CHAPTER III.

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Russian Slavdom—The Mir—Stress and Famine—The Duma—Russian Literature—Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoievski—Realistic Ideals—The Russian Soul.

The eminent Russian publicist Menschikoff, in one of his works on Russian nationalism, writes the following: “In a world-wide sense only we Russians are Slavs and—unfortunately—so far no one else. The other Slav nationalities are so dismembered, so stupidly and artificially kept apart and hostile among themselves, that they scarcely count either politically or otherwise. The majority of the Outer Slav nations are still under the German, Hungarian or Turkish yoke, and at present they are quite unable to shake off this yoke. There are many reasons for the decline of the Western Slavs, but the principal one is the _negative_ type of their character and the consequent tendency to dissensions and mutual jealousies.... Even as regards national culture, Russia—in spite of all her internal miseries—takes the lead among the Slav nations. In every respect she has the right to say: ‘I am Slavdom.’”

The somewhat bitter tone adopted towards the other Slav nations in this dictum might easily be modified by an appeal to evidence, but, for all that, Menschikoff’s remarks are correct in essentials. The truth of his assertion as to the world-wide importance of the Russians and the relative unimportance of the other Slavs to-day must be freely admitted. And that is why a special interest attaches to the question of the Russian people. It is too early in the day to judge of the full significance of the Russians as a factor in the world’s development, for they have scarcely yet come into their own. The birth of the Russian people has been in progress for the last century. First the head appeared—_Russian literature_, and then slowly, deliberately, the giant body—the _Russian people_, who are gradually attaining to political and national self-consciousness.

Till 1861 the Russian people led an embryonic existence within the womb of Holy Mother Russia. A nobility of mixed Mongolian, German, British, French and even Negroid (Pushkin) stock ate, breathed and thought for the people. Most foreigners imagine that the Russian people were “emancipated” in 1861. But this emancipation was only partial, and more apparent than real; for though serfdom had been abolished, there still remained the heavier yoke of the “Mir”—a conservative, iron-bound institution, which has greatly hindered the development of the Russian people by restricting the liberty of the individual. Strictly speaking, the “Mir” was the village or parish, but in an economic sense it was the association of several families under one head. The Slavophil writers, Homiakoff and the brothers Kirieyevaki, with their followers down to Pobyedonszeff saw in the “Mir” a guarantee, not only for the welfare of Russia, but for all the world. They believed the “Mir” to be that economic communism and moral brotherhood which Western Social Democracy is vainly trying to discover in other ways. They held that the “Mir” was destined to assure the future of the Russian people and to afford it the means of solving all the social problems of the world in accordance with the laws of justice and of love. Russian literature is full of poems, treatises, and religious contemplations in praise of it. Even the greatest Russian minds, such as Dostoievski himself, were smitten with this idea. No “Western” doctrine was potent to disabuse the Russians of their fallacy. Nature herself had to come to the rescue, destroy the chimera and lead Russia back to the high road of common sense and progress.

It happened very simply. The periodic famine arose in Russia, and the vast Empire, the “granary of the world,” had no bread for millions of her honest, hard-working children. They could not understand how there could be a famine in a fertile, sparsely populated country, whilst the teeming populations of the Western countries had enough to eat. The starving Russian people argued that the famine was caused by an insufficiency of _land_, and that they had been cozened in 1861 when the land was divided up between the nobles and the peasants. The result was a growing ill-feeling against the ruling classes, to whom the peasantry still had to pay “redemption-dues” either in money or in kind. In accordance with ancient custom the “Mir” periodically divided the land among its members. Obviously, in many communities there was not enough land for each member. Result—Famine. The “Mir” was self-governing, and had the same powers over its members as formerly the lord of the soil. It exercised a paternal jurisdiction, punished with blows, or with banishment to Siberia, divided the land, collected taxes, issued travellers’ passes, and often made itself arbitrarily unpleasant. During the ’nineties it became increasingly evident that the “Mir” constituted a moral and material danger to the people. Poor harvests followed by famine were the bane of the people from 1871 till 1907 and even as lately as 1911.

Space forbids me to enter into the agrarian crises—questions of reform, experiments and reactions, which loom so large in the pages of modern Russian history. Suffice it to say that all this led up to the revolution in 1905, and that in consequence of this revolution the Government decided upon a step it might equally well have taken in 1861. In 1906 the Government decided partially to dissolve the “Mirs,” and by establishing freehold farm properties owned by _individuals_ it created the yeoman farmer class with full civic rights. This reform which was only fully carried through in 1911, marks the beginning of a new political era for the Russian man of the people. It is still too soon to feel the consequences of this truly great reform to their full extent. The Russian peasant has scarcely got used to his new position of individual freedom, and has not yet learnt to give effect to his political and social will. There can be no question of a constitution so long as the “Muzhik” has not attained to the full stature of a citizen and agriculturist. In Russia we speak of a “first Duma,” a “second Duma,” a “third Duma,” whereas no one in the rest of Europe would speak of a “first,” “second,” or “third” Parliament, but simply of “the Parliament.” These “first,” “second,” “third” and now “fourth” Dumas are simply so many editions of one and the same Duma, with each edition more rigorously pruned by the Government, till the merest shadow is all that remains. At this moment the entire social structure of Russia is analogous to this Duma-system. The Russian world of intellect is no more entitled to represent the Russian people, than the fourth Duma is to represent the first. The Russian intellectuals may speak in the name of the people, but their word is really no better than a third-hand account. Even when there is no attempt at falsification, they always stand at a certain distance from the people. Whatever the great Russian realists have written concerning their own people is merely intuitive conjecture from a distance. A poet projects his own world into the people. The psychology of the great Russian writers of fiction is a _tendency_, an illusion based not on exact, but on intuitive knowledge of the people. Russian realism borders on the visionary, and on mysticism. Europe has hitherto failed to discern the actual foundations of this poetry in its relation to Russian life, and has simply allowed herself to be fascinated by the “keen psychology” of the writers. The result has been a false impression. The facts are really different—instead of _real truthfulness_ we find in the Russian writer a realistic tendency, a _real ethical resentment_; thence the increased “keenness” of his psychology, the critical touch in his imagination, which gives such a striking effect of verisimilitude. European critics have never detected the seam in the fabric of the Russian novel; they have accepted the masterpiece as the outcome of a single creative inspiration. Even though Russian realism comes nearer to life than that of any other literature, still it is more art than life.

Proof of this is to be found in Gogol’s private correspondence. He frequently complained that nobody would send him “copy” from Russian life. He begs in vain for hints, anecdotes and descriptions; he has to “invent” his stories, and is ashamed of having to “deceive” his reader. In his immortal comedy, “The Revising Inspector,” Gogol satirizes his own “untruthfulness,” and in Hlestakoff, the great adventurer, who is mistaken by every one for the real revising inspector, he ridicules himself. For the sake of the people Gogol consents to play the “revising inspector!” But Gogol’s “untruthfulness” is simply creative genius. An eminent Tolstoi student, Osvianiko-Kulikovsky, has plainly asserted that even Tolstoi was not of the soul of the people but of the soul of the gentry. Tolstoi is a “_barin_” (landlord) and he thinks and feels only as a _barin_. Turgenyeff was blamed even during his lifetime for writing about Russia without knowing it; for he practically never lived in Russia.

The inmost soul of the Russian people has, however, found an excellent representative in Dostoievski. “Do not judge the Russian people”—pleads Dostoievski—“by the atrocious deeds of which they have often been guilty, but by those great and holy matters to which they aspire in their depravity. And not all the people are depraved. There are saints among them, who shed their light upon all, to show them the way.”

Dostoievski himself was such a light and such a saint. His works reflect the character of the Russian clearly and faithfully as it is:

“In the Russian man of the people one must discriminate between his innate beauty and the product of barbarism. Owing to the events of the whole history of Russia, the Russian has been at the mercy of every depraving influence, he has been so abused and tortured that it is a miracle that he has preserved the human countenance, let alone his beauty. But he has actually retained his beauty ... and in all the Russian people there is not one swindler or scoundrel who does not know that he is mean and vile.”

Dostoievski further adds: “No! The Russian people must not be judged by _what they are_, but by _what they aspire to be_. The strong and sacred ideals, which have been their salvation from the age of suffering, are deeply rooted in the Russian soul from the very beginning, and these ideals have endowed this soul for all time with simplicity and honesty, with sincerity, and a broad, receptive good sense,—all in perfect harmony.”

Concerning the part the Russian people are destined to play in the world, Dostoievski wrote the following:

“The Russian people is a strange phenomenon in the history of mankind. Their character is so different from that of the other peoples of Europe that to this day Europeans have failed to understand it, and misconstrue it at every turn. All Europeans move towards the same goal. But they differ in their fundamental interests, which involve them in collisions and antagonisms, whereby they are driven to go different ways. The ideal of a universal humanity is steadily fading from among them. The Russian people possess a notable advantage over the other European nations,—a remarkable peculiarity. The Russians possess the synthetic faculty in a high degree—the gift of feeling _at one_ with the universe and a universal humanity. _The Russian has none of the European angularity, he possesses the gift of discernment and of generosity of soul._ He can adapt himself to anything and he can _understand_. He has a feeling for all that is human, _regardless of race_, _nationality_ or _fundamental ideas_. He finds and readily admits reasonableness in all that contains even a vestige of true human instinct. By this instinct he can trace the human element in other nationalities even in exceptional cases. He accepts them at once, seeks to approximate them to his own ideas, ‘places’ them in his own mind, and often succeeds in finding a starting-point for reconciling the conflicting ideas of two different European nations.”[4]

This characteristic is so general and so true, that all other opinions on the character of a great people must take second place. It finds room for the Cossack with his nagaika and for Tolstoi with his gospel. It embraces every aspect of the human soul. Dostoievski himself possessed the synthetic faculty, the wonderful gift of universal understanding. He could make it clear that a crime may be a holy deed, and holiness mere prostitution, even as he succeeded in fusing Russian Christianity with the Tatar “Karat”[5] in one soul. Whence came all these paradoxes in the one man? On one occasion he wrote: “I am struggling with my petty creditors as _Laokoon wrestled with the serpents_. I urgently require fifteen roubles. Only fifteen. These fifteen roubles will give me relief, and I shall be better able to work.” Here lies the secret of the Russian synthesis in Dostoievski. Mental work is restricted by hard external circumstances. The inherent tendency to despond when in trouble is one of the greatest dangers to the Russian. He would fain lead the contemplative life, and hesitates “to take up arms against a sea of troubles.” To combat this he has had to lash himself into a state of hard practical efficiency. The Russian must grow strong against himself before he can again take up his ideal of an aggressive inner life. It is once more a case of Laokoon and the serpents. For this very reason Tolstoi’s teaching did not appeal to Dostoievski. When he had read a few sentences of this doctrine he clutched his head and cried: “No, not that, anything but that!” A few days later he was dead, and the world will never know what was gathering in his mind against the great heretic. But Dostoievski’s works are really in themselves a most vehement refutation of the Nazarene doctrine—it is as if he had prophetically discerned Tolstoi. Dostoievski solves the contrast between European culture and Christianity in accordance with both the Church and culture. He bows before the miracle, the mystery, and authority, and thus creates the union between material culture and Christian culture. He accepts the world as a whole, even as the Russian people take it.

Tolstoi denies the divinity of Christ and the entire synthesis of Russian philosophy. But even Tolstoi could only have been born in Russia. Personally he liked being accepted by the Russian peasants as one of themselves. The figure of the “Muzhik” is inseparable from Tolstoi’s doctrine, because Tolstoi’s doctrine is inseparable from the Russian people. It lives in the Great Submerged, who are as far removed from Western culture in fact as Tolstoi himself is in theory. Russian law courts have to deal every day with people who refuse to pay taxes, to serve in the army, or to acknowledge the “pravoslav” clerical authority. The Church calls these people “Shkoptzi,” “Molokami,” or “Hlisti.” There are about twenty million of them. They style themselves “White doves,” “The New Israel,” “Doukhobortzi.” In principle they are “pure Christians” like Tolstoi. Both have the same “tone” of soul. Dostoievski says of Tolstoi that he was one of those who fix their eyes on one point, and cannot see what happens to the right or to the left of that; and if they _do_ wish to see it they have to turn with their whole body, as they invariably move their _whole_ soul also in one direction only. This correctly observed obstinacy is the very opposite to the synthetic gift and generosity of soul mentioned before, and this peculiarity of the Russian mind has often been called “Maximalism,” to denote the rigid criterion, which loves no happy mean, but always goes to the utter extreme.

Many Western writers, among them the British author Bering, have asserted that the Slavs have no strength of will. This view is erroneous and harmonizes neither with Tolstoi’s tendency to extremes, nor with Dostoievski’s universal charity. It applies only to such phenomena in Slav life as are accessible to the European tourist, as, for instance, technical undertakings and colonial enterprise; for in this matter the Slav is naturally not so well qualified as the Englishman.

The Russian soul, and consequently the character of the Russian people, is many-sided and paradoxical in its obstinacy and its generosity. It is the historical outcome of such extremes as are represented by yellow positivist Mongolism, and gentle altruistic Christianity. But the soul of the Russian people has not yet clearly found itself, like the souls of the Western nations; first, because the head has not yet acquired control over the body; secondly, because the work of enlightenment and emancipation is only being completed by the present war. Hitherto it has laboured in its birth-throes. It has been a Laokoon wrestling with serpents.