Part 15

The man who spoke in this way was not a Liberal, but a Conservative aristocrat in the state service. I had reserved him for the end in my journey of research. After I had had conversations with high officials in the departments of education and of finance, with men like Prince Ukhtomski, with bankers and with lawyers, and had heard always the same story of the instability of things and the worthlessness of the régime, I turned to the friends who by their influence had smoothed the way for me everywhere, and said to them: "This cannot go on. I did not come to Russia merely to be shot, as it were, out of a pneumatic tube through a collection of Liberal and Radical malcontents. I do not wish to hear merely the opposition in Russia. You must gain access for me to some prominent Conservative also, one who stands on the basis of the present system, and who honestly and in good faith defends it. It need not be Suvorin or any other man of questionable honor, for I myself can apply Stahl's theories to Russian conditions. It must be a sincere, reputable, and sensible man with whom I can discuss the most widely different questions with or without an interpreter; either is the same to me."

My request was readily granted. A scholar admired almost to the point of worship, in whose house I had been entertained, gave me a letter to the Conservative aristocrat whose words I have quoted at the beginning of this paper. This letter I forwarded to the honorable gentleman in question, asking for an interview, and by return mail I received a reply stating that he would expect me that same afternoon.

I must confess that I anticipated this interview with some qualms. It was towards the end of my visit. The results hitherto obtained had the disadvantage of a certain monotony of sombreness, with, however, the advantage also that each succeeding interview only strengthened the impression gained from previous ones. Thus by degrees I had formed a very sharply defined image of Russian conditions--such an image as is pictured in the mind of the thinking Russian. Was this clear and distinct image now to be dispelled by the lye of this Conservative critic, and was I to lose the chief result of my journey, a confidence in the trustworthiness of the data hitherto accumulated?

I met the gentleman at his house at the appointed time, and learned at once that I had been especially commended to him. I therefore entered without hesitation upon the matter in which I was interested.

"I do not wish," I began, "to go through Russia in blinders. If your excellency, as a Conservative, will have the goodness to refute what I have heard hitherto, and will give me more accurate information, I shall be under great obligation."

"What have you heard?" asked the count.

"That Russia is starving, while the papers report a surplus in the treasury."

"That, unfortunately, is true."

"That your thinking people are in despair."

"Also true."

"That a revival of the Reign of Terror is to be feared."

"Equally true."

"That all Russia hopes the war will be lost, because only in that way can the present state of things be brought to an end."

"True again."

"That the present régime passes all bounds of depravity, and can be compared only with the Prætorian rule in the period of the decline of Rome."

"That understates the truth."

My face must have taken on a very strange expression during this brisk play of question and answer, for the count now took the initiative, and said:

"You are, I can see, surprised that I, as a Conservative and a state official, should answer in this way; but I hope you do not consider 'conservative' and 'infamous' synonymous terms. If you do not, you will not expect me to approve the régime of Plehve. That is not a Conservative régime. It is the régime of hell founded by a devil at the head of the most important department." (Here came the speech with which this paper began.) The count then proceeded: "Do not suppose that Russia is of necessity smitten with such serious problems. These questions are nowhere simpler than with us. We have no national problems like those of Prussia, for instance, or of Austria-Hungary, which are complicated by the fact that majorities and minorities are mixed together almost beyond separation. We have even in Poland almost no national aspirations regarding which we could not come to a peaceable understanding. Our nationalities live almost entirely distinct, in compact bodies side by side; even the Finns are politically separate. It would be an easy thing to make them all contented under just maintenance of the supremacy of the Czar. But the priestlike intolerance of Pobydonostzev has spread the idea in the world that all diversities of religion and speech must be ironed out with a hot flat-iron, even at the risk of singeing heads. Since then it is considered patriotic to repress men and convictions. For this business unclean creatures are to be found who make careers for themselves in this way; and their prototype is the tenfold renegade Plehve."

"Yet I cannot conceal my astonishment, your excellency, that you, as a Conservative, have this opinion of the system of Pobydonostzev."

"Why is that so illogical? Conservative thought is, above all, that of organic development. All violence is revolutionary in its essence, whether it serves reactionary or republican tendencies. The system of Pobydonostzev is revolutionary and reactionary. In his fashion Plehve, however, is simply a monstrous bill of extortion against the Czar as well as against the shackled nation."

"Your excellency of course refers to the idea that Plehve intimidates the Czar by threats of revolution?"

"That is not an idea simply; it is a fact, of which we have very definite information. But what not every one knows is the fact that we have no one but Plehve to thank for this war, which may be a catastrophe. He had a finger in all the manoeuvres of delay which provoked the Japanese to war, because he believed that he could no longer preserve himself in any other way than by diverting public attention from conditions in the interior, and by ridding himself of those who were dissatisfied with him into the bargain."

"How the latter?"

"You do not know? It is very simple. The first men who were sent to Asia were the Poles, the Jews, and the Armenians. Among our troops the Poles were five times as largely represented, and the Jews even more so, than they should have been according to their census number. And you must search to discover a Christian among the reserve surgeons. Why is this the case? To get rid of the most important elements of the malcontents for years, perhaps forever. Of course, the Poles, the Jews, and the Ruthenians have the most cause for discontent. Meanwhile there is peace at home."

"Not to a remarkable extent, I observe."

"Wait. The students, who are so incautious in airing their ideas, will come to know the East."

"Your excellency, no Radical has spoken like this."

"I can well understand that. The honorable Radicals have much less cause to be dissatisfied with this rule of banditti, for it sends the water to their mills. But a Conservative like myself sees with horror that all the foundations of the Conservative order of things are undermined, and that we are approaching exactly the same convulsions that France experienced after the spontaneous downfall of her absolute monarchy."

"In what respect, then, does your excellency distinguish yourself as a Conservative from the so-called Liberals? Certainly not in criticism?"

"I will explain. The Liberals are Girondists, with their ideas adopted from Cahier and Rousseau. Minister Turgot was a Conservative, who wished to save the monarchy by trying to make an end of the loose management of favorites. We Conservatives do not believe in a constitution or a parliament as the only means of salvation. We Russians are anything but ripe for that. It is a question if any people of the Continent, untrained in English self-government, are ripe for it. We look to the Czar for salvation, and to the Czar alone."

"Prince Ukhtomski says much the same thing. He does not speak of Liberal or Conservative, but only of an intelligent party in Russia, and he believes that an able minister could save the whole situation."

"I do not believe that for an instant. For, under the present circumstances, an able and honest minister cannot remain at court. There is only one salvation--a czar who is so educated for his task of ruling that he is not the plaything of a circle of courtiers, like our present good Emperor."

"I have heard a saying of Pobydonostzev, 'Autocracy is good, but it involves an autocrat.'"

"Certainly; even if it were not Pobydonostzev's opinion. For brutality alone certainly will not do. We must have knowledge of the subject and strength of will."

"Then the future must look very black to your excellency, if you await salvation from a new and better-trained czar. At present there is not even a prospect of a successor to the throne."

"It looks black enough. I have no hope at all. For what is hope to others is to me new ground for sorrow. We shall be defeated in Asia. We shall have a financial crash--_i. e._, our long-existent bankruptcy can no longer be veiled by juggling with the budget; and then we shall have a repetition of the old game of revolutions and constitutions. Some Western ideas on constitution-making will be imported and will not work. There will come a reaction, and the hand of every man will be against every other...."

"Then your excellency is opposed to the freedom of the press?"

"God forbid! A Conservative régime is far from being a police régime. We must have a public opinion and a respectable press, and a press without freedom cannot be respectable. A press which is under strict laws but not under police tyranny, and an honorable government, can both be brought about more easily under an absolute monarchy than under parliamentary rule; but there will be no question of all this."

"I find hardly any essential difference between the ideas your excellency represents and those I have been hearing for months in Russia."

"You cannot wonder at that. If you should ask me whether the snow out-of-doors is white or green, I also, as a Conservative, can only answer that it is white. We are in a bad way; our peasantry is starving, our thinking class is in despair, our finances are ravaged. Yet I believe that far more evil days are before us, and I thank God that I am an old man who has seen the worst."

So ended my interview with the Conservative, whom I had sought out for the correction of the Radical views I had heard. In the evening I had to make a report to my friends, who had waited it in suspense. My information created an immense sensation. Something entirely different from the interview had been expected, and there was astonishment at hearing views as bitter as any one present could have formulated. Had he permitted me to publish the conversation with his name?

"The conversation, but not his name," I answered.

A general "Aha!" went up from all present.

"That is the way with our chinovniks," remarked some one; "in a tête-à-tête they are all Liberal, and as soon as they are on the retired list they are all Radical."

"I beg pardon. Count X---- spoke with decision against a constitution, therefore he is not a Liberal."

"We must beg of you," came in an almost unanimous chorus, "for Heaven's sake, not to adopt this view and represent it abroad. It would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us if the outer world should believe that we really are not ripe for a constitution. We do not need an English or a Belgian constitution, to be sure, but a free parliament and a free press we do need. Otherwise there is no reliance to be placed upon any reform, and the farther from the centre the more Asiatic will be the rule of the satraps."

"My duty is to report and not to judge," said I, dryly. "I owe it to my authority to reproduce his views as he gave them to me. The only thing that I can do is to add your criticism to my report."

They were satisfied with this offer; and in accordance therewith I have reproduced the interview.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] An interview with a Russian Conservative.

XXV

SECTARIANS AND SOCIALISTS

I was taken one day to see a young Russian nobleman who was making a special study of the nature of sects. We drove to the outermost skirts of Moscow and stopped before a small palace. My companion, another young boyar, spoke to the servants, and after a few minutes we were conducted up a broad marble staircase to the first floor, where a suite of rooms furnished in extremely modern style opened out before us. I remarked to my companion that, after all, there really are no boundaries between countries, for this little palace with its very modern interior might just as well have been in Paris or London as here in Moscow. Instead of answering, the boyar motioned towards the ikon which hung in a corner. Modern furnishings, a bookcase filled with the most modern philosophical literature, and above it the orthodox ikon--we were in Moscow, after all.

The master of the house came in and embraced and kissed his friend. I was introduced, and we shook hands. Cigarettes were lighted, and without further formalities the young host took some manuscripts from a shelf and began to give me a private reading. My companion helped out when the reader's vocabulary failed him. It is thus that I am in a position to give from my notes the following excerpts from a work which cannot be printed in Russia, because it deals with the forbidden subject of the character of sects in a fashion not entirely acceptable to the censor.

The significance of sects in the inner structure of Russian life is best shown by some figures which give approximately their membership. In the year 1860 about ten million Raskolniks (non-conformists) were counted; in 1878, fourteen million; in 1897, twenty million; and to-day they number thirty million. These non-conformists not only do not belong to the orthodox church, but stand in hostility to the state, which identifies itself with the orthodox church. The sects are constantly increasing in number, and there is no doubt whatever that they answer much better to the religious needs of the Russian people than the state church, just as they already comprise what is morally the best part of the nation.

The sects interested me less in themselves--although every expression of the human instinct of faith is of psychological interest--than in their bearing on the question as to how far they are united to form a revolutionary army which could disarm and overthrow the autocracy and then take in hand the new order of things. I tried to inform myself on this point from my attractive host's reading. I also asked about it directly. The answers I received have no room for expectation of a revolutionary organization in the near future. According to them deliverance cannot come from below. Absolution no longer has the masses in hand, but it is at least able to prevent any general, all-inclusive organization of the dissatisfied; and the thinking class in the opposition to the government did not find the way to the people until the most recent times. Only within the last few years has it been reported that the peasantry is beginning to show symptoms of unusual fermentation, the authors of which are unknown. The government does what it can. It has spent nine million rubles for the strengthening of the provincial mounted police. According to the accepted view the sects arose because Patriarch Nikon wished to have the sacred writings and books of ritual then in use, in which textual errors were to be found, replaced by texts carefully revised according to the originals. The clergy, however, clinging to the old routine, opposed this. When the great council of May 13, 1667, declared itself in favor of Nikon's proposed reform, the division became complete. From that time forward the opposition of "Old Believers" (Starovertzy) became the heart of all popular movements against the imperial power. My host represented a different shade of opinion. According to his idea, the sects arose with the introduction of Christianity, and they represent the opposition of the simple paganism of the people to the complicated casuistry of the Byzantine Church. Until the fourteenth century, he thinks, the church tried to keep with the sectarians, and suffered the procession to go according to the old pagan usage, with the sun instead of against it. Since the fourteenth century, however, the church has identified itself with the power of the state. From this time dates the hostility of the sects to the government. Nevertheless, until the seventeenth century, local gods were tolerated as patron saints. But when Bishop Mascarius issued a list of the saints recognized by the state, the quarrel with sects which clung to their own saints was made eternal. Since that time the sectarians have not troubled themselves at all with the official religious literature. They print their own books on secret presses.

Sectarianism really represents, therefore, in the first place, the national opposition of the Russians to Byzantium; next, the opposition to St. Petersburg, and especially to Peter the Great, who was and is regarded as antichrist. But side by side with these nationalistic religious sects, and far in advance of them, have grown up mystically rationalistic ones also. Some of these, going back to early Christian ideas, refuse to bear arms and to take oath in court, like the German Anabaptists, Nazarenes, and Baptists. Others oppose the church on mere grounds of judgment, and lead a life regulated according to the teachings of pure reason. The Old Believers, after long and terrible martyrdoms in which their priests were burned or otherwise executed, and after a sort of recantation, finally came to an understanding with the state and are at present in part tolerated.

The great majority of rationalistic--mystic--sects, however, have remained hostile to the government, and are persecuted on all sides by the state, although a great part of their members lead much more moral lives than the orthodox Russians.

They are to be distinguished at present--sects with priests ("Popovtzy") and sects without priests ("Bezpopovtzy"). The first are the Old Believers, who are especially well represented in the rich merchant class in Moscow and are recognized by the state. They may be distinguished by their uncut beards, by their mode of crossing themselves, and by their great piety.

The sects without priests are, however, the most interesting. The most characteristic among them are the Self-burners, or Danielites, the Beguny, or Pilgrims, the Khlysty, or Scourgers, the Skoptzy and Skakuny, or Jumpers.[11] Their customs show what psychology knows already--namely, that religious emotion leads easily to sexual, and then both tend to revel in bloody ideas. One is led, indeed, to question whether the fascinating effect of so many of the stories of saints must not be traced back to that psychological connection in the subconsciousness. With the Danielites voluntary death by fire is considered meritorious. The Beguny are vagabonds, "without passport," an unheard-of thing according to Russian ideas, without name, without proper institutions. In this sect men and women live together promiscuously. They are supported by secret members of the sect who live in towns, and who do not, like the regular Beguny, expose themselves to the standing curse of antichrist--_i. e._, the state. The Khlysty have direct revelations from heaven in the state of ecstasy which they experience at their devotional meetings. They are flagellants, dance in rings until they are exhausted, and then sink all together in a general orgy. The Skoptzy castrate themselves in such circumstances. The Skakuny, or Jumpers, dance in pairs in the woods with frightfully dislocated limbs until they sink down exhausted. All these sects are accused of child murder. They are said to wish to send children unspotted to the kingdom of heaven. It is to be noted that all these data are unreliable, because no stranger is admitted to the secret devotions, while the imaginations of the denouncers have just as much tendency to revel in sexual and sanguinary ideas as that of the exalted devotees. The persecution of these sects by the government is easy to understand. Spiritual epidemics must be fought as much as physical disease.

The persecution of the rationalistic sects is quite unjustifiable. They do not deserve the name of sects at all, for in other countries similar ones form simply free political, ethical, or philosophical societies. Certainly they can only benefit the communities in which they exist by their high ideal of integrity and strict morality. Count Leo Tolstoï has already made the banishment of the Doukhobors known to all the world as an infamous proceeding, and has thereby raised large contributions for their settlement in Canada. The Shaloputy and the Malevents, for the most part Ruthenians, have a really ideal character, free from the narrowness and superstition of the church, without ritual, industrious, helpful, peaceful, and kindly. They live together in a state of free-love marriages, without constraint of church or state, neither lie nor swear, and do good even to their enemies. The Stundists, who are said to have originated with the German pastor Bonekemper, in the Rohrbach colony near Odessa, are similarly virtuous communists, who do not trouble themselves about the state, hold all property in common, adjust all quarrels among themselves, and harm nobody. The formula of the report with which the gendarmes are accustomed to give notice of the discovery of a Stundist is characteristic: "I was passing the house of Farmer X---- and his son and saw them both reading in a book. I entered and ascertained that this book is the Gospel. Farmer X---- and his son are therefore Stundists, and as such are most respectfully reported to the authorities." Russian nobles have been exiled to Siberia for the crime of reading the Gospel to their servants. A former officer of the guards, Vassili Alexandrovitch Pashkov, who dedicated all his means to philanthropy and held religious exercises, was expelled from St. Petersburg and the movement named for him was suppressed.

Why is all this? The narrow-mindedness of Pobydonostzev's system permits no falling-away from the official church. The police state tolerates no suspicious morality. The thinking class in Russia quote with bitterness Aksakov's saying, "Be a rascal, but be correct in your politics" ("Bud, razvraten, no bud, blagonamyeren"). Debauchery is directly commended to young men of good family because it prevents intense absorption in politics. The crime of the Stundists, Doukhobors, and Malevents consists in their wishing to be Christians in the spirit of Christ, and in being disaffected towards that diabolical machine the Russian state. For this they are persecuted in the name of Christ and of the state, but, as the above-quoted figures show, without result. Sectarianism grows continuously. Thus Leo Tolstoï's religious anarchy is in a certain way comprehensible. Whoever looks about him sees good people who, without making any disturbance, simply turn away from the state as something unchristian and inhuman; and he may easily fall into the delusion that it will some time be possible to found the kingdom of heaven upon the earth through the spreading of these teachings. Their rise, however, is only too comprehensible in a state which has never pretended to represent the general welfare and justice--means by which even conscienceless conquerors and despots have spread civilization.