Chapter XIII: Appendix (5)

‘The disorder prevailing in our affairs is incredible; there is robbery on every side, all departments are badly governed; order seems to have been banished from everywhere—and in spite of that, all the energies of the Empire are devoted to nothing but widening its frontiers. When that is the position of things, it is scarcely possible for one man to govern the State, even less so to reform the deeply rooted abuses existing in it.... The task is beyond the powers not only of a man endowed like me with ordinary abilities, but even of a genius, and I have always clung to the principle that it is better not to undertake a task at all than to perform it badly. It is in accordance with that principle that I have taken the resolution I have mentioned to you above. My plan is, after renouncing this difficult career (I cannot yet with certainty fix the date of this renunciation), to settle with my wife on the banks of the Rhine, where I shall live quietly as a private man, finding my happiness in the society of my friends and in the study of nature.

‘You are at liberty to laugh at me and say that this design is impracticable; but wait till it has been carried out and then pronounce judgment. I know that you will blame me, but I can do nothing else, for I make the peace of my conscience my first rule, and it can not be at rest if I undertake a task beyond my strength. This, my dear friend, is what I have long wished to tell you. Now when it has all been uttered, there is nothing left for me, but to assure you that wherever I may be, whether happy or unhappy, rich or poor, your affection for me will always be one of my greatest comforts; mine for you, believe me, will end only with my life.’

Catherine died. Paul dragged the body of Peter III. into the Peter-Paul Fortress in a hard frost to bury it beside his dead mother, and made Count A. Orlov[87] and Baryatinsky carry the former Tsar’s crown. Alexander was moved one step nearer to that pinnacle surrounded by the clouds of corruption of which he wrote. Everything was already transformed by one death, everything grew even viler, though in a different way. It was his lot to regret the courtiers ‘whom he would not have cared to have for his lackeys.’ The spoilt and sated household of the old mistress was filled with the army captains and _kammerdieners_ of her successor, who brought the atmosphere of the barracks and servants’ hall into the palace. In place of the haughty palace robbers there were thieves who were police spies; in place of the lackeys there were hangmen. The palace was transformed from a brothel into a torture-chamber. The orgy of sensuality was followed by an orgy of ferocity and cruelty.

Overwhelmed with horror, the Tsarevitch stood in alarm and distress at the foot of the savage throne; powerless to help and unable to get away, Alexander wandered like Hamlet through the palace-halls, unable to decide on anything; others decided for him.

With the same alarm and distress, and with a black stain, moreover, on his conscience, he mounted to the dreadful pinnacle from which the mutilated corpse of his slain father had just been thrown down. He wanted the good of Russia and he was trusted. Men gazed on his mild and youthful features with ardent hope; he too hoped that he would make a paradise of Russia; he would give her his best years, his utmost strength, the people should bless him; he would expiate the sin of his share in the bloody deed, and then, like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, he would do what he had written to Kotchubey and retire to his vineyards on the banks of the Rhine.[88]

Alexander was sincere in these dreams; he believed in them, and not he alone, all Russia believed in them, that is, the Russia of decent people, the Russia recognised as human. The _dark_ masses of Russia, the Russia of the poor, had nothing to do with it. As at all celebrations and holidays, they were excluded from the general rejoicing, and, indeed, made no effort to take part in it, remembering their Little Mother, the Empress, and seeming instinctively to divine that the new reign would only pay for the blood of every twelfth man among them with the gift of Araktcheyev’s military settlements.

It was easy to begin a new epoch supported by such love, such faith, such joy at the death of the miscreant....

‘Now give me a man, O Creator....
Thou hast given me much: a true man
Is all that I ask Thee for now....
I pray for a friend; I am not such
As Thou the All-Knowing. The servants
Thou hast sent me, Thou knowest
Their hearts what they are,
For money alone do they serve me
Truth and faith is all that I ask.’[89]

Ten days had passed after the death of Paul. There was a great reception in the palace; people with joyous faces, clothed in deep mourning, came and went, bowing low, repeating slavish phrases. Alexander, shy, unaccustomed to this job and to playing the part of a god, before whom every one falls down, upon whom every one rests his hopes, went after the reception exhausted to his study, and sank into an easy-chair before his writing-table. On his table in his study, which no one dared to enter, there lay a thick letter, sealed and addressed to him.

He broke the seal and opened the letter; as he read it, his eyes filled with tears, his cheeks burned. He put down the letter, and big tears still rolled down his cheeks. They were seen by Count Pahlen and Troshtchinsky. ‘Gentlemen,’ the Tsar said to them, ‘some one unknown has put this letter on my table; there is no signature; you must find out for me who wrote it.’

2

THE LETTER

Here is what the Emperor read:—

‘With what a lovely day has Thy reign begun! It seemed as though Nature herself were greeting Thee with rapture![90] Alexander, beloved of our hearts! For ten days now the spring sun has been shining on Thy subjects, who are full of hopes, and day by day, hour by hour, Thou hast done more to justify those hopes. What a joyful future awaits us!

‘At this time of universal rejoicing, who would spare his life for Thy defence? But Thou hast no need of it.... Forgive me, then, if I, remote from Thy Court and all dreams of reward, an obscure Russian, seeking to bring Thee an offering, trace certain truths with audacious hand. Forgive, forgive me for this unworthy offering, an offering from the heart; accept it as a testimony of trust in Thy virtues, as a sign of the true love of Thy subjects. Doubtless all that I could say to Thee is more or less clearly printed already on Thy noble heart, or is well known in the counsels of the wise men with whom Thou surroundest Thyself. But this thought could not keep me from offering my widow’s mite to the treasury, even as the most dazzling conception of Thy glory will never keep me from zealously proclaiming it wherever I may go.

‘My Sovereign! Thou reignest over forty million men, from of old accustomed to pay boundless homage to authority, apart from which they cannot picture their weal. A mere glance from their Tsar is often enough to diffuse universal joy, and of course, a mere command is enough to give the greatest happiness man can enjoy on earth....

‘The Empire which will call Thee its own is not an ordinary State. There is no other like it either in the Europe of to-day or in the other parts of the earth, nor perhaps in the chronicles of past ages. It includes ten climates, and is inhabited by a people for the most part of one language and of one religion. From north to south and from west to east it abounds in innumerable riches of all kinds supplementing each other; and this gives it the possibility of complete independence in its relations with foreign countries. It has spacious lands for producing the materials peculiar to it, and the trusty hands of its sons for working upon them. Hence its wealth, resting on no chance foundations but on Nature herself, is bound to increase with time. It may be compared to a mine that has only been opened on the surface, the wealth of which is gradually revealed as it is sunk deeper. It abounds in rivers which, flowing from its centre into five seas, await only the protecting hand of government to unite them in order to carry the products of Europe to Asia and the products of Asia to Europe by the shortest ways. It is bounded for the most part by the Arctic Ocean or by lands as unapproachable; on its other frontiers it has neighbours accustomed to respect the might of Russia. What new thing can I say to Thee, Sire, of the civic virtues of Thy people, which even in the period of coarsest ignorance had already given evidence of its power; of the people, which in the present state of the moral world is perhaps less corrupted than any other nation?... I will only recall one of these virtues, which secures the stability of the Fatherland. The sacrifice of life for one’s country has at all times and in all places been deemed worthy of everlasting praise; but this sacrifice with no prospect of the glory which comforts dying heroes, this great devotion, is characteristic only of rare souls, and the Russian soldier is more capable of it than any warrior of ancient or modern times. The heroic leader goes to his death: I respect him; but I see that the glory which beyond the grave will strew its laurels on him fills his mind with the admiration of his fellow-countrymen and of posterity, and that glory softens the horrors of death. He is intoxicated by ambition, the desire of winning the highest distinction. The very necessity of acting in accordance with the traditions of the class to which he belongs leads him on. But the humble soldier who does not dream of laurels, who has none of the conventional ideas of noble birth that compel a man to distinguish himself, expects no reward; the soldier, whose lot is unchanged after twenty battles won, and who, with no thought of eye-witnesses, of posterity, of history, dies _altogether_, for whom his sacred duty is the one impelling force, is to my mind a great hero indeed! Such is the Russian soldier; and of such Thou hast hundreds of thousands. Time has developed the wisdom of man; time, which perfects all things, is making it possible for the lawgiver to be the benefactor of all mankind. If Catherine, if Marcus Aurelius himself had lived in the Iron Age of the reign of Ivan Vassilyevitch when all Europe was still shrouded in the darkness of superstition and oppressed by the tyranny of feudalism, could they have done much for the benefit of their subjects? Even assuming that they had evolved laws from their own benevolent hearts, from their own all-embracing wisdom, assuming that they could have found the possibility of vigorous action and of deep reflection, could, without any preliminary study, have fully understood the organisation of society and the hearts of the people, where could they have found men worthy to carry out their plans? Neither the men nor the means for public education had yet been evolved. In our day, Sire, legislation, together with other branches of learning and the progress of reason which has inevitably advanced in the course of ages, offers Thee in the works of the greatest minds a thousand new ideas. These ideas, embraced by Thy beneficent spirit, and tested by Thy religious ardour as gold by fire, may be the foundation of the happiness of the Russians. Great is the service of the sage who laboriously discovers the truth; but he who uses the power given him by Heaven to apply that truth to real life is deserving of an altar! He is like God Who gathers the mists that float profitless in the air into the fructifying rain that brings fertility to the plains and water to the rivers irrigating them. If earthly rulers may be likened to the Great Inconceivable Being Who has created millions of worlds, it can only be when they imitate Him in their beneficence....

‘Look at the present state of Europe; can there ever have been a time fitter for the raising of Thy “Russia to the pinnacle of glory and happiness” in accordance with Thy promise? The pretensions and aims of all the Powers are so different, so opposed to one another, that Thou canst never be forced to take up arms if Thou hast Thyself peaceful intentions, if the vain praises of idle minds (the so-called glory of conquerors) are never by Thee held worthy to be weighed beside the blessings of thousands and thousands of men whose fate depends on Thee. The French Revolution, so fatal in itself, so menacing to the stability of many Governments, far from doing harm to Russia, into which its principles could never penetrate, has brought it palpable advantage: in the first place, by turning away the envious attention of the Powers at the moment most critical for Russia, and then, by the new grouping of their alliances, freeing our Court from the necessity of adhering to one or the other party, both of whom now, regarding our alliance as the determining factor, are bound to compete for our goodwill. Through this unexpected concatenation of circumstances Russia has emerged from the state of concealed warfare with all the European Powers which has always existed since the days of Peter the Great. The very youth of Russia, which would hardly have been forgotten for another whole century, has been for ever effaced from the memory of man by the Revolution.

‘In this position of affairs, the internal and external debts of Thy Empire are not so great in comparison with the still unexhausted sources of Thy revenues that the Treasury could not be extricated from every difficulty in a few months by simply cancelling some proposed expenses.

‘Such are the means, Sire, which Thou hast at Thy disposal for becoming a great and happy monarch in the midst of the happiest people on earth....

‘At night as I passed by Thy palace I drew this picture of Thy blessed political position and pondered on what would be Thy ways.

‘Can it be, I said to myself, can it be that He will wantonly destroy the rare harmony of heaven and earth in His favour, and will leave uncompleted the blessed work that has been prepared by the last half-century? Can it be that for the pleasure—created for common souls—of despotic power He will coldly sacrifice the people’s hopes, the immortal glory and the reward which in the Land of Bliss awaits virtuous monarchs after a long untroubled life filled with domestic joys?

‘_No! He will open the great book of our destiny and the destiny of our descendants to which Catherine only pointed with her finger. He will give us inviolable laws. He will confirm these laws for generations on generations with the oath of allegiance of his numerous subjects. He will say to Russia: “This is the limit of my autocratic power and that of my descendants, and is immutable for ever....” And Russia will at last become one of the monarchical powers; and the iron sceptre of arbitrary tyranny shall not be able to break the Tables of her Covenant._

‘Towards this goal He will move slowly, as Nature moves in the mysterious ways made ready for her by the Creator. He will call to His aid the Eternal Reason that can shed light on His soul; guided by that, He will examine the whole code of laws hitherto existing, that He may not without need or through mere love of novelty destroy what has been confirmed and justified by time. In the name of the Fatherland He will require advice from the wise men happily placed by destiny at His side, and from others whose voice from the remotest borders of His Empire may make the truth known to Him. _Under vow of strictest discretion_ He will question them; with the light of His own pure conscience He will go through the works of the lawgivers of the world, ancient and modern, and will compare them with the circumstances of His people, with their manners, customs and religion, with their local conditions, with the true enlightenment promised us by the coming age after the cruel trials of the past.... He will compile in secret, but publish in the face of an attentive world, an Imperial Code, the basis of laws which may of themselves imperceptibly pave the way for the diffusion of its underlying principles. He will command throughout the expanse of Russia the election of elders, worthy of the unlimited confidence of their fellow-citizens; and, putting them beyond the sphere of ambition and fear, bestow upon them the excess of His authority—that they may preserve the Holy of Holies of the Fatherland.... He will take other measures too, drawn from the experience of ages, to confirm the rights of his subjects. He will be the first to use autocracy for the bridling of despotic power; He will be the first who from the purest impulse of the heart will sacrifice His own interests for humanity! And humanity, sobbing with joy, will raise His image higher than the images of other rulers, and multitudes of foreign people will flock to kiss its pedestal and to enjoy happiness in our midst!

‘Doubtless, our Alexander, the Friend of Humanity, knows that nothing but confidence in the Government, resting on the certainty of its immutable principles, begets mutual confidence among the citizens, that it alone is the life of commerce, the mother of public virtue and the source of social prosperity....

‘Beside confidence in the Government, and on a level with it, He will set faith in the justice of law. Without these two principles, the honoured words “Citizen” and “Fatherland” are empty sounds in our language!...

‘He will despise these new false politicians who maintain that private wrongs do no harm to society, that it makes no difference to the State “how property passes from hand to hand.” Leaving all the administration of justice to the elected of the people, He will remove the judges from temptation, not by laws, inevitably ineffectual, but by providing them with an abundant maintenance, commensurate with their disinterestedness and their zeal for the public service. To the same end He will subject the judges to the influence of public opinion. It has always been more impartial, more implacable than the higher authorities, which were not rarely moved by the same motives as their subordinates, to the still greater discredit of the laws! A court with open doors, the right for the litigants to publish the decisions, will be one of the most reliable guarantees of justice.

‘He will lay the State property on a firm basis once for all: He will reckon out the wealth of His spacious dominions; He will determine the powers and liabilities of His subjects upon an immovable scale, unaffected by the rise and fall of the currency, and will say: “Such are the dues of one class to another; such are the dues to the public Treasury; such are the means at the personal disposal of the Tsar.” Then only extraordinary needs of State that cannot be foreseen by any human wisdom will remain undetermined: but to meet these there will be the national—so to speak—natural riches of the country, which in a state of peace increase indefinitely.

‘He will not command steps to be taken for laying on new taxes in order to increase the nominal revenue indefinitely, but with goodwill will take steps tending to diminish expenditure. And by this surest of means He will, accompanied by the blessings of the citizens who toil in the sweat of their brow, secure a continual surplus in the Treasury of which no single Power can yet boast.

‘He will restrict particularly the expenditure which does not serve the welfare of His Empire, nor really exalt the glory of His crown. He will diminish His Court; He will dismiss from it the crowds of servitors and flatterers who shamelessly imagine that the property of the Empire belongs to them, and that they have a pre-eminent right to the Tsar’s favour, simply because chance has placed them in proximity to His person.

‘He will restrict vain display—the desire to adorn the streets and squares of the capitals while all the rest of the Empire presents the spectacle of roofless huts. He will not call art to His aid to provide monuments for Himself, but will find them in the wisdom of His institutions and the love of His people. These memorials will not perish with time, and will awaken not the wonder of idle curiosity but the reverence of all ages and all peoples!

‘He will not merely protect the arts capriciously and only in His own palace, on condition that they pay Him homage, but will truly encourage them, increasing the general welfare and setting free intellects and talents. In general, He will prize the toil, the bloody sweat of His subjects, that is devoted to the public benefit; and moral beauty will be His first care. He will not deign to occupy Himself with details, and waste on trifles the precious time which will barely, very barely, suffice for the all-embracing cares of the Ruler of the greatest Empire in the world. His glance will embrace whole masses. He will give the right direction to the chief wheels of the political machine, and all the rest will run their course rightly! As even the most perfect laws will remain useless to a corrupt people and will lack meaning for an ignorant people, He will doubtless turn all His attention to the education of His subjects in accordance with the local and personal needs of each. He will entrust the higher supervision of this to the class of the guardians of the law, and they will act through the men who have the most moral influence over the people. The clergy will be employed for the enlightenment of the people, and will first themselves be enlightened to that end; schools will be founded for the latter, free from the tedious principles of scholasticism; and distinctions will be given not to those preachers of the Word of God who with poetic enthusiasm glorify the Tsar in town churches, but to those who show in practice the good influence they have had on the morals of their flocks; to those who, founding schools, will faithfully preach in them the pure teaching of Christ and by their example will exhort the man and the citizen to his duties. In this way not the sword, wielded, day and night, by power, will compel the fulfilment of the law, but far more effectively the personal conviction of each man of his usefulness. In this way law will be preserved by morals and morals by law.

‘On the other hand, He will do something, too, for the moral improvement of those who are called the lowest. He will secure to the landowners’ serfs the rights of man; He will give them the rights of property; He will set limits to their dependence. And this not by a law which might dangerously shake the stability of the present bonds of society, but by the gradual influence of custom, which would strengthen them the more. To the simple peasants He will give the means of tasting at times the sweetness of life in reward for their toil, without resorting to wantonness, to beverages that deaden the sense, to other temptations of depravity, sometimes of despair, and of hopeless slavery....

‘Agriculture will flourish under His gentle rule. Little by little He will cover the wide steppes of Russia with settlements, not moving whole families by force over thousands of versts to lands terrible from being unknown and deadly from extreme contrast of climate, but by attracting them from adjacent over-populated parts and encouraging them with rewards and privileges.

‘The waterless but fertile mountain-ranges of favourable climates He will make habitable and will turn to blossoming gardens, cutting canals from neighbouring rivers, turning spacious lakes to advantage, or gradually clothing the slopes of mountains with forest. Is it only enlightened capital cities that have claims on government expenditure? Is it not bound to prepare dwellings for future generations and ... a refuge for those who will probably come one day from the West to seek a home among us?

‘He will not set crowds of greedy officials to take charge of the forests, those ornaments of the land and treasure-stores of water, but by judiciously distributing them as private property will preserve them for the country. Only the wild steppes and impassable forests should be the estate of the Government; they must become the property of private persons as soon as they are made fit for husbandry. Woe to the Governments whose institutions serve only as a source of temptation without eradicating the evil in its very foundation!

‘He will assign solemn rewards for peasants distinguished either by rare virtues or by industry or by the invention or introduction of anything new in agriculture or manufactures. He will not leave the decision of this and the like in the hands of local authorities swayed by partiality or narrow political considerations, but will organise occasional expeditions about the Empire of persons qualified by special knowledge in the department investigated and worthy to represent His Imperial Eye. He will Himself not infrequently abandon the monotony of Court life in order to see and hear in person; He will not confine the rule of the lovely and spacious realm entrusted Him by God within the narrow limits of work at the papers laid before Him. He will encourage handicrafts, not by sudden and arbitrary prohibition of the importation of foreign produce (it is possible to combine the welfare of the Fatherland with peace and goodwill towards foreign countries), but by privileges given to manufacturers and factories, and especially by the removal of oppressive taxes which discourage new enterprise. Russia can, however, without the slightest disadvantage to herself, generously yield many branches of industry and manufacture to nations more scantily provided with land. Is it for her, so lavishly endowed with essential riches, greedily to appropriate all the sources of existence? Is it for her to desire to make everything for herself, when she can incomparably more cheaply employ _hired_ labour outside her frontiers? How long are we going to measure ourselves by foreign standards and to imitate like children?

‘Internal trade, strengthened by the progress of agriculture and handicrafts, will of itself in the course of a few years, with no artificial encouragement, increase our foreign trade to our advantage. Morality and love for everything belonging to one’s own country, encouraged by examples in high places, will also tend to diminish the demand for foreign produce. The price of essential Russian goods, and at the same time also the rate of exchange, will rise inevitably.

‘For the sake of internal and external trade, for the sake of completing the great work of legislative reform, He will, of course, strive to keep the peace with the Powers. To this end, He will employ the happy means furnished Him now by Providence, which is unmistakably extending to Russia a blessing hand. It will doubtless be His task to outline a bold plan of permanent policy appropriate to the Russian Government and peculiar to it. Has He not the most hopeful resources for keeping all the Courts respectful to Him, without swerving from one side or the other? Will He, in the present position of His Empire, with its unbroken frontiers and its strength, find the slightest reason for entering into their disputes? Is the population of Russia, still in its flower, such as to justify the sacrifice of men without the utmost necessity?... Oh, what a destiny, to draw upon oneself the grateful love and respect of all peoples! To have unlimited power and to do good.... If the Almighty loathes murder and the other abominable results of war, if it is pleasing to Him that there should ever be a truly Christian Power, it is most of all likely in Russia and in the reign of Alexander.

‘In that happy time the armed forces will not remain useless. On the contrary, then they will fulfil their true purpose, the preservation of public tranquillity. While waiting till some frantic foe really attacks, means will be found, without forcing them to shed blood in foreign lands and affairs that do not concern them, to occupy the millions of strong, healthy hands which cost annually more than a third of the Imperial revenues.... First of all, He will fence the western frontier of His Empire with a double shield of fortresses: and they will seem to neighbouring peoples like the terrible rows of teeth of a lion in repose. Then, after the example of the Romans, who, though they esteemed the trade of arms above all others, did not hesitate to employ soldiers on public works, building their splendid aqueducts and roads; after the example of some European sovereigns who in more modern times have undertaken similar experiments, and among them of the founder of this capital, who secured its welfare by the Ladoga Canal, He will employ part of our sturdy soldiers, accustomed from their youth to obedience and labour, on the tasks of the State. Some addition to their ordinary pay will stimulate their energy; and how many really profitable works there will be to show for it in the course of a few years! On all sides means of communication by water and by land will be opened. Rivers will be made navigable, marshes will be turned to fertile valleys.... Meanwhile the frontiers of the Empire will not remain undefended, and the force of Russia will be seen and understood by enemies.

‘He will unite the warrior with the peasant, and the peasant with other classes, by bonds of mutual profit, the feeling of which, together with brotherly love and allegiance to the Sovereign, will be the same feeling under three different aspects.

‘He ... but can I fathom the designs of God? Can I picture, can I enumerate, all the activities of which the seed lies in the humane heart of Alexander?...

‘Nations will always be what it pleases the Government they should be: the Tsar, Ivan Vassilyevitch, wanted to have submissive slaves—abject with him, brutal among themselves; he had them. Peter wanted to see us imitating foreigners; unhappily we have done so to excess. The wise Catherine began to educate the Russian. Alexander will complete that great work. Rejoicing in the fruits of His youth, He will be the most blessed of mortals. His glory, resting securely on the love of His subjects, passing down from generation to generation, based on the universal esteem of all races of the earth, will be the envy of the greatest monarchs!

‘I have heard that our young Ruler receives with indifference the hackneyed phrases of poets who shamelessly apply them to all monarchs, assuring each one that he is better than his predecessor: I have made bold to outline these thoughts....

‘O Thou whom my heart adores, do not reject this gift of it, offered Thee in simplicity and with disinterested feelings....

‘Sire! In my soul I throw myself at Thy feet, I water them with tears of the purest everlasting devotion.... Beneficent Genius of my beloved Fatherland!’

3

MARQUIS VON POSA

Next day Troshtchinsky announced to the Tsar that he had brought the author of the letter, that he was a clerk in one of the offices of his department, called Vassily Nazarovitch Karazin. The Tsar, dismissing Troshtchinsky, invited Karazin into his study, and as soon as he was alone with him asked:—

‘You wrote that letter to me?’

‘Pardon, my Sovereign,’ answered Karazin.

‘Let me embrace you for it, I thank you; I should be glad if I had more subjects like you. Continue always to speak as frankly to me, continue always to tell me the truth!’

The Tsar pressed him to his heart, and Karazin, sobbing like a child, flung himself at his feet with the words: ‘I swear that I will always tell you the truth.’

Alexander made him sit down, had a long conversation with him, bade him write directly to him, the doors of his study were to be open to him....

‘Als der Marquis weggegangen, empfing ich den Befehl ihn
künftighin unangemeldet vorzulassen.’

Our Marquis von Posa had begun his political career two years before. At five-and-twenty he had left the army. Well educated, of an unusually many-sided culture, he said good-bye to the Semyonovsky Regiment in order to study Russia and devote himself to the exact sciences. This was at the time when the frenzy of Paul’s reign was at its height. When the young man had looked into the position of luckless Russia, scourged at random by her torturer, he was overcome by such horror, such loathing, such despair, that he made up his mind at all costs to go away to another country. Foreign passports were forbidden. Karazin could not obtain permission to go. He determined to get over the frontier without a passport. As he was crossing the Niemen, he was caught by the dragoons and brought to Kovno. Karazin’s fate seemed inevitable. He clutched at the most risky and incredible means of saving himself, and it saved him. Before the official report had been despatched, he sent on the 14th of August 1798, by express messenger, the following letter to Paul:—

‘SIRE,—A luckless criminal makes bold to write to Thee, a
criminal against Thy commands, O Sovereign Ruler of Russia,
not against honour, conscience, religion, or the laws of his
country. Deign to listen before condemning. And may one ray of
Thy clear vision be shed upon me before the lightnings of Thy
wrath consume me!

‘I have tried to leave my country, the great land of Thy
sovereign rule; I have transgressed Thy Will, doubly expressed,
that is, for the whole people and for me personally. On the
night of the third of this month, while crossing the Niemen to
Kovno, I was seized by a patrol of the Ekaterininsky Grenadier
Regiment; the official report will reach Thee shortly.

‘No doubt information will be collected about me in St.
Petersburg, where I have spent a short time, and in the
province of Ukraine, where I was born and have my estates. I
make bold to assure Thee beforehand that they will in no wise
prove me guilty. I had no need to take refuge in flight. It
will be the only weapon for my prosecutors.

‘Receive my confession: I wanted to escape from Thy rule,
dreading its cruelty. Many examples, carried by rumour over the
expanse of Thy Empire, in all likelihood exaggerated tenfold by
rumour, terrified my thoughts and my imagination day and night.
I knew of no guilt in myself. In the solitude of my country
life I could have neither opportunity nor occasion to offend
Thee. But even the free turn of my thoughts might be a crime....

‘Now it is in Thy power to punish me—and justify my fears—or
to forgive and make me shed tears of repentance that I have
cherished thoughts so false of a great and merciful Sovereign.’

It was not often Paul’s lot to read such letters. The horror of his despotism, which had compelled the young man to flee, and the simple-hearted confession of it, took Paul by surprise. Standing in the third position of dancing, and leaning with intentional awkwardness on his cane, Paul said in his husky voice to the _criminal_ who was brought before him: ‘I will show you, young man, that you are mistaken, that service in Russia under my rule may not be so bad; in whose department would you like to serve?’ Though Karazin’s design to escape over the frontier was no proof of a very strong desire to test the charms of service under Paul, there was no discussing the question. Karazin mentioned Troshtchinsky. Paul commanded that he should be given a post and left in peace.

For Alexander such a man was a treasure, and it seemed as though he understood that. Karazin’s inexhaustible energy and his broad scientific education were striking. He was an astronomer and a chemist, a statistician, a scientific agriculturalist, not a rhetorician like Karamzin, nor a pedant like Speransky, but a living man, who brought into every question a quite new point of view and advised exactly what was needed.

At first the Emperor was continually sending for him and writing notes to him with his own hand.[91] The intoxication of success increased Karazin’s energy tenfold; he drew up programmes of reform, among others the plan of a Ministry of Education, sent in a note concerning the _eradication of slavery_ (that is, of serfdom), in which he says plainly that after the nobles had been set free by special decree[92] it was the peasants’ turn; at the same time, he wrote about elementary schools, himself composed two catechisms, one secular, one religious, and all at once, in the very heyday of his favour, asked for leave and was lost in his native district in Little Russia. It must not be imagined that he went for a rest to gather fresh energy; such men are never tired. No, he returned to Petersburg a few weeks later with six hundred and eighteen thousand roubles which he had wrung by tears and entreaties from the nobles and merchants of Harkov and Poltava for founding a university in Harkov. The Tsar wanted to reward him for it, but Karazin refused. ‘I have been on my knees, Sire, before the nobles and the merchants, I entreated the money from them with tears, and I will not have it said that I did all that hoping to gain a reward.’ Alexander was pleased with him and everything went well, but already a hostile force could be discerned which at times rolled a log under the wheel, at times put on the brake....

The plan for a Ministry of Education was ratified, but by now it was not the same; the scheme of the Harkov university was ratified too, but Karazin’s colossal plans were narrowed down to the commonplace proportions of a German provincial _Hochschule_. Karazin was dreaming of a great educational centre, not only for all Little Russia, but also for the south-eastern Slavs and even the Greeks. He wanted to attract to it the greatest celebrities of the world of learning. Laplace and Fichte agreed to go at his invitation, but the Government found them too expensive.

Scarcely noticing the failure of his success, Karazin summoned from foreign lands to Harkov at his own expense thirty-two families of printers, bookbinders and other workmen, visited the palace of the widowed Empress, wrote for her treatises concerning female education, articles on pedagogy, and so on. This did not in the least distract him from carrying out other commissions of Alexander’s and persisting with other labours he had undertaken. In a little more than two years he had, in addition to all we have mentioned, already succeeded in writing constitutions for an academy, for universities and for various educational institutions, collecting materials for the history of finance and for the history of medicine in Russia, superintending the collecting of the first statistical information, and bringing the State archives into order.

In 1804 Karazin returned from an inquiry which he had been conducting, in combination with Derzhavin, into the doings of the Governor Lopuhin. The misdeeds of this man, who was under powerful protection, were laid bare. Lopuhin was put on his trial. All that remained to do was to reward the investigators; but by now the rope that had been allowed Marquis von Posa was almost at its end.

Unaware of anything, he presented himself before the Tsar. The Tsar received him with knitted brows. Karazin stood as though struck by a thunderbolt.

‘You brag of my letters?’

‘Sire....’ But the Tsar would not let him answer.

‘Other people know what I have written to you alone and have shown to no one. You can go.’

Karazin withdrew, and all was over between them. Karazin asked to be relieved of his duties; the Tsar accepted his request.

And so in 1804 the Emperor did not know that the contents of letters become known through the Post Office.

One cannot help recalling the melancholy anecdote that used to be told by N. I. Turgenev, that at some congress Alexander, receiving the petition of a peasant who had been sold by his owner, asked Turgenev: ‘Surely the law does not permit the sale of men apart from land, and the sale of serfs individually?’ Turgenev, who knew the chaotic state of the law on that subject, tried to take advantage of the question to abolish such sale of serfs, and of course did not succeed. After the sitting of the Council at which Turgenev spoke heatedly on the subject, V. P. Kotchubey went up to him, and, smiling bitterly, said: ‘And do you imagine that anything will come of this?... What you should rather be surprised at is that after reigning twenty years the Tsar does not even know that serfs are sold individually in Russia!’

4

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

The Russian Government since the days of Peter the Great has been exceptionally free. It has views, interests, relations, but no sort of _moral obligations_.

When it freed itself from the stagnant traditions of the parental home, it simultaneously severed all ties of blood, without assuming any others; it handed over its own mother into bondage to a stranger, but did not submit to him either.

The complex elements of Western life, derived from various different sources, were selected to suit its purposes. Of a whole phrase in which the very discords softened its one-sidedness, took the edge off its extremes and made a harmony of a sort, a few notes were retained, destroying the concord and the significance. All that exaggerated authority and all that oppressed the individual was adopted; every defence of personal liberty was laid aside; the casuistry of the inquisition was enriched by Tatar torture, German discipline, Byzantine servility.

Even speech, absolutely oppressed and despised, gained the power of fatal menace, of inflicting boundless misfortune, the power of action, only when ‘word and deed’[93] meant denunciation!

There has never in history been such a Government, relieved from all moral principles, from every duty undertaken by authority except that of self-preservation and maintaining the frontiers. The Russian Government of this period is the most monstrous abstraction to which the German metaphysics _eines Polizeistaates_ could rise. The Government exists for the sake of the Government, the people for the sake of the State: a complete disregard for history, for religion, for tradition, for the heart of man; material force in place of an ideal, material power in place of authority.

Had Russia been conquered by Poland, let us suppose, there would have been a struggle. The Polish nobility would have brought in their tradition of aristocratic freedom; it would, as in Little Russia, as in the time of the Pretenders, have called forth from outraged national feeling Lyapunovs,[94] Minins,[95] Pozharskys and Hmyelnitskys.[96] The two elements would have measured their strength. The conqueror would have seen what the conquered was, what were his peculiarities, where his national characteristics lay. But the conquest of Russia by the Government of Petersburg, without an enemy of a different race, without a hostile flag, without an open battle, took the whole country unawares. The people only grasped that it was conquered by the time that all the strong places were in the hands of the enemy; for the conquerors the vanquished people had not even the interest of novelty, of the unknown; on the contrary, the estranged oppressor despised the ignorant Russian people, was convinced that it knew them and felt that it was the same flesh and blood, but purified by civilisation and called to rule the ignorant masses.

About Peter the Great there gathered a crowd of destitute nobles who forgot their birth, of foreigners who forgot their native land, of orderlies and sergeants, interspersed with the old Boyar aristocrats and the everlasting intriguers who crawl at the feet of any one in power and take advantage of any one’s favour. This circle grew and multiplied rapidly, sending out its parasitic branches in all directions. Little by little this blight spread all over Russia, it trailed through the mud and the snow carrying an officer’s commission, an appointment from the senate, or a deed of sale, hungry and greedy, ferocious with the common people and abject with the higher officials.

It formed a sort of net, maintained by soldiers, joined together at the top in the knot of the Winter Palace, and holding tight peasants and townsmen in every mesh below. This was a sort of fortuitous state made up of nobles and government functionaries, with a flavour of army discipline and serfdom. In it everything was shaved off: beard, regional independence, individuality. It wore German dress and tried to speak French. The people looked with horror and repulsion on the traitors, but power was on the side of the latter, and however the people moaned, and however they revolted, the census and the recruiting, the forced labour and pay in lieu of labour, knout and rods went on unchecked. The people murmured, made frequent efforts to revolt; joining with the Cossacks and the Tatars, a whole countryside rose in insurrection—but there were troops and troops of soldiers ... and order was restored by the knout. Stunned with pain, crushed by despair, the people were felled to the earth and lay stupefied for nearly a hundred years. It is only from that time that Russia has become that dead, dumb sea which no hurricane will stir.

Up to the ’seventies of last century the Petersburg orderlies and sergeants had not fallen into step. These people of haughty insolence and no feeling of honour, drunk with wine and blood, accustomed to the executioner’s axe and the moan of the tortured, after tasting the sweets of power and being beaten with the stick, remembered well how easy it is in a state without a people to put any worthless creature on the throne or turn it off again.

They knew that they too had their share in the Imperial ‘We.’ ... The far-sighted among them wanted to limit the power of the autocracy for their own benefit, but the true sergeants preferred simply to strangle Tsars and put their mistresses in their place. The insolent courtiers were dangerous, exacting. It was not enough for Prince Grigory Grigoryevitch Orlov to have Catherine, he wanted the title of her husband. Knowing how light are the chains of matrimony, Catherine consented, but the other orderlies and sergeants would not dream of allowing it. The name of Ivan Antonovitch[97] was pronounced: she bade them kill him like a cat; the name of Princess Tarakanov[98] was recalled: she bade them steal her as puppies are stolen.

All this was done from terror. Feverish, irresistible terror took possession of every one who sat on Peter’s blood-stained throne. It was hard to rely on such faithful subjects as the orderlies and sergeants, as the German adventurers; still more so to rely on the people, on the voiceless people, trampled in the mud, handed over as a gift to the nobility: they did not exist. Those who wore the crown kept up appearances, tried to forget themselves, but panic got the upper hand, and suddenly they would be overcome by the terror of the rope-walker: below, a black mass of downcast heads that never look up, no voice can reach it; near at hand ... it would be better if there were no one ... near at hand, sergeants, orderlies, and no one akin.... They were terrified by their own infertility, and sent seeking everywhere among German _landgrafs_ and archbishops a drop of Peter’s blood in the fourth or fifth generation, or hurriedly ordered children, as Elizabeth did from Catherine, and kept looking about them, afraid that a drunken orderly would come ... with the ribbon of Saint Andrew on his breast and a rope in his hand.

_Another figure_ appeared on the scene, and everything was changed. The storm-clouds had parted, men could see clear again. A picture of the greatest family happiness was displayed to the world: the god-like Felitsa,[99] ‘the mother of her country,’ stood serenely at the pinnacle of power and authority, graciously smiling on her kneeling orderlies and sergeants, senators and cavaliers; every one worshipped her, every one did homage to her. Radiant with paste gems, after the manner of the _encyclopaedic_ diamonds, she sparkled with the wisdom of Beccaria[100] and the profound thought of Montesquieu, delivered classical speeches to the landowners of the steppes, put Roman helmets on her _balafrés_ ... sent for legislators who took her will for law.... Her generals brought her victory on land and on sea, Derzhavin sang her praises in heavy verse, Voltaire exalted her in light prose, and she, drunken with power, weighed down with love, gave everything to _her own_ people, everything: her body, the souls of the free Cossacks, the estates of the monasteries. ‘Glory, glory to you, Catherine!’

Who had performed this miracle, who had roped in the Russia of the renegades and the Germans? Who wedded the mutinous orderlies and blood-stained sergeants to Felitsa?

An unknown old lady, a landowner of the steppes after the style of Korobotchka,[101] had bewitched them. What happened, it was said, was this.

Pugatchov came to her farm; the old woman was frightened and went out to offer His Majesty bread and salt.

‘Well, what sort of a mistress has she been to you, good Christians?’ the Tsar-Cossack asked the peasants.

‘We will not take a sin on our souls, Your Majesty; we have always been satisfied with our mistress, she has been a mother to us.’

‘Good! I will come to you, old lady, and drink your vodka, since the people praise you.’

The old lady regaled him as best she could. Pugatchov took leave of her and went to his sledge. The peasants stood waiting for him; their faces were dissatisfied.

‘If you have some favour to ask, speak boldly.’

‘Well, Your Royal Majesty, how is it left then for us?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, here, you see, Sire, you were at such a place and there you hanged the master and his children too, and at the other village, too ... and how about us?’

‘Why, you say yourselves your old woman is a very good one.’

‘That is so, Your Majesty, she is a good woman, but still, perhaps it would be better to do for her.’

‘Well, brothers, if you want to—as you like, we can do for her.’

‘It is a pity, it is a pity, but there is no help for it,’ said the peasants, going to fetch the old lady, who was calmly clearing away the plates and dishes, delighted at having been spared by the Tsar, and to her great surprise they hanged her from the crossbeam. It was she, they said, who cast a spell over the mutinous orderlies and sergeants of the Government.

They pondered, seeing such impartial justice. ‘Is that how we did for them? I say, but you know, might not this happen to any one of us? No, enough of mutiny; what could we do without the help of the Tsar?’

And the family feud was ended.

From that time forward the Government dared not hold out a hand to the peasants in any way. The nobles lost all sense of civic courage in face of the Government, and all feeling of moral shame in regard to the peasants. The two Russias completely ceased to recognise each other as human beings. There was no human tie, neither compassion nor justice between them. Their morality was different, what they held sacred was different. The terrified peasant crouched in his village, afraid of the landowner, afraid of the police-captain, afraid of the town where every one could beat him, where his full coat and jerkin were looked on with contempt, where he saw a beard only on the images of Christ. The landowner, who shed genuine tears over the novels of Marmontel, flogged the peasant in his stable for arrears with perfect equanimity; the peasant with untroubled conscience deceived the landowner and the judge. ‘Are you a gentleman?’ an old woman would say in the coach-house to Mitka or Kuzka, ‘that you eat meat in Lent? As for the master, it’s not expected of him, but why don’t you keep the law of God?’ The division could be no wider.