Chapter VII: Part 7

"What do you mean by 'everything'?"

"A constitution and freedom of the press. They do not even use the right to form scientific societies. _At present there is no studying done at our universities_; politics have swallowed up everything, and the radical element has seized the leadership completely. They hope in a few months, by means of demonstrations, and Heaven knows what fateful resources, to attain a constitution, and after that there will always be time enough for study. At present, study, too, would be treason against the cause of freedom. The universities are only political camps awaiting the call to arms and nothing more."

"But in this respect, at least, they must be glad of their independent university courts--that is, that at any rate they punish their youthful misdeeds more leniently than the police."

"No. In the first place, it is only disciplinary matters over which our court has jurisdiction; and then, in the second place, you forget that the students do not at all want to be mildly treated, but to be sacrificed."

"Of course. It is hard to reckon with motives that one scarcely understands. But one thing is still unintelligible to me. It cannot exactly be said that Russia is a radical country in the sense that the whole upper stratum is radical. How is it that the student body, which comes principally from this upper stratum, is so laden with revolutionary tendencies?"

"I might answer you in a French phrase, although it is not particularly flattering to us, 'Le Russe est liberal jusqu'à trente ans, et après--canaille.'[8] The Russian is absolutely _not_ conservative, not even the official. He can mock conservatism while seeking office, but in his own house he remains a free-thinker, and youth, which has not yet learned to cringe and hedge, blushes at the two-facedness of its parentage, and continually reveals the true attitude of the house. Then, with the exception of the high nobility, our whole landowner class is more than liberal. Moreover, from two to three hundred conservative students are to be found at each of the great universities, and they have formed a secret association for the protection of the _sacred régime_--and it is characteristic that the _Novoye Vremya_ was allowed to print the call to form this secret society, although here in Russia all secret societies are illegal."

"And are not these conservative students dangerous to their fellows?"

"Up to the present they have confined themselves to patriotic demonstrations. They might become dangerous if they once decided to go to lectures--not even then to their fellow-students, but to the professors, who have greater doctrinal freedom, and who also make use of the right to express their opinions, of course within the limits of their special subjects. [Shortly after this interview a professor in Kharkov who had expressed sympathy for the Japanese was actually informed against by the conservative students and disciplined by the authorities, a thing which led to great student demonstrations.] Moreover, there are special spies which keep watch over the professors and students, but luckily they are too illiterate to understand the import of what is said, and therefore can do little damage."

"Are the professors sufficiently in sympathy with each other for the formation of a university esprit de corps?"

"Most certainly. The common suffering, the fact that they are forbidden to take open part in politics draw them together. Where in other places rivalries and differences of opinion occasion dissensions, here there is to be found only one solid whole--oppression is the firm cement. And only in this way is it possible to make some resistance to the absolutism of the police. In _open_ resistance we are quite weak, yes, even defenceless, against the brutality of the régime, but in _passive_ resistance we are almost unconquerable because of our close contact with each other."

"Ah! And so here there is brought to my attention one of those subterranean sources of public opinion in Russia, which I have so long sought."

"Of course. The universities form at least one of the main channels."

"And you consider the next generation to be thoroughly impregnated with ideas of independence?"

"Thoroughly."

To the question with which I always parted from my authorities--that is, what he believed the immediate future contained for Russia--this professor, whose department I am not at liberty to indicate, but of whom I can say that he is particularly well informed, gave the following answer:

"We are exhausted. The transition to the financing of railroads, tariff legislation, the tightening of screws of taxation bring in money for a while, but no real power. We are on the brink of a crisis. I believe that the war will greatly accelerate and force us to discount our coupons.[9] Then, in my opinion, it cannot be long before a sort of national assembly is called. This is my belief and my hope. Conditions of excitement like the present ones at our universities cannot be long endured under any circumstances. In one way or another a change must take place, and we must hold fast to the hope of better things."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The Russian is liberal until his thirtieth year--and then he joins the rabble.

[9] Den Coupon zu kürzen.

XXIV

BEFORE THE CATASTROPHE[10]

"If you wish to have a striking evidence of the worth of our government, you need notice only one thing," said an entirely unprejudiced Russian to me one day. "We have as many questions as we have classes of population. We have a Finnish question, a Polish, a Jewish, a Ruthenian, and a Caucasian question. We have, besides, a peasant question, a labor question, and a sectarian question, and, moreover, a student question also. Wherever you cut into the conglomerate of the Russian population, lengthwise or crosswise, everywhere you strike conflicts, combustibles, and tension. Not a single one of the problems which may exist in organized states in general is solved, but every one has been made burning and dangerous through unskilful, brutal, and even malicious handling."

The man who spoke in this way was not a Liberal, but a Conservative aristocrat in the state service. I had reserved him for the end in my journey of research. After I had had conversations with high officials in the departments of education and of finance, with men like Prince Ukhtomski, with bankers and with lawyers, and had heard always the same story of the instability of things and the worthlessness of the régime, I turned to the friends who by their influence had smoothed the way for me everywhere, and said to them: "This cannot go on. I did not come to Russia merely to be shot, as it were, out of a pneumatic tube through a collection of Liberal and Radical malcontents. I do not wish to hear merely the opposition in Russia. You must gain access for me to some prominent Conservative also, one who stands on the basis of the present system, and who honestly and in good faith defends it. It need not be Suvorin or any other man of questionable honor, for I myself can apply Stahl's theories to Russian conditions. It must be a sincere, reputable, and sensible man with whom I can discuss the most widely different questions with or without an interpreter; either is the same to me."

My request was readily granted. A scholar admired almost to the point of worship, in whose house I had been entertained, gave me a letter to the Conservative aristocrat whose words I have quoted at the beginning of this paper. This letter I forwarded to the honorable gentleman in question, asking for an interview, and by return mail I received a reply stating that he would expect me that same afternoon.

I must confess that I anticipated this interview with some qualms. It was towards the end of my visit. The results hitherto obtained had the disadvantage of a certain monotony of sombreness, with, however, the advantage also that each succeeding interview only strengthened the impression gained from previous ones. Thus by degrees I had formed a very sharply defined image of Russian conditions--such an image as is pictured in the mind of the thinking Russian. Was this clear and distinct image now to be dispelled by the lye of this Conservative critic, and was I to lose the chief result of my journey, a confidence in the trustworthiness of the data hitherto accumulated?

I met the gentleman at his house at the appointed time, and learned at once that I had been especially commended to him. I therefore entered without hesitation upon the matter in which I was interested.

"I do not wish," I began, "to go through Russia in blinders. If your excellency, as a Conservative, will have the goodness to refute what I have heard hitherto, and will give me more accurate information, I shall be under great obligation."

"What have you heard?" asked the count.

"That Russia is starving, while the papers report a surplus in the treasury."

"That, unfortunately, is true."

"That your thinking people are in despair."

"Also true."

"That a revival of the Reign of Terror is to be feared."

"Equally true."

"That all Russia hopes the war will be lost, because only in that way can the present state of things be brought to an end."

"True again."

"That the present régime passes all bounds of depravity, and can be compared only with the Prætorian rule in the period of the decline of Rome."

"That understates the truth."

My face must have taken on a very strange expression during this brisk play of question and answer, for the count now took the initiative, and said:

"You are, I can see, surprised that I, as a Conservative and a state official, should answer in this way; but I hope you do not consider 'conservative' and 'infamous' synonymous terms. If you do not, you will not expect me to approve the régime of Plehve. That is not a Conservative régime. It is the régime of hell founded by a devil at the head of the most important department." (Here came the speech with which this paper began.) The count then proceeded: "Do not suppose that Russia is of necessity smitten with such serious problems. These questions are nowhere simpler than with us. We have no national problems like those of Prussia, for instance, or of Austria-Hungary, which are complicated by the fact that majorities and minorities are mixed together almost beyond separation. We have even in Poland almost no national aspirations regarding which we could not come to a peaceable understanding. Our nationalities live almost entirely distinct, in compact bodies side by side; even the Finns are politically separate. It would be an easy thing to make them all contented under just maintenance of the supremacy of the Czar. But the priestlike intolerance of Pobydonostzev has spread the idea in the world that all diversities of religion and speech must be ironed out with a hot flat-iron, even at the risk of singeing heads. Since then it is considered patriotic to repress men and convictions. For this business unclean creatures are to be found who make careers for themselves in this way; and their prototype is the tenfold renegade Plehve."

"Yet I cannot conceal my astonishment, your excellency, that you, as a Conservative, have this opinion of the system of Pobydonostzev."

"Why is that so illogical? Conservative thought is, above all, that of organic development. All violence is revolutionary in its essence, whether it serves reactionary or republican tendencies. The system of Pobydonostzev is revolutionary and reactionary. In his fashion Plehve, however, is simply a monstrous bill of extortion against the Czar as well as against the shackled nation."

"Your excellency of course refers to the idea that Plehve intimidates the Czar by threats of revolution?"

"That is not an idea simply; it is a fact, of which we have very definite information. But what not every one knows is the fact that we have no one but Plehve to thank for this war, which may be a catastrophe. He had a finger in all the manoeuvres of delay which provoked the Japanese to war, because he believed that he could no longer preserve himself in any other way than by diverting public attention from conditions in the interior, and by ridding himself of those who were dissatisfied with him into the bargain."

"How the latter?"

"You do not know? It is very simple. The first men who were sent to Asia were the Poles, the Jews, and the Armenians. Among our troops the Poles were five times as largely represented, and the Jews even more so, than they should have been according to their census number. And you must search to discover a Christian among the reserve surgeons. Why is this the case? To get rid of the most important elements of the malcontents for years, perhaps forever. Of course, the Poles, the Jews, and the Ruthenians have the most cause for discontent. Meanwhile there is peace at home."

"Not to a remarkable extent, I observe."

"Wait. The students, who are so incautious in airing their ideas, will come to know the East."

"Your excellency, no Radical has spoken like this."

"I can well understand that. The honorable Radicals have much less cause to be dissatisfied with this rule of banditti, for it sends the water to their mills. But a Conservative like myself sees with horror that all the foundations of the Conservative order of things are undermined, and that we are approaching exactly the same convulsions that France experienced after the spontaneous downfall of her absolute monarchy."

"In what respect, then, does your excellency distinguish yourself as a Conservative from the so-called Liberals? Certainly not in criticism?"

"I will explain. The Liberals are Girondists, with their ideas adopted from Cahier and Rousseau. Minister Turgot was a Conservative, who wished to save the monarchy by trying to make an end of the loose management of favorites. We Conservatives do not believe in a constitution or a parliament as the only means of salvation. We Russians are anything but ripe for that. It is a question if any people of the Continent, untrained in English self-government, are ripe for it. We look to the Czar for salvation, and to the Czar alone."

"Prince Ukhtomski says much the same thing. He does not speak of Liberal or Conservative, but only of an intelligent party in Russia, and he believes that an able minister could save the whole situation."

"I do not believe that for an instant. For, under the present circumstances, an able and honest minister cannot remain at court. There is only one salvation--a czar who is so educated for his task of ruling that he is not the plaything of a circle of courtiers, like our present good Emperor."

"I have heard a saying of Pobydonostzev, 'Autocracy is good, but it involves an autocrat.'"

"Certainly; even if it were not Pobydonostzev's opinion. For brutality alone certainly will not do. We must have knowledge of the subject and strength of will."

"Then the future must look very black to your excellency, if you await salvation from a new and better-trained czar. At present there is not even a prospect of a successor to the throne."

"It looks black enough. I have no hope at all. For what is hope to others is to me new ground for sorrow. We shall be defeated in Asia. We shall have a financial crash--_i. e._, our long-existent bankruptcy can no longer be veiled by juggling with the budget; and then we shall have a repetition of the old game of revolutions and constitutions. Some Western ideas on constitution-making will be imported and will not work. There will come a reaction, and the hand of every man will be against every other...."

"Then your excellency is opposed to the freedom of the press?"

"God forbid! A Conservative régime is far from being a police régime. We must have a public opinion and a respectable press, and a press without freedom cannot be respectable. A press which is under strict laws but not under police tyranny, and an honorable government, can both be brought about more easily under an absolute monarchy than under parliamentary rule; but there will be no question of all this."

"I find hardly any essential difference between the ideas your excellency represents and those I have been hearing for months in Russia."

"You cannot wonder at that. If you should ask me whether the snow out-of-doors is white or green, I also, as a Conservative, can only answer that it is white. We are in a bad way; our peasantry is starving, our thinking class is in despair, our finances are ravaged. Yet I believe that far more evil days are before us, and I thank God that I am an old man who has seen the worst."

So ended my interview with the Conservative, whom I had sought out for the correction of the Radical views I had heard. In the evening I had to make a report to my friends, who had waited it in suspense. My information created an immense sensation. Something entirely different from the interview had been expected, and there was astonishment at hearing views as bitter as any one present could have formulated. Had he permitted me to publish the conversation with his name?

"The conversation, but not his name," I answered.

A general "Aha!" went up from all present.

"That is the way with our chinovniks," remarked some one; "in a tête-à-tête they are all Liberal, and as soon as they are on the retired list they are all Radical."

"I beg pardon. Count X---- spoke with decision against a constitution, therefore he is not a Liberal."

"We must beg of you," came in an almost unanimous chorus, "for Heaven's sake, not to adopt this view and represent it abroad. It would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to us if the outer world should believe that we really are not ripe for a constitution. We do not need an English or a Belgian constitution, to be sure, but a free parliament and a free press we do need. Otherwise there is no reliance to be placed upon any reform, and the farther from the centre the more Asiatic will be the rule of the satraps."

"My duty is to report and not to judge," said I, dryly. "I owe it to my authority to reproduce his views as he gave them to me. The only thing that I can do is to add your criticism to my report."

They were satisfied with this offer; and in accordance therewith I have reproduced the interview.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] An interview with a Russian Conservative.

XXV

SECTARIANS AND SOCIALISTS

I was taken one day to see a young Russian nobleman who was making a special study of the nature of sects. We drove to the outermost skirts of Moscow and stopped before a small palace. My companion, another young boyar, spoke to the servants, and after a few minutes we were conducted up a broad marble staircase to the first floor, where a suite of rooms furnished in extremely modern style opened out before us. I remarked to my companion that, after all, there really are no boundaries between countries, for this little palace with its very modern interior might just as well have been in Paris or London as here in Moscow. Instead of answering, the boyar motioned towards the ikon which hung in a corner. Modern furnishings, a bookcase filled with the most modern philosophical literature, and above it the orthodox ikon--we were in Moscow, after all.

The master of the house came in and embraced and kissed his friend. I was introduced, and we shook hands. Cigarettes were lighted, and without further formalities the young host took some manuscripts from a shelf and began to give me a private reading. My companion helped out when the reader's vocabulary failed him. It is thus that I am in a position to give from my notes the following excerpts from a work which cannot be printed in Russia, because it deals with the forbidden subject of the character of sects in a fashion not entirely acceptable to the censor.

The significance of sects in the inner structure of Russian life is best shown by some figures which give approximately their membership. In the year 1860 about ten million Raskolniks (non-conformists) were counted; in 1878, fourteen million; in 1897, twenty million; and to-day they number thirty million. These non-conformists not only do not belong to the orthodox church, but stand in hostility to the state, which identifies itself with the orthodox church. The sects are constantly increasing in number, and there is no doubt whatever that they answer much better to the religious needs of the Russian people than the state church, just as they already comprise what is morally the best part of the nation.

The sects interested me less in themselves--although every expression of the human instinct of faith is of psychological interest--than in their bearing on the question as to how far they are united to form a revolutionary army which could disarm and overthrow the autocracy and then take in hand the new order of things. I tried to inform myself on this point from my attractive host's reading. I also asked about it directly. The answers I received have no room for expectation of a revolutionary organization in the near future. According to them deliverance cannot come from below. Absolution no longer has the masses in hand, but it is at least able to prevent any general, all-inclusive organization of the dissatisfied; and the thinking class in the opposition to the government did not find the way to the people until the most recent times. Only within the last few years has it been reported that the peasantry is beginning to show symptoms of unusual fermentation, the authors of which are unknown. The government does what it can. It has spent nine million rubles for the strengthening of the provincial mounted police. According to the accepted view the sects arose because Patriarch Nikon wished to have the sacred writings and books of ritual then in use, in which textual errors were to be found, replaced by texts carefully revised according to the originals. The clergy, however, clinging to the old routine, opposed this. When the great council of May 13, 1667, declared itself in favor of Nikon's proposed reform, the division became complete. From that time forward the opposition of "Old Believers" (Starovertzy) became the heart of all popular movements against the imperial power. My host represented a different shade of opinion. According to his idea, the sects arose with the introduction of Christianity, and they represent the opposition of the simple paganism of the people to the complicated casuistry of the Byzantine Church. Until the fourteenth century, he thinks, the church tried to keep with the sectarians, and suffered the procession to go according to the old pagan usage, with the sun instead of against it. Since the fourteenth century, however, the church has identified itself with the power of the state. From this time dates the hostility of the sects to the government. Nevertheless, until the seventeenth century, local gods were tolerated as patron saints. But when Bishop Mascarius issued a list of the saints recognized by the state, the quarrel with sects which clung to their own saints was made eternal. Since that time the sectarians have not troubled themselves at all with the official religious literature. They print their own books on secret presses.

Sectarianism really represents, therefore, in the first place, the national opposition of the Russians to Byzantium; next, the opposition to St. Petersburg, and especially to Peter the Great, who was and is regarded as antichrist. But side by side with these nationalistic religious sects, and far in advance of them, have grown up mystically rationalistic ones also. Some of these, going back to early Christian ideas, refuse to bear arms and to take oath in court, like the German Anabaptists, Nazarenes, and Baptists. Others oppose the church on mere grounds of judgment, and lead a life regulated according to the teachings of pure reason. The Old Believers, after long and terrible martyrdoms in which their priests were burned or otherwise executed, and after a sort of recantation, finally came to an understanding with the state and are at present in part tolerated.

The great majority of rationalistic--mystic--sects, however, have remained hostile to the government, and are persecuted on all sides by the state, although a great part of their members lead much more moral lives than the orthodox Russians.

They are to be distinguished at present--sects with priests ("Popovtzy") and sects without priests ("Bezpopovtzy"). The first are the Old Believers, who are especially well represented in the rich merchant class in Moscow and are recognized by the state. They may be distinguished by their uncut beards, by their mode of crossing themselves, and by their great piety.

The sects without priests are, however, the most interesting. The most characteristic among them are the Self-burners, or Danielites, the Beguny, or Pilgrims, the Khlysty, or Scourgers, the Skoptzy and Skakuny, or Jumpers.[11] Their customs show what psychology knows already--namely, that religious emotion leads easily to sexual, and then both tend to revel in bloody ideas. One is led, indeed, to question whether the fascinating effect of so many of the stories of saints must not be traced back to that psychological connection in the subconsciousness. With the Danielites voluntary death by fire is considered meritorious. The Beguny are vagabonds, "without passport," an unheard-of thing according to Russian ideas, without name, without proper institutions. In this sect men and women live together promiscuously. They are supported by secret members of the sect who live in towns, and who do not, like the regular Beguny, expose themselves to the standing curse of antichrist--_i. e._, the state. The Khlysty have direct revelations from heaven in the state of ecstasy which they experience at their devotional meetings. They are flagellants, dance in rings until they are exhausted, and then sink all together in a general orgy. The Skoptzy castrate themselves in such circumstances. The Skakuny, or Jumpers, dance in pairs in the woods with frightfully dislocated limbs until they sink down exhausted. All these sects are accused of child murder. They are said to wish to send children unspotted to the kingdom of heaven. It is to be noted that all these data are unreliable, because no stranger is admitted to the secret devotions, while the imaginations of the denouncers have just as much tendency to revel in sexual and sanguinary ideas as that of the exalted devotees. The persecution of these sects by the government is easy to understand. Spiritual epidemics must be fought as much as physical disease.

The persecution of the rationalistic sects is quite unjustifiable. They do not deserve the name of sects at all, for in other countries similar ones form simply free political, ethical, or philosophical societies. Certainly they can only benefit the communities in which they exist by their high ideal of integrity and strict morality. Count Leo Tolstoï has already made the banishment of the Doukhobors known to all the world as an infamous proceeding, and has thereby raised large contributions for their settlement in Canada. The Shaloputy and the Malevents, for the most part Ruthenians, have a really ideal character, free from the narrowness and superstition of the church, without ritual, industrious, helpful, peaceful, and kindly. They live together in a state of free-love marriages, without constraint of church or state, neither lie nor swear, and do good even to their enemies. The Stundists, who are said to have originated with the German pastor Bonekemper, in the Rohrbach colony near Odessa, are similarly virtuous communists, who do not trouble themselves about the state, hold all property in common, adjust all quarrels among themselves, and harm nobody. The formula of the report with which the gendarmes are accustomed to give notice of the discovery of a Stundist is characteristic: "I was passing the house of Farmer X---- and his son and saw them both reading in a book. I entered and ascertained that this book is the Gospel. Farmer X---- and his son are therefore Stundists, and as such are most respectfully reported to the authorities." Russian nobles have been exiled to Siberia for the crime of reading the Gospel to their servants. A former officer of the guards, Vassili Alexandrovitch Pashkov, who dedicated all his means to philanthropy and held religious exercises, was expelled from St. Petersburg and the movement named for him was suppressed.

Why is all this? The narrow-mindedness of Pobydonostzev's system permits no falling-away from the official church. The police state tolerates no suspicious morality. The thinking class in Russia quote with bitterness Aksakov's saying, "Be a rascal, but be correct in your politics" ("Bud, razvraten, no bud, blagonamyeren"). Debauchery is directly commended to young men of good family because it prevents intense absorption in politics. The crime of the Stundists, Doukhobors, and Malevents consists in their wishing to be Christians in the spirit of Christ, and in being disaffected towards that diabolical machine the Russian state. For this they are persecuted in the name of Christ and of the state, but, as the above-quoted figures show, without result. Sectarianism grows continuously. Thus Leo Tolstoï's religious anarchy is in a certain way comprehensible. Whoever looks about him sees good people who, without making any disturbance, simply turn away from the state as something unchristian and inhuman; and he may easily fall into the delusion that it will some time be possible to found the kingdom of heaven upon the earth through the spreading of these teachings. Their rise, however, is only too comprehensible in a state which has never pretended to represent the general welfare and justice--means by which even conscienceless conquerors and despots have spread civilization.

All these sects are limited to the peasantry. The sectarianism of the cities is called socialism. Here, too, one must use the word "sectarianism." For even the little bands of organized labor split immediately, after the Russian fashion, into smaller groups; and even the intelligent upper classes form just as many little circles, each with its own doctrine and its own organ. In spite of all efforts I did not succeed in getting approximately reliable figures for the strength of the separate socialistic groups. The estimates varied from forty thousand to two hundred thousand, and are, therefore, entirely worthless. In regard to the nature of the groups, both in general and in particular, there is much more definite information.

After the assassination of the Czar Alexander II., which no one in Russia will believe was committed without the help of these groups, who knew definitely that the Emperor intended to sign an order for arrest, the small and entirely isolated group of perhaps a hundred and fifty desperadoes was simply exterminated, and several thousand people were exiled to Siberia. With that the so-called aggression of nihilism came to an end. Malicious persons, however, think it ended with the deed which was most in the interest of the omnipotent police--namely, the assassination of Alexander II. In any case, the police was not at all severe in getting rid of this definitely recognized band. At that time the doctrine of Marx was beginning to spread in Russia. This doctrine was looked upon by the authorities as an antidote for the terrorism of anarchy. The Marxists, whose organ is the _Iskra_ (Ray, or Spark), are doctrinaires here as everywhere, swear--at least so the Revisionists declare--by the theory that the poor are growing poorer, and wish the peasants to abandon their land and to become a wandering proletariat according to the catechism of Marx. They were opposed by the late Mikhailovski, who knew Russia better than the founders of the _Iskra_. To-day the Marxists are supposed to be suppressed. Besides these there is the league with the two Parisian organs, the _Revolutionary Russia_, a monthly printed in Russian, and the _Russian Tribune_, the real monitor of the socialistic movement, and, next to Struve's _Oswobozhdenie_, the best source of information upon Russian conditions. The leaguers are former followers of Lasalle. They are exceedingly troublesome to the police on account of their close organization.

For a while the police cherished the hope of being able to seize the labor movement for their own purposes. A certain Subatov invented a plan by which the police were to give financial support to the organization of labor, and in exchange to require the political good conduct of the organization. The industrial barons, however, at whose expense this treaty of peace was to be brought about, put themselves on the defensive. Gouyon in particular, a manufacturer of Moscow, who employs over five thousand persons, simply threatened to close his factory if the inspectors were not withdrawn. So fell Subatov, leaving only his name behind to designate those who still put in a good word for police socialism. They are called "Subatovists." With this exception, no one has thought of an honest factory inspection as an effectual help for the workmen.

The socialistic movement is seizing not only the working classes, but also the universities, almost all of which to-day embrace a radicalism certainly related to socialism. No sharp distinction can be made, indeed, between these two stages in the general dissatisfaction and fermentation. The police keeps its strictest guard upon the universities and all the thinking classes. In the province of Irkutsk there are at present no fewer than three thousand political exiles. How many are lashed to death with knouts in police prisons no man knows. The answer, however, is found in those unplanned outrages which are beginning to occur again, and to which a governor or a minister falls victim, now in one place, now in another. An outbreak of many of these is generally expected in the near future.

There is still, however, a conservative element in Russia. I asked a well-fed Russian tradesman, a representative "kupetz" (small dealer) of Moscow, what he thought about the war and the conditions in the country. His answer was so characteristic that I must give it: "It is not anybody's business to think, but to obey God and the Czar." The present order of things in Russia rests on this principle and on the stupidity of the half-savage Cossacks. Therefore, no one must be deceived by the symptoms of bitter feeling. A revolution under organized leadership and with a definite object is impossible. At the most, single nationalities and the starving peasantry may rise up, to suffer a sanguinary overthrow. Deliverance is not yet within sight for these most unfortunate of all men. National bankruptcy, which no one doubts is imminent, will perhaps bring an improvement. Therefore the Russians pray, desirous to hasten it, "God help us so that we may be defeated."

FOOTNOTE:

[11] A kind of Shakers.

XXVI

MOSCOW

Blue heavens, golden cupolas, green towers, red houses, pealing bells above, sleigh-bells on the streets, praying muzhiks before images of the saints, beautiful women in costly furs--when I wish to reconstruct from my recollections the picture of Moscow, these are the elements which at first mingle, charming, chaotic, like the colors in Caucasian gold-enamel. How beautiful a city this! How often have I stood upon the tower of the Ivan Veliky and looked down on this endless sea of shining cupolas and gay roofs crowded upon gently rising hills far into the blue haze of the distance! Never was the Russian love of home so intelligible to me as there in the heart of Russia, upon the battlements of the Kremlin, high above the bank of the Moskva! And involuntarily I wondered, as, indeed, would any one not a subject of the imperator, who has looked down from such battlements upon all the subject masses of Russians, whether he has really subjugated them or whether they have only been brought to a death-bringing hibernation. Æsthetic, ethnological, historical, and political suggestions swarm to the mind of the thoughtful observer in this place. What wonder if the Russian feels himself here on holy ground and would prefer to put off his shoes when he treads it?

The tongue of the people has a kindly word for St. Petersburg and a pet name for Moscow--"Little Mother Moscow," it is called, the real capital of Russiandom. And even the stranger must remark this difference of treatment. St. Petersburg astonishes, awes, frightens. Moscow ingratiates herself at first sight and wins each day a firmer hold on our hearts. One thinks with a certain tenderness of one's stay in Moscow, and in spite of unbelief predicts to himself another visit. But not with faith. For unless business calls him there he is not likely to make a second visit to Moscow in a lifetime. But one longs to pass many a pleasant day in this city, so curious and yet so homely, with her kindly inhabitants. Why? It would be hard to say in a few words. The city is in too strong a contrast to the forced founding of St. Petersburg. There the hand of man is all in evidence; nothing is refreshing. A great prison fortress of granite blocks surrounded by huts and barracks. Moscow is a product of nature, founded with enthusiasm by its dwellers in response to the open invitation of nature, and adored even with devotion. Even the stranger feels this, even though there is nothing to which he is unaccustomed except the devotion and tenderness of a people to whom he is bound by not a single tie of common association. With what shudders one wanders through Rome, from Mont Pincio to the Vatican! how one is carried on by the ocean of world history upon the Capitoline, among the excavations of the Forum, among the palace walls of the Palatine! What is to us, in contrast, the Kremlin, this sanctuary of half-Asiatic barbarians? Yes, an exoteric delicacy, nothing else! One cannot free one's self from the charm of these places. Here a good-natured folk has created a jewel-box, gay and dazzlingly ornamented, careless of what the culture of the West has declared beautiful and holy; hither gravitate all the national feelings of a hundred million people; and, finally, all this is created to the harm of no one, to frighten no one, to oppress no one. Here the Czar is not the general-in-chief of so many million bayonets, but "Little Father Czar," who yields the countless holy images and chapels just the same devotion as his lowest muzhik. And here is the past--not alone the brazen, threatening present--the past of a strange people, but a people of lovable individuals, who, besides, are brought nearer to us than many of our nearest neighbors by a literature of unparalleled fidelity to life. One must grow to love this childlike, slow-blooded, and yet care-free people, with their irresistible heartiness. And he who has learned to love the Russians must love their Little Mother Moscow, in spite of, or just on account of, her quietness.

From St. Petersburg an express train brings us to Moscow in thirteen hours. It is always a night train that disposes of this traffic, for the Russian likes to sleep in his comfortable berth. And so we arrive in Moscow in the morning, ready at once to assimilate the first impressions of the enormous city. Our expectancy is great, of course. Moscow, the object of all most Russian! It must differ, at first sight, from all we have as yet seen. But while the hotel omnibus rattles through the streets from the depot but little that is peculiar is to be seen. An affable fellow-passenger explains to us that that is only the foreign business quarter. But now one after another the church cupolas appear, one after another in increasing brightness and variety. At our "Ah!" in expression of our satisfaction, we are instructed that we had better be more sparing of that vowel sound or we might soon become hoarse. Moscow has no less than four hundred and fifty such churches and twenty cloisters in addition. So let us be sparing. But the resolution is hard to keep. A long and mighty wall suddenly rises before us with countless angles, towers, and turrets. The wall is white, the towers are green, and through the gate we see long streets and buildings in all possible colors, dark included. It is Kitay-Gorod, the inner city, with the bazars. Bokhara cannot appear more Asiatic. Now we feel already all that we are about to see. A giant modern hotel almost destroys for us the ensemble. Look quickly to your lodgings and then out again!

We are nicely located. From our windows we see the towers of the Kremlin, which rise above the nearest roofs. Let him who will endure remaining behind double windows! After washing and having some tea we are at the door again, and quickly make a bargain with the "izwozchik" who is to drive us over the outlined tour of the city. Horse and sleigh are a bit smaller than in St. Petersburg, but still very good. And so we are out in the sunshine, off into the snowy landscape, to gain a hurried general conception of the endless city.

For two hours our good little horse draws us, gliding over bridges and pikes, up and down hill, and when we return half frozen to the hotel we have seen scarce a fraction of the periphery, but a thousand teams, with shaggy muzhiks in wicker sleighs, and, still more, little country-houses of wood, which might serve in the West for summer cottages, but which offer an inviting shelter even here in the icy winter. The whole of Moscow is a complex of official municipal buildings which are crowded together into the narrowest space, of churches and palaces narrowly crowded about the Kremlin, and of immense suburbs which lie in rings about the inner town. But these suburbs have a half-country character--broad, uneven streets and low, villa-like houses, with little gardens. Little Mother Moscow gives her children room. They do not have to crowd together in usuriously paying tenements, and houses of more than one story are quite the exception. Even in the shadow of the Kremlin a parterre for the stores and a single story above it are sufficient. Really, only the hotels stretch with three or four stories heavenward. The impression is ever recurring that Moscow has no desire to be a city, and only quite unwillingly yields to the necessity of a crowded existence.

The Kremlin, which we did not lose sight of once on our whole trip, entices us strongly. It lies before us; so let us enter.

Yes, if it were as easily done as said! We cross a broad square, across which lean little horses draw a horse-car high as the first story of a house, and then we stand before buildings which allow us to go no farther. It is the Duma, the city hall, on the left, and the historical museum on the right, both dark-red in color; on the latter the façade is built entirely of darkened stone, so that it gives the impression of the whole being incrusted. The style is to be met with frequently. It belongs to the sixteenth century and is now being revived. The idea of using a coating of Russian enamel as an element of architectural style is a brilliant one. We reach a gate of the high wall surrounding the inner city Kitay-Gorod. But before we pass the gate let us cast a glance at the peculiar doings in the little chapel, scarcely bigger than a room, which is built on its left side. It is the Iberian chapel, with the famed image of the Virgin to which the Czar pays his devotions before he enters the Kremlin. The original, with its genuine precious stones, is now in the city, where for a fee it is brought to sick people. In the mean time a copy takes its place. At the time of the daily excursions of the Virgin the governor-general, Prince Sergius, does not allow the Jews to remain on the streets. The Blessed Virgin may not see upon her way the traces of Jewish feet. Every one crosses himself before her. But most climb the few steps to her and cross themselves again, with deep bendings of the upper body; but some, men as well as women, throw themselves full length upon the ground and touch the earth with their foreheads. The candle trade flourishes; scarcely a soul enters who does not buy a candle and light it before some image. No difference of station can be recognized. The great lady, the high official, the dirty muzhik, all are the same in their worship. Their caps are continually removed, and the rather time-consuming Russian ceremony of making the sign of the cross is performed. But the really pious ones do not content themselves with worshipping before the gate. They do the same thing again when inside.

We reach, finally, the "Red Square," so called because of the red Kremlin wall and the red group of houses at the entrance. We notice again that astonishment does not exactly make one brilliant. An "Ah!" in unison is all that escapes our lips. I believe that then I cried out with enthusiasm, and I should have liked to take by the coat-lapels the people who, used to the scene, were indifferently going their ways, and to say to them: "Look, you barbarians! Do you not know what you have here?" Vasili Blazhenny (the Basilius Cathedral)! Many times as one may have seen the curious bit of architecture depicted and dissected, yet when one finally stands before it and allows the gay towers, with their green, red, blue, and yellow cupolas to make their impression, he seems to have entered quite another world, which no longer has a single thing in common with our Western one. A sovereign, glorying fantasy has here been formed and created, apparently without rule, led only by the law of variety; has made wings, doors, and windings, and in the narrowest space unfolded a richness which strikes us dumb, much as our feeling for style struggles against the reversal of all our national laws. One's whole architectural sense leans towards clear relationship of parts, towards rhythm and proportion; the artist of the Basilius Cathedral leans towards intricacy, lack of rhythm, disproportion. He is a colorist, and but a colorist, in contrast to our Renaissance artists, to whom the color seems almost an injury to the delicate line. And yet in all this gay confusion he has held fast to a fundamental feeling which in all the variations keeps returning, as in a joint--yes, just as in the wildest dream some guiding idea like a red thread follows through it all. This motive--I could not help always calling it to myself the Tschibuk motive, after the winding, pearl-set tubes of a Turkish pipe--is carried out with every possible Indian, Persian, and Roman ingredient, and still retains the characteristic Byzantine style. A person would show great partiality to call this building a mad-house, as many an artist has done. One must only be able to free himself for an hour from the dictator of the old taste in order to be able to comprehend the delight of Ivan the Terrible at sight of this architectural orgy. (He gave expression to this delight by having the eyes of the architect put out in order that he might build no second masterpiece like it.) And then again it must be confessed that the task of uniting in narrow space thirteen chapels with thirteen towers could not well have been solved in any other way than in this apparently most untrammelled, fantastic one. If this proposition be accepted, the master of Vasili Blazhenny can only be the object of wonder.

Now Vasili Blazhenny is typical of all Moscow, the Kremlin included. It is the spirit of curious variety, of rich fantasy, the spirit of the South and the East which rules here. The snow one feels to be almost out of place, so Southern is the character of the city. The Kremlin, too, before which we now stand, is a "free-act" work of art, a piece something like the San Marco quarter in Venice, if one thinks of the sea as removed. For the Kremlin must not be thought of as a palace is; it is a whole part of a city, surrounded by a wall twenty metres high, two kilometres long, enclosing an irregular pentagon. It lies on a rather steeply rising hill on the bank of the Moskva, and commands the whole region round about. Its beauty is not to be enjoyed in the interior of the many churches, palaces, and barracks, although there is enough worth seeing there, too. It only opens up from the balcony of the Ivan Veliky tower, or from the bastion where the colossal monument of Alexander stands. But the most beautiful view of the whole complex is from the far bank of the Moskva, where the high wall, with its countless towers and cupolas, seems like the birth of an Oriental dream-fantasy. It shines and lightens in all colors, looks into the air, and speaks kindly greetings to all below; one could simply sit and clap one's hands for joy. But to the Russian this little jewel-box is by no means a plaything. On the contrary, he very respectfully bares his head and ceases not to cross himself. For "above Moscow is only the Kremlin, and above the Kremlin is only heaven." Within, however, the muzhik regains his childlikeness, and when he stands before the enormous cannon--"the Czar of Cannon," an old bronze gun--he invariably climbs upon the pyramid of giant balls which stands before it, climbs aloft and gapes into the yard-wide mouth of the gun. And under no circumstances does he neglect to creep into the hole of the "Queen of the Bells," which is in front of the Ivan Veliky, in which there is room for two hundred people.

We who are not childlike muzhiks may not allow ourselves such diversions; we must conscientiously see all the wonders of this greatest of all rarities, a thing which will consume at least a day. We spare the reader our experiences. Even the treasure-chamber with the coronation insignia and jewels big as one's fist cannot inveigle us into a description--all that could be seen in Berlin or Vienna.

Finally, the wonderful beauty of the colossal Church of the Deliverer must here be spoken of. The work is too unique in its nature to allow of being passed over in silence. The church is built apart, is visible afar, and forms the glorious completion of the Kremlin picture seen from the Moskva. In its mighty height, with its colossal, gilded domes, of which the middle one measures thirty metres in diameter, it lightens like a promise of the light the gay, romantic air of the Kremlin. Fifty-eight high reliefs in marble ornament the façade, sixty windows give bright light to the interior, colored still more golden by the light of countless candles. The magnificence of the central nave, entirely of gold and marble, is simply overpowering, and the golden and silver garments of the patriarchs would be quite unnecessary in giving us the strongest impression of the enormous riches of the Russian Church. Together with the Cathedral of Isaac, in St. Petersburg, this church is well calculated to compete with St. Peter's, in Rome. But I believe that one should refrain from the comparison. The expression "Roma tatae!" comes from Madame de Staël, and was, within certain bounds, approved by Moltke, who would call Moscow a Russian Rome. But I must, with all due modesty, demur. Too many undertones vibrate in our souls at the word "Rome" to allow us to consider any sort of comparison. But for a Russian? Who knows where the awe of eternity touches him deeper, before St. Peter's or before this Church of the Deliverer?