The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRussian Life To-dayThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Russian Life To-dayAuthor: Bp. Herbert BuryRelease date: July 31, 2010 [eBook #33303]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIAN LIFE TO-DAY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Russian Life To-dayAuthor: Bp. Herbert BuryRelease date: July 31, 2010 [eBook #33303]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Russian Life To-day
Author: Bp. Herbert Bury
Author: Bp. Herbert Bury
Release date: July 31, 2010 [eBook #33303]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed ProofreadingTeam at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIAN LIFE TO-DAY ***
His Imperial Majesty the Tsar.His Imperial Majesty the Tsar.
Bishop for Northern and Central Europe
Author of “A Bishop among Bananas”
A. R. MOWBRAY & CO.Ltd.
London: 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W.
Oxford: 9 High Street
Milwaukee, U.S.A.: The Young Churchman Co.
TO MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN AT WORK IN SIBERIA
First impression, March, 1915
New impressions, April, July, December, 1915
My first inclination, when the entirely unexpected proposal of the Publishers came to me to write this book, was immediately to decline. There are so many well-known writers on Russia, whose books are an unfailing pleasure and source of information, that it seemed to me to be nothing less than presumption to add to their number. But when I was assured that there seems to be a great desire just now for a book which, as the Publishers expressed it, “should not attempt an elaborate sketch of the country, nor any detailed description of its system of government and administration, or any exhaustive study of the Russian Church, and yet should give theimpressionsof a sympathetic observer of some of the chief aspects of Russian Life which are likely to appeal to an English Churchman,” I felt that I might venture to attempt it.
It has been given to me to get to understand thoroughly from close and intimate knowledge the commercial development of Siberia by ourcountrymen; and yet everywhere, both there and in Russia proper, I have to go to every place specially and primarily to give the ministrations of religion. It can be permitted to few, if any, to see those two sides of the life of a great and growing Empire at the same time. This has been my reason, therefore, for undertaking this small effort, and my object is to give, as the Publishers expressed it, “personal impressions.” I hope my readers will accept this book, therefore, as an impressionist description of Russian life of to-day, of which it would have been quite impossible to keep personal experiences from forming an important part. And though I write as an English Churchman, yet I wish to speak, and I trust in no narrow spirit, to the whole religious public, that I may draw them more closely into intelligent sympathy with this great nation which has seemed to come so suddenly, unexpectedly, and intimately into our own national life and destiny—and I believe as a friend.
HERBERT BURY,
Bishop.
I will begin my opening chapter by explaining how I come to have the joy and privilege of travelling far and wide, as I have done, in the great Russian Empire. I go there as Assistant Bishop to the Bishop of London, holding a commission from him as bishop in charge of Anglican work in North and Central Europe.
It may seem strange that Anglican work in that distant land should be directly connected with the Diocese of London, but the connection between them, and between all the countries of Northern and Central Europe, as far as our Church of England work is concerned, is of long standing. It dates from the reign of Charles I, and from an Order in Council which was passed in 1633, and placed the congregations of the Church of England inallforeign countries atthat time under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London “as their Diocesan.” It may be remembered that when the present Bishop of London went to Washington some years ago he took with him some interesting documents which he had found in the library at Fulham Palace, and which were connected with the time when Church work in the United States looked to London for superintendence and episcopal leadership. These he handed over to the custody of the Episcopal Church of America, knowing how interested that Church would be to possess them, and to keep them amongst other historical records.
The same rapid progress as that which has attended the American Church has been made in the Colonies and other parts of the world. New dioceses and provinces have been formed one after another, and in 1842 the Diocese of Gibraltar was formed, taking in the congregations of the English Church in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Roumania, and all places bordering upon the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But the other countries of Europe, to the north and in the centre, remain still, as far as Church work goes, where that old Order in Council placed them, in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London.
It is impossible, of course, that he should attempt to meet this responsibility himself and bear the burden of such a diocese as that of London, and so the rule has been, since 1825, to issue a commission to another bishop, who, while being an assistant, yet has to feel himself fully responsible, and in this way spare the Bishop of London as much as he possibly can.
It will therefore be understood, as I have said in my few words of introduction, that, filling such a position and having such work to superintend, and also, for many reasons to be more fully explained in succeeding pages, finding the Orthodox Church of Russia very friendly towards our own, I shall write throughout with those whom I have termed the “religious public” very clearly in my mind and sympathies. At the same time I am hoping to interest the general reader also, and therefore shall try my utmost to give a comprehensive view of Russian life as it will be found to-day by travellers on the one hand if they give themselves time and opportunity enough, and by those, on the other, who have to go and live and work in Russia.
First impressions are usually interesting to recall. Mine were immediate and extraordinarily vivid, and were all associated with thoughts—which have gradually become convictions—of Russia’s vast potentialities and future greatness.
When first I had the honour and pleasure of an audience with the Emperor of Russia—I will speak of it at greater length in a later chapter—one of the first questions he asked me was:—
“And what has most impressed you, so far, on coming, as a new experience, into my country?”
I was not prepared for the question, but answered at once and without the least hesitation—for there seemed to come into my mind even as His Majesty spoke, the vivid impression I had received—
“Russia’s great spaces!”
“Ah, yes!” he said, evidently thinking very deeply; “that is true. Russia’sgreatspaces—what a striking impression they must make, for the first time!”
Russia's Great Spaces—Winter.Russia's Great Spaces—Winter.
I went on to explain that one can see great spaces elsewhere. On the ocean when for days together no other vessel is seen; on some of the great plains in the other hemisphere; riding across the great Hungarian tableland; and even in Central France or in the Landes to the west I have felt this sense of space and distance; but Russia’s great flat or gently undulating expanses have always seemed to me to suggest other spaces on beyond them still, and to give an impressionof the vast and illimitable, such as I have never known elsewhere. It is under this impression of vast resources, no doubt, that so many military correspondents of our daily papers constantly speak of the Russian forces as “inexhaustible.” It is the same with other things also. They suggest such marvellous possibilities.
This is the impression I would like to give at once in this my opening chapter—a sense of spaciousness—power to expand, to develop, to open out, to make progress, to advance and grow. It is not the impression the word “Russia” usually makes upon people who know little about her inner life, and have received their ideas from those who have experienced the repressive and restrictive side of her policy and administration. But I can only give, and am glad of the opportunity, the results of my own experiences and observations; and those are embodied in my reply to the Emperor.
When I crossed the Russian frontier for the first time it was with a very quaking and apprehensive spirit. All that lay beyond was full of the mysterious and unknown, so entirely different, one felt it must be, from all one’s previous experiences of life! Anything might happen, for this was Russia! “Russia” has stood so long with us in this country for the repressiveand reactionary, for the grim and forbidding and restricting, that it will be difficult for many to part with those ideas, and I can hardly hope to remove impressions now deeply rooted. I can only say, however, that my own prejudices and preconceptions in the same direction disappeared, one after another, with astonishing rapidity in my first year; and now my spirits rise every time I cross the frontier of that great country, and my heart warms to that great people as soon as I see their kindly and friendly faces, their interesting and picturesque houses, and catch my first sight of their beautiful churches, with the fine cupolas above them with their hanging chains, painted and gilded domes, and delicate finials glittering in the sun and outlined against a sky of blue. Russia to me presents at once a kindly, friendly atmosphere, and others feel it also; for I have, just before writing these words, laid down a copy ofThe Timesin which Mr. Stephen Graham—no one knows the heart and soul of Russia quite as he does, I fancy—writing one of his illuminating articles on “Russia’s Holy War,” says “People in Russia are naturally kind. They have become even gentler since the war began.” Those who enter Russia expecting the unfriendly will find, I feel sure, as we have done, exactly the opposite—nothing but kindnessand courtesy. It will be the same in other experiences also if I mistake not.
One of the chief difficulties ordinary travellers or tourists expect to encounter, for instance, in Russia is that of language.
“Isn’t it extraordinarily difficult to acquire, and to make yourself understood?” is an invariable question, and certainly in long journeys across country, as from Warsaw up to Riga, and from Libau on the Baltic to Moscow, and especially in my Mining Camp Mission in Siberia, I expected to have very great difficulties; but, as so often happens, they were difficulties in anticipation rather than in reality.
Even off the beaten track in Russia any one who can travel comfortably in other European countries can travel equally satisfactorily there. Most educated people speak French, and an ever-increasing number—for English governesses and nurses are in great request—speak English. Great numbers of the working class speak German, the national language, of course, of Russia’s Baltic provinces, on railway trains as conductors and in restaurants as waiters, and at railway stations as porters. Indeed, if any one is in the dining-car of a train or in the buffet or dining-room of a railway station or other public place, and has the courage to stand up and say, “Does any onehere speak French?” or “Does any one here speak German?” some one ready to help and be friendly will invariably come forward.
In my first Siberian Mission, however, I found myself in a real difficulty. I had to drive across the Kirghiz Steppes from the railway at Petropavlosk, about four days and nights east of Moscow, to the Spassky Copper Mine, and the management had sent down a very reliable Kirghiz servant of theirs to be my interpreter; but I found that his only qualification for the work of interpreting was that, in addition to his own Kirghiz tongue, he could speak Russian!
For the inside of a week, travelling day and night, we had to get on as best we could together, and arrange all the business of changing horses, getting food, and paying expenses, largely by signs. Once only, and then in the dead of night when changing horses, did we encounter a German-speaking farmer from Courland or Lettland on the Baltic, and a great joy it was to him to meet some one who knew those fair parts of the Russian Empire where agricultural work brings much more encouraging results for the toil bestowed upon it than Siberia, with its terrible winter season.
Russia's Great Spaces—Summer.Russia's Great Spaces—Summer.
But though to acquire a knowledge of Russian for literary purposes, so as to write and composecorrectly, must be most difficult, owing to the number of letters in the alphabet—forty-six as compared with our twenty-six—and the entirely different way from our own in which they are written, I do not think it is difficult to acquire a fair knowledge of the language in a comparatively short time so as to make one’s self understood and get along. I find young Englishmen, going to work in Russia and beyond the Urals, very quickly come to understand what is being said, and to make known their own wishes and requirements; and in a couple of years, or sometimes less, they speak quite fluently.
It always seems to me that the Russians pronounce their words with more syllabic distinctness than either the French or Germans. And that natural kindness and friendliness of the whole people, of which I have already written, makes them wish to be understood and to help those with whom they are speaking to grasp their meaning. This, of course, makes all the difference!
When the question of the great difficulty of the language is raised another remark nearly always follows:
“But then the Russians are such great linguists that they easily understand!” And it is usuallysupposed that they “easily learn other languages because their own is so difficult,” though they encounter no more difficulty, probably, than any one else when talking in their own tongue in infancy. They are “great linguists” for the same reason as the Dutch—and that is because, if they wish to be in educated society or in business on any large scale, their own language will only go a very short way.
In Russia as in Holland, as I have been told in both countries, an educated household will contain a German nurse and an English governess, while French will be the rule at table. It used to be a French governess, but now the English governess is in great request everywhere in Russia and Poland; and, in the great nobles’ houses, there is the English tutor also—not always for the language, but to impart English ideas to the boys of the family. When I was last in Warsaw, an Oxford graduate came up at a reception and introduced himself, and told me he was with a Polish prince who had astonished him on the first morning after his arrival by saying:—
“I have engaged you as a tutor for my two boys, but it will not be necessary for you to teach them anything—that is already provided for. I want you to be their companion, walk outwith them, play games with them, and help them to grow up after the manner of English gentlemen.”
There is no real difficulty, therefore, with the language, nor is there with the money of the country as soon as one realizes the value of the rouble, eight of which make nearly a pound, and that it is divided into a hundredkopecks, pronouncedkopeeks, two of which are equal to about a farthing.
And now to speak of the actual travelling. Everything in the way of communication in Russia is on a large scale and in keeping with the answer I gave to the Emperor, and which I have placed at the head of this chapter. As soon as one passes the frontier, for instance, the travellers change into carriages adapted for a broad-gauge railway, and are at once in more commodious quarters. There is no land, I suppose, where travelling over great distances is so comfortable as in Russia for all classes; and it is incredibly cheap, first-class tickets costing less than third in our own country, for those using the ordinary post train, which every year becomes more comfortable and nearer to the standard of the wagon-lit. There are excellent lavatories, kept perfectly clean, where one can wash, shave, and almost have a sponge bath, for—thoughwithout the luxuries of the Trans-Siberian express—there is more room.
There is usually a restaurant-car on the long-distance trains—and practically all the trains in Russia are for long distances—and, if not, there is plenty of time to get food at the stations on the way. Conductors will take every care and trouble to get what is necessary, and first and second-class compartments are never overcrowded, as far as my experience goes. I believe, indeed, that not more than four people may be put into a compartment for the night, and, as the cushioned back of the seats can be lifted up, all the four travellers can be sure of being able to lie down. The first-class compartments on a post train are divided into two by folding-doors, and one is allowed to buy aplatzcarteand so have the whole compartment to one’s self. Every accommodation too is provided for lying down comfortably in the third-class, and the travellers there are always the happiest-looking on the train.
Another consideration shown to the public is that the scale of charges falls in proportion to the distance to be traversed. The stations are specially spacious, particularly along the routes beyond Moscow, where emigration continually goes on into the great pastoral lands of Siberia. In the summer months the traffic is very great,and it is one of the most touching and appealing experiences I can recall to pass through one of the great waiting-halls of such a station as Samara, at night, and pick one’s way amongst the sleeping families of peasants waiting to get their connection with another line, and resting in the meantime. Their little possessions are all about them, and father and mother and sons and daughters lie gathered close up together, pillowing their heads upon each other, good-looking, prettily dressed, and fast asleep—as attractive a picture as any one could wish to see.
There is a great freedom of movement everywhere in Russia, and I do not remember having seen the wordverboten(the German for “forbidden”), or its equivalent, in any part of a Russian or Siberian station. The rule of having three bells to announce approaching departure is a most excellent one, whether the pause is long or short, the first ringing very audibly about five minutes, the second one minute, and the third immediately before departure. If travelling long distances, the ten-minutes’ stop at all large towns gives plenty of opportunity for exercise and fresh air, and the absolute certainty of hearing the bells gives a perfect sense of security that no one will be left behind. If the bell rings twice just as the train enters the station, every oneknows that the stay will be short, and that it is not worth while getting out.
Some of the most resting and refreshing experiences I have ever had have been those of travelling day after day for some two or three thousand miles in Russia, getting one’s correspondence straight, for writing is quite easy in those steady and slow-moving express trains, reading up reviews and periodicals or making plans for future journeys, looking out of the windows in the early morning or late evening, all varied by meals in thecoupéor at a station, seeing all kinds of interesting people in strange costumes, and many attractive incidents at places where one alights for a walk and exercise.
More interesting than the railways, however, are the rivers. How large these are, and how important a part they have filled in the past, before the days of railways, and still play in the commerce and life of the people, will be seen at once by a glance at the map at the end of the book. None of them, however, though one gets a real affection for the Neva after sledging over it in the winter and sailing upon it in the summer, attracts and indeed fascinates, as the Volga never fails to do. It is magnificent in size, and is the largest in Europe, 2,305 miles in length, three times as long as the Rhine. Many of us knowwhat the Rhine is to the Germans. Treitschke, as we have been reminded in one of the most widely read of modern books, when leaving Bonn, wrote to a friend, “To-morrow I shall see the Rhine for the last time. The memory of that noble river will keep my heart pure, and save me from sad and evil thoughts throughout all the days of my life.”
I have always understood the strong appeal to the historic, and even the poetic, sense which the Rhine puts forth, but I never understood the sense of the ideal which a river might convey until I saw, approached, and crossed the Volga.
It was a May evening, three years ago, as we drew near and then passed along its right bank before crossing. It was of the loveliest colour of rich and living brown, like that of a healthy human skin, carrying life and burdens of every description upon its ample bosom, fostering all kinds of enterprise and activity on its shores, and flowing on with stately dignity, as if it would not be hurried from its calm consciousness of its own strength and significance for those nine provinces through which it passes on its way to the Caspian. I felt its spell at once, and, as I crossed the great bridge over which the Trans-Siberian line is carried—an exquisite piece of engineering a mile and a quarter in length—I knew that I should always feel a curious sense of personality in connection with that glorious river. I think Merriman, in one of his novels, speaks of associating a sense of consciousness with the Volga; and that is just what I have felt each time of crossing over its bounteous-looking, calm, and steady flow. It seems to live and know.
The third and last “difficulty” which I will speak of in this opening chapter, and which is no difficulty at all, is the passport. Every one in Russia must possess one; and, if travelling and intending to spend one or two nights in a place, it must be sent to the proper official and be duly stamped. It must bevisèdby the Russian ambassador, or minister, at the place from which one starts before entering Russia; and, which is even more important, it must bevisèdby the right official at some important town or place of government, and stamped with the necessary permission, before one is able toleaveRussia.
It is natural to feel at the frontier, when entering the country, “I hope it is all right,” as the passport is handed to the customs officer, and, with just a little approach to anxious uncertainty, after all one has heard and read; but it is almost impossible to avoid real anxiety that it will be found correct and in order as it is presented atthe frontier whenleaving, as the difficulties of being kept back there, so far away from the great cities, would be far greater than those of being refusedadmissionfrom some technicality that could probably be put right by a telegram to and from England.
“But surely the passport must prevent you from feeling that sense of freedom that you have spoken of more than once—surelythatmust give a sense of repression and suspicion and being watched and having an eye kept on your doings,” my reader will be thinking, and perhaps many other people have the same feeling. It is, however, exactly the opposite with me, for my passport in Russia and Siberia is a great stand-by, and gives me a great sense of being always able to establish my own identity.
There can be little doubt that the passport was established from the first in the interests of the community, for it is entirely in their own interests that people should possess them. No one who is honest in purpose can have any difficulty in procuring one or be brought to any trouble through it. The necessity of frequently producing them, in moving from place to place, is always in the interests of the traveller in a vast empire like Russia. It has given me a great feeling of confidence in launching out, as has been necessary now and then, into the unknown, to feel “They will be able to trace me all along by the entries made in official registers, as the passport has been stamped.” If any one disappeared in Russia the police would be able to trace his movements to very near the place of disappearance.
It is a great help in getting letters also to have a passport, for we are just as anxious as the officials can be that our letters should not go to the wrong people; and in travelling in out-of-the-way places it is simply invaluable in getting the help, advice, and recognition that sometimes are so very necessary. Even the passport, therefore, helps to deepen the sense of security and freedom with which one launches out into Russian travel, anxious to gain all that it has to give in information and stimulating experience.
It will be remembered, however, that I speak always not as a resident, but as a traveller; and there is just this difference—indeed, it is a vast difference—between my own opportunities and those of an ordinary traveller. Travelling as the bishop for the English Church work in Russia, in every place our clergy and residents have only been too happy to speak of their own experiences and impressions, some of them lifelong and all-important. When travelling inSiberia, and the guest from time to time of managers of the great mines, I go out with them day after day and get long conversations with them, their wives, and members of the staff. I hear all about early struggles, hopes and fears, difficulties and triumphs extending over many years. The conditions of life and characteristics of the people in vast tracts of country are described to me by those who know them well. No one but a bishop travelling through the country would have the same information so freely volunteered to him. And it is this which has led me to feel that I might, without undue presumption, write for ordinary readers about the life of a country in which I have not, as yet, spent a great many years.
Itisa great country, as all we who know it feel, and “It doth not yet appear what it shall be.” If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them; and still,in spite of all this and of other defects of their social and religious life, how much they have accomplished in the way of real achievement.
I fail to see how any one can help feeling the greatest interest—hopeful and expectant—about their future, or feel anything else but the great thankfulness that I feel myself, that we and they as peoples have been brought so intimately together by circumstances which few could have foreseen only a very few years ago, but which have come about not only, as some would say, in the course of Providence, but in a very true sense, as I trust our and their national histories shall show in time to come, “According to the good hand of ourGodupon us.”
The Kremlin.The Kremlin.
The whole life of the Russian people reminds those who visit them continually and in every possible way that they are in a religious country; for everywhere there is theikon, or sacred religious picture. There are other ways, especially the columns of the newspapers full of notices of private and public ministrations and pathetic requests for prayers for the departed, of bringing religion continually before the public mind, but theikonis most in evidence. It is a picture in one sense, for it is a representation either of ourLordor of the Holy Virgin or of some well-known saint; but the garments are in relief, often composed of one of the precious metals and ornamented in some cases with jewels; and thus it is quite different from other sacred pictures. It is the first characteristic evidence of “Russia” to meet one’s eyes on entering, and the last to be seen as one leaves, any public place.
“A great picture of the Virgin and Child hangs in the custom-house at Wirballen,” writesMr. Rothay Reynolds at the beginning ofMy Russian Year, “with a little lamp flickering before it.”
“The foreigner, who was a few minutes before on the German side of the frontier and stands on Russian soil for the first time, looks at the shrine with curiosity. Porters are hurrying in with luggage, and travellers are chattering in half a dozen languages. An official at a desk in the middle of the great hall is examining passports. A man is protesting that he did not know that playing-cards were contraband; a woman is radiant, for the dirty lining she has sewn in a new Paris hat has deceived the inquisitors. Everybody is in a hurry to be through with the business, and free to lunch in the adjoining restaurant before going on to St. Petersburg. It is a strange home for the majestic Virgin of the Byzantine picture.
“Here, at the threshold of the empire, Russia placards—S. Paul’s vivid Greek gives me the word—her faith before the eyes of all comers. In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind.”
Nowhere as in Russia is one reminded soconstantly, in what we should consider most unlikely places, that we are in a Christian country. In the streets and at railway stations, in baths, hotels, post offices, shops, and warehouses, in the different rooms of factories and workshops, in private houses, rich and poor alike, in government houses, and even in places of evil resort which I will not specify, as well as in prisons, indeed ineverypublic place there is theikon—most frequently representing the Holy Mother and Child—and its lamp burning before it.
In later chapters I will write more at length upon religion and worship, but I must give the readerat once, if a stranger to Russia, something of the impression which the ubiquity of theikonmakes upon those who go there for the first time. It isalwaysto be seen. And though I will try and describe what it directly represents in the shape of Church life later, yet from the very first I must write, as it were, with theikonbefore me. I must see with my mind’s eye the Holy Mother clasping the Divine Child to her bosom, with a few flowers and a twinkling little light before them, all the time I write, whether it is of things secular or sacred, grave or gay, national or international, or I shall give out but little of the spirit which I feel I have breatheddeeply into my life in that wonderful country, and certainly shall not be able to help any reader who has not been there as yet to understand why it should be spoken of as “Holy Russia.”
That which theikonstands for, therefore, must be the spirit of every chapter I write, or I shall give my readers no true picture of Russian life.
Fortunately for those who want further particulars than such a book as this can give them—and it will fail in its purpose if it does not make many readerswishto have them—there has been a very excellentBaedeker’s Guide to Russiapublished last year, which is a wonderfully complete work considering the vast empire with which it has to deal. I will therefore attempt nothing at all in the way of statistics or descriptions such as a guide-book gives, or such as will be found in the excellent books to which I shall often refer. If I can take my readers with me in thought as I travel about Russia and Siberia, and can give them some of the information which has been given so freely to me, and can convey to them some portion of the impressions made upon me when far away from the beaten track, and above all can lead them to give their sympathies freely and generously to the people of the land and to our own countrymen so hospitably welcomed amongst them, and sogenerously treated, I shall be more than repaid for my work, and shall ask nothing better.
In Russia there are two forms of government, clearly and strenuously at work, and wide asunder in their character, the autocratic and the democratic. It is impossible to do much more than mention these two tremendous forces, which are so strongly forming the character, and determining the destinies for a long time to come, of a great people.
Since 1905 the Russian Empire has had constitutional government under the form of an Imperial Council or First Chamber, the Imperial Duma or Second Chamber, with the Emperor, advised by a small council of ministers, still an autocratic sovereign. The Emperor can overrule any legislation, and probably would if advised by a unanimous council; but it must be evident to most people if they think a little, that even now he would be very reluctant to do this except in some very grave crisis of the national life, and that in time to come he will never dream of such interference. Constitutional government in Russia has really begun, and when one considers the past it is clear that great progress has been made in the direction of constitutional freedom since it was granted in 1905. The reconstitution of the Polish nation, the stirring amongst theFinns, the rising hopes of the Jews, the national aspirations of Mongolia more and more fully expressed, the general “moving upon the face of the waters” of the Spirit which makes a free people, cannot but rivet the attention of those interested in social and national life upon Russia at this time, when the autocratic government of long standing is passing, so simply and so naturally, it would seem, into the constitutional.
Since the emancipation of the serfs there has been a steady growth of the democratic, almost communal, spirit in all the peasant villages of Russia, and though their powers have been somewhat curtailed since 1889 they are self-governing and very responsible communities. Some of the best and most interesting Russian stories, therefore, deal with incidents and experiences in village life; and it is the great fact that Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, whose book upon Russia is one of the most complete character, went and shut himself out from the rest of the world at the little village of Ivanofka, in the province of Novgorod, and there drank in the spirit of the language and of the national life, that makes his compendious work a real classic for those who want truly to understand Russian life and nationality.
There are two distinct social and constitutional forces at work, therefore, and not working slowlyand deliberately, as so often in the past, but with great rapidity—the autocratic seeking to realize its responsibilities and to fulfil them, and the democratic feeling that its ideals are coming nearer to being realized every day.
There is consequently no country so absorbingly interesting to the constitutionalist at this time as Russia. Nothing can be more stimulating, to those who want to read the signs of the times, than to know that revolutionaries, such as M. Bourtzeff,[1]who had left their country in despair to plan and plot, have now returned, without troubling whether they would be pardoned or punished, full of expectant hope for their country’s constitutional future. Perhaps cautious people will hope that progress may be slow, but the great thing is to be able to say, “It moves.”
Every city and great town in Russia has something specially characteristic about it, and of course they are, as yet, very few in number. Catherine the Great, as is well known, thought cities and towns could be created, though she found out her mistake, and Russia still remains a land of villages rather than of towns, but the great towns which do exist have usually very distinctive features.
Petrograd, for instance, though, as Peterintended it should be, essentially modern, has its very special features in its domed churches and the magnificence of its wide river with the great palaces upon its banks and bordering upon its quays. The fortress of S. Peter and S. Paul, on the opposite side, “home of political prisoners and dead Tsars,” when the sun is setting, is never to be forgotten, and enters at once upon the field of vision as one thinks of Peter’s capital.
Then Moscow! How well I remember Bishop Creighton’s enthusiasm whenever he spoke of Moscow. Though his face might be calm and its expression grave before, only let Moscow be mentioned and it would light up at once, as with sparkling eyes he would exclaim:—
“Moscow!—oh, you must see Moscow: nothing in the world is like it. Youmustsee it.”
But it is really the Kremlin which makes Moscow unique, with an intangible influence and sense of association connected with it that no one can describe, as one thinks of its historic past and of Napoleon! The Kremlin! I had read and heard descriptions of it from time to time, but was in no way prepared for that vast area of palaces, churches, treasuries, great houses, and barracks, enclosed by glorious walls and towers and entered by impressive gateways,over which one gazed with wondering eyes when seen first under the blue sky and brilliant winter sun.