Chapter 37

As Russia entered the nineteenth century, the hearts of earnest men must have sunk within them. For Paul I, Catharine's son and successor, was infinitely more despotic than Catharine, and infinitely less restrained by public opinion. He had been born with savage instincts, and educated into ferocity. Tyranny was written on his features in his childhood. If he remained in Russia his mother sneered and showed hatred of him; if he journeyed in Western Europe crowds gathered about his coach to jeer at his ugliness. Most of those who have seen Gillray's caricature of him, issued in the height of English spite at Paul's homage to Bonaparte, have thought it hideously overdrawn; but those who have seen the portrait of Paul in the Cadet-Corps of St. Petersburg know well that Gillray did not exaggerate Paul's ugliness, for he could not.

And Paul's face was but a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought into his every fibre. He demanded an oriental homage. As his carriage whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop, descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism into this formula: "Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is no one noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I speak."

And yet within that hideous mass glowed sparks of reverence for right. When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they overtasked their human chattels Paul made a law that no serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his master's domain. But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such a ravenous wild beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came at the same time a change in the spirit of European politics, as from May to March.

For, although the new Czar, Alexander I, was mild and liberal, the storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgement there. Still Alexander breasted this storm; found time to plan for his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead and of a few acres, giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; and in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities; the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside.

The Czar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan also the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted. At last the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit--worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his empire into dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times--when the grapple of the emperors was at the fiercest; in the very year of the burning of Moscow--Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia into the empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever. Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his empire. He found that progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse. The newly ennobled _parvenus_ were worse than the old _boyars_; they hugged the serf system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully. The sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore that the serf system should be abolished.

Straightway a great and good plan was prepared. Its main features were: a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years; the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it; the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs; and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty. Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it in various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland became free. Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom, the serf-holding caste made every effort to blast the good fruits of freedom. In Courland they were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they succeeded during many years; but the eternal laws were too strong for them, and the fruitage of liberty had grown richer and better.

After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls of false political economy; pretended statesmen built walls of sham common-sense. If the Czar could but have mustered courage to cut the knot! Alas for Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to untie it. His heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him from it.

Alexander's successor, Nicholas I, had been known before his accession as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade days, wonderful in detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments. It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of energy in climbing his brother's throne. The great article in Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in despotism, and in himself as despotism's apostle. Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that anything between these he could not understand. Of his former rule of Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing.

Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin. That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds and sacks of pearls and a nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise rows upon rows of jewelled cimeters, and vases and salvers of gold, and old saddles studded with diamonds and with stirrups of gold--presents of frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies. There too are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of Astrakhan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland. And next this is an index of despotic hate--for the Polish sceptre is broken and flung aside. Near this stands the full-length portrait of Alexander I, and at his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland--some with blood-marks still upon them. But below all, far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the _very_ Constitution of Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good promise--which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas took away with so much bloodshed.

And not far from this monument of the deathless hate Nicholas bore that liberty he had stung to death stands a monument of his admiration for straightforward tyranny, even in the most dreaded enemy his house ever knew. Standing there is a statue in the purest of marble, the only statue in those vast halls. It has the place of honor. It looks proudly over all that glory and keeps ward over all that treasure; and that statue, in full majesty of imperial robes, and bees, and diadem, and face, is of the First Napoleon. Admiration of his tyrannic will has at last made him peaceful sovereign of the Kremlin.

This spirit of absolutism took its most offensive form in Nicholas's attitude toward Europe. He was the very incarnation of reaction against revolution, and he became the demigod of that horde of petty despots who infest Central Europe. Whenever, then, any tyrant's lie was to be baptized, he stood its godfather; whenever any God's truth was to be crucified, he led on those who passed by, reviling and wagging their heads. Whenever these oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas backed them in the name of religion; whenever their nations struggled to preserve some great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of law and order. With these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his crumbs and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can see today, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite vases or porcelain bowls or porphyry columns.

But the people of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, representing fiery horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his measures, have fastened upon one of these curbed steeds the name of "Progress Checked," and on the other "Retrogression Encouraged."

A few days before Nicholas's self-will brought him to his deathbed we saw him ride through the St. Petersburg streets with no pomp and no attendants, yet in as great pride as ever despotism gave a man. At his approach, nobles uncovered and looked docile, soldiers faced about and became statues, long-bearded peasants bowed to the ground with the air of men on whose vision a miracle flashes. For there was one who could make or mar all fortunes--the absolute owner of street and houses and passers-by--one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud and confident as ever.

There was in this attitude toward Europe--in this standing forth as the representative man of absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth century--something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this greatness was wretchedly diminished. For, as Alexander I was a good man enticed out of goodness by the baits of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever-recurring phantom of the French Revolution.

In those first days of his reign, when he enforced loyalty with grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his character soon showed another side. Fearless as he was before bright bayonets, he was an utter coward before bright ideas. He laughed at the flash of cannon, but he trembled at the flash of a new living thought. Whenever, then, he attempted a great thing for his nation, he was sure to be scared back from its completion by fear of revolution. And so, today, he who looks through Russia for Nicholas's works finds a number of great things he had done, but each is single, insulated, not preceded logically, not followed effectively. Take, as an example of this, his railway-building.

His own pride and Russian interest demanded railways. He scanned the world with that keen eye of his, saw that American energy was the best supplement to Russian capital; his will darted quickly, struck afar, and Americans came to build his road from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nothing can be more complete. It is an air-line road, and so perfect that the traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet, before and behind him, in the horizon. The track is double, the rails very heavy and admirably ballasted; station-houses and engine-houses are splendid in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat gardens. The whole work is worthy of the Pyramid builders. The traveller is whirled by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed granite, through cuttings where the earth on either side is carefully paved or turfed to the summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as crossings in the midst of broad marshes, lions' heads in bronzed iron stare out upon vast wastes where never rose even the smoke from a serf's kennel.

All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his praises grow fainter. He sees that Nicholas held back from continuing the road to Odessa, though half the money spent in making the road an imperial plaything would have built a good, solid extension to that most important seaport; he sees that Nicholas dared not untie police regulations, and that commerce is wretchedly meagre. Contrary to what would obtain under a free system, this great public work found the country wretched and left it wretched. The traveller flies by no ranges of trim palings and tidy cottages; he sees the same dingy groups of huts here as elsewhere, the same cultivation looking for no morrow, the same tokens that the laborer is not thought worthy of his hire. This same tendency to great single works, this same fear of great connected systems, this same timid isolation of great creations from principles essential to their growth, is seen, too, in Nicholas's church-building.

Foremost of all the edifices on which Nicholas lavished the wealth of the empire stands the Isak Church in St. Petersburg. It is one of the largest and certainly the richest cathedral in Christendom. All is polished pink granite and marble and bronze. On all sides are double rows of Titanic columns, each a single block of polished granite with bronze capital. Colossal masses of bronze statuary are grouped over each front; high above the roof and surrounding the great drums of the domes are lines of giant columns in granite bearing giant statues in bronze; and crowning all rises the vast central dome, flanked by its four smaller domes, all heavily plated with gold.

The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of lapis lazuli and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work, where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years.

Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as of his timidity. For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part at least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like those of Moscow; but here again is a timid purpose and half result; Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious training or moral training. There had been such an organization, the Russian Bible Society, favored by Alexander I; but Nicholas swept it away at one stroke of the pen. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly interpreted against certain sins in modern politics. The corruption system in Russia is old, organized, and respectable. Stories told of Russian bribes and thefts exceed belief only until one has been on the ground.

Nicholas began well. He made an imperial progress to Odessa, was welcomed in the morning by the governor in full pomp and robes and flow of smooth words; and at noon the same governor was working in the streets with ball and chain as a convict. But against such a chronic moral evil no government is so weak as your so-called "strong" government. Nicholas set out one day for the Kronstadt arsenals to look into the accounts there; but before he reached them, stores, storehouses, and account-books were in ashes. So at last Nicholas folded his arms and wrestled no more. For, apart from the trouble, there came ever in his dealings with thieves that old timid thought of his, that, if he examined too closely their chief tenure, they might examine too closely his despot tenure.

We have shown this vague fear in Nicholas's mind thus at length and in different workings, because thereby alone can be grasped the master-key to his dealings with the serf system. Toward his toiling millions Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up--for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his action. He was told that the serfs were well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-provided with religion; were contented, and had no wish to leave their owners.

Now Nicholas was not strong at spinning sham reasons nor subtle at weaving false conscience; but, to his mind, the very fact that the system had so degraded a man that he could laugh and dance and sing, while other men took his wages, his wife, and homestead, was the crowning argument against the system. Then the political economists beset him, proving that without forced labor Russia must sink into sloth and poverty.

Yet all this could not shut out from Nicholas's sight the great black fact in the case. He saw, and winced as he saw, that, while other European nations, even under despots, were comparatively active and energetic, his own people were sluggish and stagnant; that, although great thoughts and great acts were towering in the West, there were in Russia, after all his galvanizing, no great authors, or scholars, or builders, or inventors, but only two main products of Russian civilization, dissolute lords and abject serfs.

Nearly twenty years went by in this timid dropping of grains of salt into a putrid sea. But at last, in 1842, Nicholas issued his ukase creating the class of "contracting peasants." Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into contracts, the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in instalments. It was a moderate innovation, very moderate--nothing more than the first failure of the First Alexander. Yet even here that old timidity of Nicholas nearly spoiled what little good was hidden in the ukase. Notice after notice was given to the serf-owners that they were not to be molested, that no emancipation was contemplated, and that the ukase contained "nothing new." The result was as feeble as the policy. A few serfs were emancipated, and Nicholas halted. The revolutions of 1848 increased his fear of innovation; and finally the war in the Crimea took from him the power of innovation.

The great man died. We saw his cold dead face, in the midst of crowns and crosses, very pale then, very powerless then. One might stare at him, then, as at a serf's corpse; for he who had scared Europe during thirty years lay before us that day as a poor lump of chilled brain and withered muscle. And we stood by, when, amid chanting and flare of torches and roll of cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold thread, and lowered him into the tomb of his fathers.

But there was shown in those days far greater tribute than the prayers of bishops or the reverence of ambassadors. Massed about the Winter Palace and the Fortress of Peter and Paul, stood thousands on thousands who, in far-distant serf-huts, had put on their best, had toiled wearily to the capital to give their last mute thanks to one who for years had stood between their welfare and their owners' greed. Sad that he had not done more. Yet they knew that he had wished their freedom and loathed their wrongs; for that came up the tribute of millions.

The new Emperor, Alexander II, had never been hoped for as one who could light the nation from his brain; the only hope was that he might warm the nation somewhat from his heart. He was said to be of a weak, silken fibre. The strength of the family was said to be concentrated in his younger brother, Constantine. But soon came a day when the young Czar revealed to Europe not merely kindliness, but strength. While his father's corpse was still lying within his palace, he received the diplomatic body. As the Emperor entered the audience-room he seemed feeble, indeed, for such a crisis. That fearful legacy of war seemed to weigh upon his heart; marks of plenteous tears were upon his face; Nesselrode, though old and bent and shrunk in stature, seemed stronger than his young master.

But as he began his speech it was seen that a strong man had mounted the throne. With earnestness he declared that he sorrowed over the existing war; but that, if the Holy Alliance had been broken, it was not through the fault of Russia. With bitterness he turned toward the Austrian minister, Esterhazy, and hinted at Russian services in 1848, and Austrian ingratitude. Calmly then, not as one who spoke a part but as one who announced a determination, he declared: "I am anxious for peace; but if the terms at the approaching congress are incompatible with the honor of my nation, I will put myself at the head of my faithful Russia and die sooner than yield."

Strong as Alexander showed himself by these words, he showed himself stronger by acts. A policy properly mingling firmness and conciliation brought peace to Europe and showed him equal to his father; a policy mingling love of liberty with love of order brought the dawn of prosperity to Russia and showed him the superior of his father. The reforms now begun were not stinted as of old, but free and hearty. In rapid succession were swept away restrictions on telegraphic communication, on printing, on the use of the Imperial Library, on strangers entering the country, on Russians leaving the country. A policy in public works was adopted which made Nicholas's greatest efforts seem petty; a vast network of railways was begun. A policy in commercial dealings with Western Europe was adopted, in which Alexander, though not apparently so imposing as Nicholas, was really far greater; he dared advance toward freedom of trade.