Chapter I: The Russian Enigma

The misfortunes of Russia and the disillusions of the nations that trusted her promises and relied on her help are attributed to no one circumstance more markedly than the failure of the interested statesmen to grasp the purely predatory character of the Tsardom, its incompatibility with the politico-social ordering of latter-day Europe, the pressing necessity on the one hand and the almost insuperable difficulty on the other of remodelling and adapting it to its European environment. It is no exaggeration to affirm that the history of drifting Europe--excluding the Central Empires--during the past quarter of a century, and of the outbreak of the awful struggle at its close, is the story of a tissue of deplorable mistakes--a tragedy of errors culminating in a catastrophe. The delusion of statesmen about the Tsardom, its origins and its drift, are the least blameworthy. For Russia is a cryptic volume to Slav nations, and to Britons a book with seven seals. Her own ruling class constantly misread the workings of her peoples' mind. Even the close observer who classified the strange phenomena that unfolded themselves to his eye seldom traced them back to their causes or realised their various bearings. Between Slav and Saxon, in particular, there yawns a psychological abyss wide enough in places to sunder two different species of beings not merely two separate races. And of all Slav peoples the Russian is by far the most complex and pulling. He often raises expectations which a supernatural entity could hardly fulfil, and awakens apprehensions which only a miracle could lay, yet somehow neither hopes nor fears are realised and, as they fade away, one wonders how they could ever have been entertained. In truth, Sarmatia is a {2} realm of illusions where the goddess Maya is hardly less active or thaumaturgic than in the Buddhist world of shows.

Unsophisticated foreigners are bewildered by the contrasts, subtleties, and contradictions that mark the thoughts and acts of the articulate, to say nothing of the inarticulate, Russian nation. In vain they strive to disentangle the skein of events and episodes in which these utter themselves. Nor do they perceive their own errors until it is too late. It is a noteworthy illustration of the easy-going ways of the Entente Governments that they should have accepted as adequate accounts of things Russian the fanciful pictures reflected in the minds of foreigners ignorant of the country, the history, the people, and the language. It fell to my lot more than once to hear the wildest theories propounded by responsible ministers during the war on the strength of such misleading reports, and I have seen political measures adopted which were bound to defeat the objects for which they were planned.

Even Russian statements have to be placed, so to say, in quarantine and truth sifted carefully from fiction. I remember an interesting illustration that came under my cognisance one evening soon after the promulgation of the Constitution of October, 1905, which was extorted from the Tsar by Count Witte. The press was discussing the question of how the future Duma should be elected, by direct universal, equal, and secret suffrage or otherwise. I was sitting in the Winter Palace with Witte when Count B. and Prince U., both of whom were afterwards elected to the first Duma, were announced. They were shown in. "We are come," said Count B., "from the country where we enjoy the confidence of the peasant population, and we wish you to know that we are absolutely opposed to direct universal suffrage. Absolutely. Under no conditions will we accept it, because it would lead to the ruin of the Empire. So true is this and so firm is our resolve to save the country from this calamity that if you make the suffrage direct or universal we two will march to Petersburg at the head of our armed peasants and will fight until the decree is rescinded. Please communicate this respectfully to his Majesty."

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Witte calmed the fiery passion of the count and the two visitors left. A fortnight later there was a dispute among the cabinet ministers on the subject of the suffrage. The Tsar displayed his interest in the matter, and Witte decided to send for Count B. and Prince U. and to give them an opportunity of laying before the sovereign the views of the population in that province of Central Russia. But when they arrived he stood aghast to hear Count B. inveigh in unmeasured terms against those short-sighted individuals who dared to restrict the suffrage and deprive the Tsar's loyal subjects of their right to vote for, or against, a candidate. "But," expostulated Witte, "was it not you who fourteen days ago said the very opposite and threatened to march on the capital at the head of the armed peasants if we enacted what you now demand?" "Yes, yes, I know all that. But during that fortnight I have been among the peasants and asked them for their views. And what is more, I can tell you that most Russians of the intelligentsia are of the same mind. And I am anxious to tell his Majesty how they think and feel on the subject."

As I was very well acquainted with Count B. I took him aside and taunted him with his sudden change of front, but he defended himself, urging quite seriously, "Most of my friends are for universal suffrage. So is the general public. Surely that is a good reason for yielding to the consensus of opinion." Down to the Revolution Count B. played a prominent but not a helpful part in Russian politics.

The struggle which, since the year 1904, has been going on in the Tsardom was so tremendous, the interests involved were so many and mixed, and the vicissitudes of the contest so frequent and sudden, that to be understood even approximately they need to be approached from more than one angle. The analyses made by the Russian people themselves, which are among the most instructive, are not by any means the most trustworthy. For class misunderstands class hopelessly. Indeed, the extent to which Russian observers have gone astray in their appreciation and forecast of events and situations, and in their interpretation of the nation's ideas {4} and aspirations, would astonish the reader if it could be set forth in detail. A few of the more striking instances may here suffice.

In the 'seventies the two main parties that advocated a revolution were anxious to get hold of the emancipated peasants and to energise them. But they had no knowledge of the people, whose soul was, to use a Russian saying, a dusky forest. They agreed, therefore, that their best plan would be to merge themselves in the peasantry, to live the unenviable life of the tiller of the soil, and to interest them actively in the upheaval that would bring about the millennium. Representative men and women of all the "intelligent" classes accordingly swelled the ranks of these apostles, and with alternating self-denial and self-indulgence, devoid of measure, self-discipline, and coherency, took to the life of squalor and hardship to which the _mooshik_[1] has for ages been inured and diversified it by bouts of looseness and back-sliding. Adoration of the people whom they hoped to indoctrinate and inspire was the new religion which the "intellectuals" preached and for a time endeavoured to practise. They looked upon the nation as a body mystical, somewhat as Roman Catholics regard their Church, but they went further than the Roman Catholic and worshipped the object of their veneration, sacrificed their ease to it, and in some cases died for it. Yet they were aggressive atheists withal, and atheists who took their dogmatic negation second-hand from foreign writers without verification or study. With no attainable goal, no lode star in their strivings, no inspiring dogma to sustain them, no cleanliness, moral or ethical, in their habits, with hardly a trace of conscience and no sense of individual duty,[2] they fancied that having fashioned a deity they could yoke it to their char-à-banc and drive to a marvellous Utopia. Everybody who disagreed with them was anathema, and even those who were not actually with them were under their ban. For they were the most intolerant of despots. My friend Leskoff, one of Russia's most gifted novelists, whose politics were colourless {5} rather than reactionary, was systematically ignored by them, and none of the Liberal reviews or newspapers would dare to publish a favourable notice of his works. Vladimir Solovieff, Russia's unique philosopher, was sneered at as a visionary, and Dostoyeffsky set down as an obscurantist, because they reproached those self-made missionaries with harbouring a fundamentally false idea of the Russian people and with being ignorant of its aims and aspirations. These courageous writers added that it was mischievous presumption in men of unclean lives, changeful purpose, and misty notions of science to hope to bring about the transfiguration of the masses and lead them to an enchanted, unpromised land.

After a long series of disillusions, rebuffs, and humiliations, the zeal of the revolutionary _Narodniki_[3] cooled. They were forced to the conclusion that their reading of the peoples' strivings was wrong, that their own impulsive action was distinctly baleful, and that the success of the cause for which they had sacrificed so much must lie in other directions.

Years after,[4] my friend Witte, together with several of his colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first Duma, fell into a like error. Regarding the peasants as the most conservative element in the Empire he gave them the preponderance in the Chamber and then found that he had wholly mistaken their temper and misinterpreted their aims. The mistakes made by the Kadets[5] ever since they organised their party were equally glaring and much more sinister. More than once this influential party had their own object and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their reach, but by misreading the character of their people and shaping their tactics congruously with this false conception they forfeited their chances. The first of these missed opportunities occurred immediately after Count Witte had jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power and convoking a representative assembly.

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Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate aim was to establish on a solid basis constitutional government of a kind adapted to the nation's needs as he understood them, and he agreed with me in thinking that to give the peoples of Russia universal suffrage and parliamentary government, such as obtains in Britain, Belgium, and Italy, would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef and plum pudding. A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most German, constitution, but without universal suffrage, seemed to him to meet the case adequately. But he could not hope to carry his programme without the support of public opinion, and public opinion, as he well knew, was eager for a democratic regime to be instituted at once and was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the Russian principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf. He requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the Jews, and to endeavour to secure their support. I was empowered to dangle before their eyes the perspective--which was no will-o'-the-wisp--that the power which his health would not allow him to retain more than eight or ten months would immediately pass on to them and that they would thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having thrown open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed democracy.

I first addressed myself to the Jews, some among whom a couple of months before had assured me that they would accept gratefully a representative chamber, even if its functions were circumscribed, provided it was a viable organism of growth. But now scarcely had I opened my mouth when I received the emphatic answer, "No. The Jews will give no support to Witte. He is not their man. He is a mere bureaucrat, and no bureaucrat can play the rôle of reformer." Thereupon I tried suasion and held up before the eyes of the Jewish leaders the prospect of a Liberal cabinet after their own heart taking over the seals of power from Witte within a twelvemonth. This outlook soothed the hearts and sweetened the words of my friends, but their message was still a refusal, only it now ended with the words, "If Witte {7} had made his proposal sooner--it might have met with a different reception. But now--now the Jewish cause is indissolubly bound up with the revolutionary Bund. The Jews will owe their emancipation to force, and they will see to it that the force is sufficient to burst their bonds and give them all their rights." "And if they fail and _pogroms_ recommence will the condition of the Jews be better?" I asked. "That is an unlikely supposition, in the Russia that has received the October Manifesto. Anyhow we are willing to run the risk."

I next went to the Liberals, who afterwards became the Kadets, and made my proposals to a group including MM. Petrunkevitch and Roditcheff. The conversation moved over the same lines as when I had reasoned with the Jewish leaders, with this difference, that the Liberals were more curious and asked for greater details. They finally said, "Witte is insincere. He is a bureaucrat. He is playing for his own hand. He flatters now the Tsar and now the intelligentsia. He has no programme; if he had, you would be able to unfold it even though he might not be able to publish it. You cannot give us any details. Therefore we will not support him. Let him resign and people may believe in his sincerity." "He will resign after the loan is floated next spring," I said. "And if in the meanwhile you do not support him, you will then have reaction." Never shall I forget the explosion of laughter produced by my words. "Dr. Dillon, we thought that you, at least, knew Russia well enough to grasp the fact that the days of reaction are over. Henceforth a reactionary movement in Russia is inconceivable." "If your assumption is correct," I retorted, "your decision is statesmanlike": and I took my leave and went back to the Winter Palace to carry the fatal message.

Witte, when I delivered the answers, said, "I am not altogether surprised that the Jews have thrown in their lot with the revolutionary gang, but I am pained. They received provocation enough to make them impatient, but none the less they are only making bad worse. They cannot win by force because the army is on the other side. As for the Liberals they are a conceited, short-sighted, unpractical lot. {8} You who know the situation are aware that I cannot stand the strain of office much beyond April next, when I hope to float the biggest loan recorded in history. After that I would have retired in favour of the Liberals. But if in the meanwhile they are against me I shall be thwarted and they will not be benefited. What fools they are! They are of the same clay as the men who made away with Alexander II. on the day when he had signed the decree promulgating a constitution. As for reaction, if only they knew how the high priests of the reaction are weaving their spells and uttering their incantations in the palace even now, and how impatient the Emperor is to give them their innings, salutary fear of the reaction would, of itself, have sufficed to convert the Liberals into supporters of my cabinet. But we shall all see how their attitude works out--and then the experience will be of no avail. It is an awful tragedy!" Not only did the Kadets not support Witte's domestic policy, but a number of their adherents repaired to Paris and endeavoured to dissuade the French government from advancing the money demanded by the Russian Premier! And the Jews played the same game in Berlin. On the part of candidates for power these tactics are unintelligible to the Western mind.

In the following summer those same Liberals, who had since formed themselves into a parliamentary party under the name of "Kadets," gave further proof of their lack not only of political sense but also of practical acquaintance with the bulk of their own people. They publicly promised the land to the peasants, whetting appetites and stirring up tumultuous passions which made the country deaf to the finer vibrations of the political voice, and ended by swamping all political issues and their exponents. It was the evocation of a spirit which they were unable to lay. Again, when the first Duma was dissolved by a quaking cabinet and an irresolute Tsar who had decided to entrust the reins to the Kadets, these amazing tacticians fled to Vyborg in Finland, set the imperial decree at naught, and threatened the government with penury, confident that the nation, whom it exhorted to pay no taxes, would make good the threat at any {9} and every cost. But this draft on the peoples' devotion was dishonoured. Taxes were collected as successfully as before, and the main results produced by the audacious move were the elimination of the Kadets from the ranks of candidates for the government which was about to have been handed over to them and the disqualification of some of their best men for seats in the Duma.

Finally it was the Kadets and their parliamentary friends who, when the March revolution of 1917 was in progress, weakly acquiesced in the abolition of the monarchy and the extinction of the Duma, reckoning upon the self-discipline and moderation of an anarchist people which acknowledged no restraints and knew not what measure means. But they knew not what they did.

It is hardly too much to affirm that if the parliamentary parties had understood their own people better they would not have swept away the regime root and branch, dissolved the Duma, which might conceivably still have been able to keep the various Russians together, and broken up the greatest political community in Europe.

The history of the revolution of 1917 in its technical aspect is the tale of a fatal psychological error and its sequel. It was the currency of the notion that the peasant was aware of the causal nexus between his situation of inferiority in the community and the vicious system of governance under which he lived that induced in the Duma leaders the belief that the political revolution which they were shaping and circumscribing would be welcomed as a boon by the masses. In itself the change as projected by them would have been beneficial. To free the country from the parasitical bureaucracy, to restrict the power of the Tsar, establish parliamentary government, and admit the people to a share in public affairs proportionate to their mental and moral equipment were among the aims of the Duma leaders. But the whole conception, elaborated by lawyers and professors, bore the stamp of the legal rather than the psychological temper. It lost sight of the peculiar workings of the peasants' psyche and of the narrowness of their intellectual {10} horizon. Its authors forgot that hardly one of the institutions of the Empire, economic or political, was rooted in its essential fitness and utility, and that the function by which society can assimilate what is helpful and reject what is pernicious was long since atrophied. They had no inkling of the decisive fact that the predatory character of the State had long since been assimilated by the people who were accustomed to rob the land of its fertility and were impatient to deprive the nobles of the land.

The second error flowed from the first. It was taken for granted that the masses were self-disciplined enough to accept just what was offered them and be content with that. On this assumption, and by way of winning their support, the Duma leaders promised them the land belonging to the great landowners provided that they would wait until the Constituent Assembly should meet and lay down the conditions of expropriation and transfer. But the Bolsheviks at once outbid the Kadets, took the people into partnership with themselves, and practically offered it the situation of national parasite from which the bureaucracy had just been ousted, the only difference being that the body on which the people was to prey was that of the well-to-do section of the community. This aspect of the revolution--which has also other and nobler facets--may be aptly described as "the democratisation of parasitism which had theretofore been confined to the administration and its branches."[6] A glance at the work of spoliation by beings who display no trace of conscience or moral sense, who pounce like beasts upon their prey, torturing and slaying the defenceless and the well meaning, deaf to pity and heedless of the morrow, will suffice to justify that somewhat hard definition. It is owing to the characteristics enumerated that "Russia is a poor country in spite of her riches, uncultured notwithstanding her talents, an amazing mixture of the sublime and the savage in which, however, the simply civilised element is wholly absent."[7] It is a land of cultural no less than climatic extremes.

[1] One of the Russian words for peasant.

[2] Cf. _Landmarks_, 1910.

[3] So called from the word _Narod_, a nation.

[4] In 1905.

[5] Constitutional Democrats.

[6] Cf. _Gazette de Lausanne_, 7th January, 1918.

[7] _Ibidem._

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