Part 10 (1/2)

The military spirit, so potent elsewhere, scarcely exists in the empire.

Glory and honour are things for which the Russian serfs care very little, nor have they any conception of the magic that lies in the words ”Our country,” ”Our native land.” The only country they know is their village, their stove, their _kasha_, the patch of ground they daily cultivate, and that mud which a French grenadier lifted up with his foot, exclaiming, ”And this they call a country!” ”_ils appellent cela une patrie!_” At the same time, it is evident that this antipathy of the Russians for military service, is to be attributed as much to the political const.i.tution of the empire, as to the character of the inhabitants; and as that const.i.tution has. .h.i.therto been a national necessity, it would be unjust to charge as a crime upon the government, the unhappy moral condition of its armies. We shall speak at more length in another place, on the subject of the Russian soldiery.

Moral and intellectual instruction have hitherto made very little way among the slave population. Attempts indeed have been made to found schools in some of the crown villages, but these attempts have been always ill-directed, and necessarily unsuccessful. Religion which everywhere else const.i.tutes the most potent instrument of civilisation, can have in Russia no favourable effect on the improvement of the people. Consisting solely in fasts, crossings, and outward ceremonies, it leaves the mind totally uninfluenced, and in no respect acts as a bar to the demoralisation which is gradually pervading the immense cla.s.s of the serfs. The peculiar circ.u.mstances of the Russian towns and villages are also perhaps among the greatest obstacles to intellectual progress.

The advance of civilisation depends in a great measure on facility of intercourse. When a population is compact, and its several members are continually in presence of each other, each man's knowledge is propagated among his compatriots, facts and opinions are discussed, and men become mutually enlightened as to what is thought and done around them. From this continual interchange of mental wealth, there naturally arises an amount of enlightenment and capacity that tends greatly to extend the domain of thought. But let any one cast his eyes on Russia, and he will be struck by the unfavourable manner in which its population is distributed. Not only are the great centres of population very thinly scattered over the surface, but the several dwellings too in the towns are placed very wide apart, and those of the villages still more so.

Every man is isolated, every man lives by and for himself, or at least within a very contracted sphere. Social meetings are rare, and in winter almost impossible; in a word, it is not at all unusual for people not to know their neighbours on the opposite side of the street; hence the invariable _nesnai_ (I do not know) with which the Russian replies to every question the traveller puts to him, ought not to astonish or incense the latter. At first I was disposed to think this ignorance was pretended, and to attribute it to sulkiness and indolence; but I afterwards perceived that it was occasioned in much greater measure by the absurd style of building adopted in the country.

Another thing that tends to enervate the Russians and keep them in their brutified condition, is the immoderate use of brandy, to which both men and women are addicted. It is truly deplorable that the government feels constrained to favour the sale of that pernicious liquor which forms its most important source of revenue. How often have I seen the dram-shops full of women dead drunk, who had left their poultry yards tenantless, and sold their household furniture to gratify their fatal pa.s.sion.

A thing by which I have always been much struck in Russia, is the stationary uniformity which prevails over the whole surface of the empire, both in ideas and in physical productions. You see everywhere the same plans and arrangements of the buildings, the same implements, and the same agricultural practices and modes of carriage. Contact with foreigners has as yet had no influence on the Sclavonic population, and the prosperity generally enjoyed for sixty years by the German colonies has done little in the way of example. Is this intellectual insensibility the result of servitude exclusively? I think not.

Servitude may indeed repress, but it cannot extinguish, the various qualities with which nature has endowed us; and if the Russians are still so backward, and give so little promise of improvement, we must explain the fact by the nature of their race, by their still infant state as a nation, and their want of precedents in civilisation. At the same time there is no reason to despair of them. In our opinion, the future civilisation of Russia rests in a great measure on the contingency of a religious reformation; but as that reformation could not but be hazardous to absolute power by awakening ideas of independence and resistance to oppression, the government impedes it by every means in its power, and labours unceasingly to reduce all the inhabitants of the empire to religious uniformity, as is proved by its conduct towards the United Greeks of Poland, and towards the Douckoboren and the Molokaner. I had opportunities of observing among the members of the two latter communities, how great an influence a change of religion may have on the character and intellect of the Russians. The Douckoboren and the Molokaner differ essentially in this respect from the other subjects of the empire. Activity, probity, intelligence, desire of improvement, all these qualities are developed among them to the highest degree, and after having consorted with the Germans for fifteen years, they have completely appropriated all the agricultural ameliorations, and even the social habits of those foreign colonists. Among the Russian peasants on the contrary, whether slave or free, a complete immobility prevails, and nothing can force them out of the old inevitable rut. All the efforts and all the encouragements of the government have hitherto been of no avail.

The emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves seems earnestly to occupy the Emperor Nicholas; and the measures adopted of late years testify in favour of his generous intentions. Unfortunately, the task is beset with difficulties for the legislator, and an abrupt attempt to make the Russian people independent, would infallibly expose the empire to the greatest dangers.

There are in the Russian slave two natures, essentially distinct: the one, dest.i.tute of all energy, of all vitality, is the result of the servitude under which the nation has bent for ages; the other, a bequest of barbarism, starting into action at the breath of liberty, is prompt to the most alarming excesses, and inspires the revolted serf with the desire, above all things, to ma.s.sacre his master. Emanc.i.p.ation, therefore, is not so easy as certain philanthropists would believe it to be, and the details we have just given may enable one to conceive all the mischiefs that might ensue from it.

The greatest obstacle to this social metamorphosis is presented by the private slaves, the majority of whom belong to the hereditary aristocracy; it is especially on the part of this cla.s.s that premature liberty might occasion fatal and b.l.o.o.d.y reactions, which would endanger the empire itself, though immediately directed against the lords only.

Accordingly the tzar, who is not ignorant of these facts, does all in his power to withdraw the serfs from their proprietors, and bring them into the crown domain: hence the position of the serfs has been considerably altered within the last few years. Slaves can now no longer be purchased without the lands to which they are attached. Formerly owners often hired out their slaves: they can now only grant them pa.s.sports for three years, and the serf himself chooses the master he will serve, and the kind of labour to which he will apply himself.

It was evidently with a view to the same end that a bank was created some years ago in St. Petersburg, for the purpose of rendering pecuniary a.s.sistance to the aristocracy. Every proprietor can borrow from the bank at eight per cent., on a mortgage of his lands. But by the rules of the inst.i.tution, when the term of payment is past, the property of a defaulting creditor may be immediately sequestrated to the crown. What the government foresaw has happened, and does happen daily, and it has acquired numerous private estates, and incorporated them with the imperial domains.

A new ukase respecting the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves which was issued in 1842, fixed the relative position of freedmen and their former lords.

The measure was shaped so as to give the government a direct influence conducive to the gradual emanc.i.p.ation of the population. The owners were left, as before, the power of emanc.i.p.ating their serfs; but by the terms of the ukase, they could only do so in accordance with certain rules, and with the express sanction of the emperor. This ukase excited so much dissatisfaction among the old _n.o.blesse_, that the tzar was induced subsequently to neutralise its effect by a police enactment. The primary end was, nevertheless, obtained, and the ukase dealt a heavy blow to the subsisting relations between lord and serf.[11] We believe, nevertheless, that the course adopted by the Emperor Nicholas (by the advice, no doubt, of Count Kizilev) is erroneous, and that the last ukases are impolitic. Do what it will, the government will never succeed in liberating the private slaves without the co-operation of their owners. It is impossible to think of making all the peasants exclusively serfs of the crown; such a means of emanc.i.p.ation is impracticable, for it implies that the government should remain, in the last result, sole possessor of all the lands in the empire, and that the n.o.bility, great and small, should be infallibly ruined. In our opinion, the last ukases have only served to make emanc.i.p.ation more difficult, by exciting hatred between masters and slaves, and fostering the germs of a dangerous rebellious spirit. The Russians are still so backward in civilisation, that ideas of independence, abruptly and incautiously introduced amongst them, would be very likely to cause disastrous convulsions. Liberty must reach them gradually; and above all, it is absolutely necessary that they should be prepared, by instruction, to exchange their slavery for a better state of things. Otherwise, with their present character, liberty, after being first summed up by them in the privilege of doing nothing, in pillage and ma.s.sacre, would inevitably end in wretchedness and dest.i.tution. In the treatment of this great social question, it is before all things necessary that the government should come to a fair understanding with the n.o.bles, and labour conjointly with them for the regeneration of the slave population: it is only by earnest mutual aid that those two powers will ever succeed in advancing the cause of emanc.i.p.ation without imminent peril to the empire. But in any case, there is no denying the many difficulties of this enterprise, no answering for all future contingencies. Considerations connected with landed property will probably long defeat all efforts in this direction, unless the peasants be freely permitted to become landowners, on payment of a certain sum for the redemption of their persons, and the purchase of the land requisite for their subsistence. This seems to us the only rational, nay, the only possible means, of arriving at complete emanc.i.p.ation without violence. No doubt if such a privilege be granted to the peasants, the present improvident and prodigal race of n.o.bles will be rapidly dispossessed; but this will not occasion the country any serious inconvenience, and the new order of things will but favour the development of the middle cla.s.s, in which really reside, in our day, all the strength and prosperity of a nation.

As for the clergy, whose numbers amount to about 500,000, both males and females, we mention them here only to repeat our declaration of their nullity and immorality. Utterly unacquainted with any thing pertaining to polity and administration, having nothing to do with public instruction, and being in their own persons ignorant to excess, the priests enjoy no sort of influence or consideration, and are occupied solely with corporeal things. We will not enter further into this subject. We are loath to unveil completely the vices and ign.o.ble habits that distinguish the priests of the orthodox Russian church.

The following is a general table of the Russian population as published by the ministry in 1836:

_Clergy._

Males.

Females.

Orthodox Greek clergy of all grades,

including the families of ecclesiastics

254,057

240,748 United Greek

7,823

7,318 Catholic

2,497

Armenian

474

343 Lutheran

1,003

955 Reformed

51

37 Mahommedan Mollahs

7,850

6,701[A]

Buddhist Lamas

150[B]

_n.o.bility._

Hereditary n.o.bles

284,731

253,429 Personal n.o.bles, including the children

of officers

78,922

74,273 Subaltern functionaries, retired soldiers,

and their families

187,047

237,443

_Populations bound to military_

_service in time of war._

Cossacks of the Don, the Black Sea, the

Caucasus, Astrakhan, Azov, and the

Danube, Orenburg and the Ural, and of

Siberia, Bashkirs, and Mestcheriaks

950,698

981,467

_Inhabiting towns, or included_

_in the munic.i.p.alities._

Merchants of the three guilds, including

notable _bourgeois_.

131,347

120,714 Bourgeois and artisans

1,339,434

1,433,982 Bourgeois in the towns of the

western provinces