Greater Russia; the continental empire of the Old world

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Preface

Many books have been written on Russia and its people. The reason that the number is again increased is due to the fact that Russia is developing more rapidly than any other nation, and that Siberia is very different from the inert, barren, dismal country conventionally described The outward changes are numerous and easily recognised by one who remembers Russia as it was under the rule of Alexander II., the Great Tsar Liberator. Nor is it difficult to describe the altered conditions, and explain some of the processes by which the transformation has been effected.

There has been a great awakening of Russia. The people, debarred generally from active participation in politics, have directed their energies towards the commercial and industrial exploitation of their native land. They are active, strenuous, and persevering ; they have advanced in civilisation as well as increased their wealth and power. By territorial expansion Russia has taken a long stride forward towards the attainment of world supremacy, and boasts that the step is but the beginning of her progress towards the realisation of her manifest destiny.

This is the greater Russia to which the attention of the reader is invited. For obvious reasons this treatise does not even pretend to present a complete picture of such an immense continental empire, still less to give an exhaustive account of its resources, a full description of its natural features.

vi PREFACE

or minute explanation of the home and foreign policy of its government Its object is to convey an adequate idea of Russia's advance: her industrial progress, commercial prospects, the openings presented for both capital and labour, the markets closed to foreign enterprise. In order to accomplish this it has been needful to describe the present condition of Russians as agriculturists and artisans in Europe and as colonists in Asia; to write of the men who are creating wealth and the means they employ, of the laws and the officials who administer them, of the aims of the Russian State in so far as they are revealed by what has been already accomplished. Some purely historical, topographical, and statistical details have been inserted, because without them the real indication of certain recorded facts might not be understood by those to whom Russia is unknown. Otherwise the contents of the book are the result of actual observation made during different visits, but mainly whilst twice crossing the empire in 1901.

Instead of merely recording impressions, I have used the facts coUected to form a basis for suggestive comment, and at the risk of being thought flippant have preferred anecdote to verbal description in conveying an idea of the habits and customs of the different classes of people with whom a traveller comes in contact An objection to this plan is that from a single concrete instance one is prone to generalise; another, that greater prominence is given to unimportant occurrences than the circumstances warrant; and so a false value is unconsciously attached to some trifling incident. It is unnecessary to warn readers that an isolated example does not constitute a rule, and if I have reported matters which apparently might have been omitted with advantage, it is not that I bear any official a grudge or lack generosity, but am anxious only to create a true impression. In all I have been

PREFACE vii

content to represent whatever came to my notice, without exaggeration and, as far as possible, without bias.

The future of Russia in Asia is of far greater importance than its prisons to the world generally. Of them we all know already far more than of the country itself, of its natives, its great towns, long rivers, immense fairs, varied produce, and unexploited resources.

In the Far East there is a serious problem awaiting solution. The Russia that opened a window on to Europe was quite unlike that which made a port-hole on to the Pacific to afford egress for itself, but closes with a snap against the entrance of foreigners and their merchandise.

East of Baikal is Russia's greater and better half, because that land has been influenced from the West by way of the cosmopolitan Far East. It is there that Russia is most jealous of foreigners ; it is of that territory the Anglo-Saxons know so little. It was there that I discovered that Englishmen, however Russophile they may have shown themselves, were denied privileges granted readily to foreigners of any other nationality, and were rigorously excluded by Russia from Manchuria — a country to which she now professes to make no claim. Denied legalised access to the territory I entered it in disguise, and was thus precluded from obtaining information from the usual official sources. Whether or not what I did succeed in getting was worth the trouble of collecting my readers must judge.

I am conscious that a more successful book of reference than this is could be compiled on the subject of Greater Russia, for I have drawn mostly from my own limited experience, and that of persons whom I met Perhaps this attempt to supply information will induce other writers to make complete studies of an accessible country and its interesting inhabitants of whom we ought to know more.

viii PREFACE

In order to facilitate reference the rule of the British War Office and Baedeker's Guide has been followed for the transliteration of place names, and I have further to acknowledge my indebtedness to Russian officials and others for the aid they have afforded me in securing information, and many kindnesses extended to me during my journeys.

AuTHOBs' Club London, S.W.

December 31, Z9oa

Contents

CSAF. PAGB

I. The Awakening op Russia i

II. Young Russia . 14

Chapter I

'THD-DAY an increasing interest is taken in Russia and its "*- people. It is coming to be believed that the country and race are other than they have been represented by conventional novelists and travellers, and that Russian politics have not been properly understood by foreign statesmen. There are many Russias, but that which is most widely known existed only in the imagination of the romancist, or appeared as a distorted picture seen through political glasses. When, on fuller acquaintance, we find a Russia other than we expected, we are again apt to suppose that Russia has changed, whereas much that now appears different is due only to a change in the point of view.

It is difficult to obtain an adequate idea of the Russian Empire, comprising a territory of some forty times greater area than England, all within a ring fence and, if not correctly described as one country, yet practically undivided by any physical barrier. Geographically Russia-in-Europe is separated from Russia-in-Asia by the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. The Urals are low hills forming the backbone of the empire, and have practically the same climate, fauna, flora, and soil on both the eastern and western slopes, and much of the Russia west of the range more closely resembles the Asiatic plateau than it does the remainder of Europe.

Geologically it is Baikal — the lake and volcanic range — which divides Russia, and zoologically it is the valley of the

B I

Irtish in West Siberia. Flatness characterises the country, and whether in Europe or Asia the central zone consists of large tracts of forest and marsh which terminate with frozen wastes in the arctic circle on the north, and on the south change to rough prairie lands which merge with arid sandy plains. Throughout, the climate is more intense than in Europe: in summer the weather is hotter, and in winter colder than at corresponding latitudes in the west; there is also a greater range of temperature between day and night.

The division into Government districts is purely artificial and arbitrary, the result of political expediency at different periods. Although under the rule of an absolute monarch, and everywhere governed by Russians, the empire is peopled by many different races, and in the European territory even, these are so many that to denote all by distinctive colourings on a map is next to impossible. The Russians are predominant, but in many districts are quite outnumbered by men of other nationalities whom they are now absorbing. This heterogeneity of its subjects is at once the strength and weakness of the State at the present time. For instance, as the Poles in the west and the Mongols in the east have nothing in common as sons of the empire save an admitted allegiance to their Russian conquerors, a coalition of all non-Russians against the State, if successful, would result in an absolute shattering of the empire into many antagonistic fragments. For practical purposes the dissimilarity of races inhabiting the empire may be ignored, and the entity of the State regarded as entirely Russian.

It has been so generally the fashion to ignore the history of Russia prior to the eighteenth century, that comparatively few English people know anything concerning the origin of the Russian Empire. The main facts may be stated briefly, as a knowledge of them will be of use in arriving at a correct estimate of the progress Russia is making to-day.

European Russia is an immense plain, its centre barely four hundred feet above sea-level. Lakes are plentiful, and great rivers with many ramifications flow slowly by tortuous channels towards the south-east, or the north-west The land is rising slowly : at no very distant geological period it was submerged, and at one time — perhaps that of the Argonauts — there was a natural waterway between the Black Sea and the Baltic, just as now the rivers are connected by different navigable canals.

Europe has been invaded and peopled from the East at various times, and of these immigrants the Slavs for the most part took the direction of the great waterways of Russia ; that is, went up the rivers from the south-east to the north-west In addition to their nomadic habits, internecine warfare and various other causes led to their dispersion, and the successful resistance of earlier comers determined their progress in certain directions. About 400 B.C. the Scythian branch of the Slav race was settled upon the bank of the Don, but was gradually driven north from the shores of the Black Sea by Greek Colonists. These colonies were taken by the Romans, to fall again to the Slavs about 300 A.D., who in turn were thrust aside by Huns, Turks, Goths, Pechenegians, and others. In the fifth century the Slavs were established on the Dnieper at Kief, and on the Ilmen at Novgorod, where they progressed and became civilised; in the seventh century they were also once more on the shores of the Black Sea. The little that is known of them is to the effect that they were idolaters, hospitable, and fond of fermented liquors; they hunted for furs, raised cattle, and farmed bees ; lived in communities governed by elected or hereditary elders, and appear to^ have been an inoffensive people much preyed upon by Asiatics in the south, Vikings in the north, and were unable to agree with each other. In 862, Rurik, a Varceger prince, invaded Russia with his Norsemen, conquered the Novgorod Republic and established his race as ruler of the Slavs. Some of his followers pushed further south, occupied Kief, and fitted out an expedition against Constantinople. It failed; Rurik's successor annexed Kief, and in time the Norsemen subjugated the Drevlians, Sieverskis, Krivitches, and other Slav tribes, and so became masters of Russia.

It has been contended that the Varoegers were Slavs, or closely akin to them, or were quickly absorbed by them ; but to the contrary there is indisputable evidence that the invaders were a distinct race possessing qualities peculiar to the Norsemen, that they introduced the right of primogeniture, imposed laws similar to ''Knut's Code," were aggressive, and successful Usually they married women of their own race, and the direct descendants of Rurik were wedded with members of the reigning houses of France, Hungary, Germany, and England, as well as of Sweden and Norway. The freedom accorded to women and the high position some of them took in the State were quite foreign to Slav customs and as the Scandinavian element died out feminine privileges and influence declined; then the seclusion of women in the Asiatic manner prevailed, and lasted until the days of Peter X.

The descendants of Rurik fought against each other on matters of precedence and succession. The history of Russia during their dominion is a story of internecine strife and disaster, of wars against Poles, Swedes, Lithuanians, Polovtsi, and predatory tribes on the south and east. In 1224 the Russians had to make common cause with their neighbouring enemies to repel an invasion of the Tartars. Notwithstanding this, they were beaten, and Kief fell Thirteen years later a second invasion subjugated the new capital, Vladimir, and brought eastern and southern Russia under Mongol rule. Lithuanians and Poles pressed upon them from west and north-west; the Russians could extend only towards the north-east

In these times and with this environment, Moscow grew to importance. It had been founded by Yuri, a son of that descendant of Rurik who had married Gyda, daughter of Harold II. of England; but its real maker was Ivan I., the Purser (1328-1341), who found the power of money greater than that of the sword, whether in dealing with Tartars, or his own kith. Christianity had been introduced into Kief from Constantinople in 866, and in 988 the Norsemen embraced the faith. The heads of the Church, driven to Vladimir when Kief fell, were enticed to Moscow by Ivan, who by his liberality to the Church, made its priests so much his servants that they not only suffered him to take up arms with the Tartars against his Russian neighbours, but even excommunicated a Christian prince at the behest of the Mongols. It was a new policy of aggrandisement which Ivan and his equally unscrupulous successors pursued, and by it the Muscovite was evolved from the Slav race. ** Round Moscow, subject to the Tartar yoke, the people became patient and resigned; bom to endure bad fortune they could profit by good. The princes of Moscow gained their ends by intrigue, by corruption, by the purchase of consciences, by servility to the Tartar Khans, by perfidy to their equals, by murder and treachery. Politic and persevering, prudent and pitiless, it is their honour to have created the living germ which became Great Russia."

This policy was successful. Ivan IV., " The Terrible," was able to vanquish the Tartars finally, and to dominate the whole of Russia and extend his sovereignty to Sibir in Asia. In the history of the "Troublous Times," subsequent to his death, there are many happenings analogous to recent events in China. The Church resuscitated national fervour, and in the seventeenth century under its influence the Tsars of Muscovy attained the zenith of power, extending their dominions so enormously 9 that Peter I. succeeded to a territory reaching almost from the Baltic to the Pacific^ and he enlarged the limits to both seas. These Tsars were the real makers of the Russian nation : under their rule relations with the west became general, and reforms were introduced conformable with the capacity of Russia to absorb what is nearest akin to its own spirit from amongst the more progressive nations of the west The Church escaped the general Reformation, but had its own revolutionary changes which resulted in the reversion to an earlier and more primitive liturgy, which obtains to the present day ; the "orthodox dissenters" being termed, paradoxically, the "Old Believers." Peter the Great had no sympathy with Muscovite ideals, and attempted to graft a coarse imitation of western forms upon a rarer stock. Stagnation and corruption were the result. His " pupils " were not more successful, and even the daring innovations of Catherine the Great failed to imbue Russians with the western spirit By following the policy of the old Tsars of Muscovy, successive rulers have added territories to the empire, and brought neighbouring peoples under their dominion, but no amount of instruction in western ways has altered appreciably the character of the Russian people. Nor is this surprising. A race which, generation after generation, has been ruled by foreigners and survived ; which could submit to Norseman, Mongol, German, and Turk, and be content under all; which is by habit quarrelsome but not warlike by nature; which is unused to liberty and incapable of individual independence, is unable to feel the impulses which have made the nations of western Europe progress.

It may have been that belief in the common origin of man, and therefore the similarity of human nature, led the Russian emperors to think that their people could be changed in char-

THE AWAKENING OF RUSSIA y

acter as in appearance by the importation of western methods. They persisted : the people were passive : the change was not wrought. There is no making a silk purse from a sow's lug. Examples, teachers, ample instruction, were provided, but tiiere was no real education — no real progress.

It was not until the later half of the nineteenth century that the Muscovite spirit reasserted itself successfully. After the so-called liberation of the serfs the Slavophil party oi Moscow obtained a hearing and followers. Their cry was " Russia for the Russians I ** Their creed, fadth in the natural abilities of the Slav peoples. In a few years they triumphed. The foreigners were gradually dismissed from Government posts, none are now directly in the employ of the State, and the reaction went so far as to forbid them to acquire freehold property within the empire. An interest was taken in the Russian language and its literature; once more Russia progressed on the line of Muscovite ideals.

Russia, a giant in strength, has aroused herself from the dull lethargy habit had seemingly almost converted into nature, and is now widely awake.

For some time Russia has been progressing rapidly : even during the last twenty years the difference is so great that in the large towns the material changes wrought seem to have converted a stagnant community into an enterprising, go-ahead race, the like of which Europe has not produced since the dawn of the Italian renaissance. The activity is as great as it was with the English people in the days of Queen Elizabeth, though, perhaps, it is not so much a revival as a starting to life.

The reason for this is not difficult to find : it is the result of the internal policy of the State. In almost every department it is the State which initiates, directs, controls, and represses or suppresses. In <Mie particular it gave its subjects a free hand ;

those who believed in Russia's ability to be independent of the foreigner, might aid in developing the natural resources of the country; might introduce new industries which the Government would nurse with protective duties on importations from abroad. The way to acquire wealth was open to all. Or, it may be, that the restrictions placed by the Government upon individual action, first in one sphere, then in another, have of themselves been enough to direct the Russian people towards industrial enterprises. Man must have some vent for superfluous energy, and the Russ, who might have taken to art and succeeded, has relapsed on commerce. No doubt the Englishman gets some reward for his devotion to politics, but when one considers what the energy the average man fritters away on party, local, and Imperial politics would accomplish if directed solely to advancing each individual's business, it is clear that in these days of race and world competition the exercise of the whole of one's political privileges has its disadvantages. The majority of Russians are relieved of all trouble of governing themselves and of attempting to govern other people; their interference in domestic or foreign politics is not desired nor allowed. The citizen who recognises that this is a relief can exercise greater activity in other directions.

Like a sponge, Russia has absorbed ; she has not assimilated. Whatever there is of western civilisation in the Russian is an accretion; there is no blend. The Russian is an apt imitator; but he stops theTeT H7s acquired knowledge does not enable him to initiate similar work, but he becomes competent very quickly to act exactly as he is taught. By himself lying out on the yard did not our Admiral Crump in one short month make of Russian serfs sailors able to manoeuvre a fleet into line against the French ? Then, what excellent copies of western originals were made in the days of the great Catherine, when in art, letters, dress, deportment, and ail things but

MAKING PAVING- BLOCKS l\ St, t'EIKKSItLKt^'S BUSItSI' Sl'KEKT essentials, the Russians became for a time quite French ! So prone is the Russian to imitate that he is apt to mistake his copy for original work, so much so that one may doubt whether Russia will ever find herself. Of late years she has tried to accumulate material wealth by adopting the methods which have proved successful in the west. She is pleased with the result In the slang of the day, Russia has arrived.

Poland, more than Russia, has immediately benefited by the recent industrial developments. The cause is sufficiently simple. The Poles possessed greater practical knowledge than the Russians, and have established factories whose products find a market in Russia at remunerative prices. Lodz is both the Oldham and Leeds of Russia ; Warsaw is the Birmingham, Sheffield, and more, for it furnishes all the articles de Paris, galanterie ware, and goods '' made in Germany " to which we are accustomed in the British market. Poland is making a big bid for the trade of the Far East ; already her wares compete with foreign goods in all Russia and Siberia west of Lake Baikal. Poland is the western manufacturing annexe of the great Russian Empire, and as that she will continue to progress. Russian Poland is increasingly prosperous, and Poles in Austria and Germany seem anxious to get under Russian rule. There is considerable immigration which the Russians vainly endeavour to check.

The unpalatable fact to British Free-Traders must be the success that has followed the imposition of protective tariffs in the Russian Empire. It is solely to this provision of a sure market that the industrial successes are due, and to it must be attributed the growth of towns, with large and thriving populations, ever increasing in number and wealth. In short the adoption of the principle has increased the resources of the Russian Empire enormously. By manufacturing at home, even at greater cost than what was paid for articles imported lo GREATER RUSSIA

from abroad, the State is in the position of the man who by doing work himself saves a penny by earning it from the outsider.

Mammon worship is becoming as general in Russia as it is in Britain, but Russia provides no outlet for the accumulated savings of the millionaire manufacturers and traders. The class of the newly enriched is likely to become a trouble if not a danger to the State. In Russia, as in England, and elsewhere, there are men who find needful satisfaction in contemplating their increasing wealth. There are others who regard riches as only a stepping-stone to power. In Russia these men are particularly circumscribed: to them wealth brings nothing but a longing it is unable to satisfy. Means are lacking for utilising the Russian parvenu. Society does not want him; he cannot attain political importance; if he has only inherited his wealth, even those who have themselves achieved success despise him. True, he may use his wealth to cover his wife with gems, but that is little satisfaction to a man who cannot by any means obtain for himself the recognition he thinks his riches entitle him to receive. His position is pathetic — and ludicrous. He is as unhappy as his fellows who have great wealth in minerals, or produce, on their estates, but are unable to realise their value.

The effect of successful industrialism is seen to best advantage in the better condition of the towns. All exhibit changes, and all decidedly for the better.

Warsaw has improved beyond all expectation; its main streets are well paved and kept, its new buildings are grandiose when they are not handsome, and altogether the city is ostentatiously prosperous, in no less degree, but in not so offensive a manner as Berlin. Soon Warsaw will be a city well worth a long journey to see. The smaller towns do not all share the capital's good fortune, but some, as

THE AWAKENING OF RUSSIA u

Lodz, have simply stepped from the rank of villages to cities in two decades.

St Petersburg has also benefited.

There is at present keen rivalry for commercial supremacy between the capital and Moscow, and into this struggle the citizens of the older capital are throwing themselves with boldness and zest Possibly there is not actually greater freedom in Moscow than in St Petersburg, but it appears that Moscow is making the faster progress. If it has no special privileges, perhaps the mass of traditions act as an incentive to effort The Empress Anne termed Moscow her haughty little republic; the knowledge of their greater antiquity must produce some sense of independence. Moscow not only founded St Petersburg, but would continue it it were swept away; Moscow stopped the Tartar, and drove out the Poles; Moscow conquered the north, and colonised the east — with such achievements to its credit it would be surprising indeed if the Muscovite did not consider himself superior to the provincial. Apart from all this, Moscow is so advantageously situated that as a distributing centre it must lead, and therefore its development as a manufacturing town is inevitable.

The Moscow of the literary traveller, the Moscow of which all have heard, was a superb village built in a great hurry less than a hundred years ago. The larger part of that Moscow has already disappeared. The remainder is going as fast as a London slum before a newly elected County Council. Wooden Moscow was picturesque and gay, but it was inconvenient, unsanitary, and fire insurance societies objected to it. Wooden Moscow will never reappear ; instead there is a town with immense buildings of white stucco and terra-cotta; a town of surface railways and electric trams ; of paved streets burrowed by water and gas companies ; of large shops, magnificent arcades, and all that goes to make a modern town fit for the habitation of the man of busmess. Those who would see anything of the Moscow they have pictured to themselves must hurry ; soon all that will be left of it may be stated in two words — Kremlin, churches. The " bazaar " of Moscow is a thing of the past; instead of the dark, crumbling, foul, old Gostinnoi Dvor, there is a marvellous block of arcades with tiers of overhead galleries — a block containing over one thousand shops and offices, all spick and span as the latest erection in Berlin. Gone, too, is the cloth fair under the wall of the Kitai Gorod ; gone the Sunday morning market by the Sukharev Bashnia, gone the scrambling isvoshchiks and the clamouring vendors of second-hand clothing. The Moscow of to-day is lit by electricity, and is eminently progressive and respectable. A bird's-eye view from the summit of Ivan Veliki is still a scene to enchant the eye, but eastward and southward the view is obscured by the dark smoke belched out by many factory stacks. Wood fuel is no longer the rule; the blue sky is clouded by the black smoke from ligneous coal, or screened by the sepia vapour from part-consumed crude petroleum.

As Moscow, so the other towns in the south and east. Kief thinks Moscow slow, Odessa believes Kief is far from being upto-date. All are modifying their towns in accordance with the views of fitness held in the west. St. Petersburg and the German towns in the Baltic provinces are altering too, but, as they were of brick and stone, bigger buildings of the same material do not bring about so great a change.

The changes indicate unmistakably that Russia is not conventionally eastern or conservative in things material. The people are not content to dream and let the world pass by. They are active, they are strenuous. Russians are making money, spending money, adding to their resources, developing their country as their means permit. What is more they are evolving a people. Measured by the standards of the west.

Russia is making rapid progress. The Russians know this. They believe that their country is another America, and that by adopting certain methods from the west their country will grow in importance as rapidly as the United States has done. How far they are justified in their belief time will show. At present we can observe only the working of methods and policies borrowed from the west by the people who are not American^, and who possess few, if any, of the characteristic qualities of the American people.

Chapter II

T ESS than three generations ago Russia was quite mediaeval, -*— ' and much that is opposed to progress lingers in the Russia of to-day.

There is an idea prevalent that Russia is a new country, and that the Slavs are a young people. It matters not how the idea arose. It is erroneous ; although generally assumed to be true on the strength of newspaper assertion. The journalist is modem. To him a Russia anterior to Peter the Great is as unthinkable as an antediluvian Atlantis. His Russia came to life some time after the Crimean War; the present Tsar has evolved it, consequently it must be new, and something like America, only younger. The journalist takes the Slav at his own valuation, and the Slav likes to believe that he is young, that his race and country are beginning a career.