CHAPTER XVIII

FURTHER IMPRESSIONS OF THE DUMA

_May 23rd._

Every time I pay a fresh visit to the Duma I am struck by the originality of the appearance of its members. There is a Polish member who is dressed in light blue tights, a short Eton jacket and Hessian boots. He has curly hair, and looks exactly like the hero of the “Cavalleria Rusticana.” There is a Polish member who is dressed in a long white flannel coat reaching to his knees, adorned with an intricate pattern of dark crimson braid, and he also wears a long, soft, brown sleeveless cloak hanging from his shoulders, bordered with vermilion stripes. There are some Socialists who wear no collars, and there is, of course, every kind of head-dress you can conceive. The second, and what is to me the principal impression of the Duma, is the familiar ease with which the members speak; some of them speak well, and some of them speak badly, but they all speak as if they had spoken in Parliament all their lives, without the slightest evidence of nervousness or shyness. The sittings of the Duma are like a meeting of acquaintances in a club or a _café_. There is nothing formal about them. The member walks up to the tribune and sometimes has a short conversation with the President before beginning his speech. Sometimes when he is called to order he indulges in a brief explanation. The last sitting I attended they did their work in a most business-like manner and got through it fairly quickly and without many speeches. The peasants think there is too much speaking altogether. One of them said to me, “There are people here who have no right to be here.” “Who?” I asked. “Popes, for instance,” he said. “Why shouldn’t Popes be members?” I asked. “Because they get 200 roubles a year,” he answered; “what more can they want?” If this principle were carried out in England there would be no members of Parliament at all.

Nobody can possibly say the Duma is disorderly; it takes itself with profound seriousness. Only one person has made a joke so far. But there have been many dramatic moments; for instance, when the President announced that he was not to be received by the Emperor, and when for the first time, in breathless silence, one of the Under Ministers spoke from the Ministerial Bench. The beauty of the hall in which the members sit is increased by its outlook, for the windows form a semicircle behind the President’s chair and they look out on a sheet of water and trees; a kind of Watteau-Versailles landscape where _fêtes galantes_ were once probably held. Two peasants cross-questioned me narrowly the other day about England and English Parliamentary institutions. They asked me if there was an income tax in England, what sort of education I had received, what was the state of agriculture in England, what was the rotation of the crops (to which question I gave a vaguely complicated answer), and how long the House of Commons had existed.

On Monday morning an amusing incident occurred in the Lobby; on the notice-board a telegram from the _Temps_ was pinned, in which it was said that the demands of the Duma were unreasonable. One of the peasants strongly objected to this, and said that it might influence the peasants. It was pointed out to him that telegrams were posted in the House of Commons and in all Parliaments. He then said, “Why don’t they put up all the telegrams? Why do they choose that telegram in

## particular? Besides, the English House of Commons has existed for

centuries; our Parliament is being born, and to do that sort of thing is like interfering with a woman when she is giving birth to a child.” If it be urged that the members of the Duma have spoken a great deal, I should like to remind my readers that they have got through a great deal of business in a short time. They passed the rules with regard to closure and the Address comparatively quickly, and they have now their Agrarian Bill ready for discussion.

Last Sunday I spent the afternoon at Peterhof, a suburb of St. Petersburg, where the Emperor lives. There in the park amidst the trees the splashing waterfalls and the tall fountains, “les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres,” the lilac bushes, and the song of many nightingales, the middle classes were enjoying their Sunday afternoon and the music of a band. In this beautiful and not inappropriate setting suddenly the Empress of Russia passed in an open carriage, without any escort, looking as beautiful as a flower. I could not help thinking of Marie Antoinette at the Trianon, and I wondered whether three thousand swords would leap from their scabbards on her behalf.

ST. PETERSBURG, _May 24th_.

One is repeatedly told by the best authorities that it is a mistake to compare what is taking place now in Russia with the French Revolution. It is, I know, misleading, and yet I cannot help thinking that, besides the fact of all revolutions having more or less the same fundamental causes, and proceeding, broadly speaking, on the same lines, there are certain superficial resemblances of detail between the two movements which are startling. What occurred in Russia last year was, properly speaking, a prologue; it was not comparable to the events of 1789, because we had not in Russia yet reached the period which corresponds to 1789. But now with the opening of the Duma it seems to me that we are reaching this point. This evening a Russian friend of mine asked me to glance at a short manual of French history which was lying on the table and to notice how striking the resemblance is between the account of the opening of the States-General and that of the Duma.

Before discussing this point there is a greater and more important resemblance to be noted, namely, that the Constitutional Democrats or the Cadets are not only playing the part, but are in their essence the same thing, as the Tiers-État in France. The Constitutional Democrats represent the whole of the educated middle class of Russia, and they are championing the rights and the wishes of the peasants. It is, therefore, a case, if ever, of saying like Sieyès: “Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État?—La nation. Qu’est-il?—Rien. Que doit-il être?—Tout.” Up to now the Tiers-État in Russia has been politically nothing. In the future it will probably be everything.

What do the Cadets want? I find the answer in my French history. “Établir l’unité politique et sociale de la nation par l’égalité devant la loi et la garantir par la liberté, c’était là, en deux mots, tout l’esprit de 1789.” That is also the whole spirit of 1906. People both in Russia as well as abroad minimise the pretensions of the Cadets because they are unaware of the existence, or rather of the nature, of the middle class in Russia. This is not surprising, because the middle class, besides having been denied all access to political life, has produced no startlingly great men in the branches of production which obtain popular fame. The great Russian writers and artists came nearly all from the aristocracy or from the peasantry. Men who have contributed much to modern science have abounded in the middle class, but the fame of such men is rarely popular. But now the work which the Cadets have so far accomplished politically is a work which needs not a few great men, but a compact mass of men who are agreed.

To go back to the French Revolution. It is striking to read sentences such as the following, describing the opening of the States-General: “Dès le 2 mai tous les députés furent présentés au roi; le 4, ils se rendirent en procession solennelle à l’église de Saint-Louis.... L’étiquette avait assigné aux députés du Tiers un modeste vêtement noir; ils furent couverts d’applaudissements. Les habits brodés de la noblesse passèrent au milieu du silence.... Le 5 mai s’ouvrirent les États.... Le roi était sur son trône, entouré des princes du sang; sur les degrés se tenait la cour. Le reste de la salle était occupé par les trois ordres ... le roi exprima, en quelques nobles paroles, ses vœux pour le bonheur de la nation, convia les États à travailler, en les engageant à remédier aux maux, sans se laisser entraîner au désir exagéré d’innovations, qui s’est emparé des esprits.” The powers which were conferred upon the States-General were similar, both as regards their extent and their limitations, to those of the Duma, and the spirit in which they were given then was just the same as that in which they have been given here. The members of the States-General cheered the King. And the silence with which the members of the Duma met the Emperor recalls the phrase of the Bishop of Chartres to the National Assembly, after the taking of the Bastille, “Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.” Unhappily the lesson is not generally learnt.

The Duma worked hard last week to finish the debate on the reply to the Speech from the Throne. The third reading was passed at three o’clock in the morning last Friday. It must be noted that the majority of the Duma seem to have made a grievous mistake in refusing to add a clause to their address deprecating the murder of policemen by anarchists; only five members of the Right supported this clause. Later on Friday morning the President of the Chamber asked for an audience of the Emperor, and it was thought that no time would be lost in letting him present the address, since all Russia was waiting breathless for the event. Friday passed, Saturday also, and Sunday, and conflicting rumours as to the reception of the President by the Emperor were continually spreading in the city.

Late on Sunday night it became known that the Emperor had refused to receive the President and his deputation, and it was ordained that the address should be presented through official channels. The news was not believed at first. The blunder seemed too great. Somebody had prophesied to me on Sunday that such a course would be adopted, as a joke, never dreaming that it would really be the case. On Monday morning it was announced in the newspapers, and when I arrived at the Duma, I found that the place was in a state of agitation. “The Government is defying us,” was the general expression. An official remarked that the farce was over; that the Duma would proceed to make a fool of itself by some explosion of violence, and discredit itself for ever. This did not occur. A short meeting of the party was held in one of the Committee rooms, and Professor Milioukov, in an eloquent speech, pointed out the extreme folly of any policy of violence, and his party agreed with him unanimously. This lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Then the debate opened; the President announced the intimation he had received as regards his audience. M. Aladin made a speech in which he gave expression to the general resentment at the way in which the Duma had been treated. Professor Kovolievski analysed the situation, and illustrated it with parallels from the procedure of other countries, and then the House went on to the business of the day with unruffled serenity.

Considering the intense bitterness of feeling created by the action of the Emperor, the behaviour of the Duma was miraculous in its good sense and moderation. But the fact that this action was received quietly does not wipe out its effect as an irreparable blunder. The peasants were more incensed than all, even the most conservative of the peasants. One of them said to me: “The Emperor would not receive our delegates,” in a tone of deep resentment, and this evening the telegrams tell us that the feeling created in the provinces where the news has arrived is alarmingly bitter. It is a melancholy fact that if a course is fatal it will probably be taken. I have begun to think that the higher authorities here are destined to take no single step which is not fatal. When one reads the history of France, one understands people making the mistakes they made, as they had not the glaring example of the past before them; but it is hard to imagine how people who have read the history of France can persist in making the very same mistakes over again. Probably the Government relies—and perhaps rightly—on the troops when the inevitable struggle comes. I asked a peasant member of the Duma yesterday what he thought about that; he said that he had talked with many soldiers, and that they would refuse to fight if it was to be against the Duma. The peasant may be mistaken; he may be cherishing an illusion. But what is undeniable is the fact that the existence of the Duma entirely changes the situation of the Army in the event of a great rising. Because the soldiers now know that, if the Duma falls, the struggle of the peasants for land and liberty is lost, and the cause of peasants is their cause, because they are peasants. In 1789 Paris was full of troops for the purpose of keeping order. Paris was like an armed camp. Eleven soldiers of the Guard were arrested in July for their opinions. The National Assembly demanded the dispersal of the troops, “dont la présence irritait les esprits,” and Mirabeau, commenting on the line of conduct adopted by the advisers of the King, put the following question: “Ont-ils observé par quel funeste enchainement de circonstances les esprits les plus sages sont jetés hors des limites de la modération, et par quelle impulsion terrible un peuple enivré se précipite vers des excès, dont la première idée l’eût fait frémir?”

_May 24th._

I was talking to-night with a very cultivated Russian officer whom I had known in Manchuria, who was a great admirer of Rudyard Kipling. He said the “Jungle Book” was one of his favourite books. He said he thought there was a certain kind of Jingoism to which he considered it weak on Rudyard Kipling’s part to stoop. He did not mean the patriotism which inspired his work in the sense of praise of England; but the passages which were directed against other countries, such as France or Russia. He cited the story “The Man that Was.” He said he knew a true story of an Englishman made prisoner in the Crimean War. This Englishman had been very ill during his captivity and was taken care of by a Russian family. When peace was declared he returned to England. Two years afterwards he died, and his mother had been so touched by the way in which he had been looked after by the Russians with whom he had lived and by the way he had always spoken of them, that she sent them a ring which had belonged to him and a lock of his hair. He gave me the names. He said he always wished to write and tell Kipling about this.

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