LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 KING STORK AND KING LOG
 
 KING STORK AND 
 KING LOG. A 
 
 Study of Modern Russia. By 
 STEPNIAK 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 )OWNEY & CO., 12 YORK STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, 1896. {All rights 
 reserved]
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ...... vii 
 
 I. A TAME DESPOT i 
 
 II. THE TZAR MUJIK 21 
 
 III. HESITATING ON THE CROSSWAY THE 
 
 LIBERAL PERIOD . . . . .36 
 
 IV. A TORY DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME . . 58 
 
 V. THE UPSHOT OF AUTOCRATIC DEMO- 
 CRATISMCOUNT DMITRY TOLSTOI . 70 
 
 VI. A MAN WITH A SYSTEM . . .86 
 
 VII. THE GREAT FAMINE, AND THE ECO- 
 NOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE RUSSIAN 
 PEASANTS 115 
 
 VIII. THE JEWISH QUESTION IN RUSSIA . 142 
 
 IX. THE POLES AND THE FINNS . . .195 
 
 X. THE STUNDISTS . 210
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A CERTAIN interest in Russia is one of the 
 permanent elements of English intellectual life, 
 being the result of permanent causes which do 
 not depend upon the fluctuating tide of public 
 curiosity. Two great rival States cannot pos- 
 sibly ignore each other. This interest naturally 
 grows with the daily increase of the mass of 
 people actually and intelligently participating 
 in the political life of their country. Yet it is 
 far from being due to political considerations 
 only. If with every few years England becomes 
 more truly democratic, she also becomes less 
 insular. People take a greater interest in the 
 politics, literature, social evolution of the great 
 continental nations ; foreign art obtains a foot- 
 ing in England ; foreign ideas are assimilated 
 and adapted to English life more quickly. 
 England does not keep herself so entirely to 
 herself as she did only a generation ago. She 
 imports foreign intellectual goods to a vast 
 extent ; whilst formerly she was used only to 
 export her own.
 
 viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 One important circumstance has given Russia 
 a much greater share of that broad attention 
 and study than the present state of her culture 
 would warrant. It is the growing sympathy 
 with the Russian people ; the spreading of the 
 consciousness that the Russian Government and 
 the Russian nation are two things widely apart, 
 and that whatever be the attitude of the English 
 toward the former, they have no reason to feel 
 anything but pure human sympathy for the 
 Russian people. The Society of Friends of 
 Russian Freedom, founded by Dr. Spence 
 Watson, is a body which represents most 
 thoroughlyand consistently that newlyawakened 
 generous public sentiment. During the five 
 years of its existence, it has rendered sterling 
 services to both countries in creating better 
 feelings and better understanding between the 
 two nations, and its influence will surely extend 
 much beyond the present time. It is paving 
 the way for better mutual relations between 
 the two countries in the future, when the 
 Russian people will be masters of their own 
 destinies. But in every movement consistent 
 and thorough-going bodies form only a small 
 minority in the mass of people who are more 
 or less affected by certain ideas or tendencies.
 
 INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 I need hardly say that the number of people 
 in both England and America who feel a 
 genuine interest in the Russian people is far 
 superior to that of the enthusiastic nucleus of 
 men and women who are devoting their energies 
 to winning over foreign public opinion to the 
 cause of Russian Freedom. This is proved to 
 demonstration by the existence of a whole 
 literature upon all sides of Russian life, which 
 could not be supported except by a large body 
 of readers. It has been created by a vast 
 demand, and it has had a corresponding result 
 in vastly increasing the amount of knowledge 
 of our country. But Russia is as yet too much 
 behind Europe in her politics and culture to 
 make the study of her life, history, and in- 
 stitutions a necessary part of a general educa- 
 tion, as is the case with France, Germany or 
 Italy. With the bulk of the educated English 
 people the interest in Russia does not go 
 beyond the desire to understand certain ques- 
 tions in connection with Russian life. 
 
 The Jewish persecution begins, driving out of 
 their native land a million of men, who come 
 to crowd the English labour market. The 
 English naturally want to know what is at the 
 bottom of these mediaeval barbarities. The
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 persecution of the Stundists draws their atten- 
 tion to the religious conditions of the Russian 
 people. The outbreak of a great famine, due 
 to a comparatively insignificant failure of crops, 
 puts before them the puzzle of Russian eco- 
 nomic problems. 
 
 Some complication arises in the far or in 
 the near East in Japan or in Armenia and 
 it turns out that Russian diplomacy reaps 
 where it did not sow, spoiling friends and foes 
 with equal impartiality. People become curious 
 to know why it is that Russia, which is so weak 
 within, should be so strong without. A fresh 
 move of the revolutionists revives the popular 
 curiosity about the so-called " Nihilists," who 
 are always the centre of attraction for lovers 
 of the sensational as well as for earnest 
 students. 
 
 And when the late Tzar died, all these 
 questions and many more came up together, 
 crowding upon one from all sides more quickly 
 than one could answer them. Is the new reign 
 likely to bring any change for Russia ? Will 
 the young Tzar start liberal reforms? Are 
 such reforms possible? Is Russia ripe for 
 political freedom ? Has the Tzar the power 
 to grant a constitution if he had a mind to ?
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 These are, as far as I could gather, the chief 
 points which the English wish to have 
 explained. 
 
 The book which I have the honour of pre- 
 senting to the indulgence of English readers is 
 an attempt to give a reply to all these general 
 as well as special questions, which come to 
 public notice every now and then. I have put 
 in chapters on the Jews, on Nihilism, on the 
 Famine, on the Siberian exile system, some of 
 which have been published at different times, 
 and remoulded for the present book, others 
 being new. But my chief aim was to answer 
 one general question, which is still present 
 to the public mind : how the recent change 
 of rulers is likely to affect the destinies of 
 Russia ? 
 
 The time which elapsed since the idea of the 
 book first occurred to me brought in many 
 facts bearing upon this question. 
 
 The present reign is meant to be an exact 
 facsimile of the past. This is an absurdity. 
 History does not admit of such reiteration. 
 The new reign has begun differently ; it has 
 found a different country, and it will develop 
 differently. With a ruler like Nicholas II., 
 changes are more likely to take place than with
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 any other ; because they may come not only 
 from below, but from above as well ; from the 
 fierce conflict and rivalry of the various factions 
 which are struggling for ascendency and power. 
 Under this rule autocracy is a house divided 
 against itself. The reader knows how that 
 must end. 
 
 Yet, in view of such aspirations, the study of 
 the reign of Alexander III. is of more than 
 historic interest. I have done my best to point 
 out what an ugly skeleton was hidden under its 
 Tory-democratic glamour, in order to show in 
 what direction the blind power of reaction is 
 trying to push our country. 
 
 In the concluding chapter I have tried to 
 indicate the forces which are at work under- 
 mining the edifice of autocracy, and also the 
 present attitude of the opposition. 
 
 S. STEPNIAK.
 
 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 
 
 I. 
 
 A TAME DESPOT. 
 
 THERE is one curious anomaly about the fate 
 of the late Russian Tzar. Men of some dis- 
 tinction, especially men in positions of power, 
 are usually misunderstood and misrepresented 
 in their lifetime, their death marking the line 
 after which the truth is first told about them. 
 With Alexander III. it was the very reverse. 
 
 As long as he was alive most thinking people 
 understood him quite correctly, and those 
 among them who were not compelled to silence 
 spoke of him truthfully. But immediately 
 after his death a deluge of nonsense about him 
 has come pouring upon the innocent, or rather, 
 perfectly indifferent public from the daily press. 
 And it was not the usual tribute of forgiving 
 tolerance paid to the solemnity of death. In 
 looking over the papers for the day following 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the telegram from Livadia "announcing that 
 Russia had changed rulers, -we find that the 
 long acquired notions about Alexander III. 
 found their expression in most of the English 
 papers, regardless of their political colours. 
 
 "He was not a great statesman, wrote the 
 Times, " and, unlike many autocrats, he had the 
 sense to know it. He made no pretensions to 
 originality. He had nothing of the versatility, the 
 brilliancy, or the evanescent enthusiasm of the 
 ' broad Slavonic nature.' But, if his views were 
 few and narrow, they were clear and strongly 
 held. Peace was the unspeakable blessing 
 which it lay in his hands to bestow on millions 
 of his fellow-creatures. . . . Whether his policy 
 towards his own subjects was as beneficent as 
 his policy in foreign affairs, we need not for the 
 moment inquire. 
 
 Through the veil of what may be called 
 obituary euphemism, one can see clearly what 
 the writer wants to convey. 
 
 Taking a paper of the opposite party, the 
 Daily Chronicle, we find in it on the same date a 
 notice which is more explicit as regards internal 
 politics, but which is almost identical as regards 
 the personality of Alexander III. 
 
 The leading Radical paper does not scruple
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 3 
 
 to call his reign a tyranny comparable to that 
 of the Tudors, and likely to lead to a violent 
 revolution. Of him personally nothing higher 
 can be said than that he would have made a 
 highly respectable farmer or cattle drover, but 
 was quite out of place upon the throne of a 
 great nation, and that the unfortunate accident 
 of his birth was a source of endless misery for 
 himself, as well as for the Russian people. 
 
 A few days passed, and suddenly the Daily 
 Chronicle became " lyrical " in its praises of the 
 model Tzar Alexander III., the other papers 
 vying with each other in extolling the greatness 
 and the wisdom (not to speak of the virtue) of 
 a man of whom they had had such a poor 
 opinion a short time before. 
 
 Why such a sudden change ? Has anything 
 been revealed throwing new light upon the 
 late Tzar ? No. It was the prospect of an 
 Anglo-Russian entente which created that flood 
 of benevolence. 
 
 The mood has passed away as quietly as the 
 lame political scheme which gave birth to it. 
 We need hardly speak of it except as an 
 historical curiosity. Yet, as time goes on, the 
 reign of Alexander III. acquires a peculiar 
 interest for us. Since the young Tzar has 
 
 B 2
 
 4 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 declared his resolution to follow in his father's 
 footsteps, the picture of our recent past becomes 
 an image of our possible future. It is, therefore, 
 a good time to tell the full, unadorned truth 
 about a ruler who for thirteen years attracted 
 such an unusual amount of attention. 
 
 I do not feel in the least tempted to depreciate 
 Alexander III. as a man. The English, who 
 jealously keep their nominal rulers from any 
 interference in politics, like to indulge in a sort 
 of sickening monarchical cant in regard to 
 Russia. They assume everything depends upon 
 the personal qualities of the Tzar. When once 
 they have come to the conclusion that the Tzar 
 is not altogether a villain, their conscience is at 
 rest ; everything must be as good as it could 
 be, and only fools and fanatics could rebel. 
 
 We Russians feel upon this matter very 
 differently. Imagine an instrument of torture, 
 a rack, a wheel, or a Nuremberg doll, and 
 imagine somebody coming to the friends and 
 relatives of the victims, or to the victims them- 
 selves who have escaped with their lives, and 
 calling on them to admire the good workman- 
 ship of that infamous machine, and the excellent 
 qualities of the wood and the iron, which have
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 5 
 
 been used for its construction. I do not think 
 they would be able to show much appreciation 
 of these unmistakably good qualities. The 
 same may be said about the good points in 
 the character of the man who is the main prop 
 of the huge instrument of torture called the 
 Russian autocracy. I do not want to deny 
 these good points. I am willing to recognize 
 them just to show how supremely and abso- 
 lutely irrelevant they are for us. 
 
 I do not know whether the reader will endorse 
 this standpoint. In any case, this attitude will 
 serve him as a guarantee of my perfect fairness. 
 
 I leave to Mr. Stead and Co. the task of 
 extolling the domestic virtues of Alexander III., 
 and will speak of him only as a ruler. 
 
 The future historian of our times will look 
 with a mingled feeling of pity and amazement 
 at the figure of this relentless despot who, 
 without any personal craving for distinction, 
 made himself a wretched prisoner for life, in 
 order to maintain a show of power which he did 
 not enjoy and could not use. 
 
 Alexander III. was a man of routine one of 
 those who must walk in a beaten track. He 
 clung to autocracy with an obstinacy worthy a 
 better cause. But had he inherited a constitu-
 
 6 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 tional crown, he would never have transgressed 
 the rights of his Parliament. He had not the 
 masterfulness of his grandfather, Nicholas I., a 
 typical despot, and, unlike his father, he had a 
 great respect for the laws passed by himself. 
 His reign was the most lawless we have had 
 since, perhaps, the time of the adventurers of 
 the eighteenth century, because Russia was 
 given over to a horde of lawless, irresponsible 
 officials. But this was the natural consequence 
 of the system. He himself did not take away 
 what he had once granted. He tried to live 
 up to the absurd fiction of the autocracy 
 which he learned by rote from his manual of 
 State law, as a form of government different 
 from despotism in so far that the autocrat, 
 being the absolute master of everybody, is 
 bound by himself to obey the laws made 
 by himself until it pleases him to alter 
 them. 
 
 I heard from a trustworthy source the 
 amusing story of the prohibition of the 
 intended performance, at the Court theatre, 
 of Count Tolstoi's "Dominion of Dark- 
 ness." On this occasion, the Tzar showed the 
 same helpless submissiveness to the whims of 
 the censorship as the most defenceless of his
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 7 
 
 subjects. He has read Tolstoi's play, and he 
 liked it very much. His daugher Xenia Alex- 
 androvna, who is the wit and literary critic of the 
 family, liked it still more, and she proposed that 
 the play should be performed privately in one 
 'of the halls of the Anitchkov Palace. Actors 
 were engaged, and the rehearsals were begun, 
 when the news reached Feosktistov, the head of 
 the Press Department and of the censorship 
 generally, who had a strong dislike for the 
 play, on the ground of its "immorality," 
 and prohibited its performance on the stage. 
 But not wishing the prestige of his 
 authority to suffer, he went to see Count 
 Dmitry Tolstoi, then Minister of the Interior, 
 who was of the same mind as regards the 
 play. They saw the director of the Imperial 
 Theatre, Potekhin, who had a direct authority 
 over the actors engaged for the Court perform- 
 ance of the " Dominion of Darkness/ and the 
 upshot of it was that the rehearsals were 
 stopped and the announcement of the perform- 
 ance withdrawn, although the affair was started 
 with the Tzar's knowledge and consent. When 
 Xenia Alexandrovna mentioned the matter at 
 a family party, at which some Ministers were 
 present, expressing her surprise, the Tzar
 
 8 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 turned to his Ministers, and merely exclaimed, 
 with a meek astonishment one does not asso- 
 ciate with the idea of an all-powerful despot : 
 " Predstavte, Zapretili ! " which may be trans- 
 lated, " Yes, imagine, the play has been pro- 
 hibited!" 
 
 The affair did not go further and the play 
 was not performed until many years later, when 
 the censorship relented towards it. 
 
 One of the best biographers of Alexander III., 
 Samson von Himmelstierna, says that the in- 
 tellectual standard of the body of ministers was 
 very low during the reign of Alexander III., 
 because he always wanted to have around him 
 men inferior to himself intellectually, entertain- 
 ing a morbid dread of falling under some- 
 body's influence. 
 
 That Alexander III. very much resented 
 any appearance of outward influence is quite 
 true, and as time went on this feeling grew 
 upon him. But it was the result of his growing 
 diffidence and suspicion rather than of a 
 domineering spirit. Retiring as he was, and 
 painfully conscious of his own limitations, he 
 was instinctively afraid of clever people, whom 
 he did not know and could not completely trust. 
 But it does not seem that he tried to shun the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 9 
 
 fe\v clever people who for good or for ill, 
 succeeded in gaining his full confidence. 
 
 The late Count Dmitry Tolstoi was un- 
 doubtedly a clever man in his way, whatever 
 else he may have been, and so is Pobedonoszev. 
 Yet Alexander III. stuck to both of them to 
 the last, abiding by their advice and allowing 
 them sometimes to rebuke him. 
 
 In 1882, one of the " student disturbances," 
 rather common in Russia, took place in the 
 University of St. Petersburg. The well-known 
 Jewish magnate, Poliakov, one of the railway 
 kings and army contractors, who during the 
 Balkan war of 1877 made himself famous 
 through all Russia by wonderful feats of 
 swindling, resolved to ingratiate himself with 
 the Russian public and with Count Loris Me- 
 likov. He gave, in 1880, twenty thousand 
 pounds for the foundation of a " Students' 
 Home," i.e. for building and fitting up a house 
 where the undergraduate might obtain board 
 and lodging at reduced prices. 
 
 The gift was not quite disinterested, and 
 proved to be a good investment because it 
 procured for him a Government contract worth 
 several millions, which, unpopular as he was, 
 he could not have obtained otherwise. How-
 
 IO KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 ever that may be, the students as a body were 
 not at all pleased with such a gift from a man 
 whom all Russia held responsible for such 
 crimes against Russian soldiers in time of war. 
 But when in 1882 the new students' home was 
 opened, the university officials got up, without 
 consulting the students, an address to Poliakov, 
 thanking him for his munificence, in the name 
 of the whole university. Having obtained a 
 number of signatures, they sent the address to 
 Poliakov through a small deputation which 
 assumed the part of representatives of the 
 whole body of students. 
 
 This provoked a storm. The students con- 
 vened an indignation meeting to protest against 
 the abuse of their names. The authorities 
 interfered, for meetings of the undergraduates 
 are prohibited. The whole " meeting" four 
 hundred people was arrested, and half of them 
 two hundred people were not released for 
 three weeks. But public opinion and a consider- 
 able number of the university authorities were on 
 the side of the students. The rector, Beketov, 
 succeeded in interesting a very influential man, 
 Admiral Reuter, in the fate of the young people. 
 Reuter, then president of the council of 
 ministers, promised to lay the matter before the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. II 
 
 Tzar, and personally to intercede in favour of 
 the arrested students. He kept his word. At 
 his next interview with the Tzar he introduced 
 the topic of the day, which was the disturbance 
 at the university, and warmly pleaded the cause 
 of the students. He spoke of the generosity 
 of youth, which could not swallow such a slight 
 on the honour of their corporation as to have 
 thrust upon them the bounty of such a man, 
 and a Jew. " If I were a student, I would have 
 protested myself," he concluded boldly. 
 
 The Tzar was strongly impressed, especially 
 by the appeal to his anti- Jewish feelings, and 
 said, 
 
 "Yes; I would have protested if I were a 
 student." 
 
 The affair seemed settled. But here Pobe- 
 donoszev, who was also present, jumped up 
 and began to speak most vehemently about the 
 pernicious effect of the " Imperial Liberalism," 
 which had already done the greatest possible 
 harm to the country, in undermining the very 
 foundations of law and order. He was alluding 
 to Alexander II. 
 
 The Tzar did not say a word, and looked as 
 sheepish as a schoolboy who is being scolded 
 by his tutor as one of the witnesses of the
 
 12 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 scene said to a friend of his. Reuter thought 
 it impossible to press the matter any further, 
 and the " ringleaders " of the disturbance were 
 punished in the usual way ; forty young men 
 were expelled from the university for ever and 
 exiled to the provinces ; forty others were ex- 
 pelled for one year. The Tzar, at Pobe- 
 donoszev's instance, gave an audience to 
 Poliakov, and vented his temper against him 
 by putting the rather poignant question, how 
 many millions he had made by his generosity. 
 
 Alexander III. was not always forbearing 
 with his ministers. When his temper was roused 
 he would abuse them and swear at them in the 
 coarsest manner. In the autumn of 1886, it 
 was rumoured in St. Petersburg, on good 
 authority, I believe, that he had once given the 
 Minister of War, General Vanovsky, a sound 
 box on the ear with his own rather heavy 
 imperial fist. The quarrel with Prince Alex- 
 ander of Battenberg was at its fiercest, and the 
 Tzar ordered the prince's name to be struck 
 out of the lists of the Russian army, in which 
 he stood as an honorary commander of some 
 battalion of guards. It was an unprecedented 
 act of gross incivility, not to use a stronger 
 term. Officers are struck off the army list as
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 13 
 
 members are excluded from clubs only when 
 they have done something positively dishonour- 
 able. Alexander III. fully deserved the re- 
 taliation on the part of the prince. The latter 
 struck him too out of the list of his own small 
 army, where he was the honorary commander of 
 a regiment. The intended insult was thus con- 
 verted into an amusing joke, and the ridicule 
 was naturally turned against the aggressor. 
 The German, Kladeradatch, embodied it in a 
 caricature representing the two Alexanders in 
 their night shirts, the Tzar shouting : " I have 
 undressed you," and the prince shouting in 
 return " No, it was I who undressed you." 
 
 It was all Vanovsky's fault ; had he informed 
 his master that he was the honorary commander 
 of a Bulgarian regiment before striking out 
 the name of Prince Alexander, he would have 
 withdrawn his own as an additional sign of his 
 displeasure. 
 
 The position of the ministers of Alexander 
 III. was not a dignified one, exposed as they 
 were to similar treatment. But men who can 
 stand it are certainly not worthy of a better 
 one. 
 
 Otherwise they had no complaint to make 
 against their master. Their appointment was
 
 14 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 a mere farce. Deprived as Alexander III. 
 was of the principal gift of a ruler (as well as of 
 too many accessory ones) that of divining 
 characters, he was absolutely at the mercy of 
 court intrigues and favouritism. But he was 
 not guided by personal likes and dislikes, as 
 his two predecessors almost invariably were. 
 He had an insuperable aversion to Vyshne- 
 gradsky ; he profoundly despised as a man, 
 Val, the head of the St. Petersburg police, and 
 he cordially hated a minister, whom I will not 
 name, suspecting in him Liberal tendencies. 
 But he stood by them all when once ap- 
 pointed. At the beginning of his reign he sum- 
 moned his former teacher, Professor Bunge, to 
 the post of minister of finances. The professor 
 declined at first, saying that he was not used to 
 the court and had no faction to back him 
 against court intrigues. The Tzar stretched 
 out his hand to him and said : " I will be your 
 faction/' And he kept his word for six years, 
 dismissing Bunge only in 1887, because the 
 state of finances demanded imperatively a 
 sharp trickster like Vyshnegradsky. 
 
 He rarely changed his ministers, most of 
 whom had a longer tenure of office than in many 
 constitutional countries. He tried personally to
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 15 
 
 revise as much of the overwhelming mass of 
 State affairs as was physically possible for one 
 man, but he was not meddlesome, arfd allowed 
 his ministers a good deal of latitude in their 
 respective departments. 
 
 Thus, to sum up ; his character, tastes, and 
 habits of mind fitted him for the position of a 
 constitutional monarch. Certainly one does not 
 see in him any instinctive predisposition to 
 despotism. He undoubtedly was devoted to 
 his country. He was killing himself with the 
 drudgery of State affairs. 
 
 Yet no man, living or dead, has done Russia 
 so much harm as Alexander III. ; no one has 
 inflicted upon her such deep yawning wounds, 
 from which she can hardly recover for years. 
 He inaugurated a reign of suspicion and terror, 
 making the life of the whole educated class a 
 humiliation. He demoralized it by imposing 
 upon it a degrading hypocrisy, from which there 
 was no outlet but in dreary apathy or cynical 
 epicurism. And what makes the riddle still 
 more puzzling for outsiders is that in order to do 
 this he made his own existence more wretched 
 than that of his humblest subjects. His was 
 a life of incessant terror without respite by day 
 or by night. Never for a moment could he
 
 16 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 feel safe in the streets, or in the midst of his 
 army, or in the seclusion of his palace. 
 
 Death hovered over him. When he was 
 travelling, some innocent creature was almost 
 invariably killed for inadvertently approaching 
 the line when the Tzar's train was expected. 
 
 In 1883, on the Tzar's journey to Moscow for the 
 ceremony of the coronation, a peasant was killed 
 under his very eyes, because he was swimming 
 on a raft down the river, and could not stop 
 when the Imperial train was crossing the bridge, 
 Another time, in Gatchina, taking his walk in 
 the garden of the palace, which was his prison, 
 the Tzar asked a question of one of the 
 gardeners, who was digging a flower-bed some 
 way off. The gardener threw his spade on the 
 sod and hastened to the Tzar, but before he 
 could approach him he was shot dead by the 
 sentinel, who from the post of observation on the 
 wall could not hear the Tzar's voice, but only 
 saw a man approaching him hurriedly, and sus- 
 pected a plot. 
 
 A much grimmer story is circulated about 
 Baron Reutern, a relative of the minister of that 
 name, who it is asserted was shot by the Tzar 
 himself in a moment of suspicious terror. The 
 young man was smoking a cigarette, and when
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. I/ 
 
 the Tzar unexpectedly entered the guard-room, 
 he hastily put it behind his back. The Tzar, 
 haunted as he was by fear and suspicion, at 
 once concluded that he was about to throw a 
 bomb at him, and shot him dead. 
 
 Fear did not leave him even at the doors of 
 churches. 
 
 A friend of mine who happened to see him at 
 the Thanksgiving Mass in the Kazan Cathedral, 
 in 1888, told me the following incident. After 
 the service was over a crowd of students, especi- 
 ally selected for this purpose by Delianov, the 
 Minister of Public Education, moved toward 
 the Tzar, and surrounded him in a body, making 
 all sorts of demonstrations of servile reverence, 
 some of them trying to kiss his hands. But the 
 hero of this demonstration stood pale as death, 
 and for some time could not say a word. His 
 first thought was that it was a body of con- 
 spirators who surrounded him, and that his last 
 moment had come. It took him some time to 
 realize his mistake. When at last he recovered, 
 he began in a broken, tremulous, utterly un- 
 kingly voice to thank the students, saying that 
 he would not forget it. In fact, Delianov, no 
 less successful than Count Dmitry Tolstoi, in 
 stifling the youth of Russia, though his dis- 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 1 8 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 missal was expected daily, was confirmed in his 
 post, and received in 1889 the title of count. 
 
 After the Borki catastrophe, the Tzar's nerves 
 gave way completely, and his life during the last 
 years of his reign, as shown by recent revelations, 
 must have been something almost unendurable. 
 In fact the constant nervous tension went a 
 long way towards ruining his herculean consti- 
 tution and towards hastening his end. 
 
 He could never get over the nervous shock 
 the wrecking of the train at Borki gave him. 
 Every insignificant accident, an unusual noise 
 in the night, the appearance of a stranger, 
 upset him, calling forth all his terrors. Yet he 
 clung to the wretchedness of power, whilst 
 with one word he might have made himself as 
 safe as any king or queen in Europe. 
 
 How could such a thing be ? Is autocracy 
 such an absolute necessity for Russia that no 
 matter how badly it works out, no European 
 form of government can be thought of ? And if 
 freedom is a possible remedy, why was he so 
 reluctant to try administering a small dose of it ? 
 
 It is a not uncommon opinion that it was 
 the terrible death of his father which forced 
 Alexander III. into the line of stolid, unflinch- 
 ing reaction. Was not it so in reality ?
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 19 
 
 To the above questions and a number of 
 others connected with them, the answer will be 
 found later on. I will begin with the last ques- 
 tion which comes first in historical order, and 
 can be dismissed very briefly. 
 
 No, the tragedy of March I3th, 1881, did not 
 determine Alexander III.'s internal policy, which 
 was fixed in his mind long before his accession 
 to the throne. On the contrary the fierce out- 
 burst of discontent, which culminated in the 
 murder of Alexander II., seemed to have thrown 
 Alexander III. off his balance and for some 
 time a change of policy seemed possible. But 
 that hesitation passed with the suppression 
 of the movement which created it. The old 
 ideas and the old influences took the upper 
 hand, and the internal policy of Alexander III. 
 took its definite shape, which it would have 
 assumed at once, had the revolutionary out- 
 burst never taken place. It was then and only 
 then that the Government was able to avail itself 
 of its victory and point to the past as an 
 excuse for the tyranny of the present. Every 
 war is a game of chance, and those who do not 
 win have to lose. The events of 1879-83 have 
 served as a lesson which will not be lost upon 
 the Russian opposition. They have proved that 
 c a
 
 20 KING STORK AND KING LOG. 
 
 extreme parties and extreme methods alone can- 
 not overthrow a government. The part of the 
 Nihilists was that which artillery plays in 
 modern battles. They shook the enemy's 
 ranks, they sowed consternation in its midst 
 and paved the way for a general attack. If it 
 did not follow and the enemy was allowed to 
 rally and strengthen its position once again, the 
 blame is to be laid upon those who did not take 
 advantage of the chance offered to them, and 
 not upon those who created that chance. But 
 let us return to Alexander III.
 
 II. 
 
 THE TZAR MUJIK. 
 
 UPON the late Tzar, as heir to the throne, we 
 have a very interesting and exhaustive study 
 from the pen of Turghenev himself, who knew 
 him personally, as did many of his intimate 
 friends, from whom he got very accurate infor- 
 mation as to his views and plans. With such 
 materials, and his wonderful insight into the 
 character of men, he was able, not only to 
 draw his portrait, but to trace out the whole of 
 his future policy. The surprising correctness 
 of Turghenev's forecasts as to the acts of 
 Alexander III., vouches for the correctness of 
 the whole picture. This character sketch ap- 
 peared anonymously in Madame Adam's "Revue 
 Politique et Litteraire," soon after the acces- 
 sion of Alexander III. to the throne. Tur- 
 ghenev admitted freely to his friends the author- 
 ship of this article, but his name was not 
 mentioned in connection with its publication, 
 and it was not incorporated in his works.
 
 22 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 Although very complimentary, the portrait 
 has its lights and shadows, and represents the 
 figure of a simple mortal, whilst a Russian is 
 allowed to portray the Tzar only in the old 
 symbolical Egyptian style i.e. as the ancient 
 artists of the old Nile painted their Pharaohs : 
 huge figures, all lights, covering the whole field 
 of the picture, without the slightest regard to 
 perspective or reality. 
 
 The most interesting part of Turghenev's 
 study, which, as far as I know, has been over- 
 looked by all the numerous biographers of 
 Alexander III., is that which refers to his 
 political programme. Turghenev says that this 
 programme of intended reforms was cherished 
 in his mind for many years, so that his infor- 
 mant was able to give him all its chief items. 
 These are : 
 
 1. Considerable reduction of the land re- 
 demption money, paid by the peasants to the 
 State, which acted as intermediary between 
 them and their former masters. 
 
 2. A radical change in the system of taxation 
 which pressed too heavily upon the peasantry. 
 
 3. Abolition of the capitation tax, which 
 peasants alone (and petty artisans and burghers 
 of the towns) had to pay.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 23 
 
 4. Measures for facilitating the migration 
 of peasants from the provinces, where land 
 became scanty to those where it was plentiful 
 and free. 
 
 5. Reform of the passport system with a view 
 of giving the peasants greater facilities in 
 moving from place to place in search of em- 
 ployment. 
 
 6. The foundation of rural banks, which 
 would relieve the peasants from the scourge of 
 petty usurers, swarming in the rural districts, 
 and eating up, like locusts, the substance of the 
 peasantry. 
 
 Most of these reforms have been more or less 
 realized, in a queer way sometimes, as we shall 
 presently see. But this was due to pressure of 
 outward circumstances, and not to the will of the 
 Tzar. All were discussed at his private council. 
 There is no doubt, therefore, that they were in 
 his mind when Turghenev wrote about him. 
 And these were the only points of his politics 
 upon which he has made up his mind. Every- 
 thing else, according to Turghenev, was vague, 
 and to be determined by circumstances. 
 
 Thus we have a full programme of reforms 
 for the exclusive benefit of the peasants. 
 
 In discussing the future foreign policy of Alex-
 
 24 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 ander III., Turghenev foretells that it will 
 be that of non-interference, rather of aloofness, 
 because he says the Tzar is really indifferent 
 to all that is not Russian. "He is, above 
 all things, a Russian, and nothing but a Rus- 
 sian, his whole heart being given to Russia 
 alone." 
 
 It is not exactly so. To Russia, as a whole, 
 i.e. as a nation embodying a certain culture of 
 its own, having certain aspirations and common 
 characteristics, moral and intellectual, he was 
 as indifferent as to Germany or to France. He 
 loved only the peasants, who represented for 
 him the whole of Russia. He wanted to be 
 the Tzar of the peasants, says Turghenev. The 
 name of Tzar Mujik, which was given to him 
 later on, and which he himself liked to use, is 
 not to be found in Turghenev's article, but the 
 idea is there. 
 
 Alexander III. was a mujik on the throne, 
 a title which is certainly a compliment in our 
 Democratic age. But it is an unmixed com- 
 pliment only, if we are prepared to admit that a 
 mujik taken from the plough would make a 
 good minister of the interior, or of public edu- 
 cation ; or that the democracy of England 
 would benefit by a law prescribing that all
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 25 
 
 Members of Parliament should be elected from 
 the class of agricultural labourers. Alex- 
 ander III. was a mujik by his political creed, 
 as well as by his sympathies. 
 
 All heirs are naturally prone to take to the 
 opposition. As Alexander 1 1. turned reactionary 
 in the second half of his reign, his son became a 
 liberal. But his liberalism did not outlive his 
 boyhood. Turghenev tells us that it was the 
 Parisian Commune of 1871 which cured him of 
 this aberration. " That is what these things 
 lead to," he would repeat on hearing of the 
 excesses committed in Paris. 
 
 Confounding the exceedingly modest claims 
 of the Russian Liberals with such acts as the 
 burning of public buildings and the massacre 
 of hostages, was rather ludicrous. But the 
 fact that he gave up his liberal dreams so 
 readily, shows that they suited him as little as 
 wings would suit an elephant. He was born a 
 Conservative, and he returned to his natural 
 element like a fish to the water, becoming the 
 friend and adherent of the Slavophils, who are 
 the philosophers of what may be called nation- 
 alist Conservatism. 
 
 The Slavophils have been so much talked 
 about in the English press during the reign of
 
 26 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 Alexander III., and they came so much to 
 the front at its beginning, that it is worth our 
 while to stop for a moment to explain the real 
 character of this party, which is quite unique of 
 its kind. 
 
 The English know it in connection with 
 foreign affairs, as a party representing the 
 grasping tendencies of the Russian autocracy, 
 chiefly among the Slavonic populations of 
 Turkey and Austria, and having for its object 
 the unification of all Slavonic races in one huge 
 State, under the sceptre of the Tzar. Thus the 
 Panslavists are confounded with the Slavophils, 
 whilst the two parties are fundamentally dis- 
 tinct. The original Slavophils did not care for 
 invading the West, their chief object being to 
 purge Russia herself of the Western element 
 which has invaded her. Their doctrine can be 
 described as nationalism run mad. The Russian 
 people, the Russian institutions, the orthodox 
 church, and all that was genuinely Russian 
 seemed to them so much superior to everything 
 they saw among the Western nations, that, 
 according to them, any borrowing or adaptation 
 of Western ideas by Russians, could but spoil 
 their ideal perfection. Thus they stood in 
 opposition to the Government, which Peter the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2J 
 
 Great had transformed into a bureacracy on the 
 German pattern. 
 
 It is very interesting that this school of 
 Chinese exclusiveness and self-sufficiency was 
 founded by very gifted men of the highest 
 European culture of the epoch, such as 
 Homiakov, Samarin, the brothers Kireievsky, 
 and the brothers Aksakov, Konstantin, who was 
 the actual leader of the party in its palmy 
 days, and the famous Ivan, who gradually came 
 to terms with the Government. 
 
 All these men had at their finger's end the 
 philosophy of Hegel, which was the gospel of 
 their time, and may be described as followers of 
 Fichte, whose ideas of the Messiah-like mission 
 of the German people they were fully justified in 
 twisting to suit their own ends. 
 
 If Fichte was right in asserting that the 
 German race, being free from the influence of 
 the Greco-Roman culture, was destined to build 
 up a new civilization superior to that of the 
 Latin race, the Russians clearly had the same 
 advantage in a much higher degree. It was 
 only from the time of Peter the Great that 
 Russia had been spoiled by any culture at all, 
 and at the epoch when the Slavophils began 
 to preach, the disease, thank heaven, had not
 
 28 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 advanced far. As to the masses of the Russian 
 people, the millions of peasants, they were as 
 yet perfectly untouched by it. Russia's chances 
 were not yet lost if only she would adopt the 
 programme of the Slavophils, which was very 
 simple : to turn for guidance in ethics, religion, 
 and family life to the peasants, who had 
 preserved in their primitive purity all the high, 
 truly national ideals of life. In politics, they 
 advocated return to the forms anterior to the 
 destructive work of Peter the Great, i.e. to the 
 Muscovite period of Russian history, which the 
 Slavophils idealized beyond all reason, with that 
 perfect disregard of documentary evidence 
 characteristic of fanatics. 
 
 Of the first half of this programme I will not 
 speak, because it is outside the immediate object 
 of my book. Count Tolstoi is the last incar- 
 nation of this side of the old slavophilism, and 
 I can refer the reader to his latter-day pamphlets, 
 and stories, which explain what is meant by 
 that seeking for moral truth in the hearts of the 
 lowly. 
 
 But the political programme of the Slavo- 
 phils deserves a closer examination, for it bears 
 in many ways upon the question of modern 
 Russian history.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 29 
 
 The Muscovite monarchy was a gloomy, semi- 
 theocratic, semi-patriarchal despotism, on the 
 high-road to becoming a sort of petrified bureau- 
 cracy. Fierce, implacable persecution of the 
 slightest independence of thought in religion, 
 politics, philosophy, or even manners, was one of 
 its chief characteristics. But the Slavophils over- 
 look that as an accident, representing the Mus- 
 covite times as a sort of patriarchal idyll of a 
 perfect harmony and mutual confidence between 
 the rulers and the ruled. And we will not 
 grudge them this little travesty of history, 
 because we owe to it all that was good in the 
 political programme of the Slavophils. Whilst 
 vehemently defending the autocratic form of 
 government as a national glory, the Slavophils 
 declared themselves against the censorship and 
 all restriction upon liberty of speech, which they 
 considered as a manifestation of diffidence and 
 suspicion alien to the spirit of a truly paternal 
 government. 
 
 We have a very interesting document from 
 the pen of Konstantin Aksakoff, the founder of 
 Slavophilism, which presents an excellent sum- 
 ming up of the political philosophy and prac- 
 tical demands of the Slavophils. It is AksakofFs 
 " memorandum " which was presented through
 
 30 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 Count Bludov to Alexander II. soon after his 
 accession to the throne in 1855. 
 
 The memorandum is divided into three parts. 
 In the first, the exordium, Konstantin Aksakoff 
 explains the reason why he found it necessary 
 to present his memorandum just then. 
 
 " Sire ! Thou hast ascended the throne. 
 These first instants are precious and of import, 
 not for thee only, but for thy subjects also. 
 Invested on a sudden with the dignity of sove- 
 reignty, thou hast not yet grown used to being 
 Tzar. Thy spiritual hearing has all its freshness 
 and delicacy, thy spiritual vision all its keen- 
 ness and far-sightedness; both hearing and 
 vision are more highly strained in these first 
 moments of sovereign rule than at any other 
 time. We trust that thou wilt ever strain all 
 the forces of thy spirit to learn the truth for 
 thy people's weal. But every period has a sig- 
 nificance and glory peculiarly its own ; and 
 this is that of these first instants of Imperial 
 power, the freshness and delicacy of which can 
 never come again." 
 
 Then follows the exposition of the general 
 views of the Slavophils, which are summed up 
 in the third part in fifteen paragraphs, which I 
 will give here, omitting some repetitions.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 31 
 
 " I. The Russian people, containing no 
 political elements within itself, has divested itself 
 of supreme power, and has no desire to govern. 
 
 " II. Having no desire for rule, the Russian 
 people assigns to the Government unlimited 
 power. 
 
 "III. In return for this, the Russian people 
 reserves to itself moral liberty, liberty of life and 
 of conscience. 
 
 " IV. Unlimited power without the partici- 
 pation, of the people can but take the form of 
 absolute monarchy. 
 
 " V. The Russian state organization rests on 
 the basis of the following principles : for the 
 Government (necessarily monarchical in form), 
 absolute governing political power ; for the 
 people, complete moral liberty liberty of life 
 and conscience, of thought and of word. The 
 sole thing which the people, destitute of power, 
 can and ought of their own initiative to offer to 
 the all-powerful Government is opinion (conse- 
 quently a purely moral force), and this the 
 Government is free to accept or to refuse. 
 
 "VI. These essential principles may be 
 violated either on the one side or on the other. 
 
 "VII. Through the violation of these principles 
 on the part of the people, through the limitation
 
 32 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 of the power of the Government, and so through 
 the participation of the people in governing, the 
 people resorts to external coercive force, aban- 
 dons its true path of inward spiritual freedom 
 and force, and inevitably deteriorates morally. 
 
 "VIII. Through the violation of these prin- 
 ciples on the part of the Government, through 
 the restriction by Government of the moral 
 freedom the freedom of life and of conscience 
 of the people, absolute monarchy passes into 
 despotism, into an immoral government, stifling 
 all the moral energies, and corrupting the spirit 
 of the people. 
 
 " IX. The principles of the state have not been 
 violated (in Russia) on the part of the people, 
 inasmuch as they are its fundamental national 
 principles ; but they have been violated on the 
 part of the Government that is, the Government 
 has interfered with the moral liberty of the people, 
 restricted the liberty of life and of conscience 
 (of thought and of word), and in so doing, has 
 passed into a degrading despotism, stifling the 
 spiritual existence and human dignity of the 
 people, and involving ultimately the decay of 
 the moral energies of Russia, and the corruption 
 of society. This despotism threatens in the 
 future either the total decline and fall of Russia,
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 33 
 
 to the rejoicing of her foes, or the obliteration 
 of Russian principles in the people itself, which, 
 deprived of moral liberty, will be taught at 
 last to desire political liberty, to resort to revo- 
 lution, and to abandon its true path. Both of 
 these issues are alike fraught with horror, in- 
 asmuch as both alike lead to destruction the 
 former one to material and moral destruction, 
 the latter to moral destruction only. 
 
 " X. And thus the violation by the Govern- 
 ment of the principles of Russian national life, the 
 spoliation from the people of its moral freedom, 
 that is the source of evil of all kinds in Russia. 
 
 "XI. The improvement of things rests obvi- 
 ously with the Government. 
 
 "XII. The Government have laid an oppres- 
 sive yoke on the moral life of Russia ; it is 
 bound to remove that yoke. The Government 
 has deviated from the essential principles of 
 Russian nationalism; it is bound to return to 
 these principles. They are : 
 
 "For the Government, unlimited Governing 
 power ; for the people, complete moral liberty 
 liberty of life and conscience. For the Government, 
 freedom of action, and so of legislation ; for the 
 people, freedom of opinion, and so of speech. 
 ...... 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 " XV. Not content with the mere existence 
 of freedom of speech, and consequently of 
 public opinion, the Government at times feels 
 the need of calling forth this public opinion. In 
 what way can the Government call it forth ? 
 
 " Ancient Russia illustrates for us both the 
 thing itself and the means of obtaining it. Our 
 Tzars used to call forth, on weighty occasions, 
 the public opinion of all Russia, and for this 
 end, to invoke zemsky sobor, or national assem- 
 blies, to which were sent delegates from all 
 classes and all parts of Russia. Such a zemsky 
 sobor was merely to obtain an expression of 
 opinion, which the sovereign may accept or 
 refuse. 
 
 " And -so what is wanted is complete freedom 
 of speech, oral, written, and printed, always 
 and at all times ; and a zemsky sobor on those 
 occasions when the Government desires to 
 gauge the public opinion of the country. 
 
 " The inner social bonds of life have grown so 
 weak in Russia, classes have become so anta- 
 gonistic to one another, in consequence of the 
 despotic system of the Government during the 
 last 1 50 years, that a zemsky sobor at the present 
 moment could not be productive of its full
 
 A STUDY CF MODERN RUSSIA. 35 
 
 utility. I say, of its full value, for even imme- 
 diately, the zemsky sobor would be of indubitable 
 value both for the Government and the people, 
 and it is but needful for some time to elapse for 
 the Government to be able to profit by the wise 
 precedent of ancient Russia, calling in a zemsky 
 sobor. 
 
 "Public opinion unreservedly declared that 
 is what might take the place of a zemsky sobor 
 for the Government at the present moment ; but 
 for this end freedom of speech is indispensable, 
 whereby the Government will be enabled to 
 call a zemsky sobor without loss of time, to the 
 unmixed benefit of itself and the people." 
 
 D 2
 
 III. 
 
 HESITATING ON THE CROSSWAY THE 
 LIBERAL PERIOD. 
 
 IN 1881, by permission of Count Loris Melikov, 
 Ivan Aksakov published his brother's memoran- 
 dum in his paper, " Russia/' evidently for the 
 edification of Alexander II., whom the Count 
 wanted to tranquillize as to the possible danger 
 of encroachments on the side of the partisans of 
 the Zemsky Sobor. But before the publication 
 of the long article was completed, the tragedy of 
 March I3th took place, and thus the post- 
 humous work of the prophet of Slavophilism 
 came to be a solemn appeal to Ivan Aksakov's 
 imperial pupil. Although a much weaker man 
 than his brother and rather a time-server, Ivan 
 Aksakov was honest enough not to conceal his 
 opinions, and we may assume that the doctrine 
 which he tried to impress upon the mind of the 
 future Tzar, Alexander III., was that which we 
 find in the memorandum of Konstantin. But 
 Turghenev says that Alexander III. endorsed
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 37 
 
 only a part of it. The metaphysical division 
 of the two functions in the State the action 
 and the thought was too subtle for him, and 
 he introduced into the Slavophil doctrine a 
 modification which a Russian mujik might, and 
 a Russian Tzar was sure to think of: he 
 dropped all which referred to the obligations of 
 tolerance, recommended to, if not imposed upon, 
 the Tzar by the idealism of the Slavophils. As 
 a practical man, he took the kernel of their 
 doctrine, which is the idea that autocracy is for 
 Russia the best possible form of government, 
 and any limitation of autocracy ought to be 
 resisted by the Tzar on national, as well as on 
 personal grounds. All the rest he rejected as 
 impractical, as, indeed, it was. In this form the 
 doctrine pleased him mightily. In an inte- 
 resting letter to his brother, the Grand Duke 
 Vladimir, accompanying the copy of the auto- 
 cratic manifesto, which marks the turning-point 
 of Alexander III.'s policy, the Tzar writes : " I 
 will never allow any limitation of autocratic 
 power, which I consider necessary and useful 
 for Russia." 
 
 The Russian Tzars and the autocrats of all 
 
 nationalities have always been prone to take a 
 very exalted view of their importance to the 
 
 world in general, and the countries blessed by
 
 38 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 having them as rulers in particular. This is 
 only human. In our modest walks of life we are 
 all inclined to look upon ourselves and our work 
 in a magnifying glass. George Eliot says that 
 it is very happily ordained so, for we should not 
 perform even the little we do perform without 
 that spur of self-idealization. But if it is a good 
 thing, we have surely too much of it in men 
 born in the regal purple, with whom this natural 
 weakness of mankind has been inflated and 
 developed to monstrous proportions by their 
 artificial surroundings. There has hardly been 
 a Tzar or an Emperor who has not considered 
 it his special mission to be a despot as com- 
 pletely and as long as he could. But when 
 to the flatteries of courtiers the influence of 
 some philosopher or religious fanatic has been 
 added, then we see the formation of the deeply 
 convinced, i.e. the worst possible despots of the 
 type of Philip II. of Spain, or Nicholas I. of 
 Russia, in whom the best and the worst 
 elements of human nature combine to make 
 them the scourge of their land. 
 
 What Joseph de Maistre was for Nicholas I., 
 Ivan Aksakov was for Alexander III. He 
 made him a fanatic of autocracy. When, in 
 1879 and 1880, the revolutionary movement
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 39 
 
 assumed threatening proportions, he was in 
 favour of merciless reprisals. He would have 
 played the part of the Due d'Alba had his 
 father allowed him. 
 
 I have been told of a little incident which 
 occurred in 1878, soon after the execution of 
 Martin Kovalsky, a revolutionist who was 
 accused of armed resistance in Odessa, tried 
 by court-martial, and shot in August, 1878. 
 General Heins, who was the chief of the police 
 and garrison of the city, and had to superintend 
 the execution, tendered his resignation, and 
 went to St. Petersburg to present it in person. 
 He was an honest man, and a true and devoted 
 servant of the Tzar such as there are few among 
 the officials of our time. His object in coming to 
 St. Petersburg was to seek an interview with the 
 Tzar, and to render him the greatest service a 
 subject can render to his sovereign by boldly 
 telling him the truth upon the Russian situa- 
 tion. He did not succeed in obtaining an 
 audience with the Tzar, but he was able to see 
 the Tzarevitch, and to him he poured out his 
 loyal and patriotic remarks upon the impossi- 
 bility of suppressing by mere force a movement 
 which had the strength of an idea behind it, 
 and of the fatal consequences which the policy
 
 40 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 of reprisals might have for the State and the 
 person of the Tzar. 
 
 " When the judges who pass the sentence 
 of death, and the officer in command of the 
 soldiers who are to carry it out, and the soldiers 
 themselves are all pale as death, then it means 
 that there is something wrong in the system 
 which commands these executions." 
 
 The Tzarevitch listened, not saying a word, 
 with a sullen expression upon his heavy face. 
 
 " Then you mean to say that the Tzar 
 ought to make concessions to his enemies ? " 
 he said. 
 
 " Not to his enemies, but to the country, 
 which has no quarrel with him," answered the 
 General. 
 
 Upon this the Tzarevitch rose from his seat, 
 put his hand which, it is rumoured, could un- 
 bend a horse-shoe upon Heins's shoulder, and 
 squeezed it violently, pushing his visitor out of 
 the room. That was all he got for his pains, 
 except the blue marks of the Tzarevitch's fingers, 
 which remained on his shoulder for several days. 
 
 He showed them to his brother, telling him 
 that, on leaving the palace, he said to himself 
 that there was no hope of concessions at least 
 till the third reign. General Heins is dead
 
 A STUDV OF MODERN RUSSIA. 4! 
 
 now, so that one can tell the story without 
 committing an indiscretion. 
 
 The words of General Heins proved prophetic 
 in both ways as regards the immediate, as well 
 as the more distant future. The policy of 
 reprisals of Alexander II. led to the fatal result 
 which everybody knows ; and Alexander III. 
 as everybody knows, too, made no concessions 
 whatever. Yet his policy was not fixed all 
 at once. The terrible outburst of discontent, 
 which led to the tragedy of March I3th, 1881, 
 set even this man thinking and hesitating, little 
 as he was given to thought or hesitation. The 
 first year of his reign he was like a man standing 
 at crossroads, vacillating and uncertain as to 
 which way he would take. 
 
 The Princess Dolgoruki, who, after her mor- 
 ganatic marriage with Alexander II., received 
 the title of Princess Yurievsky, took her revenge 
 on the Nihilists who had deprived her of her 
 husband and of her position at the Court. Under 
 the pseudonym of " Laferte/' she published a 
 book, by which she set afloat the legend of the 
 Nihilists having killed the Tzar on the eve of 
 his granting to Russia political liberty. 
 
 If this were the fact, the blame would be at 
 the door of Loris Melikov, who publicly stated,
 
 42 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 in an interview with the editors of the chief papers 
 of the capital, that no limitation of autocratic 
 power was in contemplation. But we know what 
 to think of it now that authentic documents 
 bearing upon the matter have seen the light. 
 
 When the late dictator died at Nice, an 
 official of the Russian Embassy arrived from 
 Paris and put seals on all his papers, which 
 were sent to St. Petersburg to be kept in the 
 archives of the State, until the triumph of the 
 Revolution. Foreseeing the fate awaiting his 
 manuscripts, Count Loris, who was keenly solici- 
 tous about his reputation, allowed a friend of his 
 to copy some of the most interesting of the docu- 
 ments and letters, with a view to their publica- 
 tion some time after his death. This manuscript 
 was delivered, in 1893, into the hands of a small 
 company, founded in London for the publica- 
 tion of books prohibited by the Russian censor- 
 ship. As a member of that company I know 
 how and through whom the manuscript reached 
 our hands, and can vouch quite confidently 
 for its authenticity. Now, from this docu- 
 ment we learn : (i) that what Count Loris 
 Melikov proposed to Alexander II. was not a 
 constitution, but a plan of convocation of 
 notables from the Zemstvos, whom the Govern-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 43 
 
 ment might consult upon points selected by it ; 
 and (2) that Alexander II. did not sign this 
 project a few hours before his death, as was 
 reported, to enhance the dramatic effect of the 
 situation. He merely ordered the project to be 
 brought before the Council of his ministers, for 
 discussion at the next sitting, which was to take 
 place on the i/th March. 
 
 Count Loris Melikov was a moderate Liberal, 
 who dreamed of a monarchical constitution 
 and of political freedom for Russia. 
 
 " Unfortunate country," he wrote later on to 
 a friend, " will ever the happy day come when 
 a Russian, like a citizen of any other country, 
 will be allowed openly and freely to express his 
 views, his convictions, his opinions upon men 
 and things without running the risk of being 
 proclaimed a revolutionist and an enemy of 
 law and order ? " But he was not able to 
 bring Alexander II. round to accept his views. 
 The well-known leader of moderate Liberals, 
 Koshelev, in his posthumous memoirs, relates 
 that Count Loris Melikov told him confidentially 
 that " he had lost all hopes of obtaining from 
 the Emperor his consent to a summoning of the 
 national assembly." His project was certainly 
 utterly unlike the convocation of such an as-
 
 44 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 sembly. It is idle to speculate upon the 
 fate of a project which had not been finally 
 accepted by the changeful Alexander II., and 
 which was kept in absolute secrecy on purpose 
 to leave the Tzar full freedom of withdrawing it 
 if the fancy took him. 
 
 Anyhow, Alexander III., shattered by the 
 tragedy of March I3th, and by the general 
 fermentation of men's minds, which infected 
 even the highest circles, began by doing what 
 his father had been about to do. 
 
 On the day of the catastrophe he ordered 
 Loris Melikov's project to be made public. He 
 withdrew this order a few hours later, but he 
 confirmed Loris Melikov, who tendered his 
 resignation, in his office, and he ordered his 
 project to be read at the Council of Ministers 
 convened for March 2ist. The Grand Duke 
 Vladimir, Count Valuev, Nabokov, Solsky, 
 Milutin, Saburov, and Abaza pronounced them- 
 selves in favour of the project. Pobedonoszev, 
 Count Stroganov, Makov, Prince Liven, and 
 Possiet against it. Seven voices for, five 
 against. 
 
 The Tzar expressed his agreement with the 
 majority, and he seemed to have quite made up 
 his mind and to be much relieved. Spending
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 45 
 
 the second half of the day following the council 
 with the Grand Duke Vladimir, he exclaimed, 
 " Thank God, I feel as if a burden has been 
 taken off my shoulders," as the Grand Duke 
 told Loris Melikov later on. 
 
 The affair seemed finally settled. But it 
 seems that autocrats can be firm only in re- 
 action to which they naturally gravitate. When 
 undertaking anything in the opposite direction, 
 they are like bodies whose centre of gravity is 
 over the point of support and whose unstable 
 equilibrium can be destroyed by the slightest 
 touch. 
 
 K. P. Pobedonoszev, who was holding the 
 modest office of procurator of the Holy Synod, 
 for the first time made his hand felt in the 
 affairs of State. A mediaeval bigot, whose figure 
 is too familiar to all the reading world to need 
 description, he stood at the Tzar's ear as the 
 representative and spokesman of uncompro- 
 mising reaction. Being, unfortunately we must 
 say, a man of unimpeachable personal honesty 
 and disinterested devotion to his crazy ideas, he 
 succeeded in obtaining over the Tzar, his former 
 pupil, such a strong and lasting influence as no 
 other man ever had. But, with his great erudi- 
 tion, he was absolutely deficient in originality,
 
 46 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 and, beyond religious persecution, is not credited 
 with having initiated any reactionary measures. 
 He always played the secondary part, holding 
 the candle to some more inventive man. It 
 was Katkov in the beginning of the reign, and, 
 later on, Count Dmitry Tolstoi. 
 
 Pobedonoszev was untiring in setting his 
 pupil against the whole of the educated class, 
 which he represented as conniving at and 
 approving of the murder of his father. When 
 it was proposed to start a subscription for the 
 building of the chapel at the spot where 
 Alexander II. was killed (which was never 
 completed because the money was stolen by 
 the managing committee under the presidency 
 of Grand Duke Vladimir), Pobedonoszev wrote 
 to the Tzar on March i6th : 
 
 " Your Majesty, let the accursed educated 
 class (intelliguenzia) of St. Petersburg, with all 
 its insane trumpeters, howl around here will be 
 a spot where a Russian's heart will find holy 
 peace." He frightened him with the fate of 
 Louis XVI. of France, if he followed the lead 
 of the Liberals. Katkov, in his paper, insinuated 
 very clearly that treason was nestling in the 
 Tzar's own family, and that the Grand Duke 
 Constantin, the Tzar's uncle, was the actual
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 47 
 
 leader of all the liberals and an abetter and ally 
 of the terrorists, and was planning a Court re- 
 volution. And he used all the power of his 
 brilliant sophistry to prove that the resignation 
 of autocracy would be the end of Russian 
 greatness and a betrayal of the trust of the 
 millions of Russian people. 
 
 Katkov was a dishonest man, using his 
 enormous influence for making his private 
 fortune. This was proved on his death by the 
 fact that he left over a million roubles which 
 he could not possibly have made otherwise than 
 by foul means. But he was the strongest man 
 in the Reactionary party, and its actual creator 
 and inspirer. Pobedonoszev summoned him 
 from Moscow in the middle of March and ar- 
 ranged two meetings with the Tzar, which lasted 
 for several hours. 
 
 But the man who proved of still greater use 
 as a tool of the reaction was Ivan Aksakov. 
 He was very intimate with Alexander III. as 
 Tzarevitch, who had a great respect and affection 
 for him. Now Aksakov, with all his naive 
 dreams of liberty of the press and of speech, 
 and his hostility to bureaucracy, was dead against 
 the idea of a " constitution," as a thing borrowed 
 from the " rotten " West. When driven into a
 
 48 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 corner, he confessed that he did not know 
 himself how practically to realize his plans of 
 preserving autocracy whilst abolishing the 
 bureaucratic despotism and the tyranny of cen- 
 sorship. Yet he preached vehemently against 
 the Liberals, who offered a practical solution of 
 the problem. His own incapacity for doing so 
 he hid in a cloud of high-flown empty phrases 
 about the necessity of " putting oneself face to 
 face with Russia," " bending the ear to the 
 pulsation of her heart," and the dangers of 
 " being unfaithful to one's own nature," pro- 
 mising that in some mysterious way Russia will 
 evolve in the future a political arrangement, 
 absolutely unlike anything we see in the West, 
 and as perfect as it will be original. (See 
 Aksakov's " Russia.") 
 
 Out of this silly rigmarole, Alexander III. 
 could not make head or tail. But one thing 
 was clear and precise : the advice not to yield 
 to the " sedition " both revolutionary and liberal. 
 
 A perfect chaos reigned in the government 
 and in the head of the Tzar too. The fear of 
 new attempts was the dominant feeling with 
 all. The police having proved inefficient in 
 defending the head of the State from the 
 attacks of his enemies, it was decided to form
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 49 
 
 for the protection of the Tzar a secret society 
 of volunteers, organized avowedly on the same 
 plan as the revolutionary Executive Committee. 
 The Grand Duke Vladimir was at its head, and 
 it was backed by the enormous wealth of Prince 
 Demidov San Donate, besides many other 
 wealthy aristocrats who joined the Society. 
 Patronized by the Tzar's brother, the Holy 
 League was quite above the reach of the or- 
 dinary police or the minister of the interior. 
 It was a State within the State. It held its 
 secret meetings like the Nihilists' Committee, 
 and it is fully proved that in imitation of the 
 Nihilists, it passed sentence of death upon some 
 of the most prominent Nihilists, which, however, 
 were never carried out for lack of courage in 
 the Executive. Though it did nothing par- 
 ticular in any other direction, it spread never- 
 theless with such rapidity as to alarm the Tzar 
 whom they meant to protect. With adherents 
 among the high officials of the army and the 
 civil service and with its enormous wealth, the 
 Society might easily have become one day a 
 danger to the State, especially as it was in the 
 hands of the ambitious Grand Duke Vladimir, 
 who was considered something of a rival to the 
 Tzar. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 But the Government was so completely dis- 
 organized that it could not venture to hurt 
 his own adherents by denying them the right of 
 putting themselves outside and above the laws. 
 To protect the Tzar against his protectors, no 
 better expedient was devised by his intimate 
 friends than to found another society more 
 prudent, but secret nevertheless. It was called 
 the Voluntary Defence, and, being patronized 
 by the Tzar himself, it spread very rapidly, 
 absorbing most varied elements. Its avowed 
 object was to protect the Tzar's coronation, not 
 trusting in the capacity of the police to achieve 
 that end. With this object the Society ap- 
 proached the Revolutionists living abroad, offer- 
 ing them a price for a promise to allow the 
 Tzar to put on his head the crown of his fore- 
 fathers. It made overtures to the terrorists 
 who were kept in prison as hostages. 
 
 At the same time the Society entered into 
 a formal agreement with the Raskolriks a 
 body of Ritualist Dissenters numbering many 
 millions and very well organized to obtain 
 from them some thousands of trusted men who 
 would serve as a sort of escort to the Tzar 
 and represent the " people " during the corona- 
 tion.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 51 
 
 The Government, undermined by revolu- 
 tionary and liberal agitation, was further dis- 
 credited by the machinations of these two rival 
 societies. The Tzar was a prisoner in his own 
 palace, being inaccessible to anybody, even 
 to his own ministers ; the wire-pullers, like 
 Pobedonoszev,and Katkov, either from cowardice 
 or diplomacy, kept in the background, putting 
 nonentities into the positions of power and 
 responsibility. 
 
 It was at this moment that a bold plan 
 for a palace revolution was, it is said, 
 formed by General Skobeleff, the hero of 
 the Turkish war, and the idol of the Russian 
 army. I have the story through a man to 
 whom it was told by General Loris Melikov, 
 during his last illness in Nice. I have no reason 
 to disbelieve its truthfulness. General Skobeleff 
 was a daring and powerful man. During his 
 stay at Smolensk he had tried to approach 
 the Revolutionary party. Besides, he had the 
 courage openly to express his disapprobation of 
 the policy of the Government by refusing to 
 share with his colleagues the doubtful honour of 
 the dictatorship over Russian provinces, which 
 was instituted in 1879. ^ e would not join, in 
 1 88 1, the " Okhrana " or Voluntary Defence of 
 E 2
 
 52 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 Prince Veronzov Dashkov. He was certainly 
 a man capable of conceiving a plan of a palace 
 revolution. However, as my information on the 
 subject is second-hand, I leave it to stand on 
 its own merits. The story is that Skobeleff pro- 
 posed to move to the palace at the head of one 
 of his regiments, upon whose absolute devotion 
 he could count, to arrest the Tzar Alexander 
 III., to establish a provisory Government, and 
 to proclaim a Constitution. He was ill- 
 advised enough to confide his intention to 
 Count Ignatiev, whose co-operation he con- 
 sidered necessary. The feather-headed Count 
 did not want much persuasion. He consented 
 enthusiastically, and the two allies went to see 
 Count Loris Melikov, to whom Skobeleff told 
 their joint project. Loris Melikov, on seeing 
 Skobeleff's companion, refused to have any- 
 thing to do with the intended revolution. 
 
 It is doubtful whether he would have 
 accepted the proposal had Skobeleff been 
 alone, or with a more trustworthy companion. 
 Count Loris had nothing of the dash and fiery 
 ambition of the hero of Shipka. 
 
 When the Bulgarians were on the look-out for 
 a prince, he was approached on the subject of 
 standing as a candidate. But he declined,
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 53 
 
 although he had good chances of election. 
 When a friend asked him why he had shown 
 such inopportune modesty, and lost such a 
 unique chance, he replied that it was not 
 modesty, but prudence. " You know the Gov- 
 ernment was not favourable to my candidature, 
 and might have deprived me of my pension." 
 
 A man who will resign a crown for fear of 
 losing a pension, has not the stuff of which Crom- 
 wells are made. Anyhow, he refused point 
 blank to be a party to the conspiracy, and the 
 same evening, Ignatiev, to make the best of a 
 bad job, denounced both his would-be colleagues 
 in the provisory Government. A few days 
 later Count Ignatiev was at the head of the 
 ministry, and Loris Melikov was making him- 
 self ready for a trip abroad, which was a sort of 
 informal exile. The reactionary party had 
 played him out very skilfully. Whilst the 
 astute Count was wasting his time in trying to 
 influence the Tzar, by every possible means, 
 except the only one that would tell, the display 
 of the force of the Liberal party, the reac- 
 tionists prepared in secret a manifesto, which 
 pledged the Tzar to the autocratic policy. We 
 have a very interesting letter of Alexander III., 
 which throws some light upon the machinations
 
 54 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 of the reactionists, and also the simplicity of 
 their master. 
 
 On April 27 (May 9th) the Tzar was writing 
 to his brother : 
 
 " I send you, dear Vladimir, the project of a 
 manifesto approved by me. I want it to appear 
 on the 29th of April (May nth). I have been 
 thinking of it a long while. The ministers are 
 for ever promising to take measures that would 
 render the manifesto unnecessary, but as I can 
 never get any decisive step out of them, and 
 the people's minds are still in a ferment, and 
 many expect something extraordinary, I 
 resolved to apply to K. P. Pobedonoszev, 
 and asked him to draw up a manifesto to state 
 clearly what direction I want to give to affairs, 
 and that I will never consent to the limitation 
 of autocratic power, which I think necessary and 
 useful for Russia. The manifesto seems to me 
 to be written very well. It was fully approved 
 by Count Stroganov, who also agrees with me 
 upon the timeliness of such a step. To-day I 
 have read the manifesto personally to A. V. 
 Adlerberg, who fully approved of it. Thus, 
 with God's help, forward ! " 
 
 We have rarely a chance of seeing the private 
 correspondence of a Tzar who is our contem-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 5$ 
 
 porary, and few documents convey a better 
 idea of the darkness prevailing in our highest 
 spheres. 
 
 The Tzar has no suspicion of the intrigue 
 of which he was the object. He believes him- 
 self the initiator of the whole affair, and he is 
 so innocent of all political notions as to apply 
 to Pobedonoszev when he is dissatisfied with the 
 procrastinations of Loris Melikov. And this is 
 done only a few days after he has inscribed, 
 with his own Imperial hand, on the margins of 
 Loris Melikov's project, the words, " It is very 
 well written." This means, if it means anything, 
 that Alexander III. repudiated at the end of 
 April what he had approved in the middle of the 
 same month, or that he did not understand at 
 all what the project meant, and might lead to. 
 He had inscribed the enigmatical " It is very 
 well written," quite perfunctorily, simply to say 
 something, as though he would thoughtfully 
 remark that " the Count's handwriting is good." 
 In both cases we can well endorse the old 
 Oxenstiern saying that little wisdom rules the 
 world. 
 
 Being much smarter than their opponents, 
 the reactionaries took care not to let the cat 
 out of the bag, out of fear that their enemies
 
 56 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 might oust them, as they had been ousted a short 
 time ago. The preparation, and even the 
 printing of the reactionary manifesto remained a 
 secret to the seven ministers supporting Loris 
 Melikov, and probably to many of the reac- 
 tionary ones. When it appeared in the Official 
 Gazette on April 29, it was like a thunderbolt 
 from a clear sky. 
 
 " It is a treason, a reactionary coup-d"e'tat" 
 exclaimed Loris Melikov. He and two of his 
 colleagues, Milutin and Abaza, tendered their 
 resignation. The Tzar was surprised. He had 
 not expected his manifesto to prove unpalatable 
 to the Count and his friends, which might lead 
 some disrespectful persons to the general con- 
 clusion that the Tzar was not very quick in 
 grasping the meaning of official documents. 
 But the resignation of the Liberal ministers was 
 accepted, though not very gracefully. Alex- 
 ander III. could never forgive any of the three 
 statesmen for such an unprecedented demon- 
 stration. In fact a resignation of a minister, 
 not to speak of a resignation of three of them at 
 once, on the ground of principle, was something 
 unheard of in Russia. The Tzars are used to 
 consider all public offices as a service to them 
 personally. Loris Melikov and his colleagues
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 57 
 
 were the first to introduce the question of their 
 political views. 
 
 Thus the Liberal period of Alexander III.'s 
 reign came to a close, and the " peasantist," or 
 Slavophil period began.
 
 IV. 
 
 A TORY DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME. 
 
 COUNT IGNATIEV, the pet of the Slavonic com- 
 mittee, and of its president, Ivan Aksakov, was 
 not a person agreeable to Pobedonoszev or 
 Katkov. But they did not stand in the way of 
 his nomination, biding their time. Some con- 
 cession had to be made to the leader of the 
 Slavophils, who had been so useful to them in 
 detaching Alexander III. from Loris Melikov. 
 Besides, too abrupt a turn of the rudder was 
 dangerous upon a rough sea. Count Ignatiev 
 was just the man to weary out the public agita- 
 tion, and gain time without the slightest chance 
 of ever doing anything serious, because nobody, 
 except Mr. Stead, could take him seriously. 
 
 The Count gained his spurs in the East, as 
 the Russian minister in Constantinople. It is 
 said that he had a special gift of making friends 
 with the Turks, then taking advantage of them, 
 and then making friends again. Orientals
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 59 
 
 do not mind deceit and treachery, if it is clothed 
 in amiable, winning form. 
 
 But his appearance as leading minister is one 
 of the strangest events of that strange time. 
 With his many and varied gifts the Count com- 
 bined a fancy so vivid and unruly as to entirely 
 deprive him of the capacity of distinguishing 
 truth from fiction. No end of anecdotes are 
 circulating about him in Russia. 
 
 It is said that being invited once to step into 
 the carriage of Prince Beloselsky, who was 
 going the same way, he forgot that carriage and 
 team were not his own, and began to improvise 
 a wonderful story about the merits and gene- 
 alogy of the horses, which were presented to 
 him, he assured the prince, by the Sultan 
 himself. 
 
 " But excuse me, Count," said Prince Belo- 
 selsky, " you forget that the horses are mine." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed the Count, " I beg your 
 pardon. But it makes no difference ; they 
 might have been mine." 
 
 For him, what has been and what might have 
 been reality and fancy were the same. 
 
 He is a born actor, and he enters heart and 
 soul into the part he fancies on the spur of the 
 moment. The well-informed St. Petersburg
 
 60 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 correspondent of Free Speech tells us that when 
 he was minister he amused himself and his 
 clerks with the following farces : 
 
 A petitioner would come from some distant 
 town to inquire about some business of his own. 
 The Count would receive him with the most 
 winning courtesy. 
 
 With a tremulous voice the petitioner would 
 ask about his affairs. 
 
 " Oh, things are going on capitally," the 
 Count would reply, encouragingly. " Be seated, 
 please." 
 
 " Mr. So-and-so," he would call one of the 
 clerks, " what is the position of this gentle- 
 man's case ? Is your report ready ? " 
 
 " Yes, your Excellency," the clerk would 
 reply without flinching, " it is ready, and will be 
 included in your next report to the Emperor." 
 
 The petitioner withdraws in exultation ; and 
 when the door is shut behind him they all burst 
 into a laughter. His case had not been even read. 
 
 This was not done out of malice, but from 
 the desire to please. Count Ignatiev wants to 
 please everybody, and he is remarkably versatile. 
 He can be jocular or serious ; he can assume 
 the most varied parts, giving everyone what he 
 supposes he would like best. With Ivan Aksa-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 6l 
 
 kov and the Slavonic committee he is an ardent 
 Slavophil. With the Tzar he was a hot 
 monarchist with democratic leanings. 
 
 An old refugee, who had made himself a good 
 social position in the south of France, told me 
 that once Count Ignatiev, in a confidential talk, 
 recommended with the greatest friendliness 
 some improvements in the organization of the 
 Nihilist party. 
 
 " An Executive Committee ! It is a mere 
 shadow ! " he said. " They ought to have at 
 their head one energetic man, well connected, 
 with a good position in society and well known 
 to the country, and with a Russian name." 
 
 The Tzar wanted to make his reign a golden 
 era for the peasants, and he had some pricks of 
 conscience for having very nearly put aside 
 what was the last will of his father the convo- 
 cation of notables proposed by Loris Melikov. 
 
 The Russian public, like the sea after a 
 storm, was still agitated by the waves of recent 
 commotions. It wanted something to occupy 
 its mind and feed its hopes. 
 
 Count Ignatiev tried to satisfy both the Tzar 
 and the Russian public by starting what has 
 been called very improperly a national do- 
 mestic policy.
 
 62 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 With much beating of drums and blowing of 
 trumpets, the Government, through its papers, 
 declared its resolution to carry out a series of 
 important reforms for which the democratic 
 party had been clamouring for ten years past. 
 The Liberals, the Radicals, and the Revolu- 
 tionists were urging, in fact the whole opposition 
 was urging, that the misery of the masses of the 
 peasantry was the supreme justification for the 
 demand for reform on the part of one section 
 and the rebellion on the part of the other. 
 And all agreed in admitting that its chief cause 
 lay in the exorbitant taxes on the one hand and 
 the insufficiency of land allotted to the peasants 
 on the other. 
 
 Now Count Ignatiev announced that the 
 Tzar would use all his power to bring about a 
 series of reforms in precisely that direction. 
 These were : reduction of redemption money, 
 which was the chief item in the payments of the 
 peasants ; obligatory settlement of the redemp- 
 tion, which many landlords had been putting 
 off for twenty years ; abolition of the capita- 
 tion tax ; facilities for peasants renting crown 
 lands ; facilities for migration from over-popu- 
 lated provinces to the outskirts, where land was 
 plentiful; foundation of a peasants' bank to
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 63 
 
 advance them money for facilitating the purchase 
 of land from the nobility ; finally, measures for 
 the suppression of drunkenness, which was the 
 source of ruin for so many peasant households. 
 
 Nothing worth speaking of was actually done, 
 and the peasants were left by Alexander III. 
 much worse off than he found them. 
 
 Nicholas II. had to acknowledge that in his 
 manifesto, which begins by the statement that 
 the condition of the masses of the peasantry is 
 unsatisfactory. The story of the reign of 
 Alexander III. and of the great famine of 
 1891-92 is there to prove that it is so. But the 
 programme of reform was certainly a very 
 brilliant one. It was sufficient not only to make 
 the Tzar believe that his dream was being 
 realized, but to turn the heads of a number of 
 so-called Russian " peasantists," or short-sighted 
 democrats who consider political freedom some- 
 what aristocratic or bourgeois, and think that 
 economical reforms for the benefit of the 
 peasants, even started by an autocratic Govern- 
 ment, are much more valuable for the nation 
 than general freedom. The official press was 
 not wholly unsuccessful in advocating the theory 
 that the educated or upper classes could put off 
 their dreams of a constitution for a time and let
 
 64 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 the Government do something for the peasants 
 first. 
 
 But the bulk of the Russian public could not 
 be taken in by such a transparent snare. After 
 twenty-five years' experience of the reign of 
 Alexander II., most people knew very well how 
 much autocratic reforms come to. Something 
 had to be done to divert the general diffidence, 
 and here Count Ignatiev's genius for political 
 humbug showed itself in all its possibilities. He 
 pretended that the Government meant to carry 
 out the projected reforms, not in the usual 
 bureaucratic way, but on an entirely new plan ; 
 i.e. with the co-operation of the press and of the 
 representatives of the nation. For a whole 
 year the internal politics of Russia were like a 
 scene out of a comic opera. 
 
 Afraid to confront any genuine representa- 
 tion of the people, the Government summoned 
 to St. Petersburg a number of notables, " well- 
 informed men," as they were called, or experts, 
 who were appointed ad hoc by the governors of 
 different provinces, who were to judge of their 
 fitness unaided. 
 
 The assemblies of these notables had no 
 right of initiative ; no right to step out of the 
 strict limits of the question which was sub-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 65 
 
 mitted to them by the Government, and their 
 resolutions could be taken into consideration 
 by the Government or not, as it chose. This 
 was in strict conformity with the plan proposed 
 in Count Loris Melikov's project, but it was a poor 
 substitute for the national representation which 
 the Opposition demanded, and the Russian 
 public made no mistake possible on this point. 
 
 Count Ignatiev's view upon the co-operation 
 of the press was, to say the least, a curious one. 
 He upheld the opinion that union is strength, 
 and mercilessly crushed all the papers which 
 refused to sing his praises. At no time was the 
 Liberal press persecuted so relentlessly. In 
 the years 1881 and 1882 thirteen periodical 
 publications (daily papers and magazines) were 
 suppressed, and twenty-eight periodicals suffered 
 administrative penalties of various kinds. Some 
 Liberal papers did not bring out one-half of 
 their number in the year. 
 
 The official and semi-official press clamoured 
 only the louder, being left almost in exclusive 
 possession of the right of speech. It went into 
 ecstasies over the projected reforms, the comedy 
 of the commission of experts, and the silly mas- 
 querade of the reintroduction of ancient Russian 
 dress and customs. The Tzar let his beard 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 grow a thing which had never been seen since 
 Peter the Great shaved himself and compelled 
 his reluctant boyars to do the same. A uni- 
 form resembling the peasants' costume was 
 proposed for the army, and at Court balls the 
 ladies appeared in the dresses of the Muscovite 
 period. 
 
 All this was hailed by Aksakov as a return to 
 
 the good old times, when Russia was proud of her 
 
 nationality, and did not ape the heretical West. 
 
 Of course, all men of any sense laughed at 
 
 these mummeries. 
 
 The Liberal Party showed in this trying time 
 greater energy than at any other period. The 
 Zemstvos besieged the Government with re- 
 monstrances. That of Novgorod passed a 
 resolution prohibiting their members from 
 taking part in the commission of experts, unless 
 they should be appointed to this office by the 
 Zemstvos. Twelve other Zemstvos made state- 
 ments to the same effect, expressing the hope 
 that the members of these commissions would 
 be elected by the Zemstvos, and not nominated 
 by the Government. The Zemstvos of Novgo- 
 rod, Tver, Kirilov, Tchernigov, and Kharkov 
 asked in plain terms for the participation of 
 representatives of the nation in legislation.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 67 
 
 The Government silenced the voices of these 
 true patriots. The governors of the provinces 
 received stringent orders not to allow the 
 Zemstvos to discuss any such questions. Some 
 of the members of the Zemstvos were visited 
 with administrative punishment. 
 
 Thus a whole year passed, and the popular 
 excitement subsided, tired out by its own inten- 
 sity. The Liberals did not succeed in spread- 
 ing it farther and deeper. They had not the 
 courage to override the order of the Minister, 
 and to compel the Government either to yield, 
 or to persecute them in the same relentless 
 fashion as it persecuted the Nihilists ; and the 
 Nihilists could not fill the double function of 
 conspirators, and leaders and organizers of 
 the public. 
 
 The want of union and mutual under- 
 standing between the two branches of our 
 opposition told grievously in this most decisive 
 moment of our political life. The forces which, 
 in other revolutions, have worked together, 
 mutually assisting and completing each other, 
 with us have been divided. The reckless au- 
 dacity, the enthusiasm, which measures neither 
 danger nor sacrifice, was on one side ; whilst 
 it was utterly without the social influence 
 F 2
 
 68 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 and representative character of the other 
 section. 
 
 Neither could succeed alone. The terrorist 
 method became impossible with the accession to 
 the throne of a new Tzar, who had not shown 
 his hand, and the extreme party showed much 
 political sense and self-control in entirely 
 abstaining from them under very severe pro- 
 vocation. Attempts were made to organize a 
 military insurrection we shall record them later 
 on ; here we will merely say that they did not 
 ripen into actual outbreak, and the revolu- 
 tionary agitation in the country subsided, so 
 that the Government considered its position as 
 safe once again. 
 
 Count Ignatiev had played out his part ; he 
 was no longer necessary. For one moment he 
 thought of regaining the ground he had lost by 
 raising the outcry against the Jews, which 
 would secure him the good-will of the Tzar and 
 Pobedonoszev, and rally around him the jingo- 
 istic elements of Russian society. But the time 
 was not yet ripe for that ; and Count Ignatiev, 
 by his greed and double-dealing in this matter, 
 only hastened his ruin. 
 
 It is rumoured that, at the last moment, seeing
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 69 
 
 the ground sinking under his feet, he surprised 
 everyone by an unexpected change of front, and 
 advised the Tzar to summon a Zemsky Sobor, 
 or national assembly. The proposal was rather 
 out of date. Yet, apprehending some unex- 
 pected move on the part of his master, Pobedo- 
 noszev went to see Count Dmitry Tolstoi, who 
 expressed himself in these remarkable words : 
 " Why disturb the usual course of affairs by the 
 convocation of a National Assembly, when the 
 opinion of the country can be obtained in a 
 much simpler way ? Write a circular letter to 
 the governors of all the provinces, asking them 
 to report upon the public feeling in their respec- 
 tive provinces. You can read their replies, and 
 you will know the opinion of the country." 
 
 This extraordinary view of representative 
 institutions appeared a stroke of genius to Pobe- 
 donoszev, who reported it immediately to the 
 Tzar, who was profoundly impressed by the 
 wisdom of the advice. A few days after, Russia 
 learned through the Official Gazette that her 
 destinies had been entrusted to the most un- 
 popular and inapt of Russian statesmen.
 
 V. 
 
 THE UPSHOT OF AUTOCRATIC DEMOCRATISM 
 COUNT DMITRY TOLSTOI. 
 
 COUNT DMITRY TOLSTOI began his career as 
 Minister in the office to which Pobedonoszev 
 has since given so wide a renown : the office, 
 that is, of procurator of the Holy Synod, or 
 chief administrator of the Church, corresponding 
 to the French Ministre des Cultes. This does 
 not in the least imply that he had any turn 
 for theology, or that he was of a specially 
 devout character. Unlike his renowned suc- 
 cessor, Pobedonoszev, Count Dmitry Tolstoi's 
 bent of mind was decidedly secular. He 
 never troubled himself about religion, ex- 
 cept from the police standpoint ; and his 
 knowledge of the Scriptures was so vague 
 that on one occasion, in full Synod, after 
 quoting, " No man is a prophet in his own 
 country," he added, " as a French proverb has 
 it." He had got it himself from a French 
 proverb, and did not suspect that there was any-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 7 1 
 
 thing more behind it. For the Russian clergy, 
 whom he ruled, he had the contempt of a 
 Russian grand seigneur, accustomed to regard 
 them as an inferior caste, dependent on the 
 bounty of the manor house, and only one degree 
 superior to the menials. His ten years of office 
 as the head of the Church administration, to 
 whom the seamy side of the life of the clergy 
 was inevitably revealed, did not tend to increase 
 his respect for the representatives of the national 
 Church. His after-dinner pastime was to amuse 
 his guests by telling anecdotes of the gross mis- 
 conduct of bishops, who, being monks in the 
 orthodox church, are credited with all the sins 
 which popular suspicion attributes to monastic 
 orders. 
 
 But in one respect Count Dmitry Tolstoi 
 was utterly unlike the grand seigneurs of our 
 country, and, in fact, the whole of our upper 
 classes. That was in his attitude to the 
 peasants, and in general to those plain sons of 
 Adam, who have all undoubtedly long pedigrees, 
 but do not remember them. The broad and 
 generous democratic spirit of which Count Leo 
 Tolstoi, the distant relative of the Minister, is 
 such a splendid exponent, may be considered 
 a common characteristic of our upper classes, 
 without distinction of parties. Sometimes a deep
 
 72 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 and powerful stimulant of action, sometimes 
 not going beyond a superficial benevolence, this 
 feeling is always sincere and spontaneous, 
 being the organic outcome of the whole of our 
 history, as well as of our social condition. But 
 there are exceptions to every rule, and Count 
 Dmitry Tolstoi, through all his long career, has 
 shown such a steady aversion and contempt for 
 the masses of our people, that he, the descend- 
 ant of a house of noblemen of three hundred 
 years' standing, might be taken for one of those 
 foreign adventurers, who never fail to attribute 
 their success to their own merit alone, and pay 
 their debt of gratitude in haughty contempt for 
 the nation to whom they owe their elevation. 
 Yet the "liberal" Alexander II., and his 
 " peasanttst " successor kept this man in office 
 between them for twenty-one years from 1866 
 till his death in 1889, during which period he 
 was in disfavour only for twenty-four months. 
 Alexander II. was not, however, entirely in 
 sympathy with him. He made use of him as a 
 bloodhound to track out and root up the seeds 
 of sedition in the high schools, which, in 1866, 
 culminated in Karakosov's attempt, 
 
 The appointment of Count Dmitri Tolstoi to 
 the post of Minister of public education was a
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 73 
 
 punishment inflicted upon Russia for the par- 
 ticipation of a certain number of students of the 
 Universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the 
 conspiracy which resulted in that unsuccessful 
 pistol-shot of April 4, 1866. 
 
 If the whole of the ink-stained youth of 
 Russia had been privy to the offence, their 
 punishment could hardly have been more 
 severe. It lasted fully twenty years, and 
 might fairly be described as spiritual penal 
 servitude. 
 
 Count Tolstoi went to the root of the evil. The 
 turbulent Universities received their contingent 
 from the colleges gymnasiums. He resolved to 
 apply the screw to the tender brains of boys just 
 out of the nursery. With the assistance of the 
 pedagogues of the Moscow Gazette, Count Tolstoi 
 elaborated a programme which was a master- 
 piece of stultifying sterility and difficulty. The 
 boys' brains were stretched on it as on a rack, and 
 very few could stand the strain without breaking 
 down. Statistics have shown that out of about 
 sixty thousand pupils entering the gymasiums 
 during the seven years' course, only six-and- 
 a-half thousand, or one-ninth, completed their 
 studies, obtaining a diploma, which opened to 
 them the doors of the universities. The
 
 74 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 remainder broke down in the race, and were 
 turned adrift without any chance of utilizing 
 the years they had wasted in insipid drudgery. 
 And no scope for private initiative in education, 
 no high school except those of the Government 
 existed. No possibility for parents to screen 
 their children from the effects of a system, 
 which was a veritable massacre of the innocents. 
 Russia was like Rachel crying over her chil- 
 dren. But the Tzar remained deaf to the voice 
 of expostulations : Count Tolstoi had promised 
 him to purge the schools from the revolutionary 
 infection, if he were allowed to have his way. 
 
 The outbreak of rebellion in its fiercest form 
 at the end of the seventies, after Tolstoi's 
 system had fourteen years of trial, showed that 
 he and his remedy were a fraud. Count Loris 
 Melikov succeeded in obtaining from Alexander 
 II. the dismissal of the noted "minister of 
 public benightedness," as he was appropriately 
 called, and there was universal jubilation all 
 over the country, as at a deliverance from a 
 foreign invasion. Parents ordered thanksgiving 
 services to be sung in churches. The press was 
 full of such eulogies of the Tzar, and such frank 
 and outspoken abuse of the retiring minister, 
 that the censorship department took alarm. The
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 75 
 
 exultation of the present was a grievous asper- 
 sion upon the past. But public feeling was 
 too strong to brook restraint. The Govern- 
 ment could not for one moment doubt that 
 none of its representatives was so cordially 
 and universally hated as Count Dmitry Tolstoi. 
 He seemed dead and buried. 
 
 In Russia, a minister who has been dismissed 
 is hardly ever called back ; this would mean an 
 implicit recognition of the previous error, and an 
 autocratic ruler will think twice before forfeiting 
 his claims to infallibility. 
 
 But Alexander III. disregarded this tacit rule, 
 which his autocratic fanaticism should, one 
 would have thought, have made more stringent 
 for him than for any other Tzar. Two years 
 after his dismissal, Count Dmitry Tolstoi was 
 summoned to a still higher post than he had 
 filled before : that of the Minister of the 
 Interior. 
 
 How, of all men, could Tolstoi deserve to 
 be made an exception ? Why should the 
 " peasantist," Alexander III., of all Tzars, 
 make an exception of such a man ? 
 
 On being summoned to the Gatchino palace he 
 said to the Tzar, Alexander III., " I am at your 
 Majesty's service, but I am not aware if my
 
 76 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 views have the honour of meeting with your 
 Majesty's approval. I do not/' he explained, 
 " understand the peasantry of Russia at all. To 
 my mind the strength of Russia lies in the cul- 
 tured classes," by which he meant the nobles. 
 
 Now, as the Tzar professed to understand the 
 peasants only, and certainly did not understand 
 the cultured classes, one would have thought 
 that the two men should have parted company at 
 once. They could not help making " a mess of 
 it/' in ruling the country on two opposite 
 plans. 
 
 They did, in fact, make a mess of it, but they 
 never parted company until death severed their 
 connection, because there was one essential 
 point which they both understood excellently : 
 autocracy. 
 
 Alexander III. understood it as a fiction 
 in the style of the Slavophils. Count Dmitry 
 Tolstoi understood and accepted autocracy, 
 such as it is, has always been, and will remain 
 as long as it exists, i.e. as a bureaucratic 
 despotism, which he wished to strengthen by 
 making it aristocratic. 
 
 Pobedonoszev was right in telling the Tzar 
 that with such a minister autocracy was safe 
 from any underhand attacks, and, for Alex-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. ?/ 
 
 ander III., this was the essential point. Thus 
 they got on together, the Tzar sacrificing his 
 democratic aspirations for the sake of the 
 maintenance of his power, the Count humouring 
 his master by throwing to the humble peasants 
 some crumbs from the table of their betters. 
 
 Alexander III. had a few ideas which he held 
 firmly. The strongest was that of the necessity 
 and usefulness of his power to Russia. How 
 far his policy was a compromise with the 
 exigencies of life, and how far a treason to the 
 masses of the Russian people whom he professed 
 to love, the balance of the good and of the evil 
 which he has actually done to them, will show. 
 
 From the time that Count Dmitry Tolstoi 
 came into power, the domestic policy of Alex- 
 ander III. was irrevocably fixed, so that the 
 history of his reign becomes identical with that 
 of Count Dmitry Tolstoi's administration. The 
 continuity was not interrupted by the bodily 
 disappearance of the powerful minister. 
 
 Before starting on his vast experiment, Count 
 Dmitry Tolstoi gave himself a little recreation 
 in hunting down the press. The farewell con- 
 cert of execration it gave him in 1880, was, as 
 we have said, something unique in its kind, and 
 not easily to be forgotten by a man of forgiving
 
 ?8 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 temper. And Count Dmitry Tolstoi was 
 viciously vindictive, in which again he is 
 marked off as a deviation from the Russian type. 
 
 As the Tzar did not understand the press, 
 and his confidential advisers understood it too 
 well, there was no one to stand between the 
 irritated Count and his prey. In no time the 
 Liberal press was annihilated. The largest 
 papers, such as the Golos and Poriadok dis- 
 appeared, and the famous magazine the 
 " Annals of the Country," was suppressed. The 
 minor periodicals followed suit. 
 
 The ground being cleared, the indefatigable 
 champion of reaction set himself to work in 
 earnest. He began methodically and deliber- 
 ately, as one who feels his hands free, and knows 
 that he can bide his time. The task he had 
 planned for himself required time and delibera- 
 tion, for it was nothing less than upsetting the 
 very foundations of our democratic country, 
 transforming it into an aristocratic one. The 
 plan was certainly more destructive and "vision- 
 ary " than the boldest schemes of the Nihilists. 
 In fact, the Nihilists wanted to change the 
 Government, so as to adapt it to the require- 
 ments of the democratic country ; whilst Count 
 Dmitry Tolstoi wanted to upset the democratic
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 79 
 
 structure of the country in order to suit it to the 
 needs of the Government. 
 
 What made the efforts of Count Dmitry 
 Tolstoi quite hopeless, and even a little 
 ludicrous, is the fact that the nobility, on 
 whose behalf he was exerting himself, by no 
 means shared the ambitious dreams he cherished 
 for it. The bulk of the nobility does not care to 
 play any political part : they are too indolent, 
 too fond of the lighter pleasures of life to 
 nourish class ambitions. It is rare for them 
 to have the energy and public spirit to take any 
 share or active interest in public life at all. 
 And the public-spirited minority is antagonistic 
 to these schemes of class dominion, which 
 wound its democratic sentiments, and are 
 opposed to its historical traditions. 
 
 There is no creating aristocratic tendencies 
 where there is no room for aristocracy. The 
 Russian nobility has been a class of privileged 
 servants of the State : trained warriors to whom, 
 instead of salary, the State gave certain portions 
 of land, transferring, at the same time, certain 
 rights over the peasants who were occupying it 
 at the time. Originally the peasants, as free 
 men, had the right of moving from one place to 
 another, changing their landlords as freely as a
 
 80 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 modern English farmer. As time went on, the 
 State expanding, and the difficulties of national 
 defence increasing, the right of peasants to 
 leave the land of the nobles was gradually re- 
 stricted, until it was abolished altogether. 
 
 Serfdom was nothing but the gradual restric- 
 tion of this right of free movement, and the 
 fixing of tenure of State lands, first upon the 
 nobles individually, then upon their descendants 
 as well. This double reform was introduced 
 gradually in the course of a century and a half, 
 entirely in the interests of national defence. 
 The nobles had to serve the country in the army 
 or civil service from early youth till the age of 
 sixty-five. As a compensation, the State im- 
 posed upon the peasants the obligation of giving 
 them their unpaid labour. With the liberation 
 of the nobility from obligatory service to the 
 State by Peter III., serfdom lost its raisontfetre 
 and became a monstrous injustice. It was 
 maintained, however, by Catherine II. and her 
 successors, as a means for securing the adhesion 
 of the nobility, which thus became a privileged 
 class in the worst sense of the word. But the 
 privilege treacherously bestowed by the Tzar 
 proved to be a poisonous gift to the nobility. 
 
 From a hard-working, energetic, and useful
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 8 1 
 
 class in the community, the nobility was trans- 
 formed into a body of idle drones, enervated 
 and demoralized by the absolute power put into 
 their hands, and the easy, slovenly life they were 
 enabled to live ; and certainly the nobility have 
 not gained in political influence what they have 
 lost in personal qualities. There is no love lost 
 between masters and slaves, and the Russian 
 nobility never had any trace of the most 
 essential attribute of aristocracy moral in- 
 fluence over the masses of the people. The 
 peasants obeyed their masters out of deference 
 to the supreme power upholding them. But 
 there was no human tie between them. The 
 resident nobles were perfect strangers to their 
 peasants, by whom they were generally hated, 
 in some exceptional cases loved, but never re- 
 spected. Up to the present the word, " barin," 
 or " a noble," means, in the peasant language, 
 a fellow who is unfit for any serious work or 
 business of life, whatever else he may be. 
 
 After the emancipation for which the best 
 part of the nobility had been agitating for two 
 generations the democratic principles forming 
 the basis of our social life were allowed free 
 scope, and the nobility, as a class, never showed 
 any attempt to put obstacles in their way. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 The most numerous and poorer section of the 
 class, the lower or smaller nobility which the 
 Government had purposely excluded from par- 
 ticipation in local self-government being the 
 best educated class of the community, is the most 
 democratic. But even the richer section of the 
 nobility, which alone is admitted to representa- 
 tion in the Zemstvos, is remarkably free from the 
 domineering spirit characterizing nobilities of 
 feudal origin. The nobility protested repeatedly 
 against the attempt to constitute it into a 
 dominant class. Whilst, in his coronation 
 speech to the peasants, Alexander III. made 
 himself the mouthpiece of Count Dmitry 
 Tolstoi's aberrations advising the peasants to 
 obey the local Marshals of Nobility we find 
 in the addresses of the authoritative spokesmen 
 of the nobility an emphatic repudiation of all 
 desire to rule over the other classes of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 The feelings which the nobility expressed 
 on these exceptional occasions were confirmed 
 in practice during thirty years of provincial 
 self-government. Although numerically in the 
 ascendant, out of the thirty-eight provincial and 
 about two hundred district Zemstvos, one can 
 point to only a few cases where these assemblies
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 83 
 
 tried to further any class interests. When, in 
 1871, the question was put to them as to the 
 reform of taxation, they were unanimous in 
 advising a graduated income-tax. But the 
 paternal Government would never adopt their 
 advice in that matter, well aware that only the 
 peasants would pay, asking no question ; but 
 the middle and upper classes, after paying their 
 money, would ask to have a voice in their ex- 
 penditure. 
 
 The abolition of the tax upon salt, which 
 bears so heavily upon the peasants, and hardly 
 affects the upper classes, was due mainly to the 
 efforts of the Zemstvos. And when, in 1893, the 
 Government, being short of cash, wanted to re- 
 introduce it, the Zemstvos and the upper classes 
 in general prevented this backsliding in the 
 interests of the masses. 
 
 With a class imbued with such plebeian 
 sympathies Count Tolstoi's aristocratic dreams 
 could not find favour. So much so, that when 
 Count Dmitry Tolstoi, being, in 1881, out of 
 office, offered himself as a candidate for the 
 Zemstvo of his province (Riazan), the nobility 
 blackballed the ardent champion of their rights. 
 
 Of course such opposition on the part of the 
 best elements, we may safely say, of the bulk of 
 G 2
 
 84 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the nobility, would have disheartened any man 
 of ordinary common sense. If forcing people 
 into something repugnant is difficult, forcing 
 them into accepting a favour is simply absurd. 
 But Count Dmitry Tolstoi was a man with a 
 system, and he would not allow any such trifling 
 consideration to stand in his way. If he could 
 not reckon upon the support of the best part of 
 the nobility, he was prepared to make use of 
 the worst, provided the system should triumph. 
 As a man with a system he proceeded system- 
 atically. 
 
 The Russian nobility was ruined by the 
 emancipation, owing to its utter inability to 
 adapt itself to the new conditions of life. Before 
 elevating this class to the high functions which 
 Count Tolstoi conceived for it, he resolved to re- 
 establish its former economical predominance. 
 The idea was a very good, even a brilliant one, 
 and quite in keeping with modern scientific 
 theories. 
 
 Our age has been so deeply impressed by 
 the economic philosophy of which Karl Marx is 
 the founder, that even men who hold his name 
 in abhorrence, and certainly have never read any 
 of his works, will sometimes show an amusing 
 deference to his views. Count Tolstoi was one
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 85 
 
 of their number. He was advanced enough 
 in modern social science to understand that 
 unless he succeeded in improving the economic 
 position of the nobility, all attempts to make it 
 the leading class in politics would fail hopelessly. 
 Had he advanced a little further in economics, 
 he would have discovered that he was flogging 
 a dead horse. Classes change their function on 
 the historic stage so organically, that to bring 
 to life one that has succumbed in the struggle 
 for existence, is as impossible as to repopulate 
 the earth with antediluvian animals. But Count 
 Dmitry Tolstoi was a statesman of the old 
 stock, who believed that the State can do any- 
 thing. 
 
 The nobility was losing ground, and rapidly 
 dwindling away as a territorial power, owing to 
 its impecuniosity. He therefore jumped to the 
 conclusion that the State had only to lend them 
 money ungrudgingly, and the process would be 
 stopped, and the nobility would flourish once 
 again. 
 
 The foundation of a special bank for this 
 object in 1886, opened what has been called in 
 Russia the era of the nobility.
 
 VI. 
 
 A MAN WITH A SYSTEM. 
 
 THIS is the fitting place to mention that about 
 two years before that time a peasants' bank had 
 been opened. The object of the Peasants' Land 
 Bank was to assist the peasants in acquiring on 
 easy terms some land, of which they were in 
 such great need. It was the outcome of the 
 honeymoon of the Tzar's peasantism, its plan 
 having been elaborated and accepted under the 
 ministry of Count Ignatiev, who " understood 
 the peasants." But its operation began under 
 Count Tolstoi, who could not decently suppress 
 it, and probably did not care to, for it was 
 evident that this democratic mushroom would 
 not stand in the way of its aristocratic rival. It 
 is interesting to make a parallel study of both 
 these financial concerns. 
 
 The Peasants' Land Bank was started on a 
 very modest scale. The State Exchequer, 
 which was so prodigal to its rival, the Nobility
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 8/ 
 
 Land Bank, would not come to its assistance, 
 unless we count as such the eventual credit of 
 half-a-million roubles (about 5o,ooo/.) Its re- 
 sources depend upon the 5^ per cent, bonds 
 issued by the Bank, with the State guarantee to 
 the extent of five million roubles a year. 
 
 With such limited resources the Peasants' 
 Land Bank could satisfy only a very small 
 fraction of the very keen demand on the part of 
 the landless peasantry. 
 
 Still, it did a good work, especially in the be- 
 ginning, in assisting some of the peasants in 
 purchasing the disposable land of other classes. 
 
 On the whole, the Peasants' Land Bank may 
 be called the most successful of the measures 
 representing the democratic tendencies of the 
 Tzar Alexander III., though its success, as we 
 shall presently see, was a very modest one. 
 
 In 1884, which was the first year of the 
 regular activity of the Peasants' Land Bank, it 
 had advanced nine and a half million roubles 
 to peasants of various denominations, helping 
 them in acquiring 210,000 desiatines. The 
 full value of this land was a little over eleven 
 millions. Thus the peasants had advanced one 
 and a half millions of their own. 
 
 The operations of the next year were still
 
 88 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 more successful ; the purchased area of land in- 
 creased to 318,000 deseatines, its total value to 
 sixteen and a half million roubles, out of which 
 the Peasants' Land Bank advanced fourteen 
 millions. 
 
 But the third year of the activity of the Bank 
 shows a slight falling off from this absolute 
 maximum : the area to 295,000 deseatines ; 
 the value to thirteen and a half millions, and 
 the advance to eleven millions ; and the farther 
 we go the worse it grows. 
 
 The area of land which the Bank helped the 
 peasants to purchase is decreasing gradually 
 and regularly with every year that passes. The 
 falling off in the total value of the purchased 
 land is also regularly decreasing, but more 
 rapidly than its total area, whilst the advance 
 of the Bank diminishes in a still more rapid 
 proportion than the general operations. The 
 Bank has become stingier in proportion as it 
 restricts its activity. 
 
 In 1886, which followed the year of the 
 greatest prosperity of the Peasants' Land Bank, 
 the area of purchased land is 22,000 desiatines 
 below the earlier figures, namely 295,000; then 
 it sinks to 219,000, 190,000, 156,000, 172,000, 
 161,000, which is about one-half of the year
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 8p 
 
 1885. The value of the purchase gradually 
 sinks from sixteen-and-a-half millions to five 
 and five and a half millions, or to one-third of 
 the earlier sum ; whilst the Bank, which in the 
 beginning advanced fourteen million roubles, 
 stops now at three and a half millions, or less 
 than one-fourth of the earlier sum. 
 
 It is evident that the Peasants' Land Bank is 
 not doing well, and that there is some organic 
 defect in the mechanism. It is easy to find out 
 what it is. The Bank has forgotten its original de- 
 mocratic aim. The political inspiration to which 
 it owes its origin did not outlive three years ; the 
 Bank became rusty. During the first years it 
 advanced money chiefly to the peasants who had 
 very little land of their own under one and a 
 half desiat. per soul (taxable unit). Very often 
 it advanced the full sum of the purchase-money 
 to people who had no other guarantee to offer 
 but their willingness to work. 
 
 The administration of the Bank in its 
 earliest official reports, says, that such invest- 
 ments were among the safest, because in such 
 cases the peasants had not to borrow from 
 usurers, and at very high interest (thirty-five per 
 cent, is the average, sometimes a hundred per 
 cent, and more), the supplementary money, and
 
 90 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 thus were better able to fulfil their obligations 
 toward the Bank, their sole creditor. 
 
 But there are peasants and peasants, and there 
 is land and land. Such transactions required a 
 certain amount of attention and carefulness to 
 be uniformly successful, and the Peasants' Land 
 Bank, entrusted as it was to the care of a lazy 
 and apathetic bureaucracy, preferred very soon 
 to drift into the usual routine of money-lenders, 
 which secures the safety of an investment with- 
 out the slightest trouble. It is not improbable 
 that the ill-will of the leading ministers had its 
 share of influence in hastening this natural 
 result. Anyhow, in 1887 the Peasants' Land 
 Bank was not the same as in 1884-5. 
 
 The regulations permitted the Bank to ask 
 from the peasants, by way of security, that they 
 should pay a fraction (up to 25 per cent.) of the 
 purchase-money. 
 
 During the first three years of its activity 
 these supplementary payments were about 
 12 percent, on the average, as the Bank did not 
 use its privilege beyond the limits strictly 
 necessary. But then the supplementary sums 
 reach 16 per cent., then 18 per cent, 21 per 
 cent., and, in 1888, 25 per cent, at which figure 
 they keep. But this not seeming sufficient, the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. pi 
 
 Bank having been allowed by the regulation 
 to put certain conditions to its mediation, the 
 administration introduced, as a general practice, 
 that the Bank should make its assistance con- 
 ditional on a lowering of the price of the pur- 
 chaseable land. 
 
 This meant, of course, merely a supplemen- 
 tary payment by peasants to be got from the 
 same source as the former, i.e. from usurers. 
 The seller would not abate the price agreed 
 upon simply to meet the wishes of the Bank. 
 
 Thus the Peasants' Land Bank was virtually 
 advancing only about one-half of the purchase- 
 money, at the comparatively moderate interest of 
 5^ per cent, (with different out-goings 6| per 
 cent.), leaving the peasants to find as best they 
 could the other half. The Peasants' Land Bank 
 became an ordinary loan office, which could only 
 contribute to the economical disintegration of 
 the village communities. 
 
 N. Kvalson, who since the death of Professor 
 Yanson is the best authority on the economics 
 of our rural classes, thus sums up his detailed 
 study of the Peasants' Bank: 
 
 "Judging from all the materials supplied by 
 the official reports of the Bank, and from other 
 sources, we can confidently affirm that the
 
 92 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 Peasants' Land Bank, in lowering the purchase 
 prices, and in raising the supplementary pay- 
 ments, in the best cases supports those who 
 might very well have managed by themselves, 
 but usually works into the hands of rural 
 usurers." 
 
 The Peasants' Land Bank, even at its best, 
 was a small affair, though much big talk has 
 been made out of it. With the seventy millions 
 of rural population, increasing at the rate of 
 I per cent, a year, no less than two millions of 
 deseatines ought to be added every year to the 
 peasants' property out of unreclaimed land, 
 merely to meet the demand of these new-comers. 
 And there are, at least, twenty-five times as 
 many more among the men of the generation 
 which witnessed the emancipation who have 
 been turned into landless proletarians. 
 
 Only an agrarian revolution peaceful if pos- 
 sible, violent if not will satisfy the just claims 
 of the Russian peasants. As to the Peasants' 
 Land Bank, in the ten years of its existence it 
 assisted in the purchase of only if millions of 
 deseatines, out of which not more than three- 
 quarters of a million went into the hands of those 
 who were destitute of land. 
 
 But if all the land had been turned to the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 93 
 
 same good use, it would not, in all the years of 
 its activity, have filled the want which the mere 
 increase of population creates in one year. 
 
 The Peasants' Land Bank does not deserve 
 much notice on its own account, but its history 
 is interesting as illustrating in a minute sphere the 
 generic peculiarity of bureaucracy, which proved 
 so fatal in all the greater reforms of Alexander 
 II., and in all the measures which benevolent 
 despotism has started in Russia within the last 
 forty years. 
 
 If we pass to the story of the Nobility Land 
 Bank, we shall find it quite as suggestive, though 
 in an entirely different line. Its object, as its 
 name indicates, was similar to that of the 
 Peasants' Land Bank. But what a difference 
 in the methods ! No trace of suspiciousness or 
 stinginess ; not even common prudence in sub- 
 sidizing a class which gives no guarantee what- 
 soever of its solvency. The owners are allowed 
 to give their own estimates of their estates, 
 which the administration almost invariably 
 accepted, making but a slight reduction. All 
 facilities having been offered for the borrowers, 
 there was a rush of impecunious noblemen for 
 loans from the new bank. 
 
 In the first year of its activity, 1886, the Bank
 
 94 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 gave away sixty-eight and a half millions of 
 roubles, or seven millions more than the 
 Peasants' Land Bank disbursed during the ten 
 years of its existence. But next year, when the 
 time for paying the interest came, almost the 
 whole body of the borrowers proved defaulters. 
 
 The fact is unique, and it is difficult to find 
 a more conclusive and damning proof of the 
 utter hopelessness of the aristocratic dreams of 
 Count Tolstoi and Co. But this egregious check 
 produced no impression upon them. The next 
 year a still larger sum seventy-one millions 
 of roubles was swallowed up in the same 
 insatiable abyss, which again returned nothing, 
 and gaped for more. In 1888, after three years' 
 operation, the total amount of arrears was 
 ten and a half millions of roubles, out of twelve 
 millions of roubles which had to be paid. 
 
 After an experience of this kind, the wisest 
 thing to do would have been to close the 
 Nobility Bank altogether, and to sell up the 
 defaulting debtors. But a much milder course 
 was adopted. The Bank waited for three years 
 without receiving a penny from most of its 
 creditors, and then the Government, by an ukase 
 of October I2th, 1889, virtually cancelled ten 
 and a half millions of arrears of interest, which
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 95 
 
 were added to the original debt, partly with a 
 nominal interest, partly without any interest at 
 all. 
 
 The nobility remained in possession of its 
 land, which ought in justice to have become the 
 property of the State, and the Nobility Land 
 Bank remained to subsidize them. Up to 
 January, 1892, the Bank advanced to the 
 nobility the total sum of three hundred and 
 forty millions, at the rate of about fifty millions 
 of roubles a year. To show the grandmotherly 
 nature of this institution, suffice it to mention 
 that out of these fifty millions yearly subsidy 
 full sixty or seventy per cent, is retained for the 
 payment of ancient debts. Yet the Bank goes 
 on subsidizing such insolvent clients over and 
 over again. 
 
 The Russian nobility has shown its full worth, 
 or rather, its full worthlessness as a political 
 factor, by the use it has made of the assistance 
 received. A class of luxurious paupers, kept at 
 the expense of the tax-payers, cannot have 
 political influence. Instead of raising the pres- 
 tige of the nobility, Count Tolstoi only suc- 
 ceeded in lowering the prestige of the Tzar 
 with the masses of peasants by showing his 
 partiality for their former masters.
 
 96 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 But whether from fanaticism or hypocrisy, 
 Count Tolstoi remained absolutely impervious 
 to the most palpable evidence of the absurdity 
 of his political plans. He pretended that the 
 Nobility Land Bank had improved the eco- 
 nomic position of the nobility quite sufficiently 
 to proceed to the restoration of its political in- 
 fluence. His project of the abolition of the 
 peasants' communal autonomy, and of their 
 subjection to the authority of a special adminis- 
 tration, composed of members of local nobility 
 this project of his, which he considered the 
 crowning work of his life, was actively elabo- 
 rated in the Ministry. 
 
 Meanwhile, another law, inspired by the 
 same narrow-class prejudice, but easier in execu- 
 tion, was promulgated in 1887. Its purport 
 was to exclude from the privilege of secondary 
 and higher education all except the nobles, and 
 the richer section of the middle-class. By a 
 decree of the minister, the directors of gymna- 
 siums (colleges), were enjoined to refuse the 
 children of shopkeepers, artisans, and trades- 
 men admittance to the schools, even though 
 their parents might be quite willing and able to 
 pay their fees. It was an act of monstrous 
 injustice and tyranny. By a stroke of his silly
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 97 
 
 pen the minister deprived thousands of young 
 Russians of their inalienable right to self- 
 improvement and knowledge, and made dis- 
 tinctions which are unknown to the code 
 of laws. But the stupidity of this decree is 
 as surprising as its coarse arbitrariness. 
 
 The suppression of education altogether 
 might be of great use to the autocracy 
 ignorance being the best safeguard of loyalty 
 The system has been tried on the lower classes, 
 but it was impossible to extend it higher with- 
 out giving up Russia's claims to be a first-rate 
 European power. The State could not stand, 
 and be administered and defended against 
 external enemies, without a vast body of edu- 
 cated people to act as its officials. And once 
 admitting education at all, it was perfectly use- 
 less to restrict it to one class rather than to 
 another. Parents cannot be a guarantee for 
 their children, and the educated youth belonging 
 by birth to the nobility, acquire higher interests, 
 which they will not sell for a governmental 
 subsidy. They cast in their lot with the peo- 
 ple, swelling the ranks of the revolutionists, the 
 majority of whom belong to this class, simply 
 because, up to the present, it is the best edu- 
 cated in the community. If this advantage 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 were increased artificially at the expense of 
 other classes, this percentage would increase, 
 and the Government would have gained 
 nothing. 
 
 This educational restriction, unprecedented 
 even in Russia, greatly exasperated the middle 
 class, which had already become a power in the 
 country, and to no purpose irritated the whole 
 of the Russian public. The pressure of public 
 opinion compelled the Government to put the 
 absurd decree into abeyance. Still, Count 
 Tolstoi probably congratulated himself on 
 having put another stone to the foundation of 
 his favourite scheme by investing the nobility 
 with the double power of wealth through the 
 Nobility Land Bank, and knowledge through 
 the decree of 1887. 
 
 The times were ripe for striking the great 
 blow and turning the tide of the democratic age, 
 to convert Russia into an aristocratic country. 
 The project of the new-law was finished and re- 
 vised by Count D. Tolstoi, but here his career 
 ended. He died, accompanied to his grave, as 
 the wicked magnate in Nekrasov's poem, " by 
 the secret curses of the country, and loud 
 praises," in which the Tzar's voice rang the 
 loudest.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 99 
 
 It is rumoured that on his death-bed he ob- 
 tained from the Tzar a solemn promise that his 
 favourite "reform" should not be forgotten. 
 In fact, it was carried out, notwithstanding the 
 universal outcry of disapprobation, and the 
 almost unanimous vote against it of the State 
 Council, including several members of the Im- 
 perial family. 
 
 Count Dmitry Tolstoi struck the note of 
 autocratic reaction so well, and his anti-popular 
 policy so completely suited the tastes of the 
 Tzar mujik, that his death made no change 
 whatever, and we may say that his ghost con- 
 tinued to sit at the head of the Ministry of 
 the Interior. 
 
 The new law was introduced first by way of 
 experiment in six provinces. It was an attack 
 upon the personal liberty of millions of peasants, 
 and the Government wanted to see first how 
 they would stand it. They did stand it, though 
 not quite patiently, and the Government made 
 bold to extend it gradually to the whole of 
 European Russia. 
 
 The ukases of August 3rd, 1889, and of 
 
 January 6th, 1890, create "in the interests of 
 
 the peasants," special officials called District 
 
 Commanders, who will be the " guardians " of 
 
 H 2
 
 100 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 the peasants' autonomy guardians of a strange 
 sort, as we shall presently see. 
 
 The District Commanders are nominated by 
 the minister out of a number of candidates pre- 
 sented by the provincial administration. They 
 must be hereditary nobles. All other qualifica- 
 tions for this important post, education, and 
 even property, may be dispensed with. But 
 hereditary nobles they must be, if possible, local 
 ones, and here lies the political meaning of this 
 reform. 
 
 The District Commander has no power over 
 the nobles or the middle-class people settled in 
 his district. He is the chief of the peasants, 
 uniting in his person the functions of both ad- 
 ministrator and judge. He receives beforehand 
 from the village elders a list of resolutions to be 
 proposed at the meetings of the forthcoming 
 season. He may add new proposals, if he 
 thinks fit, and strike out those which seem to 
 him objectionable. No subject can be legally 
 brought before a village Mir (communal meet- 
 ing) without his consent, and he has the right 
 of vetoing any of the Mir's resolutions. The 
 law gives him no right of substituting his own 
 resolutions for those of the Mir, but he can 
 impose them by vetoing all the others.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA: IOI 
 
 The District Commander's means of directly 
 influencing the village Mirs are very great. He 
 can fine and imprison any of the peasants of 
 his districts (the elected officials included), by his 
 own authority, " without formal proceedings," 
 and suspend both elders and clerks from their 
 functions. 
 
 Moreover, he is the rural magistrate, judging 
 all civil and criminal matters, excepting those 
 which belong to the jurisdiction of the principal 
 tribunals. Finally, he is the " guardian," which 
 means absolute master of the peasants' tribunal. 
 
 The last attribute is particularly important, 
 because the peasants' tribunals hold in Russia 
 an altogether exceptional position. They are 
 not bound by any written law, but judge ac- 
 cording to the traditional law, which gives them 
 an almost unlimited power over the peasants, who 
 alone are subjected to their jurisdiction. Bon- 
 dage, compulsory work without remuneration, 
 disappeared from the Russian code with the abo- 
 lition of serfdom. But the peasants' tribunals 
 have the right of inflicting compulsory labour. 
 Corporal punishment is also cancelled from 
 the common code ; but the peasants' tribunal 
 can inflict it upon any member of its com- 
 munity.
 
 IO2 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 Now the power of the District Commanders 
 over the peasants' tribunals is practically un- 
 limited. Besides acting as a higher authority, 
 the District Commander is the immediate chief 
 of the peasant judges. He nominates them, to 
 begin with. Formerly, they were elected by 
 the peasants. Now the peasants will only elect 
 two, three, or more candidates for every post of 
 judge, and the District Commander will choose 
 from among them his four judges. They are 
 his subordinates, whom he can suspend, re- 
 ferring the matter to the Assembly of District 
 Commanders. As the judges receive a good 
 salary, they are bound to the District Com- 
 mander by interest as well as by fear. 
 
 With such powers the District Commander 
 can do in the villages just what he chooses. 
 He can plunder the Communal treasury, all the 
 money being put under his control ; he can ex- 
 tort bribes, compel the peasants to work gratui- 
 tously upon his estates, and flog them as freely 
 as the ancient serf-owners. The common 
 peasants are quite defenceless against him. In 
 graver cases they have the right of appealing to 
 the Assembly of District Commanders of the 
 province. But who will venture to incur the 
 vengeance of the all-powerful master for the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. IO3 
 
 very problematic chance of redress from such 
 an assembly ? 
 
 It is impossible to regard such a measure as 
 anything but the re-establishment of serfdom. 
 And that is what it was meant to be. The 
 District Commanders were absolute masters in 
 their domain, and they used their power in a 
 way that forcibly reminds one of the good old 
 time, the dream of Count Dmitry Tolstoi and his 
 school, when the millions of peasants were slaves 
 to a handful of nobles. Corporal punishment has 
 remained in the "traditional code" by which 
 the peasants' tribunals were ruled. But, as time 
 went on, and the peasants grew alive to the 
 sentiment of their human dignity, this degrad- 
 ing punishment had gone out of use. In many 
 places sentences of flogging were passed, but 
 never carried out. Thus, thousands of such 
 unexecuted sentences went on accumulating in 
 the registry books of various Communal offices. 
 
 One of the first things the District Com- 
 manders did was to unearth these antiquated 
 sentences and to have them carried out. The 
 Governors of many provinces had to interfere. 
 Those of Nijni Novgorod and Tula issued 
 special " instructions," explaining to the newly- 
 appointed officials that they had better mode-
 
 IO4 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 rate their zeal. In other places the peasants 
 took the matter into their own hands and 
 settled it in a somewhat illegal, but very effec- 
 tive way. In the province of Riazan the pea- 
 sants laid hands upon their District Com- 
 mander, Mordvinov, who was too great a lover 
 of the rod, and flogged him in their turn. In 
 the district of Medin (province of Kalouga) 
 they set fire to the house of the District Com- 
 mander whilst he was asleep. In the district of 
 Shouia (province of Vladimir) they beat him 
 black and blue. In a fourth case they destroyed 
 his property. 
 
 The offences against the District Com- 
 manders became very frequent, but unfortu- 
 nately quite out of proportion to the offences 
 of these latter against humanity and the rights 
 of the people. I will not harrow the reader 
 with the details of revolting brutalities on 
 one hand, and hardly less revolting endurance 
 on the other. But I must quote here one 
 example of the working of the new institution. 
 
 In March, 1891, a number of peasants of the 
 village Doljik (in the province of Kharkov), 
 were tried by the Kharkov tribunal for riot and 
 resistance to their District Commander, Proto- 
 popov. The judicial inquiry brought to light
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. I OS 
 
 facts proving that the peasants had acted under 
 great and constant provocation on the part of 
 the Commander. To say nothing of floggings for 
 which he could not be held legally responsible, 
 because he inflicted it through the subservient 
 peasants' tribunal, Protopopov was in the 
 habit of personally chastising the peasants, for 
 which he had no legal pretext. It was his 
 practice to make a free use of his fists and his 
 stick, to say nothing of bad language, threats, 
 and arbitrary imprisonment. At Doljik the 
 peasants could not stand this treatment. When 
 at the meeting of the Mir, Protopopov gave the 
 peasant Starchenko, who disagreed with his 
 opinions, a blow on the head with his stick, the 
 crowd became excited. "Why do you strike 
 the man ? " they shouted. " You should ex- 
 plain and not use your stick." *' He is beating 
 us," others shouted, " let us pay him back ! " 
 
 Upon this the crowd rushed on Protopopov 
 and hustled him so severely, that the elder 
 Dolgopolov and the rural constable Pribytkov 
 had great difficulty in rescuing him. Proto- 
 popov shut himself up in the communal house 
 while the crowd shouted and abused him out- 
 side. 
 
 This outburst of popular indignation was
 
 105 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 declared to be a riot. Troops were sent to 
 Doljik, a number of peasants were flogged or 
 otherwise punished by administrative order, 
 whilst others, declared to be ringleaders, were 
 taken to prison and tried for rebellion before 
 the Kharkov Tribunal. Fourteen of them were 
 found guilty and sentenced to severe punish- 
 ments, including penal servitude in Siberian 
 mines, long terms of imprisonment, and hard 
 labour in fortresses. 
 
 The District Commanders, as a body, enjoy 
 the particular protection of the administration 
 and of the censorship which does not allow any 
 unfavourable reports of their doings to appear 
 in the press. 
 
 Only in exceptional cases, as the present one, 
 when the tribunals had to interfere, the whole 
 truth comes to light. After the heavy charges 
 which the trial of the delinquent peasants 
 brought against Protopopov it would have been 
 a public scandal not to prosecute him. The 
 Minister of the Interior ordered him to be put 
 on his trial, which, after much procrastination, 
 took place in November, 1892. 
 
 A number of cases of gross abuse of power 
 were proved apainst Protopopov. A peasant, 
 Vorvul, had been beaten by him because he had
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. IO/ 
 
 not recognized him, and did not take off his hat 
 quickly enough. Another peasant, Michael 
 Sery, was beaten by him so cruelly that his own 
 hand was swollen and he could not take off his 
 glove. The peasants assembled in communal 
 meeting at Folochev were told by him that he 
 would " smash their ugly mugs " if they made an 
 uproar, and he added that those who should 
 complain or petition against him should have 
 "their complaints printed on their mugs, and 
 their petitions on their backsides." A number 
 of other offences of similar nature were laid to 
 the charge of Protopopov, who was found 
 guilty, but was sentenced only to expulsion from 
 the service. 
 
 The mildness of the punishment is a conclusive 
 proof that in Protopopov's offence there was 
 nothing very extraordinary. The use of the 
 fist is an integral element of the patriarchal 
 principle. Protopopov had merely exaggerated 
 and pushed to extremes the element of " per- 
 sonal" authority which all the District Com- 
 manders take for their guidance. It is very 
 significant that his counsel advanced as an 
 extenuating circumstance, the influence of the 
 reactionary press, which, in advocating and de- 
 fending the institution of District Commanders
 
 108 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 on the ground of its being a strong, prompt, 
 vigorous, patriarchal authority, had turned 
 the head of Protopopov, who wanted to put 
 these admonitions into practice. 
 
 One could fill many pages with examples 
 showing that Protopopov was not quite the 
 black sheep of the flock. " A number of Dis- 
 trict Commanders acted in the same way as 
 Protopopov, though they do not go so far, 
 and they remain unpunished, or practically so," 
 says the moderate and perfectly reliable Vestnik 
 Evropy. 
 
 In Kursk a peasant had quarrelled with the 
 coachman of a District Commander. Although 
 the affair took place within the boundaries of 
 the city, and therefore clearly fell under the 
 jurisdiction of the local judge, the District Com- 
 mander ordered the peasant to be brought 
 before the village tribunal. Here the peasant 
 was found guilty of disorderly conduct and 
 sentenced to corporal punishment, which was 
 executed on the spot, notwithstanding the pro- 
 test of the Elder of the village. 
 
 The council of the province on receiving the 
 complaint was satisfied with reprimanding the 
 District Commander, although he had been 
 guilty of flagrant breach of law and abuse of power. 
 
 An interesting illustration of the views of
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. IO9 
 
 the District Commanders upon the character of 
 their authority is furnished by the following 
 story. The Zemstvo of Yukhnov (in the qro- 
 vince of Smolensk) had founded in 1891 an 
 Agricultural Council for the improvement of 
 the economical condition of the whole district. 
 With this object the council acquired a store of 
 seeds, chemical manure and improved agricul- 
 tural implements, and offered to intervene for 
 the purchase of improved breeds of cattle. The 
 enterprise met with great success from the 
 very beginning. In the first year various 
 peasants' communes bought all the stock of 
 agricultural implements and seeds and phos- 
 phates which were offered by the council, and 
 orders for new purchases were received from all 
 sides, greatly in excess of the council's stock. 
 But suddenly an unexpected obstacle appeared. 
 Whilst the Agricultural Council was discussing 
 the letter of the commune Sidorova ordering 
 400 pounds of improved seeds and the same 
 quantity of phosphate flour, the following decla- 
 ration was received from the local District Com- 
 mander Titov : " Not recognizing the useful- 
 ness of the peasants' intention to have improved 
 seeds and phosphates and other similar fancies, 
 I, as a District Commander, will prohibit the 
 peasants under my authority from making such
 
 I IO KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 unprofitable outlay ." Vestnik Evropy, Dec., 
 1892. 
 
 The district commander Sukhotin (Chern, 
 prov. of Tula) advised the neighbouring land- 
 lords that he can lend them at any time as 
 bond slaves " his defaulting taxpayers/' whom 
 he undertakes to keep in " strict order." Vest. 
 Evropy, 1895, N. 3. 
 
 The establishment of District Commanders is 
 one of the sorest grievances of rural Russia. 
 The emancipation of the serfs was not a great 
 success. Even the partisans of the Government 
 admit that now. It did not improve the 
 material condition of the masses. But the 
 former serfs became citizens ; they recovered 
 their personal independence and immunity from 
 interference in their private affairs. This was a 
 very great moral benefit. Now, without any 
 offence or provocation on their part, out of 
 absurd doctrinairism this benefit has been 
 gradually reduced to a shadow. 
 
 At the same time it must be noted that this 
 obnoxious measure, condemned in its infancy 
 alike by public opinion and the assembly of the 
 highest officials of the State (the State Council), 
 has been a total failure from the point of view of 
 the aristocratic doctrine which inspired its creation.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. Ill 
 
 Count Dmitry Tolstoi and Katkov and the 
 gang of the Moscow Gazette favoured it as a 
 means of re-establishing the patriarchal prin- 
 ciple of local authority, which was destroyed by 
 the emancipation. The original idea of the 
 law was that District Commanders should be 
 elected from among the resident nobility. But 
 this plan had to be given up at the very outset. 
 " A respectable gentleman would not accept the 
 post of a District Commander," the Moscow 
 Gazette quotes the words of some peasants 
 protesting against it as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 There are respectable people among the 
 District Commanders. But the better men 
 among the nobility shun as a body this office as 
 much as those in the police. The governors were 
 not able to appoint to the posts of District Com- 
 manders many of the resident nobility, because 
 the latter rarely would accept it. So the 
 ministry allowed them to nominate members of 
 the nobility of the province, who with our great 
 distances were perfect strangers to the peasants 
 whom they had to command. But even these 
 failed to answer to the appeal. Out of the 
 600 vacancies for District Commanders, about 
 one-third could not be filled by the governors
 
 112 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 in any way, and had to be appointed out of 
 the rabble of officialdom coming from the four 
 winds of heaven. And it cannot be said that 
 the authorities were very exacting in the choice 
 of these new masters of our rural population ; 
 40 per cent, of the District Commanders are 
 men who have got their education at primary 
 schools only. 
 
 Yet, as usual, the Government pretended to 
 believe in the success of the " reform," and a 
 few months after the institution of District 
 Commanders the next and last step was made 
 for the aristocratization of the country. 
 
 On June I2th, 1890, a new law changing the 
 constitution of our Zemstvos, or provincial 
 councils, was promulgated. 
 
 Until then, as the reader may know, thirty- 
 eight out of the seventy-four Russian provinces 
 had provincial councils for the management of 
 a few local matters, as roads, hospitals, supply 
 of funds for primary schools. These councils, 
 called Zemstvos, were composed of members 
 elected by three different bodies : the land- 
 owners (without distinction of origin), the class 
 holding town property, and the peasantry. Now 
 the peasants alone continue to vote as a class as 
 they did before ; but it matters little how they
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 113 
 
 vote, for they are practically deprived of any 
 share in the provincial autonomy. 
 
 According to the new regulation, they will 
 merely elect two or three candidates for every 
 vacancy, out of whom the governor, advised by 
 the assembly of District Commanders, will 
 choose the man who suits them best. These 
 same District Commanders are empowered to 
 convene and preside over the meeting that 
 elects these candidates. This puts the elections 
 entirely into their hands. There is no secret 
 ballot, nor ballot of any kind, at peasants' 
 meetings. The votes are given openly, viva 
 voce, mostly in a lump, and they will certainly 
 be given to those whom the District Com- 
 mander recommends. A special clause pro- 
 hibits the election of the District Commanders 
 in their own districts. But the law puts no 
 obstacle to their electing each other in a 
 neighbourly way. 
 
 Thus the peasants, these supposed Benjamins 
 of autocracy, are excluded from everywhere. 
 Their noble chiefs, the District Commanders, 
 rule at their Mir, judge at their tribunal, and 
 sit for them at the provincial assemblies. The 
 peasants have to pay and obey, leaving all the 
 rest to their betters. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 The old regulation (of 1864) gave the nobility 
 an influence in provincial self-government which 
 was quite out of proportion to its numbers. 
 The nobility nominated about one-half of the 
 members of all the thirty-eight Zemstvos. 
 
 The " reform " of Count Dmitry Tolstoi goes 
 beyond that. The marshals of the provincial 
 nobility, numbering ten or fifteen in each 
 province, are added to the representatives of 
 the nobility, thus giving the nobility absolute 
 majority. The Government nominates besides 
 one- fifth of the members in addition to those 
 elected by the different classes of citizens, and 
 two special officials of the administration sit at 
 the provincial Zemstvos to further strengthen 
 the hand of the Government. 
 
 Thus the Government did all in its power 
 to transform the Zemstvos into so many 
 bureaucratic commissions obedient to a sign 
 from the minister. The nobility was the only 
 force that counted in the new Zemstvos, and 
 it was expected that the exclusive and un- 
 warrantable privileges granted to this class by 
 the new law would act as a bribe to lure it over 
 to the side of the Government. As to the 
 millions of peasants forming the nine-tenths of 
 the population, paying three-fourths of the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 115 
 
 budget and furnishing nine-tenths of the army, 
 they are nowhere on the new provincial 
 councils. The position of the peasant deputies 
 in the newZemstvos is more than subservient 
 it is degrading, since their immediate chiefs, 
 the District Commanders, having almost dis- 
 cretionary powers over them, are also there. 
 
 The Liberal Zemstvos and the Liberal 
 press have often protested against the ad- 
 mission of District Commanders to provincial 
 councils. 
 
 " The presence of District Commanders in 
 the provincial councils," says the Saratov 
 Gazette, " has one serious inconvenience. The 
 deputies of the peasants, as people who are 
 their immediate subordinates, are afraid to 
 express their opinions freely. With the sus- 
 piciousness characteristic of our peasants, their 
 deputies think that any disagreement with the 
 opinions of their District Commander may be 
 unpleasant to the latter. That is why no one 
 who has been at the district councils, where 
 sometimes a considerable proportion of the 
 deputies are peasants, can fail to notice the 
 passive submissiveness of the peasants to the 
 opinions of the District Commander of their 
 locality. Such a state of things is hardly 
 I 2
 
 Il6 KING STORK AND KING LOG. 
 
 desirable in the general interests of provincial 
 self-government." 
 
 The reader will not be deceived by the 
 cautious, subdued tone of the paper, which is 
 published under the censorship. The " serious 
 inconvenience " means a monstrosity. Imagine 
 a council of any kind in which one member 
 can have other members flogged. The "in- 
 convenience " of such a mutual relation would 
 render the very right of sending deputies a 
 cruel mockery. 
 
 The peasants have been virtually excluded 
 under the Tzar Mujik from participation in 
 local self-government, even as they have been 
 deprived of many other civil rights. 
 
 So much for their political rights. Now let 
 us say a few words upon the economic con- 
 ditions of the masses under Alexander III.
 
 VII. 
 
 THE GREAT FAMINE AND THE ECONOMIC 
 CONDITIONS OF THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS. 
 
 IN 1891 the attention of the whole world was 
 attracted to the condition of the Russian 
 peasantry, owing to the breaking out of a vast 
 mediaeval famine in the whole of the Volga 
 region. The harvest having failed, thirty-four 
 millions of people, according to other calcula- 
 tions, thirty-seven or thirty-nine, were left 
 without any means of subsistence, to face 
 hunger and cold during the eight winter 
 months. The situation was very grave. In 
 the autumn, six weeks after the gathering of 
 the scanty harvest in the provinces of Kazan, 
 Samara and others, people were feeding on 
 acorns, grass and bark bread. And in a few 
 months over thirty millions of people were 
 reduced to the same extremity. Taking the 
 low estimate of I/, as necessary to keep a man 
 over the winter months, the total sum required
 
 Il8 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 to prevent wholesale starvation was about 400 
 millions of roubles. Such a sum could not 
 possibly be forthcoming, and a vast and acute 
 famine was anticipated, with all its terrible con- 
 sequences. And the Government, by its silly 
 efforts to hush up the whole thing, seemed bent 
 upon bringing people to the verge of despair. 
 
 As early as July, 1890, when the results of 
 the harvest became known, the Zemstvos of 
 Saratov, Samara, Nijni Novgorod, and Kazan 
 sent to the Minister of the Interior detailed 
 reports upon the situation, asking for large 
 advances of money to save the population from 
 the worst consequences of the distress. In 
 reply, the Government sent to the Volga Pro- 
 vinces a special commissioner, whose mission 
 was to hush up the matter, and to protect the 
 Government from the demand of the Zemstvos. 
 Of course, General Vishniakov fulfilled his 
 easy task to perfect satisfaction, reporting that 
 there was no famine in the Volga Provinces, 
 and consequently no need of subsidies. This 
 is the system usually adopted for hushing up 
 unpleasant affairs, and it was in a fair way of 
 being hushed up ; the official gazette published 
 a reassuring report of the conditions of the 
 province supposed to be in a state of distress. 
 The Moscow Gazette declared the " famine " to
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 
 
 be a " Liberal intrigue," a fiction set afloat to 
 discredit the Government. The editors of the 
 papers received stringent orders not to publish, 
 under the fear of suppression, and other adminis- 
 trative penalties, any news about the famine 
 likely to "disturb the public mind." 
 
 A calamity of such an extent as the famine 
 of 1891 could not be hushed up any more than 
 a conflagration. It was bound to assert itself, 
 if the Government persisted long enough in the 
 silly efforts to prevent its being brought to 
 public notice through the ordinary medium 
 of the press. But it was quite in the power of 
 the Government to allow the distress to come 
 to so advanced a stage that no efforts could 
 prevent very terrible consequences. We owe it 
 to Count Lev Tolstoi that the measures against 
 the calamity, although taken late, were not put 
 off until the case was past cure. He is the 
 only man in Russia whose voice could not be 
 silenced and against whom the Government 
 dared not lift its hand, and it was he who com- 
 pelled the Government to give up the policy 
 of the ostrich. 
 
 He published in a Russian paper an article 
 entitled "The Terrible Question," in which 
 he pictured the danger of the situation; the 
 scarcity of corn, and the absence of any
 
 120 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 reserve fund in the impoverished population, 
 which had been living from hand to mouth, and 
 could have no alternative but to starve or steal 
 if bread were not forthcoming. He called upon 
 the Government not to keep the country in 
 suspense, and to state plainly whether there 
 was enough corn in the country to keep the 
 Russian people until the next harvest or not, 
 and if there were not, to take immediate steps 
 for getting a sufficient quantity of corn from 
 abroad. 
 
 The conspiracy for enforcing silence was 
 broken. Since one man spoke so loudly, it was 
 useless to shut the mouths of others. The 
 whole press quoted and endorsed Count 
 Tolstoi's letter, and Vyshnegradsky found it 
 necessary to give it a reply, stating that the 
 quantity of corn possessed by the country was 
 amply sufficient to keep the population until the 
 following harvest. 
 
 This was reassuring to some extent. The 
 export of grain had been stopped by an im- 
 perial ukase of September, 1890. 
 
 The corn possessed by the country could not 
 disappear, and it was consoling to think that it 
 was within reach. But this fact did not in the 
 least solve the question whether the millions of
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 121 
 
 Russian peasants would starve or not. The 
 vast quantity of corn mentioned by Vyshne- 
 gradsky was not in the hands of those who 
 needed it most, and to transfer it from the hands 
 of corn-dealers into those of the famishing 
 peasants, an equivalent of full 400 millions of 
 roubles were needed. Without this sum the 
 needy peasants could get no more profit from 
 the corn stored up in the country than if it had 
 been exported abroad, or were hoarded on the 
 moon, unless they took it by force. But this 
 was an expedient strongly objected to by the 
 well-to-do classes. 
 
 The peasants themselves, with their tradi- 
 tional endurance and submissiveness, showed a 
 decided aversion for this course of action, not in 
 all cases, perhaps, insuperable. Those most 
 concerned, at least, did not expect it to be so. 
 
 A. Potapenko, the well-known Russian 
 author, in his sketches of the famine-stricken 
 districts, tells a suggestive story. There was 
 among the members of the Zemstvo he visited, 
 an old man, known formerly as one of the most 
 cruel serf-owners, who enjoyed torturing his 
 peasants, and actually killed several of them. 
 This was a criminal offence, and he was exiled 
 for several years to Siberia. On returning, after
 
 122 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the emancipation, he showed himself the 
 bitterest enemy of the people, and at the first 
 sitting of the Zemstvo, convened on purpose to 
 discuss the measures for relieving the distress, 
 he made a fiery speech against giving any re- 
 lief to " these drunkards, robbers, and scoun- 
 drels," as he designated the peasants. - 
 
 " At the sitting at which I was present," 
 says Potapenko, " as his huge, ungainly figure 
 rose upon the platform, people expected to hear 
 a similar outburst of inveterate hatred ; but, to 
 the general surprise, he began to speak in 
 favour of prompt and generous relief." 
 
 " What does it mean ? " asked Potapenko of a 
 friend of his, whose estate was near that of the 
 speaker's. 
 
 " It means this," the friend said, " a month 
 ago the peasants came to ask him for a loan of 
 corn. Of course he refused, and bad words 
 passed between him and the applicants. And 
 the famine in these parts is very severe. There 
 are houses where there is literally nothing and 
 no prospect of anything. Now, about a week 
 after the squabble, his granary took fire and 
 was saved almost by a miracle. Of course, he 
 must have understood what that meant. Then, 
 again, he sent his manager one day with a load
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 123 
 
 of corn to the railway station, but on the way 
 the cart was waylaid, all the corn was stolen, 
 and the police could discover no trace either of 
 the stolen goods or of the delinquents. These 
 were indications of a kind not likely to 
 conduce to equanimity. He took fright ; there 
 might be worse in store. He understood that 
 it was better to protect himself with the help of 
 public money." 
 
 Korolenko's book, "The Year of Famine," 
 contains a significant portrait of a well-to-do 
 peasant, a local kulak or usurer, whose feelings 
 towards his destitute fellow-villagers are the 
 very reverse of friendly. 
 
 On the absurd system of collective responsi- 
 bility, the loan of corn advanced for the support 
 of the destitute was to be repaid by the village 
 commune in a body. If the poor have nothing 
 to repay it with, the rich have to pay it for 
 them. 
 
 Korolenko's hero, Potap Ivanovich, wanted 
 therefore to repudiate all assistance (oiGaTLca 
 OTL noco6ifl). But he changed his mind, owing, 
 as he confessed, to "miracles," which occur 
 now and then in the village. " A barn not 
 visited by anyone would take fire by itself in 
 the dead of the night, or a hay-stack."
 
 124 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 " Bad times," he explained ; " people look so 
 fierce. A man who has never been a thief will 
 try his luck in that line, and worse may 
 happen." 
 
 The bread riots which took place in Vitebsk, 
 Pskov, Astrakhan and Saratov proved later on 
 that these apprehensions were not without 
 foundation. 
 
 In higher spheres the disquieting reports of 
 the governors of the famine-stricken provinces, 
 and the eloquent figures of criminal statistics, 
 shook up the apathy of the central Government, 
 and induced it to take steps to prevent the 
 worst consequences of popular despair and 
 misery. 
 
 Thirty-four millions of people absolutely 
 destitute, with death staring them in the face, 
 and nothing to lose, were a danger which no 
 government could overlook. 
 
 The sum of twelve millions, which was men- 
 tioned as the maximum which the State could 
 advance from the Imperial Relief Fund, was 
 gradually increased tenfold. But this was only 
 about one-third of the sum required for the re- 
 lief of the famishing provinces. In other terms, 
 the State undertook to feed one hungry 
 man out of three. Where was food to be
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 125 
 
 found for the remaining two ? Public benefi- 
 cence was the only resource that could be 
 looked to. This was self-evident as soon as the 
 papers were allowed to open subscriptions for 
 the relief fund. But the secret wish and hope 
 of the Government was that the money should 
 be entrusted to its own agents and officials, 
 under the control and direction of a special 
 committee, composed of Cabinet Ministers, high 
 dignitaries of the State, and presided over by 
 the Tzarevitch himself now the Tzar Nicholas 
 II. 
 
 It was expected that such a committee would 
 inspire confidence as to the proper management 
 of the funds entrusted to it. So it would in 
 other countries. But in Russia, the deep-rooted 
 distrust in official honesty is quite proof against 
 the fascination of big names. I have it on very 
 good authority that when the representatives of 
 the English Society of Friends came to Russia 
 with the money subscribed in England, ladies of 
 the Court privately advised them not to entrust 
 that money to the Tzarevitch's committee. 
 Only three millions were subscribed to its funds 
 all over Russia during the nine months of its 
 existence. 
 
 The Red Cross Society, by way of conces-
 
 126 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 sion, was allowed to distribute its funds through 
 special agents. The Society enjoys a good 
 reputation, acquired during the Turkish cam- 
 paign ; but its staff was insufficient for the work 
 of relieving the distress over one-third of the 
 Empire, so that it had to depend upon the work 
 either of local officials or men who were not 
 known and could not be controlled. The Red 
 Cross got less than four millions ; yet, as it was 
 soon proved by facts, thousands of wealthy 
 people were ready to come to the assistance of 
 their suffering countrymen they only wanted 
 the certainty that their money would reach its 
 destination, and they had no confidence in 
 organizations connected in any way with 
 officialdom. The guarantee that would satisfy 
 them, and for which they asked, was the right of 
 managing the relief funds independently, without 
 the interference of the Government. Nothing 
 seems more reasonable or harmless. But for 
 twenty-five years the policy of the Government 
 had been, by fair means or foul, to keep the 
 masses of the Russian peasantry apart from the 
 democratic elements of society. To allow, under 
 pretext of relief, free access to the people, to 
 men and women whose loyalty was more than 
 doubtful, seemed particularly dangerous at such
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 127 
 
 a critical time. Now as Russian society showed 
 clearly that it would not move in the matter 
 unless its hands were free, the dilemma which 
 stood before the Government was either to come 
 to terms with society or to have no assistance 
 on their part worth speaking of. As one may 
 well have expected, judging by antecedents, the 
 Government preferred to let the people starve, 
 rather than run the risk of having a few of them 
 "infected with ideas of liberty." 
 
 Whenever put to the test, the Tzars, tribunes 
 of the people, never hesitated in the choice 
 between the interests of the people and those 
 of their own sacred person. The Minister of 
 Finance, Vyshnegradsky, expressed this policy 
 in all its frank cynicism at the interview which 
 he gave to the deputation from the Moscow 
 Relief Society, backed by millions of roubles. 
 The Minister not merely refused peremptorily 
 to allow the society to distribute relief inde- 
 pendently, but had the impudence to threaten 
 to have any persons arrested who should be 
 found engaged in this work in the country. 
 
 To arrest men as criminals for going with 
 open hands and hearts to the assistance of their 
 famine-stricken brethren was the extreme point 
 to which crazy red-tapeism could go, but it could
 
 128 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 not be maintained at that point for long. It 
 was impossible to outrage the public conscience 
 to such a degree with impunity. At a moment 
 when the whole of the educated class was 
 burning with pity for the ill-fated peasants, it 
 was not only cruel but dangerous to repulse 
 the hands that brought bread to the starving 
 peasants, their children, and old people. The 
 Government had declared that it was unable to 
 feed all. After such an avowal, to stand in the 
 way of those who offered to do it was a mon- 
 strous crime, provoking both the peasants and 
 their friends of the upper classes to revolt. 
 
 The latter did, in fact, rebel at once by dis- 
 regarding all obstacles and starting the work of 
 relief at their own risk and responsibility all 
 over the famine-stricken region. One may say 
 that our educated classes put all their unem- 
 ployed forces at the service of the peasantry 
 during the terrible winter of 1890-91. Ladies 
 who had spent their lives at Court balls and 
 parties, and the " Radical " young students of 
 both sexes ; authors of world-wide fame and 
 obscure village priests ; aristocrats, merchants, 
 burghers all rushed to the villages, regardless 
 of discomfort, privation, and exposure, to dis- 
 tribute the relief funds, which in most cases were
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 129 
 
 entrusted to them by a number of friends. 
 They defied the prohibitions of the administra- 
 tion, and the Government was bound to give 
 way. For three months the red-tapeism asserted 
 itself by trammelling in all possible ways the 
 activity of these generous men and women. 
 But on December I2th, 1890, a circular was 
 issued at last, enjoining upon the administration 
 " not to put any obstacles in the way of private 
 initiative in the work of relief" a preposterous 
 order, which appears superfluous to the point of 
 absurdity to an Englishman, and stands as a 
 condemnation of the whole system which made 
 it necessary. 
 
 Three months had brought about the 
 transition from the speech of Vyshne- 
 gradsky to the decree of December I2th. 
 Besides the moral impossibility of fighting the 
 whole of Russian society upon such delicate 
 ground, there was a special reason why the 
 Government thought it advisable to reconsider 
 its decision. Advanced and democratic Russia, 
 which was the most eager and irrepressible in 
 its desire to get at the people, did not make any 
 attempt to take advantage of the famine for 
 fomenting disorders and riots. The fears of the 
 Government upon the point proved to be quite 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 groundless. In the face of the horrors of the 
 famine, it was impossible for men with genuine 
 pity and love for the people not to devote 
 themselves entirely to the relief of immediate 
 suffering. Educated Russia devoted to the 
 peasants the assistance which was demanded 
 by them, and in the form in which it was 
 demanded. The gloomy year did not create 
 a new step in the revolutionary movement, 
 but it established a moral bond between the 
 intellectual classes and the masses of the people, 
 who for the first time saw their elder brothers 
 in the capacity of true and devoted friends. 
 
 On the other hand, the year passed in the 
 midst of the people left incalculable traces upon 
 the minds and hearts of the leading sections of 
 the upper classes. The great famine marks an 
 epoch in the growth of the opposition. Two 
 things became clear as day to Russians and 
 foreigners alike whose attention was fixed by 
 the famine upon our agrarian conditions. The 
 first was that the calamity was due only in 
 small degree to the accident of inclement 
 weather, its real cause being the total ruin and 
 disablement of the peasantry ; and, secondly, 
 that no effective remedy was possible as long as 
 the present political system prevails.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 131 
 
 To begin with, it was proved that the famine 
 which brought so much suffering upon the 
 whole of Russia was due to the falling-off of 
 the harvest, amounting to one-fifth only of 
 the normal one. Quite a similar falling-off 
 occurred in France in 1888, as proved by the 
 official statistics, and the failure was not even 
 noticed by the world at large, for it did not 
 disturb even the surface of the national life. 
 With us it has upset everything. If such a 
 failure, which is within the daily chances of 
 every agricultural country, throws thirty-four 
 millions of people upon public charity, it is 
 a proof of the total ruin of the whole agricul- 
 tural class, which lives on the verge of starva- 
 tion, and has nothing whatever to fall back 
 upon. This is a fact which has been admitted 
 and recognized in 1891 in Russia by the press, 
 by men of science, and even by the Government. 
 The official report, published in No. 188 of the 
 Volga Messenger, says that it has been ascer- 
 tained that the crisis through which the Volga 
 regions is passing began virtually two years 
 ago, as it was from that time that a considerable 
 diminution was noticed in all the revenues from 
 direct taxes upon the rural population. This 
 decrease was the greatest in the provinces 
 K 2
 
 132 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 which later on were most severely affected by 
 the failure of crops, and which require the most 
 energetic measures for the relief of the distressed 
 population. Thus, in the province of Samara, 
 in 1889, there was a deficit of one million 
 roubles in the direct taxes paid by the peasants. 
 In 1890 the deficit increased to two millions. 
 In the province of Kazan, in 1889 (owing to 
 exceptional energy on the part of the adminis- 
 tration), the peasants paid an extra 85,000 
 roubles to cover the enormous arrears of former 
 years. By next year there was a deficit of over 
 two millions. In the province of Nijni Nov- 
 gorod there was, in 1889, a deficit of 340,000 
 roubles, and in 1890 a deficit of 869,000. In 
 the province of Simbirsk the respective deficit 
 of the two years was 253,000 and 653,000. In 
 the province of Saratov the deficit was of 22,000 
 and 377,000 roubles respectively, and so on. 
 
 The increase in the arrears of 1890, as com- 
 pared with that of 1889, fully corresponds with 
 the gradual falling-off of the crops. In the 
 province of Samara the return of crops in 1889 
 was 48^ million puds ; in 1890 it fell to 42 ; 
 in Kazan, from 37 millions it fell to 27 ; in that 
 of Simbirsk from 38 to 29 ; in that of Nijni 
 Novgorod from 21 to 15 millions, and so on.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 133 
 
 As a matter of fact, the crisis began, not two 
 years ago, but at least eleven, because the year 
 1880 marks the epoch in which the results of 
 the exhaustion of both land and people began 
 to show quite clearly. 
 
 The Imperial Commission of 1871 established 
 by its extensive investigations the astounding 
 fact that the Russian peasants pay to the State 
 in taxes about 45 per cent, of their total income 
 derived from all sources, agricultural and manu- 
 facturing. Though nominally imposed upon 
 property, this is no longer a property tax. It 
 is a tax upon labour, differing from serfdom 
 only in form. Out of his six days' work the 
 peasant was bound to give to the State about 
 three days. This was more than any taxpayer 
 could stand. With the insecurity of industrial 
 work and the fluctuations of the harvest, the 
 peasants could not possibly make both ends 
 meet. They contracted debts which absorbed 
 more than the greater effectiveness of free labour 
 could give. According to the lowest estimates, the 
 modern peasant has to work now for the State 
 and the money-lenders no less than four days a 
 week (Slonimsky). Thus the amount of gra- 
 tuitous labour has increased from 45 to 66 per 
 cent., and only 33 per cent of his nominal time
 
 134 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 is left to the peasant for his own maintenance. 
 The peasants were defeated in the hard struggle 
 for existence. There are many and frightful 
 proofs of their gradual impoverishment. Such 
 are the diminution in the consumption of bread, 
 the terrible mortality in the rural districts, which 
 in thirteen provinces is higher than that of the 
 towns, and in 1880 reached 62 per thousand. 
 
 The provinces which are now numbered as 
 those where the distress is most severe, occupy 
 a rather conspicuous place in the table of mor- 
 tality. The highest is observable in that of Orel, 
 where the average mortality reaches the frightful 
 figure of 46.7 per thousand, which is far more 
 than double the average mortality of London. 
 The province of Nijni Novgorod follows, show- 
 ing a mortality of 46.5 ; Samara, 44.6 ; Perm, 
 Simbirsk, Orenburg, Viatka, showing a death- 
 rate between 43 and 46 all exceeding the 
 average mortality for the Empire by 6 or 9 per 
 thousand. Holy Russia, with her excellent 
 climate and soil, has the highest death-rate in 
 Europe, 37.3. 
 
 In Russia, the whole burden of the State 
 weighs upon the agricultural population, the 
 peasants. Those of. them who depend exclu- 
 sively upon agriculture were the first to be
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 135 
 
 ruined, although their land was the best in the 
 country, and, indeed, in Europe. Now with us 
 there is one unmistakable test of the degree 
 of destitution of every district or village ; it 
 is the amount of arrears in taxes, for they are 
 collected rod in hand with relentless severity. 
 We need not be surprised to find that the 
 provinces heading the list are precisely those 
 which have become the centres of the famine ; 
 Samara, with arrears of iij million, Kazan 7^- 
 million, Nijni Novgorod, Saratov, having each 
 about 2\ million. Simbirsk, Voronej, Tambov, 
 all have millions of arrears, which represent 
 hundreds of thousands of blows of the rod 
 given to the destitute in the vain hope of 
 extorting the payment of their debt. 
 
 A destitute peasantry means poor husbandry, 
 and with bad husbandry there is no getting 
 good returns. The average productiveness of 
 Russian agriculture is very low ; seed excluded, 
 it is 2.9 upon one grain sown, which is about 
 the limit beyond which agriculture is impossible. 
 Now our agriculture has sunk below this limit. 
 The " bad harvests " which are below that 
 average are becoming distressingly frequent 
 within the last decade. Very often they lead 
 to actual famines. The Volga basin has been
 
 1 36 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 most often visited by this scourge. The much- 
 tried middle Volga region, with the province 
 of Samara for its centre, passed in 1873 through 
 a terrible famine, from which it never could 
 completely recover. Then, after seven years of 
 fluctuating harvests, it was stricken with another 
 famine that of 1880 which brought it a few 
 degrees lower still. In the eleven years that 
 followed there were seven bad harvests to four 
 good ones, and of the seven bad years there 
 were two actual famines. 
 
 The story of other agricultural regions is 
 pretty much the same. Thus the famine 
 of 1891 was but the last link in a long series. 
 Russian agriculture and agriculturists began to 
 slide downhill long ago. The general famine of 
 1880 gave them a blow which accelerated the 
 sliding process. The famine of 1891 was the 
 coup de grace which hurled them down into the 
 abyss. 
 
 The most serious and lasting effect of the 
 famine was the destruction of cattle, the chief 
 and only riches of our agricultural population. 
 When the cattle are gone, a peasant has to give 
 up his plot of land, and is turned a prole- 
 tarian, "a batrak," whose position is hardly 
 better than that of an ancient serf. Now mil-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 137 
 
 lions of horses perished in 1890-1 from want of 
 fodder, or were sold in haste by their owners for 
 ridiculously small sums. In the provinces of 
 Kazan, TambofF, Samara, the markets were 
 flooded with horses at six or eight shillings a 
 head. N. Sharapov writes : " Simultaneously, 
 all over the distressed provinces, the conviction 
 spread like wildfire that further struggle was 
 impossible. The selling of horses and cattle 
 became a sort of epidemic." It is calculated 
 that in most of the famine-stricken provinces 
 there is only left one horse for every ten 
 families. 
 
 The next year there was a falling-off of the 
 crops in the south-western and southern regions 
 in the provinces of Kamenetz-Podolsk, Kher- 
 son, the southern districts of the province of Pol- 
 tava, as well as in a number of provinces which 
 have suffered from the famine of the former year 
 Tula, Orel, Kazan, where, according to testi- 
 monies of Count Boriatinsky and Lev Tolstoi, the 
 distress, though less extensive, was much more 
 severe than before. But much less has been 
 allowed to come out as regards the new calamity, 
 which certainly did not contribute to lessen its 
 effect. With the very low standard of our agri- 
 culture, yielding the absolute minimum (three
 
 138 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 grains per one sown) below which agriculture 
 becomes impossible, and with the complete 
 destitution of the peasantry, partial famines 
 must recur every year. The Empire is so huge 
 that the climatic conditions cannot possibly be 
 uniformly favourable through all its vast area. 
 And when they are not favourable famine 
 follows fatally and unavoidably. The Russians 
 themselves will not call it by such an ominous 
 name. They are used to seeing people eating 
 for bread horrible stuff resembling dry manure, 
 composed chiefly of husk or bark or pounded 
 straw. In most of the provinces the peasants 
 have recourse to such famine food regularly 
 every year for a few spring months, when the 
 old bread runs scanty and the new one is not 
 yet gathered. A peasant who is able to eat 
 pure bread all the year round is considered, 
 and considers himself, a wealthy man. At 
 the slightest falling-off in the harvest, the 
 " wealthy " pass into the ranks of the poor, and 
 the poor ones fall into a state of utter destitu- 
 tion and wholesale ruin. What the year 
 1890-91 has shown us on a gigantic scale is 
 repeated every year on a smaller scale. Every 
 year scores of thousands of peasants some- 
 times hundreds of thousands have their homes
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 139 
 
 ruined, their families broken, each member 
 having to go a different way for a chance of 
 getting a precarious livelihood the father to 
 some wealthy neighbour as farm labourer, the 
 wife and daughters to town to seek work in 
 factories, and worse, the young boys being sold 
 as " apprentices " to some artisan or publican. 
 
 No peasant is safe against such a fate ; and 
 with taxes amounting to one-half of his net 
 income, it does not require a failure of crops to 
 ruin a peasant. Quite independently of the 
 fluctuations of the harvest and the pressure of 
 general economic conditions, an ever-increasing 
 section of Russian peasantry is disabled and 
 thrown into the ranks of landless agricultural 
 proletarians, which for them is the ruin of 
 everything and the utmost degradation. 
 
 Alexander III., with all his professed love 
 for the peasants, did nothing to improve 
 their position, and a good deal to make it 
 worse. 
 
 His Peasant Land Bank, which was to save 
 the rural population from the hands of the 
 usurers, proved a fraud, for it only increased 
 the power of the usurers. 
 
 His intended reform of the taxes was 
 a mockery ; the abolition of capitation money
 
 140 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 and of the tax on salt was replaced by new 
 taxes upon the very same peasantry. Some- 
 times it was made simultaneously, so as to 
 make the irony of it even more evident. This 
 was the case with the abolition of the tax upon 
 salt, which was immediately followed by the 
 increase to eight millions of the redemption 
 money paid by the State peasants. The high 
 protective tariff enriched the middle class at the 
 expense of the peasants, who had to pay double 
 for manufactured articles of first necessity 
 cottons, candles, soap and treble for agricul- 
 tural machines and simple tools, like scythes. 
 The reckless expenditure of money for the 
 support of the nobility was also an additional 
 burden laid on the peasants. Other despots 
 have been clever enough to compensate the 
 people for the loss of freedom by material com- 
 fort; Alexander III. enslaved his beloved 
 peasants to the nobility, and made them pay 
 the cost. 
 
 What, then, remains of the motto of Alex- 
 ander III., " Russia for the Russians"? That 
 the educated classes are excluded wholesale 
 from the privilege of being considered " Rus- 
 sians" goes without saying. The Russia of 
 Alexander III. had no room for them that is
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 14! 
 
 well known to everybody. But on a somewhat 
 closer examination, it becomes clear that the 
 millions of peasants were not Russians either ; 
 they certainly were treated as if they were not. 
 Who, then, according to Alexander III., were 
 " Russians " for whom their country was not a 
 harsh stepmother ? They are represented by a 
 handful of people, whom the Tzar took under 
 his protection. The grandiloquent motto of 
 Alexander III. ought to be amended; it was 
 not Russia for the Russians, but Russia for a 
 gang of self-seekers trying to fish in troubled 
 waters, impecunious nobles, the rabble of official- 
 dom or, to sum it up in one word, Russia for 
 the Tzar. 
 
 Only in one way Alexander III. was never 
 slow in showing his active love for the Russian 
 people, namely, in persecuting relentlessly all 
 those of his subjects who differed from the bulk 
 of the population either in race or religion. 
 His was a reign of persecution all round.
 
 VIII. - 
 
 THE JEWISH QUESTION IN RUSSIA. 
 
 IT has been said by many people not Nihilists at 
 all, that the name of the Persecutor would suit 
 Alexander III. much better than that of the 
 Peacemaker. Because the maintenance of peace 
 was more of a happy accident of which any man 
 in his senses would have taken advantage, whilst 
 the persecution was a spontaneous activity, which 
 is most characteristic of Alexander III., both 
 as a man and as a Tzar. 
 
 Who was not persecuted during his reign ? 
 The Poles, the Fins, the Germans, had all 
 their doleful tale to relate ; the Raskolniks, 
 although they were promised freedom for their 
 decorative service during the coronation, and 
 the Stundists, although they were the most 
 obedient and peaceable of his subjects. But 
 the crusade against the Jews is certainly the 
 widest, most far-reaching, and most important
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 143 
 
 of the exploits of this kind, which give its 
 gloomy colour to the reign. At the same 
 time, to foreigners, it is the least comprehen- 
 sible. 
 
 Making allowance for the short-sightedness 
 and tyrannical habits of our Government, we 
 can account for the persecution of theStundists. 
 A body of Nonconformists, not recognizing the 
 supremacy of the Tzar in spiritual matters, may, 
 and we hope will, come some day to question 
 the legitimacy of his secular power. Spreading 
 like wildfire, they are a real danger to the present 
 Russian Government, which, not being much 
 versed in history, may well entertain the wild 
 hope of putting them down by brute force. 
 
 One can easily account for barbarity, however 
 shocking, in dealing with political prisoners and 
 exiles. Despotic governments, when frightened, 
 can go to any length of cruelty. But here we 
 have a whole race, millions of souls, who, after 
 all, have never offended the Government, who 
 do not question its authority, who have obeyed 
 the laws and paid taxes, bribes, and all their 
 dues. Why, then, are they so persecuted ? Are 
 they really so bad as the Russian Government 
 represents them ? Is the motive religious 
 fanaticism, or blind racial hatred ? Is the
 
 144 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 Government really responsible for these perse- 
 cutions, or has it been forced to them by the 
 anti-Jewish feeling of the nation? All these 
 questions are interesting enough to be treated 
 on their own merits in a thoroughly objective 
 and scientific spirit, which an opponent of the 
 Russian Government can adopt easily enough. 
 When the actual offences are so numerous and 
 aggravating, one is not tempted to invent 
 offences. 
 
 The Russian Government is certainly not 
 responsible the present Government at least 
 for the existence in the south and south-west of 
 Russia of very abnormal relations between the 
 Jews and the Russian population, which create in 
 those parts the so-called Jewish question. This 
 question bears relation to the whole of our his- 
 tory, and is one of the burning national, even 
 international, problems with which every country 
 has, or has had to deal. In Russia it is only 
 more difficult and complicated because of the 
 greater mass of Jewish population, and the 
 general backwardness of the country. 
 
 There are 4,000,000 of Jews in Russia proper, 
 not counting 1,000,000 of Polish Jews. Of this 
 number, three-quarters of a million are scattered 
 all over the empire, but the remaining three and
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 145 
 
 a quarter millions are huddled together in the 
 south-western corner of European Russia, in a 
 vast ghetto called the Pale of Settlement. They 
 form there a race within a race, living apart 
 from the rest, and there is a marked hostility 
 toward them on the part of the masses of Rus- 
 sian people. This hostility has undoubtedly a 
 religious basis, or at least originated in religion. 
 But it seems to me an error to represent, as 
 most people do, the anti-Jewish movement in 
 Russia as a manifestation of religious intolerance. 
 Among the uneducated masses religious hostility 
 toward the Jews undoubtedly exists in a latent 
 state, and is stirred up purposely by those whose 
 interest it is to work upon it. But the classes 
 which are at the head of the Russian anti- 
 Jewish movement have long ago outlived the 
 period of religious fanaticism. With them the 
 hostility toward the Jews is purely racial. 
 With the masses the racial antipathy is also a 
 much stronger ingredient in the anti-Jewish 
 feeling than religion. Thus we may fairly 
 describe the anti-Jewish movement as racial. 
 
 I hardly need say that the Jews, as a race, are 
 not a bit worse than other people. Whenever 
 I hear the idle, wholesale characterization of 
 Jews as a race of usurers, tricksters, and the 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 like, I always remember Mr. David Phillipson 
 of Cincinnati, author of " The Jews in English 
 Fiction," who observed that the process by 
 which the Gentiles form their notions of Jews is 
 invariably thus : The vices, crimes, and short- 
 comings of individual Jews, no matter hovv 
 restricted as to number, are fastened upon the 
 whole race, while the manifestations of all 
 opposite qualities, no matter how striking or 
 frequent, are viewed as individual exceptions, 
 and therefore are not taken into account. I 
 beg to add that it seems to me that the same 
 process is adopted by all races in their mutual 
 estimates. There is no love lost between 
 different races and tribes anywhere, each 
 considering itself the only good and lovable 
 one. In countries where various nationali- 
 ties are mingled, and have many opportuni- 
 ties of hurting each other by their racial 
 differences, their antagonism becomes so intense 
 and so out of all proportion to the real differences 
 between them, as to become positively amazing 
 to an outsider. Among the Balkan Slavs or 
 the motley population of south-eastern Austria 
 one may study this queer manifestation of 
 narrow-mindedness. 
 
 The Russian Jews have lived for centuries a
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 147 
 
 life of complete isolation from the bulk of the 
 population, remaining a nation within a nation. 
 It is only within the last thirty or forty years 
 that they began to read Russian books, go to 
 Russian schools, and take interest in art, the 
 sciences, and politics. Nevertheless, they have 
 already produced a number of men whose names 
 are the pride of Russia. In music, in which this 
 gifted race stands so high, we have quite a 
 number of eminent artists, of whom I will 
 mention those who are better known abroad. 
 The two brothers Rubenstein, Anton and 
 Nicholas ; Vladimir de Pachman, and that 
 wonderful boy pianist, the rising star of Russian 
 music, and the heir elect of all its glory, the 
 young Mark Hamburg, who produced such a 
 sensation in London four years ago, and is sure 
 to produce it once again before long. Anto- 
 kolsky, the greatest sculptor of the age, the 
 man about whom Turghenev used to say that 
 if he ever met a genius, he was one, is also a born 
 Jew. The Jewish race has produced no Russian 
 Heine or Borne ; but the present literary gene- 
 ration, which is the first, or at the utmost the 
 second generation of the Russian Jews that has 
 been educated at all, has already given to Russia 
 a number of eminent literary men, some of 
 L 2
 
 148 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 them prominent in their profession, like 
 Semen A. Vengueroff; some standing fore- 
 most among their contemporaries, like Minsky, 
 the best among our living poets. 
 
 Another, to me, far more striking fact, which 
 speaks volumes for the high moral qualities of 
 the Jewish race, is the participation of the 
 Russian Jews in the struggle for Russian free- 
 dom. For more than fifteen years in the gloomy 
 empire of the Tzar a fierce struggle has been 
 raging, in which only the ardent enthusiasm and 
 absolute self-denial of the few enable them to 
 cope with the enormous forces arrayed against 
 them. There are thousands of educated Jews 
 who have cast in their lot with our patriotic 
 movement. This fact has greatly hurt the 
 feelings of our Anti-Semitic ruler, and an edict 
 was issued in 1885 making, contrary to all 
 principles of justice, political offenders of the 
 Jewish race punishable with far greater severity 
 than Christians. But I never heard that this 
 edict had produced any impression upon the 
 Jews, and there are as many of them as before 
 willing to give up their all for the freedom and 
 better future of the country which is a step- 
 mother to them. This is a fact that does not
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 149 
 
 agree with the general conception of the Jewish 
 character. Yet it was the outcome of the short 
 experience of 1860-80, during which a genera- 
 tion of Jews passing through our schools grew 
 up in friendly surroundings, mixing freely with 
 Russians, feeling themselves men and citizens, 
 and not a race of outcasts. Some of the best 
 and most influential members of our party were 
 born Jews. And when I remember their kind- 
 liness of heart, their pure ideality, coupled 
 so often with a mind so subtle, flexible, and 
 comprehensive, I cannot help thinking that 
 Spinoza was not altogether a miraculous ap- 
 parition, but a representative of the best type 
 of the race. I venture also to surmise that 
 in better circumstances the Jewish people 
 would probably produce more Spinozas than 
 Shylocks. 
 
 The common, uneducated Jew is neither 
 better nor worse than men in his position and 
 circumstances generally are. A Jewish usurer 
 is exactly the same sort of person as a Christian 
 usurer. A common Jewish merchant is as tricky 
 as a common Russian merchant. A Jewish 
 artisan is like the Russian artisan in all re- 
 spects, except that his face bears strong marks
 
 150 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 of his Semitic origin ; that his nose turns 
 down, while that of his Russian confrere is 
 merrily turned up ; that he is generally dark, 
 instead of being fair ; that his gesticulation is 
 queer, and that he speaks Russian with a 
 peculiarly unpleasant accent. 
 
 The hostility toward the Jews has its origin in 
 the surprising tenacity of their race, which has 
 preserved its purity through all its historical 
 vicissitudes, and is quite the same nowadays as 
 it was a thousand years ago. 
 
 The exceptional business capacity of the Jews, 
 developed in the course of centuries by their 
 exclusion from all other pursuits, has created 
 everywhere a natural channel for the manifesta- 
 tion of that racial hostility. A Jewish middle- 
 man, whatever his special calling trade, usury, 
 banking fulfils his functions as well as a 
 middleman of another race. If anything, rather 
 better. Being on the average cleverer, he can 
 offer his services at a lower rate than his rivals. 
 That is indeed the only reason why he beats 
 them ; but he beats them invariably, and that is 
 the cause of his historical troubles. Everywhere 
 the Jews almost monopolize the most lucrative 
 calling in the community that of middlemen.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. I$I 
 
 They come to constitute a class apart as well as 
 a race apart, and racial hostility comes to 
 embitter the struggle between the classes. The 
 racial struggle is substituted for the economical 
 struggle, and the worsted and invidious rivals of 
 the Jews, who only wait for this opportunity 
 are accepted by the mob for its leaders. 
 
 In the Pale of Settlement the Jews, although 
 forming but one-seventh of the population, have 
 concentrated in their hands one-half of the 
 wholesale trade of the region, and have almost 
 monopolized the retail trade. Russians, Ger- 
 mans, Poles, Greeks, all have been beaten by 
 them, and as a matter of course they do not 
 feel very gratified by it. The lower middle- 
 class, the Greeks in particular, have played a 
 very conspicuous part in the anti-Jewish riots. 
 
 The Russian peasants are very peaceable and 
 inoffensive creatures, too much so, indeed, for 
 the interests of independence and good govern- 
 ment. If left to themselves they would rarely, 
 if ever, give vent to their latent ill feelings 
 against the Jews in open rioting, but the middle 
 class are there to egg them on. In the two 
 most notorious riots, those of 1871 and 1881, 
 in Odessa, both of which began in the vicinity of
 
 152 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the Greek Church, the Greek merchants incited 
 and headed the mob. The Russian merchants 
 are the chief allies of the Government in Jew- 
 baiting nowadays. 
 
 Since 1 88 1 the anti-Jewish movement in 
 Russia has entered upon a new phase, because 
 the Government itself takes the lead in that 
 war against one class of its own subjects. 
 
 Anti-Semitism is not a Russian invention. It 
 originated in Germany, where it was elaborated 
 by a certain class of scholars and philosophers 
 into a social theory. Its real author is un- 
 doubtedly Prince Bismarck. It was he that 
 inaugurated a reign of brute force such as 
 Europe has not known at any other epoch, even 
 in the time of the first Napoleon. Force means 
 right ; the dominant race, simply because the 
 strongest, has a right to get rid of a weaker 
 race, if the latter happens to annoy it in some 
 way. The wholesale eviction by Bismarck of Poles 
 from Posen is a direct parallel of the wholesale 
 eviction of Jews in Russia. The persecution of 
 the Finnish nationality, started by the present 
 Government in Russia, is just as unprovoked, 
 foolish, and harmful to the general interests of 
 the State as the persecution of the Jews. The
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 153 
 
 one prepares us to see the other without much 
 surprise. It is the same deliberate appeal to 
 the selfishness of the dominant race with a view 
 of transforming it into a sort of dominant caste, 
 whose interests are identified with the interests 
 of the State, while those of others are trampled 
 down. Such a policy is immorality erected into 
 a system. In the long run it is sure to bring 
 ruin and dissolution to the State. But it is 
 the last trump of a tottering despotism. 
 
 Alexander III. deliberately put barriers to the 
 fusion of the two races. Education, to which 
 access was at one time given to Jews, worked in 
 Russia remarkably well for the removal of racial 
 prejudices on both sides. It gave the best 
 promise for the future, because of the great zeal 
 of the Jews for education. There was a rush to 
 colleges and universitie s on the part of Jewish 
 youths. In some southern colleges the Jews 
 numbered fifty, sixty, sometimes seventy per 
 cent, of the pupils. In the universities of 
 Odessa and Kharkov they formed, on the 
 average, fifteen to twenty per cent, of the 
 students, and they were strongly represented in 
 all other high schools. 
 
 Now Alexander III. has deliberately rejected
 
 154 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 this natural means of reconciling the two races. 
 From some schools, formerly open to them, the 
 Jews were excluded completely. In others they 
 were admitted as a necessary evil, but only up 
 to a certain low percentage, three, five, and in 
 some instances ten per cent, of the total 
 number of Christian pupils. If Christians lag 
 behind, the Jews have to pay the penalty. In 
 the town of Biely a Jewish apothecary wanted 
 to send his boy to the local college. But the 
 director informed him that there was for a 
 Jewish boy only four-fifths of a vacancy, which 
 meant that the last Christian ten was not com- 
 plete, being two boys short. The father 
 petitioned the Minister of Public Education, 
 Count Delianoff, asking that the four-fifths of 
 the boy might carry to school the other one- 
 fifth of the boy, instead of letting the un- 
 authorized one-fifth keep the entire boy outside. 
 But Count Delianoff was strict ; admittance was 
 refused, and the father was compelled to send 
 to the college two Christian boys at his own 
 expense to make room for his son. But few 
 parents can afford such outlay, and there are 
 many towns within the Pale where Jews con- 
 stitute from sixty to eighty per cent, of the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 155 
 
 population. Thus the new law means com- 
 pulsory ignorance. I need not speak of the 
 discouraging restrictions depriving the Jews who 
 have received their degrees from practising in 
 the professions for which they have been 
 qualified. 
 
 The Government does not want the Jews to 
 be Russianized. On the contrary, it wants every 
 Jewish boy to feel keenly and never be able to 
 forget that he is an outcast. There is a special 
 edict prohibiting the Jewish boys from giving 
 lessons to Christian children. In Minsk a 
 Jewish boy of fourteen was expelled from the 
 college because he was found guilty of teaching 
 a peasant boy merely for love of the child. In 
 the same town there lived in 1891 a certain 
 Doctor Medem, a Jew by birth. He had two 
 boys, the youngest of whom was christened, the 
 eldest was not. Now the authorities prohibited 
 the elder- boy from preparing his younger 
 brother for examinations, because the latter was 
 baptized. 
 
 Nor did the late Tzar want the Jews to 
 become Christians. In former times the con- 
 version of a Jew to Christianity cancelled all his 
 disabilities. But by a new edict of 1890 the
 
 1 56 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 rights granted to converts have been restricted 
 to a qualified freedom of settlement, complete 
 citizenship being granted only to the grand- 
 children, the second generation of Christians. 
 The war against the Jews is not a war of con- 
 quest, but a war of extermination. 
 
 Anti-Jewish riots have always occurred at long 
 intervals in our southern cities, with their mixed, 
 excitable populations. But they were unim- 
 portant and rare. They were ordinary scuffles, 
 which take place between alien tribes every- 
 where. The one which preceded the outbreaks 
 of 1882-3 occurred in Odessa in 1870, and did 
 not provoke imitation anywhere else. During 
 the Passion Week, after the Mass, the Greek 
 sailors and merchants attacked the Jews in the 
 neighbourhood of the Greek Church. Being 
 few, they got the worst of it. They appealed for 
 help to the crowd of Russians, who joined hands 
 with them. The riot extended. The troops 
 were few ; the police lost their heads. For two 
 days the rioters could satisfy their lust for destruc- 
 tion to their hearts' content. At the news of the 
 approach of the troops the crowd dispersed and 
 vanished, leaving the authorities to wreak their 
 brutal, stupid vengeance upon innocent men
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 157 
 
 seized at random and flogged in the streets. 
 The matter ended there. The isolated Odessa 
 riot had no echo in any other place. 
 
 But what is most remarkable about the riots 
 of 1882-3, which open the era of Jewish per- 
 secutions, is that they seemed to be contagious 
 to a degree which no former disturbance of 
 the kind had ever shown. There were riots 
 in Elisavetgrad, Kieff, Balta, Ekaterinoslav, 
 Smiela, Biela Zerkov, Uman, Skviza, etc., etc. 
 
 The whole of Southern Russia was embraced 
 by them. They went even beyond its limits ; 
 one of the fiercest riots occurred in Kunavino, 
 near Nijni Novgorod. 
 
 Was this a manifestation of religious fana- 
 ticism, such as is recorded in the annals of the 
 Middle Ages, or was there some other hidden 
 force underlying this wild outburst ? One fact 
 seemed to point clearly to the latter explana- 
 tion. Everywhere, according to the testimony of 
 numerous and unimpeachable eye-witnesses, the 
 rioters set to their destructive work with the con- 
 viction that they were fulfilling some secret and 
 imperative order. At times this belief gave rise 
 to very curious incidents. Near Skviry, a small 
 town in the province of Kieff, there lived a Jew, 
 Abraham Jultik. He owned a small flour-mill,
 
 158 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 and was on the very best terms with the sur- 
 rounding peasantry. He was an excellent man, 
 without any trace of that greed for money 
 which people consider inherent in the Jewish 
 blood. Being rather well off, and depending 
 upon the work of his own hands, he often lent 
 money to needy peasants, "for God's sake," 
 without taking any interest ; he advised them 
 on points of law, and befriended them in every 
 way. The Russian peasants are not blind 
 pedants the common people never are. They 
 have their prejudices against Jews as aliens, as 
 well as against officials, nobles, and the priests. 
 But after a time these prejudices are overcome 
 by every individual whose conduct inspires confi- 
 dence. Abraham was the most popular man in 
 the district, a general adviser and arbiter in many 
 family disputes. The peasants never gave him 
 any reason for complaint. Great was therefore 
 his surprise when, soon after the Anti-Jewish riots 
 in Kieff, a crowd of peasants came to his mill 
 and told him that their object was to break his 
 mill to pieces and loot his house. Abraham pro- 
 tested, expostulated, reminded them of his many 
 services and of their friendly relations for many 
 years past. The peasants admitted all that, and 
 said that they were very sorry, but were bound
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. ICQ 
 
 to do it, because such were the orders of the 
 Tzar. Abraham was educated enough to 
 understand that such a notion was perfectly 
 absurd. But his arguments were of no avail. 
 At last he hit upon a good idea. He proposed 
 to go with a deputation of persons to the 
 Stanovoi, the chief of police of the district, who, 
 as an official of the Tzar, must know if such an 
 order was given. To this the peasants agreed, 
 and Abraham, with the elder and the sotsky of 
 the village, hurried to the stanovoi, the crowd 
 waiting from midday till late in the night for 
 their return, smoking their pipes, talking with 
 his family, and doing no harm. Of course 
 the stanovoi assured the deputation that they 
 were talking nonsense, and that there was no 
 order for the destruction of Jewish property. 
 When this was communicated to the crowd 
 at the mill, the peasants declared themselves 
 very much pleased, and returned peacefully to 
 their homes. 
 
 The story is perfectly authentic. I got it from 
 a friend of mine, a student, who spent his holi- 
 days in the district. 
 
 Another friend of mine, a Jewess by birth, 
 who was assistant to a doctor, told me of 
 her experiences in a village near Ekaterinoslav
 
 l6o KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 By her indefatigable zeal in the service of her 
 patients and disinterestedness, she not merely 
 won their confidence, but even their sincere 
 affection. She had many devoted friends in 
 the village, especially among the women folk. 
 They proved their devotion by coming one 
 day to warn her that she had better leave the 
 place where she was no longer safe, because an 
 order had come for despoiling the Jews. The 
 neighbouring towns had already done their duty, 
 and the people of the place were saying that 
 they must not lag behind. Deeply grieved, the 
 lady asked whether it was really possible that 
 the peasants should do any harm to her, 
 whom they have always called their friend. 
 " Oh," the women replied, " everybody in the 
 village loves you and will pity you. But what 
 can they do ? The orders are not to spare any 
 one ; and they must obey, whether they like it 
 or not." The women offered to hide in their 
 houses the pieces of valuable property she had, 
 in order that she should not suffer real damage 
 in case of the attack, which they considered 
 unavoidable. Many similar instances may be 
 quoted. 
 
 There can be no doubt that in 1882-3 the 
 bulk of the Southern peasantry were under the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. l6l 
 
 sway of a superstitious belief in the existence of 
 orders for attacking the Jews, just as in 1880 
 and 1 88 1 they believed in the nearness of a 
 millennium, when the whole land would be taken 
 by the Tzar from the nobles and distributed 
 among the peasantry. 
 
 So common was this belief that even the 
 soldiers, as peasants by origin, shared in it. An 
 eye-witness tells, that seeing the looting of 
 Jewish shops in Uman, while a detachment of 
 soldiers was watching the disorders without 
 making any attempt to stay them, he asked one 
 of them, why they were in the place at all. 
 
 "Dlya poryadku" to preserve order the 
 soldier replied stolidly. "That the people who 
 loot the Jewish shops should not break those of 
 the Christians." 
 
 Whence could this absurd belief have origin- 
 ated ? What can have been at the bottom of it ? 
 
 Count Ignatiev, the future author of the 
 shameful May edicts, was then Minister of the 
 Interior. I do not think one can call him a 
 Jew-hater. That title may very well be bestowed 
 upon the Tzar, Alexander III., who, when in- 
 specting troops at Moscow, would order all the 
 privates of Jewish extraction (a Jew can never 
 rise in the army above the grade of private) to 
 
 VOL I. M
 
 162 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 be consigned to the barracks, and even on his 
 death-bed in Livadia could not bear the thought 
 that some Jews in as bad a plight as himself 
 were trying to restore their health in the benig- 
 nant climate of the place, and ordered them to 
 move out of the neighbourhood. 
 
 But Count Ignatiev ? Could a man such as 
 he was really have any genuine disinterested 
 feeling of hatred ? I doubt it very much. Yet 
 he assumed the part of a Jew-hater to humour 
 the antipathies of his master ; and he has shown 
 it in many ways. Besides, it became very soon 
 known that he had a personal grudge against the 
 Jews of St. Petersburg for having refused him 
 an enormous bribe which he wanted to extort 
 from them. 
 
 He was credited with a fierce desire to wreak 
 vengeance upon the whole race, and one need 
 not be surprised that by the Jews and some 
 foreign writers he was held to have been the 
 secret instigator of these disorders. 
 
 Mr. Harold Frederic speaks of bands of young 
 men from St. Petersburg roaming about the 
 country, and invariably appearing in a town a 
 day or two before the outbreak of a riot, and 
 doing their work of agents provocateurs so impu- 
 dently that they could be easily detected.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 163 
 
 I venture to think that it is all pure fancy. I 
 do not deny the possibility of provocation and 
 incitements. On the contrary, in many cases 
 there were undoubtedly both incitements and 
 provocation, but local ones, proceeding from 
 people who had some interest to gain or some 
 grudge to gratify. But one cannot for one 
 moment admit the possibility of an organized 
 provocation, still less of one, proceeding from 
 anyone like Ignatiev, as Mr. Harold Frederic 
 seems to think. He was not a man to conceive 
 and carry out a plan of such a diabolical ven- 
 geance, and it could not have been carried out 
 by anyone without exposure. 
 
 The first outbreaks were spontaneous ; they 
 were the manifestation of a deep discontent 
 within the masses of the people, who did not 
 understand any of the real causes of their suffer- 
 ings, and wanted some sort of outlet for their 
 hidden fury. The Jews became the expiatory 
 victims, pointed out by their racial prejudices. 
 
 The provocation of which Count Ignatiev was 
 truly guilty was an indirect one ; it was to his 
 influence that was due the strange attitude of 
 the Government in the places where the first 
 riots broke out. No steps were taken to put 
 down the violence of the crowd in its incipient 
 M 2
 
 164 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 stages, though it might have been done easily 
 without bloodshed. The troops which were 
 sent to the place of disorder simply surrounded 
 the rioters and seemed to protect them, instead 
 of protecting the Jews whom they attacked. 
 
 For such negligence, amounting to con- 
 nivance, Count Ignatiev, as Minister of the 
 Interior, is certainly responsible ; and, if any- 
 thing, it was bound to create within the masses 
 the impression that it was permissible to ill-use 
 the Jews. And from this to the legend of the 
 existence of a Tzar's " order," there is but a 
 step. 
 
 People who are quite trustworthy, and do not 
 mean it as a joke, assure us that the germs of the 
 future riot were thrown into the masses a year 
 before the outbreak took place, and this, 
 curiously enough, had been done, quite inadver- 
 tently of course, by the Tzar's manifesto de- 
 nouncing the Nihilists, and calling upon all his 
 faithful subjects to assist the police in exter- 
 minating them. The official name for the 
 Nihilists is kramolniki, which means in Russian, 
 rebels, State criminals. Now, in the south of 
 Russia the pedlars and retail traders, who are 
 all Jews, are popularly called kramorniki. For 
 illiterate peasants, who only heard the manifesto
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 165 
 
 and could not understand fully the meaning of 
 its long-winded pompous phraseology, it was 
 easy to confound the two words and to come to 
 the conclusion that the kramorniki, or Jews, 
 were at the bottom of the mischief, and had to 
 be exterminated. 
 
 The psychology of crowds is a very queer one. 
 A suspicion, a suggestion thrown into it will 
 assume sometimes wild proportions, get a life of 
 its own, and become no longer governable or 
 manageable. Yet I will not vouch for the 
 explanation, and merely repeat what we find in 
 the Russian press. To me the indirect provoca- 
 tion of the apparent connivance of the authorities 
 in the riots seems quite sufficient to account 
 for the wild rumours. 
 
 Then came Ignatiev's May edicts, which 
 virtually threw the blame of these riots upon 
 the misconduct of the Jews, and, in the circum- 
 stances, could not but confirm the conviction of 
 the masses that the Government was on the side 
 of the rioters. 
 
 The iniquitous law was suspended a few 
 months after its promulgation, owing, I believe, 
 to the influence of foreign public opinion, which 
 the Tzar, new as yet to power, did not at that 
 time dare to disregard.
 
 166 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 A contrary view is expressed by Mr. Harold 
 Frederic, who maintains that the suspension of 
 the May Laws and the fall of Count Ignatiev was 
 due to the Tzar having got convincing proofs 
 of the bad faith of his minister, and his gross 
 abuse of power. The fact of his having offered 
 immunity from the May Laws to the Jews of the 
 capital for an enormous bribe of one million 
 roubles is perfectly authentic. It was negoti- 
 ated between him and the representatives of the 
 Synagogue in the form of the purchase of one 
 of his estates for a fancy price, exceeding its 
 real value by one million roubles. I have the 
 fact from a man who knew the whole story first- 
 hand. Mr. Harold Frederic informs us that to 
 him it was told by men who had been entrusted 
 with the negotiations. He mentions the three 
 reasons which caused the affair to collapse, of 
 which the concluding one is the most character- 
 istic ; there was no possibility of trusting Count 
 Ignatiev's word. He might have pocketed the 
 bribe and not have fulfilled his promise. 
 
 The May Laws appeared before the stupefied 
 world in their entirety, prohibiting hundreds of 
 thousands of Jews from living in certain cities, as 
 well as from remaining in the country, on the 
 plea that their presence was injurious to the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 1 6? 
 
 native population. But Count Ignatiev took 
 care to exempt his own estates from the effects of 
 his own edicts by surreptitiously renewing the 
 leases of all his Jewish farmers. 
 
 The Count's successful trick and the story of 
 his unsuccessful extortion having been brought 
 to the Tzar, the minister got into disgrace, 
 and his edicts, without being repealed, were put 
 into abeyance. Whether this was due to the 
 latter cause or to the former, or both, it matters 
 little. The Tzar's policy became more tolerant 
 once again, but only for a time. His hostility 
 towards the Jews was not altered. Now the 
 ball comes to the player. Rulers easily get 
 advice they are looking for. Eight years later 
 Alexander III. lent his ear to Pobedonoszev, a 
 man of incorruptible bigotry, against whom no 
 damaging fact could be revealed, and he fallowed 
 his advice unflinchingly. 
 
 The May edicts of Count Ignatiev forbid the 
 Jews (i) to settle in villages, and (2) to acquire 
 or rent real estates within the Pale of settlement. 
 In 1890 they were revived under the following 
 most aggravating conditions : The eight years' 
 suspension was ignored, and the edict declared 
 to have been in force since May, 1882. This 
 actually was giving it a retrospective force for the
 
 1 68 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 full eight years. All the scores of thousands 
 who settled in villages in full confidence during 
 this period were therefore to be evicted. 
 
 But the evident intention of the Government 
 was to expel from the open country in the 
 shortest possible time all the Jews who were 
 settled there. This was manifested by a series 
 of additional edicts, which rendered life utterly 
 unbearable to those who wished to remain. 
 
 An early ukase of the Senate, November, 
 1887, explained that the right of residence 
 granted to old settlers was strictly localized. A 
 Jew living in the village A has no right to 
 move his residence to the village B, half a mile 
 distant The right was also made strictly indi- 
 vidual. Children cannot receive their aged 
 mother or father coming from town or another 
 village. The right did not extend even to the 
 wife, although by the Russian common law all 
 the rights and privileges of husbands belong to 
 their wives. There are dozens of cases within 
 my knowledge of Jews residing in villages 
 who married in towns, and had been ordered 
 by the police either to leave the villages 
 or to send their wives away, for as town 
 women they had no right to be in open 
 country. Family ties, recognized as being the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 169 
 
 most sacred in the community, are broken daily 
 in Russia where Jews are concerned. I will 
 quote from the Voskhod (January 2ist, 1891) a 
 case of this nature in Kieff, where ten Jewish 
 families were thus broken up. Ten women, 
 wives of Jewish artisans, whose names are given 
 in full, were expelled from the town, because 
 it was discovered that one of them had one cow 
 and sold to her neighbours a few jugs of milk, 
 and the others tried to add to the modest earn- 
 ings of their husbands by baking bread, sewing 
 shirts, and the like, which they carried on 
 market days to the market and sold. They 
 were set down on this score as merchants, 
 and expelled from town in twenty-four hours, 
 because only Jewish artisans are allowed to 
 breathe the air of Kieff. And the husbands ? 
 The children of these ten families ? Well, they 
 could remain behind, of course. They were 
 only Jews ! 
 
 In the law depriving the Jews of the right of 
 settlement in the open country there is a special 
 clause, of little moment, but very characteristic 
 of the spirit animating the late Government. 
 I mean the clause which expressly says that 
 Jewish patients are no exception, and that a 
 Jew cannot go to the country, even temporarily,
 
 I/O KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 for health ! People able to meditate upon and 
 draw such clauses cannot be expected to care 
 about breaking up Jewish families. 
 
 But let us return to the general measures 
 against the rural Jews. One of the most im- 
 portant, and at the same time most vexatious, 
 is the restriction of their right of movement. 
 They mu^t remain as prisoners within the 
 boundaries of the district, if they do not want 
 to forfeit their right of settlement. If they go 
 to town and spend there only a few nights, they 
 are liable to be considered on their return as 
 new settlers and evicted on that score. Near 
 Gomel there are many villages where there is 
 no synagogue. In 1888 a number of Jewish 
 families went to celebrate in the synagogue of 
 the town. On their return they were evicted 
 by the ispravnik, Elensky. This is the com- 
 monest trick, practised all over the Pale, and 
 the Jews living at some distance from towns 
 have either to give up religious observances or 
 their privilege of residence. Young Jews who 
 have to go to serve in the army are regularly 
 expelled as new settlers on returning to their 
 families. The Jewish artisans, who have, 
 according to law, the privilege of free settle- 
 ment in all the towns and villages outside the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 17 1 
 
 Pale, are evicted wholesale under the pretext 
 that it is not specified whether the general 
 franchise includes the right of settlement within 
 the Pale. 
 
 According to Russian law, no new building 
 and no repairs can be made without the 
 authorization of the administration. Now the 
 administration refuses systematically all such 
 authorizations to Jews living in rural districts, 
 in order that the buildings may fall into decay. 
 They must move to towns or live in houses 
 falling to pieces. If the house is consumed by 
 fire, they are never allowed to rebuild. 
 
 Arable lands and pastures, which means 
 farms, cannot be taken in Russia on long 
 leases. Twelve years is the maximum allowed 
 by the law, although it may be stipulated that 
 at the expiration of this term the tenant has a 
 right to renew the agreement ; but the land 
 agents are expressly prohibited from registering 
 such renewals when the farmers are Jews. As 
 the May edicts extend eight years back, it is 
 evident that in the current year (i>95), all the 
 regular Jewish farmers will be evicted from the 
 Pale, because the new Tzar has not altered any 
 of the anti-Jewish laws of his father. There 
 is a considerable class of special farmers of
 
 1/2 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 Jewish extraction, known as Chinsh men, 
 whose tenure and rentals are permanent, 
 being based upon customary law. The Chinsh 
 people are virtual owners, the nominal land- 
 lord having no right either to increase their 
 rentals or to evict them as long as they pay 
 their rent. These rights are recognized in the 
 case of Christians, but never in the case of Jews. 
 There are, according to official statistics, 36,429 
 Jewish families holding small pieces of land by 
 virtue of the Chinsh right. They are all now 
 absolutely at the mercy of the cupidity or the 
 caprice of their nominal landlords. The tri- 
 bunals always decide these Chinsh disputes 
 against the Jews, and the members of our 
 highest class are not ashamed to take advantage 
 of their helplessness. Prince Abimelek evicted 
 a whole village, Pavlovka, district of Tiraspol, 
 peopled for over thirty years by Chinsh Jews. 
 The Princes Gorchakoff, Michael, and Kon- 
 stantin, sons of the Chancellor, did the same 
 with their Brailov Jews, who had been in undis- 
 turbed possession of the land for forty or fifty 
 years. 
 
 Sometimes the outrages against the rights of 
 property are accompanied by shocking outrages 
 of moral feelings. A certain Mr. Demy, a land-
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 173 
 
 lord in Bessarabia, has been at law for ten years 
 with the Jewish Chinsh people of Kopreshty 
 about the piece of land upon which their houses 
 and synagogue are built. The matter of the 
 synagogue, the only one in the neighbourhood, 
 and built over forty years ago, caused the Jews 
 to exert themselves most strenuously. The 
 affair dragged on, passing from one tribunal to 
 another. The synagogue, pending the decision, 
 was, as a matter of course, in the possession of 
 the defendants. But in the summer of 1890, on 
 the eve of the approaching Jewish holidays, 
 Mr. Demy persuaded the Police Inspector, 
 Luchinsky, to take possession in his name of 
 the Jewish house of prayer, and Luchinsky, 
 knowing well that with Jews anything can be 
 done with impunity, proceeded to carry out his 
 friend's request. He arrived at Kopreshty, 
 entered the synagogue, took possession of all 
 the sacred rolls, and sent them in a cart to the 
 police-station. Mr. Demy was then installed in 
 possession of the Jewish house of prayer, and 
 he immediately drove into it a herd of pigs, 
 which remained there all day and the following 
 night. The ispravnik, Luchinsky's superior 
 officer, ordered the animals to be taken away, 
 and restored the sacred books to the Jews. But
 
 174 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the authors of this practical joke went scot-free. 
 (Voskhod, February, 1891.) 
 
 These are facts the authenticity of which 
 cannot possibly be doubted, for I have taken 
 them from a paper published in Russia under 
 the vigilant eye of the censorship. It is a very 
 bold thing to publish such facts at all. It would 
 be disastrous to invent or exaggerate. 
 
 At various times there have been attempts to 
 form Jewish agricultural colonies. The plan 
 seems to me to be somewhat artificial, and not 
 likely to succeed upon a large scale in Russia 
 at least, where it depends entirely upon the 
 manual skill of the husbandman, which requires 
 a long training. The Jews do not shun manual 
 labour. There are 300,000 Jewish artisans within 
 the Pale, and 200,000 outside of it. Nine-tenths 
 of the rest are pedlars, shop-boys, and the like, 
 whose physical work is certainly no lighter than 
 that of artisans and mechanics. But it is very 
 difficult for such workers to return to agricul- 
 ture, and why should they ? Yet these projects 
 were always warmly received by the Jews, and, 
 notwithstanding the most unfavourable condi- 
 tions created for these colonies by the stupidity, 
 suspiciousness, and meddlesome spirit of the 
 bureaucracy, some of these agricultural colonies
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 175 
 
 continue to thrive. There are about 50.000 
 Jewish farmers in Russia, but they do not find 
 much grace with the Russian Government. 
 They do not fall under the action of May edicts, 
 but whenever the administration finds a pretext, 
 the Jewish husbandmen are evicted as ruthlessly 
 as other Jews. The agricultural colony of 
 Sytna, which has existed for fifty-three years, 
 near Minsk ; Orany, another colony of forty 
 years' standing, near Vilna ; half-a-dozen colo- 
 nies in Bessarabia and in the province of 
 Kamenez Podolsk, have been evicted and dis- 
 persed. Thus a score of thousands of pros- 
 perous farmers, gardeners, tobacco planters, 
 who worked the land with their own hands, 
 and were an example of sobriety and diligence, 
 were turned out downright paupers, the pretext 
 being now that the land was rented sometimes 
 for over half a century not owned ; now that 
 the village stood too near the frontier. 
 
 These facts are interesting to us from one 
 particular point of view. The Russian Govern- 
 ment and its defenders profess that Jewish 
 persecutions have exclusively for an object the 
 protection of the peasants against Jewish 
 usurers. The claim is preposterous. In the 
 Pale the Jews are the chief money-lenders, to
 
 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 whom the masses of the peasantry are inex- 
 tricably indebted. But outside the Pale there 
 are no Jews in villages. Yet the masses of 
 the peasants are indebted to local money- 
 lenders and usurers of Christian faith as 
 much as they are indebted to Jews within the 
 Pale. Usury is a terrible scourge of agricul- 
 tural Russia ; but it springs from the general 
 economical conditions of the country exorbi- 
 tant taxes, combined with insufficiency of land 
 which compel peasants to borrow money any- 
 where on any terms. The expulsion of Jews 
 will result to the advantage of Christian usurers, 
 who will be left without competitors. That is 
 the only possible effect of the expulsion of Jews 
 from villages. 
 
 The May edicts, whose working we have 
 described, form but a part of a general plan of 
 campaign. There are about three-quarters of a 
 million of privileged Jews living outside the 
 Pale artisans, merchants of the first guild, 
 members of the learned professions, and their 
 families, to whom these franchises are given by 
 the laws of 1865 and 1867. The next move after 
 the revival of the May edicts was to drive the 
 Jews out of the country at large, and the energy 
 shown by the administration promises that
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 177 
 
 very shortly most of these 750,000 will go to 
 swell the Jewish paupers in the towns and 
 hamlets of the Pale. 
 
 The richest Jews, the merchants of the first 
 guild, are alone left comparatively unmolested, 
 while the poor artisans gaining their bread by 
 the sweat of their brow are the chief sufferers. 
 There are no end of tricks resorted to in order to 
 deprive them of the franchises granted to them 
 by the law. In one place certain handicrafts 
 are declared to be excluded from the list of 
 callings which the franchises cover. In Moscow 
 the compositors were declared to be artists, and 
 not mechanics, and therefore the Jews following 
 this trade were expelled from the capital. In 
 Smolensk the glaziers, vinegar makers, bakers, 
 and butchers have been also declared not to be 
 artisans, but something else and the adminis- 
 tration did not say what. In Simbirsk the 
 Council of the Guilds passed a resolution not to 
 give to Jewish artisans any licences unless they 
 passed a special examination in their respective 
 crafts. This was illegal and absurd, the skill 
 of the artisans being proved by their certificates, 
 and still better by their good work. But this 
 was exactly what the Simbirsk guild-masters 
 would not tolerate. Their special commissioners 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 declared the Jews almost to a man not proficient 
 in their trade, and the administration immedi- 
 ately expelled them and their families from the 
 town. In Uffa the same result was obtained 
 by the opposite means. Here it was the 
 administration that took the initiative and 
 declared all local certificates inefficient and void 
 for the Jews alone, of course. The Jewish 
 artisans were requested to present certificates 
 from the towns of their origin, which means 
 from the Pale, which some of them had left 
 twenty years before, and upon their being unable 
 to comply with this foolish demand, they were 
 expelled in a body. In other places the police 
 pounce on Jewish artisans on Saturday, and, 
 finding them and their families at rest, issue an 
 order of expulsion against them, on the pretext 
 that they are not artisans, as they do not work 
 with their hands. 
 
 An old law of Nicolas I. has served the 
 administration a good turn for wholesale expul- 
 sions. This law is directed against a small 
 religious sect the so-called Sabbatarians, who 
 keep Saturday as the day of prayer. These 
 have always shown a great leaning toward the 
 old Mosaic and Rabbinical law, and willingly 
 accepted Jewish Rabbis as their pastors. It
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 179 
 
 was therefore enacted, by way of precaution, 
 that the Jews should not be allowed to settle in 
 the localities where these sects existed. Now 
 the administration has inverted the law. The 
 discovery or the arrival of one Sabbatarian in a 
 town is considered a sufficient reason for ex- 
 pelling all the Jews from the place. 
 
 This expedient was used for the first time 
 last year in Samara. A Sabbatarian, M., was 
 exiled to this town by administrative order. 
 The day after his arrival all the Jews were 
 ordered to close up their business and to be off 
 to the Pale. The same trick was resorted to 
 afterwards in Orel. Such devices are always 
 tried elsewhere, if they seem worth while. 
 Some day we may hear that the Government 
 has used the Sabbatarians as a sort of Jew- 
 killing instrument, scattering a few hundreds of 
 them broadcast in all the towns of the Empire 
 to render it impossible for Jews to remain any- 
 where. But it is just as likely that they will do 
 without any such trick; when they have no pretext 
 they will do the same without a pretext. The 
 Governors vie with each other in the exhibition 
 of anti-Jewish zeal to win the good graces of 
 the Minister. The Jews are expelled from 
 Siberia, which ought surely to be considered a 
 
 N 2
 
 180 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 bad enough place for even Jews to be allowed to 
 live in. They are expelled from the Caucasus, 
 although the official statistics collected in the 
 course of four years (1886-1890) testify that 
 fully 60 per cent, of them are artisans and 
 10 per cent, manufacturers and members of 
 learned professions. They are expelled from 
 the newly-acquired provinces of Central Asia, 
 where their help might do so much toward 
 developing the local industries, and where they 
 are undoubtedly a Russianizing element. 
 
 The mode of carrying out these evictions and 
 .expulsions is barbarous in the extreme, the 
 underlings in their turn trying to distinguish 
 themselves in the eyes of their superiors. In 
 Kieff, in February, 1891, 1000 shop assistants 
 and shopkeepers of Jewish extraction, with their 
 families, were arrested and expelled in a little 
 more than twenty-four hours, without being 
 allowed to prepare themselves for the journey. 
 At eight o'clock in the morning the police broke 
 into their houses, awakening many of them from 
 sleep, and they were immediately taken to the 
 police-station. The shopkeepers were fined 
 1300 roubles each, the shop assistants 600 
 roubles each, and the next day at noon they 
 were all packed into railway carriages and sent
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. l8l 
 
 off to the Pale. These people were all respect- 
 able tradesmen, with legal licences, for which 
 they had all paid in December, 1890. They 
 had their shops in the best streets of the town, 
 and were not accused of any wrong-doing. But 
 there is a new order prohibiting Jews from 
 keeping shops in Kieff, and these people did 
 not hasten to clear the ground on their own 
 account without a special notice. For this 
 offence all their stock was confiscated. 
 
 The chase after the Jews and their spoils is 
 extended to the Baltic Provinces. Jews are 
 expelled from Mitava, Libau, Jacobstadt, and 
 Riga, sometimes after forty years of undisturbed 
 residence. In Riga a rich merchant, Blumen- 
 thal, owner of three mills and of two large shops, 
 had all his stock confiscated, and was ordered 
 to leave within twenty-four hours. In Libau 
 the value of the goods confiscated amounts to 
 200,000 roubles. In Dinaburg the administra- 
 tion, confiscating the stocks of the Jewish 
 merchants, took possession also of 70,000 
 roubles of the " box-money," destined, accord- 
 ing to a Jewish custom, for schools, and devoted 
 the proceeds to the building of an orthodox 
 church. In St. Petersburg the Prefect of the 
 town, General Gresser, robbed the Jews in
 
 1 82 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 another way, by ordering them (March i5th, 
 1891) to change the store firm names they had 
 acquired from Russians, putting instead their 
 own names, "in order," the edict runs, "that 
 the public shou'd see at once that the shop is a 
 Jewish one." In Moscow, on the nights of 
 April nth, I2th, and 1 3th, the police broke in 
 upon 167 families, who were all carefully searched 
 and sent to the police-stations under escort as 
 criminals mothers, children, old men to be 
 afterwards conveyed to the Pale. From a town 
 in the Pale a perfectly trustworthy eye-witness 
 writes : " Every day crowds of our people are 
 brought here, chained like criminals, ragged, 
 hungry. The time allowed them for settling 
 their affairs was so short that they could not 
 dispose of their property. In Moscow suites of 
 Vienna chairs, worth 4/., were sold for one 
 shilling. Complete furniture for a room was 
 sold for six shillings. The families were cast 
 out of their houses into the streets, their furni- 
 ture was thrown out, and they were left without 
 shelter. It is just as bad as at the riots." 
 
 These are facts taken from private letters of 
 friends and relatives, never intended for print. 
 
 I will not dwell upon the third measure 
 against the Jews, although it is, perhaps, still
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 183 
 
 more sweeping than the two former. I mean 
 the wholesale expulsion of Jews from the fifty 
 versts (thirty-three miles) strip of border-land 
 along the western frontier. The same scenes, 
 the same brutalities, the same misery accom- 
 pany them. The ostensible reason of this 
 measure is the prevention of smuggling. That 
 there is much smuggling along this frontier is 
 quite true. It is also true that the smuggling, 
 like so many other trades, is chiefly in the 
 hands of Jews. But there are 250,000 Jews 
 settled upon that strip of land, and a quarter of 
 a million people cannot possibly live there by 
 smuggling. There is smuggling upon all 
 frontiers. What would people think of a pro- 
 posal to make it a desert by expelling the whole 
 of the border population as a preventive of 
 smuggling? And yet this is just what the 
 Government is doing with regard to Jews. All 
 are to be expelled, without exception. Even 
 members of learned professions lawyers, pro- 
 fessors, physicians, rabbis are not allowed to 
 settle near the frontier, the administration pre- 
 tending to see smugglers in all of them. The 
 total number of human beings affected by the 
 persecution is therefore overwhelming. 
 
 English readers know very well from not
 
 1 84 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 very distant Irish history what human miseries 
 are represented by the word " eviction." But in 
 Russia we have not a handful of tenants sur- 
 rounded by a friendly population, but over a 
 million of men, women, and children, evicted or 
 in the way of being evicted, helpless, destitute 
 a picture of suffering which defies comparison. 
 We must recall to our memory the expulsion 
 and starving out of the 800,000 of Mauresques 
 from Spain to have an idea of what has been 
 inflicted nowadays upon the Jews. 
 
 The 1,500,000 Jews cooped in the towns and 
 hamlets of the Pale were never very prosperous. 
 The greater number of them lived in extreme 
 and sometimes degrading poverty, because of the 
 fierce competition. The terrible, harrowing pages 
 of the accounts of a commission of professors, 
 published in the St. Petersburg Economical 
 Magazine in 1882, are there to testify to it. We 
 read there of thousands of men, women, and 
 children living in hovels not fit for dogs ; of 
 families of ten and more huddled together in a 
 room having sufficient air for only one person ; 
 of squalid misery, slow starvation, dirty promis- 
 cuity which makes one sick only to think of it. 
 Now another million at least of people were 
 thrown in, expelled from all parts of Russia
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 185 
 
 people entirely destitute, who come as com- 
 petitors for public charity and for work. The 
 state of things brought about in these towns is 
 easier to imagine than to describe. It is a 
 starving out one of those miseries seldom seen 
 except in besieged towns, when pestilence 
 breaks out and men return to the state of 
 savage nature. 
 
 But material sufferings are not the only 
 scourge of this unfortunate people. There is 
 the paternal Government to goad them into 
 utter despair by petty tyranny, extortion, 
 abuse, insult, humiliation of all kinds. They 
 are at the mercy of everyone vile enough to 
 lift his hand against a defenceless people. In 
 Odessa the Jews are threatened with exile if they 
 have the impudence to try to get good places 
 in the tramways and railway carriages. In 
 Rostislavl they are told that they will be flogged 
 upon the market-place if the Jewish children 
 make a noise in the streets. In Kieff their 
 hospital has been closed because it happens to 
 stand within a hundred yards of a Christian 
 church ; a benevolent institution, simply because 
 it is Jewish, being thus likened to a low tavern 
 or a house of ill-fame. In the same town the 
 Governor, a particularly picus gentleman, pro-
 
 1 86 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 hibited the Jews from passing through certain 
 streets where there are many churches. When 
 a small anti-Jewish disturbance occurred in the 
 town, a handful of drunken roughs breaking 
 into some Jewish houses, destroying property, 
 and insulting the inmates, a deputation of Jews 
 waited upon the Governor, who refused to take 
 action, and replied in these words : " I am very 
 sorry that disturbances occurred in my province, 
 but I cannot prevent them ; for the people 
 must once for all get rid of the Jews, who defile 
 our holy town." 
 
 In such circumstances it is natural that the 
 Jews should live in constant dread of riots. 
 All the time rumours of new and drastic 
 measures keep the Jews in a state of constant 
 terror and suspense. The St. Petersburg press 
 has announced such news as the contemplation 
 by the Jewish committee of a plan for the 
 gradual restriction of the Pale of Settlement ; of 
 the expulsion of Jews from certain streets, and 
 of the creation of real mediaeval ghettoes ; of 
 further restriction of the education of Jewish 
 children ; of closing various professions to Jews ; 
 of even a special compulsory dress, which would 
 single them out among other people. 
 
 In a private letter from Vilna, we read :
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 1 87 
 
 " It is rumoured that even the merchants 
 of the first guild will be expelled from 
 Russian towns, and prohibited from return- 
 ing under penalty of flogging by the police 
 without any preliminary trial. It is even 
 rumoured that this brutal order has been carried 
 out in some places. You will understand what 
 is our position and what we have to expect in 
 the future. We are all of us here as men who 
 have lost their mind from grief, with eyes swollen 
 with tears, looking with despair upon each other's 
 faces. Our hearts are torn to pieces on hearing 
 on all sides news about the suffering of our un- 
 fortunate people. Pen cannot describe all the 
 depth of our misery. But you will understand 
 it, I hope, yourself." 
 
 Foreign wars are an expedient often tried by 
 despots to blunt the liberal aspirations and 
 deaden the internal discontent of nations. But 
 war is a dangerous game, which may turn either 
 way. The Russian Government has hit upon 
 something better. In starting a sort of civil 
 war against an enemy which cannot fight, it has 
 avoided all the risks of a foreign war, while 
 securing its advantages. But not with all the 
 Russians. The truly patriotic, humane, en- 
 lightened Russian, without distinction of parties,
 
 1 88 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 social position, or creed, is indignant at the 
 barbarous persecution of Jews, which disgraces 
 our country and demoralizes our people. Even 
 at the Court, among the highest dignitaries of 
 the State, there are men who have had the 
 courage and wisdom to oppose the present anti- 
 Semitic policy. The Commission for settling 
 the Jewish question, appointed in 1881 under 
 the presidency of Count Pahlen, favoured the 
 abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the 
 enfranchisement of the Jew as the means of 
 settling the Jewish problem in Russia. But the 
 Emperor agreed with the minority, which was 
 for a further increase of restrictions. The Bishop 
 of Kherson and Odessa, Nicanor, delivered a 
 sermon against the persecution of Jews as con- 
 trary to the spirit of Christian charity. He was 
 reprimanded by the Holy Synod. The Rev. 
 Mr. Nemiroff, of Moscow, who committed a 
 similar offence, was dismissed. Count Lev 
 Tolstoi's petition, in favour of tolerance and 
 humanity towards the Jews, has been with- 
 drawn from circulation by order of the police. 
 The papers that dare defend the Jews are visited 
 with administrative punishment. A circular 
 note of the Minister of the Interior has been 
 sent to all the newspapers, forbidding them to
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 189 
 
 publish anything against anti-Semitism. This 
 is a fact which I have from perfectly authentic 
 sources. One of our largest morning papers, 
 the Nov0sfi(Nevts), of St. Petersburg, which was 
 the most prominent in defending the cause of 
 tolerance, for some time past has published no 
 news whatever about the Jews in Russia. Thus 
 the Government has well cleared the ground by 
 silencing all who could say one sensible, humane 
 word in opposition to the anti-Jewish outcry. 
 The coarse, scurrilous papers trading upon the 
 ignorance, racial prejudices, and superstitions of 
 the crowd are, on the contrary, allowed free 
 scope in vilifying and abusing the Jews, against 
 whom all the evils of Russia are charged, the 
 deterioration of the Russian climate and the 
 shallowing of Russian rivers included. 
 
 Racial hostility is a feeling easily excited. In 
 connection with the Jews there is, moreover, 
 the question of economical and professional 
 rivalry. The heads of our industries, in justice 
 it must be acknowledged, have shown sufficient 
 insight into the real interests of the country. 
 In the well-known petition to the Governor of 
 Moscow, drawn in connection with the expul- 
 sion of Jews from Moscow, the representatives 
 of all the leading firms of that town asked for
 
 190 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 the granting to Jews of the right of settling in 
 the capital, in the interests of Russian commerce, 
 which the Jews have contributed so much to- 
 ward extending. But how many there are who 
 will be glad to have the dangerous rivals re- 
 moved ; how many who will seize the oppor- 
 tunity of trampling upon somebody for the mere 
 pleasure of feeling that they are something 
 superior ! No wonder that, after a while, the 
 Government found itself not alone in waging its 
 inglorious war upon the Jews. If in highly 
 cultured Germany the Jew-baiting started by 
 Prince Bismarck found supporters among literary 
 people, politicians, and scholars, it is nothing 
 surprising that the same thing was repeated in 
 Russia. 
 
 The Russian Government has achieved a 
 masterly stroke of domestic policy in starting 
 the Jewish persecutions. It has but one incon- 
 venience, the risk of provoking too strong a dis- 
 approbation abroad, both among the powerful 
 Jewish element and all educated people of the 
 civilized world. Hence the attempts on the 
 part of the Russian Government to hush up, to 
 make light of, or to completely deny the fact 
 of the Jewish persecutions in Russia. Hence 
 the constant repetition of alleged protests of
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 191 
 
 Russian Jews against all foreign interfer- 
 ence, their alleged rejection of all assistance 
 except that of the Tzar himself, whom they are 
 represented as trusting implicitly a strange 
 loyalty, which, if it were true, would give the lie 
 direct to the accepted idea that the Jews, what- 
 ever else they be, are certainly a clever race. 
 But it is not true, and I could bring many 
 proofs to refute it. As to the Government, it 
 seems to me that the fact that it is particularly 
 anxious to have foreign agitation hushed up is a 
 sign that it is precisely the weapon that can be 
 effectively used against it 
 
 The Jewish question is, above all, an inter- 
 national question, because it affects all nations. 
 For economical, political, and moral reasons it 
 is the right and the duty of foreign countries to 
 interfere. We representatives of the Russian 
 opposition never wished for, or expected or 
 advocated, foreign interference in Russia's 
 domestic affairs. The Russians are fighting 
 their own national Government, and no inter- 
 ference, except that of public opinion, can be 
 suffered in that internal feud. But the Jews 
 are not oppressed by a national Government 
 of their own. Their position is strictly the same 
 as that of the Bulgarians or Armenians under the
 
 192 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 Turkish dominion. If the diplomacy of the 
 civilized world thought interference incumbent 
 upon it, why should it keep aloof on the Jewish 
 question ? The only difference is that the Sultan 
 is weak and the Tzar is strong. Will that con- 
 sideration prevent the statesmen of the civilized 
 nations from entering up a solemn protest ? 
 
 As to foreign Jews, it seems to me that the 
 present condition of affairs in Russia imposes 
 upon them special obligations. They are bound 
 to help their brothers in their extremity. No- 
 body denies that. One can only regret that the 
 traditional timidity and diffidence of their race 
 has caused them to avoid up to the present any 
 energetic action in the matter. Let me recall 
 a precedent. About forty years ago the first 
 Russian political refugee, Alexander Herzen, 
 settled in London and founded the first Russian 
 free press and paper, called the Bell. He was 
 a wealthy man, and before starting for his volun- 
 tary exile he converted all his landed property 
 into bonds of the State. On coming to England 
 he wanted to realize on these bonds ; but it 
 somehow happened that the Government knew 
 the numbers of Herzen's bonds, and the Tzar, 
 Nicolas I., thought he could ruin his enemy by 
 ordering the bank of the State to refuse his
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 193 
 
 bonds as worthless. The bank obeyed, as a 
 matter of course, although it was contrary to 
 law. But Herzen found a strong man to take 
 care of his interest, Mr. Rothschild the elder, 
 who sent to the Tzar's Government a note 
 intimating that since the bonds in question were 
 in all respects as good as other Russian bonds, 
 he would consider their rejection as an evidence 
 of insolvency and would declare the Tzar of all 
 the Russias a bankrupt upon all the Stock Ex- 
 changes of Europe. The Tzar Nicolas put his 
 pride into his pocket and ordered the bank to 
 accept Herzen's bonds. This story is perfectly 
 authentic, and Herzen relates in his Bell, very 
 wittily and in all details, how " King Rothschild 
 sent his orders to Emperor Nicolas and the 
 Emperor obeyed." 
 
 The present Russian Government cannot 
 stand without being subsidized from without. 
 It is a pity citizens of free nations subsidize it 
 at all, for in so doing they uphold the tyrants 
 against the people. But for Jews to support the 
 present Tzar is the same as it would have been 
 for the French capitalists to have subsidized the 
 Prussian army marching upon Paris. The Jews 
 control the money market of the world. By 
 combining they might have cut off the Russian 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 IQ4 KING STORK AND KING LOG. 
 
 Tzars "with a shilling," and obtained what 
 they will never get by supplication, solicitations, 
 and entreaties, made sometimes at the expense 
 of their dignity. There is no impressing Russian 
 Tzars by obsequiousness ; they have been too 
 much stuffed with it at home. The Jews should 
 have shown fight, and they would have won the 
 battle. But they did not show fight. An 
 influential member of the Jewish community in 
 London, to whom I talked once of this plan, 
 said that it was not realizable because the Jews 
 did not control the money market to such an 
 extent as is generally supposed. Upon this I 
 cannot judge. Anyhow, the Tzar Alexander 
 III. met with no opposition, and had all his own 
 way. He carried on his expulsion scheme, and 
 no less than one million unfortunate men, 
 women, and children had their homes ruined, 
 and had to tread the painful, thorny pathway of 
 exile. 
 
 The immense mass of suffering of the Russian 
 Jews must be set entirely at the door of Alex- 
 ander III. He was the cause of it, and it is 
 childish to throw the blame of it upon such or 
 such of his advisers.
 
 IX. 
 
 THE POLES AND THE FINNS. 
 
 THE persecution of the Poles went on unin- 
 terruptedly as a matter of course without 
 exciting much comment or even attention. 
 People would have been surprised if under a 
 Tzar like Alexander III., a nation embodying 
 the idea of Revolution had been left unmolested. 
 Every now and then the English and German 
 press published brief bits of news about fresh 
 severities in Poland, just enough to satisfy the 
 reader that the prearranged order of things 
 existed undisturbed, and that he need not de- 
 vote more attention to the subject. 
 
 True : the fact that thirty years after the 
 insurrection Poland was still kept under martial 
 law was in itself a flagrant violation of the pre- 
 arranged order of things. But on foreign 
 subjects public attention must be caught at once 
 by something striking and sudden, or it will 
 never be caught at all. 
 
 O 2
 
 196 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 The civilized world has contemplated unmoved 
 the brutal efforts of the Russian Government to 
 murder a whole nation by forcing the Poles to 
 become what they abhorred becoming. 
 
 Alexander III. did more than persecute the 
 Catholic religion and impose civil disabilities 
 upon its followers. His object was a thorough 
 Russification of Poland, and his main efforts 
 were directed towards the destruction of what 
 constitutes the distinction, the pride, and the 
 intellectual wealth of the nation its language. 
 For a nation which has lost its language is cut 
 adrift from its past, and ceases to be a nation. 
 
 The means taken to stamp out the Polish 
 language showed an unheard-of stupidity and 
 disregard for the most sacred rights of man. It 
 was made a crime for Poles to speak Polish in 
 public places, streets, and meetings, or to teach 
 in that language in any school, the primary ones 
 included, although the children of peasants and 
 working men did not know Russian. In 
 Warsaw there is a home for the deaf and dumb, in 
 which these unfortunate persons are given some 
 instruction to mitigate their frightful isolation 
 from the rest of their fellow-men. In 1893 the 
 head of the educational department, Apukhtin, 
 ordered that the institute should not be an
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 1 97 
 
 exception, and that the teaching should be in 
 Russian. The inmates had to be taught to 
 spell with their fingers the Russian alphabet and 
 compose with it Russian words. So that these 
 unfortunate creatures, who were for the most part 
 peasants, on returning to their native villages, 
 could not make the slightest use of the training 
 given to them at the institute, and were plunged 
 again into that awful isolation from which their 
 kind-hearted friends had tried to rescue them. 
 
 This is certainly a unique example of cruel 
 and stupid official pedantry. But equally cruel 
 and stupid was the general policy of the central 
 government, for was not the partial suppression 
 of the sole language spoken by the enormous 
 majority of the people equivalent to partially 
 depriving them of all speech ? 
 
 The Russian Government has committed 
 many acts of cruelty and tyranny, but it is 
 difficult to point out anything so cynically 
 despotic as this forcing men into the condition 
 of dumb creatures. 
 
 During thirty years this policy of oppression 
 went on in Poland. But it seemed as though 
 Europe grudged that unhappy country the 
 absorbing interest of which it had been the 
 centre in the first half of this century.
 
 198 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 Even such acts as the massacre of Roman 
 Catholics at Krozy, where Cossacks killed and 
 wounded over thirty unarmed men and women, 
 plundered a church, breaking to pieces all that 
 could not be taken away even such acts of 
 mediaeval barbarity and vandalism only momen- 
 tarily disturbed the world's indolent apathy. 
 No cry of Vive la Pologne was flung into the 
 face of the Russian Tzars whilst travelling abroad. 
 The Poles were left to defend their nationality 
 and religion as best they could. And they were 
 not found wanting. The policy of Russification 
 failed completely. 
 
 A country of a higher culture cannot possibly 
 be denationalized by a country of an inferior 
 culture, no matter how great the disparity in 
 their size. Colonization on a vast scale is the 
 only means of permanently altering the ethnical 
 physiognomy of any given locality. Now, 
 Russian peasants with their primitive agricultural 
 implements and primitive manner of life would 
 be beaten in no time in competition with the 
 Poles, and finally starved out. With the skilled 
 workmen of the towns, the artisans, the difference 
 is not so great, but they cannot be tied down to 
 any place, as the Government is unable to secure 
 them any privilege to compensate for their
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 199 
 
 natural disadvantages. The predominance in 
 material strength is of no avail in this struggle. 
 It is like oil and water in the same glass which 
 are superposed by their natural gravity, no 
 matter what effort you make to mix them. 
 
 As to the efforts to convert the Poles them- 
 selves into Russians by making them speak 
 Russian, it was childish on the face of it, and 
 only served to keep alive in all its intensity the 
 hatred of Russian dominion in this often con- 
 quered but never subjugated country. 
 
 National feeling and desire for independence 
 is as strong in Poland nowadays as ever, and the 
 enforced familiarity with the Russian language 
 has only helped the Polish middle class to take 
 advantage of their industrial superiority over 
 Russia, accumulating forces, which at the first 
 opportunity will be turned against the Russian 
 Government. 
 
 While in Poland the Russian Government 
 only fostered and augmented a hostile feeling 
 created by the past, in Finland it has created 
 such a feeling where it never existed before. 
 
 The persecution of the Finnish nationality, 
 being something quite new and unexpected, 
 has attracted a good deal of attention in this
 
 200 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 country, and has been constantly pointed to in 
 the English and German press as one of the 
 most foolish and shocking among the many 
 tyrannical acts of Alexander III. It was mean 
 on the part of the Tzar of all the Russias to 
 attack a small principality which was absolutely 
 at his mercy. It was foolish wantonly to 
 transform loyal friends into bitter enemies. 
 
 Finland is at the gates of the Russian capital, 
 and the Finns are an entirely alien race. 
 In fact the Poles have much more in common 
 with the Russians than the Finns. To create 
 another Poland at half an hour's distance from 
 St. Petersburg is an easy affair, but hardly 
 advisable from a strategical point of view. 
 Nothing but good government can bind Finland 
 to Russia, and it is prescribed by considerations 
 of elementary political prudence. 
 
 When, in 1809, Finland was definitely an- 
 nexed to Russia, Speransky, then minister and 
 adviser of Alexander I., fully understood the 
 position, and persuaded the Tzar to conciliate 
 the Finns by fair dealing and respect for their 
 national institutions. In 1810 Alexander I. 
 solemnly swore for himself and his successors to 
 preserve the ancient constitution of the country. 
 
 He did not exactly break his oath, though it
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2OI 
 
 cannot be said that he kept it. The convoca- 
 tion of the Finnish Seym, or Parliament, for a 
 short sitting to pass new laws and listen to the 
 report of the Executive, was an essential part 
 of the Finnish constitution. Whilst Finland 
 was a vassal state to Sweden, it was customary 
 to convene the Seym every four or five years. 
 But the statute fixed no definite period for 
 its convocation, leaving it to the discretion of 
 the Grand Duke. On the strength of this, 
 Alexander I., whose Liberalism was of a short 
 duration, did not choose to convene the Finnish 
 Parliament for the remaining fifteen years of 
 his reign. The example was followed by his 
 successors up to 1863, so that the Parliamentary 
 recess lasted in Finland for full fifty-three 
 years. 
 
 That this practical violation of so important 
 a provision of the constitution led to no abuse 
 of power on the part of the Finnish officials is 
 a proof of the high standard of public morality 
 in Finland. The Senate, which in Finland acts 
 as both High Court of Justice and Executive, 
 administered justice fairly, spent the public 
 funds honestly and prudently, and, guided by 
 the free press, passed many new laws under the 
 form of administrative orders to meet the
 
 202 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 exigencies of the time. There was no inter- 
 ference on the part of the Russian Government 
 in the organic life of the country, and the Finns 
 put up with the despotic caprices of their 
 Grand Dukes. In the great trial of the Crimean 
 war they proved most loyal to the Tzars. In 
 1863 Alexander II. summoned at last the 
 Finnish Seym, which, in a long sitting of eight 
 months, made a thorough revision and codifica- 
 tion of the Finnish laws. 
 
 This was done in the early liberal years of 
 that unhappy and misguided Tzar. But whilst 
 in Russian affairs he completely changed his 
 policy, and, repudiating his early liberalism 
 became a thorough reactionist, his policy towards 
 the Finns remained the same through all his 
 reign, and he never had any grounds for repent- 
 ing of it. He had no more loyal subjects than 
 the Finns. Whilst the Tzar's capital and all the 
 big towns of Russia swarmed with conspirators, 
 Finland remained perfectly quiet. Among 
 the many thousands who joined the Russian 
 revolutionary movement, we do not know one 
 Finn, except those who were educated in Russia 
 and thoroughly Russianized. When the revo- 
 lutionary propaganda in the army was initiated, 
 it was enough for those conducting it to hear
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 203 
 
 that a certain officer was a born Finn to give up 
 as hopeless the task of converting him into a 
 revolutionist. The Finns were thankful to 
 their Grand Duke, and did not mind what he 
 was as the Tzar of all the Russias. It was 
 selfishness on their part, but to some extent 
 every one has a right to be selfish. 
 
 With the accession to the throne of Alex- 
 ander III. the position remained unchanged 
 no abuse of their privileges on the part of the 
 Finns, nothing to serve as a pretext for retalia- 
 tion. It cannot be even alleged that the exist- 
 ence of a constitution in Finland caused any 
 dangerous fermentation of feeling among the 
 less favoured Russians. Finland is so far a 
 foreign country that her anomalous position was 
 considered as a matter of course, and did not 
 impress the Russians any more than the exist- 
 ence of a free constitution in Sweden. The 
 granting of a constitution to kindred Bulgaria 
 in 1877 caused unquestionably more fermenta- 
 tion and unfavourable comments than its exist- 
 ence in Finland. 
 
 The encroachment upon the Finnish autonomy 
 is but a part of the aggressive policy of cen- 
 tralized bureaucratism, which fancies it can 
 transform the whole empire into a dead auto-
 
 204 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 maton, obeying the will of the St. Petersburg 
 wire-pullers. I have tried to show what havoc 
 this despotic craze has made in Russia proper. 
 In the so-called border provinces it does the 
 same work under the banner one would say, 
 on the pretext of their Russification. 
 
 Why one should wish to have the Poles, 
 Finns, Germans, and Latyshes transformed into 
 Russians, one fails to see. Their common 
 country, supposing they should continue to be 
 for ever united, would gain more by giving all 
 nationalities free scope to develop their national 
 genius than by bringing all to one dead level. 
 But this is not the question we have to deal 
 with. The fact is that Finland can as little, and 
 even less than, Poland be assimilated to Russia. 
 Russia can do it in the East, where her culture 
 is superior to that of the natives ; but not on 
 her western outskirts. 
 
 The only way for Russia to increase her 
 influence in these regions is to develop her own 
 resources and culture, so as to bring it to a level 
 with theirs. The present effort to bring about 
 Russification by violent methods spreads the 
 dominion of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy, and 
 not the Russian influence. It can create nothing 
 but hatred of the Russian name, it hampers
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2O$ 
 
 the material and intellectual progress of many 
 promising nationalities, and destroys the good 
 which they have already achieved. 
 
 The Finnish autonomy has proved, in all 
 respects, superior to the Russian centralization. 
 According to her constitution, Finland has her 
 own finances, coins her own money, negotiates 
 loans, and spends her own revenues. Whilst 
 the Russian rouble is worth about 60 per cent, 
 of its nominal value, the Finnish paper money 
 stays at par. Finland can borrow money at 4^ 
 per cent., whilst Russia cannot get it at less than 
 6 per cent. The Finnish national debt is purely 
 nominal. It has been contracted for building 
 railways, and spent with so much prudence 
 that, whilst the Russian people pay over 
 40,000,000 roubles of guarantee money to rail- 
 way shareholders, the Finnish railways, which 
 are state property, pay their own debts, and 
 leave a surplus, which is spent upon public 
 schools. It has been calculated that each mile 
 of Finnish railways, though built in a rocky 
 country, with many tunnels and bridges, has 
 cost, on the average, only one-third of what has 
 been squandered upon Russian railways. 
 
 The economy and carefulness of public inte- 
 rests proper to a truly national government is
 
 206 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 shown in all branches of administration. Though 
 burdened by the will of the Tzar with a heavy 
 military budget, Finland spends 1 1 per cent, of 
 her revenue upon schools, which is about 
 six times more than Russia. Her system of 
 popular education can be compared to that 
 of the United States ; it is obligatory and free 
 in primary schools, which have their own trained 
 teachers, male and female. Ample provision is 
 made for higher education, which is rendered 
 accessible to the bulk of the people. There are 
 in Finland a university, a military and a naval 
 school, a seminary, a number of colleges, 
 women's schools, and three first-class technical 
 schools, where the education is almost free. 
 The fees do not exceed I/, a year for all theo- 
 retical and practical studies ; but even these 
 are remitted to all who apply for it on the 
 ground of indigency, no matter how great 
 their total number. Peculiar facilities are 
 offered to those who wish to improve in some 
 speciality. 
 
 No wonder that, with such a system of educa- 
 tion, a country so ill-favoured by nature could 
 hold her own and gain upon her huge neighbour. 
 In 1854, the aggregate product of Finnish manu- 
 facturing industry was estimated at 5,000,000
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2O7 
 
 roubles. In the twenty-five years that followed 
 it increased tenfold, reaching the imposing 
 figure of 49,000,000. The Finnish manufac- 
 tories beat the Russian in paper, glass wares, 
 and several other industries, causing protective 
 customs to be created against her. 
 
 Whilst in Russia the peasants, who are the 
 poorest class, bear all the burden of the taxes, 
 paying to the State about one-half of their 
 income, in Finland the families having less than 
 250 roubles yearly, which is about the average 
 income of a Russian peasant family, are ex- 
 empted from taxation, and those who have 
 more pay from one-half per cent, to 2 per cent, 
 of their income, according to its total amount. 
 Thus Finland was among the first countries to 
 introduce a graduated income tax. 
 
 No greater contrast can be imagined within 
 the boundaries of the same empire. 
 
 In 1891 the St. Petersburg bureaucrats de- 
 cided that there should be no contrast. They 
 began their work of levelling at the right place. 
 The first blow was struck at the most precious 
 inheritance of the Finns the freedom of the 
 press, which was the guardian and guarantee of 
 all their franchises. 
 
 By an Imperial ukase, the Finnish press was
 
 208 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 subjected to the St. Petersburg officials, and 
 the censorship introduced, with all its cavils, 
 stupidity, and arbitrariness. 
 
 The public has been deprived of news, espe- 
 cially of the most interesting. Thus the fact 
 that the Finnish Post Office has been amalga- 
 mated with the Russian was not allowed to 
 appear until four days after it had been officially 
 announced in St. Petersburg. The newspapers 
 were stopped every day, whole editions being 
 destroyed by order of the censors. Official 
 " warnings," which, if thrice incurred, led to the 
 suppression of the paper, and other punish- 
 ments are raining upon the Finnish periodicals, 
 the censors giving, as usual, no reasons or ex- 
 planations of their proceedings. The editor of 
 the Hufvudstadsblatt has been fined for not 
 having been in town when the censor's mes- 
 senger called on him. The editor of the Nya 
 Pressen, one of the principal newspapers, got 
 into trouble for having handed in a French 
 translation of one of his articles upon Finnish 
 prisons to the Prisons Congress, assembled at 
 the time in St. Petersburg. 
 
 The subjection of the Finnish Post Depart- 
 ment to Russian officials means the violation of 
 the secrecy of private correspondence, which had
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2Og 
 
 hitherto been respected in Finland, but never in 
 Russia. 
 
 Several bureaucratic commissions were ap- 
 pointed, to prepare plans for the fusion of 
 the Finnish Customs Administration with the 
 Russian; for the abolition of the Finnish 
 coinage ; for the introduction of the Russian 
 language in schools ; for the establishment of 
 the hierarchical supremacy of the orthodox 
 Church, etc. 
 
 The two first innovations were introduced in 
 Alexander III.'s lifetime. The others were in 
 preparation when his death interrupted the 
 reactionary crusade in Finland, and allowed her 
 to breathe freely. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 X. 
 
 THE STUNDISTS. 
 
 IT is known that in the south of Russia there 
 exists an important and very promising religious 
 sect, called by the colloquial name of Stundists. 
 Being entirely a popular movement, it is one of 
 the most remarkable signs of the intellectual 
 awakening of the Russian masses. 
 
 The translation of the Gospel into the spoken 
 language of the people, completed in the second 
 quarter of this century, owing chiefly to the 
 efforts of the English Bible Society, produced 
 in Russia a spiritual movement very much akin 
 to that which resulted from the same cause in 
 Germany, England, and Scotland in the times 
 of Martin Luther and John Knox. Religion, 
 which formerly was the business of a small class 
 of professional priests, became all at once a 
 subject upon which the thoughts of all the most 
 earnest and gifted men and women among the 
 people were centred. In Russia, moreover, the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 211 
 
 spiritual awakening, that resulted from easy 
 access to the Gospel, coincided with a great 
 reform the abolition of serfdom, which opened 
 a new era in the life of the masses of the 
 Russian people. Whilst raising them from the 
 condition of slaves to that of citizens, and giving 
 them many facilities for widening their intelli- 
 gence, the emancipation rapidly destroyed the 
 groundwork of the ancient patriarchal order of 
 things. It divided the formerly homogeneous 
 peasantry into two classes, the rich and the 
 poor, with all the complexity of relations and 
 the evil feelings which great inequality of wealth 
 creates in the community. For an earnest, 
 public-spirited man and they are not fewamong 
 our peasants there was much to ponder upon, 
 much to blame, much to deplore in the life of 
 the new village. He would apply to the facts he 
 observed every day the test of religion, which 
 for him embodied the whole of moral and social 
 philosophy, and of course he would find that 
 the life of the people was in flagrant contradic- 
 tion with the creed they professed to adhere to. 
 The orthodox clergy proved almost invariably 
 incapable of understanding, still less of guiding 
 these sorrowing souls yearning after truth and 
 purity. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 The peasants seeking for spiritual advice 
 invariably try to find assistance from their vil- 
 lage priests, and are invariably disappointed, 
 often repelled with gross abuse, and must turn 
 for their only guidance to the book which is 
 admittedly the corner stone of their religion. 
 The greater the discrepancy between its teach- 
 ing and the doctrine of the Orthodox Church 
 the more imperative the impulse to secede from 
 it. Since the great schism of the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, which was caused by the 
 narrow, purely ritualistic differences, hardly 
 a year has passed without a new sect spring- 
 ing up somewhere in the forests and marshes, to 
 which the persecuted Old Believers repaired. 
 But these sects were the meagre product of 
 narrow ritualistic scholasticism and had no future 
 before them. One must always keep in mind 
 the dense ignorance of these people to account 
 for their taking seriously matters so trivial as 
 the mode of spelling the name of Christ or their 
 way of crossing themselves. 
 
 The new sectarianism is entirely different 
 It evidently springs from the direct influence of 
 the Gospel, and it is remarkable for its uni- 
 formity. It is the return to the simple creed of 
 the early Christians, for which the Stundists are
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 213 
 
 striving, so that one can say that this religious 
 sect represents the type of the religious aspira- 
 tions of modern reformers. The religious doc- 
 trine of the Stundists is much akin to that of 
 the Baptists or Anabaptists of the time of the 
 Reformation. They baptize only grown-up 
 people, re-baptizing those to whom this sacra- 
 ment was administered in babyhood. Instead 
 of the communion they have simply " the break- 
 ing of bread," accompanied with singing of 
 hymns. The wedding ceremony exists, but is 
 a very plain one. Both communion and bap- 
 tism are viewed by the Stundists, not as sacra- 
 ments, but as "rites performed in commemoration 
 of Christ, and for a closer union with Him." 
 They consider the Ikons as no better than pic- 
 tures, and do not keep them in their houses. 
 They recognize only the Lord's Prayer. At 
 their meetings they sing hymns of their own 
 composition and psalms. As to prayers, they 
 are left to the personal inspiration of the 
 believers. 
 
 As regards their moral code, suffice it to say 
 that it is prohibited among them to ill-use even 
 dumb creatures. An observer says that once 
 he saw a girl of eight, a Stundist, who rushed 
 into the house, saying, with an appear-
 
 214 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 ance of great distress, that she could not 
 restrain her little brother a boy three years 
 old from throwing stones at a dog. The 
 Stundists, like all Ruthenians or Southern 
 Russians, hold land as private property, not in 
 common, like the great Russians. Among the 
 Stundists there is no conscious leaning towards 
 collective ownership of land. But according to 
 their religion, all earthly goods are not given, 
 but, so to say, lent by God to men, who will be 
 held responsible before Him for the use they 
 have made of their worldly possessions. To 
 prove faithful debtors men are bound to come 
 to the assistance of their neighbours when they 
 are in need, sickness, or affliction. It is well 
 known that with the Stundists this doctrine is 
 in no contradiction with their life, but on the 
 contrary their lives are a confirmation and illus- 
 tration of their doctrine. 
 
 One of the peculiarities of the Stundists is the 
 perfect absence of national and religious intoler- 
 ance. During the anti-Jewish riots the Stundists 
 used all their influence to restrain the Orthodox 
 from committing any outrage. There were no 
 anti-Jewish riots in the villages where the Stun- 
 dists formed even one-third of the population. 
 Riabashapka, a common peasant, one of the
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 21$ 
 
 founders of the sect, delivered several sermons 
 upon the subject. In one of them (recorded 
 verbatim by a lady who was present), Riabas- 
 hapka said to his congregation : " The Jews 
 have received from God a law for their guidance. 
 When they transgressed it He punished them. 
 Perhaps they are suffering now for their own 
 sins. You have heard how they are beaten, 
 ruined, plundered. But God preserve you, 
 brothers and sisters, from participating, even in 
 thought, in such deeds. The Jews are the eldest 
 sons of God. He punishes them more severely 
 than the others. But woe to the man who will 
 take upon himself to be the instrument of God's 
 wrath ! God preserve you from wishing it, and 
 still more from taking part in these violences." 
 
 With regard to politics, the views of the pre- 
 sent Stundists are easily formulated ; they think 
 that one must obey the authorities in every- 
 thing, except in matters pertaining to religion. 
 To show how peaceful is their disposition, it is 
 enough to mention that at the close of their 
 meetings they always pray for the Tzar. How- 
 ever one may dislike it, this is a fact which must 
 be acknowledged by every impartial and honest 
 investigator who has personally been with these 
 sectarians.
 
 2l6 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 It is evident that the Stundists are a perfectly 
 harmless body, which does not threaten existing 
 institutions, and even may be said to help in 
 the preservation of public order by dissuading 
 people from anti-Jewish outrages, by preaching 
 against all sorts of bloodshed, rebellion, and 
 resistance by violence. Besides, this sect is one 
 of the most powerful instruments of a peaceful 
 Russification of the heterogeneous population of 
 our border provinces. The Stundists make con- 
 verts not only among the Russians, but among 
 the Moldavians, Gypsies,Tartars, Jews, and even 
 Poles, and every new Stundist congregation falls 
 necessarily under the influence of Russian cul- 
 ture. The Ruthenians understand easily the 
 Russian language, and the Stundists read almost 
 exclusively Russian books (Ruthenian ones are 
 very rare). The Gospel is invariably read in 
 the Russian version, as published by the Synod. 
 Even the hymns of their own composition are 
 written in the Russian language, with a few 
 provincialisms. In any case, all Stundists, both 
 men and women, are invariably taught to read 
 and write, and they all read Russian. 
 
 Now let us see how the Russian Government 
 has behaved towards this most sympathetic, 
 promising, and genuinely popular movement.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 2 1/ 
 
 During the reign of the " liberal " Alex- 
 ander II. they were persecuted unremittingly. 
 The regular tribunals, whenever called upon to 
 judge the Stundists, invariably acquitted them. 
 But it did not prevent the administration from 
 arresting them again and again, keeping them 
 in prison, imposing ruinous fines, and exiling 
 them to Siberia. 
 
 At the beginning of the present reign the 
 position of all sectarians, the Stundists included, 
 improved. The service rendered by the 
 Old Believers at the coronation could not be 
 immediately forgotten, and the Stundists, with 
 the other dissenters, benefited by that compara- 
 tive tolerance. But the rapid spread of the 
 sect, which was winning over hundreds of thou- 
 sands of adherents from official orthodoxy, 
 excited the jealousy of the clergy and alarmed 
 the Government. It is rumoured that with 
 PobedonoszefT personal motives came to add to 
 the irritation of a zealous upholder of orthodoxy. 
 
 To account for the latter we must throw a 
 glance behind the scenes. It is known that in 
 1887 Mr. Pobedonoszeff was on the point of 
 falling into disgrace. This was due to two 
 circumstances. We will not dwell upon the 
 first, as it is strictly private. Suffice it to say
 
 2l8 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 that, thanks to a court intrigue we had better 
 not mention, the Tzar was shown an authentic 
 letter of Pobedonoszeff, in which the latter 
 boasted that he could make his Master sign 
 anything he wished. At the same time the Tzar 
 was much incensed against Pobedonoszeff for 
 his being worsted in polemics by the Evangelical 
 Society. 
 
 The persecution of the Lutherans in the 
 Baltic provinces caused the Evangelical Society 
 to write an address to the Russian Holy Synod. 
 Pobedonoszeff replied, but so poorly, that he 
 exposed himself to a crushing rejoinder from 
 the Evangelical Divine. 
 
 It was rumoured at this time that Pobedonos- 
 zeff would be dismissed altogether. He got a 
 two months' furlough instead, to compose at 
 his leisure a reply to the Evangelical pamphlet. 
 He made no reply, but he got out of the diffi- 
 culty by resorting to a trick very often practised 
 in Russian official circles. Everything is for- 
 given there, and condoned for some zeal in the 
 cause of autocracy. Pobedonoszeff contrived to 
 make a show of this zeal at the expense of the 
 Stundists. With the assistance of a South 
 Russian Bishop, Nicanor, and a couple of paid 
 scribes, he concocted against these inoffensive
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 219 
 
 people the accusation of being traitors to the 
 Russian Tzars, and emissaries of Prince Bis- 
 marck and the German Lutheranism. Such 
 was the purport of the famous " Letter from 
 Simferopol," published in the Moscow Gazette, 
 which, after Katkoff s death, became the organ 
 of Pobedonoszeff. 
 
 The grounds for these sweeping accusations 
 were as follows : (i) This sect was founded by 
 German Lutherans residing in Southern Russia ; 
 (2) the Stundists have in their houses the por- 
 traits of the Emperor William and of Prince 
 Bismarck instead of the Tzar's ; (3) they are 
 wont to shave their beards in order to look like 
 Germans. 
 
 It must be observed that all the Ruthenians 
 are wont to shave their beards, the orthodox as 
 well as sectarians. As to the obnoxious por- 
 traits, being comparatively educated people, who 
 read the newspapers, they might well have por- 
 traits of men of prominence in European politics. 
 As to the influence of the German Protestants 
 (Baptists and not Lutherans), it was quite for- 
 tuitous, and disappeared after the first few years, 
 the sect becoming thoroughly national. 
 
 The Stundists held a general council, and 
 sent to the Synod a petition expressing their
 
 220 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 wish to join officially the German sect of Bap- 
 tists, which is fully tolerated in Russia. In fact, 
 there is a great similitude in the rites of the two 
 sects. As to the Stundist catechism, it was 
 simply a translation of the catechism of the 
 Tiflis Baptists. 
 
 As might have been expected, it was Pobe- 
 donoszeff who replied instead of the Synod. 
 His reply was rough and peremptory. He 
 begins by declaring that there is nothing in 
 common between the Stundists and the Baptists, 
 thus showing his complete ignorance of the 
 tenets of both sects, and he finishes by order- 
 ing the Stundists not to trouble their superiors 
 in the future. 
 
 Persecutions were resolved upon, and they 
 broke out everywhere. The " missionaries " 
 were personated by policemen, who broke 
 into the houses of the brethren, dispers- 
 ing their assemblies, arresting the peaceful 
 Stundists, who were thrown into prisons, exiled 
 to Siberia without trial, and treated like the 
 worst criminals. 
 
 A Russian exile, whose name cannot be re- 
 vealed, in his recollections published by the 
 Friends of Russian Freedom, tells the following 
 incident :
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 221 
 
 " On the way to Kiev, two men in chains and 
 with shaven heads were placed in our railway 
 carriage ; their wives accompanied them, one 
 with four children, the other with three ; the 
 eldest boy was twelve years old. The appear- 
 ance of these prisoners instantly attracted our 
 attention ; both of them had fine faces, and 
 there was a quiet, straightforward look about 
 them, which impressed us pleasantly. 
 
 " On seeing us, they at once asked us what we 
 were, and when we answered, ' Socialists,' their 
 faces brightened and they held out their hands 
 to us, calling us brothers. They were members 
 of the religious sect of Stundists or Evangelicals, 
 and had been tried several years ago in the dis- 
 trict of Chigirin, as being among the first pro- 
 moters of heresy. Their sentence was : trans- 
 port to the Caucasus and forfeiture of all civil 
 rights (which accounted for their being shaven 
 and chained). When the priest of their parish 
 accused them of heresy, they were dragged, with 
 blows and insults, through their village, and 
 brought before the authorities. In prison they 
 were treated with a barbarity worthy of the 
 middle ages ; the priest who had denounced 
 them, struck them in the face, demanding the 
 names of their co-religionists. While waiting
 
 222 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 for trial, they were deprived of their one conso- 
 lation, the Gospel, though by law every prisoner 
 may possess it. On arriving at Kiev we 
 bought a New Testament, and gave it to them 
 with the consent of the official in charge. Their 
 delight on receiving our present, and the passion 
 with which they at once began their propaganda, 
 was something to remember/' 
 
 This statement is very valuable as a testimony 
 of an eye-witness that Stundists are put in 
 chains and have their heads shaven like the 
 convicts in the mines. As to the fact that thou- 
 sands of Stundists are exiled to Siberia and 
 the Caucasus by mere administrative order, it 
 needs no confirmation by an eye-witness, as it is 
 admitted officially. 
 
 Not satisfied with direct persecutions, the 
 police and the clergy are not ashamed to let 
 loose upon the unfortunate Stundists the ortho- 
 dox mob, which is encouraged and incited to 
 commit the grossest outrages upon them. At 
 the instigation and in the presence of priests, 
 Stundists have been flogged over and over 
 again by the orthodox peasants, to compel them 
 to cross themselves, or drink brandy or smoke 
 tobacco, or commit anything contrary to their 
 creed or rules of life.
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 223 
 
 An English missionary whose name I cannot 
 mention, as he has returned to Russia, told me 
 cases where Stundists of the province of Kherson 
 have been frozen to death bythe orthodox, who 
 in the heart of the winter poured water upon 
 them by way of mock baptism. 
 
 George Lazarev has told in " Free Russia " the 
 touching story of Elisey Sukhach, a Stundist 
 whom he knew intimately, and whose story he 
 heard from his own lips. Before being converted 
 to the Stunda, Elisey was a fervid orthodox 
 believer, much devoted to the interests of the 
 Church and those of the village priest. His 
 desertion irritated the latter exceedingly, and 
 transformed his former good-will towards Elisey 
 into violent hatred. The priest preached un- 
 tiringly against him, denouncing him as an 
 enemy of God whom it is sinful to leave un- 
 molested. One of the most vehement of such 
 sermons was delivered at the ceremony of 
 the Benediction of Waters, which takes place on 
 January 6th, when the frost is at its bitterest 
 in Russia. The crowd got so excited that it 
 rushed to the houses of the two Stundists, 
 Elisey and another peasant, demolished their 
 cottages, breaking to pieces every bit of furni- 
 ture, and then dragged the two Stundists to the
 
 224 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 river, where the priest was awaiting them. He 
 began by asking them whether they abjured 
 their heresy. On their making an open pro- 
 fession of their faith, he ordered them to be 
 plunged into the ice-cold water through a 
 hole made in the thick ice, repeating it three 
 times, as is done at the baptism, and asking 
 them each time whether they would abjure their 
 heresy. 
 
 In the province of Kiev, the efforts on the 
 part of the authorities, both civil and ecclesias- 
 tical, to arouse the wild beast in men brought 
 forth fruit. The outrages committed there 
 upon the innocent Stundist men and women 
 defy description, and must be told in the victims' 
 own words. At times they are so horrible that 
 they cannot be told at all. 
 
 In September, 1892, the Stundists of one of 
 the districts in the province of Kiev, sent to the 
 Pennsylvanian Friends, and to several other 
 bodies, whose addresses they obtained, a series 
 of letters which are one wail of distress. 
 
 Having no one to defend them, they appeal to 
 the public opinion of the distant world. 
 
 " We implore you,beloved brothers,with tears," 
 begins the first letter, " take this account of 
 ours or give it to somebody who can cry out
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 22$ 
 
 loudly, and perhaps people will hear us in our 
 terrible distress. Because we are, as it were, 
 stifled and cannot cry out ourselves, and awful 
 and unspeakable is our distress." 
 
 This appeal bears the signature of all the 
 members of the Stundists' community. Then 
 come individual letters of those who have been 
 especially victimized. 
 
 Elias Lisovoi writes as follows : " I declare to 
 you, beloved brothers, what is done with us 
 here. The elder of the village, the village con- 
 stable (uriadnik\ and other drunkards torment 
 us pitilessly. Every day they send us to public 
 works in Babenzy and in our village. And we, 
 men, are sent out every night as watchmen. 
 And these cruel drunkards the village autho- 
 rities come to our houses whilst we are not in 
 and frighten our children, and do evil things to 
 our women. Late in the night, from September 
 nth to 1 2th, they came to my wife Xenia, and 
 tormented her as they chose, as it is told in the 
 Bible about Susan. Only they did worse. Pro- 
 tect us, O Lord ! It is terrible even to speak of 
 it. They threw her on the floor and then they 
 outraged her. The drunken companions of the 
 elder did it first and then the elder himself. 
 Then they compelled her to make the sign of 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 the cross, threatening in case of refusal to out- 
 rage her again. They outraged the poor 
 woman, and she was with child. They dis- 
 located her hands, wounded her body, and left 
 her almost dead. They broke all the plates and 
 kitchen things and all the windows. Up to the 
 present our houses are without windows. 
 
 " We beg you, brothers, with tears, help us. 
 Do it as soon as you can. Do not make any 
 delay. They are tormenting us so. We 
 implore you with tears to take our cause to 
 heart. Perhaps our Heavenly Father will help 
 us and protect us in His mercy." 
 
 The signature follows. 
 
 This case is but a sample of the outrages 
 endured by the Stundists during several months. 
 
 We have upon this a statement from the 
 leaders and representatives of the Stundist 
 Church, giving a detailed account of the bar- 
 barities committed, with names and details 
 showing that the guilt cannot be laid to the 
 charge of ignorant subordinate officials and their 
 besotted assistants only. 
 
 The persecutions of the brethren in the village 
 Kapustnizy began on August i/th, 1892, when 
 the village authorities sent them in a body to 
 forced labour on the public works, partly in
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 22/ 
 
 their own village, partly in Babenzy and 
 Borshchagovka. They had to repair public 
 buildings. The men did the wood-work, the 
 women and children some only ten and 
 twelve years old plastered the walls, worked 
 the clay, etc. Many of the women had 
 their babies with them, so that they had to 
 carry on one arm the child, on the other a 
 bundle of wood, and the overseers sometimes 
 struck the poor women to make them work 
 faster. 
 
 It was impossible to leave the little ones at 
 home, as there is no one to look after them, and 
 the people were sent to work at a distance of 
 four or five miles from their houses. 
 
 In the evening all the men had to go as 
 night watches for the whole night ; and to 
 every two of the brethren an orthodox overseer 
 was told off to see that they never sat down to 
 rest, but walked all the night through. 
 
 " On September 2nd, the ispravnik (chief of 
 the police) of the Skviri district, the stanovoi, 
 the uriadnik, 1 and the elder of the district, 
 Pantelei Skribuk, came to our place, and the 
 village priest exhorted us in their presence to 
 
 1 Different officials. 
 Q 2
 
 228 KING STORK AND KING LOG: 
 
 renounce our creed. As we refused, the is- 
 pravnik gave orders that we should be sent for 
 as night watches every night and two days in 
 the week for public work. But we were sent 
 to public work every day. Up to the i6th of 
 September we were employed for 106 days and 
 116 nights. 
 
 " On the 6th of September the priest came to 
 the village school, and, having summoned us, 
 began to persuade us once again to repent and 
 baptize our children to go to the orthodox 
 church. But we did not consent. 
 
 The same evening the village elder, Emelian 
 Ocheretnuk, the sotsky, Avila Shlapan, with a 
 batch of about eight men, all drunk, came to 
 the house of Kerik Zubko, where they behaved 
 most disgracefully, abusing his wife, shouting, 
 making great noise, and filling the room with 
 tobacco smoke. Then they went to the other 
 Stundists, Elias and Dolman Lisovoi, Paras- 
 kovia Panchenko, and others, and were guilty 
 of similar improprieties everywhere. 
 
 On the 7th the local uriadnik, the elder, and 
 the sotsky, with a crowd of drunken peasants, 
 came late in the night to the house of the 
 brother Zubko, the uriadnik shouting, " Open 
 the door, or I will break the window." And
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 229 
 
 although his wife hurried to light a lamp and 
 open the door, a window was broken before she 
 could let them in. On entering the room they 
 began to smoke, make an uproar, and sing 
 indecent songs. The uriadnik abused Zubko's 
 wife, threatening to cut her to pieces if she 
 refused to be converted. He called her abusive 
 names, undid her hair, and knocked her down. 
 
 In the same way they made the round of all 
 the houses of the Stundists, ill-treating the 
 women, who were alone in the houses, their 
 husbands being in the other villages as watch- 
 men. 
 
 On the nth of September, late in the night, 
 the same drunken crowd, with the elder and 
 the sotsky at their head, broke into the house 
 of Kerik Zubko, who was absent on night 
 watch, and the elder shouted to Zubko's wife 
 to make a sign of the cross like an orthodox. 
 As she kept silent he pulled her by the hair, 
 and covered her with blows till she lost her 
 senses. Then they went to the house of Elias 
 Lisovoi, living with his brother Nicholas, who 
 is an orthodox. Elias was out as a night- 
 watch, and his brother Nicholas was in the 
 prairie." 
 
 Having ascertained that there were no men
 
 230 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 in the house, the elder and the drunken rabble 
 with him lost all restraint, and committed upon 
 the defenceless women the worst outrages, 
 aggravated with such insults as cannot be 
 described in any civilized language. 
 
 The account we have mentioned gives the 
 names of the seven men who either took part 
 in these abominations or witnessed them, and 
 also the name of those who have heard the 
 priest of the village encouraging the elder and 
 his gang to " make it hot " for the Stundists, 
 and promising to pay for their tobacco and 
 vodka to make the game more exciting. And 
 these incitements, appealing to the brutal in- 
 stincts of the mob, came not from the village 
 priests alone. Upon this important point we 
 have the unimpeachable testimony of one of 
 the disciples of Count Tolstoi, Prince Khilkov, 
 whose exile to the Caucasus was reported some 
 time ago in the English papers. 
 
 Prince Khilkov belongs to the high aristocracy 
 of Russia, his family descending in direct line 
 from the house of Rurik, which reigned over 
 Muscovy up to the end of the sixteenth century. 
 Having completed his studies at the military 
 academy of St. Petersburg, the young prince 
 rapidly advanced in his career, owing to his
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 231 
 
 great connections, wealth, and abilities. He 
 was the youngest general in the army, having 
 outstripped all his comrades, and a brilliant 
 career was opening before him, when he was 
 converted to Tolstoi's ideas, and abandoned the 
 military service as contrary to the Christian 
 religion. He did more. On coming to his 
 estate in the province of Kharkov, he made a 
 present to the peasants of his lands, forests, 
 and meadows, and began to earn his bread by 
 the sweat of his brow like a common peasant. 
 To all who were curious to know what was the 
 meaning of these extraordinary proceedings, he 
 was quite willing to explain his new creed, 
 which was that of the author of "Christ's 
 Christianity." The Government which has 
 not the courage to persecute Count Tolstoi him- 
 self meanly attacks his disciples. Prince 
 Khilkov was exiled by administrative order to 
 the Caucasus, where he now is. Copies of the 
 Stundists' letters to the American Friends were 
 sent to him there, and caused him to write to 
 the Governor of the province of Kiev, in which 
 these disgraceful outrages took place, and to 
 the Archbishop of Kharkov, Ambrosius, who 
 made himself conspicuous in the general cam- 
 paign against the Stundists.
 
 232 KING STORK AND KING LOG : 
 
 I will quote a passage only from the second 
 of these letters, which bears upon the attitude 
 of the clergy high and low : 
 
 " Your reverence, every public man is 
 pleased to see the fruits of his activity," the 
 letter begins. " Now your reverence can 
 see full well what fruits your activity has 
 borne. The reiterated appeals of your rever- 
 ence, and of other ' shepherds ' like yourself, 
 whose characteristics are given in the tenth 
 chapter of St. John, has found an echo in the 
 hearts of the rural police in the province of 
 Kiev. You may rejoice ! The proclamations 
 affixed by your order to the walls of the 
 churches, inciting one section of the population 
 to hate the other; pamphlets like 'That accursed 
 Stundist ' (Proklyatei Stundisl), which is so 
 zealously distributed by your reverence ; the 
 sermons, appealing to hatred and intolerance, 
 preached by yourself and your followers all 
 this has at last done what it was meant to do. 
 Houses have been destroyed; people have been 
 tormented in every possible way. The new 
 champions of orthodoxy have devised a novel 
 means for compelling the women to make the 
 sign of the cross ! Shame and abomination ! 
 At the judicial inquiry the inferior agents alone
 
 A STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIA. 233 
 
 will probably be found guilty. But who was it 
 incited these inferior agents ? 
 
 " In the village Pavlovky (district of Sumy), 
 the stanovoi, together with the dean and two 
 priests, were reproaching the peasants at the 
 meeting of the Mir for their tolerating the 
 Stundists in their midst. ' In other places in 
 Russia they are torn to pieces/ said these 
 worthies, alluding probably to the province of 
 Kiev, and evidently wishing that the example 
 of Babenzy should be followed in their district. 
 Is not this a direct incitement c to tear them 
 to pieces ' ? Fortunately, the peasants of Pav- 
 lovky, thanks to the newly-awakened faith in 
 Christ, are no longer capable of heeding such 
 incitements." 
 
 By the newly-awakened faith in Christ, Prince 
 Khilkov evidently means the adhesion to his 
 own creed. The village of Pavlovky is close to 
 his own estate. His information is first-hand, 
 and cannot be doubted any more than his state- 
 ments as regards the activity of the archbishop 
 of his province. 
 
 But does the responsibility stop at men like 
 Ambrosius and Nicanor who are most con- 
 spicuous in hunting down the Stundists ? Cer- 
 tainly not. The bishops take their cue from
 
 234 KING STORK AND KING LOG. 
 
 the central Government, and their immediate 
 chief, Pobedonoszev, the confidential adviser of 
 the Tzar. These two men have to share between 
 them the disgrace of these abominations. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIV1NGTOV, LTD., 
 ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, B.C.
 
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