Part 22 (1/2)
Thereupon the central committee of the Nihilists proclaimed war _a outrance_ until the Czar conceded to a popularly elected National a.s.sembly the right to reform the life of Russia.
Here was the strength of the Nihilist party. By violent means it sought to extort what a large proportion of the townsfolk wished for and found no means of demanding in a lawful manner. Loris Melikoff, gifted with the shrewdness of his race, saw that the Government would effect little by terrorism alone. Wholesale arrests, banishment, and hangings only added to the number of the disaffected, especially as the condemned went to their doom with a calm heroism that inspired the desire of imitation or revenge. Repression must clearly be accompanied by reforms that would bridge over the gulf ever widening between the Government and the thinking cla.s.ses of the people. He began by persuading the Emperor to release several hundreds of suspects and to relax the severe measures adopted against the students of the Universities. Lastly, he sought to induce the Czar to establish representative inst.i.tutions, for which even the n.o.bles were beginning to pet.i.tion. Little by little he familiarised him with the plan of extending the system of the Zemstvos, so that there should be elective councils for towns and provinces, as well as delegations from the provincial _n.o.blesse_. He did not propose to democratise the central Government. In his scheme the deputies of n.o.bles and representatives of provinces and towns were to send delegates to the Council of State, a purely consultative body which Alexander I.
had founded in 1802.
Despite the tentative nature of these proposals, and the favourable reception accorded to them by the Council of State, the Czar for several days withheld his a.s.sent. On March 9 he signed the ukase, only to postpone its publication until March 12. Not until the morning of March 13 did he give the final order for its publication in the _Messager Officiel_. It was his last act as lawgiver. On that day (March 1, and Sunday, in the Russian calendar) he went to the usual military parade, despite the earnest warnings of the Czarevitch and Loris Melikoff as to a rumoured Nihilist plot. To their pleadings he returned the answer, ”Only Providence can protect me, and when it ceases to do so, these Cossacks cannot possibly help.” On his return, alongside of the Catharine Ca.n.a.l, a bomb was thrown under his carriage; the explosion tore the back off the carriage, injuring some of his Cossack escort, but leaving the Emperor unhurt. True to his usual feelings of compa.s.sion, he at once alighted to inquire after the wounded. This act cost him his life. Another Nihilist quickly approached and flung a bomb right at his feet. As soon as the smoke cleared away, Alexander was seen to be frightfully mangled and lying in his blood. He could only murmur, ”Quick, home; carry to the Palace; there die.” There, surrounded by his dearest ones, Alexander II. breathed his last.
In striking down the liberator of the serfs when on the point of recurring to earlier and better methods of rule, the Nihilists had dealt the death-blow to their own cause. As soon as the details of the outrage were known, the old love for the Czar welled forth: his imperfections in public and private life, the seeming weakness of his foreign policy, and his recent use of terrorism against the party of progress were forgotten; and to the sensitive Russian nature, ever p.r.o.ne to extremes, his figure stood forth as the friend of peace, and the would-be reformer, hindered in his efforts by unwise advisers and an untoward destiny.
His successor was a man cast in a different mould. It is one of the peculiarities of the recent history of Russia that her rulers have broken away from the policy of their immediate predecessors, to recur to that which they had discarded. The vague and generous Liberalism of Alexander I. gave way in 1825 to the stern autocracy of his brother, Nicholas I. This being shattered by the Crimean War, Alexander II.
harked back to the ideals of his uncle, and that, too, in the wavering and unsatisfactory way which had brought woe to that ruler and unrest to the people. Alexander III., raised to the throne by the bombs of the revolutionaries, determined to mould his policy on the principles of autocracy and orthodoxy. To pose as a reformer would have betokened fear of the Nihilists; and the new ruler, gifted with a magnificent physique, a narrow mind, and a stern will, ever based his conduct on elementary notions that appealed to the peasant and the common soldier. In 1825 Nicholas I. had cowed the would-be rebels at his capital by a display of defiant animal courage. Alexander III. resolved to do the like. He had always been noted for a quiet persistence on which arguments fell in vain. The nickname, ”bullock,” which his father early gave him (shortened by his future subjects to ”bull”), sufficiently summed up the supremacy of the material over the mental that characterised the new ruler. Bismarck, who knew him, had a poor idea of his abilities, and summed up his character by saying that he looked at things from the point of view of a Russian peasant[228]. That remark supplies a key to Russian politics during the years 1881-94.
[Footnote 228: _Reminiscences of Bismarck_, by S. Whitman, p. 114; _Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History_, by M. Busch, vol. iii.
p. 150.]
At first, when informed by Melikoff that the late Czar was on the point of making the const.i.tutional experiment described above, Alexander III.
exclaimed, ”Change nothing in the orders of my father. This shall count as his will and testament.” If he had held to this generous resolve the world's history would perhaps have been very different. Had he published his father's last orders; had he appealed to the people, like another Antony over the corpse of Caear, the enthusiastic Slav temperament would have eagerly responded to this mark of Imperial confidence.
Loyalty to the throne and fury against the Nihilists would have been the dominant feelings of the age, impelling all men to make the wisest use of the thenceforth sacred bequest of const.i.tutional freedom.
The man who is believed to have blighted these hopes was Pobyedonosteff, the Procureur of the highest Ecclesiastical Court of the Empire. To him had been confided the education of the present Czar; and the fervour of his orthodoxy, as well as the clear-cut simplicity of his belief in old Muscovite customs, had gained complete ascendancy over the mind of his pupil. Different estimates have been formed as to the character of Pobyedonosteff. In the eyes of some he is a conscientious zealot who believes in the mission of Holy Russia to vivify an age corrupted by democracy and unbelief; others regard him as the Russian Macchiavelli, straining his beliefs to an extent which his reason rejects, in order to gain power through the mechanism of the autocracy and the Greek Church.
The thin face, pa.s.sionless gaze, and coldly logical utterance bespeak the politician rather than the zealot; yet there seems to be good reason for believing that he is a ”fanatic by reflection,” not by temperament[229]. A volume of _Reflections_ which he has given to the world contains some entertaining judgments on the civilisation of the West. It may be worth while to select a few, as showing the views of the man who, through his pupil, influenced the fate of Russia and of the world.
[Footnote 229: _Russia under Alexander III._, by H. von Samson-Himmelstierna, Eng. ed. ch. vii.]
Parliament is an inst.i.tution serving for the satisfaction of the personal ambition, vanity, and self-interest of its members. The inst.i.tution of Parliament is indeed one of the greatest ill.u.s.trations of human delusion. . . . On the pediment of this edifice is inscribed, ”All for the public good.” This is no more than a lying formula: Parliamentarism is the triumph of egoism--its highest expression. . . .
From the day that man first fell, falsehood has ruled the world--ruled it in human speech, in the practical business of life, in all its relations and inst.i.tutions. But never did the Father of Lies spin such webs of falsehood of every kind as in this restless age. . . . The press is one of the falsest inst.i.tutions of our time.
In the chapter ”Power and Authority” the author holds up to the gaze of a weary world a refres.h.i.+ng vision of a benevolent despotism which will save men in spite of themselves.
Power is the depository of truth, and needs, above all things, men of truth, of clear intellects, of strong understandings, and of sincere speech, who know the limits of ”yes” and ”no,” and never transcend them, etc[230].
[Footnote 230: _Pobyedonosteff; his Reflections_, Eng. ed.]
To this Muscovite Laud was now entrusted the task of drafting a manifesto in the interests of ”power” and ”truth.”
Meanwhile the Nihilists themselves had helped on the cause of reaction.
Even before the funeral of Alexander II. their executive committee had forwarded to his successor a doc.u.ment beseeching him to give up arbitrary power and to take the people into his confidence. While purporting to impose no conditions, the Nihilist chiefs urged him to remember that two measures were needful preliminaries to any general pacification, namely, a general amnesty of all political offenders, as being merely ”executors of a hard civic duty”; and ”the convocation of representatives of all the Russian people for a revision and reform of all the private laws of the State, according to the will of the nation.”
In order that the election of this a.s.sembly might be a reality, the Czar was pressed to grant freedom of speech and of public meetings[231].
[Footnote 231: The whole doc.u.ment is printed in the Appendix to ”Stepniak's” _Underground Russia_.]
It is difficult to say whether the Nihilists meant this doc.u.ment as an appeal, or whether the addition of the demand of a general amnesty was intended to anger the Czar and drive him into the arms of the reactionaries. In either case, to press for the immediate pardon of his father's murderers appeared to Alexander III. an unpardonable insult.
Thenceforth between him and the revolutionaries there could be no truce.
As a sop to quiet the more moderate reformers, he ordered the appointment of a Commission, including a few members of Zemstvos, and even one peasant, to inquire into the condition of public-houses and the excessive consumption of vodka. Beyond this humdrum though useful question the imperial reformer did not deign to move.
After a short truce, the revolutionaries speedily renewed their efforts against the chief officials who were told off to crush them; but it soon became clear that they had lost the good-will of the middle cla.s.s. The Liberals looked on them, not merely as the murderers of the liberating Czar, but as the destroyers of the nascent const.i.tution; and the ma.s.ses looked on unmoved while five of the accomplices in the outrage of March 13 were slowly done to death. In the next year twenty-two more suspects were arrested on the same count; ten were hanged and the rest exiled to Siberia. Despite these inroads into the little band of desperadoes, the survivors compa.s.sed the murder of the Public Prosecutor as he sat in a cafe at Odessa (March 30, 1882). On the other hand, the official police were helped for a time by zealous loyalists, who formed a ”Holy Band”