[La Russie en 1839.] The Empire of the Czar; or, Observations on the social, political, and religious state and prospects of Russia, made during a journey through that Empire, translated from the French

Front matter

RUSSIA. BY THE MARQUIS DE CUSTINE. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. " Respectez surtout les strangers, de quelque qualite, de quelque rang qu'ils soient ; et si vous n'etes pas k meme de les combler de presents, prodiguezleurau moins des marques de bienveillance, puisque de la mani&re dont ils sont traites dans un pays depend le bien et le mal qu'ils en disent en retournant dans le leur." Extrait des Conseils de Vladimir Monomaque a ses Enfants en 1126. . Histoire de V Empire de liussie, par Kauamsin, t. xi. p. 205. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. j?cc0trir (Titian. LONDON: PRINTED FOR. LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATER NOSTER- ROW. 1844*. NOTICE. The Publishers of this work beg to state that it is private property, protected by the late Copyright Act, the 5 & 6 Victoria, c- 45. They beg also to state that any person having in his possession, within the United Kingdom, for sale or hire, one or more copies printed abroad of any English work protected by the Act referred to, is liable to a penalty, which, in cases affecting their interests, they intend to enforce.

The Public are farther informed that the Act 5 & 6 Victoria, c. 47. s. 24., pro hibits the importation of all works printed in foreign countries, of which the copyright is not expired. Even single copies, though for the especial use of the importers and marked with their names, are excluded; and the Customs officers in the different ports are strictly enjoined to carry this regulation into effect. N. B — The above regulations are in force in all British colonies and depen dencies, as well as in the United Kingdom. Londok : Printed by A. Spottiswoode New- Street- Square. TRANSLATOR'S

Preface

TO THE SECOND EDITION. In publishing the second edition of the translation of a work, which, whatever its faults, has excited more attention throughout Europe than any travels which have appeared for a long time, it will not perhaps be considered out of place if the Translator advert for a moment to the criticisms of the British press, both on the original work ancl the English version. The great majority of reviewers, without overlooking the hasty impressions, somewhat vague conclusions, and unguarded expressions of personal feeling which may have rendered M. de Custine open to the charge of exaggera tion, inconsistency, and egotism, have, never theless, done justice to his powers of description, and to his striking views of Russian character and policy. Indeed, although his aris tocratical tendencies make him as little a favourite with one English party, as his at tacks upon the great Representative of moa translator's preface.

IV narchical power clo with the other, nearly all our reviewers re-echo his leading opinions regarding Russia, even when most severely criticising the impressions and sentiments on which they are founded. Nor has the general approbation thus ex tended to the original work, been withheld from the Translator's humbler labours. With but one exception, he has received from the Press a meed of commendation with which he has every reason to be gratified, and which, backed by the demand of the public, has imposed upon him the pleasing duty of preparing this new and, he trusts, improved edition. TRANSLATOR'S

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION. The work, recently published in Paris, of which these volumes are a translation, has appeared in the form of letters addressed to anonymous friends. This form has not been preserved in the trans lation, which is divided into chapters ; an arrange ment better adapted to the taste of the English reader, and unobjectionable in other respects, as the division of the chapters still corresponds with that of the original epistles. In making the alteration, a few very trivial modi fications in the phraseology of the text were necessary. The translator has likewise ventured on some occasions slightly to curtail the French paragraphs. It will, however, be sufficient to add, that no details have been abbreviated, nor one single observation omitted, that appeared likely to interest the general reader. a A taste for travelhng has never been with me a fashion ; I brought it with me into the world, and I becan to gratify it in early youth.

We are all vaguely tormented with a desire to know a world which appears to us a dungeon, because we have not ourselves chosen it for an abode. I should feel as if I could not depart in peace out of this narrow sphere unless I endeavoured to explore my prison. The more I examine it, the more beautiful and extensive it becomes in my eyes. To see in order to know : such is the motto of the traveller ; such is also mine : I have not adopted it ; nature gave it to me. To compare the different modes of existence in different nations, to study the manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to each, to perceive the relations which God has established between their history, their manners, and their physiognomy; in a word, to travel, is to procure for my curiosity an inexhaust ible aliment, to supply my thoughts with an eternal impulse of activity : to prevent my surveying the world would be like robbing a literary man of the key of his library.

But if curiosity cause me to wander, an attachment which partakes of the nature of a domestic affection brings me back. I then take a review of my obser vations, and select from among the spoil, the ideas which I imagine may be communicated with the greatest likelihood of being useful. During my sojourn in Russia, as well as during all my other journeys, two thoughts, or rather sentiments, have never ceased to influence my heart, — a love of France, which renders me severe in my judgments upon foreigners, and upon the French them selves, for passionate affections are never indulgent, — and a love of mankind. To find the balancing point between these two opposing objects of our affections here below, between the love of country and the love of fellow-men, is the vocation of every elevated mind.

Religion alone can solve the problem : I do not flatter myself that it has enabled me to do so ; but I can and ought to say that I have never ceased bend ing towards attaining this means of solution, all my efforts without regard to the variations of fashion. With my religious ideas, I have passed through an unsympathizing world ; and now I see, not without a pleasurable surprise, these same ideas occupying the youthful minds ofthe new generation. I am not one of those who view Christianity as a sacred veil that reason, in its illimitable progress, will one day tear away. Religion is veiled, but the veil is not religion : if Christianity mantles itself in symbols, it is not because its truth is obscure, but because it is too brightly dazzling, and because the eye is weak : as the vision becomes stronger, it will be able to pierce farther ; and yet, nothing fundamental will be changed : the clouds are not spread over celestial objects, but over our earth.

Beyond the pale of Christianity, men remain in a state of isolation ; or, if they unite, it is to form a political communities ; in other words, to make war with fellow-men. Christianity alone has discovered the secret of free and pacific association, because it alone has shown to liberty in what it is that liberty consists. Christianity governs, and will yet more rigidly govern the earth, by the increasingly strict application of its divine morals to human transactions. Hitherto, the Christian world has been more occupied with the mystical side of religion than with its political bearing. A new era commences for Chris tianity: perhaps our grandchildren will see the Gospel serving as the basis of public order. But it would be impious to believe that this was the only end of the divine legislator ; this is but His means.

Supernatural light cannot be acquired by the hu man race, except through the union of souls beyond and above the trammels of all temporal governments : a spiritual society, a society without limits — such is the hope, such the future prospect of the world. I hear it said that this object will be henceforward attainable without the aid of our religion ; that Chris tianity, built on the ruinous foundation of original sin, has had its day ; and that to accomplish his true vocation, misunderstood until now, man needs only to obey the laws of nature. Ambitious men of a superior order of talent, who revive these old doctrines by eloquence ever new, are obliged to add, in order to be consistent, that good and evil exist only in the human mind ; and that the man who creates these phantoms may also destroy them.

The pretended new proofs which they give do not satisfy me ; but were they clear as the day, what change would they effect in me ? Man, whether fallen by sin, or standing as nature placed him, is a soldier forcibly enlisted at his birth, and never dis charged until death ; ancl, even then, the believing Christian only changes his bonds. The prisoner of God, — labour and effort are the law of his hfe ; cowardice would be in him an act of suicide, doubt is his torment, victory his hope, faith his repose, obedience his glory. Such is man in all ages and in all countries ; but such, above all, is man civilized by the religion of Jesus Christ. It may be said that good and evil are human inventions. But if the nature of man en gender phantoms so obstinate, what is to save him from himself? and how is he to escape that malig nant power of internal creation, of falsehood if you like, which exists ancl abides within him despite of himself and of you, and which has done so ever since the commencement of the world ?

Unless you can substitute the peace of your con science in place of the agitation of mine, you can do nothing for me Peace ! No, however bold you may be, you would not dare to pretend to it ! — and yet, peace is both the right and the duty of the creature rationally endowed ; for without it he sinks below the brute : but, — O ! mystery of mysteries ! for you, for me, for all — this object will never be attained by ourselves : for whatever may be said, the whole realm of nature does not contain that which can give peace to a single soul. Thus, could you force me to assent to all your au dacious assertions, you would only have furnished me A X with new proofs of the need of a physician of souls — of a Redeemer, to cure the hallucinations of a creature so perverse, that it is incessantly and inevitably engendering within itself contest and contradiction, ancl which, by its very nature, flies from the repose it cannot dispense with, spreading around itself in the name of peace, war, illusion, disorder and misfortune.

Now, the necessity of a Redeemer being once ad mitted, you must pardon me if I prefer addressing myself to Jesus Christ rather than to you ! Here we come to the root of the evil ! Pride of intellect must be abased, and reason must own its insufficiency. As the source of reasoning dries up, that of feeling overflows : the soul becomes powerful so soon as she avows her want of strength ; she no longer commands, she entreats ; and man approaches near to his object when he falls upon his knees. But when all shall be cast down, when all shall kiss the dust, who will remain erect upon earth ? what power shall exist amid the ashes of the world ? The power which shall remain unshaken is a Pontiff in a Church. .- , Vliluul* If that church — daughter of Christ, and mother of Christianity — has seen revolt issue from her •• bosom, the fault was in her priests, for her priestSi are men.

But she will recover her unity, because these men, frail though they be, are not the less direct successors of the apostles, ordained from age to age by bishops who themselves received, bishop from bishop, under the imposition of hands traced back wards up to Saint Peter and to Christ Himself, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, with the requisite au thority to communicate that grace to the regenerated world. Suppose — for is not every thing possible to God ? — suppose that the human race shall wish to become sincerely Christian, will they in that case seek for Christianity in a book ? No, they will apply to men who can explain that book. There must, then, al ways be an authority, even among the preachers of independence ; and the authority which is chosen arbitrarily is not likely to equal that established for eighteen centuries.

Will any believe that the Emperor of Russia is a better visible head of the Church than the Bishop of Rome ? The Russians have to believe so : but can they ? Such is, however, the religious truth which they now preach to the Poles ! Would you, piquing yourself on consistency, ob stinately reject all other authority but that of indi vidual reason ? This would be to perpetuate the war ; because the government of reason nourishes pride, and pride engenders division. Alas ! Christians little know the treasure they voluntarily deprived them selves of when they took it into their heads that people might have national churches ! If all the churches in the world had become national, that is Protestant or schismatic, there would not now be any Christianity ; there would be nothing but systems of theology subjected to human policy, which would modify them at its will, according to circumstances and localities.

To sum up: I am a Christian, because the des tinies of man are not accomplished upon earth : I am a a Catholic, because out of the Catholic church, Christianity becomes diluted and perishes. After having surveyed the greater part of the civilized world, after having applied myself with all my power during these different travels to discover some of the hidden springs on the action of which depends the life of empires, the following is, according to my attentive observations, the future that we may venture to predict. If contemplated from a human point of view, and according to human calculations of probability — the universal division or dispersion of minds produced by the contempt felt for the only legitimate authority in matters of faith — in other words, the abolition of Christianity, not as a system of morals or philosophy, but as a religion ; and this suffices for the strength of my argument.

When contemplated from a spiritual point of view — the triumph of Christianity, by the re -union of all the churches in the Mother Church, — in that shaken but indestructible church which is every age widening its gates for the return of those who went out from it. The universe must again become either pagan or catholic : pagan, in a manner more or less refined, with nature for its temple, sense for its worship, and reason for its idol ; or catholic, with priests, of whom a certain number at least, sincerely put in practice before they preach, the precept of their master, " My kingdom is not of this world." Such is the dilemma out of which the human mind will never be extricated. Beyond it, there is no thing on one side but imposture, on the other but illusion. This prospective result has struck me ever since I thought at all : nevertheless, the ideas of the age were so different from mine, that I wanted — not faith, but boldness : I felt all the weakness of isolation ; still I did not cease to protest with all my power in favour of my creed.

But now that it has become popular in a part of Christendom, now that the great interests which agitate the world are those which have always caused my heart to beat, now that the approaching future is big with the problem for the solution of which I have never ceased to search in my obscurity, I discover that I have a place in the world, I feel supported ; if not in my own country (still a prey to that destructive, narrow, exhausted philosophy which continues to retain a large portion of France out of the debate upon the great interests of the world), yet at least in Christian Europe. It is this support which has emboldened me more clearly to explain my views in various parts of the present work, and to draw from them their ultimate consequences. Wherever I have set foot on earth, from Morocco to the frontiers of Siberia, I have seen smouldering the fires of religious war ; not any longer, let us hope, to be the war of the armed hand, the least decisive of any, but the war of ideas.

God alone knows the secret of events ; but every man who observes and reflects can foresee some of the questions that will be resolved by the future : those questions are all religious. Upon the attitude which France may take in the world as a Catholic power, will depend her political influence. In the proportion that revolu tionary spirits leave her, catholic hearts will draw around her. In this respect, the force of things so o-overns men, that a king supremely tolerant, and a minister who is a Protestant, have become through out tlie world the most zealous defenders of Catho licism, simply because they are Frenchmen. Such were the constant subjects of my meditation and my solicitude during the long pilgrimage, the account of which here follows ; an account varied as the varying and errant life of the traveller, but in which a love of country, combined with more general views, will be always seen.

Nevertheless, with what a mass of controversy are not these ideas connected which now agitate the world, long absorbed in a civilization altogether ma terial ? To acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ is undoubtedly to clo much, it is more than is done by the greater number of Protestants ; still this is only the commencement of Christianity. Even the pagans were willing to raise temples to Him who came to demolish all the temples of their religion. Were they Christians because they proposed to the apostles to place Christ among the number of their gods ? A Christian is a member of the church of Christ. Now this exclusive church is One ; it has its visible Head ; and it inquires about the faith of each man quite as much as about his acts, because it governs by the mind. This church deplores the strange abuse that has been made in our days of the word Christian toleration, to the great promotion of philosophical indifference.

To make a dogma of toleration, and to sub stitute that human dogma for all those which are divine, is to destroy religion under the pretext of rendering it amiable. In the eyes of the Catholic church, to practise the virtue of toleration is not to enter into any covenant or to make any compromise respecting principles, but to protest against violence, and to employ jirayer, patience, gentleness and per suasion in the service of eternal truth : such is not modern toleration. That creed of indifference which became, more than a century ago, the basis of the new theology, loses its hold upon the esteem of Christians in the proportion that it robs faith of its power : true toleration — toleration confined within the limits of piety — is not the normal state of the soul, it is tlie remedy which a charitable religion and a wise policy oppose to diseases of the mind.

What is meant by that lately invented appellation, Neo-catholicism ? Catholicism cannot become new ■without ceasing to exist. New converts, tired of being pushed about by every wind of doctrine, and seeking in the sanctuary a shelter from the torment of the conflicting ideas of tKe age, may be called Neo-catholics, but Neo-catholicism cannot be spoken of except through a misconception of the essence of religion, for the word implies contradiction. Nothing is less ambiguous than our faith ; it is no system of philosophy, of which each one may take or reject what he pleases : an individual is altogether a Catholic or he is no Catholic at all ; there can be no almost, nor yet any new manner in Catholicism. Neo-catholicisnl is a disguised sect which must soon abjure error to return into the bosom of the church, under penalty of being otherwise condemned by a church justly impressed with the necessity of pre serving the purity of faith, much more than with the ambition of increasing the number of her doubtful and equivocal children.

When the world shall adopt Christianity with sincerity, it will take it as it is. The essential point is that the sacred trust remain pure from alloy. Nevertheless the Catholic church may reform it self as regards customs, the discipline of the clergy, and even as regards doctrine upon points which do not affect the fundamentals of faith ; what indeed is its history, its life, but one perpetual reform ? This legitimate and uninterrupted reform can however be only carried on under the direction of ecclesiastical authority and according to canonical law. The more I see of the world, its different states and tribes, the more am I convinced that truth is immutable : it was defended with barbarity by barbarous men in barbarous ages ; it will in future be defended with humanity : but its purity cannot be affected either by the prism of error with which its adversaries are dazzled; or by the crimes of its own champions.

I should like to send into Russia all Christians who are not Catholic, to show them what our religion may be brought to when taught in a national church, when practised under the direction of a national clergy. The spectacle of abject servility into which the sacerdotal power can fall in a land where the church is only held of the state, would make every consis tent Protestant recoil. A national church or a national clergy are words which ought never to have been joined ; the church is, by its very essence, superior to all national distinctions, all human associations ; to abandon the church universal in order to enter into any political church, is to do worse than to err in faith, — it is to abjure the faith, it is to fall back again from heaven to earth. And yet how many sincere, how many excellent men believed, at the birth of Protestantism, that they should be purifying their creed by adopting the new doctrines, which have only served to narrow their minds !

Since then, indifference, masked and extolled under the attractive name of toleration, lias perpetuated error. The circumstance which renders Russia the most singular State now to be seen in the world is that extreme barbarism, favoured by the enslavement of the church, and extreme civilization, imported by an eclectic government from foreign lands, are there to be seen united. To understand how tranquillity, or at least immobility, can spring from the shock of elements so opposed, it will be necessary to follow the traveller into the heart of this singular country. The mode which I employ of describing places and defining characters, appears to me, if not the most favourable to the author, at least the most likely to inspire confidence in the reader, whom I oblige to follow me, and whom I render the judge of the development of those ideas that may be suggested to me.

I arrived in a new country without any other pre judices than those which no man can guard against ; those which a conscientious study of its history imparts. I examined objects, I observed facts ancl individuals, while candidly permitting daily experience to modify my opinions. Very few exclusive political notions incommoded me in this spontaneous labour, in which religion alone was my unchanging rule; and even that rule may be rejected by the reader without the recital of facts and the moral consequences that flow from them being discarded, or confounded with the reprobation that I shall meet with from those whose creeds do not agree with mine. I may be accused of having prejudices, but I shall never be reproached with intentionally disguising the truth. The descriptions of what I saw were made upon the spot, the recitals of what I heard each day were committed to paper on the same evening.

Thus, my conversations with the Emperor, given word for word in the ensuing chapters, cannot fail to possess a species of interest : that of exactitude. They will also serve, I hope, to render this prince, so differently viewed among us and throughout Europe, better known. The chapters that follow were not all destined for the public. Several of the early ones were written as purely confidential letters. Fatigued with writing, but not with travelling, I resolved, this time, to ob serve without any methodical plan, and to keep my descriptions for my friends. The reasons that de cided me to publish the whole will be seen in the course of the work. The principal one was the feeling that my views were daily modified by the examination to which I subjected a state of society absolutely new to me.

It struck me that in speaking the truth of Russia, I should be doing something bold and novel : hitherto, fear and interest have dictated exaggerated eulogies ; hatred has also published calumnies : I am not afraid of making wreck either on the oue rock or the other. I went to Russia to seek for arguments against re presentative government, I return a partizan of con stitutions. A mixed government is not the most favourable to action ; but in their old age, nations have less need of acting : this government is the one which most aids production, and which procures to man the greatest amount of prosperity ; it is, above all, the one which imparts the highest activity to mind within the sphere of practical ideas : in short, it renders the citizen independent, not by the eleva tion of sentiments, but by the operation of laws ; assuredly these are great compensations for great dis advantages.

As I gradually grew acquainted with the tremen dous and singular government, regulated, or I might say founded, by Peter I., I became aware of the im portance of the mission which chance had entrusted to me. The extreme curiosity with which my work in spired the Russians, who were evidently rendered unquiet by the reserve of my language, first led me to think that I had more power than I previously attributed to myself; I therefore became attentive and prudent, for I was not long in discovering the clanger to which my sincerity might expose me. Not daring to send my letters by post, I preserved them all, and kept them concealed with extreme care ; so that on my return to France, my journey was written, and in my own hands. Nevertheless, I have hesi tated to publish it for three years : this is the time which I have needed to reconcile, in the secret of my XX conscience, what I beUeved to be the conflicting claims of gratitude and of truth !

The latter at last prevails, because it appears to me to be truth of a nature that will interest my country. I cannot for get that, above all else, I write for France, and I hold it my duty to reveal to her useful and important facts. I consider myself competent and authorized to judge, even severely, if my conscience urges me, a country where I have friends, to analyse, without descending into offensive personalities, the character of public meu, to quote the words of political persons, to commence with those of the highest personage in the state, to recount their actions, and to carry out to the last stage of inquiry the reflections which these examinations may suggest ; provided, however, that in capriciously pursuing the course of my ideas, I do not give them to others except for just the worth that they have in my own eyes : this, it appears to me, is all that constitutes the probity of an author.

But in thus yielding to duty, I have respected, at least I hope so, all the rules of social propriety ; for I maintain that there is a proper manner of express ing severe truths : this manner consists in speaking only upon conviction, whilst repelling the suggestions of vanity. Besides, having seen much to admire in Russia, I have been able to mingle many praises in my descrip tions. The Russians will not be satisfied ; when was self love ever known to be ? And yet, no one has ever been struck more than I, by the greatness and political importance of their nation. The high destinies ot these people, these last comers upon the old theatre of the world, engaged my mind during the whole time of my stay among them. The Russians, viewed as a body, appeared to me as being great, even in their most shocking vices ; viewed as individuals, I considered them amiable.