! II liii 
 
 llilfli! 
 
 11 ! 
 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 lil 
 
 liilll ! llilM II 
 
REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOb vflA. 
 
 Class 
 
 
 '!M/-v¥nHri"j-VSi-.". i'j-TV/nViTMi-illtJTBKMi-vH.-vVj-J'n'T; 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 

TOLSTOI PROPHET OF THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 Taken especially for the author in 1906 
 
Russia's Message 
 
 The True World 
 Import of the Revolution 
 
 By 
 WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 New York 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 1908 
 
-r 
 
 COPYWGHT, 1908, BY 
 
 IXJUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHED, JUNE, 1908 
 
 ALL RIGHTS KESERVED INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 ^36 
 
 
 \ 
 
TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO IN ALL WALKS OP 
 LIFE ARE CONTENDING AGAINST THE FORCES THAT 
 ARE TRYING TO INTRODUCE INTO AMERICA THE 
 DESPOTISM AND CLASS-RULE OF EASTERN EUROPE; 
 TO ALL THOSE WHO, IN THE TRADITIONAL REV- 
 OLUTIONARY AMERICAN SPIRIT, ARE LEADING 
 OUR COUNTRY AGAINST ALL THE REACTIONARY TEN- 
 DENCIES PREVAILING IN POLITICS, MORALITY, 
 EDUCATION, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, TO ITS 
 GREAT DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIAL WORLD- DESTINY 
 
 173175 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 It is impossible to harmonise the Russian spelling, with its 
 twenty-six letters of a different alphabet, with the spelling of 
 any other modern language. As a consequence there are often 
 half a dozen ways of putting into English, French or German 
 letters the name of some well-known Russian, consequently 
 the reader must not be surprised to see a Russian name which 
 he has been accustomed to see spelled in one way, here spelled 
 in another; for example, I have spelled the name of the present 
 prime minister Stolypine, whereas the reader may possibly 
 know the name better as Stolypin, or Stolipin. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 No ONE who has seen and understood the social upheaval 
 now going on in Russia can doubt that the Russian people 
 have a message. It does not need to be written down; it is 
 carried abroad by every telegram. But to understand the 
 whole message the situation must be seen and understood as 
 a whole. 
 
 I have undertaken to make a plain statement of this situa- 
 tion, omitting no feature of the first importance and relating 
 all together as a single whole. I have not written suggesting 
 what we can do for Russia, but rather what Russia has to offer 
 us; I have concerned myself with the universal qualities of the 
 Russian people rather than with any aspect of their character 
 and situation that is peculiar to themselves. I have not 
 written historically for the benefit of the academic student, nor 
 sought to dwell on the picturesqueness of those sections of 
 Russia and aspects of Russian life that are most strange; I 
 have not dwelt on personal experience, as the situation is too 
 large to be presented in all its aspects in any personal narrative. 
 I have sought rather, through the personal acquaintance with 
 a majority of the most important leaders of all parties and 
 elements of the Russian nation, to put myself in the most 
 immediate contact with the inner ideas and spirit of the great 
 struggle and to present this struggle to the reader as seen through 
 the eyes of its leaders themselves. 
 
 Finally, I have written not for the casual reader or for him 
 who draws from this tragic and inspiring situation a mere 
 interest in the chances of the fight or in its melodramatic aspects. 
 I appeal rather to those seriously interested in the Russian 
 revolutionary movement for the Hght it sheds on that all- 
 inclusive problem, the future of human society. 
 
 The greater part of two years I have spent in Russia in order 
 to gain a rounded view. My attention was first drawn to the 
 absorbing interest of this great struggle by Polish and Jewish 
 
 ix 
 
X RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Russian exiles met while I was living among them in the 
 University Settlement in New York. Leaving the United States 
 shortly after the massacre of January 22, 1905, I spent several 
 months in London, Paris, Geneva, Cracow, and Vienna among 
 leaders of the revolutionary parties of all factions and races. 
 Within a week after the Czar issued his October Manifesto 
 I was in Warsaw, and a few days later in St. Petersburg, where 
 I at once met Witte and the chief members of his ministry, and 
 at the same time put myself in touch with the most conspirative 
 of the revolutionary organisations. I spent the larger part of 
 my time in that country from this date until the opening of 
 the third Duma. Near the close of my last visit the press of the 
 United States, and the leading European countries, announced 
 the arrest of myself and wife and her sister and our detention 
 for twenty-four hours in prison through the acknowledged 
 mistake, or perhaps inconsideration, of the Russian Govern- 
 ment. It is not true, as was suggested then in a few papers, 
 that the Russian Government made either a direct or indirect 
 request through the American ambassador that we should 
 leave the country. We had wished to follow Russian events 
 closely only until the meeting of the third Duma, and we left 
 St. Petersburg on the day on which we had previously arranged 
 to go. It was explained by the Russian political police that our 
 arrest was due to our friendly relations with certain revolu- 
 tionists. I have certainly had such relations with hundreds 
 of leading persons of this movement, as with an almost equal 
 number of their opponents. 
 
 I have to some extent made use of articles that I have written 
 for various magazines — particularly the Independent, in 
 which perhaps a score of my articles appeared in the course 
 of 1906 and 1907. I have also made some use of articles 
 published in Collier's Weekly, the Outlook, the World To-day, 
 Charities, the American Federationist, and Moody's Financial 
 Magazine. However, nine-tenths of the present book is 
 entirely new. 
 
 , Realising the immensity of the task that lay before me, I 
 have confined my attention in the present work largely to the 
 Russian part of Russia, leaving aside entirely all 
 Asiatic Russia, the Caucasus and the Baltic Provinces,, 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Poland, and Finland. The Polish and Finnish situations are 
 of such exceptional importance in relation to the Russian that 
 I spent several weeks in visiting both countries, but I have 
 not made them a part of my work. 
 
 One feature of the book needs perhaps a special explanation* 
 The crimes of the Russian Government are so monstrous and 
 so manifold that I have quite despaired of giving any satis- 
 factory picture of them as a whole. In my first chapters I 
 have dwelt at some length with this subject, but I have devised 
 the economical measure of taking the Jews as my central theme, 
 not because I consider that their persecutions are any worse than 
 other peoples' in Russia, nor because they are more important 
 than other nationalities, as for instance the Tartars or the Poles,, 
 but because they have themselves been selected by the Govern- 
 ment as the centre of the whole persecution system. In other 
 parts of the book I have tried to portray not merely the central 
 feature but the whole situation. 
 
 If I had cared to burden my work with footnotes showing 
 the source of all my information I could readily have done so; 
 but this would have increased very largely the bulk of the 
 volume, besides interrupting the attention of the average 
 reader, interested rather in the facts themselves than in the 
 source from which they come. I am prepared, however, to 
 give my authority for every detail, just as much as if I had been 
 writing a history or a scientific sociological work. 
 
 I owe little to writers of books and much to active leaders in 
 the movement. Of these I have met hundreds. It would be 
 impossible in a few pages to mention even their names. To a 
 few persons, however, I am especially indebted ; among the fore- 
 most are: Prince M who introduced me to the Czar's 
 
 ministers, Witte and the rest, as well as to several of his most 
 important generals and who kept me for the whole period of my 
 visit in close touch with the situation in court circles and the 
 ministry; to Mr. David Sosskis, the able correspondent of the 
 London Tribune; Mr. Harold Williams, correspondent of the 
 Manchester Guardian, a valued friend of the Constitutional 
 Democratic Party ; to Madame Turkova, one of the most active 
 and important leaders of that party ; to the Countess Bobrinsky 
 of Moscow, one of the organisers both of the Constitutional 
 
xii RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Democratic Party and of the Peasants' Union; to Professor 
 Milyoukov, whose high personal quahties are appreciated even 
 by his severest critics; to the poet Tan (Borgoraz), a founder 
 of the Peasants' Union and of the National Socialist Party and 
 an active leader in all the most revolutionary but non-partisan 
 movements; to Aladdin, the most active and valuable, if not the 
 most influential, of the Labour Group; to Volkovsky, Tchai- 
 kovsky, Gershuni, Chisko, Shidlovsky, and Madame Breshkov- 
 skaya, founders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party ; to Isaac 
 Hourwich, Nahum Stone, and James M. James, leaders among 
 the Russian Social Democratic Party in New York ; to Vladimir 
 Simkhovitch, of Columbia University ; to Prince Dimitri Hilkov, 
 one of the most gifted and popular leaders of the whole revolu- 
 tionary movement, and most of all to Bielevsky, Staal, and 
 Mazurenko, founders of the great Peasants' Union. 
 
 I have selected these names somewhat at hazard and do 
 not wish to imply that the list of those to whom I am most 
 indebted is exhausted. I cannot leave the question of my 
 indebtedness without expressing my gratitude to other 
 prominent Russians with whom I have had only single long 
 interviews or brief meetings. Among them are Tolstoi, 
 Gorky, and Korolenko; the conservative leaders, Gutchkov, 
 Maklakov, and Michael Stachovitch; the Social Democratic 
 leaders. Parvus, Dan, Lenin, and Alexinsky ; the brilliant leaders 
 of the Polish Socialistic Party who make their headquarters at 
 Cracow — not to speak of innumerable others, especially Duma 
 members, editors, elected members of local government boards, 
 and active organisers of all the popular parties, labour organisa- 
 tions, and of the Union of Unions. 
 
 I have written of course according to the possibilities of the 
 moment. The time is ripe for a general review of the first 
 act of the great revolutionary drama. The second act has not 
 yet begun and it will be years before the whole drama has been 
 finished. A few months ago it would have been impossible to 
 gauge accurately the real intentions and policy of the Czar, the 
 court and the Government after the great events through which 
 Russia has just passed ; a few years hence it will be possible to 
 write a full and satisfactory history at least of a large part of 
 the revolutionary movement. In the meanwhile, if I have been 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 able to give a general understanding of the first act, to spread 
 the conviction that Russia has a message for humanity and to 
 suggest what this message contains, the reader will be enabled 
 to appreciate coming events at their true value and to feel that 
 the Russian struggle is not far av/ay, as we sometimes imagine, 
 but nearer to us in the end than any of the smaller spectacles 
 that are taking place in front of our own doorways. 
 
 Lincoln's Birthday, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 
 
 IX 
 
 I. 
 II. 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE OF SOCIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Why Russia is the Field of the Great Experiment 
 The Beginning — 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907 
 
 3 
 10 
 
 PART II 
 
 OPPRESSION 
 
 I. Nicholas, Czar .... 
 
 II. How Czars Govern 
 
 III. The Czarism Struggling for Existence 
 
 IV. The Slow Massacre System 
 V. Creating the " Internal Enemy " . 
 
 VI. The Danger of Progress 
 
 VII. "My Chief Support" . 
 
 VIII. What Happened to ' * The Constitution 
 
 IX. " Prussian " Reform . 
 
 X. Autocracy's Last Hope 
 
 XL The People's Enemies are the Czar's Allies 
 
 29 
 
 32 
 40 
 
 51 
 
 59 
 
 70 
 
 80 
 
 88 
 
 100 
 
 112 
 
 126 
 
 PART III 
 
 REVOLT 
 
 I. The Russian People — A Mystery 
 
 11. The Russian People — Their True Character 
 
 III. How the Peasants Live 
 
 IV. How the Peasants Till the Soil 
 
 XV 
 
 145 
 153 
 166 
 180 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 PART 111 — Continued 
 
 V. From Slaves of the Landlord to Slaves of the State . 192 
 
 VI. The Peasant Gives His Orders . . . .208 
 
 VII. How the Peasant Became a Revolutionist . . 216 
 
 VIII. The Village Against the Czar — A State of Mind 227 
 
 IX. The Czar's Armies of Revenge .... 235 
 
 X. The Village Against the Czar — A State of War . 250 
 
 XL Waiting for Civil War 261 
 
 
 PART IV 
 
 
 
 EVOLUTION OF A NEW NATION 
 
 
 I. 
 
 The Nation United . . . 
 
 271 
 
 II. 
 
 The Nation Chooses the Revolutionary Way . 
 
 . 279 
 
 III. 
 
 The Unity Destroyed 
 
 . 287 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Moderates Cooperate with the Reactionaries 
 
 • 295 
 
 V. 
 
 Begging for Crumbs ..... 
 
 304 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Peasants Become Socialists . 
 
 . 312 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Peasant Parties Abandon Hope in the Duma 
 
 • 327 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Leaders of the People .... 
 
 33^ 
 
 PART V 
 
 REVOLUTION AND THE MESSAGE 
 
 'I. The Workingmen .... 
 
 II. The Position of the Workingmen . 
 
 III. Organising ..... 
 
 IV. Planning the War .... 
 V. How the Priests are Becoming Revolutionists 
 
 VI. The Religious Revolution . 
 VII. The Russian Revolution 
 vVIII. Russia's Message .... 
 
 Appendix . 
 Bibliographical Note 
 Index 
 
 349 
 358 
 371 
 382 
 
 392 
 402 
 
 413 
 428 
 
 468 
 469 
 
 473 
 
 XVI 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Count Tolstoi 
 
 Nicholas 1 1. , " Most High ' ' . 
 
 Two high officials . 
 
 How the peasants are " pacified" 
 
 Executing political prisoners . 
 
 The slayer of von Plehve 
 
 Marie Spiridonova 
 
 Krushevan, massacre organiser 
 
 Reactionary Duma members 
 
 Herzenstein and Kovalevski . 
 
 Map showing political divisions in 
 
 Teaching the peasants . 
 
 A southern peasant 
 
 The landlord's palace . 
 
 The peasant's cottage . 
 
 The earthen cottage 
 
 The cottage's single room 
 
 A peasant's waggon 
 
 Agricultural implements 
 
 Peasants in winter costume 
 
 Famine-stricken peasants 
 
 Methods of threshing . 
 
 Haying done by women 
 
 Bogoraz (Tan) , the poet 
 
 Korolenko, the novelist 
 
 The village chief . 
 
 A wise peasant 
 
 The village street 
 
 Social farming of the peasantry 
 
 Little Russian peasants . 
 
 Professor Milyoukov 
 
 Constitutional Democratic leaders 
 
 Labour Group of first Duma . 
 
 xvii 
 
 Russia 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 48 
 
 49 
 64 
 
 65 
 80 
 81 
 96 
 
 97 
 162 
 165 
 174 
 175 
 178 
 179 
 190 
 191 
 192 
 
 193 
 208 
 209 
 340 
 240- 
 241 
 241 
 256 
 256 
 
 257 
 276 
 277 
 284 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Social Democratic deputies . 
 
 
 
 
 
 2S5 
 
 Executive Committee of Peasants' Union 
 
 
 
 294 
 
 Cossack liberals . . . . . . 
 
 
 
 29s 
 
 A young village leader . 
 
 
 
 
 
 298 
 
 Peasants' Union delegates . 
 
 
 
 
 
 299 
 
 Peasant members of the Duma 
 
 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 An educated peasant leader . 
 
 
 
 
 
 327 
 
 Anikine ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 Aladdin ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 Bielevsky , under " house arrest *' 
 
 
 
 
 
 331 
 
 Father Gapon 
 
 
 
 
 
 356 
 
 Type of working man . 
 
 
 
 
 
 357 
 
 A corner of old Moscow . 
 
 
 
 
 
 364 
 
 Prince Kropotkin 
 
 
 
 
 
 36s 
 
 Socialist Revolutionary leaders 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 384 
 
 Two types of village priests . 
 
 
 
 
 
 38s 
 
 Fathers Petrov and Kolokolnikov 
 
 
 
 
 
 400 
 
 Two types of the higher clergy 
 
 
 
 
 
 401 
 
 xvin 
 
PART ONE 
 
 The Birthplace of Social Freedom 
 
OF THE ^>^ 
 
 DIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHY RUSSIA IS THE FIELD OF THE GREAT EXPERIMENT 
 
 ON THE banks of the Neva, the Volga, and the Vistula," 
 writes Anatole France, "the fate of new Europe and 
 the future of humanity are being decided." 
 / The future of humanity is being decided in Russia because 
 fit is Russia alone among the great nations that has not already 
 \definitely chosen the path of her development. The foundations 
 of modem industry were laid in Great Britain more than a cen- 
 tury ago, the political institutions of America have undergone 
 no revolution for more than a hundred years. The other 
 modem nations also are held fast in the framework of material 
 and political conditions fixed by some long-dead generation. 
 In this sense Russia is comparatively free. Without being out 
 of touch with modem life she is not bound by any of the peculiar 
 limitations of the other nations. 
 
 i She is almost entirely free from those great business interests 
 that dominate the life of other modem nations. Witte has 
 tried the great experiment of turning Russia into a modem 
 business nation by means of ukases of the Czar and the division 
 of his plunder and the country's wealth with foreign capital. 
 The result was the collapse in 1 900 of the whole artificial indus- 
 trial structure based on the taxation of the starving peasantry. 
 The recent parliamentary experiment is also ended and the 
 shadow of a constitution has disappeared. The Government 
 i is once more a despotism that leaves neither power nor freedom 
 to the people. 
 
 Neither by political education, then, nor by economic neces- 
 sity are the Russians tied to any one of the industrial and 
 political institutions that characterise other peoples of our 
 time, nor are they in any way wedded to an effete and outworn 
 ^civilisation. The Czarism is a half -Asiatic, half -German insti- 
 tution imposed on the coxmtry from without, just as the Church 
 
 3 
 
4 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 was bodily transported from Constantinople and set up without 
 the slightest reference to religious ideas then in existence. 
 We have the judgment indeed of one of Russia's greatest histo- 
 rians and sociologists, of the man who led the party that con- 
 j| trolled both of the first two Dumas, to the effect that Russia is 
 
 ^^ I indeed without any national religious or political tradition 
 in the truest sense of the word. 
 
 Scratch a Russian and you find not a Tartar but a new 
 European. Old institutions are hated rather than venerated. 
 There is no question among any important element of the 
 population outside of the relative handful that supports the 
 Czar, of not leaving the landmarks of Russia with all speed. 
 Russia's unparalleled tragedy is not due to any innate conser- 
 vatism in the national character, not to the grip on the people's 
 soul of old customs and an old faith, but to an incredible incubus 
 that has been imposed upon her from without and like a mon- 
 strous parasite has grown strong at the expense of all her 
 best vital forces. 
 
 "The Russian," said Turgeniev, "is so convinced of his 
 own strength and powers that he is not afraid of putting himself 
 to severe strain. He takes little interest in his past and looks 
 boldly forward. What is good (in his own past or that of other 
 nations) he likes, what is sensible he will have, and where it 
 comes from he does not care." 
 
 y "The old is dead, the new is not yet born," says an old Russian 
 proverb. It portrays the present condition of the country. 
 The old Russian system of slavery and despotism is already dead 
 in the minds and hearts of the people because enslavement 
 either to private individuals or to the State wholly contradicts 
 every thought and feeling of the Russian, as of every thinking 
 and feeling man who knows of any other mode of existence. 
 The new is not yet bom because of the greatness of the changes 
 that are coming into being. It is not merely a revolutionary 
 change in land ownership or a new government that is demanded. 
 It is, to employ an expression now widely in use among all classes, 
 
 ^ ""new forms of life," new forms of national and individual 
 existence. The peasants want the land and the nation wants 
 to rule itself, not because conditions are growing worse, not so 
 much because they are inspired with the horror of what now 
 
RUSSIA THE FIELD OF EXPERIMENT 5 
 
 prevails, as because they are filled with a sense of the greatness 
 that is possible to a regenerated Russia. 
 
 Here is a great people in possession of half the continents 
 of Europe and Asia, a people unhampered by inherent traditions, 
 that has yet never experienced a great national awakening like 
 other countries. Every thoughtful or enterprising Russian 
 feels that in a well ordered society there would be room for 
 his development. Every peasant knows of the better conditions 
 and opportunities of America and Western Europe. Every 
 educated person has read and thought over what is desirable 
 and undesirable for Russia in this "Western life." Every 
 trained person, publicist, artisan, professional or business man, 
 has studied, planned and dreamed over the technical revolution 
 already accomplished in other countries that is called for also 
 in his occupation in Russia. But all feel that the absence of any 
 real tradition in Russia, the long pent-up energies and revolution- 
 ary spirit in all things, should ultimately give her an advantage 
 over the other countries, and sweep away many of the obstacles 
 to individual and national development that exist in other 
 lands either because their advanced economic condition has set 
 them in the hard and fast lines of a fixed material and institu- 
 tional framework, or because some popular, but none the less 
 blind, political tradition has been allowed to sink its roots in the 
 minds of the people. 
 
 The evil Russia is fighting does not exist, then, in the charac- 
 ter of the nation itself, as a thing of the spirit, but as an arbitrary 
 physical power. Nevertheless, the struggle of the new against 
 the old Russia is not merely a physical conflict. The people's 
 cause has long ago attained a strength sufficiently great to force 
 the Government to break its silence and to cover its selfish, 
 irresponsible, and anti-social action, often consciously hostile 
 to the general welfare, by a whole universe of lies. To every 
 appeal from glaring wrongs to reason, to justice, to the nation's 
 welfare, or even to the most elementary rights of the individual, 
 the Government's answer is — some falsehood. 
 
 Official Russia is in a land of lies. The Czar lies as to facts 
 in signed documents, breaks his most solemn promises to the 
 nation, and, finally, diabolically proclaims his God-given right 
 to break his word. The ministers lie to the Duma and the Duma 
 
6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 fully exposes their lies. To retrieve its own national reputation 
 lost in the war with Japan, the Government tries to throw the 
 blame on the Manchurian generals and finally convicts them, 
 apparently with justice, of every manner of fraud and degrada- 
 tion, even to telegraphing in official despatches of battles that 
 were never fought. Every financial statement the Government 
 has issued has been proved by the experts of Europe to be only 
 a cleverly managed collection of misstatements. All the tele- 
 grams allowed to be printed in Russia are those of the Govern- 
 ment agency, and every day proves some of them to be either 
 lying half-truths or falsehoods. 
 
 Each of these lies covers a wrong. With the growth of the 
 revolutionary movement all wrong-doers and parasites enjoying 
 a wrongful or unearned income are herding together for defence. 
 Whether the incompetent person is professor, administrator, 
 engineer, or priest, whether the dishonest wrong-doer is official, 
 banker, or landlord, makes little difference. They are all 
 connected with the Governnient. The ramifications of the 
 governmental power are numberless and few are the unscrupu- 
 lous that have not secured some kind of protection or benefit. 
 It would seem that there is nothing too old, too outworn, too 
 repugnant to all humanity and reason, whether in government, 
 religion, education, or science, for the Czar to cover with the 
 Imperial sanction. 
 
 The struggle is not being carried out on a physical plane, largely 
 because all the best life of the nation is absorbed in exposing 
 this great system of falsehood. And as the hard-pressed Govern- 
 ment takes shelter at one time or another behind nearly every 
 one of the most used and dangerous lies that are oppressing 
 humanity and have oppressed it for centuries, the leaders of the 
 nation on their side have been forced to draw into the discussion 
 all the greatest and most illuminating truths of history and of 
 [our time. The more hopeless the outlook for the immediate 
 success of the revolution, the more enthusiastic, impassioned, 
 many-sided and profound has been the public discussion of 
 every far-reaching social problem, until it can now be^ said 
 though she is without a vestige of political liberty that Russia 
 is more vitally alive to every great political and social issue 
 than the freest countries. In the brief periods of relative free- 
 
RUSSIA THE FIELD OF EXPERIMENT 7 
 
 dom of the press that have occurred several times during these 
 revolutionary years no great problem of human destiny was 
 left unstirred. All arguments, all philosophies, all history, 
 the experience of all countries were dragged into the arena. 
 Because nothing is settled in the nation's life, because the people 
 are clamouring for everything that for generations may have 
 been denied, and because all great questions are under discussion, 
 nothing can be taken for granted in the argument. So there 
 are marshaled in opposing camps in Russia all the forces of 
 progress and reaction as in no other country during all the 
 century that has elapsed since the revolution in France. 
 
 The issues of this revolution are greater than they were in 
 France, the struggle is on a more extended scale, and the whole ^ 
 world is lending its forces to aid the Russian Government. 
 The foreign influence that threatened the French Revolution 
 through the English fleet and the Prussian and Austrian armies 
 on the frontier, which finally forced the Revolution to choose 
 between Napoleon's military dictatorship and extinction, is 
 represented in the very heart of Russian life by the apparently 
 inexhaustible supply of gold by means of which foreign money- 
 lenders enabled the Government to provide itself with all the 
 formidable machinery of modem warfare and to hire an army of 
 nearly a million Cossacks and police to hold down the revolu- 
 tionary movement. The Russian revolution is in no sense 
 only a Russian question. It is against the financial powers ^ 
 of all the world that the revolutionists are fighting. This is 
 why Russia's most profound thinkers cannot see an early end 
 to the upheaval — though the whole world will benefit from ' 
 their victory. 
 
 I saw Count Tolstoi just after the meeting of the first Duma, 
 and told him I had come to spend several years to observe the 
 revolution. " You had better stay here fifty years," he answered. 
 "The revolution is a drama of several acts. This Duma is not 
 even the first act, but only the first scene of the first act, and as 
 is usual with first scenes it is a trifle comic." 
 
 If the revolution is long drawn out, if the losses are great, 
 if the Czarism seems to be holding its power, this is only because 
 new forces have been thrown into the balance, and means that 
 a still greater battle will have to be fought, a battle that may 
 
8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 V become what Carlyle called the French Revolution, "the 
 account day of a thousand years." 
 
 But in order to realise what is going on it is not necessary to 
 wait for the final fruition of the great movement. The soul 
 Wof the future civilisation is foreshadowed in the conflict. The 
 rising generation, the youth and even most men under middle 
 age, those who will constitute the chief force of Russia in another 
 decade, are nothing less than inspired by the revolution. Their 
 devotion goes further than that of mere patriots engaged in 
 foreign wars; they imdergo denials, sufferings and actual tortures 
 that make them more akin to religious martyrs. Patriots die 
 freely in battle for their country — these enthusiasts submit 
 to a whole life of unrewarded sacrifice. The vast majority of 
 the young men of every social class except the most privileged, 
 and a large part of the educated young women as well, are daily 
 offering their lives, their liberty, their property and their future 
 careers for the cause. Their leading motive is not hatred of 
 the enemy, nor perhaps even love of their own friends and 
 kindred, so much as the political principles and social ideals 
 ' to which they have given all their most serious thoughts. The 
 t more thoughtful, active, and capable the young people, the more 
 immersed we find them in the revolutionary movement. Nor 
 do they leave it with growing years. The revolutionists of the 
 former generation have for the most part remained steadfastly 
 attached to their faith, and each of the great parties is still led 
 by the last even more than by the present generation. Neither 
 must it be inferred that it is altogether different with the fathers 
 of the rank and file. As usual in wars or revolutions their 
 positions and family cares do not permit them to bear the brunt 
 of the movement, the active parts are necessarily taken by the 
 yotmg, but the parents often encourage, and rarely interfere 
 with, their children's activities. 
 
 It is perhaps the first time in history that a whole nation 
 has been infected to the point of religious enthusiasm by this 
 purely social faith. Something like this occurred in France. 
 But as the revolution there did not meet a tithe of the obstacles 
 that this one has already met, it did not develop a tithe of the 
 intensity, profundity, or universal scope of the present move- 
 ment. This is why so many great thinkers feel that the 
 
RUSSIA THE FIELD OF EXPERIMENT 9 
 
 Russian revolution means more to humanity than any great 
 popular movement, political, economic, or religious, that all 
 history records. 
 
 As regenerated Russia, inspired by her victory and with 
 the spiritual strength and character gained through the struggle, 
 steps finally into the arena of the modem nations and faces 
 the same situation as the rest, she is likely to lead in her solutions 
 rather than to follow, to inspire rather than to act as a drag 
 upon the others. Her poverty, her inexperience, her miserable 
 past, will give to her young men the same stimulation as they 
 have to our own, who in struggling against precisely such 
 obstacles have created the greatness of the United States. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BEGINNING — 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907 
 
 IN THE brief space of four years Russia has gone through 
 the experience of a generation: the war with Japan; the 
 broken promises of the Czar and the false constitutional hopes 
 of a part of the people ; the indefinite postponement of the once 
 impending bankruptcy; the failure of passive resistance called 
 for by the national assembly, of the second great general strike, 
 of the insurrections in the cities, of the agrarian uprisings 
 in the country, and of the imposing mutinies on sea and land to 
 shake off the hated Czar. The guerilla war and the killing 
 of. the most murderous officials by mortally injured and mad- 
 dened citizens continue to cost the Government dear, but the very 
 persons engaged in this kind of warfare know that by it alone 
 the Czarism can never be overthrown. The people's parties are 
 powerless and insignificant in the third Duma, but they have 
 succeeded in planting their doctrines everywhere and even in 
 partly organising the masses of the population. The three 
 Dumas and the revolutionary movement have brought no great 
 improvements in the political freedom or the economic condition 
 of the people. But they have already brought the Russian 
 problem before the whole world, and revolutionised Russian 
 life, thought, and opinion. 
 
 It was at the beginning of war with Japan that the foreign 
 press first directed its attention to Russia's internal affairs. 
 The spectacular failure of the Russian arms in Manchuria, 
 however, shed little light on the internal conditions of European 
 Russia nearly ten thousand miles away. One particular fact, 
 though, was made evident. From the events in Russia at this 
 time it was clear to all the world that a large part of the people 
 of all classes was opposed to the war. The leading newspapers, 
 gagged as they were, managed to attack the war and the Govern- 
 ment; and the troops began almost immediately to revolt. 
 
 10 
 
THE BEGINNING ii 
 
 The world learned that the Russian people had not brought 
 on this war. 
 
 The real cause of the war soon developed. It became clear 
 that the terrible conflict was brought on chiefly to further the 
 private interests of the Grand Dukes, Admiral Alexis, and other 
 favourites of the court, A quarter of a million lives had been 
 destroyed and a sum calculated by a leading economist at four 
 or five billion rubles, a tenth of the total wealth of this impov- 
 erished people, had been destroyed. The whole world then for 
 the first time realised that the Russian Government is indeed a 
 barbarous despotism, that it is sustained by violence, that the 
 welfare of the people is subordinated to the interests of those 
 who happen to be pleasing to the Czar. The true nature of the 
 Czarism was probably as plain at that moment as it will ever be. 
 All the other horrors, the massacre of the St. Petersburg workmen 
 on January 22, 1905, the innumerable massacres of the Jews 
 instigated by the police, the butcheries of Tartars, Armenians, 
 and Poles in peaceful assemblies, the deliberate burning of a 
 theatre full of educated people at Tomsk, however terrible to 
 the foreign reader, were, taken all together, hardly so costly to 
 the Russian people, hardly so significant of their enslaved 
 condition, as the spectacle of a nation of a hundred and forty 
 million people being driven by their despot to war against 
 another people ten thousand miles away of whom they knew 
 little and against whom they had conceived no grievance. 
 
 The events of the last three years (1905, 1906, 1907) are 
 surely enough to show that there is no hope of this incredible 
 and monstrous despotism reforming itself. Russia has listened 
 to the Czar's broken promises for more than a generation. But 
 the promises of the last three years have been heard one after 
 another by the whole world. In October, 1905, the Czar prom- 
 ised a Duma and freedom and equality before the law. At 
 present all continues as before : newspapers are confiscated and 
 suppressed ; every kind of -meeting forbidden ; Jews and Poles 
 persecuted for their religion and nationality; workingmen and 
 peasants arrested by the wholesale for striking; hundreds of 
 speakers, writers, students and working people sent every day, 
 without trial, to prison, hard labour, and Siberia; the starving 
 \ peasantry crushed by the same overwhelming burden of taxes, 
 
12 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 and the Duma abolished in all but name. The third Duma is 
 entirely in the hands of the landlords, the sole important ele- 
 ment of the nation outside of Government employees on which 
 the Czar can now rely for loyal support — about one per cent, 
 of the population. 
 
 It is not a question of reform in Russia but of revolution. 
 The reader does not need to be reminded how large a part of 
 the Russian people are of this opinion. Tens of thousands 
 have died for it, hundreds of thousands gone to prison or exile, 
 millions suffered persecution, fines and arrest. Tens of millions 
 of Russians who do not happen to have been individually 
 persecuted share their view. In the election an overwhelming 
 majority of the people voted for representatives of the revolu- 
 tionary factions. It was only a most unequal suffrage and 
 unheard of arbitrariness of the officials that gave the moderately 
 oppositional parties a bare majority. It will be remembered 
 that this election law, though by no means distorted enough 
 to give a Government majority and now replaced by one infi- 
 nitely less democratic, nevertheless gave the noble landlord the 
 same number of votes as a hundred peasants. And it will 
 be recalled that voters and electors were publicly disqualified 
 by the hundred thousand at all stages of the election for nothing 
 more subversive than unfriendliness to the Government. But 
 it is not generally realised that nevertheless an overwhelming 
 majority of the votes cast were votes for revolution. 
 
 The intelligent newspaper reader is well aware that every 
 attempt at revolution has failed to gain any concrete results, 
 whether general strike, insurrection, mutiny, refusal of taxes 
 and recruits, assassination of despots, guerilla war, or even the 
 most peaceful parliamentary method of refusing to countenance 
 the foreign loans on which the Government is absolutely depen- 
 dent for every year of its continued existence. The general 
 strike, which won the Czar's idle promise of reform, the well 
 known Manifesto* of October, 1905, was carried to success by 
 two causes that can hardly recur again — the unpreparedness 
 of the Government, and the unity of the people. The strike 
 was begun on the railroads and its effect was almost wholly 
 due to the tying up of all the communication of the country. 
 
 * For the full text of this Manifesto see Appendix, Note A. 
 
THE BEGINNING 13 
 
 The Government has now organized the railroads on the Prus- 
 sian military system and made it an offence punishable by 
 immediate execution to have anything to do with a railway 
 strike. After the passing of this law a second effort to strike, 
 in December, 1905, proved an almost complete failure. This 
 was partly due to the preparedness of the Government, partly 
 to the hostility or indifference of a part of the population. The 
 Railway Union in Siberia felt itself forced to leave the lines open 
 to send the troops home from Manchuria. The troops in Man- 
 churia, though sympathetic with the revolt, were more anxious 
 to get home a few weeks earlier than to further the cause. In 
 another section the imion felt compelled to forward grain to the 
 famine-stricken peasants. The peasants were sympathetic but 
 not enough so to withstand a few more weeks of a state of siege 
 for the sake of permanent freedom. The railway men knew 
 then, and have since finally decided, that a strike can succeed 
 against the courts-martial only if the communications are 
 completely interrupted and the bridges as far as possible de- 
 stroyed. They propose to wait until some large section of the 
 peasants rises in revolt. The general strike depends then on the 
 general insurrection. 
 
 But the general insurrection has also been tried and foimd 
 wanting. The Moscow barricades certainly proved an imex- 
 pected and brilliant success at the outset, and this success was 
 repeated at a nimiber of other places. But no unity of action 
 developed between the various points. The railroads remained 
 almost intact and the Government was able to send reinforce- 
 ments wherever it was hard pressed. In the meanwhile the 
 revolutionists failed to get on their side a sufficiently large part 
 of the army at any one point to be able to march to the rescue 
 of their comrades. 
 
 , The agrarian insurrections were even more isolated and 
 fruitless. Numbering on the whole several thousand, they were 
 yet so disconnected that never were more than a handful of 
 villages able to act in concert. A hundred million rubles worth 
 of landlords* property was destroyed, here and there an official 
 was killed. Yet there was no call for, nor support of, a general 
 railroad strike, the only measure that could have confimed the 
 loyal part of the troops to the cities and allowed time for the 
 
14 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 organisation of the agrarian revolt. Again, in the summer of 
 1907, after the dissolution of the second and last real Duma, the 
 whole of the southern part of the country was covered with 
 agrarian revolts, but again these revolts were never so general 
 as to be too much for the relatively few loyal troops, the Cossacks 
 '. and mounted rural police. If the day should ever arrive when 
 these revolts become general in any section, the Railroad Union, 
 sure then of the support and aid of the people, promises a strike 
 accompanied by the destruction of the lines. This would cer- 
 tainly leave the country districts in the people's hands. The 
 half a million mounted soldiers who happen for the most part 
 to be loyal would be as nothing spread over a large section of 
 the country. 
 
 Events have shown conclusively that most of the peasant 
 / infantry in the towns are infected and that some are ready for 
 ' mutiny or desertion. But there remains the semi-professional 
 army of Cossacks and guards, and this has been the one great 
 safeguard of the throne. The relatively few revolts among the 
 loyal professional, and one might almost say standing, army 
 have of course been made the most of by the revolutionists. 
 But such mutinies have been directed often merely against the 
 miserable food, and unnecessary regulations or discipline. The 
 Czar has quickly realised the necessity of giving these soldiers 
 no such causes of discontent. Their food has been entirely 
 altered, their pay increased, their service eased and especially 
 compensated in times of "campaigns against the internal 
 enemy." The regiments of the guard were favoured in every 
 way, stationed at the most important and interesting places, 
 clothed, fed, paid, and treated better than the rest. The mem- 
 bers of these regiments had been chosen from all the recruits, 
 not only on account of their physical development, but also 
 because of loyalty and zeal. 
 
 The Cossacks are even more favoured among the subjects 
 of the Czar. They are truly professional soldiers and the chil- 
 dren of paid fighters. Living in outlying parts of the country 
 the Czar has devoted to their use for several generations, they 
 are given every privilege the Government can afford -Aplenty 
 of land, low taxes, and even local freedom to govern themselves. 
 They are not forced conscripts like the rest of the Czar's forces 
 
THE BEGINNING 15 
 
 and all the great armies of to-day. They are well paid to follow 
 the profession their fathers freely chose before them. Their 
 privileged position puts them socially apart somewhere between 
 the nobility and the common people. Without having the inde- 
 pendent military power of the Janissaries or Pretorian guards, 
 they are as much the indispensable prop of a detested govern- 
 ment as were the mercenaries of the old Empires of Constanti- 
 nople or Rome. 
 
 The reader has often noticed the undoubted zest with which 
 these Cossacks have filled their murderous office, and he has 
 doubtless felt the hopelessness of inspiring such bom servants 
 of despotism with devotion to the people. If he remembers 
 that the Cossacks* privileges would also vanish with the institu- 
 tion of a people's army and a more democratic government, 
 he will understand from the Cossack problem alone that the revo- 
 lution has before it a task greater than that ever faced by any 
 people fighting for freedom. An impoverished and unarmed 
 people spread out in little isolated villages and towns over half 
 Europe and half Asia has to face a modem army of half a million 
 men, mostly hereditary fighters, perhaps the best horsemen in 
 the world, well paid and rewarded, splendidly armed and disci- 
 plined, hated by the mass of the people and naturally returning 
 with contempt this hatred, prepared by special schooling and 
 the careful tutelage of their officers to despise democracy and 
 peace, to love Czarism and war, already experienced in, and now 
 thoroughly reorganised for the express purpose of, putting down 
 revolt. It is this army paid by the money advanced by the 
 financiers of Germany and France, that has checked the revolu- 
 tion. It is the activity of this army that explains why the 
 peasant uprisings limited to a few thousand villages scattered 
 over the land did not take hold of the others and result, as in 
 France in 1789, in the driving of the last landlord out of the 
 country. It was this army that suppressed the growing mutiny 
 among the troops in every comer of the land. It was this army 
 that recaptured the few towns and strongholds that fell into 
 the people's hands and prevented the peasants and small towns 
 from imifying their movements as was done by the federations 
 in France, which organised a government that was able to defend 
 itself for twenty years against the allied forces of all Europe. 
 
i6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The peaceful measures of revolt, as I have said, were no more 
 successful. The failure to get a foreign loan would have forced 
 the Government to yield — but the people's opposition to the 
 loan availed nothing. In December, 1906, the Government 
 reports showed that the country's finances were only a few 
 million rubles, or a few days from paper money and ruin. The 
 financial situation may indeed overwhelm the Government 
 in another generation, but if aljowed to reach that point it 
 might first overwhelm the natioii in utter impoverishment and 
 economic ruin. 
 
 The only other "peaceful" means of forcing the Government 
 to terms were those appealed to by the first Duma when it was 
 dissolved. The celebrated Viborg manifesto,* signed by a 
 majority of the people's representatives, called for every possible 
 means of passive resistance, denounced the foreign loans, and 
 proposed to the people to refuse taxes and recruits. These 
 latter measures, certainly passive, could not long have remained 
 peaceful. If the Duma's advice had been followed by any 
 considerable proportion of the people, the savage and universal 
 reprisals of the Government would inevitably have led to open 
 outbreaks. The villagers that refused recruits were at once 
 taken before the courts-martial, which were the supreme power 
 in the country from that time, and punished by military "law." 
 Both the people and the majority of the Duma members who 
 had signed the manifesto, were thoroughly aware of the impos- 
 sibility of a general insurrection. The people refused to take 
 the first step where a second was out of the question, the moder- 
 ate party within a few weeks repudiated the proposal they 
 themselves had put forward, and passive resistance is no longer 
 talked of as a means of liberating the land. 
 
 So far all the means of revolution have failed. But more 
 remarkable than their failure is the way the people have taken 
 their defeat. The reader must have noticed that the revolu- 
 tionary spirit has lived on even after the hope of any kind of 
 immediate and general movement had failed. All the more 
 determined revolutionists have decided that the spark of revolt 
 shall be kept alive until a way is found to inflame the nation to 
 a final heroic and successful stand. Assassination, expropria- 
 
 * For text of the Viborg Manifesto see Appendix, Note C. 
 
THE BEGINNING 17 
 
 tion and guerilla war are on the decrease because they are not 
 leading to the general movement their partisans had hoped — 
 and the current has set against them as means of leading up to a 
 general revolt. But confidence in Russia's future and undying 
 hatred to the Government have driven the people to ever new 
 and more successful forms of action, slower, more costly perhaps, 
 but irresistible in the end. Some of the measures of repression 
 still in effect are proving fruitless, and when the Government 
 does successfully maintain its might it does so at the cost of mak- 
 ing new enemies it can ill afford, or of a financial expenditure 
 that must lead to a steady decay of its power. 
 
 The reader must have realised that the new election law by 
 which the voice of the people in the third Duma is reduced 
 almost to zero, while the nobility and landlords, scarcely one per 
 cent, of the voters, are given a majority of the representatives, 
 amounts practically to an abolition of the national parliament. 
 He may, therefore, have concluded not only that the revolution- 
 ary movement is quelled but that the revolutionary parties, 
 many of them formed or crystallised in the Duma, have been 
 robbed of their importance. None of the popular parties had 
 any hope that the Czar would allow the Duma to accomplish 
 anything, and they finally succeeded in their great common 
 object, which was to teach the people that nothing would be 
 gained from the Government that was not taken by superior 
 power. 
 
 Three years of revolution and three national assemblies have 
 brought the Russian people neither freedom nor the control of 
 their Government, nor any great improvement. If the revolu- 
 tion should now draw to a conclusion all the colossal struggle 
 and waste of hundreds of thousands of lives would have been 
 for nothing; but if it should continue, even though it takes a 
 generation to overthrow the Czarism and establish the sover- 
 eignty of the people, all the sacrifice will be justified. Russia is 
 willing to pay high for freedom because of the infamy of the 
 Czarism, because of the qualities of her peasant population and 
 the splendidly progressive character of the people of her towns. 
 But above all she is making these unheard of sacrifices because 
 of the greatness that lies before her. A people that will have 
 overcome an enemy like the Czarism backed by the world's 
 
i8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 money power, will not shrink before the greatest social regen- 
 eration the worid has ever known. 
 
 The recent partial successes and complete defeats, the mon- 
 strosity of the evils she is fighting, the difficulties to be overcome, 
 are only measures of the power the nation is developing in the 
 struggle and the profundity of the social revolution that only 
 such a struggle can call into being. The recent dramatic 
 struggle, the incredible degradation of the present Government, 
 the tragic spirit of rebellion among the peasants, the exceptional 
 intelligence and public spirit of the educated classes, the daring 
 and devotion of the revolutionists, has led the Russian nation 
 to the most heroic, the most inspired, and the most revolutionary 
 social movement of centuries. 
 
 Because of this revolutionary social movement the Russian 
 people lead the world at the present moment in the imselfish 
 devotion of individual to the general welfare, in the systematic 
 study of social problems, in the intensity of their interest in 
 other coimtries and other periods, in the subtlety and profimdity 
 of their analysis of the political, social, and moral movements of 
 our time, and in the elevation of the individual type which is a 
 necessary result of such a vigorous social movement. 
 
 When the coming regeneration of life, which is believed in 
 as a religious faith by all sincere and disinterested Russians 
 from the peasants to Tolstoi and the most moderate of liberals, 
 is finally accomplished, the world may have to look to Russia 
 not only as it does now for individuals with the most developed 
 social character but for the community that will have evolved 
 for the first time social equality and a truly social government. 
 The germs of this future society are already visible, the truly 
 social individuals are already here. That complete and glad 
 devotion to social causes that must constitute the life principle 
 of the men of the future is already embodied in inntmierable 
 individual Russians of the present generation. 
 
PART TWO 
 
 Oppression 
 
r 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 NICHOLAS, CZAR 
 
 Russian People, who journey sad and trembling, 
 Serfs at St. Petersburg, or at hard labour in the mines, 
 The North Pole is for your Master, a dungeon vast and sombre ; 
 Russia and Siberia, O Czar! Tyrant! Vampire! 
 \ These are the two halves of your dismal Empire; 
 One is Oppression, the other Despair! 
 
 — Victor Hugo {Les Chatiments) 
 
 NICHOLAS II., though bom heir to the vast Empire of the 
 Romanoffs and absolute master of a hundred and forty 
 million people, was a most ordinary child. But he was not 
 long allowed to remain normal or ordinary. All the unlimited 
 resources and powers of a Czar's educators from infancy to man- 
 hood, were used to convince him that he is the God-bom superior 
 to every man in his Empire, and that he has been given the 
 'right by God to regulate to the last particular the lives of each 
 one of his one hundred and forty million subjects. Such an 
 education can lead to only one result — with ordinary children. 
 
 "I knew a promising young princess," a well-known old 
 courtier told me, "who had inborn progressive ideas. She was 
 given to asking most interesting questions. Her teacher was of 
 course changed, and when I saw her again, a few years later, 
 I did not know her, she was so much like the rest. It is impos- 
 sible that anything good should come out of that poisonous and 
 misanthropic atmosphere of the Court. I have abandoned 
 hope." So with the Czar. He is a product of his environment.* 
 Or, better, he is part and parcel of the whole of the old system. 
 For now that he is on the throne, he is daily creating his environ- 
 ment and his environment is daily creating him. \ .. -^ 
 
 That Nicholas II., by nature an ordinary, normal man, should 
 have developed into a perfect and willing tool of reaction and 
 an enemy of progress, is a sign that the day for expecting liberty 
 from Czars or benevolent despots has passed. The sustamers 
 
 21 
 
22 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 n of autocracy have read history and studied revolutions aright. 
 They are now taking no chances with their despots. To prevent 
 his becoming better than those around him, Nicholas, like his 
 uncles and cousins, the notoriously dissolute grand dukes, was 
 scientifically corrupted in his youth. He was allowed several 
 mistresses. A Jewish girl whom he is said to have really loved 
 was torn away from him by the Court. True love is dangerous 
 to despotism, above all love for a member of a persecuted race. 
 His notorious affair with the ballet-dancer, Kshesinkaya, which 
 lasted to the very day of his marriage, was more after his uncle's 
 heart. He was allowed to endow this woman with a palace 
 and a fortune in jewels and gold. 
 
 /And while his body was being corrupted by fast living and 
 drink, his soul was imder the sinister and misanthropic influence 
 of fanatic old Pobiedonostzev, or the half -crazy mysticism of 
 Father John of Cronstadt, who, while still preaching massacre, 
 has now set himself up for a Russian Christ. It is natural that 
 a mind so beclouded should shower honours on the necromancer 
 Phillipe, and, as God-appointed head of the Russian Church, 
 canonise the monk Seraphin, dead now for fifty years, for having 
 interceded with God to send him a male heir. 
 
 Nicholas is by education an ordinary absolute monarch, as h^^^ 
 is by nature an ordinary man. If he has lightly glorified war, 
 so has William II. If he has publicly announced his hatred of 
 millions of his subjects, has not the German Emperor called 
 a party of three million of his subjects "dogs"? He differs 
 from other autocrats not in his ideas or in his nature, but in 
 his actual crimes. UnfortuLnately for Nicholas, history offered 
 him the choice either to rise above the monarch to the true man, 
 or else to sink from the level of inhuman feeling and opinion to 
 the definite degradation of criminal acts. Nicholas chose as a 
 Czar, and not as a man. As a consequence the Czarism 
 has been preserved, but at this price, that the Czar has 
 become an accessory before the fact to a policy as black as 
 anything ever dreamed by Machiavelli, and to crimes more 
 horrible than any that have been perpetrated in Europe 
 since the religious wars. 
 
 It is said that Nicholas II. is not to be known or judged like 
 ordinary mortals, that he is helpless against the grand dukes, 
 
p< 
 
 f^ 2 
 o £ 
 
 ^ o 
 
 a. 
 
NICHOLAS, CZAR 23 
 
 his family, and the court. But, as was pointed out to me by 
 one of the most honoured and best-informed men in Russia, the 
 Czar has long selected his own court and chosen his own family 
 favourites. "An autocrat can be formed by his environment for 
 a few years," said this man, "but since the age of thirteen Nich- 
 olas has himself created his own environment." Nicholas loved 
 the old reactionary advisers left him by his father — his Uncle 
 Sergius, Minister Sipiaguine, and Count Ignatiev. The revolu- 
 tionists have taken these terrible persons away. He feared 
 Von Plehve, who, before the Czar had yet obtained a secure con- 
 trol of the reins of government, had got a firm hold on the secret 
 police, a position impregnable in a despotism. The revolution- 
 ists also solved this problem for him. But he has replaced 
 the reactionaries he loved by new reactionaries. 
 
 He became jealous within a few weeks of the popularity of a 
 successful liberal minister like Sviatopolk-Mirski. Witte he 
 always hated, but held to him long because he better than all 
 others could procure gold in biUions from Germany and France, 
 His present favourites are all either discreet reactionaries, men 
 of blood and iron like Stolypine, or shameless reactionaries 
 like Kaulbars. Noble leaders of the black league formed for 
 massacres, Bobrinsky, Sherebatov, Apraxin, Konovnitzin, 
 General Bogdanovitch, have constant access to the court. 
 Men of relentless violence, like Prime Minister Stolypine, 
 Deduline, and Dumovo, are given the ministries that hold the 
 real power. Kaulbars, Skalon, Herschelman, and Meller- 
 Zakomelski are entrusted with the fate respectively of Odessa, 
 Poland, Moscow, and the Baltic provinces. They are all cynical, 
 violent, and open reactionaries. It was Herschelman who upset 
 even the military law of the realm by reversing the sentence 
 of a military court, which had let off with a light punishment 
 four drunken peasants who had insulted a policeman. Herschel- 
 man had them hanged. When new laws are being prepared it is 
 the reactionary jurists, old Goremykin, Stichinsky , and Dumovo, 
 not real experts, who are taken into the Czar's personal confi- 
 dence. But above all, to swing the destiny of the tortured and 
 suffering peoples and nations called Russia, one must win the 
 favour of the Czar's boon companions, the extreme reactionaries 
 Prince Orlov and the Queen's Secretary, Prince Putiatin. 
 
24 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Prince Orlov is the Czar's drinking companion, Prince Putiatin 
 is endeared to him as a heritage from his late beloved Uncle 
 Sergius. 
 
 Talents for despotism, flattery, and intrigue, these are all 
 of value in securing a commanding position and power in the 
 land of the Czar. " But the only way to succeed permanently," 
 said one of the most trusted and best-known of my informants, 
 "the only certain road is reactionism — open, active, and bitter 
 hatred of progress. Nicholas sometimes tolerates a progressive 
 person for a short time. But he is never really pleased with 
 anything but reaction, movement backward toward his father's 
 regime. All his sympathies are for reactionary things, all his 
 feelings are for reactionary men. This is why we are governed 
 by reactionaries, why Russia may have to go through far worse 
 trials and horrors in the next few years than in those just passed. 
 The Czar is oppressed and weighed down by superior intelligence, 
 because it dwarfs his own ordinary powers. He can't bear it 
 aroimd him. His real favourites have always been, and doubt- 
 less always will be, dull and stupid men." Other opinions 
 equally to be respected are in entire accord with this. 
 
 "The keynote to the Czar's character," said another authori- 
 ty, "is an inflated hypertrophied self-love, as is natural and 
 almost inevitable with an irresponsible and absolute monarch. 
 This self-love was consciously created in his youth and is pur- 
 posely developed by all who approach the throne. It is the 
 explanation of every important act of the reign. For instance, 
 it was nothing but the Czar's self-love that brought us the Duma 
 and a few months later took this Duma away." 
 
 At enmity with the people, surrounded by dull and brutal 
 persons of his own choosing, endowed himself with a clearly 
 expressed love for violence and the "good old times" of his 
 father Alexander III., what is the use of seeking further Nicho- 
 las's political ideas? They are, of course, most rudimentary. 
 His leading idea, expressed in every public utterance, is that 
 his personal desires and the welfare of his immense empire 
 are one and the same thing — that the preservation of his own 
 unlimited, irresponsible, and absolute personal rule, and' the 
 maintenance of the riches and irresponsible power of his 
 family and his friends, of the grand dukes, the high officials, 
 
NICHOLAS, CZAR 25 
 
 the high clergy, the high nobihty and the court, are all entirely 
 consistent with the welfare of the vast and varied peoples of 
 the realm. 
 
 It was to the supposed interest of the grand dukes, the Czar's 
 mother, the Russian police, the heads of the army and the court, 
 to declare war against Japan. The nation, almost wholly 
 opposed to the calamitous and terrible enterprise, was not 
 consulted. But the Czar, justly certain that he was acting in 
 accordance with the wishes of his family, his friends, and every- 
 body he respected, entered into the bloody and unprincipled 
 business with a light heart. He said, writes Prince Urussov, 
 that he considered the Japanese attack "like the bite of a flea" 
 and that he was "fully satisfied with the progress of the war" 
 because it would call out an increase of the patriotic spirit, 
 because the agitation against the Government would cease and it 
 would he easier to maintain order in the State. This unjust, 
 bloody, unpopular war was brought on, then, by the common 
 human frailties of a single individual — the desire to please his 
 friends and relatives and the determination to maintain his 
 control of his inherited property, Russia, at any cost. 
 
 Nicholas happens to be absolute master of the lives and 
 property of one hundred and forty million people, and that they 
 are "the submissive servants" of his will is agreed by all defen- 
 ders of the autocratic system. Imagine the wrath of such a 
 master when the slaves are in revolt. Rebellious slaves have 
 never been treated as human beings, and their revolts have 
 usually been put down without stint of the utmost cruelties. 
 In Russia, where not even the highest of the nobility have any 
 rights against the Czar, a revolution is quite incomprehensible 
 to the supreme power. 
 
 A certain Russian prince, internationally famed for honesty, 
 moderation and public spirit, complained in person to the Czar 
 about the frightful Bielostock massacre. After having shown 
 that the massacre was carried out almost entirely by the soldiers 
 and police, the prince said, "This thing simply cannot continue. 
 It is wrong." 
 
 The Czar hesitated long, but finally answered: "Yes, it is 
 wrong. It is wrong. But what can you do? These people 
 are republicans and revolutionists." 
 
26 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The loyal prince excused himself in hopeless despair. "The 
 people of Bielostock are republicans and revolutionists; that 
 justifies any crime against them," thinks the Czar. But nine- 
 tenths of the Russian people are, broadly speaking, revolution- 
 ists. The Czar is then simply at war with his own people — 
 imhampered by any usage or principle of civilised humanity 
 or of civilised war. 
 
 "What is the exact relation of the Czar to the crimes and 
 horrors that are perpetrated in his name? Is the Czar himself 
 primarily responsible, or are others more to blame?" I asked 
 these questions of the men in Russia best able to answer, and 
 had for my literal replies: "The court is the centre of the 
 'pogromists' and 'Black Hundreds.* The Czar himself is the 
 chief of the 'hooligans.'" And I foimd such to be the almost 
 unanimous opinion of Russia's most reliable men. 
 
 Prince Urussov, recently governor of Bessarabia, places a 
 full share of the responsibility for the wholesale massacres of 
 1905 directly on the Czar. "A word from the authoritative 
 mouth of the Emperor or any action would have extraordinarily 
 facilitated the maintenance of order," he writes significantly. 
 But every effort failed to obtain from Nicholas either any 
 kind of declaration condemning the pogroms, or even the 
 suggested manifestation of unspoken sympathy with the 
 victims through some slight monetary present for their relief. 
 " From 1 903 " writes the prince, "it became plain to all the world 
 that the Czar himself, if not in action, at least in thought and 
 feeling, was an enemy to the Jews." 
 
 A recognised enemy to the Jews, yes, but none the less an 
 enemy to the Poles, Armenians, Finns, Letts, and Lithuanians, 
 as the most credited representatives of all these races have 
 testified, and to all the fifty million non-Russian peoples that 
 constitute a full third of his subjects. For the actions and 
 policies that have shown the Czar's attitude to the Jews, the 
 most powerful of the "subject" peoples, have been repeated, 
 almost exactly, toward the rest. A recognised enemy also of 
 the overwhelming majority of the common people of Russian 
 stock, the hundred million peasants and workingmen, as their 
 representatives in the Duma testified. Friend only of the 
 officials, the landlords, the very rich, the few himdred thousand 
 
NICHOLAS, CZAR 27 
 
 pampered Cossacks, spies, and police, who altogether constitute 
 the only real foundation of the throne. Friend, also, of the 
 murderers who have carried out the massacres that have drenched 
 the land in blood. Nicholas is no mere onlooker. To be 
 sure he has not taken part in the shooting, as did Charles IX. 
 in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but he is literally throwing 
 open the prison doors for all who have murdered "in his name." 
 The pogromists at Kertch, at Volsk, at Nijni Novgorod, in 
 Volhynia, in Bessarabia, at Tula, and a dozen other places, 
 though sentenced by the local courts, have all been fully par- 
 doned by the Czar. The Czar's pardon for three Kharkov 
 assassins who murdered a lawyer in his home, carried with it an 
 even more open excitation to a repetition of the act in the words, 
 "A pardon is extended to X, Y, and Z, the men who killed the 
 miscreant revolutionary Jew.'' 
 
 One of the chief organisers of the great Odessa massacre of 
 October, 1905, when nearly a thousand were killed and wounded, 
 was at last got behind the bars. The circuit court could not 
 declare him innocent. It sentenced him, however, to only 
 eight months' imprisonment. He soon received the full pardon 
 of the Czar. Numerous other pardons followed, until the daily 
 massacres in that city increased to the point that brought a 
 diplomatic disgrace to the Russian Government. The combined 
 foreign consuls felt impelled to raise a protest; it, however, 
 accomplished nothing. Nearly every day shows one or more 
 open and cold-blooded murders to be attributed directly to 
 the immistakable approval of the Czar. The chief of police, 
 Novitzki, was finally forced to telegraph Stolypine: "It is not 
 possible for the police to fight successfully against secret leagues 
 which are led by persons who guarantee the members impunity for 
 crifne.** 
 
 In Odessa the Government and the murderous League of 
 Russian Men have become practically one. The local president 
 of the league, Count Konovnitzin, is the aid-de-camp of the 
 governor-general, Kaulbars; the latter is a member of the 
 executive council and its meetings are often held in his palace. 
 Nicholas himself is an honorary member of the League. A 
 delegation, headed by the mayor, recently sent by desperate 
 Odessa to the court to complain against the league's atrocities 
 
28 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 was received by the Czar wearing on his breast the emblem of 
 the League of Russian Men. That emblem was significant of 
 his answer: he has delivered the great port of Odessa, with its 
 half million of inhabitants, to the tender mercies of the League. 
 
 To the delegation which presented him his badge (and one 
 for his little heir), together with an address setting forth the 
 "loyal" and anti-semi tic purposes of the organisation, Nicholas 
 answered: "Thank in my name all the Russian people who 
 have joined the league." Stolypine reported recently to the 
 Czar that 60 per cent, of this notorious league was recruited 
 from the criminal classes and scarcely i J per cent, were edu- 
 cated persons. On Stolypine 's report Nicholas wrote: "The 
 league is the most loyal of all the parties and the most useful 
 to the Government. It would be well to be patient and to give 
 it time to improve and correct itself." 
 
 Dr. Dubrowin, president of the league and editor of its St. 
 Petersburg organ, the Russian Flag, was asked recently 
 the practical way out of Russia's difficulties. The justly 
 notorious doctor replied: "It is necessary to hang eleven fore- 
 most leaders whom I cotdd name, two hundred secondary 
 leaders and three thousand party workers." To the question 
 as to who could be foimd to execute such a cruel sentence, he 
 answered: "The League of Russian Men would have the courage 
 to do it." Dubrowin has made it clear that he reckons among 
 those to be killed not only beloved popular leaders like Anikine 
 and Aladdin, but also moderates like the economist Herzenstein, 
 already assassinated by the league, if not by Dubrowin 's own 
 personal order. No Russian revolutionist has ever made a 
 proposal of wholesale butchery — their victims are the victims 
 of a guerilla war. It is not the revolution for freedom that has 
 produced the Russian Marat. It is the criminal counter- 
 revolution personally patronised by the Czar. 
 
 At first it was proposed to make Nicholas himself one of the 
 three members of the league's executive board. Later the 
 position was given to the Czar's new favourite and spiritual 
 adviser, the priest Vostorgov. This "orthodox Christian" fire- 
 eater stirred up race-wars in the Caucasus imtil he was forced 
 to flee from the enraged people. Though only a common priest, 
 he has now taken the place of sinister old Pobiedonostzev as the 
 
NICHOLAS. CZAR 
 
 39 
 
 theorist of arbitrary autocracy and reaction and the spiritual 
 consoler of the court — while at the same time he guides the 
 league for massacre. The Czar in appreciation has heaped 
 exceptional ecclesiastical honours on his head and has given him 
 a place in the Holy Synod. With the coming of Vostorgov it 
 can at last be said that the League's end, the fusion of the 
 "true Russian people" with the "Most High," has at last been 
 accomplished. 
 
 The title "Most High" sounds almost blasphemous. But 
 in the eyes of the advocates of absolutism the Czar can be 
 guilty of no blasphemy, just as he can be guilty of no crime. 
 What he does is not only right, but sacred. The heads of the 
 Church are his servants, as much subject to his orders as any 
 peasants. The Czar has been given by God the care also of his 
 subjects' souls. Every important ukase, even if on a purely 
 political subject, is read from every village pulpit along with 
 the rest of "God's word," likewise emanating from the whims 
 and dictation of Nicholas and other Czars. Every expression 
 and activity of life, every book, every newspaper, every school, 
 every church or private society, must be forced and distorted 
 to express absolute obedience, submission, subjection, and 
 servility to the Czar. 
 
 If a man in whom such a megalomania is cultivated from 
 early childhood is not engaged personally in hunting down his 
 subjects like Charles IX., it must be attributed to court custom 
 rather than to anything in the conscience of the Czar. Young 
 German barons around him who have led man-hunts against 
 peasants they have harried into rebellion, receive his full sympa- 
 thy, approval, and even promotion for their actions; while those 
 who do not take a lively interest in such work are quickly marked 
 with imperial disfavour and disgrace. This bloody business 
 has gone so far that many who in the past have been reactionary 
 or circumspect enough to rise to the highest rank, are now 
 drawing back in horror and disgust. Not so the Czar, and no 
 titles such a renegrade may bear, no services rendered, can 
 save him from the imperial wrath. 
 
 To an officer reporting a rather bloodless "pacification" in 
 the west, the Czar replied after a long meditative silence: 
 "Just the same, you have killed too few, you have killed too 
 
30 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 few.'* To General Kazbek, reporting a similarly bloodless 
 success against the revolutionists, the Czar listened without a 
 word. After having given his report, the general was leaving 
 and was already near the door when he heard a low, harsh 
 voice behind him. He turned immediately round; the Czar 
 was following him with a wolfish stride, and hissing through 
 his closed teeth: "You ought to have fired just the same, general! 
 You ought to have fired just the same! " 
 
 The famous General Subbotich, a member of the general staff 
 and recent governor-general of Turkestan, not only did not 
 shed any blood in his province but scandalised the court by 
 making several speeches in which he promised that the Czar 
 would carry out his promises expressed in the October Manifesto 
 and soon begin the work of reform. He was removed from his 
 office and robbed of his dignities and pension without any 
 statement of the cause. He demanded a trial by courts-martial, 
 and was refused. He was told only that he had not taken 
 measures to suppress the revolution, and that the Emperor 
 "had deigned to refuse to let him know the tenor of the accusa- 
 tions against him." He annotmced himself as a candidate to 
 the Duma from the most conservative class of St. Petersburg, 
 consisting of 2,000 members carefully selected by the Govern- 
 ment, and received more than eight himdred of their votes. 
 This vote is an evidence of the fact that the bitterness of all 
 classes has reached such a point that only a bare half even of 
 the most favoured and privileged can be persuaded to stand for 
 the bloodthirstiness of the Czar. 
 
 The Czar has also his minor heroes of violence. A certain 
 cadet heard disrespectful words about his sacred Majesty on the 
 street. He struck the speaker two blows on his head with his 
 bayonet and the latter sank to the groimd. The Czar wrote 
 with his own hand on the war minister's report to express his 
 thanks for this "praiseworthy action " as he called it. A certain 
 cavalry officer, a passenger on a local steamer, called the members 
 of the Dtuna "rascals," entered into a quarrel with his fellow- 
 passengers and finally opened fire with his revolver, seriously 
 wounding a waiter before he was disarmed. His term was 
 shortened by his Majesty's favour to three months' police arrest. 
 A soldier shot a girl prisoner dead through the head for looking 
 
 ^^':: 
 
NICHOLAS, CZAR 31 
 
 out of the prison window against the rules. He was sent a 
 present of five dollars by the Czar. Since then this act has been 
 repeated by the wholesale in all parts of the country. 
 
 Nicholas II. is a criminal in the eyes of his people. In all 
 sections, among all classes, among rich and poor, townspeople 
 and country people, the educated, the business men, and priests, 
 there is one dominating opinion about the Czar — that he bears 
 to the full his share of the responsibility for the monstrous system 
 of crime and plunder called the Russian Government, that he 
 is neither better nor worse than the average of his predecessors, 
 and that nothing better is to be expected from his successors 
 since even the Czars themselves are products of the Czarism 
 it is sought to destroy. The people have no desire to wait tmtil 
 the Czarism produces a ruler who is not a Czar. 
 
 '^^-^^ 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW CZARS GOVERN 
 
 IT IS not permissible to dip far into Russian history in the 
 course of this review of present-day conditions. But 
 we can thoroughly grasp the deep-seated and almost unconscious 
 feeling of Russia about her rulers, only when we recall what 
 kind of Czars the Czarism has actually produced. The first 
 great Czar was Ivan the Terrible. He was a successful Czar 
 and did Russia the inestimable service of driving out the Tar- 
 tars and more than doubling the extent of the realm. But 
 when he was not crushing the Tartars he was literally crushing 
 the souls and bodies of his own people. He was trained purposely 
 in his childhood to make what was then considered the strongest 
 type of Czar, a man whose very name was to cause fear and 
 submission among his subjects — and this principle of govern- 
 ment not alone by the strong arm, but by fear of it, by "terror," 
 remains a leading principle of the Czar's Government to-day. 
 We have seen that Nicholas still demands bloodshed instead of 
 unconditional surrender, and we shall see that this principle 
 is not merely one of the chief policies of State but the very 
 basis of the whole governmental system. 
 
 Ivan set an example of Czarism that has never since been 
 equalled — though, to be sure, most of his actions have been 
 repeated frequently since his time. When as late as the middle 
 of the sixteenth century Ivan wiped the half-free and the half- 
 democratic towns of Pskov and Novgorod off the map, he did 
 not ask for surrender, but practised deliberate and continuous 
 tortures for the space of five weeks, in which time, one chronicle 
 says, he put to death in one of the towns, men, women and 
 children to the number of sixty thousand. Moscow, in 1 5 70, was 
 treated to similar tortures, at which Ivan as usual assisted 
 in person, piercing many to death with his him ting spear. 
 The scene was on the great sacred place in Moscow, afterward 
 
 32 
 
HOW CZARS GOVERN 33 
 
 christened the Red Square, in front of the famous sacred 
 church erected after Ivan's own plans and clearly announc- 
 ing his insanity, but which has served ever since as a cherished 
 model for the Czars, like so many of the traditions of this 
 age. 
 
 Ivan's practice was to make a public spectacle of his "execu- 
 tions," but on this great occasion the instruments of torture 
 and pots for boiling people alive frightened the public away, 
 and they had to be brought back by main force to witness the 
 performance. Men were tortured by the wholesale in all ways 
 known to human ingenuity, and, what is rarer in modem history, 
 a show was made of the disgrace and tortures of women and girls, 
 a feature entirely in accord with the wild and cruel private 
 orgies of this Czar. After torture and disgrace the women and 
 girls were killed either by having red-hot spears thrust into 
 their bodies, or by Ivan's own instrument. Philip, metro- 
 politan of Moscow and head of the Church, he had burned 
 to death for refusing to bless him after his debauchery and 
 crimes, the court chancellor was cut to pieces, the treasurer 
 boiled alive, and a certain prince lingered impaled on stakes 
 for fifteen hours while his mother was shamed by the soldiers 
 before his eyes. 
 
 Ivan's cruelties doubtless somewhat exceeded what might 
 be calculated even by the most cold-blooded despot as useful 
 to the maintenance of his power, but the fact remains that he 
 was successful in increasing the might of the Czarism both at 
 home and abroad, and his example has not been without its influ- 
 ence on later Czars. To Peter the Great also, who ruled more 
 than a hundred years later, human life was nothing. He repeated 
 almost exactly several of the tortures devised by Ivan, as well 
 as the executions "in person." He also caused the death of 
 his own son Alexis. Fortunately, however, Peter the Great 
 was a man of ideas. If the building of St. Petersburg cost as 
 many unnecessary lives as the destruction of Novgorod, there 
 was at least a more positive result. Peter also had less time for 
 cruelty than Ivan, since he was busied with what he considered, 
 often rightly, to be real affairs of State. But like Ivan he 
 governed by execution, torture and terror, enjoyed the cruelty 
 in person, and indulged in as bestial and wholesale debauchery 
 
34 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 as the world has known. In one respect he went farther than 
 Ivan, insisting on forcing on all the nation every detail of his 
 arbitrary and sometimes even whimsical "will." By regulating 
 every detail of his subjects' lives, even to the cut of their beards, 
 he reduced every individual of the nation to the position of his 
 personal servant or serf. 
 
 Catharine II. was scarcely less debauched than Peter, and 
 scarcely less cruel to the great mass of her subjects. But, 
 though she undoubtedly caused the death of her husband and 
 many others for whom she felt enmity, she showed as a rule a 
 woman's gentleness to those immediately about her. However, 
 as these last were her companions in luxury and debauch, the 
 nation had little benefit from the descent of the great Empress 
 to this ordinary virtue of the human race. Her successor, Paul, 
 reverted to the arbitrariness of Peter. It would be more inter- 
 esting to show the disastrous effects of this reversion on the 
 people, which finally led to his assassination, than the ridiculous 
 forms it took in his personal behaviour. But it is personal 
 character tha|* concerns us for the moment, and nothing 'reveals 
 his character better than his compelling his subjects to kneel, 
 in dust, rain, mud, or snow, to his holy person when his carriage 
 passed; and he even snatched a cap from an infant's head when 
 a nurse did not know how to honour his presence. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Alexander I. was privy to the 
 murder of his father, and his reign, thus begun so thoroughly 
 in the tradition of the Czars, was in perfect accord with his 
 predecessors'. Europe, always densely ignorant of all things 
 Russian and most hopelessly in the dark about the true character 
 of the Czars, for some time took Alexander I. for a liberal, as 
 it had taken Peter and Catharine, and has since taken Alex- 
 ander II. and the present Czar. The original basis for this 
 conception was slim; later the conception became absurd, for 
 Alexander formed the Holy Alliance to battle against every great 
 idea the French Revolution had introduced, and Russia became 
 the mainstay of the reaction in Europe until her defeat, fifty 
 years later, in the Crimean War and her replacement at this post 
 of honour by Prussia and the German Empire of to-day. It 
 was Alexander who added the Prussian military discipline and 
 servitude to the other burdens of the nation. In his military 
 
HOW CZARS GOVERN 
 
 35 
 
 colonies the new militarism was combined with serfdom, till it 
 became a full penal system of forced labour. 
 
 Nicholas I. brought the new military serfdom to its perfection, 
 to the envy of Prussia and other "military" powers; and he 
 went even further and applied this system to the post-office 
 and other public service, to several industries and to the 
 mines. When Nicholas's army crushed the liberties of 
 Hungary in 1849, his generals, Haynau and others, were so 
 cruel that even Turkey refused to give up the refugees, and 
 America finally felt impelled to carry Kossuth away on a 
 frigate of the Government. 
 
 Alexander II. again, who was forced to emancipate the serfs . c^ 
 by the failure of the Crimean War and the impossibility of I ^ 
 creating a modem army or raising the taxes under the old I » 
 regime, was known as a liberal in Europe until his barbarous | 
 suppression of the Polish insurrection. It was only because 
 he had taken away the very slight liberties he had granted that 
 a group of revolutionists robbed him of his life. This revolu- 
 tionary act in turn stirred the reactionary forces in the Empire 
 to make a "martyr" of him, and gullible Europe, which for 
 years had turned away from him in disgust, again took up 
 his cause and still does honour to his memory as a "liberal" 
 Czar. Alexander III., the present Czar's father, was a typical 
 Czar, without any special talents, blindly devoted to reaction, 
 absolutism, and the narrowest conception of the Church, sur- 
 rounded by dull and servile flatterers and leading the narrowest 
 personal life, absorbed in trivialities and drink. It was this- 
 stagnant, suffocating atmosphere that produced the "heroes"' 
 of the present reign — its half-crazy or sinister fanatic priests ;; 
 its demoniacal and all-powerful police heads, von Plehve and 
 Trepov; the organisers of the statesmanship of persecution 
 of subject races, Ignatiev and the Grand Duke Sergius; the 
 first theoretical defenders of absolutism, Absakov and Leontieff, 
 who sought to keep out of the policy of the Russian State the 
 new and "obnoxious principle of seeking the material and moral 
 welfare of the human race." 
 
 Russia has learned something from her Czars. She has 
 learned that it is one-man power itself that is wrong. Nearly 
 all thoughtful Russians feel that the concentration of govern- 
 
36 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 mental power in the hands of a single man is the worst curse 
 that can befall a people. They know that the only possible 
 defence of such a system is based on a lie, a radical miscon- 
 ception of the nature of the human individual and the race. 
 And they know that the first result of this lie is to distort, 
 corrupt, or pervert the mind and character of the ruler himself, 
 so that there can be no benevolent despot unless by chance, and 
 that such a despot, if intelligent, would have to deny despotism 
 itself, and, if honest, put it to an end. In Russia there is no 
 Napoleonic worship, no "great man" theory, no demand for, 
 and no blind faith in, all-powerful leaders. There is too much 
 similarity, as far as the masses of the people are concerned, 
 between the reigns of the Czar-genius Peter and the lunatic 
 Ivan the Terrible, between the reactionary "liberal" Nicholas 
 II. and the conqueror of Napoleon and the French Revolution, 
 Alexander I. 
 
 The present reyolutionary movement of the Russian nation 
 must have arisen under any Emperor. It is directed against 
 Czarism rather than against any particular Czar. But in so 
 far as the Russian ruler is really Autocrat and Czar, that is, 
 in proportion as he rules by his own will and not that of the 
 people, he is the living embodiment of the despotism. The 
 present Czar, all future Czars, must stand or fall with the 
 system of which they are a part. Since Nicholas II. remains 
 head, or at least centre, of the old system, since he refuses 
 to abdicate or share his power, and since he is neither a 
 degenerate nor a weakling under duress, he must bear his share 
 of the great crimes of the system of which he is a part. 
 
 This is the judgment of the Russian people. It is the judg- 
 ment of their leaders and noted men: of writers like Tolstoi, 
 Gorki, Korolenko, and Andreief ; of public men of international 
 fame like Kovalevski, Roditchev, Prince Dolgorukov and 
 Milyoukov; of conservative leaders like Shipov, Stachovitch, 
 Count Hey den, Prince Trubetzkoi, and Prince Lvov; of the 
 liberal parish priesthood and its leaders. Father Petrov and the 
 Archimandrite Michael ; of recent governors and ministers and 
 generals like Urussov, Kutler, and Subbotich — in fact, of prac- 
 tically every public man of the first rank outside of the Govern- 
 ment service. Not only the masses of the Russian people, then, 
 
HOW CZARS GOVERN 37 
 
 but its best brain and soul are in revolt against both Czarism 
 and against Nicholas II., because he is Czar. 
 
 This slow-witted, self-centred reactionary and blood-loving 
 tyrant is recognised by the Russian nation as its most deadly 
 enemy, not because he is stronger or more vicious than many 
 others in high places in the State, but because he is on account 
 of his position and his power the centre of the system that it 
 is costing the country's best life-blood to destroy; not because 
 he is any worse than his predecessors, or because his successors 
 can be expected to turn out any better than he, but just because 
 there lives in him and breathes in all his actions the very spirit 
 of ''the Czar." 
 
 But if Nicholas is no better than the machine by which he 
 "governs," certainly the machine is no better than the Czar. 
 In every -day life the Czarism exists only in the form of millions 
 of irresponsible officials directing every detail of life even to 
 the commonest business affairs — officials who get their direc- 
 tions either from the senseless, confused, and lifeless orders of 
 irresponsible and neglected bureaus, or from the protdg^s of 
 the court, who without the slightest thought given to their 
 capacity or achievement have caught the eye of a favourite, 
 or of the favourite of a favourite, of the Czar. 
 
 The court is the first and most indispensable support to the 
 throne. Here is the mother, here are the uncles, the father's 
 advisers and all the sure and tried supporters of the former 
 Czars — the only channel in a Czarism or purely personal govern- 
 ment through which the ruler can get even a slight idea of his 
 nation. Nearly all the members of the court are of course also 
 members of the bureaucracy. Some to be sure are merely rich 
 idlers, such as ornamented the court in France before the revolu- 
 tion. Others hold sinecures, are called assistant ministers and 
 appear at the bureaus a few times in a week, or attend the occa- 
 sional meetings of some very honourable commission without any 
 real function or power. Whether they are suited for it or not, 
 those persons nearest the Emperor are usually given positions of 
 exalted power. One grand duke is head of the army, another 
 of the navy. The Russian Supreme Court, called the Senate, is 
 filled with such men alone as happen to have been in the most 
 intimate relations with the Czar, his father, or some grand duke. 
 
38 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The Czar must have some system or machine by which he 
 expresses his power, and carries out the details of ** govern- 
 ment." This system, before the days of Peter the Great, was 
 a sort of despotic feudalism ; since that time it has been a bureau- 
 cracy of the Prussian type. This bureaucracy had to be 
 made an integral part of Czarism, and this was accomplished 
 not alone by sending the court into the bureaucracy, but by 
 bureaucratising the court. Now the court and bureaucracy 
 are inseparable. The court represents the unlimited and 
 arbitrary power of the Czars over the lives and property of the 
 people, the bureaucracy the only method by which it is possible 
 for the Czar and the court to profit from this power. The army, 
 the police, all governors and vice-czars, all those who have the 
 right to exercise to the full the Czar's arbitrary power — that 
 is to say, all the human tools necessary for defending by force 
 the hated bureaucracy — all these are under the direct control 
 of the Czar, subject neither to Dumas nor to bureaucratic 
 ministries. On the other hand, all the tax-gathering, borrowing 
 from abroad, all the banking, railway, and other business for 
 supporting the arbitrary power of the court and the Czar, 
 are necessarily systematised under the Government bureaus. 
 I Peter's new bureaucratic machine of course immensely in- 
 :■ creased the work of the Government. New departments arose 
 one after another, until finally the biggest businesses like rail- 
 roads and banking fell into the hands of the State. Some of 
 the most costly departments, the political courts, prisons, and 
 police, the army of rural guards, the censorship, could not 
 prove of any possible service in an intelligently organised 
 and democratic society. With industrial development new 
 sources of taxation were discovered ; sugar, tobacco and petro- 
 leum were made to produce immense sums, and the entire profit 
 of the liquor industry was taken over in the form of a monopoly 
 by the State. Such of these profits and taxes as finally reached 
 the central treasury were again the source of innumerable easily 
 earned incomes in the "administration." Modem equipment, 
 for instance, must be supplied and applied in the army and a 
 modem fleet created. "Self-made" bureaucrats began to 
 accumulate fortunes in plunder, with the aid of which they 
 became irresistible in the most aristocratic society. Soon there 
 
HOW CZARS GOVERN 39 
 
 were more rich and successful bureaucrats in the court than 
 there were pampered courtiers in the bureaucracy. Now, 
 indeed, most of the ministers and chiefs of departments come 
 from the former class. But the distinction is only superficial 
 In the long run the successful courtier must know how to make 
 his way by means of the bureaus, must understand how to 
 "govern" as it is understood by the loyal supporters of the 
 Czars ; while a successful bureaucrat can only meet a miserable 
 end if he is not at the same time a true courtier, a believer 
 in the reactionary principles of Czarism and a proved expert in 
 the practice of irresponsible despotism. 
 
 The corruption of the court from the grand dukes down, 
 the inefficiency of the bureaucracy, are proverbial. But 
 this corruption of individuals is a commonplace, hardly worse 
 than what exists in many other countries. If the Czar should 
 ever succeed, as he no doubt desires, since it is the Czarism 
 itself which is being despoiled, in developing a rigid system 
 of inspection and control of Government bureaus irresponsible 
 to the people, there would still remain the wholesale legal 
 robbery and oppression that arises from the Czarism 's mere 
 existence. 
 
 The present Russian Government is a product of historical 
 evolution. The main determining factor in its development 
 from the beginning has been not the welfare of Russia, but that of 
 each privileged class in exact proportion to its nearness to the 
 throne. Every bureau of the Government is based on this 
 principle; all are more or less anti-social in the very founda- 
 tion of their methods and organisation, and in the training of 
 their personnel. A high position is attained only through the 
 sacrifice of many elementary principles of personal honesty 
 and of reasonable, not to say legal, administration. It is held 
 only by a complete abandonment of every principle for that of 
 the mere preservation of the power of the Czar, the bureaucracy 
 and the court, the maintenance of the Czarism. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CZARISM STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE 
 
 FULLY to picture the Czarism as a single whole and realise 
 its life-principle, one must see it at the moment of a 
 death-struggle to preserve its existence. Such a struggle 
 began with the present revolutionary movement just before the 
 war with Japan, reached its culmination with the Czar's Mani- 
 festo, and has by no means entirely subsided at the present time. 
 
 The negation of autocracy is constitutional government. 
 If a constitution places any essential part of the Czar's power 
 finally in the hands of the people or of a given social class 
 the unlimited "autocratic" rule of the Czar has disappeared, 
 since he may always be forced to terms with the new power. 
 The promises of the Manifesto were so broad that it seemed to 
 many that the beginning of a constitution had been granted 
 and that the autocracy was a thing of the past. The 17th of 
 October, 1905 (October 30th Western calendar), was then 
 an intensely critical moment in the history of the autocracy, 
 and this was fully realised by nearly all the court, bureaucracy, 
 and other defenders of the old power. In the desperate battle 
 for its existence that ensued, not only the organisation of the 
 Czarism and its policy, but its very soul is exposed. 
 
 At this supreme moment the Czarism pulled itself together 
 as a single man, called to the aid of the court and bureaucracy 
 the only other classes from which support can be safely relied 
 on, the land-owning nobility and the dregs of the city population, 
 and fell back on the traditional policy of the Czars — i.e., 
 to promote civil war by official lying and the machinery of 
 the Government, and then to step in and crush the divided 
 forces of the people. For this purpose any line of cleavage 
 will do, religion, race, or social class. "Patriotism" is the 
 general term employed by the Government to rouse and justify 
 all such conflicts. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mohammedans, 
 
 40 
 
CZARISM STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE 41 
 
 and Russian dissenting creeds are not patriotic because they do 
 not belong to the Orthodox Church. Poles, Jews, Armenians, 
 and Germans, though they speak Russian and have lived in 
 Russia a century or centuries, are foreigners. College gradu- 
 ates, professional men, and factory workmen had no part in old 
 Russia and are rarely inclined toward the Czar ; they are suspected 
 classes in the official propaganda — they, too, are unpatriotic. 
 
 But patriotism. Orthodoxy, and Czarism are not sufficiently 
 concrete conceptions to bind the whole of the reactionary move- 
 ment together. There was need of a common enemy — an 
 arch enemy, present everywhere, always more or less active. 
 This enemy has been found in the Jews. For notwithstanding 
 the confining of the majority of the Jews in one section of the 
 country, the Pale, the minority is scattered everywhere and is 
 everywhere pressing into the newest occupations and movements, 
 and like all others of the oppressed nationalities is in universal 
 opposition to the Czarism. 
 
 The whole philosophy, character, morality, and programme of 
 the autocracy is expressed, then, in the cry "Down with the 
 Jews." When in the height of its prosperity the Czarism has 
 no need of popularity, it announces no programme and no philos- 
 ophy. But when it is in need of popular aid, of loyal support 
 and sacrifice other than such as it can command always from 
 the nobility bought with privileges, or from the dregs bought 
 with drink, it has resort to the cry "Down with the Jews"; 
 and as conditions vary it adds, "and with Poles," or "and with 
 the intellectuals," or even "with the workingmen." This 
 invariably brings together the reaction as a man, and appealing, 
 as it will be shown later, to the lowest passions of the non- 
 reactionary classes, almost invariably draws a few of their 
 weakest and most depraved members. There is not a criminal 
 or degenerate impulse of mankind that is not played upon to 
 maintain the integrity of "Holy Russia" and the power of the 
 "Most High." Personal revenge, lust, crazy fanaticism, 
 incredible superstition and ignorance, depravity in drink, 
 desire for social position, greed, or mere envy and prejudice 
 fanned to a flame of murderous hatred, are all motives to which a 
 Czarism struggling for existence makes its daily call. 
 
 The propaganda begins necessarily with the secretly spoken 
 
42 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 approval of the Czar himself, but it is also openly manifest to 
 all in the numberless laws specially directed against the Jews. 
 When Prince Urussov was sent to Kishinev directly after the 
 massacre there, in response to the world-wide demand for a 
 more liberal governor, he was warned by the Czar's famous 
 Minister von Plehve to show "less sentimental friendship for 
 the Jews." In a long talk with the Czar at this time the prince 
 was unable to get from him any expression whatever on the 
 Jewish question and had to drop all reference to the recent 
 pogrom on account of the manifest displeasure of the Czar. 
 It was clearly agreed between Nicholas and Plehve that the 
 latter was to handle this vital matter. But there was no reason 
 then, and there has been none since, to suggest any discord on 
 this subject between the two. The attitude of all high officials 
 and those most likely to know the Czar's will was, says Prince 
 Urussov, ** either to remain silent or to justify the position 
 towards the pogroms reflected in the Russian anti-semi tic press, 
 and which therefore appeared in a certain sense binding on all 
 persons in public service." 
 
 The impression of the highest officials spread down through 
 every servant of the Government to the least privileged elements 
 of the population. "We have come to carry out the Czar's will 
 that we should massacre the Jews," said a crowd of peasants 
 when asked by an official at the time of the massacre why they 
 had come to Kishinev. This interpretation of the "Czar's will " 
 certainly had a plausible basis, thinks Prince Urussov, in the 
 numberless legal and illegal persecutions of the Jews by the 
 officials and their denunciation by the highest persons in the land. 
 For instance, these peasants could have read in Krushevan's 
 paper, which was permitted by the censor, and subsidised by the 
 Government both before and after the pogrom, the following: 
 
 Down with the Jews! Massacre these bloody monsters wallowing 
 in Russian blood! 
 
 Act so that they will recall the Odessa pogrom, where the troops them- 
 selves helped us. This time they will help too, inspired as they are here 
 by the love of Christ! 
 
 Brothers, lend us your strong arms! 
 
 Massacre these vile Jews! 
 
 We are already numerous. 
 
 (Signed] The Party op Workingmen, 
 Who are true Christians. 
 
CZARISM STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE 43 
 
 As a reward for this and similar work Krushevan was afterward 
 elected to the Duma with the aid of the officials and the Czar's 
 Bessarabian favourites, Pureschevitch and the Krupenskys. 
 Indeed, when Governor Urussov complained against this paper 
 to the chief of the newspaper censorship, Senator Swerew, a 
 trusted adviser of the Czar, he had for answer that Krushevan 's 
 tendencies and activities had a sound basis. Did not the peas- 
 ants have good reason for assuming that the massacre was the 
 will of the Czar? 
 
 The semi-official massacres that accompanied the Czar's 
 Manifesto of Liberty were not a chance outburst of reactionary 
 passion. They were not dictated by a mere desire of the reac- 
 tionaries for revenge, but by the old and deep-laid plot to 
 / create a counter-revolution. They were the one possible solu- 
 tion of the crisis accepted by all the extreme reactionaries 
 of the Empire. Furthermore, they did not spring directly out 
 .of the Manifesto. Soon after the January massacre of 1905 in 
 f St. Petersburg, and many months before the Manifesto, public 
 . opinion had already brought Nicholas to promise the rather 
 ^ empty form of an elected but purely consultative national council. 
 To counteract the danger of this concession, arrangements had 
 already been made to give the autocracy a new basis in a popu- 
 lar counter-revolutionary uprising, or wholesale massacres of 
 v^intellectual leaders, Jews and organised workingmen, with the, 
 Caid of the police, the Cossacks, and a part of the priests, the 
 •black monks. But owing to the unexpected general strike and 
 necessity of signing of the Manifesto, the date fixed for the 
 massacres had to be set forward. The Manifesto granted, the 
 signal for the postponed murder was given. 
 
 The day following the Manifesto, at a hundred different 
 points at once, the wholesale and prearranged massacres of men, 
 women, and children began. Everyv.rhere the bloody work was 
 carried on by small bands of ruffians organised and led by the 
 police and protected by the troops. 
 
 Urussov, as assistant to Witte, unearthed and exposed to 
 the Duma and the whole world the direct responsibility of Trepov, 
 Ratchkovsky, the head of the police, and many others of the 
 Czar's favourites, in these massacres. Conclusive evidence in 
 incriminating the police is scarcely lacking in one of the hundred 
 
44 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 places where the massacres occurred. Lopuchin, the chief of 
 the police department at the time, has come out with his state- 
 ment that "Government officials have systematically prepared 
 Jewish and other massacres. The facts were given to Witte 
 and verified by another official . . . and one proclamation 
 was approved in writing by Wuitch, head of the secret police." 
 The prefect of Sebastopol received on the 17 th of October, 
 the very day of the Manifesto, a telegram, signed Trepov, enjoin- 
 ing him not to publish the Manifesto before receiving money for 
 a "patriotic (reactionary) demonstration." A few days later 
 he received sixty thousand rubles for this purpose and a sug- 
 gestion that he should retire the police. Similar telegrams 
 were sent in all directions by the highest officials and favourites. 
 y These exposures in the Duma effected absolutely nothing. 
 Trepov remained in office until his final sickness. The chief 
 of the police is still in daily contact with the Czar. The court 
 favourites are still the court favourites. The local governors 
 and police who more or less actively took part in the massacres 
 have largely been promoted and rewarded in person by the 
 Czar. The actual murderers Nicholas is now letting out of 
 jail by twos and threes and dozens, as a direct act of grace 
 from the throne at a time when on grounds of public policy 
 pardons are refused to all other persons. 
 
 At the time of the opening of the third Duma the country 
 was quiet enough to bring some of the massacres and many of the 
 revolutionary disturbances before the courts. It is significant 
 to compare the wholesale sentences of revolutionists with the 
 fate of the pogrom murderers. On December 7, 1907, to give a 
 typical instance, there appeared in the same issue of the Rus- 
 sian papers two official telegrams, one about the trial and sen- 
 tences of sixty -two sailors that had mutinied a few weeks before 
 at Vladivostock, the other of fifty-four ruffians that had parti- 
 cipated in the murderous pogrom of October, 1905, in Mohilev. 
 Twenty-four of the ruffians were freed, twenty-four condemned 
 to short terms of the mildest form of arrest, five to prison for 
 less than eighteen months, and one to four years of forced labour. 
 Of the sailors twenty were, condemned to be shot, twenty were 
 condemned to terms of forced labour far more severe than that 
 of the one scapegoat ruffian just mentioned, and sixteen were 
 
CZARISM STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE 4$ 
 
 sentenced to arrest. Thus sharply does the Russian Govern- 
 ment distinguish between a courageous revolt in the name of a 
 high principle, and the cowardly massacre of unarmed men, 
 women, and children in the name of racial hate. 
 
 The higher criminals, as I have said, were never even sen- 
 tenced. Major Bugadowsky of the gendarmes was proved before 
 the first Duma to have endeavoured to gain the favour of the 
 St. Petersburg authorities by pointing out that he had caused 
 to be widely distributed a proclamation calling on "all true 
 Russian people, those who are for the Czar, the Fatherland, and 
 the Orthodox faith," to gather togeth-er at the first alarm at 
 a designated place "with arms, scythes, and pitchforks" and to 
 hurl themselves under "the holy image and the portrait of the 
 Czar " on the common enemy. The major, confident of approval, 
 explained in his report that he had done "all in his power" 
 to give the proclamations a wide circulation, as they would have 
 "a happy influence on the peasantry." Stolypine explained to 
 the Duma that the major had been called to St. Petersburg, but 
 as the massacre did not actually take place he could not judi- 
 cially be held responsible! "As to the rewards he received," 
 added the Czar's mouthpiece, "they were for having reestab- 
 lished order." 
 
 Twenty-six provincial governors, all appointed in person 
 by the Czar, were involved. Of these not one has been punished 
 to this day, and the two or three that were removed from the 
 reach of local vengeance were rewarded with high dignities else- 
 where. The governor of Minsk, for example, has been made a 
 member of the council of the interior with a large salary. On 
 the contrary, all who did not aid in the massacres were removed 
 by the Czar; as, for instance, the prefect of Sebastopol, Admiral 
 Spitzky, who organised a militia to protect the defenceless 
 population; the governor of Samara, who would not allow 
 the lieutenant-governor to bring the massacres into execution; 
 the governor of Ufa, who was removed for complaining to the 
 prime minister against the preparations for the massacres; 
 the governor of Terek, who, when asked by a personage he does 
 not name but "too high to refuse" to prepare a massacre, 
 preferred to be relieved of his office. These cases of forced 
 resignations continue without interruption. 
 
46 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Before the whole Witte ministry was forced out, Ministers 
 Kutler and Tolstoi had abandoned all hope of the Czar and 
 thrown up their offices. Other self-respecting men, about the 
 same time and since, have refused to accept these humiliating 
 ministerial positions, including the new influential leader 
 Gutchkov. These conservative leaders, among the strongest 
 men in Russia, have refused to become ministers, as I learned 
 from one in person, just because they know the Czarism and 
 the Czar. The position is too humiliating for an honest and 
 self-respecting man. 
 
 It is not necessary that a minister should himself be in direct 
 relations with the "patriotic" leagues, as is usually the case. 
 He may even be on unfriendly terms with them, but at least he 
 must be tolerant. Often the right hand taketh not the respon- 
 sibility for what the left hand doeth. Witte played the part 
 of a liberal. His minister of the Interior, Dumovo, was the most 
 reactionary the country has had since von Plehve. I was told 
 by a minister that the two disagreed in every cabinet meeting. 
 " But," he reassured me, "Witte gets his way in three cases out 
 of ten." In the other seven cases Durnovo was arresting 
 workingmen for mere membership in the trade unions, sending 
 out Cossack expeditions in all directions among the peasantry 
 to revenge the landlords for property destroyed, and exiling 
 hundreds of persons a day into Siberia or the mines on the 
 mere suspicion of the police. Lopuchin has proved that Witte 
 was informed of the preparations for massacre and neither took 
 effective measures to prevent them nor honourably resigned. 
 Witte even claimed in my presence and that of a third person 
 that it was not the Government but the whole nation that was 
 aroused against the Jews! 
 
 Stoly pine's brother, editor of the chief reactionary organ 
 in Russia, although he finds inadmissible the permanent cooper- 
 ation of the Government with the murderers, confesses that in 
 a crisis there is "no other choice than an appeal to the League 
 of Russian Men." To save the Czar and Czarism, then, the 
 minister must always be ready to descend to the principles of 
 the St. Bartholomew massacre, the Mafia or the Spanish Inqm- 
 sition. This is why, since the beginning of the Stoly pine minis- 
 try, a helping hand has been frequently extended to the League 
 
CZARISM STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE 47 
 
 from the Central Government, to say nothing of the intimate 
 relations encouraged in almost every local government between 
 the officials and the local leaders of the league. This is also 
 why, in both Duma elections under the Stolypine regime, the 
 league has been favoured in every possible manner. Its local 
 branches all over Russia were twice endowed with large sums 
 directly by the Government, its conservative rivals were appealed 
 to by the St. Petersburg authorities to ally themselves with the 
 league in the elections, and in many places all popular or liberal 
 rivals were crushed by the arbitrary arrest of the candidates 
 or the wholesale striking of electors off the lists. 
 
 After the great massacres following the Manifesto, there 
 was a brief respite. There were two reasons for postponing 
 further killings. Chie was the financial needs of Russia. Too 
 much bloodshed would have made it difficult for Russia to bor- 
 row the billion rubles she obtained from France and other coun- 
 tries the following spring. Too many official crimes would have 
 made the Duma elections impossible, or made them still less 
 favourable to the Government, and would have destroyed the 
 object for which the Duma was created, to give the Czarism an 
 artificial credit abroad for money and military allies. Not- 
 withstanding these weighty reasons, it was all that Witte could 
 do to restrain the Czar's over-zealous friends in the bureaucracy 
 and the court. The plotting and planning went on, as was 
 exposed later in the Duma by Prince Urussov. Finally the 
 "patriots," patience gave way and the world was treated to the 
 grandiose massacre of Bielostock. In this three days* massa- 
 cre nearly a hundred persons were killed and as many more 
 seriously mutilated. 
 
 The Bielostock pogrom was foreseen, as pogroms always are, 
 several days before it occurred, and the leading and most 
 respected citizens did all they could to persuade the local 
 authorities to stop it. They obtained little satisfaction. 
 Governor Kister, when complained to, refused to do anything; 
 and even after his brief visit to Bielostock by a special train 
 during the massacre, the slaughter continued. He doubtless 
 knew be would not be permitted to act. The chief of police, 
 Rodetzki, who was opposed to the pogrom, resigned on the very 
 morning of the massacre and was replaced by a "surer'* man. 
 
48 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Shortly before the massacre one of the colonels stationed 
 at Bielostock said to his soldiers: "You are defending the Czar 
 and the Fatherland. The Jews want to kill you. They have 
 decided to exterminate you to the last man. I announce to you 
 that the authorities give you the right to do whatever you please 
 on the 21 St of this month.'' This colonel knew his Government 
 and his Czar. He knew he would be thanked for his bloody 
 work and given other opportunities in the future to rise. He 
 was not disappointed — as we shall see. 
 
 The Bielostock pogrom was fully investigated and exposed 
 by the Duma, then in session. The Duma branded the official 
 report as a tissue of lies. The investigators found that the 
 troops were present, calm and impassible, at all the crimes of 
 the massacre. While the police and ruffians murdered, muti- 
 lated and plundered, they swept the streets with volleys "to 
 keep away the Jews." The Duma decided that the pogrom was 
 not only due to the officials, hut solely due to them, that, con- 
 trary to the Government report, there was no racial, religious, 
 or economic enmity between the Christians and the Jews, that 
 this hatred existed only among the police ; that the police knew 
 all about the preparation for the massacre, and they them- 
 selves murdered and robbed; and that the troops shot down 
 peaceable men, women, and children without the slightest cause. 
 
 But the Czar knew how to show that he was pleased by the 
 massacre and suited by the official report. The guilty troops 
 were at once sent his special and public thanks, as was noted 
 in the official army journal of July 9, 1906. The mayor of 
 the town was removed for questioning the truth of the official 
 report. The CathoHc Archbishop Ropp, who reported a meet- 
 ing of those who were preparing the massacre, has been followed 
 by the imperial vengeance until this day. Only recently he 
 was forced out of his office on a trivial pretext, even against 
 the protest of the Vatican. 
 
 The penalties for the atrocious mutilations at Bielostock 
 are significant. Here is the sum total for the punishment: 
 One prisoner received a rather severe sentence at hard labour, 
 eight years — which, of course, may be later shortened by the 
 Czar. One received a sentence of eight months in prison. The 
 penalties of the others were nominal. Six were let go, three 
 
BARON TAUBE AND PICTURES HE SENT HIS FIANCEE TO SHOW 
 
 HOW HE DEALT WITH PEASANTS 
 
 He wrote under the pictures: "Bringing the man to execution." "Thev are 
 
 preparing to shoot; the men are at their places." "They are firing the second 
 
 time; he is already dead." These pictures were produced before the first Duma 
 
 by Alexinsky and caused a great sensation 
 
 OF THE ' 
 
 liVERSITY 
 
CZARISM STRUGOLING FOR EXISTENCE 49 
 
 given three months in the disciplinary battalions. Two of the 
 leaders, Popko and Peredo, along with several others, although 
 under accusation were not kept locked up for the trial — • 
 *' which circumstance," laconically explained the gagged Russian 
 press, "much favoured their escape." 
 
 For a time the forces of reaction and massacre were some- 
 what frightened by the Duma's uproar about the Bielostock 
 affair. But soon they were at work again. The first to act 
 were, not unnaturally, the brave troops of Bielostock, one regi- 
 ment of which was now transported to Siedlice in Poland. A 
 frightful pogrom followed this transfer, this time entirely and 
 solely carried out by the troops, as shown by two official reports. 
 As is proved by one of these, Colonel Tichanovsky, the chief of 
 the garrison, called a conference before the pogrom, in which 
 he exposed his bloody plans, and answered every protest of one 
 or two subordinates by a promise that he would assume full 
 responsibility. This meant that he was sure of support higher 
 up. The governor was complained to without result and the 
 massacre put deliberately into execution. During the whole- 
 sale butcheries by the drunken soldiers in the houses and on 
 the streets, Colonel Tichanovsky gathered together a soldiers' 
 chorus "to raise the spirits of the troops," and "their singing 
 resounded amidst the noise of the rifles, the spilling of blood, 
 the plundering and conflagration." The colonel said that 
 *'in case he was killed he hoped the soldiers would honour his 
 memory decently and bathe themselves up to the ears in blood." 
 Though the killed and wounded amounted to hundreds, while 
 only a single soldier lost his life, the colonel complained that 
 there were too few dead. This is how Colonel Tichanovsky at 
 least, given supreme authority by his superior, interpreted 
 the personal thanks of the Czar for loyal services at Bielostock. 
 
 But now Stolypine was in office. However humiliating 
 the position he occupied along with all other ministers in the 
 court, and however helpless he was against the Czar, Stoly- 
 pine saw with the minister of war that this particular manner 
 of conducting these campaigns against the "internal enemy" 
 was a dangerous, disintegrating force of the army itself. Already 
 at Siedlice there was a threatening minority of the officers against 
 the massacre. The soldiers of a whole regiment scarcely took a 
 
50 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 hand in the business. A little more and there could have been 
 a mutiny and the military massacres would have turned into a 
 revolutionary movement. 
 
 Siedlice was the last military pogrom. We have now in 
 the place of this short-lived institution the cherished politics 
 of the League of Russian Men, the arming^ of the dregsjjf the 
 population, and the steady beating and murder under the pro- 
 ;' teciion of the police of all persons "unfriendly " to the Govem- 
 i ment. The new system, which prevails at a hundred different 
 points at once, received the sanction of the Czar, this time 
 so openly and clearly that he could be sentenced for partici- 
 pation in the crimes before any honest jury or court. 
 
CHAPTER ly 
 
 THE SLOW MASSACRE SYSTEM 
 
 THIS new "slow massacre" system, always popular, has 
 now been supreme for over a year, and promises to remain 
 an indispensable arm of the Government. Recently in Vologda, 
 for instance, a respected citizen went to the governor to com- 
 plain of the beatings the league was executing daily on the 
 streets. As an answer he was sentenced to a month's imprison- 
 ment. Of course there is a party that prefers an intensification 
 of martial law to this lynch justice of the dregs, and a reaction- 
 ary group in the Duma has recently petitioned to this effect. 
 But martial law means a setting aside of civil government, 
 and even the existing chaotic "system" of the bureaus, plus 
 the daily semi-official murder of liberal citizens on the streets, 
 is better than the utter arbitrariness of a state of war. The 
 first demand of the moderately liberal members of the Duma 
 is not the extension but the abolition of martial law, since it 
 bears down not on the "internal enemy" alone, but on the 
 whole community. There is, then, no alternative for a poor 
 Czarism harassed for its existence. The army cannot be used 
 quickly to put an end to the business, for that leads to military 
 disorganisation and revolt. It cannot be used to govern the 
 country, for the price of its arbitrariness falls alike on the just 
 ' and the unjust. The internal enemy must be left to the police 
 land such voluntary allies as they can procure themselves from 
 I the criminal class. 
 
 In the first year of the national organisation of the counter- 
 revolution on this principle, and before its universal adoption 
 made it impossible to enumerate farther, there were over six 
 hundred of these "patriotic demonstrations," $25,000,000 
 worth of property was destroyed, over a thousand persons were 
 killed and several thousand seriously or permanently injured; 
 of Jewish families alone thirty-seven thousand were affected. 
 
 51 
 
52 
 
 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 It is unfortunate that the figures do not show what was the 
 part played by the employees of the Government and what by 
 the organised mob. There can be little question that a large 
 part, if not most, of the actual killing was done by the hands of 
 officials, police, soldiers, spies, and Government employees in 
 disguise. The massacres were so similar it seems likely that 
 even the details were studied and ordered by the central commit- 
 tee; they were 'enough like those already mentioned not to 
 need description here. 
 
 The new development of the "system" as practised in Odessa 
 
 rests upon a triple basis of the Czar's patronage: his direct 
 
 , relationship with the organisation that prepares the massacres, 
 
 )the favours he extends to his leaders personally, and the pardons 
 
 I he distributes freely to any of the murderers themselves who 
 
 • may be sentenced through the occasional ignorance or simplicity 
 
 • of some honest court. The active aid of Stolypine, who claims 
 to oppose it, is not necessary ; with the Czar's personal relation- 
 ships, favours and pardons, Stolypine, who is only a minister, 
 has nothing to do. Moreover, the people's Duma has been 
 abolished and nearly a hundred of the four hundred members of 
 the new "landlord's Duma " are members of the massacre organ- 
 
 ^ isations, while the majority of the rest are ultra-conservative 
 , officials, noblemen, and privileged persons precisely in the 
 ] situation of Stolypine, that is, without either thejv^iU.or ppyer 
 
 • to combat the Czar. Thus, having no influential opposition, 
 the Odessa system will continue to reveal daily the life principle 
 of the autocratic State. 
 
 In Odessa at the present moment everything reminds us of 
 the St. Bartholomew massacre and the league during the civil 
 and religious wars three centuries ago in France. Odessa is 
 the chief stronghold of the league and Stolypine is naturally 
 jealous, as it is his chief rival for the favour of the Czar. So 
 bitter is the mutual jealousy that Konovnitzin, the local presi- 
 dent of the league, has now brought an important legal suit 
 against Stolypine for a criminal non-enforcement of anti-Jewish 
 laws. Stolypine has naturally made a counter attack and 
 recently exposed in full the Odessa excesses to the Czar ^- not 
 out of any kindness of heart, be it remarked, for when Stolypine 
 was governor of Saratov he permitted the burning of towns and 
 
THE SLOW MASSACRE SYSTEM 53 
 
 the wildest excesses by the Cossacks and the hired mob. But 
 the prime minister could do nothing to shake the Czar's con- 
 fidence in the organisation that so nearly responds to his desires, 
 and he has allowed nothing to interfere either with Governor 
 Kaulbars or the Odessa branch. 
 
 Even among the officials there are a few good men who have 
 /made complaint — but their voices are drowned in the reaction- 
 ary chorus of the Czar's favourites. The civil governor of the 
 province that contains Odessa, one Malajew, exclaims to little 
 purpose: "We cannot close our eyes. Among all the races 
 the Jews are the most oppressed and circumscribed. We 
 need not fear them, but ourselves. One is astonished not at the 
 grumblings but at the mildness of these people. We must do 
 them justice, we must give them the right to live and breathe." 
 
 Grigoriev, until recently chief of police, strove in vain to 
 do his duty and prevent the daily slaughter of the Jews. He 
 finally went to Stolypine to report that he could do nothing 
 against Kaulbars and that either he or Kaulbars must go. 
 "Then you resign," replied Stolypine, aware of Kaulbars's 
 unshakable position with the Czar. Grigoriev resigned. I 
 arrived in Odessa a few months ago on the same train with the 
 new chief Novitzki, who came with special secret orders from 
 Stolypine, directed mainly of course against the league. The 
 town had almost declared a holiday. The streets were lined 
 with thousands of people to welcome their last hope. But the 
 daily massacres have continued and Novitzki has had to give 
 up in despair. He failed above all to muzzle the press of the 
 league that calls for massacre from day to day. The head' 
 of the censorship in St. Petersburg complained of this paper 
 and Novitzki issued the order to suppress it, but Konovnitzin,. 
 safe under the protection of Kaulbars, refused to recognise the 
 order. 
 
 All the other leading criminals are also immediately under 
 the governor's protection. Last year, for instance, the secre- 
 tary of the league, Kahov, was arrested for distributing proc- 
 lamations calling for the massacre of the Jews. Kahov 's 
 brother entered the police headquarters, abused the police, 
 called up the governor of that time by telephone and made a 
 complaint. Immediately after this he had a personal conference 
 
54 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 with the governor and his brother was released. This governor, 
 tired of his strenuous duties, resigned, and was later killed. 
 He is acknowledged, even in reactionary circles, to have been 
 a brute. But in his successor, Kaulbars, the Czar has found 
 another man just as much to his taste. Recently a well-known 
 and respectable citizen received threatening letters from the 
 league. He called on Kaulbars. The governor in his presence 
 called up one of the chiefs of the criminals familiarly by tele- 
 phone and told him not to touch this particular man. Kaulbars *s 
 position in court, along with several other magnates of his 
 character, remains as firm as the grand dukes'. When a dele- 
 gation from Poland went to complain against Governor Skalon, 
 Stolypine received its members with evasive answers and left 
 the room. A minister who had been present asked them why 
 they complained to Stolypine and if they could possibly be so 
 ignorant as not to know that Skalon was protected higher up. 
 It is the same with Kaulbars ; he is protected by the ** Most High." 
 
 The situation that has arisen in Odessa is by far the most 
 damning to the Government of all the varied and innumer- 
 able horrors it has created. After a massacre last June the 
 league organ, For Czar and Fatherland , declared quite truth- 
 fully that the organisation would act in the same way in the 
 future. The continuous massacre began at once to increase its 
 daily toll. By August the murderers were in such complete 
 possession of the city that not even officials were respected. 
 A teacher of the military school wearing his uniform pointed 
 out to the police how members of the league at that moment, in 
 broad daylight and the centre of the city, were beating Jews. 
 The murderers by the grace of the Czar then began to beat the 
 -teacher before the eyes of the police. He fled, his face stream- 
 ing with blood, into a leading hotel near the palace of the 
 governor-general. The hotel was filled with high officials. 
 Nevertheless the league members surrounded it and threatened 
 to bombard if their prey was not surrendered. Two military 
 officers tried to calm them in vain. Finally the proposed 
 victim was saved by the chance appearance of the assistant 
 prosecuting attorney. 
 
 During the massacre on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of September, in 
 which many were killed and still more mutilated by the new 
 
THE SLOW MASSACRE SYSTEM 55 
 
 curved knives and clubs of rubber and wire that break noses 
 and beat out eyes, one of the leaders arrested in the act of plun- 
 der was let off merely with a "fatherly warning" by Kaulbars. 
 The league issued an appeal in which it ominously recommended 
 to those Jews who wanted to preserve their lives and property 
 "to gather themselves together with the teachers and rabbis in 
 the synagogue and to publicly call down a curse on all the 
 revolutionaries and educated Jews, to forget all their clamourings 
 for equal rights with the Christians, and to form a league of Jews 
 for the maintenance of the unlimited autocracy of the Czar.** 
 
 "Since the revolutionists are invisible," said the Count Mus- 
 sin-Puschkin, "we must strike at the public." For striking at 
 the public the league has in Odessa a fighting organisation of 
 three hundred men armed by the governor and given head- 
 quarters in a government building. Besides this band, all very 
 young men and some mere boys, there is a student detachment 
 of eighty members. These are permitted publicly, as many of 
 the other two thousand members are permitted secretly, to 
 carry arms. But the overwhelming majority of the ordinary 
 members are simply the young toughs and rowdies of a great 
 port. The members of the fighting organisation are paid fifteen 
 to twenty dollars a month, a goodly wage in a starving country. 
 Their duties consist especially in revenging on the general pub- 
 lic the killing of police by unknown anarchist or revolutionary 
 groups. A recent "order" gives the following scale: for each 
 policeman killed two Jews, for each roundsman four, for a 
 captain eight, for the chief of police still a larger number, and 
 in the case of the assassination of Konovnitzin or Kaulbars a 
 general massacre. The scale is not literally carried out, but if 
 we substitute two Jews seriously wounded for one killed it is 
 executed almost to the letter. 
 
 The league murderers, who often wear a yellow jacket as 
 a uniform, are organised under three captains or "attamans." 
 It was to one of these that Kaulbars gave the telephone order 
 already referred to. Another, Gazabatov, a typical western 
 **bad man" nineteen years of age, who even killed a five-year- 
 old child, was recently once more released from prison by Kaul- 
 bars. Under assumed but well known names he and another 
 attaman sell passes of safety from massacre. Nothing else 
 
56 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 secures one's life in Odessa now. An American friend recently 
 saw a ruffian beat a man in the face. With the blood streaming 
 the victim called for help and a crowd was soon giving chase. 
 My friend joined in. Soon a policeman was reached. When 
 appealed to he threatened the crowd, which he said he considered 
 to be a mob, that he would call the Cossacks, and in the mean- 
 while the criminal escaped. Another policeman when asked 
 in a similar case why he did not arrest the criminal replied: 
 "Why, don't you know, he's one of ours?" 
 ; Let the reader note carefully each turn of events in the 
 following outbreak, which occurred in Odessa, and he will 
 understand the nature of that basic institution of Czarism, 
 the pogrom. 
 
 As the body of a police officer, assassinated for an unknown 
 cause, passed the Jewish hospital shots resounded. This firing 
 shots near a Jewish house is a regular feature of the massacres, 
 and in several cases, as at Bielostock, it has been proved that 
 the shots were fired by a hidden agent of the police. There 
 began a fusillade. Several shots hit the coffin and the corpse, 
 hut not one of the leaguers was touched! There was a wild panic ; 
 soon all the streets were deserted and all the shops closed. 
 A group of the "yellow jackets " forced its way into the hospital, 
 with revolvers in their hands. The police appeared with the 
 Cossacks and put an end to the scandal, hut they arrested nobody. 
 The league members retreated still shooting, and a fourteen- 
 year-old girl and a man of seventy-eight were wounded. Not- 
 withstanding all those warnings to the authorities, the disorders 
 were repeated, unhindered, the next day. Again there was a 
 fusillade, an old Jew and an eight-year-old girl were killed, 
 several Jews were wounded and many beaten. This occurred 
 in the morning. At one o'clock in the afternoon the beatings 
 began again; carriages and street-cars were held up and men 
 and women passengers attacked. At two o'clock a funeral ap- 
 peared accompanied by the Chief of Police Novitzki, by Cossacks, 
 and by a large number of mounted police. As the procession 
 neared the hospital again the traditional shots resounded, and 
 a Jewish boy was severely wounded. After the funeral a crowd 
 of yellow jackets again began beating and shooting in the streets, 
 a young girl was wounded and a Jew killed before the police 
 
THE SLOW MASSACRE SYSTEM 57 
 
 put in their tardy appearance. For this carnival of crime 
 ten members of the league were taken into custody and sen- 
 tenced to two months' arrest, doubtless, as usual, in the very 
 headquarters of their friends the police. 
 
 The official account of this affair, without mentioning the 
 league, puts the whole responsibility, as is commonly done, 
 on the murdered Jews. It begins as usual with a totally irrele- 
 vant accotmt of the shooting of a policeman, for which the 
 massacre is supposed to be the revenge — carried out by the 
 Christian population of Odessa. Although the said assault took 
 place after dark and the assailants escaped, the police never- 
 theless characterised them as Jews. 
 
 **0n September ist," says this report, "a detective named 
 Vemik was passing about eight o'clock in the evening through 
 Portof ranco Street when he noticed two Jews stealthily approach- 
 ing him. . . . One drew a revolver and shot Vemik in the 
 left side. They then escaped. . . . The next day two or 
 three Jews roaming through the street fired several more shots 
 and then escaped into the crowd. . . . When the body of 
 the dead Kharchenko was carried in front of the Jewish hospital, 
 a group of Jews opened fire at the squad of police." This report, 
 as are all pohce reports of such affairs, was nothing more nor 
 less than clear invitation to repeat the massacre of the Jews. 
 
 The police incitement was successful in stirring up a massacre 
 within a few days. In this affair the same performance, even 
 to the fimeral, was repeated, and in addition several hundred 
 shops were plundered or destroyed. In the police report, 
 since the "yellow jackets" did all the killing and the Jews 
 only furnished the killed, the latter are scarcely mentioned. 
 It says that "individuals" forced their way into a tea-room 
 and wounded two "persons," that a "man" was wounded on 
 the street, that the "crowd" destroyed various windows, that 
 a certain " Stcherbakov " received a woimd. Nobody familiar 
 with the situation would question that the "individuals" and 
 the "crowd" were leaguers, while the "persons," the "man" 
 and "Stcherbakov" were all imfortunate Jews. 
 
 In the report of the massacre of the following week, the 
 police again referred to the Jews six times in the brief space 
 of a few hundred words. But it must be by no means inferred 
 
58 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 that the Jews are the only subject of attack by the yellow 
 jackets and police. A Russian smith who asked a mob of yellow 
 jackets who were beating some Jews what offence these Jews had 
 committed, was at once disembowelled by the mob. Three 
 Russian workingmen were attacked in the house of the mother 
 of two of them, and the mother and small sister were beaten. 
 The mother died and it is doubtful if the men will ever recover 
 from their mistreatment. 
 
 While these massacres go on in the streets, while Kaulbars 
 is sitting in council with the league in the governor's palace, 
 the life of Odessa has naturally become a chaos. During the 
 sessions of the town council, the members of the League of 
 Russian Men sit in the gallery and interrupt and terrorise the 
 progressive members, while armed reinforcements are waiting 
 outside in front of the building. Three newspapers were con- 
 fiscated for mentioning the names of the liberal candidates 
 for the Duma and their editors thrown in prison, along with 
 one of the candidates himself. For Czar and Fatherland, the 
 League newspaper, appears daily with the words of the Czar's 
 famous telegram at the top: "The League of Russian Men will 
 be my most faithful support," and on the next page, "Smash 
 the Jews, Socialists, Caduks (Cadets), and other reptiles." 
 
 The anarchy in Odessa, unequalled in any city of Europe 
 in modem times, unless in Constantinople, is no worse than in 
 many other of the eighty-two (out of eighty-six) provinces of 
 the Russian Empire that are now entering into the third year 
 of "government" by martial law. It may well be disputed 
 whether the martial law has brought on the anarchy, or the 
 anarchy the martial law. But it cannot be questioned that 
 both are the inevitable results of the anarchy of the Russian 
 bureaucracy and the government by violence which history 
 shows constitutes the ideal of the true courtier and the true Czar. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CREATING THE " INTERNAL ENEMY" 
 
 IN A recent conversation with the Czar which was at once 
 careftilly written down by the Countess Tolstoi, Nicholas 
 said: 
 
 "I am very sorry that in the course of the last revolts and 
 the massacres of the Jews public opinion of that great country 
 (America) has turned against me. I am not guilty of all those 
 troubles. I think the Jews themselves incite the mob to attack 
 them. The time will come when the Americans themselves will 
 hate the Jews and regard them, not as a nation of great intelli- 
 gence and isolated from the others through their religion, but 
 as the worst type of business-men and money-makers. All the 
 revolts of the last two years have been agitated by the Jews. 
 A Jew in common life may be good, but a Jew in politics is 
 worse than anyone else." 
 
 Before exposing the roots of the gospel of religious and race 
 hatred here openly preached by the Czar, let us read what is 
 clearly expressed between the lines. The Czar was talking not 
 in the abstract but of the situation in Russia at the present 
 moment, and we would lose half the value of what he says if 
 we did not recall just what questions he is answering and what 
 the situation is to which he refers. 
 
 To begin with, most of his remarks cannot apply only to the 
 Jews. If he expresses himself fully Nicholas must say he is 
 sorry that "in the course of the recent revolts and the massacres ** 
 of the Poles, Lithuanians, Esths, Letts, Tartars, Georgians, and 
 Armenians, the opinion of America and of the whole civilised 
 world has turned against him. Neither he nor anyone speaking 
 for him has ever withdrawn the accusation constantly issued 
 by the officials that each one of these peoples has also agitated 
 revolts. Nor has is ever been denied that their rebellious 
 tendency is the reason why all non-Russian peoples are more 
 
 59 
 
6o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 or less disqualified in the new Duma and legally persecuted by 
 the courts. In speaking of the Jews as if they stood alone then, 
 Nicholas creates an impression the exact reverse of the fact 
 by failing to state the "whole truth." Sworn before an Ameri- 
 can court he would stand convicted of the crime of common 
 perjury. 
 
 This is a fine specimen of the kind of lie by which the Czarism 
 is trying to save itself. If the Jews, as the Czar implies, are 
 hated by all the peoples in Russia, it looks badly for the Russian 
 Jews. But if all the non-Russian peoples in Russia hate the 
 Government and the Czar, and do not hate the Jews, then the 
 overwhelming presumption is against the Government and the 
 Czar. All the other false impressions created by this little gem 
 of falsehood are made doubly vicious by this first general lie 
 of omission that underlies every word. The great Autocrat 
 finds it inconvenient to mention the other "subject" races 
 because had he done so his attack would have appeared on its 
 face so vicious and absurd that it would have sufficed in itself 
 to convince any thinking person of the malicious hostility of 
 the Czar toward all who for any reason oppose him. 
 
 Who is guilty of the massacres according to Nicholas? The 
 Czar says he is not. He says the Jews are partly guilty, not 
 daring, as do many of his officials, to put all the blame on them. 
 The accusation that the Jews are bringing about the massacres, 
 of which they are often the only victims, is ridiculous on the 
 face of it and a monstrous perversion of facts with which, as 
 I have shown, the Czar himself is perfectly familiar. Did not 
 the Czar excuse his officials for the Bielostock pogrom, not on 
 the ground that the Jews had incited an imaginary mob to 
 massacre them, but that the Jews were "republicans and 
 revolutionists"? How are we to know when Nicholas speaks 
 the truth? Does he hold that the Jews incite the massacres, 
 or that the Jews are against Czarism and therefore ought to 
 be massacred? 
 
 But if, as he says, to the Jews is due only a part of the guilt, 
 where is the rest of it? The Czar does not assume for his own 
 Government any part of the responsibility, and has not caused 
 a single official of any consequence to be punished for these 
 crimes. Where is the missing guilt? Does it belong to the 
 
■ CREATING THE "INTERNAL ENEMY" 6i 
 
 mobs? But often there were no mobs, and in nearly every 
 case where so-called mobs existed they were composed of the 
 members of the League of Russian Men whom Nicholas 
 has since pardoned, because such criminals are an indispen- 
 sable element in what he considers to be "the best party" 
 in the country. 
 
 Then comes the effort of the Emperor to stir up race hatred, 
 the basis of his own power, in the United States. The Czarism 
 is like an infectious disease, a sort of black death. It tends to 
 spread its putrefaction in all directions, encourages by its 
 military power the reactionary influence in Prussia, Poland, 
 Hungary and even the horrible jacqueries of Roumania, corrupts 
 with high interest on its loans the small bourgeoisie of France, 
 and now hopes to defend itself by inoculating with its poison 
 of lies and hatred England and the United States. Again, 
 why does not Nicholas mention the other hounded and massa- 
 cred peoples? Why does not the God-sent take the courage 
 to tell us the unsuspected dangers of our Armenians, Lithuan- 
 ians and Poles? All three races form numerous and valuable 
 elements of our people, and the Poles from Russia are even 
 more numerous in America than the Russian Jews. How 
 does it come that they have received from the Czar the same 
 treatment as the Jews and raise the same complaint against him ? 
 Why does not the Czar tell us that his officials are every whit 
 as bitter against the Poles and Armenians wherever they are 
 found in Russia, as against the Jews? Because Nicholas knows 
 that to give the whole of his lying defences in a single statement 
 would in itself be sufficient to convict him of falsehood. 
 
 We hear from the Czar's own lips that the Jews are a separate 
 "nation" — that is, foreigners in his Empire. We know that 
 this is the fixed view of the Russian law concerning both the 
 Jews and the rest of the fifty million not of Russian race, but 
 it is an unexpected frankness to have it so stated by the Auto- 
 crat himself. So there are fifty million foreigners in Russia, 
 to be legally oppressed and on occasion enumerated among 
 "the internal enemy"! And these same people are also "iso- 
 lated" by their religion! Not in civilised countries, but in Rus- 
 sia we know that innumerable privileges are reserved for only 
 the orthodox. Yes, once more and finally, we have from the 
 
62 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 mouth of the Czar the secret of autocracy and the very founda- 
 tion of all his power. Hatred, violence, war; these are the 
 savage instincts in man by the development of which the Czar 
 hopes to master. In the end always war. 
 
 The idea is very old. Every absolutism and every political 
 slavery has so far been based on war. But Russia's mannner of 
 waging war is new. She has invented a system of universal war 
 within her own borders that for the purposes of despotism 
 excels the most ingenious contrivances of Macchiavellian or 
 Roman Imperial politics. Russia might well surpass her 
 predecessors and has in fact done so. History has never known 
 a power more absolute, more despotic, than the Czar's, and the 
 world has never seen an absolutism with a tithe of Russia's 
 population, resources, territory, and organisation, to say nothing 
 of the thoroughly modem equipment of her army and the 
 half -modem exploitation of her wealth. Russia's absolutism 
 is more than a success — it is danger to civilisation. If the 
 Russian system can survive in the modem world, it will be 
 copied in neighbouring countries, and so on indefinitely. It is 
 a standing menace to the freedom and progress of humanity 
 in the coming age. No free people can afford to view it with 
 indifference. 
 
 The great and novel feature of Russian statesmanship on 
 which the Czar stakes his empire is civil strife. The Empire is 
 already too large for imperialism. The people are satisfied with 
 the extent of their country, as large as the average continent, 
 touching on all the seas and embracing nearly every clime. The 
 foreigner is too far away to hate. Besides, an attack on one 
 enemy exposes to another some flank of the unwieldy country. 
 / Like Great Britain, Russia will be glad with the addition of 
 I some few small pieces of territory she can easily get by treaty 
 ' to keep what she already has. The recent treaty with Great 
 Britain showed that both are essentially peaceful powers. 
 Russia can scarcely defend her purely military form of govern- 
 ment on the ground of danger from abroad. But since absolut- 
 ism lives solely by violence employed against the people there 
 must be some pretext or other for military rule, government 
 outside of any law. Fortunately for the Czar the fifty million, 
 non- Russian subjects are not yet thoroughly intermarried 
 
CREATING THE "INTERNAL ENEMY" 63 
 
 with the Russians nor evenly distributed over the kingdom. 
 The pretext has been found. In the case of some races, as 
 the Tartars and Armenians, the officials have been able to pro- 
 duce an actual war. With others, as with the Jews, it has been 
 necessary to subsidise a war between them and the secret police 
 and criminal element. By these means the Czar remains 
 absolute master. He does not need to risk a foreign war, nor 
 to wait for a favourable occasion. He can have his wars, or 
 what is equally useful for his purposes, his "states of war" or 
 abolition of civil order and civil government, when and where 
 he wishes. 
 
 The Czar in this statement, then, is busied with inventing an 
 enemy. For without an enemy there is no hate, no violence, 
 no open or latent civil war ; and without civil war the Czar would 
 be supported, of course, by just exactly the number of people 
 he could buy. A part of the Russian people, the officials and 
 landlords, the Cossacks and the dregs of the population, he has 
 bought. But the money was not his own, and without an unpaid 
 increment composed of other elements of the population, the 
 investment is a bad one. For not one of the elements so far bought 
 produces any noticeable income to the State. They are all 
 parasites, and a greater number of such parasites will be needed 
 to keep the people down every day the people advance in 
 wealth-producing power. Every step forward in the wealth- 
 producing power of the nation, which is the objective of the 
 people who lend the money in Germany or France, is also a step 
 forward in the intelligence, organisation, unity, and revolt of 
 the people of the Empire. 
 
 The Czar's appeal to hatred is not a sudden inspiration of 
 malice or an instinctive revenge. It is a deep expression of 
 what has constituted the life principle of the Czarism since the 
 dawn of history. 
 
 The Czar's civil war is stirred up by a campaign of lies of every 
 kind, is conducted publicly by Government officials and by 
 means of direct attacks on the property and liberties of the non- 
 Russian subject races, the Russian intellectuals and peasants — 
 these officials acting either through specific laws requiring such 
 persecution, or under the arbitrary power placed in their hands, 
 or under administrative law, or under martial law, or, since there 
 
64 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 is never any responsibility to the people in any case, even directly 
 counter to all these so-called laws. 
 
 The aims and hopes of the official persecution are best shown 
 by the official propaganda. Witness the proclamation printed 
 on the official press of the prefect of St. Petersburg, authorised 
 by the censor, cynically defended later in an official investigation 
 by the prefect on the sole ground of this authorisation, and 
 defended by the censor himself because its printing had been 
 ordered by "a man who had not been without value" — sup- 
 posedly to the reactionary cause. 
 
 "Do you know, brothers, workingmen, and peasants, who is 
 the principal author of all our ills ? Do you know that the Jews 
 of Russia, America, Germany, and England have concluded 
 an alliance and decided completely to destroy the Russian 
 Empire?" asks this shameless document. In West Russia 
 just such proclamations are launched against the Poles, in 
 the Caucasus against the Armenians, in the Baltic Provinces 
 against the Letts, in the country against the workingmen, in 
 the city against the students, the educated classes or "intellec- 
 tuals" and the Jews. 
 
 "When these betrayers of Christ present themselves," con- 
 tinues the proclamation, "slash them to pieces, kill them, so 
 as to take away from them all wish to come." The document 
 is vicious, ignorant and at once both calculating and naive — 
 it breathes the very soul of the statesmanship of Nicholas, the 
 ministers and the court. "The order has been given," it says 
 to the people, "to elect men who will represent you before the 
 Czar (referring to the Duma). Remember that your natural 
 defenders are the landlords, manufacturers, and orthodox 
 merchants." How ignorant these governmental hopes in 
 Russian peasants and workingmen! Except where under 
 coercion, they did not elect a single landlord. The valuable 
 document then makes a complete exposition of the court's 
 favourite measures for "settling" the Jewish question. They 
 are similar to those that have been practised for twenty-five 
 years by the Czar and his "sainted father," Alexander III., whom 
 he claims as pattern. This document says that the Jews, who 
 kept out of half the towns, are to be expelled not only from all 
 the cities of European and Asiatic Russia, but also from ten 
 
A TYPE OF THE TERRORISTS WHO ARE CREATED BY : : \ 
 
 Sasonov, who in 1904 killed von Plehve — the most popular terrorist act ever 
 committed in Russia 
 
 "VERSITY 
 

 MARIE SPIRIDOXOVA 
 
 The most famous woman terrorist of recent years. She killed the brutal com- 
 mander of a "pacification" expedition 
 
CREATING THE "INTERNAL ENEMY" 65 
 
 small towns of South Russia where they are now allowed to 
 reside. Where permitted to live, they are not to be allowed 
 to trade in grain, meat or wood, or to open banking or commer- 
 cial houses or "similar establishments," or to own any real 
 estate. All special Jewish schools are to be closed and the Jews 
 are to be deprived of the right of entrance to all the Russian 
 higher, secondary and technical schools. The author-officials 
 recognise that it will take a complete sang-froid to execute these 
 measures, but "the cause is holy," nothing less than "the 
 lasting rescue of the people from the internal enemy." 
 
 The "holy cause" is at the present time especially "holy," 
 not so much for the plunder the Czar's officials are used to 
 extracting from the Jews and other "internal enemies," as for 
 the hope that the people can be corrupted by a promise of a 
 share in this plunder to turn their wrath away from the Govern- 
 ment to the Jews. For this purpose all the legislation has been 
 devilishly contrived from the outset. Whenever the country 
 has become very quiet, of course the officials keep all the plunder 
 for themselves; in other words, they allow the Jews to violate 
 the law, or if paid enough they even moderate its provisions 
 for a time. When revolutionary trouble begins again, the 
 persecution takes the form of legislation and enforcement of the 
 law, instead of secret blackmail. The purpose of the laws is not 
 mere punishment or the satisfaction of an existing hatred, but 
 an appeal to the greed and selfishness of all who compete in any 
 sphere with the Jews and can draw a profit from the handicap 
 set by the Government on their rivals in the race. There is 
 no race hatred, but there is selfish and even criminal greed — in 
 certain classes. 
 
 All during the last century the laws have been thus reversed 
 according to the Government's varying need, either to let the 
 Jew prosper and to plunder his wealth, or to ruin him to please 
 his competitors and win an enthusiastic and aggressive support 
 among certain elements of the population in behalf of the whole 
 system of oppression that is called by the name of government. 
 The law forbidding Jews to sell liquor was twice repealed and 
 twice passed again; that forbidding them to deal in land was 
 repealed, then passed again, then twice relaxed in practise, 
 then strengthened until now it is absolute. The right to live 
 
66 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 in villages was passed, repealed, passed again, and again strength- 
 ened. It was justified on what Prince Urussov brands as the 
 pure hypocrisy of separating the Jews in order to protect them 
 from the Christians! 
 
 The Jews, shut out of agriculture and many other occupations 
 by law, are forced into petty trade and handwork. Here the 
 wages and profit become so low from over-competition that 
 other nationalities shun these occupations, until finally nearly 
 all little shopkeepers and artisans are Jews. Then arises the 
 cry for further persecution, in hope that it may drive the Jews 
 from these occupations also. The cry arises, of course, not from 
 the producers of raw material, since it is good to have many 
 buyers, nor from the purchasers, who also profit from the 
 competition, but from those non- Jewish little traders and arti- 
 zans who remain. It is to these poor starving wretches that 
 the Government appeals with its campaign of murderous 
 plimder. Having artificially produced this desperate misery, 
 the Czar and his servants turn part of these wretches against 
 the others with a promise of their business when they are 
 destroyed. 
 
 The relatively small but desperately needy class of Russian 
 small shopkeepers has in many places succumbed to the poison, 
 and wherever the Jews are numerous allows the Government to 
 work them up periodically into a pitch of hatred, hardly murderous, 
 however, since many Jews are their associates and friends. 
 It is rather their wilder sons that furnish new recruits to the 
 criminal and professional "patriotic" organisations. But the 
 small merchants do enroll themselves, subscribe to the organi- 
 sation and read its papers, and it is undoubtedly to the selfish 
 interest of the small trader in the ruin of Jews that the Govern- 
 ment makes its most direct appeal. 
 
 I talked with Tichamirov, the editor of the notorious Moscow 
 organ of the League of Russian Men, who made clear to me at 
 once the purely lower middle class basis of the league. He is 
 close to the people, as he was a leader of the revolutionary party 
 in the former reign. While an exile abroad he completely 
 reversed his politics, and has written a book on the Czars which 
 is said to be the most able defence of autocracy extant. He 
 did not hesitate for a moment to acknowledge that anti-semit- 
 
CREATING THE "INTERNAL ENEMY" 67 
 
 ism was the basis of the ultra-reactionary party and the hope 
 of the Czarism. This anti-semitism he considers to be in its 
 essence an economic movement, and it is by conservative econ- 
 omic reform, not political, that he hopes to preserve the domina- 
 tion in Russia of the autocracy, the Orthodox Church and the 
 Russian nationality. 
 
 Politically, like all the leaders that stand with the Czar, 
 Tichamirov favours inertia. All accept what the Czar has given 
 without asking what it is, and all say that what the Czar has 
 given, Duma or what not, the Czar can take away. Either they 
 do not ask whether Russia has a constitution, or else they say 
 definitely with Tichamirov that a pure autocracy still prevails. 
 They accept the Duma, but they do not object to any of the 
 innumerable limitations under which it has proven utterly 
 powerless whenever opposed by the ministers of the Czar. 
 The League of Russian Men and all extreme reactionaries are, 
 nevertheless, in a certain peculiar sense democrats. They 
 believe in the possibility of a mystical direct union of "the 
 true Russian people" under their leadership with the 
 Czar, and they profess to believe that no disagreement in 
 this case is possible and that so autocracy and democracy 
 can become one. 
 
 This peculiar union and harmony it is hoped to attain by 
 purely economic reforms. The Czar is to favour those classes 
 that are most loyal to him and his policies, and these classes 
 are to grow and flourish until the whole people become the 
 loving children of the "Little Father," the Czar. Naturally 
 one must begin, not with the peasants, but with the smalf 
 shopkeepers and the small landowners. The league has- 
 always bought for itself a fighting organisation of the very^ 
 lowest social classes, but nowhere has is obtained any real foot- 
 hold among the mass of the people, the peasants and workingmen. 
 These classes are neither loyal to the Czar nor do they want 
 small doles in land, but a sovereign people's Duma, expropriation 
 of the landlords, and a social guarantee against accumulation 
 of the land in the future in private hands. The league has 
 definitely recognised that the workingmen and peasants, at 
 least for the moment, have strayed off the true path. Ticha- 
 mirov even confessed that he did not wish to see an extension 
 
68 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of peasant communal ownership, nor even of small farms, but 
 only of those with from 132 to 266 acres. 
 
 Outside of the Government and nobility these small landlords 
 and shopkeepers are almost the sole class from which the league 
 gets the rank and file of its members, and that they succeed 
 here is due solely to the diabolical machinations of the Govern- 
 ment. An overwhelming majority, however, even of the small 
 landowners belong to other less reactionary or even to merely 
 conservative groups; while the larger landlords have a party 
 of their own, the moderate reactionaries. The majority of the 
 small landowners are probably conservative or reactionary, 
 but certainly not very extreme since scarcely one out of ten 
 took the trouble to vote. The small shopkeepers, on the other 
 hand, took a lively interest. With the aid of the lower officials, 
 everywhere openly or secretly connected with the organisation, 
 and of the wholesale disfranchisements under the new election 
 law, they carried many of the smaller towns. These small 
 tradesmen, joined by the numerous class of landlords who are 
 also officials, or officials who are also landlords, and by the 
 higher clergy, elected over one hundred members or one-fourth 
 of the third Duma. 
 
 To this anti-semitic party the peasants have contributed 
 almost nothing. In eighty-four out of the eighty-six provinces 
 (or states) they have refused practically to have anything to do 
 with the organisation. Out of sixteen thousand township electors 
 for the third Duma only fifty-one declared themselves members of 
 the league, and of these thirty-three came from the one govern- 
 ment of Volhynia, leaving several hundred even in that govern- 
 ment in other parties. All unprejudiced observations agree 
 with those I made personally in a score of Russian villages. 
 Among the peasants there is almost no racial prejudice of any 
 kind. Even in those governments into which the law has 
 forced the Jews in abnormal numbers, there is scarcely a trace 
 of hostility. Witness the Duma's report on Bielostock, already 
 quoted, and Prince Urussov's conversations with Bessarabian 
 peasants. These peasants did not understand why he should 
 ask them such a foolish question as to whether they were hostile 
 to the Jews, and simply answered with other questions: "What 
 do you mean? What kind of hostility? Why any hostility?" 
 
CREATING THE "INTERNAL ENEMY" 69 
 
 I learned absolutely nothing from the peasants about anti- 
 semitism, because they don't know what Jew-baiting means. 
 It is all a question of plunder. The purely business reasons 
 for the persecution are baldly stated by the "patriotic organisa- 
 tions" themselves. The Fatherland Union, of which Count 
 Bobrinsky was chief organiser, states in its preamble, "If to 
 give the Jews equal rights should prove to be detrimental to 
 Russians, then no matter how convincing the arguments are, 
 we shall be energetically opposed to it." This is as if we should 
 deny rights of citizenship to emigrants, or to Americans who 
 were not "Sons of the Revolution." For the Jews and other 
 subject races have inhabited Russia for hundreds of years. 
 "Russia is first of all for the Russians," says the declaration, 
 apparently meaning those whose ancestors have been Russian 
 for a thousand years; and further, "the more elements there 
 are of foreign origin in the Russian Empire the stronger and 
 more forcible must the real Russian nationality be represented 
 in it." What if Americans were to say, the more foreigners 
 we have the more we must restrict their privileges and those 
 of their children to the last generation? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DANGER OP PROGRESS 
 
 THE organisations that defend the autocracy are without 
 exception the same that call for the persecution of the 
 subject races and oppose the giving either of land or of civil 
 or political rights to the people. 
 
 The Union of the Fatherland, the League of Russian Men, 
 the Russian Assembly and the other ** patriotic" organisations, 
 are "absolutely opposed to any lessening of the Czar's power." 
 One hundred and forty-six of their members in the third Duma 
 recognise Nicholas as an absolutely unlimited autocrat. Why 
 this self-renunciation, self-annihilation indeed? Because the 
 leagues are sure of this and all future Czars. They know 
 that the Czar created a Duma of officials and landlords. They 
 know that he has restricted the rights of the small merchants* 
 Jewish rivals to seats on exchanges or on merchants', artizans' 
 and citizens' commissions, and they hope that he will exclude 
 them altogether from these bodies. They know that even 
 the Centre of the Duma, composed partly of mere conservatives 
 rather than reactionaries, has abandoned the Jews. They have 
 nothing to gain, and everything to lose then, by the most 
 elementary political freedom, and so they believe in the unlimited 
 autocracy of the Czar. 
 
 We are beginning to penetrate into the citadel of reaction. 
 To the obvious fact that the Czar governs by the mere physical 
 power of the army and police, we have added the less obvious 
 fact that he governs by creating real or fictitious civil wars; 
 to the evident hostility of absolutism to democracy, we have 
 added its hostility even to the most elementary or conservative 
 forms of political or legal order. The Czarism is opposed to all 
 political rights and to any constitutional system. It is the 
 complete antithesis not only of individual freedom, but even 
 of law and order. 
 
 70 
 
THE DANGER OF PROGRESS 71 
 
 Now we can get a still deeper insight. In order to protect 
 the Czarism from the demand of the people for justice, order 
 and law, the Government and reactionaries are compelled to 
 attack every line of progress. The spread of intelligence through 
 the press, schools, and universities must be hindered, the coming 
 into Russia of foreign culture must be prevented, religious 
 evolution must at least be held where it is, and modem capital- 
 ism and business methods must be admitted with every con- 
 ceivable restriction and foresight. The Russian bureaucrats 
 and leading reactionaries are not a wonderfully endowed race, 
 but they are no savages. They have as a rule half a higher 
 education. They have read and travelled over Europe. They 
 are not opposed to higher education, modem business, European 
 culture, religious progress, and constitutional government, 
 because they dislike these things in themselves, but because 
 these things endanger their private positions and the whole 
 system from which they draw their support. There are a few 
 sentimental writers who work themselves up into a genuine 
 hatred of progress. The bureaucrats give these writings their 
 approval, pass them on to the people, and even paraphrase 
 them in the laws. But of course they would not express any 
 such views personally, as for example when in conversation 
 with intelligent foreigners or their bosom friends. We must 
 do justice to their intelligence. They are not fools. The lie by 
 which they live and degrade themselves and the whole nation 
 they command, is conscious and deliberate. 
 
 All the Government's campaigns against progress are con- 
 ducted on the same principles as the attack on the Jewish 
 tradesmen already outlined. The Government always appeals 
 to the baser instincts of some element of the population that 
 may draw a profit from the ruin of another, and it always 
 manages to connect its enemies in some way or other with the 
 Jews. The onslaught on the freedom of the press, on the 
 schools and universities is, for instance, often enough defended 
 on the direct ground that all these institutions are opposed 
 to the old ideas of autocracy. But when the courage for such 
 honesty is lacking, the attack is aimed first at the Jews. The 
 teachers, the students, the press, it is said, are under Jewish 
 influence. It is for this reason, then, that the already miserable 
 
72 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 schools must be deprived often of half their teachers, the uni- 
 versities once more closed, and the last shred of so-called jour- 
 nalistic freedom, first created two years ago and already grad- 
 ually attenuated to almost nothing, finally taken away. 
 
 Anti-semitism is the touchstone of the reaction. It was for 
 some time a question whether the party which controls the third 
 Duma, the conservative Octobrists, would on the whole prove 
 moderately progressive or moderately reactionary. The doubt 
 was short-lived. They have made a political agreement with 
 the outright reactionaries by which they have abandoned the 
 Jews. They will not even ask for Jewish equality before the 
 law. This means, and is actually accompanied by, an abandon- 
 ment of all the other subject races and oppressed classes of the 
 Empire. In fact my talk with the leader, Gutchkov, made it 
 unmistakably clear that the Octobrists will insist on keeping 
 control of the Duma at every cost and that for this purpose 
 they will work, as they must, almost wholly with the landlords 
 and bureaucrats who constitute a large majority of the assembly. 
 Gutchkov is satisfied especially with the landlords and says 
 that at the bottom they are progressive men. I shall show 
 later how this is the reverse of the truth. It is enough to say 
 here that this alliance with the reactionary landlords is in itself 
 enough to alienate from the Duma leader every other important 
 element of the population. 
 
 Since the third Duma has decided to take up a position with 
 the Government against the Jews and other subject races, it 
 has the same pretext as the Government for every reactionary 
 measure. It will not now be necessary to make a direct attack 
 on progress, and the so-called moderates can even continue the 
 polite and harmless verbal criticism on the bureaucracy and 
 the court without coming to any serious disagreement with 
 either. The campaign against progress in the form of the 
 spread of intelligence, has already been typically instituted by 
 Gutchkov 's own organ in Moscow, the object being first of all 
 narrowly selfish — that is, to destroy this newspaper's rivals — • 
 and only incidentally to aid the Government. 
 
 "The very fact alone," says this oracle of the third Duma, 
 "that nine-tenths of our press is in the hands of the Jews is a 
 disgrace. . . . We must see to it that Russians who know 
 
THE DANGER OF PROGRESS 73 
 
 that a certain paper is Jewish must not only not read it, but 
 not even take it in their hands." This "moderate" party 
 organ further suggests Duma legislation against the freedom 
 of press, and finally adds a sentence that discloses the truth, 
 which is that it is not really the Jews but the opposition in 
 general that troubles it. For it is "not only the Jewish press 
 but the present oppositional press, preponderantly Jewish" that 
 is "in its spirit rotten and foreign.'' We also see here, as we 
 shall see again and again, that what is foreign is scarcely to be 
 distinguished from what is rotten by the truly reactionary mind. 
 
 How does this moderate onslaught differ from that made a 
 year before by Trepov, speaking almost in the name of the 
 Czar? " Don't you see," Trepov said to an English interviewer, 
 "that a part of the newspapers of St. Petersburg are owned by 
 the Jews and that the majority of their editors are Jews? 
 Don't you see to what point the Jews are represented in the 
 Duma? Say what you like, this revolutionary movement is 
 principally the work of the Jews." But the Jewish writers 
 in the capital are scarcely as numerous proportionately as the 
 Jewish readers of the press, there are as many anti-semitic as 
 Jewish newspaper proprietors, and there were only twelve 
 Jewish members of that Duma instead of the twenty to which 
 their numbers in the country entitled them. Even this small 
 representation was, of course, a disappointment to a Government 
 that hoped there would be none in its assembly, but the great 
 disillusion was that there were not half a dozen anti-semites. 
 In spite of all the outrages of the officials in the elections, and 
 the innumerable inequalities of the election law in favour of the 
 Jew-baiters, there were not six men in five hundred that voted 
 against the full equality of the Jews. 
 
 The hostility to Jewish and oppositional freedom of opinion 
 and enlightenment, leads directly to attacks on enlightenment 
 itself. In a local government board in Bessarabia recently 
 the question arose whether in the country town of Akkerman 
 the library for teachers should be continued. No doubt it 
 was the only library there. The notorious reactionist 
 Pureschewitch, who happened to be a member of the board, 
 spoke heatedly and for hours against the library. 
 
 "What do you teachers need books for?" he cried. "Either 
 
74 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 you have learned enough already and you don't need to learn 
 more, or you have learned nothing. In either case you don't 
 need books. 
 
 "No more books! Through your books, through your 
 teachers, sedition is being carried amongst the people. For 
 the rooting out of this sedition, not the Manifesto of October 
 17th, but ptmishment expeditions are what we need." 
 
 In the meanwhile the Czar's Government is careful not 
 to allow the chief prey and scapegoat by any possibility to 
 go free. The Jews are not permitted in any of the thousand 
 activities of life to fuse themselves with the rest of the 
 population. The Jews, artificially held separate from the 
 rest of the nation in the ways I have indicated, are also forcibly 
 held separate in religion, in education, and in every other pos- 
 sible way. The most conservative rabbis only are permitted to 
 perform their functions, and intellectually inclined Jews are 
 by tens of thousands forcibly prevented from obtaining such 
 an education as would allow them to become one with the 
 educated class. We have seen that the reactionaries demand 
 that all higher education be closed to the Jews. Already many 
 such institutions as the St. Petersburg Normal, Dramatic, 
 Electrical Engineering and Railway Engineering schools, 
 the Moscow Agricultural and Medical schools are completely 
 closed against them, while in all other higher institutions, 
 though from a fourth to a half of the applicants for admission 
 are Jews, they are allowed to form only from 2 to 10 per cent, 
 of those in attendance. So perhaps not one young Jew out 
 of ten striving for a higher education is permitted to attain one. 
 In primary education the conditions are still worse, for here 
 only the smallest nimiber of Russian-teaching schools are 
 provided by the State, while Jews are forbidden to teach children 
 the Russian language. As a consequence, in one of the provinces 
 where an investigation was held (Odessa), it was found that 
 only II per cent, of the Jews could read and write the 
 Russian language. The evident intention of the Government 
 is to keep them separate for easier persecution. 
 
 In the schools, as elsewhere, the plan has some success. 
 Of course there are far from enough schools for the population 
 anyway. Under these circumstances only good students should 
 
THE DANGER OF PROGRESS 75 
 
 be admitted, and a large proportion of those passing the best 
 
 j examinations are Jews. But it is evident that for every good 
 
 ^)*^ Jewish student excluded some inferior Russian can find a place. 
 
 j From this exclusion of Jewish students there results a double 
 
 I gain for the Czarism. The standard of dangerous intelligence 
 
 ^ is lowered and " Russianised," and at the same time the inferior 
 
 Russian students are corrupted. Boys whose dulness already 
 
 inclined them to reaction are often made "patriots" once for 
 
 all by the selfish interest to keep a place they have no right to. 
 
 So there is a certain minority of young reactionaries in the 
 
 intermediate schools. But such students are not suited for 
 
 higher professional studies. They become rather officers, 
 
 bureaucrats, landlords, or merchants. In the universities 
 
 there is scarcely a trace either of reaction or of hostility to the 
 
 Jews. So strongly, indeed, do the Russian students stand up 
 
 for the rights of their fellows that the universities must often 
 
 be closed to make it possible to carry out the persecution of the 
 
 Jews, as has recently happened at Odessa and at Kiev. The 
 
 Government, moving ostensibly against the "foreigners," 
 
 has had the satisfaction of being able to shut up at the same time 
 
 some of the most important centres for the spread of general 
 
 intelligence. 
 
 By the revival of religious persecution the Government hopes 
 to enrage against the non-orthodox Russian sects, against 
 Catholics, Protestants, Mohammedans, and Jews, all the 
 narrowly fanatical and blindly superstitious elements of the 
 people. But unfortunately for the Czarism, such elements 
 are as rare in Russia as in any country in the world. This 
 may seem strange, but the liberal Milyoukov, the reactionary 
 Tichamirov, and the best observers of all schools are agreed that 
 it is so. Perhaps the most obvious reason for no growth of 
 deep-rooted traditions in Russia is the absence of sharply 
 defined national boundaries, at least in the older and European 
 section. In complete contrast with the rest of Europe there 
 were in Russia no naturally fixed populations, little hereditary 
 permanence of residence, little chance for narrow and local 
 traditions to be created. Through the vast empire were always 
 wandering and intermarrying families and tribes of Finns, 
 Tartars, several very different races of Slavs, and even some 
 
76 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 entirely foreign elements. There was no more possibility of 
 deep-rooted prejudice than in the modern United States. 
 Another ever-present reason for no traditions, denied of course 
 by Tichamirov, is the very existence of the autocracy, at first 
 perhaps a military necessity but later a sheer burden on every 
 useful class. As each nascent national tradition had to have 
 the official stamp of the hated Czarism, the people rejected it 
 at the outset, and as far as possible decided their private affairs 
 according to their actual conditions and without regard to the 
 official traditions of the Church or State. 
 
 Neither Orthodoxy nor Autocracy are national traditions 
 among the people. The only places where the official doctrines 
 have obtained a certain hold on the people, are where Russia 
 has defended the population in a recent generation against some 
 foreign foe. The people of Volhynia, for instance, where the 
 league obtained a few votes even among the peasants, were 
 oppressed a few generations ago by the Poles. Then Russia, 
 even with its Czar, was the Volhynian peasants' only hope, just 
 as later the Orthodox Russian priests have been the chief 
 means of reawakening among them the old Russian language 
 and culture almost extirpated during the Polish dominion. 
 Of course a result of this dependence on the priests is that 
 Volhynia is one of the most ignorant provinces of the empire, 
 and this ignorance again aids the reactionary movement. The 
 condition is similar in Bessarabia, which was won finally from 
 Turkey only a few generations back. There, where the people 
 are not Russians, but Latin descendants of the ancient colonies 
 of Rome, was the first great stronghold of Krushevan's League 
 of Pure Russian Men, and there also was the first great 
 massacre of recent years, Kishinev. 
 
 It was in Volhynia that the wild monk, Iliodor, preached 
 recently to enormous assemblies a literal religious crusade 
 against the internal enemies of the Czar; and it was in the 
 neighbouring provinces of Eaev that the following appeal, among 
 many others, was launched in October, 1905, to be circulated 
 in Volhynia and other near-by provinces: 
 
 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the great 
 anchorite of the Lavra in Kiev has ordered the people to be informed 
 that Saint Vladimir who first christened the Russian people [Vladimir 
 
THE DANGER OF PROGRESS 77 
 
 was in reality a barbarian Czar] has risen out of the bowels of the earth, 
 waked up the anchorite and wept with him about the Fatheriand, brought 
 to shame by the Poles and the Jews. 
 
 O God, where is the courage of Russia that once hurled back the 
 foreign hordes? Shame and dishonour to the descendants of the holy 
 Vladimir who tremble before a handful of cowardly Jews and street 
 urchins they have employed. All of us to whom the name of Russia 
 is still dear must know that the Jews and the Poles are thirsting for our 
 blood, that they are trying to set us against one another so as to reach 
 the throne over our dead bodies and overthrow the Czar. 
 
 Gather, all of you, in the churches, and take counsel there as to how 
 the Fatherland is to be defended against the Poles and the Jews. 
 
 Do not kill the Poles and the Jews, but give the students who are sent 
 by them the sound thrashing they deserve. 
 
 Each person who receives this letter must make at least three copies 
 and send them to other villages and towns. 
 
 He who has not fulfilled this order in six days will undergo serious 
 sickness and evil, but whoever spreads more than three copies of this 
 letter will be granted recovery from incurable diseases and will prosper 
 in all things. In St. Sophia Cathedral and the cloister of St. Michael 
 many will assemble, and when they go out they will call out to the people 
 that it shall gather itself together against the Jews and Poles. 
 
 The black clergy did assemble in several provinces, as a result 
 partly of this denunciation, and led hired ruffians not to beat 
 the students but to carry out the thinly veiled suggestion to kill 
 the Jews, as well as the Russian students and workingmen that 
 stood for their defence. 
 
 Certainly if the Russian peasants were narrow fanatics these 
 appeals from the most holy places would have led to a monstrous 
 and wholesale bloodshed, instead of to the cut-and-dried 
 massacres prepared by the officials and poHce. As a matter 
 of fact only in one of the eighty-six governments did they fall 
 on fertile ground. Even here the promise of the league that 
 every dues-paying member (the dues are twenty-five cents a 
 year) will get land from the Government, is said to have had 
 more to do with the movement than the limited popularity of 
 the priests. It is chiefly the black monks and others getting 
 an income directly through the State's money spent on the 
 Church, that give real enthusiasm to the religious part of the 
 Government propaganda. They are most numerous in holy 
 Kiev, and a light on their political character is shed by the 
 action taken at a recent meeting against the press, presided 
 
78 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 over by Bishop Agapite. As elsewhere in Russia the press of 
 Kiev is gagged and sobered by innumerable fines, yet it 
 manages to make as progressive and intelligent a presentation 
 of the news as that of Moscow or St. Petersburg. This skill 
 and daring in saying something in spite of the censor had called 
 down the wrath of these "holy '* ecclesiastics, who resolved that 
 the great majority of modem newspapers furthered ideas that 
 are in direct hostility to religion, the Church, the Government, 
 society, and Christianity, and therefore asked that the censorship 
 be made more severe and that "a prescribed standard of reason, 
 morality, and property" be required of all editors. Doubtless 
 their reverences would like to examine the editors themselves 
 before they are allowed to write. Or perhaps they are opposed 
 to newspapers in general, like Pobiedonostzev. This old 
 adviser-in-chief of Nicholas, head of the Church for the first 
 decade of his reign, thought that newspapers were largely 
 responsible for the democratic spirit that has corrupted Europe 
 and the United States and brought them to the present low 
 level from which God has spared the empire of the Czars. 
 
 Where the Government is unable to plan religious hatred, 
 jealousy of the educated classes, or the greedy desire for the 
 ruin of a persecuted race, it makes a direct call to sheer ignorance, 
 invents domestic and foreign enemies plotting against the 
 Russian nation. In one place it is the Poles and Jews that 
 "form the majority of the agitators" and are "far more 
 dangerous than our external enemies." These words were 
 used by a colonel to his troops, of course where the Poles are 
 numerous. In a proclamation, endorsed by the censor and 
 the governor at Kiev, the enemies of Russia are "the Poles 
 who cannot resign themselves to the fact that the Russians are 
 not their serfs; the Japanese and their allies, the English and 
 Americans, who instituted the war; and finally the Israelite 
 Jews." Then follow citations from the scriptures recalling 
 the biblical times when the Hebrews were massacred, and an 
 appeal to repeat these massacres. Soon after came the 
 massacres in the very places where the manifesto had prepared 
 the way. 
 
 The vicious and glaring cartoons spread by "patriotic" 
 organisations among the soldiers in Manchuria, leave no doubt 
 
THE DANGER OF PROGRESS 79 
 
 that the Government also at this time encouraged the last degree 
 of hatred against England and the United States. The 
 proclamation above mentioned, issued at the order of Trepov 
 even after the war was over, is final evidence on the question. 
 A very responsible editor of one of the semi-official Russian 
 organs, the Sinet, has even warned the United States that 
 Russia will not tolerate the insulting remarks made in American 
 papers about the Czar. He calls for diplomatic action, and 
 suggests as the explanation not that all truly democratic 
 newspapers must necessarily oppose despotism, but that the 
 American press is also owned by Jews. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 "my chief support" 
 
 THERE is no end to the lie system by which this powerful 
 Government prepares the persecution of its miserable sub- 
 jects. Special lies are needed for the army, and other special lies 
 for the lower servants of the Government. It is said the Jews do 
 not make good and willing soldiers. There is evidence to show 
 that before the present revolutionary movement of all the people 
 began, the Jews on the whole made as good soldiers as any. 
 Now, of course, special persecutions in the army have had their 
 results. Jews are first given the worst of the recruiting, assigned 
 to the worst regiments, denied all chances to rise from the 
 ranks, refused any respect for their religious observances, their 
 race is insulted in the addresses of the officers in which the 
 soldiers are told to prepare to crush the Jews — and then they 
 are accused of not liking the service. An officer ordered his 
 soldiers to spit in a Jewish comrade's face. When some obeyed 
 and finally the Jew struck one of them» he was courts-martialed 
 for the act. 
 
 The Government and reactionaries endeavour to get the 
 lower officials to hate the Jews on another count — that is, for 
 systematically undermining the laws. Here, in a word, is the 
 legal situation. In spite of civil and poHtical disabiUties and 
 exclusion from State and charitable aid and State education, 
 the Jews pay the same taxes as the rest of the people. But this 
 is not all. Special taxes are raised on Jewish "kosher" meat, 
 and even on the candles of the synagogue. These special taxes 
 are supposed to provide for the institutions the Jews are denied. 
 But no account is rendered by the Government for the miUions 
 of rubles raised, and the money is often spent, according to 
 former Governor Urussov, for pavement of streets, for the 
 maintenance of general institutions and of the police, for the 
 notorious Russian Red Cross, and even for higher schools in 
 
 80 
 
KRUSHEVAN 
 
 Professional Jew-baiter, preparer of massacres, and a leader of the extreme 
 reactionary party 
 
"MY CHIEF SUPPORT" Si 
 
 which Jews are not allowed. Thus the Jews are taxed twice over 
 for institutions in which they have no share. Is it not inevitable 
 that they should try to get around such laws? Yet this very 
 fact is often made as pretext for the enactment of further 
 restrictive laws. 
 
 Two classes the Government has long ago secured for its civil 
 war programme, the nobility and the criminal element, the former 
 on account of its intimate connection with the court, the latter 
 through its relations with the police and spy system. The 
 nobility, it goes without saying, is paid with privileges, 
 governmental positions and disguised grants to landlords from 
 the treasury of the nation ; the mob, of course, with vodka or cash. 
 I have spoken of the noble organiser of the League of Russian 
 Men in Odessa. In Moscow Count Sherebatov is at the head, 
 in Tula Count Bobrinsky, in Kursk and many other governments 
 the head marshals of the nobility, in St. Petersburg Count 
 Apraxin, gentleman of the Czar's bedchamber. Besides, 
 the league reckons on almost half the court, including many 
 princes, generals, court chamberlains, assistant ministers, judges 
 and so on. All this nobiUty is vitally interested not only in the 
 preservation of the court, the bureaucracy, and the privileges of 
 landlords, but also in agrarian poUtics, beet sugar boimties, 
 special railroad rates for large exporters of the grain of a starving 
 people, the abolition of land taxes, indefinite loans from the 
 State Bank, the free import of agricultural implements, especially 
 of such as they use and the people cannot buy, and perhaps even 
 paper money in the end. 
 
 This would seen to have nothing to do with the Jews. But it 
 is obligatory for every reactionary element that seeks to share in 
 the plunder to do so under the same pretext. Of course the 
 landlords manage to get a special profit from the persecution of 
 the Jews. There are no Jewish landlords to persecute, since 
 Jews are not allowed to own land. But there are Jewish 
 capitalists, and like other capitalists these want the whole state 
 policy to be directed to benefit industry rather than agriculture. 
 This unsympathetic attitude toward agriculture arises not 
 from the fact that they are capitalists, the landlords pretend 
 to believe, but from the fact that they are Jews. Under the 
 accusation of being part of a Jewish conspiracy to imdermine 
 
82 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Russian agriculture, even industry itself is sometimes attacked 
 and every effort of foreign or Russian capital to advance it is 
 branded as an anti- Russian, Jewish, German or English attempt 
 to control the empire through the purse strings. From this 
 same agrarian quarter metallic money is already criticised and 
 may some day be repudiated as a Jewish contrivance, and the 
 payment of interest on the international debt may some day 
 be postponed as touching only foreigners and Jews. Already 
 there are grumblings among the nobility against un-Russian 
 money and the underhand influence of Russia's creditors. There 
 is no doubt that at the time of a great financial crisis a tremen- 
 dous movement against foreign capital could be created in 
 dominant Government circles. Already Russian capitalists 
 are pursued with fierce bitterness as friends and business 
 associates of Jews. 
 
 That Brodski, a member of the Russian sugar trust, was a 
 millionaire did not protect him from being beaten by ** patriots " 
 on the streets of Eaev. That Erasmus, a wealthy Jew, was 
 seated at the table in a Moscow summer garden with a group 
 of Christian manufacturers did not prevent a "patriot" leader 
 from joining the group uninvited, openly boasting of his murder- 
 ous plans, creating a quarrel, and, picking out the Jew for 
 for attack, shooting him dead in the arms of his friends. Trepov, 
 the murderer, has not been punished, for he is the founder of 
 J '^the "League for Active Struggle against the Revolution," of 
 
 rCw" '^^i^^ some influential persons are members. 
 
 •^ \VC The Jews "are the worst type of business men and money- 
 makers," says the Czar. But they are half the business men 
 
 '^' and money-makers of his empire. When we add further than 
 
 nearly every non- Jewish business man is intimately associated 
 with Jews in business, we see that the Czar's feeling is really 
 directed against the whole Russian business world. But does 
 he attack them because they are money-makers or because they 
 are Jews? One familiar with Russian reaction will hesitate for 
 an answer. There must be hostility between Government by 
 violence and business enterprise. Business men are hated by 
 the reactionaries because of their own relative poverty and 
 incapacity to earn. The plunder of the Government is an 
 irregular source of income at the best and the big prizes are few. 
 
"MY CHIEF SUPPORT" 83 
 
 /The officials want modem business in Russia, but they want the 
 
 [profits for themselves. As they are not business men they 
 
 'plunder those who are. So when a reactionary says "Jew" 
 
 he frequently means "business man." To many of these people 
 
 the ordinary American business man would be thought of as, 
 
 or even called, a Jew. 
 
 The Government's favouritism for the League of Russian Men 
 in the recent elections has brought out the character of both 
 organisations. The league's chief nominee for the Duma in 
 Moscow was Schmakov, one of the most important of the 
 league's leaders in the country. He declared after his nomina- 
 tion that he believed only in pure autocracy, recognised neither 
 any Duma nor even merely a consultive assembly as being 
 consistent with autocracy, and considered "that there was 
 only one goal that made life worth living, only one task worthy 
 of man, the struggle against the Jews." If elected, he claimed 
 that his election would give him the right to say it was the will 
 of the people to extirpate the Jews. In spite of all the aid of 
 the Government and police he was not elected. All the fraud, 
 bribery, and violence practised brought him in this immense 
 city with all its corruptible elements, only a few hundred votes, 
 largely those of the spies and other hangers-on of the police, 
 such as the house-porters, who are used for police service, and 
 the proprietors of Government saloons. 
 
 In Minsk the common candidate of the league and of the so- 
 called moderates, Captain Schmidt, was triumphantly elected 
 against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the popu- 
 lation. In 1 901 Captain Schmidt sold the plans of the fortress 
 of Cronstadt, was caught, convicted, sent to Siberia and lost 
 all his titles and civil rights. The election law, aimed at the 
 revolutionists, expressly disqualifies all such persons and was 
 turned against Schmidt during the elections. But this traitor, 
 convicted of high treason, had been pardoned by the Czar; he 
 had only sold the plans, he was not a convinced revolutionist. 
 Of course, the Government, taking its cue from the " Most High," 
 interfered in his behalf and declared his election valid. After 
 a solemn meeting of the league in a monastery in which God 
 was thanked for His mercy, the moderates and the True Russian 
 Men sent the captain to represent them in the Duma. "Even 
 
84 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 if he is no Russian," said the presiding officer in one of the 
 meetings, "nobody else defends so well the Orthodox faith." 
 
 Such characters are among the leaders of the organisation 
 from which the Czar says he expects his "chief support"; 
 ruffians, murderers, and men ready to sell their country for 
 a song. It is these men and their noble friends in and out of 
 the bureaucracy and court that are the most influential, because 
 the most active, element in the "legal " political life of the Russia 
 of to-day. It is they that demand daily in their official organ 
 the exclusion of all the democrats from the Duma, the arrest 
 of Hessen, Milyoukov, and Kutler, the most moderate leaders 
 of the moderate reform party, and the regular and systematic 
 beating, as part of their punishment, of all the hundreds of 
 thousands of political prisoners in the jails. Nor are these 
 demands unreasonable, viewed from the standpoint of recent 
 actions of the Russian Government. Only a few years ago 
 Prince Dolgorukov was exiled for merely expressing the mod- 
 erate wishes of the official local government boards, and the 
 entire membership of one democratic party is now locked 
 up and under trial. The Government still declares the moderate 
 party illegal; why should its leaders not be arrested? There is 
 scarcely a prison in Russia where beating is not occasionally 
 employed, to say nothing of the open flogging of whole villages 
 of peasants; why should this beating not be made universal? 
 The league demands also the removal of unsuitable "humane" 
 chiefs of police, and more frequent shooting by the police of 
 suspected persons. But has not General Rennenkampf already 
 said, in an official order, that there were too few deaths and 
 that the soldiers must shoot to kill? And has not the Czar 
 just promoted the famous general in full knowledge of this 
 notorious order, and of the general's campaign against the 
 "inner enemy" in Siberia when he ordered a whole committee 
 that came to him with a complaint to be executed ? Why should 
 not the league hope for the worst? 
 
 The league knows that the Government's legal persecution 
 of the Jews has proceeded to a point where Governor Urussov 
 confesses that it constitutes the chief business of the provincial 
 governors. It also remembers its own successes; that its 
 agitation and demonstrations brought on the great massacres 
 
••MY CHIEF SUPPORT" 85 
 
 of 1905, that in many places the Government openly partici- 
 pated, as in Tiflis where the governor ordered the military 
 band to lead their procession, and that at Odessa the governor, 
 Neiahardt, to this day unpunished, quoted in the official 
 pronunciamentos the league's own proclamation to the effect that 
 ' * thirty thousand small bourgeois had threatened to bum the 
 university if the revolutionary activities of the students did 
 not cease, and that he lent them all his power to promote 
 instead of to hinder the most horrible massacre of all the bloody 
 history of the modem empire." 
 
 The league knows that at Tver its members were allowed 
 to besiege in broad daylight the building in which the pro- 
 gressive employers of the local government board were holding 
 a meeting, to set it afire and to kill and cripple those who escaped, 
 all before the eyes of the assembled troops, until finally a single 
 volley fired in the air easily put an end to the supposedly irre- 
 pressible disturbance. In Baku the German consul telegraphed 
 a protest against the proposed demonstration which he was 
 sure would lead to massacre. He received as answer that 
 "German citizens" would be protected, and the massacre took 
 place according to the schedule. The league knows also that 
 to-day Government buildings are turned over to its use, that 
 Government officials, especially local officials or those elected 
 by the privileged electoral bodies of the Russian law, preside 
 over its meetings, that the most influential persons are pub- 
 licly or secretly connected with it, that the grand dukes and 
 Government newspapers have expressed their cordial approval, 
 and that the Czar has given them every encouragement within 
 his power. Why should it not demand the arrest of all the 
 moderate and liberal leaders and the flogging of the political 
 prisoners under arrest ? 
 
 No wonder, then, that they boldly attack even the Czar^s 
 prime minister for his desire to re-shape the Czarism, to con- 
 vert it into a stronger and more orderly if not less oppressive 
 system, and to place every activity of the league under legal 
 and official restraint. There is raging a real war between the two 
 powers, but it is of little benefit to Russia. Taking advantage 
 of the state of martial law, Stolypine confiscates the league 
 organ, the Russian Flag. But Dr. Dubrowin replies that 
 
86 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 martial law applies to revolutionists and not to patriots like 
 himself, and is sustained by the Senate, the highest court of 
 the country. Stolypine sees that even martial law cannot be 
 equally or evenly applied in a Czarism. But still under martial 
 law he has an additional power and it is his only hold against 
 the "spontaneous" and relatively democratic action of the 
 league. 
 
 Against the disorder of the reaction, as well as the disorder 
 I of the revolution, Stolypine 's only remedy is the disorder of 
 *« martial law. What government by martial law is in Russia 
 I shall show later. Here I only wish to show not only how the 
 reactionary disorder can work through the disorder of martial 
 law, but that it must inevitably do so since the army officers are 
 on the whole as reactionary as any official body in the coimtry, 
 and every other group of officials to whom martial law is 
 supposed to give this power of life and death are as bad as they. 
 An example of non-military officials to whom it is proposed 
 to give absolute power of life and death are the county "land 
 officials" or "zemsky natchalniki." These men already have 
 unheard of powers. The peasants have never seen the gover- 
 nor and higher officials even of the provincial government. 
 For them this " zemsky natchalnik" is already czar, and most of 
 the thousands of revolts of recent years have been directed 
 mainly against him. These officials are almost universally 
 reactionaries — none others would accept the popular hatred 
 that goes with the function. 
 
 Everywhere the important "land officials" who may play 
 such a r61e in the near future, are most active in the circles of 
 the league. Recently one of them was entirely missing from 
 his ordinary duties for several weeks. He was sought for in 
 vain by the peasants, the marshal of the nobility, the other 
 officials and the local and provincial police. He could not 
 be found because nobody dared interfere with the more impor- 
 tant labours to which he had abandoned himself. He was vice- 
 president of the Smolensk league, was attending all this time 
 league meetings and conferences in the provincial capital. This 
 brings an ordinary picture of the fusion of the local govern- 
 ment with the league. 
 
 The extreme reactionaries are indispensable to the new 
 
( 
 
 "MY CHIEF SUPPORT" 87 
 
 Government, whichever way it turns. If the policy is to be the 
 reign of martial law, made practically universal and steadily 
 maintained, as Minister Stolypine seems to desire, then a large 
 majority of all the more zealous army officers, those who perform 
 with zest and interest this poUce work of crushing the "internal 
 enemy," are connected with one of the reactionary leagues or 
 unions. If Stolypine goes further toward the creation of local 
 czars and special police whose chief duty it is to fight the revo- 
 lution, he must rely almost entirely on the same type of men. 
 If he wishes to return to the plan of creating an artificial counter- 
 revolutionary movement among the people, he finds all the 
 arrangements, prestige, and popular leaders already monopo- 
 lised by the league. The league is also as strong in the Duma 
 as St oly pine's moderate reactionary friends, and stronger in 
 the upper house. 
 
 It cannot be questioned that the immediate future of Russia 
 is largely in the hands of professional agitators of the League 
 of Russian Men. The underlying reason for this lies in the 
 simple fact of human nature, that intelligent and high-minded 
 men cannot be obtained to serve a government at war with 
 its own people. The work of drowning in blood the struggle 
 of all kinds of people to secure the most elementary rights 
 and self-government, is a task for dull and brutal men. Nothing 
 is more to the credit of the Russian nation at the present 
 moment than that the worst of her citizens as a rule occupy 
 the higher position in the State. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED TO "tHE CONSTITUTION** 
 
 IN THE same audience in which Nicholas promised the League 
 of Russian Men that he would "think over" their petition 
 to refuse the rights of Russian citizens to the Jews, one of the 
 league's representatives prayed His Majesty also that he should 
 preserve the old principle of autocracy — in a word, that he 
 should grant no constitution. The Czar replied in an unmis- 
 takable affirmative, that he would give an account of his 
 power to God, 
 
 So we find always linked together the call for persecution and 
 outspoken hostility to constitutional government. One of the 
 persecuted races, the Mohammedans, formed a league "to 
 further constitutional government in Russia." Several 
 government officials thought the league might be legalised on the 
 ground that a constitutional limitation of the Czar's power 
 already existed in the fact that the Czar could not change the 
 so-called fundamental laws without the consent of the Duma. 
 The prefect of St. Petersburg took the opposite view, and the 
 highest court in the country has finally decided with him that 
 it is illegal in Russia for any organisation even to ask for consti- 
 tutional government. 
 
 At the time of the great massacres constitutionalists were not 
 distinguished from Jews. Indeed the chief purpose of Trepov 
 and the grand dukes at that time was to put an end to the cry 
 for a modem form of government. Their purpose reached down 
 to the lowest officials that were superintending the killing. 
 So in the small town of New Zybkov, in Tchemigov, the police 
 captain, with a telegram from the governor in his hands, 
 mounted a carriage and declared to the people: 
 
 *' Gentlemen, there is no constitution, there are no liberties. 
 What was said here yesterday was invented by our enemies 
 the Jews, Doctor Ivanov and Bagolioupov. Now you can do 
 
 88 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 89 
 
 what you please to them. You are given this right." Immedi- 
 ately a part of the crowd commenced assaulting and killing the 
 Jews. 
 
 One third of the members of the new Duma deny that there 
 is a constitution and another third refuse to assert officially 
 that there is one. The Czar and Stolypine in the meanwhile 
 reassert the existence of an unlimited autocracy, and both 
 refuse so' much as to mention the supposedly constitutional 
 promises of October 17, 1905, to say nothing of reasserting 
 them. The coup d'etat of the 3rd of June, 1907, by which the 
 Duma was made over into an assembly of officials and landlords, 
 practically annulled these promises in repealing the previous 
 election statute that had been soberly granted by the Czar as a 
 "fundamental" law. There is, then, no real need for the 
 extreme reactionaries of the Duma to assert and reassert that 
 there is no constitution, that whatever the Czar has granted 
 he has the right to take away. Already he has done this. 
 Already all semblance of a constitution has disappeared, and as 
 long as the Duma has no control whatever over the Government 
 it remains merely a king's council, no matter how the majority 
 may try to dodge the plain statement. 
 
 Persecution reigns and the autocracy is triumphant. The 
 anxiety of the extreme loyalists is not so much for the present 
 as for the future. If the Czarism is to be preserved, the 
 persecution must go on undiminished ; if it is to be strengthened, 
 the persecution must be intensified. So all the extreme 
 reactionaries speaking in the Duma for autocracy and against 
 constitution have occupied themselves almost exclusively with 
 attacks on the Poles and Jews. And they have already 
 succeeded in getting a majority of the body on their side against 
 these races. Stolypine, too, willingly or unwillingly, must 
 follow. A few days after the encouragement he received from 
 these debates, he closed the. Polish School Union that has opened 
 780 schools in the year or two it had been allowed to exist. 
 His onslaught on the painfully -won liberties of Finland probably 
 means that, even here where the conquests of the revolution 
 seemed secure, nearly everything will again be taken away. 
 
 The chief party of the third Duma, the moderate reactionary 
 Octobrists, have tried to avoid the issue. They secured the 
 
90 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 consent of 212 out of the 440 members that the Duma in its 
 
 address of thanks to the Czar should avoid both the words 
 
 autocracy and constitution. As the democratic and Polish groups 
 
 abstained from voting this remains the Duma's position on the 
 
 question of the constitution, but not so on that of autocracy. 
 
 Only 1 46 reactionaries voted to recognise the unlimited autocracy 
 
 on this occasion, but more than a hundred others have recognised 
 
 it on every other. If two votes were taken, instead of one, 
 
 the Duma would vote against the existence of a constitution and 
 
 in favour of the autocracy. The present anomalous position 
 
 of certain timid constitutionalists by which they acknowledged 
 
 autocracy every day and cannot use the very word constitution 
 
 or any equivalent, is defended by such false and shameless 
 
 I subtleties as that the title autocrat refers only to independence 
 
 from foreign powers and not to independence of the people, and 
 
 I that the discussion whether Russia has a constitution or is 
 
 I governed like China or Turkey is "a purely verbal" or "specu- 
 
 \ lative question." This is the position of the Government 
 
 itself in the Russia^ its official organ. 
 
 In the meanwhile the Duma's cowardly refusal to face the 
 one issue that is uppermost in Russian life and includes every 
 other question, has forced it to make other and still more 
 dangerous concessions to the Government's brutal power. 
 In his declaration of his ministerial policy Stolypine did not 
 mention the Czar's Manifesto of the 1 7th of October, the Magna 
 Charta of Russian liberty, or at least the only official charter 
 of Russia's hopes. A conservative member, Prince Lvov, 
 moved that the Duma at any rate recognised the continued 
 validity of this instrument. The party of the 17th of October 
 thereupon voted down the motion and denied its own name 
 and reason for existence. Like the extremists, the moderate 
 reactionaries demand nothing, and accept everything, from the 
 Government. Russia's so-called representative assembly claims 
 neither a constitution, a fundamental law, nor any rights of the 
 citizen. It is simply another council of the servants of absolu- 
 tism, another arm of the already cumbrous bureaucratic system. 
 The leader of the new majority, Alexander Gutchkov, 
 explained the position of his party in the following dark but 
 explicable manner. In a few years of the new Duma there 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 91 
 
 would be no strife among its leading parties about this question 
 of the form of government. They would all be satisfied with 
 the practical results. His party was of the view that a consti- 
 tution existed, that the Czar himself had limited his own power. 
 But he would not insist on the extreme reactionaries recognising 
 that there was a system of government other than the will of 
 the Czar. All parties could agree to accept the Czar's own 
 term for the instrument that had brought the change, namely 
 the Act of October 1 7th. As we have seen, Gutchkov's intended 
 friends of the extreme reaction would not bear a reference even 
 to this instrument, since it is now tabooed by the Government. 
 But, so satisfied apparently is he with the present Duma and 
 the harmony to come from it, that he consented to abandon the 
 only principle through which his party came into being. Or 
 perhaps his consent was unwilling. 
 
 Between the moderate and extreme reactionaries is what 
 we might call the reactionary centre, a group of over a hundred 
 landlords without whom Gutchkov cannot hope to form a 
 majority. The landlords by no means agree with Gutchkov; 
 they have not decided whether they can expect more from the 
 new Duma that has resulted from the Manifesto of October 
 17th, or from a return to the older form. They are not so 
 optimistic about the Duma. Gutchkov 's enthusiastic party 
 is composed mostly of officials, rich merchants, and indus- 
 trialists. Under the old regime the court influence of the 
 landlords had only the bureaucracy to contend against. Gutch- 
 kov does not care about the constitution so much as about 
 his Duma. The landlords don't care so much about the Duma 
 and the October Manifesto as they do about their power over 
 the Czar through the court. The landlords alone cannot control 
 the Duma, any more than can Gutchkov, but they have carefully 
 provided Russia with an election law that gives them a power 
 equal to, or greater than, that of any other class. For the 
 landlords, that is the nobility, can do nearly what they please; 
 they are the foundation of the throne. 
 
 The leader of the Duma was careful to add to his confession 
 of constitutional faith that he did not consider that the Czar's 
 voluntary limitation of the unlimited autocracy had decreased 
 his power. No, the new Duma would be a counterweight against 
 
92 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the encroachments of the bureaucracy and the court on the 
 Czar's power. As we have seen, however, a part of this counter- 
 weight consists of officials, a second and larger part of the 
 landlord nobility, the matrix both of the higher officialdom 
 and of the court. The third part represents the wealthy 
 merchants and manufacturers, by whom Gutchkov's party 
 was first created, but in it is a considerable number also of the 
 less reactionary landlords. It is, then, largely from the increased 
 power of the landlords that Gutchkov hopes to control the court. 
 Indeed he has said as much. It is also from the power of the 
 most privileged of Russian capitalists, which the election 
 law favours, that he hopes to curb officialdom. But I shall 
 show that the majority of Russian capital lives from official 
 privileges and Government contracts and has a corresponding 
 influence in the bureaus, just as the landlords live from and 
 control the court. 
 
 Gutchkov's career, his extensive travels, his service as a 
 ^Voluntary administrator of the Red Cross during the Japanese 
 
 I wax and as president of the Moscow Municipal Council, sug- 
 
 I gest that he is a sincere reformer rather than a merely ambitious 
 man. But he seems to have become a fanatic of one idea and 
 
 1 a bitter enemy of all who disagree with his estimate of its value. 
 That idea is that any assembly of men, however constituted 
 and however limited in its power, that bears the name of Duma 
 has the ability to regenerate poor Russia. The name "consti- 
 tution" or "Manifesto of October 17th" he is ready to abandon. 
 The name "Duma" retains all the wonder-working power of 
 a Russian ikon. Indeed his paper speaks literally of the 
 Duma's "sacred walls." He is the only disinterested public 
 
 ; man of any great moment in Russia who expects the Russian 
 landlords and contractors to relinquish their power over the 
 officialdom and the court. 
 
 But what is the meaning of the Duma to the Government? 
 First of all, the Government's financial credit abroad is steadily 
 falling, and it hopes to impress the little French and German 
 investors who keep it from bankruptcy, that Russia has a loyal 
 popular assembly that votes all the loans and taxes the Govern- 
 ment requires. That the majority of this Duma consists of indi- 
 viduals who are living by direct subsidies in one form or another 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 93 
 
 from the Government is a fact it is hoped the small investor 
 will overlook. Second, the Duma serves a purpose inside of the 
 country. It unifies the bureaucracy, the court, the landlords, 
 and other privileged classes against all pressure of the masses 
 of the people from below to secure a democratic form of gov- 
 ernment. It enlists definitely on the Government's side all those 
 who are in any way dependent upon it, and gives to each element 
 a definite r61e to fill in the national defence against progress 
 : — which, of course, depends entirely on the further democra- 
 tisation of the state. 
 
 "The Government must have a firm will in this matter," 
 said Stolypine to the Duma; "but this is not enough, the will 
 of the Duma must be added to that of the Government." 
 Count W. Bobrinsky, in the name of the landlords, the heart 
 of the reactionary majority, had just used almost the same 
 words: "The Duma without a strong Government is nothing," 
 said he, "but the struggle of the Government against the 
 revolutionary excesses without the Duma is unproductive. 
 Without the Duma the Government cannot accomplish the 
 pacification of the country." This pacification accomplished, 
 it remains to be seen if the Government or the landlords will 
 have any further need of the Duma. They do not have to 
 abolish it. The Czar or the upper council can as hitherto veto 
 its acts, more pressure can be brought to bear on the elections, 
 or the election law can again be modified by the Czar or again 
 interpreted by the Senate to suit the occasion. Or perhaps 
 Gutchkov will see that discretion is the better part of valour, 
 and in order to preserve the form of the present "sacred" 
 Duma will definitely abandon, one at a time, every shadow 
 of social reform. 
 
 For there is a party in Russia that is composed largely of 
 capable and devoted reformers, a party that has at the same 
 time given aid to the revolution only in an indirect manner 
 as a last desperate resort. This party desires a constitution, 
 fundamental changes in the structure of the Government; but 
 it is so anxious for the social elevation of the masses that it has 
 been willing to give up its greater hopes for the slow and diffi- 
 cult work which alone is possible under the present system. 
 When the revolution seemed about to triumph, the party mem- 
 
94 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 bers were ready to put aside their administrative work to lay 
 the foundation for a greater edifice. When the Government 
 was for the time victorious over the revolution, they were ready 
 to take up again their difficult and almost hopeless task of trying 
 to bring about a little progress in the local administration in the 
 face of the hostility of the local officials and landlord caste. 
 ^■\ I am speaking of the party of the famous "zemstvos," or local 
 government boards. The majority of the professional em- 
 ployees and workers were members of the Constitutional Demo- 
 cratic Party, a smaller part of the more conservative "peaceful 
 regenerators" or even of the liberal wing of the Octobrists, 
 Gutchkov's organisation. A few were populists or independent 
 progressives, more radical than the Constitutional Democrats. 
 
 But the local government boards are elected mainly by 
 landlords. Liberals were on the administrative committees 
 and radicals were employed as doctors, veterinaries, teachers, 
 agricultural experts and statisticians only because the over- 
 whelming reactionary majorities among the landlords did not 
 take the pains to vote. As soon as the revolutionary movement 
 began among the peasants, their tenants and labourers, the 
 landlords began to assert their principles. The results surprised 
 even the Russians. Two years ago, of the thirty odd provincial 
 zemstvos, nearly every one was liberally administered; now 
 all but one are in conservative or reactionary hands, and in the 
 several hundred subordinate district boards the proportion is 
 similar. Experienced and devoted landlord administrators 
 are giving place to ignorant and pronounced reactionaries, 
 looked on as enemies by the people they are supposed to serve ; 
 fOT else occasionally, which is sadder to relate, some mild liberal 
 V surrenders his principles and remains in office. The elections 
 showed only 5 or lo per cent, of Constitutional Democrats 
 and a still smaller proportion of liberals of every other variety. 
 Faithful employees, of whom tens of thousands have devoted 
 themselves heart, mind, and body to the peasants and the 
 practical application of their science, have been discharged. 
 Hospital after hospital, school after school, has been closed 
 because the new administrators have been unwilling to make the 
 sacrifices by which alone the old were able to sustain their work 
 under Russia's wretched government. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 95 
 
 The least public spirit ends at once the career of any 
 employee, as it did that of Chief Engineer Skriabin, of Vologda, 
 who merely complained to the governor of the tolerated beating 
 of the Jews. The poor consecrated teachers with their pittance 
 of ten or fifteen dollars a month, one-fifth of the rather low 
 average of the whole United States, get the worst of it. All 
 over Russia the conditions of the teachers are more or less the 
 same. Two recent despatches from widely separated points 
 testify what these heroes, on whom the future of this half- 
 illiterate people hangs, are going through with. Each incident 
 is similar to hundreds of the kind. 
 
 "The Glosov zemstvo treasury is empty. The men and 
 women teachers have been wandering about the streets several 
 days trying to get a few pennies to travel away with. Even 
 in this they failed." 
 
 " Kuznetz. In the whole district there are only two teachers 
 in freedom. All the rest are arrested." If this district is like 
 the others in size, the despatch means that some hundred 
 teachers were too radical to suit the landlords or police. 
 
 In these zemstvos lay Russia's only hope for a democra- 
 tisation of local government, the basis of every free society. 
 Very slowly, indeed at a most discouraging rate, but nevertheless 
 surely, they were teaching the people modem culture through 
 books, healthy living through doctors and hospitals, and modem 
 farming through the sale of modem machines and the object 
 lessons of the veterinaries and agricultural experts — to say 
 nothing of the invaluable personal influence of Russia's most 
 useful citizens, the zemstvos, employees. Besides, they were 
 the only effective means of fighting the periodical cholera 
 epidemics and the almost chronic famines. Without them even 
 the insufficient svmis dedicated to these vital purposes are 
 desecrated or unequally distributed. 
 
 Now the zemstvos as reform institutions are a thing of the 
 past, and the wish of the most hated of all of Russia's ministers 
 is accomplished. Von Plehve several years ago recognised that 
 the zemstvos were slowly modernising the Russian peasant. 
 This is why he exiled Prince Dolgorukov who presented their 
 wishes to the Czar, notwithstanding that the clemency of 
 Nicholas had been promised. And this is why he executed his 
 
96 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 notorious cleaning out of the Tver zemstvo that contained 
 Roditchev and Petrunkevitch, later founders of the Consti- 
 tutional Democratic Party, and other capable liberals. 
 
 In advance of most of the other local government boards, 
 the Tver organisation was making a visible improvement in 
 the province, which is as much as to say that it was moving in 
 many directions against the reactionary principles of the St. 
 Petersburg authorities. A notorious official named Sturmer 
 was therefore sent to inspect, with full powers. Nearly all the 
 employees were dismissed, the teachers not wishing to submit 
 to individual persecution resigned in a body, the elected council 
 was removed and von Plehve appointed his own nominees to 
 take their places. To-day Sturmer is again being promoted for 
 his zeal. But he is not needed for this particular work now. 
 The landlords are awake and the machine of the Government 
 is turned no longer against a single provincial group, but against 
 the whole liberal organisation, and the Senate has once more 
 declared the whole Constitutional Democratic Party to be 
 outside of the Russian law. 
 
 Milyoukov in the Duma may well complain against the 
 sincerity of Stoly pine's political and social reforms. What 
 more inevitable than that Stolypine should hand over his 
 proposed reform of local government to a committee of reac- 
 tionary landlords ? Still more significant is the prime minister's 
 land reform that must serve as the basis for the people's lives 
 in the future. Two years ago even the most reactionary Party 
 of Legal Order, when organising a peasants' section, was forced 
 to incorporate a proposed measure, the compulsory alienation 
 of the landlords' land for the peasants' benefit, in its platform. 
 The moderate Constitutional Democrats still retain the 
 measure as the only possible solution of the question — though 
 they are willing that the State should pay a fair price. Now 
 Stolypine actually proposes, to quote Milyoukov, instead of the 
 expropriation of the landlords, compulsory expropriation of the 
 peasants — a "reform" which would benefit only the relatively 
 few small peasant landlords, to the injury of all the poorer 
 peasants, as former ministers and imperial councils have repeat- 
 edly acknowledged. It is proposed to rob the peasants of the 
 protection of their commune, by giving each individual for the 
 
i ..wtuxraph by Bulla, St. Petersburji 
 
 A VICTIM OF THE CZAR'S MURDERERS 
 
 To the left, Russia's greatest financial authority, Herzenstein, murdered by 
 the League of Russian Men, the Czar's favourite organisation; to the right, the 
 publicist Kovalevski 
 
10 15 20 25 
 
 Longituae 40 East from 45 Greeuwicb 50 ".p- 
 
 MAP SHOWING POLITICAL DIVISIONS IN RUSSIA 
 
 From the heavily shaded provinces the majority of the peasant deputies belonged 
 to the revolutionary parties ; from the lighter shaded provinces majority belonged 
 to Labour Group ; the peasants elsewhere also strongly oppositional. Conditions 
 in Poland and Baltic Provinces too complicated to be shown on a map. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 97 
 
 first time a right to sell his share in the village property. But 
 in a famine ridden country this right to sell is a right to ruin. 
 No peasant will prefer to die rather than sell his land. 
 
 Stoly pine's land reform is, then, to create a few million 
 prosperous peasants alongside of a class of landless labourers 
 that will number five or ten times as many. But Russian 
 industry is already overcrowded with almost starving workmen. 
 These new labourers will have to sell themselves for a few 
 crumbs to their neighbours, and in famine periods be supported 
 even in greater numbers than at present by the State. They 
 will have no power to raise their wages above the starvation 
 point, for already agricultural strikes have been called rebellion. 
 Under this "reform" the majority of the peasants will be the 
 economic serfs of their close-fisted and often needy neighbours 
 instead of belonging as now to the rich and often absent 
 noblemen. The cost of keeping them alive and in subjection 
 will be an added burden to the State, and no revolutionary 
 movement will be too desperate to find its common soldiers in 
 this element. 
 
 Stoly pine, like his predecessor, Witte, has lost all hope for 
 the mass of the Russian people "in this epoch." He says 
 that freedom on paper can only become real freedom when 
 small proprietors are created. In opposition to him Rodit- 
 chev finds that all the Czar can do is to abolish privileges, make 
 all equal before the law, first of all the officials themselves, 
 cease to be a Czar of the nobility, and become a Czar of all the 
 Russians. Stoly pine's proposed extension of the so-called 
 benevolent activities of the Government is simply a pretext 
 for a simultaneous extension of its brute power. Half of his 
 declaration to the third Duma was taken up with threats against 
 officials, judges, and teachers who are not reactionary enough 
 to suit the Government. Even the more liberal of the Octob- 
 rists were forced to protest. They wished to know whether 
 officials were compelled to oppose their moderate reactionary 
 party, whether the radical students, "our own children" as 
 one speaker truly remarked, were to be treated in the old inhuman 
 way, and whether order could not be restored by lawful means. 
 Stolypine had said that the Government would be compelled 
 to do nothing by fear of a movement from below, that "com- 
 
98 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 prehensive rights" would be granted only from a "superfluity 
 of strength " and not through fear on the part of the Government. 
 Milyoukov asked if these high-handed measures were those of 
 confident power. Evidently the day of "superfluous strength" 
 has not arrived. 
 
 The moderate reactionaries protested but they did not 
 revolt. Stolypine cracked his whip, demanded them to vote 
 against the reaffirmation even of the October Manifesto, the basis 
 of their party platform, and was obeyed. The official Govern- 
 ment organ gave them a scolding the next morning for their 
 hesitation, and announced that the fact that the moderate 
 liberals favoured the Manifesto was reason enough for all friends 
 of the Government to vote against it. Even the most weighty 
 official actions are "unpatriotic," then, the moment they serve 
 progress. Has not the reproduction of the official reports of 
 the Czar's own speeches been repeatedly prohibited by thecensor ? 
 
 With his inverted social reforms, his blood and iron, and his 
 mastery over the national assembly, Stolypine promises to 
 turn out a Russian Bismarck. But what is important is not 
 whether he is a valuable servant, but whether he is a loyal 
 servant, of the Czar. That he is loyal there can now be little 
 question. This tells us where he stands. It is unimportant, 
 then, whether he or the Czar is governing, whether he is seeking 
 to discover his master's will or his master is forcing his orders on 
 a willing servant. Well-informed and friendly correspondents 
 of weighty and conservative European papers assured me last 
 summer that the Czar was managing things himself or that 
 he was superintending everything, and that Stolypine lacks the 
 will, the ideas, and the statesmanship to have his way with the 
 Czar.* Certain it is that the movement of the extreme reaction- 
 aries to depose the prime minister has several times made 
 considerable headway. If the Czar governs we know by this 
 time how he governs. If Stolypine governs he does so, as he 
 must, to please the Czar. A certain countess, with access to the 
 court and a leading woman in the country, assured me later 
 that Stolypine himself was doing the work, even directing the 
 Czar's personal appointees, the provincial governors, to whom he 
 has no right to give orders, by means of personal correspondence. 
 
 * See appendix, Note D, 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE CONSTITUTION" 99 
 
 It makes little difference whether the supreme direction is 
 in the hands of trained Czars like Nicholas, or the trained 
 courtiers of trained Czars like Minister Stolypine; the court 
 and the Czarism remain unchanged, and the words of Prince 
 Urussov received with the prolonged applause of almost the 
 whole of the first Dtuna remain true: 
 
 "The great danger . . . cannot disappear as long as the 
 direction of the affairs of state and the destinies of the coimtry 
 remain under the influence of men who are marshals of the 
 court and policemen by education and murderers by conviction." 
 
 Equally true will probably prove the words of Roditchev 
 who was suspended for them by the present reactionary Duma 
 after the most dramatic and scandalous scene of the three 
 national assemblies. Referring to the hangman's noose by 
 which Russia is governed to-day, he shouted above all the 
 clamour with which the "patriotic" deputies sought to drown 
 his voice: 
 
 "Yes, I say again, if the Russian Government considers as the 
 only palladitmi what Pureschevitch called Muraviev (the 
 recent minister of justice) collars and what will be called in the 
 
 future Stolypine neckties " Here he was interrupted by 
 
 the tumult. Stolypine left the minister's box, and Roditchev, 
 realising that he had taken the remark quite personally, went 
 to him to explain. He passed two of Stolypine 's seconds who 
 had come to demand an apology. But he did not, as reported, 
 regret his words. And when Stolypine said, "I accept your 
 apology," Roditchev answered, "I do not apologise." 
 
 Expelled from the Duma Roditchev became the hero of 
 Russia. His house was filled with flowers and he received 
 hundreds of telegrams from all parts of the country. Already 
 the overwhelming majority of all classes of the Russian people 
 except the officials and nobility feel that Stolypine governs by 
 the noose. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PRUSSIAN REFORM 
 
 GEORGE III. of England wrote: "The times certainly 
 reqiiire the concurrence of all those who wish to prevent 
 anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own domin- 
 ions, therefore I must look on all those who would not heartily 
 aid me not only as bad subjects but as bad men." 
 
 So speaks in all ages the easy conscience of the despot born 
 and bred. The times, not despotism, have brought the anarchy. 
 The despot born and bred, like the slave-owner, denies that 
 he could do otherwise than wish the prosperity of his own 
 human property. Disobedient subjects are bad men, criminals, 
 or malefactors. Those who heartily assist the despot are not 
 courtiers, flatterers, self-seekers, or petty tyrants, but patriots 
 and the best men of the realm. And the prevention of anarchy 
 and the preservation of despotism absorb nearly the whole 
 energy of the State. 
 
 To Greorge III. the anarchists and bad men were happily to be 
 found for the most part in America. To Nicholas II. most of 
 his own Russian subjects belong either to a class to be suspected 
 or to a class to be persecuted. For him the so-called war against 
 anarchy and the internal enemy is a war against the over- 
 whelming majority of the nation. The struggle of the 
 Czarism to preserve its existence is a desperate business. 
 One persecution, one arbitrary act, necessitates another, 
 until the oppression as a whole assumes monstrous and 
 finally ridiculous proportions. The unbiased foreigner asks 
 perhaps why philosophical books must be censored or school- 
 children kept in jail. If the country happens to be quiet 
 he does not realise that a desperate and ceaseless struggle is 
 going on, that a few lenient measures have often been enough 
 to allow a cumulative, and for a time irresistible, movement 
 of revolt to be set in motion. It is precisely in the Czarism *s 
 
 I CO 
 
"PRUSSIAN" REFORM loi 
 
 I worst feature, its arbitrariness and colossal violence, that 
 
 j it cannot reform. 
 
 Indeed as the people grow more intelligent and universally 
 
 \] discontented the Government must become more oppressive 
 I if it is to preserve its existence. For instance, two lawyers 
 have recently been punished, not by the judges but by the 
 political authorities, for the political tenor of speeches made 
 in court. This is a novelty even in Russia. But the reactionary 
 organ, the Russian Flag, reminds the complaining lawyers' 
 association that the provincial governors can, like the Czar, do 
 absolutely anything; that they are appointed by the Czar and 
 have unlimited powers. It quotes the law to the effect that 
 "the governor, as the responsible head of the province 
 entrusted to him by the most high will of his Majesty, is there 
 the first protector of the infallibility of the most high prerog- 
 atives, of the autocracy, of the welfare of the State, etc." 
 
 The power of the civil governors is disputed. But it cannot 
 be disputed that nine-tenths of Russia at the present moment 
 has been placed entirely in the power of military governors and 
 satraps by explicit laws created to "prevent anarchy" and 
 "preserve the State." At the same time new civil laws are 
 constantly being drafted, the reactionary Duma may lend its 
 aid, and in time most of the arbitrary oppression and punish- 
 ment now entrusted to individuals or to "military law" may 
 be classified and embodied in the civil code. Such a "reform" 
 would facilitate the preservation of order for the officials, and 
 lighten the burden the loyal and privileged have to bear in 
 times of "internal war." Whether it would lighten the 
 oppression can be questioned. Under the present disorder some 
 officials entrusted with irresponsible power are worse than any 
 law, but just as many are more humane than the statutes. ^ 
 The one reform on which all officials, courtiers, and reaction- 1 
 
 /aries are agreed is that the nation shall be forced into order 
 ( and tranquillity. But here the harmony comes to an en^ 
 Shall the new order be an "autocratic" or a "legal" order? 
 The extreme reactionaries cannot see how an unlimited ruler 
 can be bound by any laws. All their "reforms" propose 
 rather to increase his personal power. They are opposed on 
 abstract grounds to the bureaucracy and in order to control 
 
I02 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 it they want the Czar to institute a new supreme court governed 
 by no law but his personal wishes. It is certain that every 
 tradition of the Czarism is on their side. 
 
 For years every great new problem that has arisen has been 
 solved, not by an extension of the law, but by lending to some 
 newly created class of officials a part of the Czar's arbitrary 
 power. When a few years ago, in response to the landlords' 
 complaints that they could not bring their tenants and 
 labourers to terms, the local "land officials" were created, they 
 were subordinated not to higher local officials but to a St. 
 Petersburg ministry more subject to the immediate dictates of 
 the Czar. But this was not enough for Nicholas. The minis- 
 tries are after all bureaus subject to laws, while the provincial 
 governors are, as we have seen, the Czar's personal lieutenants. 
 So Nicholas asked Prince Urussov whether he did not think it 
 would be a great reform to subordinate the land officials directly 
 to the provincial governors and so withdraw them entirely from 
 the ordinary laws, and he was most displeased with Urussov 's 
 negative answer. 
 
 Of course, legal order, organisation, and system must be 
 .extended in Russia since it is a semi-modem State. In its 
 enormous business enterprises, for instance, personal rule 
 is unthinkable, and the State must be more or less modern in 
 its methods. But the Russian Government has peculiar 
 functions of persecution that can never be quite classified, 
 ordered, or brought under the law. Such activities will be 
 administered as before. Legal order based on violence will 
 extend itself in some departments, but alongside it will grow 
 the present order of sheer despotism, the brutal annihilation of 
 all opposition to the ruling class through the gallows, prisons, 
 mines, exile, and the knout. 
 
 This is a time as never before in Russian history of official 
 talk of reform, and that there will be reform among the officials 
 we make no question. The Czarism must reform its human 
 mechanism or of its own accord disintegrate. The corruption 
 of the Russian officials is notorious the world over and was 
 perhaps never worse than to-day after the recent wars against 
 Japan and the "internal enemies." Less known are the discord, 
 jealousy and hatred that prevail among the innumerable bureaus 
 
"PRUSSIAN" REFORM 103 
 
 and the various ranks of officials within them; the generation- 
 long delays in the most fundamental reforms, the arbitrary- 
 manner in which nearly every official fulfills his functions. That 
 all this will be much improved with the aid of the new Duma, 
 interested in such administrative improvements, to the exclusion 
 of all social reform, there is little doubt. If administrative 
 improvements are not made and made quickly the Government 
 will not even make a temporary headway against the revolution. 
 Even a part of its present allies, including a large part of the 
 lower and even a part of the higher officials, will join the revolt. 
 Already recent ministers and generals of the staff have gone over 
 to the almost revolutionary opposition, a large majority of the 
 railway, post-office, and telegraph employees of all classes 
 joined the revolutionary general strike two years ago, and 
 several hundred army officers are members of the revolutionary 
 organisations. Policemen have struck, officials of all classes 
 have aided the moderate opposition, a large part of the village 
 clergy has become liberal, and judges have become lenient; 
 Stolypine had to devote half his declaration to the third Duma 
 to threats against officials that aided the opposition parties, 
 however moderate, though he could not deny that all, from 
 highest to lowest, are encouraged to join the extreme reactionary 
 organisations that openly oppose the ministers as not being 
 sufficiently reactionary. The officials must be reformed if the 
 Government is not to be crippled by internal dissensions or 
 lose its own employees to the revolutionary cause. Indeed the 
 bureaucracy must be regenerated if even those measures that 
 the Government itself considers most necessary are ever to be 
 put into execution.* 
 
 The big business interests are now well represented in the 
 new Duma, which includes not only merchants and capitalists 
 but many landlords who exploit their lands in a business way, 
 and the disorganisation and robberies have reached the limit 
 of the bearable for any business interest. The railways, the 
 banks, the coal mines, are crippled for lack of effective control, 
 and the Duma will not hesitate to use effectively its sole power, 
 that of inspection and exposure, a power sufficient to this end. 
 
 It will never be known which of the losses in the recent war 
 
 • See Appendix, Note E. 
 
I04 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 were due to thieving officials and which to the real superiority 
 of the Japanese. It is known that the supplies for the Red 
 Cross were pilfered, that a thousand carloads of coal vanished 
 so completely that an investigating committee was unable to 
 say when they disappeared, and that the Czar wrote in his own 
 hand "poor fellows" on the report telling how soldiers had had 
 their feet frozen from boots that wore out after a few days of 
 service. It was not that this could be done only under cover 
 of the excitement of the war. After the war was over the 
 Government declared that Russia must learn from her defeat 
 that a new and better army and navy must be created and that 
 better fortune awaited her. As a step toward the new navy 
 it was decided to build seven gun-boats in the Far East on the 
 River Amur. They were nearly completed and an inspector 
 was just about to arrive when a fire destroyed them. The 
 Russian press claims they were burned by the order of officials 
 who had stolen a part of the money assigned to their construction. 
 Why should we not believe it? Has not a recent minister just 
 been convicted of having handed over an enormous contract 
 for supplying grain to starving peasants to a stranger whom 
 he had met through a woman of doubtful character? The grain 
 was of course not delivered, and thousands of peasants starved. 
 The criminal, Lidval, was let out of jail before he had been there 
 a few months, the minister, Gurko, was dismissed from office 
 but given no punishment. 
 
 It is not likely that this corruption will continue as it has 
 been, nor is it likely that the old type of arbitrary official will 
 always be tolerated. Like the Prussians, it is probable that 
 Government servants of the future will be held more strictly to 
 the line of their duty and the letter of the law. Here is a 
 typical case of what has been happening. Prince Gortsch- 
 akov, Governor of Viatka, went off for a three days' hunt on 
 the estate of a rich merchant. He did not turn over his "unlim- 
 ited" powers to his lieutenant, as is required on such occasions. 
 An order came from St. Petersburg declaring martial law in one 
 of the districts of the province. Nothing cotdd be done, 
 however, in this apparently critical situation until the prince 
 returned. When he did so, instead of issmng special manifestoes 
 to the population of the disturbed district, he decided to turn 
 
"PRUSSIAN" REFORM 105 
 
 it over to the mercies of a young officer friend named De Roche- 
 fort who was Hving in his house and whom he had brought with 
 him to Viatka. This young official, though of high rank, was not 
 on duty, perhaps on account of his notorious habits or his 
 publication of a reactionary pamphlet against the Government. 
 But still he was made czar of the disturbed district of Sarapul. 
 Hereupon, though the elections were just beginning, the cholera 
 breaking out, and this district was under martial law, the prince 
 went off again officially for an inspection, but unofficially for 
 another hunt, and for the journey advanced himself 1,000 
 rubles from the Government's funds. 
 
 In Prussia such idle nobleman administrators are not tol- 
 erated. If Stolypine has a tithe of the force of Bismarck and 
 the new Duma the "loyalty" of the Prussian Landtag, a few 
 years will work great changes in the whole governmental machine. 
 From the uncertain engine of oppression that it now is, it will 
 become the admirable, smooth- working, soul-crushing instru- 
 ment that is the Prussian bureaucracy of the present moment. 
 The wildness as well as the htunanity may largely disappear, 
 but the result will be the impressive but highly deceptive 
 efficiency of the Prussian btireaucrat. For the Prussians 
 have certainly created a "legal" order, but they have as far 
 as they were able annihilated individual initiative, hardened 
 the lines of caste, and done all in their power to drill into htunble 
 and terror-stricken privates all the citizens of the country. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Stolypine and the majority 
 of the third Dtrnia envy and emulate in almost every particular 
 the perfected absolutism and bureaucracy of Prussia. As in 
 Prussia, they want a "legal" rather than a "constitutional" 
 monarchy, a gradual increase of civil but not of political rights, 
 a regenerated State rather than a regenerated people. How 
 could it be otherwise ? Prussia has, like Russia, a bureaucratic 
 absolutism, a militarism, a State that can rely on the zealous 
 loyalty only of its landlord nobility. Austria has been, and 
 Hungary is still, not dissimilar. The ciu-se of Russia lies not 
 in any institutions peculiarly Russian, but in the fact that the 
 pe jple have not yet won their freedom by fighting for it. In all 
 the eastern half of Europe — Prussia, Saxony, Austria, Hungary, 
 and Roumania — elements of the same evils that are seen in 
 
io6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Russia are still prominent. France and England have had 
 their revolutions and are politically free. In these other 
 countries the people have been beaten and have just such freedom 
 as corresponds to the interests of the ruling class. 
 
 A larger part of the Russian practices that shock Englishmen 
 and Americans as outrages, glaring there because vigorously- 
 resisted by the nation, are but better disguised commonplaces 
 in Germany, carried out under the forms of law and accepted 
 by a people that has no hope whatever of immediately overthrow- 
 ing the Government. The Prussian Landtag is, like the Russian 
 Duma, composed of officials, landlords, and the privileged classes, 
 but the proportions are still higher than in Russia, for there are 
 no Socialists and only a handful of opponents to the Government ; 
 while in Russia there are fifteen Socialist deputies and the 
 opposition numbers about one hundred and fifty, or one-third in 
 the Duma. The police terrorise the voters in Russia, but in 
 Prussia this is not necessary; the voting is public, and the 
 "disloyal" voter is black-listed by the landlords and the 
 Government. Indeed the radicals of Prussia are now agitating 
 for the secret ballot that Russia has already adopted. 
 
 We forget that Prussia is an absolutism as much as Russia, 
 and that the King of Prussia even refused the crown of the 
 German Empire in 1849 solely because it was offered to him 
 by a constitutional assembly and not by the kings, his equals. 
 We forget the boundless Prussian reaction of 1849, ^.nd that 
 "the rights of man" are not even guaranteed by the present 
 constitution of the whole German Empire. We look at Prussia 
 as a modern State because her people are so clearly a modem 
 people, at least in part. We forget that politically the Prus- 
 sians have been able to make almost no progress against their 
 Government since 1848, and that there is actual retrogression 
 in such vital matters as the schools, the very basis of Prussia's 
 reputation as a modem government — to say nothing of the 
 antiquated relations between church and State and the handing 
 over of many local governments to the nobility. 
 
 It is preeminently natural, if not inevitable, in a country 
 ridden by an absolute monarch, his army, officials, nobility, 
 and church, that the people's schools should be neglected. 
 The official organ of the Russian Government finds that a slight 
 
"PRUSSIAN" REFORM 107 
 
 increase of 7,000,000 rubles expenditure for the nation's 
 schools would be a "luxury." The Russian budget is 
 2,500,000,000 rubles. Four hundred or five hundred million go 
 every year to the army and navy, and this year the amount 
 will probably be raised forty or fifty million rubles. The 
 schools are getting in many places one-tenth of what they do in 
 the United States, and yet an increase of twenty or thirty 
 cents a head for the children of the people is a "luxury." 
 There have been years when the increased expenditure of 
 the backward schools of New York City has been as great. 
 
 But this is not a Russian phenomenon; it is a normal result 
 of absolutism. In proportion to her greater wealth and better 
 organisation, the Prussian schools are better. Prussia also 
 enjoyed a generation ago some sweeping school reforms, under 
 the able Minister Studt. But this was at the time of the victori- 
 ous wars with Austria and France, that seemed to give a raison 
 d'etre to absolutism and reanimated all its branches. Since 
 1 87 1 there have been no wars, and the degeneration soon set 
 in; the common schools stood almost still while the country 
 moved forward, until now an incredible low level prevails. 
 We can not dilate upon the antiquated teaching of the one- 
 sided religious instruction, the orders to teach the splendid 
 achievements of the HohenzoUerns "in every branch of civili- 
 sation," the condemnation of all revolt and the glorification of 
 war. But we can point out that outside of the large cities, where 
 wealth and public opinion have brought some improvements, 
 there are sixty-three to seventy-four pupils to a single teacher 
 and the expenditure per pupil is from thirty-five to forty- 
 eight marks; the better schools of America expend this much 
 in dollars, so four times as much — ■ for it must be remembered 
 that in the present high-taxed Germany a mark buys no more 
 than a quarter of a dollar in the United States. There are 
 ten thousand half-day schools, many teachers have even three 
 sets of children a day, or as many children as two hundred. 
 Three thousand schools are without teachers, either, as in 
 Russia, because of their liberal opinions, or because of the nig- 
 gardliness of the landlords who control the schools. It seems 
 that these latter need the children in the fields, and to secure the 
 children's labour, often declare holidays of several days or 
 
io8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 weeks. Recently a teacher who protested was removed and a 
 preacher that supported him given a good scolding for resistance 
 to his superiors. 
 
 This is what Russia may hope to rise to in her present 
 course. For a change to Prussia's condition would be a rise, 
 since after all only a small per cent, of the Prussians remain 
 without some education, miserable as it is. Further Russia 
 will scarcely go until the people have captured some share in the 
 Government. With an election law like Russia's or Prussia's, 
 there is even a likelihood that the weak national assembly will 
 degenerate into a more and more servile tool of the Emperor 
 and officials. The Prussian Landtag is much more backward 
 than it was sixty years ago. Of over four hundred members 
 i6i are landlords, iii officials, and more than a hundred others 
 represent the wealthy classes. It is thus not necessary for the 
 Prussian Government to consult the common people either of 
 the towns or of the country, nor any part of the inhabitants 
 of the towns. The Russian Duma is not yet so bad, but 
 the pressure of the Government on its dependents and the 
 interference of the police may even bring about, after the coming 
 elections, a less representative assembly than the Landtag. 
 
 Indeed the analogy with Prussia is almost indispensable 
 for an understanding of the present Russian Government. Of 
 course Prussia does not as a rule tolerate the wildest reaction- 
 aries as Russia does, yet we have the notorious Count Pickler 
 going about for years unpunished and preaching that the day 
 would come when the Germans would have to massacre the Jews. 
 Even when he was finally arrested "in the fortress" he was 
 allowed a leave in which he went home to his estate to drill 
 the peasant troops he was preparing for the coming event. 
 Fortunately for the Government, the insanity of the count has 
 just relieved it from its embarrassing predicament. 
 
 The similarity between the two neighbouring governments 
 is more than an analogy ; it is due to common causes, a largely 
 common history, and parallel development. For instance,, 
 the Czars of Russia are very much more German than Russian, 
 and this has been the case for two centuries. Of a hundred 
 of the present Czar's ancestors scarcely ten are of Russian 
 blood and education; nearly all the rest are German. Indeed 
 
"PRUSSIAN" REFORM 109 
 
 Catherine II. and several other Russian monarchs have been 
 wholly German. The nobility and the bureaucracy are also 
 largely German. Of a recent cabinet six members, or about 
 half, bore German names ; of fifty-three members of the Council 
 of State eighteen were Russian Germans; of forty -six members 
 of the first department of the Senate twelve were German; 
 among noted generals are Kleigels, Kaulbars, Rennenkampf, 
 Neidhardt, Miiller-Zakomelski, and Bauer; of recent prime 
 ministers von Plehve and Witte were German ; of the chief 
 organisers of the massacres nearly half bear German names. 
 Of course these are all Russianised Germans, but at the same 
 time they come for the most part from the Baltic Provinces where 
 they preserve their German culture and are in constant and 
 intimate relations with their Prussian neighbours, only a few 
 hours away. Very many have much Russian blood, but very 
 many noblemen and high officials bearing Russian names are 
 largely German. The truth, more accurately expressed, is 
 that the highest Russian nobility and bureaucracy owes a 
 third or fourth of its blood and traditions to the Germans. 
 
 The bureaucracy and military are not only inspired by their 
 own German tradition, but are consciously modelled and 
 remodelled on the German example. Sometimes the process 
 has been reversed. Doubtless Peter the Great was something of 
 an inspiration to Frederick, and Nicholas I. to Wilhelm I. 
 The chief influence of Russia on Prussia has been as a possible 
 enemy, a bogy to frighten the Prussians into militarism and 
 subjection. But Prussia, in this exchange, has given more 
 than she has received. Peter's bureaucrats were mostly Germans 
 and, in the later reigns, the proportion was even increased. 
 
 The evolution of Russia in the last generation and at the 
 present time, so incomprehensible to the English, French, or 
 Americans, seems like an old story to the educated Prussian. 
 ^ The serfs were emancipated in Prussia from 1808 to 1848, in 
 ' Russia in 1 86 1 ; in both countries the conditions before and after 
 the emancipation were remarkably similar. Both were military 
 and bureaucratic absolutisms, in both society was divided by 
 the law into nobles, peasants and citizens, and all the military 
 and important civil posts went to the nobles. 
 
 In both countries the reforms came not as a social regeneration 
 
no RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 from below, but as measures to save the State from disintegration 
 after disastrous wars — in Prussia those against Napoleon, in 
 Russia the Crimean war. "The idea" (in Prussia), says Seig- 
 nabos, "was not to better the condition of the people but to 
 rescue the State from ruin." Count Hardenberg said, "We 
 wish to establish a monarchical government without democratic 
 principles." His wish was accomplished and his entirely 
 undemocratic State remains to this day intact. 
 
 After, as before the emancipations in both countries, the 
 peasants remained for a generation or more under the police 
 and judicial administration of their former owners and were 
 still subjected to corporal punishment. In both countries the 
 peasants had to pay extortionary and impossible prices both for 
 their freedom and the tiny parcels of land that were left them. 
 In both they lost their rights of access to the forests and part 
 of their common pasture, and held their property on such 
 precarious titles that the landlords in control of the courts were 
 often enabled to steal it from them. Until 1891, eighty years 
 after the emancipation was begun in Prussia, old land laws 
 were still in force, and the proprietors were favoured not only 
 by the courts but by the letter of the law. And it was not till 
 the same date that the local government was taken away from 
 the landlords, only to be placed in the hands of a bureaucracy 
 which was, as I have shown, almost entirely in their control. 
 This is what may be expected to happen in Russia to the 
 proposed local government reforms. 
 
 In Prussia, as in Russia, the Government's borrowing 
 operations were long kept secret, and a representation of the 
 people was long promised but never granted. In both countries 
 it took a tremendous struggle to secure the concession that 
 the national assembly, such as it is, should be called periodically 
 and not merely at the will of the ruler, and that new taxes at 
 least must be voted by this body. But in both countries the 
 budget is often voted after the money is already expended, and 
 neither Bismarck nor Stolypine ever hesitated to go right on 
 with their expenditures when the national assemblies were 
 opposed. Finally, in both countries the ruler appoints the 
 upper chamber, controls alone the army and foreign relations, 
 appoints all officials and reserves an absolute veto over all laws. 
 
; 
 
 "PRUSSIAN" REFORM iii 
 
 Russia and Prussia, and even the whole German Empire, 
 are unconstitutional governments — if for no other reason than 
 for this: When a contingency arises that the constitution (so- 
 called) does not provide for, the old laws hold. But the old 
 laws were those of absolutism. It is because they recognise 
 the fact that the Kaiser has the power in the last resort that the 
 opposition parties are so timid, and that the most the majority 
 of them claim is merely that the people have certain rights 
 alongside the equal rights of the Crown. This is why local reforms 
 are arrested, the schools stand still, the dignity of man is crushed 
 under an iron heel, and Germany is threatened every moment 
 with monstrous war. 
 
 The condition in Russia is and must remain similar until 
 there is a revolutionary upheaval from below. But in the 
 meanwhile there are two great differences between the two 
 countries. Stolypine has provided such a reactionary election 
 law that he may not have to repeat his recent coup d'etatsind 
 call a Duma more friendly to the Government than the present 
 one. In that case he will not have to perform Bismarck's 
 act of trampling on the constitution. He can ignore it. 
 
 At the same time Stolypine has a vast disadvantage com- 
 pared to Bismarck, He has no chance to wage war, fuse Russia 
 together with blood and iron, and crush all opposition with 
 renewed and victorious arms. Russia is not a small and de- 
 fenceless country like Prussia was. Her peasants are not war- 
 like; they are revolutionary. Absolutisms arise from and are 
 nourished by war. And without wars all absolutisms will 
 perish. With no prospect of patriotic bloodshed the doom of 
 the Czarism is sealed. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 AUTOCRACY S LAST HOPE 
 
 THE problem before Nicholas II., an ordinary man and an 
 ordinary Czar, remains after the lapse of two centuries 
 the same as the problem before the Czar-genius Peter the Great. 
 It is an insoluble problem. The desire of the Czars at their 
 best is to develop the people without giving up to them any of 
 the autocratic power. The result is not mere paternalism, but 
 a withering benevolent despotism that defeats even its own 
 object. 
 
 Peter's system was to create governmental institutions and 
 electoral bodies in a country where systematic organisation 
 and the regular participation of any class of people in the 
 Government were almost unknown. And, indeed, the people were 
 forced for the first time, rather arbitrarily to be sure, to think 
 about the best form of organisation of the country, to feel 
 deeply over real questions of state. The policy of the first ten 
 years of Nicholas's reign forms a striking parallel. Nicholas 
 is not a genius, but perhaps Witte is. This is a business or 
 economic age. It is not then merely political institutions 
 that Witte has created, but railways, manufactiires, gold 
 currency, an enormous liquor monopoly, and banks. It is 
 not of political questions that the people have been forced 
 to think and feel, but of the great economic questions of 
 modern life. 
 
 But the parallel holds good. "Peter was possessed by the 
 abstract idea of state," says the Russian historian, "the people 
 were only ciphers in the total." But the people could be 
 forced into ciphers only by whips and the sword. Peter insti- 
 tuted for the first time an elaborate system of espionage, revived 
 many of the tortures of Ivan the Terrible, and still failed. His 
 great state machine became a Frankenstein and threatened its 
 creator's existence. His new bureaucracy became corrupt 
 
 112 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 113 
 
 and rotten with bribery, and came to be an additional burden 
 on the state. 
 
 Witte is possessed by the idea of the state as the universal 
 capitalist, as the great owner, manufacturer, banker, and 
 employer. His is a state socialism beyond the dreams of 
 Bismarck. If the Russian Government were to continue 
 to absorb private capital at the rate it did in the ten years 
 of Witte 's reign over Russian finance, half a century would 
 develop a perfected state capitalism (a more accurate term 
 than state socialism) and the monopoly of industry and bank- 
 ing by the Government. To accomplish his reforms Witte 
 did not have to resort to whips and the sword like Peter. As 
 long as the instruments of violence could preserve the Czarism 
 from revolution, Witte had no need of their direct use for his 
 reforms. Quite the contrary, where they were in use he often 
 had them abolished and replaced by more modern instruments. 
 Starvation of the people is, as I shall show, literally the founda- 
 tion of Witte's reforms. But actual starvation is unable to bring 
 about the permanent economic prosperity of any community. 
 It cannot be said that Witte 's plan has failed, for it is still in 
 practice. But it must lead to the greatest economic cataclysm 
 the world has seen. 
 
 Peter's whole system, says Kostomarov, was directed against 
 the prevailing want of public spirit, the lack of independence 
 of action, the absence of initiative capacity. Mentioning his 
 proposed reforms and the Czar's October Manifesto, Witte 
 says in the budget of 1906: "The steady growth of the con- 
 sciousness of the masses will undoubtedly soon lead them 
 to true comprehension of economic progress, and arouse in 
 them a desire for real improvement of national well-being. A 
 sure pledge of the awakening of public life is Your Majesty's call 
 to the nation to enter the path of independent action, and also 
 the equality before the law granted to all Your Majesty's sub- 
 jects." After the lapse of two centuries Russia's statesmen 
 are still trying to inoculate her Czar-cursed people with initia- 
 tive, independence, and public spirit. 
 
 That Witte failed as Peter did is due not entirely to himself. 
 The proposed equality before the law and the popular assembly 
 for which he finally obtained the Czar's promise against all the 
 
114 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 nobility and the court, have now been definitely abandoned. 
 
 If Witte could have spoken more openly perhaps he would have 
 
 deplored not the lack of desire, but the lack of hope, for real 
 
 improvement among the masses of the people. But Witte 's 
 
 error lay not so much in a too loyal hopefulness and confidence 
 
 in the false Nicholas, or in a too bureaucratic contempt for the 
 
 people, as in a fundamental misconception of his own business, 
 
 finance. It is he that has the lack of true comprehension of 
 
 economic progress of which he accuses the Russian people. 
 
 Peter could not, says Kostomarov, "inoculate civic courage, 
 
 ' the feeling of duty, or love of one's neighbour," he could not create 
 
 a new and living Russia by means of violence. Witte could not 
 
 ♦ inoculate initiative, independence, and public spirit on the 
 
 ^ basis of the starvation of the peasants, which is the basis of 
 
 his conception of economic progress. 
 
 Peter the Great laid the foundations of the modem absolutism ; 
 Witte has set it on the road of its last hope. Perhaps Witte 
 at the last was even conscious of the desperate character of his 
 experiment, of the need of compromising with democracy, the 
 arch-enemy. It was no accident, however, that the road of 
 state socialism was chosen. If Witte had not been there, 
 another man or other men would have assumed his burden, and 
 the same results would have been reached, perhaps with the 
 loss of a few years, or a few billion rubles to the Russian state. 
 The reason for choosing this road is not far to seek — the neces- 
 sities of war; a reason fearfully painful to consider, for poor, 
 starving, Czar-cursed Russia is, after all, part and parcel of the 
 great modem world, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. 
 
 Russia is part and parcel of the modem world if for no other 
 reason because she must defend herself against it. She is our 
 neighbour, she controls a fourth of the best cultivable land of 
 the earth, her people are of our own white race and of the same 
 religions as ourselves. Even at the time of Peter the Great 
 she had already decided to utilise all the machinery of modem 
 industry that does so much to make our life what it is. Besides, 
 millions of her people have all our modem culture, and half the 
 rising generation can read and write. Why do we forget all 
 these obvious facts and try to judge Russia as a thing apart? 
 Even Japan and Turkey are dragged into the circle of modem 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 115 
 
 civilisation, above all by the necessity of defending themselves 
 by modem means. It was especially by the necessities of war 
 that the Czars have been compelled to keep step with many 
 modem ideas, and it was the absolute need of getting money 
 to support her enormous armies and costly fleets that inevitably 
 forced Alexander II. to abolish slavery and his son Alexander III. 
 to call a modem financier like Witte into power. It was like- 
 wise inevitable in a country where all the power rests with the 
 Government, that Witte in strengthening capitalism should seek 
 to establish State capitalism, just as Alexander II. in abolishing 
 the slavery of the agriculturists to the landlords, should 
 establish instead a slavery to the State. 
 
 The crushing defeat of Russia by France and England in the 
 Crimean War necessitated revolutionary changes in the Russian 
 army if the country were to preserve its independence. The 
 professional army of military slaves forced to twenty-five years 
 of service, had to be replaced by the much larger modem army 
 of all the young men of the nation enlisted for a few years and 
 trained by a certain "patriotism" as much as by fear. The 
 peasants, breaking out more and more in revolt, had to be made 
 over not only into loyal but into zealous subjects. War rail- 
 roads had to be built, and a new fleet and modem armament 
 were indispensable. At least there had to be enough clothes to 
 keep the soldiers from freezing, as happened so frequently in 
 that war; there had to be medical attendance for the sick and 
 wounded, the miserable lack of which had caused more losses 
 than the enemies* bullets; and enough powder, also lacking, 
 for the cannons and guns. But the country could pay no more 
 even for these important purposes. The serfs had to be liberated 
 then and modem railroads and industry introduced, or the 
 country would be divided up by the foreign powers. It was 
 not an internal situation that abolished serfdom and moved 
 Russia once more into modem Europe, but the imperative 
 necessity of keeping up with her neighbours or belonging to 
 them. 
 
 Modem civilisation is a whole. It is doubtful if modem 
 machinery can be used without introducing modem ideas and 
 a measure of liberty for the individual and democracy for the 
 mass. To be able to borrow the money for railroads, passing 
 
ii6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 through a non-industrial region that does not give profits in the 
 early years, one must have high taxes to pay the interest on the 
 railway bonds. To get carrying profits even from the grain- 
 trade in an impoverished country, the export business must be 
 developed. But high taxes can only be secured from the high 
 profits of modem industry and modem agriculture, and it is 
 only the latter than can produce enough surplus grain to keep 
 going an export trade. Modem industry needs metal and not 
 paper money. A debtor nation must have a large export trade, 
 and the export trade may make possible gold money. It is 
 all one piece — modem armies and fleets and military railroads, 
 a large government debt, high taxes, gold money, large agricul- 
 tural exports and a protected industry. And all this was forced 
 on the unwilling Czars by the fact that Russia is an integral part 
 of the modern world. 
 4^^ State capitalism went further in Russia than elsewhere. 
 In monopolising the manufacture of spirits Witte undertook 
 one of the very largest businesses in the country; in founding 
 mortgage banks and pushing the active participation of the 
 Government banks and railroads in the furtherance or hindrance 
 of this or that business enterprise, he became the financial 
 dictator of the country as much as the Czar, his master, is the 
 direct dictator over its political and military life. And as the 
 Czar, his master, was helpless before the great fact of human 
 nature, that men cannot be governed by external violence, 
 so Witte was helpless against the great economic fact that the 
 prosperity of a nation cannot be attained without the economic 
 elevation of the masses of the people. 
 
 The Council of State confessed at the end of the year 1902 
 that "the Government is powerless for the reorganisation of the 
 life of the peasants and the assistance of agricultural industry." 
 This is an acknowledgment of the complete economic failure 
 of the Czarism. Three-fourths of the Russian people are 
 peasants and two-thirds of her wealth comes from agricultural 
 industry. What is the use of State socialism or autocratic 
 capitalism if all economic hope of regenerating " in this 
 epoch" the chief national industry and the chief industrial 
 class is abandoned? For Witte has used in the State 
 budget the explicit words that this regeneration must belong 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 117 
 
 to a future epoch — that is, a future generation, or even 
 a future century. 
 
 Witte was forced to avow his helplessness not by war or 
 revolution, for neither had yet begun, but by the inevitable 
 industrial crisis that must arise when it is sought to build up a 
 modem industry among a people a large part of which is 
 starving every other year, and is happy to have enough to eat 
 let alone being able to purchase the product of the countries* 
 factories or to give goods or passengers to its railroads. 
 
 But before this frank confession of failure had been forced 
 on Witte by the tremendous panic and crash of Russian industry 
 in 1900, which he himself had feared, he had already succeeded 
 in one-third revolutionising the economy of Russia. I say one- 
 third revolutionising, for many of the best Russian economists 
 contend that the same policy by which he revolutionised Russian 
 industry is largely accountable for the progressive and constant 
 decay of agriculture. 
 
 As I have suggested, the modernising process in the national 
 economy began at the time of the emancipation of the serfs 
 in 1861. It took a much more rapid course, on the ascension 
 of Alexander III. in 1882, under Witte's predecessor Wishne- 
 gradsky. It was he that first introduced the high protective 
 customs tariff and increased every other form of indirect taxation 
 on articles of consumption. As fast as the peasants began to 
 use some manufactured and imported article, or rather as fast 
 as the non-starving minority were able to do this, the article 
 was burdened with a crushing taxation. A part of the peasants 
 began to drink tea with sugar, to wear cotton, to use petroleum, 
 and matches and to employ steel ploughs and iron nails. Almost 
 in proportion to the increased use the taxes were raised. Again 
 and again this happened, and was repeated under Witte, and 
 was repeated again in the last two years, until the already 
 miserable Russian peasant now pays two, three, and four times 
 as much for these articles as do the people of Germany or France. 
 The result has been that, although the cost of producing such 
 simple articles is falling enormously everywhere and the 
 consumption doubling again and again, consumption has risen 
 very slowly in all Russia and still more slowly among those most 
 in need. The peasant can afford only the fewest nails, the 
 
ii8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 cheapest plough, and almost no petroleum. His single shirt 
 must last a season, sugar is a luxury and his beloved tea an 
 occasional drink. 
 
 Under Witte's predecessor the peasants were already begin- 
 ning to bear the new load of the railroads and manufacturing 
 industry, added to the already crushing payments they were 
 forced to make to their former masters for their so-called freedom 
 and the possession of a part of the land they had always occu- 
 pied. In 1 89 1 the customs tariff was again increased; during 
 Witte's first ten years, 1892-190 2, the mileage of the Russian 
 railways was doubled, the operations of the State banks were 
 still more rapidly increased and a new bank was formed for lend- 
 ing money to the nobility; in 1894 the State monopolised the 
 alcohol industry, and in 1897 the gold standard was finally 
 established. 
 
 All these measures were again bound together as a single 
 whole along with the export of grain. For evidently the gold 
 standard could not be maintained unless from year to year Russia 
 should receive from abroad in payment for her exports a sum 
 of gold sufficient to enable her to pay the interest on the huge 
 sums she was borrowing. But the peasants export very little, 
 since they produce scarcely enough for their own elementary 
 needs. While they were crushed with the indirect taxes required 
 to support the new huge and artificial economic structure, their 
 enemies, the landlords, were allowed to reach their hands into 
 the treasury of this poverty-stricken State. They were loaned 
 money below the current rates and in amounts greater than 
 their properties justified. Having one bank for this purpose, 
 another was created with the high-sounding name of "Peasants' 
 Bank" to enable the most needy landlords to sell out at high 
 prices to the few prospering peasants who had elevated them- 
 selves by usury to their starving neighbours and in their turn 
 have become rich proprietors — some having by now millions 
 of acres. But more than this, Witte stated that he did what 
 he could in this starving country, which was no little, to keep 
 up the prices of grain for the landlord's benefit. 
 
 But the famines came along regularly every other year, boun- 
 tiful foreign crops or financial crises lowered prices in spite of 
 him, and Witte confessed finally to the Czar that they did not 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 119 
 
 possess the economic dictatorship of the earth, Witte was fond 
 of saying to his own associates: ** But you don't know the cards." 
 He had not played his last card and had a most disagreeable sur- 
 prise in store for the landlords and the Czar. We need not 
 accuse Witte of duplicity at this point. He had always favoured 
 industry — even though sometimes only as a home market for 
 agriculture. He now felt himself strong enough, and his 
 policies far enough in practice, to display his hand. 
 
 The budget speech of 1897 is already addressed to a greater 
 power in the end than the Russian landlords, that is, to inter- 
 national capital. Of course his relations with the great bankers 
 were private. The budget address is aimed at their prot^g^s, 
 the small investors. The minister of finance finds now that 
 low agricultural prices have their good sides for other elements 
 than the landlords. And he boasts that the product of industry 
 is now greater than that of agriculture. Industry had increased 
 rapidly though artificially, but Witte used here a very vulgar 
 prospectus writer's trick. The product of agriculture he 
 reckoned at one and a half billion rubles, that of industry at 
 two billions. But a large part of the value of the product of 
 industry is due merely to raw material. The expert De Vaux 
 reckoned the net product at this time as four hundred million 
 or one-fifth as much as Witte. 
 
 Instead of being the rich country Witte boasted, Russia is 
 almost incredibly poor. One of Witte 's modem devices was 
 the savings banks. The pennies of the non-starving minority 
 of the people were collected in Government saloons, post- 
 offices, railway-stations, ships, barracks, and even schools — 
 from the first to the last always the pitiful total of about five 
 rubles from each depositor. In the fifteen years of Witte's 
 administration (1891—1906) the total of the depositors increased 
 from one to five million, of the deposits from two hundred to 
 one thousand million rubles. The bank was a good piece of 
 business for the Government. But it is only another sign of 
 the poverty of this vast nation. The bank has ceased to 
 grow so rapidly and probably most of the available pennies 
 are already collected. What is a billion rubles among a 
 hundred and forty million people ? The savings banks of other 
 smaller coimtries have ten times as much. 
 
 OF THE ^y 
 
 R3(TY 
 
120 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 This money of course nearly all goes over to the Government. 
 It is like another tax. The Government pays low interest and 
 gets high. At first the money went directly into Government 
 bonds. But wise and modem Witte has put it into his rail- 
 ways and his land banks. And in spite of all, the show remains 
 a wretched one. In 1902, after all Witte's borrowing, Russia 
 had only forty-two thousand miles of railways to two hundred 
 thousand in the United States. Moreover, perhaps a fourth of 
 Russia's roads are merely military and most of them are miserably 
 built and equipped. The estimates for all the Russian state 
 railways (two-thirds of the total) in the budget of 1906 were 
 pitifully small — for construction forty-two million rubles, for 
 improvements twelve million, for rolling stock two million, 
 and for repair of locomotives three million. Divide these figures 
 by two to bring them to dollars and they will not by any means 
 be as high as those of several private American companies 
 for the same year. No wonder the bitter and ceaseless com- 
 plaints that appear from day to day in the Russian press from 
 every branch of business. Every day products are undelivered, 
 factories closed for lack of fuel, perishable goods ruined in trans- 
 port and whole train-loads destroyed by accidents. 
 
 Russia is wretchedly provided with railroads; the United 
 States has eight times as many miles for each soul of her popu- 
 lation. But still Russia will find it difficult to build more until 
 it is arranged that her people shall cease to starve. Witte 
 boasted that the annual loss on the railroads, had fallen from 
 one hundred and seventy-six million rubles in 1892 to ninety 
 million in 1897. According to the juggled official figures it 
 fell to only thirty-five million in 1901, but by 1903 it had 
 risen again to sixty million and is not likely soon to fall. 
 
 Far worse, and in the end a greater waste, for the country is 
 the almost complete absence of roads. I have seen almost no 
 paved roads except for a few miles from the towns and across 
 some of the properties of the grand dukes of the Czar. The 
 mileage of paved roads in France is one hundred and in Great 
 Britain six hundred times as great as in Russia. 
 
 In fact Russia has none of the elements of great wealth except 
 the raw materials of the earth that would have been there 
 were the land without people at all. She has neither a great 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 121 
 
 agriculture, a great transportation system, a great industry, 
 a great internal, or a great external trade in proportion to 
 her population. The value of the products of Russian indus- 
 try as reckoned by Witte in 1897 was less than one-tenth, that 
 of agriculture one-fifteenth, of those of the United States. The 
 Russian farmers, confesses Witte, are in the economic position 
 of Exiropean farmers of 1800 or 1850. I shall later show this 
 to be a fact. 
 
 The Russian farmer gets only one-third the product per 
 acre the English or German does, though he has a much better 
 soil. While the total wheat product of the United States 
 increased more than a third during the last decade, that of 
 miserable Russia increased less than one-tenth, not as fast as 
 the population. During this period while Russian exports of 
 wheat remained about the same, ours nearly doubled 
 
 But as I have shown, the whole economic structure of Russian 
 society and the credit of the Government rests largely on the 
 exports, of which two-thirds are grain and all but 3 per 
 cent, raw or half -raw products. The export of animals and 
 animal products in this vast country, so much better adapted to 
 the purposes of animal raising than Canada, is less than one- 
 tenth that of the latter comparatively small country. Russia 
 exports less wool than she imports and less than ten other 
 smaller countries. 
 
 The total trade of Russia increased in the last decade be- 
 fore the war, only 25 per cent., less rapidly than the popu- 
 lation. The exports, however, increased only 14 per cent, 
 and the so necessary favourable balance of trade, or superiority 
 of exports over imports, fell by one-third. More recently, in 
 1903, 1904, and 1905, it seems surprising to find that this balance 
 has doubled. The explanation of this, according to a personal 
 remark of Finance Minister Shipov, was that the peasants were 
 so necessitous that they were forced to sell products needed by 
 their animals and themselves, and these products were then 
 exported. But even then the balance was only about four 
 hundred million rubles, not enough to pay the annual interest 
 on the foreign debts of the State, the railroads, and the great 
 industrial enterprises. And then came, in the years 1906 and 
 1907, the periodical famine. 
 
122 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The false policy of the minister of finance kept up the exports 
 the first of these years in order to pay the country's bad debts, 
 but now even reactionaries are demanding the prohibition of 
 the export of the food of a starving people. The Government 
 has not forbidden, but it has discouraged, the shipping away 
 of grain, and this has rapidly diminished. 
 
 But in the coming decade, as in the last, reckoning every 
 second or third year as a. famine year, as has been the case for 
 several decades, the excess of exports over imports will scarcely 
 average more than two hundred million rubles, or less than half 
 enough to pay the interest, to say nothing of payments on the 
 principal, on the foreign debt. 
 
 Whether the Russian Government is a failure as a business 
 institution or not, it is certain that the nation imder its present 
 masters is not a successful business concern. The Government 
 has the advantage over the nation in that it can secure money 
 from abroad, either through the hope of the lenders that it will 
 be able to shoot and whip more taxes out of the people, or that 
 it will lend the aid of its rifles and cannons or warships to some 
 foreign ally. In either case the foreign investor is lending not 
 to a business, but to an army of mercenaries. 
 
 And in either case there are two sides to this bargain. If 
 the foreign investor in Russian bonds agrees to ask no question 
 as to where or how the Czar gets the money to pay him his 
 interest, the Czar must furnish the guns. He is subject to a 
 large extent to the wishes of the creditors to whom he must 
 appeal year after year. Already the most powerful reactionary 
 and Governmental organ has protested angrily that it is not 
 the Duma but the foreign financiers that constitute Russia's 
 real parliament. 
 
 This, then, is where the new finance and the last hope of 
 the autocracy has led — to a permanent financial dependence 
 on foreign capital. And if internal poverty is the weakness 
 of Witte's policy, it is this external dependence that is its strength. 
 The international bankers are exacting, but they are the 
 powerful and invaluable friends that are keeping the Czarism 
 together. For the Czarism is not supported by Russia — the 
 Russians would have destroyed it long ago — but by the whole 
 world through its gold. 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 123 
 
 Russia is poor but the world is rich. The Russian finances 
 in themselves are as hopeless as were those of France before the 
 Revolution. But at that time there was not a tithe of the wealth 
 there is in the world to-day, and all the nations but England 
 were poorer than France. Now there are four great nations 
 each with several times the wealth of Russia, and four smaller 
 ones as rich. All the older countries are overflowing with 
 capital seeking profitable investment, and Russia, like India 
 or China, has become a financial protectorate of international 
 capital. 
 
 Already Russia is the heaviest indebted as well as the poorest 
 of the great nations. The Government has borrowed five 
 billion rubles for military purposes and three billion for the 
 railways, while Russia's private railways and industries have 
 indebted themselves for an almost equal sum. From 1890 to 
 1896 there were four large Government loans, from 1897 to 1903 
 most of the borrowing was private. Since the war every year 
 again requires large borrowings from abroad. The taxes have 
 been brought nearly to the limits; the chief expenditures, the 
 military and naval, are about to be increased, for only by 
 maintaining her armed strength does Russia obtain her foreign 
 military allies and loans. It seems that the deficit of several 
 hundred millions, euphemistically called in the budget 
 "extraordinary expenditure," must remain. Every year or two 
 will see a new loan, just as every two or three years sees a new 
 famine. The sums paid for interest will increase and the 
 Government's financial position will remain of the most difficult. 
 It will not mean bankruptcy unless there is some international 
 military or financial crisis. For if the Government has not the 
 power to make fundamental financial reforms, it can, with the 
 aid of foreign capital, maintain the present taxes and 
 expenditure. 
 
 But the country is clamouring for reform and reform can 
 mean in a position like Russia's nothing but decreased taxation 
 or increased Government expenditure. Those who want any- 
 thing fundamental, whether it is a new fleet or better schools, 
 will have to solve the financial problem. And they will soon 
 see that it is useless to go to the Government, and will begin 
 more and more to look over the head of the minister of finance 
 
124 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 and the Czar, to their financial masters abroad. Here also 
 they will get no more than they have already gotten, and all 
 the vigorous forces of the country, both revolutionary and 
 reactionary, may turn against the foreign creditor. Already 
 the revolutionaries have announced they will recognise no loan 
 not authorised by a people's Duma, and the reactionaries almost 
 as a man declare that Witte has turned over Russia to the 
 international Jews (e. g., financiers). The popular measure 
 would be the suspension of interest on the bonds or its payment 
 in paper money, rather of course than the cruder cancellation 
 of the debt. 
 
 In the meanwhile private capital is not accumulating to any 
 great extent in Russia, simply because the larger share of 
 profitable business has been monopolised by the Government. 
 According to Witte's figures, already quoted, the private income 
 of Russia cannot be more than two or three billion rubles. 
 But the Government industries and railroads themselves produce 
 a billion gross income and it takes another billion from the 
 people in the form of taxes. The Government besides borrows 
 several hundred million, which is several times as much as 
 private enterprises get from abroad. The Russian people, then, 
 already owes most of its income directly to the Government, 
 whether in the form of salaries, purchases, or contracts. The 
 way to make money , then, is not to go into business, but to stand 
 in with the officials or to be one. Naturally the accumulation 
 of capital under these conditions is slow. Without materially 
 diminishing poverty State capitalism has made all but impossible 
 the rapid accumulation of wealth. 
 
 Witte's conception of the omnipotent state went so far as to 
 consider it as the "dispenser of credit" and arbiter of industry. 
 He dilates upon the greatness of this power, but never once sug- 
 gests that it might be used to enable the peasant to support 
 himself and accumulate capital enough to modernise his agri- 
 culture. Witte simply delivered the economic policy of the 
 Government for a short time from the hands of the landlords 
 and gave it over to the foreign financiers. The Japanese war 
 loans strengthened the grip of the financiers, but the dismissal 
 of Witte, the reaction against all liberalism, and the third 
 Duma, seem again about to deliver it over to the landlords. 
 
AUTOCRACY'S LAST HOPE 125 
 
 Still more likely is a return under the leadership of Stolypine 
 and Gutchkov to the middle course followed during the reign 
 of the father of the present Czar, by which Russian landlords 
 and foreign capitalists inside and outside of Russia divide 
 among them all the rich profits of the benevolent despotism 
 that do not fall to the bureaucracy's lot. 
 
 Inertia, reaction, or merely formal reform, these are the 
 three courses open to the Government, but the greatest of these 
 is inertia. Inertia defeated completely the heroic measures 
 of Peter the Great to Prussianise his empire and reduced his 
 bureaus to parodies in later years. The impossibility of bringing 
 about any great economic reforms in a country presided over 
 by violence, and where neither freedom of contract nor equality 
 before the law nor inviolability either of property or labour 
 prevail, the contradiction of obtaining the funds for the carry- 
 ing out of such reforms by promising the aid of the Russian 
 army in case of war, or by guaranteeing the use of the same 
 arbitrary power to squeeze the money in some way out of the 
 people — all this is reducing to a still more tragic parody Witte's 
 efforts to modernise Russia by marrying the autocracy to the 
 money-power. The union has taken place and it has brought 
 its fruits. But it is like a union of royal houses. The people 
 were not consulted. But they are already surly and the strength 
 of sullen resistance knows no bounds. There are economic laws 
 even in Russia. Against these neither the Czarism nor capi- 
 talism is able to have its will. What these laws are I can say 
 only after I have spoken of the people, of the new Russia that 
 is in some degree independent of the Government, and of the 
 several efforts to bring the people to a consciousness of the 
 economic realities in which they live. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE peoples' enemies ARE THE CZAR's ALLIES 
 
 NEITHER reform by violence nor the State Socialism 
 (or State capitalism) has put any check on the campaign 
 of the reactionary classes against progress. The present ten- 
 dency of the Russian Government is the resultant of these three 
 forces — the strengthening and better organisation of the brute 
 power of the State, its absorption of private industry, and 
 measures against liberty of the individual in every sphere of 
 private and public life — the "coming slavery" that haunted 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 This tendency will be maintained until the Czar has been 
 forced to acknowledge, not that he has voluntarily granted some 
 reform while his power remains intact, but that the people have 
 compelled him to abdicate or to share his power. 
 
 The coming Government, like the present one, will be rich 
 and strong. It will not need to bother about the details of 
 the persecution of the individual. But it will still need the 
 support, against the ever rising tide of revolutionary feeling, 
 of certain classes that receive their income from privilege 
 rather than directly from the coffers of the State. It will have 
 to seek the aid of these through lending them the arbitrary 
 power of the State to crush their rivals on the principle shown 
 in an earlier chapter, or, as we shall now see, to crush their 
 employees. It will be done, not in disorder as now, but by law 
 as the moderate reactionaries suggest. 
 
 Western Europeans and Americans do not have the habit 
 of mind of thinking of social evolution as sometimes going 
 backward. There has been too much prosperity in the past 
 century in America, Great Britain, and France for these countries 
 to have a very defined idea of the reverse of progress. Never- 
 theless we all know that a nation can move backward, and 
 we must realise that it is on the whole reaction which is desired 
 
 126 
 
PEOPLES' ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 127 
 
 by a large part, if not the majority, of Russia's ruling classes — 
 not because they hate progress in the abstract but because they 
 hate it in Russia where it endangers their incomes, their priv- 
 ileges and their domination. 
 
 The changes will begin at the bottom, they will be tried 
 first in the schools. There must be no more trouble from the 
 unruly children of the rich and privileged who now absorb 
 ideals of progress and liberty and upset the universities. They 
 will be trained to worship the Emperor, to spend their youth 
 in dissipation, to ignore every serious interest and study except 
 that of their future official career, and to hate foreigners, peas- 
 ants, and working people, as do the youths of the Prussian 
 universities at the present time. 
 
 The monarchists' congress in Moscow (July, 1907) demanded 
 a "sound Russian national school." A model specimen has 
 indeed just been opened in St. Petersburg. We can picture 
 how it may carry the Prussian school idea beyond anything ever 
 approached on its native soil. In connection with the same 
 propaganda for the enforcement of sound national ideas the 
 congress insisted on the "effective" punishment of agitation 
 in the press, as if the censorship had not already gone beyond 
 anything known in modem times. 
 
 The reactionaries are clamouring for the same programme 
 they were in the past, based, first of all, on opposition to all 
 traces of democracy in the Government, and next on the "prior- 
 ity of the Russian race in Russia," with all the persecution 
 this implies. They are still insisting on the continuance of the 
 principles of Alexander III., followed by the present Czar 
 without exception for the first ten years of his reign, and restored 
 to the ftdl in the creation of the new landlords' Duma. Whether 
 the reaction has restored the landlords to power, or the 
 landlords have brought about the reaction, will never be 
 decided. No Russian could ever imagine either landlord power 
 or reaction as existing independent of the other. 
 
 At the monarchist congress preceding the one I have just 
 mentioned the president, the nobleman and landlord Shere- 
 batov, declared that d\iring the revolution the nobility had 
 either kept silent or in the persons of its leaders had joined 
 the enemy. Now the landlord class has awakened, expelled 
 
ia8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 from its assemblies most of these traitorous leaders, and its con- 
 gresses together with the League of Russian Men have directed 
 the policies of the Government. It was the landlords* 
 organisation and the league that demanded the dissolution of 
 the first Duma, and the coup d'etat that dissolved the second 
 and put the people's representatives in an insignificant minority 
 by an election law framed directly contrary to the Czar's so-called 
 unchangeable fundamental laws. 
 
 These monarchists congresses, then, have a great significance. 
 They indicate clearly the position of Russia's ruling class, 
 since both the league and the landlords are represented there. 
 The president's speech in 1906 was a beacon in the often incom- 
 prehensible obscurity of reaction. If the Duma should be 
 abolished altogether, says this courtier and landlord, let us hope 
 it will be replaced by an assembly of the old Russian character 
 composed exclusively of "the population that composes Russia's 
 roots." The Czar did not follow this advice in its entirety; 
 he preserved the name of Duma, and left a few representatives 
 to the Caucasians and Poles. But he certainly went more than 
 half way toward the goal. One more short step and it will 
 be reached. 
 
 "The principle of the sovereign prerogatives of the Russian 
 nation" must be expressed in several ways said Sherebatov. 
 First, all the responsible official positions are to be filled with 
 scions of pure Russian stock, and even at least half the clerks 
 must be of the dominant race. The congress of 1907 went 
 further and extended its protection not only to Russian clerks 
 but even to Russian servants. It decided its members were to 
 use every means to get positions among Christian families for 
 such servants as were employed by Jews. It is indeed wise for 
 the league to promise something to the servants, for it is among 
 the most ignorant of these that it obtains in the larger cities 
 most of its members. 
 
 The difficulty of the league and other organisations supported 
 by the landlords, is not to influence the Government, but to 
 get members. There are only about a hundred thousand noble 
 landlords. The Government officials, house-servants and small 
 shopkeepers do not form a tithe of the population. The 
 peasantry, conceded Sherebatov, was in commotion and. 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 129 
 
 "without noticing it," he claims, "followed the revolutionists." 
 It is hoped to win these back through the priesthood. The 
 resolution passed by this congress about the punishing of any 
 priests who make themselves offensive by their liberality in the 
 Duma, or in any way opposing the league's principles, is being 
 carried into effect. Every day priests who have assumed any 
 kind of popular leadership are immured in the monasteries, 
 those who spoke for the people in the Duma have been unfrocked, 
 and two-thirds of the present delegation in the Duma is composed 
 of reactionaries of the most violent character. 
 
 This extraordinary movement that professes to be so loyal 
 to the Czar is strangely opposed to the Government. It 
 savagely attacks officialdom for losing the Japanese war and 
 wants an account of the nation's expenditures. It is opposed 
 to the arbitrariness and corruption in the bureaucracy to the 
 point that it would destroy the bureaucracy's power. But not 
 by making ministers and officials responsible to the Duma. 
 Oh, no, this would be democratic. They are to be made more 
 responsible to — the Czar! To the Czar's thousand bureaus 
 and councils is to be added another, a supreme court, above 
 all the others and directly answerable to the "Most High." 
 To this court each of Russia's sixty million adult citizens is to 
 have access, and all will be well. Such is the political science 
 of the reactionary mind. 
 
 The political economy of our "Czarists" may be summed 
 up in a word. The State is all. I have spoken of the steps 
 toward the State monopoly of industry, transportation and 
 credit. The professional reactionist does not stop half-way; 
 he always goes further than the Government. The State, which 
 is all, surely need not burden itself with the necessity of keeping 
 hoarded up a supply of gold as the basis for money. Paper 
 money is not only a natural demand in a desperately impover- 
 ished and indebted country, it is the inevitable logical outcome 
 of all the thinking and all the principles, such as they are, that 
 imderlie the Czarism. 
 
 The Czars have never ruled alone. They have always had 
 the indispensable support of a powerful ruling caste. The 
 autocracy has merely been the device by which this oligarchy 
 has governed. While subjecting themselves absolutely to the 
 
I30 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 autocrat, the landlords have relied on the fact that it is from 
 their ranks that are naturally chosen courtiers, ministers, 
 generals and administrators. Landlords are the chief source 
 of the Czar's information, teach him in childhood, advise him 
 when he governs, execute his orders, and organise the demon- 
 strations of loyalty that give some appearance of popularity 
 to the system. In return the landlords have offered the Czar 
 a loyal and zealous support. Whatever causes they may have 
 had for complaint, no considerable part of the landlords have 
 for centuries been so foolish as to attempt to overthrow a system 
 that has worked so admirably in their interests. When the 
 Czars have been wise, they have done everything in their power 
 for the landlord class. When they have been weak, innumerable 
 wealthy or ambitious landlords have crowded to the court to 
 become the true governors of the land. But only rarely have 
 the landlords tried to moderate, and never have they tried to 
 abolish, the autocratic system. 
 
 So for a thousand years the people of Russia have been 
 living under a double slavery — abject economic subjection to 
 the landlords, and abject political subjection to the State. 
 But always while the people owed a double servitude, the 
 masters were really one. The Czar himself is the greatest land- 
 holder and the natural head of the class. The landlords owe 
 their property, their privileges, and their power to their influence 
 over the Czar. There were never those very serious conflicts 
 among the members of nobility, and between the nobility 
 and the chief ruler, that gave the people a chance to obtain a 
 share of the power in other European states. There were no 
 artificial boundaries to give rise to independent robber barons; 
 the constant threat of Tartar and Turkish invasion strengthened 
 the military power and maintained the absolute dominion of 
 the Czar, There were no great seaports or trading centres to 
 build up independent towns, no industries to create a buffer 
 middle-class. When occasionally the Czar's generals and 
 governors were chosen from among the people they at once 
 became landlords, since the land constituted the sole great 
 treasure of the State from which to draw their rewards. 
 
 For centuries the peasants have borne this double servitude 
 under changing forms. During these centuries serfdom was 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 131 
 
 instituted and then abolished, and finally a "constitution" 
 has been granted and elections held. But the Czar still remains 
 autocrat with absolute and unlimited powers, he still governs 
 in the interest of the landlord caste, draws most of the ministers 
 and nearly all the governors and generals from the landlords, 
 and relies almost entirely for his power on their enthusiastic 
 and eager support. In the new Duma it is in the main the 
 landlords, elected under the unequal election law not by the 
 people but by themselves, that vote for the measures of the 
 Czar. As for centuries, the Czarism and the landlord caste 
 stand united to maintain their rule. 
 /y In the present revolutionary crisis the landlords are no longer 
 / ' entirely united, but none favour the peasants' programme. 
 Practically all are loyal to the monarchy, and the overwhelming 
 majority are zealously fighting to preserve the autocratic 
 State. They are divided with few and insignificant exceptions 
 into three parties: the extreme reactionaries, the conservatives 
 or moderate reactionaries, and the moderate liberals. Perhaps 
 the most influential are still the extreme reactionaries who 
 demand a complete return to the old order: the peasants to be 
 held on the level of serfs, the towns and industries to be left in 
 the hands of an irresponsible bureaucracy limited only by the 
 influence of the court party, which is and must remain the only 
 possible source of control over the Governmental machine. 
 For in a country as enormous and complex as modem Russia, 
 government by an absolute monarch means government by 
 the court party. No ruler ever lived that could impress his 
 single will on such a State. 
 
 The reactionaries' programme may be summed up in the single 
 word — repression. Let Russia be bathed in blood if necessary 
 until the last spark of self-assertion among the people be 
 destroyed. Then let the Czar abolish the Duma forever, 
 revive the Orthodox Church, and renew the persecutions against 
 Russian dissenters, Polish Catholics, and Jews. Finally, let a 
 general economic reform be introduced of such a character that 
 none but those sentimental landlords who happen to have some 
 sentimental attachment to their estates could cavil at its terms — 
 a reform that in turning over part of the land to the peasants 
 would leave the landlords better off than before, and let the 
 
132 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 nation pay the bill. Let the Government subsidise the so- 
 called "Peasants* Bank" and let that bank gradually buy up 
 estates. In this way, former Minister of Agriculture Kutler 
 himself pointed out, the prices of estates stimulated by 
 Government bidding would constantly rise, and the landlords 
 would secure even more than the present rack-rent prices for 
 their lands. Kutler was so outraged at this proposition made 
 by Count Witte in 1906 that he resigned from the ministry and 
 became the chairman of the second Duma's commission on the 
 land question and is now the financial expert and leader of the 
 moderate opposition party. 
 
 This "reform" would cost Russia three or four billion rubles, 
 about as much as the Japanese war. I was actually approached 
 by one of the most notorious leaders of the court party last fall, 
 Count X., with an inquiry as to my opinion about the possibility 
 of his interesting American financiers in such a loan. The 
 count had heard that America was overflowing with money 
 to be had by foreign governments on good security at 3 
 and 4 per cent. Might not America lend Russia a billion 
 dollars or two on the security of her land? The count was of 
 the same group of reactionaries which proposed to mortgage 
 the Russian railways to some Morgan syndicate, and which 
 actually succeeded in putting a large part of the securities of 
 the " Peasants ' Bank" in English hands, with hopes of continuing 
 the process. 
 
 Until his "execution" by terrorists, the notorious Jew-baiter, 
 Count Ignatiev, was the leader of this party in the court. 
 Pobiedonostzev, head of the church, Trepov, military dictator 
 of St. Petersburg, and the other chief advisers of the Czar with 
 few exceptions belonged to it and were its principal support. 
 Some of the largest landlords in the country, such as Prince 
 Sheremetrieff, also a power in the court, have spoken openly 
 on all occasions since the October Manifesto in favour of a return 
 to pure Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalist persecution. 
 
 This party, which might be called the "old" landlords' 
 party, is "legal" — that is, allowed to hold public meetings 
 and demonstrations ; while all the large parties of the Duma, 
 even the moderate Constitutional Democrats, are still "illegal." 
 Yet the basis of its programme is violence, illegal governmental 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 133 
 
 violence, without the check even of military law, where govern- 
 mental violence is effective, and wherever it is not, the arming 
 of the dregs of the population against all the better classes. 
 It is this class that has hired to guard their estates large bands 
 of so-called Cossacks, often really only raw recruits raked even 
 from the refuse of prisons. One noble landlord told me that he 
 had instructed his ruffians, as soon as any peasant touched any 
 of his property, to bum the whole thatch-roofed village down. 
 This was in fact the official decision reached at the landlords' 
 congress as to the action to be taken in case of peasant attack. 
 
 But why does this landlord party give itself up to counter- 
 revolutionary violence rather than to its more profitable economic 
 reform, the purchase of its lands by the Government at a figure 
 beyond all criticism? The cause is this. First, the revolu- 
 tionary propaganda among the peasants has given them the 
 hope and the courage to demand for nothing the land that they 
 have already repeatedly purchased with their sweat and blood. 
 The peasants refuse to buy. In the meanwhile the revolutionary 
 movement forces some of the landlords to flee and sell their 
 estates. Second, the national credit is so low that the 
 Government could scarcely get the money to make the purchase. 
 After all the landlords, even the most violent, are business men. 
 If by fair or unfair means they can crush the revolution, the 
 field of exploitation will again be theirs. They do not have 
 at their disposal any huge corruption funds like our corporation 
 magnates. With all their millions of acres they are "land poor." 
 But they are almost in complete control of this great engine of 
 violence, the Russian Government, and by that means a large 
 part among them still hopes to achieve their ends. 
 
 But the new landlord party in the court would rather follow 
 the well-tried methods of the Prussian, Polish, Austrian, and 
 Hungarian proprietors. They do not hope to bring about a 
 return to old conditions. They do not want to abolish the 
 Duma, but to dissolve it and change the election law back to 
 the Prussian model, as was recently done in Saxony. They 
 knew the Duma was created not by the Czar or the revolution, 
 but by the foreign financiers, and that therefore it cannot be 
 entirely done away with. They wish, not more violence, but 
 the continued application of the present measures of repression 
 
134 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 which have imprisoned and exiled two hundred thousand or 
 three hundred thousand people during last year. They relied 
 at first on the "constitution," which allows the Czar's "council" 
 to counteract the Duma and in which event permits the Czar 
 to enact the laws alone. 
 
 With the enactment of an election law that left three-fourths 
 of the provinces entirely in the landlords' hands, and gave them 
 nearly all the rest in common with an electoral body composed 
 exclusively of the wealthy and privileged classes of the towns, 
 the proprietors were inspired with a new life. In the third 
 Duma the majority of the extreme reactionary group of more 
 than one hundred members, and of the moderate reactionary 
 group of 150 members, are landlords, while a third group that 
 takes a position between the two, the so-called simple rights, 
 is composed almost exclusively of landowners. Of these three 
 groups the moderates hold the balance of power, but only 
 when the democratic and popular parties, who are often so 
 disgusted with the Duma that they refuse to participate, happen 
 to decide to vote with their moderate against their extreme 
 enemies. Otherwise not the moderate, but the centre reaction- 
 aries, control. This also often happens when the less moderate 
 landlord members of the moderate group vote with their more 
 violently reactionary friends. In either case the almost ex- 
 clusively landlord party controls entirely the national assembly. 
 And in any case, even when the landlords don't control, they 
 entirely dominate the Duma. 
 
 The leader of this moderate reactionary party is the wealthy 
 Count Bobrinsky. It has already become almost the official 
 party of the landlords' congress. Perhaps to a greater extent 
 even than the still more extreme reactionaries it now has the 
 sympathy of the ministry and the Czar, and it is in close alliance 
 with the Octobrists who actually propose certain moderate 
 reforms. Both parties, however, are agreed that the landlords 
 are to suffer no loss in whatever transformation is to come. 
 
 The least influential and numerous party among the land- 
 lords has been touched with the liberal ideas of the middle 
 classes of the towns and feels that Russia can neither go back 
 nor stop at the present point of her political evolution. They 
 have joined in the movement of the Constitutional Democrats, 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 135 
 
 the Progressists or the "Peaceful Regenerators" in the belief 
 that the victory of liberalism and the gradual evolution of a 
 moderately democratic state, may stop the revolution and save 
 them from threatened financial ruin. Some have formed 
 the so-called "right wing" of the landlords' party; others 
 have formed the more conservative and independent 
 group of "Peaceful Regeneration." Such are the Princes 
 Dolgorukov, Trubetzkoi, and Lvov, Count Heyden, and former 
 Minister Kutler. Their policy seemed the wisest for the land- 
 lords and at first promised to become the most successful. 
 Their influence on the Constitutional Democrats has so far 
 moderated the latter 's position of revolutionary opposition to 
 the Government that this party has lost what Uttle popularity 
 it formerly enjoyed among the people. The party owed its 
 power in the second Duma almost entirely to a few hundred 
 thousand city electors, who, under the unjust election law 
 even of that Duma, controlled almost as many members as the 
 twenty million peasants. But the Constitutional Democrats 
 have increased their influence over the ministers and the foreign 
 financiers as fast as they have lost it with the people. The party 
 that in an early congress recognised the democratic republic as 
 the goal toward which Russia must evolve, later defended 
 the monarch in the Duma against all disloyal remarks. Its 
 leader, Hessen, has declared that his party was ready to com- 
 promise both on the great political issue, on equal suffrage and 
 on the great economic issue, the handing over of the land to 
 the people. 
 
 Before the meeting of the first Duma the peasant party 
 leader, Aladdin, reminded us that the Constitutional Democratic 
 Party, of whom a considerable majority were landlords, could 
 never understand or satisfy the peasants* demands. The 
 leaders at that time were Petrimkevitch, Roditchev and Nabo- 
 kov, all noblemen and landlords. These men were not members 
 of the avowedly conservative "right wing" of the party, but 
 of the centre. Public spirit certainly plays a prominent part 
 in their opinions. Nevertheless they are landlords, and so 
 little were the peasants, their tenants and labourers, satisfied 
 with their lukewarm advocacy of the peasants' cause in the first 
 Duma, that they decreased their number to a half in the second. 
 
136 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Many landlords joined this conservatively liberal party, 
 but the peasants turned against it the more bitterly as the 
 landlords joined. After centuries of oppression they have 
 little confidence in a party half composed of landlords and 
 fought at nearly every point by their own elected representa- 
 tives. A generation ago they had a great experience with a 
 reform amended and carried, if not originally executed, by 
 the landlord class. The generation they have lived out since 
 has proved one of the most bitter of history. 
 
 The peasants of that time were even opposed to their emanci- 
 pation without enough land to keep them from starvation. 
 Warned by the emancipation and pauperisation of the peasants 
 of Prussia, and of the German and Polish parts of Russia a few 
 years before, they feared an abject dependence on the landlords 
 for bread more than they hated their blows. The landlords, on 
 the other hand, came to look on the emancipation even with 
 favour before it was actually put into execution. They looked 
 forward to the institution of a new peasantry, free but not 
 provided with enough land for their food, as the source of a 
 cheaper and more reliable form of farm labourers than the 
 serfs. Besides this, they were lured by three immediate economic 
 rewards. The State agreed to force the peasants to pay both 
 for their liberation and for the miserable plots of land that the 
 landlords were forced to leave to them. In addition to these 
 immense sums in cash, the landlords took the woods and the 
 better half of the pastures, most of which had formerly been 
 used, though not owned, by the peasants. The opposition 
 offered by the landlords was merely a haggling for terms. When 
 the great measure was finally accomplished it more than ful- 
 filled the landlords' anticipations and the peasants' fears. No 
 sooner was it put into effect in 186 1, than a thousand peasant 
 revolts reached an importance that required the intervention 
 of military force. But it took a generation for this landlords' 
 reform to produce its maximtmi of peasant ruin. The famine 
 of 1906, following so many others, has brought the industry 
 and class on which all Russian society is reared, down to an 
 economic level scarcely higher than that they occupied a 
 century ago. 
 
 In order to collect the new dues required by the enormous 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 137 
 
 sums handed over to the landlords, the screws of servitude to 
 the autocratic State, which had never for a moment been relaxed, 
 were turned on harder than ever. The serfs' bodies were taken 
 from the hands of the landlords only to be ttimed over to 
 another more brutal master, the State. The State has always 
 been the worse of the two masters. In the generation that 
 preceded the emancipation Nicholas I. had forced a large part 
 of the peasants to a military slavery of twenty-five years dura- 
 tion and to the most inhuman "discipline." But what is less 
 known is that this same terrible discipline was applied to all 
 the miners of the land, to the post-office and all the lower 
 employees of the State. And what is still more important is 
 that a police system of an almost equally barbarous severity 
 was also applied to half of the peasants working on the land; 
 for to nearly half of the peasants the Czar was not only the 
 great arch tyrant, but their sole master. The State owned 
 literally not only the army which furnished servants and working- 
 men, the miners, the State employees, but also nearly one half 
 the agricultural serfs. 
 
 By the "emancipation" this State serfdom was simply 
 extended over all the land. The police were given a power 
 more despotic and scarcely less immediate than that formerly 
 the right of the serf-owners. New servitudes replaced the 
 old, and it was largely, if not entirely, on the landlords' accoimt 
 that their severity was increased. To make easier the collection 
 of the State taxes devoted for the greater part to paying indem- 
 nities and making loans to the landlords, and to prevent the 
 escape of the landlords' quarry of cheaper labour, the emanci- 
 pated peasant was again fixed to the land. He could not leave 
 his village without a special and rarely granted legal consent. 
 When the first rumblings of the present revolution were heard 
 this measure was abolished "as a law" only to give place to an 
 almost exactly similar regulation by the police. To make the 
 collection of taxes more sure the village was made responsible 
 as a whole for each delinquent tax-payer. The village was 
 then given the right to inflict corporal punishment or forced 
 labour on its delinquent members. With the alternative 
 hanging over their heads of the ruin and destruction of the 
 village by savage Cossacks, the villagers seldom hesitated 
 
I 
 
 138 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 to use their powers under the eyes and direction of the police. 
 But this is servitude. What more is there to serfdom than 
 corporal punishment, forced labour, and fixture to the soil? 
 
 When after two decades the State found it could beat no 
 more out of the pauperised and starving peasant, it imposed a 
 new and immense and crushing burden of indirect taxes that 
 he could not possibly escape. The plan worked so much better 
 than the other that these taxes, as already indicated, have 
 been increased from year to year until the wretched peasant is 
 forced to pay several prices for his plough, the petroleum for his 
 lamp, the shirt on his back and even for his poor luxuries, 
 sugar and tea. 
 
 Not only has the condition of the people long ago ceased 
 to improve, but agriculture has gone backward and the very soil 
 has deteriorated. The average peasant farmer is to-day 
 producing less per acre than he did at the time of the emanci- 
 pation forty years ago — and this at the very period in which 
 agriculture has made the most spectacular strides forward, and 
 the American farmer is getting almost twice as much from a 
 day's labour as before. Year after year the peasant's share of 
 land is growing smaller, his horses and cattle are degenerating 
 and decreasing in numbers from under-nourishment. The 
 horses are already only about half the weight of those of France. 
 They require less food, but even taking this into account three 
 of them still get scarcely what is necessary for two. Even 
 the men are habitually underfed — according to a Government 
 report to the extent of 17 per cent. Farm machinery and 
 even harness and the iron needed for waggons are almost 
 beyond the peasant's reach, and are often replaced by devices 
 of wood and rope. The harrows are of wood and the ploughs 
 penetrate only a few inches into the soil. So when a dry year 
 comes along the peasants obtain, as a recent investigation has 
 shown, only half the crop of neighbouring landlords who are 
 able to follow the methods of modem agriculture. 
 
 The frequent famines are worse in years of drought, but 
 the drought is only a secondary cause of the suffering. With 
 more means and modem methods the peasant would have twice 
 his present crop even in dry years, and in good years he would be 
 able to accumulate enough surplus capital to last him until 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 139 
 
 the next season, as do our farmers of the arid belt. As it is, 
 he is forced by every drought to sell his farm animals and even 
 his ploughs. It is at such times that the landlords contract for 
 the peasants' labour for the next season, in return for a little 
 bread, at a half or a third of the usual starvation wages. The 
 conditions after each famine increase the losses and sufferings 
 of the next, and every dry year brings a greater harvest of death. 
 The annual death rate is already forty per thousand, twice that 
 of any other civilised land. 
 
 The landlords do not profit from the peasants' starvation 
 alone. The permanent land-hunger of the peasantry has 
 reached such a point that the landlords are able to obtain, 
 for land no more productive than at the time of the emancipation, 
 four and five times as much rent as it then obtained. The lack 
 of land is so great that the peasants are employing on their own 
 land only one-fifth, and their horses only one-third, of their 
 possible working time. To ward off starvation the peasants 
 must either work for the landlord, or pay him a rent that gives 
 him as much profit as he could extort by direct exploitation of 
 pauper labour. 
 
 So the landlords have prospered while the peasants have 
 starved. Year after year they are sending out more and more 
 grain from the country, while the peasants and their farm animals 
 are more and more underfed. In 1906, the great famine year, 
 Russian landlords exported enough grain to feed all of Russia's 
 starving millions. In some famine years, as in 1905, the exports 
 were scarcely lowered at all. 
 
 The landlords have prospered not only because of the 
 conditions created at the time of the "emancipation," but also 
 by their steady influence over the Czars since that time. All 
 the laws favour the landlords. The labour contract with the 
 "free" peasants has been turned into a farce. The landlord, 
 or any of his family, have a right to fine their labourers at their 
 discretion not only for neglect of work but even for lack of 
 respect. But even with this the landlords were not satisfied. 
 Disagreeable and expensive quarrels with the peasants about 
 wages and rents continued to arise. So a new official was 
 instituted whose special business it is to settle all disputes 
 between landlords and peasants. This "land official" has 
 
I40 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 become more hateful to the peasants than were the worst of 
 their former landlord proprietors. He is responsible, not to 
 local authorities, but directly to St. Petersburg — and is inac- 
 cessible to any except influential persons. He is backed by the 
 full autocratic power of the Czar, prison, the knout, Siberia, and 
 Cossack invasion. Furthermore, the Czar's ukase requires that 
 he himself shall be a nobleman of rank, which is in most cases 
 tantamount to a landlord! 
 
 These new officials, surrounded and courted by landlords, 
 have made full use of their powers. Villages have revolted by 
 the hundreds, only to be beaten and shot into subjection by 
 the savage Cossacks, to have their houses burned and their 
 women outraged as in the days of Tamerlane. When terror- 
 stricken villages have answered the despots' orders with loyal 
 arguments about the true will of God and the Czar, it has 
 almost become the custom for these gentlemen to answer, 
 " I am your God and your Czar." 
 
 Landlord influence has governed Russia from the institution 
 of serfdom centuries ago, to the institution of the hundreds of 
 landlord sub-despots in the last decade, and to the institution of 
 the landlords* Duma of the present moment. The peasants are 
 not again likely to leave their destinies in the hands of any party 
 in which the landlords exert an important power. They showed 
 in all three elections that they are more than ever attached to 
 their own party and its programme. The immense price the 
 peasants have already paid in beatings, imprisonment, exile, 
 starvation and violent death; the hopes that have been newly 
 raised; the evident justice of their demands for a controlling 
 voice in the nation's parliament and for the early possession of 
 the land, though evidently, starving as they are, they cannot 
 pay for it and will not be able to for many years to come; and 
 above all the results that their revolutionary movement has 
 already brought to their cause — these things have decided all 
 the parties that represent them not to await anything even 
 from the most liberal part of their former masters, and not to 
 wait indefinitely for the installment of an indefinite portion of 
 their demands. 
 
 Even the Constitutional Democrats concede that fear of 
 revolution is still a leading motive with the Government, as 
 
PEOPLE'S ENEMIES ARE CZAR'S ALLIES 141 
 
 it was at the time of the emancipation. Soon after the peasant 
 disorders of 1902 and 1903 the Czar abolished corporal punish- 
 ment and the confinement of the peasantry to their native 
 village, as normal institutions of peasant life. After the 
 disorders of 1905 the Czar gave the peasants a large proportion 
 of the seats in the new Duma, remitted half of their direct 
 taxes to the State, shortened the term of service in the army, 
 and bettered the food of the soldiers and increased their pay. 
 After the disorders of 1906 the peasants were given part of the 
 crown lands, they were admitted for the first time to equality 
 with other citizens before the courts and the law, and they were 
 given for the first time the same rights as others over their own 
 land. During 1907 there were few disturbances and no great 
 reforms. 
 
 If we remember that this same movement of violent resistance 
 of the peasants has procured them more respect from the police, 
 has driven away some of the more obnoxious landlords, raised 
 wages and lowered rents, and if we observe that this movement 
 has become better organised, more sure and less bloody each 
 year, we may realise why the peasants are clenching their 
 teeth and holding up their heads as never before in a thousand 
 years. 
 
 The peasants are full of hope ; but even if the situation of the 
 Russian people is desperate, if it is hopeless for the present 
 generation, this is because of great historical causes over which 
 this noble nation has had no control. And the chief of these 
 is not the Czarism with its dependent army of Cossacks, officials, 
 and police, but the existence of a deep-rooted and time-honoured 
 governing caste, the owners of the white slaves of the last 
 generation, a caste whose interests are against those of the 
 nation and diametrically opposed to the regeneration the nation 
 demands. 
 
 The majority of the first Duma has just been on trial for 
 having provoked the disobedience of the people. The words 
 of one of the people's own representatives addressed to the 
 judges and the Government, is the judgment of the Russian 
 nation on the third Duma. 
 
 "We see in you," said Chersky, "in this the greatest 
 political trial of the century, the defenders of the interests 
 
^ 
 
 142 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of Stoly pine's one hundred and thirty thousand landlords, and 
 the enemies of the law and the people." 
 
 This, then, is the final alignment of the Russian nation — 
 
 (on the one side the Czar, the court, the Government officials, 
 the officers of the army, and the one hundred and thirty thousand 
 landlords;, on the other the one hundred million peasants, 
 ^the working people and nearly all the middle class. 
 s The power may long remain with the Government. Justice 
 ' is with the nation. 
 
PART THREE 
 
 Revolt 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE A MYSTERY 
 
 THE Czar and his ministers continue to assure the world 
 that the real Russian people, the hundred million peasants^ / 
 are, and always have been, contented, loyal and devoted^ 
 subjects. This has been the favourite slander in the long 
 campaign of defamation of its own people that constitutes 
 one of the worst crimes of the Government. We know some 
 of the infamies of Czarism, but there are many of which we are 
 entirely ignorant. Because of the rigid censorship in Russia 
 of all the news, the systematic bribery of many foreign news- 
 papers, and the favourable misrepresentation of officials on all 
 occasions, it has been impossible to get at reliable and general 
 information on the very subjects that are fundamental to all 
 others — the actual conditions of the villages where four-fifths 
 of the people live, the present development of the peasants, their 
 attitude to the Czar, the Church, the officials, the landlords 
 and the revolution. 
 
 With so little reliable knowledge we have been at the mercy 
 of the imscrupulous official statements. Before the peasants 
 had an opportunity to voice themselves in their national 
 parliament, these official statements had succeeded in implanting 
 in the consciousness and literature of foreign nations a vague 
 and indefinite, but none the less obnoxious, picture portraying the 
 peasants as a dull and indolent race, ignorant, hard-drinking, 
 fanatically religious and stupidly devoted to the Czar. Natu- 
 rally we have had small sympathy with a people we believed 
 to have so little manhood and so little love of freedom as 
 humbly to submit to the curse of Czarism. 
 
 In Russia itself the Czar's defenders have carried their attacks 
 on the peasants* character so far as to reduce them to absurdity. 
 As patriotic Russians they pretended, of course, that most of 
 \he shameful characteristics they attributed to the great mass 
 
 145 
 
 
146 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of their countrymen are after all virtues, and that the key to 
 the peasants' psychology, the greatest of all virtues, is — self- 
 renunciation. This is "the highest expression possible to the 
 human individual" since it makes of him the perfect subject 
 of those divine Russian institutions, the absolute Czarism and 
 the "changeless" Church. According to the professional 
 Russian patriots or Slavophils, whatever is Russian is right. 
 But the peasants of Russia are both poor and illiterate. Are 
 their poverty and lack of education also part of the "highest 
 expression possible to the human individual"? The late head 
 of the Holy Church could well give an authoritative answer, 
 since he was also the most venerated adviser of Alexander III. 
 and of the present Czar. That terrible old man Pobiedonostzev 
 opposed general education, newspapers, and everything else 
 that might develop the slightest spirit of freedom. He carried 
 his ideas to their logical conclusion and fearlessly announced 
 to a world that still refuses to believe its ears and does not yet 
 realise the full monstrosity of his doctrine, that "inertia is the 
 fulcrum of progress" and that "poverty, lowliness, deprivation, 
 and self-denial are the true lot of men." 
 
 Such are the ideas that have ruled and guided the present 
 Czar. 
 
 This "official character" of the peasants, as I have said, 
 has been so long and stoutly repeated as to have been accepted 
 and passed on by foreign writers on Russian conditions. The 
 three volume work of Leroy-Beaulieu is undoubtedly the most 
 important foreign study of "The Empire of the Czars." By 
 a scientific and historical method the author has covered every 
 phase of Russian life, from the geography of the country to its 
 latest political, economic, and cultural development. But he 
 has refused to place himself at the only standpoint that can 
 lead to a true understanding, that of the Russian people. He 
 has failed to distinguish between that part of Russian life that 
 emanates from the spirit and natural evolution of the Russian 
 people, and that other alien part that has been forced on it by 
 an alien Government which owes its origin and maintenance 
 either to foreign power and influence or to the stem military 
 necessity of defending the most exposed country of Europe 
 against the Turks and Tartars. 
 
THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE— A MYSTERY 147 
 
 This famous "scientific" but unsympathetic observer, attrib- 
 uting the barbarism of the Government to the whole nation, 
 has branded the Russian people with the same vulgar libels 
 that are current among those totally ignorant of the land. To 
 him Russia is still essentially mediaeval, the people mystical, 
 fatalistic, inert. " Modem as Russia is if we look to the external 
 side of her civilisation, to her army and bureaucracy," he says, 
 "she is mediaeval still in the manners and spirit of her people." 
 
 This brief sentence is yet such a conglomeration of truth, 
 untruth, and half-truth that I can scarcely correct it, and to 
 bring out all its inaccuracies I must offer a substitute. I am 
 certain that the author in penning such a perversion of the 
 reality was thinking of the only side of Russia with which his 
 book shows any deep acquaintance, namely its government. 
 The sentence should read "Modem as the Russian Government 
 is, if we look at the external side of her army and bureaucracy, 
 the governing caste is still mediaeval in its opinions and spirit." 
 Certainly the Russian army has a modem organisation and 
 armament, certainly the Russian prisons and police are among 
 the most highly developed in the world — this organized 
 violence is indeed the very raison d'etre of the autocratic form 
 of government. It is alone to a certain aptitude and success 
 in modernising the means of holding the people in subjection 
 that it owes its existence. But this is the end of the virtues 
 of the ruling caste. The whole history of Russia and of the 
 present revolution shows that it is the spirit and opinions 
 of the army of officers and Government officials that are reaction- 
 ary and even mediaeval. 
 
 Perhaps the most dangerous of all the criticisms of Russia 
 is that which attaches some fundamental deficiency to the race 
 itself. Leroy-Beaulieu, who is careful to make no direct attach? 
 on the Slavic peoples as such, nevertheless characterises thQ 
 peasant of to-day as inert and lacking in creative power. But* 
 what permanently oppressed and starving people ever showed 
 much sign of creative power? Are not the East Prussian 
 peasants of to-day, though infinitely less poverty-stricken, 
 both inert and reactionary, an accusation that can scarceVy 
 be made against the revolutionary and Socialistic Russian 
 peasants. Have not the Russian peasants adapted themselves 
 
148 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 quickly to every variety of modern life and industry that was 
 opened to them? Are not former peasants working success- 
 fully in many instances the most complicated agricultural 
 machinery, railway locomotives, the most delicate tools? In 
 fact half of the five or six million working people in Russia's 
 modem industries are former peasants. 
 
 Furthermore, Leroy-Beaulieu refers continually to ** mysti- 
 cism," "fatalism," and "passive endurance" as the chief 
 traits of the peasant's character. Yet may not such passive 
 qualities, as far as they really do exist, be simply the temporary 
 results of oppression? Mysticism may arise from the very 
 keenness of the desire for a rational explanation of life on the 
 part of those to whom knowledge is denied; fatalism may come 
 from the intensity of frustrated longing for a better regime; 
 passive endurance from the futility of resistance to a stronger 
 physical power. Leroy-Beaulieu himself acknowledged that 
 he had only spoken of negative qualities, for he found it impos- 
 sible at the time he wrote to give an estimate of the peasant's 
 "actual creative power." It is precisely this positive creative 
 power that we want to understand. 
 
 But this racial prejudice appears much more clearly in more 
 recent and less scientific books than the one to which I have 
 been referring, works which are nevertheless widely circulated 
 and have had on the whole an immense influence. An Ameri- 
 can book that appeared just before the Russian- Japanese War 
 is typical. The author, Senator Beveridge, is known to every- 
 body in America and his views are sure to have had their con- 
 verts. Among the most striking traits of the Slavic race he 
 finds fatalism, indolence, stolidity, inertia, slowness, lethargy, 
 conservatism, subservience, and lack of initiative. Passing 
 from the people to the general spirit of the nation the writer 
 finds the soul of Russia in the voice of Pobiedonostzev. But on 
 •this man's death the foreign press characterised him rightly 
 as the best-hated man in all Russia. 
 
 The voice of Pobiedonostzev and of the officers, officials, 
 landlords, bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, to whpm 
 this author expressly acknowledges his indebtedness for the 
 information he gathered during the few weeks of his stay in 
 European Russia, naturally supplied him with his view of 
 
THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE— A MYSTERY 149 
 
 the nation's ideals. The author found that his interlocutors, 
 whose identity he betrays when he speaks of the "ordinary 
 Russian," "business man, banker, or what-not," "appears to be 
 devoted to his Czar and Russian institutions," and that "the 
 Czar is beloved by the great body of his subjects with an adoring 
 affection not accorded to any other ruler." Finally he con- 
 cluded that the Slav thinks that autocratic Czarism and the 
 Orthodox Chtirch are the " foundation stones of civilisation." 
 Unfortunately, many persons still believe that the Russian 
 masses are devoted to their Czar and Church in spite of the 
 plentiful evidence to the contrary in the recent revolutionary 
 events. I shall deal with this fallacy in an early chapter. But 
 in the meanwhile I shall show the superficial character of the 
 broad assertions of this typical observer. The writer quotes 
 without criticism or contradiction the statement of a landlord 
 that the emancipation was granted by the "liberal" Czar "at 
 the expense of the Russian nobility." The truth is that the 
 chief cause of the present revolution is the crushing burden of 
 taxes laid on the peasants to enable the Government to pay 
 the nobility not only an ample, but often even an exorbitant, 
 price for their losses both of land and the uncompensated 
 service of the serfs. This same informant also told our writer 
 that the ignorant peasants had not not known how to use their 
 liberty and had even refused to use iron or steel ploughs. The 
 truth is that the peasants had used iron ploughs even under 
 serfdom, and as to the steel ones they do not employ them 
 at the present day simply because they cannot afford the price. 
 It is certainly not true that the peasant has ever refused to 
 use any important agricultural implement within his purchasing 
 power. Finally, this landlord informed our friend that the 
 peasants had soon forgotten the severities of serfdom and 
 remembered only "the comparatively trivial inconveniences" 
 of the present time. I shall deal with these comparatively 
 trivial inconveniences later. I can find no words for the ignor- 
 ance, carelessness, or indifference of a person writing on the 
 Russia of to-day for a necessarily ignorant audience, who 
 reprints this phrase with every sign of approval and without 
 giving anywhere a single fact or statement to counteract the 
 singularly false and misleading impression it creates. The 
 
ISO RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 present sufferings of the peasants may be less than those at the 
 time of serfdom, but. they are not trivial in comparison with 
 those of any period through which humanity has passed, and 
 to speak of them as inconveniences is a monstrous understate- 
 ment of the truth. 
 
 The reader of Senator Beveridge's book knows that this 
 writer's judgment has been condemned out of his own mouth. 
 Writing just before the war with Japan he predicted in his 
 book that there was no probability in international politics 
 greater than the permanency of the Russian occupation of 
 Manchuria. Writing after the outbreak of the great and bloody 
 labour disturbances of 1902 and 1903, which he even mentions, 
 he says that "there have been no considerable labour riots," 
 that labour is submissive and there is no labour question. The 
 year before the outbreak of the revolution he belittles what 
 disturbances had occurred and expected nothing of a very 
 serious character. 
 
 Another book is worth mentioning here as a sample of the 
 malicious statements that have been circulated over the world 
 as the truth. During the famine of 1906-7 Mr. Howard P. 
 Kennard, M. D., an English "humanitarian," was in Russia 
 to assist the Government and the landlords in relieving the 
 wholesale starvation and disease they themselves had brought 
 on. His book, "The Russian Peasant," he claims to be based 
 on his own personal observation; however, in his preface he 
 confesses himself indebted to such acknowledged friends of 
 Nicholas II. and enemies of the Russian people as the French- 
 man Leroy-Beaulieu, the Englishmen Sir Donald Mackenzie 
 Wallace, and the courtier Prince Nicholas Sherebatov, one of 
 the most hated men in all Russia. 
 
 Mr. Kennard unmistakably suggests that the peasants have 
 not progressed since the time of Ivan the Terrible. He describes 
 a national peasant festivity, which he claims is typical, as an 
 "unbridled bestial orgy." He finds that "natural laziness 
 and addiction to drink have brought the peasant to the pass 
 he is in to-day," says that the peasant's belly is his god, tljat 
 he does not wish to improve his condition, and that they do 
 not even wish "to learn to farm in any other way than that 
 which has been handed down to them by their forefathers." 
 
THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE — A MYSTERY 151 
 
 Mr. Kennard declares that the "Russian peasant, devoid of all 
 capabilities in the matter of reading and writing, has a mind 
 and imagination which are ripe for the reception of all trash 
 that Church, State, those desirous of influencing him for good 
 or evil, may pour into his poor besotted brain." Our savant 
 friend then proceeds to state "that the only subject he knows 
 about is the subject of devils," and that the peasant's first 
 thought every morning is "what will the Domovoi (household 
 demon) do to-day?" In brief, Mr. Kennard finds the peasant 
 "utterly unable to understand what is meant by education, 
 progress, or culture." 
 
 Finally he simis up the peasant in this manner: "The peasant 
 emerges from the ordeal to-day but the semblance of a man 
 — a thing with half a mind, a mortal without attributes; a mor- 
 bid being blessed with life alone, and cursed with ignorance 
 and imbecility until, in the twentieth century, his melancholy 
 has become innate." 
 
 All of these statements of Mr. Kennard are about as false 
 and vicious as any calumnies concerning a whole people, or 
 a large majority of any people, could well be. His book must 
 remain a classic example of the stream of poison and hatred 
 that pours into some hearts in the presence of the ugliness 
 of human misery. I have no hope of driving the writer who 
 penned such words to shame. But I do expect to show that, 
 badly educated as the peasants are, a very large portion of 
 them have more than a modicum of education and that they 
 are thirsting for more, that far from being devoted to devils 
 the peasants have a kind of natural instinct for independent 
 religious and ethical ideas; and I expect to show that nothing 
 but a readiness to accept prejudiced statements, or a natural 
 blindness to truth while in its very presence, or a deeply ingrained 
 hatred of mankind, could have led any person who has spent 
 several months among the Russian farmers to find in them 
 merely a creature ranking somewhere between man and beast. 
 
 I trust it is clear to the reader that the Russian people have 
 enemies in all directions, even among those who claim the most 
 loudly to be their friends; and I trust that he will read what 
 follows unswayed by the self-evident prejudices so widely 
 circulated by writers like those referred to above. This im- 
 
152 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 partiality is important, not alone because of the immense 
 interest attaching to the peasant, but also because he has so long 
 remained an unknown quantity, even to the most sympathetic 
 and unbiased minds. 
 
 The real character of the peasant has remained a mystery 
 until to-day. He constitutes the greatest unknown element 
 of the white race. He is just for this reason the most interest- 
 ing human problem of our time. If his nature is undeveloped 
 it is in the same proportion unfixed and unspoiled — in other 
 words, the nattire of the generic man. He will come to his 
 majority in the twentieth century more freed from tradition 
 than our own pioneers in the nineteenth. The Russian revolution, 
 bound sooner or later to end in his favour, will not only make 
 him master of half Europe and Asia, and revolutionise the 
 relations of the world powers; it will decide the fate of every 
 democratic movement on the continent, and give a new inspi- 
 ration to the international movement for economic quality. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 
 
 BUT at last the mystery surrounding the peasant, his low 
 reputation, are beginning to be dissolved. Since the 
 first and second Dumas, in which the peasants* feelings and 
 opinions, kept dumb for centuries, were for the first time publicly 
 voiced, we have begun to get a glimpse of the true character of 
 the peasants, of their true attitude toward the Government. 
 The people's own chosen representatives have pointed out that 
 the peasants are and always have been in a rebellious state, that 
 the history of the Russian peasantry has been that of an 
 unending series of revolts, and that the only reason a revolution yL 
 has not yet overturned the Government is the terrible brute- 
 power of the half-million semi-foreign Cossacks who guard the 
 Czar. It appears in contradiction to everything the Govern- 
 ment has claimed that the peasant is a democrat in everything 
 and a Socialist in regard to the land, that he is almost without 
 race prejudice, and that he is liberal and even independent in his 
 religious views. There can no longer be the slightest doubt of 
 these claims; the two elections are substantiated by tens of 
 thousands of village meetings, endorsing the action and attitude 
 of the people's representatives, and by thousands of cases in 
 which the peasants have gone to imprisonment and death for 
 supporting their political faith. 
 
 It seems that the spiritual, if not the physical, resistance of 
 the people has risen proportionately to the imreason, injustice, 
 and violence of the ruling caste. Instead of devotion to the 
 Czar, there reigns in the mind of the peasant a supreme 
 indifference to the spirit of his laws and an almost equal indif- 
 ference to the authority of his Church. In this the Russian 
 is removed at once from the subserviency of the German peasant 
 before his officials, and that of the Southern Italian before his 
 priests. 
 
 The story of the origin of the Russian Church gives the best 
 
 153 
 
154 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 symbol of its position to-day. Before their "conversion" to 
 Christianity, the ancient Slavs had a very simple and flexible 
 form of belief. They were not idolaters or worshippers of many 
 gods, they had no priests, and their cult was limited to that of 
 Svarog, the god of heaven and light, certainly a rather spiritual 
 deity who might well symbolise the universe and its Hfe. The 
 Emperor Vladimir, however, descendant of one of the Norse 
 conquerors of the land, was impressed with the glory of 
 Constantinople and the Greek Church, and proceeded quite in the 
 scientific spirit to send a commission to study it and the other 
 Christian churches. The commission returned overcome by the 
 beauty of the singing, temples, and service of the Greeks. They 
 declared that they found no gladness among the Bulgarians, and 
 no beauty in the temples of the Germans, but among the Greeks 
 they found such beauty that they knew not how to tell of it, 
 they no longer knew, they said, "whether they were in heaven or 
 on earth . " " It is there , " they reported , ' * that God dwells among 
 men, and their service surpasses that of any land." So 
 influenced by the beauty of the Greek Church's temples and 
 service, and in return for the hand of a princess of the Eastern 
 Empire, Vladimir was baptised, and gave up his promising 
 design of capturing Constantinople, which if accomplished 
 might well have transformed the history of Europe and the 
 world. No sooner was he Christianised than with the true 
 gesture of a Czar he ordered his people led to the rivers and 
 baptised. Thus was Russia converted to the Greek Church. 
 
 In the same spirit a law among the statutes to-day requires 
 every Russian citizen who does not belong to some other 
 "recognised" creed to attend at least once every year the 
 Orthodox service. Innumerable other enactments of the kind 
 have followed without interruption since the time of Vladimir's 
 baptism, and naturally have had no spiritual effect. To-day 
 it is the pleasure taken in the service and singing that attracts 
 the peasant; the priest does not as a rule enter seriously into 
 his life. The priest is nearly always paid in kind for each service 
 and so is economically dependent on the poorest peasants, who 
 often find they can make a bargain better in proportioii to 
 the amount of vodka they can persuade him to drink. The 
 priests also are forced to serve as the political agents of the 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 155 
 
 Government, and this the peasants do not fail to feel and resent. 
 For instance, the priests received full instructions as to what 
 they were to say and do during the elections for the Duma. 
 The outraged peasants replied by ceasing to go to church, by 
 refusing to do any labour for the priests, and even in some 
 cases by proposing through the village meetings to take away 
 their land. Subjected economically to the peasants, and 
 politically to the police, even the relatively small number of the 
 priests that possess the attributes to assume moral leadership 
 are usually without the power to do so. 
 
 In what, then, does the peasant's loudly proclaimed 
 Orthodoxy consist.? In the first place he has shown an uncon- 
 querable tendency not to be Orthodox at all, but to do his own 
 religious thinking. When two centuries and a half ago one of 
 the Czars appointed a commission to study again the original 
 forms of the Greek Church, which were supposed to have 
 degenerated, the new ceremonies that were enacted were met 
 by a variety of passive resistance as obstinate and successful 
 as the world has ever seen. The passive resisters, the "Old 
 Believers," were satisfied with the "Slavic" Church and the 
 forms of service they themselves had helped to develop. The 
 genius of the people, working through the Church, has developed 
 an original and truly beautiful music that is a real source of 
 inspirational delight. The people loved these forms as they 
 were, they considered they had a God-given right to them. So 
 they obstinately refused these Czar-imposed changes — refused 
 them though persecuted and tortured relentlessly. The Czars, 
 on the other hand, have realised that one freedom leads to 
 another, and have claimed with equal obstinacy until to-day 
 that God, having entrusted them with the absolute mastery 
 of the peasants* bodies, has also made them tyrants of their souls. 
 
 A large portion of the peasants still go to the Czar's church, 
 for in the sombre, isolated and often starving villages of the 
 forests and the steppes, the most beautiful or least ugly spot is 
 the church, and the most interesting occasion is its service. 
 But they do not obey the Czar's priests and they have developed 
 a morality of their own making. Another large part have not 
 been deterred by the most terrible persecution from creating 
 a religion also after their own ideas. The tendency to break 
 
iS6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 away altogether from the priests is general. A large part of 
 the "Old Believers," especially those who settled in outlying 
 districts where priests were difficult to obtain, decided finally 
 to do without them altogether. The idea spread all over the 
 country and of course led these "priestless" ones, as they are 
 called, to do their reUgious thinking for themselves. The 
 result is perhaps as large a body of sincere and rationalistic 
 religious thinkers as is to be found among the people of any land. 
 
 But the religious evolution did not stop here. It has 
 continued and grown with the increase of education and travel, 
 and with the new life and new occupations of the people in this 
 already half -modernised country. Along with a political 
 revolution as profound as the French, is going on a popular 
 religious reformation comparable only to the peasants* 
 movements of Luther's time. The peasants have created 
 systems of new religious belief on an entirely independent basis. 
 The subtlety, simplicity and dignity of these beliefs has charmed, 
 and even won, many of their observers. It is enough to 
 remember that Tolstoi has confessed his deep indebtedness to 
 both Molokani and Doukhobors. Though these numerous 
 sects are still in progress of growth and development, their 
 adherents are already numbered by the millions. 
 
 The Government, of course, is at present straining every 
 nerve to repress and conceal these schisms and to strengthen 
 in every possible way the Orthodox Church. Persecutions 
 relaxed for a year or more after the Czar's famous promises of 
 religious liberty, are every day being renewed. The warfare 
 between the people's genuine religious instinct and the hated 
 State Church is bound to go on undiminished. 
 
 The peasants have shown as much character in their attitude 
 toward the laws of the Czar as toward his Church. The 
 thousands of bloodily suppressed revolts, and the hundreds of 
 thousands of cases of rebellious peasants who have languished 
 away their lives in prison and exile, are only the lesser mani- 
 festation of the hatred for the Government. Where the people 
 have been literally beaten into submission by the Cossacks,, and 
 this has happened at one time or another in most of the villages, 
 there has arisen a spirit of passive resistance which has often 
 ended by a complete victory over the Czar. 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 157 
 
 The Czars have always been able to exact from the peasant 
 a terrible tribute of taxes and recruits. They have been able 
 to tie the peasants to their villages and to prevent their escape 
 from these exactions, but when they have attempted to interfere 
 with the villagers' internal affairs, the imperial will has been 
 shattered against the people's own ideas of right and wrong. 
 Especially when they have tried to upset the peoples' own laws 
 of property, it has been the autocrats who have had to 
 surrender. The peasants as a whole have not yet permitted 
 the Czars to subvert their laws of inheritance or their equitable 
 system of distributing the land. 
 
 The hundred thousand villages where the mass of the Russian 
 people live are in their internal affairs so many little immemorial 
 republics. At the present moment, as at the earliest dawn 
 of history, they are ruled by a pure spirit of democracy not 
 only in political but in economic affairs. A large part of the 
 peasant land is village property used by all the villagers in 
 common ; the rest is divided, and from time to time redistributed, 
 according to the ideas of equity of the whole village. An 
 estimate is made of each family's claims, either at the death 
 of its head, or at the time of a general census, and the family 
 is allotted a certain proportion of the village ploughed land. 
 But no person is ever allowed to claim a right to a particular 
 piece of soil, he has merely a right to a certain quantity. There 
 is no such thing as title and private ownership of the land itself, 
 since it is not a product of individual labour but a "gift of God." 
 A family is allowed possession of a definite piece of the land 
 long enough only to secure the family the fruits of its labour -^ 
 that is, for the three years' rotation of crops which prevails — 
 then triennial redistribution of land takes place. This is why 
 the peasant deputies in the Duma can say with perfect truth 
 that the peasants do not want the land to buy and sell, but 
 merely to plough. They want more land in order that they may 
 have more work. They have never in their own experience 
 known what rents or unearned profits from land ownership are. 
 
 The village community, since it controls the peasant's means 
 of livelihood, has an unlimited power over his existence. But 
 this power is as democratic as it is unlimited. All the peasants 
 live in the village, and are infinitely more intimately related 
 
iS8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 to one another than a country -people living on isolated farms. 
 They work together and are always under one another's eye. 
 The spirit is profoundly social, and has been made all the more 
 so by the village ownership of the land. The democracy is 
 therefore profound and rests on the feeling of full social and 
 economic equality, which is the only sure foundation of 
 democracy in any land. The village meetings concern themselves 
 principally with questions of the chief and only great business 
 of every member, the winning of the daily bread. And so the 
 equality of these tens of thousands of little communities has 
 gone deeper than any other equality we know, because it rests 
 on a social and not merely on a political democracy. 
 
 There is no conflict between this village government and its 
 citizens. The villages do not elect temporary masters to 
 rule over them, like many so-called democratic communities. 
 The starosta, or head of the village, is in very truth the servant 
 of the community, and remains its servant in spite of all the St. 
 Petersburg Government can do to make of him an authority of 
 the despotic order always so necessary to a Czarism. The 
 Czar has enacted that the starosta shall receive a good salary 
 and be immune from taxes and corporal punishment; the 
 Government has endowed him with enough insignia of office 
 to buy the souls of the nobility of some European countries. 
 But the village assembly considers him as its servant and gives 
 its orders at every meeting as to its secretary or clerk. 
 
 The real business of the village is concentrated in the assembly 
 itself, and there are few villagers that do not take an active 
 part. There is nothing more immediate or important in their 
 lives. Conducted on a scale sufficiently small to enable all the 
 elements of the vital questions under discussion to be under- 
 stood by everybody, the village meeting has come to form a 
 part and parcel of the peasant's existence. Public life is not a 
 thing apart as in some externally democratic countries where 
 private business overshadows' public affairs and politics are a 
 mask for private interests and the greed for office. "As soon 
 as public service ceases to be the principal business of the ^citi- 
 zens," said Rousseau, "the state is already near to ruin." 
 Of all modem communities the Russian villages are perhaps 
 farthest from this calamity. 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 159 
 
 In some cases there is already complete communism — that 
 is, both common ownership and common cultivation of the soil, 
 a system that allows the advantages not only of every modem 
 method of agriculture but of large scale production and the use 
 of machinery that no small farmer can afford. Peasant 
 companies (artels) often buy or rent a piece of land, work it 
 together, and share expenses and profits according to a pre- 
 arranged plan. In all the villages the peasants manage their 
 cattle in common, cut their hay in common, and in many cases 
 they own a common granary. A large part of the peasants, and 
 the most progressive and enlightened experts on Russian 
 agriculture as well, hope and believe that this cooperation in 
 production, a natural outgrowth of the prevalent social spirit, 
 will so develop as to make it possible that common property 
 in land will remain the basis of Russian agriculture and of 
 Russian society. The peasants* party in the Duma wishes 
 each province to be allowed to adopt communism if it desires. 
 This privilege would certainly be widely accepted and would 
 result in the abolition of private property in two-thirds of the 
 land. 
 
 The Czar's Government has looked with suspicion enough 
 at this village nucleus of democracy and Socialism. A gener- 
 ation ago Alexander II. was deliberating over the village 
 commune, or mir. The dangers to the Czarism of maintaining 
 such a democratic institution were obvious. But for several 
 generations the Czarism has been caught between two equal 
 dangers — one due to the education and development of the 
 people within the country, and another due to industrial 
 progress of the rival nations without. If the village commune 
 were to be dissolved to give place to private property, this 
 would do away with the immemorial village republics; but it 
 would also hasten the economic development of Russia by 
 creating two new classes, landless working people furnishing 
 cheap labour, and a rural middle class to furnish capital and 
 business enterprise. The development of capitalists and cheap 
 labour might in turn enable Russia to develop her industry, to 
 accumulate wealth and to build up an army and navy fit to 
 resist those of other modem lands. But such a development 
 seemed to many of the highest officials highly undesirable. 
 
j6o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Both working people and small capitalists are democratic 
 everywhere, and it was they that had brought about the 
 European revolution of 1848. So Alexander decided to keep 
 the mir. He preferred a democratic village to a free nation, 
 a pauperised people to a constitution. 
 
 But the same Czar also used all his power to maintain another 
 class, whose interests were in sharpest contrast to the peasants' 
 commune. He had made the landlords free their peasant 
 serfs, but he allowed them to take away part of the peasants' 
 land, while he forced these famishing agriculturists to take on 
 a new and crushing burden of taxes and payments of indemnity 
 for their own freedom. The result was that the peasants 
 starved more and more as the years went on, agriculture stag- 
 nated and even deteriorated, it became impossible to beat 
 more taxes out of the villagers, industry was without country 
 purchasers, and the State finances were hopeless. The finance 
 ministers, as we have seen, had introduced every manner 
 of taxation, had protected industry, established a gold currency, 
 built railways, and borrowed billions of rubles from abroad; 
 but the Counsel of State, during Count Witte's ministry, was 
 forced to confess the failure of all these measures to reach 
 their chief aim and to declare that the Government was "power- 
 less for the reorganisation of the life of the peasants and assist- 
 ing agricultural industry." Read for ** peasants" the "mass 
 of the people" and for "assisting agricultural industry" "pre- 
 serving from ruin the economic foundation of Russian society." 
 
 The Czars had no hope for their people. But the condition 
 could scarcely be worse, and they began almost automatically 
 to reverse their older policies. So finally the present Czar 
 decided to abandon the mir. If there were no chance to save the 
 mass of the people from starvation, perhaps he might aid a 
 few of the peasants to establish an agricultural middle class 
 on the ruin and pauperisation of the rest. 
 
 Minister Stolypine now proposes to give the last stroke to the 
 village commune — to allow every starving peasant the right 
 of selling his land, and to assign the communities' political 
 powers to other higher, newer, and less dangerous local authorities. 
 It is doubtful if the villages will surrender their political power, 
 more than doubtful if they will allow a few of their number 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER i6i 
 
 the right to buy up the land of the rest. For the popularity of 
 communal property has been growing, and the well-defined 
 Socialist and revolutionary politics of the peasant representa- 
 tives in the second Duma leave no further doubt of the Socialistic 
 principles Russia will some day apply to her land. The great 
 peasant institution, the Socialistic commune, will have furnished 
 the basis of the future Russian State. 
 
 The peasants, then, show every sign of creative power, in religion, 
 in politics, in economic institutions. They are independent and 
 positive in their individual thought and feeling, social and 
 democratic in public life. Have they also the practical qualities 
 that will bring the revolution to a successful conclusion? We 
 can be certain of at least two of the characteristics most essen- 
 tial to a rapid and sound development, open-mindedness to 
 modem ideas, and the spirit of imity among themselves. They 
 are open-minded with regard to national institutions because 
 Russia has had no national traditions except those imposed 
 by the violence of the Czar. The peasants have neither assisted 
 in the law-making nor, except under coercion, obeyed the law. 
 They are progressive also because conditions have united them 
 by a close material and spiritual bond with two other classes 
 that are as progressive, if not more so, than the corresponding 
 classes of any other country — the working people and the 
 professional element. 
 
 In Russia, as in no other land, the city working people and 
 the country people form a single whole. The city working- 
 men were drawn only lately from the country. Most of them 
 are in the habit of returning to the country from time to time; 
 many go back for every harvest, for often the city work, service, 
 driving, and so on, is less important to them than their interest 
 in the village property. Furthermore, this current from city 
 to country is increased by the tens of thousands of rebellious 
 workingmen the Government sends back to their villages. 
 All these workingmen have brought back with them the revo- 
 lutionary ideas of the towns. 
 
 The educated classes have succeeded in establishing the 
 most cordial and intimate relations with the people of both 
 cities and villages. It is as if the whole country were an end- 
 less series of social settlements in which the settlement residents 
 
i62 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 had not merely sacrificed a few luxuries and pleasures, but had 
 accepted the risk of imprisonment, exile, and execution. In 
 all the great popular organisations of the revolution, the intel- 
 ligentsia, or educated and professional classes, have played a 
 predominant r61e, have been gladly accepted by the people, 
 and have acted side by side with the people's leaders, who 
 often owed their education in turn to that same class. The 
 political parties are governed almost exclusively by these 
 tried and cultivated democrats. The still more typically popular 
 organisations, the Peasants* Union, the Railway Union, the 
 Councils of Labour Deputies, were also managed almost entirely 
 by men of imiversity training and by self-educated peasants 
 and workingmen. From the greatest professors and lawyers 
 of the land down to the village doctors and school teachers, 
 there has been one common movement toward the people — 
 a movement not only for union against despotism, but for 
 bringing to the people all the great ideas and aspirations of 
 civilisation. The culture of this educated class being in many 
 respects superior to that of other courftries — as for instance, 
 in knowledge of foreign languages, literature, and history, and 
 in the sincerity of their social theories — the people secured a 
 corresponding advantage. Through this movement some of 
 the greatest ideas and highest aspirations of humanity have 
 gained common circtdation among the masses. Many Russian 
 peasants and workingmen are now seriously and intelligently 
 interested in foreign history, literatur-e, economics, and politics. 
 The politics and economics of their own land are put into terse 
 and readable form by the "intellectuals," spread over the country 
 in a sea of leaflets and illegal or short-lived newspapers, and 
 literally devoured by the people of every village and workshop 
 in the empire. 
 
 Thus there has arisen a great unity among the masses, 
 including the educated and professional class. On the other 
 side and in favour of the Czarism, are only the landlords, offi- 
 cials and army officers and those who accept their pay. Neither 
 the bitterness and class hatred that characterised Germany, 
 nor the selfishness of the extreme individualism that was 
 created by early conditions and still characterises the United 
 States, have ever existed in Russia, to plant in the minds of 
 
CO 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 in 
 < 
 W 
 
 W 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 H 
 
 W 
 
 H C 
 
 W C 
 
 w 
 
 P4 rt 
 
A SOUTHERN TYPE OF PEASANT 
 From a painting by Rcpin 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 163 
 
 the people an ti- social or non- social instincts that may take 
 generations to eradicate. The origin of the Russian people, its 
 common struggle against those united powers of evil that call 
 themselves the Czarism, and above all the situation in which 
 it finds itself to-day, have joined together to create the strongest 
 social and the first Socialistic nation of history. 
 
 It is not only the psychology of the people, it is the present 
 situation itself, that has created this Socialistic sentiment. 
 For whatever the causes of the revolutionary crisis, the crisis 
 itself demands and requires a social solution. The situation 
 is in sharpest contrast to that which prevailed at the birth of 
 our nation. The United States of America were formed by 
 a democratic population whose problem was to people a vast 
 and uninhabited land. The United States of Russia will be 
 formed by a democratic nation whose problem will be to provide 
 a vast people with land. Our internal problem was purely 
 political, to protect individuals from the violent encroachments 
 of other individuals. Most economic and social problems were 
 left in the individual's hands, and out of the control of society. 
 The result has been the most developed individualism the world 
 has known. The Russian people, on the contrary, are confronted 
 with a problem that is at once social, economic, and political. 
 The poUtical problem is to do away, not with the violence of 
 individuals, but with that of the State. The economic problem 
 is the common need for all classes of the nation to lift to the level 
 of the times the methods of the national industry of agriculture 
 and the conditions of the whole agricultural class. As the 
 great mass of the farms and farmers are at present on the same 
 low level, this economic problem is not only common to all, 
 but one in the solution of which society as a whole can and will 
 certainly take an active part. The great social problem has to 
 do with the present and future division of the land. If the 
 Diuna were to allow unrestricted private property, free trade 
 in land under the present conditions, the penniless and needy 
 peasants would be at the mercy of such among them as had 
 a little capital at hand with which to buy the others' land. 
 The peasants are painfully conscious of this danger, and have 
 declared at innumerable village meetings that the right of 
 private property would mean the still further impoverishment. 
 
i64 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the absolute pauperisation, of the many for the benefit of a 
 new landlord class. Some are, therefore, in favour of the reten- 
 tion of the old form of property, the village commune, adapted 
 to new needs. All are for special laws restricting the rights 
 of the individual owner and possessor, and all are in favour of 
 the absolute subordination of private interests as the foundation 
 of the new law and the Nationalisation of the Land. 
 
 The social spirit goes to unimagined lengths. It has no 
 sombre exceptions for persons of foreign race. The same 
 feeling that holds individuals and classes together has bound 
 into one whole all the races of the enormous empire. Finns 
 and Tartars, with their separate religions, have lived for centu- 
 ries in friendly neighbourliness with the Russian peasants all 
 over the country. In certain sections, German and Jewish 
 colonies have been treated in a cordial and neighbourly manner 
 for a similar period. The White Russians and South Russians 
 have lived for generations in harmony with Letts, Lithuanians, 
 and Poles. The Siberian settlers have gotten along with 
 innumerable Asiatic tribes, as we failed to get along with our 
 Indians, and as the English failed to get along with their native 
 subjects. When the Czars have decided to undertake a special 
 persecution and robbery of some subject race — like the Jews 
 — they have not been able to get the least support from the 
 people on racial grounds, and have had to resort to the same 
 purely religious pretexts with which they persecute the purest 
 Russian sects. The few popular persecutions of the Jews on 
 Russian territory have been the work not of Russians, but of 
 Poles or of Roumanians, like Krushevan. This absence of 
 race feeling is perhaps the last and severest test of the pro- 
 fundity, the completeness, of the social spirit that binds together 
 this great-hearted people. 
 
 It is not merely a new race or a new nation that is coming into 
 being in the great territory that stretches half-way round 
 the world, from the Pacific to the Black and Baltic seas. The 
 new country, casting aside all governmental violence within 
 and invincible to external attack in its freedom and immensity, 
 will be held together only by the common social problem and 
 the common social idea. By its freedom and power it will be 
 constituted a great and almost decisive influence for peace 
 
THEIR TRUE CHARACTER 165 
 
 among the nations. An essentially new people on the stage 
 of the world, in possession of a boundless and almost undeveloped 
 land, unhampered by traditions, accustomed to economic 
 equality, and permeated with the social spirit, the Russians 
 are hkely soon to become the chief inspiration of the other 
 nations, a position recently lost after having been held for a 
 century by the United States. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 
 
 THOUGH Russia's hundred million agriculturists are free 
 from the self-imposed shackles of accepted tradition, 
 both of Church and of State, yet they are by no means free from 
 limitations forced upon them by their own meagre lives, by 
 exhausting and almost unremunerated labour, and by the 
 calamities through which they have had to pass. To see a 
 little way into the lives of these so little understood people — 
 to know concretely the daily work that makes them what they 
 are — to understand the present meaning of their recent history, 
 and even more to know just what they are thinking to-day 
 
 — to know how far they have advanced in their feeling about 
 coming social changes, how far they dare to pit themselves against 
 the Government, and what are the qualities by which they expect 
 to win and hold the power over the greatest empire in the world 
 
 — it is necessary not only to hear what sympathetic and edu- 
 cated Russians have to say, but it is also necessary to move 
 among the peasants themselves. So after having interviewed 
 in the towns numerous experts on Russian agriculture and the 
 condition of the peasantry, I went out among the villages armed 
 with introductions to doctors, school teachers, and other devoted 
 persons of education living there, and also to certain of the more 
 intelligent peasants who were able to put me in touch with the 
 rest. I visited half a himdred villages, scattered from the 
 northern forests of Kostroma to the southern steppes of Poltava, 
 from near the Asiatic frontier to the former Polish province 
 of Kiev, and talked with several hundred peasants of every 
 condition and every class. I made it a practice to verify all 
 statements made to me; I endeavoured always to avoid ^he 
 prejudices of a given moment or a given place; and I checked 
 by personal observations the statistics I had obtained in the 
 provincial capitals, and then in turn I had my observations 
 
 i66 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 167 
 
 criticised by the doctors, teachers, agricultural experts and 
 statisticians who are giving their lives to the betterment of 
 coimtry conditions. In this business I spent half of the summer 
 of 1906, while the revolutionary movement was still in swing, 
 and half of the summer of 1907, when the revolution had greatly 
 subsided and the peasants were hoping to overturn the Czarism 
 only after a desperate struggle that would perhaps not even 
 begin in its full intensity for several years. 
 
 A mention of some of the circumstances attending these 
 trips will afford an insight into the internal condition of Russia. 
 The Government is trying to quarantine the villages from all 
 contact with the world's intelligence by means just as strin- 
 gent as those taken to quarantine them from Asiatic cholera 
 or any pest. Very many of the city persons to whom I was 
 directed, although by no means active revolutionists, had just 
 been hurried off by the officials to be entombed in prisons or 
 exiled to the arctic deserts, merely because they had visited 
 some village, or happened to be acquainted with a few peasants. 
 Most of the courageous, progressive element had indeed dis- 
 appeared on my second circuit of the provincial towns. Those 
 that remained often did all they could to discourage me from 
 the very idea of visiting any Russian village. Indeed, it is so 
 difficult and rare for Russians to be allowed to travel about 
 among the peasants that on my return from the first journey in 
 1906 I was eagerly interviewed, even by some who have devoted 
 their whole lives to a study of the peasant question. Occasionally 
 it happened that I would have to spend several days in a pro- 
 vincial capital of some one himdred thousand people, with the 
 best introductions, before any one would dare to suggest the 
 name of some friend in the country to whom I might talk 
 without endangering his safety. In one province, after remain- 
 ing several days, I had finally to abandon entirely the idea 
 of visiting any of the several thousand villages it contained. 
 
 In this great quarantine, probably the lack of sufficient 
 railways and the almost total lack of good roads does more 
 automatically to keep the villages and towns separated from one- 
 another than all the Government can accomplish with its 
 oppression. Whenever I had to wait in a railway station I 
 foimd dozens, sometimes hundreds, of peasants lying about 
 
i68 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 on the hard floors waiting for trains, where often they had 
 waited for days. Sometimes the trains were late, but usually 
 the delay was because the Government did not take pains to 
 furnish sufficient cars for such very common passengers. This 
 is doubtless a matter of much less consequence to the peasant 
 than the fact that the cars he needs to transport his products 
 are not on hand, and the further fact that the railways are not 
 able to take the peasants* products to market but rather serve 
 the largest estates and industries or are used merely for strategic 
 military ends. 
 
 Away from the railways conditions are infinitely worse. 
 Of course there are no roads whatever in the sense of paved 
 roadways. Everywhere there is naturally some effort to 
 drain off the most serious mud holes and to bridge over other- 
 wise impassable streams, but even this work is so badly done 
 that the roads are often utterly impassable for many weeks, 
 while in many sections the bridges are in a passable condition 
 only in that part of the year when they are strictly necessary. 
 This condition is partly due not only to the poverty of the 
 peasant, who in the Province of Simbirsk spends only half a 
 cent a head per year on the repair of roads, but also partly to 
 the Government which allows the landlords to have an absolute 
 monopoly of the local government and even to pay no taxes 
 whatever for such purposes. It is unnecessary to attempt a 
 calculation of how many hundred million rubles such a state 
 of the roads costs this miserably poor country that can so ill 
 afford such waste. 
 
 In the great majority of the Russian provinces I did not 
 see any isolated farm-houses. The villages, where live the 
 peasants, are separated by many miles of forests or fields. 
 Usually the first objects that struck the eye before entering 
 a village were a large number of windmills. These are nearly 
 everywhere constructed on the same primitive pattern and 
 entirely of wood, apparently as they were a hundred years ago. 
 It seems that the milling of flour on an economic scale has 
 scarcely begun in most of the villages. It is also to be noted 
 that the windmills are owned and operated in common by 
 a group of several families, as is so often the case in Russian 
 country life. The same cooperative habit can be noticed 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 169 
 
 in the presence outside the villages of flocks and herds tended 
 by a single shepherd or cowherd, generally some small girl. 
 The average family has only a very few head of cattle, and 
 usually the herding is done in common. 
 
 The village consisted as a rule of a single street, a mile or 
 more long Here I was reminded at once of the ever-present 
 despotism that weighs like a nightmare on the land. Most 
 of the villages have the appearance of fortified camps, are 
 surrounded by palisades, and toward evening have a guard 
 standing at the gate. This is no mere figure of speech, for the 
 Government actually does consider the villagers to be prisoners 
 for the night. Here is an order issued by a "land-official" 
 in 1899 which became a popular model for such orders among 
 other such officials of his class: 
 
 Nobody shall leave the village at night at all, or in the day-time for 
 more than twenty-four hours without reporting to the selectman where 
 he is going and for what purpose. For any departure without permission 
 the guilty one shall be punished. Anyone who departs at night is to be 
 reported in the morning by the watchmen and sentinels to the selectman, 
 who is to inquire into the matter and punish disobedience, even if it be 
 proven that there was nothing suspicious or improper in the departure. 
 
 That this law is enforced more generally than ever to-day 
 there need be little doubt. Further, the Government has not 
 only guarded the villages, but in many cases has established 
 a night patrol across the country as well — as is done in a 
 conquered country. 
 
 There is a remarkable similarity among the houses in a 
 village. As a rule there are not more than two or three houses 
 in an entire village that differentiate themselves by some slight 
 change from the others — though of course in different parts 
 of the country the style and size of the cottage varies consider- 
 ably. There is usually no iron employed, and even wood 
 for doors is sparingly used. The single door is made so small 
 that a peasant above the average height is unable to enter 
 without bowing his head. Everywhere the people spend no 
 small part of their time in re-thatching the roofs and re-plastering 
 the cracks in their houses with mud. Extremely cheap and 
 amateur construction make necessary a great deal more repairs 
 than are required in other countries. Of course if the house 
 
I70 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 falls into a bad condition while the peasants are very busy, or 
 when they have lost a hand by death, they are forced to stand 
 the cold and moisture for a long period. 
 
 The cottage is generally fifteen by thirty feet, and half of it, 
 without windows and constructed more poorly than the rest, 
 is built for animals rather than for men. Indeed, every cottage 
 is also a stable. As we pass through the low door we come 
 into the animals' part of the house. Here we often stumble 
 over cattle, chickens, and pigs, and some of the more valuable 
 agricultural implements. It is impossible to describe this part 
 of the house, for there is really nothing here to describe. 
 Passing through the second door we come into the one room, 
 about fifteen feet square, that serves as kitchen, sleeping and 
 living room for the whole family of six to twelve persons — for 
 a "family," it must be remembered, consists not only of parents 
 and children, but also of the grandparents, and perhaps of a 
 non-relative or two, for all single unattached adults of a commu- 
 nity are divided up among the families. 
 
 The worked-out old people — they are the cause of one of 
 the greatest tragedies of peasant life. They are the paupers 
 of paupers. It is no easy situation for a family, the food- 
 producers of which are starving, to be compelled to share its 
 food with those who can contribute nothing. Sometimes the 
 peasants find themselves looking forward to the time when the 
 old people will be removed by a natural cause. Nor is this 
 the worst of the tragedies which come from the fearful poverty 
 and overcrowding in the cottages. It is unnecessary to picture 
 conditions that often arise when ten or fifteen people of both 
 sexes and all ages, sometimes not very nearly related, are piled 
 up on a single broad wooden shelf and the single earthen stove 
 that constitute the only cottage beds. 
 
 The only furniture in such a place is a table, benches around 
 the wall, and the large shelf that composes the sleeping place 
 of all the family, except the old people, for whom the top of 
 the stove is reserved. Both benches and beds remind one of 
 the jail furniture that in more prosperous countries is considered 
 a part of the punishment of the convicted criminal. 
 
 Almost everywhere windows are few and very small; they 
 are often broken, and often they are sealed so that it is 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 171 
 
 impossible to open them the year through. It must be remem- 
 bered that in mid-summer Russia has the same hot and dry 
 weather that prevails in America. The inability to open the 
 windows in the summer is a very great evil, but a far greater 
 one is the inability to replace during the long and terrible winter 
 the broken panes on account of the cost of glass. In consequence 
 many broken windows are boarded up a large part of the year. 
 As soon as the weather becomes a little chilly even such as 
 can be opened are immediately tightly closed until the return 
 of spring. Many superficial visitors are disgusted at such 
 an unhealthy habit; but this is not a matter of sanitary or 
 unsanitary habits — it is a matter of expense. Nothing is 
 more costly in many parts of the country than wood. To open 
 one of the little windows, even partly for a whole day or night, 
 would doubtless cost the peasant several kopecks for fuel. 
 Perhaps it would be better for the health of the family ^f he 
 would spend this little sum and eat a little less, already famishing 
 as he is. Let us remember, however, that a large part even of the 
 educated classes of Russia's neighbour, Germany, would unques- 
 tionably reach the same unsanitary solution wherever the 
 question lay between expense and fresh air. 
 
 Do not convict the peasant too hastily of uncleanliness. 
 There is no doubt that he lives in contaminating proximity with 
 his calves, chickens, and sometimes also with his pigs. The 
 reason for this is not far to seek. In the long and severe winters 
 the animals would often freeze if it were not that they got a 
 little of the heat of the living-room. Furthermore, it is true 
 the peasant does not often change his clothes. An answer to 
 this charge is, he has not the clothes to change. In addition 
 it can be said in his behalf that, as the public bath-house is an 
 institution of his country, there is much more cleanliness in 
 Russia than there was, for instance, in some parts of America 
 in the early days when no such institution existed. 
 
 Not only do the peasants not have enough inner garments 
 to permit cleanliness, but they do not have enough shoes and 
 overcoats to keep them warm. I was shocked when I saw 
 women passing along the roads in their short skirts on windy 
 winter days and noticed that they wore no woollen clothing of 
 any kind. It would seem to be possible for the peasant to have 
 
172 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 at least enough of these cotton garments for cleanliness and 
 warmth if the Government had not put such a high customs 
 tariff on cotton and cotton goods that the wretched consumers 
 are forced to pay several prices for all they buy. As it is, the 
 man has not enough shirts or the woman enough skirts even for 
 decency, not to speak of warmth. 
 
 / As for woollen garments, they are rare. Is it not incredible 
 that in this country, possessing more pasture land than any 
 other on earth, there should be insufficient wool for the 
 elementary needs of the population, and insufficient hides and 
 leather to enable the people to wear leather shoes? For in the 
 south, and in the north in the siunmer, the shoe is not of leather, 
 but is of woven bark such as is used by many a primitive race. 
 Even in winter one sees more boots of felt than of leather. But 
 worst of all, these wretched people are not able to afford warm 
 overcoats. It is by no means always that a peasant has a 
 good sheep-skin coat. If he does possess one, it is often held 
 together in tatters for many years \mtil it reaches a disgusting 
 degree of filth. Certainly a sheep- skin coat is the least 
 expensive garment imaginable to protect him from the winter, 
 but even that is all but beyond his attenuated means. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to speak of the dreadfully low quality 
 and poor variety of the peasant's food. He himself considers 
 that he is very fortunate when he has enough to eat, to say 
 
 ' nothing of quality or variety. The staple diet is black bread 
 and potato soup, with in siunmer green cucumbers or water- 
 melons. The staple drink is not tea as is commonly supposed; 
 on the other hand this is considered rather as a luxtuy. Their 
 chief drink is "kvas," which is brewed from sour bread. It is 
 not only tea which is looked upon as a luxury more than a 
 necessity, but often also sugar, cabbage, and even a sufficient 
 amount of salt. All these articles are to be seen in every 
 peasant's cottage, but they are very sparingly used. The tea 
 is diluted and adulterated until it is almost imfit to drink, the 
 salt is coarse and dirty from long keeping imtil it is repugnant 
 even to the eye. Of meat, even the coarsest cuts of pork are 
 not eaten daily, but are a luxury indeed. A large part of the 
 peasant families have meat only on the greatest holidays — that 
 is, four times a year. 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 173 
 
 But in the preceding paragraph I have spoken only of the 
 average. A teacher from one of the poorer districts, who knew 
 all the peasants of her village, assured me that there, even 
 when there is no famine, the ordinary peasant does not drink 
 tea, that there are no vegetables in common use except green 
 cucimibers, and that he who can put fat in his soup is considered 
 by the others to be a rich man. Instead of meat on the ordinary 
 holidays, they were able to purchase only a little dry fish. 
 And during the frequent famines the food is infinitely more 
 miserable; the flour, to increase the bulk of the bread, is mixed 
 with hay, straw, bark, and even earth. 
 
 One feels keenly just what life on this basis means when one 
 considers the life of the women. Of course, it is impossible for 
 any woman that must work like a man in the fields to give any 
 attention to cooking. Bread is baked once a week, and this 
 is about all the cooking; occasionally, with a great effort and 
 at a sacrifice of her already exhausted strength, a peasant woman 
 will be able to cook a little potato or cabbage soup in the evening. 
 Ordinarily she leaves a few pieces of bread at home for the chil- 
 dren, takes some more with her to the fields and returns only after 
 an absence of twelve to fifteen hours — for we must remember 
 that the Russian system forces the peasants to work at a great 
 distance from the villages. It happens not only occasionally, 
 but very commonly, that the women give birth to children 
 in the fields, that they are carried home only in the evening, 
 and that in three or four days they are back again at work, tak- 
 ing the child with them. The inevitable result is that nearly 
 every peasant woman of middle age is sick in some way or other. 
 
 Women who work and live and suffer like this are naturally 
 unable to see anything of life or even of the commonest condi- 
 tions immediately around them. One woman with whom I 
 spoke, who happened to be very intelligent, had never been on 
 a railway train in all the forty-five years of her life although 
 the station was only four or five miles away. Twelve years 
 before my visit she had been in a little town a few miles away, 
 but not since. Her case was not an extreme one. This woman, 
 as well as other educated persons in the neighbourhood, assured 
 me that in a village not very far away the women were unable 
 to feed their children after a few months, and that the children 
 
 I 
 
174 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 were then noiirished on bread previously chewed by the women 
 and put into little sacks. Of course, such children die wholesale ; 
 the greater part of Russia's fearful mortality figures apply to 
 children under one year of age. Also in the village referred to 
 even the grown-up men were under-sized. 
 
 I spoke of these fearful conditions to one of Witte's lieutenants 
 in St. Petersburg, and asked him what was the hope for the 
 Russian peasant. Of course no satisfactory answer was forth- 
 coming. But although he did not have a solution, he did have 
 a point of view, and this came out as the result of his telling 
 how it was very common among the peasants to wear a belt 
 and to tighten it frequently to allay the pangs of hunger. 
 "Why, imder the present perfectly hopeless circumstances," 
 he asked, "is this not a very practical device? Why may it not 
 pay both the peasant and Russia that he should just take in his 
 belt? The peasant is underfed, but there is not enough work 
 for him to do. Why should he be kept in full strength ? Is it 
 not fortunate for Russia that her peasants do not have the habit 
 of eating as much as they do elsewhere? For the most part 
 they manage to live and cost the coimtry comparatively little. 
 This is lucky for the peasant, as there is no possibility of 
 obtaining any more. Countries differ in respect to diet as in 
 respect to everything else. There are many savage races that, 
 forced by necessity, have accommodated themselves to the most 
 varied and meagre diet. It is only by this power of accommo- 
 dation that they manage to stirvive." 
 
 He was thoroughly aware of all the tragdies of the situation, 
 but he accepted them as if there was no ray of hope in any 
 direction. Like the minister of finance, he stated that Russia's 
 grain exports were momentarily rising, because the people were 
 too poor to be able to keep their food for themselves; he pointed 
 out that the exports of eggs and butter from Siberia deprived 
 the Sibeiian peasants themselves of these simple articles of diet. 
 But when he finally took an economic standpoint in which he 
 viewed the peasant entirely as he viewed a horse, the true 
 inwardness of his philosophy came to the light. While we were 
 speaking of the degeneration of the Russian horse and of the 
 fact that it was also imderfed, he insisted that it was not worth 
 while feeding such a horsey and used the same terms with which 
 
o 
 
 < ^ 
 
 < (^ 
 
 O o 
 
 « 2 
 
 w 5: 
 
o o 
 
 Px5 S« 
 
 £ J3 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 175 
 
 he had spoken of the peasant. For the most part the Russian 
 officials do not have any social philosophy, but this is the 
 morality of those who do. The Russian peasants, they confess, 
 are in a deplorable condition — so little advanced, indeed, 
 that it would not even pay for the State to make any sacrifice 
 on their behalf. 
 
 The terribly low productivity of the peasant's agriculture 
 and the small size of his income are of course at the bottom of 
 his suffering. He is receiving about one-third the income of 
 a poor German peasant, one-fourth that of a French. He is 
 producing only about one-half enough to properly feed himself 
 and animals. To discuss a remedy for this condition leads 
 at once to the whole social problem, the whole economic and 
 political situation of the country, a matter on which conclusions 
 can be reached only farther on; but in the meanwhlie it can be 
 pointed out how the situation is aggravated by the Government. 
 There are two very reliable estimates of the portion of the 
 peasant's income which goes into the treasury of the Government 
 in the form of direct taxation; one from the relatively poor 
 province of Saratov and the other from the relatively rich 
 province of Moscow. In the poor province, where the net 
 family income is only 114 rubles ($57), more than half goes ^ 
 in the form of taxes to the Government. In Moscow where 
 the income, the highest in Russia, is nearly four hundred 
 rubles, nearly one-fifth goes to taxation. Of the taxes the 
 most important are the indirect. 
 
 In proportion as the direct taxes have been slowly lowered, 
 the indirect have been rapidly elevated. It must not be 
 supposed, however, that direct land taxes absorb any small 
 part of the peasant's income. Direct taxes going to the Central 
 Government have been recently much decreased, but there 
 has been at the same time a very large increase in direct taxes 
 going to the province and the village. As the relation between 
 the local and Central Government is so intimate the latter takes 
 advantage of the new taxing power of the local government, 
 made possible by the retirement of the central authorities, to 
 throw off on the provinces many of its own burdens, and it may 
 soon be that the sum total of all direct taxes will also begin 
 again to increase. 
 
 < 
 
176 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 In the last twenty-five years some of the indirect tax-rates 
 have been raised almost every year. It is estimated that 
 between 1880 and 1902 the tax on tea increased threefold, that 
 on sugar, five, and that on cotton six; the increased duties on 
 copper and iron have corresponded. The American Bureau of 
 Statistics estimates that on account of the taxing system 
 Russians are forced to pay four times as much for petroleum as 
 they would otherwise. The result is not only that the people 
 are paying several times more for ordinary articles than they 
 should, but that they are absolutely unable to purchase very 
 large quantities of any of the articles so heavily taxed. Where 
 modern industries are arising, as in the cities, and the people 
 are slightly better off, they are consuming five times as much 
 sugar, ten times as much tea, eighteen times as much petroleum, 
 as in the country. 
 
 The robbing of the people through this system is effected not 
 only by the money taken by the State itself, but also through 
 the abnormal profits the very high customs tariff gives to the 
 Russian manufacturer. The latter is the chief beneficiary from 
 the several prices which are paid for cotton goods and for sugar. 
 But in other cases, tea and alcohol for instance, the profit of 
 the system is almost altogether the Government's. Four-fifths 
 of all that the peasants pay for alcohol goes into the coffers of the 
 Government and half of what he pays for tea. On tea and 
 cotton alone, the greater portion of both of which goes into 
 the hands of the masses, the Government raises over a hundred 
 million rubles. 
 
 If any considerable portion of all these sums, so vast for a 
 poor country like Russia, came back to the people, perhaps 
 there would be somewhat less reason for complaint. But if 
 we were to examine the expenditure of the Russian budget 
 (excluding expenditures for businesses Iikc alcohol and railways 
 which are privately operated in other countries) we would find 
 that over one-half of the total sum expended for purely govern- 
 mental ends, goes for the army and navy and the police, while 
 another fourth goes to pay the interest on the over-swollen 
 national debt. In reckoning the sum paid for interest by' the 
 Government as one-fourth of the total expended, I have not 
 included the interest on sums borrowed for railways, although 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 177 
 
 a very large part of this money also served for almost purely 
 military ends. 
 
 Considering the many millions of persons that have died 
 in Russia in the last decade from direct starvation or diseases 
 that are derived from it, the amount borrowed and spent on 
 such an absolutely prime national necessity as the relief of famine 
 has been trivial — a total of a few hundred million rubles in all 
 these years. We cannot at all grasp the conditions of the life 
 of the Russian peasantry without recalling the almost chronic 
 famines. We must remember that not only do famines occur 
 occasionally, but that in the larger part of the country they 
 occur with the greatest regularity every two or three years. 
 Of course I did not fail to enter into a famine district in order 
 to see with my own eyes what the conditions were. In the 
 district of Buzuluk, in the province of Samara, the crop had been 
 so small in 1906, and what little grain there was left was so 
 valuable, that the peasants pulled the stalks by hand, finding 
 it impossible to use their scythes. There was even no hay for 
 the horses, and in August they were already breaking down 
 with disease and the people were feeding the thatched roofs of 
 bams to the dying animals. In a small district seven hundred 
 cows had already been sold, which meant, of course, more 
 starvation for the coming year. Horses were selling at five and 
 ten rubles, and goats for as little as seventy-five kopecks. The 
 peasants had recently been forced to buy grain at a ruble and 
 a quarter, the grain they had sold a few weeks before for three- 
 quarters of a ruble. The children were already too weak to 
 study and had left the schools — the village meetings had 
 declared that they would soon die of hunger. Some parents, 
 finding they could not feed their children by staying at home, 
 had left them behind in the village, hoping they might be able 
 somewhere or other to earn them a little bread. 
 
 The Government was doing something to relieve the famine, 
 but the relief was ridiculously insufficient and outrageously 
 administered. The peasants were being given for the whole 
 season forty pounds of grain for each person in the village, 
 whereas at least two hundred pounds would be required. The 
 Government was feeding the people not with bread, but with a 
 weak soup made out of potatoes and bread. Not only was the 
 
i 
 
 178 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Government ration insufficient, but in many places the grain 
 sent for seeds was mixed with earth and manure, even to such an 
 extent that in one case the peasants of a certain village had 
 refused absolutely to accept it. In some districts the grain 
 sent for food was rotten and full of worms; in others the seed 
 needed for planting on the first of September had only been 
 half delivered when that time arrived. In still others, as was 
 brought out in the noted case of the stealing grain-contractor, 
 Lidval, and his friend, Assistant Minister Gurko, a large portion 
 of the sum assigned for this purpose was stolen outright. I 
 have called attention elsewhere to the fact that Lidval was let 
 out of jail on bail, and that it was impossible in the Government's 
 courts to place any criminal responsibility on the shoulders of 
 the former minister. 
 
 Let us recall that while the peasants are starving, the exports 
 of rye, even from the very district where the famine occurred, 
 continued, and that the total exports of the country in the famine 
 year of 1906 even rose, and that the encouragement of these 
 large exports is the basis of the whole financial policy of the 
 country. And let us remember, finally, that the new law which 
 allows the peasant for the first time to sell or mortgage his land, 
 will rob him during such famine periods of the only assurance 
 that remains to him of the slightest chance of extricating himself 
 from his hopeless situation. 
 
 In 1906, when the official reports showed that thirty million 
 people were on the verge of starvation, Russia's grain exports 
 actually reached a value of more than five hundred million rubles — 
 more than sufficient to have prevented the death by famine 
 diseases of several hundred thousand children, and to have kept 
 alive millions of dying horses and cattle on which the peasants' life 
 or death in the future depended. If the peasants had not been 
 pauperised by taxes, they would have bought this grain and never 
 have allowed it to leave the country . If the landlords had not been 
 subsidised for a generation, they would never have owned either 
 the grain or the land that produced it, and the famine would not 
 even have existed. For famine is a by-product of poverty. We 
 have the same droughts in America as they do in Russia, some- 
 times even the same crop failures; but we do not have 
 famines. Our farmers have too much money in the bank. 
 

 o a, 
 o 
 
 o "5 
 
 M to 
 
 W o 
 
 O 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS LIVE 179 
 
 And this new law is Stolypine's great reform. The over- 
 whehning majority of the people must continue to starve. 
 The State is not prepared to make any great financial sacrifice or 
 fundamental reorganisation of the Government in their behalf. 
 But at any cost it must have a few million farmers of the Ger- 
 man or American sort. So the State has decided to give over 
 the mass into the hands of the more thrifty and business-like 
 few, to sacrifice the ninety penniless families of the village 
 for the five or ten that have a little cash. The penniless peasants 
 are to be allowed for the first time to sell and mortgage their 
 little lots. The very first famine they will be sold into the 
 hands of their more usurious or thrifty neighbours. It will then 
 doubtless be possible for many of these latter to build up quite 
 modem little farms of fifty to a hundred acres with several of 
 the former peasants as labourers, forced to accept all wages 
 and conditions offered or to starve. 
 
 The Government proposes to reduce ninety million of Russia's 
 peasants to a still lower level of dependence and misery than 
 that on which they now live, in order, by handing over their 
 property to the rest, to build up the prosperity of the remaining 
 ten millions. This, in Governmental Russia, is what is called 
 "social reform." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW THE PEASANTS TILL THE SOIL 
 
 IT IS impossible for the peasants to extricate themselves 
 from their terrible predicament. Their farming is doomed 
 to pitiful failure from the outset. The youngest American far- 
 mer boy would die of irritation if he were set to work tmder 
 the antiquated conditions that prevail everywhere in Russia. 
 It is very difficult indeed to make the reader realise how far 
 behind in this respect the Russian peasants are; yet we must 
 not imagine them too backward. It was only a generation 
 or two ago when many parts of America and several European 
 countries were farmed in a similar manner; and in the United 
 States even to-day there are to be found localities in the out- 
 of-the-way mountains of the East where methods are not 
 much more improved. 
 
 In the conditions of labour we can see, as in no other part of 
 the lives of the Russian people, the extent to which they have 
 been debarred from civilisation, and why their condition is 
 hopeless without some revolutionary change. We have seen 
 that the peasant is underfed; Kornilov shows that the men 
 have 17 per cent., the horses 40 per cent., less food than they 
 require, even to maintain their full working power. But the 
 .peasants want work as much as they do bread; they are even 
 more underworked than they are underfed. A Government 
 commission investigating the cause of poverty in central Russia 
 found the men had enough work to employ only one-fifth, and 
 the horses enough to employ only one- third, of their working 
 power. 
 
 Here, then, were the great, incontestable truths underlying 
 the peasants' condition. Neither the farmers nor the iarm 
 animals have enough to keep them from physical degeneration. 
 Even if the peasant was sufficiently occupied to keep himself 
 from starving to death, there would still be no chance for him to 
 
 180 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL i8i 
 
 save money and to accumulate that capital absolutely necessary 
 for the regeneration of his agriculture; even if the men and 
 farm animals had enough to eat, the peasants would still be 
 idle three-fourth of their time and the horses one-half the time ; 
 there would be no money to buy better animals or better ploughs, 
 no means to increase the miserable yield of the crops and to 
 improve the lot of the miserable agriculturist. 
 
 We cannot account for these conditions by saying simply 
 that Russia has not entered into the pale of civilisation as 
 far as agriculture is concerned. Everywhere one passes great 
 estates of the nobility and merchants, or occasionally of the 
 very exceptional peasants who have become rich from usury 
 and the very sufferings of their fellow-countrymen. In nearly 
 every such estate modern agricultural methods are applied, 
 often in the most advanced manner. Everywhere peasants are 
 employed on these places, and after a little natural prejudice 
 at the beginning, they soon master the most complicated 
 machines. It is not, therefore, as if the people did not know 
 what scientific methods are. We are facing in Russia not 
 the poverty of barbarism, but the poverty of civilisation, a clear 
 social product. 
 
 Anyone with a pencil and paper can verify in a few minutes 
 the reckoning of the great geographist, Elisee Reclus, that 
 Russia, cultivated like Great Britain, should sustain the popu- 
 lation of five hundred million souls. Cultivated like the United 
 States even, it should keep in prosperity half that number; 
 whereas at the present moment a large part of its one hundred 
 and forty million starves. Nor does the condition tend to 
 improve. Every year, while the population increases 2 or 3 
 per cent. , the agricultural production of the country increases only 
 about half as fast. While American farmers have learned to 
 get at least twice as much from an acre as they did half a 
 century ago, the Russian peasants are actually producing less 
 than they did at the time of the emancipation in 1861. 
 
 This is bankruptcy, ruin, and degeneration for the peasants' 
 agriculture. Of course the soil is being robbed and exhausted 
 and the farm animals are becoming weaker and smaller every 
 year. In the agricultural section, too, men die twice as rapidly 
 as in any other modem country. Every year half a million 
 
i82 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 human lives, more than those lost in the whole of the Japanese 
 war, are sacrificed to the demon poverty. 
 
 This is the social evil in Russia, this is the marsh and quick- 
 sand on which courtier-statesmen are building their gilded 
 and tawdry structure of mere police reform. Since Witte's 
 Council of State declared the Government helpless to aid the 
 peasantry, no minister has had the effrontery even to claim 
 that anything could be done to strike at the root of Russia's ills. 
 
 When I went to the villages I knew that I saw conditions 
 that have existed over half a century,- thg,t are not improving 
 themselves to-day, and that the Government has no hope to 
 improve materially **in this epoch," to use the words of Witte. 
 When I saw how the Russian Government leaves the farmer 
 to sow and reap, I saw at the same time into the very heart 
 of hearts of the Czarism's pretensions. Laying aside for the 
 moment the question of the right of any man to govern and 
 master another without that other's consent, forgetting that 
 the Russian peasant has a right to the full power over his own 
 life, if for no other reason than because nobody else has any 
 superior claim to exercise that power, let us see how the Czar has 
 employed his "God-given" pretension to act as "shepherd 
 to his flock,'* to employ again a favourite official phrase. 
 
 Before entering into the Russian villages themselves, even 
 from the train windows, two or three significant features of the 
 peasants* agriculture can be noted: first, that the fields are every- 
 where divided into very long and ridiculously narrow strips, often 
 stretching as far as the eye can reach and only a few paces wide ; 
 and, second, that every third field is lying fallow all the year 
 around. The strips result from the fact that all the land of the 
 village is the common property of the whole. In their crude 
 efforts to attain equality in the division of the land, and the 
 absence of any method of exactly estimating the value of the 
 different kinds of soil in the village's possession, each field is 
 divided among all the several hundred villagers in this manner. 
 Even where, as it happens sometimes in Western Russia, that 
 a single peasant is allowed to own several ** shares," the same 
 method of division is used. 
 
 This custom, one of the greatest evils in the present system, 
 and recognised as such both by the Government and the 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL 183 
 
 peasants, is to be attributed almost entirely to the oppressive 
 system of the Government. No sooner was there a measure of 
 liberty a year or so ago, than both peasants and educated persons 
 who worked in their behalf began to replace this awkward 
 triennial redistribution of the land by some kind of graduated 
 land tax, such as is already in practice in Australia. There is 
 no tendency on the part of the peasants to abandon their almost 
 instinctive insistence on the greatest possible economic equality, 
 but it is evident that a graduated tax is a far superior method 
 of reaching this end than the perpetual redistribution of the 
 land, especially in these utterly impractical narrow strips. 
 
 The other feature to be seen from the car window, the fallow 
 fields, indicate the still universal use in Russia of the ancient 
 "three field system." The peasantry have never been rich 
 enough to afford a rotation of crops, to be able to plant a field 
 in root crops and to wait for a good yield; neither have they 
 enough farm animals to be able properly to utilise these crops, 
 or to manure the fields. If they stick to the old wasteful system 
 it is not due to ignorance, but to the pressure of sheer economic 
 necessity. 
 
 The implements used by the peasants are almost incredibly 
 crude. The majority of the waggons I have examined were 
 made without the least scrap of iron, as was sometimes the case 
 among our pioneer farmers over a century ago. The plough 
 is for the most part of a type that has been in use for more than 
 a hundred years, while the so-called new plough, also in com- 
 mon use, is two or three generations behind the times. The 
 harrow, like the waggon, is made without a scrap of iron. Nor 
 is it iron alone that is too expensive for extensive use; it is very 
 rare that the peasant can afford anything but rope or thongs 
 of some wild fibre for the harness either of his carts or his 
 ploughing implements. 
 
 In this beautiful and immensely rich agricultural country, 
 with its long simny days in the summer, its plentiful snows in 
 the winter, and its very wonderful black soil, the vastest agricul- 
 tural plain in the world, all the work of cultivating the soil is car- 
 ried on in such a primitive and wasteful manner that far more 
 of its riches go to waste than are economically utilised. Every- 
 thing, of course, is done by hand. The seeds are cast out of a 
 
1 84 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 sack or apron, as they were a hundred years ago. Naturally, 
 the birds that are to be seen everywhere in inamense swarms, 
 get a large part. Then if there is too much rain, the seeds rot, 
 or if not enough, it is very common for the wind to heap them 
 up or to blow them away. The ploughing as a rule is about six 
 or eight inches into the soil. In the eastern half of Russia, in 
 the most fertile sections, droughts are very frequent. If a plough 
 was here used that turned up from twelve to eighteen inches, 
 to say nothing of the use of the modem dust blanket idea, there 
 would be very few famines at all in the land, but at the worst 
 only half crops. That this is no exaggeration is proven by the 
 results already achieved by some of the German colonists that 
 settled in the heart of Russia over a century ago. 
 
 In the summer of 1905, when there was almost a complete 
 crop failure on the lower Volga, where I happened to be, I 
 was able to secure some of the crop statistics of these German 
 colonists and their Russian neighbours in nine German and 
 eighteen Russian townships. These figures show that already 
 the Germans have learned to produce one-quarter or one-half 
 crop where the Russians get practically nothing. In the 
 majority of the Russian townships, the rye crops showed next 
 to nothing, while in the majority of the German there was 
 almost one-quarter of a normal crop. While a large part of 
 the Russian townships produced less than one-quarter of the 
 normal wheat crops, the majority of the German townships 
 were able to obtain from one-quarter to one-half of a normal 
 crop. Now of course these Germans are also poor and have 
 by no means introduced the most modern methods. Where 
 they obtained a fourth, there is little doubt that our Kansas 
 farmer could have obtained half a crop. 
 
 Of course the first cause of the peasants' agriculture is his 
 poverty, just as the first cause of his poverty is his bad agri- 
 culture. The average peasant family is enabled to obtain an 
 income altogether of only one htmdred to two hundred rubles 
 (fifty to one hundred dollars) ; the most friendly of the reformers 
 do not undertake to promise him that he will be able to bring 
 his income to higher than two hundred rubles within the 
 first few years. To show just what these figures mean, we 
 have many scientific investigations of the peasants* expendi- 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL 185 
 
 ture. Such an inquiry in the province of Veronege showed 
 that the peasants' total household expenditure, outside of 
 purchases of food for men and horses, was a little less than 
 one hundred rubles, that he invested for building thirty- 
 four, for clothes twenty-five, for farm animals twenty -four, 
 for implements about eight, and for furniture and vessels 
 six. If we convert these figures into dollars it is not necessary 
 to have any further explanation of the backwardness of the 
 peasants' agriculture. 
 
 I took pains frequently to learn what the peasant paid for 
 ploughs, harrows, and waggons — and these prices will indicate 
 the inefficiency of the implements. For the most modem plough 
 in use he was paying five rubles and every three years he had 
 to renew the ploughshare at the cost of about 1.80 rubles. These 
 ploughs were manufactured in the village with the exception 
 of certain bolts, screws, and simple pieces that the smiths 
 bought from the factory. I found that the peasants rarely paid 
 more than ten rubles for a waggon, and one waggon-maker assured 
 me a majority of those he made he sold for only five rubles 
 and that such a waggon was the result of one week of his labour. 
 The harrows with iron teeth, which are in rather common use, 
 are worth five or six rubles, but I saw more wooden ones which 
 were only worth a ruble or two. 
 
 I have traced the blame of these conditions first of all to the 
 poverty and general condition of the country; but the Govern- 
 ment, besides being responsible for this, has also a special blame. 
 The tariff of the customs duties on iron has been placed so high 
 that the peasants can scarcely afford to use even nails. As 
 a result Russia uses per head one-tenth as much iron as the 
 United States. The duty on the machinery the peasant requires 
 is correspondingly high, and there can be no question that a 
 large part of all his technical expenses are due directly to this 
 high tariff policy of the Government. 
 
 The condition in respect to the live stock is even more 
 illuminating than that of the implements. More than one- 
 fourth of the peasants* households are entirely without a horse, 
 another third has only one horse, while only slightly more than 
 a third have two or more. The condition is not getting better, 
 but worse. In the centre of the country, out of one hundred 
 
1 86 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 families, one every year joins the horseless class. Still more 
 striking is the fact that the average Russian horse weighs 
 little more than half of the better breeds of France. In 1870 
 there were nine head of cattle for each household. Every 
 ten years this number has fallen one ; in 1 900 the average number 
 was only a little over six head of cattle for each household. 
 Neither in cattle, sheep nor pigs are the Russian peasants one- 
 quarter as well provided as those of Germany. 
 
 To make still more clear the remarkable inferiority of the 
 agriculture of the Russian peasant, let us contrast the better 
 farmers among the Russian peasants with those of the leading 
 agricultural states of the American Northwest. The American 
 farmer in this section has about one hundred acres of 
 land, the Russian peasant about twenty. The value of the 
 land of the American farmer is about four times as great, so 
 we see already that the landed wealth of the American is twenty 
 times that of his Russian competitor — for we must not forget 
 that these two great grain-exporting countries and their farmers 
 are competitors in the world market. 
 
 The value of the live stock and implements is in about the 
 same proportion. We may reckon this in Russia to be about 
 twenty-five rubles for machinery and seventy-five for live 
 stock — that is altogether about one hundred rubles or fifty 
 dollars ; whereas the American farmer of the Northwest has more 
 than two hundred dollars in implements and machinery and 
 nearly eight hundred dollars in live stock. Witte estimated 
 the value of the Russian agriculture products of 1897 as one 
 and a half billion rubles; those of America were about eight 
 times as great. The area of the crops in the two countries was 
 about the same. This relative condition is not changing, for 
 whereas in the last decade our wheat crop increased 39 per 
 cent, that of Russia scarcely increased 9 per cent. 
 
 The contrast is even greater in regard to exports. In the 
 fifteen years preceding 1902 the wheat exports of America 
 nearly doubled, while those of Russia remained almost stationary. 
 But I have suggested in a former chapter that the whole economy 
 of the Russian nation, the maintenance of the gold standard, 
 the payment of the interest on foreign loans, all depend upon 
 a large grain export. The majority of the total exports of 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL 187 
 
 Russia is indeed grain; butter and eggs bring up the 
 proportion of agricultural products in exports to two-thirds of 
 the total, and the rest consists of the raw materials, like 
 wood and petroleum; manufactured products do not make 
 3 per cent, of the whole. If the agricultural exports, espec- 
 ially wheat, do not rise rapidly, then the whole financial 
 policy deliberately chosen by the Government has proved 
 itself a failure. 
 
 It would doubtless have been more wise on the part of the 
 Government to have discontinued entirely the policy of encour- 
 aging grain exports from a country where both men and farm 
 animals are starving for the need of grain. Only lately another 
 repetition of famine has forced the minister of finance not 
 only to reverse the former policy, but actually to discourage 
 the exports. Both from the extreme reactionary and the 
 extreme revolutionary party there was a strong cry for the 
 forbidding of exports from starving districts, but it was only 
 after her neighbour, Turkey, had taken this very essential means 
 of protecting its population from wholesale starvation that 
 Russia was forced to follow its example. Of course it is 
 recognised by all writers on economic questions that the forbid- 
 ding of exports must be only a temporary expedient, absolutely 
 necessary as it may be in times of famine and war. 
 
 But the real source of the degeneration of Russian agriculture 
 lies deeper than the exporting of the food of starving men 
 and beasts. At the time of the emancipation in i86i it was 
 already recognised that a peasant family, in order to support 
 itself, should possess at least twelve and a half dessiatines 
 (or thirty-three acres) of land. When serf-owners allowed 
 their peasants' land to fall below this amount, the Government 
 insisted that the peasants should be transported to some of the 
 newer sections, such as the Province of Samara. But in 1875 
 the average amoimt of land in the peasants' possession was 
 already only about nine dessiatines (twenty-four acres) for each 
 household; in 1900 it had fallen further to six and a half dessi- 
 atines (seventeen acres) — just about half enough, according 
 to the Government's own calculation, to keep a peasant family 
 alive. This does not quite represent the situation, for in some 
 places the decrease has been relatively slight, whereas in the 
 
i88 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 south and west the peasants have at the present time less than 
 a half of what they had at the time of the emancipation. 
 
 Only in the extreme south does the value of the average 
 peasant farm rise as high as five hundred rubles, whereas in the 
 leading agricultural districts in the centre and east it is between 
 three himdred and seventy- five and five hundred rubles, and in 
 the north and west under this sum. An American can get 
 an idea of these farms only by comparing them with the 
 miserable little holdings of our Southern Negroes. Even this 
 does not represent the low level of the Russian agriculturist; 
 the woods and meadows so necessary for the pasturing of cattle 
 and the forests that supply building material and fuel are 
 largely in the hands of the landlords. In the north where 
 the land is poor, and in the east where the so-called "beggar's 
 lots" exist, a large part of the revolts that have occurred in the 
 last two years have had for their immediate cause some quarrel 
 with the landlords over the woods and meadows. So far have 
 the proprietors gone in protecting such monopolised property 
 rights that they have even forbidden the gathering of berries 
 or mushrooms. 
 
 The "beggar's lots" are those of the peasants whose masters 
 at the time of the emancipation took advantage of the clause 
 of the law allowing them to give the peasants a diminutive piece 
 of land outright, rather than to sell them a larger piece. At 
 this time these "beggar's lots" consisted usually of less than 
 one dessiatine (two and three-quarter acres). Now, owing 
 to the increase of population and division of these properties, 
 the peasant owners are often possessed of no more than one 
 single acre. Such owners of "beggar's lots " are of course forced 
 to rent land from the landlord at his own terms if they remain 
 in the country. The proprietors assign for this purpose the 
 worst and least accessible of their lands, at rents which have 
 very often been proved statistically to amount to more than 
 the net product, and sometimes even to twice as much. Of 
 course such rents are not, and cannot be, collected. They mean 
 simply that the peasants are forced to do the landlords' work on 
 the "rented" land for the price often of nothing more than the 
 straw that is left over. As part of the rent of meadows the 
 landlords often insist on the transportation of their grain to the 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL 189 
 
 railways, usually at a considerable distance, and even on as 
 much as two-thirds of the hay crop besides. Little wonder 
 the helpless peasants revolt. 
 
 Meanwhile all these conditions are always getting worse. 
 The peasant's poverty and the exhaustion of the soil enable 
 him to get less from the land than he did a generation ago, 
 whereas land values and rents have risen more than threefold. 
 Far from being of any service whatever to the people in this 
 hopeless situation, the Government is an even more oppressive 
 financial burden than the landlords themselves. Professor 
 Janson has shown that for many years continually (in fact, until 
 two years ago) the Government taxes were often equal to the 
 peasant's income from the land, and sometimes even twice as 
 much. Again, it goes without saying, as in the case of the 
 high rents just mentioned, that such taxes were not collected. 
 But these excessive burdens meant that the tax-collecting 
 officials were present at the time of the harvest and took every 
 scrap of the peasant's property that was not necessary to prevent 
 his immediate starvation. As we shall see later, the Government 
 actually intended that this tax should make the former serf 
 of a private individual the serf of the State. The taxes were so 
 high that they took from the peasants not only all that the land 
 could produce, but also a very large part of all that he could 
 make by his labour elsewhere. 
 
 Professor Simkhovitch quotes figures from the province of 
 Novgorod showing that the food deficit to be made up by labour 
 of the peasants in the cities or on the estates of the landlords 
 amounted to three million rubles, taxes to a similar sum, and 
 that all that remained to the peasants of this province, after 
 all their labour for themselves and for other persons, was only 
 about twelve and a half rubles per household, from which 
 infinitesimal amount they had to purchase their clothing, part 
 of their food, and their agricultural irriplements. The same 
 writer quotes the opinion of Professor Janson to the effect that 
 the peasantry was economically better off even during serfdom 
 than at the present time. 
 
 The result of this extreme poverty is of course to drive a 
 very large part of the peasantry into the position of mere 
 agricultural labourers. Of these there are now in Russia many 
 
19© RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 millions. What it means to be a farm worker in Russia one 
 can very readily grasp from the wages they receive. One 
 of the most scientific and complete studies on the subject has 
 been produced by the local government board of Poltava. 
 The wages of this class of labour from 1890 to 1900 varied from 
 twenty-two to forty kopecks a day, with the exception of a 
 single year. The average was thirty-three kopecks (seventeen 
 cents). The monthly wages were on the average $3.06, and the 
 yearly wages $29.46. The wages in the United States, except 
 in the South, were in 1900 about seventeen dollars per month, or 
 nearly six times as much. 
 
 This by no means indicates the worst of the Russian wage 
 conditions in agricultural industry. We must take into 
 account the good and bad harvests and the varying wages of the 
 different seasons. During the harvest period wages have in 
 certain years risen almost to fifty cents a day, and in the worst 
 years they have fallen only about as low as twenty-five. But 
 we must take into account the long spring and winter seasons 
 when the wages have varied from nine to twelve and a half cents 
 per day. We can indicate the fundamental condition that 
 underlies such starvation wages by remembering that the product 
 for a farm worker in the United States has risen in the last 
 decade by nearly half, while that of the Russian worker has 
 fallen to a little more than half what it was. Russia's hundred 
 million people employed in agriculture are producing crops that, 
 at the most liberal estimate, have only a fifth of the value of 
 those produced by less than fifty million people in the United 
 States. With the aid of oiu* railroads, education, and farm 
 machinery, a single American farmer is producing crops as 
 valuable as those produced by ten Russian peasants, while 
 he is actually receiving as much as fifteen or twenty. 
 
 There is a glaring inequality in the distribution of such 
 wealth as Russia does manage to produce. The Government 
 and the landlords take nearly half of the peasants' product; 
 and, furthermore, in order to retain their large share of the 
 spoils, the Government and the landlords will not allow the 
 peasants enough income even to develop their agriculture. 
 With a free government, as in America, and the land in the 
 possession of the rural workers themselves, Russia would now 
 
3 -^ 
 
 Is 
 
 w •-* 
 
 > M 
 
 W o 
 
 o -5 
 
 o -c 
 
HOW THE PEASANTS TILL SOIL 191 
 
 be producing tenfold the agricultural wealth she does to-day. 
 And if the people had possessed liberty and the land a century 
 ago the social problem in Russia would not be other than it is 
 now in the United States. 
 
 But this opportunity has passed. The social evil has now 
 become deeper in Russia than in any other modem country, 
 the social problem has become greater, and the solution of 
 this problem will have to be correspondingly more revolutionary 
 and more profotmd. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FROM SLAVES OP THE LANDLORD TO SLAVES OF THE STATE 
 
 And as for the activity of landlords, nobody would even attempt to 
 justify it. — Tolstoi, "What Is to Be Done." 
 
 WHITE slavery has been the basis of the Russian State 
 for a thousand years. The so-called revolutionary 
 change that took place at the time of the emancipation of the 
 serfs in 1861 by Alexander II. was no more than a change of 
 the system of servitude. Before that time a part of the peasants 
 had been the slaves directly of the landlords and only indirectly 
 of the State. By the emancipation they became directly the 
 slaves of the State. The overwhelming majority of the Russian 
 people, of absolutely the same blood as the landlord nobility, in 
 this country where all are levelled before the Czar and a nobleman 
 may be created overnight, were not merely serfs but slaves 
 in the fullest sense of the term. For the so-called serfdom 
 that prevailed for two centuries before the emancipation was 
 nothing less than slavery. To be sure, the greater part of the 
 peasants tilling the soil had some sort of a guaranteed legal 
 relation to the land. But this was purely a matter of con- 
 venience. It was possible for the landlords and the Government 
 to transfer them at any time into the class of domestic slaves, 
 who were also called by the same name of serf. 
 
 After the fixing of the peasants to the soil over two centuries 
 ago, which was the beginning of the new slavery, serfdom, 
 there was a continuous contest between the Czar and the 
 landlords as to which should exercise the dominant r61e over 
 the slaves. Of course there was never any question that the 
 landlord noblemen also were the slaves of the Czar, and that 
 the serfs were therefore the slaves of slaves. But there were 
 always many matters of state which hung on the question as 
 to how far the Czar should interfere directly in the behaviour of 
 
 192 
 

 w ^ 
 
^^I^tv 
 
 fc_ J 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 •^e*"- , 
 
 '-4 
 
 L -^f^vl.- 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 »» 
 
 liaBM« 
 
 a *^ -/^ Jib' w ^ 
 
 
 a 
 
 |H^P^^1 
 
 
 .'■*■■ 
 
 3 
 
 _ 
 
 P^ ■ ^ -'"'^ .1: 
 
 wm 
 
 <J 
 
 '¥-^^ 
 
 1 
 
 ■ ■ji--j^,' ^ 
 
 'fe-^'i ... 
 
 
 ^-"L ' 
 
 p 
 
 r ^ - 
 
 
 
 r 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 193 
 
 the masters toward the slaves, and concerning the extent to which 
 he should exercise directly his power over them. 
 
 Both Catharine IL and Alexander L, over a century ago, saw 
 that the landlords were becoming such despotic masters that 
 they were starving their own slaves and depopulating the 
 country, to say nothing of other vices of the system which 
 threatened the State's very existence. Both monarchs saw 
 that the serfs must be ultimately "free" — that is, they under- 
 stood that the welfare of the country required a single form of 
 slavery instead of both Czarism and serfdom, two systems that 
 contradict each other at many points. For a long time serfdom, 
 or servitude to the landlords, was maintained. In spite of 
 the foresight of the more intelligent Czars, they valued the 
 support and aid furnished them by the landlords even more 
 than they did the health or even the existence of the common 
 man. When the emancipation was finally enacted it meant 
 only a partial accompUshment of the Czar's design of replacing 
 slavery to the individual by slavery to the State; for while 
 poUtically the landlord masters lost their old position, the 
 emancipation was accomplished in such a way, as I shall show, 
 as to make the peasantry economically more dependent than 
 ever on the landlord class. 
 
 The contest between two systems, an oligarchy of slave- 
 owning noblemen and a slave-holding bureaucratic absolutism 
 with all the power centred in the Czar, has been a burning one 
 from the outset. After the two hundred years of this contest 
 that have elapsed since the reign of Peter the Great, it is still 
 impossible to say whether the autocracy or the oUgarchy of 
 landlords has at last come out the stronger. We have just seen 
 the creation of a landlords' Duma. Under Peter the Great the 
 landlord nobility was absolutely crushed, and every individual 
 nobleman that arose into any prominence, whether Menchikov, 
 Biren, or Munich, was exiled, imprisoned, or executed. It 
 might appear from this that the power of the nobiUty was 
 increasing, but such is not the case. The victory fluctuates from 
 one to another in each succeeding reign, and after viewing the two 
 centuries as a whole we must rather conclude that all such conflict 
 is equally unprofitable for both sides, and that the autocracy 
 and nobility are absolutely necessary to one another's existence. 
 
194 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 A few years after the death of Peter the Great, in 1730, the 
 Empress Anne even signed a sort of constitution granting a 
 noblemen's government. There was to have been an assembly 
 of gentlemen, merchants, and the lesser nobility, a senate of the 
 higher nobility, and a supreme council of twelve which was 
 always to be consulted on questions of peace and war, taxation, 
 the appointment of officials and the condemnation of the 
 nobility or confiscation of their property, and even on the 
 alienation of the Crown domains, the marriages of the royal 
 princes and the fixing of the principles of succession. The 
 Empress was to have a fixed sum for her household and was to 
 command only the Palace Guards. Ten days after yielding to 
 the landlords Anne tore this instrument to pieces. It had proved 
 impossible to maintain any unity among the nobility and the 
 nobles saw then, as they had often seen before and since, that 
 the autocracy was a necessary method of maintaining their 
 domination in the country — sorry as they might be to have to 
 be forced to admit a despot above themselves. 
 
 All the palace revolutions, those of 1740 and 1741, of 1762 
 when Catharine II. got rid of her husband, of 1801 when 
 Alexander I. allowed his father to be assassinated, were revolu- 
 tions accomplished by the nobility for their own ends. At the 
 same time the nobles had been taught by experience, and their 
 purpose was merely the naming of a new autocrat. They 
 had learned that the Czarism is as necessary to themselves as 
 it is to the Czar. Catharine II., indeed, moved in an opposite 
 direction from Peter and Anne; although she did not limit her 
 own power directly she did the same thing indirectly by making 
 the landlords absolute masters over the peasantry. Under 
 her grandson, Alexander I, the severity used against the masses 
 was even greater than before, and the peasants' complaints were 
 not even tolerated. Alexander's chief favourite, Arakcheev, 
 led in the tortures until he was finally murdered by his own 
 slaves. 
 
 Alexander I., who reigned at the beginning of the last century, 
 was one of the Czars who felt inclined rather to reduce chattel 
 slavery in order to strengthen the servitude to the State; but, 
 unfortunately, he had enjoyed such a good education that he 
 also understood the absurdity of the State despotism. Hesi- 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 195 
 
 tating for a while between the reform of these two evils, he was 
 finally caught in the wave of reaction that spread over Europe 
 and accomplished neither. In the meanwhile his insight into 
 the impossibility of absolutism led him to maintain the power 
 of the landlord class. 
 
 One of the books that did the most to bring about the 
 emancipation was "The Annals of a Sportsman" by Turgeniev, 
 whom many think the greatest novelist the world has ever 
 produced. In order to give an idea of the condition in which 
 the fathers and grandfathers of the peasants were held, and of 
 the opinions in which the present officials and landlords have 
 been educated, I shall draw upon a few stories from this book, 
 which was recognised by all the contemporaries to be eminently 
 moderate and fair in its judgments. Though Turgeniev 
 pictures a number of typical landlords, I shall refer only to the 
 more humane ones. 
 
 As a sportsman Turgeniev 's attention was especially called 
 to proprietors who summoned peasants from their daily labour 
 to use them as huntsmen. This shows that the so-called 
 serfdom was nothing but slavery. It was slavery, as Turgeniev 
 mentioned, because the landlords had the right to judge the 
 peasants and to send them to exile or imprisonment for life in 
 the military battalions. The landlords drawn by Turgeniev 
 took advantage of their position to rob the peasants of land 
 which they were supposed to have a right to cultivate. Even 
 this right to work on a certain piece of land, the very basis of 
 serfdom and the only feature that separates it from mere slavery, 
 was all but ignored. In one case robbery had been accomp- 
 lished by ceaseless beatings, and the land in dispute was referred 
 to by the peasants in the neighbourhood as the "cudgelled 
 land." 
 
 Since serfdom was supposed to differ in some respects from 
 slavery, of course it was not supposed that the landlords had 
 a right to allow and forbid the peasants to marry, but this right 
 also they assumed. Turgeniev speaks of one cruel master who 
 forbade all his maids to marry and had cruelly punished any- 
 one who disobeyed ; he relates the story of a peasant lover who 
 was sent away for twenty-five years to the ruin of the whole 
 family which was supported by him alone; and he tells of an 
 
196 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 old-maid mistress who never allowed any of her serfs, male or 
 female, to marry. "God forbid," she sometimes said, "here 
 I am living single; what indulgence! what are they thinking of!" 
 
 The most cruel of the masters were under no illusions as to 
 whether the system in existence was serfdom or slavery. "When 
 a man's a master he is a master," explains one of them, who 
 had advised every manner of torture for his slaves, "and when 
 he is a peasant, he is a peasant." But what is the most inter- 
 esting for our purpose, is that when the slaves were most dis- 
 obedient and the masters most cruelly aroused, they spoke not 
 of a slaves' revolt, but of a "mutiny." In other words, the 
 most extreme form of servitude that these slave-owners could 
 imagine was military servitude, the most extreme form of 
 insubordination was military mutiny — that is, revolt not 
 against private ownership but against the State, which was 
 after all the more oppressive master at that time and has 
 remained so until the present day. 
 
 Turgeniev hesitated to present in a work intended for general 
 reading a full picture of the frightful degree which the oppression 
 at that time had reached. But we must understand this if we 
 are to understand the character of the present rulers of the 
 country. The cruelties that follow are all supported by docu- 
 mentary evidence. 
 
 The proprietors were allowed to make their own laws for 
 the most part as far as the peasants were concerned. One 
 such law read as follows: "For insulting a neighbouring pro- 
 prietor — to be whipped cruelly:" another, "if a serf omits 
 to fast at the proper time and for a period ordained by the 
 Church, he or she must fast for a week and receive five thousand 
 strokes unsparingly." The preceding are from the private 
 law-books. There is one from the public army regulations, 
 chapter 29, that requires that the court must examine carefully 
 in the case of a peasant's death why he died so easily and how 
 it was possible for him to die so easily. The public laws set the 
 example, and we must remember that half of the serfs were not 
 owned by private proprietors but by the Czar himself. Cath- 
 arine II. issued an order that the serfs were not to be permitted 
 to complain to their masters, and when some peasants begged 
 that they be killed or exiled forever rather than be left to the 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 197 
 
 mercies of their master, Count Alexis Lapuchin, Catharine ordered 
 •'half of them to be whipped publicly with rods in the market- 
 place and other squares in Moscow, and the other half to be 
 whipped in the villages in presence of the peasants; and then 
 sent them to hard labour in the Siberian mines."* 
 
 When cases against the peasants did come up for trial they 
 were judged of course by the landlords themselves. A certain 
 Redkin, marshal of the nobility in the Government of Riazan, 
 said frankly: "If I saw a gentleman who is my comrade kill 
 one of his serfs I would take an oath without any scruple that 
 I had seen nothing." This from the chief of the nobility of a 
 whole province. 
 
 The slavery of white men of the same blood as their masters 
 is even more demoralising than the slavery of another race 
 that the whites can imagine inferior to their own. This demoral- 
 isation in Russia knew no bounds. A certain nobleman had his 
 manager present to him on the day of his arrival at his estate 
 each year, a list of all the adult young women of the two villages 
 under the manager's authority. This gentleman then took 
 each one of these girls into his seignorial mansion as a servant, 
 and when the list was exhausted he went to another one of his 
 estates. The same story repeated itself year after year. This, 
 like the other cases I shall relate, is given by the best known and 
 most reliable of the Russian historians. One of these servant 
 women belonging to a proprietor named Karteev tried to escape. 
 He had her whipped and put a collar with iron points on it around 
 her neck. The unfortunate woman tried to drown herself 
 but did not succeed, and the proprietor captured her again. 
 He then had her foot chained to a post in the kitchen, and she 
 was kept this way for five years until finally she was unchained 
 in order to be allowed to work in the fields of the proprietor. 
 This case of chaining peasants up like dogs was repeated else- 
 where, although sometimes the chain was placed around the 
 peasant's neck. 
 
 One proprietor, Sau Kanov, killed a boy of twelve years for 
 having let a hare escape on a hunt. He felled the lad with a 
 stroke of his bayonet, and continued the attack by kicking 
 him in the stomach and chest. The boy died the same day. 
 
 ♦See Keimard, Chapter II. 
 
198 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The inquiry undertaken by gentlemen landlords discovered 
 nothing. The doctor did not find any traces on the body, 
 and the peasants kept a profound silence, terrorised by the prom- 
 ise of Sau Kanov to flay alive whoever should dare utter a single 
 word against him. But the inquiry was again taken up, and 
 this time the council of State brought out the truth. 
 
 It is impossible to imagine all the methods and instruments 
 of torture that were in use on various estates. In the govern- 
 ment of Saratov there is a document in the archives that de- 
 scribes some of them. From the list of hundreds the following 
 are interesting: beating with salted sticks and rubbing salt 
 into the wounds ; putting on collars of iron with nails inside ; 
 beating with rawhide whips; burning the hair of women 
 down to the skin; boiling in a caldron; roasting on red-hot 
 grills. In this same government a proprietor named Garasky 
 beat his steward so hard in the chest that the man died within 
 a week. Police agents coming to make a search in the village 
 found various instruments of torture in the proprietors' houses 
 — a collar, chains, handcuffs, a mask that was placed over 
 the head of the peasant and then locked in order to rob him 
 of the possibility of eating. This latter end, by the way, is 
 accomplished much better at the present time when the peasant 
 has only half as much land as he had before the emancipation, 
 and is more effectually placed at the disposition of his economic 
 masters without the proprietor being forced to take any direct 
 action. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these white slaves quietly 
 accepted their servitude. The tradition of the days when 
 they had had much greater freedom still lived on, and they 
 knew that they were the same flesh and blood as their masters; 
 but the means of revolt were narrowly limited and the first 
 reaction among the peasants was usually desperate. Suicides 
 were frequent, very many thousands taking place every year, 
 sometimes in the most spectacular manner. One coachman 
 belonging to a paralysed landlord drove the latter into a forest 
 and hung himself before his master's eyes to a bare tree, leaving 
 him alone and helpless until he was able to call others to take 
 him home — a Strang vengeance on the landlord by a servant 
 who for several decades had suffered unbearable tortures. 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 199 
 
 Of course it often happened that the peasants killed the 
 nobleman instead of themselves. Hardly a month passed 
 that some such attempt of murder did not succeed and reach 
 the ears of the public. How many murders were done, how 
 many attempted, without being disclosed, will never be known. 
 In the peasants' defence it must be recalled that the Czars 
 condemned to the most terrible punishment any peasant that 
 even had the audacity to complain against his proprietor. 
 
 Later I shall show how this slavery continues to-day imder a 
 new form. But first I shall touch upon the other form of 
 slavery that existed before the emancipation, that is, slavery 
 to the State. This served also as the historical foundation 
 of the present servitude. 
 
 Nicholas L was the monarch who developed this form of 
 slavery to its height. He was the son of a very stupid German 
 woman and was penetrated to the bottom of his soul with 
 monarchial and religious prejudices. Although his successor 
 was forced to introduce the Emancipation Act, Nicholas was 
 violently opposed to it, and developed the country in the 
 opposite direction. For while he did not believe that the 
 landlords should themselves exercise much power, he was in 
 favour of slavery as a general principle, and saw that it was 
 necessary to lend the landlords some of his autocratic power. 
 He did this against his will, for his favourite tyranny was of a 
 purely military character. 
 
 He himself confessed that he and his brother Michael had 
 received- a very poor education, that "even in the matter of 
 religion we had been taught only to make the sign of the cross 
 at certain moments, to go to Mass and to recite by heart a few 
 prayers without taking the slightest interest in what was going 
 on in our souls." The sciences were completely neglected, and 
 while the teacher was trying to instruct the children they were 
 drawing caricatures. All their education, all their play even, 
 had for its only end the development of a taste for military 
 exercise. This confession, written by Nicholas for his own 
 children, shows the way in which the characters and souls of 
 Czars are formed. 
 
 From this training Nicholas became, according to the historian 
 Childere, coarse, rude, haughty, and presumptuous. He 
 
200 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 showed his hatred on every occasion of all that was liberal, 
 and his love for Prussian military despotism. While on his 
 visit to England he did not wish even to see the Parliament or 
 to make the acquaintance of English statesmen; he passed all 
 his time with officers and generals. In Prussia he delighted 
 only in military parades and reviewing the army with his father- 
 in-law, the King of Prussia. Dressed in the uniform of a 
 Prussian regiment, he said to the soldiers, "Never forget, my 
 friends, that I am half your countryman and that like you I am 
 a member of the army of your King." Perhaps this was what 
 gave rise to the Russian couplet, popular at that time: 
 
 The Czar's a German Russian, 
 His uniform is Prussian. 
 
 It was this same military Emperor who tried to revive the 
 Holy Alliance in 1848, and to help all the kings of Europe to 
 put down the democratic movements of their subjects; and it 
 was this same haughty military despot that met his defeat at 
 the hands of the liberal French and English in the Crimean 
 War, and died probably of shame as the result. 
 
 It was a Czar of this soulless military type that brought 
 the State slavery to its highest point of development. So far 
 did he go that it was necessary first of all that he should prevent 
 all intellectual development among his subjects, since his 
 actions were such that no intelligent man could tolerate, them. 
 He forbade all discussions in the press on the subject of the 
 Government. He created not one office of censorship but a 
 dozen — the ecclesiastic, the military, the educational, the 
 judicial, the political, the ministers' and the secret. When a 
 distingtiished citizen asked to be allowed to start a review, the 
 Emperor replied curtly: "There is no need for it." The 
 minister of foreign affairs ordered that, in articles on any of the 
 foreign countries, the Russian press should not even print the 
 words " parliament," "constitution," or "elections," and 
 should not mention the demands, or even the needs, of the for- 
 eign working class. The minister of interior affairs ordered, in 
 his turn, that there shotdd be no description of the needs^or 
 calamities of the Russian people or of any contemporary event 
 that might excite the population, that no regret should be 
 expressed concerning the position of the peasant serfs, and 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 201 
 
 that there should be no description of the proprietors' abuses 
 of their authority. The minister of education ordered that 
 there should be no mention of the historic facts that there had 
 been struggles for freedom in Greece and Rome, and no mention 
 of the names of the heroes of those struggles. In an historical 
 work on Greek history the censor would not even permit to a 
 former minister to make use of the Greek word "Demos," 
 commanding that it be replaced by some other word. Recog- 
 nising how much Nicholas L had in common with Ivan the 
 Terrible, the deviltries of the latter were not allowed to be 
 mentioned in Russian histories. Let us remember that all 
 these measures belong to but a little more than a half century 
 ago, and that conditions are in many respects similar at the 
 present moment. 
 
 Nicholas, however, went a little farther than any other Czars 
 in his fight against intelligence. "His object," says a Russian 
 historian, "seemed to be to enslave the people intellectually 
 and to extinguish their souls." "Imagine," says another, 
 "an enormous and solid prison, a prison for forced labour 
 constructed purposely to contain all the peasants of Russia, 
 and around this prison sentinels with loaded guns, and you will 
 have an exact image of the whole policy of Nicholas I. as far 
 as the peasants are concerned." Of course a man who thus 
 treated the whole nation, considered the peasants to be not 
 only less than men but merely pieces of wood, objects even 
 rather than beasts. 
 
 Under Nicholas the State had ten million slaves directly 
 belonging to it. We are interested not only in its behaviour 
 toward this half of the peasantry, but also toward the enor- 
 mous standing army and the million of other slaves that were 
 employed directly or indirectly by the Government. Although 
 the State did not as a rule deal in human flesh commercially, 
 yet this practice also existed. The Crown paid 300 rubles a 
 head for every young man that it was allowed to send to colo- 
 nise Siberia, and it was very common for peasants to be sold to 
 take the place of other recruits under the ironical name always 
 of "volunteers." 
 
 I have already mentioned that the soldiers were slaves of 
 the lowest order for the twenty-five years of their service, that 
 
202 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 all the Government employees in the post-office and other 
 departments, as well as in the mines, were nothing less than 
 slaves, and that the State also permitted the manufacturers 
 to deal with their employees in an utterly arbitrary manner. 
 So we see that on the whole the State was a much more im- 
 portant master of serfs than all the landlords put together. 
 Against the State there was another desperate remedy besides 
 suicide and the killing of a few cruel masters. This remedy 
 was revolt, such as has been in practice for Russia during 
 centuries and is going on at the present moment all over the 
 Empire 
 
 In 1 841 four himdred persons organised a resistance to the 
 soldiers, and thirty-three were killed and one hundred and four- 
 teen wounded. Here was a little pitched battle of the same kind 
 as has occurred so frequently in recent years. In 1842, in the 
 government of Kasan, the authorities wanted to force the 
 peasants belonging to the Crown to plough the land in common. 
 Eight were killed, two hundred and thirty wounded and four 
 hundred and twenty taken before the military courts. Then, 
 year after year, until the emancipation in 1861, there were 
 twenty to forty revolts, more frequent of course on the small 
 and numerous estates of the proprietors, but of a far more 
 serious import on the large properties of the Government. 
 It was because he was frightened at these revolts, as Nicholas I. 
 confessed, that he began to consider the question of emancipa- 
 tion, though he finally decided against it. 
 
 The State Council discussions upon emancipation are 
 interesting as showing the intimate and interdependent relations 
 of the landlords and the Crown. Although Nicholas confessed 
 that the "present position cannot continue forever," he said 
 also, "I shall never decide for the emancipation." The reason 
 he thought conditions could not continue, he said frankly, was 
 the spirit of revolt among the peasants. A councillor of state, 
 seeing a little further ahead than Nicholas, proposed a plan of 
 emancipation by which the landlord-noblemen friends of the 
 Czar should not suffer. "In order that the peasants to Jbe 
 deprived of land shall not escape the labour of gentlemen," 
 he said, "when emancipated they should form a class of 
 obUgatory peasants who should not have the right to change 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 203 
 
 their place of residence without the permission of the author- 
 ities." This is exactly what was finally done, and it had the 
 desired result. For if the landlord owns the larger part of the 
 land and the peasants are not permitted to leave the village, 
 they have no choice but to work for him at his own terms or 
 to starve. The proprietor might lose a few slave house- 
 servants by the new system, but he would probably be better 
 served with labour on the land. Councillors still more 
 conservative feared that the Government would not be able 
 to gather taxes regularly, and insisted that the peasants should 
 have a certain amount of land, but should be forced to pay a 
 tax beyond their power to the landlords. This amendment 
 was also accepted, with the modification that the Government 
 instead of the landlords collected these taxes. As the proposer 
 of this amendment claimed would be the case, the peasants 
 were thus obliged to work all their lives for the proprietor, with 
 the advantage for the State and the public peace that the 
 amount contributed was determined once for all by the law. 
 
 The State was probably persuaded to undertake the 
 emancipation by three considerations: First, the necessity of 
 promoting the prosperity of the peasants in order to get a new 
 source of taxation for itself, so pressing after the disastrous 
 Crimean War; secondly, in order to make possible the change 
 from a small professional army to an army of the whole people, 
 in which of course patriotism as well as military terror must 
 be a part of the soldiers' discipline; and thirdly, in order to 
 prevent the proprietors from literally eating up the peasantry 
 and depopulating the country — for many of the landlords, 
 after squeezing the last penny out of the peasants, spent every- 
 thing on riotous living, invested nothing in agriculture, and 
 were either unable or unwilling even to keep their peasants 
 aHve in famine times. 
 
 Such was the benefit received by the State. I shall now 
 speak of the profit received by the proprietors. Let us recall, 
 however, that whatever profited the nobility profited the State 
 also. The Emperor Paul loved to repeat that the State had in 
 the one hundred thousand noblemen one hundred thousand 
 voluntary chiefs of police. The councillor of Nicholas J. whom 
 I have just quoted, the Minister of Public Instructions Ourvarov, 
 
204 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 said of serfdom, "This tree has taken a profound root; it shades 
 both the Church and the Throne." 
 
 Although it was decided that it was impossible to give the 
 peasants freedom without giving them land on which to live, 
 nevertheless a very large portion received either no land or 
 so little that it was impossible for them to keep themselves 
 alive without another occupation. Seven hundred thousand 
 domestics who before the emancipation were supposed to have 
 the same claim as other peasants to a share of the land, were 
 deprived definitely of all rights at this time ; one hundred and sixty 
 thousand other peasants were left landless without any excuse 
 being offered; six hundred thousand received the so-called "beg- 
 gar's lots. " The extent of these lots was only one-fourth of the 
 land the peasants had formerly tilled, the other three-fourths 
 being left for the first time in the absolute possession and 
 ownership of the landlords, unburdened by the duty of supporting 
 as formerly the peasants that had been legally attached to the 
 soil. Of the remaining four million households (the other four 
 and a half million were the previously mentioned serfs of the 
 State), one-half received allotments so small that according to 
 the law of the Government itself, they would have had the right 
 before the emancipation to be sent away to some new section of 
 the coimtry. 
 
 In all sections where the land was more valuable the 
 peasants fell into one or another of the above classes. In the 
 east and south, where the land was both rich and comparatively 
 new, having been under cultivation only a few decades, the 
 peasants lost from one-fifth to one-half, and even more, of all 
 their property. In the equally rich but older centre of the 
 country, they lost in every province, sometimes as much as 
 20 per cent. If we look at the total amount of land in 
 possession of the peasants and proprietors at this time, we 
 find that one hundred thousand landlords still were in posses- 
 sion of almost as much of the land as twenty million peasants. 
 
 The landlords gained, then, both by obtaining cheaper and 
 more reliable labour and by getting possession of large amounts 
 of land formerly in the peasants' hands. But this was not all. 
 Whatever power over the person of the peasants they had lost 
 was handed over to the police, who were also controlled either 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 205 
 
 directly by the local landlords or through St. Petersburg 
 bureaus that were on the friendliest terms with the land-owning 
 class. A typical law of these bureaus is that of the 1 2th of June, 
 i886,whichgivestheemployerthe right to make deductions from 
 wages of the peasant for whatever he considered to be negligent 
 work and even for rudeness. 
 
 The crushing burden of taxation laid upon the peasantry 
 by the State has also been of tremendous service to the land- 
 lords in keeping the peasants in an utterly dependent economic 
 condition. At the time of the emancipation the peasants who 
 received the pitifully small allotments mentioned were burdened 
 by the Czar with a debt of almost nine hundred million rubles, 
 one-half more than the total value of their land. Of course they 
 fell immediately into arrears — and at the present moment, 
 according to a statement made in the Duma, have already paid 
 more than one thousand five hundred million rubles. So 
 crushing were these taxes which the starving peasants were 
 forced to pay for freedom, that they often reached as much 
 as 50 percent, of their total net product, and in the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century even exceeded the peasants' income. 
 But during this same decade the amount of money loaned by 
 the Government to the nobility below the market rate of interest 
 increased from nine hundred million rubles in 1890 to one 
 thousand six hundred and fifty million in 1900. 
 
 In the meanwhile landlordism continued to flourish. Prince 
 Galitzin, grand equerry of the court, has nearly three million 
 acres; Prince Rukavishnikov, secret counsel of the ministry 
 of the interior, has nearly two million; Prince Sheremetiev, 
 of the Imperial Council, has nearly half a million, and so on. 
 To show better the local conditions I shall mention some of 
 the largest estates in the miserable province of Poltava, where 
 I visited in the summer of 1906. There, where land is worth 
 about one himdred rubles an acre (fifty dollars), the Duke of 
 Mecklenburg-Strelitz has an estate worth about fifteen million 
 rubles, Minister Dumovo's property is worth about four million, 
 those of the Princes Kotzebue, Bariatinsky, and Gortchakov are 
 each worth several millions. About one-third is in the hands of 
 the rich or well-to-do proprietors, averaging more than four 
 hundred acres of the valuable soil; while the majority of the 
 
2o6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 peasants own only from five to twenty -five acres per household, 
 and two hundred thousand have less than five acres. 
 
 An examination of the economic basis of Russia's landlord 
 nobility shows that there are two thousand persons, largely 
 of princely rank, possessed of more than twenty-five thousand 
 acres, fifteen thousand of the higher nobility and persons of 
 corresponding wealth possessed of from twenty-five hundred to 
 twenty-five thousand acres, and sixty thousand of the lesser 
 nobility or gentry with two hundred and fifty to twenty-five 
 hundred acres. The four hundred thousand individual farmers 
 and other persons of a similar class are possessed of less than 
 two hundred and fifty acres each. We see by these figiires 
 not only what a power the nobility has in the land, owning as it 
 does one-third of the richest soil in the country, but also that 
 the land is highly concentrated even within this class; for the 
 owners whom I have called of "the higher nobility "are possessed 
 of twice as much land as the mere gentry, while the princes own 
 half as much again. The gentlemen taken altogether have 
 thirteen times as much land as the middle-class farmers, 
 excluding the fifteen million peasant households. 
 
 The condition is not fully represented by taking the country 
 as a whole. In some parts the landlords are comparatively 
 powerless, but in others they own such a large proportion of 
 the land, are possessed of such large funds with which to buy 
 the local officials and police, that under the Russian despotic 
 system they are nothing less than a local oligarchy. In all 
 the western and southernmost provinces, and in five others, 
 the landlords own almost as much as, or more than, the 
 peasants. It is in these provinces that the massacres have been 
 organised, that the police have practised the most outrages 
 in the so-called elections, that rents are most exorbitant and 
 that the revolts of the peasantry have had the least success. 
 
 It is impossible, then, to consider that the peasants have 
 ever been emancipated. Fully one-half of them, those that 
 before 1861 had belonged to the State, are in approximately 
 the same situation now as they were fifty years ago. The rest, 
 besides being subjected to the State slavery that always over- 
 shadowed the private serfdom, are placed economically in the 
 landlords' hands, and this econoroic dependence is enacted into 
 
SLAVES OF LANDLORD OR STATE 207 
 
 law by the statutes concerning wage contracts, strikes, rents 
 and every other economic question. The germs of reform that 
 are being planted at the present time, are not only without 
 any chance of growing up into something of consequence, but 
 they are insignificant compared to the revival of the wholesale 
 use of direct violence on the part of the Government and the 
 landlords, and compared to the institution of a regular civil 
 war against that "internal enemy," the revolted peasantry. 
 
 Let us remember that the Government and the landlords, 
 and all the innumerable writers and journalists in their pay 
 all over the world, blame the peasants themselves for their 
 tragic condition, and that the landlords have also managed to 
 cajole many serious persons into crediting their statement. 
 Let us then judge between this standpoint of hostility toward 
 the Russian people, and that of the tens of thousands of true 
 Russians who have devoted their whole lives to the peasantry 
 and who take a diametrically opposite point of view. And then 
 let us realise to the full the criminal character of a monarch and 
 a nobility that can sustain their self-respect before the modem 
 world only by this most infamous campaign of lies against the 
 people to whose exploitation and misery they owe their very 
 existence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PEASANT GIVES HIS ORDERS 
 
 A" 
 
 FTER the first Duma was dissolved it became more clear 
 than ever that the great revolution is something far 
 deeper than a struggle against the absolutism of the Czar. It is 
 true that for more than a generation there has been growing up 
 a strong agitation for political freedom — of the American or 
 Western Europe type. This culminated in the general strike, 
 the Czar's October Manifesto, the Constitutional Democratic 
 Party and the Duma. It is also true that until the eve of its 
 dissolution, the first Duma busied itself with political rather 
 than social questions. The Constitutional Democratic majority 
 as far as possible avoided the social problem — the question 
 of the ownership of the land. In their party congress they 
 had even omitted the land question from their programme, 
 passing a mere resolution on the subject. In the Duma they 
 postponed it to the last. 
 
 When, a few days before the Duma's end, the clamour of 
 the peasant population, agrarian disorders and the direct pres- 
 sure of the peasant deputies forced the Constitutional Demo- 
 |/ crats to take up the question that underlies the whole titanic 
 " ^ revolt, they at once left the revolutionary tactics they had 
 followed when purely political issues were at stake. From 
 political revolutionism they passed, not to social revolutionism, 
 but to mere social reform. They proposed very radical 
 measures — to provide the peasants with more land, to seize 
 all the larger estates for this purpose, to pay for them without 
 considering in their evaluation the abnormal rents extorted from 
 a hungry people, to abolish absentee landlordism, to limit the 
 amount of land a man can own to what he can himself superin- 
 tend, and to see that each peasant was provided, "as nearly as 
 possible," with the "alimentary norm" of land — enough to 
 furnish him means to provide himself with food, shelter, clothing 
 
 208 
 
THRESHING BY FOOT AND BY FLAIL 
 
HARVESTING 
 The haying has fallen largely into the hands of the women 
 
 ^SITY 
 
THE PEASANT GIVES HIS ORDERS 209 
 
 — and taxes. They denied, through the mouth of their econo- 
 mist Herzenstein, the possibihty of giving the peasant more 
 than the aUmentary norm of "providing work for all the people." 
 They hope, that is to say, that the peasant will not have to 
 starve, but they despair of setting him on the road to prosperity. 
 They expect that he will be condemned to much enforced 
 idleness for the lack of land — they deny the possibility of the 
 rapid improvement of agriculture, when they say that he 
 cannot hope to have enough land to accumulate a surplus 
 capital of his own. At the same time they proclaim the 
 sacredness and inviolability of private property, and assert 
 that they stand not for social revolution, but for social reform. 
 
 But the Russian revolution is not a mere political struggle 
 for emancipation from an archaic form of government — it is a 
 movement of the masses of the people to regenerate Russian 
 society. An old order is doomed — its government, its rtiling 
 caste, its ruling ideas, its religion, its property, its property 
 forms, its economic methods and its dominating social power. 
 The new order cannot by any possibility be ushered in by mere 
 political changes modeled on the political institutions of England 
 or the United States. With the autocratic form of government 
 will go many of the social wrongs that weigh down both the 
 peasants and the relatively more prosperous and more educated 
 people. Because the peasants are poor and innocent of book 
 learning is no reason why, in the great transformation that is 
 taking place, they should lose all the lessons of modern industrial 
 development and the other social teachings of the hundred 
 years that have passed since the revolution in France. 
 
 History is indeed preparing "new forms of human society," 
 as the peasant leader Anikine claimed — precisely because all 
 the great forces of modem life are present in the nation — while 
 the counter-forces are melting away. The greatest retarding 
 forces, the national traditions, political, religious, and social, 
 are already comparatively lifeless. The revolution is beating 
 out of them what vitality remained. The national character 
 is that of a youth, the character of the individual peasant that of 
 a child. Both absorb readily every new and useful idea. The 
 peasant is somewhat inert because he is physically and spiri- 
 tually underfed. He grasps and devours a friendly book or 
 
2IO RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 newspaper with as much avidity as a loaf of tinaccustomed 
 wheat fioiir. With the same appreciation of his needs he adopts 
 and learns the use of modem agricultural implements and 
 every modem method, when they happen to fall within his 
 miserable means. The ignorance and poverty of the peasant 
 do not constitute a national tradition, despite the doctrine of 
 Pobiedonostzev. The peasants are as eager to improve their 
 condition, spiritual and material, as are any poor and ignorant 
 pioneers. Their inertia is only a resisting medium; it is not a 
 reactionary force. It can delay the time of the final outbreak, 
 and increase its intensity and profundity in proportion to the 
 delay. To overcome this ignorance and poverty of the peasants 
 there are present, on a greater or lesser scale, all the forces of 
 modern civilisation, and a public spirit new in the history of 
 the great nations. 
 
 The material development is backward only in the coimtry 
 and in the less accessible sections. Very many of the factories, 
 mills, railroads, and steamships are most modem ; so are many of 
 the public buildings, theatres, many of the public institutions 
 and schools, and nearly all the ideas, aspirations and theories 
 of the truly educated class. No educated class in the world's 
 history has ever made such a general, persistent, and heroic 
 effort to reach the people. A considerable proportion of the 
 Russian peasants, and the larger part of the Russian working- 
 men, have been familiarised with the most important movements 
 and ideas of foreign lands by means of a sea of forbidden, and 
 therefore all the more valued, poptilar literature. From the 
 agrarian movements of Europe to our People's Party, and 
 from the conservative trades unions of Great Britain to the 
 revolutionary socialism of the continent, there is no great 
 movement or social idea that has not been in this way brought 
 to the people. I do not believe that there is anywhere any 
 such deep and varied study of all that goes to make up modem 
 Socialism as among the Russian working class. 
 
 The Russian upheaval is, then, a conscious social movement, 
 and this is why it may develop into the most portentous historic 
 event up to the present time. Like former revolutions and 
 civil wars in France, England, and the United States, it claims 
 for the citizens the political rights of men But unlike any 
 
THE PEASANT GIVES HIS ORDERS 211 
 
 preceding national cataclysm, it insists on social as well as 
 political rights, on economic equality, on the right of every 
 man to as much land as he can till, and of no man to more, and 
 on the right of all the people to all the land for all time. 
 
 The first Duma was dissolved, not on account of the revolu- 
 tionary political measures or the radical social reforms of the 
 Constitutional Democratic majority, but because the peasant 
 deputies were making ominous preparations for social revolu- 
 tion. The Labour Group proposed, not the expropriation of 
 some, but the abolition of all landlords, along with their depen- 
 dents the tenants and agricultural labourers; not the temporary 
 suspension of the sacred right of private property in the time 
 of a great social crisis, but its abolition for all time. They 
 claimed it was the duty of society to provide work for all the 
 people. Therefore, they proposed to provide every peasant 
 labourer with all the land he could work with his own hands, 
 or to come as near that standard, "the labour norm," as condi- 
 tions would allow. 
 
 There seems not to be enough land in Russia to keep every 
 tiller of the soil fully employed. But it is just for this reason 
 that the land question has become a social problem. If there 
 were enough land, each individual could be provided with his 
 quarter section and left to fight it out with nature, as in the 
 United States. Every man would cultivate as much as his 
 brain and body allowed. Competition in the marketing of 
 products there would be, but not cut-throat competition for the 
 land itself. Russian agriculture is facing already a crisis that 
 all agriculture will have to face in the end, when there is no more 
 free land. The nations then either will have to take the land 
 for all the people, or leave it a monopoly in the hands of a 
 larger or smaller social class. 
 
 If Russia's supply of land is too small now, argue the peasants, 
 even after the expropriation of all the landlords, why allow 
 every individual the right further to decrease that supply by 
 acquiring a disproportionate share? No one man is to own 
 an acre in fee simple, and even his right of possession is to be 
 restricted, not to what he can personally superintend, as the 
 Constitutional Democrats suggest, but to what he can work 
 with his own hands or in cooperation with fellow labourers. 
 
212 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 In the words of Anikine in the Duma: "We need the land not 
 for sale or mortgage, not for speculation, not to rent it out and 
 get rich, but to work on it. The land interests us not as a 
 merchandise or commodity, but as a means to raise useful 
 products. We need the land only to plough, therefore we do 
 not want private property." 
 
 But if economic equality is to be maintained there must be 
 either equalisation by periodic redistributions, or a progressive 
 tax against the more valuable properties. The peasants' 
 group in the Duma adopted both ideas. If there is a rapid 
 rise in land values, the surplus value of those benefited is forth- 
 with to be taxed away for the benefit of the community. If 
 the rise is large, there may also be a redistribution of the land. 
 With a rise in the cost of living and a corresponding increase 
 in the size of the "alimentary norm," the individual may 
 demand a larger share, and always a landless worker may 
 claim his allotment. The problem of the unemployed is to be 
 solved by every labourer having the right to a farm — however 
 small. 
 
 As the maximum and minimum land allotment the peasants 
 propose to establish are the same — every man to have as 
 much land as he can work with his own hands, and no man 
 to have more — their goal is nothing less that a practical 
 economic equality. Some margin is allowed for variations 
 of exceptional individuals from the average in their capacity 
 for labour, but the margin is not very wide. Numerous reso- 
 lutions of peasant meetings give an accurate numerical measure. 
 The peasants of the poorer lands wotdd allow a man to hold 
 from fifty-six to one hundred and thirty -two acres, those of 
 more fertile districts from twenty-four to sixty-six acres, con- 
 sidering that the best worker in good health can scarcely do 
 three times the work of his neighbour. This is almost equality. 
 Certainly it is the recognition of the principle that no man 
 should enjoy the fruits of another's labour. 
 
 The hundred million know very well they are asking for 
 no simple social reform, but for a social revolution and- the 
 mastery of their country. They knew that they were not likely 
 to see their strivings of half a century satisfied by a Duma in 
 the full power of the Czar. The instructions, "ukases," they 
 
THE PEASANT GIVES HIS ORDERS 213 
 
 sent to their deputies by the tens of thousands were filled with 
 a sense of the probable bitterness of the coming conflict. " Fight 
 on you fighters," run the exact words of one of these. "Fight 
 to the bitter end. Go forward fearlessly for the people's cause. 
 Many millions of dead-worn and tormented peasants look to 
 you and wait. As long as you are with us we will stand by 
 you." The deputies obeyed. In the Duma they denoimced 
 the Government and all its works; when the Duma was closed 
 they called the people to armed rebellion. They fought to 
 the bitter end — prison and the shadow of the scaffold. And 
 the peasants kept their word too, as far as their power allowed, 
 for they frequently offered their lives and liberty to save their 
 deputies from arrest. 
 
 Another ukase shows clearly the cry for real, social equity 
 — not a merely theoretical or political, but a genuine, concrete, 
 economic equality. "Some tens of thousands own the land and 
 live in luxury," it argues, "while tens of millions must go half 
 starved and work for them their whole life through. We human 
 beings are all alike and all brothers. We must enjoy equally 
 the nature God has created, and therefore we have decided to 
 ask the Duma to confiscate all the land and to have the State 
 take charge of it and to allow only those to have access to it 
 who will till it with their own hands. We rely upon the depu- 
 ties we have elected to do all that is possible to relieve us from 
 all kinds of misery and from the Cossacks. The Duma can 
 count on our doing whatever will be required." 
 
 The following ukase of a Samara village typifies thousands: 
 
 We assembled here to write to you and after a discussion we came to 
 the conclusion that the famine, the misery, and the ignorance of the 
 Russian people, the shameful war with the Japanese, the unheard-of- 
 troubles, the continuous insurrections, come from the fact that the best 
 lands of our country belong to gentlemen proprietors, to the Crown, to 
 the State, and to the monasteries. In spite of ourselves we are forced 
 to rent these lands and pay for them every year thirty rubles a dessiatine 
 ($5.62 an acre). 
 
 Until now we have not been allowed to think even of our rights. 
 They confiscated our property, laughed at us as much as they pleased; 
 and since the organisation of the institution of the officials called ' ' Zemski 
 Natchalniki" (land officials), we have fallen completely into the hands 
 of the gentlemen bureaucrats. We cannot take a single step without 
 the authorisation of this little despot. Our private and community 
 
214 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 affairs, family and property matters, must all be submitted to their 
 sanction. Some of them often tell us that they ought to be to us both 
 "God and the Czar." 
 
 So we fear that all the ills of our poor country come from the fact that 
 we are in the power of a little group of gentlemen, rich people, and bureau- 
 crats. We have had enough. We are at the end of our patience, and 
 we order our delegate Chuvalov to demand in the Duma: 
 
 (i) The right to send to the Duma as our representatives men whom 
 we esteem and with whose convictions we are familiar. These repre- 
 sentatives must have constitutional power They must be selected by 
 a direct, universal, equal, and secret ballot. [This is more advanced than 
 in the United States, since the votes that elect our Senators are neither 
 equal nor direct]. 
 
 (2) The confiscation of State, Crown, monastery and private lands 
 and their transmission into the hands of the whole people on the condi- 
 tion that every citizen may make use of it who works it with his own 
 hands, with the aid of his family, or in co5peration. 
 
 The other demands are the repayment into the coffers of the 
 State of all the money the peasants have already paid for their 
 lands, the replacement of customs duties and excises by a pro- 
 gressive income tax, a general amnesty of political prisoners 
 and exiles, the abolition of the death penalty, the election of 
 all local officials, compulsory education, and the carrying out of all 
 the liberties promised by the Manifesto of the 1 7th of October. 
 
 Already, then, along with the social ownership of the land, 
 Russia's common people are insisting on every other line of 
 revolutionary social advance: the elevation of the sacredness 
 of the human individual to the point of the abolition of capital 
 punishment; the gradual equalisation of wealth through the 
 graduated income tax, and the most democratic representative 
 government possible, a single sovereign chamber, with full 
 legislative, judicial and executive powers, to be elected by 
 direct suffrage, like the British Parliament, and by an 
 equal and universal vote. Each one of these democratic 
 institutions has been now thoroughly tried, but to our eternal 
 shame and disgrace none prevail in the United States. The 
 Russians have passed us in their political demands. They are 
 making an heroic revolutionary effort to reach a degree 
 of democracy and liberty that remains only a pious aspiration 
 among the Americans. 
 
 The men the peasants trust and to whom they sent their 
 
THE PEASANT GIVES HIS ORDERS 215 
 
 ukases and delegations are revolutionists. They did all it 
 was possible to do in the Duma of the Czar. While the Duma 
 was in session they insisted on a peaceful revolution, an imme- 
 diate constitutional assembly. They proposed local commis- 
 sions, elected by the equal vote of the people, to report to the 
 coming constitutional assembly on the question of the land. 
 But they expected and predicted that the Duma would be 
 dissolved before anything could be accomplished. When this 
 happened they turned to overt revolution, accused the Govern- 
 ment of treason, called on the army to mutiny, on the population 
 to disobey the officers of the law, on the peasants to take the land. 
 
 The peasant group are also Socialists — often former mem- 
 bers of the Socialist Revolutionary or Social Democratic 
 parties. They are independent of formulated party programmes, 
 they are true democrats who believe that the peasants them- 
 selves will force the country in the direction of Socialism. 
 The programme they proposed in the Duma was not their 
 own, but that already worked out by the Peasants* Union a 
 year before and endorsed by thousands of villages in the fall. 
 With this programme as a starting-point, with the aid of some 
 twenty thousand "instructions" they received while the Duma 
 was in session, and with the advice of the six hundred delegates 
 the peasants sent to St. Petersburg, they can surely claim to 
 know what the peasants want. 
 
 The demand of the Peasants* Union, of the twenty thousand 
 villages, and of the Labour Group has swollen from the old 
 demand for "land and freedom'* to the war-cry of the social 
 revolution: "To the people all the power and all the land.'* 
 
 Russia's desperate struggle is not a mere reaction against 
 hunger and the Czar. It is a world-event of unparalleled 
 significance, a giant effort to win for Russia, and perhaps other 
 nations as well, what no nation has ever attained — unlimited 
 democracy in government and equality in possession of the / 
 land — the fulfilment of the French Revolution, the limit of 
 purely democratic evolution, the conquest of the last of the 
 rights of man, a fierce attack at the roots of private property 
 and the laying of foundation for a free Socialist state. 
 
 This is the cause that Russians die for, the faith of the revo- 
 lution — "to the people all the power and all the land.*' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HOW THE PEASANT BECAME A REVOLUTIONIST 
 
 THERE was a time when we considered the Czar the god 
 of the earth and the greatest of all benefactors. Now, 
 the newspapers have opened the eyes of us common people. 
 We see that he is only the richest of landlords and the first 
 of all vampires. The blood that he has dnmk will some day 
 flow from him again." 
 
 This statement is typical of how the peasants talked after the 
 Czar closed the first Duma and destroyed the faith of his people. 
 It was spoken in a Volga village in my presence before a chance 
 gathering of peasants, and I was requested to write it down 
 and send it to America to show what the common people are 
 thinking about their Czar. The Russian State is resting on a 
 sleeping volcano of the people's hate. The real revolution 
 — that of the htmdred million peasants — is yet to come. When 
 it does come the French Revolution will be eclipsed. For the 
 forces to be overthrown by the Russian people are richer, wiser, 
 and incomparably better organised than was the rotten 
 feudalism of France. 
 
 * What afi^ the chances of an event of this inconceivable 
 magnitude? At first glance the outlook is dark enough. Through- 
 out all Russia the townspeople have abandoned themselves 
 to depression or despair. The middle classes staked every- 
 thing on the Dumas. Their last cards were passive resistance 
 as to taxes and recruits, and the denunciation of foreign 
 loans. Passive resistance having proved impracticable against 
 active despotism, was definitely abandoned by the very 
 party by which it was proposed The denunciation of foreign 
 loans is accoimtable at the most for a fall of not more than a 
 point or two in the Russian funds. The Constitutional Demo- 
 crats, partisans of those measures, managed to prevent the 
 general disintegration of their party, but they have not been 
 
 216 
 
THE PEASANT BECOMES A REVOLUTIONIST 217 
 
 able to prevent a wholesale desertion from their ranks. In the 
 provincial capitals and country towns, where, like low thunder, 
 the voice of the gagged and beaten peasants is beginning to be 
 heard, there is a restless seeking for new parties and new means 
 of combat to correspond with the magnitude and profundity of 
 the growing revolt. 
 
 The workingmen are hardly in a better situation than the 
 middle classes of the towns. The brilliantly successful general 
 strike of October, 1905, brought the Manifesto, but it seems 
 to have succeeded only because the Czar was unprepared. The 
 workingmen 's organisations were the first to recognise the fact. 
 The next general strike must also be an insurrection, the St. 
 Petersburg council of labour deputies decided within a few 
 days after the strike had been brought to a close. The expected 
 insurrection strike took place long before the councils were 
 ready for it. The barricades of Moscow were reproduced at 
 a dozen other important industrial centres. But the Govern- 
 ment was prepared this time for both strikes and insurrection. 
 Within a few weeks the last of the barricades had been swept 
 away, the leaders imprisoned or shot, and the railroad men put 
 to work under martial law and the penalty of instant death 
 for leaving their posts. 
 
 This was the last spasmodic effort of the rebellious working- 
 men. Since the barricades, the masses of the towns have been 
 vainly dreaming of, or sometimes vainly planning, another 
 insurrection. This time it was to be an insurrection of soldiers 
 and workmen — a mutiny strike. There were two insurmount- 
 able obstacles to the new plan. The workmen-soldiers of the 
 artillery and sappers and miners were ready to die for the 
 cause, and did die by hundreds at Sveaborg and Kronstadt; 
 but the peasant soldiers, in the face of this type of mimity, 
 remained loyal to the Czar. The Railroad Union was ready to 
 strike, but they were not ready to face the military courts 
 unless the strike had some chances of success. To gain success, 
 their congress imanimously decided, there must not only be a ces- 
 sation of labour, but a tearing up of rails, blowing up of bridges 
 and the destruction of the telegraph lines. The Government 
 has declared a railway strike rebellion, the strikers to be instantly 
 executed for high treason. Against this official "state of war'* 
 
2i8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the union proposed also to declare war. But for such a war 
 the railway workers are not enough ; they must have the support 
 of the population along the lines. That population must 
 be inflamed to the point not only of protecting and hiding 
 the scattered and otherwise helpless railway men, but of aiding 
 in the work of cutting and keeping out the Government's com- 
 munications — an object eminently worth while in one case, 
 but one only, when the peasants themselves are in revolt. 
 The Railroad Union decided to wait. 
 
 Every path, then, that the "legal" opposition or the illegal 
 revolution has trod has led finally to the peasants. Refusal of 
 taxes, refusal of recruits, refusal to shoot on the revolted work- 
 men, destruction of the railway lines, all depend on the peasants. 
 And what has been their reply? We know what they did in 
 the first two Duma elections; they sent the most radical and 
 fearless deputies the Duma contained, men at the same time 
 wise enough to lead the Duma even to its dissolution, and after 
 that to the manifesto of "passive" revolt. We know how they 
 supported their members with hundreds of delegations and 
 some twenty thousand instructions ^s to what their servants, 
 the deputies, were to demand. What do they intend, now that 
 their Dumas are abolished, now that they have lost the only 
 chance for a free discussion of their lot on a national scale that 
 they have had for the thousand years since they left the pastoral 
 stage of man, now that all other classes in the nation have 
 cried out to them to act? 
 
 What did the peasants say when the first Duma was closed? 
 The papers of the capital were not allowed to discuss the subject, 
 the peasants no longer had Duma delegates with whom to lodge 
 their grievances. But the provincial papers, caught in the 
 irresistible current of free expression that prevailed during the 
 Duma's session, were harder to suppress, and from them we 
 see that in thousands of villages peasant opinion had so gained 
 the upper hand over the village clergy and police that public 
 discussion, even in official village meetings, went on much as 
 before the Duma was dissolved. I went to the provincial 
 capitals and smaller towns, and visited a number of village^, to 
 make sure that these reports were correct. I found the peasants 
 invariably familiar with all the larger aspects of the revolution. 
 
THE PEASANT BECOMES A REVOLUTIONIST 219 
 
 I found that, trained by centuries of oppression and defeat, 
 and having put little hope in the late Duma, they were neither 
 surprised nor despondent at its dissolution. Having long hated 
 the Government, they were now beginning to hate the Czar. 
 Having long lost respect for the Government Church, they were 
 now turning actively against it. Having put their case in the 
 Duma and seeing it despised and their elected deputies thrown 
 into prison, they now fully realised that they would get from 
 the Government only what they could take. 
 
 "When Gapon came with the workingmen and a petition to 
 the Czar, the ministers called them rebels," said the peasant 
 I have quoted at the beginning of this chapter. "Then we 
 believed it. When the Duma was meeting, the ministers stood 
 against the people, and we knew that the ministers were our 
 enemies. But now that the Duma is dissolved, we see that the 
 Czar and the ministers are the same. Now we know that the 
 Czar is our enemy, too, and we must upset the whole Govern- 
 ment. And the peasants are ready to do it " 
 
 This statement of the peasant attitude is true. The massacre 
 of the 22d of January, 1905, removed the last traces of loyalty 
 from the masses of the workmen and the citizens. The brutal 
 dissolution of the first Duma, and the abolition of the second, 
 took away the last illusion and the last hope from the people 
 of the soil. On the evening of the 2 2d of January a friend 
 visiting Count Witte found him prostrate on his couch. With 
 tears in his eyes, Witte said the last hope of the nation had 
 been destroyed, the faith of the people in the Czar. That was 
 true only of the cities then. It is true of the country and the 
 nation to-day. 
 
 Listen now to the voice of another village. A little group 
 was explaining to me the village opinion, and about them 
 gathered the whole village, old men and young as they came 
 home one by one from the fields, the women and the children. 
 Many talked at the same time, but the peasants know how to 
 talk together — as they have learned to do in their village 
 meetings for centuries past. Out of the whole clearly came 
 this common speech: 
 
 "We did hope the Duma would help us. But now we see 
 that it was made for the rich and not for the poor. We were 
 
220 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 told from the first that the Duma was a fraud made to lead us 
 off by the nose, and that 's all it was. We heard about the 
 closing of the Duma a few days after it happened, but we did 
 not hear the Czar's manifesto about it read in church. We 
 do not go to church any more because when we hear the pope 
 pray for the Government and the Czar, it is just as if some 
 one ttuTied a knife in otu- stomachs. 
 
 "We believed the October Manifesto, too, and in three days 
 the Czar took it back. Now we all see we have nothing to 
 expect. We Ve had enough of carrying the landlords on our 
 backs. It 's better to die for the right. If the other villages 
 do anything we won't be behind." 
 
 "Do you believe in the Czar?" I asked. 
 
 "We believed in him once," they answered, without a protest- 
 ing voice, "as in God, but otu- eyes now are open. Now we 
 know it is n't the ministers, but the Czar himself who is to 
 blame." 
 
 The villages I have mentioned were on the middle and lower 
 Volga. Up toward the soiu-ce of the river, by the northern 
 woods that stretch up to the arctic tundra and reindeer land, 
 I visited another little town. There the older peasants — 
 splendid, erect, regular-featured men — were gathered together 
 in the tea-house to make a business deal concerning the village 
 hay with their friend, the agricultural expert of the Zemstvo, 
 who had brought me with him. They, too, were unanimous in 
 their opinions. They would gladly boycott the taxes and 
 refuse recruits if this were possible. But a village can't resist 
 a squadron of Cossacks, and the taxes, they understood clearly, 
 were for the most part indirect and could not be boycotted. 
 They knew all about the customs duties on cotton and tea, 
 and the excise duties on petroletun, alcohol, sugar and vodka, 
 that make them pay two or three prices for all they buy. They 
 were clear as to what they thought about the Duma. They 
 would not bother about another such as the last. The next one 
 they would turn into a constituent assembly, and for that they 
 would lay down their lives. They knew well enough what a 
 constituent assembly was. It is a body, they said, that appoints 
 all the ministers and officials. It must have all the power, and 
 nobody (not the Czar) is to have a right to interfere with its 
 
THE PEASANT BECOMES A REVOLUTIONIST 221 
 
 acts. While the older peasants were saying these things the 
 younger peasants outside were singing as accompaniment the 
 fiery, revolutionary words of the peasants' "Marseillaise." 
 
 The last hope of the Czar, the ignorance and distmion of his 
 people, is giving way. In Russia the tendency of all despotism 
 to keep the people in darkness and to exploit their divided 
 state has been exalted into a perfectly conscious principle of 
 State, freely expressed by ministers, bureaucrats, and heads of 
 the Church. First, they say, do not let the individual know 
 what the Government is about, and, second, if individuals do 
 manage to learn, they must not be allowed any expression of 
 what they think or want. The peasants were not only not 
 taught to read by the Government, they were not allowed to 
 read. If they had learned what the Government was about 
 and wanted to hold meetings to discuss what they had learned, 
 the village police sat by, closed the meeting when they saw fit, 
 and arrested those whose speeches they did not like. As to 
 meetings of several villages, they were tolerated under no form. 
 
 Since the war the new pressure against this system of com- 
 pulsory ignorance has all but broken it down. The police 
 are still on duty. Joint meetings of villages must be held 
 secretly in the woods. Unnumbered tons of pamphlets and 
 newspapers are confiscated and destroyed. But all the villages 
 have now read more or less of the new deluge of newspapers, 
 pamphlets, books, and peasants' weeklies. The peasants' 
 intellectual appetite has grown incredibly, as I have already 
 pointed out. They beg newspapers from the travellers, they 
 send delegates to towns to get the students' aid. They spend 
 the nights in barns or woods listening to readings of the French 
 Revolution, or the history of Russia as it is not taught in the 
 schools. Invariably they begged reading matter from our 
 party, and I was often astonished by what they had already 
 read. They pulled the most revolutionary proclamations out 
 of their pockets, and asked intelligent questions about the 
 conditions in the United States. 
 
 In a certain village I met a typical case of this development 
 of interest. A young peasant who had been reading and 
 studying through the long winter evenings for several years, 
 under the guidance of a genial revolutionist librarian that 
 
222 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 spent his summers nearby, undertook to rouse the people of 
 his village by reading to them. Two winters before my visit 
 he had found the villagers so little interested that even in the 
 dull isolation of the northern night, they did not care to hear 
 him read. The following winter all was suddenly changed; 
 they eagerly followed and fairly consiimed every scrap of 
 printed matter he could offer; they were specially delighted 
 with a little history of Russia, already circulated among the 
 villages to the number of half a million copies. Picture the 
 excitement of the peasants of a village that has slumbered from 
 immemorial times when suddenly awakened to the dramatic 
 story of their own wrongs, as freshly written by a Socialist 
 writer with something of the simple style and the emotional 
 genius of a Tolstoi! 
 
 Nearly all the peasants I met during my two thousand mile 
 journey down the Volga had read an excellent peasants' weekly, 
 published in Kasan. As a type of several others issued by the 
 Socialist Revolutionary Party or the peasant group in the Duma 
 and scattered in nearly every village in the land, a summary 
 of its contents during the Duma and since will show the 
 character of the peasants' new intellectual diet. 
 
 The Kasan Peasants' News seemingly neglected nothing that 
 the peasants most needed to understand. Beginning with the 
 late war, the whole ruinous policy of the Government was 
 exposed and effectually damned. The weapons by which the 
 Government maintains itself were sketched historically — 
 Cossacks, "black hundreds" and the League of True Russian 
 Men. It was pointed out that the village police and the 
 new type of soldier-ruffians called rural guards, are paid twice 
 as much as the village schoolmaster, who gets one hundred 
 dollars a year. The Government's proposed reforms were laid 
 bare in all their flimsiness, and there was a r^sum^ showing how 
 little the Government has done for the peasants. 
 
 The possibility of change was suggested by outlines of foreign 
 forms of government, foreign election laws and foreign 
 agrarian movements. There was a full account of the now 
 illegal Peasants' Union, of the thousands of ukases sent by the 
 peasants to the Duma, of the agrarian disorders, of the brutal 
 expeditions of revenge sent out by the Government at the 
 
THE PEASANT BECOMES A REVOLUTIONIST 223 
 
 demand and often under the personal direction of the injured 
 landlords, of the killing and maiming of the peasants, of the 
 retaliation of the latter in the Baltic provinces and in the 
 Caucasus. To combat the Government's efforts to turn the 
 popular excitement from itself to the Jews, Poles, Armenians, 
 Letts, Lithuanians, this peasants' paper tried in every number 
 to familiarise the peasants with the virtues and friendliness 
 of these "conquered peoples." 
 
 The "black" papers, sustained by Government subsidies, 
 or by the liberal subscriptions of high-place bureaucrats, 
 generals, and landlords, carefully excluded any mention of these 
 wholesome truths. But their influence was slight. Only in 
 one village did I find copies of any of the reactionary organs 
 sent gratis all over the land. For they were not only incredibly 
 brutal and false, they were incredibly stupid in their judgment 
 of the peasants. For instance, starving countrymen — and, 
 be it remembered, there were thirty million of them in the winter 
 of 1 906-7 — were told that the reports of the famine were 
 grossly exaggerated, and that if they stiff ered it was from their 
 own drunkenness and laziness. 
 
 "Without the land officials and police and other benefactors," 
 says one of those extraordinary articles, "the peasants would 
 perish like a flock without shepherds." Now the hatred of 
 the peasants for these same officials and police is too bitter and 
 deep for words. Innumerable cases are on record in which 
 these "shepherds" have beaten their sheep to death with clubs, 
 or have crippled them for Hfe. In Tambov, in the fall of 1905, 
 some half hundred peasant rioters were captured while engaged 
 in openly hauHng off the landlords' grain, as the peasants did 
 in thousands of villages at this time. The police "shepherd" 
 had them bound and gagged, and held them prisoners in the 
 bam which they were sacking. They were made to lie on one 
 side for several weeks and beaten when they turned. One at 
 a time they were "examined" and tortured within hearing 
 of their comrades. Sixteen were thus before all slowly beaten 
 to death, executed, not for murder, violence, or attack on the 
 public officials, but for taking in broad daylight, or stealings if 
 you like, what they considered should in law and justice have 
 been their own. Every village has seen or known of cases of the 
 
224 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 kind. What influence can a press have that sees in these 
 brutes the shepherds of the peasant flock? 
 
 If it were not for the assiduity of a part of the village priests 
 the peasants would long ago have lost all credence in the official 
 system of falsehood. One priest and patriotic agitator travels 
 about calling the peasants* deputies in the Duma Anti-Christs 
 who had been bought by the Jews. Others preach the like 
 in their churches; all are perforce tools of the Czar, must read 
 his ukases and manifestoes from the pulpit. Not all, however, 
 are still "black" in their hearts; thousands are openly liberal 
 and some are secretly revolutionists. Those who are still 
 loyal are being reduced by the population to narrow straits. 
 Only a dozen families of the hundreds in the village, the money- 
 lenders and shopkeepers, are contented. The discontented, 
 when not rebels at heart, are incredulous; in many places they 
 have deserted the churches; in others they are beginning to 
 boycott the services of the priests, and in some cases the villagers 
 are taking away from the priests the grants of village lands upon 
 which they live. The village popes were never respected, and 
 this lack of respect is turning into open hate. Their sermons, 
 threats, and advice will not long seriously hinder the new flood 
 of literature and public discussion. 
 
 In the last two years and a half there has been more reading 
 and discussion in the villages than took place in the preceding 
 forty-five years. The peasants, then, know the great facts 
 of the situation, but they know also what they have yet to learn. 
 They have discussed everything in their village meetings, and 
 often several villages have met together in the woods. They 
 have held frequent secret congresses at which dozens, hundreds, 
 and even thousands of villages have been represented. They 
 have gone further in some governments, where, with the aid 
 of the revolutionists, the whole countryside is organised in a 
 system of secret committees — village, volost (township), 
 district (county), and government (state). All this reading, 
 discussion, and organisation, however hampered and incomplete, 
 is duly bearing fruit. 
 
 The idea of a peasants' union and a peasants' party, of the 
 absolute necessity of a common organization for all Russia, 
 has taken permanent root; also the idea that the people's Duma 
 
THE PEASANT BECOMES A REVOLUTIONIST 225 
 
 was opposed, thwarted and finally abolished by the Government 
 of the Czar; also the demand for a Duma with all the power 
 of a constituent assembly; and, finally, the belief that the 
 people should have all the land and that there should be no 
 more landlords either now or at any future time. 
 
 The great majority of the villages hold in common the same 
 ideas as to the means by which the people are to get the power 
 and the land. They and their representatives — who had 
 long ago proposed passive resistance, the refusal of taxes and 
 recruits, and the denunciation of the foreign loans, measures 
 that the Constitutional Democrats adopted only when the Dtuna 
 was dissolved — were also the first to discover, as they had 
 suspected from the outset, that these measures alone would 
 never bring the Government to terms. Furthermore, the 
 peasants have recognised that the measures of their own 
 representatives were not at the time practical. After the 
 dissolution of the first Duma the peasant deputies not only 
 declared the Government illegal and at war with the people, 
 but they declared all peaceful relations at an end. They left 
 the accepted Fabian tactics of revolution of the Peasants* 
 Union and joined with the Socialist parties in the proclamation 
 of mutiny and armed insurrection before the army was ready to 
 mutiny or the peasants ready to rise. 
 
 Now, what has happened in the tens of thousands of disaffected 
 villages that cover the land? They read the proclamation of 
 the peasants* group, and agreed heartily that the Government 
 was illegal and was to be overturned. As for the proposal of 
 insurrection, they served it as they did the call to passive 
 resistance of the Constitutional Democrats; they labeled it 
 as impractical and passed to the order of the day — the tried 
 and developed tactics of the Peasants' Union. 
 
 Here is the peasants' programme: The Government evidently 
 is not yet to be voted out, starved out or suddenly overthrown. 
 But it can be worried to death, it can be gradually cut off from 
 its sources of supply, the army can be gradually honeycombed 
 with disaffection, the elections can serve as an excuse for 
 agitation and disorders; the landlords, the only economic class 
 supporting the Government, can be starved out, their houses 
 and crops burned at night, and themselves literally driven from 
 
326 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the land; the life of the village authorities, officials, clergymen, 
 and police, can be made unbearable — their property and lives 
 forfeited if need be. Government property can be pillaged and 
 Government officials killed. In cases of successful guerilla 
 war, as in the Caucasus and the Baltic provinces, the guerilla 
 bands can be provided with food and money, and at the proper 
 moment bridges and railroads can be destroyed. And the 
 forced service of the peasant soldiers against their relatives and 
 friends can lead rapidly to the spread of mutiny, till finally 
 the larger part of the army passes out of Government control. 
 That all this can be is proven by the fact that it has already 
 been. A general, simultaneous, armed insurrection may never 
 occur. But there are many degrees of rebellion between this 
 and the tame submission to such "legal" reforms as may be 
 granted by a Government whose hands are red with the people's 
 blood. 
 
 Revolution by secret and guerilla war may be long and 
 costly — it may be proportionately thorough and profound. 
 Russia may pay a price such as Germany paid in the Thirty 
 Years* War — she has not yet made a tithe of the sacrifices 
 we suffered for an alien race during our War of the Rebellion. 
 But the facts are already here to show that, unfrightened by 
 the Czar's access to all the gold of earth, Russia is treading 
 with increasing rapidity the road of decentralised, general, and 
 revolutionary violence against her Government, and that she 
 will follow it to the end. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE VILLAGE AGAINST THE CZAR A STATE OF MIND 
 
 THE threat and the imminent possibiUty of a costly, bloody 
 and terrible revolution of the whole mass of the people 
 is the driving force in Russia to-day. A general uprising is 
 in the last resort the only possible goal for the revolutionary 
 parties, it being deliberately prepared for by the Government, 
 and it is the only real argument with which the nation has 
 ever influenced the Czar. Whether the uprising actually does 
 occur this year, next year, or never is relatively unimportant. 
 It is enough to shape Russian history that it is an imminent 
 possibility. To understand the chances of the revolution, the 
 motives of the revolutionists, the inner meaning of the policy 
 of the Government, we must realise with all well-informed 
 Russians that this mass movement is, under present conditions, 
 just what may be expected to occur; we must see just what the 
 Government is doing and may be expected to do to prevent it, 
 and we must know what qualities in the people and what 
 elements in the general situation give the revolutionists the 
 remarkable faith in the people that inspires their action. 
 
 The Government is in a feverish strain to keep the peasants 
 out of the revolution. This is the key to every action it has 
 taken since Witte came into power. I myself have heard 
 Count Witte say, as I have already mentioned, that he expected 
 the first Duma — largely a peasant body — to be composed 
 of Jew-haters ; that is, he actually thought (or said he thought) 
 that the peasants would send forward extreme reactionaries 
 in answer to the call of the Czar. In this mistaken belief lies 
 the reason for the original convocation of a body that proved 
 to be so hostile to the Czar. A majority of reactionary 
 peasants was expected by the Government, and this majority 
 was to have offset the revolutionism of the zemstvos, the 
 intelligent townspeople and the workingmen. But instead 
 
 327 
 
228 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of sending reactionary representatives, the peasants sent 
 Aladdin and his confreres, and these men called on the 
 peasants, when the Duma was dissolved, to revolt against 
 a Government that had "betrayed" them, was guilty of 
 *' treason," and had forfeited all claims to authority and the 
 obedience of the people. 
 
 Not only the institution of a representative assembly, but all 
 the other real Government changes in Russia since the fall 
 of 1905, along with innumerable false promises of changes, have 
 been aimed at the growing peasant discontent. Take for 
 instance the new so-called "freedom of worship." Immediately 
 after the October Manifesto the popular faction of the Russian 
 Church, the ritualists, or " old believers," were given religious 
 freedom, while the Jewish and other religions remained in about 
 the same position as before. Why were the "old believers" 
 preferred? Because among them are fifteen to twenty million 
 peasants. Then consider the only important change in the 
 system of taxation. Witte had not been prime minister for 
 many weeks before the peasants were relieved of thirty-five 
 million rubles of direct taxation on the land — and in 1 906 a 
 similar burden was removed. To counterbalance this loss 
 all other forms of taxation were increased. Then shortly before 
 the closing of the first Duma came the sale of the Crown lands 
 — a drop in the bucket for the individual peasants — but a 
 very real loss to the Czar. Then a few months ago certain 
 special legal disabilities of the peasants were removed. They 
 Were given, for the first time, freedom to come and go, and access 
 to the same justice (?) as the higher classes. Finally the property 
 disqualification — the inability of the peasants to sell or mort- 
 gage their share of the village land — has been abolished, and 
 it is said that the village commune, along with its common 
 responsibility to the Government for the taxes of individuals, 
 must disappear. 
 
 All these concessions were made during or after the time of 
 hundreds and thousands of armed peasant revolts. And what is 
 the outcome? The peasants feel that they have forced the 
 Government to terms. They are not grateful as they would 
 have been had the changes been freely granted. They are only 
 crying for more. For, of course, none of these reforms strike 
 
A STATE OF MIND 229 
 
 at the roots of the evil — the peasants' poverty, the terrible 
 indirect taxation on which the Government lives, the oppres- 
 sion by local officials, the lack of the least trace of individual 
 freedom, and the lack of that public life which can only come 
 from local and national self-government. Besides, most 
 of the reforms that have been given are not in reality in force. 
 Every vestige of new or old freedom or legal form is choked by 
 a monstrous growth of miUtary courts, military governors, 
 poHtical execution and exile without trace of legal procedure. 
 And every reality has been diluted and adulterated by a mass 
 of false and broken promises. 
 
 The Russian peasantry has always been an eminently rebel- 
 lious people and the tradition of rebellion has been revered 
 and kept alive for hundreds of years. Over two centuries ago, 
 almost immediately after the institution of serfdom, occurred the 
 revolt of the Volga pirate, Stenka Razin, in which millions of 
 peasants took part. More than a hundred years ago half of 
 peasant Russia was infected with the rebellion of the serfs 
 against the masters under the pretender Pougatchev. In this 
 rebellion hundreds of thousands of peasants died, apparently 
 in vain, for freedom. But neither the authorities nor the 
 peasants have ever forgotten the event. I passed through 
 a Volga province last simimer, where the peasants of a certain 
 village had asked the priest to say a mass for the souls of Pougat- 
 chev and Stenka Razin. 
 
 All through the present century every province of Russia 
 has witnessed the horribly bloody suppression of peasant revolts. 
 In 1854 and 1855 the rebellions covered a large part of Russia, 
 and the partly enlightened Alexander II. told his landlords 
 that they must either consent to the proposed emancipation 
 of the serfs or see it accomplished by a movement from below. 
 Even this Czar, so autocratic in the last half of his reign, realised 
 the power and probable will of the peasants in extremis to over- 
 turn the whole structure of the Russian State. The great 
 emancipation, then, was accomplished neither from philan- 
 thropic motives nor from economic consideration, but from a 
 highly justified fear of immediate revolution. 
 
 After the emancipation the peasants again showed their unwil- 
 lingness to accept, unless through sheer impotence, either autoc- 
 
230 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 racy or the well-disguised shadow of reform that the emanci- 
 pation turned out to be. After passing through the hands 
 of the landlords' commission to which the Czar referred it, the 
 proclamation contained neither freedom nor even the more 
 needed land. The State simply became the master and extor- 
 tioner instead of the landlord, while the latter got an even 
 firmer grip on all the better parts of the land. The following 
 years were most busy ones for the Czar's Cossacks and dragoons. 
 The peasantry of whole provinces were in rebellion, there was 
 violence in every direction, and there were many hundreds 
 of outbreaks sufficiently serious to justify the call for military 
 aid. 
 
 Never since the emancipation has the ceaseless recurrence 
 of village rebellions been interrupted. Five years ago, before the 
 Japanese war, there were half a hundred revolts in two provinces 
 alone, and the peasants had to be mercilessly beaten and executed 
 into submission. And in 1906 the spirit and fact of rebellion 
 became general throughout the nation — more general, perhaps, 
 than ever in the history of the empire. 
 
 The Russian villages have never lacked the will or the courage 
 to revolt. They have only been wanting in the physical possi- 
 bility of revolting together. No army can act as a unit, divided 
 into a hundred thousand contingents and scattered over the 
 half of a hemisphere. Yet if not much more coordinated and 
 organised now than before, the revolts have become more and 
 more general, and more and more imbued with a common idea. 
 The villages discuss for months and years a situation that is 
 general in the land. National crises arise. The reaction on 
 the villages is general, almost universal — all the villages are 
 prepared for similar action by the same events. Some village 
 makes a desperate beginning and the outbreaks spread like 
 wildfire over the country. To the outsider it all looks blind 
 and wild. The observer in the village is neither shocked nor 
 surprised. So it has come about that the spirit and manner of 
 the peasants' revolts have kept a general character and have 
 evolved together as a single movement. 
 
 The first roots of revolution go down to the very sources of the 
 peasant nature. The Russian peasant was originally enslaved 
 only by the utmost cruelty and bloodshed, after centuries 
 
A STATE OF MIND 231 
 
 of the same relative freedom as otir Anglo-Saxon forefathers 
 enjoyed before the Normans came. But the enslavement came 
 a thousand years ago in England; in Russia it came but three 
 centuries ago — ten or twelve uneventful generations — and 
 the peasants never forgot their former relative freedom. The 
 Russians were so little serfs in spirit that they attached the 
 smallest importance to their emancipation in i86i from a yoke 
 they had never accepted in their hearts. The system had only 
 succeeded in keeping alive the spirit of rebellion against all 
 authority. 
 
 The State reUgion, as we have also seen, had no deeper hold. 
 No people of Europe so thoroughly paganised the early 
 Christianity with their own popular legends and their own 
 truly popular saints. Many millions of peasants, separating 
 entirely from the Russian Church, have formed some of the 
 most rational and some of the most spiritual sects in existence, 
 never halted in their growth by the continuous persecution of 
 the Government. As to the rest, the so-called orthodox, they 
 mechanically follow the set Governmental forms and are inspired 
 with a sincere, if broad and loose, Christianity. But nowhere 
 do they show any deep respect either for the priests or their 
 State-directed utterances from the pulpit. Not in Catholic 
 Italy or Protestant England is there more resistance to the 
 Church as an institution, more independent religious feeling, 
 more rebellion against established creed. The peasant is imbued 
 and permeated in his religious feeling, that is in the depths of 
 his nature, by a thorough spirit of revolt. 
 
 In morality and law the opinion of the village, and not that 
 of the priests, fixes the living moral code. This code is vital 
 and flexible, irregular and changeable, but on the whole most 
 elevated and most humane — witness any great Russian writer, 
 say Turgeniev or Tolstoi. As for the St. Petersburg law, true, 
 it must be obeyed, for it is backed by whips and bullets, imprison- 
 ment and exile — but it comes from outside the village assembly, 
 so it is obeye4 only in its letter, and not in its spirit. The 
 peasants are told by the Government not to try to understand 
 it, but to obey. So they obey its letter without trying to 
 understand its spirit, and in consequence fully half of the 
 Czar's orders are reduced to naught. 
 
232 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The peasants are born and bred in an atmosphere of 
 unconscious and even conscious passive resistance to both 
 Church and State. They were ordered from St. Petersburg 
 not to interfere in the passing of property from father to son. 
 But the villagers have always been accustomed to consider all 
 the land at the bottom common property of the village. When 
 an heir had too little, he was given something from the village 
 store; when he had too much, something was taken away. 
 So the Czar's orders were disobeyed. His terrible Cossacks 
 were as nothing against the quiet village will, the common and 
 almost religious feeling of the people that the land belongs to 
 the community. The majority of the villagers not only 
 equalised the shares between heirs, but they equalised landed 
 wealth among all the families of the village. The Czar's 
 Government, seeing at every point in the present revolution the 
 danger of this rebellious village spirit, has decided to abolish 
 entirely the commune's control over individual property. It 
 can be doubted if the Czar has the power. In the village, the 
 village meeting is the sovereign rather than the Czar. 
 
 Before the first Duma met, before even the Peasants' Union 
 had conceived the plan, the peasants' spirit of resistance had 
 already led to boycotting taxes and recruits. Many villages 
 had refused taxes on various grounds ; many others had refused 
 the last leTies of recruits during the war. These methods of 
 action were proposed a year before the Duma by peasants at 
 all the congresses of the Peasants' Union and were adopted and 
 spread broadcast over the land. When the Czar dissolved the 
 first Duma, and the representatives of all the nation wished to 
 find a means of general national resistance, they adopted as a 
 national measure the peasants' plan of the boycotting of taxes 
 and recruits. Thus the first great revolutionary measure ever 
 endorsed by the Russian people as a nation, came neither from 
 professional revolutionists nor any upper social class, but from 
 the people themselves. 
 
 But long before the Duma had adopted this measure, it 
 had already been sufficiently tested among the peasantry to 
 be rejected by them as impractical, for it left every advantage 
 in the hands of the Government, which, of course, did not 
 scruple to use force. They had turned to less passive ways 
 
A STATE OF MIND 233 
 
 of making their power felt. The first and most natural action 
 was against the landlords, who constitute the main support 
 of the throne both in St. Petersburg and in the country. As 
 soon as the Czar had granted the October Manifesto, the 
 peasants began to make their preparations. They argued that 
 the Manifesto must have given something of a very concrete 
 nature to the nation at large, as was evident to them by the 
 enthusiasm with which it had been received in the towns. 
 They knew that the only reality to them as country people 
 was the land. Therefore the Manifesto must sooner or later 
 enable them to acquire the landlords' landed property. They 
 began to consider themselves as the future proprietors of the 
 landlords' estates. The latter protested in vain. 
 
 Had the landlords not lived at the people's expense? the 
 peasants asked, and had they not stood between them and 
 the Czar? Did they have any place in the village religion, 
 the village morality, or the village law? Had they not pillaged 
 the peasants after the emancipation, and since that time had 
 they not taken advantage of the peasants' economic weakness 
 and starvation to mercilessly lower wages while they pitilessly 
 raised rents? To take a business advantage of a starving 
 neighbour may be well in America; it agrees neither with the 
 law, morality, nor religion of the benighted Russian peasants. 
 When the landlords heard how the peasants reasoned, they 
 began to hire armed guards. Evidently, said the peasants, 
 they propose to thwart the will of the Czar. The peasants would 
 see about that. 
 
 Suddenly the latent class-hatred between the village and 
 landlord broke out into a gigantic class war. The countryside 
 from Poland to the Urals and from the Black Sea to the Baltic 
 was lighted up within a few weeks by the fires of thousands of 
 country mansions — in all some fifty million dollars of property 
 was destroyed. Everywhere the movement was similar, since 
 it was everywhere invited by a common situation and founded on 
 the same peasant nature. It consisted of two procedures. 
 First, the peasants moved as a village against the neighbouring 
 estate, often in daytime, always with their horses and carts. 
 They took possession of all the landlord's movable property — 
 implements, animals, and grain — and divided it in more or less 
 
234 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 equal proportions among themselves. They usually claimed 
 to act either in the name of the people or that of the Peasants* 
 Union. The second procedure was almost always the burning 
 of the landlord's house as a war measure against this common 
 enemy of the people, lest he should return and demand 
 possession of what he claimed as his own. The landlord himself 
 and his servants were rarely attacked. There was little or 
 nothing of the spirit of personal vengeance. 
 
 This was the most universal plan of action in the months of 
 November and December, 1905. With the coming of the winter 
 snows, all the most active movements must relax. The peasants 
 had time to think over this first plan of revolt, and their cooler 
 judgment was against it. Cossacks came to the villages — not 
 to all at once, there would not have been enough Cossacks in 
 the Empire to do that — but to one at a time ; they took back 
 the landlords' property, beat the peasants into submission, 
 killed a few of the ringleaders, and sent others to Siberia or the 
 prisons in the towns. The landlords got back enough of their 
 live stock and provisions to enable them to return. The plan 
 had failed in every aspect. The peasants were neither on a 
 better economic footing, nor had they achieved the least 
 measure of freedom. They had only further embittered the 
 landlords and police. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE czar's armies OF REVENGE 
 
 Ciphered Telegram N 929, January 5, 1906: To-day an agitator 
 has been arrested in the Kagarlyk locality, government of Kiev, in the 
 estate of Ychertkoflf. The crowd demands with threats his immediate 
 liberation. The local armed force is insufficient. I therefore urge you 
 persistently, in this case as in all similar ones, to order the mutineers to 
 be forthwith annihilated by force of arms, and in case of resistance their 
 houses to be burned. At the present moment, it is necessary to uproot 
 once and for all the people's tendency to take the law into their own 
 hands. Arrests do not attain their purpose now; it is impossible to judge 
 hundreds and thousands of people. The sole thing necessary now is that 
 the troops should be penetrated by the directions given above, 
 
 (Signed) P. Durnovo. 
 
 AT THE beginning of 1906 it was already evident the Russian 
 Crovemment was declaring war upon a large part of the 
 Russian people. The measures proposed in this order of the 
 minister of the interior are not legal measures, nor even the 
 customary procedure of maitial law. This means that, in the 
 course of a few weeks, he had reached the last stage of govern- 
 mental violence. On November 30, 1905, Durnovo had issued 
 another order also directed against the Russian civil law, but 
 still perhaps not in accord with a certain military conception of 
 legality. He had addressed a circular to the local agents of 
 the political police as follows: 
 
 I request you (i) to arrest all those revolutionary ringleaders and 
 agitators who have not been arrested by the judicial authorities and 
 immediately to take steps to have them confined under police surveillance; 
 (2) not to make any special inquiries in regard to such cases, but merely 
 to draw up a report stating briefly the causes of arrest and facts establish- 
 ing guilt; (3) if persons known as agitators are liberated by the judicial 
 authorities to keep them under guard and to proceed to act in accordance 
 with (2). 
 
 I had a long interview with the Minister of War Rediger at 
 this time. He did not fail to distinguish between military law 
 
 235 
 
236 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 and levying war on the population. "When a detachment 
 of soldiers in charge of an officer is sent into a village with an 
 order to arrest and shoot such and such persons, or to bum down 
 such and such houses, this can be accomplished without 
 disttu*bing the ordinary functions and regulations of a modem 
 army. Even if the officer is told to shoot every tenth peasant, 
 or to bum down every tenth house, it is possible for him to 
 execute this order. But what is the sense of issuing a command 
 to a young officer to pacify a village (the stereotyped official 
 phrase for, the revenge taken by these military expeditions) ? 
 There can be no denying that a considerable proportion of the 
 younger officers lack the character, education, and sense of 
 responsibility to be entrusted with such a task. It could not be 
 denied that many of the young lieutenants are often heavy 
 drinkers. Stationed a few days or a few months in the village, 
 with the power of life and death over all its inhabitants, it is 
 impossible to say what outrages they might allow to be 
 committed in their name." 
 
 If we remember not only that many of the younger officers 
 are drunkards, as the minister suggested, but that they are 
 themselves the very landlords or the sons of the very landlords 
 that the peasants have attacked, we may be prepared to expect 
 every possible cruelty and excess. We are not surprised at the 
 execution of captured peasants by the dozens and hundreds, 
 nor by the barbarous tortures that have been practised over 
 and over again. I shall not even try to summarise the various 
 notorious cases of torture, in many of which young girls 
 were the victims, that have been proven to take place in 
 the prisons. I shall not speak of the execution soon after 
 torttire of many prisoners in order to prevent them from 
 reporting the scenes later to the public. It may interest the 
 reader, however, to show the spirit in which this bloody 
 work was carried on, to quote a well-authenticated case 
 among inntmierable others of the beating of a woman by 
 the order of the notorious German Baron von Sievers at 
 Fellin During the thrashing the woman did not utter a 
 sound but afterward declared in a strong and energetic voice 
 to her tormentors, "This is against the law. There is no 
 Russian law that allows you to punish people in such a 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 237 
 
 manner." Von Sievers's answer was an order for her to be 
 thrashed a second time. 
 
 Already himdreds of thousands have been beaten and tens 
 of thousands executed under this thin pretence of military law. 
 But when we come to the wholesale beating of villages according 
 to the first-quoted order of Minister Durnovo, we are no longer 
 dealing with punishment at all, of however unjust and barbarous 
 a character, but with civil war, for there is no pretence that more 
 than a part of the people beaten are guilty of anything whatever, 
 unless it be not aiding the Government in its brutal revenge. 
 
 Here is a typical case, quoted from the letter of an inhabitant 
 of the village of Korovine in the province of Smolensk: 
 
 On the 8th of January a troop of soldiers was sent into this village. 
 With the soldiers there arrived the captain of police, a colonel of the 
 gendarmes, and other officers. The "judgment" (otherwise called 
 pacification) commenced. The mayor of the village was called. "How 
 did you dare to allow this brigandage in the village?" 
 
 "What could I do," replied the mayor. "One dares everything when 
 one is starving. But to know which of us took part in this brigandage 
 there must be a just trial." 
 
 ' ' Take off his clothes and take him into the neighbouring bam. There 
 they will give you a just trial." 
 
 Four soldiers, two armed with guns and two with rods, were sent into 
 the barn. The soldiers with guns stopped in front of the gate and the 
 soldiers with rods went inside. . . . The tribunal remained in the 
 village the entire day. In Korovine all the peasants were beaten; 
 nobody was spared, not even the old men. No interrogation was made, 
 no inquiry — everybody was beaten without distinction. An old man 
 aged sixty who had received twenty-five blows said on rising: "God 
 be praised that they have not beaten me to death." This seemed to 
 be an insolence and the old man received twenty-five more blows. 
 
 These situations are entirely beyond the power of an ordinary 
 pen. I make no attempt to picture them to the reader's mind. 
 Fortimately, Russia's writers of genius have made such an 
 attempt unnecessary. Among these none is more devoted 
 to the peasantry than Korolenko, the greatest writer of South 
 Russia living at the present time, the author of many stories 
 translated into every modem language, a publicist of the first 
 importance, and chief editor of Russian Wealth, perhaps 
 the coimtry's leading scientific and literary monthly. Korolenko 
 is not merely devoted to the peasants ; no man in Russia has been 
 
238 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 more active in their behalf, and therefore of course more hostile 
 to the Government. Like so many of Russia's great men, he 
 has spent a large part of his life in exile. 
 
 I talked with Korolenko about the conditions in his province 
 of Poltava, and later I paid a visit to the very place that caused 
 the writing of the famous letter which I quote in part below. 
 I interviewed the peasants of the villages where these brutalities 
 had occurred, and they substantiated in every respect Korolenko 's 
 facts and shared his views. I talked also with the liberal 
 justice of the peace who brought the facts to Korolenko 's 
 attention, and he guaranteed that all was just as Korolenko 
 relates. AH the facts the letter contains are perfectly familiar 
 to every Russian in hundreds and thousands of other cases; 
 but the courageous statement by Korolenko was the sensation 
 of the country for many weeks, and the celebrated author is 
 still not free from the Government persecutions that were its 
 result. The reader will be interested to know that the brutal 
 Filonoff was afterward killed by the revolutionists. 
 
 Korolenko 's letter: 
 
 Sir States-Counsel Filonoff: 
 
 Personally I do not know you at all. Neither do you know me. But 
 you are an official who has come into wide prominence in our province 
 for the glorious war you have been waging against your own country- 
 men. And I am but a writer who asks you to take a retrospective look 
 at a brief record of your deeds. 
 
 In the village Sorochintza (Poltava province) a number of meetings 
 have taken place. The people of Sorochintza evidently thought that 
 the Manifesto of the 1 7 th of October granted them freedom of assemblage 
 and speech. At those meetings speeches were made, resolutions passed. 
 Amongst other things it was decided to close the Government liquor stores, 
 and not waiting for an official sanction, they were in compHance with the 
 decision closed. 
 
 On the 1 8th of December, for no cause whatsoever, a villager by the 
 name of Besviconny was arrested. The Sorochintza people demanded 
 that he be tried before a court, and that meanwhile he should be let out 
 on bail. This they were denied. Then the Sorochintza people in their 
 turn arrested an uriadnik and a pristav (police officials). 
 
 On the 19th of December, Assistant Ispravink (a higher police official) 
 Barabast, at the head of a hundred Cossacks, arrived at the village. 
 He was permitted to see the arrested pristav and uriadnik. The latter 
 advised him to release the arrested peasant. Barabast promised to do 
 so. But then he changed his mind and decided to '"punish" the Soro- 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 239 
 
 chintza people. He ordered the Cossacks to attack them — and a terri- 
 ble collision between the attacking Cossacks and the unarmed peasants 
 took place, as a result of which the assistant ispravink was mortally 
 wounded and about twenty peasants killed. The Cossacks were not 
 satisfied with dispersing the crowd and releasing the pristav. They 
 chased the peasants and killed them when overtaken. This was not 
 enough ; they dashed into the village and began to hunt down every one 
 insight . . . 
 
 So in the house of Maisinka the watchman Otrechko fell while peace- 
 ably cleaning the snow off the steps of his master ; so Garkovenko, feeding 
 his master's cattle in the court a kilometre away from the mayor's house; 
 a Cossack took aim at him from the comer of the street, Garkovenko, 
 wounded, fell before he had even seen his assassin. So the old pharma- 
 cist, Fabian Perevozki, coming back from the post-office with his son. 
 A Cossack shot the son to death under the eyes of the father near the 
 Orlov home. So Sergius Kovchine was killed a few metres away from 
 his door. The wife of the peasant Mabvestki was killed at the same 
 door. A young girl named Kelepov had her two cheeks shot away. I 
 could tell you with details the conditions and the place of all the murders 
 of Sorochintza — it is enough to say that eight persons were killed at 
 the mayor's house and nearby, that twelve fell in the street near their 
 houses or in the courtyards. 
 
 Now, Mr. States-Counsel Filonoff, I'll take the liberty to ask you: 
 Was there committed in Sorochintza on the 19th of December one or 
 many crimes? Do you think that only the blood of people in uniforms 
 is valuable and that the blood of these common people dressed in simple 
 peasants' clothes can be freely shed like water? Doesn't it seem to you 
 that if it is necessary to investigate by whom and under what circum- 
 stances Barabast was killed, that it is not less necessary that justice 
 should occupy itself with the investigation of the men who with rifle 
 and sabre were butchering in the streets, yards, and orchards unarmed 
 people who were neither attacking them, nor offering any resistance, and 
 who neither were present at the spot of the fatal collision nor even aware 
 that it had taken place? 
 
 It is not at all necessary for me to apply to this tragedy the great prin- 
 ciples of the new fimdamental laws (the October Manifesto). For this 
 purpose any law of any country which has the most rudimentary concep- 
 tion about written or customary laws would be sufficient. Just go, Mr. 
 States-Counsel Filonoff , to the land of the half-savage Kurds, to the home 
 of the Bashi-Bazouks. Even there any judge will say, "Even our imper- 
 fect laws recognise that the blood of people in plain clothes appeals to 
 justice just as much as the blood of a killed official." 
 
 Will you dare to openly and publicly deny this, Mr. States-Counsel 
 Filonoff? Undoubtedly not! And, therefore, we both agree that the 
 representative of the authorities and law in going to Sorochintza had a 
 severe, but honourable and solemn r61e to fulfill. 
 
 In this place, seized by confusion, sorrow, and horror, he ought to 
 
240 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 have reminded the people of the law, severe but impassionate, just, 
 standing above all momentary emotion and passion, which severely 
 condemns the mob's law, but which also (note, Mr. Filonoff) does not 
 admit the very idea about caste vengeance from the part of officials on the 
 population . 
 
 But to Sorochintza there was sent, not an investigating magistrate, 
 but you, Mr. States-Counsel Filonoff, and upon you falls the whole 
 responsibility that the military force placed at your disposal turned 
 from guardians of the law into lawbreakers and outrageous oppressors. 
 
 You began from the very start to act in Sorochintza as if in a conquered 
 land. You ordered the village assembly to be driven together — and 
 declared that if it would not assemble you would destroy the whole 
 village, "not leaving even ashes to remember it by." 
 
 Is it then to be wondered at that, after such orders in such a form, 
 the Cossacks began to drive the peasants together in their own way. . . . 
 that men were cruelly beaten, women and girls outraged? 
 
 First of all you ordered the people thus driven together all to get down 
 on their knees — you forced them to obey your order by surrounding 
 them with Cossacks with drawn swords and by placing opposite the crowd 
 two field guns. All submitted and got down on their knees, their heads 
 uncovered, in the snow. . . . Under the threat of death you kept 
 them thus for four and a half hours. You did not even give a thought 
 to this, that amongst these unlawfully tortured people there may have 
 been those who had not yet buried those innocently killed on the 19th 
 of December, brothers, fathers and daughters, before whom others ought to 
 kneel and ask forgiveness for killing . 
 
 This crowd of people was necessary for you as a background to prove 
 )rour Counselman's Almightiness and . . . contempt for the laws. 
 
 The further "examination" consisted in that you called out names 
 of peasants from a list made beforehand. 
 
 And what did you call them out for? For examination? For estab- 
 lishing the extent of their guilt and responsibility? 
 
 As soon as the person called out opened his mouth to answer the 
 question asked of him, to explain, maybe to prove, his utter innocence, 
 you with your own Counselman's hands gave the man full swinging blows 
 in the face, and handed him over to Cossacks who by your order continued 
 the criminal torture begun by yourself, throwing him in the snow, beating 
 him with nagaikas on the head and face until the prey lost his voice, 
 consciousness, and all semblance to a man. 
 
 But all this seemed to you not enough, and casting your eyes over the 
 people who stood before your Counselman Majesty, you were inspired 
 with a new act of refined cruelty. You ordered the Jews to separate 
 from the Christians, put them separately on their knees and ordered the 
 Cossacks to beat them without discrimination. You explained this 
 act of yours by this, that the Jews are clever and that they are the 
 enemies of Russia. The Cossacks moved through the kneeling crowd, 
 whipping right and left men, children, and aged people. And you, Mr. 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 241 
 
 Counsellor of State, stood looking at their butchery and encouraging the 
 Cossacks to greater cruelties. 
 
 Filonoff's expedition of course did not terminate in a single 
 village, but covered a score. I followed in his path and found 
 that everywhere his actions had been the same ; and I also found 
 that the peasants rejoiced at his death, and were far more 
 revolutionary than before his visit. Filonoff's expedition was 
 not an extreme case of brutality. According to all that I was 
 able to find out, it was rather a typical case. Some of the 
 officials were less brutal, but only a few. Multiply Filonoff's 
 score of villages by several hundred, and we have some sort 
 of a picture of the Government's revenge among the Russian 
 peasantry. Add to these the far more serious wholesale 
 slaughter and massacres among all the non-Russian races, 
 Letts, Poles, Armenians, Georgians and others, and we get a 
 general idea of the full extent of this chapter of the Government's 
 colossal crimes. 
 
 Some of the worst of Stolypine's wholesale tortures while 
 governor of the Province of Saratov, were for the purpose of 
 coercing the peasants to bear false witness against themselves. 
 I have a signed document, sworn to by a whole village, as 
 testimony of this kind of action. The action described is only 
 one among very many of Stolypine's exploits, and Stolypine 
 himself is only a type of a hundred high dignitaries of the 
 Russian Government who have behaved in this manner toward 
 the conquered people. Here is the document: 
 
 The i8th of November, 1905, we, the undersigned peasants of the 
 village of Khvalinshine of the district Sordobsk of the province of 
 Saratov, having assisted at the meeting of the village assembly to the 
 number of 2 1 5 persons, have discussed the question of the arrests in our 
 commune made by the order of General Sacharov. 
 
 The 8th of November Mr. Sacharov arrived in our village accompanied 
 by Governor Stolypine, by the chief official of the district, the chief of 
 the district police, other functionaries and an escort of Cossacks. 
 
 A village meeting was called together before which Mr. Sacharov 
 explained the end of his visit and the powers with which he was furnished 
 (practically all the unlimited powers of the despot Czar). 
 
 The president of the village community and the village council wished 
 to speak for the peasants in favour of sending to St. Petersburg a dele- 
 gation to explain the peasants' misery, but they were immediately arrested 
 and beaten till they lost consciousness. 
 
242 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 After a brief conversation Mr. Sacharov retired into the office of the 
 village court, after which Mr. Governor Stolypine called one after another 
 the members of our commune, submitting them to the following questions : 
 
 "Have you pillaged the property of the landlord Beklenichev? Have 
 you burned his house?" 
 
 "No," was the answer. 
 
 Then the Cossacks commenced to beat with their "nagaikas," to strike 
 with their fists and their bayonets and the flats of their swords, to tear 
 out the hair and beards of the wretched peasants. Several were beaten 
 two or three times to force confessions from them. Some, all bloody, 
 finally confessed. All this took place under the eyes of the officials, 
 who gave the order to redouble the rigour of the punishment. Such was 
 the manner in which the thirty-two men arrested were questioned. 
 
 After these savage punishments Governor Stolypine proposed to 
 the other peasants that they should sign a decree, by which the commune 
 declared that it rejected these thirty-two men from its midst as dangerous 
 individuals. Indeed, we ourselves signed this degree, for after the terror 
 through which we had passed we did not have the strength to refuse. 
 All the arrested men are now in prison. 
 
 As soon as we became conscious of the illegality of the administration, 
 we found that the functionaries who had come to us had acted on the 
 evidence of the local police, of spies, and of other cowardly persons. 
 Although the property of Beklenichev had been sacked, the culpability 
 of the thirty-two peasants of our commune had not been established. 
 All the men arrested are good people and have never been known to have 
 committed any damaging acts in the village. They underwent their 
 punishment at the instigation of police spie" and officials. The decree 
 that we signed on the 8th of November to have these thirty-two men 
 exiled to Siberia, we consider to be illegal, because it was tortured from 
 us by violence. In consequence, we have decided to address ourselves 
 to the Council of Advocates, praying it to present our decree to the high- 
 est administration in order that it may be annulled, that a new inquiry 
 may be ordered concerning the thirty-two peasants falsely convicted 
 and that the administrators who tolerated the savage punishments 
 inflicted by the Cossacks may be cited before the courts. We hope that 
 our request will be heard. 
 
 Needless to say, it was not. But later, Sacharov, who was 
 gtdlty in innumerable cases of shedding innocent blood, was 
 "executed" by the revolutionists. 
 r^ It will be seen that the village was by no means converted 
 to loyalty to the Government by these terrible public tortures. 
 No man ever failed more miserably to frighten the peasantry 
 than Prime Minister Stolypine while governor o^ the province 
 of Saratov. The following instance is quoted and condensed 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 243 
 
 from an account by the popular poet, "Tan," or Bogoraz, one 
 of the founders of the Peasants' Union, a scientific writer on 
 ethnology, a literary character of the first rank in Russia, who 
 had visited the village of Ivanovka very soon after the presence 
 there of a "punishment expedition" of Stolypine. The cause 
 of this expedition was a resolution that had been passed by the 
 village assembly after having been drawn up by a young 
 educated peasant of the place. This yoimg man, typical 
 of the new village leaders, had educated himself at a tremendous 
 sacrifice to become a teacher, but had been thwarted by the offi- 
 cials on accoimt of his liberal opinions. Like all the other resolu- 
 tions, this one demanded liberty of speech, press and meeting, a 
 constitutional assembly elected by equal and universal suflPrage, 
 and the transference of the land into the hands of the people. 
 
 A few days after the passage of this xhe then Governor Stoly- 
 pine arrived. "Rebels, revolutionists, who influenced you 
 to do this?" he shouted. 
 
 "All the village," he was answered. 
 
 "You lie! Who composed the resolution?" 
 
 Bitchenkov, the young man, advanced and declared, "It 
 was I!" 
 
 "You lie! Go and write!" 
 
 They took this man Bitchenkov into a neighbouring room 
 and gave him pen and paper. 
 
 "Why do you not write?" 
 
 "Wait, I must think a little; I am very excited." 
 
 "You lie! Why should you be excited?" 
 
 "I was never so near such a great person as you." 
 
 In half an hour Bitchenkov composed, without seeing the 
 old one, a new copy of the resolution. 
 
 "You lie! You learned it by heart. Shut your mouth; 
 do not dare to reason with me!" 
 
 The demand for the nationalisation of the land enraged 
 the governor more than anything else. After his fierce denun- 
 ciation of the peasants an old white-headed man spoke: "Your 
 excellency, we have listened to your speech. Now listen to 
 ours. I have two sons in the war, and twenty-one persons at 
 home to nourish and land enough for only one person. How 
 shall we feed ourselves?" 
 
244 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The governor could reply only by the Malthusian theory: 
 "Who forced you to reproduce yourselves in this way?" 
 
 "That is a sin what you are saying now," said the old man. 
 "It is against God." 
 
 "Silence! No reasoning!" shouted Stolypine. 
 
 The assembly of peasants was sourrounded by Cossacks and 
 dispersed, while the elected chiefs of the village were imprisoned. 
 After two hours of violent shouting the governor demanded 
 that the village should place in his hands all its leaders, confess 
 who had influenced the peasants to adopt such a resolution and 
 draw up another to suit the official taste. That evening all 
 the village consulted together over Stolypine 's demands. 
 
 "Well, old men, have you come to a decision?" asked the 
 governor of the peasants the next morning. 
 
 "Yes, your excellency, we have passed a resolution," returned 
 the mayor. 
 
 "That is good; where is it, this new resolution of yours?" 
 
 "We have resolved to stand by the old one." 
 
 The governor was enraged. He himself questioned every- 
 body, but everybody kept silent. The next day twenty of the 
 most respected peasants were arrested. Eighteen persons were 
 imprisoned for a month and Bitchenkov and an old man named 
 Savelieff for two months. 
 
 There was only one traitor in the village, and when it was 
 discovered that it was he who had denounced everybody to 
 Governor Stolypine, the others declared a boycott against him 
 without mercy. They burned his barns twice and finally 
 declared to him categorically that he must leave the village. 
 The wretched spy went to his son at Volsk; but the son would 
 not receive him, and declared, " I have no need of such Iscariots. " 
 Finally, the wrecked informer had to go into another province. 
 
 While the arrested peasants were gone, the villagers performed 
 all their work for them, and even gave bread and potatoes to 
 the poorer families. A month later eighteen of the condemned 
 returned, and were received as home-coming heroes. The 
 commune sent to meet them eighteen waggons, in each. four 
 persoiis, the horse decorated with green leaves and red 
 ribbons — and as the procession entered the village it was 
 greeted by the singing of the Marseillaise. Bitchenkov and 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 245 
 
 Savelieff returned a month later. For them, too, a great cele- 
 bration was prepared. 
 
 But, of course, the village did not escape so easily. Later 
 Stolypine returned, and after a two days* stay departed, leaving 
 a hundred Cossacks, one officer, and eight rural guards, to execute 
 his orders. From that time the "nagaikas" commenced to 
 whistle on the backs and heads of the peasants. The Cossacks 
 beat not only the peasants of Ivanovka; they beat the passers- 
 by, they beat everybody that fell into their hands. Some of 
 their wounded victims they threw into prison, and held them 
 there without any medical relief. They stole everything 
 they could lay their hands on, from the smallest household 
 object to the grain in the granary. When a respected peasant 
 went, as representative of the village, to the head man of the 
 Cossacks to beg the cessation of this persecution, he was killed 
 by the Cossacks in broad daylight. 
 
 This is how Premier Stolypine 's orders were executed when 
 as provincial governor he was travelling about among the 
 villages. All reliable persons in the province agree in saying 
 that at this time he behaved more like a beast than a human 
 being. This is the man the Czar has selected to "pacify" the 
 cotmtry, and with whose labours he has expressed himself as 
 amply pleased. 
 
 In addition to imprisonment, flogging, violent death, the 
 ravishment of women, the peasants have had to endure a most 
 serious economic hardship in consequence of the Government's 
 "punishment expeditions." Wherever these expeditions have 
 been most successful, advantage is immediately taken by the 
 landlords of the peasants' depressed condition to lower their 
 wages and raise their rents. Undoubtedly this is the first 
 object of the proprietor in calling for these expeditions. For 
 this benefit of the landlords no new forms of economic slavery 
 have had to be invented in despotic Russia; the old tyrannical 
 laws have merely had to be put again into practice. The 
 Russian laws make explicit provisions for keeping agricultural 
 labourers as far as practicable in servitude. 
 
 A recent circular of the governor of Poltava to the "land 
 officials" is significant of the power the landlord has over 
 the peasant laboiu-er. "There is reason to believe," says this 
 
246 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 circular, "that the agitation of the revolutionary parties in 
 the country will be directed this summer to bring about the 
 suspension of work by the agricultural labourers. Among the 
 means of combating such proceedings, the most excellent is the 
 quick and energetic interference of the authorities and the use 
 of the law as soon as the violations come to light. The arbitrary 
 leaving of work without sufficient ground, is a cause for a legal 
 persecution upon the complaint of the employer alone. The 
 result is that damages can be collected from the labourer up 
 to the sum of the contracted wages for three months. However, 
 the judgment of the land officials (themselves landlords, it will 
 be remembered) can be put into execution immediately. But 
 if the labourer is bound by a written contract, the employer 
 has the right to give up the above mentioned damages and to 
 turn to the police with the demand to force the labourer immedi- 
 ately to the performance of his labour." This order, I will add, 
 was strictly enforced. 
 
 In the neighbouring province the landlords turned to the 
 prison authorities with the request that, on account of the 
 great demand for field hands, the prisoners should be turned 
 over to them for field labour for a suitable wage. Now we see 
 the perfect trap ready to catch peasants not able to support 
 themselves from their own lands. As soon as the spirit of 
 the disturbed district is sufficiently crushed so that field labour 
 can be continued, the employers begin to lower wages and 
 raise rents, with the assurance that they will have the armed 
 assistance of the Government to compel the peasants to labour. 
 There are two ways in which the landlord gets his initial "legal" 
 grip on the labourer. First, if the preceding winter has been 
 a bad one, it was naturally easy for the landlords to get the 
 peasants to sign any kind of a contract (often for as little as a 
 .third of the usual wage) to avoid their immediate economic 
 ruin or death by starvation; with this piece of paper in their 
 hands the landlords are masters of slaves for the term of the 
 contract. Second, if the peasant's absolute necessity has not 
 forced him to enter into this "voluntary" servitude,^ the 
 proprietors can still lure him to enter their employment tmder 
 false promises. As soon as the peasant begins to complain of 
 impossible food, of the fines that the employer is allowed to 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 247 
 
 place upon him, or of other frauds, and quits work, the employer 
 has a civil case against him, which can be judged immediately 
 by his landlord friend, the "land official." After the judgment 
 the peasant has either to go to labour immediately under the 
 old conditions or be arrested, and if he is arrested he is again 
 subject to be driven to the fields, as the ancient slaves of Greece 
 or Rome. 
 
 Every "punishment expedition" has been followed imme- 
 diately by the lowering of wages and the raising of rents. Protest 
 against these harsher conditions has meant a new expedition. 
 The peasants on the estate of Prince Kotzebue in the province 
 of Poltava told me how, it being impossible for them to keep 
 alive either as tenants on account of the high rents, or as 
 labourers on wages of twenty to thirty kopecks (ten to fifteen 
 cents) a day, they had therefore decided to quit work and not 
 to pay rent. Of course the Cossacks came, and were still there 
 at the time of my visit. They beat the villagers from day to 
 day, and the discontented peasants were sent away by the dozen 
 and sometimes in shoals of as many as fifty at a time. The 
 result of the strike, followed by the "punishment expedition," 
 was that wages had again been lowered and rents raised. 
 
 But although the peasants' attempt to better their economic 
 conditions by organised effort is checkmated by the guns 
 and whips of the Cossacks, the peasants have by no means been 
 terrorised as the Government desires; they cannot "strike" 
 successfully as this is physically impossible against an armed 
 force, but they can still plan and work toward revolution. 
 They are ever learning new determination and courage in the 
 great war. They are just reaching the height of that primitive 
 lynch justice which doubtless has preserved the existence of 
 many communities under barbarous surroundings. If they 
 should ever learn the use of this measure as did the pioneers of 
 our West, it would be an inconceivably powerful instrument in 
 their emancipation. Here is a recent story that shows the new 
 practice, adapted especially to landlords: 
 
 The landlord Pavlovsky of the town of Shestkovka, in the govern- 
 ment of Cherson, had noticed a peasant's horse while riding through his 
 fields. He turned to the peasant, who had come to get the horse, with 
 the question why he had let his horse on another's field. The peasant 
 
248 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 answered that the horse himself had run away to the place. Thereupon 
 Pavlovsky fired a shot and killed the horse. The owner of the horse 
 went thereupon with other peasants to the house of Pavlovsky and 
 declared to Pavlovsky 's people that the landlord had shot his horse and 
 that he, its owner, would take instead a horse of the landlord. There 
 arose a conflict between the people of the estate and the peasants, during 
 which the people of the estate fired several shots, wounded the owner of 
 the killed horse and killed his son. Out of fear of the lynch justice of 
 the peasants the landlord's people hastened to the station where two 
 of them surrendered themselves to the police and the third was arrested. 
 As we were afterwards informed, a crowd of the peasants marched to 
 the station, broke into the office, dragged out the landlord's people and 
 practised lynch justice on them by beating them to death. 
 
 The new lynch justice of the peasants is not always directed 
 against the landlords, but also against the landlord's allies, 
 the local officials. In many places the so-called "land officials" 
 have been resigning by the wholesale, and it is very difficult 
 to find new men to take their places. In one province this 
 class of official does not dare to appear in the villages without 
 the accompaniment of several others of the same class and the 
 accumulated bodyguards of the whole, that is to say, a htmdred 
 or more rural guards. In Voronege province the Government 
 has to keep transferring the heads of the district police from 
 one district to another, in the hope of preventing in this way 
 the sharp conflicts that prevail as soon as these persons become 
 personally known to the peasants. In one district of Jaroslav, 
 of four "land officials" only one remained and this one feared 
 to wear the uniform. Another, after holding the position only 
 a month and a half, fell into acute insanity. He used to write 
 petitions in which he implored the peasants not to tear him 
 to pieces but simply to hang him. He had to be taken to the 
 asylum. 
 
 It is becoming rather less common to attempt to resist the 
 armed authorities by means of pitched battles such as took 
 place in thousands of cases in 1905 and 1906. At that time 
 it had become almost a custom for the peasants to go up into 
 the church tower when the enemy approached and to sound 
 the alarm. The immense crowds of peasants that would 
 then gather were often equal even to a company of armed 
 soldiers. Now, when Cossacks come to a village, they first of 
 all go to the church and tie up the tongue of the bell or take it 
 
THE CZAR'S ARMIES OF REVENGE 249 
 
 altogether away. In some villages, even, "unknown thieves" 
 (the police) have succeeded in stealing the bell. 
 
 More successful is the well-known war measure of burning 
 down the enemy's property and source of supplies. The land- 
 lords' mansions are still being burned by the peasants in every 
 section of the country. So far has this gone that now, to quote 
 from the conservative organ, Navoe Vremya, "not a single fire 
 insurance company in Russia issues any policies on farm stock 
 or buildings, owing to the enormous spread of incendiarism. 
 The landlords for a long time concealed the facts, misleading 
 both the companies and the Government, but the true state of 
 affairs at last leaked out." This is the most serious and pressing 
 questfon that confronts the landlords to-day. A committee 
 recently called on Prime Minister Stolypine with a plan of 
 rehabilitating the fire insurance on country estates. Stolypine 
 approved, but of course could see no way by which the Govern- 
 ment could participate in such an unprofitable business. 
 
 But neither Mr. Stolypine nor any others of the savages in 
 civilised clothing that are executing the Czar's orders have 
 had or can have any permanent success in suppressing the 
 growing and invincible revolutionary spirit that is already 
 animating a large part of Russia's hundred million peasants. 
 If the country people are on the defensive at the present moment 
 it is not that they lack the will for the most aggressive and 
 violent warfare against the Government, but merely that for 
 the moment they lack the power. Whether this situation can 
 long continue may most seriously be questioned. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE VILLAGE AGAINST THE CZAR A STATE OP WAR 
 
 WAS the spirit of rebellion crushed in the winter of 1906 
 by the twenty-five thousand exiles and arrests and 
 the hundred thousand flayed backs of the insurrectionists? 
 In Russia at the time this was the mooted question among all 
 profound students of the revolutionary movement. 
 
 There was another great question. Had the peasants done 
 their best and finally become discouraged? Events soon 
 proved that the peasants had lost nothing of their rebellious 
 instinct. They had only been forced to change the tactics of 
 revolt. The spring of 1906 had hardly commenced when a new 
 movement began, equally widespread with the last and cover- 
 ing nearly all the rich agricultural section of Russia. A strike 
 of agricultural labourers was organised against all landlords 
 who worked their own land, and a movement against high 
 rents was directed against those who farmed out their estates. 
 
 The strike was highly organized, aggressive, and violent. 
 In all cases the action was by village, often in pursuance of 
 resolutions of the official village meeting. In one government 
 of the south not only were whole villages represented in district 
 committees, but the district committee sent their representa- 
 tive to a central convention of the whole government. The 
 strike was aggressive, because the peasants were asking for an 
 increase in wages that amounted often to 200 or 300 per cent. 
 It was violent, in that strike-breaking peasants were not only 
 beaten by their neighbours, but often also their houses were 
 burned over their heads. Its results were highly satisfactory 
 from the peasants' standpoint, the rate of wages per hour being 
 more than doubled. Peasants who were getting thirty or fifty 
 kopeks for a twelve or fourteen-hour day were often paid' one 
 or two rubles for a day of ten hours. In some cases those land- 
 lords who could not afford to pay the wages demanded were 
 
 250 
 
A STATE OF WAR 251 
 
 told that they might sell their land to the village, but that 
 the peasants' terms would not be lowered. The movement 
 against high rents was equally successful, some villages in the 
 east paying fifteen rubles where before they had paid forty. 
 
 This was the movement of the spring. The summer again 
 marked another step forward toward revolution. The landlords 
 had been beaten on the economic field but they were more 
 embittered than ever by their new difficulties and more ready 
 than before to make use of their allies, the Cossacks and police. 
 So after the first Duma had met and it was evident even to the 
 most credulous villages (some never had believed) that the 
 Czar was going to grant none of the people's demands, the 
 aggressive economic movement was supplemented by a still 
 more aggressive attack against the landlords, who were justly 
 blamed for a large part of the Czar's stubbornness. The princi- 
 ple of the boycott was applied to the landlords, their servants 
 and the police. Every relation between the landlord and the 
 village was made a source of trouble and even of combat. Some 
 villages refused to pay taxes to the zemstvos in order that the 
 landlord might be forced to build his own roads. Others refused 
 to allow the landlord's horses and cattle even to cross the 
 village land, or to furnish horses or lodging to the police. They 
 beat, burned out, or expelled from the village, any peasant 
 who did the landord or the Government a service. 
 
 But this was only the first step. In very many villages ths 
 movement went much further. In the fall of 1 905 the peasants 
 were burning the landlords' mansions in the daytime. In 
 the summer of 1 906 they were burning their farms and granaries 
 at night. At first the destruction was merely a matter of war 
 fare. Then it became the result of a bitter spirit of revenge. 
 This spirit has gone still further, and very many guards and 
 superintendents and a considerable number of landlords have 
 been killed; also many of the village police and even members 
 of the newly created military arm, the rural guards. 
 
 The reign of terror in some sections is already very similar 
 to that of the towns and mining regions. Recently, in the 
 province in which Odessa is situated, fires and murders became 
 so frequent that the governor actually felt himself constrained 
 to establish a night patrol. Does not this order indicate that 
 
252 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the rural revolution in this section has gotten beyond the control 
 of the authorities? Imagine the practicability of patrolling 
 large sections of rural Russia by night. Everyv/here, too, the 
 landlords are forced to hire Cossacks or special watchmen to 
 guard their estates — an equally impractical, because alto- 
 gether too costly, measure. In some districts the nobility 
 do not even dare to go out to pick berries or mushrooms without 
 their Cossack guards ; in others almost every landlord has left the 
 country for the capital or provincial towns. With the sudden 
 fall of rents in the country has gone an equally general and rapid 
 rise in the rents of good houses in the provincial towns. 
 
 This class war of pillage and arson and murder had already 
 brought about concrete results for the peasants. I have spoken 
 of the moderate measure of reform the Government had pro- 
 mulgated, largely under landlord pressure; I have also mentioned 
 the rise in wages and the fall in rents. A much more remarkable 
 and solid benefit has fallen to the peasants as a reward for 
 their successful warfare — the landlords are selling their estates. 
 In the single year since these present agrarian disorders began 
 more than a tenth of the estates of all Russia have been offered 
 for sale. What is still more important is that the peasants, 
 expecting a far more considerable fall in prices, if not a free 
 division of the landlords' property, have often refused to buy. 
 
 The peasants were rapidly, and with comparative ease, getting 
 the better of the landlords, even to driving them from the 
 countryside, when the Government redoubled its oppressive 
 measures, restored the balance of power in favour of the land- 
 lords, and, as I have shown in the preceding chapter, helped 
 them to win back more than they had lost. The struggle with 
 the Government, backed as it is by the consolidated power 
 of the landlords and those allies and relatives of theirs, the army 
 officers and the bureaucrats, is a far more serious and pro- 
 tracted matter — is, in fact, the very substance of the war of 
 the revolution. In this part of the struggle the peasants have 
 had far less success, and up to the present time they have gotten 
 decidedly the worst of it. 
 
 But let us not suppose that the Government is altogether 
 invulnerable. In every village it has given the people hostages 
 in the persons of the village policeman and the village priest. 
 
A STATE OF WAR 253 
 
 Both are the subject of constant persecution in those sections 
 of the country that are most advanced. In many cases these 
 local representatives of the Czarism are already dominated 
 by village opinion; more particularly, of course, the priests. 
 In Kasan the peasants captured several of the local police 
 functionaries and held them until the Government liberated 
 an imprisoned leader of the revolution. Besides these personal 
 pledges, there is in every village a valuable property pledge in 
 the shape of the Government saloon from which the Czarism 
 receives a third of its annual income. Every day the official 
 Russian telegrams report the robbery or destruction of some 
 of these saloons. How many are really attacked or destroyed 
 cannot be known. New villages are daily taking up the campaign 
 against this Government monopoly, and a new plan of attack has 
 been devised — the boycott. The village meeting decides that 
 the peasants shall not drink; an agreed schedule of fines is 
 arranged for all those who do — one ruble for the first drink, three 
 for the second, five for the third, and expulsion for the fourth. 
 
 So successfully have these various attacks hit at the Govern- 
 ment revenue that the authorities have been forced to the most 
 extreme measures of protection. Already all post-offices, 
 railway stations, and every visible form of property have had 
 to be guarded by soldiers or police. Now the same becomes 
 true of all of the tens of thousands of vodka shops in Russia — 
 a sufficient sign in itself of the revolution's strength. Through 
 raising the price of vodka to the very limit the traffic will bear, 
 the Government has succeeded so far in retaining the level of its 
 revenue, but it is only a question of a short time before the 
 State budget must show an enormous loss. 
 
 The measures of physical protection for the saloons are 
 the least interesting of the Government's policies in this matter. 
 In one government of the south, the governor-general has issued 
 an order that any village which has boycotted the saloon must 
 be made to pay in direct taxes the same sum which that saloon 
 produced for the Government the year before. The Govern- 
 ment has always encouraged the use of the vodka poison. It 
 is now compeUing it by nagaikas and bayonets. 
 
 The warfare of the village against the Government is being 
 worked up into a science. The revolutionary bodies are direct- 
 
254 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 ing the activities, but the peasants are quick enough to under- 
 stand. Every possible form of worrying the Government, 
 of upsetting the authority of the local officials, of cutting off the 
 Government's income from the village, of implanting the spirit 
 of mutiny among the new recruits, of coercing the landlords, 
 is being embodied by the revolutionists into a regular revolu- 
 tionary code. Congresses of local and village committees 
 have been held all over Russia to discuss the best means for 
 carrying out the war. It is generally recognised that the time 
 for concerted action in the country at large has not yet arrived, 
 and it is evident to the outside observer that it will not even 
 arrive so soon as the revolutionists hope. What is sought now 
 is not the common action of several villages, but the comparative 
 study of the best modes of action for each individual com- 
 munity. So well do the villages understand this that some 
 have not only themselves absorbed the new programme, but 
 have undertaken to spread it far and wide among the neigh- 
 bouring communities. I visited one village, for instance, where 
 practically everybody was active in one way or another in this 
 revolutionary work, and where the young men seemed almost 
 without exception to be members of the fighting organisations 
 of the revolution. It is especially in those villages where the 
 peasants have been beaten by the Cossacks or imprisoned 
 that the feeling runs most high and the action takes the most 
 aggressive and intelligent form. 
 
 This is the situation at the present moment. There are also 
 ominous preparations for a far more serious and violent manner 
 of warfare. In several of the leading provinces the villages 
 are making every effort to arm and to train up a secret village 
 militia for future use. In the government of Saratov nearly 
 every one of the fifteen hundred villages has its secret committee, 
 and nearly every one of these committees has more or less 
 arms. Some committees are small, consisting of half a dozen 
 members. Others include a hundred or more — all the young 
 rrien of the village. In some cases the committee has only a 
 few old revolvers and guns ; in others the peasants are provided 
 with modem rifles. These local committees are all organised 
 under the district committees, and the district committees 
 under the committees of the Government. 
 
A STATE OF WAR 255 
 
 The revolutionary committee of Saratov is preparing daily 
 for future needs. The local militia are being secretly drilled, 
 taught how to use their weapons and educated in the art of 
 guerilla war. All the roads, bridges, and railway lines are 
 being studied with the end of accomplishing the destruction 
 of the means of communication in the quickest possible manner 
 when the moment arrives. Of course, the peasant militia 
 has the fullest assurance of the support of the whole Railway 
 Union in this plan. Saratov is the model province of Russia 
 from the standpoint of peasant revolt, but many others, espe- 
 cially among its neighbours and those provinces nearest to the 
 Black Sea, are following Saratov's example. 
 
 Until a short time ago there seemed to be one fatal lack 
 in the revolutionist plan — the means with which to purchase 
 the large supplies of arms that will be needed before this guerilla 
 war can be put on the same footing that it has reached in the 
 Caucasus and the Baltic provinces. There are now scarcely 
 a hundred thousand rifles among the revolutionists, even includ- 
 ing these outlying parts of the empire. There must be several 
 times that number before the guerilla war can be successfully 
 begun in the central parts of the country. The money for this 
 purpose was entirely wanting a year ago, but within the past 
 year the well planned and executed robberies of the Govern- 
 ment officers and large banks by the revolutionists (the robberies 
 of the private institutions were of course undertaken only by 
 the most extreme wing) have partly supplied the lack. Approx- 
 imately some ten million rubles have been obtained in this way 
 — sufficient, perhaps, to justify the carrying of the guerilla 
 war into the heart of rural Russia as soon as the guns have 
 been smuggled over the border, or secured by official corruption 
 within the realm. 
 
 The peasants are striving for their liberty at a terrible cost, 
 of which the blood tribute is the least important item. All 
 this sacrifice of life, all the misery and hardship that it must 
 entail, are not a very large price for the Russian peasants to 
 pay for emancipation from age-long oppression, famine, and 
 misery. The worst part of the situation is the reaction on 
 their own character of the violence to which the Government 
 forces the people to resort. When the peasant gets used to 
 
256 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 killing overseers and police, he must have become more or less- 
 accustomed to the shedding of blood — as brutalised, perhaps, as 
 soldiers during a war. But he cannot and will not stop there. 
 Already the villager's hand is raised against his fellow-villager. 
 The soldiers of brutal regiments that are still "loyal " to the Czar 
 are beaten by the villagers when they return home. Peasants 
 that refuse to take part in the general revolutionary movement 
 or strike, are beaten or slain. 
 
 Even this is not the worst. Some villages may have among 
 them no "traitors" to the cause; but there is in nearly every 
 village a small class of peasants who have always been, and 
 may for some time remain, openly loyal to the Czar. These 
 are the privileged — the village usurers, the peasant landlords, 
 the small merchants, the mail carriers, the contractors, the 
 Government saloon-keepers and others favoured by the officials. 
 They are usually only a half dozen or dozen families out of a 
 hundred or two, but they are among the most active of all. 
 Everywhere among the families of the common peasants there 
 are also a few that are inclined to follow the lead of this village 
 aristocracy. Between these and the majority of the peasants 
 there is arising the most brutal and terrible war. The victory 
 is not so easily with the majority as it might seem. A strong 
 village policeman and a few well-hidden spies, a detachment 
 of rural guards or Cossacks in the village or near at hand, will 
 give the advantage entirely to the favoured few. In such cases 
 some horrible incidents have arisen. The peasant aristocrats, 
 following the illustrious example of the Czar, have even insti- 
 tuted so-called military courts for the execution of the leaders 
 of sedition, and have executed such of their enemies as they 
 could lay their hands on. With others, also emulating the 
 Czar, they have proceeded to apply the well-established custom 
 of the "red cock" — that is, they have burned down their 
 enemies' houses over their heads. 
 
 But this last is a dangerous procedure, for it invites a fierce 
 retaliation. The red cock is a principal weapon of the revolu- 
 tionary element in the village, and as the property is to a large 
 degree in the hands of the reactionary few, these few are the 
 principal sufferers in this kind of a war. Such village feuds, 
 resiilting in the burning down of the houses of the enemies, 
 
A STATE OF WAR 257 
 
 and sometimes by accident of neighbours* houses, or of the 
 whole village as well, have always been frequent. Since the 
 revolution began this incendiarism has doubled, and to the other 
 plagues of Russia — war, famine, pillage, and Cossacks — must 
 be added fire. In the short space of one year there were over 
 three thousand such fires in a single government of the fifty 
 of European Russia. 
 
 Worse than the public executions in the village and worse 
 than fire, is the secret murder by night. Of course when the 
 war reaches this stage it cannot last long, as the numbers are 
 overwhelming on the side of the poverty-stricken many. But 
 the spirit of bloodshed has been turned against neighbours, 
 an infinitely more demoralising fact than the killing of those 
 regarded as natural enemies, the landlords and police. 
 
 With this loss of regard for life comes an equal disregard 
 of personal property and every other form of personal right. 
 From pillaging the landlords it is a short step to pillaging the 
 rich peasants. The latter reply where they can with a forced 
 confiscation of the weaker peasants' goods. Soon a period of 
 plunder sets in, directed very largely against those with whom 
 the peasants have their scores to settle — that is, the rich 
 peasants, the landlords, and the police. 
 
 The whole picture of the immediate future of the Russian vil- 
 lage is such a terrible one that few large-hearted and cultivated 
 Russians can bear to contemplate it. Many, in revolt against 
 the only picture their reason tells them to expect, will yet deny 
 some of the most obvious facts. Others, unable to argue away 
 the facts, give up all hope and can see no end to the demoralisa- 
 tion once it gains the upper hand. I have been forced to confess, 
 indeed, that the spread and success of the revolution depends 
 probably, not so much on its successful organisation, as on the 
 disorganisation of the Government and on the spread of the spirit 
 of rebellion and desperation in the mind of the individual peas- 
 ants. Evidently individual rebellion is subject to all the limi- 
 tations of the individual rebel. A growing disregard for life, 
 property, industry, and order, is inevitable as long as the revo- 
 lution continues. The powers that are maintaining the Russian 
 Government to-day can undoubtedly force the nation to this 
 fearful and protracted disorganisation. The revolutionary 
 
2S8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 organisations and organised forms of revolt that make against 
 this demoralisation, the Government can defeat and destroy. 
 Against millions of individual rebels, who, however unorganised, 
 are ready to give up everything for the cause, the Government 
 can accomplish nothing. 
 
 It would be the grossest error to conclude that there is no 
 organisation of the revolutionary forces. Only a few pages 
 back I have spoken of the effort at secret military organisation. 
 In addition there is a constant and often successful effort to 
 create organisations of every kind, though such organisations 
 are organisations only in an educational sense. The personnel 
 of both leaders and rank and file is constantly shifting. 
 Continuous and concerted action is out of the question. 
 
 The PeavSants* Union gathered together, in a single programme 
 and a single set of revolutionary tactics, the best opinion among 
 the Russian radicals as well as the most widely accepted 
 opinions of the peasants. It perfected and developed its 
 programme through repeated national conferences, and it 
 finally succeeded in spreading a knowledge of its tactics in 
 nearly every village of the land. This is organisation in the 
 deepest spiritual sense. Its central committee was imprisoned; 
 its local committees were exiled; all its most openly active 
 members were beaten or thrown into jail. Yet the idea of the 
 union lives, and it unites the peasants in a common effort 
 for a common end. The union remains as popular as ever 
 among the peasantry. Whole villages are still anxious to be 
 admitted to its somewhat mysterious folds. They know its 
 programme; they do not and cannot know the personnel of its 
 organisation. The intelligent peasants of nearly every village 
 will tell you that they stand for the Peasants' Union. One 
 peasant summed the matter up in this way: 
 
 "Of course I am for the Peasants* Union, whatever I may 
 think of other organisations. It is like the hen that spreads 
 its wings over all the smaller revolutionary brood." 
 
 After the Peasants' Union came another organisation, equally 
 successful and equally popular. The radical and revolutionary 
 peasants sent by the villages to represent them in the Duma 
 formed themselves into the "Labour Group." This group 
 adopted practically the entire programme of the Peasants' 
 
A STATE OF WAR 259 
 
 Union, and urged the most advanced and democratic demands 
 along every line. It was the members of this group, it will be 
 recalled, that kept themselves in daily touch with the villages 
 all over Russia while the first Dimia was in session, and who 
 issued, after the Duma was closed, the sensational appeal to 
 arms. This appeal is the most dangerous document to the 
 Government that has ever been published. It has not reached 
 all the villages, but it has certainly reached a large majority. 
 It is so violent and desperate in tone that there are doubtless 
 some villages to which it would not appeal. However, it has 
 been circulated broadcast, has met with approval in all directions, 
 and in the villages that had received it I foimd it had called 
 forth the most cordial and enthusiastic endorsement. A large 
 part of the members of the Labour Group, like the organisers of 
 the Peasants' Union, are now in prison or exile; but many are 
 the villagers who have answered the call of the village bell to 
 arms, or rather to sticks and pitchforks, when there has been 
 a need to rally to the assistance of these members. Though 
 known to thousands of peasants, and travelling about freely 
 after the first Duma was dissolved, many, perhaps half, of the 
 members of the group were enabled by the peasants' aid to 
 escape abroad. The group's proclamation lives in the peasants' 
 minds, gains ground every day, and may yet serve as a rallying 
 cry for the great revolt. 
 
 Through these organisations, or frameworks of organisations, 
 a very large proportion of the villages have been thoroughly 
 ripened and prepared for revolt. Of course the revolt may 
 never occur. It is impossible to say at what time the Govern- 
 ment may become sufficiently frightened to make a complete 
 surrender. The peasants will be satisfied with nothing less 
 than complete surrender, and the only proposal that has 
 appealed to them so far is that a constitutional assembly be 
 instantly convened. If the Government shotdd not siirrender^ 
 as it shows no signs of doing at the present time, the guerilla 
 war will some day take a more terrible form. The country 
 will swarm with an army of guerilla bands, and the Government 
 authorities may be forced to retire from the villages to the strong 
 places the Cossacks are able to hold. The peasants will already 
 have gained part of that for which they are contending. The 
 
26o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 revolution would have to wait for further success on the capture 
 of some sufficiently important stronghold to serve as a centre 
 for an insurrectionary government and for the formation and 
 organisation of a regular revolutionary force. Even then the 
 Government armies might be able to put up a terrific resistance. 
 
 But whether events ever proceed so far or not, it is the 
 imminent possibility that they may which constitutes the hope 
 of the revolution, and the only factor that is able to force from 
 the autocratic Government such fundamental and revolutionary 
 changes as, in the minds of every important element of the 
 Russian people, are now absolutely essential to the development 
 of Russia. 
 
 The Russian people, perhaps more than any other, deplore 
 all warfare. They stand squarely for the abolition of govern- 
 mental violence in every form. But until the present inhuman 
 despotism is done away with, neither war, nor capital punish- 
 ment, nor imprisonment and exile without trial can be done 
 away with. War is the excuse for the Czarism's existence. 
 Administrative punishment and execution are its sole means 
 of support. It is in a last hope of putting an end, perhaps 
 forever, to war and bloodshed that the people have declared 
 war on the Czarism and are ready to pay with their own blood 
 for victory. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 WAITING FOR CIVIL WAR 
 
 THE military aspect of the Russian revolution must finally 
 decide the great struggle. Nor does this military aspect 
 concern Russia alone. The United States and several other 
 modem nations think they are permanently free. But if the 
 art of modem warfare is ever so developed that a fraction of a 
 nation, the Government, has at any time the physical power 
 to keep the rest of the nation in subjection, freedom has no 
 concrete foundation on which to rest. Our liberties depend 
 largely on the character of the arts of war. If coercive govern- 
 ment is possible, it is because the modem means of war give a 
 coercive government the physical superiority. 
 
 Since the invention of repeating rifles, rapid-fire cannon, and 
 machine guns, no prominent people has been in general armed 
 revolt against its government. We can neither say how heavy 
 the popular majority would have to be to win against the 
 disciplined and centralised armies of the government, nor if the 
 people did win, can we say what would be the slaughter the 
 victory would entail. Terrible and unspiritual as these 
 conjectures are, they are of supreme moment and form one of 
 the greatest questions that the Russian revolution has to 
 answer. Some of the Russian conditions are special to that 
 country, but this much is general — the Government has a 
 monopoly of most of the machinery of modern warfare, the 
 possession of the strategic points, the use of a large, disciplined, 
 and centralised army of professional fighting men. 
 
 For more than two years past the Russian Government has 
 practically been at war with its people. Military law prevails 
 throughout the whole empire. The military courts are backed 
 by an enormous military power. The war against the people 
 is being carried on by a full score of modern army corps. An 
 army of more than two hundred thousand men is holding down 
 
 261 
 
262 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the Poles, armies of from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand 
 are burning and hanging in the Caucasus and the Baltic 
 provinces. Armies almost as large are the sole means of 
 preventing insurrections practically en masse of the people of 
 St. Petersburg and Moscow. Every city in Russia is an armed 
 camp. 
 
 In all these armies nearly all the more brutal and dangerous 
 work falls to four hundred thousand Cossacks. They are loyal 
 and enthusiastic killers, and, being half foreign, they are 
 serviceable in massacring Russians, Letts, or Jews. It is for 
 this reason that a large part of them are divided into small 
 bands and kept occupied beating, maiming, and killing the 
 rebellious Russian peasantry. But peasant rebellions have 
 increased recently in number and intensity and the Cossacks 
 have become insufficient. As there are no more Cossacks 
 available, a large number being occupied on the Manchurian 
 and other frontiers, a new army, called the "rural guards," 
 has been especially created for this part of the governmental 
 campaign. 
 
 On paper the Russian army, including these Cossacks, consists 
 at the present time of some two million men. The mutinies 
 of the last two years prove that few of this army except the 
 Cossacks can safely be coimted on for service in the present 
 internal war. Several himdred thousand of the common 
 soldiers, chiefly former workingmen, woidd even turn their guns 
 against the Government if they could. The rest — more than 
 a million peasant soldiers of the line — are clearly a neutral 
 force. They have not the organisation, determination, dash, 
 or physical ability to create a successful revolt. In case they 
 did mutiny they would probably prove helpless against the 
 loyal troops that are carefully mingled with them in every 
 camp. On the other hand, they would certainly be glad to 
 desert the ranks at the first opportunity — if for no other reason 
 than to avoid the suffering and hardship of the Russian soldier's 
 lite. This life has always been hard, the discipline always 
 severe, and since the revolution conditions are worse than e^^er. 
 For the suppression of agrarian disorders, then, such soldiers 
 could scarcely avail. An irresistible opportunity for individual 
 desertion would be afforded the moment they were spread 
 
WAITING FOR CIVIL WAR 263 
 
 over the land in the inevitable small detachments. Moreover, 
 they have nearly all now taken part in peasant disturbances 
 in their own villages before they were torn from their homes 
 and taken to the barracks. They might mutiny, they would 
 probably desert, they would certainly be useless in an agrarian 
 uprising. 
 
 The Government can count on its four hundred thousand 
 Cossacks and on some one hundred thousand other troops of 
 favoured regiments. The newly formed ** rural guards," if not 
 very valuable, are probably loyal, as are also an equal number 
 of the gendarmes and of the police. Here are some seven 
 hundred thousand armed and disciplined men. • Also there are 
 some fifty thousand loyal army officers and several hundred 
 thousand rural police, spies, ruffians and black hundreds which 
 the Government has armed and can rely on where the warfare 
 has not yet entered into a critical guerilla stage. Altogether, 
 then, the Government has at its disposal a million armed men. 
 
 There are also determined partisans of the Government 
 without arms — Government officials in the middle and higher 
 ranks, large and small landlords, the merchants of the towns, 
 village usurers and shopkeepers, petty traders who wish to get 
 rid of their business rivals among the Jews. But, as the 
 elections have finally proven, it may be doubted if the Govern- 
 ment's unarmed supporters number, all told, another million. 
 
 The rest of the people, not less than twenty-five million 
 fighting men, are opposed to the Government, and gradually are 
 joining in the war against it. They are fighting men because 
 nearly all have had four or five years training in the army, 
 and several millions have been through the recent war. They 
 are opposed to the Government because the Government has 
 taken a clear and final stand against their wishes for a political 
 and economic revolution, as expressed in the first Duma, 
 and is using the most violent, savage, and murderous means to 
 repress their discontent. What part of the twenty-five million 
 are already prepared to go to war — i. e., to risk their lives 
 for the cause — it is impossible to say. Certainly almost 
 the whole youth of the cities and towns, probably the over- 
 whelming majority of the yoimg peasants as well. The older 
 men, less valuable and slower to act, are fast moving toward the 
 
a64 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 same attitude. If the present conditions continue there is no 
 doubt that a large part of the twenty-five million will soon be 
 ready for the revolution's service. 
 
 What is lacking to the revolution is not men but organisation 
 and means. It is here that the disparity is most glaring. The 
 Government gets every year several hundred million rubles 
 from foreign financiers, and will doubtless continue to get these 
 sums at whatever cost. The Government has control of 
 hundreds of forts and arsenals throughout the land, of innum- 
 erable rapid-firing cannon and machine guns. It monopolises 
 the use of the telegraphs and railroad lines, and will continue 
 to monopolise them even in the height of civil war. The 
 revolutionists can always destroy the railways — the organisation 
 to use them is lacking and must remain lacking until the 
 Government has been overthrown. The same is true of the 
 telegraphs. Even when all the lines are down, the Government 
 will continue to have the use of its wireless system against 
 the revolution. 
 
 The Government is not only highly organised, but it is 
 organised especially to fight the revolution. By the side of the 
 first Government, a second has grown up. There is one 
 organisation of the railroads in time of peace, and another 
 organisation in time of insurrection. In time of insurrection 
 the roads are on a war footing. Every workman becomes a 
 soldier, every superintendent an officer. So with the telegraphs, 
 the post-office, and the police. Machine guns are 
 
 within a few minutes of every public place, spies infest every 
 restaurant and railway station, Cossacks are on the alert for 
 the few cents of extra pay they get for every hour of "service 
 against the internal enemy." 
 
 Against such an array of organisation and force what can 
 the people do? There is no hidden answer to the question, no 
 possibility of an easy escape from the colossal tragedy of the 
 situation. The people must be ready to die. When they are 
 ready to make the necessary sacrifices of life and everything 
 that life contains, then only can they hope for freedom-. A 
 quarter of a million soldiers were sacrificed in Japan. This is 
 a war of infinitely more importance to the land. 
 
 The war between the Czar and the people has already passed 
 
WAITING FOR CIVIL WAR 265 
 
 the first stages. The armies have taken up their positions^ 
 and the first skirmishes, in which the Government has been 
 tmiformly successful, have already occurred. Nevertheless^ 
 the revolutionists have gained a great advantage. With a 
 mere fraction of their army mobilised and in the field, they 
 are keeping busy the total available Government force. 
 
 How many men of fighting age are subject to revolutionary 
 orders at the present time? Probably two-thirds of the city 
 population, most of the miners and railway men, practically 
 the whole people of the Baltic provinces and of parts of the 
 Caucasus, and a few hundred thousand Russian peasants. In 
 all, certainly no more than a few million men — armed with a 
 few hundred thousand revolvers and less than a hundred 
 thousand rifles, financed with the few million rubles they have 
 been able to seize from the Government, held together largely 
 by purely local organisations and limited in their field of action 
 to a fraction of the land. The workingmen are able to gather 
 in mobs of several hundred or several thousand. Without 
 arms they cannot be able to do much active damage, though 
 it takes several large armies and numerous smaller detachments 
 to keep them down. The guerilla forces in the Baltic provinces, 
 the Caucasus and Poland, are composed of bands of only ten ta 
 a hundred armed men, but they destroy a great deal of 
 Government property and keep three armies employed. 
 
 The peasants' contingents are only beginning to move. 
 The whole peasantry is daily growing more bitter against the 
 Government, but hardly a tithe have yet become soldiers of 
 the revolution. Nevertheless, see what an army they have 
 engaged. The Cossacks and rural guards in the country probably 
 number not less than two hundred thousand mounted men. 
 If the peasants* revolt continues to spread, if ever the dozen 
 most revolutionary provinces of the Volga and the south rise 
 at the same time, this force would not be a fraction of what 
 would be needed to keep the peasants down. It is at this 
 moment of the peasants' uprising that the Railway Union has 
 agreed to strike, and with the aid of the peasants to destroy 
 the bridges and tear up the ties. The national movements 
 in Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces and the Caucasus, 
 would redouble at such an auspicious revolt. The Czar's loyal 
 
266 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 army — that is, the part which is loyal — would do well if 
 it held the strong places and a few important lines of communi- 
 cation. The country districts would have practically emanci- 
 pated themselves at the outset, the cities would soon become 
 centres of mutinies and barricades, and all Russia would be 
 covered with the same guerilla warfare that has been waging 
 for the year past on the borders of the Black and Baltic seas. 
 
 It may well be a protracted struggle, for it is most likely 
 to end as it begins, a guerilla war. The revolutionary forces 
 will strive for better organisation, more arms and more financial 
 backing — but they will long remain relatively disorganised 
 and poor in both money and guns. The size of the guerilla 
 bands may increase from tens to hundreds, or even thousands; 
 it will certainly be long before anything like a regular army 
 is in the field. The basis of the operations of these bands may 
 spread from a dozen outlying districts to a large section of 
 Russia itself, the hundred thousand men now secretly or openly 
 under arms may increase even tenfold; the Government will 
 -continue to count successfully on all, or a very large part, of a 
 centralised army of nearly a million men. It will continue to 
 hold for a long time nearly all the strong places, the cannon and 
 the machine guns; the wireless telegraphs will remain; the 
 railway soldiers will hold and operate the main lines and repair 
 them sufficiently at least for the transportation of troops. 
 
 There is possibility of appalling bloodshed. No people 
 is more lavish of lives than a peaceful people whipped and 
 driven to revolt. If the Czar is determined, no man can see 
 where the bloodshed will end. In our Civil War the United 
 States, a nation of thirty millions fighting over the freedom 
 of a few million blacks, and the preservation of the Union, lost 
 a million men. If great Russia, fighting over the freedom of 
 one hundred and forty million human beings and for the birth- 
 right of a nation, should give the lives of a million or several 
 million, could we fail to understand? 
 
 It is certain that the intelligence, daring and fighting powers 
 displayed in any of the great revolutions of England, France, 
 or America would not have been sufficient to win this present 
 struggle. If to the resources of the tyrannical governments 
 in all past cases there had been added an apparently inexhaustible 
 
WAITING FOR CIVIL WAR 267 
 
 treasury, military railroads, and even wireless telegraphy, these 
 revolutions might have taken generations where they took 
 years to triumph. We must remember that as far as its need 
 of the machinery of war to fight its people is concerned, the 
 Russian Government's resources are inexhaustible; for France 
 cannot afford to let Russia be without a modem army. And 
 it must also be remembered that the cannon, machine guns, 
 railroads, and telegraphs cannot be turned against their owners, 
 as Westerners so superficially imagine. All that is necessary 
 to protect them is an army of a million well paid and well- 
 drilled mercenaries — and these Russia has, literally a profes- 
 sional army, such as is supposed not to exist since the introduction 
 of universal military servitude. 
 
 Americans and Europeans would do well to take an interest 
 in the new Russian military slavery by which a modem 
 professional army of a million men can keep down twenty 
 million. If the method succeeds, it will first be imitated by 
 Prussia, Hungary, and other reactionary countries, and later 
 perhaps by their more Western neighbours. A few years or 
 decades would be enough to endanger all the liberty there is on 
 this earth. The great world-danger of Russia's success is, it 
 may encourage the hope of the privileged classes everywhere to 
 establish similar military despotisms, and encourage the gradual 
 growth of armies making the establishment of such despotisms 
 possible. 
 
part four 
 Evolution of a New Nation 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NATION UNITED 
 
 IN STRUGGLING against Czarism the Russian people are 
 fighting for the right of free development in every possible 
 direction. The professors are struggling for academic freedom, 
 the peasants for land, the workingmen for the right to organise, 
 citizens for the right to govern themselves, publicists for the 
 right to speak and write, and the people at large for every 
 elementary human freedom. As a result there are as many 
 parties as there are groups of people that emphasise one or 
 another aspect of the struggle; but it by no means follows that 
 these parties are turning aside to fight one another. On the 
 contrary there is no fundamental confusion. The object of 
 every bona fide liberal, radical, or revolutionary organisation, 
 is to take all the power away from the incompetent, immoral,, 
 and murderous regime that is at present in control. All opposi- 
 tional parties are agreed that the Government has never listened 
 to any argument except that of violence ; that the past warfare 
 of the people against the Government, whether the best possible 
 or not, has been entirely natural and justifiable; that no one 
 but the Russian people itself should be consulted in the regenera- 
 tion of Russia ; that the Duma should have absolute and supreme 
 power, and that a system of universal suffrage should be estab- 
 lished by which the common people shotdd control the destiny 
 of the nation. In the words of Professor Maxime Kovalevsky, 
 there is only one question in Russia to-day, that is whether 
 Russia is to be a European or an Asiatic nation. 
 
 From this state of the public mind some kind of unity is 
 a necessary and inevitable consequence. The various revolu- 
 tionary and oppositional organisations often feel bitterly against 
 one another for what they consider to be a misinterpretation 
 of the main purpose of the revolution, or a dangerous error 
 in the others' tactics. Nevertheless they cooperate practically 
 
 271 
 
272 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 in that they have dropped into an unconscious and, perhaps 
 even unwilHng, but nevertheless perfectly definite, division of 
 labotir. The Liberals or Constitutional Democrats provided 
 the parliamentary organisation and the leading parliamentary 
 ideas; the Peasants' Unions and the Labour Group directed 
 the peasantry into politics; the Social Democrats organised 
 the workingmen; the Social Revolutionists are most actively 
 occupied with preparations for insurrection. 
 
 The nation was first united at the time of the great general 
 strike which brought about the October Manifesto. Before 
 the Manifesto there were only two organisations which could be 
 said to have any very important political influence. The 
 first was the congress of the zemstvos, or local government 
 boards, and the town councils; the second was the Union of 
 Unions, which included organisations of all the professions of 
 Russia and of nearly all their leading members. Of course all 
 these local government bodies are, according to Russian election 
 laws, placed in the hands of the richest, most privileged and 
 most conservative classes alone. It happened, however, that 
 their power was so restricted by the Central Government, and 
 their functions relatively so unimportant, that none but the 
 enthusiastic reformers took part in the elections. Therefore, 
 although at least nine-tenths of the landlords and rich citizens 
 that elect these bodies are ultra-conservative and entirely 
 friendly to the Government, the zemstvos had nearly everywhere 
 fallen into the hands of honest and enthusiastic, sometimes 
 even qtiite serious and democratic, reformers. 
 
 The congress held at Moscow on the 6th of November, 1905, 
 three weeks after the Manifesto of Freedom, shows the temper 
 of the organisation at this time. The overwhelming majority 
 of these relatively disinterested reformers voted in favour of 
 all the essential features of the revolutionary proposals that were 
 afterward made the programme of the whole nation in the 
 address of the first Duma to the throne. One of the speakers, 
 the well-known Roditchev, the only important public character 
 in Russia who has been a member of all three Dumas, and who 
 was also perhaps the leading orator in each, demanded that 
 either the new elections should be general and direct or that the 
 proposed Duma should not be convoked at all. As it was known 
 
THE NATION UNITED 273 
 
 that the laws then being framed by the ministers did not concede 
 di^-ect elections this was a challenge and ultimatum to the 
 Government. He insisted also on the "absolute separation 
 of the Government from the reactionary court party." Prince 
 Dolgorukov said that they ought to refuse to grant the Govern- 
 ment any credits. Other speakers demanded a common action 
 with the extreme revolutionary parties. One said, "Do not 
 fear the word 'revolution;' we are also revolutionaries, at least 
 in principle." Another said, "I am not a Socialist, but if any 
 one will show me that the Socialists will save Russia, I shall 
 be first to stretch them my hand; a temporary aUiance is 
 inevitable." 
 
 It was decided to demand an absolute amnesty of all political 
 and religious criminals, and at the same time the pimishment 
 of all officials guilty of having stirred up the massacres and 
 other disorders. This resolution justifies the whole movement 
 against the Government even in its most revolutionary aspects, 
 while it refuses any clemency toward officials guilty only of 
 having carried out the well-known inclinations of the Czar. 
 
 It is v/orth while to stop and notice in this early congress the 
 beginning of the only great division that now separates the 
 Russian people. The more peace-loving and less aggressive 
 members of the congress proposed, instead 01 the Duma elected 
 by universal and equal suffrage, a national assembly to be 
 composed of representatives sent by local government boards, 
 town councils, universities, and so on, and suggested that this 
 body should then elaborate the new electoral law. In favour 
 of this proposition were the well-known public men Prince 
 Trubetzkoi, General Kousmin-Karavaiev and Stachovitch. 
 Another relatively conservative view was that of Maxime 
 Kovalevsky, who said that he was not an anti-republican but 
 that he was persuaded that the peasants did not yet want a 
 republic, and therefore that although in France he might be a 
 republican in Russia he was a monarchist. Count Heyden 
 agreed with these ideas. 
 
 These points of view were not so objectionable as those 
 expressed by Alexander Gutchkov, who has now become the 
 leader of the third Duma, and of such reformers as are entirely 
 friendly with the present Government. Mr. Gutchkov was 
 
274 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 opposed to direct suffrage and also to any sort of alliance with 
 the revolutionary parties. Finally, Prince Volkonsky, now 
 become the leader of the notorious black hundreds, demanded, 
 though without receiving any approval, that the congress lend 
 its support unconditionally to the Government. It is necessary 
 to note in passing these conservative tendencies of the minority 
 of the congress, for since the revolutionary movement has 
 stirred up the land-owning and otherwise privileged electors 
 the recent zemstvo congresses have taken a position somewhere 
 between that of Volkonsky and Gutchkov, and this must not 
 appear as a reaction but merely as an assertion of neglected 
 privileges on the part of a threatened social class. 
 
 At the same period also the famous Union of Unions reached 
 its highest degree of development. This organisation had 
 declared its support of the first general strike, and later, in view 
 of a possible recurrence, decided to assess all its members one 
 day's earnings for the support of the next great national effort. 
 Nearly all the most distinguished engineers, lawyers, doctors, 
 journalists, artists, actors, and authors had openly joined in 
 the movement. Even the professors and school-teachers were 
 organised, and the Railway and Peasants' Unions were admitted 
 to membership. Besides, there was a union for the advance- 
 ment of the interests of women, and the Union of Hebrews, 
 The Hebrew union alone, I was told by a prominent Jewish editor, 
 had more than one hundred and fifty local branches and fifty 
 thousand members. 
 
 Here is the heart of the Union of Unions' revolutionary 
 declaration on the eve of the second strike: 
 
 The Government has committed many new crimes. It has arrested 
 the Central Bureau of the Union of Peasants, of the Union of the Post 
 and Telegraphs, also the Council of Deputies of the Workingmen. It 
 has closed the progressive newspapers and proclaimed laws that destroy 
 civil liberty. The Government is threatening the rights which the 
 people obtained for themselves by struggle, and which it confirmed 
 (only) by the Manifesto of October 17th. The liberty of the people is 
 in danger. 
 
 The Central Bureau and Committee of the Union of Unions, declaring 
 a common cause with the Council of Workingmen 's Deputies in its 
 struggle against the Government, calls upon all citizens to defend their 
 rights. The Government invites us to struggle; then let us struggle. 
 The form of this struggle does not depend at all upon us. It depends 
 
THE NATION UNITED 275 
 
 upon the actions of the Government, which by its invasions is trying to 
 destroy the organisation of the working people, of the peasants and of 
 the revolutionary professional classes. By its effort it is compelling the 
 revolutionary movement to take an elementary road. If the Govern- 
 ment keeps the power in its hands it threatens innumerable misfortunes 
 and bloodshed. The Central Bureau and Committee of the Union of 
 Unions invites all the unions which compose it to commence a mobili- 
 sation of their forces to be ready every moment to take part in the general 
 political strike as soon as it shall be proclaimed. 
 
 The Union then demands the abdication of the "provocative Govern- 
 ment" and the immediate convocation of a constitutional assembly. 
 
 As long as the Government allowed it to remain in existence 
 the union continued its revolutionary activities. On the 3d of 
 May, 1906, after the Government had secured a loan of 
 850,000,000 rubles without asking the Dimia's consent, the 
 union again issued an equally revolutionary declaration stating 
 that this loan permitted the Government to reply to the popular 
 demands in the same old way, by bullets, bayonets, imprison- 
 ment, and exile: 
 
 New cannons, new machine guns, armoured automobiles, the mobilisa- 
 tion of new Cossack regiments, the formation of new troops of rural 
 guards, gendarmes, and secret police— these are the results that threaten 
 us from this new financial operation. . . . The money of the people 
 will be employed by those who are outraging it, our children will be 
 compelled to pay for our enslavement. 
 
 The Union of Unions declares this loan a crime against the nation. It 
 declares that, contracted illegally without the consent of the people, this 
 loan cannot bind the coming popular Government, just as was declared 
 last year by the Peasants' Union, the Council of Labour Deputies and all 
 the Socialist parties. . . . 
 
 But the effective power of the people cannot be established except by 
 a constituent assembly possessing full constitution-making, legislative, 
 executive, and judicial powers, and convoked by a universal, direct, 
 secret, and equal suffrage. 
 
 When we have had a glimpse into the programme of these 
 two great organisations, the Zemstvo Congress and the Union 
 of Unions, we have all the materials necessary for understanding 
 the origin of the Constitutional Democratic party, which has 
 occupied the principal position between the thoroughgoing 
 revolutionists and the Government. The party so formed 
 is indeed in a sense the leading political party of Russia, 
 as we can readily perceive if we recall the fact that the large 
 
276 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 majority of the people, hoping little from politics in Russia, 
 have definitely organised themselves — when at all — rather 
 into revolutionary organisations than into political parties. 
 
 At the very first congress of the Constitutional Democratic 
 Party, in October, 1905, the position taken was thoroughly 
 revolutionary. Professor Milyoukov's opening speech declared 
 that the end of the party, and that of all the Russian people, 
 was a constituent assembly based on universal and equal suffrage. 
 He declared that the programme of his party was not only radi- 
 cal for Russia but the most radical of any similar organisation 
 in all Europe, going further in the direction of the decentrali- 
 sation of government and opposition of the principle of laissez 
 faire than any of the rest. While his party wished to preserve 
 the integrity of the Russian State as well as the inviolability 
 of private property, it was in favour of giving the greatest 
 possible liberty to all local branches of the Government, and of 
 extending the functions of the State in every direction that for- 
 warded the common good rather than of restricting them 
 according to the principles of the radicals of half a centiu-y ago. 
 
 Not only did the party take up this advanced position but 
 it looked forward to a strong revolutionary movement and 
 continued to do so for a year or more. In the first number of the 
 party paper, edited by Professor Milyoukov, he said: "We are 
 for the revolution, then, in so far as it serves the cause of politi- 
 cal enfranchisement and social reform." This was not an 
 abstract or general position merely. Professor Milyoukov wrote 
 some time later showing that he was prepared for great dis- 
 turbances. "The disposition of the country," he said, "has 
 not quieted down; it has only gone down deeper below the 
 surface and is now going through some difficult preparatory 
 process . . . As in the case of many organisms, the greater 
 the interval between the moment of irritation on the surface 
 and the final discharge of nervous energy, the more grandiose 
 the latter becomes." Professor Milyoukov has so far changed 
 his opinion of late — as I shall show in the following chapter — 
 that I have considered it necessary to indicate definitely^ that 
 he stood at this time with the rest of the Russian nation. 
 
 Indeed, we may well feel that the Constitutional Democratic 
 leader was then too optimistic. He reported an interesting 
 
o -5 
 ^ .2 
 
 t-t u 
 
 o - 
 
 o "1 
 CO 
 
 •s 
 
^•' OF THE '^ 
 
 UMIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
THE NATION UNITED 277 
 
 interview that he had had with the then prime minister, Count 
 Witte. He said that he had called Count Witte's attention to the 
 mistake the latter (or the Czar) had made in not responding to 
 the general wish of the Russian people by calling a constitutional 
 assembly and bringing about a liberal but monarchistic consti- 
 tution similar to that of Bulgaria — established, by the way, 
 with the aid of the Russian Government. Count Witte answered 
 that the public would now be satisfied with no constitution 
 that was given from above. " In other words," says Milyoukov, 
 "Count Witte proved more liberal than I." Professor Milyou- 
 kov 's answer was that the public would not be satisfied with 
 a constitution from above only because it did not believe it possi- 
 ble to get it, and he threatened that the first Duma would draw 
 up an election law, demand a constitutional assembly elected 
 on the basis of this law, and that only after this would a third 
 and regular legislative body be convened. Professor Milyoukov, 
 we see, from the very outset had an almost child-like faith in 
 the powers of any parliamentary or legislative body to bring 
 about revolution without reference to the guns outside its 
 hall. He did not suspect that the progressive and revolutionary 
 elements would be reduced to naught either by the election law 
 or by the new Duma being ignored by the Government. Count 
 Witte in this instance was the true statesman. He reckoned 
 only with the real elements of the situation, the revolutionary 
 movement, which woiild not be satisfied with any constitution 
 from above, and was undismayed by Milyoukov 's threats of 
 paper laws to be passed by a powerless assembly. 
 
 But we must consider that even Professor Milyoukov had 
 small faith at first in the Duma. He wrote a little later, " Until 
 there is a definite admission from the Government that a con 
 stitution is finally established, and as long as open preparations 
 for a coup (Tdtat continue, it will be impossible to squeeze the 
 revolutionary struggle into the framework of parliamentary 
 combat. We are under no delusion about this and do not 
 imagine that the weapons of parliamentary struggle are very 
 great." Since the Government has now definitely refused to 
 consider that there is a constitution, and the coup d'etat Mil- 
 youkov feared has actually taken place, we must conclude from 
 his own logic that the weapons of parliamentary struggle have 
 
2 78 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 become insignificant, no matter what Professor Milyoukov 
 may now say to the contrary. If Professor Milyoukov and 
 the Constitutional Democratic Party have become more con- 
 servative, this is doubtless largely due to the fact that, instead 
 of seeing that both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary 
 revolutionary movements in Russia have no immediate outlook, 
 he was disposed to be pessimistic only concerning the latter 
 phase of the great movement. 
 
 Before the first Duma the Constitutional Democratic Party 
 decided that they were actually to enter into the details of 
 social reform rather than to continue a direct effort for a funda- 
 mental political change; they were already on a downward 
 slope which could not but lead to the miserable fiasco later 
 to be mentioned. But they had not yet deserted the Emanci- 
 pation movement, and so we can speak of the unity of the 
 whole Russian people in the first Duma. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATION CHOOSES THE REVOLUTIONARY WAY 
 
 THE address of the first Duma to the throne was signed 
 by all its members except an insignificant minority of 
 seven. In this address the Russian nation presented to the 
 Government and the world its Magna Charta. It was passed 
 unanimously. While the seven extreme reactionaries did not 
 vote for it they did not dare to vote against it, but merely 
 walked out of the hall as if they did not know what had been 
 passed. In the voting on every important question proposed 
 in that address the majorities were overwhelming. Sometimes 
 the vote was unanimous, sometimes the majorities were four 
 hundred to one, to three, five, or six. This unity was secured 
 not only by the powerful pressure and intelligence of the Consti- 
 tutional Democrats who occupied the centre, but by the full 
 recognition of the necessity of unity by both of the extremes. 
 After the Duma was dissolved both the revolutionary and the 
 peaceful extremists in the Duma were more than ever impressed 
 with the necessity of making the great fight on the basis of the 
 address to the throne. Whatever agitation and discussion of 
 other revolutionary subjects may have been in the air, all the 
 wise leaders of every oppositional and revolutionary party 
 were at one in the necessity of concentration on this basis.* 
 
 The most important article in the address, the matter that 
 came first of all before the Duma, was the demand for imme- 
 diate and full political amnesty as "the first pledge of mutual 
 imderstanding and mutual agreement between the Czar and 
 his people." This demand for amnesty is a demand for the 
 most revolutionary measure practicable imder the present 
 conditions of the coimtry. Few of the himdreds of thousands 
 of political prisoners are terrorised by their political punish- 
 ments. The idea that people can be forced into submission by 
 
 * For the text of the address to the throne, see Appendix, Note B. 
 
 279 
 
28o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 sheer terror comes down from the days of Ivan the Terrible and 
 is utterly inapplicable at the present time. The Duma knew 
 that when these political prisoners got out they would first 
 look about to see if the Government was itself making a funda- 
 mental and revolutionary reform. If not, the revolutionary 
 movement would be wondrously reinvigourated by these out- 
 raged subjects. Indeed the Duma felt that the revolutionary 
 movement would become invincible when reinforced by a hundred 
 thousand active recruits. The Dtmia likewise demanded the 
 abolition of martial law, knowing well that this would leave 
 entire provinces, and perhaps the larger part of the coimtry, 
 entirely in the people's hands. 
 
 The first Duma demanded universal suffrage, the respon- 
 sibility of the ministers and all the Czar's officials to the Duma 
 and not to the Czar, the abolition of the existing Coimcil of 
 State, and all laws that stood in the way of the full popular 
 sovereignty. In a word, the representatives of the Russian 
 nation demanded the full sovereignty of the people, and, 
 whether monarchy or republic, a wholly democratic state. At 
 the same time the Duma was very well aware that it was most 
 unlikely the present Czar would grant this request for a com- 
 paratively free government, and it knew full well that the 
 demand itself was leading to future revolutionary conflicts. 
 
 Quite as revolutionary as its political programme was the 
 Dimias's challenge to the reigning landlord caste. In demanding 
 the expropriation of the estates of the large proprietors on the 
 principle of eminent domain, the Duma was instituting a social 
 conflict of the greatest importance. It was facing the funda- 
 mental social question in Russia, for, besides the Government, 
 the common enemy of the nation is the landlord class. In 
 taking this position the Duma was only fulfilling the mandates 
 on which it had been elected, for all over the country the voters 
 had united definitely against the landlords as well as against 
 the Government. All the calamities that have happened since 
 the nation's declaration of war against the landlords, have 
 been traced by the Constitutional Democratic leaders themselves 
 to a conspiracy between the Government and the Russian land- 
 owning nobility to restore fully the old oppressive despotism. 
 
 The Constitutional Democrats not only took up a revolu- 
 
NATION CHOOSES REVOLUTIONARY WAY 281 
 
 tionary position with the rest of the nation at the beginning 
 of the Duma; they maintained it in a sense until the close. The 
 Duma's action, which was used by the Government as an excuse 
 for closing it, was animated by the same revolutionary spirit 
 as the address to the throne. The Duma proposed to post in 
 every village in the country declarations to the effect that it 
 intended to provide all the peasants with land. Although the 
 proposal itself is entirely practical and on its surface innocent,, 
 its bearings can be well imagined. Neither the Government nor 
 any considerable part of the landlords were ever willing to 
 carry out such a fundamental social reform, and to do it against 
 the will of the Czar and the ruling social caste meant nothing 
 less than social revolution. 
 
 No sooner were the troops stationed around the Dimia hall 
 for the purpose of expelling the deputies than active members 
 both of the peasants' and the Constitutional Democratic parties 
 arranged to get a majority of the members then present 
 in St. Petersburg to meet together at the Viborg in Finland, 
 where they issued the now famous manifesto. In this historic 
 document, signed by more than two hundred representatives 
 of the people, it was predicted that the Government would use 
 every effort to obtain a second and more servile Duma, and that 
 if it succeeded "in suppressing the people's movement altogether 
 it would summon no other Duma at all." As is usual with 
 political predictions this one turned out to be true only in a 
 very large interpretation. Before calling an obedient and 
 servile Duma the Government again made an experiment with 
 the old Duma election law, and in spite of all the efforts of 
 the police the second Duma was more Socialist and more revolu- 
 tionary than the first. But the prediction held strictly true for 
 the third Duma, the elections for which were held after all 
 only thirteen months after the Viborg manifesto. When, after 
 deciding to dissolve the second Duma also, the Government 
 had succeeded in suppressing the people's movement altogether,, 
 it did indeed summon no other Dimia, if we use the 
 word "Duma" in the sense in which it was employed by the 
 signers of the manifesto. For the third Duma is no Duma at 
 all, but merely a council of elected representatives chosen not 
 by the people but to suit the Government's convenience. 
 
282 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The chief revolutionary proposal of the Viborg manifesto 
 was that the Government had no right to demand taxes or 
 recruits from the people without the consent of their represen- 
 tatives. As there was no such clause in the so-called consti- 
 tution or in fundamental laws in existence at that time, this 
 principle, however just, was entirely extra-constitutional and 
 revolutionary. The manifesto also proclaimed that all loans 
 raised without its consent would be illegal. That all three of 
 these revolutionary proposals were belated and impractical, 
 that the country was no longer in a revolutionary fever as at the 
 time of the successful general strike a year before, is not of 
 interest at this point. I insist only that these measures were 
 thoroughly unconstitutional and revolutionary, being the same 
 which had been demanded more than a year before by the 
 Peasants' Union, the Railway Union, the Council of Labour Depu- 
 ties and the Socialist parties — and which were then opposed 
 by the timid Constitutionalists, at the only time when they had 
 any chance of practical effect. During the Dvuna the Consti- 
 tutional Democrats had been continually forced in a revolutionary 
 direction, or at least held in a radical position, by the so-called 
 "Labour Group," an offshoot of the Peasants' Union. At its 
 •close they fell almost entirely into the revolutionary position 
 and the tactics elaborated more than a year before by that 
 and other related organisations. 
 
 Among the signers of the Viborg manifesto were nearly aU 
 the important members of the Duma, the only exceptions being 
 several leaders who were attending the inter-parliamentary 
 congress in London, and a few conservatives like Hey den and 
 Stachovitch. The parties that stood for the manifesto had 
 much greater success than ever in the elections for the second 
 Duma. The only regret expressed among the mass of the elec- 
 tors was that the meeting could not have been held in St. Peters- 
 burg and that the Dimia did not then and there declare itself 
 the Russian Government. Such an attempt would undoubtedly 
 have led to the immediate arrest of the whole Duma. This 
 would have had a much more electrical effect, would have been 
 much more likely to precipitate an uprising of the whole nation 
 than the passive-resistance measure actually adopted which 
 called on the people to refuse recruits and the payment of taxes. 
 
NATION CHOOSES REVOLUTIONARY WAY 283 
 
 Moreover, these members of the Dimia did not save them- 
 selves by not inviting their own arrest at this time, when it would 
 have brought on not only a powerful movement in Russia 
 but a great wave of international indignation such as has not 
 been seen since the days of the January massacre in St. Peters- 
 burg — for they have all just been on trial and have been 
 sentenced to three months' imprisonment by the courts. 
 
 In this trial Muromzev, president of the first Duma, asked 
 how it could be possible that the people's elected representatives, 
 and so the people themselves, should be declared to be enemies 
 of the Government, and he claimed that such a view sets us back 
 in the Middle Ages when the governments behaved toward the 
 people as the conquerors in a conquered land. He asked: 
 "Can we look on our people in this way? It is said that this 
 is the patriotic standpoint, but this is not so; it is rather a 
 standpoint of hostiUty to the very idea of the State." 
 
 We see that in the intervening two years the president of 
 the Duma has not retracted his former principles, and we find 
 that the revolutionary spirit of the workingmen and peasant 
 deputies had on the contrary rather increased than fallen dtiring 
 this period. As there were only two of the most extreme revo- 
 lutionary party among the peasants' deputies in the first Dtmia 
 and forty were sent to the second, we can see to what degree 
 the revolutionary feeling had risen between the two Dumas. 
 The trial of the Viborg deputies is indeed, as the lawyers claimed, 
 not a trial of individuals but of the whole Russian people. The 
 Russian Government, by its decision in this trial, has convicted 
 90 per cent, of the Russian people of political crime and sent 
 their representatives to prison as a pimishment. 
 
 That the signers of this manifesto deserved well of the Russian 
 people is witnessed also by the attack made on them by the 
 reactionary leaders. The Russian Flag, the extreme reac- 
 tionary organ favoured by a large class of officials and courtiers, 
 demands for Muromzev, the president, and for the Princes 
 Dolgorukov and Schackovskoi, the vice-presidents of the Duma, 
 the death .-penalty, or, what is even worse, a life-long sentence 
 of forced labour in the mines. 
 
 We must distinguish the action of the moderate Constitutional 
 Democratic majority in this Duma from the action of the 
 
284 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 radical minority. The majority of the Duma represented at 
 the most a few hundred thousand city electors and small land- 
 owners, while the Labour Group represented no less than five 
 or ten million peasants. This group, after having signed the 
 manifesto calling for passive resistance, went much further 
 in its appeal to the population and called on them to enter into 
 real revolution, ' ' open violent rebellion. ' ' Its manifesto declared: 
 
 Nobody has a right to submit to such a government, it would be 
 criminal to execute its decrees. The people ought everywhere to drive 
 away the local authorities and replace them by elected authorities. 
 They ought to confiscate everywhere and place in the hands of authorities 
 legally elected by the nation, all the fixed and movable property of the 
 State. . . . 
 
 The peasants ought to take their affairs in their own hands. They 
 have not been given land and liberty. They must take liberty; they 
 must take all the land, not in a disorderly manner, but by putting it 
 from the outset into the hands of locally-elected authorities 
 Now is the moment for the whole country to rise as a single man to save 
 the fatherland from ruin, and to pronounce the terrible judgment of the 
 people against the betrayers of the country. 
 
 From the point of view of immediate practical results this 
 appeal was no more efficient than the call of the Duma majority 
 for passive resistance, but it had a far more revolutionary and 
 permanent effect on the people, as I have already indicated 
 in speaking of the state of mind of the peasantry. The signers 
 of this proclamation were, however, quite mistaken as to the 
 ripeness of the country for a great revolutionary movement. 
 There has been a tremendous evolution in this direction, but 
 the people were by no means aroused to that pitch of warlike 
 spirit and readiness for martyrdom that would be necessary to 
 overthrow a government having such financial and military 
 resources as that of the Czar. 
 
 The revolutionary spirit of the first Duma lived not only in 
 the largely increased number of Socialist and revolutionary 
 deputies elected to the second — nearly one-half of the whole 
 body in spite of the outrageous election law and the monstrous 
 interference of the police — but also in a frequent reassumption 
 by the moderate party of the revolutionary position it had 
 taken in the first Duma. When this Duma also had made 
 itself obnoxious to the Government and Nicholas dissolved it 
 
;=) 
 
 H 
 
 ^ 13 
 

NATION CHOOSES REVOLUTIONARY WAY 285 
 
 in a manifesto creating an even more outrageous election law, 
 he specified certain accusations of political crime. From the 
 standpoint of one wishing to preserve all his arbitrary power, 
 these accusations were certainly justified. It was true, as 
 Nicholas claimed, that the Duma in refusing to endorse certain 
 measures of the Government was unquestionably encouraging 
 the revolutionary movement. The Government asked for a 
 law punishing the justification, in meetings and in the press, 
 of so-called political "crimes." The Duma refused its consent. 
 The Government proposed a law punishing more severely 
 revolutionary agitation in the army. The Duma refused its 
 consent on the ground that such agitation could only be fought, 
 not by more severe punishment than that in existence, but by 
 far-reaching social reforms. The Czar accused the Duma of 
 having allowed a minority (the two hundred Socialist or semi- 
 Socialist deputies, a pretty large minority) of using the Duma's 
 right of questioning the Government as " a means of waging war 
 against it and awaking the mistrust of the population." There 
 can be no question that this accusation was practically true. 
 Finally, the Government accused the Duma of not having 
 examined the budget after a session of two months, and suggests 
 rightly that this action was due to the non-Russian elements 
 in the Duma in league with the revolutionists. It is true that 
 the Polish delegates who held the balance of power were consider- 
 ing the refusal of the budget on the ground that the Govern- 
 ment was continuing its oppression of the Polish people. It is 
 also true that the Mohammedan group was probably more in 
 accord with the moderate Socialists than with the Constitutional 
 Democrats, and that by the union of these forces a majority 
 entirely hostile to the Government on the all-important land 
 question might have been created had the Duma continued. 
 
 The second Duma, then, was more revolutionary than the 
 first, in spite of efforts of the moderate Constitutional Demo- 
 crats to prevent its drift in the revolutionary direction. On 
 all great economic and political questions the Constitutional 
 Democrats in the Duma were disposed to compromise indefi- 
 nitely with the Government, but on the most pressing and 
 immediate questions they were forced by the overwhelming 
 sentiment of the country to take up a revolutionary position. 
 
286 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Indeed the position that they took at this time in refusing ta 
 pass a resolution condemning the assassination of officials, 
 without reference to the arbitrary and equally violent acts of 
 the Government, is the one thing which will never be forgiven 
 them by the reactionary forces of the country. It will be 
 difficult for the most conservative members of the party to over- 
 come this revolutionary past, and above all it will be difficult, 
 if not impossible, for them to entirely reverse the party's position 
 on this question of "The Terror." 
 
 The practical unity of the Russian people in favour of the 
 revolutionary movement and against the Government was 
 maintained, then, until the dissolution of the second Duma, 
 when the Czar's coup d*^tat practically put an end to every 
 shadow of constitutional and parliamentary government. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE UNITY DESTROYED 
 
 WE HAVE now to deal with the only serious division 
 that has taken place in the ranks of the people since 
 the beginning of the Russian revolution. It is by no means as 
 important a division as it appears, but owing to the fact that 
 the Constitutional Democratic party, favoured by an absurdly 
 unjust election law which they themselves have denounced^ 
 formed the majority of the first Duma and usually held the 
 balance of power in the second, this division has become noised 
 abroad and is overestimated by even the most serious foreign 
 observers. There is no question that the Constitutional 
 Democratic party after the dissolution of the second Duma 
 had lost almost all of its revolutionary standpoint, and 
 become an ordinary radical party. Such parties are vitally 
 important and entirely justifiable in all countries that have 
 any real constitutional government. It may be doubted, 
 however, if this kind of opposition has any deep signifi- 
 cance whatever, under the arbitrary government of the Russia 
 of to-day. 
 
 That a group so timid and weak as to assume this moderate 
 position during the present great crisis, has left the revolution- 
 ary ranks does not necessarily mean a weakening of the whole 
 revolutionary movement. Quite the contrary. It means 
 that the new army, composed only of such elements as are 
 ready to fight the Government by all means until it is entirely 
 overthrown, is more practically constituted, more profound 
 in its principles, and much more powerful in every way. The 
 Constitutional Democratic party has withdrawn from the 
 revolutionary movement only a small minority of the middle 
 class. The majority of the middle class, the overwhelming 
 majority of the one hundred and forty million peasants and 
 working people, remain as they were before, united in the move- 
 
 2i^ 
 
,^88 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 ment for a constitutional assembly and the absolute sovereignty 
 of the people. 
 
 Nevertheless, this desertion of the official Constitutional 
 Democratic party (let it be noted from the outset that the 
 rank and file of those who have voted for the party have by no 
 means forsaken the revolution), since it is the first and only 
 great betrayal since the beginning of the movement, is the only 
 spiritual calamity that has happened to the revolutionary 
 movement. Though the loss was only of one part of ^ one of 
 the several corps of the great revolutionary army, yet the loss 
 did destroy the complete national unity that existed during the 
 first Duma when all elements of the Russian population were 
 as one against the Czar, the nobility and their bought retainers 
 and mercenaries. 
 
 We must examine this desertion carefully to find out whether, 
 from the standpoint of the conservative wing of the Russian 
 moderate party, there are any fundamental defects in the 
 morality or the intelligence of the revolutionary movement. 
 From the outset the Constitutional Democratic Party was an 
 opportunist and political organisation. It was not endeavour- 
 ing, like the Socialist parties, to unite the people on fundamental 
 principles of social evolution; it did not endeavour, like the 
 Peasants' Union or the Council of Labour Deputies, to bring 
 together large elements of the population on the sole ground 
 of their economical interests. It was a political party in the 
 same sense as those of England or the United States, where 
 political liberty has already been attained. 
 
 Nevertheless this party differed from similar parties in other 
 •countries. At the time of its formation it was impossible, and 
 remains impossible to-day, to organise any large party in 
 Russia, even if it is to have only one hundred thousand members, 
 without taking in revolutionary and Socialistic elements. In 
 the first congress of the party Professor Milyoukov, the 
 president, stated that the party was composed of persons with 
 two opinions in regard to the Socialist proposals — one class 
 which were convinced that these principles were just but that 
 they were outside the limits of practical politics, another that 
 considered them unacceptable in general. Therefore, he urged 
 that it was necessary for the party to take no position on these 
 
THE UNITY DESTROYED 289 
 
 fundamental social principles. "To put these questions in the 
 foreground," he said, "and to include them in our programme, 
 will have as an immediate result the dissolution of the party." 
 We see then, not that the party was conservative, since it wished 
 to take into its ranks a large number of convinced Socialists, 
 but that it was opportunist. The leader, Milyoukov, was a 
 confessed opportunist. The party executive, largely composed 
 of members of the first Duma, was half opportunistic. The 
 party members, on the other hand, were from the outset 
 extremely radical and Socialistic if not Socialist. One may say 
 without danger of error that a very large proportion of them 
 were "opportunist Socialists" and far more friendly to the 
 Socialist parties than to organisations more conservative than 
 their own. When we come to those who gave their votes for 
 this party, a much larger and more important body than the 
 party members, we find a still more Socialistic and revolutionary 
 opinion. In each election a very large portion voted for the 
 Constitutional Democratic Party only because there was no 
 other organisation between this party and the Socialists. 
 
 The party organisation itself has ceased to be revolutionary, 
 but this change could hardly have come about except for the 
 persecution of the Government. A large part of the radical 
 members of all the committees have been arrested all over 
 the country, leaving inevitably only the most conservative 
 which the Government either could not or did not care to disturb. 
 For instance, the radical members of the first Duma were 
 disqualified by the Government for election to the second. 
 As a result many of the new representatives came from the 
 conservative wing of the party. Again and again the 
 Government has been able to change the whole tactics of this 
 party, which has insisted always on being strictly legal, by orders 
 issued directly from the Government bureaus. Whenever 
 anything the party was doing seemed especially radical to the 
 Government, it proceeded to enact some new administrative 
 regulation by which the agitation was eradicated. The party 
 insisted on being legai. Is it necessary to expatiate on the 
 absurdity of legaUty in the Russia of to-day? Step by step, as 
 the Government has become more severe in its measures, the 
 "legal" party has been forced backward. 
 
290 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Tainted with the vice of opportunism rather than that 
 of conservatism, the party at the meeting of the second Duma 
 seemed about to change its tactics once more and to adopt a 
 more revolutionary rather than a more conservative position. 
 During the second elections, and before the Duma met, it 
 appeared that the Socialists would very nearly have a majority 
 without the Constitutional Democrats, and Professor Milyoukov 
 said in a public interview that the party would have to work 
 with these elements. But when the Duma met it was soon 
 clear that the aggressive tactics of the Socialists against the 
 Government might lead to an immediate dissolution. Now 
 as a purely opportunist and purely political party, the Consti- 
 tutional Democrats were of practically no importance except 
 by the Duma being in session. They were therefore forced into 
 every possible measure for conciliating the Government and, 
 preventing the dissolution. They dropped all the revolutionary 
 proposals addressed to the throne by the first Duma, postponed 
 the demand for amnesty and declared through their leaders, 
 Hessen and Milyoukov, that they were ready to compromise 
 even on the absolutely vital matters of obtaining a just election 
 law and expropriating the landlords for the benefit of the 
 peasants. But this timid and conciliatory attitude, instead of 
 bringing the Government to yield to their attenuated proposals, 
 only made easier the Government's design of abolishing the 
 parliamentary institution at least in all but name. 
 
 When the Czar dissolved the second Duma, and at the same 
 time broke his own word and repealed a "fundamental law," 
 he performed, according to the Constitutional Democrats, an 
 unconstitutional act. In pursuance of their own principles, and 
 concentrating all their strength in a fight for the constitution, 
 they should have done everything in their power to resist this 
 measure. All the organs and speakers of the party should have 
 proclaimed, without cessation or fear of any punishment, the 
 unconstitutionality of this act. Being unconstitutional it was 
 also a political crime. By proclaiming this act a crime of the 
 Czar, all the well-known leaders of their party could have got 
 themselves imprisoned or exiled, and thus have created the 
 utmost possible protest against this measure — which, according 
 to their principles, was the worst the Government could be 
 
THE UNITY DESTROYED 291 
 
 guilty of. I am not defending the party's principles. I do 
 not see that there was ever anything resembling a constitution 
 in Russia. What I insist on pointing out here is that the party 
 was not even true to its own fictitious and timid conceptions 
 of how liberty is to be won for the Russian nation. We see again 
 from this failure to act that constitutionalism is not the basis of 
 this party, but that its very foundation is mere political 
 opportunism — to keep moving a little bit in the right direction 
 without reference to the rate at which the goal is neared. 
 Having accepted from the outset in its resolution to be legal the 
 framework made for it by the Government, the party is now 
 operating within limitations so narrow as to make it appear 
 quite ridiculous in view of the momentous, tragic issues at stake. 
 
 The Russian independent press has pointed out that the 
 Constitutional Democrats have now taken the position formerly 
 occupied by the confessedly anti-revolutionary reformers, the 
 Octobrists. This party was in favour of the strictest ** legality " 
 in all measures of reform — that is, the strictest submission 
 to the will of the Czar. Since the coup d'etat, however, which 
 the Octobrists also confess to have been a wholly illegal act, 
 tney have even lost this principle of legality, for it was by 
 the new illegal election law that they were given control of 
 the third Duma, and they are now opposed to any further 
 changes in the law. In the same way the Constitutional 
 Democrats, who were formerly constitutionalists, have 
 consented to sign an address to the Czar in the name of the 
 whole of the third Duma in which the word ** constitution" is 
 not mentioned. All that remains of their former principles is 
 a sort of "legal" or "loyal" opposition precisely similar to the 
 former opposition of the Octobrists. From their own stand- 
 point, then, the Constitutional Democratic Party has taken 
 the place of their most bitter opponents, the very position which 
 they were denouncing a few months ago. 
 
 The degeneration of the party, after having reached this 
 low level, continued apace. The new timid position assumed 
 by the organisation while its more radical members remained 
 in prison and exile, has given an opportimity to an entirely new 
 class of men to secure control. The type that now has the 
 greatest influence over the party congresses, however common 
 
292 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 in other countries, is comparatively rare in Russia, trained as 
 she is to a large degree of public spirit by her great struggle. 
 In the empire of the Czars such public characters as do not live 
 first of all for their coimtry, but rather to make a success in their 
 own private lives, are called "careerists," a term of the utmost 
 reproach. In America many such anti-social but successful 
 individuals are simply praised as self-made men. I do not 
 imply that the Russian type is in any way different from that 
 familiar in other countries, but only that the type is less common 
 and less popular there. Individuals who have not been 
 imprisoned recently, and are taking up such a position that 
 they are not likely to be seriously persecuted by the Government 
 in the future, those who have profited rather than suffered by 
 the revolution, now compose the principal element in the 
 Constitutional Democratic faction in the third Duma. I do 
 not mean that such persons have not been persecuted more 
 or less, but only that they are not being seriously persecuted at 
 the present moment, although they still are submitted to the 
 irritating annoyances of police regime. Examples of this type 
 are commonly held to be Professor Milyoukov himself, Hessen, 
 the other editor of the central organ of the party, and Struve, 
 the principal theoretical writer. They are all more of the 
 German professorial type than of the type of the Russians 
 active in local government who were the true founders of 
 the Constitutional Democratic Party. 
 
 In all that follows I must warn the reader to distinguish 
 sharply between the degeneration brought about by these 
 leaders and their relatively small following, and the opinions 
 held by those who have merely voted for the party. But 
 though we can exonerate the great mass of . voters, we cannot 
 exonerate the party organisation. The party, as well as its 
 leaders, is responsible; long ago it chose the wrong road. 
 Although the first party congress took up a clearly defined revo- 
 lutionary position, the second, deciding that Russia was already a 
 constitutional country, took the path of a purely parliamentary 
 agitation inconsistent with any true emancipation movement 
 in a despotic land. They adopted the theory that Russia had 
 a constitution, and supposed that they were following politically 
 advanced coimtries like England and the United States where 
 
THE UNITY DESTROYED 293 
 
 legal convictions must flotirish and have played an important 
 and useful role — in times of social peace. These Russian 
 moderates have forgotten that no people have ever been more 
 revolutionary and more practical in times of social war than 
 the people of England and the United States. A Cromwell 
 would have said of the second Duma, even before the Czar 
 showed his scorn of it, "Take away that bauble." An 
 American assembly would certainly have signed some declaration 
 of independence even if they had gone to imprisonment or 
 execution in the next moment. The German professors of the 
 Constitutional Democratic Party decided to talk about a 
 constitution in Russia tmtil the people, and the Czar himself, 
 should come to believe in its existence — until gradually their 
 voices should force the Government to grant the reality in place 
 of the shadow. 
 
 The first mistake of the Constitutional Democrats was in 
 claiming that Russia had a constitution. Article 87 of the 
 fundamental laws reduced almost to zero the right of the Duma 
 to reject projects and laws which the ministers have the 
 intention to propose, and reduced the right of the Duma over 
 the budget, as Milyoukov himself confessed, to all but a pure 
 illusion. The second mistake was to take seriously a parliament 
 which had absolutely no power, and to act as if this were a 
 genuine parliament. But this was only the beginning of a 
 whole series of mistakes which necessarily followed. 
 
 The third incomprehensible error of this timid party was in 
 not taking a more decidedly revolutionary position at the 
 time of the Viborg manifesto and in not accepting their penalties 
 at that critical moment instead of being convicted two years 
 later of political crime. As I have indicated, this might have 
 brought the nation much nearer to a crisis. 
 
 The fourth mistake of the party was when, after the 
 dissolution of the first Duma, it fell practically into the hands of 
 the mere opportunist and politician Milyoukov (I use politician, 
 of course, in the true sense of a man devoted merely to politics 
 without any ulterior motives). I have already shown how 
 this came about, and that it led to the surrender of all the great 
 principles of the Russian Magna Charta, the address of the first 
 Duma to the throne. 
 
994 
 
 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The fifth great surrender of the party was its prospoal to 
 vote in favour of the Government on the question of the budget 
 in the third Duma on the ground that it did not have any power 
 over the budget anyway. Common sense, logic, and loyalty to 
 principle would have taught, it would seem, the opposite 
 conclusion: viz., that the less power the Duma had over the 
 budget the more clearly it should express itself as opposed to the 
 colossal robberies and frauds and waste of the public money 
 which the budget contains. 
 
 The sixth and last error which has reduced the Constitutional 
 Democratic Party to a nonentity in the great Russian crisis 
 (unless it again reverses its decision), was its refusal to take 
 up any effective position at the time when the Government 
 itself took away a large part of what this party was pleased to 
 call the constitution. Certainly the party was unable to 
 prevent this action on the part of the Government, but it could 
 have made a very effective protest by making an appeal to the 
 Russian nation and the whole world, showing the impossibility of 
 legal action in such a country ; and it could have resolved itself 
 again into a conspirative organisation like the Emancipation 
 League of a few years before, which included the majority of the 
 present leaders of the party. 
 
 Having taken the downward slope of mere politics the party 
 has now come to the logical conclusion of such a policy. All 
 real politics have now become impossible, and the party is 
 reduced to mere empty words in a parliament constituted by 
 the Government to suit itself and even then not entrusted with 
 any sovereign power. 
 
COSSACK MEMBERS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY 
 Even some of the Cossacks are against the Government 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MODERATES COOPERATE WITH THE REACTIONARIES 
 
 THE report of the Constitutional Democratic party after 
 Czar's coup d'etat shows very clearly the illogical basis 
 and impractical politics of the organisation. Instead of stating 
 boldly the true meaning of the great illegal act of the Govern- 
 ment, the party was satisfied with the most indirect indictment. 
 "As to the political and judicial meaning of the change that has 
 taken place by the act of the 3d of June," says the report, "there 
 cannot be the least difference of opinion." But it is precisely 
 the fundamental difference of opinion between those who reject 
 this coup d'etat and those who do not reject it, that constitutes 
 the fundamental distinction between those who are really 
 opposing the Russian Government to-day and those who are 
 opposing it only within the lines of demarcation marked out 
 by the Government itself as suitable for a "loyal" opposition 
 movement. The report says that the denial of the constitution 
 by the more revolutionary parties has injured the approval of the 
 new-bom, and far from perfect, constitutionalism that was 
 growing up in the public mind. The Constitutional Democratic 
 Party, then, far from being the practical organisation that it 
 claims to be, bases all its politics on the shadowy notion in the 
 public mind concerning an institution of which the Government 
 itself, which alone has the power of interpreting the law of 
 Russia, denies the very existence. 
 
 The Constitutional Democrats in this report accuse the 
 revolutionary parties of having promised everything without 
 reference to what they could obtain. The reverse is the truth. 
 The Socialistic deputies selected by the peasants promised 
 "to fight for the land and freedom," but the cases were relatively 
 few in which they held out any hopes to the peasants of obtaining 
 through the Duma the things for which they were fighting. 
 On the other hand, the same report states it definitely as a 
 
 295 
 
296 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 purpose of the Constitutional Democratic Party (in spite of 
 the utter absence of popular government in Russia) "to realise 
 solutions for certain national problems." The leaders of the 
 party now confess privately that they have no hopes whatever 
 for any such general solutions. The party claims of course 
 that it could have persuaded the Government to grant some- 
 thing in the way of compromises, had it not been for the revo- 
 lutionary attitude of the Socialistic peasant and workingmen 
 deputies — but it must be noted that the representatives of 
 the people did not wish to stand for such half-way and totally 
 unsatisfactory measures as were called "reform" by the Con- 
 stitutional Democrats. This may be seen sufficiently clear 
 from the proposed "solution" of the agrarian question. The 
 representatives of the people were in favour of creating a great 
 land fund from which land should be granted only temporarily to 
 the peasants or to local governmental units representing them. 
 In order to defeat this proposition the Constitutional Democrats 
 had to vote not only with the conservative Polish party, but 
 with the party of the landlords themselves. 
 
 The report makes it very clear why the Constitutional Demo- 
 cratic party had taken up a generally conservative position. 
 It rebukes one of the Socialist parties for asking a more conser- 
 vative organisation to "plunge into illegality without any refer- 
 ence to any other social force and whether or not there is any 
 general upheaval in the country." It is not true that the 
 majority of the revolutionary deputies wanted any important 
 section of the Russian people to plunge into illegality without 
 reference to the other sections; all expected and still expect 
 the overwhelming majority of all sections to act together in a 
 revolutionary movement. But it is perfectly true that all 
 the revolutionary organisations want all who claim to represent 
 any important part of the people, to plunge into illegality 
 whether or not there are any immediate hopes for success of 
 the revolution. Where a government, consisting in consider- 
 able part of murderers and criminals, as it is agreed by all the 
 oppositional elements, has in its power the absolute decision 
 as to what is legal and what is illegal, it certainly behooves 
 every honest opponent to repudiate once for all this official 
 legality. 
 
MODERATES COOPERATE WITH REACTIONARIES 297- 
 
 As the consequences of such principles and such politics 
 the Constitutional Democratic Party cut a very sorry figure 
 in the second Duma. Most of the great occasions were quite 
 dominated by the Social Democratic party, consisting largely 
 of workingmen; and even the peasants' deputies, though less 
 educated and capable, got the better of their Constitutional 
 Democratic opponents. When Stolypine had given his insult- 
 ing opening address, the moderate parties, for fear of offending 
 him, decided to make no reply, but the Social Democrats in 
 the person of their brilliant orator, Zeretelly, took advan- 
 tage of this great opportunity to tell the story of Russia's 
 condition to the civilised world. It was perhaps the best 
 oratorical effort of the whole Duma, inspired as it was from 
 start to finish by an outright tone of utter hostility to the 
 Government. 
 
 "By all its actions," said Zeretelly, "the Government has 
 opened the eyes, even of the blind, to see and understand the 
 indissoluble bonds that exist between the autocratic Govern- 
 ment and a band of landlord ex-serfholders who prey upon 
 the millions of homeless peasants." 
 
 Zeretelly then went on in his famous speech to expose the 
 Government's efforts to subdue, terrorise, and crush into 
 submission the miserable peasant population. He pointed 
 out that two-thirds of Russia had been placed under martial 
 law, transformed into a number of entirely independent satrap- 
 ies and given up to the arbitrary will of authorised generals 
 to accomplish their purposes. He recalled the organisation 
 of the massacres by the Government and the bombardment 
 of whole villages and towns and the killing of innocent people, 
 and made a convincing argument that the actions constituted 
 nothing less than warfare against the nation. It took courage 
 to use such language at this time. Zeretelly knew almost 
 certainly that he would be imprisoned for many years for his 
 words, as he was talking in the very claws of the Government, 
 surrounded as the Duma was by overwhelming military force. 
 He was not disappointed and is now in prison for a term of 
 years, not only losing a large part of his youth (he is not thirty 
 yet), but risking his life, for he is dangerously ill. 
 
 The concluding part of his speech was even more outspoken 
 
^98 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE' ~ 
 
 than the first, being a direct appeal to revolutionary action 
 outside of the Duma: 
 
 We, the servants of the people, must direct and concencrate all our 
 energy, all our aspiration and efforts toward helping the people to unite 
 and organise, because only with the help and direct support of the 
 people will it be possible to stop the wild debauch of the oppressors who 
 are devasting the country. You, fellow citizens, representatives of the 
 people, probably remember well how ten months ago the deputy Nabokov 
 (Constitutional Democrat) from the height of the Duma platform rightly 
 said to the Government, "The executive power shall be subordinated to 
 the legislative power." Two months after the executive power, supported 
 by bayonets, dispersed the legislative power. I am saying all this simply 
 to show you that we have no real constitution, that there are only 
 symptoms of one, and that every step of ours must .be directed first of 
 all toward solidifying the people into an organised force capable of 
 wiping off from the face of the earth its autocratic Government. 
 
 Let the revealing voice of the representatives of the people sound 
 through the length and breadth of the country and wake up to the 
 struggle those who are not yet awake. And let the Duma at the same 
 time organise and rally the awakened masses through legislation; let 
 us stir up in this way the actual force of the people which is the only 
 support to any real constitution. Without this force the people will 
 never get either freedom or land, will never be able to take them from 
 the hands of the Government. This force is growing every day, e very- 
 hour. The people, once conscious of their rights, will sooner or later 
 unite for the realisation of those rights. This movement cannot be 
 stopped by the autocratic Government. May be, I say may be, this 
 Duma will be no more in a week from now, but the mighty popular 
 movement which succeeded in leading Russia from the old shores will 
 succeed with the Duma, or without it, in forcing a path through all 
 obstacles in freedom's way. 
 
 And now since the hour has not yet arrived, we do not yet call upon 
 the Government to submit to the people's power. We turn to the 
 people's representatives with the appeal to organise that power. We 
 do not say with the Constitutional Democrats that the executive power 
 should submit to the legislative. We say, "In union with the people, 
 bound up with the people, legislative power will force the submission 
 of the executive power! " 
 
 The Constitutional Democrats not only refused to join issue 
 with the Government at the opening of the second Duma; 
 they failed to represent the nation again and again during the 
 session. The demand for complete political amjiesty, the first 
 words uttered in the first Duma, was laid aside by the second 
 Duma. The Constitutionalists, defending their timidity on 
 
A TYPICAL YOUNG VILLAGE ORATOR AND LEADER 
 
ffTT 
 
 " 
 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 j 
 
 d 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 B 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 9. -k s» 
 
MODERATES COOPERATE WITH REACTIONARIES 299 
 
 this question, claimed that they had no "legal power" over 
 it. It was on the same groimds that they decided to vote in 
 favour of the budget and in favour of granting the very recruits 
 that were being used for the bloody "punishment expeditions." 
 Perhaps even more traitorous was the conduct of certain 
 members of the party in voting in favour of the validity of the 
 elections in Poltava, where conservatives had been returned by 
 the most outrageous official frauds. The stolen seats were 
 held by the reactionaries through the aid not only of the con- 
 servative members, but also of part of the so-called moderates, 
 who in this act more clearly than any other showed themselves 
 to be the humble servants of the Government. 
 
 Several of the great debates deserve to be noticed, as showing 
 how the Constitutional Democrats have retreated from their 
 former position, and as showing the widening gulf between 
 them and the radical opposition. In the discussion of the 
 budget the Constitutional Democrats allowed their criticisms 
 to be conducted chiefly by ex-Minister Kutler who had just 
 joined their party. His criticism was entirely taken up with 
 matters of petty details, just as if this discussion had taken 
 place during an ordinary peaceful period in any free coimtry. 
 The revolutionary Social Democrat, Alexinsky, of St. Peters- 
 burg, scathingly denounced the Constitutional Democrats along 
 with their Governmental allies, since in this case there was no 
 fundamental disagreement. Further on Alexinsky said: 
 
 When a representative of the Government, a representative of State 
 authority, comes before the representatives of the people with his first 
 account of his financial activity, he ought to give them not merely a 
 formal justification, he ought not to refer to clauses and paragraphs 
 of dead old laws. He ought to bring a living justification — that is, 
 a justification from the point of view of the people's interests, a 
 justification for those enormous expenses which have exhausted and 
 impoverished our unfortunate people. This real justification has not 
 been given us. 
 
 The minister told us our indebtedness and the unfavourable condition 
 of our finances are to a great extent due to war expenses. He pointed 
 out to us that there was a time when Russia stood as the defender of the 
 whole of Europe. He referred to the beginning of the last century and 
 considers the r61e that Russia had played then to be a sufficient reason 
 and justification for the nine billions of debt that now rests on our State 
 treasury. 
 
300 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 I must say that the workingmen that have sent me here, people who 
 are less informed perhaps on the question of finance and politics, have 
 reasoned thus: It is true that Russia has played an important r61e in 
 foreign events and in the international conflicts of Europe; but it is not 
 enough to play an important r61e; the question is, what kind of a r61e 
 and to whose interest is it? And in studying the history of Russia the 
 workingmen have come to the conclusion that when the Government 
 of Russia tried to be the guard of "law and order," at home and in other 
 countries, it has always been striving to play the role of an international 
 gendarme. 
 
 Alexinsky's last phrase, which may seem dark to us, is worth 
 making clear. France has furnished immense sums of money 
 to the Czar which he has used for the purpose of crushing the 
 movement of freedom in Russia. France loaned this money 
 only because she thought she could make use of the Russian 
 army in the event of war with Germany. Russia has agreed 
 to help France against Germany almost entirely in return for 
 this money. The French bankers, then, were paying for 
 mercenary aid from the Russian Government. The Russian 
 Government may be maintaining law and order in Europe, 
 but it is doing it only in order to help herself to maintain her 
 authority and continue her oppression at home. 
 
 The most sensational debate was that over the granting of 
 recruits. Here, as before, the position of the moderates and 
 that of the Government were all but identical. The real conflict 
 was between the moderates and the revolutionists. The 
 moderate deputy, Hessen, pointed out that the Duma did not 
 have any power according to "Article 119 of the fundamental 
 laws," to decrease the number of recruits. It seemed to the 
 radicals that this was all the more reason that the Duma should 
 express itself clearly on the subject. Constitutional Democrats 
 of the new conservative type, ex-Minister Kutler and the jurist 
 Maklakov, tried to warn the radicals that the rank and file of 
 the Russian people would not stand for this "unpatriotic" 
 attack on the army, showing that their real motive in supporting 
 the Government was not the Duma's lack of power to deal with 
 the question but rather the moderates' lack of faith in- the 
 people, the most deep-seated curse of this rapidly degenerating^ 
 party. 
 
 The peasant deputy Semenov, after the manner of intelligent 
 
MODERATES COOPERATE WITH REACTIONARIES 301 
 
 but half-educated persons, went straight to the heart of the 
 subject and accused the Government of increasing the number 
 of recruits in order to "keep us in slavery as before, so that 
 we shall be under oppression and get it from the nagaikas, 
 bayonets, and machine guns as we have always got it." 
 He continued: 
 
 What do the soldiers serve? The State and Fatherland? No, they serve 
 the officers who compel them to take care of their dogs. . . . All we 
 are taught wnen we enter the army is the title, forename, and father's 
 name of the sergeant, officers, and others. What kind of science is this? 
 The soldiers ought to be taught business. . . . We ought to recollect 
 the saying, "that the soldier is no good if he has no ambition to become a 
 general." But can the soldier who has to take care of the officers' dogs 
 ever become a general? 
 
 "We promise to defend Russia, but we will never defend 
 the landlords! " cried another peasant deputy. Others spoke to 
 the same effect, showing the deep-lying hatred of military ser- 
 vice and the officer caste that exists in all classes of the people. 
 But it was the Social Democrat Zurabov, an army officer him- 
 self, who created the greatest sensation of the season. Speaking 
 as an officer, a Socialist and a revolutionist, Zurabov quickly 
 came to the point that there existed a war in Russia between 
 the people and the Government. He said: 
 
 We do not consider it possible to declare an armistice ; we do not find 
 it possible to enter into any negotiations with the old power; we are on 
 the field of battle and therefore it would be insanity on our part to grant 
 this old power the armament it demands. ... In order to make 
 the army serve as a blind tool for its own purpose and interests, the 
 autocratic Government terrorises it by an iron and utterly merciless 
 discipline which makes of a living human being a soulless machine that 
 neither thinks nor is conscious of its acts, that can be turned and 
 compelled to act in any direction wanted by its chiefs. . . . 
 
 It is impossible with the little money the soldier is paid to meet the 
 demands of barrack life, to have boots, to mend clothes and to provide 
 himself with soap and blacking and so on. For all these needs, to say 
 nothing of others, forty-five kopecks a month is certainly not sufficient. 
 The soldier, in order to provide himself with what he is compelled and 
 ordered to have, resorts to robbery and thieving, and thus becomes in 
 the end demoralised. ... As far as oiu" army officers are con- 
 cerned, it is a well known fact that the majority are the most ignorant 
 of men. And this is true not only in regard to their general character, 
 but even in regard to their own specialty. As the result of all this we 
 
302 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 have an army which is from top to bottom entirely unfit for outer defence ; 
 no wonder that this army has given us such chiefs as the Renenkanovs, 
 Orlovs, and Karilbavs. That they are the dullest of men nobody can 
 doubt. 
 
 Our army under the autocratic state, no matter how often we are told 
 differently from these benches, will never be fit for the purpose of outer 
 defence. Such an army will successfully fight us (the people) and will 
 successfully disperse you (the people's assembly), but it will always 
 suffer defeat from the. East. 
 
 Here began outcries from the reactionary deputies against 
 the speaker, accusing him of treason, and here occurred the 
 greatest and final disgrace of the Constitutional Democratic 
 Party. The organisation was now hurried into a sensational 
 reactionary position by the notorious Jew-baiter, Puresche- 
 vitch. Pureschevitch interjected repeatedly and at the top 
 of his voice, "Get out!" and Golovine, the president. Constitu- 
 tional Democrat, instead of calling him to order, turned to 
 Zurabov and asked him not to make such remarks in the Duma 
 as there was **no ground for such opinions." But in the recent 
 trials of the generals that conducted the late war with Japan 
 it has become clear that Zurabov was probably right; Russia 
 would have little hope of victory under the present regime. 
 Golovine postponed the sitting and when it was resumed later 
 proposed the suspension of Zurabov from the Duma, because 
 "of his insulting expression regarding the Russian army." As 
 a result the peasant and workingmen deputies, representing 
 the vast majority of the Russian people, left the hall. 
 
 After a second secret session held the next day, the Social 
 Democrats returned to the attack and exposed clearly the true 
 ground for the Constitutional Democratic position. Quoting 
 from Struve's paper, the Northern Star, Alexinsky showed 
 that the writer had claimed that only a standing army in the 
 hands of the "conscious elements of the country," that is, of 
 the liberal landlords and middle classes which Struve represents, 
 could serve as a reliable means against popular outbreaks. We 
 see then that the leading motive of the Constitutional Demo- 
 crats of Struve's type at least was probably already, not^only 
 to win the friendship of the Government by concession, but 
 also to make use of the army to crush the revolutionary move- 
 ment. Alexinsky again reproached the Constitutional Demo 
 
MODERATES COOPERATE WITH REACTIONARIES 303 
 
 crats, who had a few months before counselled the nation in the 
 Viborg manifesto not to give a single soldier or a single kopeck 
 to the Government, for having betrayed the people. It was 
 true certainly that the Constitutional Democrats voted for 
 recruits, which a few months before they had called on the people 
 to refuse at the risk of their lives. It was also true that they 
 had every reason for supposing that within a few weeks an 
 even more critical situation might arise. 
 
 Again during this speech the reactionaries showed that they 
 were at one with the so-called Constitutional Democrats- 
 Count Bobrinsky interrupted to exclaim, "Against the common 
 enemy we will fight as one!" A few moments before Pures- 
 chevitch had called out to Alexinsky, "The whole question 
 is who is who will hang whom — I you, or you me." In the 
 most violent attack that the reactionaries ever made on the 
 people's deputies of the Duma, the Constitutonal Democrats 
 found themselves at one with the defenders of all the iniquities, 
 of the Czarism. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BEGGING FOR CRUMBS 
 
 IT APPEARED clearly after the dissolution of the first 
 Duma and at the opening of the third, that the moderate 
 leaders had not carried with them the mass of the party- 
 adherents. In its last congress the Constitutional Democratic 
 Party was faced by a serious internal crisis. As usual, Professor 
 Milyoukov presided. In his opening speech he stated the 
 ultra-parliamentary view that the October Manifesto and 
 fundamental laws, though practically broken on June 3rd, still 
 remained judicially in force, and that the party still considered 
 its policy to be the carrying on of the struggle on a legal basis, 
 so long as this proves in the least degree possible. We see 
 then that the Government has only to leave to the Constitutional 
 Democrats a petty and insignificant field of legal action in 
 order to make it a perfectly harmless organisation. 
 
 Milyoukov said in conclusion that his party, although it 
 would be in the minority of the third Duma, would represent 
 the people. This is untrue. The Russian nation, as is clear 
 from all three elections, is represented by parties far more 
 radical than the Constitutional Democrats. The very tragedy 
 of the situation for this legal party is that it has neither the 
 legal power of a Dimaa majority nor the moral power of an 
 organisation that can claim to represent the Russian nation. 
 
 Milyoukov is such a power at the moment that perhaps 
 his position should be further explained. It must be remem- 
 bered that before the revolutionary movement began, he was 
 quite sympathetic toward it. In his book, "The Russian 
 Crisis," he speaks in favour of a direct agreement between the 
 liberals and revolutionists, in favour of the radical idea of a 
 single legislative chamber, and also in favour of the State 
 making a large financial contribution toward the solution of 
 the land question. The latter reform he seemed ready to 
 
 304 
 
BEGGING FOR CRUMBS 305 
 
 abandon when, at the time of the second Duma, he expressed 
 himself as hoping to get some agreement with Stolypine on this 
 question. He has now entirely dropped his agitation in favour 
 of the single chamber; and finally, he has become the most 
 active opponent of the revolutionary movement in his party. 
 He is becoming a mere opportunist, stating recently in an 
 interview that the party would enter the Duma with certain 
 principles but would be ready to abandon any of them if this 
 would bring it the least nearer to its main goal, a constitution. 
 In explaining his desertion of his "revolutionary friends," 
 he said that he had done this because they had no longer any 
 power. It is quite true, of course, that their power is very 
 limited, but it is also true, as has been shown, that the 
 moderates have very little power over the Duma, or through it 
 over the Government. If every section of the revolutionary 
 army were to desert every other section on the ground that the 
 "other fellow" had little or no power, at this depressing 
 moment the revolutionary movement would break up entirely. 
 
 Milyoukov's attitude at the time of the great crisis, the 
 coup d'etat of June 3rd, gives us a very deep insight into his 
 reasoning. Instead of attributing this calamity, not to any 
 moral cause, but to the sheer immoral physical power of the 
 Government, he seeks to find an answer to the questions: 
 "Where lies the blame? In the ill will of the rulers? In the 
 bad statesmanship of the governing class? In the mistakes of 
 the leaders of the emancipation movement? In a reaction 
 against the revolutionary excesses?" We might very well 
 answer all these questions with a whole or partial affirmative, 
 but we still would not have given the real answer. The 
 Government dissolved the Duma almost wholly on the ground 
 that it had the power to do so and that it found the Duma to a 
 greater or lesser degree inconvenient to its plan of oppression. 
 
 In a conversation with Professor Milyoukov about this 
 time, I asked him on what real force outside of the mere justice 
 of the cause he thought his party could rely. The only answer 
 which he gave was that such a force existed in "the disorgani- 
 sation and anarchy in the country caused by spontaneous, 
 disorganised acts of rebellion and individual crime." The 
 present Government being totally incapable of successfully 
 
3o6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 repressing this kind of blind revolt, Professor Milyoukov thought 
 that it would one day be taught to rely on the capacity of his 
 party to restore order. There is no question that the disorgani- 
 sation referred to — robbery, arson, and assassination — existed 
 on an enormous scale at that time and continues almost unabated 
 at the present moment. But let us consider the logical 
 consequences for this party from placing its sole reliance on 
 unorganised and semi-criminal disorder. In doing this 
 Professor Milyoukov's party is depending upon the forces 
 entirely outside .of its own control. A party that relies on 
 factors outside of its control is not only opportunist, but 
 exclusively opportunist. In hoping to benefit indirectly from 
 the reigning disorder, Milyoukov and his followers are depending 
 on a destructive tendency, and they lay themselves open to the 
 accusation that they themselves passively welcome this anarchy. 
 Of course it may be that this anarchistic tendency will be 
 successfully suppressed by the present Government. In that 
 case this accusation will have no further application, but to-day 
 the party still remains guilty of having based its hopes on chaos. 
 Milyoukov, Struve, and other leaders are even making over- 
 tures to the enemy. Thus the party paper, after the dissolution 
 of the second Duma, said that the fate of the third would depend 
 wholly on the class of proprietors, but that they had not lost 
 faith absolutely and still hoped that in this class there would 
 be sufficient vitality and intelligence to repudiate an egotistic 
 policy of special privilege. These living elements would shatter 
 "the reactionaries' illusion of the unity and solidity of the 
 big land-holding class.'' We have seen that the big land- 
 owning class is in fact the heart of the reaction, and that 
 opposition to this class, rather than any effort to obtain such 
 insignificant reforms as could be secured with its aid, is the life 
 principle of the revolutionary movement. The position here 
 taken does not materially differ from that of the confessedly 
 conservative leader of the majority of the third Duma. In a 
 conversation I had with Gutchkov at this time he said he also 
 considered the landlords to be sufficiently liberal, and explained 
 then he had no ideas of any fundamental economic reform for 
 the peasantry, and that he was aware that the Government 
 measures which he favoured would throw millions of peasants 
 
BEGGING FOR CRUMBS 307 
 
 once and for all in the class of absolutely pauperised agricultural 
 labourers He also confessed that he believed in the existing 
 military courts and that he was sure that they would do no 
 injustice ! 
 
 This then is the leader alongside of whom the Constitutional 
 Democratic organ took its position in the most practical 
 question of third Duma politics. Later at the congress of the 
 party the same conservative elements that were responsible for 
 the article just quoted, were able to put through a resolution 
 allowing an agreement between this so-called Constitutional 
 Democratic Party and Gutchkov's Octobrists, who in their 
 congress declared first of all for "the restoration of authority," 
 then against equal rights to the Jews, against any reform of the 
 Czar's new election law, and in favour of the agrarian politics 
 of the Government. When the Duma met an Octobrist was 
 elected president and secured, among others, the votes of the 
 Constitutional Democrats. In his opening speech he said that 
 the purpose of the Duma was to fulfill the "sovereign will of 
 the Czar" and made no mention of the constitution. 
 
 At this time Maklakov, one of the Constitutional Democrat 
 leaders of the Milyoukov type, explained in an interview that 
 it was only necessary "in order to completely suppress the 
 revolution" that the Duma should be placed on a firm footing 
 and that he believed in "a loyal opposition" and was satisfied 
 that the majority of the Duma (landlords) was progressive. 
 This so-called popular leader was then satisfied with the very 
 element that he knew had actively engaged in and aided 
 the massacres and persecutions conducted by the Russian 
 Government. 
 
 It is unnecessary to add that these hopes in the landlords, 
 whether genuine or only meant to flatter, are coming to nothing. 
 The moderate party expressed its hopes to accomplish in the 
 third Duma, with the aid of the landlords, at least two reforms — 
 that of the local government, and that of the administration of 
 justice. The local government reform has already fallen to 
 committees formed of the very landlords who have done the 
 most to corrupt it, and justice is being regenerated in an equally 
 ludicrous manner. New justices of the peace are to be instituted 
 and the old detested "land officials" abolished, but the new 
 
SoS RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 justices are to have qualifications which make it certain that 
 few if any of them will be peasants, while at the same time the 
 popular peasants' courts of course are to be abolished. But 
 there is an even worse judicial "reform" — a reform carried 
 even through the reactionary Council of the Empire by a 
 majority of only four votes among a hundred and fifty. In his 
 speech in favour of this typical governmental reform the 
 Minister of Justice spoke practically in these words: "The 
 Government cannot exist if the possibility is taken away from 
 it of conducting the inner politics of the country. The right 
 to choose the personnel of State institutions (the judges) is a 
 mighty weapon for the direction of politics on the road 
 prescribed for them by His Majesty.'' This reform will consist, 
 then, of a new supreme court to be as usual entirely under the 
 thumb of the Czar. 
 
 Against the moderate new politics of sacrificing everything 
 for such "reforms," the revolt in the party itself is serious. 
 When Milyoukov and other leaders of the last party congress 
 voted down the proposition that the party should take a strong 
 oppositional stand and avoid all rapprochement with the 
 Octobrists, and that it should only support laws which would 
 lead to the increase of freedom of the people or to the democrati- 
 sation of the Russian institutions, the progressive element 
 at last realised where they stood. Already Mandelstam, 
 whom a recent referendum had shown to be the favourite 
 candidate of half of the party members in Moscow, had resigned 
 from the Central Committee. Another important leader and 
 member of the first Duma resigned from the party altogether, 
 and the principal independent and radical newspapers of the 
 country nearly all took up a more or less hostile position to 
 the organisation, even though they had been very friendly 
 before. Many other active party members turned aside from 
 party work into a new educational propaganda, with a view 
 to getting the nation ready for a new revolutionary movement 
 in later years. 
 
 In the recent congress Mandelstam accused the , party 
 management of the second Duma of having failed to reassert the 
 principle on which they staked everything during the first, 
 that of the responsibility of the ministers, not to the Czar. 
 
BEGGING FOR CRUMBS 309 
 
 but to the national assembly, and of having foolishly supposed 
 up to the very day of its dissolution that the Government, 
 pleased by their new docility, would allow the Duma to continue. 
 He claimed it was a mistake for the party to accept peacefully 
 the coup d'etat, and that it should rather rely on the new 
 wave of revolution which must arise. He thought that the 
 party ought now at least to see that, since the Duma was elected 
 to suit the Government, the latter would make concessions 
 rather to its extreme reactionary friends in that body, than to 
 the Constitutional Democrats or other oppositional elements. 
 
 "In a pseudo-constitutional regime the chief task," said 
 Mandelstam, "is to define the means of securing a real 
 constitution, and behold we are told (by Milyoukov and his 
 friends) to try and convince the Government." Another 
 speaker, Safonov of Kostroma, a member of the first Duma, 
 who represented a very large part of all the party members 
 and a still larger part of the voters themselves, said that the 
 party would find itself in the third Duma in the hostile camp 
 of the anti-Constitutionalists, that compromise was not only 
 dangerous to the party, but to the whole social movement, and 
 that the proper function of the party in the third Duma was 
 purely one of criticism. The only important point in Milyoukov's 
 answer was the claim that the voters had shown they were 
 satisfied with the party. As I have made plain, this is wholly 
 false. 
 
 This was not the final fall of Milyoukov. When Roditchev, 
 a Constitutional Democratic leader scarcely less important than 
 Milyoukov, during an early session of the third Duma, made 
 his sensational attack on Stolypine, saying that in future the 
 gallows would be called "Stolypine neckties," Milyoukov with ^ 
 several other party members in the Duma took part in the 
 reactionary demonstration of sympathy for Stolypine! So 
 shocking was this act to the Russian nation that even the 
 Central Committee could not stand it and Milyoukov was called 
 before it for a reprimand. Certainly he could not have 
 degraded his party further in the opinion of the country. 
 
 I have given so much attention to Professor Milyoukov 
 and his opinions and his actions, that I cannot avoid at least 
 a brief mention of another type of leader, Prince Shakovskoi. 
 
310 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 In the element of the party to which he belongs are found 
 nearly all the original founders of the movement and those who 
 have made the largest sacrifices for its benefit. The party 
 has two very capable women members, the Countess Bobrinsky 
 and Mme. Turkov, two unprejudiced, and I believe most 
 intelligent, observers of the situation within the party. The 
 former in a conversation with me called Shakovskoi the heart 
 of the whole moderate movement ; the latter has given him the 
 title of "the fisher of souls," claiming that it was he, before any 
 one else, who brought into the movement its most valuable and 
 devoted members. Prince Shakovskoi is still in the party and 
 likely to remain there. Besides being one of its very first 
 organisers, he was the secretary of the first Duma. In contrast 
 with Milyoukov, in the opinion of several party leaders with 
 whom I conversed, he is a democrat always, while in the past, 
 like many other moderates, he has been not only friendly 
 toward, but actively interested in, the whole revolutionary 
 movement. Perhaps he and the other leaders of his type are 
 hardly such prominent characters as Milyoukov, but instead of 
 being viewed with suspicion even by many members of their 
 own organisation, they are loved and respected by all. 
 
 Professor Milyoukov, however, has long been the chief figure 
 in his party and is so well known abroad that it has been 
 necessary to define his position with the utmost clearness, to 
 show definitely why he is so unpopular in his own country, and 
 to show that he is not a leader of any large part of the Russian 
 nation. His leadership, his and his followers' opinion that their 
 party can accomplish something *' legally'' under a government 
 which recognises no law, has led only to the miserable fiasco 
 of the organisation. 
 
 One Anierican editor, at least, writing in the New York 
 Globe of January 14, 1908, has grasped the situation so clearly 
 that his words deserve to be quoted. They are in part as 
 follows: 
 
 Milyoukov is an absolute parliamentarian — now. Revolutionary 
 activity is as foreign to his programme as to the minds of most stable 
 Americans; hence in him Americans recognise a kindred spirit, a cham- 
 pion of the fundamental principles of human liberty and human justice 
 that we ourselves won a century and a quarter ago. Milyoukov 's aims 
 are our ideals and our fixed standards. Milyoukov 's tactics and methods 
 
BEGGING FOR CRUMBS 311 
 
 to-day in Russia are precisely our tactics and methods. So it develops 
 that the very elements in Milyoukov's policy that appeal to a greater 
 number of Americans than the policy of any other Russian who has ever 
 come to us, also alienate him from a vast section of Russia — the element 
 that believes that Russia's freedom must eventually be purchased by 
 precisely the same means as our freedom was purchased. The shackles 
 of slavery were not struck off by act of Congress. The rule of taxation 
 without representation was not ended by act of Parliament. The tyran- 
 ny of the Czars, the incredible oppression of autocracy, may cease through 
 the legislative efforts of the Duma, but a large section of the Russian 
 people fear not. Milyoukov represents the optimistic minority. 
 
 Last winter it was our privilege to welcome and listen to two other 
 Russians whose stirring appeals moved many thousands of our people. 
 One of these men — Nicholas Tchaykovsky — now lies in the grim old 
 fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, while the other — Alexis Aladdin — has 
 been obliged to remain in exile from his native land. Such are the 
 penalties these two brave men are paying for their appeal to America — 
 not for material support, but for sympathy and understanding. [They 
 are paying these penalties rather for other and greater services to their 
 country.] 
 
 Wherever Tchaykovsky and Aladdin journeyed in this country they 
 were introduced as representatives of "two of the great parties of Rus- 
 sia's liberal movement." In Professor Milyoukov we have the repre- 
 sentative of the third and last great party of progress . . . Tchay- 
 kovsky was frankly a revolutionist. He believed that constitutional 
 government could be permanently established only through fighting. 
 Aladdin based his hopes on the parliament, but held armed resistance 
 in the background as an ultimate resource — trusted in God and the 
 Czar, but kept his powder dry, as it were. Milyoukov stakes everything 
 on the parliament. He stands ready to compromise everything save 
 the merest forms of parliamentary government. "Half a loaf is better 
 than no bread," according to the old adage. ** Crumbs are better than 
 nothing when there is small hope for even the half loaf," says Milyoukov. 
 
 But what crumbs he has obtained he has gotten only by 
 abject humiliation and the betrayal of former principles. A 
 party that only begs for crumbs has no longer any claim to be 
 considered a part of a great emancipation movement. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 
 
 THE masses of the Russian people took the dissolution 
 of the first Duma far more seriously than did the 
 moderate parties. This act of the Czar's had the same electrical 
 effect on the peasantry that the massacres of January 22, 1905, 
 in St. Petersburg, had on the working people. The outraged 
 nation expressed in the second elections an opinion so radical 
 that a national unity on the basis of the comparatively moderate 
 Viborg manifesto was no longer possible. While the moderate 
 party was becoming more moderate the population was becoming 
 more revolutionary. 
 
 In spite of the election law that favoured the reactionary 
 and moderate parties and the arbitrary actions of the police in 
 many provinces where they openly robbed the democrats of their 
 victories, the second Duma came within an ace of being an 
 outright Socialist body. Out of twenty million voters the 
 results showed that at least fifteen million had voted for 
 revolutionary and Socialistic organisations, which having been 
 tested in the first Duma were thoroughly well known to the 
 people for what they really were. Of the other five million 
 votes the majority went to revolutionary nationalist parties, 
 such as those of the Poles, the Caucasians, the Letts, the 
 Tartars, and the Armenians. Only a million or two at the 
 outside cast their votes for moderate and reactionary parties. 
 A majority of the people then voted for recognised Socialist 
 candidates, and an overwhelming majority for revolutionists. 
 
 If we take into account +he fact that the delegations from 
 several provinces, according to the Duma's decisions, had 
 been stolen by the officials, we can say that the majority of 
 the deputies actually legally elected were Socialists and 
 revolutionists. This is a very remarkable result when we 
 consider that the election law made one landlord equal to 
 
 312 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 313:. 
 
 several hundred peasants, gave the middle class voter of the 
 cities a voting power equal to half a hundred peasants, and 
 allotted to the working people a proportion of the electors^ 
 scarcely better than that of the peasantry themselves. 
 
 After the warning the Government had already received 
 at the first elections, we may wonder that it did not put into- 
 effect its coup d'etat before these second elections. It decided 
 to try to obtain a docile Duma by police measures without 
 breaking its solemn pledge to maintain the law, so as to satisfy 
 the foreign money-lenders, on whom Russia is so dependent, 
 that the country was really entering into a modern parliamentary 
 form of government. 
 
 The outrages committed by the police went so far that some 
 of them were even branded by Russia's highest courts — after 
 the second Duma had already been dissolved. This was the case 
 with the candidates Hellat and Pold who were thus robbed of 
 their seats from the Baltic Provinces. The elections in the 
 province of Minsk were quashed by the St. Petersburg 
 authorities without the slightest reason. They acted at the 
 suggestion of the notorious Schmidt, whom I have already 
 mentioned and who has now become an outcast even from 
 the reactionary parties. One of the candidates so elected and 
 illegally thrown out was Isaac Hourwich, long resident in the 
 United States and known there by his economic writings. In the 
 government of Kiev, the Central Government struck off 
 thirteen thousand voters from the lists because their apartments 
 did not correspond to on official's idea of a home as specified in 
 the law. Newspapers were confiscated for merely giving the 
 lists of electors, and in the province of Vladimir they were 
 forbidden even to mention political questions. That a very 
 large Socialist minority was elected in spite of all these measures 
 shows unmistakably the strong and irresistibly Socialist and 
 revolutionary current in Russian opinion. 
 
 Of the majority of the deputies elected by the masses of the 
 people over a hundred were members of the so-called *' Labour 
 Group." founded by Aladdin, Anikine,and others in the first 
 Duma. There can be no question that a universal suffrage law, 
 as demanded even by the moderate opposition parties, would 
 have given to the Labour Group a majority of the whole Duma. 
 
314 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Almost equally important were the democratic parties which 
 use the Socialist conception as the basis of their programme and 
 in the title of their organisation, the Socialist Revolutionary, 
 the Social Democratic and the National Socialist parties, which 
 combined also returned more than a hundred members. In 
 the first Duma these organisations had had only twenty deputies, 
 in the second Duma they had approximately one hundred and 
 twenty. While the moderate Socialist "Labour Group" had 
 doubled its representation, the still more revolutionary and 
 wholly Socialist parties had increased theirs sixfold. 
 
 After these elections it is unnecessary for a true democrat to 
 give any further consideration to the Constitutional Demo- 
 cratic party. Doubtless the middle-class electors were dis- 
 satisfied with the party for the reasons I have already stated, 
 but there is a more deep-seated reason separating the conser- 
 vative element of the moderate party now in control of the party 
 from the masses of the people. Before the first Duma met 
 Aladdin called attention to the fact that the large majority 
 of the Constitutional Democrats elected were landlords and 
 that the peasants had no deep confidence in the liberalism of 
 any part of the class whose estates they proposed to expro- 
 priate. We must remember always with the peasants that the 
 fathers of these men, however liberal, had been slave-owners and 
 the older of them had themselves been masters of white slave 
 servants in their youth or childhood. 
 
 The peoples' underlying distrust of the Constitutional Demo- 
 crats has its counterpart in the Constitutional Democrats' 
 distrust of the people. They have constantly doubted the 
 peasant's capacity and have even regarded him as a savage 
 by nature. It is not only a lack of faith but a lack of scien- 
 tific observation, true sympathy, and understanding, that marks 
 this patronising and imdemocratic organisation. I do not 
 imply that the leaders of the movement are governed by their 
 interests as landlords, but I do assert it as a profound belief that 
 they have not lost entirely the slave-owner's psychology, and 
 I know that the people's true leaders share this view. -The 
 democracy of the Constitutional Democratic party is patro- 
 nising and tinged with a sort of benevolent feudalism. Their 
 constitutionalism, taken largely from the professors and the- 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 315 
 
 oretical publicists among them, is of a purely logical order — 
 uninspired as it is by knowledge, love, or faith, it is no wonder 
 that it has broken down in the great crisis. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the several million votes 
 given to the nationalist parties were on the whole more favour- 
 able to the Socialist than to the moderate standpoint. The 
 Polish situation is so complicated that it could only be properly 
 analysed in a work apart and it is best not to endeavour to 
 explain it here at all. The Tartars, even a more important 
 element niunerically in Russia's population, numbering as they 
 do more than fifteen millions, furnish a less complicated prob- 
 lem. I shall touch on them only as an illustration, leaving aside 
 the Poles and the Armenians, Georgians, Letts, Esths, and 
 other minor but not imimportant nationalities. 
 
 The Mussulman group in the second Duma had thirty-one 
 members, enough to hold the balance of power. Until the 
 close of the Duma this organisation was outwardly allied with 
 the moderate parties, but there are elements in its programme 
 and its tactics at this moment which justify the belief that its 
 position was far more radical than the moderates', and that it 
 would soon have forsaken the alliance. I talked with a leading 
 member who stated that his group had decided to vote for a full 
 political amnesty and not only for a partial one as the moderates 
 had proposed. In the important land question also the position 
 of this party was nearer to that of the "Labour Group" than 
 to the moderates. Among other of the Mussulman principles 
 was that no compensation was to be paid for lands that had 
 been made as a gift by the Government to former officials. As 
 such lands form a very considerable part of the whole nobility's 
 possessions, a measure embodying this principle would have 
 brought on a most violent conflict. Another important item 
 of the Mussulman programme was that the people's representa- 
 tives should demand the right of legislating, not only within 
 the bounds laid down by the Czar, but also concerning the 
 so-called "fundamental laws," which is as much as to say 
 that the party favoured turning the Duma into a constitutional 
 assembly. 
 
 It is probable, then, even without taking into consideration 
 that a large part of the reactionary members had no right to 
 
3i6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 their seats, that the second Duma did not really have a moderate 
 majority. It is probable that it was dissolved by the Govern- 
 ment just before it had time to show to the world its true 
 revolutionary character. 
 
 In the Viborg manifesto the revolutionary proposals were 
 largely of a political nature. The deputies of the majority 
 of the nation in the second Duma were in favour of a social 
 revolutionary programme. The social revolution which the 
 masses of the people had united to demand was concerned prin- 
 cipally with the land question. On the other social questions 
 a certain part even of the revolutionary deputies might be called 
 mere radicals, on the land question they were Socialists. All 
 the parties which had any claim to represent the peasant 
 majority of the nation were in favour of the State expropriating, 
 with or without compensation, all the land belonging to the 
 nobility and the wealthy classes, of creating out of this land 
 a national land fund, and of giving either to individual peasants, 
 to villages, or to other local government bodies, a permanent 
 right to share in this fund. The proposed measure was not 
 like the land grants made to settlers by the United States 
 Government. In America there was at first too much land 
 and not enough settlers. In Russia there is not enough land 
 for the people. It is therefore proposed by all the popular 
 parties not to divide the land permanently into private property, 
 but either to lease it for long terms to individuals, or to leave 
 it in the hands of the villagers or of local governments to dis- 
 pose of as they will according to some plan arranged by the 
 National Representative Assembly. 
 
 It is recognised by all the popular and Socialistic parties 
 that this programme amounts to a social revolution, and that 
 the Government can only be forced to grant the programme 
 either by a general insurrection or by continued agrarian rebel- 
 lions which it will be unable to repress. Stolypine said to the 
 Duma; "You shall not frighten the Government, for it has 
 behind it the physical power." "Behind us," said Karaviev, 
 a leader of the Labour Group, "are justice, science, and a hundred 
 million peasants, four-fifths of the population of the Empire." 
 
 On the land question, when it became acute in the discussions 
 of the second Dtuna, the Constitutional Democrats entirely 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SCXIALISTS 317 
 
 failed to satisfy the people's representatives. Ex-Minister 
 Kutler, their leader, while confessing that many interests of 
 society were above that of private property, reached in his 
 argument only that degree of radicalism attained many years ago 
 all over the world by the opponents of "absentee" landlordism. 
 Passing lightly over the historic wrongs under which the peas- 
 ants are suffering, the only evil he saw was that certain land- 
 lords should draw an income from their estates without really 
 taking part in their management. His party did not ask that 
 any of the other great wrongs which were crushing the Russian 
 peasantry should be redressed. The party proposed to pay for 
 the land to be expropriated for the peasants' benefit a sum less 
 than its present artificial market value, but it wished the starv- 
 ing peasantry themselves to pay half of this sum. 
 
 All of the popular groups took a more advanced position. 
 At first glance it might appear that the Social Democrats, who 
 were looking forward in the future not to the growth of small 
 farms in Russia but rather to their gradual absorption by large 
 estates even after the expropriation, were taking up a more 
 conservative position than the Constitutional Democrats, who 
 rather expected to see the new small properties now to be 
 instituted becoming a permanent feature of Russian agriculture. 
 However, the Social Democrats did not want the peasants, 
 or even the Government, to pay anything to the landlords for 
 the expropriated property, while the Constitutional Democrats 
 voted in committee with the most violent reactionaries and 
 secured a majority in favour of compensation. The Constitu- 
 tional Democratic position was dictated both by a desire to 
 please the landlords and a lack of true contact with the peasantry 
 — that of the Social Democrats was derived solely from a dis- 
 trust of the peasants. Primarily a city workingmen's party, 
 this organisation does not believe in the permanence of the 
 peasants' Socialist tendencies, but considers that the peasants 
 will soon be satisfied with imrestricted private property, and 
 considers that they play also a secondary rdle in the revolution 
 — that the peasant disorders, in the words of their spokesman, 
 Zeretelly, were only an echo of the emancipation movement in 
 the towns. 
 
 In spite of their skepticism in regard to the peasants' Social- 
 
3i8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 ism and revolutionism, however, the majority of this party 
 has forced a somewhat conservative minority to a friendly 
 position toward other Socialist parties that stand nearer to 
 the peasants. The party does not believe, with one of the 
 landlord speakers in the Dimia, that the peasants are an ignorant 
 herd that cannot be left without a nobleman pastor. It is 
 genuinely democratic and understands that the peasants must 
 be allowed to decide their questions for themselves. It urges 
 only against the other popular parties that a national land fimd 
 entirely in the hands of the centralised State might prove 
 dangerous to the people's interest because it might increase 
 the power of an undemocratic government. It proposes, 
 therefore, that the distribution of the land be left entirely in 
 the hands of local government organisations, the provinces^, 
 districts, and towns. It also objects to making those small 
 properties, relatively few, that are now in the hands of individual 
 peasants a part of the national land fund, on the ground that 
 this class of small farmers would become hostile and dangerous- 
 to the success of the revolutionary movement. The party 
 suggests that the local government should either rent the land 
 to the peasantry, or operate it itself in the form of large estates,, 
 or divide it finally among the peasants. 
 
 It is principally the present form of communal property in 
 the villages that this organisation opposes, the very fornn 
 favoured by the rival organisation, the Socialist Revolutionary 
 Party, on the grounds that it is the historic Russian land institu- 
 tion. We need not anticipate, however, a serious conflict,, 
 as both parties are entirely democratic in their principles, 
 and will leave the question to be decided finally by the people 
 themselves. Certainly the Social Democrats, who consider 
 these communes not an advanced but a retarded form of land 
 ownership holding back the full modem exploitation of the land,, 
 and consider them the genesis of large estates and of property- 
 less agricultural labourers, cannot refuse to allow the peasants 
 to try this form of property if they wish. On the other hand 
 the Socialist Revolutionary Party cannot refuse to give the 
 local authorities, duly elected by the peasantry, full power tO' 
 give over the land into private property or administer it mtmi- 
 cipally if they so decide. When at the beginning of the first 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 319. 
 
 Duma I asked Aladdin, of the Labour Group, whether his 
 organisation favoured communal ownership, he answered: 
 "We favour leaving this question to the peasants themselves. 
 Certainly we are not going to send Cossacks and machine guns 
 to any locality to enforce either communal or private property." 
 
 The proposal which must shock most the earnest believers 
 in private property is that of confiscating without compensa- 
 tion, as proposed by the Socialists, or without full compensation 
 as proposed by the Constitutional Democrats. But the argu- 
 ments used in the Duma would convince any broad-minded and 
 disinterested hearer. Zeretelly called attention to the punish- 
 ment expeditions, which, in burning homes, villages, bombarding 
 houses and whole city districts, had ignored private property 
 in every part of the country. He might also have spoken of 
 the wholesale confiscation of estates by the Government for 
 purely political reasons. He looked on these Government 
 confiscations as a war measure and declared his party answered 
 by proposing the destruction of the present State, to its very 
 bureaucratic and landlord foundations. A deputy from Little 
 Russia reminded the Duma how the Government had given 
 away to court favourites twenty-five million acres of land that 
 had been the property of the Cossack population who had won 
 it from the Turks and Tartars at the cost of innumerable lives. 
 At the same time that this property was confiscated by the 
 Czar the free population of this part of Russia was the first 
 time sold into serfdom, at the end of the eighteenth century! 
 
 The members of the more moderate Labour Group were in 
 favour of fair compensation by the State, but the majority 
 were persuaded that the peasants themselves, who had been 
 forced by the Government to pay an exorbitant price for their 
 own lands and also for the mere fact of their emancipation, 
 should pay nothing. The landlords then were to be rewarded 
 by such payments only as a democratic government could 
 afford, which wotdd have as its principal source of income 
 from taxation only the middle and upper classes. 
 
 The solution of the land question proposed by this, the most 
 important group in the second Duma, lies in some respects 
 between the Social Revolutionary and Social Democrats 
 proposals already mentioned. With the Social Democrats 
 
^2o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the Labour Group does not wish to expropriate the small prop- 
 erties of peasants who have already won for themselves a 
 sufficient amount of land to fully occupy all their labour. With 
 the Social Revolutionists it proposes that all private sales, 
 mortgages and other deals in land shall be immediately and 
 permanently put an end to, while the Social Democrats would 
 leave this question wholly in the hands of the local government 
 to decide in either way. In another aspect of the question 
 the position of the Labour Group, which can best claim to 
 represent the peasantry, is still more diametrically opposed to 
 that of the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats welcome 
 the Government's measure which allows every peasant share- 
 holder in the common property of the villages to sell off his 
 share as his private property. This measure favours those 
 peasants who, not finding sufficient occupation in the villages, 
 have drifted to the towns. By this law they can demand their 
 property and sell it immediately to some well-to-do peasant, 
 leaving the village that much poorer in the future. However 
 hard on the peasants remaining in the village, this measure 
 ■cannot but be welcomed by the workingmen owners. Acting 
 on the contrary principle, the Labour Group demands that in 
 the allotment of the new lands to be taken from the proprietors 
 the agricultural population be first provided for. 
 
 The arguments used by the present deputies in support of 
 the proposed expropriation were of the most revolutionary 
 character. "Do you really think." asked one, "that you will 
 succeed for a moment in convincing the peasants, whose fathers, 
 brothers and children's lives have been expropriated by the 
 Government without their consent, that this cannot and must 
 not be done with the land?" This militant challenge was 
 greeted with a storm of applause. Another said, "We know 
 from experience of one sacred form of inviolable property — it 
 was the peasantry themselves who were kept in slavery. . . . 
 Do you landlords sitting here think that we do not remember 
 that you used to bet us on cards and exchange us for hunting 
 dogs! (Thunderous applause.) . . . Once the people ipake 
 up their minds to it there is nothing sacred. . . . You say 
 your property is sacred and inviolable, I will tell you one thing, 
 that we will never purchase it; the peasants that sent me here 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 321 
 
 told me to tell you the land is ours ; we do not want to buy it, 
 but to take it." 
 
 If in the question nearest the peasant's heart, the land question, 
 he could expect nothing from the Government, the same is 
 true also with the other great social questions referring to the 
 peasant's economic, moral or intellectual situation. The same 
 Government which robs its peasants of the land, so essential 
 for their very existence, secures one half of its own income 
 from the promotion of drunkenness among them, and spends 
 most of this income on armament and wars for conquest and 
 almost nothing at all on popular education, which it calls a 
 "luxury." Alexinsky showed to the Duma that the United 
 States spends twelve times as much per person. Education 
 takes only 2 or 3 per cent, of the total expenditure of the 
 Central Government and only a relatively small proportion of 
 that of the local government bodies. A few years ago there 
 was a movement among these organisations to improve the 
 schools; in 1900 the Government shut off their principal source 
 of income and put the improvement to an end. 
 
 The school system is at an incredibly low level. The teachers* 
 salaries range between one himdred and two hundred rubles 
 a year (from fifty dollars to one hundred dollars); the highest 
 are about five hundred rubles, and hundreds of teachers are 
 paid even less than one hundred. In those provinces where 
 the landlords are relatively powerful, education is at its worst 
 and the proportion of literates in the population is sometimes 
 as low as one-fifth. In general the situation is not quite so 
 bad. One-half of the young men are now literate, though of 
 those of middle age, who suffered from the still worse conditions 
 of the last generation, only one-fourth can read and write. 
 Worst of all is the condition of the women. For many years 
 less than 5 per cent, reaching maturity could read and write; 
 the proportion has now risen, but only to about one-eighth of 
 the total. While this situation is bad enough, and a terrible 
 accusation against such an extravagant government as that 
 of Russia, it must not be exaggerated. We must notice that 
 half of the present generation of young men in the country 
 read and write, and that the proportion in the cities is very 
 much higher. This condition is certainly better than that of 
 
322 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the people of the western part of the United States a few genera- 
 tions ago, when no one questioned the capacity of the people 
 of this part of the country for intelligent self-government. Yet 
 it is a disgrace to Russia, which did not spend as much for the 
 elementary schools of the whole Empire in 1 900 — fifty million 
 rubles — as did the city of New York alone (if we take into 
 account the expenditure for school grounds, rents and buildings). 
 But the official organ of the Russian Government, the Rossia, 
 stated recently that the proposed paltry increase of expendi- 
 ture of seven million rubles on the schools was a luxury! The 
 peasants see that they will only get good schools when they 
 have conquered the Czar. 
 
 The Russian Government is now making a net profit every 
 year of five hundred million rubles on the nation's drink bill. 
 The peasants are not very heavy drinkers compared with other 
 nations, but unfortunately they drink in spells. Depressed 
 by their always impending economic ruin, starving in times 
 of famine and confined to village drudgery by their extreme 
 poverty, they occasionally take refuge in drink. However, 
 the consumption of alcohol per capita was falling rapidly in 
 the last generation, till the Government took up the monopoly 
 of the business. Before 1880 the people were consuming four 
 litres per year per head; in the years immediately before the 
 asstimption of the business by the State (1897) the constmiption 
 had already fallen to two and a half. Before the opening of 
 the State saloons every village had a right by the vote of the 
 majority to shut up the local public houses; not only is this 
 no longer tolerated since the Government has assumed control, 
 but, as we have seen, any village that even passes a resolution 
 to boycott the liquor store is heavily fined by the local czars. 
 Before the institution of the Government monopoly the elected 
 village authorities used to extract large sums of money for the 
 relief of local needs whenever a licence was granted. In one 
 province the total sum so paid to the villages amounted to one 
 million rubles, a tremendous amount to a pauper population. 
 After the institution of the Government monopoly the, value 
 of alcohol consumed doubled within five years, rising from 
 254,000,000 to 504,000,000 rubles (in 1906) and the amount 
 also rapidly increased. 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 323 
 
 At the present moment the Government and the reactionaries 
 are making a great pretence of conducting a campaign against 
 the drink evil. As it is obvious that the success of such a 
 campaign would ruin the Government one must doubt its 
 sincerity. 
 
 Even in the third Duma a moderate peasant leader had the 
 courage to denounce the Government and the Duma's position 
 on this question. Immediately after Stoly pine's declaration 
 at the opening of the Duma, he arose and, gazing severely at 
 the astonished premier, cried out in stentorian tones: "I am 
 amazed to have heard nothing from his Excellency about the 
 most important, the most vital question in Russia — the drink 
 question . . . Drink kills Russia . . . You speak of 
 the hopeful condition of the State finance, but your budget is 
 built up of the poison given to the people, upon the poisoning 
 of its vital forces by drink encouraged for financial purposes.'* 
 So obviously just was every word this peasant said, and on the 
 face of it so removed from any political revolutionism, that a 
 large part of the Duma cheered the speaker and listened to him 
 attentively afterward every time he brought up the question. 
 The whole Duma has decided that something ought to be done 
 about the drink question, but nothing in Russian politics is more 
 certain than that no serious reform will be accomplished without 
 revolution. The moral deterioration of the masses of the people 
 is as much a matter of indifference to the Government and to 
 the landlords as are their intellectual and physical starvation. 
 
 In view of the hopelessness of getting the Government or 
 landlords to do anything on any of these vital social questions, 
 in view of the contempt in which the peasants know they are 
 held by the ruling classes, it is not to be wondered at that they 
 have lost all interest in the Duma, and that in many parts of 
 Russia all the parties representing them decided to have nothing 
 to do with the third election which placed the Duma entirely in 
 the landlords' hands while leaving it as helplessly in the power 
 of the Government as before. By the coup d'etat of the 3d of 
 June, 1907, the electors of the workingmen, the peasants, and 
 of the non-privileged and poorer part of the city middle classes, 
 were reduced to one-half of their former number, while those of 
 the landlords were increased 30 per cent. This left the 
 
324 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 majority of the provinces of Russia entirely in the landlords' 
 power, and nearly all the rest in the hands of the landlords in 
 combination with the richest class of the city electors, who had 
 been given by the new law a right to vote apart not only from 
 the workingmen, but also from the majority of the middle classes. 
 
 The Constitutional Democrats complained of this new law, 
 and it is true that their power, compared to that of the reaction- 
 aries, was very much decreased, but at the same time they 
 suffered far less than the workingman and the peasant. In 
 the third Duma the Constitutional Democrats and groups allied 
 to them have about one-fourth of all the deputies, whereas in 
 the second Duma they had about one-half; the peasants' and 
 workingmen 's parties, on the other hand, which also had nearly 
 one-half of the deputies of the second Duma, have less than 
 one-eighth of those in the third. Under the new law a landlord 
 has the vote of about ten ordinary citizens, but every such 
 citizen has the vote of fifty peasants, and of more than fifty 
 workingmen. We can see, then, that the injustice done to the 
 masses of the people is much greater than that done to the 
 classes from which the moderate party secures nearly all its 
 votes, and this accounts largely for the relative satisfaction 
 of the latter with the third Duma. 
 
 The real distribution of political power in Russia is better 
 shown by the fact that any two landlords had the same voice 
 in the elections for the third Duma as any thousand peasants. 
 We must not forget also that in case the Duma, should by any 
 chance happen to displease the Government in any way, the 
 latter has the power to reduce it to a nullity. The people would 
 perhaps have distrusted the third Duma on this accoimt alone, 
 even if the election law had remained unchanged, but when 
 the relative voting power of their enemy, the landlords, was 
 increased several fold all over Russia, they lost their interest 
 almost entirely. In the Province of Viatka the landlords had 
 been given sixteen times the influence compared with that of 
 the peasants that they had before. For the most part the 
 peasants either took very little interest, or boycotted the 
 elections entirely. When they did vote, however, they voted 
 for Socialist and revolutionary electors just as before. I have 
 already shown that there were only a handful of reactionaries 
 
THE PEASANTS BECOME SOCIALISTS 325 
 
 among sixteen thousand peasant electors. In a large number 
 of the towns also revolutionary electors preponderated. If 
 the workingmen had been given an equal vote and had combined 
 with the revolutionary element of the middle class, two-thirds 
 or three-fourths of the population of every city in Russia 
 would have voted Socialist. 
 
 Another class of the population from which both the 
 Government and the moderate reformers hoped to get great 
 support, took the attitude of the peasants. Of the small 
 landowners, very few participated in the elections. In the 
 Moscow district, out of one thousand four hundred and eighty 
 electors only sixteen appeared, and in the district of Odessa 
 only one came out of one thousand nine hundred. In the 
 country at large so few of this class of votes appeared that more 
 than one-half of the elections could not take place at the 
 appointed time. It need not be inferred that the small landlords 
 are very revolutionary, but it is evident that they do not now 
 consider the Government's promises to be worth even a few 
 hours away from business, though they were much interested 
 in the former Dumas. 
 
 The Socialist Revolutionary Party, which next to the Laboiu- 
 Group is most successful among the peasantry, boycotted the 
 elections everywhere. Their manifesto calling for the boycott 
 explains the attitude of a very large number of the Russian 
 people. It runs in part as follows: 
 
 As the third Duma will inevitably be a sort of organisation of the 
 reactionary pseudo-constitutional and anti-revolutionary forces in 
 general; as the participation in the Duma of revolutionary elements 
 will only help the Government to give the next Duma an appearance of 
 an authoritative parliament; as this will strengthen the financial and 
 international position of the Government; as under such conditions to 
 go into the Dirnia would be logical only for those who have lost faith 
 in the revolution and to whom therefore the non-participation in the 
 Duma is equal to passivity and inactivity; the council of the Socialist 
 Revolutionary Party therefore resolves to take a most energetic part in 
 the election campaign agitation for the propaganda of an effective 
 demonstrative boycott by the population at the elections as well as in 
 the Duma itself; to make a pressure by means of public opinion upon 
 radical deputies in the Duma, if there be any such, with the purpose of 
 impelling them demonstratively to go out of the Duma and leave it to 
 its naturally wretched lot. 
 
326 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 In accordance with this poUcy the few popular representatives 
 who have really entered the Duma have lost no occasion to 
 tempt the reactionaries to expel them. Liachnitzky, a member 
 of the Labour Group, told the Duma that 'the great mass of 
 people who most need reform are not represented here" — 
 to the great scandal of the reactionaries, who scarcely allowed 
 his voice to be heard through the tumult they created. "As 
 a representative of the population," said another member of 
 the same group, Petrov, "as a workingman, I repeat what 
 my comrade voters have told me. We are suffocating under 
 these laws, we are dying under these laws. The voters said 
 to us, 'demand the rights for the pople that are rotting in 
 the prisons and mines; your duty is to fight for freedom.' " 
 
 It would seem that even this relatively moderate revolutionary 
 party, the Labour Group, is entirely of the opinion of the more 
 radical Socialist Revolutionary leader, the late Gregory Gershuni, 
 who, though his own party had boycotted the Duma and had 
 no representatives there, urged the Labour Group to" demand 
 frankly the execution of the national will, full political 
 amnesty, the realisation of the promised liberties, the judgment 
 of the autocratic Government by the people and the convocation 
 of a constitutional assembly elected by universal suffrage. 
 This is the task, says the well-known revolutionist, that the 
 Labour Group must assume; it must understand that its end 
 is not the realisation of half-way reforms, for it will never 
 succeed in tearing anything from the Government, but the 
 frank and clear statement of the popular demands in order that 
 the people should consider the Labour Group as the true 
 representative of its interest. 
 
< 
 
 O .2 
 
 o ^ 
 
 O Vl-I 
 
 w o 
 
 a. ^ 
 
 ft J3 
 
 Si 
 
 < X 
 
 ^5E LIBrI^ 
 
 V^ OF THE f^ 
 
 ••'VERSITY 
 
A TYPICAL EDUCATED LEADER OF THE PEASANTRY 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PEASANT PARTIES ABANDON HOPE IN THE DUMA 
 
 AS THE people have grown conscious of their unity, the 
 revolutionary movement has become more profound. 
 At the opening of the first Duma the members of all the popular 
 parties, including those of the Social Democratic workingmen's 
 party, were organised together in the "Labour Group," all were 
 looking forward to an early overthrow of the Czarism, and all 
 were demanding a constitutional assembly elected by equal 
 suffrage. But the unity was based on political grounds. As 
 the land question came into the foreground and the revolutionary 
 movement became a social movement, the unity was threatened, 
 and it was only after a vast discussion and much disagreement 
 on the fundamental land question that the popular parties have 
 again all reached a very similar standpoint. As long as the 
 Duma had any chance of becoming an organ not alone of a 
 political but also of a social revolution, the parties were some- 
 what disunited, principally on account of the essential question 
 as to whether the city working people or the peasants were to 
 be the principal factor in the movement; but after the Govern- 
 ment had destroyed all hopes of bringing about any revolution 
 through the Duma, the parties again began to come together. 
 There remain important theoretical differences, but practically 
 on the land question and on the agreement that the revolution 
 needs for its success outside the Duma the overwhelming 
 majority both of the peasants and workingmen, the popular i 
 parties are again united. 
 
 The organisation which has done the most to bring about 
 this unity is the Labour Group. It was revolutionary enough 
 to declare at the dissolution of the first Duma that the people 
 must be the absolute masters of the State, and that all the land 
 of Russia must belong to the entire people ; and it was Socialist 
 enough to demand measures leading toward a permanent equali- 
 
 327 
 
328 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 sation of the land among the peasantry. This organisation 
 was able to please more or less all the other Socialist and 
 revolutionary parties, and became at the same time immensely 
 popular among the overwhelming majority of the peasants, 
 those not yet organised. The party wanted the Constitutional 
 Democrats to insert in the Viborg manifesto an appeal to the 
 people no longer to obey the Government "in fratricidal 
 war with the nation" and to return to St. Petersburg and 
 attempt at least to resume the session of the Duma. Meet- 
 ing a refusal on the part of the moderates, it turned to the 
 people with a proclamation that closed by calling for a 
 Duma of the people with full sovereignty, or in other 
 words, a constitutional assembly. "The Czar with his 
 ministers," the Labour Group declared, "has closed for us all 
 peaceful roads to liberty and justice, let us try to clear them 
 by force." 
 
 From the beginning this party owed most of its ruling ideas 
 and the majority of its most active leaders and organisers to 
 the Socialist Revolutionary Party ; not being a dogmatic organi- 
 sation, however, it has laid aside all the theoretical elements 
 of revolutionary Socialism and retained only the programme of 
 the immediate measures proposed. In the first Duma half of 
 the group consisted of the peasants who had not yet made up 
 their minds on the leading issues; of the others a part were 
 connected with the Socialist Revolutionary Party and Peasants' 
 Union, or held independent Socialist views; another part leaned 
 to the Socialist Democratic Party or were members of that 
 organisation, but these soon left the group and the Socialist 
 Revolutionary influence became dominant. In the first Duma 
 one-third, and in the second Duma one-half, of the members of 
 the group signed the land bill of the Socialist Revolutionary 
 Party. In the second Duma the majority of the party became 
 more revolutionary in a political sense, and made use of their 
 position in the Duma solely to stir up an agitation among the 
 people of the country, abandoning all hope of turning the Duma 
 itself into a revolutionary body ; both of these actions helped to 
 secure a tremendous popularity for the organisation among the 
 peasantry. The party, which in the first Duma had forced the 
 moderates and the whole Duma to a revolutionary position, 
 
PEASANTS ABANDON HOPE 329 
 
 used the second Duma to unite the masses of the people on a 
 revolutionary and Socialist programme. 
 
 The keynote to the Socialist land reform of this organisation 
 is a proposal to equalise permanently the distribution of the 
 land, just as the foimders of the American Republic had 
 temporarily equalised the Government lands in the new part 
 of the country. As there is not enough land in Russia to enable 
 the Government to provide for all, measures must be taken to 
 prevent its accimiulation in the future in the hands of a few 
 persons, a process which takes place very rapidly wherever 
 the population is crowded as in Russia. The group realises 
 that pure political democracy, far more advanced than the 
 constitution of the United States, is necessary in order to put 
 into execution such a revolutionary measure, and it is therefore 
 for political revolution ; but it also feels that only with an equal 
 distribution of the land would the democracy be truly strong, 
 and so it insists also on the principle of a permanent economic 
 equality in the distribution of the land. It has long been 
 recognised by democratic writers of all countries that political 
 liberty itself depends on some approach at least to economic 
 equality. From Rousseau to de Tocqueville in his comments 
 on America, we have been told that political equality cannot 
 continue to exist where there is an imequal distribution of 
 wealth. 
 
 The Russians are hopeful for a social solution of the land 
 question, because the large majority of the peasants are not 
 only its converted but its bom partisans, having maintained a 
 certain economic equality in the villages for generations through 
 their common ownership of the land. Whatever be the 
 solution of the land question, whether the commtmal ownership 
 continues or not, Russians are convinced that its principles 
 are a part of the peasant's very soul and that the peasants will 
 demand not only political, but also economic, equality as a 
 permanent principle of Russian society. 
 
 "We wish to have the land to work it," said Anikine in the 
 first Duma. "We do not want it as private property — no, 
 and again no! No private property; such notions do not exist 
 in the juridical conscience of the Russian peasants. It has been 
 claimed here that the peasants want private property in land in 
 
330 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 order to be able to will it to their children, but look at the 
 transfers of the land in the various sections of the country and 
 you will see that this is not the case and that the peasants have 
 rather a horror of this private property." Anikine then cited at 
 length many documents proving that even in the western 
 provinces, where the communal form of property does not 
 prevail, the peasants in their village regulations of inheritance 
 have ideas against private inheritance and are in favour of the 
 distribution of the land of deceased peasants on principles of 
 social justice. 
 
 It is only in the non-Russian parts of the country, Poland 
 and the Baltic provinces and Lithuania, and in relatively small 
 sections of White and Little Russia and the three Border 
 provinces, that private property is the dominant form among 
 the peasantry. Even in the western provinces, Little and 
 White Russia, from a quarter to a third of the peasants live 
 under the communal system. In the other parts of the country, 
 two-thirds of the whole, commion ownership by village prevails 
 in from 80 to 95 per cent, of the peasant households. In the 
 centre the proportion rises to 90 per cent., in the north and 
 east to more than 95. Of the fifteen million peasant house- 
 holds in Russia proper, only four hundred thousand have 
 private property in land. The Government is using every 
 effort to increase this number, and it may soon rise to a million 
 or perhaps even to a million and a half; even then in the villages 
 only half a dozen families out of one hundred or two hundred 
 will have private property. 
 
 Communal property has even been growing in popularity. 
 In some of the eastern provinces the redistributions of the land 
 by which equality is maintained have doubled in frequency 
 since the emancipation, until now in two-thirds of the villages 
 redistribution takes place within each decade. In thirty-seven 
 provinces statistics show that one-half of the villagers are 
 redistributing the village property according to the needs of 
 each household — that is, according to the mouths to be fed — 
 while in the most typical agricultural section of Central Russia 
 the proportion rises to two-thirds. The village property is 
 also often redistributed to each family in proportion to the 
 amount of workers in the family, or its "labour power." The 
 
< ^ 
 
BIELEVSKY 
 Under "house arrest" in Moscow at time of my interview 
 
PEASANTS ABANDON HOPE 331 
 
 majority of the peasants of Russia, then, have no underlying 
 instinct for private property, but quite the contrary; the habit 
 is rather one of cooperation, seen not only in many undertakings 
 by the democratic government of the village, but also in the 
 associations for cooperative labour, or "artels," that are so 
 common among the peasantry. There is no mystic idea among 
 them of some legal bond existing between a man and a thing 
 which he has not produced. The land is felt by them to be a 
 thing apart, very precious and insufficient in quantity, and so 
 obviously to be divided according to democratic and social 
 principles. 
 
 Conservative authority is not lacking to support this 
 interpretation of the Russian peasants' attitude in regard to 
 land. Coimt Witte declared a few years ago that, in spite of 
 all the Government's efforts, it was unable to innure peasants 
 to private property, and Milyoukov has declared to the Duma 
 that the small individual property ideal is no Russian ideal. 
 
 Mushenko, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, 
 said that the principal defence of private property in land was 
 that it assured durability in the possession of the land for 
 the persons working on it. He then denied that this was the 
 fact in most countries and quoted a Russian Government report 
 on the question as follows: 
 
 The study of other countries has proved to us beyond doubt that 
 small peasant households, when submitted to the same free conditions 
 of purchase and sale as other property, are not durable and gradually 
 vanish away, giving place to land ownership of a different character: 
 on the one side, a concentration of a great number of separate lots under 
 the ownership of a single person takes place, larger households are formed 
 and a large part of the agricultural population is misplaced ; on the other 
 side, there arises an extreme sub-division of the land (by inheritance), 
 some lots becoming so small that it is impossible to till them economi- 
 cally, the land loses its productivity and finally falls into the hands 
 of larger landowners. 
 
 It is indeed precisely to this process, as we have seen, that 
 both the Government and leading party in the third Duma 
 are looking calmly forward. A few hundred thousand peasants, 
 or perhaps a million or more, are to become relatively prosperous, 
 while many millions are to be expropriated by natural economic 
 laws, thus furnishing an enormous army of cheap labour for 
 
332 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the landlords and capitalists. The Government itself recognises 
 that the process might go so far as to become dangerous, 
 creating desperate village disturbances, and proposes the 
 limitation of the expected concentration of property in the 
 hands of a few peasants to the shares that would naturally fall 
 to six average families — viz., twenty-five dessatines or about 
 sixty-five acres. 
 
 The Government proposes to favour a few at the expense 
 of the many by two measures. The first is by abolishing all the 
 communal property, or rather, since such a measure cannot be 
 executed against the will of the peasantry, of allowing individual 
 peasants to demand some particular piece of land, equal in 
 value to their present share, as their permanent private 
 property. This may seem to one unfamiliar with the commune 
 to be no more than just to the individual, whether a wise measure 
 socially or not, but this is not the case. Many villages have 
 even persuaded all the peasants to swear allegiance to the 
 communal form of ownership, and not to take advantage of the 
 law. In the discussions that are going on about this question 
 among the peasants all over Russia, the sentiment is over- 
 whelming against the dissolution of the commune, as was 
 evidenced by nearly all the Duma members representing the 
 peasants. It is against their deepest feelings of morality and 
 justice that a man with few or no dependents should be allowed 
 to take away from his fellow villagers a share of the land 
 attributed to him years before, when his family was larger, 
 while some peasant households with ten to twenty members 
 are without sufficient land for the barest livelihood. So strongly 
 do they feel this injustice to them as individuals that they are 
 taking every measure to coerce unsocial members of the 
 community who are disposed to take advantage of the law. 
 Although in force for many months, the number of persons 
 making use of the law has been very disappointing to the 
 Government, and arbitrary police measures have failed to 
 increase it. 
 
 The second measure promises to have more success froiji the 
 Government standpoint. By helping financially the Peasants' 
 Bank, the Government has enabled it to buy up and divide 
 many large estates and sell them to individual peasants. It is 
 
PEASANTS ABANDON HOPE 333 
 
 true that the prices asked are exorbitant and that the land is 
 often overburdened with payments to the bank — that is, 
 to the Government — greater even than its full value ; but 
 nevertheless a great deal is in this way passing over into the 
 peasants' hands, in the one year 1907 more than in any ten 
 years before, nearly twenty million acres. Through this second 
 law the Government is accomplishing the same purpose of 
 favouring the creation of a new class of small landowners at 
 the expense of the masses. Its reasons are obvious. It is not 
 alone that these measures favour the capitalists and landlords, 
 who want to exploit the new army of pauper labour which will 
 arise, though this motive is doubtless the main influence with 
 the majority of the third Duma. Stolypine, with Witte, has 
 probably still more at heart the direct interests of the Czar's 
 treasury. The State income, as I have shown, depends largely 
 on the building up of industry, and industry has its principal 
 market among this small landowning class, since the peasants, 
 as has been explained, barely produce enough to eat and there- 
 fore can purchase little. It is chiefly from this class that the 
 Government can hope to obtain greater sums, either by direct 
 taxation or by indirect taxation of the tea, sugar, and other 
 articles they buy in quantities the ordinary peasant cannot 
 afford. As Witte has explained very clearly, the peasants are 
 so poor that it does not pay the Government to help them. 
 There is no promise that the great mass of them will have 
 enough money in the near future either to promote Russian 
 industry by their purchases, or to be able in any way to help 
 out the Russian treasury, so near to bankruptcy. 
 
 Indeed, from an economic standpoint, half-way measures 
 of relief to the masses of the peasants would lead to further 
 impoverishment of the nation as a whole, for the reason that the 
 largest of the estates of the landlords are much more produc- 
 tively operated than the small holdings; the decrease of the 
 former and the increase of the latter, while benefiting the 
 peasants, would impoverish the nation as a whole, and the 
 Government treasury would feel the result. Statistics from 
 the province of Poltava show that the large properties produce 
 25 per cent, more wheat and 40 per cent, more rye than 
 the small. Indeed, there is already raging a hopeless economic 
 
334 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 conflict between the two cultures — the landlords' and the 
 peasants'. The famishing peasants having so little land 
 themselves are pressed to rent that of the landlords, but they 
 cannot produce as large crops and often do not get enough 
 even to pay the rent, to say nothing of making anything to 
 repay their labour. For example, a certain Poltava landlord 
 calculated that he could get nineteen rubles a dessatine by 
 renting his land at an exorbitant figure, whereas he made 
 twenty-seven by cultivating it himself. It is evident then that 
 half-way measures under these conditions might really imperil 
 the State finances, even under a modem and democratic 
 government ; and it is just because they feel this that the peasant 
 parties want to find a far more fundamental solution. 
 
 Nearly every measure proposed by the Government is a half- 
 way, and therefore a retrograde, measure. It is doing everything 
 possible, for instance, to encourage emigration to Siberia, 
 and in the last year for the first time has had considerable 
 success. However, even if half a million peasants are removed 
 to the new country every year, the Government will not in this 
 way be able to provide even for a third of the annual increase 
 of population. The Siberian peasants would seem to be 
 relatively prosperous, exporting as they do large amounts of 
 butter and eggs, but we find on investigation that no section of 
 the Russian peasantry is more revolutionary, and we see the 
 explanation of this attitude partly in the heavy railway rates on 
 which these isolated farmers are absolutely dependent. Like 
 the new small landowning class the Government is creating in 
 Russia itself, they are burdened with immense taxation either 
 on their purchases of goods or in payment for the land; even 
 the amount advanced by the Government to get them to 
 Siberia is a serious matter for the pauperised peasants. This 
 taxation is not likely to be diminished. The Government, on 
 the verge of bankruptcy, is using every possible means of 
 extorting money; it will hardly exempt these new classes that 
 have no representation either in the Duma or the Government. 
 
 The discontent on account of the heavy taxation is not the 
 only additional danger the Government has to fear from this 
 new class. The first famine that appears, a large proportion of 
 the new debtors of the Governmental Peasants' Bank will prove 
 
PEASANTS ABANDON HOPE 335 
 
 delinquent and will turn all the wrath formerly spent on the 
 landlords against the Government. All the revolutionary 
 representatives of the peasants in the Duma are looking forward 
 to this new class, which the Government is trying to create, 
 as a powerful factor in the coming revolutionary movement. 
 
 In a private conversation I had with Anikine in the summer 
 of 1907, the most popular of all the peasant leaders set his main 
 hope of the revolutionising of the peasantry on the high pay- 
 ments which would be demanded from them by the Government 
 for the new land. He thought that these reforms would bring 
 about a new revolutionary movement quicker than any other 
 measures the Government could take. "In trying to satisfy 
 the peasants* land hunger," he said, "the Government is digging 
 its own grave." The same view is held by the Socialist Revolu- 
 tionary Party ; it expects that the peasants will be both unable 
 and unwilling to pay for the land they are now buying, and 
 basing its hopes largely on this measure it is preparing to renew 
 its agitation in the villages in the most thoroughgoing way. 
 
 The Socialist Revolutionary Party expects to win to the 
 Socialist ideas not only such peasants as have become landless, 
 and therefore uninterested in the preservation of private prop- 
 erty in land, but also the communal peasants who have already 
 learned to believe in the equal distribution. It does not wish 
 to see Russia proceed further "along the sad and beaten path 
 of capitalistic development," and to prevent this it hopes to 
 preserve the village commune against all Governmental attacks. 
 The Socialist Revolutionist expect to make use both of the 
 vague yearnings for social liberty and equality that have grown 
 up in the democratic village assembly and of the very clear 
 social conceptions with regard to land, labour, and human 
 relations that have resulted from the long prevalence of com- 
 munal property. These yearnings and these definite concep- 
 tions they hope to combine into an intelligent political 
 programme. 
 
 For the purpose of arousing the peasants they hope first 
 of all to make popular among them the agrarian bill signed by 
 the majority of the peasant deputies of the second Duma. They 
 expect to adapt this bill to local conditions and thus to make its 
 application clear to the villages. They appeal also to the 
 
336 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 peasantry to take advantage of their right of communal property, 
 to redistribute the land not after the end of ten years or more, 
 as is the usual custom, but immediately. In this way they hope 
 to satisfy all elements in the community and to eliminate the 
 chief motive that tempts the individual to sell out — namely, 
 dissatisfaction with his present allotment. They expect to 
 take advantage of the peasants' cooperative traditions to form 
 new organisations, especially for the lowering of rents and the 
 raising of wages. In general they are using every effort to 
 strengthen and further organise the village as a vmit and to 
 promote its interests both against the anti-social individual 
 and the anti-social State. 
 
 In most of the practical features of its programme the Socia- 
 list Revolutionary Party has the support of several other very 
 important organisations, including the Teachers' Union, the 
 Railway Union and, best of all, the Peasants' Union. The 
 policy of the Socialist Revolutionary Party is to promote in 
 every way these and similar organisations, while preserving its 
 own political independence. Besides meeting the majority 
 of the chief leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, I have 
 taken pains to make the acquaintance of nearly all the founders 
 of the Peasants' Union and of several of the active officers of 
 the Teachers' and Railway Unions. I have visited these organi- 
 sations in their headquarters and attended one of the congresses. 
 The policy of these organisations has been to aid only in a general 
 way the revolutionary movement, without adopting a too 
 definite programme which might offend any particular revolu- 
 tionary political party. The Socialist Revolutionary Party 
 gives full recognition to the Peasants' Union as being the im- 
 portant economical organisation of the peasant classes. At 
 no time have there been fundamental matters of difference 
 between these two organisations. They have always had 
 many important members in common, while the party has 
 furnished a large portion of the persons who have done most to 
 spread the union among the villages. 
 
 I have written at some length of the Labour Group. I must 
 call attention now to the fact that it took nearly all its' pro- 
 gramme, as well as its tactics, from the Peasants* Union, and 
 that many of the founders both of the union and the Labour 
 
PEASANTS ABANDON HOPE 337 
 
 Group were former members of the Socialist Revolutionary 
 Party. The principal element of the Labour Group's solution 
 of the land question, that each peasant is to have only so much 
 land as he can work with his own labour, was taken directly 
 from the Peasants' Union. But the latter organisation has 
 always been somewhat more revolutionary. The Labour 
 Group was under the necessity of assimiliating and educating 
 many peasants who, though all broadly speaking revolutionary 
 and in favour of expropriating the landlords' estates, had no 
 other very definite political ideas. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 THE founders of the Peasants' Union were all merely seeking 
 to express the existing state of opinion of the peasantry. 
 The union was really founded by the peasants themselves. The 
 resolutions of its first congress in Moscow in July, 1905, were 
 printed in all the Russian press, and, through the teachers or 
 progressive and educated peasants, soon reached a large part 
 of the villages. It is not surprising that it was everywhere 
 received with favour, for the first congress was composed largely 
 of ordinary peasants. To understand how the idea of the 
 union was received, and branches formed without any local 
 agitation, let us take an account of a meeting that was held in 
 Saratov in the summer of 1905. This and other meetings in 
 that province were reported to the Central Committe by the 
 writer Bogoraz, and had a good deal to do with shaping the 
 future policy of the union, of which Bogoraz became a 
 secretary. After a long discussion by the peasants, who had 
 assembled to discuss not the Peasants' Union but the question 
 of cooperation, they decided that there was no use in orga- 
 nising a cooperative society under the insufferable conditions 
 that prevailed, and drew up after several hours' labo\ir the 
 following resolution: 
 
 We are born and brought up in the villages. We do not know any 
 other occupation except agriculture. We are not in a condition to occupy 
 ourselves with other things because we are lacking the means for it- 
 Agriculture has to nourish us; it has to give us the possibility of saving 
 a few pennies for our dark days, for the famine years, or in case we have 
 to marry off a daughter or send our sons into military service. This 
 occupation has to give us means of pa5ang taxes, of paying for our elected 
 authorities, our clergy, our school, our hospitals, and -of constructing 
 our roads and paying the indirect taxes, which are the most important 
 of all and fall entirely on us. All the taxes on alcohol, petroleum, tea, 
 sugar and matches come principally from us. We have to extract 
 
 338 
 
THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 339 
 
 hundreds of millions of rubles from our land to pay for the needs of the 
 State, and in spite of this the land that we possess gives us a chance to 
 live only in a half-starved condition. 
 
 That is what we are suffering from, the lack of land; but the lack of 
 liberty makes us suffer still more. We have such a quantity of officials 
 over us that at times we do not know whom we ought to fear most. We 
 do not know why they exist in such a number, or who has installed them, 
 but we know that those who are most numerous here are like guards over 
 prisons. One might think that we peasants are the greatest of criminals. 
 All our officials shout at us, curse us, threaten us with prison, the whip 
 and "nagaika, " and with forced military service. They have only one 
 law, the club. They know only one kind word to address us with; 
 it is "give." 
 
 The "land officials," the police captain, the police colonel and the 
 governor, even the elected authorities of the village, even the priests who 
 ought to be our fathers in Christ, they too do nothing but laugh at us. 
 Our assembly has no power over them. All the power is in the hands of 
 the officials and the upper classes. We build schools to have our chil- 
 dren taught. We want our children to learn the truth in these schools, 
 but the officials send us teachers not of our choice. These teachers 
 teach our children all sorts of stupidity in the place of true knowledge. 
 They forbid our children to read good books. They hide the truth from 
 them. We do not know where the taxes go that are collected from us, 
 but we know that if we do not pay them in time acts of violence are 
 committed against us. 
 
 We have no true justice. We have no defence, if injustice is committed 
 against us. When we want to defend ourselves soldiers are sent and 
 beat us. It is our brothers and sons that do the beating, our brothers 
 and our children whom we tear from our families and send to defend the 
 Fatherland. They teach them instead to kill their own brothers, but they 
 do not learn how to defend the Fatherland. 
 
 This cannot last. We must confess that we find it necessary to bring 
 it about that this state of things be changed. 
 
 People elected by everybody ought to govern the country, and not 
 only the officials. All the voters ought to be equal, the rich and the poor, 
 the educated and the uneducated. Those elected by the people must 
 give equal laws for all and they must follow the way in which the people's 
 money is being expended. 
 
 The army must be replaced by a popular militia, so that every man 
 should learn military science at home and during his free time. We are 
 sure that such a militia in the case of war will know how to defend our 
 country as well as the present army. 
 
 The people must have the liberty of meeting and of speaking freely 
 about everything, about affairs of state and about social questions. 
 The censorship must be abolished. 
 
 All crimes must be judged by jury, and the right should not exist to 
 arrest any one more than two days without judgment. 
 
340 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Taxes ought not to be collected as now by the taxation of poor p)eople 
 alone. A certain per cent, of income ought to be taken and this per cent, 
 ought to be increased according to the size of the property owned; a 
 large part of an inheritance that one has received ought also to be taxed, 
 for this is not money earned. 
 
 Complete liberty of conscience ought to exist. The clergy must be 
 elected by the people. Education of the people must be free and equal 
 for all, and the Government must give the money for it. 
 
 Finally, and this is the most important, this will put an end to our 
 servitude and stop our ruin — for servitude still exists, and alongside 
 the peasant agriculturists are living landlords who are enriching them- 
 selves by the peasants' labour, which they can do because of their right 
 of possessing God's property — finally, it is indispensable to expropriate 
 all private lands and to give these lands into the possession of the villages 
 which will give it only to him who cultivates it with his own labour. 
 Only when all that will be accomplished will the people be able to live 
 and commence a regular life, but if all that is not accomplished a great 
 misfortune awaits our country. 
 
 To realise all these demands we find necessary the immediate convo- 
 cation of a constitutional assembly on the principle of universal, equal, 
 and secret suffrage. 
 
 For the struggle to obtain these reforms we are founding the Peasants' 
 Union of the district of Petrovsk. The founders of this union are all 
 the members present at this conference. 
 
 The last words give us a key to the origin of the union. 
 Everywhere the peasants themselves took the initiative as soon 
 as they heard that such an organisation was being formed. All 
 those who did the work of organising report that villages sent 
 to request them to put these villages into relations with the 
 national organisation. Locally no agitation was necessary. 
 
 A few words about the educated organisers of the union in 
 Moscow and St. Petersburg might not, however, be inappro- 
 priate. In the country the organisation was promoted chiefly 
 by the employees of the local governments, teachers, doctors, 
 agricultural experts and others, all of whom had their national 
 organisations which aided in the movement. Besides these 
 organisations there was a little group of men in Moscow among 
 whom the idea at first took root, largely as a reaction against 
 the effort of the Government to organise the peasants into^some 
 form of "patriotic" association. The "patriotic" association 
 was a failure, but the Peasants' Union was perhaps the most 
 remarkable and quickly successful effort to bring into imity 
 
THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 341 
 
 a disassociated mass of many million people, of which we have 
 any record. 
 
 Perhaps the first initiator of the idea was a lawyer named 
 Staal, who had obtained his first ideas of social movements 
 while a student in Germany. He saw then, he told me, that 
 the organisation of the masses after the manner of the Social 
 Democratic Party in Germany would never succeed in Russia, 
 principally because only a very small proportion of the Russian 
 people are working people while a vast majority are peasants. 
 Yet he felt that the future social transformation must come 
 through some form of popular organisation. 
 
 After the massacre of January 22, 1905, the Czar granted 
 certain limited rights to meet to discuss "the needs and the 
 benefits of the Government." Taking advantage of this law, 
 Staal conceived the idea of starting some kind of Peasants* 
 Union in opposition to the association that the reactionaries 
 were trying to establish. Bringing together several friends 
 and acquaintances in Moscow, principally active members of 
 the national organisations of agricultural experts and statisti- 
 cians, who had been in close contact with the peasantry, Staal 
 proposed the idea of his association. Most valuable among his 
 friends was a peasant Kurneen, still in touch with his village, 
 but a man of affairs and agent for the Rothschild oil business 
 in Moscow. The small committee wrote a proclamation with 
 Kurneen *s assistance and sent it out among the villages of the 
 Moscow province through Kumeen's agents and the salesmen 
 of tea and caldrons. The proclamation was at once well 
 received in all the villages and the agents soon brought back 
 suggestions from the peasants about the future organisation 
 of the union. At the same time Masurenko, a former army 
 officer, was carrying on similar work independently in the Don 
 district. It was soon decided to call a congress. 
 
 With the aid especially of the teachers' organisation, and of 
 Masurenko, a very large number of the villages, representing 
 perhaps a million peasants, sent delegates to the first congress. 
 From the outset the members of the union and the dele^ 
 gates to the congress took a radical position on economic ques- 
 tions, demanding the expropriation of all the landlords* land, 
 its division among only those who work the land themselves, 
 
342 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the abolition of indirect taxation, and the establishment of a 
 progressive income tax. 
 
 It was evident that the union was no artificial organisation 
 but had grown up from the people themselves. The majority of 
 the founders of the union were what may be called independent 
 Socialists ; most of them were inspired with the Socialist Revolu- 
 tionary programme, but they did not feel that it would be 
 just or practical to urge their ideas on the peasant delegates 
 and left them entirely free to work out their own programme 
 with a few stimulating suggestions. They were democratic 
 leaders, that is, they were helping the people to go where they 
 themselves desired. I talked with nearly all of them. One of 
 the most interesting of these conversations was with the well- 
 known writer on agriculture and economics, Bielevski, while he 
 was under house arrest with the gendarmes before his door. It 
 was just about one year after the first congress of the union. 
 Bielevski was looking forward to a long and frightful revolution. 
 He said that a foreigner only imagined he observed Russia's 
 condition, for he could not see how Russian hearts were full 
 of hate. He spoke of the Czar's punishment expeditions, of 
 his armies of revenge, and said that the people were almost 
 insane with anger. 
 
 "The Government," he said, "is used to using the 'nagaika' 
 and blows; it hates the people, while the people hate the Govern- 
 ment, as a slave does his master." He believed that the Govern- 
 ment had gone so far in betraying its promises that it had 
 compromised among the people not only itself but the Czar 
 also. He tried to picture the state of mind of the peasants by 
 calling attention to the thousands and thousands of flayed 
 backs all over the country. These were things that were never 
 forgotten. He thought that the people had learned more during 
 the year since the union had been founded than they had in a 
 generation. He insisted not only that the revolutionary 
 sentiment but also the Socialist programme of the union came 
 from the peasants themselves, since they knew that if free trade 
 in land was allowed in starving Russia they would be forced 
 to sell their little lots at the very first famine. 
 
 Staal and Kumeen also insisted that the union had only put 
 in words what the peasants were already thinking. The union 
 
THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 343 
 
 indeed was so thoroughly popular that even the reactionaries 
 were forced to change their plan for organising the peasants and 
 to adopt the Peasants' Union programme almost in full, with the 
 single exception of ignoring the call for a constitutional assembly. 
 
 The founders of the union have been tried and condemned 
 to a year's imprisonment by the Government. That the 
 punishment was not longer is owing to the very intelligent and 
 broad attitude that these men took in their work. In the trial 
 itself it was made thoroughly clear that there had been a demand 
 among the people for political leadership that had been filled by 
 a number of the devoted and patriotic "intellectuals" of the 
 kind I have mentioned. These intellectuals proved that their 
 principle had been to spread among the peasantry a correct 
 understanding of the land question. One leader, Pieshekanov, 
 defended himself in the trial by saying that there were only 
 two roads to be chosen, either to let the peasants pour by 
 themselves into a torrent of anarchistic revolt, or to take the 
 direction of the movement and reduce it to order. It was 
 shown in the trial that where the union was best organised the 
 disorders were least; and I myself have had it pointed out to 
 me by the peasants that the union and the revolutionary 
 parties try to restrain them from revengeful violence. The 
 peasants told me of an incident in which the president of a local 
 government board, a landlord, the guards of whose estate had 
 fired on the peasantry, was attacked by the latter and sent to 
 town to secure some revolutionary student to talk to the 
 peasants and protect him from their revenge. 
 
 Among the St. Petersburg members of the union a new and 
 still more definitely organised party, that of the National 
 Socialists, took its origin. The Peasants' Union and other 
 revolutionary organisations had successfully taught the peasants 
 that they must look forward to a constitutional assembly and 
 that they would have to take the land for themselves. I 
 believe that this new organisation may possibly find the correct 
 solution of the problem of the distribution of the land. There 
 is no doubt that each of the parties we have mentioned will 
 contribute something to this solution. In the programmes 
 both of the Labour Group and of the Socialist Revolutionary 
 Party one of the measures for equalising land is a heavily 
 
344 ' RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 graduated land tax on the principle of Henry George. Miacotin, 
 one of the chief leaders of the new party, told me he considered 
 this the most important element for the purpose of bringing about 
 the desired economic equality ; and considering the enormous diffi- 
 culties of the actual redistribution of land itself as it is now car- 
 ried on in the Russian villages, there seems no doubt that this 
 measure will be the one on which ultimately the Socialist and 
 revolutionary parties will all unite. The Nationalist Socialist 
 Party is the organisation which is best liked by all the other 
 revolutionary parties at considerable rivalry with one another. 
 Although the democratic Socialist movement that has em- 
 bodied itself in the Peasants' Union, the Labour Group and 
 the National Socialist Party, owes its theoretical inspiration to 
 the Socialist Revolutionaries and its real origin to the spon- 
 taneous demands of the people, it has not been wanting in 
 leaders among the chief men of Russia. Vladimir Korolenko, 
 whom I have already mentioned, a novelist known abroad and 
 beloved by every Russian, has been in the forefront of all the 
 great movements of protest in which Russia's most distinguished 
 and talented names have figured. Korolenko has for years 
 been in close touch with the Socialist Revolutionary movement 
 and is now considered to be one of the chief leaders of the new 
 popular Socialist parties, without, of course, being a partisan 
 of any. I visited him in his home in Poltava and found him 
 looking forward to a greater and broader and more profound 
 revolutionary movement with the same hopefulness as the masses 
 of the peasant people. He was under no illusions as to immediate 
 prospects, realising that the Government had succeeded in 
 imprisoning or exiling the brains of the movement, but he did 
 not consider this check at all as an insuperable calamity, but 
 rather perhaps even as a piece of good fortune in the end. To 
 Korolenko and all the great Russians in real, close and sympa- 
 thetic contact with the people, the revolution is such an im- 
 mense thing that it ought not to succeed too rapidly; too hasty 
 victories in such a cause would necessarily lead to latei deteats. 
 He felt that the great thing needed was organisation in the 
 spirit of the Peasants' Union and the Labour Group and con- 
 sidered that tremendous progress had already been made in 
 this direction. He did not believe that any amount of dis 
 
THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 345 
 
 organised and blind revolt could do anything but strengthen 
 the Government. Far from agreeing with Milyoukov that the 
 continuance of disorder in Russia would force the Government 
 to rely on the reformers to straighten things out, he felt that 
 just the contrary was the case and that disorderly revolt could 
 only weaken the revolutionary movement. 
 
 Korolenko is an excellent type of Russia's famous men who 
 have participated in the popular revolutionary movement. 
 Of the new leaders that are also springing up plentifully all over 
 the country each of the Dumas has produced a score. One of 
 the most influential and typical is Karaviev, perhaps the most 
 impressive speaker of the Labour Group in the second Duma. 
 When a youth he was a physician to the local government 
 board of Perm. Having exposed a corrupt judge, the latter 
 tried to have him removed; however Karaviev's peasant 
 friends were so outraged that they threatened to kill this 
 official if the measure was carried out; to solve the difficulty 
 Karaviev removed to one of the districts of the St. Petersburg 
 provinces. Again he was arrested, because the political police 
 had decided "that he was too popular and influential and that 
 his beliefs were dangerous to the State." No other accusations 
 could be made against him; indeed, while Karaviev is both a 
 revolutionary and a Socialist, he belongs to the moderate wing 
 of the movement and has always been very careful in his public 
 life. It happened that some of the factories situated in the 
 district where he was living at this time (1897) were English, 
 and that some of the members of the English colony were 
 interested in him and secured his release from prison, but he 
 was forbidden to reside in any industrial province. Without 
 his knowledge the peasants of the neighbourhood had sent 
 an application to the Czar that he should be allowed to stay. 
 Later on he removed to Kharkov in the south of Russia, but his 
 persecution by no means ceased. His election to the second Duma 
 and the prominent part he played in it, far from relieving him from 
 petty and serious police persecutions, have made them worse. 
 
 When I visited him in the summer of 1907 he had just had 
 the good forttme to be elected as physician of a certain factory 
 hospital; the governor, however, had notified him that he 
 would remove him from this position if he accepted it. Kara- 
 
346 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 viev, it must be remembered, is under no legal process of any 
 kind, and the Government has never been able to formulate 
 any accusation against him. He had decided to accept the 
 position offered in defiance of the governor. I have no doubt that 
 he will soon end in Siberia, but persecution everywhere in Russia 
 is now so bad that progressive people do not feel it is of any tragic 
 importance where they live, in Siberia, or in their native town. 
 
 Karaviev was strongly in favour of a peasant party entirely 
 independent of the theoretical influence of the Socialist organi- 
 sation, but he also realised that the Socialistic and revolutionary 
 proposals adopted by the Peasants' Union were of a thoroughly 
 practical character and applicable to the present condition of 
 the country. He therefore wished the peasants' party to be 
 headed by the Peasants* Union. Although he thought that 
 the peasants felt that a hereditary ruler was a sort of law of 
 nature, he was certain that they were also so democratic that, 
 if they had their way, they would so qualify and limit any 
 monarchy that there would be very little place left in it for the 
 Czar. Besides, he had noticed that an anti-monarchical senti- 
 ment was growing up very rapidly among all the more educated 
 villagers. He thought that social ideas of the peasants had 
 gone further even than their political ideas and believed that, 
 if political equality were established. Socialist ideas in some 
 practical form would be readily accepted by the whole population. 
 
 Like Korolenko he was hopeful for the future. He thought 
 there was much promise in the view prevailing among the 
 peasants that, after a few years when the army was composed 
 entirely of new recruits sworn by the villages not to shoot against 
 the people, the revolution would be able to conquer; and he 
 was confident that the peasants now purchasing property 
 through the Peasants* Bank, and so seemingly accepting the 
 Governmental land reform, would, within a few years, revolt 
 against making any further payments and accentuate the 
 revolutionary situation. 
 
 I talked with many other leaders of this class, active Duma 
 members in thoroughly intimate contact with their constit- 
 uents. All were hopeful of a renewal of the revolutionary 
 movement within a few years, and all were in general accord 
 with the opinions and feelings stated by the peasants themselves. 
 
part five 
 Revolution and the Message 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WORKINGMEN 
 
 IF THE peasants have become revolutionary and Socialistic, 
 the city worldngmen, better paid, better educated, and 
 better organised, have both preceded them and gone further 
 in this direction. Indeed the most important events of the 
 revolutionary movement up to the present have been brought 
 about solely by the workingmen. The Czar's promise of a 
 national assembly was forced from him by the indignation of 
 Russia and the whole world at his massacre, on January 22, 
 1905 (Western calendar), of the courageous workingmen peti- 
 tioners before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. On October 
 30th of the same year the general strike instituted by the 
 Railway Union wrung from the reluctant Czar his promise of 
 universal suffrage for this assembly and of the rights of man 
 for Russian citizens. All these promises were empty phrases, 
 but nevertheless the most momentous political acts of all 
 Russian history up to the present day. Having gone so far, 
 having made such sacrifices, and having won such a moral 
 victory for the nation, the working people began to ask some- 
 thing for themselves. They saw it was possible that even 
 imder a free government, if it fell into the hands of other social 
 classes, they might still continue to starve. 
 
 They had never placed a mere political liberty above their 
 hope to reach a position where they might cease to go hungry. 
 The petition of January 2 2d itself was the result of a strike 
 for better wages and bearable hours of labour. The national 
 general strike was instituted by the Railway Union driven to 
 exasperation because the Government had refused it the ele- 
 mentary right to organise railway employees for economic 
 betterment. The Russian workingmen have fought not only 
 against political conditions worse than those of other countries, 
 
 349 
 
3SO RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 but also against an equally inferior economic sittiation. They 
 are not willing to give up their lives to a fight jor a political 
 freedom that would not bring a corresponding economic im- 
 provement. 
 
 The Russian working people are for the most part able to 
 read and write. For many years the country has been in such a 
 disturbed condition that they have had the advantage of the 
 leadership not only of the intelligent individuals in their midst 
 but of a large part of the equally revolutionary educated class 
 who have turned to the working people with their ideas for 
 political and social regeneration of Russia. They have come 
 to be keenly conscious of the superior conditions of working- 
 men in other countries, and at the same time of all the social 
 and political evils against which labour unions and social parties 
 everywhere are fighting. They have found much matter of 
 vital import to them in comparing the condition of their country 
 with that of other lands. 
 
 They found that the American workingmen, with the aid of 
 education and modem machinery, are producing three times, 
 and the Englishmen twice, as much as the Russian, that the 
 Englishmen are paid four and the American five times as 
 much wages per hour, while the cost of living is on the whole 
 as high in Russia as elsewhere. The meat is indeed dearer, 
 the bread is as dear, and only clothes are cheap; yet the aver- 
 age yearly wage in Russia is less than $100; the very highest 
 wages in any industry is that in the construction of machines, 
 $262.50. The hours are longer than in other countries, even 
 if we take into account in reckoning the annual working time 
 of the Russians the large number of holidays. The hated system 
 of company stores prevails widely, fines are in very wide use, 
 and the employers pay the wages at such times as they think 
 fit. Worst of all the conditions, perhaps, is the fact that the 
 factories own a large part of the workingmen 's homes and the 
 overcrowding is greater than in the worst tenement districts 
 in New York, sometimes several families being put into a single 
 room. Sometimes the homes are even in the factories. There 
 are labour laws, some of which look very well on the statute 
 books. However, the law of 1897 about hours shortens them 
 only to eleven and a half and is poorly enforced at that. 
 
THE WORKINGMEN 351 
 
 The big strikes began in the very beginning of the recent 
 industrial movement in Russia, in 1885. Conditions at that 
 time amounted practically to slavery and the result was a sort 
 of anarchy in the factories. The chief cause of the large dis- 
 turbances in the Moscow district in 1885 was that the employers 
 were taking back from the working people of the Morosov factory 
 every year three hundred thousand rubles, or nearly 40 per 
 cent, of the workingmen's wages, in the form of fines. The 
 strike was successftd in a sense; laws were passed against the 
 fines and company stores and irregularity in the payment of 
 wages, but of course they were not enforced. The strikes 
 continued to grow from this time, until in St. Petersburg in 1896 
 the strike of the weavers was so serious that the question came 
 up in a conference between Finance Minister Witte and the chief 
 of police of the city, Kleigels, whether it would be practicable, 
 under modem conditions, to force workingmen, like slaves, to 
 their work. The city chief of poUce answered that he could 
 force workingmen to labour "if they would only make disturb- 
 ances on the street," but that if they sat quietly at home he 
 could do nothing against them. As a result of this strike the 
 eleven and a half hours law I have mentioned was written on 
 the statute books. 
 
 All the strikes during the recent revolutionary movement, 
 both before and after the St. Petersburg strike that led to the 
 massacre, have had as part of their object shorter hours and 
 higher wages. In some cases the hours have actually been 
 shortened to ten, nine, or in a very few even to eight hours. 
 The workingmen have felt they have a certain power, however 
 large the reserve army of starving peasants ready to take their 
 places, or the army of police ready to shoot them down. They 
 have felt at the same time that this power rises or falls with the 
 general revolutionary movement, for as soon as the Govern- 
 ment began to get the upper hand during 1907 wages were again 
 curtailed and hours are being gradually put back to the old 
 level. 
 
 Even more than the peasants, then, the working people had 
 a social element in their revolutionary programme. Even 
 before the meeting of the first Duma they had arrived at a 
 very revolutionary position, demanding no mere reform of any 
 
352 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 kind, but a constitutional assembly. They did not wait, like 
 the peasants, to see whether the Duma succeeded or failed in 
 wringing important concessions from the Czar; they wanted 
 the Czar to turn over the Government into the hands of the 
 people, and they felt that no lesser measure would give them 
 any guarantee of the promised freedom. 
 
 Soon after the Labour Group was formed the eleven working- 
 men deputies left it. They were not satisfied with the address 
 of the Duma to the Throne, but issued another of their own, 
 in which they accused the Czar of having already broken his 
 ** sacred" promises of the October Manifesto of only a few 
 months before, and of having lessened rather than increased the 
 rights of the people. They further accused the Czar in issuing 
 the fundamental laws of April 25, 1906, of having attempted 
 to abolish the other part of the October Manifesto, viz., the 
 promise of a popular Duma. It was certainly true that the 
 power given to the Upper Chamber by this law and the 
 restriction of the Duma's rights over the budget left the latter 
 practically no power whatever. The workingmen's represen- 
 tatives demanded again immediate amnesty for all political 
 prisoners, liberty and justice for those who had fought against 
 the Government. They further asserted that the great land 
 question could not be rightfully decided by the present Duma, 
 elected on restricted suffrage, but must be turned over to an- 
 other Duma elected by equal votes of all the people. They 
 concluded that the only purpose of the first Duma, its only 
 raison d'etre, was to pass a universal suffrage law, and they 
 declared that this must be done speedily if it was to be done 
 peacefully. 
 
 The workingmen had reached the extreme revolutionary 
 position without having to learn anything from the Dumas. 
 The majority of the peasants only reached it after the dissolu- 
 tion of the first Duma, and a considerable part is only just now 
 learning to take this advanced position. Not only had the 
 workingmen reached this point, but the overwhelming ma- 
 jority were already republicans. The Social Democratic 
 Party, to which most of them belong, demanded not only an 
 immediate trial of "those bloody murderers, the ministers 
 and the Czar," but also the abolition of the monarchy once 
 
THE WORKINGMEN 353 
 
 for all. It asserted before the meeting of the first Duma that 
 all the ministers were simply the Czar's servants, and that he, 
 therefore, must be held strictly responsible for all the outrages 
 they committed. 
 
 The workingmen of Russia would be glad to secure the half- 
 freedom of the workingmen of other countries, or even of 
 the United States, but they are not ready to die for it. They 
 did not have themselves shot down on the 22nd of January, 
 executed by hundreds in Moscow, Riga, and Odessa, imprisoned 
 by thousands in every Russian jail, and exiled to the deserts 
 and the arctic regions, in exchange for the doubtful privi- 
 leges of the workingmen of Goldfield or Cripple Creek. They 
 knew these American stories ; I have heard them from their own 
 lips. I have talked with labour leaders of all the factions — • 
 pure and simple unionists, revolutionary Socialists, independent 
 Socialists, and Social Democrats, members of the Duma, and 
 the practical leaders of the great Railway Union. They were 
 all agreed that our political institutions are much preferable 
 to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one 
 despot for another. The enthusiasm with which they, more 
 than any other class in Russia, throw away their lives is due 
 to the great hope that they may not exchange the despotism 
 of the Czar for a despotism of private capital. No faction 
 has any idea of the immediate creation of a Socialist state, but 
 every faction hopes that the Russian working class, if it once 
 makes possible the greatest revolution of the world's history, 
 will demand such a voice in the reborn nation as to make it 
 impossible that the new Government should be dominated by 
 a handful of capitalists. 
 
 For a short while it looked as if labour might combine with 
 capital against the Czar. After the 22nd of January, employers 
 cooperated for a time with the workmen, and the workmen with 
 employers, in a common cause against the Government. The 
 strikes at that time had almost without exception a political 
 character. Many employers freely paid for waiting time 
 during these purely political strikes, a direct subsidy to the 
 revolution. Even during the Moscow barricades several of 
 the largest manufacturers openly or secretly supported the 
 insurrection. But now the situation has cleared and the 
 
354 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Russian revolution, the only great revolution the world has 
 seen since the rise of modem capitalism, is directed as much 
 against landlordism and capitalism as it is against the Czar. 
 For the Czar, by the "fundamental laws " of April 25th, invented 
 an improved style of American Senate. Half the members of 
 this august body are elected by employers, landlords, bankers, 
 and clergymen — half appointed by the Czar. For fear the 
 Duma might do something popular this second body shares the 
 power. The employers were finally cured of their revolution- 
 ism by this measure, for from the capitalistic standpoint the 
 new body was an ideal representation of the nation. When a 
 few months later the second Duma was dissolved and a third 
 created almost in the image of this Senate, or Council of the 
 Empire, the capitalists became enthusiastic supporters of the 
 "new" Government. The workingmen's unions and political 
 parties, which never had anything but suspicion toward their 
 self -professed ally, were at least in the fortunate position of 
 having both their opponents, absolutism and capitalism, in a 
 single camp. 
 
 Witte saw the danger that the workingmen would demand a 
 share in the political power of the future Russian Government 
 which his friends, the capitaHsts, would be unwilling to con* 
 cede, and did not fail to try to thwart it. He advised the labour 
 leaders to leave politics alone. He favoured purely economic 
 action for his "brother workingmen," as he styled them. As 
 much class struggle as you please, but no class politics! 
 
 When I called, Witte referred me to his Minister of Commerce 
 (and Labor) Timiriaseff , with orders to the latter to talk freely 
 for the benefit of the American workingman. Mr. Timiriaseff 
 believed, he said, in the widest possible democracy — much 
 beyond the " checks and balances " of the American Constitution. 
 He believed in cabinet government; that is, that every execu- 
 tive should be always and forever responsible to the legislative 
 power — an idea that, put into the American Constitution, 
 might do much to restrain the unbridled conservatism of our 
 elected executives and the judges, their appointees. He believed 
 in many kinds of labour legislation, such as a legal maximum 
 for the working day and workingmen's insurance. He believed, 
 in fact, in everything the workingmen wanted, but he did n't 
 
THE WORKINGMEN 355 
 
 want them to take it themselves. He explained the benevolence 
 of the new Government, which was ready to do everything, and 
 showed how he and Witte had fought in the cabinet for tolera- 
 tion of "good" unions (the non-revolutionary ones). It was 
 not Witte, he explained, but the Czar's pet minister, Dumovo, 
 chief of police, gendarmes and spies, that had not even per- 
 mitted these pious unions to hold a single meeting. Witte him- 
 self would have had them given every privilege. 
 
 Here was Mr. Witte's scheme to foil the revolution. The 
 workingmen were to be divided into two parts — the wild 
 and the tame. The wild, he said to a friend of mine, those 
 who were not satisfied with his benevolent efforts, were to be 
 killed or caged, "like the wild beasts they were." The tame 
 were to be further tamed. First came Gapon with his 30,000 
 rubles subsidy for restoring the workingmen's clubs, under 
 police supervision to be sure. But Gapon was inconvenient for 
 the taming. He played such a hidden game — either very deep 
 and subtle or else very oily and false — that he was trusted 
 neither by the watchful workmen nor by the watchful police. 
 His long, involved career is of more interest to the searcher 
 for clever plots for novels than it is to the serious public. He 
 stands for no great clear idea, and he spent the last year of his 
 life trying in vain to explain himself. 
 
 Gapon 's successor was Ushakoff, with whom I have talked 
 frequently and at length. He certainly considered himself an 
 honest man, though he has taken Witte's money for his move- 
 ment. But labour did not fall into the trap. Ushakoff, as it 
 happened, took more money than he was willing to confess. 
 Exactly like one of the Gapon troop, he turned it over to the 
 union, but he was ashamed to turn it over in Witte's name. 
 The real origin of the money was discovered, and his movement 
 was ruined. The Russian workman, his eyes more widely 
 opened, now decided to keep his hands clean of Count Witte's 
 benevolence. Later, when independent labour parties and 
 unions appeared, condemning both Gapon and Ushakoff, but 
 satisfied with political conditions and permitted by the Rus- 
 sian Government, this was enough in itself to condemn them 
 in the eyes of the honest workman. So the tottering liberal 
 (capitalistic) ministry had at last to give up its attempt to 
 
356 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 defeat the revolutionising of the working class by terrorising 
 its more active part and cajoling and deceiving the timid and 
 ignorant. 
 
 The Russian workingman is revolutionary, but he is neither 
 violent, dogmatic, nor unintelligent. He is ready for barri- 
 cades, but he has studied them, and alone of the workmen of 
 the world he has learned about them from actual experience. 
 He believes in the class struggle. He is ready and willing to 
 fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to the finish. But he 
 does not ignore the existence of still other classes. He merely 
 asks that the other classes take one side or the other in the bitter 
 conflict that draws so near. 
 
 He is unwilling to antagonise the agricultural classes, the 
 peasants, though they may not always agree with him; he 
 hopes rather to secure a common basis of action. There are 
 many orthodox Marxists in Russia, but the great mass of the 
 Russian workmen do not expect the peasants to disappear, 
 absorbed either in the capitalist or working class, according to 
 the stricter Marxist formula. Far from expecting the 
 increasing lower middle classes of the cities to disappear, the 
 workingmen invited their aid to build barricades and carry 
 out the general strike — and the Moscow insurrection was 
 carried on not alone by workmen but by students, clerks, office 
 workers. Government employees, teachers, doctors, engineers. 
 The majority faction of the Social Democratic Party (the pro- 
 gressive and more Russian part) having seen this light, is now 
 for cooperation with these "little bourgeois." 
 
 The Railway Union, which formed the heart and core of 
 the great October general strike, realises that the success 
 even of a general strike does not depend on the working class 
 alone. For if the October strike won the Manifesto, the De- 
 cember strike, at the time of the Moscow barricades, failed. 
 The workingmen of the cities joined the strike, but it was 
 only in Moscow that the whole mass of the population, 
 excepting only the rich and privileged, was thoroughly roused. 
 The Railway Union has proved itself wise. It favoured, the 
 October strike and the strike was won. It opposed the Decem- 
 ber strike and the strike was lost. It realises fully the enor- 
 mous cost and danger of tying up the transportation of a great 
 
FATHER GAPON 
 Killed by enraged workingmen for tr>'ing to buy them for the Government 
 
 JY ^ C THE '^ 
 
 VERSITY 
 
TYPE OF A RUSSIAN WORKINGMAN 
 
THE WORKINGMEN 357 
 
 country. Its wisdom consists in knowing that if the popula- 
 tion is not thoroughly with the strike, the strike will fail. It 
 does not oppose a new strike, but it proposes to wait until 
 success is assured. 
 
 The railway men and the labour movement at large have not 
 lost their heads. In October, 1905, they showed the world 
 the first great example of a successful general strike on a national 
 scale. At the first stroke they secured the Manifesto — the 
 first promise of freedom ever wrung from the Czar. The next 
 stroke is to be for nothing less than the final sovereignty of the 
 people, in place of the sovereignty of the Czar — who, if he is 
 kept at all, will retain little more than his name. The work- 
 men are as one man in their demand for a constitution, and they 
 know they will have to force it by revolution — "open, violent 
 rebellion" as Carlyle defines it. 
 
 But they propose to make this revolution as speedy and 
 orderly as it can be made, and for this end they propose one 
 more great general strike. The working people, having forced 
 the Czar to promise freedom, propose now to force him to make 
 his promise good. It is to be a class struggle against officials, 
 landlords, and employers. But the working class will not 
 antagonise any other class except that of the rich and privileged. 
 The Russian labour movement is under no delusions as to the 
 "benevolence" of the employing class, but it does not extend 
 its hatred to every other class outside its ranks. In the next 
 great revolutionary crisis behind the rejected working people 
 will be found the great mass of the intelligent city population of 
 Russia — all those not held back by private interests, privi- 
 leges, or public office, and above all, the overwhelming majority 
 of her agricultural population of a hundred million souls. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the great general strike the labour 
 unions and the Socialist parties became at once aware that 
 the promises in the Czar's Manifesto had no real value. If 
 there were any illusions they did not last beyond the massacres 
 of the second day; most of the leaders were thoroughly con- 
 scious of the emptiness of the victory from the first moment 
 they heard the Manifesto and saw that it was a compromise 
 that left all the actual power in the hands of the Czar. That 
 the next movement would have to be, not a peaceful general 
 strike, but an insurrection, was realised fully by the famous 
 Council of Labour Deputies. 
 
 In St. Petersburg and many other places the insurrection- 
 strike that followed was a complete fiasco, but in Moscow the 
 revolutionaries succeeded with a little body of armed men, far 
 inferior numerically to the army to which they were opposed, 
 and with the aid of the population, in holding for several days 
 large portions of Moscow. They were without cavalry, without 
 artillery, and the great majority were without discipline; the 
 trained revolutionary militia formed a very small part of the 
 whole. Their success was due to the enthusiastic support of 
 the population. If the revolutionary militia consisted of 
 workingmen with a certain proportion of students and pro- 
 fessional Socialist leaders, the barricades were built by work- 
 ingmen, servants, clerks, engineers, lawyers, and members of 
 the professional class. 
 
 A great lesson remains fixed in the minds of all the revo- 
 lutionists, especially of the workingmen — the possible suc- 
 cess of guerilla tactics in a modern city. It was because^ the 
 population could safely aid the revolutionary militia without 
 being caught; because the arms could be passed from hand to 
 hand, so that one gun did the service of three, and the military 
 
 358 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 359 
 
 had no rest; because of the impossibility of the Government's 
 deciding which house-owner was terrorised into aiding the revo- 
 lutionists and which was glad to do so; because of the possi- 
 bility of the sudden transformation of a peaceful citizen into 
 a revolutionist and a revolutionist into a peaceful citizen at 
 a moment's notice and without the least chance of detection — 
 it was because of these conditions that the revolutionists per- 
 formed their astounding feat. In a week were belied the 
 theories of a whole generation of revolutionary but timid 
 European Socialists and a century of military dogmas on the 
 hopelessness of insurrection. The spontaneous and universal 
 use of guerilla tactics by the revolutionaries and the assistance 
 of a large part of the people of Moscow came near placing the 
 second city of a great empire in the hands of the revolutionists. 
 In other sections of the country where the whole popula- 
 tion had for many months been preparing for an armed insurrec- 
 tion, the movement, also guided by the workingmen, was more 
 difficult to conquer. In one part of the Empire it even had a 
 complete victory, and the Czar has not yet been able to force 
 this section under the old servitude. In the Finnish, as in 
 the other insurrectionary movements of which I have been 
 speaking, the working people played by far the most important 
 part. Aided by the "Red Guard,' entirely under the leader- 
 ship of workingmen and Socialists, moderately well supplied 
 with arms and supported by nearly all classes of the population, 
 the revolutionists were able to abolish entirely the Czar's 
 Government, to remove the Russian officials and police and 
 to establish Finns in their stead. It is well known that the 
 Finnish revolutionary movement was orderly from the outset, 
 that there was no unnecessary bloodshed and that there has 
 been none since. The Czar's Government, occupied seriously 
 with other insurrectionary movements in the heart of the Em- 
 pire, conceded nearly everything, and for a while there was 
 no freer country in Europe. Now the Red Guard has been dis- 
 banded, but the Finnish people have learned a lesson and 
 if there is any sign of revolutionary movement in Russia they 
 will undoubtedly at once undertake active measures for the 
 defence and recovery of their liberties now being gradually 
 stolen away. 
 
36o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Similar revolutionary movements of the overwhelming major- 
 ity of the population, under the leadership of the working 
 classes, placed considerable parts of Poland and the Caucasus 
 for a time in the hands of the people. But with the aid of 
 armies of 50,000 and 150,000 men these movements were com- 
 pletely suppressed. The movements in both these regions were 
 on the whole orderly and humane, while the Government 
 repressions were savage and barbarous from the first moment. 
 
 The intelligent classes in both sections saw that the rule 
 of the revolutionary committees was in many respects better 
 than the former rule of the police. The systematic lynching 
 of thieves and the deliberate destruction of houses of ill-repute 
 by the revolutionists did more for the good of Warsaw than 
 years of its miserable, inefficient, and corrupt police, often 
 in league with the thieves and souteneurs and occupied almost 
 entirely with the oppression of political suspects. The Govern- 
 ment has occupied, rather than conquered, these two regions, 
 and it does not dare to remove any considerable part of the 
 occupying forces. The people are not defeated, but only wait- 
 ing until the Russian people are ready to renew the war against 
 the Czar. 
 
 The same revolutionary committees were also conducting the 
 only schools and classes to be found during the height of the 
 movement. When all the schools were closed and all the 
 scholars, from little children to students of law, medicine, and 
 engineering, were on strike, the Socialists were conducting 
 secret evening classes in reading and writing for the neglected 
 children of the workers, and secret evening courses in these and 
 other subjects for the adults. And for years every evening 
 literally hundreds of these circles, necessarily confined to a 
 dozen pupils or less for fear of the police, have gathered in every 
 comer of Warsaw, taught by the students of the universities 
 and higher schools, by young men of the professional classes, 
 by young salesmen and clerks. 
 
 The schools are only a small part of the education the rev- 
 olutionists provide. There are secret revolutionary pamphlets 
 by the million, and even many regular revolutionary journals, 
 the only truly popular newspapers, which handle every sort 
 of political, economic, and social question under the direction 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 361 
 
 of university-bred editors and contributors. The innumerable 
 Government prosecutions have failed utterly to hold this flood 
 of printed matter back. 
 
 Simultaneously with this great educational movement, both 
 in Poland and throughout Russia generally, the revolutionary 
 movement enabled the working people to organise into large and 
 successful trade unions in spite of the prohibitions and persecu- 
 tions of the Government. Wages were raised and hours short- 
 ened, until sometimes the wages were 50 per cent, more than 
 before. From any standpoint of the public welfare or the best 
 economic interests of the country at large, this movement must 
 be considered entirely a progressive and profitable one. As 
 soon as the Government once more secured the upper hand 
 the unions were again suppressed, until now membership in 
 nearly any union in Russia is a crime under the law. Doubtless 
 the Government from its point of view is quite right in reaching 
 this decision, since it is impossible to imagine that any labour 
 organisation could long continue under the present Government 
 without deciding to fight it to the death. 
 
 During the revolutionary movement the peaceful construc- 
 tive work of organising the working people, not only in trade 
 unions but in cooperative organisations, has gone on much more 
 rapidly than before. Just as the Government has destroyed 
 the unions and attacked the tremendously successful "People's 
 Universities" or university extension movements as danger- 
 ous to the State, so have the reactionary organisations proposed 
 that the Government should either close by force, or put out of 
 business by subsidised competition, the astonishingly success- 
 ful cooperative movement that began recently in St. Petersburg. 
 There are already thousands of these workingmen's cooperative 
 stores, just as there are thousands of secret classes to which 
 the teachers and professors of the country, nearly all public- 
 spirited men, are freely giving their time. It is certain that both 
 of these movements are untinged by any direct political ob- 
 ject; it is equally certain that the Government from the stand- 
 point of the safety of autocracy, is right that anything that 
 elevates the condition of the working people or increases their 
 intelligence is likely soon to become an imminent danger to the 
 Czarism. 
 
362 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 It has, of course, been realised that the support of the army 
 must be secured, and of the numerous mutinies that have occur- 
 red from Vladivostock to Sebastopol, Riga, and Cronstadt, 
 nearly all have been brought about principally by workingmen 
 agitators and by such elements of the army as have been com- 
 posed largely of workingmen, The reason for the mutinies 
 that all but put the fleets both of the Black and Baltic seas 
 into the hands of the revolutionists was that sailors are also 
 workingmen and in close touch with the rest of the working 
 classes. Even the conservative wing of the Social Democrats 
 has always favoured agitation in the army and hoped that the 
 Government might fall into the hands of the people through 
 widespread army rebellion. The prosecution of the fifty 
 deputies of the Social Democratic Party of the second Duma, 
 which was used by the Government as a pretext for dissolving 
 the Duma when it refused to turn over the deputies to the 
 courts, was based on the fact of this army agitation. The trial 
 has now taken place; a third of these deputies have been sen- 
 tenced to hard labour in the mines and another third exiled, 
 while only a very few have gone entirely without punishment. 
 
 But these mutinies, isolated from one another, occurring 
 also at different times, never succeeded even in gaining the 
 whole garrison to their side. This was a necessary result of the 
 propaganda as carried on by the workingmen 's parties; the pro- 
 paganda among soldiers already enlisted was necessarily a bar- 
 racks propaganda and necessarily dealt largely with the con- 
 ditions of the soldiers themselves, which varied greatly from 
 regiment to regiment, and town to town. The leaders of the 
 agitation soon saw two great necessities. One was to convert 
 the soldiers before they enlisted, so that they would understand 
 that they were fighting, not for temporary or small military 
 evils, but for a great national cause. Another was to secure 
 some form of common movement between the army and the 
 rest of the people, without which no mutiny could, of course, 
 ever develop into a national revolutionary movement. But 
 before these lessons were learned hundreds of persons had been 
 executed and thousands sent to hard labour for their lives for 
 agitation in the barracks. The parties now know very well 
 that no army movement, any more than a general strike, can 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 363 
 
 succeed until the general state of public feeling has reached an 
 extremely acute stage. They know that no revolution can be 
 planned beforehand ; but they propose to be as ready as possible 
 when the psychological moment has arrived. Unfortunately, 
 a certain difficulty still exists between the workingmen's and 
 the peasants' organisations. It is well understood that co- 
 operation is necessary but some of the workingmen's parties, 
 especially those composed largely of "intellectuals," feel that 
 in the general movement the working people should have the 
 leading r6le. This seems a very wrong attitude, since the 
 peasants in Russia are five times more numerous than all 
 other working classes. 
 
 The organisations that were initiated and managed by the 
 workingmen themselves with the minimum of assistance from 
 outsiders have always shown a very friendly spirit toward 
 the peasantry. Most remarkable of such organisations were 
 doubtless the Councils of Labour Deputies, purely revolutionary 
 or insurrectionary bodies, that arose after the general strike 
 and before the Government had again seized firmly the reins 
 of power. These organisations were of a purely Socialist 
 character but they were at the same time strictly non-partisan 
 and took care not to develop a too definite political programme; 
 they were composed of workingmen but they were not by any 
 means labour unions, or even a federation of labour unions. 
 They were nothing more nor less than a framework for a 
 revolutionary government, perhaps some vague foreshadowing 
 of what may develop into a very real power in some future 
 revolutionary moment. It is largely on account of experience 
 with these organisations that the Government hesitates to 
 allow any labour association of any kind and continually fluctu- 
 ates between two equally impossible policies. First it forbids 
 all unions, but this only leads to the more rapid development 
 of conspirative parties and every form of violence, as well 
 as that disorganisation of industry which now exists at Odessa, 
 Lodz, and many other places. Urged, then, by the employers 
 themselves, and perhaps by the small moderate element among 
 the workingmen, the Government decides to tolerate loyal and 
 peaceful unions, but it has no sooner done this for a few months 
 than these organisations, outraged at every point by the pre- 
 
364 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 vailing despotism, turn into purely revolutionary associations. 
 It was the Council of Labour Deputies to a large degree that 
 taught the working people their power and placed the Govern- 
 ment in the dilemma from which it can find no issue. 
 
 The Councils of Labour Deputies have usually taken a broad 
 national view of the revolutionary movement, cooperating in 
 the fullest way, for instance, with the Peasants' Union. Far 
 from taking their leaders from the Socialist parties, they have 
 rather given those parties some of their most active organisers. 
 Such an example is Khrustalev, a figure so important and also so 
 typical of the organisers of the labour movement in general that 
 I have obtained from him a personal statement of his life. 
 
 Khrustalev, more correctly Nossar, was a peasant's son from 
 the province of Poltava. His father had become a Tolstoian 
 and was sentenced to exile for twenty years by the Government, 
 though he was allowed to return under police supervision. His 
 home was the centre of all revolutionary thought in the neigh- 
 bourhood and the young man was early surrounded by every 
 shade of revolutionist. As a Tolstoian his father demanded 
 that he should work with his hands. He was employed at times 
 by his landlord and at times attended a board school. 
 
 At this period, the early nineties, the revolutionary move- 
 ment existed chiefly among the students, and young Nossar 
 was urged to become one in order to carry on agitation. The 
 police, knowing his revolutionary environment, wished to 
 prevent his entrance to the high school, but the director was 
 a friend of peasant and self-taught students and he was 
 accepted. In 1897 he was one of the organisers of a students' 
 congress. The police insisted on his being expelled from the 
 school but he was allowed first to graduate. He then went to 
 St. Petersburg and entered the university. The first great 
 students' strike took place in 1898, and for having aided in the 
 organisation of the national movement he was kept three months 
 in prison. It was at this time that he changed from the radical 
 people's party, of which Korolenko was at that time the leader, 
 and joined the Social Democratic organisation, which, with its 
 rich German literature, has always been popular among the 
 student class. 
 
 He was exiled to South Russia, took part there in the organi- 
 
A CORNER OF OLD MOSCOW 
 
 ^ he ' 
 
PRINCE KROPOTKIN 
 Greatest living enemy of coercive government 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 365 
 
 sation of unions, a workingman's party, and a workingman's 
 paper. Later he went to the Caucasus and tried to organise 
 a railroad union and only escaped another imprisonment 
 because he was employed as tutor to the son of the pros- 
 ecuting attorney. The latter advised him to leave. He 
 returned to St. Petersburg to continue his studies, but the police 
 interfered and exiled him to Yaroslav, where he passed his law 
 examinations and received the rights of citizen and the privi- 
 lege of holding a chair at the university, providing, of course, 
 he could secure a vacancy. 
 
 In 1904, returning again to St. Petersburg, he met Gapon 
 and took a prominent part in the movement that led to the 
 general strike in St. Petersburg and the massacre of the work- 
 ing people on January 22 d. It was at this time that he got 
 his name of Khrustalev. When, after the massacre, the working- 
 men were allowed to elect a delegation to deal with the employers, 
 Nossar was elected as a member, but since he was not a work- 
 ingman he could not serve. Offered his place by a workingman, 
 Khrustalev, Nossar assumed the workingman's name and has 
 since borne it. The members of the commission were all ar- 
 rested, among others Nossar. He stayed two months in prison 
 and was condemned to eight years hard labour in Siberia. In 
 the meanwhile he was exiled to Kharkov. But at the first sta- 
 tion out from St. Petersburg he left the train and returned. 
 In St. Petersburg he was again arrested, again kept two months 
 in prison, again exiled, this time under escort. When the train 
 arrived at Moscow a street demonstration was taking place and 
 Khrustalev again managed to escape. Here he helped to 
 organise a Council of Labour Deputies, and when the great 
 general strike of October began he was sent as a delegate of this 
 council to St. Petersburg to aid in organising a similar body 
 there. He was successful, and after the great strike became 
 the central figure of the revolutionary movement. He was 
 again arrested and again exiled, but managed to make his 
 escape. The conduct of his organisation and his opinions showed 
 sufficient force and originality to interest the world at that time ; 
 and to this day, of course, he continues one of the leaders of 
 the movement 
 
 Another leader, Trotsky, likewise a young man in the early 
 
366 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 thirties, is equally known among the revolutionists. In a re- 
 cent talk with the latter I asked what was the final conclusion 
 reached by the leaders of this movement as to the future of the 
 revolution, and he answered that the future army would have to 
 be educated for revolt in the villages themselves. In four 
 years the army will be entirely composed of new recruits. It 
 is hoped by Trotsky, as well as by a large part of the peasantry 
 themselves, that the new army, made up of young men familiar 
 with existing conditions, will be made up of revolutionists. 
 
 In the new revolutionary tactics which are working toward 
 a complete unity of the peasants and working people in the revo- 
 lutionary movement, the popular faction of the Social Demo- 
 cratic party has played a still more important role perhaps 
 than the Council of Labour Deputies. But there has been a 
 certain current of opinion in the party against this evidently 
 practical and indispensable proposal of unity. The minority 
 faction, represented by a number of leaders, among others by 
 Zeretelly, has a very great scorn for peasant rebellions, which 
 it claims have always been easily suppressed. It might, of 
 course, be answered that rebellions conducted by workingmen 
 alone have likewise failed. Fortunately, this attitude of sus- 
 picion toward the peasantry and underestimate of their power 
 in the popular movement are confined almost entirely to the 
 leaders. The majority faction and the Council of Labour 
 Deputies, both composed largely of workingmen, have evolved 
 no such theory of the superiority of workingmen over all other 
 classes, either during the revolutionary movement or after it. 
 The workingmen have from the first shown themselves more 
 social than the majority of the professional Socialists, especially 
 in their attitude toward the peasant class. 
 
 Nevertheless, the attitude of these leaders of the Social Dem- 
 ocratic Party, more workingman than the workingmen them- 
 selves, more proletarian than the proletarians, has been a 
 great retarding force on the revolutionary movement, and one 
 of the great changes through which the masses of the people 
 have gone has been to learn to distrust those who believe, that 
 there is a fundamental antagonism between the two most im- 
 portant classes of the country, the peasants and the working 
 people. It was because of this suspicion toward the peasantry 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 367 
 
 that the leaders of the minority succeeded in getting the last 
 congress of the party to reject guerilla warfare and the ex- 
 propriation of Governmental funds as a means of combat at the 
 present moment. The resolution, however, would have been 
 lost had it been put to the vote of the Russians of the party 
 alone. The delegates from Poland, the Baltic Provinces, and the 
 Caucasus, though most revolutionary, were against the practice 
 of guerilla war at the present time for a very practical reason 
 peculiar to these non-Russian provinces — that the guerilla 
 war in these sections has necessarily taken an anti-Russian 
 turn, and the Russian soldiers stationed as garrison there have 
 been severe sufferers. Many lives of innocent peasant soldiers 
 have thus been sacrificed, and sometimes it has happened that 
 Russian revolutionists themselves have been killed through 
 inevitable mistakes. This reason does not apply in Russia 
 itself, and the overwhelming majority of the working people of 
 Russia, even of those who are members of this party, favours 
 relentless warfare against the Government and the expropria- 
 tion of Government money. 
 
 It can be asserted with all confidence that the Lettish, Polish, 
 and Caucasian leaders of the party are not of a moderate but 
 of the most revolutionary opinion. A Lettish leader has 
 assured me that his party is only temporarily against guerilla 
 war because the Russian movement itself is scarcely ripe for 
 these tactics. A leader of the Poles has pointed out that a 
 solution of the difficulty has been found by one of the chief 
 Polish Socialist parties. This organisation has declared itself 
 in favor of guerilla war, but at the same time against all war 
 on the Russian soldiers. This restricts guerilla tactics very 
 narrowly, but the principle is that in which the large majority 
 of the Russian working people and nationalists undoubtedly 
 believe. The most important Caucasian leader, though a mem- 
 ber of the minority faction, declared to me that the peasants 
 of the Caucasus are both revolutionary and well armed, that 
 they make use of the strike and boycott almost as frequently 
 and as successfully as the workingmen, that they are largely 
 members of the party, and that the party hopes to keep them 
 in its ranks, even those who are property owners. Certainly 
 these peasants are not opposed generally to guerilla war. 
 
368 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 The abandonment of guerilla war means the crippling of the 
 agitation in the army itself. All the conferences of those 
 who have risked their lives in this work favour both guerilla 
 war and the expropriation of Government money. In the 
 resolutions introduced by the majority faction, both these meas- 
 ures are favoured as a means of preparing the members of the 
 party and the working people in general for future revolutionary 
 conflicts. This is naturally the principal question within the 
 party, for, if the organisation goes in for a guerilla civil war, 
 it must expect to receive the most bitter opposition of all well- 
 to-do and prosperous classes, who will necessarily suffer by the 
 resulting confusion, and it must at the same time seek the closest 
 possible alliance with the peasantry. The leaders of the 
 majority now in control of the party clearly recognise this 
 significance of the new policy. It is for this reason that they 
 are in favour not merely of guerilla war but of the organisation 
 of armed bands composed partly or altogether of non-party 
 members, thus offering the possibility of the most complete co- 
 operation with the peasants, who have shown very little tendency 
 to join the Social Democratic organisation. The majority 
 faction realises thoroughly the necessity of a full unity in the 
 revolutionary movement and points out that the lack of this 
 has been the chief failure up to the present point. 
 
 The leaders now in control of the party feel that the peas- 
 antry and the less well-to-do element of the middle classes of the 
 large cities are entirely against both the landlords and the abso- 
 lutism and altogether ripe for a thorough democratic revolution. 
 This is why they favour the fullest cooperation both with the 
 peasants and with the majority of the middle classes of the 
 towns. But even these leaders do not concede that the Socialism 
 of either of these classes can possibly be as genuine on the 
 whole as that of the working people ; they do not feel that unity 
 is possible on the great land question, the first social issue to 
 be solved by a democratic government. But they do feel that 
 these classes can all struggle side by side for a constitutional 
 assembly. It seems, then, that this party under the present 
 leadership has shown that it may assume a part, but not the 
 whole, of the leadership of the revolutionary movement. 
 
 I talked with the chief speaker and also with the chief writer 
 
THE POSITION OF THE WORKINGMEN 369 
 
 of this party in their separate hiding places in the woods of 
 Finland. Alexinsky, one of the chief figures in the second 
 Duma, is part workingman, part student, very much in the same 
 way as Khrustalev. When he was elected to the Duma he was 
 member of the Central Committee of the party in St. Petersburg. 
 He is also a very young man, scarcely above thirty years of age. 
 Like all the present leaders of the party, he feels that it must 
 struggle as much against the "traitor Constitutional Democrats " 
 as against the Government itself, and he stakes all his hope in 
 the future of the revolution on the further development of the 
 peasants* movement. He thought that the power given to the 
 landlords in the third Duma was a reactionary movement that 
 would especially stir up the peasants' hatred. Before this, he 
 said, the landlords were only parasites, now they are occupying 
 themselves with the politics of oppression as much as their noble 
 heads permit. He felt that it was only when the peasants were 
 in a revolutionary movement that it would be possible to 
 secure the aid of the army, and so he, it is seen, was in 
 substantial agreement with the organisers of the Councils of 
 Labour Deputies. 
 
 Still more important for understanding the position of the 
 workingmen's party at the present moment was my talk with 
 the man who is perhaps the most popular leader in Russia, 
 Lenin. He feels that the revolution in Russia is being re- 
 tarded consciously by foreign capitalists and governments, 
 which are very glad to be able to hold it back at any cost, 
 knowing that it is sure to have a social character in the end 
 that will affect even their own governments. All of his views 
 are formed with a very full knowledge of the economic and 
 political situation of other countries and are especially interest- 
 ing because he sharply differentiates his Socialism from that 
 prevailing in Germany, whence the leaders of the opposite 
 faction have taken bodily nearly all their ideas. The German 
 movement, he finds, has been too anxious to be legal. Under 
 a despotic government like that of Prussia he would have been 
 glad to see it take a more illegal and violent form; he thought 
 that it had been deluded by the fact that Prussia had a paper 
 constitution. 
 
 Like Alexinsky, Lenin awaits the agrarian movement, favours 
 
37© RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the guerilla war at the present time, and hopes that a railway 
 strike with the destruction of the lines of communication and 
 the support of the peasantry may some day put the Government 
 of Russia into the people's hands. However, I was shocked 
 to find that this important leader also, though he expects a full 
 cooperation with the peasants on equal terms during the 
 revolution, feels toward them a very deep distrust, thinking 
 them to a large extent bigoted and blindly patriotic, and 
 fearing that they may some day shoot down the revolutionary 
 workingmen as the French peasants did during the Paris 
 Commune. 
 
 The chief basis for this distrust is of course the prejudiced 
 feeling that the peasants are not likely to become good So- 
 cialists. It is on account of this feeling that Lenin and all 
 the Social Democratic leaders place their hopes on a future 
 development of modem large agricultural estates in Russia and 
 the increase of the landless agricultural working class, which 
 alone they believe would prove truly Socialist. . At the same 
 time Lenin is far more open-minded on the subject than the 
 leaders formerly in control of the party, and conceded it was 
 possible that such peasants or farmers as were not at the same 
 time employers might join in a future Socialist movement. 
 
 We see, then, that the Russian working people in all their 
 organisations are prepared for a cordial and full cooperation 
 with the agricultural population in the revolutionary movement, 
 but we see at the same time that their leading political party 
 expects the city working people to maintain the chief r6le and 
 that the confidence of the leaders of this party in the peasantry 
 is without any deep roots. There is another Socialist and revo- 
 lutionary organisation in Russia, however, that has as much 
 trust in the peasants as in the workingmen, an organisation 
 that has also a very large following among the working classes. 
 It is to this revolutionary body that we must look to find out 
 how far the movement for the unifying of the various revolu- 
 tionary tendencies, for the formation of a single national revo- 
 lutionary movement, has progressed. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ORGANISING 
 
 THE principles and tactics of the Socialist Revolutionary- 
 Party afford the best insight into the heart of the whole 
 revolutionary and Socialist movement that is taking possession 
 of the greater part of Russia's peasants and workingmen. Like 
 the majority of the peasants and workingmen, the party is not 
 looking backward on recent defeats and victories as marking 
 any final stage in the movement ; there is no sign of surrender 
 or compromise. A recent party statement claims that the 
 revolution has scarcely seen the end of its first act ; that the chief 
 characters in this first act were the city workingmen — the 
 advance guard of the revolution — but that it would be erro- 
 neous to believe that this advance guard can take the place 
 of the bulk of the army, the peasantry. It is just at this point 
 that the party differs from the Social Democratic organisation 
 which looks to the peasants to play a secondary, if essential, rdle. 
 "We are only at the beginning of the revolution," says 
 this declaration, "and we have before us a long period of obsti- 
 nate struggle, of organization, of new open conflicts, of new 
 defeats and new victories." The Government, it acknowledges, 
 is again in full power, but the general atmosphere is no longer 
 the same and no repression in the world can efface from the 
 conscience of the people what it has felt and endured dur- 
 ing the period through which it has just passed. The task is 
 the same as before the Manifesto, but the conditions are more 
 favourable. In a conversation with one of the younger, but 
 most important leaders, of the party, Sevenkov, the man who 
 planned the "executions" of the brutal von Plehve and the 
 Grand Duke Sergius, I found he held the same view. Far from 
 underestimating the obstacles ahead of the movement, Sevenkov 
 felt that the difficulties of the French Revolution were a baga- 
 telle by comparison. The executive committee of the party 
 
 371 
 
372 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 feels the same way: it looks at the third Duma as having the 
 power of considerably strengthening the Autocracy; it does 
 not deny that certain elements of the population, frightened 
 by the growing profundity of the revolution, its development 
 from a purely political to a profoundly social movement, 
 have been driven into the camp of the enemy ; it acknowledges 
 that a part of the educated leaders of the revolutionary move- 
 ment have become tired out, that another part have become 
 disappointed, and that a third part have lost their heads ; it sees 
 that the Government repression has successfully prevented the 
 organised movement of the masses, and it recognises that active 
 and rebellious individuals, finding no possibility of an organ- 
 ised outlet for their passionate anger against the Government, 
 have taken to individual actions which have no social value, 
 however much they may have been prompted in the first 
 instance by the social spirit. Nevertheless, it feels that this 
 very situation will still further intensify the struggle and will 
 weld all the revolutionary movements into a single whole. 
 
 Viewing the situation thus seriously, but without the least 
 despondency, the party with its powerful allies, the Rail- 
 way Union, the Peasants' Union and the majority of the Social 
 Democratic Party, has laid out a whole plan of campaign against 
 the Autocracy to be carried out without regard to the length of 
 time or number of lives necessary for its execution. The party 
 especially urges the peasantry to concentrate their efforts against 
 the Government and its agents rather than against the land- 
 lords, and has a highly elaborate series of suggestions of means 
 by which the struggle can be carried on with the greatest 
 possible effect. The party undertakes to direct into a common 
 plan of action the innumerable devoted persons who propose to 
 sell their lives for those of officials who are carrying out the 
 Czar's plan of murder on the wholesale scale. These persons 
 are advised by the party as to the means of organizing their 
 actions, of bringing them as far as possible into a general plan, 
 of making them simultaneous, of directing them against the 
 most nefarious persons, of aiding them to reach a successful 
 result, and, in such few cases where this is possible, to escape 
 with their own lives. The party also is always busy with plans 
 for all possible insurrectionary and revolutionary movements 
 
ORGANISING 373 
 
 on a national scale that seem to have any chance of success; 
 above all, it concentrates its attention on the army and navy, 
 and as far as possible on the officers, feeling that intelligent 
 organisation is most of all necessary in an army movement. 
 To the workingmen the party says above all that the labour 
 unions must enter, independently of all political parties, into 
 Socialist and revolutionary politics. 
 
 In order to promote the unification of all the elements of the 
 population that recognise that the only way to answer the 
 war the Government is levying against the Russian people, 
 is for the people to levy war against the Government, the 
 party is endeavouring to maintain the friendliest relations 
 with all organisations that are ready to fight. It has been 
 especially ready and willing to grant whatever national autono- 
 my is demanded by the movements of the very many oppressed 
 people that live under the Czar's rule. By this policy it 
 has brought into intimate relations with itself the principal 
 revolutionary party in Poland and also the principal Armenian 
 organisation. 
 
 This important organisation has conceived a broad idea 
 not only with regard to tactics; its principles also are so broad 
 as to admit all the important revolutionary elements in 
 the country. The preamble to the party programme, besides 
 employing the usual Marxian formulas, broadly attributes 
 social progress to the conscious action of those who struggle 
 for truth and justice ; while the party expects to use, in order to 
 realise its end of revolutionary Socialism, all the positive 
 elements of economic evolution in the capitalist regime and also 
 independent and autonomous creative powers of the working 
 classes, whether property less or not. Thus the party appeals 
 not only to the industrial working classes, but to the small 
 farmers and to the professional element, without regard to the 
 question as to whether they are well-to-do or not. The language 
 of its programme, as that of many of its leaders, suggests that 
 its attack is levelled against capitalism rather than against 
 private property, this is partly why it has had considerable 
 success in bringing about a unity among all the revolutionary 
 classes of Russia. 
 
 The party assumes that war exists between the Russian 
 
374 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Government and the Russian people. It assumes that this war 
 ought to be conducted under the rules of civilised warfare, and 
 it strictly limits and disciplines the action of its party mem- 
 bers to such a degree that the moderate parties recognise 
 that it lives up to its own code, which can by no means be 
 said of the Russian Government. The party saw at once that in 
 this war against odds more overwhelming perhaps than those of 
 any war on record, new methods and new tactics are necessary, 
 but it believes that the measures that it undertakes are an 
 inevitable outcome of the mere fact that this civil and social 
 war exists. 
 
 Already there is a roll of thirty thousand people killed in 
 the struggle for freedom — the majority in massacres in which 
 the police and Cossacks have participated. Not only the 
 outlying and non-Russian provinces, like Poland, the Caucasus, 
 and the Baltic Provinces, are involved, but every part of Russia 
 without exception. At the present time all but 26 of the 661 
 districts of European Russia are either under some form of mar- 
 tial law or the local governor is given by Nicholas II. the right 
 to issue any order he pleases with the force of law. 
 
 A glance at a few places where the conflicts have been most 
 acute will help to show how far this war has gone. In several 
 Russian cities, like Odessa and Bielostock, several per cent.- 
 of the population have been killed or wounded. In Odessa 
 as well as in Warsaw and Lodz, tens of thousands of persons 
 have been imprisoned and exiled. The condition is such that 
 scarcely one family out of ten has not suffered through its own 
 members or intimate connections.- Many other places have 
 suffered more severely: Rostov and Novorissisk on the Black 
 Sea, Tomsk in Siberia, and Kronstadt a couple of hours from 
 St. Petersburg, have been partly depopulated. 
 
 This is war of the most barbarous kind; and without at- 
 tempting to judge the morality or practicability of the meas- 
 ures adopted in their counter- war by the revolutionists, I 
 have no hesitancy in saying that they are justified in using 
 any means that tend to reach their goal without damaging 
 innocent persons. Archangelsky declared in the Duma that as 
 long as the demands of the people with regard to the pardon 
 of the hundreds and thousands of political prisoners, and the 
 
ORGANISING 375 
 
 abolition of martial law, were denied, as long as the Govern- 
 ment refused to abdicate in favour of a constitutional assembly- 
 elected by the equal votes of the whole people, the war would 
 continue. 
 
 The character of the war waged by the revolutionists is 
 rapidly changing. During the year 1907 the war was reduced 
 almost exclusively to the executions of exceptionally brutal 
 officials as a check on the ruthless massacres and "legal" 
 murders practised by the Government. Widespread prev- 
 alence of this kind of warfare, it will be readily seen, is almost 
 an inevitable result of Russia's condition. This is recognised 
 by moderates as well as by all the popular parties; by the 
 moderates when they refuse to condemn these acts, except 
 in stating at the same time that they are the natural accom- 
 paniment of the violent acts of the Government ; by the popular 
 parties in refusing to condemn them altogether, except oc- 
 casionally on purely tactical grounds. The execution of officials 
 is justified as the only possible check to the savagery and 
 cruelty of the official class. It is not supposed that such 
 measures will long continue and it is purposed even by the most 
 extreme organisations to replace them at the earliest moment 
 by an entirely different mode of warfare. 
 
 When Ministers Sipiaguine and von Plehve were killed, a 
 majority of the Russian people applauded, and a large part 
 of Europe has since learned to recognise that these acts were as 
 patriotic as that of William Tell. The killing of Bobrikov is 
 certainly approved by the majority of the peaceful people of 
 Finland, and like the execution of von Plehve brought decidedly 
 beneficial results, since no man so strong and ruthless was to 
 be procured to succeed him. Of those since executed, Ignatiev, 
 a favourite of the Czar, was the chief instigator of the massacres 
 of thousands of Jews; von Launitz was the savage head of 
 Russia's savage police; Pavlov, who while speaking to the first 
 Duma from the Minister's bench was driven out of the room 
 with calls of "murderer," was the first organiser of the lawless 
 military courts that have executed hundreds of persons with- 
 out any real trial; Maximovsky, as head of the prison system, 
 was responsible for the wholesale tortures and murders of poli- 
 tical prisoners; and the Grand Duke Sergius was perhaps the 
 
376 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 most cruel, brutal, and corrupt member of the royal family 
 since Ivan the Terrible. It is impossible to deny that the 
 nation has gained tremendously by the death of each of these 
 individuals, and relatively few Russians outside of Govern- 
 ment circles are disposed to question the public utility of 
 most of these executions. Although, as the executions spread 
 from the highest authorities to lower officials, their social utility 
 becomes more and more questionable — laying aside for the 
 moment all questions of morality inapplicable to a state of 
 war, and remembering only the deep human instinct against 
 all unnecessary cruelty and unnecessary sacrifices of life — we 
 cannot doubt that such of them as are justified by the national 
 conscience have afforded much temporary relief from the hor- 
 rible practices of the Government. 
 
 The revolutionists and other outraged citizens have killed 
 and wounded in the two years before July i, 1907, seven hun- 
 dred police officials and several thousand spies, political police, 
 and other persons engaged in similar work. The proportion 
 of the police officials attacked has been a considerable part of 
 the total, but there can be no question that nearly all such offi- 
 cials are engaged in a perfectly relentless war against those 
 who are trying to. overturn the Government. Nor is the pro- 
 portion of the total number of common police and gendarmes 
 killed or injured a small one, although the policy of all the 
 parties is to attack such persons as little as possible, since it is 
 recognised that they are mere mercenaries, selling themselves 
 perhaps only temporarily for their bloody work. 
 
 A large part of the common soldiers as well as Cossacks 
 have been used against the revolutionists, yet even when 
 both are classed together only a few hundreds out of the army 
 of nearly two million have been killed or injured, for the 
 revolutionists hope to ultimately win over most of the soldiers 
 and even a considerable part of the Cossacks. Unfortunately, 
 a good many private citizens have also been killed or wounded 
 for political causes by peasants or workingmen, but the total 
 out of Russia's millions is only a few hundred; not at all a seri- 
 ous matter in these times of tremendous losses of life. 
 
 Moreover, it is only in a very few parts of the country that 
 these acts of violence have gone to a bitter extreme. In 
 
ORGANISING 377 
 
 Sebastopol and Kronstadt, two small towns of a half a hundred 
 thousand people, over a hundred officials have been killed or 
 wounded as the result of the repeated mutinies of soldiers and 
 sailors engaged in a desperate war with the authorities. In the 
 Caucasus, also in Tiflis and Baku, hundreds of these attacks on 
 officials have taken place and the ordinary life of the community 
 has certainly been forced into an entirely new course. The 
 same is true of all the chief cities of Poland. Outside of these 
 districts there have been massacres, mutinies, and other serious 
 forms of revolutionary disturbances, but the attacks on offi- 
 cials have never reached such an acute stage as to mean any- 
 thing in the daily life of the ordinary citizen. 
 
 This method of warfare is pretty well under the control of 
 its principal advocates, the Socialist Revolutionary Party. 
 During the first Duma the party ordered that the executions 
 should cease, and they fell to less than one half of what they 
 were before, such attacks as were made being those of half- 
 organised groups or individuals on the police. 
 
 Recognising the inevitability of this form of self-defence on 
 the part of the population, neither of the first two Dumas were 
 willing to condemn it, without attacking in the same breath 
 the Government also. The representatives of the people in 
 both bodies, the deputies of 95 per cent, of the Russian popu- 
 lation, the peasants and workingmen, were unwilling even 
 to characterise with similar expressions the violence of the 
 Government and that of the popular revolutionary organisa- 
 tions, for the latter they recognise as a legitimate means of 
 replying to the warfare of a government. Even the moderates, 
 in condemning violence on both sides, put the chief blame 
 on the Government; assuming that this violence will and must 
 continue until liberty is granted to the people, they do not 
 defend it, but accept it, once and for all, as the inevitable result 
 of the Government's own action, and hope that one day the 
 Czar, realising his inability to restore order, will turn over his 
 power into their hands. 
 
 Those of the popular parties which do not themselves take 
 part in the practice of these executions, defend them. Alexin- 
 sky, the Social Democratic leader in the second Duma, pro- 
 claimed that these executions were as legitimate a weapon of 
 
378 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 warfare as the courts-martial of the Government. "The 
 State," he said, "is a gallows State, a nagaika State, a State 
 of murder." Even the leaders of the more moderate faction of 
 this party have confessed to me in private conversation that 
 they recognise the utility of popular executions and wish to 
 see them increased, desiring especially at the present time the 
 execution of Stolypine, a strong and brutal servant the Czar 
 would find it very difficult to replace. 
 
 The first of the present series of great executions was not 
 accomplished by a member of any party. The Minister of the. 
 Interior, Sipiaguine, was shot by Balmachov in April, 1902. 
 ** My only accomplice in this act," said the popular executioner, 
 before paying its penalty, "was the Russian Government; I 
 was always against terrorism and violence, I was in favour of 
 law and the constitution ; it was the Russian ministers who con- 
 verted me to the belief that there is no order and law in Russia, 
 but instead only unpunished lawlessness and violence that can 
 be resisted only by force." 
 
 The Social Revolutionary Party has been responsible for 
 all the important later deeds. Since it has undertaken to or- 
 ganise this kind of warfare, it is natural that individuals who 
 have decided that the nation has had enough of some partic- 
 ular oppressor, should join their forces with this organisation 
 for the purpose of carrying out their proposed act. One- 
 quarter of the persons executed by the Government in the first 
 year of the courts-martial were members of this party. Al- 
 ready over a year ago (April, 1907) the party had lost fifteen 
 thousand of its members, more than one-quarter of its 
 total membership, by imprisonment, or exile in Siberia or in 
 the mines; there can be little question that at least one-half of 
 this organisation has been now captured by the enemy. But 
 the party is by no means destroyed; the fighting spirit of the 
 remaining members is rather intensified, and new recruits 
 supply the empty places in the ranks. Each martyrdom brings 
 in numerous new persons. If we can judge by the case of the 
 revolutionists released from imprisonment or exile of fifteen 
 or twenty years by the amnesty of the Government in 1905, 
 we can be assured that as often as those now imprisoned or 
 exiled are released or make escape, they also will rejoin the 
 
ORGANISING 379 
 
 movement. All the world knows of the cases of exiles, both 
 men and women, some of them in the later years of life, and of 
 prisoners who have been locked up in the fortresses ever since 
 the former revolutionary movement in the eighties, who on their 
 escape or release have plunged at once into the war of the new 
 generation. 
 
 But the warfare is fast moving out of this stage; the revo- 
 lutionists are now planning not isolated acts of "popular 
 defence," but to teach the whole nation how to wage aggressive 
 war against the Government. For this purpose the party 
 is trying to draw into its camp all persons of whatever 
 nationality or social class who are ready to give up their lives 
 to overthrow the Czarism, and it has considered every possible 
 plan for accomplishing its purpose. At present it is dividing its 
 energies between plans for a general military and popular 
 insurrection and its efforts to teach the people how to wage a 
 guerilla war on the Government, which might, in the course of 
 a few years, lead up to this national revolutionary movement. 
 A relatively small portion of its energies now goes to the exe- 
 cution of officials, and the day is certainly drawing near when 
 these executions will be almost entirely abandoned. At a 
 period when the masses of the people had already reached a 
 revolutionary attitude, but did not yet know how to fight 
 against the Government, the party members considered it neces- 
 sary to give up their lives in exchange for those of the most 
 brutal of the oppressors. Now that the masses are being 
 drawn into ♦fee warfare, a growing part of the membership 
 considers it not only a possibility, but also a democratic duty, 
 to leave the fighting largely in the hands of the masses them- 
 selves. Recognising this first principle of a democratic revolu- 
 tionism, the party is on the verge of a very fundamental change. 
 From the beginning its principles have been those of a revolu- 
 tionary democracy. It proposed to use violence only for 
 the purpose of establishing democracy, the rule of the people, 
 and not for any other element of its programme. 
 
 It was in accordance with the previous interpretation of 
 its duties that it should act for, rather than through, the people, 
 that the party had decided in favour of the popular executions 
 carried out by the party and against the growing violence of 
 
38o RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the peasants themselves. It boasted that in the early peasant 
 disturbances managed by the party in Poltava and Kharkov 
 in 1905, that there was not a single murder in more than twenty 
 provinces. But as we have shown, the peasants are being 
 treated in a manner which does not allow them to refrain from 
 waging war on their oppressors. The party, fearing that this 
 independent warfare of the peasantry might develop to excess, 
 has passed repeated resolutions against it, but the yoimg 
 leaders are all now seeing that these spontaneous conflicts can- 
 not be restrained much longer. Already the party is trying 
 to afford an outlet for the peasants' martial instincts in organis- 
 ing guerilla bands in each village and finding a proper work 
 for them to do. It recommends that only officials be attacked, 
 and among these only the most cruel. It allows land- 
 lords to be assaulted only when they have taken an active part 
 in the anti-popular violence, in the Government expeditions 
 of murder and revenge; but as the cases of such landlords are 
 very many, the peasants will have enough to do without in- 
 fringing the party's principles. One step further and the 
 principal revolutionary party will have placed its full reliance 
 on the capacity of the people to wage their own war of liberation, 
 attempting only to organise it, to give it a national character 
 and to bring it to the earliest possible conclusion. 
 
 This guerilla war does not any longer require preparatory 
 organising. . In a half dozen parts of the country it has already 
 been developed into a very high state — in the Baltic Provinces, 
 in the Caucasus, in Siberia, and in the Ural Mountains. Al- 
 though the insurrectionary disturbances and mutinies in the 
 centre of Russia have ceased for more than a year, Cossack 
 armies have not even yet succeeded in stamping out these 
 various guerilla movements. A few months ago a whole com- 
 pany of soldiers who had deserted were still to be seen in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Briansk in the heart of Russia. During a mutiny last 
 year in Kiev this company had escaped to the woods and none 
 were captured for months, until about them a sort of legend 
 grew up in the neighbourhood and the peasant population^ as- 
 cribed to "the hundred" almost fabulous achievements. A 
 band of half a hundred men were able to elude capture for many 
 months in the Ural Mountains and to make innumerable sue- 
 
ORGANISING 381 
 
 cessful attacks on Government property and Government 
 officials ; always polite to the population and regardful of private 
 property, they became exceedingly popular. It was only in 
 January, 1908, that the leader Lvov, who had by this time 
 become nothing less than a popular hero for hundreds of miles 
 around, was captured. All these incidents are of the keenest 
 interest to all the peasantry and must have given every pos- 
 sible encouragement to those among them that have decided 
 to devote themselves to guerilla war. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PLANNING THE WAR 
 
 rilHE goal of all revolutionary striving is the army. No 
 A revolutionary movement can hope to accomplish any- 
 thing of lasting value until the larger part of the Czar's army is 
 turned against him. The revolutionary parties have assigned 
 thousands of their members to the work of agitation among the 
 troops; many of these are executed, imprisoned or exiled every 
 month, but the ranks are continually filled and the agitation 
 goes on almost undiminished. All the parties have very 
 numerous organisations among the troops of all the garrisons 
 and all branches of the service. It is only the Socialist Revolu- 
 tionary party, however, that has made any progress in the 
 organisation of the officers. Before his recent arrest, Tchai- 
 kovsky assured me that there were no less than four hundred or 
 five hundred members of the revolutionary Officers* Union. 
 ^ Before the nation can make use of the army for its own 
 purposes there are three great difficulties to be overcome: first, 
 the number of officers ready to give up their lives for the cause 
 has to be greatly increased; second, further inroads have to be 
 made into the loyalty of the troops, of which a very considerable 
 portion is still faithful to the Czar; third, the soldiers who are 
 already converted to the revolutionary cause have to be taught 
 not only to refuse to shoot at the people, but to make war on 
 such regiments as remain stubbornly loyal. 
 
 I shall show that none of these obstacles are insuperable. 
 Every year sees more and more officers of the highest rank and 
 greatest capacity becoming bitterly discontented with the exist- 
 ing conditions in the army; loyal regiments, even among the 
 Cossacks and Guards, have only a year ago gone over to the 
 revolutionary movement; and the common soldiers of several 
 fortresses have shown that, being unwilling to wait for the word 
 of command, they were even too ready to die for the cause. 
 
 2>^^ 
 
PLANNING THE WAR 383 
 
 Intelligent and progressive officers, even those whose chief 
 interest is in arms and war, are on the very verge of deserting 
 the Government, not only on account of its ruin of the nation 
 and of the people at large, but especially because of its misuse 
 of the army, of the waging of unjust and senseless wars and the 
 humiliation of both officers and soldiers through crushing and 
 unnecessary defeat. 
 
 I talked with an officer of the Guards who was at the same 
 time a member of the most extreme revolutionary organisation. 
 It was difficult to meet him without danger to himself, but by 
 taking great precautions I was able to discuss at considerable 
 length the revolutionary situation in the Guards' regiments. 
 He acknowledged that at the time of our conversation there 
 were no other revolutionary officers among the Guards, but he 
 said this was because it was assumed at that time, a few months 
 after the October Manifesto, that certain constitutional guaran- 
 tees were in existence. He said that before the Manifesto there 
 were scores of officers organised and ready to aid in overthrow- 
 ing the Government, and he predicted that this would soon 
 be the case again when it was seen that the constitutional prom- 
 ises were without value. Now that the whole nation is dis- 
 illusioned on this score, this time has probably arrived. 
 
 I met other officers of various grades, including four generals 
 of the highest rank. All acknowledged that the warfare of 
 the Government against the people was injurious to the army — 
 even the Minister of War, it will be remembered, confessed as 
 much before the whole Duma. General Subbotitch went further. 
 He is the most important military figure that has joined, not 
 the revolutionists, but the most extreme opposition party. 
 He was the chief figure in the very large group of officers that 
 supported for several months a remarkable army daily, the 
 Soldiers* Voice. Day after day for several months this organ 
 appeared with the most fundamental and bitter criticisms of 
 the Government's conduct of army affairs. The facts it ex- 
 posed could hardly be more injurious to the credit of the Czarism 
 than those recently laid before the whole world by the famous 
 trial of the generals who conducted the Japanese war. But 
 the matter was of a different character. It dealt with the use 
 of the army in the suppression of the revolutionary disturbances 
 
384 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 and the resulting disorganisation, and with internal politics 
 in general; no day passed when some of its declarations would 
 not have satisfied the most active revolutionist. 
 
 The chief position of this journal, so popular among the 
 Russian officers, was that the army ought to remain neutral in 
 the internal politics of the country. This is as much as to say 
 that such disturbances as could not be suppressed by the police 
 must be treated as insuppressable. It would follow, of course, 
 that the Government would have to make terms with the 
 revolutionists. General Subbotitch, having since been dismissed 
 from the army for conducting his governorship of Turkestan 
 according to these neutral ideas, has come out openly against 
 the Government, demanding a constitution. In a long attack 
 on the whole policy of the Czar at the present moment he says 
 frankly that the internal warfare being waged by the Govern- 
 ment against the people must necessarily lead to the demorali- 
 sation and embitterment of the army and the destruction of 
 military discipline. He accuses the Government of unrestrained 
 violence, of allowing the people to starve and of driving them 
 to rage and exasperation. 
 
 The Government realises the seriousness of the army situa- 
 tion. As a first measure of protection it is proposed to raise 
 the army's pay. But while the common soldiers have been given 
 an extra twenty kopecks (ten cents) a month, a little tea and 
 sugar, soap and towels, and an extra shirt each year, the Cos- 
 sacks have been granted enormous subsidies and special pay for 
 every day of service against "the internal enemy," They are now 
 clamouring for a gift of horses from the Government and for a 
 shortened service. To make up for their relatively shabby 
 financial treatment, such common soldiers as have served the 
 Government faithfully against the revolutionists are being re- 
 warded with the decoration of St, Anne, with the decoration 
 of St. George with the words "for courage," or with a plain 
 medal with the words "for zeal." We doubt if the common 
 soldier enlightened by the revolutionary agitation will take such 
 trinkets as compensation for shooting down his relatives — 
 especially in view of the handsome treatment of the Cossack 
 regiments. 
 
 But the lion's share of the new Government's expenditures 
 
J 
 
 SOME OF THE MEN WHO HAVE HELPED ORGANISE THE SOCIALIST 
 REVOLUTIONARY PARTY AMONG PEASANTS 
 On floor, right, Stepniak; left, Tchaikovsky. Seated, right, Volkovsky; left, 
 
 Chisko 
 
I 
 
 M DC' 
 
 § I 
 
 en ^ 
 
 a. 
 
 .a 
 
PLANNING THE WAR 385 
 
 will go to the commissioned and non-commissioned officers. 
 It is especially by high pay and pensions that the war ministry 
 has hoped to secure a permanent army of 100,000 non-com- 
 missioned officers, who would make a life work of executing the 
 Government's orders without question. The increase of pay 
 demanded by the commissioned officers is so large that the 
 Government has not dared yet to put it into execution, but the 
 bill will unquestionably be passed by the present Duma and 
 become a law, January i, 1909. 
 
 As the money for all of these expenditures, so wasteful for 
 starving Russia, must come from Germany or France, it will be 
 difficult for the Government to make it out that this extrava- 
 gance is of a patriotic character, to develop an army to be used 
 against foreign foes. It will be easy for the revolutionists to 
 convince the peasant soldiers that not only are they getting too 
 little of these immense sums but that the whole plan is only to 
 secure an army for the further oppression of the Russian people. 
 
 The Soldiers' Voice confessed repeatedly the growing 
 bitterness between soldiers and officers. One article warned the 
 military authorities against converting the barracks into prisons. 
 *' Every movement of the soldier," it stated, "is controlled; 
 visits of acquaintances or friends are strictly forbidden; the 
 soldiers have been forbidden to walk in the streets, to talk in 
 a crowd, to read newspapers or books. Even their letters are 
 submitted to the officers' censorship." The paper quoted a 
 soldier's letter with approval, in which the writer accused the 
 officers of humiliating the soldier at every opportunity and 
 displaying a malice that awoke in the soldier's heart the 
 profoundest hatred. 
 
 The most significant of all the military revolts was that 
 of the Preobrajenski Guards. The famous Guards mutinied 
 almost to the last man, demanding first of all to be better treated 
 by their superiors, to be relieved of police duties, to be granted 
 the free right to come and go from the barracks and to have 
 their private correspondence respected. Two others of the 
 demands of this crack regiment were of the most revolutionary 
 character: that the duty of saluting officers excepting com- 
 manders of battalions should be abolished, and that political 
 opinions should be free in the regiment and that no one should be 
 
386 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 punished for his convictions. Under existing conditions this 
 latter reform would rapidly lead to the same demand for neu- 
 trality on the part of the soldiers as is now put forward by the 
 more progressive officers. The result would be that the Govern- 
 ment would soon find itself in a helpless condition and that the 
 army, appealed to both by the revolutionists and the Govern- 
 ment, would take necessarily a constitutional and popular stand- 
 point. It is impossible that this, the chief demand of the 
 Russian soldiers, should be granted by the military authorities. 
 It is impossible, on the other hand, that the clamour for the 
 elementary liberties of the individual should not continue to 
 grow in the army as everywhere else. 
 
 Fortunately for Russia, the conditions of the army have 
 not reached such a point that the army has been roused to carry 
 out a purely military revolt and so gotten into its hands the 
 destinies of the nation. But I think I have shown that the dis- 
 content has come at least to this, that the army could not be 
 relied on to take a stand against any very widespread revolu- 
 tionary movement, and that it would only be a matter of a 
 relatively short time when the army would go over to the 
 people's side. The revolutionary leaders do not expect more. 
 Whether army officers themselves or leaders of the peasants, 
 they are of the same opinion — that the future revolt must 
 begin among the peasantry and that it must rely on the army 
 only for assistance and not for carrying on the principal work 
 of revolution. The reason for this, as stated by the Officers' 
 Union, is that no one questions that a considerable part of the 
 Cossacks, police, gendarmes, and non-commissioned officers, 
 will remain loyal, amply satisfied with the large financial re- 
 ward the Government is able to lavish upon them owing to the 
 generosity of the capitalists of foreign countries who are so 
 freely supplying it with the means. Against such mercenaries 
 the revolutionists are prepared ultimately to wage a relent- 
 less war. 
 
 The mass of the peasants take the same keen interest in 
 the army as do the most enlightened and educated of the revolu- 
 tionary army officers. Journeying among them in the late 
 summer of 1907, I found that they were everywhere expecting 
 that the new recruits, sworn in the last two years and to be 
 
PLANNING THE WAR 387 
 
 enlisted in the two years to come, would prove loyal, not to the 
 Czar, but to the people. Many villages are making the 
 recruits take an oath to the nation against the Czar, and every- 
 where I found the people looking forward to war. "What 
 kind of a war? " I asked. They answered, "A war for the land; 
 a people's war in which the soldiers will not fight against the 
 peasantry as before." This people's war, the peasants under- 
 stand as well as do the revolutionary organisations, must be 
 begun by themselves, and they seem to be very nearly in a 
 proper mood for this. 
 
 In the last village I visited, in September, I was photo- 
 graphing the poor little houses when some women came along 
 and asked what I was doing. On explaining that I was going to 
 use the picture to describe the village to foreigners, they shouted 
 out in a tone of bitter irony: ** If you go back to St. Petersburg, 
 show your pictures to the White Czar and let him see how we 
 live — like dogs." They said that they knew the Czar did not 
 care how they lived, but that he cared precious well for the 
 landlords. A few minutes later a passing peasant, noticing 
 what I was doing, said: "See what the Czar has brought us to! 
 He helps the landlords when they are in trouble, gives them jobs 
 in the army and the Government. For us he does nothing. 
 The Czar is responsible for all this ; he did away with the Duma 
 and the liberty he had granted us." One peasant, when told 
 of the dissolution of the second Duma and the creation of a 
 landlords' Duma, cried out before the whole crowd: "What 
 a crook! " What is interesting in these expressions is not that 
 they were new, but that they were said openly before perfect 
 strangers. Certainly the peasants have got a long way from 
 the old belief in the "God-given powers of the Czar"; certainly 
 they are not troubled with any feeling of loyalty or duty 
 toward his Government. 
 
 The peasants on the whole seemed to prefer the Socialist 
 Revolutionary Party at the present moment to all other revolu- 
 tionary organisations. They are all friendly disposed toward 
 the Peasants* Union and the Labour Group, but the former is 
 mainly an economic and the latter mainly a political organi- 
 sation, whereas the Socialist Revolutionaries have given more 
 study to the question of how to organise the peasants' war 
 
388 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 and to make a successful revolution than all the other parties 
 combined. In nearly every one of the six hundred districts of 
 Russia, they have their members, or their committees, and in 
 tens of thousands of villages they have little groups of ad- 
 herents, I have shown how they are urging the full exercises of 
 its great powers by the village assembly, the formation of co- 
 operative societies and the organisation of strikes and boycotts ; 
 besides, along with the Peasants' Union, they are trying to get 
 the peasants to boycott the Government saloons, the source of 
 half of its net income. Long before the beginning of the pres- 
 ent hypocritical movement among the reactionaries against the 
 drink evil, the revolutionists had declared total prohibition, 
 aiming to save the peasants morally and to ruin the Govern- 
 ment financially at a single stroke. 
 
 Not only do the enlightened revolutionists consider every 
 form of organisation as of utility for the terrible future con- 
 flicts, not only do they feel that good revolutionary fighters 
 m.ust be sober and moral in their habits and submissive to the 
 will of the community, but they feel, above all, the need of 
 greater intelligence. Already a large part of the literature 
 read by the peasants comes from the secret presses of this 
 revolutionary organisation. Since the Government forbids 
 to the peasants all but the most antiquated and stilted 
 reading, denying them nine-tenths even of the literature that is 
 allowed to the city people (we have seen that in the cities many 
 purely scientific and literary works are forbidden, to say noth- 
 ing of histories), the revolutionists have supplied the lack with 
 popular science, history, and literature from their own stand- 
 point. Chisko's *' History of Russia " has been circulated to the 
 extent of half a million copies, which means that nearly every 
 village in Russia is supplied with this well written and extremely 
 revolutionary book that sums up the whole history of the 
 ruthless and brutal oppression of the Russian peasants. As 
 Chisko is at the same time the chief theoretical writer of the 
 party, we can see what an influence the party has gained over 
 the population by this book alone. Besides, there are hun4reds 
 of other brochures and newspapers of the greatest popularity. 
 
 Thus far it has seemed that the Government has been suc- 
 ceeding gradually in suppressing the peasant disorders, but 
 
PLANNING THE WAR 389 
 
 two or three illustrations will show how ineradicable the 
 revolutionary movement has become, and how near the Govern- 
 ment is to the limit of its power for checking the movement's 
 growth. So frequent have attacks on and executions of officials 
 become that a very large part of the village population is 
 already more or less involved and it is becoming nearly im- 
 possible to find the culprits. In a recent investigation of a 
 killing of a political order, the guilty party was found to be 
 on the investigating jury. When one of the most cruel of the 
 German barons of the Baltic Provinces, Budberg, was killed 
 on the way from his estate, there was no way of finding any 
 trace of the one who had done the killing, and the helpless 
 Government, feeling that it had to do something if such acts 
 were not to be encouraged by such examples, laid a heavy fine 
 on the two villages between which the killing had occurred. 
 As the fines were not paid troops were sent to seize the peas- 
 ants* property. By this act the Government turned all the 
 moderate persons in the village, of whom there were doubt- 
 less still a few, into bitter revolutionists. 
 
 Another example of how the Government is reaching the 
 limit of its powers is found in the rural guards, recently drawn 
 from the ranks of the people and still in many cases very near 
 to them in their sentiments. It is upon this newly created army 
 that the Government must rely to keep order in the country- 
 side. I found recently, for instance, that the brother of one 
 of these guards kept the supply of revolutionary literature 
 in the village. In many cases the guards have refused to act 
 against rebellious villagers, finding them "in the right." 
 When a village is not able to win the friendship of the rural 
 guards, it is often able to frighten them into powerlessness. 
 It finds out from what village the guard comes and has action 
 taken by this village against the guard's interests. If this 
 measure does not succeed the guards are often attacked by 
 superior numbers and disarmed. In one case the peasantry 
 were able to get the better of sixty of them and seized nearly 
 two hundred rifles and three hundred pounds of cartridges. 
 Another measure is for the villagers to boycott those who take 
 in the rural guards for the night, and even to bum down the 
 houses of the villagers who show the enemy any friendship. 
 
390 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Certainly it seems that it will be difficult for the Government 
 to increase very largely this new army corps, without still 
 further increasing at the same time the number of its mem- 
 bers who are revolutionists at heart. 
 
 The guerilla war has an immediate object, to drive the hated 
 landlords and officials from the countryside. I have already 
 pointed out that the peasants have achieved some success 
 in this direction. Formerly it was required that the land offi- 
 cials should be noblemen; the Government has found so much 
 difficulty in getting anyone to accept this dangerous position, 
 that it has been forced to abolish the rule, and even then the 
 vacancies, in spite of the enormous power of the office, are 
 frequently unfilled. 
 
 The goal of the new revolutionary movement is agreed upon 
 both by the peasants and the revolutionary parties. The par- 
 ties are making considerable headway toward organising the 
 people for the struggle to reach this goal, and it is even clear 
 that the leaders needed for such a movement will not be lack- 
 ing. One of the most popular revolutionists among the peas- 
 ants, a man perhaps who has longest advocated the new move- 
 ment and is at the same time the most mature of its leaders, 
 Prince Hilkhov, feels that the time is very near when it is only 
 a question of securing the right leaders to launch the movement. 
 He does not think it likely that the movement will begin in an 
 entirely intelligent and revolutionary manner; he believes that 
 it is likely to be directed rather against the landlords than 
 against the Czar, in spite of the efforts of the revolutionists and 
 of the disillusionment of a large part of the people with regard to 
 the Emperor. He feels that another Father Gapon, trusted 
 by the peasants as was Father Gapon, whether he deserved it or 
 not, by the workingmen, will some day lead millions to a half- 
 blind but irresistible revolt ; and that when such a movement 
 is once started, it will soon pass into the hands of the revolu- 
 tionists and remain there, as happened with the Gapon move- 
 ment. 
 
 The most important psychological element in the conning 
 conffict Prince Hilkhov considers to be the people's militant 
 religious instincts. A few years ago the Baptist peasants of 
 his village, persecuted to despair by the Government, burned 
 
PLANNING THE WAR 391 
 
 the orthodox church ; every time two or three met together to 
 read the Bible they had been fined fifty rubles as a penalty. 
 These peasants, who have gone freely to prison and exile for 
 their beliefs, have now been reading the revolutionary liter- 
 ature; without losing any interest in the Bible, they have 
 laid it temporarily aside, trying to inform themselves from 
 political literature of the day — and now their indomitable 
 spirit is turning into politics and Socialism. So strong is 
 the tendency for them to throw their religious enthusiasm into 
 revolution, that the police have vainly urged them to renew 
 their former narrower religious activities. Such of them as 
 have been arrested for their political ideas and held in prison 
 for several months, have listened to the orators there and 
 returned bringing back an intensified political enthusiasm. 
 This idealism and enthusiasm, Prince Hilkhov thinks, can be 
 organised by some popular leader, who will then have an 
 unconquerable army to lead against the enemy. So sympa- 
 thetic is Hilkhov 's grasp of this religious instinct and so fervid 
 is his revolutionary spirit that one cannot help supposing 
 that he himself might prove to be such a leader, or at least a 
 power behind the leader, of such a movement. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW THE PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 
 
 I HAVE been speaking at such length of the economic 
 problems that underlie every great social movement, and 
 have given so much attention to the political struggle in which 
 the economic conflict expresses itself, that I have spoken little 
 of the quite independent spiritual revolution which may in the 
 end have as great an influence in reshaping the destinies of 
 Russia's one hundred and forty millions as the political and 
 economic revolution itself. 
 
 I do not speak of the spiritual regeneration of Russia as 
 a thing apart. If the Czarism had not grown so infamous as 
 to destroy all the illusions of trusting religious natures in 
 the possibility of benevolent despotism whether in State or 
 Church, if the peasantry had not evolved out of the most elemen- 
 tary human instincts a fundamental reaction against every 
 form of oppression, if modern capitalism had not invaded Rus- 
 sia with its creation of new industries and new social classes, 
 if modern science and modern ideas had not taken possession 
 of all of Russia's intelligent classes, if the Duma had not created 
 a centre to bring all these democratic tendencies together — 
 then the spiritual and religious revolution could never have 
 taken a general and national form. It would necessarily have 
 been expressed, as for generations past, in the personal 
 revolts of unconquerable individuals or in the localised, poorly 
 organised and by no means entirely enlightened religious 
 rebellion of Russia's numerous and highly interesting religious 
 sects. 
 
 All elements of the people recognise that something of the 
 greatest import is going on in Russia's religious thought. It 
 is imnecessary to show how general this recognition is since 
 the Government itself has proposed extraordinary measures to 
 put it to an end. The first of such measures was the proposal 
 
 392 
 
PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 395 
 
 to grant what the Government was pleased to call "religious 
 freedom"; the second, equally significant, is the calling of the 
 first general congress of the Russian Church. It is hardly 
 necessary to say that neither have the foreign religionists in 
 Russia — Catholics, Mohammedans, Lutherans, or Jews, or the 
 Russian sects, or the half-orthodox "old believers" — been in 
 the least deluded by the Government's promises; nor have the 
 ordinary members of the Orthodox Church, the liberal element 
 among the democratic village priests, or those national leaders 
 clamouring for church reform who have developed during the 
 recent emancipation movement, put any hope whatever in the 
 promised congress. The grounds for all these suspicions are 
 very obvious 
 
 The Holy Synod, which now has the active backing not only 
 of the Government but of at least one-third of the artificially 
 elected reactionary Duma and the passive support of perhaps 
 two-thirds of that body, has already set its "interpretation" on 
 the new "religious freedom." Indicative of the general position 
 taken is its demand that no new religions or religious sects shall 
 be allowed "except if subordinated as before under the supreme 
 spiritual authorities." The Synod has also practically decided 
 to ask for the maintenance of all the principal elements of its 
 control over religions and sects already "tolerated." It 
 holds it for "its holy duty to insist that all the privileges of the 
 Orthodox Church hitherto existing in Russia shall be reserved 
 to it unchanged in the future, and that the right of the free 
 propaganda of religious teachings shall belong alone to the 
 Orthodox Church, while all other religious confessions shall be 
 allowed to take into their faiths only such persons as come over 
 to them of their own free impulsion." We might consider this 
 reactionary proposal as merely a very despotic measure of 
 defence. Other parts of the Synod's "reforms," although in the 
 same defensive guise, are really almost savagely militant, 
 reminding one of the persecutions and even tortures in force 
 recently under the Pobiedonostzev regime. The Synod finds 
 it necessary "in order to protect the dignity of the Orthodox 
 Church and its servants against attacks, that all insults and ex- 
 pressed contempt of its laws shall be severely punished whether 
 they take place in ordinary private conversation or in the press 
 
394 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 or in representations on the stage " — a sort of a law of Use majesty 
 of the church, going as far certainly as any of the outrages of 
 the past. 
 
 Recently the convention of a certain society, not of the non- 
 orthodox but of the half-orthodox "old believers, " ordinarily 
 most loyal to the Czar, was forbidden in Moscow although it 
 had held its sessions free and unhindered even under the rule 
 of Minister von Plehve, supposedly the most oppressive that 
 Russia has^ ever endured ; while a priest of this creed that counts 
 perhaps fifteen million believers in Russia was punished ''because 
 he had had friendly intercourse with the members of the village 
 and had been able to convert the orthodox to the ' old believers* 
 church." 
 
 Known to the whole nation and even more outrageous has 
 been the attempt of the State to coerce the priests and members 
 of the Orthodox Church politically. In the last elections in the 
 province of Tver, for instance, the bishop required twenty priests 
 that had been chosen as electors by the people to meet in his 
 house and to take no part in electoral assemblies. He threatened 
 that he would deprive them of their positions and also punish 
 them in other ways if they did not vote for the extreme reaction- 
 ary parties. Everywhere the priests were instructed by their 
 superiors to preach from the pulpit that the people must not 
 elect to the Duma ** enemies of the sacred Faith and the Throne." 
 In Voronege the Church functionary, Anastasius, thundered 
 against " intellectual rebels." In Bolkhov the head priest urged 
 Ms flock to choose unlearned men and true Russians, suggesting 
 by the latter phrase members of the massacre organisations. 
 
 Where the priests did not wish to obey the ecclesiastical 
 authorities they were persecuted and dismissed by the whole- 
 sale. A priest of the town of Salucce in the Government of 
 Tchemigov, asked by his parishioners if there was any need 
 of beating the Jews as some of the officials were instructing them 
 to do, replied, "You must not listen if anyone advises you to do 
 such a thing, even if the person that does it wears a uniform of 
 the police. The Jew is useful to us; besides he must be pitied 
 and not struck ; he works for his family and, nevertheless, remains 
 very poor; he has not enough to eat." A few days afterward 
 the parishioners were surprised to learn that their priest had 
 
PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 395 
 
 been thrown into prison. Aroused by this news they made a 
 collection and sent a telegram to Count Witte. Thirteen days 
 afterward the priest was released, but on the order of the 
 bishop he was excommunicated and deprived of his robes. 
 Accompanied by an escort of Cossacks to protect themselves 
 from the enraged populace, who knew how to appreciate this 
 kind of priest, the clergy came to the village to make an inquiry 
 and found nothing against him ; but the order remained in force 
 and the priest had to go to a hospital and leave his family with- 
 out food or shelter. 
 
 So much for the "religious freedom" and the political freedom 
 of the priest, matters of general interest to the whole population. 
 The proposed Church Council is, on the other hand, so much 
 a Church affair that it is best understood and must necessarily 
 be exposed largely by the lower clergy themselves, without 
 much assistance from the general public which during the centuries 
 of the State Church has lost all interest and hope of participa- 
 tion in its administration. The village or white clergy, so 
 called to distinguish them from the black clergy or monks that 
 furnish the higher ecclesiastical authorities, is almost unani- 
 mously opposed to the new Church Council — because they 
 know it is a fraud, but equally because they are to be given 
 no voice whatever in its deliberations, although they are the 
 only ones who could by any chance bring a new life and popu- 
 larity to the Church. At a recent meeting of seventy-nine 
 priests from all parts of the country, it was decided unanimously 
 not to take part in this Council, even as guests, the humiliating 
 position allotted to the white clergy. At the same time it was 
 demanded that not only the white clergy, but also the people 
 themselves, should be allowed active participation in the Council. 
 
 The white clergy's position, then, toward the official religious 
 reforms, as well as that of the believers and clergy of all other 
 sects and creeds, is wholly opposed to that of the Government. 
 I except, of course, the very numerous cases of neutral and 
 timid individuals who do not express any opinion on any sub- 
 ject. At the time of the October Manifesto a part of the white 
 clergy explained it sympathetically to the people. They were 
 soon seized and cast into prison, so that in many parishes no 
 one was left to perform the religious ceremonies. In many 
 
396 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 sections there were meetings of priests that decided it was high 
 time the clergy should declare themselves in relation to the 
 emancipation movement, and national organisations like the 
 "League of Workers for Church Reform" were established. 
 Moreover, congresses have been held of the various sects hoping 
 to find some common basis for a sort of general Protestant 
 Church. There was much agreement on many questions, and 
 it was only a rather serious contention on infants* baptism 
 that prevented some kind of a union. 
 
 Most significant of the spirit of rebellion has been the partici- 
 pation of the priests in the Duma. At last, in the third Duma, 
 by the combined action of a Chinese election law, barbarous 
 police threats, and the official Church, the Czar has secured 
 a solid delegation of some forty more or less reactionary priests. 
 In the first Duma, elected by the people, there were several, 
 radicals, while in the second half of the dozen priests elected 
 were distinctly revolutionary. The Government has prosecuted 
 six of them because of their political attitude and convicted 
 five. The most revolutionary was the priest Brilliantov; he 
 was accused with four others of having absented himself from 
 the Duma when a resolution condemning political assassinations 
 was being voted upon. When asked for an explanation of his 
 action, he refused to give it or to leave the Social Revolutionary 
 Party, of which he was, and still is, a member. Three others* 
 of the priests, Tichvinski, Archipov, and Kolokolnikov, were 
 members of the Labour Group, and this membership was the 
 accusation against them on the part of the Church, which 
 rightly called the Labour Group a revolutionary organisation. 
 On technical grounds the priests denied this latter accusation, 
 but they did not deny their political tenets in general and they 
 were all unfrocked. 
 
 Tichvinski, the most important of the three, wrote a well 
 known letter to Metropolitan Antonius, explaining his political 
 views. 
 
 I, a former reactionary and narrow-hearted conservative, have 
 revised my views in the course of four years under the influence of the 
 needs and sufferings of the people, who have placed their conditions be- 
 fore the priests ; and I have put myself on the side of the interests of the 
 people and of a legal state. Now according to the order of the Synod of 
 
PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 397 
 
 12th May, in the course of three days I must turn over to the opposite 
 side "according to my conscience," change my convictions and join the 
 reactionary monarchists or the independent reactionaries. We are 
 not only asked formally to leave our party but according to conscience 
 to change our convictions. I declare that I cannot change my convic- 
 tions. My political opinions, all my economic views, my Christian 
 orthodox standpoint, my activity in the past, are known to you. I stand 
 disclosed before you and I have talked nothing secretly. These my con- 
 victions, my life, my activity and the conduct of my office, are known 
 to the people who honour me with their confidence through my election 
 to the Duma. How can I change my convictions without becoming 
 a traitor to the people ? Such a day would be the disgrace of my life. 
 
 The persecutions of these priests only began with their ecclesi- 
 astical punishment. They have been hounded from one end 
 of the Empire to the other, exiled from this place to that and 
 always prevented from undertaking any kind of fruitful work. 
 Two who tried to study at universities were driven hither and 
 thither. The outright revolutionist Brilliantov wrote a letter 
 to the Social Democrats in the third Duma in which he describes 
 his sufferings. Studying in the University of Tomsk, he was 
 arrested and banished from Tomsk and forbidden to live in 
 Moscow, anywhere near the Siberian railroad, in the towns of 
 the Caucasus, and so on and so on. He chose Ufa as his 
 dwelling place and was sent there on foot, but when he arrived 
 he was put not in freedom but in solitary confinement. He 
 complained bitterly over his treatment. He wrote, "On what 
 grounds I came into solitary confinement I do not know. I 
 know only that this little room only four feet long, the lack of 
 walks, the perpetual half darkness of the room, have finally 
 undermined my shattered health." 
 
 The Government did not suppress the revolutionary feeling 
 among the priests by these persecutions. Especially note- 
 worthy had been the continued denunciation of two very well 
 known priests, both of high rank and national reputation. 
 Father Petrov and the Archmandrite Michael. The latter 
 kept up a continual series of brilliant letters to the radical press 
 even after he was banished to a monastery on a dreary island 
 of Lake Ladoga. Finally, he found a way out of his difficulties 
 by voluntarily quitting the Church and joining the "old believers." 
 Indeed, it was told me by Father Petrov that this was the 
 
398 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 most practicable step for all the radical priests and would per- 
 haps lead to a very important tendency in the revolutionary 
 movement. The "old believers " are so Russian and so numerous 
 that State policy requires that they be granted certain moderate 
 rights. If the radical priests go over in considerable numbers 
 to this church, an educated leadership now waiting will be sup- 
 plied, and a new and powerful revolutionary force created. 
 Archmandrite Michael denounced the proposed Church Council 
 as a fraud before he quit the fold and fearlessly demanded a 
 review of the judgments passed against the revolutionary 
 priests of the first and second Dumas. He questioned whether 
 the people of the Church had accepted their dismissal. So 
 radical were his opinions that the papers in which they were 
 printed were confiscated by the Government. But Michael 
 could not be gagged. 
 
 The most striking clerical figure that has been developed 
 so far in the course of the recent movement is Father Petrov, 
 a figure of such importance that he promises not only to urge 
 forward the coming religious transformation but also to furnish 
 a very important leader for the revolutionary movement at 
 large, since his political capacity and his power as a popular 
 writer are as great as his influence as a preacher and writer of 
 religious tracts. In fact, Father Petrov is a movement in him- 
 self. The author of a hundred religious, moral, political, and 
 social pamphlets, with a combined circulation of more than ten 
 million copies, he is master of a style so popular that it is said 
 that the peasants read him with greater pleasure than they do 
 Tolstoi. At the same time he has been the editor of the most 
 popular newspaper that ever circulated among the Russian 
 peasantry, and his name is perhaps as well known to the people 
 of all the country as that of any living man. 
 
 Most interesting in the personal life of Father Petrov is the 
 fact that he has been in contact with the whole of the Russian 
 people from the peasantry to the court. For years the tutor 
 of the families of two of the Grand Dukes, it is said, on the 
 highest authority, that he was selected to become the future 
 tutor of the Czarevitch, the heir to the throne. The present 
 Queen of Greece, by birth a member of Russia's royal family, 
 was such an admirer of his that she alone has circulated, it is 
 
PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 39^ 
 
 estimated, a million of his pamphlets. When I add to this that 
 Petrov was elected to the second Duma from St. Petersburg as 
 one of the small nimiber of deputies elected by the capital, not 
 as the member of any of the influential parties but as that very 
 rare thing in the Dumas, an independent, we begin to realise 
 the importance of the rdle he has played. 
 
 Not a pope's son, like most of the priests, he chose the clergy 
 freely as his profession, having an ambition to fill the r6le of 
 a regenerator of the true religious instincts of the people. 
 Brought up in his father's grocery store in a village near St, 
 Petersburg, he had every opportunity of observing the common 
 people. Like Gorky, he became especially fond of tramps 
 and outcasts. Feeling at the same time their misery and their 
 humanity, he both loved them and thought that he was sent by 
 God to deliver them from their suffering. When he taught 
 later in an aristocratic school he saw, he assured me, that these 
 tramps were better people than the highest aristocrats in the 
 country. 
 
 A certain ecclesiastical law allows the students of the theolo- 
 gical seminaries to preach. Taking advantage of this law 
 Petrov often returned to his village to deliver impromptu 
 sermons and was delighted to find that he was always cble to- 
 interest his audience. In this very early period of his life he 
 had already conceived the idea which it seems to me is his con- 
 tribution to the present movement. He expressed it to me in 
 these words: "Even Kant can be understood by the people.'" 
 This assumption, though similar to Tolstoi's, is exactly the 
 opposite to that of all the Socialist parties. Conceiving as they 
 do the economic and political principles of the emancipation 
 movement from a scientific standpoint, they are unable to bring 
 them into popular language and very seldom succeed in clothing 
 them in flesh and blood. Among such doctrinaires the opposite 
 belief of Petrov has given him a tremendous importance. 
 Almost alone among the important leaders he believes that the 
 people understand all clear language and clear ideas even better 
 than do the educated class. 
 
 In the theological seminary he was intelligent enough to 
 be bitterly disappointed. Imagining in his simplicity that all 
 mysteries would be explained to him there, he rather found that. 
 
400 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 in proportion as one immersed one's self in the theological 
 studies, one was buried alive. However, students of the theolo- 
 gical seminaries are no exception to the general rule for Russian 
 students. Even they are imbued with the current revolutionary 
 and Socialist ideas and know what independent thinking means. 
 So far has this gone that recently nearly all the theological stu- 
 dents of a certain province, after graduation, refused to go into 
 the ministry and the whole province is short of preachers. Father 
 Petrov then was able without much difficulty to form a small 
 group of students to read history, literature and philosophy, 
 and it was in this group, he told me, that he got an entirely 
 different and broader conception of life. Among the influ- 
 ences that he fell under at this time he places second to none 
 Ruskin and Carlyle. He was especially impressed with a story 
 of Ruskin 's who, seeing an announcement that prayer was to be 
 5aid to God in a certain church between nine and eleven, asked 
 "to whom do you pray before nine?" This expresses Petrov 's 
 fundamental religious feeling that all life should be prayer and 
 that mere words were useless. 
 
 After graduation from the seminary Father Petrov went to 
 preach in the slaughter-houses near St. Petersburg, where for six 
 years he delivered eight to ten lectures a week, attaining a 
 tremendous popularity among the peasants and working people. 
 It was through the common people indeed that he was introduced 
 to the upper classes. A servant in the family of the Grand Duke 
 Paul heard of him and begged his master to have him give a pri- 
 vate sermon. This was arranged and he was taken into the 
 family of the Grand Dukes Paul and Constantine as teacher 
 of their children He lectured everywhere among fashionable 
 schools and organisations, in the pages corps, in the Guards, and 
 so on. He says he might have filled sixty hours a day. 
 
 Before he accepted this opportunity to work among the court 
 circles, as a profound democrat he hesitated. It was only after 
 long arguments that his comrades persuaded him to accept, 
 since the fate of Russia was entirely in the hands of these peo- 
 ple. But he soon found that he had made a mistake. "While 
 the common people want light like grass wants the sun," he said, 
 "the nobility are a separate race entirely; they cannot under- 
 stand the wants of the people. They read willingly what I 
 
photograph by CuUa, St. Petersburg 
 
 TWO REVOLUTIONARY PRIESTS 
 
 Left, Father Petrov, the most famous churchman of Russia, former pastor to a 
 
 grand duke; right, Father Kolokolnikov 
 
 ^ OF THE r 
 
 P UNIVERSITY 
 
 I lt-^r^%.^ 
 
PRIESTS ARE BECOMING REVOLUTIONISTS 401 
 
 wrote, but they admired only the figures of speech and phrases, 
 in the same way as they would a pretty landscape painting or 
 society poem. The children of the grand dukes and nobility 
 cannot understand ; they are taught from the first that they are 
 superhuman and different from other people. One girl exclaimed 
 to me once, * How difficult it is to be human in the Court! ' She 
 had a true human instinct, but the teachers do not appeal to 
 and awaken such higher instincts, but only the lower." 
 
 Father Petrov learned very much in the court. He met 
 not only Russian but also foreign aristocrats. He found that 
 everywhere the aristocracy feel that the people must be thank- 
 ful to them, that Russia or any other country in their power 
 is merely a private estate, that the masses should be glad to 
 pick up what falls from their table, that the people owe every- 
 thing to the aristocracy and the aristocracy nothing to the 
 people. In 1904 he met the Grand Duke Sergius whom he 
 found had read his book, "The Evangel as the Basis of Life." 
 The murderous grand duke remarked: "You reformers are all 
 dreamers ; the people are all beasts ; they only understand what 
 is taught them with the fist and the 'nagaika.'" Petrov 
 answered: "You said that to the Japanese and they replied 
 with a still heavier fist. That is what the people will do to you." 
 
 Father Petrov withdrew from the court circles, but at the 
 time of the October Manifesto was still professor in the theo- 
 logical and military academies. He soon saw it was impossible 
 to continue even in this work. He thinks that the gulf is so wide 
 between the people and the ruling class that it is impossible 
 to stand with one foot on either side, and so he left the ruling 
 class. During the year and a half that elapsed before the 
 elections to the second Duma he occupied himself almost 
 entirely with his writing and the editorship of his wonderfully 
 popular paper, God's Truth. He attributes his success to the 
 fact that he came from the people, that they know that his 
 heart beats with them, that they understand that he knows 
 their wants and is ready to give up his life if necessary in their 
 behalf. Servants, cabdrivers, and other common people used 
 to come to his office to ask not for God's Truth, but for "our" 
 paper. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 
 
 AFTER his election to the Duma from St. Petersburg in 
 February, 1906, by an immense majority, Father Petrov 
 was immediately banished to a monastery by the Holy Synod 
 and returned only when the Duma was dissolved. He was 
 dismissed then by the order of the Holy Synod from all the 
 schools and colleges in which he had taught and was forbidden 
 to preach in any church. However, his paper, God's Truths 
 attained enormous success among the masses of the people both 
 of the cities and of the villages. I was assured by those able to 
 judge that nothing ever written in Russia reached more directly 
 to the heart of the people, and I was unable to find any illiterate 
 cabdriver or peasant who had not heard of Father Petrov. 
 When I asked the opinion of some common man about him 
 I was always answered: "How could we fail to be pleased by 
 what he writes; it is God's truth." 
 
 During a few months twenty -seven prosecutions were started 
 against him with a view to depriving him of his robe and civic 
 rights. On all occasions he was able to prove that neither 
 he nor his writings had ever turned aside from Christianity. 
 At last, in the beginning of 1908, he saw that the Government 
 would condemn him to be unfrocked in spite of anything that 
 he could do, and taking the advantage of the prestige of his 
 robe before he was deprived of it he wrote a public letter to 
 Russia and the world. 
 
 In order that this important letter should not be suppressed 
 Father Petrov addressed it not only to the Holy Synod, but 
 to the somewhat liberal Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Anto- 
 niuis, and also mailed copies to all the ministers and to persons 
 who would assure its publicity. Within a few days he met 
 his punishment. He was deprived of his robes, the right of 
 residence in St. Petersburg or Moscow for seven years, and of 
 
 402 
 
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 403 
 
 most of the other privileges, such as they are, of the Russian 
 citizen. Strong as are the denunciations of the Czar in this 
 letter. Father Petrov is so popular in Russia and so known abroad 
 that, as in the case of Tolstoi, the Government did not dare to 
 go further. I give a large part of this very important letter, 
 summing up as it does the situation of the Russian church 
 and the attitude of a large majority of liberal Russians, whether 
 priests or laymen, on the condition of the Church and the feeling 
 of truly religious persons about the Czarism and the revolution. 
 
 Your High Eminence, Lord Antonius: 
 
 . . . The second accusation was founded on complaints against 
 my work and speeches. From these complaints the ecclesiastical in- 
 vestigators drew up a long series of questions. To reply to all these 
 questions would be easy for me and I could have closed the affair in 
 this way, but such replies would not have satisfied the questions that I 
 have put to myself. 
 
 The thing which our Holy Synod passed for the Orthodox Church and 
 the composition of the Synod itself, can these be considered as at all 
 the true church of Christ? Am I in accord at all points with the 
 Synod and the Orthodox Church ? If I differ, in what and upon what are 
 the differences founded? 
 
 To reply to these questions that I have put to myself, I have preferred, 
 instead of addressing myself to the ecclesiastical prosecutors, to send to 
 Your Highness an exposition of my religious opinions and of the political 
 opinions which result from them . . . 
 
 I am explaining my whole way of understanding the duty of the 
 Church at the present moment. My conscience demands it. You will 
 act as yours commands you to act. 
 
 We have to-day, after nineteen centuries of preaching, individual 
 Christians, separate persons, but no Christianity; there is no Christian 
 legislation; our customs and morals are no longer Christian; there exists 
 no Christian government. It is strange to speak of the Christian world. 
 The mutual relations of the various peoples are altogether contrary to the 
 spirit of the Evangel; the most Christian states maintain millions of 
 men for mass butcheries, sometimes of their neighbours and sometimes 
 of their own citizens. 
 
 To justify these monstrous butcheries the very soul of the mystified 
 population is sapped away. The same butcheries are erected into a 
 science. They are the object of the military art, the art of killing. In 
 what way are these relations of Christian people distinct from the rela- 
 tions of the people of pagan antiquity? Governments violate, states 
 oppress, entire populations. Kings look at their countries as their prop- 
 erty; at the people as their herds. They do not serve the people but 
 they demand that the people serve them. They try to replace the will 
 
404 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of the nations by their own desires and even by their caprices. Every 
 year they plunder the poor population of millions for their palaces, and 
 such a state of affairs is called legal! 
 
 On the other hand, the demand of the people addressed to the king 
 to recognise the rights of the nation, is a crime to be pitilessly punished. 
 With what cruelty Christian Czars have made the blood of the people 
 flow, when attempts have been made by the latter to find some relief 
 for their sad destiny. What pitiless brutality there is in the punishment 
 that they have let fall on countries already enough oppressed 
 
 There is no Christian Czar and no Christian government. Conditions 
 of life are not Christian. The upper classes rule the lower classes. A 
 little group keeps the rest of the population enslaved. This little group 
 has robbed the working people of wealth, power, science, art, and even 
 religion, which they have also subjected; they have left them only 
 ignorance and misery. In the place of pleasure they have given the 
 people drunkenness; in the place of religion gross superstition; and be- 
 sides, the work of a convict, a work without rest or reward. That which 
 the upper class have taken either by force or by artifice they have called 
 their sacred property. When the nobility had serfs the latter were very 
 sacred property; at present some of them have taken possession of the 
 land and this they call the sacred property. If the rich had been able 
 to take the sky, the air, the sea, or the stars, they would still have called 
 all this their sacred property. They squeeze out heavy rents for the 
 maintenance of their idleness, and when the people, brought nearly to 
 exhaustion by suffering, outraged in its highest feelings, speaks of rights, 
 demands for its labour a part of their abundance, the rich classes send 
 against it with cannons and bayonets its own brothers — only dressed 
 up in the uniforms of soldiers and transformed by barrack drill into a 
 machine that kills. 
 
 It that Christianity? 
 
 The true servant of the true Church and Christ, John Slatoust, said 
 in discussing the question of the unequal distribution of wealth in society, 
 "Every rich man is a criminal or the son of a criminal." Those whom 
 he attacked rebelled at this declaration. He replied to them, "My speech 
 puts you out of temper. You say to me, when will you cease to speak 
 against the rich; I answer, when you cease to oppress the poor. What, 
 you cry out, more thunders against the rich? Against your cruelty 
 to the poor! You abuse without check your power over the poor and me, 
 and I will never check my curses." 
 
 But the words of John Slatoust, like the words of several other fathers 
 of the Church, were only rare rays of light which scarcely pierced the 
 thick fog of satiety of the rich classes. The unequal distribution of 
 wealth is being corrected by charity. An infinitesimal part of what 
 has been taken away from them is given back to the disinherited, and 
 this passes for a virtue! As to the crying misery of millions of working 
 people alongside of the extraordinary opulence of the rich classes, the 
 preachers say: "It has pleased God that it should be so. Where there 
 
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 405 
 
 is light there is always shadow." Such preachings are a calumny of 
 God . . . 
 
 Christian morality would have been limited and little developed if it 
 had had no other end but the life and conduct of private persons with- 
 out throwing light on the organisations, the rulers, the life and conduct 
 of societies and states. "But that is politics," says the clergy; "our 
 business is religion." . . . 
 
 True politics is in fact the art of the better organisation of life in 
 society and the state; but is not the Evangel, with its doctrine of the 
 Kingdom of God, the science of the better organisation of life, of society, 
 and of the entire State? This being true the clergy cannot say that 
 politics is the business of politicians ; it cannot say that the labour ques- 
 tion, the agrarian question, the question of the class and race hatred in 
 the State does not concern them, for these are just the questions that do 
 concern them . . . 
 
 But Christianity has become the State religion before the State has 
 ceased to be pagan. How should we explain otherwise the fact that the 
 influence of Christianity has not really been exerted on the laws of society 
 and the organisation of the State? The Evangel, from the broad road 
 of the organisation of the Kingdom of God in societies and states, has 
 had to pass into the narrow path of personal virtues and the salvation 
 of the individual. How has this happened? Christianity itself is 
 accused. Defects are sought for in the doctrine of Christ; this is wrong, 
 for it is the fault rather of the higher clergy which in spite of the triumph 
 of Christianity has not been able to resist the seduction of power. It is 
 not the clergy that has influenced the State, but on the contrary, it 
 has borrowed from the State its external brilliance, its organisation, its 
 means of action, its constraint and its non-spiritual punishments . . . 
 
 The Papistry is not the disease of the Roman clergy alone. All the 
 Christian religions suffer from some form of Papistry. The Greek Church 
 no less than the others. As in the West, the higher clergy aspire greedily 
 for power, but it could not conquer the imperial power so mighty here in 
 the East. And it did not even conceive such a notion ; it directed all its 
 greed to the interior of the church, pushed aside the lower clergy and 
 the faithful and said to them: L'Eglise, c'est tnoi I And to enjoy with- 
 out any obstacle from the Government a complete administrative power, 
 the princes of the Church shared with the Government. They left to it 
 sovereign power over society and the State, and they reserved for them- 
 selves the direction of the Church . . . The clergy governed the 
 Church and submitted to the temporal authorities and served them as 
 a docile tool . . . Whatever crimes the authorities accomplished, 
 the clergy repeated invariably to the people: "Obey and submit; God 
 requires it." Or still further, "All authority comes from God." 
 
 All over oui country every day are proceeding executions by shooting 
 and hanging. It is all done at the order of the power of the authorities. 
 The hangman builds the gallows and throttles the victim with the rope. 
 But it is not the hangman that kills. He is but an instrument connected 
 
4o6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 with the execution, like the gallows and the noose. It is the high- 
 placed executioner who kills. The judge who passes the death sentence, 
 the administrator who sanctions the sentence. It is the minister who 
 covers the face of the country with the gallows, who sees in the gallows 
 the support and upholder of his power — he it is who throttles. It 
 is the sovereign power that throttles, the sovereign who appoints the 
 hangman minister. A whole hierarchy of authorities strangles people 
 already bound and solitary, already rendered harmless; in the place 
 of giving justice it gives proof of an unrivaled, cowardly and cruel spirit 
 of revenge. 
 
 Can one say that such authorities are placed there by God? 
 
 The ruling regular clergy, with its cold, heartless, bony fingers, has 
 stifled the Russian Church, killed its creative spirit, chained the Gospel 
 itself, and sold the Church to the Government. There is no outrage, no 
 crime, no perfidy of the State authorities which the monks who rule the 
 Church would not cover with the mantle of the Church, would not bless, 
 would not seal with their own hands. What power would the voice of the 
 Church possess were i^ raised in genuine Christian words! If it should 
 speak them to the rulers and to the people, to revolutionists and to 
 reactionaries, if it should speak to the whole country! Such words would 
 become the voice of the eternal Gospel truths addressed to the conscience 
 of the country. They would strike every heart, they would penetrate 
 into every corner, they would chime above the thunders of revolution, 
 above the clamour of execution, like the voice of a church-bell through 
 the howling of the tempest. 
 
 When on January 22, 1905, the people, that immense, naive child, 
 went with ikons and crosses to beg the authorities for truth and justice, 
 in answer to them was arranged a monstrous onslaught ; when the bleed- 
 ing heaps upon the square made the whole world shudder, the Synod 
 approached the quivering mass of bodies not yet cool, stopped before them, 
 and in a priestly message struck them with a vile and brutal libel. It 
 declared that the murdered ones were not seekers of justice, that they 
 were Japanese agents, bought by Japanese money. The Synod could 
 not find one word of reproach for the murderers, one sigh for the victims — 
 nothing but a libel. A libel signed by the Synod in the name of the 
 whole Church. 
 
 In the Church the creative power of truth became withered, dried, and 
 anaemic ; separated from life, the thought of the Church was condemned 
 to turn about in the world of abstract dogma and theological discussions. 
 God was reasoned about without being introduced into life 
 itself. A sort of special Atheism was created, practical Atheism. Cer- 
 tainly in words and thoughts the existence of God was recognised, but 
 life activity went forward as if it was not so, as if God was only an ab- 
 stract word, a sound without meaning. An example of such practical 
 Atheism is Pobiedonostzev, of sad memory, or rather the tendency of the 
 life of the Church that has borrowed his name. This tendency was in- 
 deed not created by him for it existed before and after. He only put 
 
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 407 
 
 strongly in relief this current of clerical life ; it is the same morally anaemic, 
 Byzantine spirit which drove Christianity from the Church and sub- 
 stituted itself in its place. . . . The principal aim of his Church was 
 the same as that of the Papacy: to replace the Kingdom of God by the 
 kingdom of the princes of the Church and the reigning monks. Sepa- 
 rated by an asceticism, by their monk's mantle, from all the joys of the 
 world, even the most pure, the reigning monks tried to find consolation 
 in what they had repudiated — in their power over the world 
 We have no Papacy but we have what is called correctly the Papacy 
 of the Czar. With us even in the code (Vol. I, Chap. VII, Art. 42) the 
 sovereign is called Lord of the Church, Lord even with a capital L. In 
 the true Church the Lord is Christ. In the Papacy the chief of the state 
 is the pope, and in the Russian Church it is the sovereign . . . 
 
 The majority of the lower clergy is ignorant, poor, dulled; nobody 
 occupies himself with its moral welfare. It is crowded by the reigning 
 monks into a corner, it has its arms tied; it is deprived of the liberty to 
 think, to speak and to act. They who are so near to the masses of the 
 people, to the centre of life, they who see all its misery, the deprivation 
 of justice from which the whole country suflfers, who hear the ceaseless 
 groans that rise from below, who are choked by the tears of the people, 
 blinded by the sight of the frightful nightmare created all over the coun- 
 try by the impious violence of the reigning power, they have not even the 
 right to speak of the sufferings of their flocks, not even the chance to 
 cry out to the violators, halt! . . . 
 
 Indeed, according to the opinion of the monks, who are at the same 
 time reigning dignitaries of the Church, all that goes against the State 
 goes against the Church, against Christ and against God. This is to 
 reduce the great work of the salvation of humanity to the petty r61e of 
 bodyguard to the temporal autocratic organization . . . The Church 
 is the universal union, the organisation of all humanity, above nations 
 and states. For to the Church none of the existing organisations of the 
 State are invariable, perfect, permanent, or infallible. 
 
 Such an organisation is the work of the future; expressing one's self in 
 the language of the Evangel, it will be the future Kingdom of God. An 
 organisation in which everything will be maintained not by external 
 violence but by a common interior moral bond, in which there will be 
 neither exploitation nor arbitrary government nor violence nor master 
 nor workman, where all will support equally the burdens of life and all 
 will profit equally from its good. This is the task of the Church, but 
 the organisations which exist at present, whether they are autocratic or 
 not, are worth nothing. Their only difference is in the degree of useless- 
 ness; one is more, another is less useful; yet our old expiring organisation 
 is the worst of all that exists in the Christian world. 
 
 Of course this letter made it unnecessary for the Synod to 
 carry to a finality its other prosecutions that contained such 
 accusations as that, on a visit at Yasnaya Polyana he had asked 
 
4o8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Count Tolstoi (excommunicated, it will be remembered, from 
 the Orthodox Church), for his blessing on his work, and that 
 during a visit in the Crimea he had spent most of his time with 
 two Jews. 
 
 Father Petrov is more than the most formidable enemy, 
 aside from Tolstoi, of the Russian State Church. He is an 
 independent religious and political thinker and leader; in fact, 
 the great interest of his standpoint is that he neither separates 
 politics and religion, nor allows one to interfere with the other. 
 In many countries he might be classed in spite of himself as 
 a Christian Socialist, but he objects vigorously to this term. 
 He says he is a Christian and a Socialist but that his Socialism 
 and his Christianity are both unquaHfied, He wishes to be 
 considered simply a Christian and not a Christian of any par- 
 ticular sect, objecting, therefore, even to the limitation of the 
 social obligations of his Christianity implied by the term * ' Chris- 
 tian Socialist." He is a Socialist, differing from the others 
 only in that he has arrived at precisely the same point by the 
 religious path instead of the study of Marx or the indirect 
 experience of the economic conflict. He does not wish to 
 differentiate himself from other Socialists by qualifying himself 
 as a Christian Socialist. 
 
 We might be tempted to compare him in some respects with 
 Tolstoi; but the difference is profound. He is a great admirer 
 of Tolstoi, for he says that the latter has done an incalculable 
 service to Russia in reviving the interest in the Evangels among 
 educated classes at the very moment when Buchner, Darwin, and 
 materialism were sweeping all before them. He shares Tol- 
 stoi's indifference to mere political forms, but he does not 
 share his indifference to the organisation of the future state. 
 Tolstoi confesses himself to be an anarchist in the philosophical 
 sense. Petrov is a Socialist and hopes that the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity will not destroy but regenerate the State. Indeed, 
 in one of his brochures he goes so far as to express a preference 
 for the republican form of government which with Tolstoi meets 
 almost the same contempt as does the Czarism itself. Like 
 Tolstoi, Petrov is interested in the psychology of the ruling 
 classes, and it is because he understands this psychology so well 
 that he denounces this class. For these denunciations he ex- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 40^ 
 
 pects to be considered wild, seditious, revolutionary, and 
 criminal, just as those who denounced serfdom a generation 
 ago were branded by these same terms of reproach. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, Petrov's attitude toward existing society is 
 that of a revolutionist. "In other forms and with certain 
 changed aspects," he says in a typical message, "the relation 
 of the slave-driver and serf-holder to the lower strata of the 
 people remains in force in our own day. The majority of 
 people of our time who have privilege or power either through 
 capital or noble birth, have not learned to understand that no 
 one has the right to exploit another, to turn a man like himself 
 into a tool as a means of promoting his own welfare, and that- 
 all privilege is not lawful and right, but unlawful, violent,, 
 unjust. All men are men. All have the same right of the 
 recognition of their personality. Nature, which created man 
 and the means of his existence, does not know of any selection 
 and special favouritism." 
 
 But Father Petrov is not a revolutionist who places his 
 sole hope on the regeneration of the individual, as does 
 Tolstoi. He seeks rather a regeneration of both the Church 
 and the State, his efforts being equally directed to remove 
 the growing "contempt and hatred" of the people toward the- 
 clergy, and to introduce democracy and Socialism into the State. 
 In his politics he has nothing in common with the moderates^ 
 just as he has perhaps nothing in common with the violent 
 revolutionists. He felt bitterly toward the pusillanimous- 
 attitude of the Constitutional Democratic party in the second 
 Duma, who in order to persuade the Czar not to dismiss the 
 Duma were ready to concede everything to the Government. 
 Petrov thought, on the contrary, that as long as the Duma 
 existed it ought to have been worthy of its task, outspoken 
 on every question and ready to submit to the Czar on none. 
 
 Father Petrov does not believe in the possibility of a peaceful 
 political evolution in Russia. He believes that a period of great, 
 violence is inevitably approaching, since there is no hope of 
 any spirit of progress in the Court or upper classes. The preach- 
 ers in the Court he brands as men without principles or ideas, 
 like the Vostorgov who has been mentioned, who is a leader 
 in the organisation that is preparing the massacres. He con- 
 
4IO RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 siders that the Government's so-called punishments dealt out 
 by this time to literally millions of people are not in truth punish- 
 ments in any true sense of the term, but mere revenge. He 
 feels that the ministers have the instincts of hunting dogs, that 
 the Government is not conducting its persecutions from any 
 standpoint of State but merely as a war against an enemy 
 without belligerent rights. He feels with the other revolution- 
 ists that the way in which the Government is conducting this 
 campaign is not as humane as ordinary war and urges that 
 The Hague Conference ought to interfere. It does not occur, he 
 says, in modern countries that an officer outrages a captured 
 girl, as recently happened in Russia. Petrov knows the court 
 and his indignation is in proportion to his knowledge. He looks 
 gloomily upon the approaching struggle, but is sure of the 
 triumph of justice in the end, though only after great bloodshed. 
 The people, he is confident, will not recede in the least degree 
 from their revolutionary demands, based as they are on necessity. 
 
 Father Petrov looks more hopefully toward the expected 
 spiritual regeneration. He realises that at the present moment 
 the Church is losing adherents every day on account of its 
 intimate connection with the infamous Czarism, but as soon as 
 the least elements of democracy begin to appear during the 
 course of the coming struggle he feels that there will be a rapid 
 revolution in the Church also. The chief ground for his hope is 
 that the village clergy will not only join in large numbers in 
 the popular movement but will even become martyrs for the 
 cause. He feels also that as soon as the least religious liberty 
 is offered the whole mass of the peasantry will go over to the "old 
 believers," who differ from the Orthodox Church chiefly in 
 that they have no connection with the State. 
 
 He does not take so much interest in the sects as he does 
 in the "old believers," because he has observed with Prince 
 Hilkhov that the members of the sects are interesting them- 
 selves at the present time rather in politics than in religion. 
 I agree with Father Petrov — that the majority of the Russian 
 peasants will probably only reach the point of the "old believjers." 
 But I feel that the sects are the most advanced element of the 
 Russian population, though not the most numerous, and I 
 believe that their participation in politics will be as spiritual 
 
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 411 
 
 as their religious development has been practical. Indeed I 
 have met complaints from among their most revolutionary 
 members that the Socialist parties were not sufficiently imbued 
 with ideals, but too much interested in the mere questions of 
 wages and rents and elections of a constitutional assembly. 
 I believe that the chief religious movement and hope of a 
 spiritual regeneration in the near future lies in the increasing 
 spirit of self-assertion of these sects which promise a tremendous- 
 ly rapid growth as soon as the least real religious freedom has 
 been won from the Government. 
 
 Let me remind the reader of a typical sect, that natural 
 product of the Russian soil, the Dukhobors. To be sure, trans- 
 ferred to the strange soil of Canada, it has manifested itself 
 in some peculiar forms, but in its original state in Russia it 
 could not have failed to inspire any sympathetic observer. 
 I am confident that this is a type of faith that will grow most 
 rapidly among the peasants, and that as it grows the economic 
 and political movements will receive a spiritual reinforcement 
 that will make finally certain the victory of the reigning Socialist 
 and democratic ideas. 
 
 The members of this faith cast aside all ceremonies and 
 externalities. The only important dogma of their belief is the 
 justification of God as "the spirit of truth." They recognise 
 the Trinity but declare that it has a purely spiritual sense. By 
 "the Mother of God" they understand the endless grace and 
 bounty of God, which produces '* the spirit of truth " in ourselves, 
 which they call the Son of God. For the saving of the soul the 
 belief in this purely spiritual Christ is necessary, but a belief 
 without deeds is dead. God lives in the soul of man and He 
 teaches men Himself. It is in us that Christ must be bom, 
 grow up, teach, be resurrected and carried to heaven. The 
 Church and religious images are not recognised. The church, 
 the Dukhobors say, is in ourselves and wherever two or three 
 men gather together in the name of Christ. 
 
 The Dukhobors' faith is their only law in their daily lives; 
 they apply their doctrines to their whole existence. Most 
 important is their communal life; property is held in common, 
 each one takes for his family according to its recognised needs. 
 Their refusal to go in for military service is notorious. They 
 
412 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 accept the most severe and cruel punishments liberally 
 bestowed on them by the Russian Government, or a whole life- 
 time in prison, rather than to kill their brother men. War 
 they declare to be murder, contradicting flatly the idea of 
 brotheriy love. 
 
 Such evident purity of religious faith, such depth of social 
 and moral principle in daily life, and such unconquerable cour- 
 age in defending their practices, may prove after all the most 
 insuperable obstacle that the Government has to meet. Among 
 the Dukhobors and related sects a resistance may take the form 
 of refusal to participate in the suppression of disturbances. 
 Among the Russian Baptists (Stundists), who have millions 
 of adherents, it is already taking the form of a religious warfare 
 against the Government as determined and invincible as the 
 religious wars of the Engh'sh Puritans and Levellers against 
 the king and his church, and in the same unconquerable spirit 
 with which the Tyrolese Catholics or the Swiss Protestants 
 defended their homes against their religious foes. The Czarism 
 has conquered the bodies of its subjects; we doubt if it will ever 
 be able to conquer their souls. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 In new song the old note of mournful meditation was absent. It 
 was not the utterance of a soul wandering in solitude along the dark 
 paths of melancholy perplexity, of a soul beaten down by want, burdened 
 with fear, deprived of individuality and colourless. It breathed no sighs 
 of a strength hungering for space ; it shouted no provoking cries of irritated 
 courage ready to crush both the good and the bad indiscriminately. It 
 did not voice the striving elemental of the animal "instinct" for freedom, 
 for freedom's sake, nor the freedom of wrong or vengeance capable of 
 destroying everything and powerless to build up anything. In this 
 song there was nothing from the old, slavish world. 
 
 It floated along directly, evenly; it proclaimed an iron virility; a calm 
 threat. Simple and clear, it swept the people after it along an endless 
 path leading to the far distant future; and it spoke frankly of the hard- 
 ships of the way. — Maxim Gorky, Foma Gordeeff. 
 
 THE struggle in which Russia is engaged is so desperate, the 
 brave and intelligent people are at present so helpless, that 
 the foreigner is almost incapable of grasping the full tragedy of 
 the situation. We moderns can conceive tragedies of the in- 
 dividual. We are not accustomed to tragedies in which whole 
 peoples are the heroes. In Russia a single class of men, put by 
 circumstances in entire control of the destinies of the nation, 
 has become so cold, so false, so dulled to all its higher inter- 
 ests, that our minds refuse to credit their actions. In other 
 countries we do not have a ruling class with such utterly irre- 
 sponsible power, and we have almost forgotten the depth of evil 
 that still remains in mankind. Russia's rulers are to all appear- 
 ances modem educated men that would pass anywhere for good 
 Europeans or Americans, but they have been given a mastery 
 over others, a right to govern others without their consent, and 
 through this they have become like the tyrants of old. 
 
 413 
 
414 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 "The debauched, idle and blas^ men that compose the govern- 
 ing classes generally," says Tolstoi, "must find some goal for 
 their existence, but this goal can only be the increase of their 
 own glory. In all other passions the point of satiety is soon 
 reached; only the passion for glory is unlimited." We have 
 forgotten that it is a law of all history that men in a false 
 position of power are bound to degenerate, that no man is good 
 enough to govern another against the other's consent, and if 
 he does so that he is bound to bring about both his own and 
 that other's ruin. Unless we seize again this principle which 
 lies at the bottom of all social life, we cannot hope to grasp 
 one iota of the awful tragedy that faces the Russian people 
 at the present moment. 
 
 It is just because its spiritual life has been deepened and 
 intensified by great experience in the suffering of the whole 
 nation, that Russia's message is able to stir the other countries; 
 happier lands less experienced, living more superficially, have 
 had no such insights into the evil that still lies buried in man, 
 into the horrors that can be perpetrated in the present state 
 of society, and into the heroic capacities that lie latent in us to 
 enable us to fight even without success against a world of evil. 
 It is not another society that Russians are learning to under- 
 stand through suffering, but our own. We know capitalism, of 
 soulless corporations that rob consumers, starve employees and 
 corrupt the State. Russia knows that this same capitalism 
 gives the Czar the money to build prisons for hundreds of thou- 
 sands of his people, to buy the rifles and machine guns of the 
 Cossacks and to hire an army of thugs — knows that this same 
 capitalism is as ready to take profits directly from murder and 
 plunder supported by murder as it is to grow rich through 
 bought corporations, lawyers or legislators. 
 
 The Russian people have reasoned it out that modem capital- 
 ism will stop at no wrong, even that of the murder of whole 
 peoples — they have experienced this illuminating truth in 
 their own flesh and blood. They know that each individual 
 capitalist has doubtless this or that moral code for his private 
 life, but they know that the capitalists, all bound together by 
 the bond of international finance, are ready to murder all man- 
 kind and secure higher interest rate. So there has been planted 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 415 
 
 in Russians heart a great and ennobling hatred ; not a hatred of 
 persons but of a system, a hatred raised to great social princi- 
 ples and ideas. Hatred against men brings the world no mes- 
 sage. Such of Russia's victims as have been killed in a war of 
 mere mutual hate, however just the cause for which they have 
 died, however honoured by their companions in arms, will never 
 be viewed by the world as mankind's martyrs, as world-heroes 
 who "when we are born are straight our friends." Russia's 
 martyrs have often died with their hearts filled with love not 
 hatred, not for a party merely or even for a nation, but quite 
 consciously for all mankind. 
 
 They died as victims of that capitalism which oppresses 
 the whole race. Like the early Christians they died for the 
 emancipation of humanity. Some, it is true, seek first a mate- 
 rial emancipation for their fellow men, putting things spiritual 
 in a second place; others merit Tolstoi's accusation that though 
 sincere, they have an egotistic passion for leadership in the 
 new cause; but most of those who go gladly to prison and exile 
 and death go for the spiritual elevation of the races, for the 
 ideal of a better society that is to produce better types of 
 individuals than the world has yet seen. 
 
 II 
 
 The Russian people had already won their battle against the 
 Czarism when the foreigners interfered and threw in their 
 forces with those of the Czar — lending him 1,000,000,000 rubles, 
 satisfied with 7 per cent, interest and making no conditions 
 for what murderous purposes the money was to be employed. 
 
 The battle was won when the Czar was allowed to reach his 
 hands into the vast treasury house of the international capital — 
 and now, until he is cut off from the colossal subsidies that en- 
 able him to continue his murderous Government, the situation 
 is desperate indeed. Cases are common in which despots 
 have allied themselves with foreign powers. But this is new — 
 this is the unique instance of all history, when foreign powers 
 have each contributed something to support the oppressive 
 government. There is hardly an important banking interest 
 in France or Germany that has not contributed something to 
 
41 6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the Czar's murder funds, and scarcely a prominent capitalistic 
 institution of Austria and England that is not indirectly con- 
 nected with it. Even America was tainted a few years ago. 
 
 The Russian people, I say, had won their struggle at the 
 time of the first Duma when the foreign capitalists loaned 
 1,000,000,000 rubles to the despotic Government, pretending to 
 assume that they thought the Czarism was becoming constitu- 
 tional, but really well aware that it was absolutely irresponsible 
 toward the people. The European military situation was 
 only a part of the cause of this monstrous international pride. 
 France and Germany, overloaded with military burdens and 
 forced to subordinate their greatest social reforms to military 
 necessities, are entirely depending on the position toward the 
 other nations taken by the Czar's criminal Government. Before 
 the last loan the immense sums of gold secured from France 
 to make possible the perpetuation of the Czarism, were obtained 
 largely on the ground that the money would go to supply arms 
 to an enemy of Germany. The new crushing tax burdens for 
 the rebuilding of the navy destroyed by the Japanese — bur- 
 dens which make impossible any genuine reform inside of Russia 
 in the near future — were levied to please the Czar's cousin, 
 William 11. of Germany, who wants to see another European 
 fleet that might be used in an emergency against his rival, Eng- 
 land. As long as the Russian Government remains despotic 
 and half independent, it will engage, like every other despotism, 
 in aggressive enterprises of one kind or another, if not in Turkey 
 in Japan, if not in Japan then by pledging its army to this or 
 the other power as mercenary troops. The last monster loan 
 also was in part a sale of Russia's organised forces for murder. 
 It will be remembered that large contributors to this loan, 
 besides France, were also Austria and England, and other coun- 
 tries. In return for these immense sums the Russian Govern- 
 ment, it appears, promised the world to work against Germany 
 in the cause of international peace ; it was a sort of international 
 blackmail. 
 
 But the murderous Czarism probably gets more of the money 
 of the international bankers by selling the natural resources 
 of the impoverished country in the form of industrial privileges 
 granted by the Government, or by means of high rates of inter- 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 417 
 
 est squeezed from the starving population, than it does as pay 
 for its mercenary army. 
 
 For many years English, Belgian, and German money, as well 
 as French, has been pouring into Russia's industries under the 
 tutelage of the State, until the country is rapidly becoming like 
 India, Egypt, Turkey or Persia, with both the Government 
 and industries largely in the hands of foreign financiers. 
 Already leading conservatives even have spoken of Russia's 
 real parliament, the international bankers. There is a decided 
 danger, indeed, that the country may in the not distant future 
 become a sort of international protectorate, like China — unless 
 in the meanwhile the Czarism is overturned. 
 
 The Russian people, in resisting the alliance between the 
 foreign financiers and its Government, are fighting to prevent 
 another effort of international capital to still further strengthen 
 itself, to enlarge the territory of its "colonies" or "subject 
 races," and by means of its vast income so secured to further 
 corrupt the world's governments and maintain its power. 
 
 The Russian fight is in this sense a world fight indeed, but 
 it is also a world movement in a more direct and much more 
 spiritual meaning. It is a world struggle for modem or social 
 democracy. The Russian movement is the only revolutionary 
 movement of a whole people in our times. Russia is therefore 
 the only country where, under the guidance of the best knowl- 
 edge and the highest ideals of our period, a new foimdation is \ 
 being laid for the democracy of the future. 
 
 For whenever democracy has taken deep and permanent root 
 it owes its first beginning to revolution, to open violent re- 
 bellion. This is notoriously true of France; it is true of Eng- 
 land ; it is true of the United States. That country which has 
 had no revolution has had no real democracy. Many per- 
 sons look at modern Prussia, where there has been no revolu- 
 tion, as possessing a semi-democratic government. Let such 
 persons recall the principle of Bismarck when, as recently as 
 1863, he governed the country without the consent of the Land- 
 tag as it was governed centuries ago. There has been a con- 
 stitutional deadlock, and as there has never been a revolution 
 to put an end once and for all to the last vestiges of the old 
 autocratic system, Bismarck could very reasonably claim that 
 
4i8 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 in such cases when the new laws did not work it was necessary 
 to return to the old. When the constitution fails to work in 
 the United States the reactionary forces cannot turn back to 
 the laws of George III., because the United States has had a 
 revolution; nor do English judges revert in political questions 
 to English institutions before 1688, nor the French to laws that 
 existed before 1789. In these countries revolutions have cut 
 off the line of retreat of reactionary forces. In every great con- 
 test between reaction and progress, then, progress has the 
 advantage, for reaction can only obtain a foothold by basing 
 its claims on the barbarities of the past. In supporting a 
 profound revolutionary movement, then, the Russian people 
 are laying the only possible basis for a new democracy. This 
 democracy, struggling into being to-day, must be based on the 
 world conditions of the present moment. It is evident that the 
 problem before any great revolutionary movement in our time 
 will be the great problem of the age — the social problem. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A revolutionary social movement in any one nation would 
 be rich in lessons for every other. But the only countries that 
 can really advance new and great solutions are the large coun- 
 tries — those that are powerful enough to be independent, that 
 embrace such a variety of conditions and of peoples that their 
 solution may be of a universal application. It is evident that 
 countries like Germany or France, the slaves of constant ter- 
 ror of destructive war, or Great Britain, oppressed by the night- 
 mare that one day she may be reduced to poverty by the loss of 
 her control of the ocean, are not entirely free to undertake 
 solutions of great social problems; they must give the first 
 place in the policies of State and the expenditure of public 
 money to problems of national defence. Russia, on the other 
 hand, has long ago lost all terror of becoming a province of some 
 other nation, just as the United States is under no necessity 
 of maintaining either a large land force or a navy of the size 
 of Great Britain's. 
 
 Russia, like the United States, is a self-sufficient country; 
 more than a coimtry , a world. Like the new world, the Russian. 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 419 
 
 world forms an almost complete economic whole, embracing 
 tmder a single government nearly all, if not all, climates and 
 nearly all the raw products used in modem life ; both countries 
 are large exporters of agricultural products, both are devoted 
 more to agriculture than to manufacturing industry. Both 
 of these worlds are composed largely of newly acquired and 
 newly settled territory; though both are inhabited by very 
 many races, in each a single race prevails numerically and in 
 most other respects over all the rest, and keeps them together 
 as a single whole. As the result of the mixture of races and the 
 recent settlement of large parts of both countries, their culture 
 is international, world-culture, unmarked by the comparatively 
 provincial nationalistic tendencies of England, Germany, or 
 France. We may look, according to a great German publicist, 
 Kautsky, to America for the great economic experiments of the 
 near future and to Russia for the new (social) politics. 
 
 America is essentially a country of rapid economic evolu- 
 tion, while Russia is undeveloped, economically and financially 
 dependent. America is the country of economic genius, a nation 
 whose conceptions of material development have reached even 
 a spiritual height. The great American qualities, the American 
 virtues, the American imagination, have thrown themselves 
 almost wholly into business, the material development of the 
 country. Americans are the first of modem peoples that have 
 learned to respect the repeated failures of enterprising individuals 
 with a genius for affairs, knowing that such failures often 
 lead to greater heights of success. They have learned how to 
 excuse enormous waste when it was made for the sake of econo- 
 mies lying in the distant future. They can appreciate the 
 enterprise of persons who, instead of immediately exploiting 
 their properties, know how to wait, like some of our most able 
 builders that, foreseeing the brilliant future of the locality in 
 which they are situated, are satisfied with temporary structures 
 and poor incomes until the time is ripe for some of the magni- 
 ficent modem achievements in architecture, in which we so 
 clearly lead. All three of these types of men we admire are true 
 revolutionists, who prefer to wait, to waste, or to fail, rather 
 than to accept the lesser for the greater good. 
 
 So it is with Russians in their politics. There seems no 
 
420 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 reason for doubting that the near future will show that the 
 political failures now being made by the Russians are the 
 failures of political genius, that the waste of lives and property 
 will be repaid later a hundredfold, and that the hopeful and 
 planful patience with which the Russians are looking forward 
 and working to a great social transformation promises the 
 greatest and most magnificent results when that transforma- 
 tion is achieved. Already the political revolution of the 
 Russian people, though not yet embodied in political institu- 
 tions, is becoming as rapid, as remarkable, as phenomenal, 
 as the economic revolution of the United States. 
 
 IV 
 
 As the Russians have to contend with world forces and are 
 bringing about world results, it is no ordinary war or revolution 
 in which they have engaged themselves. Already it has become 
 a part of the social struggle of all Europe ; if it lasts many years 
 it must ultimately become a part of some future world upheaval 
 of unprecedented magnitude, of new and widespread world 
 revolutions and world wars. We are not so likely to deny the 
 possibility that such events as the French Revolution and 
 the world wars which accompanied it may occur again, as to 
 be misled by a too close comparison between the present situa- 
 tion and that of 1789. Considered even as a world movement 
 the French Revolution was a success, but it was also a failure, 
 so it has come about that whenever we hear of revolutions we 
 hear also of the inevitable "reaction that must follow revolu- 
 tion," and of the avenging "man on horseback." 
 
 Certainly there was a reaction in Europe soon after 1800; 
 certainly Napoleon was of all men that ever lived the man on 
 horseback. But were this reaction and this man on horse- 
 back results of the French Revolution? To answer this ques- 
 tion we must first divide the revolution into two parts — the 
 true revolution, the movement that embraced the whole of the 
 nation, that resulted in the final overthrow of feudalispi in 
 France, and led to the calling of the Constitutional Assembly. 
 In contrast to this we have the later Insurrection of Paris which 
 resulted in the execution of the king — a measure by no means 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 421 
 
 approved of by the whole nation — and in the capture of the 
 Legislative Assembly by the mob of Paris with the assistance 
 of a few regiments of professional soldiers. Moreover, the Paris 
 of 1792 was in a sense the tyrant over the nation. Modem 
 capitals have no such power as did Paris then. It was this 
 insurrection that produced the reign of terror and led ultimately 
 to the inevitable reaction, not against the revolution, but 
 against the insurrection. 
 
 The insurrection of Paris in 1792, not the Revolution of 
 France in 1789, produced the terror — a reign of violence not 
 against the Government, not from below, but by the Govern- 
 ment itself against the captives in its power. There has been 
 no single important example of such mob violence in Russia. 
 The so-called "terror" does not consist in the execution by 
 revolutionists, without risk to themselves, of persons within 
 their power, but of heroic attacks on murderous officials that 
 hold the community by the throat, attacks which almost 
 always result in the instant death or execution of the revolu- 
 tionists. Every political party in Russia is even opposed to 
 capital punishment, not only for political but even for ordinary 
 crimes. The Russian nation, far from being led to any reaction 
 by terroristic deeds, looks at these executioners of the popular 
 will as national heroes and martyrs in the same sense as were 
 the early Christians that braved the wrath of Nero or Domitian. 
 
 There was, however, an international reaction against the 
 French Revolution that put the nation under the necessity of 
 granting military powers to Napoleon, that robbed the French 
 people of a part of the victories they had won, and that long 
 supported a reactionary government in the country itself. 
 Napoleon would never have been created had it not been for 
 the reactionary attacks of all the foreign powers of Europe on 
 Republican France; he would never have been entrusted with 
 the powers of a despot if France had not been under the desperate 
 necessity of fighting a life and death battle for her very exis- 
 tence. It is literally true that England, Russia, Austria, and 
 Prussia placed Napoleon on the throne and that they kept there 
 one king or another for more than a generation afterward. 
 Even Napoleon III. would have had no success in appealing to 
 the imperialistic instincts of the country if it had not been for the 
 
422 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 general movement and reaction of Prussia, Russia, and Austria, 
 a sort of renewal of the Holy Alliance after 1848. 
 
 The reactionary countries of Europe were able to plant their 
 despotic autocracies in France after the revolution because, 
 leagued together, they were far more powerful than that nation. 
 There are still reactionary countries in Europe. As we have 
 shown, the Prussian Government is in some respects even behind 
 her Russian neighbour. But the other nations of the world 
 to-day, especially France, England, and the United States, will 
 by no means be so far behind democratic Russia as the monar- 
 chies at the end of the eighteenth century were behind France. 
 There is no power than can force the Russian people in self- 
 defence to rely on a man on horseback. Nor is there any tendency 
 amongst the Russians themselves to worship individuals to 
 the exclusion of great principles. France had had the evil 
 example of a feudalistic Catholic Church and its infallible pope. 
 In Russia there is no pope and the Church has no prestige 
 among the people. France had been engaged in wars with 
 her neighbours uninterruptedly for many generations; to a 
 certain degree she had learned the military spirit that could 
 be used by Napoleon and the foreign oppressors. Russia has 
 long ceased to expand territorially, and she possesses such a 
 large part of the surface of the earth that the keenest ambition 
 of her people is rather to hold and develop what they have than 
 to gain more. Nowhere are the masses of the population so 
 pacific as in Russia. Let us, then, not judge the Russian Revolu- 
 tion by the French. The reaction in France and the coming 
 of Napoleon are both explained by the special conditions of the 
 world at the time, and none of these conditions exist to-day. 
 
 In France, as in Russia, the more prosperous and privi- 
 leged part of the middle classes, at first enthusiastic revolu- 
 tionists, soon left the movement, but in neither coimtry has 
 this desertion been great enough to create a reaction. Carlyle 
 shows how constitutionalism in France "in sorrow and anger" 
 demanded martial law against the revolutionists and obtained 
 it, an act that soon may be expected from the majority of the 
 Russian constitutionalists and that is already supported by 
 a large minority. This step, says the great historian, can be 
 justified on one premise only — that ** constitutionalism is of 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 423 
 
 God and mob assembling the devil, otherwise it is not so just." 
 Like the Russian Constitutional Democrats, the august National 
 Assembly, according to Carlyle, never really wanted riot. "All 
 it ever wanted was riot enough to balance court plotting." 
 In Russia, as in France, the people very soon learned the worth- 
 lessness of their moderate constitutionalist allies. "To them 
 it was clear," writes Carlyle, "that Philosophism has baked no 
 bread; that Patriot Committee men will level down to their 
 own level, and no lower." 
 
 The Russian moderates have not carried with them in their 
 retreat even as large a part of the population as did the French. 
 Nearly all the unions of the professional classes which at first 
 allowed themselves to be used by the President of the Union of 
 Unions, Professor Milyoukov, for the purposes of the Constitu- 
 tional Democratic Party, have cast this organisation off. From 
 the first most of them refused to throw their weight in for any 
 lesser measure than an assembly elected by an equal suffrage, 
 while such as temporarily joined the moderate party have left 
 in large nimibers. 
 
 From the very first the intellectual leaders of the Russian 
 people have been opposed heart and soul to the Czarism, and 
 there is hardly one name of the first rank from the beginning 
 that has not made every sacrifice, even to suffering imprison- 
 ment, exile, and death, in the struggle against it. Over a century 
 ago Novikov, who foimded the first newspaper and publishing 
 house of importance and established scholarships and libraries 
 all over the country, was imprisoned by Catharine II. until his 
 death. Roditchev was similarly persecuted by the same 
 monarch. Catharine said of him, " He is spreading the French 
 plague (the Revolution), he is a rebel worse than Pugatchev, 
 he praises Franklin.*' These were among the founders of Rus- 
 sian literature, since educated persons before this time wrote 
 and even spoke almost exclusively in French. I need barely 
 mention the later writers whose works and persecutions are 
 known to everybody: Pushkin, Turgeniev, Gogol, Tcher- 
 nechevsky, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Korolenko and Gorky, there 
 
424 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 are also a dozen others equally well known to Russians as these, 
 who have suffered as much. 
 
 Since the last generation educated and refined women have 
 taken the same part in the movement as the men ; in fact, they 
 have been even more high-spirited, devoted, and consistent. 
 It is not that the equality of women is a special feature of Rus- 
 sian civilisation, for Russian women until the emancipation 
 movement had been perhaps even less prominent in literature, 
 politics, and affairs than had the women of some other countries. 
 It is that there began in Russia a generation ago the first life 
 and death struggle of a nation, carried out on the very highest 
 social principles. Into this struggle women plunged from the 
 very outset and they have furnished a very considerable part 
 of the martyrs to the cause. In the revolutionary movement 
 of the '80s, in some of the big trials, often a fourth or a fifth 
 of the prisoners were women of the educated and noble classes. 
 Several of these women who have spent fifteen or twenty years 
 in exile or solitary confinement have rejoined the revolutionary 
 movement. Still more important, they and less active friends 
 and admirers who were legion, have taught their children either 
 to look up to or respect the revolutionists. As Russian children 
 are already without any inbred love of the State or Church, 
 they are ripe for the most complete sacrifices for the revolutionary 
 movement. 
 
 I cannot even sum up the wholesale sacrifice made by hun- 
 dreds of thousands of the young men and women students of 
 Russia for the social liberty and equality of the whole Russian 
 people and for Socialism the world over. I will only deny the 
 reports that are being spread that there is any relaxation of this 
 movement. It has been said that a certain part of the students 
 are becoming less revolutionary, that the Government has been 
 able to terrorise another part into submission. Both state- 
 ments are entirely false. If the proportion of timid or naturally 
 conservative students in the universities has somewhat increased, 
 it is because tens of thousands of the brave are languishing in 
 prison or exile. This year already the majority of the leading 
 universities of Russia have been closed again on account of 
 revolutionary student disturbances. A reactionary paper 
 recently reported with glee the reopening of one of them — the 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 42$ 
 
 picture it drew of the reopening is sufficient to show its true 
 significance: "The University is again open. At the doors 
 there are standing policemen and sentinels with loaded guns; 
 inside of the University is a company of soldiers and a large 
 squad of police. The students have to show tickets on going 
 in and to have them marked. The lectures are going regularly 
 forward. It is to be noticed that there is no tearing about in 
 the corridors, with cries, noises, and alarms, with the caps on 
 the head. The strong measures have forced order. The 
 revolutionists are foaming with rage." Let us not leave the 
 picture without recalling the misery of these students who give 
 up everything, present opportunities, their freedom, and their 
 future careers, for the cause, who go about in the university 
 towns in the terrible Russian winters without warm overcoats^ 
 who are ready to accept any sort of old clothes from anyone 
 sufficiently sympathetic with the revolutionary movement to 
 donate them in the name of the cause, who earn their living 
 by any means, from shaving to giving lessons for two or three 
 rubles a month. 
 
 There can be no question that the overwhelming majority 
 of the educated class of Russia are devoted heart and soul to 
 the revolution. This is not an accident; it is not due to any 
 particular element of the moment, nor perhaps even to the poli- 
 tical situation of Russia in general. The Russian educated 
 man is not bourgeois like those of other countries. His 
 character has never been drawn better in a few words than by 
 Merejkovsky, one of Russia's most brilliant writers, whose 
 works are being translated to-day into every language. " Recall,'* 
 he says, "the figures of Rasbolnikov, Bazarov, Karamazov 
 (perhaps the three most famous characters of Russian litera- 
 ture). What strange characters! You can call these men 
 what you like; they are not bourgeois. In their presence 
 Flaubert would not have dared to say that politics is the busi- 
 ness of the mob. For them politics are a passion, an intoxica- 
 tion, a devouring flame. They are heroes and martyrs who 
 leave of their own free will the camp of the successful to go into 
 the camp of the dying." 
 
 The character of nations, like that of individuals, can be 
 made great by tragic experience. Some of our modem countries 
 
426 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 are so far from such calamities and deep experiences that they 
 have forgotten what can be learned from misery and suffer- 
 ing. The Russian people are losing much of their vital forces and 
 even something in certain elements of character by the struggle, 
 but they are gaining more than they lose. Every year sees 
 an astounding and inspiring increase of the intelligence and 
 seriousness of all classes of the people. There is, for instance, 
 little tendency to patronise light and superficial literature and 
 plays, to look at great situations in a superficial or comic man- 
 ner, to idealise the brutal and ugly forces of life because we are 
 on the whole satisfied with our present state. The nation is 
 becoming refined, chastened, elevated and ennobled by the 
 indomitable struggle it is making for great and pure ideas. 
 
 Under the leadership and guidance of men devoted to great 
 causes, the Russian people is surely awaited by a greater destiny 
 than is so far known to history. All the best writers of the 
 •country, read as no others perhaps by the whole civilised world, 
 are trying to express the message that this heroic and devoted 
 people are sending to humanity. It will only be after the 
 -climax of the great revolution that we shall know definitely 
 what this message is. In the meanwhile that which lends most 
 of all an absorbing and irresistible interest to the Russian 
 revolution is the dim foreshadowing of large ideas. Whoever 
 tries to peer even a little way into the future must make his 
 essay at a characterisation of the Russian message. Certainly 
 its import to humanity does not promise to be inferior to 
 the message of Rousseau and Voltaire, and we should not be 
 surprised to find one day that the world has been more affected 
 by the Russian revolution than it has by any of the great world 
 transformations that have taken place since the fall of the 
 Roman Empire and the general adoption of Christianity by the 
 European people. 
 
 For Russia it seems to be at once a revolution, a refor- 
 mation, and a renaissance. To the world it may be the begin- 
 ning of a still greater change. For Rome the adoption of 
 Christianity was a profound transformation in the Church and 
 State, for civilisation it was the reversal of the aims and ideas 
 that had guided it for a thousand years. A conscious social 
 revolution victorious in Russia might set in motion an untold 
 
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 427 
 
 world- change in both the organisation of society and the ruling 
 ideas and aims of mankind. 
 
 "Christian himianity — if not all humanity," says Tolstoi, 
 "is at present at the beginning of a universal transformation 
 that has been smouldering during centuries, even thousands of 
 years." 
 
 What is this transformation? What is Russia's message? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Russia's message 
 
 THE Russian revolution is an heir to the ages. It is 
 descended in part from primitive Christianity and partly 
 from the Reformation, but its immediate predecessor was the 
 French Revolution. The first Russian revolutionists, the 
 Decembrists of 1825, received their ideas and inspiration directly 
 from France itself. Both Russia's great religious Socialist, 
 Tolstoi, and its new political Socialism, are deeply indebted 
 to the French Revolution and its thinker, Rousseau. In the 
 last generation many liberal and educated Russians have been 
 brought up from the cradle on the pure and noble democracy 
 of Rousseau. For more than a generation the "Nouvelle 
 Heloise," "Emile," and the "Contrat Social," were the source 
 of social inspiration not only to France and Russia, but to the 
 world. In France they were gospels — as Carlyle had said, 
 "the Evangel according to St. Jacques"; and in Russia even 
 to-day if we want to understand the political side at least of the 
 new faith we must turn back for at least a moment to Rousseau. 
 Unlike the faith of his predecessor, Montesquieu, the father, 
 if there was one, of the American Constitution, and unlike the 
 sociology and most of the Socialism of our time, the social faith 
 of Rousseau was based on a conception of the moral duty of the 
 individual rather than on a mere evaluation and acceptance 
 of the conditions and necessities of history. Rousseau based 
 his principles and ideas not on what has been, but, as he declared, 
 on what ought to be. Here he is at one with Tolstoi, who 
 replaced him in a sense in Russia. Like Tolstoi also, Rousseau 
 was not at all satisfied to give society a mere scheme of political 
 or social principles. He felt that no healthy social organism 
 could exist on the basis of a sort of civil religion, common beliefs 
 
 428 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 429 
 
 that should hold society together and furnish the foundation 
 of a social faith. 
 
 To-day Rousseau no longer answers definitely the prevailing 
 social questions, but at least he formulated the great question 
 as it should be formulated. He asked not what kind of govern- 
 ment is best suited to the men of the time, but what kind of 
 government will form the best men. His question is, then, 
 what is permanent and what can be improved in man. His 
 social principles all rest on a moral study of human nature, 
 with no special relation to conditions that happen to exist now 
 or have existed for a few generations or centuries. He asks 
 what is the destiny of man, what can be made of him, and what 
 government is necessary to this end. In contrast with Montes- 
 quieu, whose ideas prevailed before Rousseau and still prevail 
 in England, the United States, and other countries, Rousseau 
 was a pure democrat. His first principle was that the sovereign 
 people could not be bound even by its own actions ; to him there 
 could be no written constitution, for he demanded that the first 
 question to be asked in every governmental assembly ought to 
 be, what form of government do we want. The sovereign 
 people of Rousseau had the right at any moment to revoke 
 the power of its agent, the government; this was the principle 
 that we know to-day as the imperative mandate. A law that 
 the people had not ratified was not a law ; this was the principle 
 now called the referendum. To Rousseau a representative 
 government was a really free government only during the 
 elections, only while the voters were actually exercising their 
 will — afterward they were absolutely enslaved. 
 
 All these principles, it will be remembered, were adopted 
 during the French Revolution by not only the extreme revolu- 
 tionary Jacobins, but even the moderate Girondists. If they 
 had been put into practice, as the latter indeed demanded, 
 during the trial of Louis XVI. the French king would never 
 have been executed and the chief disgrace of the Revolution, 
 the "Terror," would never have come to be. 
 
 Sovereignty for Rousseau was also indivisible. He abhorred 
 Montesquieu's (the American) system of checks and balances. 
 In all other important respects also Montesquieu was a perfect 
 contrast, demanding as he did that laws be rarely altered, that 
 
430 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the only way to rule rulers was to change them frequently and to 
 divide their power, that if two dangerous arms of government 
 were both limited by the other the people were comparatively 
 safe from oppression, that there should be a second legislative 
 chamber composed of persons of birth, wealth and honours — 
 all principles that in their application in America to-day enable 
 the capitalistic power to go far toward controlling the govern- 
 ment. But Montesquieu was at least logical. Like Alexander 
 Hamilton, he was perfectly conscious that he was as much of an 
 aristocrat as democrat. If a democratic republic, he says, be 
 founded on commerce, individuals may safely possess great 
 riches, for the spirit of commerce brings with it that of economy, 
 moderation, labour, wisdom, tranquillity, and order. In other 
 words, a commercial state to Montesquieu has all the political 
 virtues. For Rousseau it has all the vices ; for him democracy 
 requires absolutely certain equality of fortune. To Rousseau 
 Montesquieu's republic might indeed be a republic after the 
 order of the oligarchies of Venice or Florence, but it had no 
 claim to the title of democracy. 
 
 In the free and democratic form of government conceived 
 by the prophet of the French Revolution, "each one of us puts 
 his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the 
 general will ; and we receive into our body every member as an 
 indivisible part of the whole." This great conception rested, 
 it may be seen, on faith in the absolute unity between the indi- 
 vidual and the government, transcending in this respect all social 
 philosophies which see some conflict of interest between society 
 and the individual. Rousseau reached this height in his view 
 of society because of his equally unified conception of the moral 
 nature of the individual. "The truly free man," he says, in 
 "Emile," "wishes only for what he can achieve and only does 
 what pleases him." 
 
 Applied to social life this feeling of the unity of man's nature, 
 led to the conclusion that "as soon as the public service ceases 
 to be the principal business of the citizens . . . the state 
 is already near to ruin." Rousseau demanded then, as much 
 as Tolstoi or the Russian Socialist of to-day, not only pure 
 democracy but the complete devotion of the individual to the 
 general welfare. He had no mystical belief that the devotion 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 431 
 
 of every man to his own private business would necessarily lead 
 to the general good. 
 
 Rousseau's successor in Russia was partially , and for a certain 
 time at least, Tolstoi, but contemporary with Tolstoi, or almost 
 so, have been the teachings of another international thinker, 
 read more in Russia than in any other land, Karl Marx. I shall 
 not stop to characterise the teachings of the founder of German 
 Socialism any longer than to say that his influence in present- 
 day Russia has to be reckoned alongside that of Rousseau, and 
 certainly above that of Tolstoi. Perhaps the chief significance 
 of Tolstoi for Russia, where Marxism is the dominant social 
 theory among the present generation, is his antagonism to it. 
 Tolstoi himself feels so strongly his antagonism to Marx that he 
 bears proudly the title of Marx's most bitter opponent, the 
 philosophical anarchist, rather than that of Social Democrat 
 monopolised by the Marxian school. We look on him, however, 
 as a complement rather than an opponent of Marx. We do not 
 and cannot deny the antagonism, but as far as their practical 
 proposals are concerned we say that the points of strength in 
 Marx are for the most part the weak points of Tolstoi, just as 
 we say that the essential weaknesses of Marxism are the very 
 elements of strength in Tolstoi's doctrine. 
 
 Tolstoi indeed recognises many of the most fundamental 
 principles of Marxian Socialism and elaborates them in the most 
 effective way. To Tolstoi, as to Marx, the struggle between the 
 rich and the poor, the employer and the employee, is a bitter 
 reality. Both recognise the existence of this ** class struggle.'* 
 
 But while Tolstoi recognises the struggle he does not express 
 it in Marx's dogmatic form, but feels, like so many other Russian 
 Socialists, that it is a conflict not between the "haves" and 
 "have-nots," but rather between those who have more and 
 those who have less. Laying the chief emphasis, as he does, 
 on its spiritual and not on its material aspect, he does not feel 
 that the question of a small amount of property decides the po- 
 sition of an individual in the conflict. At the same time he 
 gives equal importance to other struggles, those between indivi- 
 duals and nations, and condemns all as the expression of the same 
 irrehgious and unsocial hatred that characterises present-day 
 mankind in his social relationships. 
 
432 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 It might appear that the economist, Marx, and the religionist, 
 Tolstoi, had few points of contact; but since Marx concerns 
 himself with all society, including religion, and Tolstoi applies 
 his religion to economic questions, this is not the case. In 
 regard to the land question, Tolstoi is undoubtedly a kind of 
 Socialist. He agrees with the fundamental principle of Socialism 
 that the work of society must be reorganised. In our conversa- 
 tion he explained that he thought this could be done according 
 to the principles of Henry George ; at any rate he had a supreme 
 faith in the soundness of the life and instincts of the country 
 people. But at the same time he surprised me by acknowledg- 
 ing quite frankly that he was not clear as to how the future 
 society could be organised in the towns. Here, then, we have 
 a point where a third person may well reconcile Tolstoi's economy 
 with that of Marx. Of course the disciples of neither would 
 tolerate such a reconciliation. But since Marx expressed more 
 or less pity or even contempt for the peasant and displayed 
 very little knowledge of the evolution through which the peasant 
 has passed, we may well decide that Tolstoi understands better 
 the conditions of his peasants, just as Marx was unquestionably 
 a master of all questions concerning most nearly his workingmen. 
 It is indeed on this principle that the Russian political movement 
 is solving the great social problem. It is bent on finding a 
 common ground for the best parts of the doctrine of Marx and 
 Henry George. 
 
 The Labour Group in the Duma, representing the majority 
 of the Russian peasantry, in proposing a solution of the land 
 question, proposed at the same time to solve the labour question 
 for the workingmen. It was for this reason perhaps that its 
 delegate, Anikine, was received as a Socialist by an international 
 congress at London in 1906. For this revolutionary land reform 
 of the Labour Group is Socialism of the broadest and deepest 
 kind. In demanding that each individual shall be supplied 
 with land, while knowing full well that there is not enough land 
 to give any one all that he needs, the Labour Group proposed 
 to make the Russian Government responsible for the economic 
 well being of each and every citizen. In insisting that every 
 individual should have a right to his share in the soil the Group 
 offered an alternative of agricultural labour to every workingman 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 433 
 
 in the country. In declaring that no man should have more 
 land than he could work with his own hands the Group pro- 
 posed to abolish wage labour in the agricultural sections. 
 
 The result of this great social revolution would be that the 
 farmers would become interested in the upbuilding of indus- 
 try, not only to gain a market but also to lift from their own 
 shoulders the necessity of dividing their land with the disin- 
 herited. The farmers would share the burden of the underpaid 
 and unemployed workers of the towns, but in return they would 
 demand by right from the general Government every possible 
 support for agriculture in the form of cheaper transportation, 
 cheap credit, and wherever beneficial to them, free trade. At 
 the same time, having the burden of the labourer on their 
 shoulders, they would have his interest at heart; they would 
 want to build up industry and encourage business enterprise, 
 while they would be jealous of all exceptional profits and would 
 join their forces against those of private capital alongside the 
 working people and professional classes of the towns. For 
 according to Tolstoi, according to the Labour Group, and 
 according to all the popular and Socialist parties of Russia, 
 the larger part of the profits of private capital are unearned. 
 Tolstoi has best expressed the feeling of all. 
 
 " It a statesman," writes Tolstoi, "says that besides a personal 
 advantage he has in view the common benefit, we cannot help 
 believing him, and each of us knows such men; but a business 
 man from the nature of his occupations, cannot have and would 
 be ridiculous in the sight of his fellows if in his business he did 
 aim at something besides the increasing of his own wealth and 
 the keeping of it. And therefore the working people do not 
 consider the activity of business men of any help to them, for 
 their activity is associated with violence toward the working 
 people; and its object is not the good of the people but always 
 and only personal advantage." 
 
 This is the view not of Tolstoi alone, nor of the popular 
 class, but of nearly all classes of Russian society. Of course 
 he is speaking not of the business man who is also something 
 else, but of the business man as business man. As far as a man 
 is absorbed wholly in business, says the Russian opinion of 
 to-day, he cannot have in view the common good. 
 
434 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Tolstoi has also expressed better than any other Russian the 
 common belief of the majority of the nation that capitalis- 
 tic property is the root of all the evil of present-day society. 
 In another passage, equally a part of Russia's message, Tolstoi 
 used the word "property " instead of "capital," but since he is a 
 follower of Henry George, he doubtless has in mind rather than 
 property of all kinds only capital and land. 
 
 "Property," he says, " is the root of all evil; and at the same 
 time property is that toward which all the activity of our 
 modern society is directed, and that which directs the activ- 
 ity of the world states and government intrigues, makes wars 
 for the sake of property, for the possession of the banks of the 
 Rhine, of land in Africa, China, the Balkan Peninsula. Bankers, 
 merchants, manufacturers, landlords, labour, use cunning, tor- 
 ment themselves, torment others, for the sake of property; 
 government functionaries, tradesmen, landlords, struggle, deceive, 
 oppress, suffer, for the sake of property; courts of justice and 
 poHce protect property ; penal servitude, prisons, all the terrors 
 of so-called punishments — all is done for the sake of property." 
 
 In spite of the jealousy felt against him by the Socialist 
 parties, especially the more orthodox Marxian party, Tolstoi 
 is the greatest opponent of capitalism in Russia and in the world 
 to-day. He is indeed a party in himself — not a political party, 
 of course, but the exponent of a social programme. This social 
 programme may be impracticable, but it is among the greatest 
 menaces to the continued existence of the Czarism supported by 
 international capital. Tolstoi's great contribution, as I have 
 already suggested, is his attack on the intellectual defenders 
 of the present system. "Science," he says, "has proclaimed 
 struggle and hatred as necessary and beneficent conditions of 
 human life." This also is a feature of the criticism of all the 
 very intellectual and truly philosophical Russian movement. 
 "The appropriation of the labour of others by a strong man, 
 which formerly theologians called Divine predestination," says 
 Tolstoi in another of his strongest passages, "which philosophers 
 called inevitable conditions of life, scientific science now calls 
 the organic division of labour. All the importance of the ruling 
 science consists in this alone. This science now becomes the 
 dispenser of diplomas for idleness, because she alone in her 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 435 
 
 temples analyses and determines what activity is parasitic 
 and what is organic in the social organism. As if men could not, 
 each for himself, much better decide it and more quickly, too, 
 by consulting his reason and conscience." "When art and 
 science really existed," he says elsewhere, "they were intelligent 
 to all men." This demand, then, for democracy , applied not only 
 to political, economic, and social questions, but also to science 
 and art, is the great contribution of Tolstoi to revolutionary 
 Socialism. Often half-hearted democrats take refuge in the 
 advocacy of an "aristocracy of mind and heart." This to 
 Tolstoi is not only a sin and a crime but the very source of all 
 the evil of our time, since men are led astray not so much by 
 their mere selfish desires as by their very unwillingness to obey 
 the appeals of society instead of answering only their own 
 intellectual or aesthetic whims. 
 
 Tolstoi, as I have said, placed all his hopes on the peasant, 
 while Marx in his communist manifesto spoke of the "idiocy 
 of rural life." According to a recent interpreter (Boudin) Marx 
 was at the best filled with "compassion" for the "hopeless case 
 of the poor peasant." The new Russian Socialism takes no 
 such patronising view. It does not share the common suspicions 
 against either half of the population, the peasants or the work- 
 ingmen. Already even the Russian Marxians concede that the 
 peasantry of Russia may make as good revolutionists and 
 democrats, if not as good Socialists, as the workingmen. But 
 the Socialist Revolutionary Party goes further and feels that 
 the agricultural population will make good Socialists also. 
 Their chief writers stake everything on the peasants without 
 deserting the workingmen. One of them, Tchemov, tries to 
 interpret Marx, to prove that he did understand the peasant and 
 points to the efforts of nearly all the European Socialist parties to 
 fix up their doctrines to please the agricultural population and 
 to accept as justifiable some form of private property in land, 
 in order that the country people shall not be frightened away 
 from Socialism by fear of losing their possessions. 
 
 But another thinker of the Socialist Revolutionists, rather 
 than endeavouring to make one more interpretation of Marx, 
 seeks the historical predecessors of the new Socialist doctrine 
 in the French Revolution. Chisko and others who think with 
 
436 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 him value Bakunine, Marx's chief antagonist, almost as much 
 as they do Marx himself. In championing the cause of the foun- 
 der of modern anarchism they show that they are as much opposed 
 to coercive government as they are to private property and 
 justify the claim that the object of their attack is not private 
 property any more than it is government, but capitalism in 
 so far as it roots itself in both. 
 
 "The fundamental ideal of the communists* manifesto'* 
 (the ten commandments of Marxian Socialism), says Chisko, 
 "that economic phenomena, indepeftdently of the will and ten- 
 dencies of mankind, are preparing the technical material and 
 psychical elements of the social revolution, must be renounced." 
 Chisko then, as well as the majority of the Socialist Revolution- 
 ary Party, is at one with Rousseau and Tolstoi in placing the 
 first emphasis on the will of man. 
 
 The Socialist Revolutionists accuse their orthodox Marxian 
 predecessors of defending only the interests of wage labourers 
 who possess nothing, the so-called "proletariat," and not those 
 of labour in general. It is on this ground that Tchemov 
 accuses them of lacking both in true Socialism and true 
 democracy. Indeed, in attacking private property instead of 
 private capital, in refusing to recognise that a peasant even 
 though he is in possession of a piece of land, provided he 
 does not employ another, may be as social as the working- 
 man, the older Socialists had abandoned a principle of equal 
 importance certainly with Socialism itself, namely democracy. 
 The Social Democracy has brought Socialism in the various 
 nations to a many-sided crisis precisely because of its undem- 
 ocratic character. 
 
 If a Socialist organisation is attached to Socialism (collectiv- 
 ism) rather than to democracy, it is a natural result that English 
 Fabian Societies should arise — that favour, or at least accept 
 without much resistance, even so undemocratic an idea as the 
 justification of a minority rule. This leads at once, of course, 
 to the idea of a domination by some minority, usually some 
 part of the middle class. The Socialism then proposed is not 
 any fundamental change of society but only a State Socialism, 
 the extension of the functions of the government. 
 
 If the working people, unwilling to accept the domination 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 437 
 
 of a numerical majority, insist on pushing forward their Social- 
 istic beliefs in a revolutionary manner, then the penalty of this 
 form of undemocratic Socialism is a Paris Commune. If, on 
 the other hand, while still remaining revolutionary and undem- 
 ocratic, they propose to wait for a majority, they announce that 
 with the aid of their majority they are going to establish 
 a "dictatorship" of the proletariat, and all the neutral 
 and wavering elements of society are frightened into 
 reaction by the idea that all minorities are to be crushed 
 by the working class. 
 
 But the undemocratic Socialists give up their revolutionary 
 spirit. They console themselves by some illusion of politics, 
 some kind of parliamentarism. So in Germany we have seen 
 the naive working class under the leadership of Bebel calmly 
 looking forward to the day when the majority of the nation 
 would be workingmen — a day whose arrival we may well 
 doubt in any self-sufficient modem country. Nor is this the 
 greatest danger for this latter peaceful and undemocratic type 
 of movement. It stakes everything on the permanence of 
 constitutionalism and universal suffrage; it fails to learn from 
 the recent examples in Germany and Russia and many other 
 countries that it is as easy for political institutions to be turned 
 backward as forward, and that without democracy, without a 
 majority in possession of the concrete power to enforce its will, 
 no people has the hope of evolving a great social movement, 
 that no people is protected by a mere paper constitution or 
 an election law in the hands of a hostile power. 
 
 The Russian Socialists are both revolutionists and democrats. 
 They know that they have to win liberty and Socialism by 
 fighting for them, and they know that they can hope for nothing 
 unless they can maintain a unity of the masses of the population 
 both of the towns and country. It is in order to maintain 
 this unity that they have sought a reconciliation of the 
 revolutionary social principles with regard to the land, those 
 of Henry George, and the revolutionary view of capitalism, 
 that of Marx. 
 
 It is this unification of all the highest conceptions of Socialism 
 and politics that we shall learn from Russia, rather than any 
 entirely new social ideals. It is precisely because Russia is 
 
438 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 so much a part of the modem world that we cannot and 
 must not expect an entirely new and strange ideal, but we 
 can expect and have already received from her higher and 
 better expressions of the profoundest social conceptions that 
 have yet been formulated by men. 
 
 II 
 
 The Russian Revolution gives the world more than a social 
 programme. The new Russian ideas tend to revolutionise the 
 very basis of modern thought, not only with regard to society, 
 but with regard to all life ; they tend to revolutionise the method 
 of reasoning and feeling of every individual; they attack the 
 modern religion, the only real deeply rooted religion of our 
 day, the theory of evolution, considered not as a mere hypothe- 
 sis of physical science, but as a guide to all life. Russians in 
 general, even conservatives, are agreed that the great movement 
 that is gaining possession of the nation means not merely a 
 change of the constitution, but if I may quote from a private 
 conversation with Michael Stachovitch, one of the most moder- 
 ate, "a change of all institutions, of all relations, of all life, of 
 everything." 
 
 In developing the new idea of the laws of the growth of 
 society, the Russian people are also reaching a new conception 
 of all life, of all realms of human activity, even of science, art 
 and religion. For the conception of the law of social growth 
 that prevails in any society itself, marks the whole psychical 
 condition of that society. When this conception changes all 
 other ideas change; this is why Russia is leading, not only in 
 social thinking and ideals, but in all the realms of spiritual life. 
 
 Because all the nations have common economic problems — 
 how to secure for society the enormous unearned land rents that 
 now go into the pockets of individuals, how to manage the rail- 
 ways and how to give the profits from the great economies of 
 modem industry to consumers and employees instead of leaving 
 them in the hands of capitalists — the social programme^ and 
 philosophy of the revolution is international. But the new 
 conception of life itself had to come from Russia, the only 
 country in profound spiritual upheaval since the conquest of 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 439 
 
 the world by the new scientific religion, now too deeply rooted 
 to be eradicated under ordinary conditions of life. The French 
 Revolution overthrew not only Louis XVI. in France and shook 
 feudalism in all Europe; it also upset authorities in philosophy, 
 religion, science, and art and prepared the way for Kant and 
 Darwin as world powers. Humanity has undergone no French 
 Revolution, no spiritual world upheaval for a century, and as a 
 consequence new authorities begin to rule and we have been 
 sinking gradually into unfruitful skepticism and even into a 
 virulently anti-social faith. 
 
 Several generations ago several great social thinkers, like 
 Marx and Proudhon, began to write how society develops, not 
 only by slow, quiet, orderly, and continuous evolution, but also 
 by rapid changes, by apparent though not real breaks in the 
 ordinary process. The best known and most influential of these 
 writers was Karl Marx. Marx conceived a new idea of the 
 law of social development, especially of that particular form 
 of development known as revolutions. He, however, was 
 chiefly concerned with that revolution which he thought was 
 rapidly approaching at the time he wrote. As he conceived 
 of revolution as the "open and violent rebellion" we usually 
 know under that name, he did not look further ahead into the 
 future than to the next catastrophe, he did not try to foresee the 
 kind of revolution that humanity should have to go through 
 with for a longer period. This lack of far-sightedness vitiated 
 his doctrine. To followers of Marx the conception that revolu- 
 tion in the social psychology of mankind, in the methods of the 
 control of society over individuals and of individuals over 
 society, should continue forever, might be even a misuse of the 
 term revolution. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the world is already in possession 
 of Marx's elaborate doctrine of revolution, the so-called scien- 
 tific Socialism, the prevailing conception of social growth in all 
 countries, even among the most scientific persons, is still of the 
 simplest order. The great masses still believe in the same form 
 of linear social development. To them society moves along 
 more or less straight lines in one direction or another, and this 
 they call "evolution." To the more educated the conception 
 is slightly more complicated and the idea is perhaps that of an 
 
440 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 "evolution" along the line of a spiral — society is supposed to 
 move from one side to the other of the spiral, to return to a 
 similar position vertically to the one it occupied before, but on 
 a higher plane. It is doubtless true, as many psychologists 
 say, that we must use, as handles or tools of thought, certain 
 physical images and certain mechanical figures of speech, but 
 if our logical and reasoning powers have not developed further 
 than this, let us at least see that our images and figures are 
 more developed. Let us try, like those Russians, all of whose 
 waking and sleeping thoughts are absorbed by the social prob- 
 lem, to conceive society in a more subtle and realistic manner. 
 If we must use figures, let us imagine social development as 
 taking place, not along any single line, no matter how curved 
 or complicated, but in every possible direction at once and in 
 all three dimensions. By the use of this figure we wotdd be 
 rescued from many of the absurdities of the prevailing concept 
 tion, we could for the first time conceive of society as growing 
 in two opposite directions at the same time, or developing in 
 one direction without losing what had already been gained in 
 another. We would not speak, then, of political revolution as 
 being the result of reaction, or of reaction as the inevitable 
 result of revolution. If we must put our concept of the tendency 
 of society at a given moment in a single figure of speech, we 
 could speak of the movement of the centre of gravity of the 
 growing body politic in some new direction, and along some 
 given line. But a solid body growing always in many directions 
 would be something far different from our old figure of society 
 as a point moving along a line, since bodies of the same bulk and 
 the same centre could have an infinite variety of form and 
 structure. To employ this figure for our own purposes, if the 
 resultant, the sum of all the motions of society in various 
 directions, the general movement of the whole, should itself 
 suddenly take a new direction, or commence to move much more 
 rapidly along the same path, we should have what would be 
 more properly called revolution than evolution. 
 
 Revolution is simply a new rapidity, or suddenly changed 
 direction, of evolution. This is the great truth that the modems, 
 outside of Russia, are forgetting, and in forgetting it are risk- 
 ing all the freedom, democracy, and accelerated development of 
 
/ 
 
 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 441 
 
 the race that revolution has obtained for mankind. Some 
 advances have been obtained by evolution, exclusive of revolu- 
 tion; I am not opposing one to the other, but on the contrary 
 I am objecting most vigorously to this very fictitious opposition, 
 to the consideration either of evolution or of revolution as a 
 superior form of social development. To speak of evolution as 
 against revolution, or to exclude rapid and strikingly new devel- 
 opments as entirely inadmissible, as a higher form of social 
 progress, is to adopt the most fundamentally conservative and 
 reactionary idea ever yet thought out by the mind of man. 
 Many religions and theories of the state have spiritually sub- 
 jected humanity, but none were ever so universal, so dangerous, 
 and so terrible as this. If we speak of social development as 
 evolution, and if from this term evolution we exclude all revolu- 
 tionary development, we are in the toils of a dogmatic creed or 
 philosophy worse than anything the world has seen since the 
 time of the ancient Egyptians. 
 
 This reactionary scientific-religious faith was invited by the 
 dull neutral attitude toward moral and social questions held 
 by the great scientists in the middle of the last century, who 
 divided life into science and — life. Spencer and his school 
 had no social or individual faith to offer. They converted 
 mankind to an almost servile respect for physical science, 
 destroyed by the aid of this science much of the old philosophy 
 and many of the old moral and social ideals, and offered nothing 
 to take their place. Their successors have not been so modest; 
 the place was there visibly empty ; only the voices of the devo- 
 tees of science could fill it, for other voices were no longer heard ; 
 God had been overthrown, the throne was empty and there 
 was every temptation to set up the devil in his stead. 
 
 A generation ago John Morley in his interesting book on 
 "Compromise," that sums up so well the best political thought 
 of our intellectual predecessors, deplored the lack of faith in 
 the thinking of the English people of that day. To-day we are 
 facing a still greater evil in the prevalence not of indifference 
 but of a positively anti-social faith. Morley complained of a 
 profound distrust of all general principles, of the popular sup- 
 position that there was some antagonism between principle 
 and expediency, between theory and fact. He accused his 
 
442 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 generation of thinking only of the interest of the day and very 
 little of the day to come. **What great political causes," 
 he asked, "her own, or another's, is England defending to-day? " 
 He might have asked the same question of any other people of 
 the time, and of a large part of any people to-day. 
 
 Morley, like Spencer and the other great individualists of 
 his time, who still have an immense influence, especially in 
 America, felt deeply the need of the recognition of "the sacred- 
 ness of principle." "Elements of national deterioration," he 
 said, "will disappear only when the world has grown into the 
 possession of a new doctrine; when that day comes, all good 
 things will follow. . . . The new doctrine itself will never 
 come except from spirits predisposed to their own liberation. 
 Our day of small calculations and petty utility must first pass 
 away. Our vision of the true expediencies must reach further 
 and deeper; our resolution to search for the highest verities, 
 to give up all and follow them, must first become the supreme 
 part of ourselves." Yet Morley and his generation are respon- 
 sible more than all others for the further deterioration of public 
 opinion with regard both to political and all other great principles. 
 For instead of welcoming the only new doctrine that could 
 save or help society, they opposed it with all their power; 
 like Morley himself, who, though he acknowledged some form of 
 Socialism was inevitable, proposed to die fighting it with back 
 to the wall, or like Spencer who called it the coming slavery. 
 "Ours is a country where love of constant improvement 
 ought to be greater than anywhere else, because the fear of 
 revolution is less," wrote Morley — but the fear of revolution, 
 or rather the hope of revolution, is the mainspring of the 
 greatest progress of the race. 
 
 It is because they have grasped this principle of social politics 
 that the Russian spirit is so great to-day. Once having lost 
 the highest social verities, it was natural that Morley and his 
 whole generation of individualists should fall into the very gulf 
 of compromise that they all so wished to avoid. Already Mill 
 had questioned the sovereignty of the people, the first principle 
 of all social progress, and given some credit to the belief that 
 society was in need of heroes or deliverers to govern it. Morley 
 -accepted Mill's waverings and fell even further than he. Seek- 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 443 
 
 ing "the right kind of compromise," like the moderate party 
 in the Russia of to-day, he bargained away most of his great 
 principles, even to avoiding the issue as to whether he favoured 
 a republic or a monarchy in the England of the present day. 
 
 Since individualism, much as it saw the need of it, supplied 
 no social faith, Nietsche and Kipling have come along to fill 
 the empty place until now the new popular social science, as 
 Tolstoi rightly says, even in the midst of our so-called civilisation, 
 defends the survival of the principle of the tooth and claw; 
 while a Henley or a Nietsche actually glorifies war, not for its 
 fruits alone but because they see in it the noble art. In seeking 
 to lay the philosophical foundations for a higher individualism, 
 in endeavouring to inspire mankind with the passionate desire 
 to produce a higher type, Nietsche has indeed not only ignored 
 society, but he has constructed a positively anti-social belief, 
 leaving no place but slavery or death for the overwhelming 
 majority, who are not "supermen." Yet this man's phil- 
 osophy rules in Germany and the number of his disciples grows 
 apace in other lands! 
 
 This is as we might have expected; men cannot live with- 
 out faith; we must either idealise the coming society, including 
 as part of it the coming man, or we must idealise the individual 
 of the future without regard to society and the race, and accept 
 the worship of mere power without regard to any other question. 
 Humanity need no longer go without a faith adapted to the 
 times ; the Russians have already found it. During the present 
 generation, say the Russians, we are in need of preachers of 
 revolution, and of revolution in all things. The goal of the human 
 race is best expressed perhaps in Schopenhauer's "will to live" 
 or Nietsche*s "will to power"; the living out of our deepest 
 instincts, however doubtful when applied only to individuals, 
 may hold true if applied to humanity as a whole; but if this 
 is so, if society exists to fulfill its own purpose and not to con- 
 form to fatal and fixed conditions of environment, the now 
 popular use or misuse of the conception of evolution would again 
 be consigned to a secondary r61e. We should say with Maeter- 
 linck in his essay, "The Bees," that it is our duty to seek out the 
 ends of our existence, not in the natural environment or even 
 in htunan history, but rather in the study of the structure of our 
 
444 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 own psychical and physical organs; and since functions are 
 fixed by the structure of organs, to live the life we were bom 
 for — to travel in the directions pointed out by our own organic 
 ends and capacities, under the limitations of our own physical 
 and psychical organisms, rather than under the external 
 limitations imposed on us by the outside universe, considered 
 by the evolutionary or historical school as the only really 
 important element of our environment. According to this 
 conception it is not the function of man and society to try to 
 see life from a dead scientific standpoint, to endeavour to be 
 objective and external, as it were to put ourselves outside of 
 our bodies, but to give up this equally useless and impossible 
 task and to live the life for which another kind of science, a 
 physically and psychically introspective science, a science 
 that restores man to his true place in the centre of his universe, 
 shows we were created. 
 
 Here is a truly spiritual conception of evolution and the 
 struggle for existence. In this conception we do not struggle 
 against one another, forced to internecine strife by the 
 narrow limits of a fixed environment; but the environment 
 presents itself to our senses, to our intelligence, our will and 
 our power, dumbly pleading to us for such recognition as it 
 humanly deserves, each element of the environment struggling 
 with the other to be taken into the only realm that is real to 
 man, that of our physical and psychical life, in order there to 
 become an element in the further evolution of our being. This 
 is indeed a revolution of the prevailing evolutionary theory. 
 Instead of individuals struggling against one another under a 
 more or less fixed environment, this new world-outlook regards 
 human evolution as being a struggle of environments before the 
 human individual, the arbiter of the universe, at least as far 
 as mankind is concerned. This beautiful concept loses nothing 
 of what modem science has gained for us; it merely reverses 
 the inhuman social and moral principles that have been allowed 
 almost to monopolise the applications of science to our ideas 
 of human life. 
 
 To worship nature objectively as some scientists advise 
 us to do is to return very near to the psychology of the primi- 
 tive man, who in his devotion both to the devil and to God was 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 445 
 
 paying a no greater tribute to the maleficent and beneficent 
 powers of nature. It is to go back even of the ancient Hebrews ; 
 it is to forget that mankind is a chosen race, that as long as 
 there is a single human family left, we must obey nothing, 
 not even non-human "nature," which is absolutely external 
 to ourselves, but must follow our own best moral reasons and 
 instincts supported by a scientific study of the nature of our 
 physical and spiritual selves. 
 
 This modem return to nature and betrayal of man, this 
 adoption of the standpoint of the savages, which is supposed to 
 be preached by the theory of evolution, is nothing less than 
 impious to a truly social people like the Russians of to-day. Of 
 all the countries of the world, it is the only one where such 
 pseudo-scientific sociology is completely discredited. Yet we 
 all feel there is something wrong. 
 
 It is because Tolstoi attacks this pseudo-science more effec- 
 tively than anyone else that he is the most respected and vener- 
 ated man alive to-day, even in countries where pernicious 
 doctrines rule. If Tolstoi has lost nothing of the love and 
 admiration in which he was held since he gave up trying to 
 entertain and please his readers and took to preaching to them — 
 this is due to the fact that he takes an absolute and moral view 
 of life, retaining all the best conclusions of the ancient philoso- 
 phies and religions on the nature of man, but drawing his 
 materials entirely from our time. Tolstoi does not know that 
 we are related to all things as well as to all men, but he contends 
 nevertheless that our individual and social duty is not relative 
 but absolute. There is for each individual in each given 
 moment only one best way ; if we fall below our appointed func- 
 tion as it is shown us by nature and our own best instincts and 
 reasonings, or if society falls in the same way below its appointed 
 functions, we hear from our individual or social conscience 
 and know we have done wrong. 
 
 This view places man again in the centre of the universe, 
 and gives him a truly unified and unbroken conception of life 
 and of society. If we look at society not from the human, but 
 from the pseudo-scientific or objective standpoint, we shall fail 
 to understand a single social problem. If, for instance, political 
 development is studied apart from all the other developments of 
 
446 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 the life of society and of the individuals that compose it, we 
 shall not only see political revolutions in the sense of a rapid 
 evolution or evolution in some new direction, but we shall imag- 
 ine we see or fear we may see positive gaps in the continuity 
 of the process of development. As long as we consider political 
 or even social evolution as a thing apart from the rest of the 
 science of life, we shall stand in fear of these gaps. Indeed, 
 ill-understood interruptions of continuous political evolution 
 are so common that it is often even denied that there are any 
 laws of political development. We do not know what politics 
 will bring for us to-morrow because the political situation of 
 to-day depends not on the political situation of yesterday, but 
 on that of industry, science, religion, education, public morality, 
 or even on some obscure comer of social life. There is no steady 
 evolution of politics ; there is only a continuous evolution of life, 
 while politics consists of an endless series of more or less revolu- 
 tionary transformations. Indeed it is only when politics are 
 least important and have the least fundamental contact with 
 life, that there can be anything resembling continuous and quiet 
 political evolution. When politics become vital, when the 
 energies of the individual and of society go principally and 
 consciously in a political direction, the evolution of politics 
 becomes to a large degree the barometer of the whole evolution 
 of the race; and since it is certain that in trying to prophesy 
 the political future we shall leave important elements of this 
 greater evolution out of the reckoning, it is also certain that 
 revolutions or breaks in the imaginary chain of political develop- 
 ment will occur to surprise the "scientific" observer. 
 
 The Russians learned the danger of the old political thinking 
 from their own experience. The Government through its 
 prime ministers endeavours to promote such "scientific" think- 
 ing. As soon as the Government can succeed in polarising the 
 popular thought, and concentrating the public attention on any 
 two extremes, it is easy to persuade it that both are to be 
 avoided. As soon as the people are divided into two 
 camps, even in discussion, while the timid elements of, the 
 community are situated between, the Government can step 
 in, and taking advantage of the chaos, itself induce some 
 principle of that unity which every society imperatively 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 447 
 
 demands. When it can stir up such a spiritual conflict it is 
 as if the Government had itself ordered the placing of the 
 enemy's forces. Unity there must be; if in the chaos of 
 competition of American industry, it is a great economic unit, 
 a trust, that introduces the new and necessary unity, to the 
 economic subjection of the people; if in Russia, it is the Czarism 
 that steps in to restore the balance in race struggles and social 
 conflicts it has itself encouraged, replacing by an artificial and 
 violent unity the revolutionary Socialist unity for which the 
 nation is striving. 
 
 If in Russia it is the Government that takes advantage of the 
 division in the thought of the individual, it is the moderate 
 party that is now trying to make use of this old and crude 
 dualistic manner of political thought in order to put an end to 
 the revolutionary movement. Contending, like Witte, that 
 there are no interruptions in political evolution, the philosophers 
 of Russia's moderate party and of the conservative wing of the 
 Marxian Socialists as well, deny the possibility of revolutionary 
 political changes, assume a legal or constitutional regime even 
 before it exists, obey the present Government, and wear out 
 their souls in vain working for the smallest beginning of a real 
 constitution. The moderates' dualistic attitude toward life, 
 their separation of science and the human soul, was recently 
 expressed by the well known writer Berydaiev when he said: 
 "We desire a neutral social development, the freeing of human- 
 ity and the lifting of it out of animal state, but not the trans- 
 forming of social visions and dreams into a religion; for with a 
 neutral sphere we can make our religion harmonise." But for 
 the Socialist Christians or almost religious Socialists of the type 
 that is dominating in Russia to-day, whether a Father Petrov 
 or a Maxim Gorky, it is precisely these social dreams and 
 passions that must be transformed into a religion and a social 
 faith, and it is this social faith that constitutes the essence of all 
 the deepest human thought and feeling, whether we call it religion 
 or something else. Socialism as a purely political or economic 
 doctrine can be opposed to a well harmonised purely political 
 religious creed as Berydaiev suggests, but to the new revolu- 
 tionary Russians there can be no contradictions between 
 Socialism and religion, or one's social and personal creed. To- 
 
448 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 divide life into science and matters of the soul is for the Russians 
 of to-day as much crime as it was to Rousseau or his followers 
 in the great revolution of France, who lived and breathed their 
 social faith before they preached it to mankind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One of Russia's brilliant political writers, Bulgakov, demands 
 in the name of Russian public opinion that the political party 
 of the future should be a religious party in the broadest meaning 
 of the term, including even a certain kind of atheism as a 
 religious force. 
 
 In the true conception he claims every political party should 
 constitute a single spiritual whole, should have a common 
 soul, a common thought, a common will, should be literally a 
 collective organism. The object of the religious political party 
 he says should be **to participate in social and political life 
 with the object of transforming it in equal spirit of love, liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity. Sooner or later there must arise in 
 our midst a purely Christian party absolutely alien to clericalism, 
 obscurantism, and other spectres of the past, but inspired by 
 great faith and in the name of this faith by ideals of democracy 
 and Socialism." In these terms a devoted Christian is express- 
 ing a feeling that is common to all parts of the Russian people. 
 Whether we hear speaking the radical Petrov or the conservative 
 Bulgakov, the Christian anarchist Tolstoi or the communist 
 anarchist Kropotkin, we have a common instance of the fusion 
 of social and religious faith. Among the political Socialists and 
 the great popular and Socialistic parties that are taking hold 
 of the masses, we hear often the same cry, or still more often 
 the simple demand, that Socialism raised to the height of a 
 religious conception should become the faith of mankind. 
 
 These individuals and parties say that faith like this is not 
 mystic; that their religion is no theological abstraction; it 
 resembles rather the high rationalistic faith of Tolstoi. In 
 Tolstoi's creed religion must inspire all individual and social 
 morality, but this religion we find is based on a simple and 
 rational conception of brotherly love, the desire to do to others 
 as we would have others do unto us. Even the philosophy of 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 449 
 
 Comte, Tolstoi classes with religions which he defines as efforts 
 to establish the relation of man to the world and its principle. 
 God is the principle of the world, but the will of God is to bring 
 about the welfare of man, the end of religion is social service. 
 The end of society, on the other hand, is God. "For man, 
 through man, to God," is Tolstoi's latest formulation of his 
 social creed. But God's will is the spiritual welfare of mankind. 
 
 The religion of all who make their individual belief also a 
 social faith is necessarily of a highly revolutionary order. 
 Tolstoi's religion, for instance, teaches above all independence, 
 it leads to both a spiritual and practical anarchism. So clearly 
 is this true that we doubt if under our anarchist law, Tolstoi, 
 any more than his friend. Prince Kropotkin, could be admitted 
 into the United States, for Tolstoi not only speaks of the sub- 
 mission to human power as a sin, but preaches openly and 
 clearly, like our great Thoreau, that nobody ought to submit 
 to any government. He says repeatedly, as he also made clear 
 in our personal talk, that he agrees in large part with the leading 
 anarchists, Thoreau, Bakounin, Kropotkin, Proudhon and 
 the rest. 
 
 But the social faith of the majority of Russians has no direct 
 relation with any religious creed; it is inspired with the depth 
 of feeling and faith that characterises religious thought, rather 
 than with its intellectual formulation. Tolstoi and most of 
 the revolutionists who have received their inspiration rather 
 from religion than from the social situation itself, are inclined 
 to favour a non-political and inactive verbal attack on 
 the existing regime; whereas the revolutionists who have 
 obtained their ideas largely from the struggle itself, believe not 
 only in a militant activity but in martyrdom for the cause. 
 Both are equally revolutionary in what they teach, but it is 
 only the political Socialists that are revolutionary in action. 
 
 There are only two courses to humanity in the minds of 
 most honest and intelligent Russians. We must either defend 
 our principles against the universe to the last drop of our blood, 
 as the majority of the Socialists demand, or with Tolstoi we 
 must abandon social as opposed to individual progress, surren- 
 der all claims to the exercise of our physical energy in behalf 
 of our principles, and become with him non-resistant to evil. 
 
450 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 We must either devote ourselves whole-heartedly and aggres- 
 sively to the service of our conception of the welfare of society, 
 whatever it may be, and so hope also for the best possible devel- 
 opment of each of society's members, or we must devote our- 
 selves first of all to our own perfecting and expect with Tolstoi 
 that the best social results will follow. We must either make 
 the great social cause the first business of each of us, as Maeter- 
 linck has lately so brilliantly urged, or beginning at the other 
 end we. must first socialise the individual with Tolstoi. In 
 either case we find a religious ideal that gives equal account 
 to the individual and society, that re-creates the individual 
 and gives hini a chance through social service to feel at home 
 in the world and at one with the race. 
 
 I have traced briefly the social principles that the Russians 
 are dying for, I have shown the new conception of life itself 
 that is arising out of the revolution of social ideas. Russia 
 has to offer the world something far greater even than a better 
 and truer social philosophy or a larger conception and feeling 
 about life; she is raising a new goal for all human endeavour. 
 No Russian would consider it a misfortune that Maeterlinck and 
 not one of their own compatriots has best expressed this imagina- 
 tive striving after a social goal that lay beyond our own compre- 
 hension, for Russians, as has been said at the beginning, are 
 international, not merely patriotic in their feelings, and inter- 
 national above all in their ready assimilation of the world's 
 best thoughts. 
 
 Maeterlinck, who after Tolstoi is perhaps the most popular 
 of all living serious writers, has seized the very soul of this 
 revolutionary nation; indeed, we can have little doubt that he 
 had the great revolutionary movement of the times in mind 
 when he wrote his brilliant essay on "Our Social Duty." 
 
 "What are we to do in the present state of society?" asks 
 the great Belgian, and answers that there can be no question 
 about destroying it. The most spiritual argument against over- 
 throwing the present society is, he thinks, that of those who 
 ask only for a few years of respite on the ground that the great 
 social question, with the onward march of science, will solve 
 itself and render useless all the difficult sacrifices that justice 
 now demands of men; but he denies this argument and refuses 
 
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 451 
 
 this respite. Man must fulfil his organic duty, he says; he 
 must play the r61e written for him by nature. He writes: 
 
 Humanity has appointed us to gather that which stands on the horizon. 
 It has given us instructions which it does not behoove us to discuss. It 
 distributes its forces as it thinks right. At every crossway on the road 
 that leads to the future, it has placed, against each of us, ten thousand 
 men to guard the past ; let us therefore have no fear lest the fairest towers 
 of former days be insufficiently defended. We are only too naturally 
 inclined to temporise, to shed tears over inevitable ruins; this is the 
 greatest of our trespasses . 
 
 Let us not say to ourselves that the best truth always lies in moderation, 
 in the fair average. This would perhaps be so if the majority of men did 
 not think, did not hope, upon a much lower plane than is needful. That 
 is why it behooves the others to think and hope upon a higher plane 
 than seems reasonable. The average, the fair moderation of to-day, 
 will be the least human of things to-morrow. At the time of the Spanish 
 Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the just medium was cer- 
 tainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; 
 extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should 
 bum none at all. It is the same to-day with the question of marriage, 
 of love, of religion, of criminal justice, and so on. Has not mankind yet 
 lived long enough to realise that it is always the extreme idea, that is J / 
 the highest idea, the idea at the summit of thought, that is right? At 
 the present moment, the most reasonable opinion on the subject of our 
 social question invites us to do all that we can gradually to diminish 
 inevitable inequalities and distribute happiness more equitably. Extreme 
 opinion demands instantly integral division, the suppression of property, 
 obligatory labour, and the rest. We do not yet know how these demands 
 will be realised; but it is already quite certain that very simple circum- 
 stances will one day make them appear as natural as the suppression of 
 the right of primogeniture or of the privileges of the nobility. It is 
 important, in these questions of the dtiration of a species and not of a 
 people or an individual, that we should not limit ourselves to the experi- 
 ence of history. What it confirms and what it denies moves in an 
 insignificant circle. The truth, in this case, lies much less in our reason, 
 which is always turned toward the past, than in our imagination, which 
 sees further than the future . . . 
 
 Let us listen only to the experience that urges us on: it is always 
 higher than that which throws or keeps us back. Let us reject all the 
 counsels of the past that do not turn us toward the future. This is 
 what was admirably understood, perhaps for the first time in history, 
 by certain men of the French Revolution ; and that is why this revolution 
 is the one that did the greatest and the most lasting things. Here, this 
 experience teaches us that, contrary to all that occurs in the affairs of 
 daily life, it is above all important to destroy. In every social progress 
 the great and the only difficult work is the destruction of the past 
 
452 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 And let us not fear that we may go too fast. If, at certain hours, we 
 seem to be rushing at a headlong and dangerous pace, this is to counter- 
 balance unjustifiable delays and to make up for time lost during centuries 
 of inactivity. 
 
 We are certain that almost to a man all the great parties 
 and individuals that are driving forward Russia's great revolu- 
 tionary movement could sign this confession of faith. Nearly 
 all have seen in the life around them not only the evolutionary, 
 but the revolutionary, truths ; nearly all value the life of the com- 
 ing generations more than they do that of the months and years 
 in which they happen to be living ; nearly all are listening only to 
 the higher experience and are following the greater expediency. 
 None have the belittling fear that society may go too fast. To 
 them as to Maeterlinck social duty is a religious faith. 
 
 The Russians have not an over-confident nature, and this 
 is why in their great crisis they have studied so carefully, so 
 sympathetically and profoundly the histories and literature of 
 all other countries to find if there is not a great and helpful 
 truth that can aid Russia now. They have found many such 
 truths and made them their own, and it is because of their open- 
 mindedness and sympathy that they have now rather to teach 
 humanity than to learn from it, and that the world is listening 
 for their message. For a generation and more, especially during 
 the last few years, they have been hearing and assimilating the 
 world's best thought and experience — as no people that ever 
 went before them. Maeterlinck's stirring appeal to social revolu- 
 tion is not received as it is in other countries as new, startling, 
 and sensational, but rather as a perfectly accurate and true 
 expression of what the Russians already feel. And this is 
 Russia's message — not the words of any individual, not the 
 principles of any party, but the daily thoughts and feelings and 
 actions of a people ready to die for what they think and feel ; 
 a message involved in every living speech or writing, in every 
 great deed, a message that goes out from Russia to travel 
 around the world, to become implanted and to take root among 
 all peoples and individuals that deserve and will win a share in 
 the new civilisatioa of which the Russian Revolution is perhaps 
 the dawn. 
 
APPENDIX 
 AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
NOTE A 
 
 THE BASIS FOR RUSSIA'S CONSTITUTIONAL ILLUSIONS 
 
 THE czar's MANIFESTO OF OCTOBER I7, I905. (OCTOBER 30, 
 1905 WESTERN calendar) 
 
 We, Nicholas IL, by God's Grace Emperor and Autocrat 
 of all the Russias, Czar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, 
 and so forth, announce to our loyal subjects: The disturbances 
 and movements in oiu* principal cities and numerous other 
 places in our realm fill our heart with great and intense anguish. 
 The happiness of the Russian Ruler is inseparably bound with the 
 happiness of the people and the pain of the people is the pain of 
 the Ruler. From the present conditions there may arise a deep 
 national disturbance and danger for the integrity and unity 
 of our empire. 
 
 The high duty of our mission as Ruler compels us to bestir 
 ourselves with our whole might and power to hasten the 
 cessation of these disorders that are so dangerous for the State. 
 
 While we have ordered the proper officials to take measures 
 to allay the direct manifestations of disorder, riots and deeds 
 of violence and for the protection of the peaceful population 
 which is striving to quietly fulfil all of the duties imposed 
 upon it, we have at the same time recognised it as indispensable 
 in order to accomplish successfully the general measures for 
 the calming of public life to give to the activity of the highest 
 officials of the Government a unified direction. We obligate 
 the Government to fulfil our unchangeable will as follows: 
 
 1. The population is to be given the inviolable foundation of 
 civil rights based on the actual inviolability of the person, 
 freedom of belief, of speech, of organisation, and meeting. 
 
 2. Without interrupting the elections already ordered for the 
 State Duma and as far as the shortness of the time at our 
 disposition for the calling of the first Duma allows — such classes 
 
 455 
 
4S6 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 of the population which are now altogether shut out from the 
 right of suffrage, are to be called to participate in the Duma, 
 upon which the working out of the principle of universal suffrage 
 will be left to the new legislative body. 
 
 3. As an unchangeable principle it is declared that no law 
 can be put into effect without the consent of the Duma of the 
 State and that the elected representatives of the population 
 will be guaranteed the possibility of an effective share in the 
 revision of the legality of the commands of officials appointed 
 by us. 
 
 We rely on all true sons of Russia to reflect concerning their 
 duty to the Fatherland to work together for the cessation of 
 the present unheard of disturbances of order, and to place 
 all their powers along with ourselves at the disposal of the 
 Cause of the restoration of order and peace in the Fatherland. 
 Given at Peterhof on the 17th October, 1905, in the eleventh 
 year of om- reign. 
 
 (Signed) Nicholas. 
 
NOTE B 
 
 THE REPLY OF THE FIRST DUMA TO THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE 
 
 MAY, 1906 
 
 Your Majesty: 
 
 In a speech addressed to the representatives of the people 
 it pleased your Majesty to announce your resolution to keep 
 unchanged the decree by which the people were assembled to 
 carry out legislative functions in co6peration with their 
 Monarch. The State Duma sees in this solemn promise of the 
 Monarch to the people a lasting pledge for the strengthening 
 and the further development of legislative procedure in strict 
 conformity with constitutional principles. The State Duma,, 
 on its side, will direct all its efforts toward perfecting the 
 principles of national representation and will present for your 
 Majesty's confirmation a law for national representation, based 
 in accordance with the manifest will of the people, upon 
 principles of universal suffrage. 
 
 Your Majesty's summons to us to cooperate in a work which 
 shall be useful to the country finds an echo in the hearts of all 
 the members of the State Duma. The State Duma, made up 
 of representatives of all classes and all races inhabiting Russia,, 
 is united in a warm desire to regenerate Russia and to create 
 within her a new order, based upon the peaceful cooperation of 
 all classes and races, upon the firm foundation of civic liberty. 
 
 But the State Duma deems it its duty to declare that while 
 prese^it conditions exist such reformation is impossible. 
 
 The country recognises that the ulcer in our present regime 
 is in the arbitrary power of officials who stand between the 
 Czar and the people, and seized with a common impulse the 
 coimtry has loudly declared that reformation is possible only 
 upon the basis of freedom of action and the participation by 
 the nation itself in the exercise of the legislative power and 
 the control of the executive. In the Manifesto of October 17,. 
 
 457 
 
458 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 1905, your Majesty was pleased to announce from the summit 
 of the throne a firm determination to employ these very 
 principles as the foundation for Russia's future, and the entire 
 nation hailed these good tidings with a universal cry of joy. 
 
 Yet the very first days of freedom were darkened by the 
 heavy affliction into which the country was thrown by those 
 who would bar the path leading to the Czar; those who by 
 trampling down the very fundamental principles of the imperial 
 Manifesto of October 17, 1905, overwhelmed the land with the 
 disgrace of organised massacres, military reprisals, and 
 imprisonments without trial. 
 
 The impression of these recent administrative acts has been 
 felt so keenly by the people that no pacification of the country 
 is possible until the people are assured that henceforth arbitrary 
 acts of officials shall cease, nor be longer shielded by the name 
 of your Majesty ; until all the ministers shall be held responsible 
 to the representatives of the people and that the administration 
 in each step of State service shall be reformed accordingly. 
 
 Sire: The idea of completely freeing the Monarch from 
 responsibility can be implanted in the mind of the nation only 
 by making the ministers responsible to the people. Only 
 a ministry fully trusted by the majority of the Duma can 
 establish confidence in the Government ; and only in the presence 
 of such confidence is the peaceful and regular work of the 
 State Duma possible. But above all it is most needful to free 
 Russia from the operation of exceptional laws for so-called 
 ''special and extraordinary protection," and "martial law," 
 under cover of which the arbitrary authority of irresponsible 
 officials has grown up and still continues to grow. 
 
 Side by side with the establishment of the principle of 
 responsibility of the administration to the representatives 
 of the people, it is indispensable, for the successful work of 
 "the Duma, that there should be implanted, and definitely 
 adopted, the fundamental principle of popular representation 
 based on the cooperation of the Monarch with the people, as 
 the only source of legislative power. Therefore all barriers 
 between the Imperial power and the people must be removed. 
 No branch of legislative power should ever be closed to the 
 inspection of the representative of the people, in cooperation 
 
APPENDIX 45^ 
 
 with the Monarch. The State Duma considers it its duty 
 to state to your Majesty, in the name of the people, that the 
 whole nation, with true inspiration and energy, with genuine 
 faith in the near prosperity of the country, will only then 
 fulfil its work of reformation, when the Council of State, 
 which stands between it and the throne, shall cease to be made 
 up, even in part, of members who have been appointed instead 
 of being elected; when the law of collecting taxes shall be 
 subject to the will of the representatives of the people; and 
 when there shall be no possibility, by any special enactment, 
 of limiting the legislative jurisdiction of the representatives 
 of the people. The State Duma also considers it inconsistent 
 with the vital interests of the people that any bill imposing 
 taxes, when once passed by the Dtmia, should be subject to 
 amendment on the part of any body which is not representative 
 of the mass of tax-payers. 
 
 In the domain of its future legislative activity the State Duma, 
 performing the duty definitely imposed upon it by the peo- 
 ple, deems it necessary to provide the country, without delay, 
 with a strict law providing for the inviolability of the per- 
 son, freedom of conscience, liberty of speech, freedom of the 
 press, freedom of association, convinced that without the strict 
 observance of these principles, the foundation of which was 
 laid in the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, no social reform can 
 be realised. The Duma also considers it necessary to secure 
 for all citizens the right of petition to the people's representatives. 
 The State Duma has further the inflexible conviction that 
 neither liberty nor order can be made firm and secure except on 
 the broad foundation of equality before the law of all citizens 
 without exception. Therefore the State Duma will establish 
 a law for the perfect equality before the law of all citizens, 
 abolishing all limitations dependent upon estate, nationality, 
 religion and sex. The Duma, however, while striving to free 
 the country from the binding fetters of administrative guardian- 
 ship and leaving the limitation of the liberty of the citizen to 
 the independent judicial authorities, still deems the application 
 of capital punishment, even in accordance with a legal sentence, 
 as inadmissible. A death sentence should never be pronounced. 
 The Duma holds that it has the right to proclaim, as the 
 
4ek> RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 unanimous desire of the people, that a day should come when a 
 law forever abolishing capital punishment here shall be estab- 
 lished. In anticipation of that law the country to-day is looking 
 to your Majesty for a suspension of all death sentences. 
 
 The investigation of the needs of the rural population and the 
 undertaking of legislative measures to meet those wants will 
 be considered among the first problems of the State Duma. 
 The most numerous part of the population, the hard working 
 peasants, impatiently await the satisfaction of their acute want 
 of land and the first Russian State Duma would be recreant 
 to its duty were it to fail to establish a law to meet this primary 
 want by resorting to the use of lands belonging to the State, 
 the Crown, the royal family, and monastic and Church lands; 
 also private landed property on the principle of the law of 
 eminent domain. 
 
 The Duma also deems it necessary to create laws giving 
 equality to the peasantry, removing the present degrading 
 limitations which separate them from the rest of the people. 
 The Duma considers the needs of working people as pressing, 
 and that there should be legislative measures taken for the 
 protection of hired labour. The first step in that direction 
 ought to be to give freedom to the hired labourer in all branches 
 of work, freedom to organise, freedom to act and to secure 
 his material and spiritual welfare. 
 
 The Duma will also deem it its duty to employ all its forces 
 in raising the standard of intelligence, and above all it will 
 occupy itself in framing laws for free and general education. 
 
 Along with the aforementioned measures the Duma will pay 
 special attention to the just distribution of the burden of taxa- 
 tion, unjustly imposed at present upon the poorer classes of 
 inhabitants ; and to the reasonable expenditure of the means 
 of the State. Not less vital in legislative work will be a funda- 
 mental reform of local government and of self-government, 
 extending the latter to all the inhabitants upon the principles 
 of universal suffrage. 
 
 Bearing in mind the heavy burden imposed upon the people 
 by your Majesty's army and navy, the Duma will secure princi- 
 ples of right and justice in those branches of the service. 
 
 Finally, the Duma deems it necessary to point out as one of 
 
APPENDIX 461 
 
 the problems pressing for solution the long-crying demands 
 of the different nationalities. Russia is an empire inhabited 
 by many different races and nationalities. Their spiritual 
 tmion is possible only by meeting the needs of each one of them, 
 and by preserving and developing their national characteristics. 
 The Duma will try to satisfy those reasonable wants. 
 
 Your Majesty : On the threshold of our work stands one 
 question which agitates the soul of the whole nation ; and which 
 agitates us, the chosen and elected of the people, and which 
 deprives us of the possibility of undisturbedly proceeding 
 toward the first part of our legislative activity. The first word 
 uttered by the State Duma met with cries of sympathy from the 
 whole Duma. It was the word amnesty. The country thirsts 
 for amnesty, to be extended to all those whose offences were 
 the result of either religious or political convictions; and all 
 persons implicated in the agrarian movement. These are 
 demands of the national conscience which cannot be overlooked ; 
 the fulfilment of which cannot be longer delayed. Sire, the 
 Duma expects of you full political amnesty as the first pledge of 
 mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Czar 
 and his people. 
 
NOTE C 
 
 THB FIRST NATIONAL ASSEMBLY'S DECLARATION OP 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 THE VIBORG MANIFESTO. JULY, 1906 
 
 To THE People: 
 
 The Duma has been dissolved by the Ukase of the 8th of July. 
 You have elected us as your representatives ; you have elected 
 us and you have given us instructions to struggle for land and 
 liberty. According to your instructions and to our duty we 
 have drawn up these laws to assure liberty to the people. We 
 have demanded the resignation of irresponsible ministers who 
 transgress the laws with immunity, suppressing freedom. 
 
 But first of all we wished to formulate a law relative to the 
 distribution of land to agricultural labourers, a law which 
 demanded the division for this purpose of the lands belonging to 
 the Crown, the monasteries and the clergy, and the expropriation 
 of private estates. The Government considered this law as 
 inadmissible, and when the Duma again presented its resolution 
 in a more urgent manner on this subject of forced expropriation 
 the Duma was dissolved. 
 
 The Government promises to summon a new Duma in seven 
 months. Russia will have then to remain for seven long months 
 without a people's assembly at a moment when the population 
 finds itself a few steps from ruin and when industry and 
 commerce are tottering. When all the country is filled with 
 a feverish agitation and when the ministers have definitely 
 shown their incapacity to do justice to the popular needs. 
 
 During the seven months the Government will act arbitrarily 
 and will fight against the popular movement to obtain a, pliant 
 and obedient Duma. If it should succeed , however, in completely 
 suppressing the popular movement the Government will not 
 convoke the Duma at all. 
 
 462 
 
APPENDIX 463 
 
 Citizens, rise for the defence of your rights to a popular 
 assembly which are being trampled under foot and for the 
 defence of the Duma. Russia must not remain a single day 
 without popular representation. You have the means of 
 procuring this representation. The Government has without 
 the consent of the representations of the people no right to levy 
 taxes on the people nor to call the people into military service. 
 Consequently, now that the Duma has been dissolved, you are 
 fully justified in giving neither money nor soldiers. If, however, 
 the Government should contract loans to procure an income, 
 these loans contracted without the consent of your popular 
 representatives are null and void. Russian people will never 
 recognise them and it will not feel itself called upon to repay 
 them. As a consequence until the popular representatives are 
 called together do not give a kopeck to the throne, nor soldiers 
 to the army. Be firm in your refusal. No power can resist 
 the united and inflexible will of a nation. 
 
 Citizens, in this obligatory and inevitable struggle your 
 representatives will be with you. 
 
NOTE D 
 
 ONE OF THE CZAR's CONFESSIONS 
 
 This secret document, one of the many of which the revo- 
 lutionists have stolen a copy, shows how Russia gets her 
 best, most accurate and irrefutable knowledge of the true 
 character and statesmanship of her Czar. The marginal re- 
 marks were written by the Czar's own hand. The report, it will be 
 noticed, was issued just before the close of the Manchurian war. 
 
 Report of the Controller of the State for the year 1904. Dated 
 6th August, I go ^ N ^41. 
 
 1. The Controller has noticed that the number It is necessary 
 and quantity of the materials, ammunition, 
 provisions, etc. in the Army Corps do not correspond 
 
 to the standards set by the law. The Controller 
 of the State proposes to ask the Minister of War 
 to give an account of this matter. 
 
 2. The projectiles manufactured in the Perm Sad but true 
 workshops according to the specifications of the 
 
 Krupp Company have shown a poor quality during 
 the trials. 
 
 3. The ammunition of the 5th and 6th Siberian Difficult to believe 
 Corps are altogether exhausted. In one of the 
 
 travelling cars they have not been renewed since 
 the campaign of 1877-78. 
 
 4. In the 4th Corps the winter shoes are in This is disgrace- 
 fripfhtful condition; the soles are made from ful; how many 
 chips of wood covered with strips of leather. legs have been 
 
 frozen as a result ? 
 
 5. The financial results of the activity of the It is time to or- 
 State workshops in the Urals are very disappointing, ganise the State 
 the quantity of their product is insufficient and workshops of the 
 their qualities do not correspond to the needs of the Urals in a manner 
 Ministry of War. to render them 
 
 useful to the State 
 
 7. The construction of the railway^s of the State (This artide was 
 demands enormous sums. The principal cause: twice underlined 
 The contractors give their rights to other persons, by the Czar) 
 receiving 20 to 40 per cent, for having conceded 
 them. 
 
 464 
 
APPENDIX 46s 
 
 9. The Controller thinks that the management This is the way it 
 of the State railways gives insufficient results seems to me too 
 because the members of the Central Administration 
 who receive high salaries are not interested in 
 the increase of the railway revenue. He proposes 
 to divide the salaries into two parts, first, a constant, 
 second, varying according to the increase of the 
 railways. 
 
NOTE E 
 
 EXAMPLES OF AUTOCRATIC LEGISLATION 
 
 S. Maruda, in the Constitutional Democratic organ, gives 
 these examples of the delay and arbitrariness of "legislation" 
 without an elected assembly: 
 
 In 1 88 1 was begun the revision of the criminal laws. At length 
 in 1903 the new code was finally affirmed. But only a few 
 sections, those differing least from the old ones, were put into 
 execution. 
 
 In 1882 the civil code was ordered to be revised. After 
 twenty -two years the work had not gotten further than a project 
 for a new code. 
 
 In 1 88 1 the law about courts-martial and the so-called ** states'^ 
 of "strengthened" and "extraordinary" defence which are 
 almost in universal use as supreme over all civil law at the 
 present moment, was first "temporarily" introduced for not 
 longer than half a year (an apology for its outrageous character), 
 then extended year after year for twenty-seven years — to the 
 present moment. 
 
 In 1895, perhaps partly as the result of George Kennan's 
 book, the Czar ordered a revision of the laws about exile. After 
 twelve years this order is not yet completed, and has just been 
 put into execution in its uncompleted form. 
 
 The laws about doctors and veterinaries progressed so slowly 
 that before their completion technical changes in science had 
 made them obviously absurd, and it was not even tried to put 
 them in execution. But worst of all was the fate of the law 
 that was necessary above all others to prevent corruption — 
 namely, that concerning the control and inspection of official 
 expenditure. 
 
 In 1866 began the work of gathering material for a new 
 inspection law. Perhaps this, too, was partly the result of a 
 book — Gogol's satirical masterpiece, "The Inspector," that 
 
 466 
 
APPENDIX 467 
 
 had drawn the whole world's attention to the almost universal 
 corruption of Russia's official caste. With great pains and 
 trouble the project was at last written out, but it contained 
 nothing new. Besides, it was not "approved," and the 
 controller is in no better position than before to put a check 
 to the bureaucratic robbery. Indeed matters are worse, for 
 in 1862 the minister of finance was deprived of the right of 
 distributing the public moneys at his will, according to one or 
 another paragraph of the laws, while this year the minister, 
 Kokovzev, has again claimed this right. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 There are very few books and articles bearing directly on 
 the present Russian situation in English, French, or German. 
 The writer has not made a very thorough search but, aside 
 from daily papers, especially the London Tribune, the London 
 Times, and Vorwdrts of Berlin, and the Humanite of Paris, 
 all of which he has found useful — he has discovered almost 
 nothing. If the student wishes to go deeper, he must either 
 read Russian or employ a translator. In either case he would 
 probably be obliged also to transfer his labours to Russia, 
 where he would of course at once strike an enormous literature. 
 In mentioning the few works and articles that follow, I refer 
 only to such as bear directly on the present situation; there 
 is a much more abundant literature in all modem languages 
 on conditions that existed before the beginning of the present 
 revolutionary movement. 
 
 More full and reliable than the reports to be obtained from 
 the daily papers I have mentioned have been the frequent 
 articles of VEuropeen (defunct) and Le Courier Europeen 
 of Paris, and especially of the Correspondance Russe, published 
 at Berlin, London, and Paris during the last two years by an 
 important group of Russian liberals, giving in a brief form several 
 times a week invaluable documents and statistical information 
 about the political situation and the revolutionary movement. 
 
 On the general situation the only book of first rate importance 
 
 , in English, French or German is the work of Professor Paul 
 
 /f Milyoukov, "The Russian Crisis," which describes in a very 
 
 V satisfactory way the situation at the moment at the beginning 
 
 of the present revolutionary movement in 1905. Another 
 
 interesting general work (in German) is "Russen iiber Russ- 
 
 Vland," which contains articles by the best Russian authorities 
 
 on many phases of the present situation — as for example, an 
 
 article by Ozerov on finance, by Struve on politics, by Komilov 
 
 on the peasants, and by Amfiteatrov on the women of Russia. 
 
 468 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 469 
 
 Two books in partictilar have been very useful to me in their 
 exposure of the inner workings of the Government; the "Mem- 
 oiren eines Russischen Gouvemeurs" by Prince Urussov, and 
 "Une Page de la Contre-Re volution Russe" by Semenoff. I 
 believe that both of these books are now obtainable in English 
 translations. 
 
 On the economic conditions of the country, there is a group 
 of Russians in America that have produced their numerous 
 interesting articles in our scientific and popular reviews. The 
 writers of these articles, Messrs. Hourwich, Simkhovitch, and 
 N. I. Stone, are known as authorities on these questions in Russia 
 as well as in the United States, where they now reside. I must also 
 mention the very useful monograph of the United States Depart- 
 ment of Statistics on Commercial Russia, prepared under the able 
 governmental statistician, Jacobson, also a Russian by birth. 
 
 On the Russian parties themselves, we have some very 
 interesting publications in French. For several years. La 
 Tribune Russe ( 83 Rue de la Sant^, Paris) has given full monthly 
 accounts of the whole Socialist revolutionary movement. The 
 Socialist Revolutionary Party has also published a very full 
 report for the last International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart 
 — to be obtained from the International Socialist Bureau at 
 Brussels. Lastly, I recommend the reader to Prince Kropot- 
 kin's able work in English on Russian Literature, which is not 
 only the best book we have on the subject, but also shows from a 
 passionately sympathetic standpoint the revolutionary character 
 of Russian literature from its first beginnings about a century ago. 
 
 For pictures of the condition during the recent revolution- 
 ary disturbances, we have the excellently and truthfully written 
 books of several of the most capable correspondents. Among 
 these are **The Dawn in Russia," by Nevinson, "The Red 
 Reign," by Durland, and two similar works, though not written 
 by correspondents, "A Year in Russia," by Baring, and "Russia 
 in Revolution," by Penis, which describe the revolutionary 
 movement just at the moment of the beginning of the recent 
 disturbances. I also recommend a number of the articles in 
 Collier's and Harper's Weekly by Albert Edwards and by Harold 
 Williams, as describing accurately and from a broad standpoint 
 the situation during the heat of the conflict. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absakov, 35 
 
 Address to throne, 457 
 
 Agrarian uprisings, 1.^1, 265; dis- 
 order, 222; incendiarism, 249; 
 warfare, 255-258 
 
 Agriculture, 81 ; American farming, 
 138; estates of nobility, 181; 
 features of, 182; crisis of, 211 
 
 Aladdin, 28, 135, 228, 319; in 
 America, 311 
 
 Alcohol industry, 118, 236: mo- 
 nopoly of, 322 
 
 Alexander II., 34, 35, 229 
 
 Alexander III., 24 
 
 Alexinsky, 229, 321, 369 
 
 America, 35; political institutions 
 of, 3; wages, 190 
 
 Andreief, 36 
 
 Anikine, 209, 212, 335; at Inter- 
 national Congress in London, 
 432; in first Duma, 329 
 
 "Annals of a Sportsman," 195 
 
 Appeal of October, 1905, 76 
 
 Apraxin, 23, 8i 
 
 Army, 262-267, 300-302 ; common 
 soldiers, 384; mercenaries, 386; 
 military revolt, 385; mutiny, 
 362; officers' desertion of, 383; 
 recruits sworn against Czar, 387; 
 revolutionary organisations in, 
 
 Austna, 105. 
 
 Authors. See Andriev.Chisko, Gorki, 
 Korolenko, Turgeniev, Tolstoi 
 
 Autocracy, 11, 90, 129, 193; con- 
 stitutional government versus, 
 40; legislation, 466 {See also 
 Czarism) 
 
 Baltic provinces, 23 
 
 Bebel, 437 
 
 Berdyaiev, 447 
 
 Bessarabia, 26, 68 
 
 Beveridge, Senator, book on 
 
 Russian peasantry, 148, 149, 150 
 Bibliography, 468 
 Bielostock, 25,26; pogrom of, 47-50 
 Bismarck, niling of Prussia in 1863, 
 
 4x7 
 
 Bobnnsky, 23, 93, 303 
 
 Budberg, 389 
 
 Budget, 107, 176 
 
 Bulgakov, conception of poKtical 
 
 parties, 448 
 Bureaucracy, 29, 38, 39, 103, 
 
 105, 109; anarchy of, 58 {See 
 
 also Czarism). 
 
 Cariyle, 8 
 
 Catharine II., 34, 109, 193 
 
 Caucasus, 28 
 
 Censorship. See Press 
 
 Charles IX., 27 
 
 Church, 3, 4; council, 395; league 
 of workers of church reform, 
 396; loyalty of, 224. {See also 
 Russian Church, origin of) 
 
 Clergy, 396 
 
 Collapse of 1903, 3 
 
 Communal ownership, 329, 330 
 
 Commune, 332 
 
 Communism, 159 
 
 Constitution, 3, 40, 88 
 
 Constitutional Democratic Party, 
 92, 287, 297; acts against its own 
 principle, 302; mistake of, 293; 
 opportunity of, 298; severance 
 of unity, 288 
 
 Constitutional Democrats, 298; 
 course of, 276 ; measures adopted 
 by, 225; monarch defence of, 
 135; reforms proposed, 211; 
 social reform, 208 
 
 Cooperation. See Government 
 coojjerative stores 
 
 Council of Labour, 217, 282; pro- 
 gramme of, 263 
 
 Court, 37 
 
 Crimean war, 34, 115 
 
 Crops, 84 
 
 Czar, 4, 6, 31, 44, 50, 60, 63, 67; 
 absolutism, 89 ; chief support of, 
 84; common people, 216; 
 early life of, 21-23; enmity 
 to Jews, 26; lineage of, 108; 
 promises of, 9, 11 
 
 Czarism, 3, 61, 75, 85, loi, 447; 
 Duma, 47; economic failure of» 
 
 473 
 
474 
 
 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Czarism — Continued 
 
 ii6; members of court, 37; 
 nature of, 1 1 ; opposition to, 41, 
 260, 423; preservation of, 39, 
 40, 89; pretentions of, 182, since 
 dawn of history, 63 ; support of, 
 17, 122 
 
 Czar's encouragement of massacre, 
 52, 60; Manifesto of October 
 19, 1905, 455, 456; statement 
 concerning the Jews, 82; tele- 
 gram to official organ of League 
 of Russian Men, 58 
 
 Decembrists of 1825, 428 
 Deduline, 23 
 
 Dolgorukov, 36, 84, 95, 273 
 Doukhobors, 156 
 Drink. See Alcohol industry- 
 Duma, 5, 44, 52, 89, 228, 271; 
 centre of democratic tendencies, 
 392; dissolution of, 312; Jewish 
 members, 73 ; landlords, 52 ; peas- 
 ants' demands, 215 
 Duma, first, 16, 208, 228, 329; 
 unity of, 278, 279. (See also 
 Address to throne) 
 Duma, second, 282, 285, 3 29; consti- 
 tutional assembly, 315. (See also 
 Stolypine and Zeretelly) 
 Duma, third, 68, 72, 134, 273, 
 332, budget, 294; drink prob- 
 lem, 323; elections, 325; ele- 
 ments of, 292; purpose of, 307 
 
 Education, 321, 462. (See also 
 
 Masses) 
 Election law, 108, 128, 312, 324, 325 
 Emancipation of serfs, 137, 192. 
 
 (See also Landlords' gain) 
 Exports, 121, 178, 186 
 Expropriation, 67, 211 
 
 Famine, 122, 177, 178 
 
 Farming, 180, 186; implements, 183 
 
 Finland, 89 
 
 Finns, 26 
 
 "For Czar and Fatherland," 54 
 
 Foreign loans, 12, 115, 300; cred- 
 itors, 124; international rela- 
 tions, 416 
 
 Foreign newspapers, 145 
 
 France, 8, 15, 422 
 
 Freedom of speech, 462 
 
 French Revolution, 7, 34, 421 
 
 Greneral strike, 9, 13, 217, 272; 
 railway, 349 
 
 George IIL of England, 100 
 
 Germany, 106 
 
 Gershuni, 326 
 
 "Globe," 311 
 
 Gorki, 36, 413 
 
 Government, 126, 127, 227, 263, 
 264; bureaus, 38; campaigns of, 
 71; constitutional, 40; coopera- 
 tive stores, 36; despotism, 31; 
 financial position of, 123; pres- 
 ent degradation of, 181; small 
 landowners, 333; trade unions, 
 361; war waged against, 374 
 
 Grand dukes, 11, 25 
 
 Guerilla warfare, 359, 368; peas- 
 ant bands, 380 
 
 Herschelman, 23 
 
 Herzenstein, 28 
 
 Heyden, 36 
 
 Hungary, 35, 61 
 
 Holy Alliance, 34, 422 ; Synod, 393 
 
 IHodor, 76 
 
 Industry, 417 
 
 Institutions, 3 
 
 Insurrections, 12; general, 13, 15 
 
 Ivan the Terrible, 32 
 
 Japanese war, 6, 10, 25, 103; cost 
 
 of, II 
 
 Jewish question, 64, 65 ; families, 51 
 Jews, 41, 55, 74, 307; as soldiers, 
 80 ; expulsion of, 64, 65 ; massacre 
 of, 46, 54, 57, 89; occupation of , 
 66; persecution of, 84. {See also 
 Priests' advice) 
 
 Karaviev, 345 
 
 Kaulbars, 23, 27, 53, 55; position 
 
 in court, 54 
 "Kazan Peasants' Weekly," 22a 
 Kennard. See Russian peasants, 
 
 book on 
 Khristalev. See Nossar 
 Kiev, 77 
 Kipling, 443 
 Kishinev, 42, 76 
 Konovitzin, 23, 27, 52, 55 
 Korolenko, 36, 237, 238, 423; letter 
 
 to Filinon, 238-240 
 Kronstadt, 217, 377 
 Krushevan, 42, 164; massacre, 76 
 Kutler, 36, 46, 84 
 
 Labour Group, 211, 215, 258, 282, 
 284, 327, 328; solution of land 
 question, 337 
 
INDEX 
 
 475 
 
 Landlords, 90, 227, 280; gain 
 through emancipation of serf s, 204 
 
 Land question, 211, ;j2i, 368; 
 Anikine on, 432 ; division of 
 land, 205, 206; Tolstoi on, 432 
 
 Laws concerning non- Russian 
 races, 61 
 
 League of Russian Men, 54, 61, 70, 
 81, 87, 128; official organ of, 85 
 
 Lendin, 370 
 
 Letts, 26 
 
 Lithuanians, 26 
 
 Lvov, 36, 90 
 
 Lynch justice, 247, 248 
 
 Maeterlinck, 443, 452 
 
 Magazines. See "Novoe Vremya," 
 "Russian Wealth," "Sviet" 
 
 Manchuria, 10 
 
 Manifesto, 40, 43. See Czar's mani- 
 festo of October 19, 1905; and 
 Viborg manifesto 
 
 Martial law, 58, 85-87 
 
 Marx, 439 
 
 Masses, 227; democracy of, 157, 
 159; education of, 322 
 
 Massacre, 44, 45, 51, 58; Govern- 
 ment encourages, 5 1 ; of Jan- 
 uary 22, 1905, II, 85; of non- 
 Russian races, 24 
 
 Michael, Archamandrite, 36 
 
 Mill, 442 
 
 Milyoukov, 84, 96, 305 ; and the 
 enemy, 306; in America, 311; 
 early attitude toward revolu- 
 tion, 304; opportunism of, 289; 
 persecution of, 293 ; statement 
 of, 288; Stolypine, 309,316 
 
 Ministers, 5 
 
 Mohammedfan Group, 285 
 
 Monarchists' congress of July, 1907, 
 127 
 
 Morley, 441, 442 
 
 Moscow, 23, 32, 33 
 
 Nap)oleon, 421 
 
 Navy, 104, 107; mutiny of, 362 
 
 Newspapers, 58, 79, 85. {See also 
 "For Fatherland and Czar;" 
 ' ' Kazan Peasants* Weekly ; ' ' 
 Northern Star;" "Soldiers 
 Voice") 
 
 Nietsche, 443 
 
 "Northern Star," 302 
 
 Nossar, 365 
 
 Novitzki, 27, 53 
 
 "Novoe Vremya," 249 
 
 Novgorod, 32 
 
 Octobrists, 72, 89, 291 
 
 Odessa, 23, 28, 54, 85, 86; Mas- 
 sacre of, October, 1905, 27, 52 
 
 Old Believers, 156; advanced ele- 
 ment of Russian population, 411, 
 punishment of, 394 
 
 Orlov, Prince, 23, 24 
 
 Peasant, agriculture, 175; children, 
 174; dwellings, 70; women, 173 
 
 Peasant group, 159, 222 
 
 Peasantry, 130, 131; Bessarabian, 
 68; programme of, 225, 226; 
 racial hatred among, 68; 
 religious belief of, 397; revolts, 
 229-231 
 
 Peasants' Union, 24, 215, 222, 225, 
 272; Congress of 1905, 338 
 
 People's Party, 210 
 
 Peter the Great, 33, 34, 38, 112, 
 114, 125 
 
 Petrov, Father, 36, 39, 409; his 
 letter, 402-404 
 
 Pobiedonostzev, 22, 78 
 
 Poland, 23, 61 
 
 Poles, II, 26, 76, 89 
 
 Police, 44, 47. Si> 223, 249 
 
 Press, 73, 224; foreign, 10; 
 Government newspapers, 85 
 
 Priesthood, 36, 129 
 
 Priests, 154, 155, 224; advice con- 
 cerning the Jews, 395 ; persecu- 
 tion of, 397 {See also Michael, 
 Archamandrite, Petrov, Father) 
 
 Prisons, 84, 236 
 
 Progressists or Peaceful Regener- 
 ators, 135 
 
 Prussia, 61, 106-109 
 
 Pureschevitch, 43, 73, 302 
 
 Railroad Union, 218, 274, 282; in 
 Siberia, 13; strike, 217, 265 
 
 Red Cross, 80, 104 
 
 Rousseau, 428, 429 
 
 Russia, 105, no, 165, 332, 419; 
 future of humanity, 3; powers 
 foreign, 416; present struggle, 
 18; private income, 124; pro- 
 found spiritual upheaval, 438; 
 regeneration, 8; tradition, na- 
 tional and political, 4 
 
 Russian assembly, 70; church, 
 origin of, 154; development of 
 the, 5 ; farmer, 121, '* Russian 
 Flag," 28, 10 1, 283; Government, 
 126; "Russian Peasant," by 
 'ennard, 150; people and 
 Czarism, 415; people's new con- 
 
 I& 
 
476 
 
 RUSSIA'S MESSAGE 
 
 Russian assembly — Continued 
 ception of life, 438; problem uni- 
 versal in its applications, 419 
 
 Russian Revolution, 209, 213 ; dawn 
 of new civilisation, 452; Finnish 
 people, 359; goal of, 382; inter- 
 national capital, 369, 415; 
 literature of, 221; problem of, 
 418; spirit among working 
 people, 282 
 
 Russian Revolutionary Party, 
 265; activities of, 224 
 
 Russian Revolutionists, 44, 265; 
 activities of, 224 
 
 Russian Revolution movements, 
 36, 277, 287, 288; Duma, 9; 
 in Poland, 360 
 
 Russia's confidence in future, 17; 
 fight, 417; Magna Charta, 279; 
 message, 414, 452; rulers, 413; 
 social problem, 449 ; success, 267 ; 
 tragedy, 14 
 
 St. Bartholomew's eve, 27 
 St. Petersburg, massacre of Jan- 
 uary, 1905, 45 
 Schools, 10, 107 
 Senate, 37, 107 
 Sergius, 23, 96 
 Siedlice, 49 
 Social Democratic Party, 215, 301; 
 
 Deputies, prosecution of, 367; 
 
 guerilla bands of, 38 
 Social Democrats, 302 ; programme 
 
 of, 318 
 Socialism, 448; among Russian 
 
 working men, 210; view of in 
 
 Russia, 435 
 Socialist commune, 161; land 
 
 reform, 329; nationalist party, 
 
 343. 
 
 Socialist Revolutionary Party, 215, 
 325; army, 382; demands of, 
 326; on verge of fundamental 
 change, 379; peasantry, 325, 
 388; programme of, 335, 336 
 
 Socialist Revolutionists, 378; cam- 
 paign of, 272, 273; execution of 
 officials by, 375 
 
 "Soldiers Voice," 383, 385 
 
 State, finances, 334; religion, 23; 
 
 slavery, 99; socialism, 126 
 Stolypine, 48, 87, 89, 99, 105, m; 
 
 reform, 179; second Duma, 297; 
 
 strikes, 351, 358 
 Subbotich, General, 30, 36, 384 
 Suffrage, 12; universal, 280 
 
 Tariff, 185 
 
 Tartars, 1 1 
 
 Taxation, 38, 228, 334 
 
 Taxes, 11, 15, 175, 176, 203; Jews 
 
 80, 81; Peasants, 205 
 Tchaykovsky, 311 
 Teachers, 96; condition of, 95; 
 
 salaries of, 321 
 Tichamirov, 66, 67, 75 
 Tolstoi, 36, 46, 156, 408, 414, 427, 
 
 432, 434; and Marxism, 431 
 Trepov, 44, 82, 88 
 Trubetzkoi, 36 
 Turgeniev, 4, 96, 195 
 Turkestan, 38 
 
 Ukase, 213, 214 
 Union of Fatherland, 69, 70 
 Union of Unions, 274 
 United States, 8, 16 
 Universities, 361 
 Urussov, 26, 47, 66, 102 
 
 Viborg Manifesto, 16, 293, 282; 
 
 political nature of, 316 
 Villages, 169; quarantine of, 167 
 Von Plehve, 42, 95 
 
 Wages, 190, 350 
 
 William II., 22 
 
 Witte, 47, 219, 477; conditions of 
 
 Russian working men, 182, 354; 
 
 Czar, 23; reforms, 112, scheme 
 
 to foil revolution, 355 
 Women, 274 
 
 Zemstvos, 94, 95; congress of, 272, 
 
 27s 
 Zeretelly, 317; address, 297; decla- 
 ration against the Government, 
 319; peasants, 366 
 
 u UNlVERSf 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 
 
 University of California Library 
 
 or to the 
 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station 
 University of California 
 Richmond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 n 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 2- month loans may be renewed by calling 
 
 (510)642-6753 
 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books 
 
 to NRLF 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days 
 
 prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 MAY 1 9 199S 
 
 EB 011997 
 
 RgCEIVEU 
 
 DEC 1 1956 
 
 CIHCULATION DEP T, 
 
 20,000 (4/94) 
 
 -I 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 "Hiii 
 
 C05711764U 
 
 ^ :i 
 
 ->. ^$%