Ante-Bellum Russia

Alexander S. Kaun

Theeffects that the European War will have—and is having already—on the internal conditions in Russia are merely conjecturable, considering the fact that since the first week in August we have had no sterling news from the embroiled countries. I believe that a study of the pre-war situation in Russia, of her recent moods and aspirations, will enable us to venture a guess or two as to the potential results of the present imbroglio. The forthcoming is by no means an attempt to exhaust the problem: it is barely a bird’s-eye view of contemporary Russian reality as reflected in life and literature.

In a recent article an eminent Russian publicist thus characterizes the modern literature of his native land:

It is quite clear: With the death of Tolstoy our literature also expired. Not orphaned, bereaved; it died, came to an end, perished....In fact, what does our modern literature teach us? It positively preaches all the instincts, the complete “credo” of the bestialized criminal. Self-despite, sacrilege, sexual licentiousness, political mutiny, commendation of crime, hooliganish all-negation, stalest individualism, morals of an outlaw, the ideology of fratricide-Cain, the codex of an apache and Jack-the-Ripper.

It is quite clear: With the death of Tolstoy our literature also expired. Not orphaned, bereaved; it died, came to an end, perished....

In fact, what does our modern literature teach us? It positively preaches all the instincts, the complete “credo” of the bestialized criminal. Self-despite, sacrilege, sexual licentiousness, political mutiny, commendation of crime, hooliganish all-negation, stalest individualism, morals of an outlaw, the ideology of fratricide-Cain, the codex of an apache and Jack-the-Ripper.

Taking the above philippiccum grano salis, we must, however, consider it as a characteristic phenomenon illustrating the contemporaneous moods of Russian society in the process of its prolonged morbid crisis. For if literature is supposed to be the mirror of life; if in literature we find the true reflection of a people’s feelings, cravings, ideals, struggles,—then Russia presents the most vivid demonstration of this truth. In no other country has literature reflected real life with such a consequential and accurate preciseness as has that of the land of the Czar in all its epochs and stages. If, therefore, the modern Russian literature has a morbid aspect; if its heroes preach adultery, crime, free love, and praise the lowest mob instincts; if it does, and to a large extent it unquestionably does represent a base degradation, then we must needs look into the very life of that unhappy country in search for the causes of its mental affliction, then “something is the matter” with holy Russia.

As a pendant to the quoted jeremiad, I shall cite another distinguished Russian publicist, whose keen observation equals his absolute truthfulness:

A filthy torrent flows over wide Russia—a torrent of savageness, bloodthirstiness, cruelty, sexual wantonness, intoxicated cynicism. The torrent overflows and deluges and infects all spots of life and ruins the soul of the nation.... The man, theperson is of no value or consideration. There is no self-respect nor respect for others. The provoked instincts know of no hold-back. The sexual passion intermingles with the passion to torture and to tyrannize. The atmosphere is veiled in a bloody fog. The venom has penetrated all over, through all ranks of the population. Bloody and shameful deeds have become an every-day occurrence not only among the higher society—army officers, bureaucrats, noblemen, cultured and uncultured capitalists; you meet with the same crimes likewise among the poor urban populace, among the lower strata, the so-called “masses”; similar dramas occur also in the village.... The same all over. Everywhere the nonchalance disposition. Everywhere the morbid passion in the first place. “I want—and I must. And to the devil with the whole world and with myself.”

Exaggeration? Hardly.

The Russian dailies give amazing material for the student of sociology. The impartial chronicling of daily events tells us a dreadful story of a people that have lost every sense of moral sensitiveness and value of life. Facts of wildest debauchery and corruption, murder and suicide, defloration and parricide, to the accompaniment of governmental executions, hanging and shooting, fill up column after column of the periodical press. A Russian journalist remarks:

And this is our every-day life. This occurs every day, every hour. It is not any more a sensation or a crying extraordinary occasion that awakens general attention and astonishment. It is—daily happenings. It is the general tone of our life. Oftentimes one does not notice such items of news—so trivial have they become. “Ah, another bloody drama! How tedious, by God!” And the “citizen” lays aside the paper with a dull yawn.

Such is life in that strange country, and consequently such is its literature, life’s mirror, its product and interpretation.

The definition of Russian literature as Heroic was perfectly true until a few years ago. The literature, like the life itself, had been a continuous heroism. The harder the oppressions from above, the more resolute was the fighting spirit below; the wilder the reaction that raged over the throbbing country, the loftier were the ideals of the struggling people; the more acute the sufferings of the gloomy present, the brighter and the more attractive appeared the perspectives of the future.

Ever since the first revolutionary outbreak in 1825, the so-called Insurrection of the Decembrists, the Russian populace has had one great ideal, one ardent all-embracing aim—the overthrow of the autocracy, the impersonification of evil, injustice, and tyranny. This goal has been the sense of life, the justification of man’s existence, the holy spirit elevating and purifying the miserable subjects of the Czar, the solace for the eternal humiliation, the compensation for the unique martyrdom of that unfortunate nation.

A great, an inestimable rôle has been played by Russian literature in the education of the public. Though restricted by draconic rules of thebigoted state censorship, it succeeded in speaking to the public in an Aesopic tongue, training the readers in the gentle art of understanding between the lines. It preached idealism, self-sacrifice, unbounded devotion and love to their suffering compatriots, and unlimited deadly hatred for the common foe—the Tyrant.

The elevating influence of that idealistic literature has been displayed most manifestly upon Russian youth, particularly upon university students. The susceptible young souls followed the call of their great teachers and guides, and plunged with zeal and ardor into the battle. Selfishness, life’s diversions and conventionalities had no place in their puritanic minds. To fight for freedom was their only “sport”; to enlighten the masses, their sole “amusement”; to die on the scaffold for the Ideal, the climax of happiness.

In that enduring bitter struggle there have been but two sides, two antagonistic camps—the government and the people. On one side rude force, violence, and outspoken retrogression; on the other—notwithstanding minute differences in party platforms and theoretical principles—an all-uniting ocean of lofty ideals, spiritual forces, great hopes, boundless altruism.

Noblesse oblige.The great common cravings and aims must needs have cultivated a high standard of morals and intercourse among the people. The able correspondent ofThe London Daily Chronicle, Henry W. Nevinson, who had had the opportunity of closely observing Russian life during the unforgettable red years of 1905-1906, justly remarked:

To have a cause like that (the Revolution), to dwell with danger for the sake of it every day and night, to confront an enemy, vital, pitiless, almost omnipotent, and execrable beyond words—what other cause can compare to that, not only in grandeur, but in the satisfaction of intellect and courage and love and every human faculty? So tyranny brings its compensations.

The general strike and uprising of October, 1905, compelled the obstinate Czar to “grant” a tolerable constitution. It seemed that the long struggle had come to an end, that the desired goal having been reached, the bitterly fought-for concession having been attained, there was no reason for continuing the bloody war between the government and the people. The Manifesto of 30 (17) October, 1905, pledged liberty of speech, press, and public meetings, equal rights for all, and a representative government with a comparatively liberal election-system.

Only those who happened to abide in Russia during the autumn months of 1905 are able to comprehend the indescribable joy of the population at the announcement of the Manifesto. An intoxication of happiness reigned all over the country, strangers embraced and kissed each other, everyone was addressed with the hearty “comrade,” a sincere feeling of brotherhood and mutual love overfilled all hearts, and from Finland to farthest Siberia,from the polar regions to the Black Sea, over the entire vast empire thundered the exalted cry: “Long live liberty!”

The enchantment, however, was of a short duration. The people soon found out that they had put too much confidence in the paper pledge of the Czar, and that they should not have laid their weapons aside. The solemn promise declared from the heights of the throne was broken. One after one the pledged liberties were taken away, and a wave of brutal repression and massacre swept over the tormented land. Only too late one could recollect with the American Russologue Joubert, the ever-new aphorism of Bertrand: “The tree of liberty can grow only when it is watered with the blood of the tyrants.”

The government recovered its senses after the first collapse, and decided to play its game on the obscurity and ignorance of the army. The simple-minded soldiers, themselves miserable peasants or workingmen, were ordered to shoot and flog their fathers and brothers, their friends and defenders; and they fulfilled their official duty with incomparable brutality. The revolution was betrayed and strangled. Its leaders were shot, hanged, or banished; the free press shut up, liberal parties and meetings forbidden, and once more the monster-bureaucracy held in its claws the palpitating unhappy land.

Let us return to the problem: What is the matter with Russia? What is the cause of its general decay and demoralization? The revolution proved a failure. The masses—the army particularly—were unprepared for carrying out the long cherished ideal. But that was not all. The Russian revolutionary movement has been used to failures and temporary collapses, the organizations have been destroyed and abolished many a time, and yet like a Phœnix they would arise from out the ashes and manifest their significant existence again and again. The cause, to all appearances, lies with the modernized system applied by the bureaucracy in its war with the people—the demoralization of the people. What Nicolas I. could not attain through his iron despotism; what Alexander III. failed to accomplish by means of crudest oppressions and restrictions carried through by such arch-tyrants as Pobyedonostzev, D. Tolstoy, Muravyov, etc.; what had been beyond the reach of Nicolas II. during the dictatorships of his genial assistants of the type of Plehve, the hero of Kishinev, or General Trepov, the man of Bloody Sunday (January, 1905),—this important point was won by the gentleman-butcher, the hangman in the frock-coat, the late premier Stolypin. The credit for having succeeded in breaking the spirit of the nation and for having brought it to the verge of demoralization is largely due to his policy.

To accomplish acoup d’état, to abolish the Douma and reinstall the old order of things, was the easiest attainable measure for Stolypin at the timeof his appointment to the highest post in the state. The opposition was silenced by military force, the servile European financiers renewed their enormous credit to the “pacified” Czardom which had been on the brink of bankruptcy, and it seemed an obvious step to declareurbi et orbithe successful restoration of the ancient autocracy. But Mr. Stolypin was a politician of Bismarck’s school. He loathed the laurels of a Pyrrhic victory. The rich experience of his ill-famed predecessors had taught him that the more harshly he suppressed the opposition the deeper it would grow and develop in the “Underground”; that the closer he stopped up the yawning crater the more intense and terrible would be the inevitable explosion. A complete return to the old regime would again unite the entire nation within and the civilized world from without in common hatred for the outworn Asiatic despoty. Instead the shrewd premier chose the old Cæsarean maxim,Divide et impera.

To incite racial hatred among the heterogeneous strata of the one hundred and thirty millions population; to provoke the meanest mob instincts and to flatter the lowest chauvinistic sentiments; to create mutual ill feelings in all ranks of society by various provocative means; to incarnate espionage in the national life as a virtue; to corrupt and prostitute all state institutions, so as to kill every sense of confidence in the mercenary justice and respect for all authorities; to arrest intellectual progress by barring and banishing the best professors, by forbidding enlightenment organizations, by distracting young minds from social problems through unscrupulous patronage of nationalistic societies in the high schools and universities, of “easy amusements” and all but clean sports; to augment crude force to the degree of absolute right and sole law,—these have been the chief strategic measures of the modernized absolutism.

It is true that a similar course, although on a considerably smaller scale, has been pursued by the Russian government all through the nineteenth century. The originality of Stolypin’s methods and of those of his less original successors lies in their up-to-dateness, their quasi-modernism, their pseudo-constitutionalism, their hypocritical jesuitism. Actually Russia represents the same old Asiatic despotism as of olden days. Officially, however, it wears with a clumsy awkwardness the European frock-coat of parliamentarism. It is a modern Janus, with an artificial human expression towards the outside world, and with its natural primitive bestial front at home.

The Douma, the long-cherished ideal of the people, was transformed from a house of representatives into an ante-room of the government, into a shameful profanation of parliamentarism. The first two Doumas gave an overwhelming opposition to the government, and the latter found an easy way to get rid of its disagreeable opponents by dissolving the Assemblies and suing the deputies as rebels. The unscrupulous Senate issued a series of “modifications” to the electoral laws, and thus insured for the laterDoumas a “desirable” element. Having deprived the majority of the populace of voting rights, giving all means of assistance and protection to the “Black Hundreds”—criminal societies flourishing under the standard of patriotism, terrifying the average voter and driving him into political absenteeism, the government succeeded in gaining a majority of obsequious manikins who have sold the people for a pottage of lentils and have debased the Douma to a purely instrumental force in the hands of Stolypin & Co.

Even the moderate liberals of the type of Professor Paul Milyoukov or Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy, who have been ardent supporters of the Douma as a means of educating the people on constitutional ideas,—even they are gradually losing their rosy expectations. Representative Maklakov, a man to whom even the late Stolypin, his bitterest antagonist, paid the highest respect, in his report on the Douma cried in despair: “One could have hoped that the Douma was useless. Alas! It is getting harmful.”

About a year ago the writer of these lines thus summarized the “Contemporaneous Russian Nihilism”:

The bureaucracy celebrates its victory over the people. The heretofore united forces are divided, the sacred ideal polluted, the bitterly-fought-for constitution brought down to a mocking buffonade, and the “Mighty Ham,” whose coming was predicted a few years ago by the illustrious Merezhkovski, has his day in the degradated country. The Russian giant who had temporarily awakened after a slumber of centuries, snores again hopelessly. Over the vast continent reigns a suffocating atmosphere of despair, decay, and demoralization. A thick fog of nihilism, not the Nihilism of Turgenyev’s times, but nihilism in its direct negative meaning, enwraps the martyred land of the Czar, and one can hardly discern a bright spot on the cloudy horizon.

In the past year the “cloudy horizon” has slightly brightened. Grave symptoms have appeared in the seemingly calm atmosphere which suggested Vereshchagin’sAll is Quiet on Shipka. Notwithstanding the strict censorship of dispatches one could easily discern from the news items that the volcano has not been extinguished yet. True, the orgy of the reactionary forces has not abated; freedom of spoken and written word is still a myth; the majority of the Douma is “a trillion times blacker than black”—to use a Bodenheimesque figure; the revolutionary organizations are dragging a pitiful existence in the underground, and the average citizen is still seeking safety from the cossack’s knout in phlegmatic splein. Yet signs of gratifying unrest have been manifestly displayed of late in various camps of the Empire. The rapidly developing capitalistic class has come to realize the deadening effect of the bureaucratic regime on industry and commerce, and resolutions have been passed at numerous conventions of manufacturers, bankers, and other big business-men, condemning the stifling policy of the archaic government. The tragicomedy of the Beilis process which revealed the puerile helplessness of the rotten State justice, has united all culturedRussia in a tremendous protest against the existing order; lawyers, journalists, physicians, artists, teachers, and men of other liberal professions, signed fiery resolutions whoseleit-motifwas Chekhov’s sad verdict—“Such life is impossible!” The unrest among the army, and particularly among the navy, has had a great symptomatic significance. Multitudinous arrests among soldiers and sailors, sporadic trials of revolutionary military organizations, frequent transportations and transfers of regiments and vessels, declaration of martial law in some important ports,—such have been the albatrosses of the oncoming storm. After the crash of the proletarian uprising of 1905 the remnants of the revolutionists have concentrated all their forces against the stanchest citadel of Czardom—the army and the navy, justly considering that only a militarycoup d’étatcould change things in present day Russia. The situation became definitely threatening last July, during the visit of President Poincaré, when the Russian proletariat, defying all manners andbon tontowards “allied France,” suddenly and unexpectedly marred the display of friendly demonstrations by an epidemic outburst of general strikes in St. Petersburg (ormustwe, by order of Nicolas II., say—Petrograd?) and in other metropolises.

Amidst these pregnant preludes burst out the war bomb. For the tottering absolutism it came most timely as the saving trump. Whether we believe the press informations about the mad wave of patriotism overflowing Russia or not, there can be no doubt that in view of the threatening national catastrophy internal differences will lose their keenness and will give way to easily drummed-up imperial solidarity, as far as the average citizens are concerned. The uncompromising revolutionists will hardly have a considerable following, especially when we consider the fact that the Czar has been showing surprising tact and foresight of late by granting concessions to his subjects and lavishly extending tempting promises to the oppressed nationalities. The constantly humiliated and insulted citizen; the empoverished overtaxed moujik; the flogged workingman; the bleeding, robbed, deprived-of-rights Pole, Finn, Armenian, Caucasian, Jew, Lithuanian, Little-Russian,—all these elements that make up the abstraction “Russia” would have to possess a great deal of optimism in order to take seriously the spasmodic ejaculations of the drowning “Little Father” who has beaten the world’s record as a perjurer. Yet one need not be a specialist in mass psychology to predict the success of Nicholas’s bait. We may further prophesy that, whatever the outcome of the war, Russia will emerge purged and electrified, stirred and volcanized. Surely, “such life,” pre-war life, will be “impossible.”

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