tlHluln
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT 
 IN RUSSIA 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL VINOGRADOFF, F.B.A. 
 
 \ V 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF OXFORD, SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MOSCOW 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E-P-DUTTON & COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BKKNDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
 
 HPHE little book which I submit to the 
 
 -*- public is mainly based on lectures 
 
 delivered on various occasions during the 
 
 o 
 
 war-year the 1915 Henry Sidgwick lecture at 
 Newnham College, Cambridge, an address to 
 the Literary and Philosophical Society of 
 Leicester, a lecture at Toynbee Hall, London. 
 Lectures do not lend themselves to the 
 detailed analysis of a subject, but they may 
 gain in clearness what they lack in wealth 
 of information. I venture, in any case, to 
 address my readers as if they were members 
 of a sympathetic audience. 
 
 OXFORD, November, 1915
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PACE 
 
 OUTLINES OF RUSSIAN EVOLUTION . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT . . 31 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 POPULAR EDUCATION . . . . 71 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR . . . 94
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT 
 IN RUSSIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUTLINES OF RUSSIAN EVOLUTION 
 
 ENGLAND and Russia seem at first glance to 
 stand at the opposite poles of European 
 civilisation : the classical country of constitutional- 
 ism, the centre of industry, the great mart of sea 
 intercourse on one side, and the Holy Russia of 
 Tsardom, the home of agricultural peasantry, the 
 vast background of Continental Europe on the other. 
 And yet, for the unprejudiced observer the two 
 countries possess many common traits : we may 
 notice at the outset that the British are not only 
 insular but cosmopolitan, and so are the Russians. 
 The insularity of the Briton is not only the conscious 
 reflex of a geographical situation, but the necessary 
 outcome of a civilisation moulded within the 
 compass of three seas. And yet the commercial 
 and political intercourse with all the nations and 
 B
 
 2 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 states of the earth has imparted to the British 
 people interests and sympathies of a widely cosmo- 
 politan character. In China and in Turkey, in 
 Italy and in Greece, in Albania and in Serbia 
 genuine Britishers have been intimately connected 
 with the destinies of the people and keen to realise 
 their aspirations. In Russia, again, although the 
 nation is still struggling to emerge from its position 
 in the background of Europe and although this 
 situation in the rear has given a peculiar stamp to 
 Russian character, people are alive almost to excess 
 to the variety and the wealth of universal ideas. 
 There is hardly any other community which gives 
 so much time and energy to the study of foreign 
 languages, foreign literature, foreign history. This 
 similarity is far deeper than one might have sup- 
 posed; the present crisis has brought home even 
 to the man in the street the fact that there is a 
 vast field for observation and enterprise in this 
 mysterious country which used to be dismissed 
 with a few superficial remarks borrowed from 
 German sources. 
 
 In approaching the subject we must emancipate 
 ourselves entirely from the official sequence of great 
 events. It is not the history of ministers and 
 generals, nor the tales of conquest and diplomacy, 
 that will form the substance of my discourse. At
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 3 
 
 the back of all such pageants and events stands the 
 living personality of the nation, and it is only facts 
 relevant to the understanding of this personality, 
 of its growth and education, that will have to be 
 described and examined. They may, I hope, serve 
 as an introduction to a very remarkable and power- 
 ful individuality which is not likely to be concealed 
 much longer by the wall of German malevolence 
 and obstruction. 
 
 The subject is so wide that we have from the 
 outset to impose certain limitations to its treatment. 
 Twentieth-century Russia has inherited intricate 
 problems of great magnitude in many spheres of 
 her activity. The acquisition of new territories 
 and nationalities by Imperial conquest has pro- 
 ceeded more rapidly than the welding together of 
 provinces and races into a coherent whole : to cite 
 only one egregious instance, the condition of the 
 Jews is an open sore and a scandal which requires 
 immediate redress. The necessity of constitutional 
 changes and of firm legality has been amply 
 illustrated within the last decade by the conflicts 
 of revolution and reaction. Again, in the field of 
 religious life, the established Church, conscious and 
 proud of the immense influence it has exerted over 
 the course of Russian history, and armed with means 
 of secular coercion, stands confronted by a growing
 
 4 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 movement towards free conscience and free thought. 
 If it were my task to present a kind of mosaic of 
 present-day impressions it would be necessary to 
 take account to some extent of all these hetero- 
 geneous and yet converging conflicts. But I prefer 
 to follow a different plan. I want not to disperse 
 but to concentrate your attention on one vital issue 
 which, to my mind, is bound to react on everything 
 else. If Russia succeeds in building up a strong 
 and active system of self-government, a basis will 
 be formed on which all other problems may be 
 approached and solved. Subordinate nationalities 
 will be able to preserve their individuality without 
 losing touch with the Empire ; constitutional and 
 legal progress will obtain a firm foundation in socia 
 life ; religious freedom will be advanced and 
 supported by the organic cohesion of local bodies. 
 There may be differences of opinion as to the extent 
 of such beneficial influences, but there can hardly 
 be a doubt about the direction in which the principle 
 of self-government will assert itself. This being so, 
 it is a question of primary importance for all 
 speculations as to the future of Russia, whether the 
 actual facts of history and of present practice 
 warrant the view that self-government is not only 
 a desideratum of Russian life but a factor in being, 
 the importance of which is growing apace. This is
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 5 
 
 the cardinal question to which my course is intended 
 to provide an answer. Incidentally its treatment 
 will give us opportunities to review various other 
 aspects of Russian life, but the main thread of the 
 discourse must not slip from our hands. 
 
 Before approaching the main subject of the dis- 
 course let us consider the turning points of the main 
 current of Russian development during the modern 
 era : such a preliminary sketch is necessary in order 
 to assign to the facts their proper historical per- 
 spective. One more introductory remark has to be 
 made : when I speak of the main current of Russian 
 life I mean the evolution of the Russian nationality, 
 comprising not only the Great Russians of old 
 Muscovy and Siberia, but the Little Russians who 
 joined them in the decisive struggle against the 
 Poles and the White Russians reconquered from 
 Lithuania in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 The Ukraina movement of which there has been 
 so much talk lately does not constitute for the great 
 majority of Little Russians a motive of political 
 cleavage, but an assertion of cultural peculiarities : 
 they ought to have been freely conceded by the 
 Government if it had been wiser, and they are 
 bound to be recognised in a near future. Ukraina 
 separatism does exist and has sometimes led to an
 
 6 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 unnatural alliance between excited groups and 
 Germany or Austria, but it would be preposterous 
 to suppose that the people of Kiev or Kharkoff do not 
 realise their fundamental affinity with the rest of 
 their Great Russian kinsmen, and any policy con- 
 structed on such a surmise would prove as disastrous 
 as the pact of Hetman Mazeppa with the Swedes. 
 The Cossacks have shed their blood in innumerable 
 Russian wars in a very different spirit from that 
 which animates unfortunate Czech and Serb soldiers 
 driven by Austria-Hungary. Variations of folk- 
 lore and language do not alter the fact that the 
 main current of modern Russian life embraces both 
 Moscow and Kiev, as well as Petrograd, and that 
 no of the 170 millions of Russian subjects are 
 following its course. 
 
 We started by taking notice of certain analogies 
 between the situation of Russia and that of Great 
 Britain. Let us now take into account the funda- 
 mental difference between the two countries. 
 Whereas the horizon of Great Britain opens freely 
 in all directions, the Russian people have been, as it 
 were, slowly revolving from East to West in order 
 to reach an outlook free from obstruction. 
 
 This process of turning round began some three 
 hundred years ago, and is not quite completed 
 even now.
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 7 
 
 I am alluding, of course, to the powerful impetus 
 imparted to Russian life by the conversion from 
 Muscovite to European civilisation. It was drasti- 
 cally embodied in Peter the Great's well-known 
 reforms, including, as they did, not only the organi- 
 sation of an army drilled according to Western 
 methods, the building of a sea-going fleet, the 
 acquisition of the Baltic shores, the foundation of 
 a new capital in close proximity to Sweden and to 
 Germany, but also changes in the alphabet, the 
 opening of various schools, the obligation for men 
 of the privileged class to shave and to wear short, 
 tight-fitting garments. 
 
 The age of Peter the Great forms undoubtedly a 
 convenient landmark in popular history, but for 
 students the transformation began earlier, and it 
 was not only a secular and technical one, but a 
 religious and cultural movement as well. It 
 coincided with the accession of the Romanoff 
 dynasty, which symbolises the national revival 
 against Polish aggression and the reconstitution of 
 a firm State after an " age of trouble." In the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the nation was 
 directing its energies towards the East and organis- 
 ing to meet the demands of the struggle against the 
 Tartars on the Volga and in the Crimea ; in the 
 seventeenth the principal front was turned towards
 
 8 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 the West, against the Swedes, and especially the 
 Poles, who nearly strangled the Muscovite State 
 in the opening years of the century and who were 
 slowly and gradually driven back from Moscow, 
 Smolensk and Kiev. In these terrible wars the 
 practical needs of military organisation, technical 
 skill and fiscal resources forcibly asserted them- 
 selves. Foreign soldiers, doctors, merchants and 
 craftsmen were called up in ever-increasing numbers, 
 chiefly Germans and Western Slavs, but also a 
 good many English and Scots. Among the first 
 commanders of troops drilled according to Western 
 methods were e.g. Sir Arthur Aston, conspicuous 
 later on in the army of Charles I, a Leslie, a Gordon, 
 etc. The formation of " foreign " settlements like 
 the famous German quarter in Moscow, still recog- 
 nisable by the names of a street and the old Lutheran 
 church built in 1654, may be regarded as the start- 
 ing point of a rapidly increasing influx of men and 
 ideas. The intercourse with the Poles and with 
 the Greek East created two other channels of 
 cultural permeation. The first conspicuous result 
 of this process was the ecclesiastical reform carried 
 out in the third quarter of the seventeenth 
 century, a reform of which Patriarch Nikon was 
 the most active promoter. Its aim was to bring 
 the Russian Church into a closer connection with
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 9 
 
 the Eastern orthodoxy by removing various debased 
 practices which had grown up in consequence of the 
 political isolation and the insufficient culture of 
 Muscovy. It was intended, among other things, to 
 obtain a purified and more rational understanding 
 of the Gospel and of Church service a kind of 
 Church Slavonic reformation adapted to the tastes 
 and requirements of orthodox Muscovy. Revised 
 versions of the Holy Books and of the various 
 services were taken in hand with the help of learned 
 monks from Mount Athos and from Kiev. The 
 characteristic practice of a simultaneous reading of 
 prayers crammed from consecutive stages of the 
 Church service was abandoned, the preaching of 
 sermons was revived, and many local customs which 
 had arisen in the Russian Church were corrected in 
 accordance with general Eastern traditions. This 
 official rejuvenation of the Church provoked the 
 stubborn opposition of the Old Ritualists, the 
 raskolniks, blindly bigoted in their unreasoning 
 clinging to errors sanctified by national usage, but 
 grand in their spirit of independence, in their 
 unconquerable protest against arbitrary ordinances 
 in matters of creed. One of them, Priest Avvakum, 1 
 sat for years in a cell at Pustosersk in the far 
 North and never ceased to reprove the Tsar for 
 1 Habakkuk.
 
 io SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 suffering the spread of new-fangled notions, to 
 exhort the pilgrims flocking to him from all parts 
 of Russia to stand firm in the old creed. When he 
 was called up, in 1667, before a synod at which two 
 dignitaries of the Eastern Church were present, 
 they reproached him with his stubborn disobedience 
 to the decrees of canonic authorities in the matter 
 of making the sign of the cross with two fingers 
 according to local Muscovite usage and not with 
 three fingers, as the rest of the Christian world 
 the Greeks, the Romans, the Poles. He said : 
 " Rome has fallen long ago and the Poles have 
 perished with it, and even your orthodoxy is a very 
 mixed one you have grown weak through the 
 violence of Turkish Mahomet, you had better come 
 to us. By the grace of God we have preserved 
 autocracy, and our orthodoxy was pure and free 
 from vice up to the time of the apostate Nikon, and 
 our Church is free of trouble." In his wonderful 
 autobiography Avvakum summarised his position 
 in the following words, worthy of a better cause : 
 " I am not clever and not learned, but this I know, 
 that all that has been transmitted to us by the 
 Holy Fathers of the Church is holy and immacu- 
 late : I hold it till death as I have received it. I do 
 not draw limits to the eternal : it has been laid 
 down before us and so let it stand until the end of
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION n 
 
 centuries." No wonder the spirit of this and 
 similar confessors commanded unbounded reverence 
 among the simple people around. When Awakum 
 was overcome one day with pity for his wife and 
 children who had to endure persecution and suffer- 
 ing for his sake, his wife said to him : " What are 
 you talking, husband, go to church, confute the 
 depravation of the heretics." 
 
 Against this unreasoning fidelity to national cus- 
 tom there reacted the consciousness of the wrongs 
 and weaknesses entailed by ignorance and backward 
 habits. This feeling was spreading more and more 
 widely and some of the best men of the age were 
 strongly affected by it. One among many, for 
 instance, was the Chamberlain of Tsar Alexis, 
 Rtistcheff, a man of singular charity and wisdom. 
 The task of helping sufferers was for him not a 
 matter of casual attention, but the constant pre- 
 occupation of his whole life. As an old man he set 
 out with the army in a campaign against the Poles, 
 and began his journey in a comfortable carriage, 
 but soon had to continue on horseback, because he 
 filled the carriage with sick and wounded. One of 
 his preoccupations was to start a leading school in 
 Moscow : he collected some thirty monks from 
 Western Russia into the St. Andrew convent 
 founded by him and succeeded in attracting pupils
 
 12 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 from the city. He attended himself, as a pupil, 
 classes of Greek, Latin and Church Slavonic. 
 
 This curious introduction to the modern history 
 of Russia is not only significant of the profound 
 religious background of Russian life ; it also sets 
 vividly before us the two groups into which the 
 Russian nation is to some extent divided even 
 now the enlightened, rather materialistic State, 
 together with the upper, highly educated classes 
 on one hand the great mass of the people, still 
 clinging to ancient manners and customs on the 
 other. Even in outward appearance one sees the 
 two societies mixed and yet distinct in the streets 
 of Moscow, Tula, Orel or any other Great Rus- 
 sian town the men in Western attire in bowlers 
 and jackets that might have been made in 
 Vienna, and the men in long garments and 
 top-boots, reminding one of Eastern lands. The 
 contrast goes, in truth, far deeper than outward 
 appearance, and the extreme views of Old Ritual- 
 ists make us realise the fact that the cleavage 
 between East and West, between the upper classes 
 brought up in European schools and the lower 
 classes following Muscovite traditions, is not worn 
 out even now, and has to be traced to this water- 
 shed of the seventeenth century. I remember a 
 quaint sight illustrating that point. A good many
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 13 
 
 years ago a party of " intellectuals " journalists 
 and University men of whom I was one, drove to 
 a settlement of the Old Ritualists in the Rogojsky 
 quarter of Moscow. We assisted at a service in 
 front of Ikons dating from before Patriarch Nikon, 
 and we listened to old-world litanies and prayers. 
 When the service which took place in the middle 
 of the church was over, we were conducted towards 
 the inner chapel of the altar. It was closed and 
 seals were affixed to the gates : they were seals of 
 different public departments put on because the 
 Government, though tolerating ordinary functions 
 in the Church, did not allow the Old Ritualists to 
 celebrate High Mass for fear of their making 
 converts among the adherents of the established 
 Church. Persecutions and annoyances of this kind 
 have ceased now, but the recollection of them is still 
 fresh and one cannot wonder at the fact that the 
 Old Ritualists likened the seals of the Ministries to 
 the seal of Antichrist described in the revelation of 
 St. John. 
 
 The dualism of Russian life is a source of peculiar 
 difficulties for the development of the country. It 
 is not easy to combine the interests and views of the 
 rich and of the poor in any community, but it is 
 doubly difficult to assure mutual understanding 
 and trust between sets which represent two different
 
 14 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 kinds of civilisation. The people of Western educa- 
 tion are striving hard to overcome this initial 
 difficulty. The expression "to go among the 
 people " has a special meaning in Russia it points 
 to the wish of making propaganda for advanced 
 political and social ideas, but it may also indicate 
 the striving towards a simpler life and a communion 
 of aspirations in which the privileged class re- 
 nounces its assumption of superior wisdom and 
 higher culture. The evolution of Modern Russia 
 is intimately connected with the gradual " solution " 
 of these discords, the overcoming of this fundamental 
 dualism of Russian life. It aims at the inclusion of 
 Russian culture within the wider sphere of universal 
 civilisation, while at the same time national origin- 
 ality should be preserved. 
 
 It cannot be denied that in its early stages the 
 process of Western orientation was powerfully 
 furthered by the policy of a strong centralistic 
 government striving towards power, wealth, external 
 efficiency. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great 
 are prominent among the leaders of this compulsory 
 enlightenment. They are both full-blooded repre- 
 sentatives of providential absolutism and the 
 civilisation which grew up under their guidance is 
 characterised by a hard, aggressive spirit of technical, 
 rationalistic utility.
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 15 
 
 Peter the Great may be regarded as the most 
 famous exponent of the utilitarian theory of enlight- 
 enment through strong government. In his mani- 
 festo published in 1702 he sets forth how all his 
 efforts and endeavours had been directed since his 
 accession towards such a rule as would secure to all 
 his subjects an increase in prosperity and welfare 
 through the maintenance of peace and order at home, 
 protection against foreign enemies and progress of 
 trade. To improve the condition of the subjects in 
 order and knowledge, and in view of the fact that 
 they were not yet sufficiently versed in these matters, 
 foreigners skilled in arts were invited from all lands 
 for the better instruction of the army, the furtherance 
 of commerce. They were promised complete freedom 
 of conscience, all sorts of privileges and a special 
 standing in law before courts empowered to decide 
 cases in which such foreigners were concerned, not 
 by Russian laws, but in accordance with Divine 
 ordinances and the civil law of Rome. It must 
 not be supposed that the official action of strong 
 government led only to mechanical compulsion : 
 society responded to it more and more, not only on 
 account of external successes, but as a result of a 
 gradual awakening to the value and beauty of 
 knowledge. A characteristic example may be seen 
 in the career of the spiritual founder of the Uni-
 
 16 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 versity of Moscow, Lomonosoff, the son of a fisher- 
 man, born on the shore of the White Sea. His zeal 
 for learning was kindled by his admiration for 
 Peter's work. At the age of twenty he came to 
 Moscow and spent five years in great poverty, while 
 acquiring the rudiments of literary education. 
 Eventually he went to Germany, where he studied 
 philosophy and science under Wolf; he was kid- 
 napped by the recruiting sergeants of the King of 
 Prussia and pressed into a grenadier regiment, but 
 succeeded in escaping and made his way back to 
 Russia. He became a professor and a leading author- 
 ity on physics, chemistry and metallurgy as well as 
 on grammar, literature and history. He was, among 
 other things, one of the first enthusiastic students 
 of electrical phenomena and the manager of a 
 school and workshop for mosaic art. The keynote 
 of his restless activity is sounded in one of his odes 
 in which he glorifies Peter the Great. 
 
 Addressing the pioneers of Russian intellectual 
 progress he exclaimed : " You, whom the father- 
 land expects to arise from its own body and whom 
 it wishes to equal men called up from foreign 
 lands, be of good cheer ! Show by your exertions 
 that Russia is able to give birth to Platos of her 
 own and to quick-witted Newtons." 
 
 Thus the successes achieved by the strong govern-
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 17 
 
 ment in the reigns of Peter, Catherine, Alexander, 
 Nicholas I were not a mere display of external 
 power. The nation did not only acquire a position 
 of vantage in the world, but it asserted its national 
 worth in many a desperate struggle and developed 
 considerably on the lines of State organisation. 
 The most curious point is, however, that although 
 the light of universal civilisation was introduced 
 for practical aims by the Government, its growth 
 and diffusion became a force independent of govern- 
 mental guidance and fetters. A momentous process 
 of internal growth proceeded under the cover of these 
 outward achievements ; it began to manifest itself 
 in a striking manner, directly after the titanic 
 struggle with Napoleon, in the shape of a free 
 and original literature : Pushkin, Kryloff, Gogol 
 testify to that awakening, but perhaps the main 
 expression of this process of ripening conscious- 
 ness is the cultural harvest of the 'forties. It 
 falls into an age when the Nicholas regime exerted 
 the most uncompromising censorship on inde- 
 pendent thought, when Kireyevsky's moderate re- 
 flections were prohibited, Shevtchenko was exiled 
 to a far-off fortress in the East for singing of Cossack 
 valour and turbulence, and Herzen had to fly over 
 the border on account of his radicalism. And 
 yet the intellectual tendencies and forces were 
 c
 
 i8 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 being accumulated by the best men of the time 
 chiefly around the Universities, but also in all other 
 centres of education and learning, in the ecclesiastical 
 seminaries, as well as in military schools. The 
 leading feature of this great revival is its philo- 
 sophical and humanistic character. The followers 
 of Peter the Great were striving to acquire know- 
 ledge for the sake of technical skill, the con- 
 temporaries of Catherine II were confident that 
 encyclopaedic rationalism has the power to solve all 
 problems by the help of scientific methods, the 
 idealists of the 'forties sought regeneration and 
 progress in raising many-sided philosophic specula- 
 tion as an appeal to the dignity and inner freedom 
 of man. The discovery of the charmed, unconquer- 
 able world of human ideals right amidst the 
 officialdom and the crude violence of the surround- 
 ing regime inspired this generation of the 'forties 
 with unbounded enthusiasm and a sensitiveness in 
 regard to all manifestations of independent thought 
 and artistic beauty, which has never been rivalled 
 either in Russia or in any other country. A figure 
 like that of Granovsky, professor of history in the 
 University of Moscow, was the very embodiment 
 of Western enlightenment and humanitarian liberal- 
 ism : he could not come forward with a direct 
 criticism of official rule, and his lectures on mediaeval
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 19 
 
 Europe, or on the connection between geographical 
 and political factors in history, were straightforward 
 and scientific, and never meant to serve as a screen 
 for allusions to modern misdoings. But his pupils 
 and educated society at large listened to every word 
 of his with rapt attention because it opened before 
 them a vista of noble, disinterested, free thought : 
 it was like a breath of fresh air penetrating 
 into the stifling atmosphere of servility and 
 superstition. However, it is not necessary for 
 me to dwell long on the ideas propagated by 
 " Westerners " like Granovsky, Herzen, Bielinsky. 
 They were the familiar ideas of European liberal- 
 ism and radicalism, though endowed with particular 
 vitality and freshness. It is more significant to 
 notice the trend of thought of another intellectual 
 set of the 'forties and 'fifties, namely, the teaching 
 of so-called Slavophiles, representing the other aspect 
 of Russian dualism. These men had also been 
 taught at the Universities and had reflected on 
 philosophical and religious problems ; they were far 
 away from the unreasoning stubbornness of the 
 Old Ritualists ; but, like the latter, they clung to the 
 belief in the peculiar genius of the Russian people 
 and sought salvation not in a repetition of Western 
 methods, but in an original contribution to the 
 general history of culture.
 
 20 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 Kireyevsky, Khomiakoff, Aksakoff formulated 
 various aspects of this view. I should like to call 
 your attention to one of them, to Constantine 
 Aksakoff on account of the importance of his 
 historical doctrine. Constantine was a dreamer, 
 entirely unfit for any other life but that of study. 
 He never married, never took up any external 
 career, lived till he was forty years of age as an 
 inmate of his father's house, and broke down at 
 once when his father died. It was a touching story 
 and an exceptional one this pining away of a 
 man who had been conspicuous for his high spirits, 
 as well as for his physical strength. Something of 
 the same fanatical earnestness pervades Constan- 
 tine's literary activity : he does not see many 
 things, he does not understand mean terms and 
 compromises, he just goes with his whole heart 
 into the few objects of his pursuits a child and a 
 giant at the same time. His main idea was, that 
 instead of looking down upon the common people 
 we have to learn from them. It is worked out in a 
 rather amusing way in a comedy entitled " Prince 
 Lupovitsky." The hero is discovered engaged in 
 conversation with friends in a Paris restaurant. He 
 tells them of his wish to go to Russia and do some- 
 thing for civilising his peasants. One of his com- 
 panions, Count Dolinsky, finds the notion ridiculous.
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 21 
 
 " Our peasants are they men ? Do you know 
 what their destination is ? They exist in order 
 that we, the educated people, may enjoy all the 
 pleasures of civilisation c'est le mot. That I, for 
 instance, may live in Paris and dine at the Cafe de 
 Paris. Us ne sont bons qu'd $a et c'est encore trop 
 d'honneur pour eux." The other friend, Baron 
 Salutin, explains that if Lupovitsky will insist upon 
 his whim, then he ought to make up his mind to 
 drive the peasantry into civilisation by sheer force : 
 " you want an iron hand ; une main de fer. Make 
 them into paste and then knead it as you like. C'est 
 ainsi que Pierre le Grand a agi envers nous." Lupo- 
 vitsky is of gentler temper and tries persuasion 
 and instruction, when he returns to his native 
 country-seat and meets his subjects. He begins by 
 making a speech about his sentiments and plans, 
 and then calls up the village elder, the starosta, to 
 instruct him about the duties of man. The noble 
 philanthropist tells the starosta that he will buy 
 books for the instruction of the people. S. What 
 books, sir ? L. There are many books written to 
 suit simple minds. They treat of subjects which 
 are necessary to the peasant, for instance, what is 
 an ox ? S. An ox ? L. Yes, an ox. I hope an ox 
 is very important in your life. S. But, sir, we know 
 about it. How should one not know what one
 
 22 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 is tending all through life. L. It is not only about 
 oxen, but also about moral duties, that people 
 ought not to lie, to get drunk. S. Everybody knows 
 so much, sir, only people do not act up to it. 
 L. Yes, but still it won't be amiss to read. S. No, it 
 won't be amiss to read, but it has been written so 
 well in old books. There are books about it. L. 
 What books do you mean ? S. The Holy Books, 
 sir. Please buy them, sir. There is much in the 
 same strain and the conversation ends by the 
 conversion of the nobleman. He is especially im- 
 pressed by the common sense and the high moral 
 standard of the Mir, the Village Community, and 
 winds up by saying : "I shall leave with the 
 greatest respect for the peasant. Je vous estime, 
 Monsieur le peuple." 
 
 The main tendency of Constantine Aksakoff's 
 writings is well rendered by this caricature. He 
 never aimed at artistic perfection. Everything had 
 to serve his political philosophy. He praised some 
 of Turgeneff's novels from this point of view, but 
 he was very bitter in his appreciation of a contem- 
 porary lyric poet. ' What is the use of always 
 singing out, love, love, love, dear, dear, dear ? " 
 
 Constantine Aksakoff's chief desire was to give 
 a new explanation of Russian history and Russian 
 ideals. He looks for stray bits of intelligence
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 23 
 
 likely to prove that the people were organised into 
 democratic communities and well capable of having 
 their say in public affairs. 
 
 But he repudiated all wish to set up a re- 
 publican theory. He does not even want to be a 
 liberal in the European sense of the word ; he hates 
 all such Western party cries. In regard to Russia 
 he discovers a curious duality of principles on one 
 side is the land, on the other the State. The land 
 consists of communities and is a community of the 
 folk by itself, but it does not concern itself with 
 questions of power. Everything that has to do with 
 law, coercion, external power has been handed over 
 to the State, and in such questions the land has only 
 a consultative voice. Aksakoff thinks, that the 
 voluntary subjection to the State is a distinctive 
 feature of Russian history. Instead of beginning with 
 a conquest, it begins with the calling in of Norman 
 chiefs by the Russian tribes. The moral unity of 
 the people exists quite apart from any power of the 
 sword it depends on conviction and the feeling of 
 brotherhood. But the world is not satisfied with 
 such unity it is a world of strife, and therefore 
 external order must intervene to make the unity 
 complete : external order, with its State direction, 
 its prisons and soldiers. The Russian people is in 
 favour of the moral unity and does not make much
 
 24 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 of legal formalities. This is why it puts up with a 
 political organisation concentrated round the Tsar. 
 The simpler, the more straightforward the fabric of 
 State authority, the better it is. There is nothing 
 in Russian history savouring of an attempt of the 
 people to get hold of politics, to transact State 
 affairs directly by its own hands. Let us notice in 
 passing that Aksakoff was not quite a dreamer in 
 this respect. Notwithstanding all the attempts of 
 centralising bureaucracy, there was still a good deal 
 of self-government going on in Russia every 
 village community was a little world by itself for 
 the management of its affairs, although subjected to 
 the squire and to the Imperial officials. And in every 
 province the landed gentry still formed a kind of 
 corporation with a considerable class feeling and 
 important rights and duties in local government. 
 The Central power was doing its best to curtail all 
 these independent elements, and men of Aksakoffs 
 stamp were picturing to themselves an ideal state 
 of things, when each of the two agents would have 
 its free play and both would live together in har- 
 mony. 
 
 It is strange, however, that Aksakoff should not 
 have realised the serious antagonism between his 
 plans and the existing form of government in 
 Russia, or rather that he did not quite make up his
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 25 
 
 mind about settling contradictions in some definite 
 way. We find him at one and the same time an 
 enthusiastic admirer of the absolute Tsar, as a 
 representative of national greatness and strength, 
 and a staunch enemy of Petersburg policy, that is 
 of centralising bureaucracy. 
 
 He will not hear of a constitution this is just 
 one of those miserable Western contract-notions 
 which have become so important in the history of 
 Europe, because they proceed from conquest and 
 from party-strife. 
 
 The Russian people has never been divided into 
 conquerors and conquered let it not be divided 
 into political parties. 
 
 ;< There are some who would tell us the people or 
 the government may break their pledges : guaran- 
 tees are needed. No guarantees ! Guarantees are 
 evil. Where they are needed, there is no good it 
 is better that life in which there is no good may be 
 destroyed, than that it should exist through evil." 
 
 Russian political life is based on the implicit 
 confidence of the people in their ruler, and it must 
 be added that the sentiment was for a long time 
 returned by the ruler in regard to the people. The 
 relations between the Tsar and his council, his 
 Duma, are very characteristic of this point. 
 
 But if it had been so in the past, one could not say
 
 26 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 that it was so in the present. The power of the 
 Tsar stood firm and uncontested as before, but the 
 institutions representing the free advice of the 
 nations had disappeared. Aksakoff could not 
 but deplore the want of confidence which had done 
 away with the Duma and the Sobor. Altogether 
 he was no friend of the new practices in the ad- 
 ministration, and saw no reason whatever for its 
 greed of power and the distrust of all local and 
 individual originality which inspired the govern- 
 ment of his time. Such persecution of one element 
 of the people by another was, in his view, quite 
 against the old Muscovite traditions. He had a 
 ready explanation for the mischief : it was the plain 
 outcome of the unhappy connection with the West. 
 It is for the sake of such flimsy pageants in 
 the Western style that the government has been 
 seduced to forsake national tradition. Peter 
 the Great is answerable for the misdeed. He in- 
 augurated the unhappy Petersburg period of 
 Russian history. Constantine Aksakoff has ex- 
 pressed his feelings in regard to Peter in some verses 
 which, though not distinguished by great poetical 
 merit, are very characteristic of his views. 
 
 " A man of genius and of blood-stained fame, you 
 stand far off on the border in the halo of terrible 
 glory and armed with your axe. In the name of
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 27 
 
 usefulness and science you have often dyed your 
 hands in the blood of your people, and your swift 
 thought told you that the seed of knowledge would 
 quickly grow when watered with blood. But wait ! 
 The spirit of the people has drawn back in the 
 time of trouble, but it keeps its eternal right. 
 It is waiting for the hour when a national voice 
 will again call forth the waves of the people. You 
 have despised all Russian life, and in return a curse lies 
 on your great work. . . . You have discarded Moscow, 
 and far from the people you have built a solitary 
 city which bears your name in a foreign tongue. 
 And this city feasting by the sea has exhausted the 
 life of the nation. But your feat is a wrong, and 
 the nation will rise again some day for ancient 
 Moscow. Then it will pardon you." 
 
 You see that although Aksakoff did not want in 
 the least to preach liberalism in the Western sense 
 of the word, still his appeal to the traditions of Old 
 Russian life was conceived in direct opposition to 
 the policy of the government. Absolutism as a cen- 
 tralised rule of the policy of supervision was in his 
 view quite as Western as constitutionalism. The 
 ideal of mutual goodwill and confidence he sought 
 in the Muscovite period, and as his resentment of 
 present wrongs concentrated into a plain and clear 
 historical protest against Peter's reform, so his hope
 
 28 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 of future revival was bound up with the thought 
 that Moscow would take the place of St. Petersburg. 
 
 The next stage was reached when the idealists and 
 dreamers had to be summoned and to correct the 
 work of the official leaders, of the generals and privy 
 councillors whose bankruptcy was proclaimed by 
 the Crimean war. The marvellous feature of the 
 situation in the 'sixties was not that the government 
 of Alexander II had to submit to criticism and 
 reform, but that it found ready to take charge of 
 practical politics so many men who were able to 
 cope with the immense difficulties of the many tasks 
 imposed upon them. The value of university educa- 
 tion asserted itself brilliantly by the side of the 
 traditional training in administration which the 
 gentry had acquired in the course of Imperial 
 history. 
 
 A society sedulously kept under tutelage by 
 Nicholas I proved capable in the 'sixties of 
 carrying out stupendous and lasting reforms. It is 
 sufficiently known how the liberal movement of the 
 'sixties gave place to the embittered revolutionary 
 propaganda of the 'seventies. Not that this pro- 
 paganda embraced and concentrated all the aspira- 
 tions of the men of Western persuasion in Russia : 
 the majority of them harboured ideas of moderate 
 constitutionalism and of democratic evolution. But
 
 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTION 29 
 
 moderate parties are never successful in the begin- 
 ning of a great crisis. Their turn comes when the ex- 
 treme votaries of contending parties have sufficiently 
 maltreated and exhausted each other, and some 
 compromise has to be arranged as the outcome of 
 the struggle. It would be out of the question to 
 rehearse the striking events of recent years the 
 reaction under Alexander III, its breakdown in the 
 Japanese war, the rush for liberties in the fateful 
 years 1905 and 1906, the renewed attempts at 
 strong government and the advent of the present 
 crisis. What I want to emphasise, in conclusion, is 
 the fact that the present situation is in no way an 
 accidental one. It has been produced and prepared 
 by the whole course of Russian culture and politics. 
 The two great currents of Russian life have met 
 again, but this time they act in conjunction to 
 ward off the traditional enemy of the race, the 
 hostile power which is seeking to imprison the 
 nation for ever in a back room of Europe in order to 
 exploit it at leisure for its own economic and political 
 ends. This is impossible and will not be. But it is 
 to be hoped that the union of the two currents will 
 achieve more than the repulse of the enemy at the 
 border, that it will be strong enough to initiate a 
 new creative period of Russian evolution, free from 
 the limitations of Oriental lethargy and at the same
 
 30 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 time true to the cast of originality impressed by 
 history on the Russian mind. 
 
 However, it is the great creative movement of 
 the 'sixties which dominates the second half of the 
 nineteenth century in Russia, and in order to esti- 
 mate its real worth let us examine somewhat more 
 closely one of its most momentous sides the 
 organisation of Self-government.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 
 
 THE growth of Russian society as a body 
 distinct from the State is best illustrated by 
 the stages in the formation of self-government. 
 It is impossible to separate neatly and completely 
 the affairs of central and local administration, 
 the machinery of the State and the organisation of 
 social forces concerned with political problems. 
 But in describing the structure of a nation it is 
 possible and desirable to mark contrasts rather 
 sharply and to avoid the confusion and compromises 
 which exist in reality. 
 
 We need not go back to origins in our survey. 
 Let us look at the social organisation of Muscovy 
 in the sixteenth century, when the grand dukes 
 had " collected " the scattered principalities of Great 
 Russia, shaken off the yoke of the Volga Khans 
 and assumed the title of Tsars in token of their 
 full and independent sovereignty. The situation 
 was governed by the constant struggle of this new 
 power against the incursions of the Tartars over 
 
 31
 
 32 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 the southern steppes and the wars with Poland and 
 Sweden in the west. Muscovy was like a besieged 
 fortress slowly extending the circuit of its walls and 
 forts, gaining ground against the horsemen of the 
 steppe or stemming their terrible invasions, with a 
 garrison harassed and decimated by ceaseless cam- 
 paigns, and yet advancing on the whole like a 
 slowly rising tide. In order to stand that sort of 
 life the whole population had to be registered and 
 called up for compulsory service, some in the 
 " regiments " on the frontiers, some for siege 
 defence in the supporting towns, the majority in 
 the fields for the purpose of providing the armies 
 and the administration with the necessaries of life. 
 
 The landed gentry in its hierarchical order was 
 the mainstay of that organisation. It formed the 
 class of " serving men " proper, and was distributed 
 over the land on regimental and garrison duties 
 under the liability of being called up to mobilise 
 and to meet eventual attacks on various fronts. 
 Every knight of this array came up for active service 
 with a retinue of esquires and foot followers accord- 
 ing to a settled scheme and in proportion to the 
 amount of landed estate of which he was enfeoffed in 
 military tenure. The numbers of these unwieldy 
 hosts were large, and testified to the importance 
 attached to this primary duty of " serving " the
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 33 
 
 Tsar and the country. A trustworthy chronicle 
 tells us that in 1581, when the Hungarian king of 
 Poland, Stephen Batory, laid siege to Pskov, that 
 city was held by a garrison of 30,000 men, while 
 Novgorod was occupied by another army of 40,000, 
 and Tsar John the Terrible himself advanced to 
 Staritsa with a host of 300,000 men of all grades. 
 This was an exceptional effort, but the incursions 
 of the Crimean Tartars, though they led to smaller 
 mobilisations, were not less troublesome, as they 
 recurred from year to year. Behind the serving 
 class stood the " chargeable " population that had 
 to get somehow through the economic pursuits of 
 settled existence : it was heavily assessed in various 
 ways and in most cases assigned to the landed 
 serving men for the payment of certain dues and 
 rents, besides bearing the charge of the various 
 State taxes and rates. The secular clergy and the 
 monasteries were supported in a similar way by 
 chargeable groups, and it was only in the towns 
 and in the north-east in the provinces facing 
 the White Sea and the Ural Mountains that a 
 stock of chargeable men independent of superior 
 " serving " gentry still formed a prominent part of 
 the population. The whole situation was not unlike 
 the state of things which obtained in England under 
 Athelstan or Canute, when the pressure of the Danish
 
 34 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 invasions called forth an immense burden of ser- 
 vices and of Danegeld taxation. 
 
 Now in the sixteenth century the various classes 
 of the Muscovite people had not only to fight the 
 enemy and to till the land, but also to perform 
 various administrative functions. In the earlier 
 centuries the princes and their lieutenants, who 
 ruled the land by the help of military followings, 
 exacted from their territories produce in kind, 
 money rents or fines, but did not trouble particularly 
 about the details of justice and police, leaving these 
 very much to the management of local hundred 
 ealdors and tithing men, or, as regards procedure, 
 to the judicial struggle between the parties. The 
 functions of government, as far as exercised by the 
 " lieutenants " of the princes and grand dukes, 
 gave rise to " provender " for these functionaries 
 this was the chief aim of administration, while 
 popular welfare and justice came in only for sub- 
 sidiary consideration. When exactions became in- 
 tolerable, complaints were made in Moscow, and 
 there ensued trials similar to the Roman actions 
 against governors " de pecuniis repetundis." 
 
 The establishment of the Tsars in the sixteenth 
 century led to a more systematic treatment of the 
 problem and to a better understanding of the inti- 
 mate connection between the interests of the people
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 35 
 
 on one hand, and the rights and duties of government 
 on the other. The constructive period marked by 
 the publication of the two Codes of 1497 and 1550, 
 and by the policy of John the Terrible, present an 
 interesting attempt at a settlement of administra- 
 tive problems. The " provender " system was given 
 up : that meant that the Moscow government 
 ceased to regard the office of a provincial lieutenant 
 as a kind of estate, from which he was to 
 draw income on the condition of providing certain 
 supplies for the central authority and performing 
 in a perfunctory manner certain functions of 
 haute justice or police. It took up the point of 
 view that the local administration of law and order 
 in the provinces concerned the State, which ought 
 to assume direct control over it. 
 
 This control, however, was not exercised by 
 means of hierarchical centralisation. On the con- 
 trary, the various local groups were called upon 
 to act on their own accord for the purpose of 
 solving the different problems at hand. The landed 
 gentry, for one, had to meet in the garrison centres 
 and to elect assessment officers and town com- 
 manders, who had not only to arrange the reparti- 
 tion of service between the members of the cor- 
 poration, but to watch over their economic interests, 
 to provide guardians for minors, to approach the
 
 36 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 Moscow authorities with complaints and petitions, 
 etc. Thus the serving gentry of each province was 
 consolidated into a kind of county corporation, 
 the members of which were bound to stand pledge 
 for each other in the performance of their duties 
 and to provide security for the good behaviour and 
 efficiency of their elective officers. Another set of 
 groups was formed for the pursuit and extermina- 
 tion of highwaymen and burglars the district was 
 called guba, a term derived from the putting 
 to death of habitual criminals. The elder of this 
 police district was elected by an assembly drawn 
 from all classes of the population the " charge- 
 able " men and the clergy taking part in the election 
 by the side of the gentry. Thirdly, the legal 
 procedure under the new Codes was generally 
 remodelled by the introduction of jurors or sworn 
 assessors, who had to watch over the proper conduct 
 of trials and to protect the parties against arbitrary 
 decisions of the magistrates. Fourthly, in fiscal 
 administration we find two sets of officers elected 
 by the local districts, hundred ealdors and tithing 
 men, who had to collect direct taxes and dues, and 
 sworn collectors in charge of custom duties, public- 
 house payments and the like. As you see, the life 
 of the Muscovite population in the sixteenth century 
 was supervised by a network of heterogeneous
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 37 
 
 offices to which must be added the parishes and 
 other ecclesiastical districts. One common feature 
 of these institutions was their tendency to make use 
 of local grouping and of elective machinery in order 
 to carry on political functions of the State : the 
 concerns of the communities themselves were left 
 to a great extent to take care of themselves. Un- 
 doubtedly, even such parasitical treatment of the 
 local groups by the State had some bearing on the 
 growth of autonomous local and provincial bodies, 
 and we find that, especially in the beginning, towns 
 and districts are keen to obtain grants of electoral 
 franchises. But the working of the administrative 
 network was soon felt to be rather a burden than 
 a privilege. It entailed a tremendous amount of 
 compulsory drudgery on the part of elective officers, 
 who received no regular pay and suffered greatly 
 in the management of their private affairs. In 
 difficult times and in exposed places the duties 
 became very irksome and were seldom transacted 
 with honesty and efficiency. It is not rare to find 
 that localities petition for a return to the regime of 
 appointed lieutenants. 
 
 This state of affairs explains why in the seven- 
 teenth century, during the troubles which followed 
 the extinction of the direct descendants of Rurik, 
 and in the course of the reconstruction of the State
 
 38 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 under the early Romanoffs, the elective system 
 breaks down and gives way to centralised adminis- 
 tration by commanders under the supervision of 
 departments established in Moscow. And yet the 
 element of local self-government lingered tena- 
 ciously in the household affairs of the social classes. 
 The landed gentry formed cohesive groups according 
 to regimental and garrison centres, and as for the 
 peasantry, while it lapsed more and more into a 
 servile dependence upon the landlords, its village 
 communities became more and more consolidated 
 into bodies responsible for taxes and labour services 
 to the State as well as to the squires, and exercising 
 control over the distribution and cultivation of the 
 soil. This undercurrent of economic life explains 
 why local self-government, which to all appearance 
 was dead in the seventeenth century, reappears 
 again on familiar lines in the reign of Peter the 
 Great. In his prodigious efforts to turn the current 
 of Russian development he came to feel keenly 
 the need of an administrative reform. There is a 
 story how after a banquet Prince James Dolgoruky, 
 one of the most trusty and courageous of Peter's 
 satellites, reproached the Tsar with having striven 
 merely after military glory and with having done 
 very little for legislation. The taunt is said to have 
 been keenly felt by Peter. In any case, the last
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 39 
 
 years of his reign were devoted mainly to experi- 
 ments in administrative changes. Swedish and 
 German practices were borrowed wholesale and a 
 number of boards and offices were created and 
 remanipulated again and again. It would be 
 confusing and unprofitable to trace the details and 
 fluctuations of the provincial reforms of 1699, 1708 
 and 1719, but a few main points which have stood 
 the test of time must be mentioned. The governors 
 became prefects with widely extended powers derived 
 from their position as the representatives of the 
 central authority. It is curious to note that Peter 
 himself tried hard to make the governor a primus 
 inter pares, but the natural evolution of affairs 
 was stronger than his mighty will. The attempt to 
 introduce collegiate institutions in fiscal and in 
 judicial administration was not wholly lost to the 
 future, however, and we find such colleges right down 
 to our own time, in the shape of boards, watching 
 over the legality and general policy of the provincial 
 bureaucrats. Yet another characteristic trait of 
 Peter's organisation is the consciousness that the 
 economic welfare of the people is necessary for 
 the might of the State, and that economic progress 
 must be produced by the efforts of the population 
 and not only by order of the rulers. Hence attempts 
 to create and encourage local self-government. In
 
 40 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 the country the squires were called together to 
 help and to control the military administration of 
 the districts, and committees were formed by the 
 gentry to take care of financial matters. As a 
 parallel to this arrangement in the country, the 
 towns were granted municipal government, entrusted 
 to the well-to-do merchant class, the so-called first 
 guild. These experiments did not come off very well 
 because of the lack of suitable men and of proper 
 training, but their tendency is full of meaning. We 
 find a traditional alliance between autocracy and 
 the class of the squires, from which military and 
 civil officers were drawn, and we notice the timid 
 beginnings of municipal life. These facts are 
 important because they help us to understand the 
 evolutionary character of Peter's reform, which for 
 the superficial observer seems a violent and miracu- 
 lous cataclysm. They also help to bridge the gap 
 between Muscovite organisation and the reformed 
 Russia of Peter and Catherine, and, as we shall see, 
 the Russia of our own times. 
 
 The principal fact to be noticed during the 
 reigns of the immediate successors of Peter is that 
 the military cohesion and discipline imposed on the 
 gentry gradually relaxed. This was produced not 
 only by the natural reaction against the tremendous 
 strain of the reform period, but also by the develop-
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 41 
 
 ment of material resources and business tendencies. 
 The landowning officers' class began to turn its 
 attention more and more to the cultivation of its 
 estates, and it grew tired of the constant service 
 and drill which had formed its chief occupation for 
 centuries. 
 
 In the reigns of the Empresses Anna and Elizabeth 
 the burdens placed on the squires were lightened 
 and their privileges accentuated. Peter III, the 
 half-witted husband of Catherine II, proclaimed in 
 1762 that " gentlemen " were free to serve the 
 State or not to serve, according to their wishes. 
 This Ukase marks the transition from the status 
 of the gentry, as an order of hereditary officers 
 endowed with land, to that of a class of privileged 
 landowners on whose support the Empire depended 
 indirectly, but whose chief occupations were not 
 military but economic. The possibility of such a 
 change of attitude testified to a very important 
 result : the leading groups of the nation began to 
 acquire a capacity for independent existence and 
 independent pursuits which they were unable to 
 manifest during the desperate struggles of the 
 preceding centuries. The squires did not cease to 
 send their sons to the army or to the civil service, 
 but they were not legally bound to do so or to keep 
 them in service from the age of 15 to that of 60.
 
 42 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 The management of estates became their chief 
 interest, the estate itself ceased to be a conditional 
 fee and was considered full property, while its 
 cultivators lapsed from the standing of citizens 
 attached to the soil under the sway of an officer, 
 to that of villains belonging to a master. 
 
 Catherine IFs legislation drew the consequences 
 from the new situation. In 1775 the gentry was 
 definitely organised for the purpose of provincial 
 government, and in 1785 it was formed into a close 
 hereditary order and endowed with corporative 
 rights. These measures present two aspects of the 
 same situation and may be treated together. 
 Provincial government was reorganised on the 
 principle of the joint action of Crown officials 
 and of elected representatives of the population. 
 Provinces and districts were formed on lines which 
 have more or less endured up to now : the pro- 
 vince was assigned a territory with approximately 
 300-400,000 heads of population, and the district 
 (uyezd) one with 30,000. Governors remained at 
 the heads of provinces and captains (ispravniks) 
 exercised similar functions in a greatly limited 
 manner in the district. Judicial authority was 
 separated from administration and from fiscal 
 affairs. The main point was that in all the tribunals 
 and collegiate institutions assessors elected by the
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 43 
 
 gentry and, in the lower instances, also by mer- 
 chants or craft guilds and by the free peasantry, 
 were called upon to play a prominent part. The 
 gentry in particular was organised in corporations 
 according to provinces. Its members met once in 
 three years to elect marshals and the assessors of 
 different courts, to administer the finances of the 
 corporation, to audit accounts, to receive reports, 
 to draw up petitions and statements of claims, etc. 
 The arrangement corresponded to a theory borrowed 
 from Montesquieu's " Esprit des Lois," of which 
 Catherine was a great admirer : it was thought 
 to embody the pouvoir intermediate of a truly 
 monarchical government. The rule of the landed 
 aristocracy was supposed to ensure legality, order 
 and public spirit. It was to be supplemented by a 
 high standard of honour and full legal protection 
 against arbitrary acts. According to the Charter 
 of 1785, a " gentleman " could not be deprived of 
 any personal rights unless by judgment in a court 
 where his peers were assessors. Thus the legislation 
 of Catherine undoubtedly reflects rays falling from 
 Western sources of light. This reform had a con- 
 siderable amount of success : it was put into 
 practice on a soil well prepared for the rule of a 
 squirearchy by previous history. The provincial 
 corporations of the gentry became influential and
 
 44 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 active bodies ; the marshals and other delegates 
 exercised a great deal of authority, and their posts 
 were coveted by ambitious members of county 
 society. 
 
 There were shady sides, however, to this aristo- 
 cratic regime. It was a class rule and exhibited 
 all the defects of class rule : jobbery, corruption, 
 arrogance, petty quarrels, narrow selfishness. An 
 amusing picture of the world of employees in a 
 small provincial centre stirred up by the supposed 
 arrival of a revising officer from St. Petersburg 
 is presented by Gogol in his comedy " The Re- 
 viser." It is a caricature, but a brilliant one : it 
 hits off in a humorous manner the weaknesses of 
 the original. The scene is laid in a town of 
 Nicholas I's time sometime about 1830, but it 
 is characteristic of a life which sprang up under 
 the operation of Catherine's legislation. A yet 
 more significant and obnoxious feature of the 
 system consisted in the debasement of the peasan- 
 try. In spite of their surrender to the exploit- 
 ation of the military class in the seventeenth 
 century, the peasants never ceased to consider 
 themselves free citizens of the State, subject to 
 landlords because the landlords were subject to 
 military burdens. Pososhkov, a contemporary of 
 Peter the Great, expressed this view in emphatic
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 45 
 
 words : " The peasants do not in truth belong to 
 the squires, they are temporarily entrusted to their 
 rule, their only master is the Tsar." When 
 eighteenth-century legislation relaxed the hold of 
 the State over the squires, when Peter III pro- 
 claimed the " freedom " of the gentry from com- 
 pulsory service, the peasants began to entertain 
 the hope that their own bondage would be corre- 
 spondingly dissolved. This called forth one rising 
 after the other, and, in spite of cruel disappoint- 
 ments, the accession of every new emperor was 
 greeted by the revival of such hopes. In reality, 
 however, the economic turn imparted to the class 
 of the squires in the course of the eighteenth century 
 led to the enslaving of the peasant, to the oblitera- 
 tion of the public law features which had charac- 
 terised the older arrangement. Though Catherine II 
 was a disciple of French philosophers and loved to 
 speculate on liberal and humanitarian theories, her 
 government did not carry out any of the noble 
 ideas of emancipation in which she occasionally 
 indulged in her writings. On the contrary, the lot 
 of the " serfs " became more and more gloomy, 
 more and more similar to the condition of domesti- 
 cated animals. In this way the class self-government 
 instituted to supplement and to support official 
 bureaucracy was made to rest heavily on a founda-
 
 46 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 tion of serfdom. Here again you may turn for an 
 illustration of the social results to a masterpiece of 
 Gogol, to his novel " Dead Souls " ; it describes the 
 journey across Russia of an adventurer who has 
 hit on the expedient of building up a fictitious 
 " fortune in souls," that is in serfs, by concluding 
 agreements with squires as to the purchase of their 
 dead dependents. This original device gives the 
 great humorist an opportunity for passing in review 
 all sorts of quaint types of Russian country society. 
 As for the tragic aspect of the situation, Tur- 
 geneffs Tales of a sportsman give a better insight 
 than any dry statements of fact. The books 
 referred to belong to a later age, but the laws of 
 serfdom of which they treat, in spite of some 
 legislative " nibbling," were not materially different 
 at the end of the eighteenth century and towards 
 the middle of the nineteenth. 
 
 And yet great changes were slowly preparing 
 behind the scenes. To begin with, the very trans- 
 formation of the military order into planters 
 testified to the dependence of the whole arrange- 
 ment on economic evolution. And that process of 
 economic evolution was rapidly reaching a stage 
 in which serf labour was becoming unproductive 
 and unsuitable to the requirements of the market. 
 In the old days natural husbandry settlements in
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 the centre and an extension of aristocratic protection 
 and capital to the colonisation fringe were the main 
 features of the Russian agricultural system. In 
 the course of the nineteenth century new factors 
 developed with increasing force : industry and 
 commerce were making progress and creating new 
 centres of attraction for labour and new markets 
 for produce. When the railways came in, the ten- 
 dency towards mobilisation acquired an irresistible 
 impetus, but even before that time the framework of 
 municipal institutions provided by Catherine II's 
 Town Charter of 1785 began gradually to fill up with 
 social groups of merchants, clerks, craftsmen and 
 workmen, which in former centuries had represented 
 almost negligible quantities. In the rural districts 
 themselves the black-soil regions of the south and 
 south-east stood in want of hired labour, while the 
 congested districts in the centre and in the north 
 spent their working strength in an unproductive 
 routine fostered by artificial settlement restrictions. 
 That means that the plantation system had not 
 even the excuse of conformity to geographical con- 
 ditions. As a matter of fact, already in the period of 
 serfdom the working population began to be exploited 
 more and more by means of cash rents (obrok) in- 
 stead of labour services (barstchina) . Thus even 
 apart from humanitarian tendencies economic changes
 
 48 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 threatened the institution of serfdom at a time 
 when it seemed to have reached its most complete 
 manifestation. One of the influential members of 
 Nicholas I's committees dealing with the problem 
 of serfdom, Admiral Mordvinoff, maintained that 
 serfdom was a product of economic evolution and 
 would disappear of itself when its economic pre- 
 mises had been removed : this argument cut both 
 ways : having been formulated for the retention of 
 serfdom it was used, later on, for its abolition. 
 Yet it is very doubtful whether any amount of 
 economic reasoning would have overcome the 
 resistance of the vested interests rooted in villainage : 
 these interests were too numerous and too power- 
 fully represented in the summit of the State. 
 Emancipation was eventually brought about by 
 the combined pressure of material facts and of 
 the irresistible movement of public opinion on 
 humanitarian grounds. Political idealism played 
 a most conspicuous part in the process. It in- 
 spired bitter criticism and acts of renunciation 
 like those of the Grand Duchess Helene Paulovna, 
 Tsar Nicholas' sister-in-law, to whom belongs the 
 glory of opening the career of emancipation by 
 liberating the serfs of her estate of Karlovka. 
 The important point is that civilised society in 
 Russia became gradually permeated by the con-
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 49 
 
 viction that serfdom was not only iniquitous but 
 dangerous, that it sapped the strength of the nation 
 and prevented its normal growth. The pioneers 
 in the campaign against serfdom were not only 
 professors and men of letters, but also country 
 gentlemen who had brought back from the Univer- 
 sities an untiring zeal for freedom and progress. 
 In these circles the study of Western history and 
 culture formed a powerful ferment for comparison 
 and for the framing of ideals. It is significant that 
 according to J. Aksakoff's testimony it was not by 
 the Slavophiles but by " Western " liberals that the 
 first plans for effecting the emancipation of the 
 peasants with their land allotments were elaborated. 
 The abolitionist movement found efficient sup- 
 porters in the ranks of Government officials. 
 
 General Rostovtseff, the first president of the 
 " Committee of Redaction " which drafted the 
 emancipation statute an excitable and well- 
 meaning man gave invaluable help by inter- 
 preting the trend of public opinion to the Tsar. 
 Nicholas Milutine, Assistant Minister of the Interior 
 under Alexander II, was its most energetic and 
 successful promoter in the memorable years 1859- 
 1861. Men of such enlightened opinions were not 
 in the majority in the upper classes of society even 
 in those eventful years. Sinister selfishness did
 
 50 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 assert itself in many ways and hampered very 
 materially the work of emancipation. But the 
 history of the years after the Crimean war presents 
 a remarkable illustration of the explosive force of 
 ideas. The opponents of the contemplated reforms 
 were unable to come out into the open and to chal- 
 lenge their aggressors frankly and boldly : they had 
 to seek advantages on side issues and to yield on 
 questions of principle. In these circumstances the 
 political consciousness of the State as embodied in 
 Emperor Alexander II and in the President of the 
 Grand Committee, Grand Duke Constantine Nikola- 
 yevitch, gave its casting vote against the planters 
 and carried the emancipation of 23 millions of serfs, 
 one-third of the population of Russia. 
 
 The above remarks on the emancipation of the 
 serfs are not a digression from our main subject, 
 as might seem at first glance. They are the neces- 
 sary introduction to an account of the reform of 
 provincial government which took place in 1864. 
 It did not require great acumen to perceive that 
 when the peasants were set free and a basis for 
 rural economy was sought in free agreement instead 
 of compulsory service, the position of the landed 
 gentry had to be resettled in every respect and the 
 new citizens had to be provided with a machinery 
 of public government instead of the class rule of
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 51 
 
 the ancient regime. The realisation of this truth is 
 expressed on some occasions before emancipation. 
 This was done in a remarkable manner in a scheme 
 of reform elaborated in view of the emancipation by 
 the Committee of the province of Tver and presented 
 in Petersburg by the marshal of the gentry, A. M. 
 Unkovsky, and other delegates. They called atten- 
 tion to the fact that the social regime based on serf- 
 dom, though absolutely wrong, contained some 
 positive traits : it enabled the squires to assist the 
 Government in the performance of its political 
 duties and it operated as a check on the arbitrary 
 methods of Crown officials the tchinovniks. Once 
 this check was removed, there would be imminent 
 danger that the people would fall into subjection 
 to bureaucracy instead of being subjected to its 
 former masters the landlords. One could not 
 expect the Crown officials to abstain from oppres- 
 sion, corruption and arbitrary violence, because the 
 whole fabric of society had been vitiated by the 
 spirit and habits of serfdom. An efficient antidote 
 could truly be found in self-government, and the 
 Tver Committee sketched progressive plans of 
 reform, drawing its chief arguments from the history 
 and the political science of Western Europe, which, 
 to their minds, had conclusively proved that 
 historical evolution leads everywhere towards the
 
 52 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 gradual ascent of lower classes and the abolition 
 of privileges. Nevertheless the Committee found 
 it necessary to pave the way towards democratic 
 self-government in which all classes should take 
 equal shares, by a preliminary stage characterised 
 by a preponderance of the aristocratic element. 
 In a less finished and less theoretical form, the 
 conviction that emancipation was the first step 
 towards a series of other changes, was widely 
 prevalent in society. Rostovtseff, the president of 
 the first central committee for drafting the plan of 
 emancipation, wrote to the Emperor on October 23, 
 1859 : " Right through the various statements 
 of the delegates runs one idea shared by all, 
 namely, the condemnation of the unfortunate 
 arrangement of local government and of the courts 
 and their activity arbitrary, encroaching, secret 
 and secure against discovery. All are convinced 
 that under such an arrangement of the judiciary 
 and police neither the welfare of the landowners nor 
 that oi the peasants can be ensured and safe- 
 guarded." 
 
 In fact, the beginning of local government re- 
 form had to be made in connection with the very 
 statute of emancipation, because an administra- 
 tive machinery had to be set up to replace the 
 authority of the lords abolished by the statute.
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 53 
 
 Certain principles were laid down in this respect in 
 1861 and developed in detail in 1866. The main 
 point was the organisation of the civil parish 
 (volost) for administrative and judiciary purposes. 
 This unit was not a new one : it had existed all 
 through ancient Russia at a time when the free 
 peasantry had not yet been subjected to secular 
 and ecclesiastical lords. It lingered on in the North 
 and East, where the black, i.e. the free, population 
 had kept its ground. It was resorted to on the 
 domains of the Imperial family and of the State in 
 the reigns of Paul and of Nicholas I. 
 
 In the 'sixties the civil parish, consisting of 
 several neighbouring villages with a normal area 
 formed by a radius of some 9 miles and a population 
 ranging from some 700 to 5000, was used as the 
 pivot of local administration in rural districts. 
 
 i. Its institutions were : (i) an assembly of 
 representatives of the component villages for the 
 principal purpose of electing the officers of the 
 volost ; (ii) an executive consisting of a volost elder, 
 assessors and a parish clerk ; and (iii) a court with 
 elective judges. These are the three parts of the 
 volost machinery. There was a good deal of election, 
 as you see, and those who framed the arrangement 
 meant it undoubtedly to form the basis of popular 
 self-government. It was, however, vitiated by
 
 54 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 substantial drawbacks which made themselves 
 felt from the very beginning. The organisation 
 came into being as an institution devised for a 
 particular class and designed to keep up the isolation 
 of the latter from the rest of the people. The civil 
 parish is exclusively composed of members belonging 
 to the peasant order or of persons of other orders 
 who have joined the volost under special conditions : 
 the gentry, the clergy, merchants, members of 
 liberal professions do not participate in its work, 
 although their interests as landowners or occu- 
 piers of rural holdings are materially affected 
 by it. 
 
 2. As regards the peasant class itself, the unit 
 which displays the greatest vitality is not the 
 volost, but the township or village. Business 
 transactions, questions as to education, etc., are 
 usually settled by the officers and the assembly of 
 the township, especially in districts where the 
 communal system still prevails. Yet the township 
 unit is considered in the light of a private law 
 corporation, and it is the volost which plays the 
 part of the lowest administrative subdivision. 
 
 3. While the volost is thus not very active for 
 the promotion of its own interests, it is overburdened 
 with tasks of police and finance imposed on it by 
 the Government, with the result that it represents
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 55 
 
 everything irksome and onerous in rural practice 
 and that the best men try in every way to 
 avoid it. 
 
 4. The judicial activity of the volost court is 
 confused and devoid of authority. The judges are 
 supposed to administer customary law, but in truth 
 they are bewildered by the variety and complexity 
 of relations created by the movement of legislation 
 and of economic practice, and their jurisdiction in 
 civil and petty criminal matters is at best a kind 
 of shifting equity tempered by corruption. The 
 clerk of the parish is too often a crafty promoter of 
 the latter. Lastly, this whole cumbersome system 
 of rural administration is under the meddlesome 
 and by no means disinterested supervision of 
 Government officials and of nominees of the local 
 gentry, who even exercise the power to subject 
 the luckless parish officers to fines and imprison- 
 ment. All these features have proved a great 
 handicap in the development of rural self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 This short sketch of peasant administration 
 discloses the characteristic and unfortunate dualism 
 of the reform legislation in the 'sixties. It was a 
 compromise between liberal ideals and bureaucratic 
 limitations : sometimes the latter actually suc- 
 ceeded in distorting the progressive intentions of
 
 56 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 the reformers, in most cases they at least hampered 
 them. 
 
 One of the results of the situation was that while 
 the peasants were presented with local self-govern- 
 ment of a kind, the gentry and other upper classes 
 of rural districts were left without any. Their 
 affairs and interests were diverted in the direction 
 of provincial institutions. A committee for the 
 reorganisation of the counties was created imme- 
 diately after the completion of the emancipation 
 statute. It was initiated by Nicholas Milutine with 
 a view of endowing Russia with a network of 
 efficient self-governing provinces, but it was inter- 
 cepted at the start by the reactionaries, smarting 
 from the effects of emancipation and apprehensive 
 of further inroads at the hands of the " revolu- 
 tionary " Milutine. The great reformer was tra- 
 duced and ousted in a manner which will be an 
 ever-memorable example of political ingratitude. 
 D. Valuieff, a clever time-server, took his place, 
 and the proceedings were conducted in a spirit of 
 duplicity which deprived the provincial reform of 
 a great deal of its significance. Enough was 
 achieved, however, by the public spirit of the age 
 to make the Zemstvo reform of 1864 a landmark in 
 the history of Russia. 
 
 The " Zemstvo Statute " of January i, 1864,
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 57 
 
 created two sets of institutions assemblies and 
 executive boards. Each district (uyezd) elected 
 representatives for the district assembly, meeting 
 once a year for some ten days, according to a 
 certain system which will be described presently, 
 and an executive board (uprava) transacting 
 business under the direction and the supervision of 
 the assembly in the course of the year. Similarly, 
 an assembly and a board acted in the province or 
 government comprising several districts, the mem- 
 bers of the assembly in this case being elected 
 at the district meetings. The electoral system in 
 the district, from which all the authorities were 
 derived either directly or indirectly, was character- 
 ised by high franchise qualifications and by the 
 splitting up of the electorate into colleges. Of these 
 there were three : the first was composed of land- 
 owners possessed of real estate of the value of 
 15,000 Rb. (about 1500 at the rate of exchange 
 before the war), or of owners of factories and other 
 business undertakings of a similar value or of 
 6000 Rb. yearly turnover. Smaller owners were 
 not disenfranchised, but had to club together and 
 meet previously in order to elect representatives 
 according to the above rates. The second college 
 comprised townspeople with analogous franchise 
 qualifications. The third consisted of representa-
 
 58 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 lives of the peasantry by volosts. The economic 
 importance of the gentry in the rural districts 
 assured it of a very great share in the ultimate 
 electoral results : about 43% of the deputies 
 in the early Zemstvos belonged to the gentry class ; 
 the peasants sent 38%, while all other professions 
 were represented by about 18%. Another feature 
 designed to secure the predominance of the gentry 
 was the fact that the assemblies were to be pre- 
 sided over by the provincial and district marshals, 
 although the executive boards were granted elective 
 chairmen. It was intended to restrict the Zemstvos 
 to the management of economic interests, while 
 administrative affairs were to be reserved to 
 functionaries appointed by the Government ; the 
 class group of the gentry or hereditary noblesse 
 retained corporate existence and the right of 
 presenting petitions as to political questions. As 
 a matter of fact it was impossible to draw a 
 definite line between administration and economic 
 functions, as may be gathered even from a simple 
 enumeration of the departments of Zemstvo ac- 
 tivity : (i) imposition and collection of pro- 
 vincial and district rates and services in kind ; 
 (2) the management of property belonging to the 
 Zemstvos ; (3) taking care of a sufficiency of food 
 and other supplies and measures of relief in case of
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 59 
 
 shortage ; (4) the construction and keeping in 
 good order of roads, canals, quays and other means 
 of communication ; (5) arrangements as to the 
 mutual insurance of local bodies ; (6) the re- 
 arrangement of hospitals, charity organisations, 
 asylums, relief of the poor and of the sick ; (7) 
 measures of public health, of veterinary supervision 
 and treatment ; (8) the prevention and suppression 
 of fires ; (9) the spread of popular education and 
 participation in the management of schools and 
 other institutions of enlightenment ; (10) assist- 
 ance to industry and commerce, measures for 
 checking the ravages of insects and diseases of 
 plants; (n) the performance of obligations imposed 
 on localities for the benefit of the military and civil 
 administration, e.g. the provision of barracks or 
 the quartering of soldiers. 
 
 To mention one example of the inevitable over- 
 lapping of attributions as regards popular educa- 
 tion the Zemstvos were invited to open schools, to 
 provide them with equipment, to pay teachers, in 
 fact to maintain the schools in a state of efficiency, 
 and yet the appointment of the teachers and the 
 supervision of the instruction was put in the hands 
 of a school board in which Crown officials and 
 representatives of the noblesse and of the clergy 
 were in the majority. However, the saying that he
 
 60 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 who pays the piper orders the tune held good in 
 this as in other cases. As the Zemstvos provided 
 the means they acquired the actual management 
 of this important branch of local administration 
 not without much friction and obstruction. Another 
 point in which the distrust of the Government as 
 regards the newly created bodies found vent was 
 the absence of compulsory power. In all cases when 
 force was required to put by-laws into execution, 
 to collect rates, to seize goods, etc., the Zemstvos 
 could not act by themselves but had to apply for 
 help to the general police, which was often very 
 remiss in assisting the new organisations and in any 
 case regarded their requirements as of secondary 
 importance. Lastly, the acts of the Zemstvos, 
 both as to decrees or by-laws and as to appoint- 
 ments of all kinds, were subjected to constant and 
 suspicious supervision by governors and other 
 agents of the Central Authority ; when the trend 
 of general policy pointed towards reaction, as it often 
 did, the Zemstvos were hampered and harassed 
 under the slightest pretexts. This was not a 
 fortunate situation : many strong liberals were 
 driven away from Zemstvo work and did not spare 
 bitter criticism of such incomplete and stunted 
 institutions. 
 Yet it would be not only wrong, but absurd to
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 61 
 
 disparage the immense work achieved by the 
 Zemstvos in an exceedingly short space of time. 
 The wonder is not that they were hampered and 
 distracted, but that they achieved so much. It is 
 not an exaggeration to say that a new age was 
 initiated by their activity in Russia. Such bodies 
 as, for example, the Moscow provincial Zemstvo, 
 under the leadership of Dmitry Shipoff, would 
 have done honour to any country, and it is not 
 their fault that they were not able to carry out 
 their plans in their entirety. An estimate of the 
 activity of the Zemstvos and of the rate of their 
 progress may be obtained by glancing at the move- 
 ment of receipts and expenditure in the years 
 1865-1912. In 1865 the Zemstvo provinces started 
 with a modest income of 5 millions Rb. In 1912 
 it had reached 220 millions in the original thirty- 
 four Zemstvo provinces and 250 together with 
 the receipts of the western provinces placed 
 under a special regime : in other words, the original 
 figure has been multiplied fifty times. As to ex- 
 penditure, a considerable share has to be assigned 
 to cover duties imposed by the State, e.g., the 
 construction of barracks or the maintenance of 
 prisons. Productive Zemstvo expenditure develops 
 outside such necessary, imposed payments. Now, 
 in 1871, 43% of the expenditure budget could
 
 62 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 be devoted to voluntary requirements, while in 
 1910 80% was allotted to them. The repartition 
 of expenditure under various heads is very character- 
 istic. In 1895 nearly 13^ millions or 20-5% were 
 contributed for the needs of the central government ; 
 the service of loans and the formation of reserve 
 capitals swallowed somewhat over 10 millions, or 
 rather more than 15 % ; the cost of Zemstvo 
 administration amounted to somewhat over 
 6 millions (9-5%); popular education was repre- 
 sented by 9-3 millions (14%) ; charitable purposes 
 by i million (1-5%) ; roads about 4 millions (6%) ; 
 medicine and sanitation 17-8 millions (27%) ; 
 veterinary department i million (1-5%) ; measures 
 for economic assistance 0-7 (i %) ; various sundries 
 1-5 million (3-5%). The same items work out in 
 the following manner in 1912 : 
 
 Government requirements . 10-5 mill. (5%). 
 
 Zemstvo administration . 15! mill. (7%). 
 
 Loans and reserve capitals . 27 mill, (n %). 
 
 Roads, etc. . . 15 mill. (7%). 
 
 Education . . . 66 mill. (30%). 
 
 Charities and poor relief . 3^ mill. (1-7%). 
 
 Medicine and sanitation . 57! mill. (26%). 
 
 Veterinary service . . 6 mill. (2-8%). 
 
 Economic measures . . 14 mill. (6-3%).
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 63 
 
 In the budget of the six western governments 
 with modified Zemstvo organisation, expenditure on 
 schools and on medical arrangements figured in each 
 case with 7 millions Rb., corresponding to 23% of 
 the whole. We shall have occasion to consider in 
 detail the remarkable progress achieved by the 
 Zemstvos in the field of popular education, and the 
 history of this department may be taken as typical 
 of the aspirations and methods of Russian self- 
 government. A reference to the above tables will 
 show that not less momentous progress was marked 
 by the activity of the Zemstvos in connection with 
 medical help and sanitation. Measures of economic 
 policy have been taken up energetically of late 
 years by the more progressive Zemstvos in other 
 ways: the acquisition of agricultural machinery, 
 the spread of agronomic education, improved 
 methods of cultivation, insurance against fires and 
 bad harvests, etc. 
 
 Particularly striking results have been obtained 
 by organising statistical work on an extensive scale. 
 A singular gap is noticeable under the head of 
 poor relief and charities. The explanation of this 
 strange fact is certainly not to be sought in callous 
 indifference for destitution. The charitable dis- 
 position and the sensitive pity of the Russians is 
 proverbial. The scanty column of expenditure
 
 64 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 under this head is explained partly by the lack of 
 a comprehensive poor law and partly by the fact 
 that the burden of supporting the poor falls princi- 
 pally on village communities and on towns, while 
 the Church and private individuals are very lavish 
 of alms an attitude condemned by political 
 economists but connected with deeply rooted 
 habits of mind. This is in any case a side of 
 Zemstvo activity in which there is evidently most 
 room for improvement. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the services rendered to Russia 
 by the Zemstvos have been immense. The new 
 factor of self-government introduced into the life 
 of the country by the reforms of 1864 has brilliantly 
 justified its right to existence and development. 
 And yet its very success has called forth bitter 
 opposition from the forces of the half-defeated old 
 regime. It is my painful duty to call attention to 
 the stages of a campaign of persecution which, 
 though it has not achieved its end, has materially 
 curtailed the beneficial effects of the organisation. 
 The honour of carrying on the war against the most 
 promising force of modern Russia appertains to the 
 reaction which set in after the murder of Alexander 
 II, and has been going on with some interrup- 
 tions until now. It has been engineered and 
 encouraged in the highest spheres of Petersburg
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 65 
 
 bureaucracy, and it is not for lack of official sanction 
 that it has been unable to carry out its main purpose. 
 As the rise of provincial self-government was 
 preceded by the local reorganisation of the volost, 
 even so the reactionary measures affecting pro- 
 vincial self-government have to be considered in 
 connection with a far-reaching scheme for subjecting 
 the peasantry to the strong government of officials 
 representing the class interests of the gentry, and 
 deriving their power from administrative central- 
 isation. An attempt in this direction was made 
 by the institution of " land-captains " (Zemskie 
 natchalnikf) under the law of June 12, 1889. 
 
 " The new officer was, on the one hand, made the 
 centre of all the administrative affairs of his district 
 sanitary measures, relief of the poor, relief in 
 cases of agricultural distress, supervision as to all 
 material and moral interests of the population. 
 On the other, he was to be judge in the first instance 
 in minor civil and criminal cases. Thirdly, he was 
 to act more especially as a guardian and controller 
 in all cases which concerned the peasantry. As 
 one of these land-captains pointedly expressed it, 
 they were to act as nurses to the peasantry. The 
 punishing power of these nurses is very extensive. 
 They have the right of sentencing village elders and 
 judges to prison, and are even provided with dis- 
 F
 
 66 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 cretionary power to put a peasant into prison 
 without any form of trial and without any possi- 
 bility of appeal, simply for supposed disobedience." 
 "... a guarantee seems provided by the right 
 of the inhabitants to appeal from the decision of 
 land-captains to sessions, composed of the same 
 magistrates under the chairmanship of the marshal 
 of the district and with the adjunct of a few trained 
 lawyers. This minority of jurists is exerting some 
 beneficial influence on the lawless practices of the 
 land-captains, but then the decisions of this district 
 board are themselves subject to be overruled by 
 the board of the province, in which the legal element 
 is all but absent, and there the procedure stops. 
 The department of this peculiar arbitrary justice is 
 not in direct communication with the Senate, which 
 towers over all other courts of law." 1 
 
 Simultaneously with this measure, designed to 
 revive squirearchy in a new shape, a new statute 
 was enacted for the Zemstvos. The arch-reactionary 
 Minister of the Interior, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, had 
 planned to subordinate the Zemstvos completely 
 to the Crown officials and to turn them into boards 
 for carrying out the orders of centralised bureau- 
 cracy. The Count died, however, without having 
 
 1 Vinogradoff in "Lectures on the Nineteenth Century" 
 (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 263-4.
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 67 
 
 put this delightful scheme into operation. The 
 new statute of 1890 turned out to be only a corrected 
 edition of that of 1864 corrected, to be sure, in a 
 characteristic manner. The gist of the change is 
 disclosed by the altered franchise. Instead of the 
 three colleges of 1864 arranged mainly on property 
 qualifications, the electoral groups were formed 
 frankly on class lines. The first college is composed 
 of members of the gentry (noblesse), the second of 
 persons belonging to all other classes except the 
 peasantry and the clergy. A third group is formed 
 by the peasants, who have to elect their repre- 
 sentatives not in colleges, but in the volosts, the 
 lists of these representatives being submitted for 
 confirmation to the governor of the province. This 
 is explicit enough, and the character of the change 
 is further emphasised by the proportional distribu- 
 tion of the deputies among the orders ; 57 % of 
 the seats fall to the gentry, 13% to intermediate 
 classes, about 30% to the peasantry. The clergy 
 do not take part in the representation. This 
 reorganisation undoubtedly poured a good deal of 
 water into the wine of Zemstvo workers. The 
 policy both of the Home Office and of provincial 
 governors kept on a level with the reactionary 
 tendency initiated by the statute of 1890. For 
 instance, after agrarian troubles in the South in
 
 68 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 1902, statistical work carried on by the Zemstvos 
 was stopped in twelve provinces because the 
 statisticians were accused of carrying on revolu- 
 tionary agitation. And yet, strange to say, even 
 these energetic counter-attacks did not succeed in 
 stifling the progressive spirit of the self-governing 
 provinces. The latter could not be prevented from 
 spending money on schools and hospitals, on roads 
 and statistics. In 1900 the magician of the Ministry 
 of Finance, Witte, himself entered the lists against 
 the obnoxious counties. The law of June 12, 1900, 
 enacted that 
 
 " No province is to increase rates by more than 
 three per cent of the previous year." 
 
 It has been pointed out that this method of 
 holding expenditure and self-imposition chained to 
 the budget of previous years is entirely lacking in 
 a rational basis. It just falls as a block on schemes 
 of development, and the greatest sufferers are those 
 who for one reason or the other had held back 
 with their imposition and requirements. 
 
 Moreover, the late Count Witte presented a 
 secret memoir to the Emperor in which he drew 
 an elaborate comparison between bureaucracy and 
 self-government, and sought to prove that the 
 further progress of the latter would inevitably lead
 
 ORGANISATION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 69 
 
 to the downfall of autocratic monarchy. Some of 
 his arguments are so characteristic that I cannot 
 refrain from referring to them at some length. 
 
 They amount to this, that self-government, even 
 local or provincial, is in its essence a political 
 arrangement and as such opposed to absolute 
 monarchy. If self-government is to live and to 
 act rationally it has to develop into a constitu- 
 tion. If it cannot be allowed to do so, it has to be 
 replaced by a centralised bureaucracy. After grant- 
 ing that such a bureaucracy leads to arbitrary 
 power and dead formalism, and quoting the con- 
 temptuous remarks of Stein as to official writing 
 machines, Count Witte nevertheless assumes that 
 Russian bureaucracy will produce a new political 
 type, unknown to history, that it will in fact turn 
 out to be an aristocracy of work and enlightenment. 
 . . . This government will somehow abstain from 
 arbitrary measures, arrests, exceptional tribunals 
 and other kinds of oppression, it will guarantee 
 freedom of labour, thought and conscience. As 
 for society, it must be left to follow private interests 
 and in them to seek an outlet for its energies. 
 Nothing is more apt to ruin the prestige of authority 
 than a frequent and extensive employment of 
 repression. Measures of repression are dangerous, 
 and when they get to be continuous, they either
 
 70 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 lead to an explosion or else turn the people into a 
 casual throng, into human dust. 1 
 
 As you see, the most prominent among Russian 
 bureaucrats, Witte, boldly challenged self-govern- 
 ment on behalf of an all-powerful bureaucracy. The 
 trial by battle might have been decided in favour of 
 the latter if the opponents had been left to fight out 
 their duel in a " stricken field." But the contest 
 was not waged on these lines : it assumed the shape 
 of a competition for the production of masterpieces. 
 In other words, self-government was able to pro- 
 duce some very creditable results in spite of diffi- 
 culties. Bureaucracy had also to show what it could 
 do for the people. And its achievements were far 
 from brilliant at the very time when it was especially 
 overbearing and oppressive. 
 
 The conduct of the Japanese war could not be 
 described as a triumph of Russian officialdom. 
 
 1 Reference from "Lectures on the Nineteenth Century," 
 pp. 273-4.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 
 
 IT is not my intention to attempt a general 
 survey of the development of Russian education 
 the subject is too wide and could not be treated 
 without many digressions into the field of political 
 and ecclesiastical history. There is, however, one 
 aspect of the subject which is of utmost importance 
 for us in connection with the study of Russian 
 self-government, namely, elementary education : it 
 is only by means of a sound system of elementary 
 education that self-government can acquire a solid 
 basis and a sure prospect of future development. 
 Therefore, it is not astonishing to find that the growth 
 of self-governing institutions in the provinces and 
 towns has exercised a decisive influence on the 
 progress of popular education. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to add that schools of the higher grades 
 Universities and gymnasiums or secondary public 
 schools attained a sufficiently high standing and 
 spread over the country long before elementary 
 schools had made any considerable advance either 
 
 71
 
 72 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 in numbers or in quality. As a matter of fact, the 
 earlier development of superior schools contributed 
 not a little to the formation and progress of the 
 more modest elementary institutions. It is un- 
 doubtedly easier to start higher teaching among the 
 well-to-do classes than to organise the masses of 
 the people for educational purposes. 
 
 From the point of view of Ancient Russia all 
 properly conceived instruction had to aim at the 
 training of pious men abiding by God's precepts. 
 These precepts were interpreted to the orthodox by 
 the Church, and the true Christian had to follow the 
 teaching of the Church without flinching or discussion. 
 Knowledge outside this religious sphere was not 
 directly condemned, but regarded as a form of 
 human curiosity which might be indulged in to some 
 extent provided it did not distract attention from the 
 main purpose. This unreasoning piety was naturally 
 combined with a religious creed in which stress was 
 laid not on the intellectual mastery of ideas, but on 
 adherence to ritual and customary practices. Regular 
 schooling did not play any part in such a scheme of 
 life, and even the priest received but scanty teach- 
 ing : the " Stoglav " synod of 1551 condemned the 
 illiteracy of the clergy and enjoined them to 
 open schools in the houses of the best priests in the 
 towns and to teach their children to read, to write,
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 73 
 
 and to sing Church music. It was quite common 
 even in the seventeenth century for candidates to 
 be admitted to orders who could neither read nor 
 write, and had merely managed to learn some of the 
 services by heart. The movement for the revision 
 of books and ecclesiastical practices in the second 
 half of the century and the struggle with the Old 
 Ritualists made it clear to the Moscow authorities 
 that some systematic education was a national 
 want. A Greek bishop, the Metropolitan of 
 Gaza, Palsios Ligarides, put it this way : "If I 
 were asked, what is the support of clerical and 
 secular office, I should answer firstly, schools, and, 
 secondly, schools, and, thirdly, schools." In the 
 reigns of the Tsars Alexis Mikhalovitch and Fedor 
 Alexeievitch, father and elder brother of Peter 
 the Great, scholastic academies were founded in 
 connection with the monasteries of St. Andrew and 
 of the " Saviour's Ikon " (Zaikonospassky) in 
 Moscow, under the rival influence of two schools 
 a Latin school taking its inspiration from Kiev 
 and indirectly from the Jesuits, and a Hellenistic 
 school prompted by Greeks from Constantinople 
 and Mount Athos and patronised by men of the 
 stricter Moscow stamp. There was in this way a 
 certain literary stir in the superior sphere of Mus- 
 covite society towards the end of the seventeenth
 
 74 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 century, but the current did not reach very deeply 
 and was not strong enough to lead to extensive insti- 
 tutional developments. When Peter appeared on 
 the scene, the importance of instruction for the pur- 
 pose of acquiring skill in crafts of every kind became 
 one of the leading preoccupations of the reformers. 
 The first Government school created by the Tsar 
 was a navigation school, opened in Moscow of all 
 places, under the guidance of a Scotsman a certain 
 Farquharson. We need not concern ourselves with 
 the fate of this institution, which became eventually 
 the Naval College of St. Petersburg, nor with that 
 of the kindred Engineering and Artillery Colleges. 
 It must be noted that Peter entertained the 
 ambitious project of endowing his Empire with a 
 network of secular and ecclesiastical schools. He 
 instituted schools of arithmetic in 1714, and en- 
 joined the clergy by the regulations of 1720 to 
 open regular ecclesiastical schools. But although 
 pupils were commandeered to those establishments 
 and teachers were subjected to rules instinct with 
 " frightfulness," the attendance was of the poorest 
 and the result disappointing. 
 
 Catherine II made a second effort in the same 
 direction with the help of Yankovitch, a Serbian 
 pedagogue lent by Joseph II. A statute for primary 
 schools was issued in 1786, but although it was
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 75 
 
 drawn up in a spirit worthy of the age of the 
 Encyclopaedists, and prescribed among other things 
 the study of the " Obligations of a man and citizen," 
 the results obtained were meagre. This may be 
 gathered, e.g., from the fact that in the large and 
 important province of St. Petersburg there were 
 only some 2000 pupils in 1802. Private tuition had 
 still to supply in the main the needs of popular 
 education. Under these circumstances, liberal pro- 
 jects initiated in the beginning of Alexander I's reign, 
 though excellent in theory and aiming at a com- 
 plete educational ladder ascending from elementary 
 schools to universities, were doomed to failure. 
 A proper teaching staff was all but absent, and the 
 peasantry of the age of serfdom proved an un- 
 suitable material for the spread of popular educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Nicholas I's reign is marked by the subjection of 
 all initiative to stringent bureaucratic supervision. 
 Private schools were prohibited and an elaborate 
 statute for the organisation of schools passed in 
 1828. In spite of the refrigerating atmosphere of 
 Nicholas I's policy some progress in popular educa- 
 tion may be noticed during the thirty years of his 
 reign. It was a great thing 'that the gentry was 
 acquiring idealistic notions as to knowledge and 
 culture. Such centres as the University of Moscow
 
 76 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 could not fail to spread enlightenment around them. 
 In the serried ranks of bureaucracy itself the 
 ministry of State domains which had to deal with 
 free " State peasants " was busy with opening 
 schools and attracting teachers. The totals of 
 Nicholas I's reign may be gauged by the help of the 
 following statistical data obtained in 1856, very 
 soon after Nicholas' death. A population of sixty- 
 four millions was served by 8227 schools with 
 450,000 pupils, that is one pupil per 143 heads of 
 population. In Central Russia the percentage was 
 about one in 100, but it fell considerably in the 
 eastern governments, and Siberia had altogether 
 only 312 schools. 
 
 The epoch of Alexander II produced a momentous 
 change in this as in every other respect. The crisis 
 was intimately connected with the institution of self- 
 government : the new Zemstvos and the rejuvenated 
 municipalities of Central Russia became the pioneers 
 of popular education, while the emancipation of 
 the serfs created an entirely new basis in a free 
 peasantry, eager for instruction and firmly con- 
 vinced of the power of knowledge. The regulations 
 of 1864 and of 1874, the latter still in force, provided 
 the external framework of the movement. It was 
 deemed necessary to give the system a particularly 
 conservative stamp, and in 1873 the landed gentry,
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 77 
 
 or noblesse, was called upon " to stand guard at the 
 gates of the school against mischievous influences." 
 This explains the peculiar cast of school administra- 
 tion as definitely adopted in 1874. All schools 
 opened by the Zemstvo of a district were to be 
 supervised by a council presided over by the 
 marshal of the gentry and consisting of a ministerial 
 inspector, a representative of the Ministry of the 
 Interior, a deputy from the clergy and delegates 
 from the district. The shares in burdens and re- 
 sponsibilities were apportioned in the following way : 
 the endowment of teachers and the equipment of 
 schools with books and other scholastic materials 
 fell to the Zemstvos, the construction of buildings 
 as well as lighting and heating to the village com- 
 munities, and the control of tuition to the Govern- 
 ment inspectors. As a matter of fact, it was 
 impossible to exclude the self-governing organisa- 
 tions from taking a lively interest and exerting 
 influence as regards the subject-matter itself, that 
 is as regards school tuition. The teaching was 
 restricted to three years, and embraced the ele- 
 mentary study of religion, Church Slavonic, Russian, 
 arithmetic, and such notions of history, geography 
 and natural science as could be imparted by means 
 of class reading. 
 
 A rapid increase in the number of schools has to
 
 78 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 be noted in the period between 1863 and 1880 : 
 14,500 schools, or 69% of the whole number, had 
 been opened in these years, which coincide with 
 the beginnings of Zemstvo self-government : in the 
 Zemstvo provinces of Central Russia the increase 
 amounted to 78%. 
 
 In 1884 a new departure was made by the impetus 
 given to Church schools in the parishes. As I have 
 said already, a tradition of ecclesiastical teaching 
 runs all through Russian history, but the activity 
 of the Church was never very energetic because it 
 had to be carried on in spare time by priests and 
 clerks who attended primarily to their ecclesiastical 
 duties. The rise of spiritual consciousness which 
 characterises the history of Alexander II's reign 
 led to a marked change in this as well as in other 
 respects. There was also another side to this 
 revival, namely, a reaction against the free-thinking 
 and materialistic conceptions prevalent among the 
 liberals. Scripture " and Divinity " were taught 
 as necessary subjects in all the schools of secular 
 institutions, but this was not deemed sufficient by 
 the votaries of ardent nationalism. The leaders 
 of the movement made a stand against the prosaic 
 secularism of the Zemstvo school, and strove for 
 a complete subjection of primary education to 
 orthodox Christianity as interpreted by the Russian
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 79 
 
 Church. As an official document issued by the 
 Holy Synod puts it : " The character of the Church 
 School is determined by the fact that it not only 
 possesses among the subjects of its curriculum one 
 bearing the title of ' Religion,' but that the whole 
 of the instruction must be permeated by the Church 
 spirit and gravitate towards the Church as the 
 centre of the religious and moral life of the local 
 community." 1 The principal leader of the revival 
 was a former professor of the University of Moscow, 
 S. Rat cl \insky, who devoted his whole time and 
 energy to teaching in a village school and acquired 
 a wide influence on other patrons and teachers. 
 Eventually the Government and the Synod took the 
 Church schools under their special protection. 
 Besides the parochial schools of that type, the Church 
 was given supervision over so-called schools of 
 " literacy," institutions with a very rudimentary 
 programme and poorly qualified teachers, which 
 sprang up in many places on account of the lack 
 of better instruction. It is contended by the 
 opponents of Church schools of both kinds that the 
 ecclesiastical policy followed by these schools does 
 
 1 " Explanatory Memorandum to a project of Law relating 
 to Church Parochial Schools," referred to by Darlington, 
 "Education in Russia," 337 (Vol. XXIII. of Special Reports 
 of the Board of Education)
 
 8o SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 not benefit tuition, and that in some cases the very 
 existence of the schools was no more than a hollow 
 pretence. In proof of the superiority of the teaching 
 in Zemstvo schools, it has been pointed out that on 
 an average 71-5 children attend at secular schools 
 and only 36-5, in spite of Government patronage, 
 at Church schools. 
 
 However this may be, the rapid spread of Church 
 schools is a feature of the situation in the last 
 thirty years which has to be taken into account in 
 many ways. It is manifested in the statistics of 
 school organisation and attendance. If we put 
 together the report of the Ministry of Public In- 
 struction for 1891 and that of the Holy Synod 
 for 1892, we find that there were 27,000 secular 
 schools, if we may use the expression, though 
 they correspond in no way to the ecole latque 
 of France or to the board schools of England. The 
 number of pupils in these establishments was 
 1,800,000 and the cost 16 millions Rb., of which 
 1,500,000 was defrayed by the Government, 3 
 millions by towns, 4 millions by villages, 5,300,000 
 by the Zemstvos, and 1,200,000 by private patrons. 
 As against these the Church had the supervision 
 of 30,000 schools with 931,000 pupils. Of these, 
 twelve thousand were parochial schools with ap- 
 proximately the same programme as that of the
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 81 
 
 Zemstvo institutions, while 18,000 were " literacy " 
 schools with 420,000 pupils. 
 
 The country had been making considerable 
 headway since the miserable situation at the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century, but, of course, 
 things were very far indeed from universal instruc- 
 tion. It must be remembered, however, that even 
 in the most favourably situated countries of the 
 West the ideal of such instruction was set very 
 late and achieved at the cost of very great efforts. 
 The landmark in England may be said to be 
 Forster's Bill of 1871, and in France the measures 
 passed by Jules Ferry in 1881 and in subsequent 
 years. 
 
 In Russia there could be no talk of obligatory 
 instruction : neither the schools nor the teachers 
 necessary for its working were available; besides, 
 the enormous difficulties presented by distances, 
 bad roads, weather conditions and economic want 
 constituted unsurmountable obstacles for the time 
 being. 
 
 The final results of what may be called the 
 Zemstvo period in the evolution of popular educa- 
 tion may be gathered from the following figures 
 representing the state of elementary schools in 
 1903, just before the Russo-Japanese conflict. 
 There were altogether 84,500 schools, of which 
 G
 
 82 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 about 40,000 were under the management of the 
 Ministry of Public Instruction and rather more than 
 43,000 under the management of the Holy Synod. 
 Of the latter the greater part were plain establish- 
 ments of literacy, and altogether the standing of 
 the Church schools was considerably lower than that 
 of the lay institutions ; this is reflected in the fact 
 that the secular schools, though fewer in number, 
 served a greater number of pupils, namely, over 
 3 millions as against less than 2 millions in the 
 Church schools (1,889,000). 
 
 And now we come to another turning point in 
 the winding course of development. 
 
 The commotion of the Japanese war, and of the 
 constitutional changes produced by it, called forth 
 an unprecedented activity of the State in regard to 
 popular education. As it was recognised after the 
 Crimean war that drill-sergeants were not the most 
 important public officers, even so it was felt after 
 the Japanese war that Russian disasters had been 
 brought about by the neglect of intellectual efficiency 
 and of popular education. 
 
 The radical change of views in this respect is 
 strikingly indicated by the sudden increase of State 
 expenditure for elementary schools. These estab- 
 lishments, which had been first left to vegetate 
 somehow and had then been consigned to the care
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 83 
 
 of counties, of towns, and of the clergy, assume 
 all of a sudden a great importance in the State, to 
 judge at least by the sensitive thermometer of 
 Treasury appropriations. Large credits are voted 
 from year to year, and the striving towards universal 
 education becomes a characteristic sign of the time. 
 This is effected under the unremitting pressure of 
 the Duma, " in the atmosphere of popular repre- 
 sentation," as one of the workers in the field has 
 aptly put it. 
 
 The story of the ten years which followed the 
 rise of national representation is well worth study- 
 ing. It throws a flood of light on the driving forces 
 and the peculiar obstacles of Russian progress. 
 The Duma had to go to work arm-in-arm with an 
 executive organisation the Ministry of Public 
 Instruction, which, though not unwilling to con- 
 tribute its share to a task of recognised public 
 utility, was hampered in every way by traditions 
 of red tape and by aloofness from actual life. It 
 has even been said with much truth that the 
 Ministry of Public Instruction started with a deep- 
 rooted distrust of public instruction. Its machinery 
 was clogged with waste paper, if one may use the 
 expression. Mr. E. Kovalevsky relates with some 
 humour the following characteristic little incident : 
 " Twice in the course of the year I have met in the
 
 84 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 streets of St. Petersburg a deputation from the town 
 of Efremov, engaged in presenting a request for 
 financial assistance for the purpose of building a 
 town school. The deputation had been petitioning 
 for seven years and had had to apply to twelve 
 different institutions on its errands. At last the 
 Minister ' himself ' had assured these gentlemen 
 that their request had been granted. One may 
 imagine how glad they were, but they were informed 
 that a thirteenth instance was still in front of them 
 namely, the Senate." Such methods are not 
 exactly encouraging for the display of initiative 
 and public spirit. Yet under the powerful pressure 
 of a new political current running through the 
 channel of the Duma, even bureaucracy had to 
 mend its ways in some respects. A rather hazy 
 memoir on the introduction of universal instruction 
 was prepared by the Ministry for the second Duma, 
 but it did not reach the stage of discussion there, 
 and it is to the third Duma that belongs the honour 
 of making a real start in that direction. 
 
 The first step was the passing of the law of June 3, 
 1908. The principle was laid down that the State 
 ought to take over from the counties and from the 
 towns the charge of paying the teachers at the rate 
 of 360 Rb. a year to every teacher of a class of fifty 
 pupils, and of 30 Rb. (increased later on to 60) to the
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 85 
 
 priest for religious instruction. As Russia already 
 possessed about 70,000 elementary schools of all types 
 with some 5 million pupils, and as the total number 
 of children of school age (from six to eleven) was sup- 
 posed to be 13! millions, 270,000 sets of fifty pupils 
 each were recognised to be necessary to accommo- 
 date the pupils under a system of universal educa- 
 tion. A series of appropriations increasing by 10 
 millions every year in the course of ten years was 
 suggested, but the Ministry asked for much less and 
 the Duma voted about 7 millions to begin with. 
 
 It is rather significant that the promoters of 
 popular education did not succeed, in spite of 
 strenuous efforts, to carry a law " consolidating " the 
 rule of gradual increases for the required number of 
 years. The idea was constantly present before the 
 minds of the legislators and repeatedly referred to 
 in debate. It was worked out in fuller and fuller 
 detail, the growth of the population being duly 
 taken into account. The goal of universal instruc- 
 tion was set first in 1920, then in 1922, ultimately 
 in 1924, while the number of pupils to be accommo- 
 dated was reckoned out to be nearer 15 than 13 1 
 millions. What is even more important, it was made 
 a condition for obtaining grants from the Treasury 
 that the counties and towns applying for them 
 should present a plan for the gradual introduction
 
 86 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 of universal instruction and a map of the network 
 of schools designed to carry out the plan. Nearly 
 all the Zemstvo districts have presented such plans 
 by this time, while, curiously enough, out of some 
 960 municipalities only about 200 had done so 
 by 1913. The Council of Ministers and the Council 
 of the Empire entertained an invincible antipathy 
 against the idea of a "consolidation" of increasing 
 expenditure for a number of years. The arguments 
 used were chiefly of a financial kind, but in the light 
 of other features of opposition to educational 
 reform one cannot help thinking that the Ministry 
 and the " House of Lords " were also actuated by 
 a vague dread of the progressive tendency of 
 popular education. 
 
 In any case, the educational reformers were not 
 weary of insisting again and again on the require- 
 ments of popular education and on improving 
 its prospects. The yearly growth of appropria- 
 tions for the purpose of widening the network of 
 schools during the five sessions of the third Duma 
 is represented by the following table : 
 
 In 1908 
 
 6,900,000 
 
 1909 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 1910 
 
 . 10,000,000 
 
 1911 
 
 7,000,000 
 
 1912 
 
 9,000,000
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 87 
 
 Though the main effort of the Duma was directed 
 to provide funds for the payment of teachers, it 
 must not be supposed that the appropriations from 
 the Treasury in the domain of popular education 
 were restricted to that object. The erection of 
 school buildings was primarily the task of Zemstvos, 
 municipalities and village communities, but the 
 State had to help also in this respect, and it did so 
 mainly by opening credits on advantageous con- 
 ditions usually at 3% with repayment spread 
 over twenty years. In order to meet this demand 
 a fund was formed in accordance with a law passed 
 on May 28, 1909 : the honorary designation of 
 Peter the Great's fund was very appropriately given 
 to this endowment. It grew by yearly increases in 
 connection with the spread of the network of primary 
 schools. It may be added that prospective 
 calculations of the expenditure on all hands for 
 1922, when the scheme of universal instruction was 
 expected to be completed, pointed to a general out- 
 lay of 150 million Rb. a year, of which 50 millions had 
 been appropriated by the end of 1910 (38 millions 
 to Ministry schools and 12 millions to Synod schools) - 1 
 The cost of buildings was calculated at 360 millions 
 and the Zemstvos and municipalities were expected to 
 increase their charges in this respect by 77 millions, 
 
 1 Made at the close of 1910.
 
 88 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 while the expenditure on the upkeep of houses, fuel, 
 light, etc., would have to be raised by 20 millions. 
 Such figures, though merely approximate and 
 likely to be modified by further measures, give 
 some idea of the magnitude of the task and also of 
 the firm course pursued by the leaders of the third 
 Duma in this matter. 
 
 Altogether the services rendered by the Duma 
 representation in developing the productive expendi- 
 ture of the Empire can hardly be over-estimated. It 
 may be sufficient to say that the expenditure for all 
 forms of public instruction was actually doubled 1 
 in the interval between 1907 and 1912, rising from 
 85 millions to 170 millions a year. 
 
 The principles and main results were endorsed at 
 a great conference of the workers for elementary 
 education held in Moscow in 1912 after a remark- 
 able statement made by the reporter of the Public 
 Instruction Committee in the Duma, Mr. E. P. 
 Kovalevsky. 
 
 This is the bright side of the picture, but one must 
 not overlook the shady side either. It is partly 
 expressed in the rivalry between Church schools and 
 secular schools. There were other important points 
 of dispute, e.g. the question as to the part to be 
 
 1 The Ministry of Public Instruction came in for an increase 
 of I54%> while the endowment of teachers rose to 503%.
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 89 
 
 played by the Russian language in the curriculum 
 of schools situated in districts with no Russian 
 population. But the opposition between clerical 
 management and secular management proved to be 
 the most dangerous rock for projects of thorough- 
 going reform and rapid progress. The Holy Synod 
 had received large subsidies (7,400,000 in 1908) 
 from the Government in connection with its schools 
 ever since 1884, when the system was regularised. 
 But when the policy of gradual increases for the 
 payment of teachers was instituted by the third 
 Duma, the Synod claimed corresponding appropria- 
 tions, and additional credits in this respect were 
 first voted during the session of 1909-10. It 
 could not be denied that the underpaid teachers 
 of parish schools and of " literacy schools " had 
 as great a claim to assistance from the State as the 
 workers of Zemstvo and town schools. But there 
 was a material difficulty in adjusting standards 
 and in elaborating a comprehensive plan of school 
 extension on divergent lines and under two different 
 systems of personnel and administration. For this 
 reason the Duma reformers, although not opposing 
 grants to the clergy for the maintenance of its 
 teaching staff, considered the spread of Church 
 schools in the light of an extraneous element and 
 demanded that these institutions should be ad-
 
 90 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 mitted to the benefits of periodical increases on the 
 condition of their conforming to certain rules. There 
 were two principal conditions of this kind : (i) the 
 entering into an agreement with the school authori- 
 ties of the State in regard to the filling up of definite 
 places in the authorised network of schools : (2) the 
 appointment of properly qualified teachers. The 
 Synod administration did not refuse to comply with 
 these conditions in principle, but tried to evade 
 them by applying for grants in aid en bloc, without 
 submitting their programme and policy to the 
 examination of the Duma. 
 
 The split on these questions came to a head in 
 1912, during the fifth and last session of the third 
 Duma. Under the influence of the clergy the 
 Council of the Empire sent back for further 
 examination a comprehensive scheme of periodical 
 increases for the purpose of carrying out universal 
 instruction. When the subject came up again in 
 the Council of the Empire on the reports of a 
 " Conciliation Committee," the scheme of the Duma 
 was again wrecked by a considerable majority led 
 by Count Witte, who characterised the plan as an 
 attempt to get into Paradise by means of murder- 
 ing a child. The child in question was the Church 
 school. As a result of these occurrences further 
 work proceeded in the fourth Duma along the line
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 91 
 
 of least resistance, and in the shape of a half- 
 hearted compromise between the two rival systems. 
 This is undoubtedly a great drawback, and the 
 absence of a guiding law settling the question as to 
 periodical increases is another. Yet the progress 
 in the direction of universal instruction and of 
 improvements in the status and efficiency of the 
 teaching staff has been maintained and several 
 substantial improvements have been achieved. The 
 law of July 7, 1913, not only secured an increase of 10 
 millions Rb., but introduced two very important 
 alterations. It was decided to raise the minimum 
 salary of teachers from 360 to 480 Rb., and a scale 
 of four additions of 60 Rb. each on the completion 
 of every five years of service was adopted. That 
 means that a qualified teacher was entitled to 720 
 Rb. a year after twenty years' work. This swelled 
 correspondingly the expenditure of the State, but 
 both the School and the Budget Commission warmly 
 advocated the grants, and the latter were cheer- 
 fully passed by the Duma. Thus, in spite of the 
 fact that there is no legal scheme establishing once for 
 all the financial steps by which universal instruction 
 has to be achieved, the idea of gradual progress to 
 this goal has taken firm hold of the mind of the 
 legislators and of the Imperial executive, and the 
 movement goes on uninterruptedly. It has been
 
 92 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 temporarily blocked by the war, as all other pro- 
 ductive work, but apart from this inevitable set- 
 back, the completion of the arrangements necessary 
 for universal education is as much a matter of 
 certainty as human affairs can be. Russia has 
 accomplished almost exactly half the journey and 
 should be able to reach the goal in some ten years. 
 
 Before leaving the subject it is well to draw 
 attention to two more points. Unquestionably the 
 development of a system of universal instruction 
 must depend not only on the provision of accommo- 
 dation and salaries, but also on a sufficient number 
 of qualified teachers and on their convenient dis- 
 tribution all over the country. This fact, together 
 with the topographic and economic difficulties, 
 makes it undesirable and even impossible to 
 introduce obligatory school attendance at one stroke. 
 That is why, according to the Russian plan, the 
 legal obligation to send children to school is made 
 to depend on the decision of local authorities. 
 
 As to the duration of the teaching, a four years' 
 course is contemplated now, and the school of four 
 years is being actually introduced in the more 
 advanced localities of the Empire. The three years' 
 course will die a natural death as well as the 
 exceedingly insufficient arrangements of the 
 "literacy" schools. The principal object is still
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION 93 
 
 to secure a practical extension of the network of 
 elementary schools. In coming years people will 
 remember the dark ages before " universal instruc- 
 tion " with a shudder. Let us hope that more 
 fortunate future generations may also remember 
 with gratitude the energetic workers who achieved 
 the desired end and, before all, the modest, self- 
 sacrificing teachers whose ceaseless toil is the con- 
 dition precedent to all improvements in this field.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 A CHARACTERISTIC feature of the situation 
 which had arisen in Russia towards the 
 beginning of the new century was the necessity for 
 the State of appealing to the help of the self-govern- 
 ing institutions on all occasions when the country 
 was in trouble. In case of the spread of epidemics, 
 or of a famine, or of a great war, there was nothing 
 for it but to turn to the devotion and energy of 
 the suspected and maligned Zemstvo and town 
 organisations. Such was the case during the famine 
 of 1898, for example, during the war with Japan, and 
 again during the present war. On such occasions the 
 Zemstvos were eager to contribute towards social 
 welfare, and always came forward with extensive and 
 efficient help. In order to do so they could not 
 restrict themselves to the ordinary routine of their 
 everyday administration. They were driven out of 
 the narrow limits of their class franchise and had to 
 call in outsiders belonging to the numerous groups 
 of the poorer intellectuals who were debarred from 
 
 94
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 95 
 
 taking part in the close assemblies of the provinces 
 and districts. The natural intermediaries in such cases 
 were the members of the so-called " third element," 
 namely, the numerous professional employees 
 of the Zemstvo institutions doctors, teachers, 
 statisticians, veterinary surgeons, agronomists, clerks 
 who did paid work under the Zemstvos. In 
 ordinary times there was a good deal of jealousy 
 between the privileged Zemstvo representatives and 
 electors on one hand, and the staffs of the employees 
 on the other. But in cases of emergency the two 
 groups joined hands and the " third element " 
 proved of invaluable help for the further mobilisa- 
 tion of social workers. Relief work during the 
 famine, for instance, demanded thousands of self- 
 sacrificing men and women to visit the stricken 
 districts, to organise feeding centres, to control the 
 supply of provisions, etc. These thousands were 
 readily forthcoming; they were in most cases 
 students of the Universities and of the women's 
 colleges, school teachers, small employees of every 
 kind. Nothing could surpass the devotion and 
 collective efficiency of these improvised hosts : 
 the Russian intellectual proletarian came out on 
 such occasions in his best form, ready to go any- 
 where and do anything, absolutely indifferent to 
 danger, bearing up with every kind of hardship and
 
 96 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 privation, uncouth, fantastic and sometimes fanati- 
 cal, but unassumingly heroic and revelling in the 
 chance of giving his life for the people. It is not 
 on rare occasions and for short periods that such 
 efforts were made. And yet instead of coming to 
 the conclusion that men like these ought to be 
 drawn closer to political life, that this self-sacrificing 
 energy should become a permanent source of 
 strength to the commonwealth, bureaucratic rulers 
 disbanded these improvised levies as soon as they 
 had a chance, and often followed up a great wave 
 of popular activity by measures of repression 
 directed against those democratic allies who had 
 helped them when in the lurch. 
 
 In 1903, for instance, when the Zemstvos were 
 preparing for a campaign against epidemics, regula- 
 tions were enacted (August n, 1903) which cut 
 short all participation of the Zemstvos in the 
 organisation of preventive measures against in- 
 fectious diseases. A similar attempt was made in 
 the domain of veterinary legislation. Bureaucracy 
 was not only antagonistic to democratic movements 
 by nature : it was also haunted by the dread of a 
 concentration of the Zemstvos for the purpose of 
 obtaining a share in the government of the country. 
 The dread was not without foundation ; in pro- 
 portion as the activity of the Zemstvos increased,
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 97 
 
 even the most conservative of these bodies felt 
 more and more that they could not carry on their 
 local work without taking stock of the doings of 
 their neighbours and arranging for co-operation 
 with them. Besides, the political education ac- 
 quired in local work sought a natural outlet in the 
 wider sphere of national interests. It was impossible 
 to invite men to assist people in matters of 
 rural economy in one or the other province, and 
 to forbid them to consider the economic needs and 
 resources of the country as a whole. Gatherings 
 like the congress of agronomic assistance held in 
 Moscow towards the close of 1901, or the meetings 
 of the committee formed in 1902 to investigate the 
 needs of rural husbandry, became naturally the 
 occasion for a concentration of views and of efforts. 
 This process of concentration assumed a decisive 
 political turn in consequence of the events of the 
 Russo-Japanese war. Hospital and evacuation 
 work had to be undertaken on a vast scale, society 
 lent its help in the usual patriotic manner, and 
 among other organisations a powerful All-Zemstvo 
 Union sprang up and did excellent work. When the 
 deficiencies of governmental leadership in the war 
 became more and more apparent, a great wave of 
 indignation spread through the country and the 
 self-governing units became the centres of a move- 
 H
 
 98 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 ment towards political regeneration. A " Union of 
 Emancipation," started abroad as a secret society, 
 made its way into the Empire. The progressive 
 congresses which the Government did not dare to 
 suppress the first in Petersburg in November, 
 1904; the second, third and fourth in Moscow 
 in April, in May and in September, 1905 ; the 
 fifth in Petersburg in November, 1905 present the 
 principal stages of the constitutional movement 
 which resulted in the creation of the Duma. It 
 would be out of the question for us to follow the 
 history of that movement in its general political 
 course, but I must call your attention to one fact 
 in its earlier period. I mean the emphatic declara- 
 tion made by the Imperial Government on December 
 12 (25) as to the necessity of a reorganisation of the 
 Zemstvos on progressive lines. The manifesto in 
 question was drafted by the Home Secretary of 
 that time, Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky, with the 
 view of diverting the rising tide of liberal opinion 
 into the channel of wider self-government, in 
 order to avoid a surrender to constitutionalism. 
 The declarations of that manifesto do not lose their 
 significance for that reason, and it may be said now, 
 in the light of actual events, that the carrying out 
 of that programme would have provided the new- 
 born Russian constitutionalism with a broader and
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 99 
 
 firmer foundation than that afforded by the hasty 
 attempt to build up the Duma on the basis of a 
 very democratic franchise practically cut off from 
 the support of provincial institutions. 
 
 The second clause of that memorable manifesto 
 promised to concede to the county and town in- 
 stitutions " the widest possible participation in the 
 management of the different sides of local welfare, 
 by entrusting to them, within legal limits, the inde- 
 pendent conduct of this work ; to call to co-operation 
 in these institutions on a uniform basis representa- 
 tives of all the parts of the population interested in 
 local affairs ; in order to achieve this aim with the 
 greatest measure of success, to organise by the side 
 of existing provincial municipal institutions, and in 
 the closest connection with them, self-governing 
 units for the management of affairs bearing on 
 local welfare in districts of small size." 
 
 Public attention was diverted from the modest 
 tasks of the Zemstvos, during the first year of the 
 Constitutional activity of the Duma. And yet 
 their history was not without influence on the 
 course of events ; for they reflected the dis- 
 appointment of the well-to-do classes with the 
 disorder and the socialistic schemes which accom- 
 panied the liberation movement. A wave of 
 reaction arose not only in Government circles,
 
 TOO SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 but also among the squires and the business men. 
 The Zemstvo and town assemblies of the years 
 1907-1910 gave expression to this reactionary 
 tendency by stopping a good many undertakings 
 aiming at the spread of popular education and 
 other progressive reforms. This period of dis- 
 illusionment was, however, of a short duration, 
 and after the restoration of order the great majority 
 of the Zemstvos and of the municipalities returned 
 to the path they had been following before the 
 revolutionary era. Discontent with bureaucratic 
 rule, and the consciousness of duties in regard to the 
 cultural progress of the people, became again the 
 leading tendencies of Zemstvo groups. The neces- 
 sity of developing local institutions was proclaimed 
 as one of the principal tasks of the third Duma 
 convened on a restricted franchise devised by 
 Stolypine. A good many meetings of the legislative 
 chambers and of their committees were devoted to 
 the discussion of local reforms, but the stubborn 
 resistance of the Council of the Empire made it 
 impossible to carry out any comprehensive scheme. 
 The only tangible result of some importance was 
 the passing of the law of June 15, 1912, for the 
 reorganisation of local courts. 
 
 This statute put an end to the confusion be- 
 tween administrative and judicial functions which
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 101 
 
 characterised the rule of the land-captains as in- 
 itiated in 1889. The office of justices of the peace, 
 which had been abolished by that law everywhere 
 except a few cities, was revived with the view of 
 substituting a regime of legality for the arbitrary 
 awards of administrative officers : the justices are 
 elected by the district assemblies on the basis of 
 rather high property qualifications, varying from 
 3000 to 15,000 Rb. in capital value. Suits for minor 
 sums between peasants and cases concerning 
 succession and agrarian disputes, as well as petty 
 criminal jurisdiction in regard to this class of 
 citizens, were reserved to peculiar volost courts held 
 by elective peasant judges and administering local 
 customs recognised by the judges. Thus the 
 peasantry was still kept isolated from other classes, 
 and the idea of a unit of local self-government 
 independent of class distinction was defeated for 
 a time. Even in this curtailed form the Act of 1912 
 was a step in advance, but its introduction in the 
 different provinces is not a rapid process ; it has 
 been delayed in a number of governments by the 
 present war. 
 
 Although the terrible struggle of the world war 
 hampers in many respects the peaceful evolution 
 of the nation, it has given rise to such a display of 
 energy and patriotism on the part of self-governing
 
 102 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 bodies that it is bound to exercise a beneficial 
 influence all along the line. Russian society in its 
 counties and towns is passing, as it were, the test 
 of a most severe examination, and the results 
 achieved could not be more brilliant. No one will 
 have the right henceforth to speak contemptuously 
 of the lack of initiative or the inability of the 
 Russians to manage corporate interests. Innumer- 
 able workers drawn from all groups of society have 
 given their time and strength without stint or 
 bargain to the common cause ; they have continued 
 their efforts under tremendous pressure for months 
 and months ; they have solved difficult problems 
 set before them without any warning, and some- 
 how their capacities for action have proved as 
 elastic as the tasks themselves. Misfortunes and 
 reverses, instead of discouraging them, have spurred 
 them on to ever-increasing efforts. Whatever the 
 future may bring, every Russian has the right to 
 look with pride and hope on the gigantic work 
 achieved by the country in this time of trial. Let 
 us notice some particulars of this national achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 The first scenes of the drama were enacted 
 in Moscow in the historical centre and heart of 
 the country. On July 31, on the news of mobili- 
 sation, the town council was convened for an
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 103 
 
 extraordinary meeting in order, as the chairman 
 put it, that " Moscow should utter its word about 
 events." The leader of the progressive party, 
 N. Astroff, gave voice to the general feeling in an 
 eloquent speech. " Fate has decreed," he said, 
 " that our generation should be responsible for the 
 future of the country, for its integrity, its power 
 and its majesty. Confronted by the historical event, 
 of the tragic conflict of nations, we all, however 
 different our opinions may be as to home politics, 
 express our unanimous indignation against those 
 who dare break the peace, who are guilty of 
 bringing on this misery, this catastrophe, this 
 crime against humanity and civilisation. We are 
 profoundly and firmly conscious of our duty in 
 regard to the past and to the future of the country, 
 and we shall fulfil to the end what we have to fulfil. 
 We shall close our ranks, we shall renounce the 
 strife which encourages our enemies, and we shall 
 defend our native land like one man." He moved 
 that Moscow should tender its service to the Army 
 and Fleet by taking care of the wounded and sick, 
 that one million Rb. should be voted at once to 
 meet the first requirements of the work, and that 
 a committee of the town council should be formed 
 in order to co-operate with the executive board for 
 carrying out all the necessary measures. The motion
 
 104 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 was carried unanimously, and the joint committee 
 appointed under it resolved, at its first meeting on 
 August i, to inform all the municipalities of the 
 Empire of its action and to invite their co-operation. 
 The Zemstvo of the province of Moscow made a 
 similar move and two congresses were called with- 
 out delay one of representatives of the Zemstvos 
 on August 12, and the other of representatives of 
 the towns on August 21. The result of these 
 meetings was the creation, with the sanction of the 
 Government, of two Unions the All-Russian Zem- 
 stvo Union, with Prince G. Lvoff as president, and 
 the All-Russian Union of Municipalities, of which 
 M. Chelnokoff, Mayor of Moscow, became eventually 
 President. The duplication of the Unions corre- 
 sponds to the difference in the social grouping of the 
 people in Russia, the squires and peasants in the 
 provinces keeping rather apart from the merchants, 
 factory owners and artisans of the towns. At the 
 same time it has to be noted that the two Unions 
 have acted together on the present occasion with 
 the most complete concord. The scope of their 
 operations was originally restricted to the organisa- 
 tion of hospitals, the transport of sick and wounded, 
 and the provision of medical help and material 
 equipment ; but, as we shall see, their activity was 
 gradually extended beyond these limits.
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 105 
 
 In the beginning of the war it was thought that 
 the Unions would confine their efforts to the manage- 
 ment of base hospitals in the inner provinces of the 
 Empire, while the Army Medical Staff and the Red 
 Cross would serve the needs of the battlefields and 
 of the war zone to which the portion of the Empire, 
 roughly speaking west of Minsk, was assigned. 
 The enormous number of casualties overruled these 
 calculations, and the Unions were drawn by necessity 
 into work within the war zone. This raised an 
 important question of finance. The Zemstvo Union 
 disposed of 12 millions Rb. from rates and 
 voluntary contributions. This sum would have 
 enabled it to keep up only some 25,000 to 30,000 beds 
 and to run a couple of hospital trains. As a matter 
 of fact, the number of patients to be tended rapidly 
 rose to hundreds of thousands. It became clear 
 that the Unions, while presenting the best means 
 for organising social help, would have to carry out 
 functions which fell primarily to the duty of the 
 State and which could not be borne financially 
 without assistance from the State. Up to March i 
 the Zemstvo Union received accordingly subsidies 
 from the Treasury to the amount of 44 millions Rb. 
 (about 4,000,000). 
 
 The cost of fitting out a bed to serve surgical 
 cases was reckoned at 100 Rb., while the upkeep
 
 io6- SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 of one wounded was made out to be on the average 
 32-4 Rb. per month. 
 
 The plan for the evacuation of the wounded by 
 the Unions was based on a general estimate made by 
 the Army Staff ; the probable figure of wounded to 
 be transferred and located per month had been put 
 at 200,000. The flow of these wounded was to be 
 received at five distribution centres at Petersburg, 
 Moscow, Kiev, Kursk and Kharkoff and directed 
 thence towards the base hospitals of five districts 
 consisting of provinces radiating from the five 
 centres. It was calculated that a wounded soldier 
 would remain on an average ten days in the centre 
 hospitals and three weeks in the district hospitals, 
 from which he would be sent on to some con- 
 valescent home or minor hospital for the treatment 
 of light cases. The actual flow of wounded which 
 passed through the hospitals served by the self- 
 governing organisations, amounted to about 60,000 
 by September i, to 120,000 by October i, 150,000 
 by November i, 154,000 by December i, 164,000 
 by January i, and 170,000 by February i. Two 
 more distribution centres were added to the original 
 scheme Ekaterinoslav and Rostoff on the Don, in 
 connection with the campaign against Turkey. 
 Moscow had to assume the lion's share of the work, 
 60% of the whole number of the wounded passing
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 107 
 
 through its various hospitals in the earlier stage of 
 the war. The relative importance of the different 
 centres is reflected in the number of sanitary trains 
 assigned to them by the Zemstvo Union. In 
 December, 31 trains ran from and to Moscow, 
 12 from Petrograd, 9 from Orel, 3 from Kursk 
 and 7 from Kharkoff. It has to be noticed in 
 this connection that the Zemstvo of Kursk, famous 
 as a stronghold of reactionaries the " Uroxen," 
 as they were nicknamed was the only provincial 
 Zemstvo which refused to join the Union and pre- 
 ferred negotiating directly with the Army authori- 
 ties ; the result was that the Kursk province, though 
 not Kursk town, proved an inconvenient block in 
 the general system of evacuation. A most im- 
 portant item of the organisation of the Zemstvo 
 Union was the formation of stores for the provision 
 of linen, wadding, warm clothing, etc. Up to 
 February i there had been provided, for instance, 
 7,500,000 pieces of linen, 10,000,000 pieces of warm 
 clothing, etc. ; altogether, the cash turnover of 
 the stores amounted for the six months under 
 consideration to 20 millions Rb. received and 
 20 millions Rb. spent. A great quantity of materials 
 from the stores, especially in the shape of warm 
 clothing, were delivered to Army units in the field 
 in view of pressing needs which could not be
 
 io8 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 promptly met by the regular commissariat ; such 
 deliveries assumed great proportions in the months 
 of December and January, and are represented by 
 half a million Rb. on the accounts of the Zemstvo 
 Union for these two months. 
 
 The efficient management by the Union of the 
 task of providing the hospitals and stores of the 
 organisation with materials and manufactured 
 goods attracted the attention of the Army Com- 
 missariat and induced it to place large orders for 
 the preparation of linen and clothes for the Army 
 with the Union. Such orders began in October, 
 1914, and soon reached gigantic figures. 7,500,000 
 complete outfits of linen were prepared by the 
 Zemstvos in two months, by means of workshops 
 for the cutting of pieces, and of distribution stores, 
 in which the cut pieces were handed out to women 
 workers for sewing and collected on the completion 
 of work. In Moscow 35,000 women, chiefly be- 
 longing to families of soldiers at the front, are 
 taking work in this way. It may be of interest 
 to note that a full outfit (shirt and trousers) of linen 
 is paid for by the Commissariat at the rate of 
 24 kopecks (6d.). The costs of the material to the 
 Union is 6-78 kop., the labour 15-5 kop., the cutting 
 i kop., the remaining 0-72 represents sundry small 
 expenses transport, accounting, etc. The enor-
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 109 
 
 mous work of distribution and collection is per- 
 formed mainly by poor law guardians and by 
 co-operative associations. The aim is to get rid 
 as much as possible of sweating, and the success of 
 the Union in this respect has been a striking one. 
 Through its co-operation with the Commissariat it 
 has been able to revolutionise the labour market 
 in more than one branch of industry. A striking 
 instance of the effect of substituting the social 
 organisation for profit-seeking middlemen is afforded 
 by the orders for tailor-made goods. The Com- 
 missariat forwarded to the Union large orders for 
 breeches and jackets, partly for the Serbian Army. 
 The Union placed these orders as much as possible 
 in the hands of artels (co-operative societies) of the 
 tailoring trade in the Moscow province, with ex- 
 cellent results. The piece wage for making a pair 
 of breeches, for instance, rose from 13 kop. to 19 
 kop., the making of a military tunic of a rather 
 elaborate pattern costs i Rb. 20 kop. instead of 80 
 kop., and the like. A similar organising activity 
 was developed by the Union in connection with the 
 provision of surgical instruments and of drugs. 
 
 A wide field of work was open for services con- 
 necting the base hospitals and stores with the 
 armies in the field. The Union took over a number 
 of hospital trains, provided them with the necessary
 
 no SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 personnel of medical men, nurses and bearers, and 
 equipped them with medicaments and food. On 
 February i the Union had forty-four sanitary 
 trains of this kind in its charge. A special feature 
 of the system was the formation of advanced 
 columns for action in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of the fighting lines. A full column, as constituted 
 towards the beginning of the current year after a 
 good many tentative experiments, consists of some 
 three or four motors for rapid transport of the 
 medical personnel, of sixty horse carriages with 
 150-180 horses, campaign kitchens and baths. Its 
 outfit costs about 100,000 Rb. and its upkeep about 
 20,000 Rb. per month. It can serve a sector of some 
 12-15 miles in width for the purpose of carrying 
 wounded to the hospitals, picking up exhausted 
 men, providing food and some rest for tired men, 
 etc. After arriving on the scene of operations it 
 generally deploys into three "flying" detachments 
 which keep in touch with each other and may 
 eventually reassemble. By February the Union had 
 nineteen columns of this kind at its disposal. 
 
 It would be impossible to describe in the same 
 detail the work achieved on parallel lines by the 
 Union of Municipalities. It may be sufficient to 
 state that it was in no way inferior to that of the 
 Zemstvo Union in point of organisation or efficiency.
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR HI 
 
 The budget of expenditure calculated to be covered 
 to a large extent by help of State subsidies amounted 
 to some 35,000,000 Rb. 
 
 In order to get a more concrete view of the 
 efforts of a leading city in the cause of the war the 
 best thing to do is to review the activity of Moscow, 
 the ancient capital and the real centre of Russia. 
 This can be done on the strength of a statement 
 presented by the Mayor, M. Chelnokoff, to the 
 Tsar during a visit of the latter towards the close 
 of 1914. There were, by December i, 66,646 fully 
 equipped beds in the city, of which 2062 belonged to 
 hospitals under the patronage of Empress Alexandra, 
 of the Imperial family, of the Red Cross, and of 
 the community of SS. Maria and Martha, 682 beds 
 in hospitals of the Zemstvo Union, 4639 equipped 
 by the Stock Exchange and the Merchant Guild, 
 953 by private subscription, 14,853 by the city 
 with contributions from private donors, 23,533 
 entirely by the city, and 11,824 by the medical 
 department of the Army. For the accommodation 
 of the wounded there were 1314 hospitals and 
 hospital wards. The staff of the city hospitals con- 
 sisted of 206 supervising guardians, 1354 doctors, 
 3442 trained nurses, and 4128 probationers, second- 
 class nurses, bearers, etc. Apart from these there 
 was a staff of 1599 attached to the distribution
 
 H2 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 centres. From the beginning of the war up to 
 December i, 239,682 sick and wounded of the 
 Russian Army had passed the Moscow distribution 
 centres, as well as 31,103 prisoners. In the Moscow 
 city hospitals there had been in the course of that 
 period 96,735 sick and wounded, of whom 427 had 
 died, 43,658 had left under the supervision of 
 military authorities, and 52,540 were under treat- 
 ment. On November 28 there were actually 
 occupied in the Moscow hospitals 55,140 beds, and 
 only 1540 were vacant. Thereupon the city decided 
 to equip 12,000 beds more, in order to meet 
 further requirements. For the treatment of infec- 
 tious diseases 10,000 beds are available. The work 
 of carrying and transporting the wounded from 
 the trains to their various destinations was managed 
 by a voluntary guild of 1300 men, consisting of 
 students of the high schools, civil officials, artists, 
 etc. Convalescents leaving the hospitals are pro- 
 vided with warm clothing and linen, the soldiers of 
 regiments formerly stationed in Moscow have 
 received Christmas gifts. The families of soldiers 
 called up for service from Moscow are receiving 
 separation allowance in addition to that granted by 
 the State (i Rb. 40 kop. per month in addition to the 
 State allowance of 3 Rb. 60 kop. per grown-up person) . 
 Besides, 1,205,6=56 Rb., making about 10 Rb. a month
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 113 
 
 per family, have been expended in assisting families 
 whose household economy had been grievously 
 affected by the calling up of their bread-winners. 
 With the help of the boards of guardians and co- 
 operative societies the city distributes a great 
 amount of labour among the families of soldiers 
 called to the colours : 1,200,000 pieces of linen are 
 distributed by this method every month. The 
 boards of guardians and 450 assistants who have 
 volunteered for this service supervise the distribu- 
 tion of money and goods to fugitives from districts 
 occupied by the enemy. 1 Besides, Moscow city 
 has voted large donations to help the devastated 
 districts of Poland and Serbia. Altogether the city 
 has spent, in the course of the first four months of 
 the war, 8 millions Rb. on various objects connected 
 with the war. 
 
 We have not the means of following the further 
 development of the activity of Russian self-governing 
 units and unions with the same wealth of details 
 and documentary completeness. But we must 
 characterise briefly the stages reached in the course 
 of the second half-year : they are momentous and 
 full of promise. Towards the middle of February a 
 
 1 This applies to the first months of the war. This item 
 has been enormously increased in consequence of the evacuation 
 of Poland.
 
 H4 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 second congress of representatives of the munici- 
 palities of the Empire took place in Moscow. Apart 
 from reviewing the work achieved in the field of 
 hospital assistance, distribution of labour, help to 
 fugitives, etc., it discussed the general situation of 
 the towns as affected by the war. Circulars had 
 been addressed to the various towns inviting them 
 to state their needs and observations in connection 
 with sanitary and economic matters ; a good many 
 municipalities sent in very instructive replies, which 
 were summarised for the use of the Congress. In 
 presenting the report, N. Astroff laid stress on the 
 necessity of a wider and more energetic treatment 
 of social and economic problems by the town 
 authorities, the Union of Municipalities, and the 
 State. " The war that has convulsed the world," 
 he said, " has strained to the utmost the intellectual, 
 economic and material forces of Russia : it leads 
 to great changes in the internal life of the country. 
 Processes of internal change are not effected by 
 leaps and bounds. But the march of extraordinary 
 events makes changes inevitable, and there are no 
 forces capable of staying these changes." Two 
 crying needs were brought home with especial 
 urgency the need of extensive measures of sanita- 
 tion and the necessity of concerted and drastic 
 action to organise traffic and to stem the inordinate
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 115 
 
 rise in prices of commodities. Unless measures of 
 sanitary reform were carried out on a wide scale, there 
 would be imminent danger of the spread of infectious 
 diseases. To mention one point : towns in which 
 cavalry units had been formed were littered with 
 refuse from the horses, and yet, not to speak of 
 sewerage which existed only in 17 towns out of 
 996, a great number of municipalities were deficient 
 even in ordinary barrels for sanitary transport ! 
 Water supply was also far from sufficient and its 
 use was not properly organised. One of the main 
 reasons for such a state of affairs was to be sought 
 in the inadequate budget of the towns. As for the 
 rise in prices, it was due not only to the enormous 
 requirements of the Army and to the dislocation of 
 traffic created by the demands made by the Army 
 Administration on the railways, but also to the 
 haphazard treatment of trade and intercourse. 
 The moral of the report, as well as of a memor- 
 andum presented by the Petrograd delegation, was 
 the urgent necessity of introducing fresh elements 
 and fresh energy into the management of national 
 affairs, the removal of friction between bureau- 
 cratic authorities and self-governing units, the 
 mobilisation of the forces of self-government for 
 the solution of problems arising on all sides. 
 Undoubtedly the weight of the rebuke as regards
 
 n6 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 the unsanitary condition of the towns, fell primarily 
 on the inertia and low cultural standard of muni- 
 cipal authorities. But they could plead as their 
 excuse the starved state of municipal finances, 
 conditioned by deficiencies in the organisation of the 
 towns on a restricted franchise, and by the pressure 
 of State requirements and supervision. The conduct 
 of the Union and of the leading cities during the 
 war had amply shown in any case that there 
 was plenty of patriotic spirit in the centres of town 
 life, and many workers capable of tackling the most 
 arduous problems with zeal and efficiency, provided 
 the best men were sought out and not driven away 
 by police obstruction and class prejudices. 
 
 The reports and speeches of the February 
 Congress, though significant enough, did not lead 
 to any immediate results. The crisis produced by 
 the concentration of Austro-Germanic forces on 
 the Russian front during May and the following 
 months imparted a new impetus to the march of 
 events. 
 
 The retreat in Galicia and Poland called forth 
 a heightened consciousness of the national danger 
 and a great manifestation of patriotic resolve. 
 Towards the end of May, at a congress of repre- 
 sentatives of trade and industry, the discussion of 
 technical questions was interrupted by an im-
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 117 
 
 passioned speech delivered by one of the leading 
 Moscow millionaires, V. Riabushinsky, just back 
 from the front and full of the impressions of the life 
 and death struggle against the invaders. " The 
 whole of Russia forms the rear of the Army," 
 he said. " We cannot busy ourselves with our 
 everyday affairs at the present moment : every 
 workshop, every factory must be used to break the 
 enemy's force." It was not a question of form- 
 ing this or that committee, but of sinking all 
 differences and appealing to the assistance of every 
 able man, without distinction of parties, as people 
 had done in the West in France and in England. 
 Prince Lvoff spoke in the same strain on June 5 
 (18) at a meeting of delegates of the Zemstvo 
 Union. " At this great historical juncture," he said, 
 " what is needed is not criticism, but energetic work. 
 We do not want to produce irritation, but a bold 
 spirit and combined efforts. We must strive to 
 concentrate all the forces of the land and to inspire 
 Government and society with mutual confidence." 
 This was the direction recommended by progressive 
 leaders. The Government ought to have recog- 
 nised the necessity of such a league long before, 
 but, in any case, the crisis opened the eyes even 
 of the blind. As Riabushinsky had said, it was not 
 so much the creation of committees for the joint
 
 u8 SELF-GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA 
 
 management of munitions and supplies that mat- 
 tered, nor one or the other change in the Cabinet, 
 but the recognition of the fact that the Govern- 
 ment is powerless without the country, and that 
 with the support of the country it is invincible. 
 
 It is a pity that mutual confidence between 
 Government and Society does not exist, but I 
 think it will be found that Russian intellectuals will 
 continue their efforts in the direction of self-govern- 
 ment with the same stubborn resolve which has 
 been shown by the Russian armies in the field. 
 And whatever mishaps may be in store for Russia 
 as a result of vacillation and obstruction, the trend 
 of history is sufficiently clear, and will not be 
 arrested by intrigues and party strife. Let us look 
 back for a moment at the stages of the process. 
 It started with the state of siege in Old Muscovy. 
 The calling in of Western skill in military and 
 economic matters opened the way for humanitarian 
 ideals. In the light of these ideals local and pro- 
 vincial self-government arose on a narrow class 
 basis but with a tendency to democratic expansion. 
 The great emergencies of national life called forth a 
 concentration of local efforts for political ends. 
 These concerted efforts reveal an active and patriotic 
 society ready and anxious to contribute its share to 
 the regeneration of the political system.
 
 Date Due 
 
 nrr 1 1 
 
 1965 
 
 
 
 UtA * J. 
 
 MOV 4 I' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137 
 
 flEQl0 NM .UBBWW 
 
 123 071 1