Chapter XVII: The Drama of Freedom

When for a time I left Russia in February, the powers of reaction were at their highest, and at such a moment it might well seem absurd to speak of the dawn, for the ancient darkness of Russia appeared again to have closed in upon the land. In looking back upon the things I had witnessed, they naturally presented themselves to me as the scenes of a great drama, in which the old Titans and demigods of humanity played from behind strange masks, compelled by the rival immortals of Freedom and Oppression, whose voices could at times be heard and their forms almost seen, while the journalists of Europe chimed in with a chorus of alternately sympathetic comment. But there was no doubt that, as in all great dramas, the Protagonist had become involved in the toils of evil, and that, as far as worldly success went, a tragic fate was overwhelming him.

When first I arrived in the country, the air was still radiant with hope. It is true that the early flush had a little faded; the joyful intoxication of the October Manifesto was passing off, and people were beginning to realize that freedom is not a thing to depend on any man’s words. Liberty and despotism were hanging in the balance, and the dull weights of habit and force were pressing down their scale. But exiles were returning, prisoners were released, the Press was free. Great public halls sounded to unaccustomed words of liberty, and the Strike Committee, which had shaken the strongest tyranny of the world, was still the strongest power in the country. The Government stood uncertain and afraid. It felt itself confronted by an unknown and incalculable adversary, the more terrible for its vagueness--an adversary that out of unregarded obscurity had struck one sudden and paralyzing blow and now lay coiled up in its lurking place, only waiting for the fit moment to strike that blow again.

In its distress the Government looked round for help. It looked to the railways to carry its troops, and the trains ceased running. It looked to the post and telegraph to bear its orders, and the wires were cut, and the letters lay in heaps. It looked to the army, and from all sides came the tale of mutiny; to the navy, and it heard the flames of Odessa, the flames of Kronstadt, and the big guns of Sevastopol. It looked to the Press, and it found even the ancient supporters of Tsardom were beginning to hint at reforms. The very Ministers were understood to speak a little uncertainly of autocracy, and whenever a reporter was within hearing, the chief of them all kept muttering, “I am a bit of a Liberal myself.” So the Government stood uncertain, in the uneasy position of an animal which does not know whether it is to be hound or hare upon the course.

That we may call the first act of the drama, but when the second act opened, the powers of evil were seen more actively insinuating themselves into the course of tragedy. Their activity took the form of a plot which can be easily unravelled from the course of the events upon the stage. In order to involve the Russian people in the doom of tragedy, they may be represented as thus whispering to the leaders of the Government:--

“The first thing is to secure the Army, by promises of better food and pay. Having secured the Army, you may goad the people to open resistance by attacking them without warning. When they rise it will be easy to stamp them down, and under the excuse of their violent revolution, you can silence the Press, you can close the meetings, you can shoot or imprison the leaders, you can choke the voice of freedom in troublesome districts like Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Poland, and the Caucasus. By controlling the elections you can secure exactly the kind of Duma you want. You may then appeal to Europe to admire both your power and your progress, and all Europe will join in applause. The chorus of journalists which used to sing ‘The Dawn of Freedom,’ will chant warnings to rebellion and the triumph of order over chaos. Your object will then be gained, for you can obtain the money that is the one thing needful for your existence. England will again recognize your credit. France will contribute the interest on her own loans, and Germany will recognize a Government endued with just about as much liberty as her William likes.”

Such were the suggestions of the powers of evil, and the Russian Government is not to be blamed for accepting them gladly. That unhappy little group of royalties, Grand Dukes, landlords, officials, and priests, were fighting, not merely for an obsolete ideal of State, but for their very existence, for their daily pleasures, their daily bread, for a decent roof over their heads and a decent table over their legs. It was no child’s play for them, since all they valued was at stake, and the only wonder is that they were clever enough to understand the whispered promptings of the powers who spoke on behalf of Oppression, an ancient and venerable god. If any Russian statesman or general or admiral had displayed the strategic skill in dealing with the Japanese that the Government now revealed in suppressing the liberties of their own country, Russia would have been spared one of the most shameful and overwhelming disasters in history.

But in following these promptings, the Government succeeded at every point. The general strike was the only genuine weapon the people had--an irresistible weapon, provided it was used simultaneously and seldom. The Government drove the leaders to use it piecemeal and often. They confiscated the strike funds to starve the women and children, they employed hunger and Cossacks to shake the determination of the men. By bombarding a committee, they drove the revolutionists to build the Moscow barricades before the movement was ripe and while the other cities remained inactive. They discovered the fighting weakness of freedom, and the entire security with which men in uniform can be trusted to kill at the command of those who feed and pay them. They stamped down the rising in blood. They shot all the leading revolutionists, they imprisoned all the suspects, they hewed the insignificant in pieces. They applauded the murderers of doctors who were saving the wounded. They executed schoolboys for believing better forms of government possible, and they handed over schoolgirls to soldiers to be flogged.

In all this they proved themselves entirely wise, for they gained their end. The moment that the Moscow rising was crushed, troops were let loose with confidence upon Poland, the Caucasus, and the Baltic Provinces. Preparations were made for the reconquest of Finland. Executions became general throughout the Empire. The prisons were crammed, and typhus finished what the rifle and hang-rope left undone. The elections for the Duma were prepared under police supervision, and Liberal candidates removed to prison. Liberal meetings were forbidden, Liberal papers suppressed. The chorus of European journalists chanted the overthrow of rebellion and the restoration of order. And at last, as the crowning reward of a faithlessness and cruelty so cleverly displayed, the deficit of over £80,000,000 was freely supplied by a fresh European loan, to which the so-called Liberal Powers of France and England were the chief contributors. There is something divine in success so unquestioned and unassailable, nor can we wonder that its worship is almost universal. In the autumn of 1905, no one thought it possible for the Russian Government to raise another loan for its existence, unless under guarantees of liberty and popular control. But the Government quietly set about the work of slaughter, and when that was finished held out a bloody hand to Europe; and Europe kissed the bloody hand reverently, and filled it with gold. In the spring of 1906, a loan of £90,000,000 was subscribed without question, and upon a triumphant tableau of Oppression reinstated and Evil enriched the curtain fell. In the distance the spirits that attend on Freedom were faintly heard bewailing her defeat.

Under large and shadowy symbols, the powers of human history may thus be imagined to move upon their stage, and it is much easier to conceive their great abstractions than to realize the life or sufferings of one man or woman out of the millions of human beings, compared to whom all principles of freedom, government, or justice are but unstable visions of the mind. It is in realizing solid and visible things that the imagination fails. I have seen a few peasants starving on potatoes warmed with straw, while they had sold their corn to Europe before it was reaped, so as to pay for defeated armies, sunken battleships, a bloodthirsty police, and the pleasures of landowners in St. Petersburg. I have seen a few, but the imagination refuses to picture the millions on millions like them, who are actually now existing. I have seen a few tattered soldiers from the war draggling into Moscow at last, begging for farthings, squatting on the curb-stones or murmuring vacantly to themselves, “Alive and home; alive and home!” I have seen a few, but there were at least five hundred thousand of them still to come--starving, tattered, mutinous, broken with terror and distress. I have seen a few work-people in their homes--scant of food, empty of comfort, and crowded with human beings--but there are millions like them. A few people I knew were shot, many were imprisoned; but there are thousands whose sons and lovers and friends have been shot, and thousands on thousands who are themselves in prison. I have heard and read of girls being flogged; but there are hundreds of lovers and brothers and fathers who have known the girls that were flogged, and have seen them come back tortured and shamed from the soldiers’ hands. The picture of such things indefinitely repeated throughout a vast Empire becomes like the nightmare of a madman, and before such bare realities the imagination falls helpless. If we wished to be charitable, we might say that this is why Frenchmen and Englishmen could still be found to bolster up the bloodthirsty tyranny with a loan, and no shout of laughter arose when Witte still went on murmuring, “I am a bit of a Liberal myself,” and the Tsar telegraphed to England that he was meditating a new Peace Conference at the Hague.

So the triumph of reaction appeared to be complete: it seemed assured by the mere immensity of its horror, and the returned exiles admitted that in the worst days of their youth Russia had never suffered as she was suffering now. Yet I suppose that no single revolutionary in the country abandoned hope or contemplated peace. If there is something discouraging in the Russian passive endurance, it has its compensation in a slow but unwavering persistence in rebellion. In spite of all the winter’s executions and imprisonment, I doubt if there was one good rebel the less in spring than in autumn, and revolutionists of all types were now drawn together by that just and savage indignation which is the strongest bond of union. The bureaucrats of Tsardom had stamped for themselves a red surface on which their little circle might continue to live a while longer; but the revolution was boiling underneath, and even they could not be deaf to the hum and rumble of its working. In such mood, and amid such hopes and fears, the advent of the long-promised Duma was awaited.

DIARY OF EVENTS

In January, M. Durnovo, as Minister of the Interior, was freed
from the supervision of Count Witte, and made responsible only
to the Tsar.

Two main subjects were prominent in Russian affairs during the
following weeks--finance and the elections for the Duma.

In the middle of January, Shipoff, the Minister of Finance, had
issued the official estimates for the Budget of 1906, showing an
expenditure of £251,000,000 and a deficit of £48,000,000. The
main items of the revenue were--

£
Direct taxes 15,000,000
Indirect taxes 42,000,000
State monopolies 64,000,000
State lands 59,000,000

The main items of expenditure were--

£
Interest on loans 34,000,000
War Office 38,000,000
Navy 10,000,000
Ministry of Finance 34,000,000
„ „ Interior 13,000,000
„ „ Communications 48,000,000
„ „ Education 4,000,000[6]

But besides these items of ordinary expenditure there remained--

£
Extraordinary War disbursements 40,000,000
Famine relief 3,000,000

The true deficit for the year amounted to at least £80,000,000,
and would probably be nearer £90,000,000. In spite of the large
foreign loans the gold reserve had fallen from £106,000,000 in
February, 1904, to £94,000,000 in December, 1905, and the paper
in circulation had risen from £59,000,000 to £143,000,000 in the
same period.

On February 21st the trial of Lieutenant Schmidt for the mutiny
at Sevastopol began in Odessa. On March 3rd he was sentenced to
be hanged.

On February 26th, an Imperial Ukase fixed May 10th as the date
for the Duma, the total number of members being 476, of which
412 would represent European Russia, exclusive of Poland.

On March 5th, the elections began among the peasants of the St.
Petersburg province.

On March 6th, an Imperial Manifesto was published reorganizing
the old Council of the Empire, and further limiting the powers
of the Duma. The Council of the Empire was now to consist of
an equal number of elected and nominated members. The elected
members would represent the Zemstvos, the Holy Synod, the
Universities, the Bourse, the nobility, and the landowners
of Poland. Both the Council and the Duma would be convoked
and prorogued annually, and have equal legislative powers in
introducing bills, but every measure must be passed by both the
Council and the Duma before it could be laid before the Tsar.

When the Duma was not sitting the Committee of Ministers might
conduct legislation not involving any change in the fundamental
laws of the Empire.

The _Molva_ (formerly the _Russ_) published an account
of terrible tortures inflicted on Vincentz Siecska and Edmund
Kempski by M. Grun, chief of detectives in Warsaw, to make
them confess and sign false documents. This paper had already
told how two officers had tortured and outraged the schoolgirl
Spiridonova arrested for complicity in the assassination of the
Tamboff Vice-Governor. One of the officers was afterwards found
shot on the road.

On March 19th, Lieutenant Schmidt was shot.

On March 20th, the Mutual Credit Society’s Bank in Moscow was
forcibly robbed of £85,000.

At this time several battalions and mountain batteries were
sent into Finland as though for the reconquest of the country
and the destruction of its restored liberties. They were,
however, withdrawn, probably owing to representations made to
the Government that an attack upon Finland at such a moment
would prove an obstacle to the much-needed loan from France and
England.

The victory of the Constitutional Democrats in the Duma
elections from March 28th onward, was greeted with satisfaction
by nearly all the Progressive parties. At Odessa on April
1st, all the sixty-six candidates selected by the workmen
of sixty-six factories were imprisoned, and the authorities
directed the workmen to choose reactionaries.

The remains of Lieutenant Schmidt were dug up and scattered in
the sea because his grave was becoming a place of pilgrimage.

On April 4th, it was found that the Constitutional Democrats
had carried every electoral seat in St. Petersburg, even in the
official and commercial wards. The _Molva_ called upon
France not to defy the verdict of the Russian nation by helping
the present Administration with money. The paper was again
suppressed, but reappeared as _The Twentieth Century_.

M. Kokovtsoff again set out for Berlin and Paris in the hope of
negotiating a new loan.

At the elections in Moscow nearly all the 40,000 electors went
to the poll, and 70 per cent. voted for the Constitutional
Democrats.

About April 10th, Germany refused to share in the proposed
new Russian loan, chiefly owing to Russia’s service to France
during the Algeciras Conference. Germany already holds about
£140,000,000 of Russian stock.

France, however, agreed to advance £46,000,000 out of a new
five per cent. loan of £90,000,000 at the price of 88. Austria
advanced £6,600,000, Holland a little over £2,000,000, and
England a little over £13,000,000.

The arrangement was concluded at Easter, April 14th, and nearly
sufficed to cover Russia’s deficit for the current year. The
Russian Minister of Finance proposed to meet the increased
charge by further indirect taxation, especially on gas,
electricity, and candles.

On April 23rd, a most brilliant rescue of ten “politicals” was
effected at Warsaw. Some men in police-officers’ uniform called
at the Pavia-street prison in the early morning and demanded
the prisoners in order to transfer them to the Citadel, which,
as I have explained above, stands besides the Vistula a short
distance north of the town.

Later in the day the police van and driver were found in a
garden upon the outskirts, the prisoners having escaped together
with their comrades who carried out the rescue.

On May 1st, it was definitely announced, not for the first
time, that Witte had resigned his position as President of the
Committee of Ministers, and an entire change of Cabinet was
rumoured.

For about a week before this, rumours of Father Gapon’s death,
either by assassination or suicide, had become frequent and
fairly definite in Russia. His fate was attributed to the double
part he had long been accused of playing as an agent of the
Government. The St. Petersburg press have published an anonymous
pamphlet received from Berlin, in which the treacheries are
enumerated for which it was said he has been condemned and
executed.

On May 2nd, M. Durnovo, with the approaching Duma in view, sent
instructions to the Governors of the Provinces to prevent the
peasant delegates from travelling with Constitutional Democrats.
News from Poland reported the election of the National party’s
candidates.

On May 4th, Count Witte, ex-Prime Minister, was thanked and
decorated, and M. Durnovo resigned the post of Minister of the
Interior for that of Secretary of State, retaining the dignity
of Senator and member of the Council of Empire. M. Goremykin,
an expert in agrarian and peasant questions, was appointed
Premier, and the opening of the Duma was announced for May
10th. The Congress of Constitutional Democrats assembled in St.
Petersburg, have published the programme of their party.

On May 6th, Admiral Dubasoff, Governor-General of Moscow was
wounded by a bomb when returning from the Uspenski Cathedral.
The attempt took place outside the carriage entrance to the
Government House in Moscow. The bomb-thrower is supposed to have
been killed by the explosion. Partial strikes in Poland, Kieff,
Moscow, and St. Petersburg were reported, and agrarian disorders
said to continue.

General Jeoltanowski, Governor of Ekaterinoslav, was
assassinated by six unknown men, who fired their revolvers
at him and then escaped. The station of Schlok at the Tukkum
Junction was attacked by fifteen armed men, who killed five
officials and ransacked the safes of post-office and station.

On May 7th, the Tsar issued a Ukase affecting the Fundamental
Laws, and a meeting of the Imperial Economic Society of St.
Petersburg was dispersed by police.

May 8th, the New Fundamental Laws, the last work of the
Witte-Durnovo Cabinet and the old State Council, were published.
These laws, which the Duma cannot alter, proclaim the unity of
the Empire and the language, including Finland in the Empire
under special institutions, but making no mention of Poland.
The powers of the Tsar as Autocrat were to include the sole
right of proposing changes in the Fundamental Laws to the State
Council and the Duma; also the right of veto, the appointment
of the Executive, the ministers and the judges, the decision of
peace and war, and the command of the army and navy. Freedom
of speech, meeting or union, together with inviolability of
person and house were granted, but only “under established
legal conditions.” Ordinary laws could not be passed without
the consent of the Tsar and both Houses, but the Tsar might
promulgate special laws and declare various parts of the Empire
to lie under martial law. The Council of Ministers, too, might
promulgate special temporary laws, with the Tsar’s consent. The
State Council and the Duma were to meet annually, but could be
dismissed at any time by the Tsar. Their powers were not to
extend over the public debt or over the expenses of the Court
and Ministry. War taxes might be raised without the consent
of the Duma, and so might foreign loans. The decrees of the
Tsar were to be countersigned by one of the ministers, but as
each minister was declared responsible to the Tsar alone, this
concession was meaningless.

It was at once obvious that the elective body being deprived
of all control over the expenditure, the Executive and their
action, hardly any democratic element was left in the new
Constitution, except the right of protest without the power to
make the protest effective.

Some of the new ministers were officially announced: M.
Stishinsky, for Agriculture; M. Stcheglovitoff, for Justice;
M. Kaufman, for Education; and M. Schwanebach as Imperial
Comptroller.

A number of repressive measures against workmen have been
initiated by the management of various State works in St.
Petersburg, and the workmen have laid their grievances before
the peasant deputies in St. Petersburg who meet daily at the
house of M. Aladin.

Another meeting of the Economical Society to consider the
agrarian question, which was attended by many members of the
Duma, was dispersed by the police. M. Stolypin was named as
Minister of the Interior, and M. Alexander Isvolsky, Minister at
the Danish Court, has been recalled to take office as Minister
of Foreign Affairs in M. Goremykin’s Cabinet. M. Isvolsky is
credited with a sound and independent judgment. He was a strong
opponent of the war with Japan.

On May 9th, the Congress of the Constitutional Democrats
closed with an impassioned speech from Professor Miliukoff,
who declared the publication of the decree on the Fundamental
Laws to be a direct challenge to the nation. A resolution was
unanimously adopted declaring the Fundamental Laws to be a
flagrant violation of the Manifesto of October 30th.

A Peasant Parliamentary Party formed, numbering 129 members, all
in favour of the transfer of lands to the agricultural labourers.

The Tsar and Tsaritsa with their children left Tsarkoe Selo for
Peterhof.

The opening of the Duma was declared a public holiday, but all
demonstrations except religious services and street decorations
were strictly forbidden. The Semenovsky Regiment, so active in
the Moscow massacre, were chosen to guard the Palace, and all
the hospitals ordered to prepare for eventualities.