Part 19
The degree of administrative responsibility for this condition is of course not to be definitely laid down. Much manifestly is due to natural conditions, national character, and historic handicaps; and some of the resultants would be the same under any administrative policy. Russia in her great area has had a sparse population. She has not, like her sister nations, and preëminently America, been able to lay the rest of the world under teeming contribution to her citizenship. She has had only her natural increase, and no such record as that of the United States has been possible. The Slav is not commercial, but agricultural. He has remained poor, and has had relatively very small resources to devote to what have proved our two greatest developing forces--internal improvement and education.
It is, however, a matter directly involved in government that, with this low standard of national living, there is the correlated fact of extremely high national expenditure. An immense budget of two billion roubles, ordinary expenditure, is annually met, which the war-loans raised to a total, for some years, of over three billions.
[Illustration: DRAGOON CONSTABLE RUSSIAN TYPES]
It is the general belief that a large part of the public funds is frittered away in needless waste, with multitudes of idling clerks and sinecure officials. Granting the benefit of doubt, assuming that the Administration’s corruption and inefficiency are exaggerated, and supposing that the public money is in the main honestly and productively spent, it is still a very serious question if any public service rendered by the agents of Government can correspond to or justify the immense burden of taxation heaped upon a people whose economic distress is so terrible.
The weight of the tax-levy crushing the peasants, whose improvident habits aggravate their want, is, for most, unescapable unless they follow the emigrant’s road to Siberia. The rate-gatherer can take anything the mujik has, save his last coat, his last horse, his seed-grain for next year. He is, with fateful frequency, forced to hire himself out to whoever will use his services, and this during the brief summer season which is so supremely essential if he is to attend to his own crops and fields. One landowner relates that he has seen paid an average of five roubles ($2.50) a month for farm-laborers, including men, women, and children, during June, July, and August.
Under the old system the method of rate-levy on the “souls” in a family weighed inequitably. Census revision was delayed in one instance, personally related, by over twenty-three years. A family taxed, twenty-three years before, on a father, four brothers, and two adult sons,--seven souls,--was still assessed for seven males, whether the family had increased to twenty, or been reduced to one. Each member of the household was responsible for the total.
It is related that whole families in Samara, reduced by the fearful cholera epidemic of some years back from scores of men to a dozen or ten, had to leave their home-country for Siberia to escape the load of their dead brothers.
Discussing the economic loss of the years of military service, one of the country nobles related an incident. He told of ordering the dead leaves and branches cleared out of his lake. Ordinarily, he said, he did not go near the work or let the peasants come near his château, for there was a good deal of class-hostility where he lives. But he was interested in the lake because the branches were killing some specially cherished fish, so he went down through the woods and was surprised to see nobody working. All the men were crowded round a peasant whom he had cited as an example of those who, though unlettered, had great capacity. This man had served seven years in the navy and could neither read nor write, a commentary upon what the service training was. He was declaiming on politics, and the squire stepped behind a tree, for the peasant spoke musically and well. The man was telling about his naval service: “Seven years on the boats I have been, brothers, and every three months I got ninety kopecks to buy a string for the crucifix and to cut my hair. I had no money for tobacco, none to send home to my wife in all this time, and I came home without a kopeck. Seven years of my life I have given to the Czar. What has he given me? What has he given you?” The landowner stepped from behind the tree and faced the group of startled peasants. “You have heard, your honor? Well it is true, it is true!”
The measure which under existing land-conditions would most directly raise the standard of life is the improvement of the mediæval agricultural system, and this depends upon the intelligence of the people at large. Scientific farming needs technical knowledge, yet of the great sums collected, a very small portion goes to education. The Nation spends for it but forty-three million roubles, the Semstvos but twenty million roubles, or together one eighth of the military budget.
A tedious, inefficient course in Slavonic, with the prayer-books as text, a smattering of modern Russian, sometimes mathematics as far as multiplication and division,--this is the state education of the privileged few of the peasants’ children. Whatever small amount of real knowledge is gained is quickly submerged in the ocean of ignorance at home. The percentage of illiteracy is very great. The record gives Switzerland five, Germany seven, Great Britain ten, France fifteen, Russia eighty-four.
It is argued that for the bulk of the population, under existing material conditions, schools are of small use. The lack, in the general poverty, of the very primary materials,--paper, pencils, books; of proper shoes and clothes; the unsuitableness of the houses of the peasants as places for the children to prepare their lessons in, with no spot to put their books or to do their tasks and with no available light--all these things strike at the very root of education. The population must be raised economically to the point where the elementals of existence are assured, before the incidental costs of schools can be met by the peasantry. However, there has been coming to Russia during the last generation, in a great wave, the kind of education that made the American West--the education of expansion, of the founding of towns, the planting of new industries, the building of new railroads, the opening of better navigation-routes, the enlistment of foreign capital; all the intelligence and enlightenment that attends a real industrial, commercial, and material quickening.
Beyond these social and economic factors a large count is set against the bureaucratic system for the conduct of administration. The suppression of personal liberty, of freedom of speech, the abuse of power by arbitrary officials, remorseless repression, ruthlessly carried out, racial oppression, frightful cruelty in the prisons and exile stations;--it is a terrible indictment that has been drawn. The close of the Japanese War opened a new “Smutnoe Vremya,” or time of trouble. Industrial wars, riots in Baku, uprisings in the Caucasus, seizure of cities by Social Democrats,--so went the disturbances throughout Russia, the white terror above grappling with the red terror beneath.
The situation which the forces of order were required to meet was extraordinary. The balance-wheel of the human mind, and all sense of proportion among classes of the people, seemed at times to be lost. Barbaric as the administration condemnations undoubtedly were, the individuals were not infrequently innocent only by curious standards. In a broad view one must confess that on both sides were rights and wrongs. The system, far more than individuals, was at fault. But while a system so linked to violence and oppression could not longer be suffered, the way out could not come through yielding to men in insurrection.
Salvation lay along the path that the Emperor opened. His rescript of October 17, 1905, proclaimed a National Duma.
The pregnant clauses in the summons to a national legislature were these:--
We direct the Government to carry out our inflexible will in the following manner:--
1. To grant the population the immutable foundation of civic liberty based on real inviolability of the person and freedom of conscience, speech, union, and association.
2. To call to participation in the Duma those classes of the population now completely deprived of electoral rights.
3. To establish it as an immutable rule that no law can come into force without the approval of the State Duma.
The ebullition of sentiment that followed these decrees was extraordinary. All the bitterness and discontent that had weltered through the years of distress were metamorphosed into a glowing hope. Ambition and aspiration became a fervor. The delirium went electrically through all classes during the few following weeks of uncensored press and unfettered meetings. The educated were fed with every sort of essay upon what would be the result of the new order, and exhortation to keep spread the young wings for national ascension. Among the unlettered peasants, pictures circulated showing glorified cartoons of the risen Russia. One of the most widely distributed of these celebrated the Imperial Svoboda Manifesto. The genius of the Slav stood forth: one hand rested on a tablet marked “Zakon” (Law), the other unfurled a banner inscribed in blazing red letters, “Svoboda” (Liberty), below which followed freedom of speech, of forming associations, of holding meetings, of religion, the inviolability of the home, and amnesty for political prisoners. Peasants and workmen were grouped around, and above them stood an heroic figure representing the Duma which was to halo all national activity with law. The rising sun, illumining the Tauride Palace, cast its glow and glamour over the prophecy.
The ukase had gone forth to give the widest representation at the polls. The command was followed out in a system by which every class had its own deputies in the nominating colleges that elected the Duma members. Among the peasantry each _volost_ had two deputies; every thousand industrials had one, the nobility, the salaried clerks, the bourgeois in the cities, the Cossack stanitzas, the boards of trade, the universities, the Holy Synod, the aboriginal Buriat tribesmen,--each had special representation. Uninterfered with for the most part by officialdom, all Russia crowded to the polls, every man believing that his ideal was now, at last, on the eve of realization. The peasants who called for land, the workmen who wished for higher wages, the Intellectuals with their slogan of universal education, the submerged races with dreams of reborn nationalities, the ambitious with visions of power, the venal with hopes of plunder, each and all thought their hopes were to spring at once into the actual and the visual.
In such a fever-time the men to whom official service meant the slow toilsome improvement of conditions by self-sacrificing devotion to the routine of administration, who could offer as pre-nomination pledges only earnest study and conscientious action on the legal matters presented, were passed by in the hot aspiring canvass for delegates. Those who believed all things and promised all things, whose fervency of expectation fed the universal hope, whose preaching held that, the way once cleared, Russia could at a bound reach the plane to which other countries had so long and toilsomely struggled, those of fiery faith which would consume every obstacle--these were the men whom the people ratified and whom the nation sent to St. Petersburg for the first Duma.
It was a band of hot heads and eager hearts that assembled, echoing their constituents’ desires, crying for all things and at once. They were saturated with the history of the French Revolution, they felt confident that their coming meant the end of the old régime, and belief in their own power was the pledge of the future. Their first official act threw down the gauntlet to autocracy. In the reply to the Crown, passed during their first day’s session, the final paragraphs read:--
The most numerous part of the population, the hard-working peasants, impatiently await the satisfaction of their acute want of land; and the first Russian State Duma would be recreant in its duty were it to fail to establish a law to meet this primary want by resorting to the use of lands belonging to the State, the Crown, the Royal family, all monastic and state lands, also private landed property, on the principles of eminent domain.
The spiritual union of Russia’s different nationalities is possible only by meeting the needs of each one of them, and by preserving and developing their national characteristics. The Duma will try to satisfy these wants.
Sirs, the Duma expects of you full political amnesty, as the first pledge of mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Czar and his people.
It was apparent that if these clauses did not contemplate the confiscation of private property, which was openly advocated by the peasant deputies, and the substitution of a “spiritual union” of Russia’s subsidiary peoples for the real hegemony, there was fair _prima-facie_ evidence for thinking that they did. While a general amnesty would render less than justice to a large number of citizens, it would cover as well the bomb-shell anarchists, whose imprisonment was as necessary to the protection of society as that of any other dangerous criminals. The tenor of these demands, the speeches of the deputies, and the avowed desires of their majority, brought matters to a crisis. Not alone the autocracy, but national unity, and the jurisdiction of the courts, were called openly and violently into question. When such a challenge is offered a government, it must answer or abdicate.
Unostentatiously, the Imperial Administration poured troops into St. Petersburg from Kronstadt and the northern garrisons. The governors at Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw, and the big industrial centres were notified to concentrate their loyal regiments. The whole country was mapped out like a checker-board. It was now only a question of when the authorities would act.
On the night of July 8, the troops in St. Petersburg were called to arms. They marched with machine-like precision to appointed stations throughout the city. With the dawn every strategic point was held by the soldiery, and a battalion ringed about the deserted Duma hall. In the silence was read the imperial rescript. The first Duma had ceased to exist.
The dissolution of this national parliament had come as a stroke of lightning. The venerable representative Petrunkevitch told how he was awakened at five in the morning with the news that the city was under martial law and that soldiers with fixed bayonets were at the Duma doors. Hurried consultations were held with groups of colleagues, and finally the word was passed to meet at Viborg in Finland. At the little inn there, the pressing crowd of one hundred and sixty-nine fugitive deputies signed their manifesto. It called for the cessation of tax-payments, the refusal of conscription, and reclaimed the freedom of Russia. But the insurrection, the uprising in their support! Not a regiment came to assist them, not a city rallied to their call, not a Mir responded. For a few weeks the signers were free. Then the police took them, one by one.
Dully unprotesting, the public received the news of the dissolution of the Duma and the arrest of the deputies. The majority of Russians did not want disunion, did not want the overthrow of vested rights. Each wanted some specialty of his own. Yet here was the resultant of each constituency’s crystallized desires. The people had accepted the leadership of those who had held out great hopes, impotently. The Government had crushed the men whose power meant social and economic, as well as administrative, revolution. In the blow it had perforce shattered the dreams as well.
[Illustration: THE TVERSKAIA GATE LOUBIANSKAIA PLACE STREET SCENES IN MOSCOW]
Humiliated by the contemptuous condemnation of their chosen representatives, bitterly disillusioned, the people at large stolidly acquiesced in the extinction.
The voting for the second Duma, which followed some months later, was almost perfunctory. Those who had chronically wished to agitate, and those put forward by the Administration in an effort to pack the membership, composed the bulk of the deputies. Moderates, hopeful of progress with order, stayed at home, disgusted with both sides. The result was a second violent, wrangling Duma, offending like the first, and in its turn ignominiously snuffed out.
The year 1907 saw universal disappointment, cynicism, and skepticism. In the literature, the lassitude of the nation was shown, and morbid despair reflected the thwarted hopes, the agonies, the confusion of the people. The bitterness in the _Lazarus_ of Andreyev, the decadence in the _Sanin_ of Artzybashev, mirrored the people’s mood, and the shadow of a dark destiny brooded over all. To fill the cup, the reaction, coldly triumphant, was able to bring the members of the first national parliament before the bar for high treason in signing the Viborg Manifesto.
In the stifling Hall of Justice in St. Petersburg, like a resurrection of the first Duma, sat the hundred and sixty-nine signers, grouped as of old by party affiliations. Each man was called upon to justify his actions. Many had signed the Viborg document in the belief that the people would rise in bloody rebellion, and they issued what was, to their fevered view, advice of moderation. One deputy after another stood erect to answer for his deeds. If the men had been carried from liberty into license, at least they had been fired by intense belief in themselves and in their mission. Impressive were the solemn declarations of those who expected nothing less than long imprisonment for speaking out, now, a defiance to the ruling power. It was currently rumored that should the former President of the Duma, Dolgoroukov, justify his action, his penalty was to be three years’ imprisonment; the others would serve one; while liberty was reported to be the bribe for any who would confess a fault. Yet almost to a man these old deputies rose to declare that they still stood by all that they had done.
“I did not care, and do not care if our action was unconstitutional. We found that we must rely,” said Nabokov, “on the highest law, the will of the people.”
Kakoshtin, of the Cadet Party, and a professor in Moscow University, declared: “Whatever fate awaits us, it will be nothing compared to the sufferings of our predecessors who have fallen in the fight for liberty.”
Three members of the “Group of Toil” declared that the first Duma would be an encouragement to the people to overthrow the present system.
Mourontzev, and Prince Dolgoroukov were there, leading members of the first Duma. Petrunkevitch ended his speech: “If you open for us the doors of the prison, we will quietly enter with the knowledge that we have fulfilled a duty to the Fatherland.”
Burning words these, but they waked not an echo. The Administration was in complete control of the situation. Repression was the order of the day, repression as widespread and efficient as in the days of Nicholas I; the autocracy, buttressed by an army which, however lacking in discipline and supposedly honeycombed by disaffection, nevertheless rallied still to the command and service of the master.
At this time there was issued the call for a third Duma. As Prime Minister sat cold Stolypin, whose reputation as a governor-general was the reverse of liberal. He had risen by virtue of rigid efficiency. His best friends did not know his beliefs. He had dissolved both the first and second assemblies, and had done his best to pack the third. “I want a Duma that will work, not talk,” he declared.
The murmurers said that the Russian Parliament had become a farce; that the administrative officers were following to the best of their ability instructions from St. Petersburg to deliver a roster of safe men; that those who had agitated unwisely were being removed from the likelihood of candidature; that the Senate, with its membership of retired officials, had so construed each provision of the election law that the unquiet classes were as far as possible disfranchised; that every influence was being used to make the third a “dummy Duma,” hopelessly manipulated into the reactionary camp.
Throughout this time of shattered ideals and discouragement, a very small band of real believers still held high the torch of faith. Most prominent among them was Alexander Goutchkov, he who among the Moscow Constitutional Democrats (the “Cadets” of the earlier times) had in a critical Polish debate of the party spoken and voted alone for a united Russia.
When at length the third Duma had assembled, the so-called Octobrists or Moderates, who had a small plurality, prepared a reply to the Speech from the Throne. Very respectful it was, with no demand for general amnesty or suggestions of confiscation or national devolution. It read in part:--
We wish to devote all our ability, knowledge, and experience to strengthening the form of government which was given new life by the Imperial will; to pacify the Fatherland, to assure respect for the laws, to be a buttress for the greatness and power of indivisible Russia.
Unexceptionable, this, to the higher powers, save that in the preamble in the original draft, the Czar’s historic title of “Autocrat” had not been given him. A debate followed, and brought about the declarations which defined the parties of the third Duma. Bishop Mitrophane, of the Right, or reactionary party, rose. He said in the name of his group that the Address to the Throne must contain the phrase “Autocrat of all the Russias.” Lawyer Plevako seconded, threatening to secede if the proper title were not incorporated. Paul Milyoukov spoke hotly for the opposing Cadets, asking whether the country was or was not under a constitution. He declared the new election law to be contrary to the original ukase and an act of force. Others of the Left, among them orator Maklakov of the Cadets, declaimed against the election law by which this Duma was constituted. They were not politic, these spokesmen, but harsh and dogmatic, yielding none of the courtier-respect that makes up for so much absence of real yielding. For the Octobrists, Alexander Goutchkov led the debate. His speech revealed that they operated, not with the bludgeon, but with the Damascus blade. They were of flexible obstinacy and opportunism, stirring up no sleeping dogs, bending to rise again. Goutchkov slipped adroitly into his speech the disputed word constitution, thus: “We do not believe that the Czar’s power has been diminished. The Emperor has become free, for the Constitution has delivered him from court camarillas and the hierarchy of chinovniks.” Thanks largely to his tact, the Octo brists won. The Address, without “Autocrat,” was passed by a vote of two to one. But it passed at the cost of self-separation by the right wing of the reactionaries, who withdrew.
The answer of the Administration came sharply from Prime Minister Stolypin:--
The manifesto of imperial power has borne witness at all times to the people that the autocratic power, created by history and the free will of the monarch, constitutes the most precious benefit of the political state of Russia; for it is this power and this free will that are alone capable, as the tutelary source of existing constitutions, of saving Russia in times of trouble, of guaranteeing the state from the dangers that threaten it, and of bringing back the country to the way of order and historic truth.
He called upon the Chamber to incorporate the recognition of the “Autocracy.”