The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians ... translated from the third French edition with annotations by Z. A. Ragozin

Part II The Institutions

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON .. WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET =4 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 8fee Jiiuclurbochtr grrss Copyright, 1894 BY CHARLES R. CRANE Entered at Stationer's Hall, London By G. P. Putnam's Sons Elcctrotyped, Printed and Bound by ■Jibe f.n.c_erbochcr press, "Hew Pori: G. P. Putnam's Suns

PART II.

The Institutions ADMINISTRATION GENERAL AND LOCAL. BUREAUCRACY. THE POLICE THE PROVISIONAL ASSEMBLIES AND THE MUNICIPAL COUNCILS THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AND THE COURTS THE PRESS AND ITS CENSORSHIP THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY POLITICAL REFORMS CONTENTS.

Book I. The Kura

. COMMUNE AND THE SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE PEASANTS.

Chapter I

Antiquity of the Russian Commune— It is the only truly National Institution — The Form of Administration is Derived from that of Land Tenure — The Act of Emancipation has Enfranchised the Village Communes, Leaving the Former Master Outside of them— Closed Commune of Two Degrees: Obsh-tchcstvo and Vdlost—ln what the Family, the Commune, and the State are Framed on the Same Type, and in what they Differ— The Rural Commune and Imperial Autocracy .......... i

Chapter II

The Communal Functionaries — Elective Administration — How Communal Autonomy is Reconcilable to Autocratism — Village Elders, the Starosla and the Starshiua — Precautions against their Tyranny — Excessive Influence of the Pissar, Scribe or Secretary, in an Ordinarily Unlettered Circle — School-Learning to Free the Communes from this New Yoke 14

Chapter III

The Assemblies of the Commune and of the Vblost — No Elective Council in the Village Communities — Assemblies Composed of the Heads of Families — In what this Patriarchal Democracy Differs from the Individualistic Democracies of the West — Qualities and Defects of these Assemblies — Their Right of Exclusion and Ostracism — Absence of Formalities and of Regular Voting — Of the Mir's Habit, like that of the Vietchi of Old, of Adopting Resolutions Unanimously — The Mir's Power over its Members — Dependence of the Individual in these Self-Governing Communes, 22 CONTENTS. PAGE 58

Chapter IV

The Principle of Communal Despotism — Boards of Supervision over the Peasants' Affairs — Difficulties and Dangers of Bureaucratic Control — The Autonomy of the Commune and the Isolation of the Peasant Class — Its Effects and its Causes — How to bring the Noble Landholders within the Pale of the Commune — Is the Mir's Self- Government a Preparation to Political Liberty ? . . . -43

Chapter I

Russian Centralization — Its Causes, Physical and Historical — Its Uses and Defects — How, After Importing into Russia European Civilization, Administrative Centralization now Arrests its Progress

Chapter II

Central Administration— The Great State Bodies — The Senate— The Council of State — Reasons why these Institutions have not Answered the Expectations of their Founders — The Ministries and Committees of Ministers — Disconnectedness of the Various Branches of State Service — Consequences of the Want of Administrative Unity — Is a Homogeneous Ministry Possible under the Autocratic Form of Government ?....... 69

Chapter III

Provisional Administration. Bureaucratism and Tchindvnism — Governments and Districts — The Governor and his Power— Faults of Russian Tchindvnism — Effects ofthe " Table of Ranks " — Lack of Specialty— Venality and its Causes — How Administrative Corruption can Temper Bureaucratic Despotism — Difficulty for the Bureaucracy of Controlling itself— Inefficiency of all Remedies Used against Venality— Formalism and Contempt of the Regulations g~

Chapter IV

The Police— Its Importance in an Absolute Monarchy— Ordinary- Police — Its Defects ; its Tyranny — Reasons of its Frequent Powerlessness — The Urban Police and the Dvdm iks— The Rural Police and the Uriadniks— Passport Bondage— Its Inconvenience ; its Inefficiency II7 CONTENTS. V

Chapter V

The State Police— The Late Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery and the Gendarmerie— Its Manner of Proceeding and its Inefficiency — Causes of the Abolition of the Third Section — Fusion of the Two Polices — What Public and Personal Liberty have Gained thereby— The " State of Protection " under Alexander III. — Effects of the Omnipotence of the Police on the Russian Char acter—In what Way the Third Section and the Secret Police have Fomented the Revolutionary Spirit 130

Chapter I

Elective Assemblies — Nobiliary Assemblies — Their Place at the Present Day — Provincial Assemblies or Zemstvos — Their Origin, Manner of Election, and Elements Composing them — How the Peasants and their Former Masters Meet each other there— Their Mutual Feelings — Preponderance of the Landholders — Provinces that have Zemstvos ; Provinces that have none 150

Chapter II

Attributions of the Provincial Assemblies ; at once Extensive and ill Defined — How Bureaucracy has Taken Advantage of the Fact to Uphold its own Power — Why No Conflicts Occur between the Two Authorities — Restrictions Imposed on the Prerogatives of the Zemstvos — Their Subjection to Tchinbvnism — Poorness of their Financial Resources — Services Rendered by them, especially to Popular Instruction and to Public Health 171

Chapter III

How it Was that, after Arousing Extravagant Hopes, the Provincial Assemblies Caused Numerous Disappointments — Local Self- Government cannot well Subsist without Political Liberties — Attitude of the Zemstvos during the Nihilistic Crisis — Injustice of the Suspicions Cast upon them — In what Way it were Easy to Transform the Provincial Assemblies into States-General — Conferences of Experts Convoked by Alexander III. — Necessity of Decentralization — Unanimity of the Russians on the Question — Local Self-Government and Autocracy CONTENTS. VI PAGE 209

Chapter IV

The Cities and Municipal Administration— Influence and Antagonism of the Two Capitals— Of the Transfer of the Seat of Government from St. Petersburgh to Moscow— The Urban Municipalities' Organization quite Different from that of the Rural Communes —Reasons of this Difference— Introduction of Electoral Qualification into Municipal Elections— Electoral Categories and pro rata Representation of the Various Classes' Interests— Results of this Mode of Election— Indifference and Abstention— Predominance of the Merchant Class in the Municipalities— Abuses and Corruption,

Chapter V

Municipal Assemblies— The Diima or Council : Publicity of the Sittings—Large Number of Councillors— The Uprdva or Board- Attempt at Collective Administration— The Golova or Mayor — Elections of Mayors and their Consequences — Municipalities and Governors — Economic Situation of the Cities — Results of Local Self-Government 232

Chapter I

Russian Law — The Code (Svod) — Complexity of the Laws — Ancient Russian Justice and Corruptness of the Courts — The Reform of Alexander II. — Its Models and General Character .... 252

Chapter II

Class Legislation — Peasant or Vblost Courts — Custom Law and Written Law — Composition aud Jurisdiction of these Rural Tribunals — Use of the Rod in Rural Justice — A Sitting of such a Rural Court —Its Faults and Merits — Other Corporative Tribunals — Ecclesiastical Courts ... 270

Chapter III

The Two Magistracies — The Elective Magistracy : Justices ofthe Peace — The Way in which they are Nominated — Restrictions Imposed on their Free Election in these Latter Years — Consequences of the Elective System — Honorary and Effective Justices of the Peace — Their Jurisdiction — Assizes of the Peace ...... CONTENTS. VII 341

Chapter IV

Courts of First Instance and Appellate Courts— The Senate as Supreme Court of Appeal— Irremovability and Independence of the Magis tracy—Right of Presentation— The Criminal Department and the Prosecuting Attorneys— Worth of the Judiciary as Regards its Members — Lawyers and the Liberty of the Bar .... 323

Chapter V

Criminal Justice — Police and Inquests — Fear of being Implicated in Criminal Affairs — On the L^se of Torture — Creation of "Judicial Inquisitors " — First Deviation from the Law — The Jury— Elements Composing it— Its Defects — Unlettered and Indigent Jurymen

Chapter VI

Restrictions Imposed on the New Judiciary Institutions — Infractions to the Principles of the Reform — The Independence of Justice and the State Police — Causes and Effects of this Anomaly — Restrictions of the Publicity of Debates — Cases Taken out of the Jury's Jurisdiction — Special Courts for Political Offences — The Ukbzes of Alexander II. and Courts-Martial — The State of Protection of Alexander III. and Powers Given to the Administration — What is Left os the Judiciary Reform 365

Chapter VII

Penality and Corporal Punishments — Their Importance in the Old Legislation — The Knut and the Rods — Their Legal Suppression and Deviations from the Law — Moral Progress in this Respect — Ancient Date of the Abolition of Capital Punishment — In what Manner the Suppression of the Knut Restored to the Law its Natural Sincerity — How the Leniency of the Penal Laws had Something to do with Necessitating Exceptional Measures — The Special Penalty for State Offences and the Right of Extradition — Results of the Abolition of Capital Punishment .... 384

Chapter VIII

Transportation and Hard Labor — Siberia and the Places of Transportation — Number and Treatment ofthe Exiles of Various Categories — Convicts and Political Exiles— Effects of this Penal Colonization — Its Faults — Necessity of Restricting it — Causes which Prevent its Suppression — Prisons and Reform of the Penal Code — Character of Russian Criminality 4°4

Chapter I

Antiquity of the Russian Commune — It is the only truly National Institution — The Form of Administration is Derived from that of Land Tenure —The Act of Emancipation has Enfranchised the Village Communes, Leaving the Former Master Outside of them — Closed Commune of Two Degrees : bbsh-tchestvo and vblost — In what the Family, the Commune, and the State are Framed on the Same Type, and in what they Differ — The Rural Commune and Imperial Autocracy. Of all liberties, the hardest to establish in a people is the lowliest, that which, it would seem, all the others should be based on — communal liberty. Tocqueville has this remark : the difficulty of establishing the independence of the communes, instead of decreasing, increases in direct ratio to progress of enlightenment among them. Possibly, there never has been such a thing as creating communal liberty : it is born in some way, of itself, and grows in obscurity, outside of the impulse given by the legislator ; such civilized nations as still own it, all have received it as an heirloom of antiquity or from semi -barbarous societies.

Thanks to the common-tenure regime, the villages in Russia, in VOL. the person of the mir, have preserved the habit of self-administration. The Moscovite peasants have retained this primary liberty while freer nations have not. Like the temples of Egypt which have remained intact under the sand-drifts of the desert or the slime ofthe Nile, the Russian commune, buried under autocracy and serfdom, is the better preserved for having escaped the gaze and handling of men. The mir's originality lies in its antiquity. The communal regime is wholly Russian, wholly national, which is a rare thing in Russia. It is not, like so many other institutions of the empire, a copy or an imitation, although the Middle Ages in the West can show many analogous customs. The commune was born and grew up on the spot.

It is, properly speaking, and setting autocracy apart, the only indigenous institution, the only living tradition the Russian people can boast.1 Far from being merely one wheel in the administrative machinery, it is older than anything in the way of administration created by imperial ukdzes ; this entitles it to be studied before the administration, either central or provincial. The Russian commune is entirely derived from the community of lands still in force among the peasantry ; the manner of govern ing it is in great part merely a consequence of the prevailing form of land tenure. The community of lands and the solidarity in the matter of taxes bind the inhabitants of the same village, the joint-proprietors of the soil with bonds far closer than can exist in the rural classes of the West.

The commune, under these con ditions, is a family or a clan, an association as well as an administrative unit. It naturally has a far wider sphere of action, a far more extensive field of competence ; it holds a very different place in men's life and affects far more deeply their interests and their well-being. 1 Always excepting the artel — (free industrial and laboring associations) — concerning which see Chap. III. of this book and the Appendix to that chapter. This commune was not constructed by the law ; it is anterior to all law-making, and the law has nothing to do with it, except recognizing it and registering its existence. The central authority did attempt to make regulations for it ; but, in point of fact, it remains under the sway of custom, living its own spontaneous life invested in its own archaic forms.

Older far than serfdom, it resisted and survived it, persisting, thanks to its economic character, through the three centuries of the peasant's bondage. Serfdom did not destroy the mir, still the rural commune could not but be affected by the civil condition of its members ; having suffered from serfdom, it had to feel the counter shock of the emancipation. The bondage of the glebe had naturally depressed it ; the emancipation raised it up and liberated it along with the peasants. In the times of serfdom, the administration, as well as local justice, was to a great extent in the hands of the master or of his bailiff. Being the born guardian of his people, he held the com munes of his domain in a state of actual wardship to himself. The mir, under this paternal system, was an economic rather than an administrative institution.

The emancipation, by breaking the bond between landlord and serf, stirred anew the question of local administration. While restoring to the peasants their per sonal liberty, many of the masters would have liked to reserve to themselves some share in it, a right of supervision or control over their former serfs. Some of them even yet, and in the interest of the peasants themselves, whom they regard in the light of incapable minors, demand for the nobility the guardianship, more or less disguised, over the communes. The imperial government has not admitted the claim ; the emancipation was both civil and administrative : the plaints and lamentations of the mujik' s detractors are evidently not going to rob him of either. The Statute of 1861, which remains the true Peasant Charter, frees the rural communes from all dependence on their former masters, and from the latter' s authority in any shape or form.

The communal administration is left to election : the mir elects its functionaries out of itself, that is from among the vil lagers, for men belonging to other classes, having no claim to the communal lands, are not members of the mir and are legally out side of the commune in which they live. The government had on hand a model for the administration of the liberated serfs : it was that of the Crown peasants. The Emancipation Act has done little but extend to the former the institutions tried on the others. The principal feature of these institutions is a communal organization in two grades — in two stories or tiers, as one might say. The small agglomerations are combined into large administrative communes or cantons (vblost), within the precincts of which each community preserves its individuality.

Collective land tenure is one ofthe causes of this way of group ing villages. The lands owned in common by the peasants are of very uneven proportions. Had these economic associations always been accepted as administrative units, there would have been territories strangely out of proportion, and the result would have been an excessive parcelling of the commune, as unfavorable to the regular working of the central authority as to local self-government.* On the other hand it would not do to go on forever annexing and merging together hamlets owning, each, property unequal in extent and in value. The system finally adopted ingeniously parries both evils. The peasants, bound together by the double chain of collective proprietorship and tax solidarity, form a village community or commune of the first grade (selskoye obsk tchestvo).

According to the Emancipation Act, such a primary commune usually consists of peasants who formerly had the same master and now own the same lands. Several such communities, if contiguous, are united into a larger unit, a canton, called vblost. It really is, like the American township, a middle thing between * There were, to 31 Great-Russian governments, nearly 180,000 village communities, having on an average 85 " revision souls," i. e., about 170 or 180 inhabitants. To 50 governments of Great-, Little,- and New-Russia, there were 243,000 villages. what would be, in France, a canton and a commune ; with its administrative side, it even leans more towards the latter. The minimum of ' ' souls ' ' paying the poll-tax was fixed by the law, for the vblost, at 300, and the maximum was not to exceed 2,000 ; which means that the population was to fluctuate all the way be tween 600 and 4,000.

The boundaries ofthe vblost were habitually to coincide with those of the church parish, another feature which makes the vblost more like the French commune than the canton. That is theory. In the practice, this rule has often been deviated from and cantons of excessive dimensions have been the cause of many troubles. Eastly there are cases, in large villages, where a vblost consists of but one community, and then the attributions of both get confounded as well as the boundaries. The vblost is a recent creation, at least amongst the late serfs. Even among the Crown peasants it is not to be traced beyond the Emperor Nicolas. The name can be met with in the old chroni cles, but with a rather different meaning, and is applied, as a rule, to much more extensive districts. The modern vblost represents, in the rural administration, the novel and, so to speak, artificial element, the part belonging to government initiative and the Emancipation Charter.

The law's object is, by the grouping of their small communities, to ensure to the peasants the means of self-administration, by which it seeks to supply the place of the now abolished guardianship of the noble landlord. In this man ner the imperial authority has given the peasantry, as a class, a cohesion which it never could have achieved by means of a general parcelling into small villages and insignificant communities. Even in the most civilized countries of the West, such as certain regions of France, one of the causes of the debility, the anæmia of communal life, frequently lies in the smallness and isolation of the communes. The vblost and the bbsh-tchestvo have different functions. The little commune's attributions are chiefly economic, the large one's chiefly administrative. To the jurisdiction of the former pertains all that concerns the usufruct of the soil and the distribution of the taxes on the basis of solidarity ; to that of the latter— all that regards the general interests of the vblost, the relations with the higher authorities, and lastly everything that has to do with justice, for the peasants have, in a measure, inherited the right of doing justice aud exercising the police supervision which used to belong to their former masters.

They have their judges and their rustic courts of justice, as they have their traditional customs, very different from the civil rights applied to the other classes. Otherwise, the principles by which both are governed are identical. The law, by tying into one bundle several peasant communities, has breathed into these new creations the spirit which tradition shows to have always swayed the mir. All the functions are elective ; all the members of the twofold commune may be equally called to fill any one of them. So that these are veritable democracies in which affairs can be treated en famille, safe from interference on the part of the other classes. Such is, in its main features, the communal system as it pre vails in the autocratic empire. This traditional self-government, this rural autonomy, the mujik, even in his long enslavement, manifestly owes to the preservation of collective land tenure.

The commune's rights, customs, habits of life, all flow from this same source. One of the natural consequences of community in the owner ship of land is the equality existing between all the members of the commune, and hence an equal participation in all the mir's affairs. This is why the villages of Great-Russia show us democracy in its purest and simplest form, without intermediate agents and without representation - democracy of the absolutely direct type, where every man takes his personal part in all the deliberations, all the decisions. With some nations, the Arabs for instance, collective property -holding, whether of the patriarchal or family type, has found it possible to accommodate itself to an aristocratic form of government ; the power being left in the hands ofthe tribe or clan, as in those of the father, the head ofthe family.

In Russia — nothing ofthe sort ; the Moscovite mir admits of no hereditary authority, no individual or oligarchical authority. In this respect Haxthausen is wrong when he gives the Russian commune the name of " patriarchal," and Tchitcherin is right in withholding it. The most complete equality reigned in those communities of bondsmen ; far as we may go back into history, we find no chief designated by birth or custom. Serfdom, indeed, gave the com mune a master, but that master remained outside of it ; he was its lord, at times its tyrant, but its chief or head— never. The dru jinnik and the pomiesh-tchik — servants of the state, provided by the sovereigns with lands, and afterwards transformed into noble landlords — merely formed a layer superposed above the peasantry, above the communes of which their domains were composed.

This was so literally the fact, that the law, while liberating the villagers, has not yet been able to find a place in their midst for their former lords ! The pomiesh-tchik, since the emancipation, still stays out side of and above the mir composed oimujiks, just as before the emancipation. He remains isolated in the midst of his quondam serfs, outside of the commune, outside even of the vblost, in which he usually resides : the chain of serfdom broken, nothing else binds him to his former subjects. Indeed, in the commune based on solidarity, there was no room for any but for members assuming their pro rata share of all the commune's rights and burdens. The manner in which the redemption of the lands was effected in the years immediately following on the emancipation, still more tightened this bond of solidarity.

The soil held in common can belong only to the former serfs who have paid for it with their pence. To be a member of such a community, it is not enough to transfer one's residence to it. Admission can take place only by the consent of all those interested in the transaction. Solidarity before the Moscovite fisc raises a barrier more substantial still. The Russian commune, such as emancipation brought it out of serfdom, is a closed association, with neither ingress nor egress free. Absent or present, nomadic or sedentary, the members of the mir are still, in a great measure, mutually responsible for one another. In this sense, not all who reside on the commune's territory belong to it, while many who live far away from it are still members. On the other hand, the village communities are composed only of peasants having strictly equal rights ; any other resident is to them an alien, somewhat after the manner of a man residing in a country not his own.

Constructed on this plan, the commune is a house in which the builders have not yet succeeded in finding room for all ; it is influenced by the divisions the tsars have made of their subjects into classes, social compartments, and, by its naturally exclusive framework, tends to uphold these ancient distinctions. The rights and privileges of such a commune are, in accord ance with ancient customs and by the very force of things, necessarily numerous and extensive. In its capacity of associa tion, it is a civil person, it can buy, lease, rent, sell land ; more than that, it has its own particular regulations, customs, laws, which are binding within its pale ; it has its own private law (jus) in the midst of the national law ; as pledging itself for its members before the State and the fisc, it wields over them the right of correction and expulsion, controls their goings out and comings in, and, in fact, holds them under a sort of tutelage.

Lastly, in its capacity of holder of the soil, the commune has over the peasants the rights that a landowner has over his tenants, and — just like a landlord or even more — can impose on them such conditions as it pleases, supervise their farming, order or forbid them to cultivate this or that product. From this double capacity — of supreme landlord and legal bail — it derives, in the eyes of its own members, an authority which, rendered harsher by the habits of serfdom, often reaches even to despotism. A body of peasants forming a village community bears, as we have often seen, the Russian name of mir. This word carries several meanings, among others that of "world," "universe." It implies a notion of order and beauty, for which reason an affinity could be discovered between it and the Greek kosmos.

It is not for nothing that this word has these manifold meanings. The Russian mir, such as it has come out of centuries of serfdom and autocracy, really is a small world within a large one, closed, complete in itself and self-sufficing, a veritable microcosm. For many centuries the Russian peasant has lived exclusively the life ofthe mir. To quote a remark of Herzen's, he knew of no rights save such as he held of his commune, recognized no duties save those which he owed to his commune. The mir was to him the true fatherland in the stricter sense ; the rest — the Russia of the nobles and bureaucrats, appeared to him in the light of a strange, and often hostile world. In Russia, with greater truth than in any other country, the commune, thus preserved in its ancient form, may be said to be the primary tissue-cell, the initial monad of the nation, if not of the state.

The whole of Russian life appears to have been origi nally modelled after this traditional type, from which Tsarian Moscovia and Imperial Russia have deviated more and more. Yet a common prototype may be found, alive still at the core of the people, for the village communities and for the state, for the mujik ' s mir and the tsar's autocracy, and that is — the family. Between these three terms, these three grades of social life — family, commune, state — a similarity of principle has been discovered, an analogy in structure, which has caused the two latter to be looked upon as derived directly from the former. State, commune, family, came to be considered as three successive links in one and the same chain — three links fashioned out of the same metal, on the same pattern, and differing only in size.

The commune is nothing but the enlarged family, while the state — or, more cor rectly, the nation — is only the reunion of all the communes forming one vast family, all the members of which, originally, were peers, and whose father or head is the " Grand-Kniaz," the Tsar, the Emperor, respectively. The sovereign's authority is unlimited —like the father's. This autocracy is only a prolongation of paternal authority. And in fact, the obedience yielded by the Russians, on all rungs of the ladder, is more that of the child than of the slave. Popular language, in this respect, is very in structive, and we should not look on its staple expressions as on empty forms. To his equal the Russian says, "Brother" (brat, brdtiets) ; to his superior of whatever rank— from his lord, when he had one, to the highest functionary, to the tsar himself, — he says "Father" (bdtiushka).

From base to summit, the immense Empire of the North appears, in all its parts, and on all its tiers, constructed on one plan and in one style ; all the stones seem to have come out of the same quarry, and the entire building rests on one foundation : patriarchial authority. With this side of her Russia leans towards the old monarchies ofthe East and decidedly turns away from the modern states of the West, which are all based on feudalism and individualism. In views such as these there is a part of truth and one of error or exaggeration. Russia is in many respects a patriarchal state, and it is difficult to speak of her without making use of this good old word. Between family, commune, and state there does run a continuous bond and a visible filiation. The authority principle is the same on all degrees of social life, and the same may be said of that of equality, which, preserved in the family and the com mune, is by way of asserting itself in its entirety in the state.

These are truly striking analogies, but in all things, in proportion as the analogies are close, it is important not to lose sight of the differences. Side by side with the original similarities there are the dissimilarities successively marked by the centuries and slowly and deeply engraved by history. The greater the temptation to reduce the entire social status of a great people to one and the same principle, the less it should be forgotten that men and nations are not easy to sum up in a formula. The least complex and most isolated modern states have lived too long, have been subjected to too many influences to show such unity of structure, such sim plicity in the ordering of their parts. The Russian people still preserves in its usages, its views, its character, or rather spirit, the patriarchal sentiment.