Chapter V: Part 5

The brutal persecutions of the Jews under Plehve have involved unspeakable misery; but a beneficial effect also, not to be underestimated. The entire public sentiment of Russian society has become friendly to the Jews. In numerous conversations with inhabitants of the Russian capitals, including people from all strata of society, only once have I heard a word expressing ill-feeling towards the Jews. The speaker in this instance was a colonel of Cossacks, on his way to the front, who assured me in all sincerity that the English are a "vile Jew-nation"! With this exception, all protested against regarding the Russians as enemies of the Jews. The Jews are victims of the murderous Russian politics, like the Poles, the Ruthenians, and the Liberals. This appeared to be the generally accepted idea. The natural consequence of this idea is that the Jews have the sympathy of all parties opposed to the government. While the officials are bringing deliberately false accusations against the Jews, unofficial Russia sides with the latter. The situation is similar to that which existed in the West before the emancipation of the Jews, when Liberal political doctrine was directly inculcating philo-Semitism; the only difference being that among the people of Russia no anti-Semitic feeling whatever exists. Therefore, during any crisis of assimilation consequent upon emancipation, there would be little fear of an anti-Semitic reaction such as that experienced in the West.

There is one class which is pleased by the perpetual hunting-down of the Jews by the _Novoye Vremya_ and its offshoots in anti-Semitism. This is the class of small tradesmen, notorious for their dishonesty, who are thankful that they are protected from Jewish competition. For the rest, all Russia wishes the repeal of the laws enacted in restriction of the Jews.

The government, of course, endeavors to persuade foreigners that to permit the Jews to settle beyond the pale would mean the Judaization, and the consequent ruin, of all Russia. This assertion is made in spite of their knowledge that the contrary is true. A memorial in regard to the Jews, written in 1884 by Ivan Blioch, and published by the ministry of the interior--_The Jewish Question in Russia_--shows by statistics that the greatest percentage of pauper peasants is found in the Jewless governments of Moscow, Tula, Orel, and Kursk; that the prosperity of the peasantry in the governments within the pale is incomparably higher than in the territory from which the Jews are excluded. The arrears of revenue in districts in which there are no Jews are three times as great as in the pale. As a result, the land purchased by peasants by means of the peasants' banks is much greater in extent in the latter than in the former districts. The usurers who advance money to the peasants at from three hundred to two thousand per cent. are without exception Christians. The assertion that the Jews tempt the people to drunkenness stands morally upon about the same level as the statement that the Jews are never found engaged in agriculture. The latter statement is true, but only because the Jews are not allowed to live in the open country. The government has now monopolized the retail sale of spirits, thus driving out of the business thousands of Jewish tavern-keepers. This measure, however severe, is viewed with satisfaction by intelligent Jews as tending to improve the morals of the Jewish masses.

All these are only idle excuses in justification of the policy of extermination of the Jews, which policy has in reality a quite different cause. Three conditions have already been cited, any one of which is alone sufficient to place the unhappy Jews of the great prison state in an especially bad situation, and also to expose the régime in all its depravity--a depravity almost incomprehensible to western Europeans.

The first is the great influence which the rich Russian usurers possess with the authorities. If Shylock is angry with the merchant prince of Venice because the latter lends money without interest, in Russia the rôles of the contestants are reversed. The Jew also exacts usury where he can--no one in seriousness pretends to be surprised at this, in view of the deliberate demoralization of the pale--but in comparison with his Russian colleague he keeps within modest limits, being indeed compelled to do so by his circumstances. He necessarily prefers to keep the debtor solvent rather than to drive him out of house and home, which he, the Jew, moreover, cannot buy in. The Russian usurer, on the other hand, is accustomed to show no mercy, because he calmly seizes the land of his victim, and either leases it or sells it at a profit or adds it to his own property. For a great part of the Russian usurers belong to the guild of village usurers. These people influence the under authorities with bribes, while the great speculators, the millionaire usurers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who likewise would have to fear the milder methods of their Jewish competitors, are powerful enough to influence senators and ministers according to their wishes. The Russian usurer, therefore, is the first complainant and enemy of the Jews.

The second and more powerful cause is the spirit of Pobydonostzev, the fanatic of uniformity. Combining in himself the qualities of jurist, theologian, and scholastic, he is too barren in mental powers to master the conception of a state which should take into account any diversity of creed or race. Above all, however, any toleration would undermine the three pillars upon which alone his conception of the Russian empire can rest--autocracy, orthodoxy, and Russianism. For the preservation of this Asiatic, uniform, absolutist régime, or, better, of the omnipotence of hierarchy, it is above all necessary to keep the people in absolute subjection. This, again, is possible only when every chance of learning anything else than their own condition is closed to them. A prisoner who endangered the spirit of blind obedience by a tendency to dispute orders could not be tolerated in a prison. As little can the great Russian prison state endure men who might lead the prisoner to think whether he must be absolutely a prisoner. Of such thoughts, however, the Jews, who are subject to special taxation, are suspected above all others. Their criminality is certainly of the smallest; they are the most punctilious of tax-payers, and, moreover, the best-conducted citizens in the world. But they are--Heaven knows why--perhaps because of their Talmudic-dialectic occupation, perhaps also because as pariahs they have little cause to be enthusiastic over the ruling order--they are inexorably subtle critics of all existing things, and so could easily upset the simple minds of the Russian lower classes. That is the chief reason why they are surrounded by a cordon of plagues. The paternal precaution of the Russian government is of course not much wiser than the conviction so many mothers entertain of the unshaken faith of their children in the story that the stork brought the baby. Quite without Jewish criticism the Russian peasant, under the never-resting lash of hunger, begins to think and to grumble; and although his unruly sentiments express themselves chiefly in the specifically Russian form of the organization of religious sects, nevertheless each new sectarian shows a new desertion from Pobyedonostzev's ideal of a Russian subject. Upon the organization of sects, however, the Jews have of course no direct influence whatever.

The third cause of the persecution of the Jews is to be found in the Satanic brain of Plehve, who wishes to furnish to the humane Czar, and perhaps still more to the Czaritza, who has western European ways of thinking, an indication that without the Jews there would be no opposition whatever in Russia. For this purpose he not only has the Jews entered more strictly on the police-registers, if they are guilty of any political offence, such as being present in a forbidden assemblage, but he also directly provokes them, in order to drive them into the ranks of the revolutionaries and thereby to compromise the latter. In Hungary and Bohemia ritual murder cases were incited in order to give the Jews a lesson to remember, and to make them national--_i. e._, more Magyar or Czechic--in feeling, since they stubbornly persisted in remaining German. In Russia, however, they are driven into the camp of the revolutionaries, in order to extirpate the former and to cast suspicion upon the latter. Nevertheless, some governors, who in other respects readily comply with the directions given from above, yet dare to step in in behalf of the Jews, contrary to the measures appointed by higher authorities, as for example, Prince Urussoff, governor of Bessarabia, who is to be thanked that in spite of all the efforts of Krushevan, the creature of Plehve, no outbreaks of the mob against the Jews took place in Kishinef recently.

As personal but nevertheless effectual causes of the persecution of the Jews, the anti-Semitism of the dowager Empress and of the Grand-Duke Sergius, governor-general of Moscow, must be mentioned. Respectively brother and wife of Alexander III., they conservatively hold to his opinions. This unfortunate and narrow-minded man had been persuaded by conscience-smitten persons that Jewish army-contractors were the cause of the defeat of the Russians in the Turkish war; and it was as hard to get an idea out of his head as to get one in. The inclination of the Grand-Duke Sergius to torture human beings amounts to a disease. He can satisfy it most easily upon the defenceless Jews.

The final cause of the persecution of the Jews, and one which is regarded by many people as the weightiest, is the certain income which legislation against the Jews means for every unscrupulous official. Most of the laws passed against the Jews are quite impossible of execution, or are executed only in a very imperfect way, thanks to the corruptibility of the Russian officials. "Absolutism palliated by corruption"--this bitter saying fits the case of the Jews best. Yet what relieves the situation for them in a certain way renders it worse for them in another. It certainly is a question whether the ransom-money of one generation will not become the purchase-money of the next. The Russian bureaucracy will not be willing to renounce its income from bribes and extortions. Thus it prevents all legislative decrees in favor of the Jews. These poorly paid, much feared, but still despised officials are, in the inclined plane of their evil consciences, quite as much victims of the system as the Jews, but in a different way. We are all human, whether Christian or Jew, and in the long run, under the operation of the most depraved of all rules, neither the one nor the other can keep himself pure. The worst thing that has happened to the Jews, however, is not, as can well be understood, an occasional "pogrom" (riot), in which, to the indignation of all civilized mankind, defenceless people are slain and plundered by command of the authorities. The worst is the restriction to particular zones and to particular callings. That is systematic massacre, a deliberate policy of destruction and extirpation. Even if the misery of the ghetto has, thanks to the strict abstemiousness of the Jews, failed as yet to kill them in the way that the peasantry, weakened by alcoholism, are killed in the famine provinces, nevertheless the moral result is frightful. Even the iron family morality of the Jews is shaken in the western governments. A deplorable percentage of prostitutes is made up of Jewesses. Experience shows that sexual deprivation is the beginning of every other form of degeneration. Moreover, the matter does not generally end with the individual who sinks into prostitution. The ethical ideas of such a morally defective person spread contagion in a wide circle. Families are broken up, or unchastity makes its way into them. The whole conception of life becomes different when the chastity of women becomes an article of trade or an object of ironical scepticism. Still, in comparison with their environment even these Jews may be called chaste, for they are merely stained by the barbarism of the Orient. But it is, nevertheless, monstrous that in a Christian country the hard-won sexual morality of a part of the population, once gained, must be endangered only because malevolent politics will have it so. The moral purity of the Jews and of the Teutonic races has redeemed the world from the deep depravity of the Roman decadence. Now a Christian state policy destroys a part of the iron stability of this moral acquisition of humanity.

It is self-evident that whoever can tries to free himself from the misery of the ghetto. Even Russian legislation has left some small gates open, and through these the struggling Jews squeeze themselves with every exertion of strength and cunning. Then there ensues a battle between brutality and artfulness--one not lacking in elements of humor. The authorities, hostile to the Jews, try of course to prevent too many of them from escaping from the ghetto and from settling in cities which it is desired to keep as free from Jews as possible. The Jews, however, try again and again to evade the prohibitions and the illegally interpreted ordinances and to settle where there is a possibility of a means of livelihood. Such cities are, for example, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The martyrdom which Jews and Jewesses undergo in order to gain the right to stay in these cities borders on the tragic. A non-resident Jewess is not allowed to study in these places, but may live there as a prostitute. An innocent young girl wished to have herself registered as a prostitute, so that she might attend the university, never suspecting what formalities she would have to undergo in consequence. In course of the medical examination, however, the circumstances of the case were immediately discovered, and the young girl was punished for the attempted deception and sent away.

A well-known Orientalist, a man of seventy years, had business to execute in Moscow which he did not succeed in finishing before night. No hotel would have taken him in; and he could not endanger any of his friends, for if in the frequent nocturnal rangings of the police in Jewish dwellings a Jewish guest without a passport should be taken, the host would lose his right of residence. In his difficulty the old man asked a railroad official how he could pass the icy-cold night. The man gave him the good advice that he should seek out the only place where a man is permitted to take a room and spend the night without a passport--a brothel. Accordingly, this man of seventy, in order not to freeze, was obliged to pass the night in a room with a drunken prostitute, and sat until morning in a chair, praying. The man who related these facts to me was a Russian author widely known and honored.

A Jew who for five years has paid the taxes of the first guild in a municipality of the pale receives permission to leave the pale and settle elsewhere. He must, however, gain permission for each member of his family through the strictest formalities. Woe to him if a child has been born to him during that time! It cannot qualify, and it may easily happen that the father must return to the pale. A Jewish merchant of the first guild in Moscow tried to obtain permission to send such a child to school. Admission was refused, because he did not possess the necessary papers. The father appealed to the senate in St. Petersburg, and asked for provisional permission for attendance of his child at school until the passing of a judgment in that place. The minister of justice, Muraviev, however, entered a protest against this. Therefore the father was obliged either to employ private tutors or to let the child grow up without instruction.

Whoever works as assistant to a dentist, and has obtained a certificate, may open an office for himself. The only requirement for this is that it shall be well fitted up and that nobody shall sleep in it. This facilitation is granted because of the fact that in Russia there is a great lack of dentists. Yet a Jewish dentist went to a lawyer and complained that he had fitted up his office and had handed in to the police his request for leave to practise. The police waited three months, then came and explained that, since he had not practised his profession for three months, he must immediately leave Moscow. He was obliged to leave his house immediately, and wander about all night, because he could nowhere find lodging.

Another Jewish dentist, a woman, wished to take her examination. A certificate was demanded testifying to her political blamelessness. When she tried to obtain this it was refused her, since she had no right of residence there, and therefore could not demand a certificate!

The Jews meet these tricks of the authorities with tricks of their own. They pay for a dentist's certificate, fit up an office, and then go into trade in bed-feathers or calico. The police official who wishes to prove whether the dentist's profession is really practised has some ruble notes slipped into his hand. Very recently the Jews have found a means to become known as Christians without baptism, which they shun. Good-natured priests, who receive nothing at all for a baptism but a large price for a written declaration that X. Y. is an orthodox Christian, draw up such declarations. The unbaptized Hebrew comes as an orthodox Christian to Great Russia and carries on business, while the helpful priest receives a little income from him.

In general, the Jew must be able to pay; in that case life is not hard for him in Russia, where, as I have said, no anti-Semitic feeling whatever exists among the people, and the national characteristics of good-nature, of heartiness, helpfulness, and politeness make life easy and pleasant. But woe to the poor wretch who cannot pay at every step! Woe to the struggler who wishes to better his lot! Woe to the lover of justice who dares to fight for his rights or even for the public welfare! One of the special laws for the Jews is that any one may trample him and injure him unpunished. Of all the unfortunate subjects of the Czar, he is the most unfortunate. His intelligence, his sense of justice are offences against the sacred order of things, which demands stupidity and obedience. Thus exists the entirely incomprehensible condition that a great realm steers towards inevitable economic ruin for lack of economic intelligence, while it possesses five million born financiers, who in the lifetime of a man could change Russia into an economic world-power.

XVII

THE JEWISH QUESTION

A visit to Russia offers opportunity for an extremely interesting study. One may become acquainted with a rapid succession of towns where the population is almost entirely Jewish, or half Jewish, or to a large extent Jewish, and also with others in which residence is practically prohibited to Jews, which, therefore, to speak in anti-Semitic jargon, are almost "clean of Jews." In western Europe there is neither the one nor the other. It would be strange, indeed, if such ethnologically unique conditions offered to the observant spectator no disclosures which he seeks elsewhere in vain. In fact, I made in the cities free of Jews an observation which seems to me well worth imparting. The Jewish problem is nothing but a problem of relative overpopulation. The Jews are unendurable only where they are forced to compete with each other.

I made this observation in the following way: The Jewish proletarians of Poland impressed me as extremely repulsive. Their laziness, their filth, their craftiness, their perpetual readiness to cheat cannot help but fill the western European with very painful feelings and unedifying thoughts, in spite of all the teachings of history and all desire to be just. The evil wish arises that in some painless way the world might be rid of these disagreeable objects, or the equally inhuman thought that it would really be no great pity if this part of the Polish population did not exist at all. One is ashamed of such thoughts; nevertheless, that does not rid one's mind of them. Either we must renounce our ideas of cleanliness and honesty or find a great part of the Eastern Hebrews altogether unpleasant. Since the former is impossible, the latter will always be the case. Comparison with the still dirtier, still more immoral, still more neglected Polish proletariat does not drive away these thoughts. The Jew has, besides his filth and his craftiness in business, something else which calls to mind a nobility of civilization, so that he cannot be confused with any chance "lazzarone" or vagabond. He is not himself, but the caricature of a man of culture, and as such he produces an irritating effect.

In the cities free of Jews all this suddenly disappears. The Jews whom one has opportunity to meet there, well educated merchants of the first guild, incorporated artisans, and descendants of the Jewish soldiers of Nicholas I., are of quite another caliber from their Polish brothers. They are in no way to be distinguished from the Russians. One is continually prone to take the bearded Russian driver or merchant for a Jew and the intelligently keen Jew for a European. Then one learns that these Jewish lawyers, physicians, merchants, and artisans are treated by the Russians themselves as their equals in every respect; indeed, that the Jews enjoy a certain priority as being relatively more honest in their dealings. On the contrary, the Russians, when large numbers of them follow a single calling, as, say, in the great mercantile houses or the ranks of trade, show all the qualities which, to our Western minds, are stamped as specifically Jewish. They are outrageously obtrusive, and unreliable to the point of open deception. The German Hanse towns strictly forbade their merchants to give Russian Jews goods on credit, to lend them money, or to borrow from them, under penalty of immediate punishment.[1] In making the smallest purchase one finds that there is no question of a mercantile reality; that there is no fixed price, no keeping one's word, nothing that to us in the West has long seemed a matter of course. Just as in the Orient the Spanish Jews seem much more reliable and sterling than the rascally Greeks and Armenians, the Jews, when thinly scattered, gain by comparison with the native Russians. Now the Russian Jew is no Spaniard, with a proud Western past. He is altogether identical with the Polish Jew. His higher development cannot be accounted for by any ethnological difference. It is simply that under quite different economic conditions of existence he has become a quite different person. Dr. Polyakoff, of Moscow, is, in fact, another man from, say, his grandfather, Pollak, of Poland.

With these facts we now approach the real problem. The overcrowding of a calling engenders a competition in squalor among Christians as well as Jews, Aryans as well as Semites. The Jews, however, live in overcrowded callings all over the world, obeying historic laws of adaptation even where other callings, not overcrowded, are not closed to them. Hence we have the disagreeable phenomenon of the handing over of certain vocations to the Jews, which means nothing else than the injury of these callings by the trickery of the competition of squalor. Where no fetters are placed on the economic life, the healthy organism, in time, overcomes these local inflammations, as we may designate, by an expression taken from pathology, the influx of an abnormal number of cells of a certain sort to a place not intended for them. The crowding of the callings until self-support is impossible, the sinking of endurance in the overcrowded vocation, lead to a flowing off of the superfluous elements, and finally the whole organism has overcome the crisis of assimilation by forcing each particle where it is economically most valuable. In Germany the adjustment cannot be far away. The fact of the unheard-of economic growth during the past fifteen years, and the unusual increase of prosperity in all branches, show at least that Germany in its bare fifty years of Jewish emancipation has been in no way injured economically.

In Russia, also, the most expedient thing would evidently be simply to declare the removal of all restrictive laws, and to open to the Jews the interior of the country, as well as all occupations which they might wish to enter. The blessing to Russia would be immense, for the Jews, as thinking men and members of a race of ancient civilization, would bring to the Russian nation just what it lacks, an intelligent middle class capable of culture. The percentage of Jews would not be at all too high for Russia to carry without danger to the national character of society. To about one hundred and thirty million Russians there are about five million Jews--that is, barely four per cent. The "Jew-free" cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg show approximately this proportion, without the Jews being perceptible there. (It must be admitted that one of the comforts of these cities is that they are not, like Warsaw, for instance, overwhelmed with greasy, caftaned Jews.) If it could be brought about, therefore, that the Jews could be scattered throughout the whole kingdom in the ratio of four per cent., it would be an incalculable gain for all parties, and mankind would be rid of a problem which threatens the condition of our ethics and humanity the more the longer it exists.

Nevertheless, this is not to be thought of as an immediate possibility. The Russian government is not in the least gifted with magnanimity and farsighted patience, though the contrary is true of the Russian people, who are entirely free from anti-Semitic prejudice. For this reason any enlargement of Jewish rights of residence and vocation is prevented by the pointing out of the infection which would then threaten all cities and all lucrative occupations. The Jewish question will long remain unsolved, for whom could the Russian officials bleed if not the tormented, worried, defenceless Jews?

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Book of Documents of Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland_, Reval, 1852-64, Nos. 576-588, and _Documentary Business of the Origin of the German Hanse_, Hamburg, 1830, ii., No. ix., p. 27; both cited in Lanin _Russian Characteristics_, German edition, i., 142.

XVIII

PLEHVE

In the winter of 1881 there took place in Cracow one of those great socialistic trials with which in those days it was hoped in Austria to smother the socialistic movements which were imported by unscrupulous agitators. The trial is known in the annals of social-democracy as the proceedings against Warnynski and his accomplices. Thirty-five men were indicted, among them twenty Russians from Volhynia, mostly students of the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg, who had been arrested in the work of agitation in Galicia. The prisoners noticed during the proceedings that they were conducted one at a time, under one pretext or another, out through a special door of the courtroom, and they could discover no explanation of this queer course of action. Finally, one of them, in passing through the door, found the reason. It was a double door provided with a deep niche. In this niche was a Russian functionary acting as a voluntary menial to the Austrian police, and at the same time as a spy in the Russian service, who took this opportunity of taking cognizance of his own people among those who were led by. Of course the matter was not closed without the gravest insults to those caught, who could only be protected against further abuse by the court constabulary. And this police devotee, who showed such zeal in putting down international revolution, was no one else than the present all-powerful figure in Russia, his excellency the minister of the interior, M. von Plehve, at that time states-attorney in Warsaw. With this bit of sleuthing, which the Poles very well remember to this day, this fortune-favored statesman made his début in the world outside of Russia. He has remained true to his character. He is to-day, at the head of the greatest state in the world, nothing else but the greatest police spy in the world. His politics are stamped with all the characteristics of a police origin, police in the Machiavellian sense--_i. e._, crime in the service of order. In all Russia I spoke to no one who would have chosen for the description of Plehve's character any other expressions than those which serve for the delineation of the lowest level of moral existence. I shall here try to make a sketch of Plehve in accordance with the statements about him which were made to me with perfectly astonishing unanimity.

Justice must be done even the basest. It should be mentioned at the outset that in a land of universal venality the reputation of Plehve had this considerable advantage, he was said to be absolutely unbribable. That is a great deal, a very great deal, when one considers that in Russia certain legislative acts are quite openly traceable to the payment of this or that high functionary. Suspicion, which as a rule does not even spare princes, never once tainted him. But little account do the Russians take of this characteristic. Probably they would prefer it if his other evil traits were a bit softened by the vice of venality. For Plehve passes for something far worse than a spendthrift or a wasteling. He is a rascal without scruples, a political Sadist, a bloodhound, an accomplished deceiver; at the same time, a cynic entirely without heart, a "va banque,"[2] a swindler to whom a political career or the playing with human lives means nothing more than a pleasant nerve stimulant--in short, a tiger clothed in a human form. At the same time, he has the most charming manners, is delightful and entertaining, and possesses the most true-hearted face possible. His unbelievable falseness is the next thing about which all complain who have had doings with him. "Every word that he speaks is a lie," is the assertion which one oftenest hears about him. The criminal element in his tactics consists not only in the fact that he persuades the Czar that revolution is at hand, and keeps him in continual, nerve-killing anxiety by means of threatening letters, proclamations, and so forth, which he causes to be smuggled into the Emperor's pockets, but still more in the fact that he actually provokes disorders, in order to be able to use them as arguments and to strengthen his position, and in the further fact that he is continually discovering conspiracies and handling the supposed members in the most fearful way in order to prove his indispensability. The whole store of police tricks which have been played on despots in order to turn autocrats into willing tools of their Prætorians has been pillaged by Plehve in order to bring his system to a state of perfection. In particular the Jews and the Poles must suffer in order to contribute to the danger of the situation--_i. e._, the indispensability of Plehve. Not a soul in Russia doubts that the Kishinef massacres were the direct result of his commands; the cynicism with which he rewarded Krushevan, the leading agitator from Bessarabia, with which he took under his protection the agitator Pronin, who had been insulted by a congress of teachers, is a shameless acknowledgment of his deed, which, to say more, he only repudiates before foreign countries, not, however, before his confidants. He seizes upon every little thing in order to make some big affair out of it. In Warsaw the widows of the members of a committee which had collected money for a Polish hospital corps were stoned by students. Immediately was sent the telegraphic order to investigate the thing most thoroughly, and if those who were the sufferers had not refused all assistance to the police another couple of dozen would-be rioters would have been sent to Siberia, in order that the existence of a Polish revolution might be proved. A Russian editor, whose paper had been suppressed because of the publication of a revolutionary poem, sought audience of the head of the censorship at the ministry of the interior, in order to obtain permission for the reappearance of the paper. The chief of the department explained to the editor, according to a Russian nobleman, that if he should simply declare to the minister that the revolutionary poem had been smuggled into the paper by Jews, he would immediately obtain permission to publish his paper again! From a source whence I never should have expected such a statement, from a highly conservative aristocrat, an "excellency" in the service of the state, I received in all seriousness the information that only Plehve, in league with Alexeyev, had conjured up the war by holding off the Japanese, simply because in this way he would become so much the more indispensable. Nay, more, it was even indicated to me that the nihilists, who killed Alexander II. at the very moment when the proclamation of a constitution lay upon the table awaiting his signature, could not have found their way to the imperial carriage without help from the police. And the ally of Loris-Melikov, the man who had drawn up the plan, and who best of all knew how near its signature, which must be avoided, the proclamation was, was none other than Plehve! His instinct drove him to the ranks of the reactionaries, for there is little use for people of his caliber in a constitutional state. His anti-Semitic tendencies, which he naturally disavows to every Jewish visitor, are only assumed because people high in position and influence, like the empress dowager, Prince Sergius, and others of the generation of Alexander III., are fanatically anti-Semitic. So even this is not genuine in him. Nothing is but his theatrical ambition to assert himself as long as possible, and to have the nerve-tickling of a tight-rope walker who balances on his wire rope over fixed bayonets.

That is the picture of the minister of the interior as public opinion in Russia paints it. I must confess that the picture is as little to my taste as is the man. While the great Russian novelists are, above all, masters in the use of shades, political public opinion likes to work with the strongest colors, with bloody superlatives. Suspicious as the circumstances may be that not a soul in the broad Russian empire is inclined to say a friendly word for the ruling power of the time, yet the unprejudiced observer must reckon with the circumstance that even without a free press in Russia there is a certain uniformity of political opinion which can only be explained on the hypothesis of a certain uniform centre of opinion, many of whose statements are taken on faith by every one. I imagine that this centre is situated pretty high, perhaps in the immediate neighborhood of the Czar, and that the picture of each minister is sketched by his rivals, but, like every article for the masses, only in poster style, in striking words, very white or, oftener, very black. He, not a Russian and not a rival, who has not the same burning interest in getting rid of Plehve, will therefore do well to transpose this rascal from his supernatural atmosphere into an every-day one, and a somewhat different picture will result.

I think of it in this light: Plehve comes from a states-attorney and a police career. Some traces of this origin cleave to every one of like training. Judges who have been states-attorney are the terror of lawyers, because of their inquisitorial manner, and because of their inclination to see in every defendant a person already condemned. Furthermore, dealings with police agents are least of all fitted to cultivate scrupulousness. Let only Puttkammer's words be recalled, "Gentlemen do not volunteer for such services."[3] The continual fear of assassination, which is well founded in the case of the head of the Russian police--Plehve allows his expenditures for the guarding of his person to amount as high as eight hundred thousand rubles a year--does not conduce to making a man human; and, finally, all bearers of honors in Russia are cynics, because their existence is founded only on the mood of a single person, and their whole career is a game of hazard. In the case of Plehve and others there is this additional evil influence, that not being Russians--Plehve is a Pole, of Lettish-Jewish origin--they must distinguish themselves by special Russian Chauvinism in order to avoid suspicion. Plehve is not a great man, his whole ministerial career being devoid of a single noteworthy act. He is a successful official, who intends by every means to make himself felt in high circles, and who considers himself justified in countering the intriguing of his rivals by any or all the means customary in the land, and "Voilà tout." But, in general, love of truth is not a characteristic of so-called public life in Russia. Hence it would be unjust to count as a special crime Plehve's special falseness.

It must be conceded that even this picture is far from being a pleasing one. If to these features the proved fact is added that Plehve denounced to the governor-general, Count Muraviev, his own Polish foster-parents, who picked him up, so to speak, in the very street and raised him (Plehve was originally a Catholic), so that they were sent to Siberia in return for their kindness; that Plehve, therefore, began his career with a deed of infamous ingratitude and treachery,[4] then the black will be black enough to allow of passing over the remaining smirches in the picture of a monster.

But the most pitiful of all that I heard about Plehve's régime was the answer I received when I asked a man in a very responsible position whether better things might be expected when Plehve should be overtaken by his inevitable fate.

"No," the answer was; "deserved as such a fate will be, for us it will bring no help. Another man, that is all. Plehve is only the ideal required by the régime. A police state needs police natures, and always finds them. He has all the vices save that of corruptibility, but is by no means unique in the hierarchy of Russian officials. And it is far from probable that anything better would succeed him. If all Russia hopes [_sic_] that he will soon be annihilated, it is not because an amelioration of things is hoped for, but because some satisfaction is felt when one of these beasts meets his due. But a philanthropist and a friend of justice will be just as unlikely to be minister of the interior under an absolutism as he is to desire to be an executioner. Only another system can bring us other men. A reign of terror tolerates only hangmen."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] One who risks everything on one card.

[3] "Gentlemen geben sich für diese Dienste nicht her."

[4] See Struve's _Oswobozhdenie_.

XIX

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

It was perhaps not altogether accidental that one evening at a social gathering I was introduced to one of the foremost lawyers of St. Petersburg, whose biting sarcasm in discussing the events of the day immediately struck me, and aroused in me the desire to have a more serious talk with him. This was immediately granted with that amiability which is never wanting in the intercourse of Russians with foreigners. Subsequently I learned that I might congratulate myself, for that particular lawyer was said to be not only one of the keenest minds in Russia, but one of the men best acquainted with his country. Moreover, he was so overwhelmed with work that even greater men were often obliged to wait by the hour in his antechamber before they were able to gain admission. Indeed, the time fixed for our interview, near midnight, showed this to be the case. The conversation lasted until long after that hour, but I had no cause to regret the loss of several hours of sleep.

My host rose immediately and gave the inevitable order to bring tea and cigarettes. In a few minutes we were discussing the question which interested me most, as being the key to an understanding of all the other economic conditions of the country--namely, the question of the administration of justice in Russia.

"One circumstance makes it uncommonly difficult here to obtain justice," began the lawyer. "I refer to the strained relations between the bench and the bar. Here the judge is more hostile to counsel than is the case in other countries, and often enough he is inclined to make them feel his power. This is less serious in civil suits--in which the judge, after all, merely has to do with the parties in the case--than in criminal cases, in which the judge represents the authority of the realm towards the accused and his advocate. In such cases the defendant may easily pay the penalty of the animosity which the judge feels towards his counsel."

"What is the cause of this?"

"It has only too human a cause. It is not unheard of for a busy lawyer of reputation and good connections to earn thirty or forty thousand rubles a year, or more. Compare with that the wretched salaries of the judges; consider how costly living is here; imagine the continuous over-burden of work of the bench and the lack of public appreciation, and you will comprehend why our judges do not look at the world in general through rose-colored glasses, and particularly at the prosperous, well-situated lawyer."

"You say lack of public appreciation. Is the position of judge not an honorable one?"

"On the whole, no official in Russia is much respected. At the most he is feared. The most lucrative positions, however, are those of the administrative department and the police. In these branches are to be found the most rapid and brilliant careers, and therefore the sons of great families, in so far as they become officials, prefer them. The judge must work hard, and has small thanks."

"Does not this evil have a moral effect on the impartial administration of justice also?"

"You mean, in plain speech, are not our judges to be bought? Well, I must say, to the honor of these functionaries, that relatively speaking they constitute the most honorable class of all our officials, and that the majority of them are superior to bribery. To be frank, there is professional ambition enough; and the effort to please superiors is almost a matter of course, since the independence of the judges, which had brought us extraordinary improvement in the candidates for the office, has been set aside again."

"Your judges are not, then, independent and irremovable?"

"What are you thinking of--under our present régime? We do not wish independent judges. A minister of justice like Muraviev, who certainly constitutes the supreme type of all that is meant by the expression, 'A man of no honor,' is the strongest hinderance to justice. Therefore, a monetary acknowledgment to the whole senate is expected for each satisfactory judgment. We have such a case just now. Here you have a list of names of seven judges who were promoted out of turn by Minister Muraviev on consideration of the kind support which they gave to the Ryaboushinskys, the Moscow millionaires, against the Bank of Kharkov, which was their debtor."

"Will you permit me to make a note of this list?"

"Certainly. I am not the only man who has it."

I noted down the names Davidov, Sokalski, Vishnevsky, Laiming, Delyanov, Dublyavski, Podgurski. They were entered on a type-written sheet with the distinction and encouragement they had respectively received after a suit which brought a considerable profit to a Moscow millionaire firm.

"But you said," I objected, "that the judges are not open to bribery. Yet they performed an illegitimate service to millionaires."

"Certainly I said the judges are not open to bribery; but I did not say that of the minister of justice. On the contrary, I called him a man without honor in a place of the highest power."

"You mean, then, that he was paid for the judgment that was given in the interest of the millionaires?"

"Your astonishment only betrays the foreigner. Only the little debts of the honorable minister were paid off--good Heavens!"

"It is incomprehensible."

"On the other hand, the judge has everything to fear when he is not compliant. Do you suppose that a comedy of justice like that of Kishinef can be played with independent judges? And yet there are always heroes to be found who fear no measures, but administer justice according to their convictions. That is the astonishing thing, not the opposite, under a Muraviev-Plehve régime."

"Was it better, then, formerly?"

"It was, and would have become better still if our authorities had remained true to their mission of uplifting the altogether immoral people instead of corrupting them still further. In the system of Pobydonostzev, in which politics take the place of morality, no improvement is to be expected. You might as well expect fair play from the Spaniards of the Inquisition as here, where premiums are set upon all sorts of unwise actions, if only they seem to lead to the levelling of the masses, who are to be kept unthinking."

"You say the people are immoral?"

"They lack--above all things, the sense of justice. No one here has rights. No one thinks he has. The natural state of things is that everything is forbidden. A privilege is a favor to which no one has any claim. To win a lawsuit is a matter of luck, not the result of a definite state of justice. One has no right to gain his cause simply because he is in the right. As a consequence of this, it is neither discreditable nor disgraceful to be in the wrong. You win or lose according as the die falls. I will illustrate from your own experience. You were to-day in the Hermitage. At a certain door, before which stood a servant, you asked whether people were permitted to enter. The answer was not 'yes' or 'no,' but 'Admittance is commanded,' or 'Admittance is not commanded.' This spirit extends to the smallest things. That you keep your child with you and bring it up is not a matter of course, but you are permitted to have children and to bring them up--the latter, be it noted, only in so far as the police allow. If you should to-day suffer heavy loss by robbery or burglary, what should you do?"

"I should report the matter, of course."

"You say of course, because it is a matter of course to you that a crime reported should become characterized as a crime, because in a certain way you feel the duty of personally upholding law and order. When the same thing happens to me, a Russian, I must first conquer my natural tendency, and then after a long struggle I, too, will report the matter, because--well, because I, as a lawyer and a representative of justice, am no longer a naïve Russian, but am infused with the usual ideas of justice. The normal Russian exceedingly seldom reports a case to the police, because he absolutely lacks the conviction of the necessity of justice. When he says of anybody that he is a clever rascal, his emphasis is laid on the word clever, which expresses unlimited appreciation."

"That must make general intercourse exceedingly difficult."

"Certainly. To live in Russia means to use a thousand arts in keeping one's head above water. One never has a sure ground of law under his feet. Property both public and private is perhaps not less safe in Turkey than here. Have you heard of the great steel affair?"

"No."

"It is no wonder, for we do not make much ado about a little mischance of this sort. In that affair a capital of eight million rubles disappeared without a trace. It was invested in the coal and steel works. A grand-duke, moreover, was interested in the enterprise, Grand-Duke Peter Nikolaievitch. A license to mine iron ore on a certain territory for ninety-nine years had been obtained. A company was formed with a capital of ten million rubles. The grand-duke took shares to the amount of a million rubles. The enormously rich Chludoff put eight million rubles into the concern. French and Belgian experts were brought on special steamers; champagne flowed in streams. Of course the reports of the experts were glowing ones. But after three years there was of the eight million rubles, barely paid in, not a kopek more to be found. It had all been stolen. Likewise there was no ore or coal on the territory, nor had there ever been. No one went to law about the affair, so little sensation did it cause."

"When did this affair take place?"

"Between 1898 and 1901."

"And can your press do nothing to better this general corruption?"

"We have a saying, 'It is hard to dig with a broken shovel.' Talented people like ourselves soon learned from abroad the little art of corrupting the press. With a fettered press like ours, this is less difficult here than in other countries, where a paper respecting public opinion might under some circumstances be unreservedly outspoken. But why should a press with Suvorin and the _Novoye Vremya_ at the head, surpassing absolutely all records of baseness--why should such a press run the risk of bankruptcy? Moreover, you must always keep one thing in mind: a press may exert tremendous power by publishing a man's worthlessness, until he is made powerless in society; but since here notorious sharpers are readily accepted in the highest ranks of society, and even grand-dukes do not escape the suspicion of corruption, it does no one any harm to be reported as having dexterously spirited away a few hundred thousands."

"You say even grand-dukes?"

"--Are not safe from suspicion. I can personally testify that not one of them takes a ruble himself. But the persons who live by obtaining concessions for joint-stock companies, etc., know how to represent that they need considerable sums for the purpose of influencing the highest persons, the minister and grand-dukes. Hence arises this idea."

"And intelligent business men believe that?"

"Believe it? No one would understand the opposite. Imagine a scene in my office. A business man comes to me with a case. He inquires my fee. I say five hundred rubles. He asks what will be the expenses. I say a few rubles for stamp duties, etc. Then he becomes more definite. He means the _charges_. 'There are none,' I answer. The man of business rises, disappointed. 'Ah! so you have no influential connections?' I will not say that this happens very often with me; for the men who come to me once know what I can do, and what not, and what my practice is. The case is, however, characteristic. Outside the legal profession, which still lives on the tradition of the time of its independence, every one is open to bribery; and every one reckons with the fact."

"And no one is angry at open injustice?"

"What is injustice? Despotism of the great. We have been used to that for thousands of years and accept it like the caprices of fortune. The peasant makes no distinction between a hail-storm which ruins his crop and an authority who oppresses or injures him. There is no way of resisting either; for when one curses God, He sends greater misfortune; and when one disputes with the authorities, one is absolutely lost. 'Duck, little brother; everything passes'; that is the final conclusion of our wisdom. We are educated to it by inhuman despots and by an official service of thieves and debauchees. We lack, too, the sharply defined idea of ownership, in which the sense of justice, considered psychologically, has its root. You know that here the peasants own their own land only to an extremely small extent. The individual is merged and lost in the 'mir' (village community), where the trustee, the 'zemski nachnalnik,'[5] the village elder, and liquor rule. This _obshtchina_, communism, is the strongest fortress of reaction. No ray of enlightenment penetrates it. At the utmost, misery and ever-returning hunger produce finally a condition of despair in which the peasant is capable of anything except an action which might advance him in civilization. In the census of 1898 there were found villages where no one had any idea what paper is, and peasants who did not know the name of the Emperor. The 'mir,' moreover, is in its nature opposed to private ownership, and every discussion between the member of the village communism and the property-holder is artfully prevented by the scattering about of compulsory peasants. For property-owners are at present for the most part Liberal. The régime, however, stands or falls with the isolation of the peasantry from Liberal influences. For the peasant is not unintelligent by nature, and, if he is not prevented, he learns very quickly."

"That is also, then, one of the causes of the ill-treatment of the Jews?"