Part 6 (1/2)
A. SOKOLOV.
[Footnote 1: It should be noted that the purchasing power of money was then approximately four times higher than at present.]
Our Russian Ally
By Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace.
LAIDLAWSTIEL, Oct. 5, 1914.
The Publications Committee of the Victoria League, which is endeavoring to enlighten the general public on the origin and issues of the war, has suggested to me that, as Russia is now in alliance with us, I might write an article on her recent advance in civilization and the ideals of her people. To condense satisfactorily such a big subject into a few pages seems to me hardly possible; but, considering that we are embarked on a great national undertaking in which it is the sacred duty of every loyal subject to lend a hand according to his abilities, I cannot refuse to comply with the committee's suggestion.
To many thoughtful observers of current events it must seem strange that in the present worldwide convulsion we should be fighting vigorously on the same side as Russia, who has long been regarded as one of our natural enemies. Some worthy people may even feel qualms of conscience at finding themselves in such questionable company, and may be disposed to inquire how far we are politically and morally justified in thus putting aside, even for a time, our traditional convictions. It is mainly for the benefit of such conscientious doubters, who deserve sympathy, that I have undertaken my present task; and I propose to place before them certain facts and considerations which may help them in their difficulties. For this purpose, I begin by examining the grounds on which the traditional conceptions are founded.
If we were to question a dozen fairly intelligent, educated Englishmen why Russia has usually been regarded as a hereditary enemy and an impossible ally, they would probably give two main reasons: First, that she is the modern stronghold of barbarism, ignorance and tyrannical government, and, secondly, that she threatens our interests in Southeastern Europe and Central Asia. Let us examine dispa.s.sionately these two contentions.
As to barbarism, there is no doubt that in the general march of civilization Russia long remained far behind her West European sisters and that she has not yet quite overtaken them, but it should be remembered--and here I appeal to the Englishman's proverbial love of fair play--that she did not get a fair start. Living on an immense plain which stretches far into Asia, her population was for centuries constantly exposed to the incursions of lawless, predatory hordes, and this life-and-death struggle culminated in the so-called Mongol domination, during which her native princes were tributary va.s.sals of the great Tartar Khan. Under such circ.u.mstances she could hardly be expected to make much social progress, and she was further impeded by difficulties of intercourse with the more favored nations of the West, from whom she was separated by differences of language, customs and religious beliefs. It was as if Europe had been divided into two halves by a formidable barrier, which condemned the unfortunate Russians to isolation. The herculean task of demolis.h.i.+ng this barrier was, as we all know, begun by Peter the Great. He built for himself a new capital on the northwest frontier of his dominions--the beautiful city on the Neva, recently christened Petrograd--in order to have, as he expressed it, a window through which he might look into Europe. He looked into Europe with very good results, and his successors have done likewise; but the demolition of the barrier proved a very tedious undertaking, and it was not completed till comparatively recent times.
The laudable efforts of the Russians to make up for lost time have been particularly successful during the last fifty years. Immediately after the Crimean War, which some of us are old enough to remember distinctly, a new era of progress began. The Czar of that time, Nicholas I., whose name is still familiar to the present generation, was a patriotic, chivalrous, well-intentioned man, but unfortunately, as a ruler, he belonged to the mailed-fist school, delighted in s.h.i.+ning armor, and put his faith largely in drill sergeants. Even in the civil administration he fostered the spirit of military discipline, and he was at no pains to conceal his contemptuous dislike of the self-government and const.i.tutional liberties of other countries. By unsympathetic critics he has been not inaptly described as ”the Don Quixote of Autocracy,” and for thirty years he remained faithful to his principles; but toward the close of his reign, in his struggle with England and France, he learned by bitter experience that true national greatness is not to be found in militarism. This salutary lesson was happily laid to heart by his son and successor, Alexander II., and the more enlightened of his subjects.
The period of triumphant militarism was accordingly followed by a period of national repentance, which was also a memorable epoch of beneficent reforms and genuine progress.
No sooner was peace concluded in 1856 than premonitory symptoms of the new order of things became apparent in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, and throughout the country generally. To all who had eyes to see and ears to hear, the war had proved that if their country was to compete successfully with its rivals, it must adopt a whole series of administrative and economic reforms; and there was a general desire that those reforms should be undertaken as speedily as possible. The young Czar took the lead in the work of national regeneration, and he had the good fortune to find sympathy and co-operation among the educated cla.s.ses. For the first time in Russian history--for on previous occasions the efforts of reforming Czars had always encountered a good deal of pa.s.sive resistance--the Government and the people were anxious to aid each other, and the main results may be described as eminently satisfactory. Three great reforms deserve special mention--the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, the radical reorganization of the civil and criminal courts, and a great extension of local self-government.
By the emanc.i.p.ation decree of 1861, which had been carefully prepared by liberal-minded officials in conjunction with local committees of the landed proprietors, the millions of serfs, who had been habitually bought and sold with the estates on which they were settled, and who had known no law except the arbitrary will of their masters, were transformed suddenly into a cla.s.s of free and independent citizens! Next came the reorganization of the judicial administration, by which a similar beneficent change was effected. In the old times the civil and criminal tribunals had been hotbeds of bribery and corruption to such an extent that a satirical author had once ventured to write a comedy with the significant t.i.tle, ”An Unheard-of Wonder; or, The Honest Clerk of Court!” Now they were thoroughly cleansed, and during some half a dozen years, when I traveled about the country in search of information, I never heard of a Judge suspected of taking bribes. The lawsuits, which were previously liable to be prolonged for a lifetime, were curtailed by simplifying the procedure; trial by jury was introduced for criminal cases; and the condition of the prisoners was greatly improved both materially and morally. Some of the new prisons were quite excellent. A big reformatory, for example, founded by a benevolent society in Moscow and largely supported by voluntary contributions, seemed to me the best inst.i.tution of the kind I had ever seen.
Regarding the new system of local self-government, I may say briefly that I was very favorably impressed by the results. The first time I followed, as an attentive spectator, the proceedings of a Provincial a.s.sembly, I was fairly astonished. It was in 1870--only nine years after the beginning of the great reforms--and already the local affairs were being discussed, on a footing of perfect equality, by n.o.ble landed proprietors in fas.h.i.+onable European costume and emanc.i.p.ated serfs in sheepskins. Some of the peasants were very able, unpretentious speakers, and in one respect they had an advantage over some of their former masters--they knew thoroughly what they were talking about. While the frock-coated young gentlemen who had finished their education in a university or agricultural college were often inclined to deal in scientific abstractions, their humble colleagues, who had come direct from the plow, confined themselves to thoroughly practical remarks, and usually exercised a very beneficial influence on the discussions.
The favorable impressions which I received from this Provincial a.s.sembly were subsequently confirmed by wider experience, especially when I worked regularly during a Winter in the head office of the local administration of the Novgorod province. The chief defect of the new inst.i.tutions seemed to me to be the very pardonable habit of attempting too much, without duly estimating the available resources. This ill.u.s.trates a very important national characteristic--intense impatience to obtain gigantic results in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time. Unlike the English, who crawl cautiously along the rugged path of progress, looking attentively to the right and to the left, and seeking to avoid obstacles and circ.u.mvent opposition by conciliation and compromise, the Russian dashes boldly into the unknown, keeping his eye fixed on the distant goal and striving to follow a beeline, regardless of obstacles and pitfalls. The natural consequence is that his moments of sanguine enthusiasm are frequently followed by hours of depression bordering on despair, when he is inclined to attribute his failure to some malign influence rather than to his own recklessness. When in this depressed mood the more violent natures are apt to have recourse to extreme measures.
By bearing in mind this national peculiarity the reader will more easily understand the strange events which followed close on the heels of the great reforms which I have just mentioned. Alexander II. was preparing to advance further along the path on which he had entered so successfully, when his reforming ardor was suddenly cooled by alarming symptoms of a widespread revolutionary agitation. Many members of the young generation, male and female, had imbibed the most advanced political and socialist theories of France and Germany, and they imagined that, by putting these into practice, Russia might advance by a single bound far beyond the more conservative nations and set an example for imitation to the future generations of humanity! The less violent of these enthusiasts, recognizing that a certain amount of preparatory work was necessary, undertook a campaign of propaganda among the lower cla.s.ses, as factory workers in the towns and school teachers in the villages. The more violent, on the contrary, considered that a quicker and more efficient method of attaining the desired object was the destruction of autocracy by revolvers and bombs, and several attempts were accordingly made on the lives of the Czar and his advisers. For more than ten years, undismayed by these revolutionary manifestations, Alexander II. clung to his ideas of reform, but at last, in 1881, on the eve of issuing a decree for the convocation of a National a.s.sembly, he fell a victim to the bomb throwers.
The practical result of all this was that for the next quarter of a century no great reforms were initiated, but those already effected were consolidated, and some progress was made in a quiet, unostentatious way, especially in the sphere of economic development.
A new period of reform began after the j.a.panese war, and this time the reform current took the direction of parliamentary inst.i.tutions. At last, after much waiting, the political aspirations of the educated cla.s.ses were partially realized, so that Russia has now a Chamber of Deputies, called the Imperial Duma, freely elected by the people, and an upper house, called the Imperial Council, whose members are selected partly by election and partly by nomination.
What strikes a stranger on first entering the Duma is the variety of costumes, showing plainly that all cla.s.ses of the population are represented. There are landed proprietors not unlike English country squires; long-haired priests in ecclesiastical robes; workingmen from the factories and peasants from the villages in their Sunday clothes; one or two Cossacks in uniform; Mussulmans from the Eastern provinces in semi-Oriental attire. The various nationalities seem to live happily together--Great Russians, Little Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Russo-Germans, Circa.s.sians, Tartars, &c. Almost as numerous as the nationalities are the recognized political parties--Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals, Radicals, Labor Members, Social Democrats, and Socialists. Great liberty of speech is allowed, but the President has generally no difficulty in keeping order.
Thus, to all appearance, the Duma seems exactly what was required to complete the edifice of self-government founded fifty years ago; but we must not suppose that a Const.i.tution not yet ten years old can be as strong and efficient as a Const.i.tution which has gradually emerged from centuries of political struggle. In other words, the Russian Duma differs in many respects from the British House of Commons. One fundamental difference may be cited by way of example. In England, as all the world knows, the Cabinet is practically chosen by the party which happens to be predominant for the moment, and as soon as it fails to command a majority it must resign; whereas in Russia, as in Germany, the Cabinet is nominated by the Emperor. This is, of course, a very important difference, and all to our advantage, but it is not so great in practice as in theory. The Czar, though free theoretically to choose his Ministers as he pleases, must choose such men as can obtain a working majority in the a.s.sembly; otherwise, the whole parliamentary machinery comes to a standstill. Such a deadlock actually occurred in the First Duma. Smarting under the humiliation of the j.a.panese war, attributing the defeats to the incurable incapacity of the Supreme Government, and believing that the old system had become too weak to withstand a vigorous a.s.sault, the majority of the Deputies resolved to abolish at once the autocratic power and replace it by ultra-democratic inst.i.tutions. They accordingly adopted, from the very first day of the session, an att.i.tude of irreconcilable hostility to the Cabinet, refused to listen to Ministerial explanations, abstained from all useful legislative work, and carried their strategy of obstruction so far that the Government had to take refuge in a dissolution.
For this unfortunate result, which tended to r.e.t.a.r.d the natural growth of const.i.tutional freedom in Russia, the Government was severely blamed by many of its critics, but I venture to think that a large share of the responsibility must be attributed to the unreasonable impatience of the Deputies and their supporters. In defense of this opinion I might adduce many strong arguments, but I confine myself to citing a significant little incident from my personal experience. Happening to meet at dinner one evening immediately after the dissolution an old friend who had played a leading part in the policy of obstruction, I took the liberty of remarking to him that he and his party appeared to me to have committed a strategical mistake. If they had shown themselves ready to co-operate with the Government in resisting the dangerous revolutionary movement and favoring moderate reforms, they might have made for themselves, in the course of nine or ten years, a very influential position in the parliamentary system, and might have greatly advanced the cause of democracy which they had at heart. Here my friend interrupted me with the exclamation: ”Nine or ten years? We can't wait so long as that!”
The Second Duma was s.h.i.+pwrecked, like its predecessor, through youthful impatience. Among the Deputies there was a small group of Social Democrats who attempted to prepare a military insurrection, and when the conspiracy was discovered there was great reason to fear that the Government might adopt a reactionary policy; but it happily confined itself to some changes in the suffrage regulations and a dissolution of the Chamber, followed by a general election. Since that time the parliamentary machinery has worked much more smoothly. The Duma has learned the truth of the old adage that half a loaf is better than no bread, and on many important subjects, such as the preparation of the annual budget, it now co-operates loyally with the Ministers. In this way it gets its half loaf, and the country benefits by the new-born spirit of compromise.
Before going further, perhaps I ought to warn my readers that I am often reproached by my Russian friends with taking too favorable a view of the Duma and of many other things in Russia. To this I usually reply by taking those friends to task for their habitual pessimism in criticising themselves and their inst.i.tutions. Naturally inclined to idealism, and not possessing sufficient hereditary experience to correct this tendency, they compare their inst.i.tutions with ideals which nowhere exist in the real world, and consequently they condemn them very severely. The impartial foreigner who wishes to form a true estimate of these inst.i.tutions must always take this into account. In spite of the impa.s.sioned philippics to which I have listened hundreds of times from my Russian friends, I am strongly of opinion that the Russian people have made in recent years considerable progress in their political education, and that they will continue to do so in the future.
But how is genuine national progress possible so long as the great ma.s.s of the population are grossly ignorant, conservative, and superst.i.tious?
Here again we must beware of adopting current exaggerations. To begin with the peasantry, who are by far the most numerous cla.s.s, we must admit that they are very far from being well educated, but they are keen to learn and they gladly send their children to the village schools, which have been greatly increased and improved in recent years. Another source of education is the army. Since the introduction of universal military service every unlettered recruit must learn to read and write.