimony of the Proprietors--Vague Replies
of the Peasants--My Conclusions in 1877--Necessity of Revising
Them--My Investigations Renewed in 1903--Recent Researches by
Native Political Economists--Peasant Impoverishment Universally
Recognised--Various Explanations Suggested--Demoralisation of the
Common People--Peasant Self-government--Communal System of Land
Tenure--Heavy Taxation--Disruption of Peasant Families--Natural
Increase of Population--Remedies Proposed--Migration--Reclamation
of Waste Land--Land-purchase by Peasantry--Manufacturing Industry--
Improvement of Agricultural Methods--Indications of Progress.

At the commencement of last chapter I pointed out in general terms
the difficulty of describing clearly the immediate consequences of
the Emancipation. In beginning now to speak of the influence which
the great reform has had on the peasantry, I feel that the
difficulty has reached its climax. The foreigner who desires
merely to gain a general idea of the subject cannot be expected to
take an interest in details, and even if he took the trouble to
examine them attentively, he would derive from the labour little
real information. What he wishes is a clear, concise, and dogmatic
statement of general results. Has the material and moral condition
of the peasantry improved since the Emancipation? That is the
simple question which he has to put, and he naturally expects a
simple, categorical answer.

In beginning my researches in this interesting field of inquiry, I
had no adequate conception of the difficulties awaiting me. I
imagined that I had merely to question intelligent, competent men
who had had abundant opportunities of observation, and to criticise
and boil down the information collected; but when I put this method
of investigation to the test of experience it proved
unsatisfactory. Very soon I came to perceive that my authorities
were very far from being impartial observers. Most of them were
evidently suffering from shattered illusions. They had expected
that the Emancipation would produce instantaneously a wonderful
improvement in the life and character of the rural population, and
that the peasant would become at once a sober, industrious, model
agriculturist.

These expectations were not realised. One year passed, five years
passed, ten years passed, and the expected transformation did not
take place. On the contrary, there appeared certain very ugly
phenomena which were not at all in the programme. The peasants
began to drink more and to work less,* and the public life which
the Communal institutions produced was by no means of a desirable
kind. The "bawlers" (gorlopany) acquired a prejudicial influence
in the Village Assemblies, and in very many Volosts the peasant
judges, elected by their fellow-villagers, acquired a bad habit of
selling their decisions for vodka. The natural consequence of all
this was that those who had indulged in exaggerated expectations
sank into a state of inordinate despondency, and imagined things to
be much worse than they really were.

* I am not at all sure that the peasants really drank more, but
such was, and still is, a very general conviction.

For different reasons, those who had not indulged in exaggerated
expectations, and had not sympathised with the Emancipation in the
form in which it was effected, were equally inclined to take a
pessimistic view of the situation. In every ugly phenomenon they
found a confirmation of their opinions. The result was precisely
what they had foretold. The peasants had used their liberty and
their privileges to their own detriment and to the detriment of
others!

The extreme "Liberals" were also inclined, for reasons of their
own, to join in the doleful chorus. They desired that the
condition of the peasantry should be further improved by
legislative enactments, and accordingly they painted the evils in
as dark colours as possible.

Thus, from various reasons, the majority of the educated classes
were unduly disposed to represent to themselves and to others the
actual condition of the peasantry in a very unfavourable light, and
I felt that from them there was no hope of obtaining the lumen
siccum which I desired. I determined, therefore, to try the method
of questioning the peasants themselves. Surely they must know
whether their condition was better or worse than it had been before
their Emancipation.

Again I was doomed to disappointment. A few months' experience
sufficed to convince me that my new method was by no means so
effectual as I had imagined. Uneducated people rarely make
generalisations which have no practical utility, and I feel sure
that very few Russian peasants ever put to themselves the question:
Am I better off now than I was in the time of serfage? When such a
question is put to them they feel taken aback. And in truth it is
no easy matter to sum up the two sides of the account and draw an
accurate balance, save in those exceptional cases in which the
proprietor flagrantly abused his authority. The present money-dues
and taxes are often more burdensome than the labour-dues in the old
times. If the serfs had a great many ill-defined obligations to
fulfil--such as the carting of the master's grain to market, the
preparing of his firewood, the supplying him with eggs, chickens,
home-made linen, and the like--they had, on the other hand, a good
many ill-defined privileges. They grazed their cattle during a
part of the year on the manor-land; they received firewood and
occasionally logs for repairing their huts; sometimes the
proprietor lent them or gave them a cow or a horse when they had
been visited by the cattle-plague or the horse-stealer; and in
times of famine they could look to their master for support. All
this has now come to an end. Their burdens and their privileges
have been swept away together, and been replaced by clearly
defined, unbending, unelastic legal relations. They have now to
pay the market-price for every stick of firewood which they burn,
for every log which they require for repairing their houses, and
for every rood of land on which to graze their cattle. Nothing is
now to be had gratis. The demand to pay is encountered at every
step. If a cow dies or a horse is stolen, the owner can no longer
go to the proprietor with the hope of receiving a present, or at
least a loan without interest, but must, if he has no ready money,
apply to the village usurer, who probably considers twenty or
thirty per cent, as a by no means exorbitant rate of interest.

Besides this, from the economic point of view village life has been
completely revolutionised. Formerly the members of a peasant
family obtained from their ordinary domestic resources nearly all
they required. Their food came from their fields, cabbage-garden,
and farmyard. Materials for clothing were supplied by their plots
of flax and their sheep, and were worked up into linen and cloth by
the female members of the household. Fuel, as I have said, and
torches wherewith to light the izba--for oil was too expensive and
petroleum was unknown--were obtained gratis. Their sheep, cattle,
and horses were bred at home, and their agricultural implements,
except in so far as a little iron was required, could be made by
themselves without any pecuniary expenditure. Money was required
only for the purchase of a few cheap domestic utensils, such as
pots, pans, knives, hatchets, wooden dishes, and spoons, and for
the payment of taxes, which were small in amount and often paid by
the proprietor. In these circumstances the quantity of money in
circulation among the peasants was infinitesimally small, the few
exchanges which took place in a village being generally effected by
barter. The taxes, and the vodka required for village festivals,
weddings, or funerals, were the only large items of expenditure for
the year, and they were generally covered by the sums brought home
by the members of the family who went to work in the towns.

Very different is the present condition of affairs. The spinning,
weaving, and other home industries have been killed by the big
factories, and the flax and wool have to be sold to raise a little
ready money for the numerous new items of expenditure. Everything
has to be bought--clothes, firewood, petroleum, improved
agricultural implements, and many other articles which are now
regarded as necessaries of life, whilst comparatively little is
earned by working in the towns, because the big families have been
broken up, and a household now consists usually of husband and
wife, who must both remain at home, and children who are not yet
bread-winners. Recalling to mind all these things and the other
drawbacks and advantages of his actual position, the old muzhik has
naturally much difficulty in striking a balance, and he may well be
quite sincere when, on being asked whether things now are on the
whole better or worse than in the time of serfage, he scratches the
back of his head and replies hesitatingly, with a mystified
expression on his wrinkled face: "How shall I say to you? They are
both better and worse!" ("Kak vam skazat'? I lûtche i khûdzhe!")
If, however, you press him further and ask whether he would himself
like to return to the old state of things, he is pretty sure to
answer, with a slow shake of the head and a twinkle in his eye, as
if some forgotten item in the account had suddenly recurred to him:
"Oh, no!"

What materially increases the difficulty of this general
computation is that great changes have taken place in the well-
being of the particular households. Some have greatly prospered,
while others have become impoverished. That is one of the most
characteristic consequences of the Emancipation. In the old times
the general economic stagnation and the uncontrolled authority of
the proprietor tended to keep all the households of a village on
the same level. There was little opportunity for an intelligent,
enterprising serf to become rich, and if he contrived to increase
his revenue he had probably to give a considerable share of it to
the proprietor, unless he had the good fortune to belong to a grand
seigneur like Count Sheremetief, who was proud of having rich men
among his serfs. On the other hand, the proprietor, for evident
reasons of self-interest, as well as from benevolent motives,
prevented the less intelligent and less enterprising members of the
Commune from becoming bankrupt. The Communal equality thus
artificially maintained has now disappeared, the restrictions on
individual freedom of action have been removed, the struggle for
life has become intensified, and, as always happens in such
circumstances, the strong men go up in the world while the weak
ones go to the wall. All over the country we find on the one hand
the beginnings of a village aristocracy--or perhaps we should call
it a plutocracy, for it is based on money--and on the other hand an
ever-increasing pauperism. Some peasants possess capital, with
which they buy land outside the Commune or embark in trade, while
others have to sell their live stock, and have sometimes to cede to
neighbours their share of the Communal property. This change in
rural life is so often referred to that, in order to express it a
new, barbarous word, differentsiatsia (differentiation) has been
invented.

Hoping to obtain fuller information with the aid of official
protection, I attached myself to one of the travelling sections of
an agricultural Commission appointed by the Government, and during
a whole summer I helped to collect materials in the provinces
bordering on the Volga. The inquiry resulted in a gigantic report
of nearly 2,500 folio pages, but the general conclusions were
extremely vague. The peasantry, it was said, were passing, like
the landed proprietors, through a period of transition, in which
the main features of their future normal life had not yet become
clearly defined. In some localities their condition had decidedly
improved, whereas in others it had improved little or not at all.
Then followed a long list of recommendations in favour of
Government assistance, better agronomic education, competitive
exhibitions, more varied rotation of crops, and greater zeal on the
part of the clergy in disseminating among the people moral
principles in general and love of work in particular.

Not greatly enlightened by this official activity, I returned to my
private studies, and at the end of six years I published my
impressions and conclusions in the first edition of this work.
While recognising that there was much uncertainty as to the future,
I was inclined, on the whole, to take a hopeful view of the
situation. I was unable, however, to maintain permanently that
comfortable frame of mind. After my departure from Russia in 1878,
the accounts which reached me from various parts of the country
became blacker and blacker, and were partly confirmed by short
tours which I made in 1889-1896. At last, in the summer of 1903, I
determined to return to some of my old haunts and look at things
with my own eyes. At that moment some hospitable friends invited
me to pay them a visit at their country-house in the province of
Smolensk, and I gladly accepted the invitation, because Smolensk,
when I knew it formerly, was one of the poorest provinces, and I
thought it well to begin my new studies by examining the
impoverishment, of which I had heard so much, at its maximum.

From the railway station at Viazma, where I arrived one morning at
sunrise, I had some twenty miles to drive, and as soon as I got
clear of the little town I began my observations. What I saw
around me seemed to contradict the sombre accounts I had received.
The villages through which I passed had not at all the look of
dilapidation and misery which I expected. On the contrary, the
houses were larger and better constructed than they used to be, and
each of them had a chimney! That latter fact was important because
formerly a large proportion of the peasants of this region had no
such luxury, and allowed the smoke to find its exit by the open
door. In vain I looked for a hut of the old type, and my yamstchik
assured me I should have to go a long way to find one. Then I
noticed a good many iron ploughs of the European model, and my
yamstchik informed me that their predecessor, the sokha with which
I had been so familiar, had entirely disappeared from the district.
Next I noticed that in the neighbourhood of the villages flax was
grown in large quantities. That was certainly not an indication of
poverty, because flax is a valuable product which requires to be
well manured, and plentiful manure implies a considerable quantity
of live stock. Lastly, before arriving at my destination, I
noticed clover being grown in the fields. This made me open my
eyes with astonishment, because the introduction of artificial
grasses into the traditional rotation of crops indicates the
transition to a higher and more intensive system of agriculture.
As I had never seen clover in Russia except on the estates of very
advanced proprietors, I said to my yamstchik:

"Listen, little brother! That field belongs to the landlord?"

"Not at all, Master; it is muzhik-land."

On arriving at the country-house I told my friends what I had seen,
and they explained it to me. Smolensk is no longer one of the
poorer provinces; it has become comparatively prosperous. In two
or three districts large quantities of flax are produced and give
the cultivators a big revenue; in other districts plenty of
remunerative work is supplied by the forests. Everywhere a
considerable proportion of the younger men go regularly to the
towns and bring home savings enough to pay the taxes and make a
little surplus in the domestic budget. A few days afterwards the
village secretary brought me his books, and showed me that there
were practically no arrears of taxation.

Passing on to other provinces I found similar proofs of progress
and prosperity, but at the same time not a few indications of
impoverishment; and I was rapidly relapsing into my previous state
of uncertainty as to whether any general conclusions could be
drawn, when an old friend, himself a first-rate authority with many
years of practical experience, came to my assistance.*  He informed
me that a number of specialists had recently made detailed
investigations into the present economic conditions of the rural
population, and he kindly placed at my disposal, in his charming
country-house near Moscow, the voluminous researches of these
investigators. Here, during a good many weeks, I revelled in the
statistical materials collected, and to the best of my ability I
tested the conclusions drawn from them. Many of these conclusions
I had to dismiss with the Scotch verdict of "not proven," whilst
others seemed to me worthy of acceptance. Of these latter the most
important were those drawn from the arrears of taxation.

* I hope I am committing no indiscretion when I say that the old
friend in question was Prince Alexander Stcherbatof of Vasilefskoe.

The arrears in the payment of taxes may be regarded as a pretty
safe barometer for testing the condition of the rural population,
because the peasant habitually pays his rates and taxes when he has
the means of doing so; when he falls seriously and permanently into
arrears it may be assumed that he is becoming impoverished. If the
arrears fluctuate from year to year, the causes of the
impoverishment may be regarded as accidental and perhaps temporary,
but if they steadily accumulate, we must conclude that there is
something radically wrong. Bearing these facts in mind, let us
hear what the statistics say.

During the first twenty years after the Emancipation (1861-81)
things went on in their old grooves. The poor provinces remained
poor, and the fertile provinces showed no signs of distress.
During the next twenty years (1881-1901) the arrears of the whole
of European Russia rose, roughly speaking, from 27 to 144 millions
of roubles, and the increase, strange to say, took place in the
fertile provinces. In 1890, for example, out of 52 millions,
nearly 41 millions, or 78 per cent., fell to the share of the
provinces of the Black-earth Zone. In seven of these the average
arrears per male, which had been in 1882 only 90 kopeks, rose in
1893 to 600, and in 1899 to 2,200! And this accumulation had taken
place in spite of reductions of taxation to the extent of 37
million roubles in 1881-83, and successive famine grants from the
Treasury in 1891-99 to the amount of 203 millions.*  On the other
hand, in the provinces with a poor soil the arrears had greatly
decreased. In Smolensk, for example, they had sunk from 202 per
cent, to 13 per cent. of the annual sum to be paid, and in nearly
all the other provinces of the west and north a similar change for
the better had taken place.

These and many other figures which I might quote show that a great
and very curious economic revolution has been gradually effected.
The Black-earth Zone, which was formerly regarded as the
inexhaustible granary of the Empire, has become impoverished,
whilst the provinces which were formerly regarded as hopelessly
poor are now in a comparatively flourishing condition. This fact
has been officially recognised. In a classification of the
provinces according to their degree of prosperity, drawn up by a
special commission of experts in 1903, those with a poor light soil
appear at the top, and those with the famous black earth are at the
bottom of the list. In the deliberations of the commission many
reasons for this extraordinary state of things are adduced. Most
of them have merely a local significance. The big fact, taken as a
whole, seems to me to show that, in consequence of certain changes
of which I shall speak presently, the peasantry of European Russia
can no longer live by the traditional modes of agriculture, even in
the most fertile districts, and require for their support some
subsidiary occupations such as are practised in the less fertile
provinces.

* In 1901 an additional famine grant of 33 1/2 million roubles had
to be made by the Government.

Another sign of impoverishment is the decrease in the quantity of
live stock. According to the very imperfect statistics available,
for every hundred inhabitants the number of horses has decreased
from 26 to 17, the number of cattle from 36 to 25, and the number
of sheep from 73 to 40. This is a serious matter, because it means
that the land is not so well manured and cultivated as formerly,
and is consequently not so productive. Several economists have
attempted to fix precisely to what extent the productivity has
decreased, but I confess I have little faith in the accuracy of
their conclusions. M. Polenof, for example, a most able and
conscientious investigator, calculates that between 1861 and 1895,
all over Russia, the amount of food produced, in relation to the
number of the population, has decreased by seven per cent. His
methods of calculation are ingenious, but the statistical data with
which he operates are so far from accurate that his conclusions on
this point have, in my opinion, little or no scientific value.
With all due deference to Russian economists, I may say
parenthetically that they are very found of juggling with
carelessly collected statistics, as if their data were mathematical
quantities.

Several of the Zemstvos have grappled with this question of peasant
impoverishment, and the data which they have collected make a very
doleful impression. In the province of Moscow, for example, a
careful investigation gave the following results: Forty per cent.
of the peasant households had no longer any horses, 15 per cent.
had given up agriculture altogether, and about 10 per cent. had no
longer any land. We must not, however, assume, as is often done,
that the peasant families who have no live stock and no longer till
the land are utterly ruined. In reality many of them are better
off than their neighbours who appear as prosperous in the official
statistics, having found profitable occupation in the home
industries, in the towns, in the factories, or on the estates of
the landed proprietors. It must be remembered that Moscow is the
centre of one of the regions in which manufacturing industry has
progressed with gigantic strides during the last half-century, and
it would be strange indeed if, in such a region, the peasantry who
supply the labour to the towns and factories remained thriving
agriculturists. That many Russians are surprised and horrified at
the actual state of things shows to what an extent the educated
classes are still under the illusion that Russia can create for
herself a manufacturing industry capable of competing with that of
Western Europe without uprooting from the soil a portion of her
rural population.

It is only in the purely agricultural regions that families
officially classed as belonging to the peasantry may be regarded as
on the brink of pauperism because they have no live stock, and even
with regard to them I should hesitate to make such an assumption,
because the muzhiks, as I have already had occasion to remark, have
strange nomadic habits unknown to the rural population of other
countries. It is a mistake, therefore, to calculate the Russian
peasant's budget exclusively on the basis of local resources.

To the pessimists who assure me that according to their
calculations the peasantry in general must be on the brink of
starvation, I reply that there are many facts, even in the
statistical tables on which they rely, which run counter to their
deductions. Let me quote one by way of illustration. The total
amount of deposits in savings banks, about one-fourth of which is
believed to belong to the rural population, rose in the course of
six years (1894-1900) from 347 to 680 millions of roubles. Besides
the savings banks, there existed in the rural districts on 1st
December, 1902, no less than 1,614 small-credit institutions, with
a total capital (1st January, 1901) of 69 million roubles, of which
only 4,653,000 had been advanced by the State Bank and the Zemstvo,
the remainder coming in from private sources. This is not much for
a big country like Russia, but it is a beginning, and it suggests
that the impoverishment is not so severe and so universal as the
pessimists would have us believe.

There is thus room for differences of opinion as to how far the
peasantry have become impoverished, but there is no doubt that
their condition is far from satisfactory, and we have to face the
important problem why the abolition of serfage has not produced the
beneficent consequences which even moderate men so confidently
predicted, and how the present unsatisfactory state of things is to
be remedied.

The most common explanation among those who have never seriously
studied the subject is that it all comes from the demoralisation of
the common people. In this view there is a modicum of truth. That
the peasantry injure their material welfare by drunkenness and
improvidence there can be no reasonable doubt, as is shown by the
comparatively flourishing state of certain villages of Old
Ritualists and Molokanye in which there is no drunkenness, and in
which the community exercises a strong moral control over the
individual members. If the Orthodox Church could make the
peasantry refrain from the inordinate use of strong drink as
effectually as it makes them refrain during a great part of the
year from animal food, and if it could instil into their minds a
few simple moral principles as successfully as it has inspired them
with a belief in the efficacy of the Sacraments, it would certainly
confer on them an inestimable benefit. But this is not to be
expected. The great majority of the parish priests are quite unfit
for such a task, and the few who have aspirations in that direction
rarely acquire a perceptible moral influence over their
parishioners. Perhaps more is to be expected from the schoolmaster
than from the priest, but it will be long before the schools can
produce even a partial moral regeneration. Their first influence,
strange as the assertion may seem, is often in a diametrically
opposite direction. When only a few peasants in a village can read
and write they have such facilities for overreaching their "dark"
neighbours that they are apt to employ their knowledge for
dishonest purposes; and thus it occasionally happens that the man
who has the most education is the greatest scoundrel in the Mir.
Such facts are often used by the opponents of popular education,
but in reality they supply a good reason for disseminating primary
education as rapidly as possible. When all the peasants have
learned to read and write they will present a less inviting field
for swindling, and the temptations to dishonesty will be
proportionately diminished. Meanwhile, it is only fair to state
that the common assertions about drunkenness being greatly on the
increase are not borne out by the official statistics concerning
the consumption of spirituous liquors.

After drunkenness, the besetting sin which is supposed to explain
the impoverishment of the peasantry is incorrigible laziness. On
that subject I feel inclined to put in a plea of extenuating
circumstances in favour of the muzhik. Certainly he is very slow
in his movements--slower perhaps than the English rustic--and he
has a marvellous capacity for wasting valuable time without any
perceptible qualms of conscience; but he is in this respect, if I
may use a favourite phrase of the Social Scientists, "the product
of environment."  To the proprietors who habitually reproach him
with time-wasting he might reply with a very strong tu quoque
argument, and to all the other classes the argument might likewise
be addressed. The St. Petersburg official, for example, who writes
edifying disquisitions about peasant indolence, considers that for
himself attendance at his office for four hours, a large portion of
which is devoted to the unproductive labour of cigarette smoking,
constitutes a very fair day's work. The truth is that in Russia
the struggle for life is not nearly so intense as in more densely
populated countries, and society is so constituted that all can
live without very strenuous exertion. The Russians seem,
therefore, to the traveller who comes from the West an indolent,
apathetic race. If the traveller happens to come from the East--
especially if he has been living among pastoral races--the Russians
will appear to him energetic and laborious. Their character in
this respect corresponds to their geographical position: they stand
midway between the laborious, painstaking, industrious population
of Western Europe and the indolent, undisciplined, spasmodically
energetic populations of Central Asia. They are capable of
effecting much by vigorous, intermittent effort--witness the
peasant at harvest-time, or the St. Petersburg official when some
big legislative project has to be submitted to the Emperor within a
given time--but they have not yet learned regular laborious habits.
In short, the Russians might move the world if it could be done by
a jerk, but they are still deficient in that calm perseverance and
dogged tenacity which characterise the Teutonic race.

Without seeking further to determine how far the moral defects of
the peasantry have a deleterious influence on their material
welfare, I proceed to examine the external causes which are
generally supposed to contribute largely to their impoverishment,
and will deal first with the evils of peasant self-government.

That the peasant self-government is very far from being in a
satisfactory condition must be admitted by any impartial observer.
The more laborious and well-to-do peasants, unless they wish to
abuse their position directly or indirectly for their own
advantage, try to escape election as office-bearers, and leave the
administration in the hands of the less respectable members. Not
unfrequently a Volost Elder trades with the money he collects as
dues or taxes; and sometimes, when he becomes insolvent, the
peasants have to pay their taxes and dues a second time. The
Village Assemblies, too, have become worse than they were in the
days of serfage. At that time the Heads of Households--who, it
must be remembered, have alone a voice in the decisions--were few
in number, laborious, and well-to-do, and they kept the lazy,
unruly members under strict control. Now that the large families
have been broken up and almost every adult peasant is Head of a
Household, the Communal affairs are sometimes decided by a noisy
majority; and certain Communal decisions may be obtained by
"treating the Mir"--that is to say, by supplying a certain amount
of vodka. Often I have heard old peasants speak of these things,
and finish their recital by some such remark as this: "There is no
order now; the people have been spoiled; it was better in the time
of the masters."

These evils are very real, and I have no desire to extenuate them,
but I believe they are by no means so great as is commonly
supposed. If the lazy, worthless members of the Commune had really
the direction of Communal affairs we should find that in the
Northern Agricultural Zone, where it is necessary to manure the
soil, the periodical redistributions of the Communal land would be
very frequent; for in a new distribution the lazy peasant has a
good chance of getting a well-manured lot in exchange for the lot
which he has exhausted. In reality, so far as my observations
extend, these general distributions of the land are not more
frequent than they were before.

Of the various functions of the peasant self-government the
judicial are perhaps the most frequently and the most severely
criticised. And certainly not without reason, for the Volost
Courts are too often accessible to the influence of alcohol, and in
some districts the peasants say that he who becomes a judge takes a
sin on his soul. I am not at all sure, however, that it would be
well to abolish these courts altogether, as some people propose.
In many respects they are better suited to peasant requirements
than the ordinary tribunals. Their procedure is infinitely
simpler, more expeditious, and incomparably less expensive, and
they are guided by traditional custom and plain common-sense,
whereas the ordinary tribunals have to judge according to the civil
law, which is unknown to the peasantry and not always applicable to
their affairs.

Few ordinary judges have a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the
minute details of peasant life to be able to decide fairly the
cases that are brought before the Volost Courts; and even if a
Justice had sufficient knowledge he could not adopt the moral and
juridical notions of the peasantry. These are often very different
from those of the upper classes. In cases of matrimonial
separation, for instance, the educated man naturally assumes that,
if there is any question of aliment, it should be paid by the
husband to the wife. The peasant, on the contrary, assumes as
naturally that it should be paid by the wife to the husband--or
rather to the Head of the Household--as a compensation for the loss
of labour which her desertion involves. In like manner, according
to traditional peasant-law, if an unmarried son is working away
from home, his earnings do not belong to himself, but to the
family, and in Volost Court they could be claimed by the Head of
the Household.

Occasionally, it is true, the peasant judges allow their respect
for old traditional conceptions in general and for the authority of
parents in particular, to carry them a little too far. I was told
lately of one affair which took place not long ago, within a
hundred miles of Moscow, in which the judge decided that a
respectable young peasant should be flogged because he refused to
give his father the money he earned as groom in the service of a
neighbouring proprietor, though it was notorious in the district
that the father was a disreputable old drunkard who carried to the
kabak (gin-shop) all the money he could obtain by fair means and
foul. When I remarked to my informant, who was not an admirer of
peasant institutions, that the incident reminded me of the respect
for the patria potestas in old Roman times, he stared at me with a
look of surprise and indignation, and exclaimed laconically,
"Patria potestas? . . . Vodka!"  He was evidently convinced that
the disreputable father had got his respectable son flogged by
"treating" the judges. In such cases flogging can no longer be
used, for the Volost Courts, as we have seen, were recently
deprived of the right to inflict corporal punishment.

These administrative and judicial abuses gradually reached the ears
of the Government, and in 1889 it attempted to remove them by
creating a body of Rural Supervisors (Zemskiye Natchalniki). Under
their supervision and control some abuses may have been
occasionally prevented or corrected, and some rascally Volost
secretaries may have been punished or dismissed, but the peasant
self-government as a whole has not been perceptibly improved.

Let us glance now at the opinions of those who hold that the
material progress of the peasantry is prevented chiefly, not by the
mere abuses of the Communal administration, but by the essential
principles of the Communal institutions, and especially by the
practice of periodically redistributing the Communal land. From
the theoretical point of view this question is one of great
interest, and it may acquire in the future an immense practical
significance; but for the present it has not, in my opinion, the
importance which is usually attributed to it. There can be no
doubt that it is much more difficult to farm well on a large number
of narrow strips of land, many of which are at a great distance
from the farmyard, than on a compact piece of land which the farmer
may divide and cultivate as he pleases; and there can be as little
doubt that the husbandman is more likely to improve his land if his
tenure is secure. All this and much more of the same kind must be
accepted as indisputable truth, but it has little direct bearing on
the practical question under consideration. We are not considering
in the abstract whether it would be better that the peasant should
be a farmer with abundant capital and all the modern scientific
appliances, but simply the practical question, What are the
obstructions which at present prevent the peasant from ameliorating
his actual condition?

That the Commune prevents its members from adopting various systems
of high farming is a supposition which scarcely requires serious
consideration. The peasants do not yet think of any such radical
innovations; and if they did, they have neither the knowledge nor
the capital necessary to effect them. In many villages a few of
the richer and more intelligent peasants have bought land outside
of the Commune and cultivate it as they please, free from all
Communal restraints; and I have always found that they cultivate
this property precisely in the same way as their share of the
Communal land. As to minor changes, we know by experience that the
Mir opposes to them no serious obstacles.

The cultivation of beet for the production of sugar has greatly
increased in the central and southwestern provinces, and flax is
now largely produced in Communes in northern districts where it was
formerly cultivated merely for domestic use. The Communal system
is, in fact, extremely elastic, and may be modified as soon as the
majority of the members consider modifications profitable. When
the peasants begin to think of permanent improvements, such as
drainage, irrigation, and the like, they will find the Communal
institutions a help rather than an obstruction; for such
improvements, if undertaken at all, must be undertaken on a larger
scale, and the Mir is an already existing association. The only
permanent improvements which can be for the present profitably
undertaken consist in the reclaiming of waste land; and such
improvements are already sometimes attempted. I know at least of
one case in which a Commune in the province of Yaroslavl has
reclaimed a considerable tract of waste land by means of hired
labourers. Nor does the Mir prevent in this respect individual
initiative. In many Communes of the northern provinces it is a
received principle of customary law that if any member reclaims
waste land he is allowed to retain possession of it for a number of
years proportionate to the amount of labour expended.

But does not the Commune, as it exists, prevent good cultivation
according to the mode of agriculture actually in use?

Except in the far north and the steppe region, where the
agriculture is of a peculiar kind, adapted to the local conditions,
the peasants invariably till their land according to the ordinary
three-field system, in which good cultivation means, practically
speaking, the plentiful use of manure. Does, then, the existence
of the Mir prevent the peasants from manuring their fields well?

Many people who speak on this subject in an authoritative tone seem
to imagine that the peasants in general do not manure their fields
at all. This idea is an utter mistake. In those regions, it is
true, where the rich black soil still retains a large part of its
virgin fertility, the manure is used as fuel, or simply thrown
away, because the peasants believe that it would not be profitable
to put it on their fields, and their conviction is, at least to
some extent, well founded;* but in the Northern Agricultural Zone,
where unmanured soil gives almost no harvest, the peasants put upon
their fields all the manure they possess. If they do not put
enough it is simply because they have not sufficient live stock.

* As recently as two years ago (1903) I found that one of the most
intelligent and energetic landlords of the province of Voronezh
followed in this respect the example of the peasants, and he
assured me that he had proved by experience the advantage of doing
so.

It is only in the southern provinces, where no manure is required,
that periodical re-distributions take place frequently. As we
travel northward we find the term lengthens; and in the Northern
Agricultural Zone, where manure is indispensable, general re-
distributions are extremely rare. In the province of Yaroslavl,
for example, the Communal land is generally divided into two parts:
the manured land lying near the village, and the unmanured land
lying beyond. The latter alone is subject to frequent re-
distribution. On the former the existing tenures are rarely
disturbed, and when it becomes necessary to give a share to a new
household, the change is effected with the least possible prejudice
to vested rights.

The policy of the Government has always been to admit
redistributions in principle, but to prevent their too frequent
recurrence. For this purpose the Emancipation Law stipulated that
they could be decreed only by a three-fourths majority of the
Village Assembly, and in 1893 a further obstacle was created by a
law providing that the minimum term between two re-distributions
should be twelve years, and that they should never be undertaken
without the sanction of the Rural Supervisor.

A certain number of Communes have made the experiment of
transforming the Communal tenure into hereditary allotments, and
its only visible effect has been that the allotments accumulate in
the hands of the richer and more enterprising peasants, and the
poorer members of the Commune become landless, while the primitive
system of agriculture remains unimproved.

Up to this point I have dealt with the so-called causes of peasant
impoverishment which are much talked of, but which are, in my
opinion, only of secondary importance. I pass now to those which
are more tangible and which have exerted on the condition of the
peasantry a more palpable influence. And, first, inordinate
taxation.

This is a very big subjec