The Russians; an interpretation

Front matter

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Contents

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Preface i x

CHAPTER

Preface

It is possible to become quite mad on the subject of Russia. In fact, those who are attracted to her eventually become either obsessed with enthusiasm for all things Russ or embittered with suspicion and hatred. They would seem to prove that there was no middle course. One cannot take Russia casually; she is too big, too fundamental, too promising. She demands attention. Her ways are different from the ways of most nations. Her viewpoint is of a nature that breeds immediate controversy.

In attempting to steer a middle course through these pages I may have failed time and again ; yet a via media was my plan. Any interpretation must be made clear both to those who are blind to the virtues of the subject in hand and those who are blind to its faults. Hatred and suspicion of Russia has led some to a complete denial of her strength or good intentions; enthusiastic obsession has led apologists to a complete denial of her weaknesses. To both classes come occasional awakenings that disrupt preconceived theories. Frankly, I have experienced this disenchantment many times. Withal, in traveling over the Russian Empire and through seven years of constant study in Russian affairs, I have had more pleasant awakenings than unpleasant. I have learned to be very slow in formulating judgments from newspaper reports or drawing quick decisions from a transient situation.

ix x PREFACE

The deeper I have gone into Russian matters the more have I been influenced by the spiritual fact rather than by the statistic. Statistics change; the genus is permanent. The pageant of a people moves along very slowly. Ideals are not born overnight. The grand scheme of development is rarely obvious on the surface. The destiny is rarely in sight. What Russia has been makes her what she is to-day. The mark of the potter's thumb is upon her — but you must look very closely to see it.

Americans are people of statistics. We lay great store by size and number. We comprehend the romance of figures as do few nations. Moreover, we are very much concerned with making a living. Russia, on the other hand, is just arriving at a comprehension of figures, and she is very much more concerned with making a life

It is in the sort of life Russia is attempting to make that American interest is greatest. To phrase it colloquially, we are curious to find out what they are trying to do over there. But before that question is answered, we must understand what the people are like, what they believe in, how they go about their work, what their ideals are and how closely they are coming to them. The statistic may show how the wind blows ; the ideals of a people constitute the power behind the wind.

In the following pages I have attempted to interpret the why and how of Russian life so that Americans can understand what the Russians are trying to do, what their present activities presage for the future, and how we as a people can establish with the Russians an entente cordiale that will have basis in something

PREFACE xi

firmer than the fluctuations of commerce or passing enthusiasm over the Ballet Russe.

There is no reason under the sun why the people of the greatest republic should not be on friendly terms with the people of the greatest autocracy. Between no two nations are there so many points of contact — what the states possess fitting so snugly into what Russia requires.

The United States will sorely need the friendship of alien folk when the war is done. Moreover, in self-defense it behooves us to cultivate the Russian people. A Russo-Japanese alliance looms all too menacingly on the distant horizon. There is no reason for our being too proud to be friendly.

To the fostering of this friendly spirit based on mutual understanding and sympathy, these pages are devoted.

Just as I finished these pages the uprising of the Douma leaders, expected by those intimately informed on Russian affairs, came about. It was, as I had believed it would be, practically a bloodless revolution. The blow was struck, the end attained, and immediately those in power devoted their energies to restoring order and furthering the campaigns of the armies in the field.

The blow was struck at the pro-German and German influences at Petrograd, influences which had thwarted every movement made by the army from the beginning of the war. It terminated German power in Russia. It opened to the great Slav Empire the opportunity to develop its own future after its own fashion. It meant that the forces which had worked to suppress and inhibit the people were stopped.

xii PREFACE

It forever silenced the rumors of Russia making a separate peace with Germany.

Russia undertook the podvig of revolution ; she must now add to that burden by sternly facing the realities of reconstruction and further war. Let us hope that the hands which guide her destinies will be strengthened by the patience and sacrifice of the people that they be counseled with wisdom and their acts tempered with justice for all.

What Russia has been makes her what she is today. We cannot understand the Russia to come until we understand what she has been. Read in that light, the pages of this book should have a far-reaching influence on those who would understand Russia and the Russian people.

I am indebted for the rights of reproduction of certain material to the editors of Travel, The Catholic World, The Bellman, The Ecclesiastical Review and several other magazines. I also wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation of the kindly counsel and criticism proffered by Bassett Digby, Esq., of Petrograd and a host of other friends, Russian and American, both here and abroad, who have been so good as to lend a hand with this book. R. W.

New York City,

Chapter I

RUSSIA is a region of extreme cold, where people are jailed for speaking their own minds. "It is governed by a bureaucracy that grinds down the people.

"Its population is largely composed of anarchists and Jews."

Take any average American — the proverbial man-in- the-street type — propose the subject of Russia, and you will be edified by hearing something very like these observations on that country.

And, very likely, there will be a half-apologetic conclusion, — "Well, we Americans don't know much about Russia, anyhow."

The last statement is unquestionably sincere. Americans, as a rule, do know little about Russia, despite the fact that the Russian flag flies over one-sixth of the earth's land surface, that 182,000,000 souls, representing sixty-four racial and tribal divisions, speaking 150-odd tongues, hold allegiance to the Tsar; despite the fact that the individual, as an individual, is freer there than in any nation under the sun — circumstances which in any other instance would have long since bred intimacy between America and Russia.

Our prejudices are accountable. Russia has been geographically isolated. Having an agricultural population and lacking an open port the whole year through, its people have only recently crossed the ocean to our shores. It is logical that an agricultural people should be less widely known than seafaring nations.

Even when discerned, Russia's national characteristics are not readily understood. Of the various national souls in Europe, none is more difficult to analyze than the Russian, none more elusive, none so persistently defiant to superficial examination and sketchy generalizations.

Moreover, since the late '8o's the world would seem to have been subjected to a campaign waged against the publication of the truth about Russia. We have heard little about that country save its evils. Time and again has she been deliberately misrepresented, misinterpreted and maligned. Her weaknesses have proved fat carrion for ghoulish pens to batten on. Some, unfortunately, have believed all the evil told of her. Some question. For most of us she remains an empire of enigmas.

With all this weight of prejudice and confusion it is surprising how our admiration is quickened when the real facts of Russia are presented to us. When we witness the artistic fact of the Russian ballet, no words can express our enthusiasm. When we listen to the musical fact of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Arensky, we are speechless with wonder. When we read the literary fact of Gogol, Gorky, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy, we are held a-marveling.

But the national contradictions are puzzling. One day we read of unbelievable fortunes rolling into the coffers of the State through a liquor monopoly; the next that it has been given up and the manufacture and sale of vodka prohibited throughout the Empire — a nation gone dry by the stroke of a pen ! One day we read of exiles being scattered to the four corners of the globe ; the next, of those exiles coming home to die for the very government against which they conspired. These paradoxes are only a handful of the multitudinous phases of the real Russ. Surely then, until we know the. truth about the Russian people, it were folly to judge them or hope to understand their artistic creations and their future place in the great pageant of the nations.

The average American mentioned above is right — so far as he goes. Russia is an extremely cold region, especially the arctic sections, just as Canada is an extremely cold place in winter.

True, intellectual people by the thousands have been jailed for speaking their own minds, when they spoke them to what the authorities considered the detriment of the people at large. To put it in terms which will be developed later on, until the upheaval of March 1917 revolution has never been the sincere expression of the entirety of the Russian peoples.

True, much of the Government is in the hands of bureaucrats, just as is the government of England and of the United States. Any governing power that is not actually vested in the people — despite what a constitution may say — is a government fef bureaucrats, whether they represent the Crown or Big Business.

But the great misconception of Russia comes about through judging her by the length of her years and not by her capacities. So much of Russia's life has been mingled with the East, so much of it spent as a buffer against the East, that if we judge her according to Western standards, she is just now coming of age. Russia is the adolescent of the world.

As soon as one crosses the frontier into Russia he feels the need for making clear distinctions. That the country is not as he conceived it, is the first fact to impress him. What he has heard about Russia and what it actually is may be as wide apart as the poles. For one who is studying Russia from a distance, the necessity for making these distinctions is even more important.

The first and perhaps most fundamental distinctions that have to be made are between Russia and the Russian Government; between the class that governs and the classes that are governed; between the faith that is taught and the faith that is believed, corresponding to the three great components of any nation that has an autocratic form of government and a state religion.

Unfortunately, many of us, when we think of Russia, think of it in the light of the reputation its government bears. Because the people have suffered lamentably in political darkness, we have a feeling that the land must also be shrouded in darkness. Quite the reverse is the case. No nation, save the United States, is so economically self-sustaining or possesses such a wealth of diversified scenery and manifold natural resources. From arctic Archangel to the sunny Crimea, from Teutonic Poland to the orientalized Pacific maritime provinces — a gigantic expanse of over eight and a half million square miles — endless beauty and the evidences of incalculable natural wealth greet the eye.

You may go among men who have been exiled and have fled to foreign countries, you may talk to the humble folk who have come to seek wealth in our cities, and with one accord they will tell you that, though they hold bitter grievance against the Russian Government, they still love the Russland and hope some day to return. Nor have I ever found the traveler who has visited Russia and not promised himself to go back. There is a haunting quality about its scenery, there is an enlivening stimulus to be caught from the singular life of the people, from the admixture of nationalities and tongues, from the varied customs and faiths that the frontiers of the empire hold.

Certainly confusion arises in considering the relation between the Russian and his Government. In matters of politics the Russian citizen is governed and his voice and vote count for little. In matters of morals and even in matters of faith he is practically left to govern himself. He may be intoxicated five nights out of the week, or what the Russians call a "bitter" drunkard, and no one will say aught save that he is a fool and to be pitied. But let him talk recalcitrant politics for one night in the week, and the gendarmerie will soon attend to his case.

So then, such problems as the Finn and the Pole — the hyphenates of Russia — are not his problems, nor is he concerned with the Jew, save as the Jew touches his life to make it difficult.

II

Between social strata the differences are clearly defined. The population can be cross-sectioned much as can a layer cake — and the layers are many. Whereas previous to the middle of the 20th Century there were but two classes — the nobles who owned the land and the fnoujiks who farmed it — there have been evolved other social classes in the recent course of the economic and political development of the country. For a matter of fact, Russian law recognizes the following classes: — nobility, clergy, privileged burgesses, merchants, burgesses, partisans and peasants.

At the head of the social ladder below the royal family stands the nobility. This body is composed of two classes, hereditary nobles and life or personal nobles. The privilege of personal nobility, which amounts to little more than a title, accompanies certain ranks in the administrative service, which is graded, after the oriental manner, into tchins. Hereditary nobility is also automatically attained on becoming a Councilor of State in the Civil Service, a colonel in the army and a senior captain in the navy; it can also be conferred by the Emperor. Certain government offices are reserved for the nobility and they enjoy a preponderance of seats in the Zemstvos in addition to other privileges ; the Marechal de Noblesse in each administrative district being president of the local Zemstvo, or provincial council, and a majority of seats being allotted them in the Imperial Council (the upper legislative house) and the Imperial Douma (the lower house).

Since the nobility numbers some 600,000, it forms an appreciable nucleus, albeit many of them are common stock, merely possessors of inherited titles that, in many instances, mean little or nothing to-day. Thus the noble colonel may dicker with his equally noble greengrocer for the common necessities of the day. There is a fine democracy about it all. Noblemen will be found doing menial tasks — men and women with scarcely enough to keep body and soul together, many of them, who for all their poverty cherish their honors and accept with fine eclat the petty respect shown them by their fellows.

A decisive majority of the aristocracy, however, is influential. Moreover an amazing part of it is Teuton. And thereby hangs the tale of the unity of the Russian masses in this war, for the class that has been influential in the past 300 years has gradually been becoming either Teuton or Teutonized, and from the Teuton did Russia learn many lessons of government that, misapplied, have brought about regrettable wrongs. Much of the corruption in the Russian Government to-day — commonly known as "the dark forces" — bears the stamp, "Made in Germany."

The clergy as a class do not dominate to-day in the manner of previous generations, and comment on them, apart from mention in this survey as a class that represents one arm of the Government, will be reserved for a later chapter. 1

Although not legally recognized as a class, the higher intelligentia form a sufficiently strong body to

1 See Chapter V.

place directly beneath the nobility. They are not always people of material wealth, yet they are usually possessed of a wealth of learning and appreciation. Often they are traveled folk, well read, cultured, firm believers in the Orthodox Faith, and generally staunch supporters of the existing order. Among them, of course, are vigorous recalcitrants, but the majority of the higher intelligentia may be said to view the present sociological and governmental situations in a calm and philosophic frame of mind, strong in the belief that when the time is ripe they will be remedied. Without question, they are the most stable type of Russian people, patriotic, faithful, believing, living in the light of modern thought — not in the darkness as does the peasant — and still sincere upholders of Russian ideals.

In this class fall many of the urban proletariat, families that have become well-to-do and influential with the growth of the cities and the increase of industries.

Below the intelligentia comes the small bourgeoisie, with all the weaknesses of a smug, half-learned middle class.

The rest of the populace — 140,000,000, or 80% in all — is moujik, peasant.

The cultured Russian is practically the same as any cultured person the world over. 1 The fact that the Dean of the University of Moscow drinks his tea from a tumbler, and the president of Harvard drinks his

1 Unquestionably there are superficial differences. There was the young married couple, straight from Petrograd on a honeymoon, who came to call the other evening. Both were of the higher intelligentia. They had been entertained at one of the fashionable New York women's clubs. She was visibly shocked. "You call American women cultured!" she exclaimed. "I saw them there, sitting with their legs crossed like men, reading newspapers, a cigarette between their lips and a high-ball at their elbows." This from a girl whose womenfolk are supposed to be the most inveterate smokers in the world!

from a cup, makes little or no difference in their conceptions of justice, psychology, art or any of those great subjects in which cultured people are vitally interested. But the peasantry of Russia stands no such comparison with a like class in other lands.

Compared with the peasant of lands under the Western influence, the moujik makes a very poor showing. His level of literacy is low, his capacity for drink enormous, and his innate laziness amazing. 1 Compared with the peasant of those nations in which the Oriental influence predominates, the moujik is a superior being. Thus he may live in a hovel, but it will be a fairly clean hovel. His clothes may be dirty, but his body will be washed. The weekly bath is almost part of the peasant's religion. He loves disorder just as the West loves order and efficiency. It is an injustice to judge him by terms foreign to him. Take him as he is, and few people afford a more illuminating study. For in that great horde of 140,000,000 you find the real Russ, unspoiled as yet by Western customs and Western philosophy. His problems are the problems of Russia. His genius is the soul of Russia. His is the class best to know, to understand and to love, for in him lies the strength of adolescent Russia.

1 While the war has changed for the better many of these conditions — mainly the drunkenness — class habits are not to be overcome in so short a time as a few years. During 1913 drunkenness increased 12^% and the evil effects were felt throughout the empire. Since the prohibition of the sale of liquors, marks of prosperity and betterment have been evident in a dozen different ways — in the increase of savings deposits, in the decrease of railroad accidents and insanity in the army and in crime. The Russian people find temperance a great blessing on the whole. If the war has done nothing else, it has brought Russia this incalculable boon.

III

There are two genuinely great Russian cities, Moscow and Kiev. Petrograd is only a French city with a Russian veneer and — until the opening of the war — a German populace. But Moscow and Kiev are pure Russ.

Enter the church of St. Vladimir at Kiev, and you touch the birthplace * of Russia's Christianity — the spot where Vladimir and his hosts stepped down into the waters of the Dnieper for baptism. Stand within the turreted Kremlin walls, and you feel the heart of Russia beat, you behold the glory of her dream and see the bulwarks of her strength. For the strength and the vision and the pulse of the Russ is his religion. Grasp that, and you have his secret, you touch his intangible genus.

By no means is the moujik body entirely Orthodox. The moujik is as fecund of sects as a Chicago University professor. There are, beside the Raskolniks — the Old Believers — the Mullakons, the Doukoboors and a host of others. In dogma they differ little from Orthodoxy, the main lines of divergence being in practice. One, two or three generations of dissent are scarcely enough to eradicate eight centuries of dogma. Moreover, while there may be slight differences in dogma, there is also the distinction between the faith that the moujik is taught to believe and the faith he actually does believe. However confusing this problem of peasant religion, the fact that he is a religious person is the vital factor both to the peasant and to those who would attempt to understand him.

'An ancient Russian hymn runs, "Kiev, Holy Kiev, is the mother of towns."

THE STRENGTH OF THE ADOLESCENT n

Untangle the matted roots, and three main strands of the moujik' s religion will be seen : the dogma taught him by the Church, the paganism that a life close to the soil has bred, and the inherent Orientalism which has been brought to the surface under economic and political pressure.

Be he Orthodox or dissenter, the moujik' s religion is centered not on the present, but on the farther side of the grave. Its symbol is the Resurrection. From this present period of suffering Death is the gateway to Life. The silver knows the fire that the dross may be purged from it. You are made perfect in suffering, says the Russ.

Suffering may be visited upon you or it may be undertaken voluntarily as a podvig, 1 a great act of selfabnegation. However it comes, it is to be accepted with resignation. Some of it was visited upon the moujik; he was a serf for 400 years, and in many present instances debt and agrarian evils have not permitted him to rise much above the level of serfdom. Some of it the moujik invites and jolly well deserves for his laziness, drunkenness and stupidity. Some of it he undertakes of his own accord, hoping for perfection thereby.

Voluntary and involuntary, this class suffering has developed, through the generations, the moujik's capacity for pity. As with an individual, so with a race ; suffering evolves a consciousness, an understanding of

1 An amusing story of the podvig, "The Devil Chase," was written by Nicholas Leskov. It is the tale of a rich merchant who has never had any real reason for repentance, and "stages" a Bacchanalian riot in a Moscow restaurant which costs him a small fortune, after which, satisfied that he has a thoroughly sound basis for repentance, he retires into a monastery!

intangible things not comprehended by those who seek conviction by eye and ear alone.

Pity bred of suffering has still another child — the capacity for forgiveness. Because he can understand, the moujik can forgive even the worst wrongs against him. Because he understands the beggar, he holds the beggar sacred — he rouses him to pity and charity. Because he, too, has sinned, he can condone excesses and lapses from virtue. Because he has known the chains of serfdom and suppression, he pities the prisoner, even the murderer, calling him "poor fellow." There is nothing Pharisaical about his attitude. With true humility he confesses to "these bonds."

Such elements in the moujik'' 's religion have fondly been termed "mystical" by some writers. I believe that here is a more tangible explanation. His attitude is eminently practical, considering the fact that he believes the good God looks after his soul in the end. His acceptance of wrongs was brought about by the bayonet and the knout under the direction of the Government and the landowners in the dark days of serfdom. There was nothing for him to do but accept. An Oriental strain in his blood quickened his capacity for resignation. It also gave him the view of Death as the gateway to Life. Besides who would not welcome death after such a life? ... As for pity and the capacity for forgiveness, these are not virtues restricted to Christians; they are logical mental states found the world over. Pity, as William Blake aptly observed, has a human face.

From this it must not be inferred that the moujik is a funereal fellow. Far from it. His capacity for laughter rivals his capacity for vodka. He loves merriment as he loves the sun and the wholesome black earth. And in this love of sun and earth lies another phase of his religion : its indisputable paganism.

The same moujik who lights a candle in his ikon corner at home each morning will sacrifice to the house fairies, the domovies, who guard the hearth. The fisherman who nails the ikon at his masthead will pour a sacrifice to the water nymphs. In fact, the blessing of the water, a yearly ceremony throughout Russia, is nothing more than a relic of paganism sanctioned by the Church. At a tiny Cossack village on the Amur in hinter Siberia I watched this ceremony. It was a cold, gray, grim dawn. The entire village, headed by priest, cross and banners, trooped down to the river bank. There with prayers and incense the waters were duly blessed. And then the natives, one by one, bent down, worshiped and drank of the muddy stream. Some carried jugs of it home to scatter on the fields that they might be plentiful. It was beautiful — and it was pagan.

This moujik) then, wears his Christianity like a coat. He is an instinctive pantheist.

At heart he is also an instinctive socialist and an instinctive revolutionist. These two are due to class segregation through the 400 years of serfdom and since — segregation that has made him independent as a class and communistic in self-defense. The Mir, a communistic system of self-government, is a striking example of these tendencies which at once strengthen and weaken the moujik.

As a result, he is intensely gregarious and clannish. I have noted this especially in Siberia, whither a quarter of million settlers go each year, a region eminently

V suited for seeing the peasant "on his own." He lives in towns and hamlets. You do not find the solitary hut far out in the wilderness as you find settlers in our West. He will go out and battle for bread against the elements, if he can battle along with his fellows — but alone, never.

Moreover, to this day he fails to understand the genuine realities of the classes above him because he has never mingled with them and because he has so often been exploited by the classes that came to mingle with him and his fellows. Sessions of the Douma, where all classes meet, bear abundant witness both to this gregarious habit of the moujik and to the governmental class distinctions mentioned above. In addition, the Government has seen to it that the moujik stays in his class.

Some fine results have developed from this class segregation; for example, the handicraft work of the peasants, the Kustarny, as they are known. Russia proper — not including Finland and Poland — has a total of not more than 2,500,000 factory hands, but its handicraft workers, living in villages, devoting their time to the manufacture of all manner of peasant wares, totals 8,000,000 to 10,000,000. Their products range all the way from bark sandals to jewelry, from cart wheels to ikons. With primitive tools and in primitive fashion, these ten millions produce an enormous yearly output of articles of great beauty and utility. Upon their devoted labors the Government has leaned heavily during the war. The workers are generally divided into bands or artels, sharing expenses and profits equally, a purely communistic arrangement that has made great numbers of the peasants economically independent.

These generations of suppression and class segregation have also bred in the people the soul of patience, and if you would understand the moujik in revolt, you must first understand the wrath of the patient man. Proverbially, it is a thing to be feared. It accumulates through long impositions and wrongs. Then suddenly it bursts forth with hideous anger.

Much has been written on the woes of the peasants, but as I went among them I began to feel that they would resent the sort of sympathy we Americans are apt to shower on them. Our Semitic-owned press has kept us sufficiently informed on all the injustice borne by the peasant, although it has been singularly neglectful of the peasant's standpoint and position in it all. We have been given the doleful picture of a human personification of "What's the use*?" being beaten, robbed and starved. Much of this picture is an exaggeration.