Great Russia

Front matter

GREAT RUSSIA

Her Achievement and Promise

BY

front matter

MR. KNOPF'S NEW BOOKS

GREEN MANSIONS

MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN

Preface

PREFACE

THE present volume is not a mere colleclection of disconnected articles, of disjecta membra, on the Russian Empire and on the Russian people. Rather is it an attempt to give a systematic and co-ordinated survey of Russian history and policy.

In the first part I have tried to analyse somewhat more consistently than has been done by previous authors how Russian history and Russian policy are rooted in definite geographical conditions.

In the second part I have tried to indicate the inappreciable debt which the world owes to the Russian people.

In the third part I have shown how the ideals of Russian culture have found adequate expression in the representative masters of Russian literature.

In the fourth part I have dealt with the two burning questions of Russian politics, the Polish problem and the Jewish problem.

In the paper on the abortive Revolution Movement of 1905 I have examined the difficulties which confronted Russian reformers. The paper was written ten years ago in Moscow under the direct impression of the tragic events of the Russian Annus Mirabilis. I have analysed the causes why the civil war of 1905 failed and was bound to fail, and I have suggested on what lines any future reforming movement is likely to succeed. I have not hesitated to reprint those pages, not only because I was repeatedly urged to do so by the late Count Tolstoy, not only because my forecasts were verified in every detail, but because those pages are still entirely applicable to the present situation. The difficulties which confronted the Russian Revolutionists in 1905, will still confront Russian Reformers in the political reorganization of to-morrow. The remedies which were demanded in 1905 are still urgently required to-day.

I am quite aware that within the narrow compass of 200 pages I have only been able to touch the fringe of a huge subject, but I shall have sufficiently attained my purpose if I have succeeded in stimulating some of my readers to think for themselves on those fascinating topics, and if I have succeeded in removing some of the most glaring British misconceptions of a wonderful people whose fortunes are henceforth closely bound up with our own, and who are destined after this war to be the dominant influence in World Politics.

The Hermitage, Jedburgh November, 1915

Chapter I

PART I

The Geographical Foundations of Russian Politics

Bartholomew, Edin.r

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

I

RUSSIA is not a country, but a continent, extending for thousands of miles in one uninterrupted expanse (except for the break of the Ural Mountains) from Central Europe to the Far East, and from the ice-bound wastes of the White Sea to the sub-tropical shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Russia is not a nation, but a bewildering conglomerate of nations, speaking every language—Polish, Finnish, Roumanian, Swedish, German—professing every form of religion—Pagan, Buddhist, Mahometan, Greek Ortho , Roman Catholic—with every degree of civilization, from the nomadic semi-savage tribes of the Steppes to the progressive Finns, with their Parliament of women and their universal popular education.

II

The first and most important fact to remember about the Russians is that they are, with the Chinese, the most prolific people of the earth. Add the aggregate population of Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Norway, and you will not reach the hundred and seventy-five teeming millions of the Russian Empire. And that population, notwithstanding an awful death-rate, notwithstanding plague and famine, increases automatically by three millions a year. Every year three-quarters of the entire population of Scotland are being added to Russia. In twenty-five years Russia will number two hundred and fifty millions! When we consider that those two hundred and fifty millions will by that time be fully equipped with every instrument of modern civilization, we realize that Russia will be one of the most formidable world-forces, for good or evil, before the first half of this century has run its course. We realize that the future belongs, not to England, or to France, or to Germany, but to Russia. After generations of suffering, the Slav is at last coming into his inheritance.

III

The vast plains of Russia, the most extensive in the planet, include three parallel zones—in the north the forest zone, in the centre the agricultural zone—with the "black earth" of wondrous fertility—and in the south the waving prairie inhabited by the Cossacks. If we add to those three zones the vineyards of the Crimea and of the Caucasus, we find that the soil of Russia produces every form of agricultural wealth. And the mineral resources of the country are no less varied and no less inexhaustible. We need only refer to the coalfields of the Donetz, to the oil-fields of Baku, to the gold and silver mines of the Ural Mountains and of Siberia. If to-day Russia is one of the granaries of the world, to-morrow she will also be one of the greatest industrial areas.

For the transport of her agricultural and industrial produce Russia possesses not only sixty thousand miles of railroad, but what is vastly more important—the most magnificent waterways of Europe. The Russian complains that he has no outlet on the ocean, that all his seas are inland lakes: the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, and Lake Baikal. But he forgets that he possesses the Don, the Dnieper, and the most glorious river of the world—the Volga! Let the tourist take his passage at Tver, where the river becomes navigable, on one of the floating hotels of the Kavkaz and Mercur Steamship Company—Tver is only eight hours' railway journey from Petrograd—and let him drift in an eight days' journey on the "Mother Volga" down to the Caspian Sea, and he will then conceive the unrivalled possibilities of Russian inland commerce.

IV

It is true that a large proportion of the Russian Empire has not yet been assimilated. The alien races—the Catholic Poles, even the Germans and Finns, the Jews and Armenians—have not yet been won over by the conqueror. Still, the Russian element forms the enormous majority of the population. When the Government gives up its stupid methods of com , when its alliance with the great liberal Powers of the West will be spiritual as well as political, it is probable that the process of Russification will proceed at a very rapid pace. For let us not be deceived by superficial appearances. The Russian race possess many of the characteristics of a superior and imperial people. They have survived a struggle for life of ruthless severity. They have resisted the continued pressure of hunger, war, plague, of a cruel climate, and a more cruel Government. The Russians have got a splendid physique, they have a capacity of endurance which is surpassed by no other race. And although they emerged only yesterday from barbarism, they have already produced giants in every department of Art, of Literature, and Philosophy—scientists like Mendeleieff, philosophers like Soloviov, musicians like Tschaikowsky, painters like Verestchagin, men of letters like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

V

European Russia is surrounded by an industrial belt in the west, in the south, and in the east. But in the meantime Russia remains pre-eminently a nation of peasants. The moujik is still the backbone of the Empire. He is a splendid worker when he is given a chance, and in Siberia and Central Asia he proves an ideal colonist. It is true that technically he is still a bad agriculturist. He is ignorant. He has no capital. He scratches the earth with his primitive plough, as in the days of Abraham. But enormous progress is being made, and great changes are impending. The Russian Government is instituting gigantic experiments in land reform, which our own land reformers would do well to follow very closely. Hitherto the communal system of property seems to have proved an insurmountable obstacle to agricultural progress. That form of collective primitive agriculture has now broken down. The ancient institution of the "mir," or village community, is being disintegrated. Communism is giving way to peasant proprietorship and social co-operation.

VI

But it is obvious that no reform of any kind will be carried through successfully until the methods of government in Russia have undergone drastic changes. Those hundred and seventy millions are still badly ruled. In the first place, they are misgoverned by their spiritual rulers. The Greek Orthodox Church, with her parish priests, or white clergy—who are compelled to marry—with her hierarchy of monks and bishops, or black clergy—who are forbidden to marry—remains grossly ignorant and slothful, and maintains the people in sloth and ignorance. She is out of touch with modern life, and continues in abject mental submission to a despotic State.

Nor do the Russian people fare much better with their temporal rulers. The Tsar is the nominal head of the Empire. But the reality of power is vested in an irresponsible bureaucracy, corrupt by tradition, and what is worse, corrupt by necessity, because they are badly paid, because despotism must needs breed corruption, and because the huge distances from St. Petersburg make supervision and responsibility impossible. The immortal comedy of Gogol, "The Inspector-General," denouncing the abuses of the provincial bureaucracy, remains partly true to this day. No doubt since the heroic rising of 1905 the Russian people have received representative institutions; but the Duma is only a beginning. No reforms can be fruitful unless they are attended by a large measure of Home Rule in Finland, in Poland, in Trans-Caucasia, in Little Russia, and unless they are attended by an even larger measure of local self-government, and last, not least, unless they are attended by a concession of religious liberty—which has ever been the foundation of political liberty. The main condition of any future progress in Russia is that the Edict of Toleration of 1905 shall cease to be a dead letter.

VII

Unfortunately for the prospects of reform the ideals and the activity of the Government were still being diverted before the war, by the menace of the German Peril and the fascination of the Far East, from the pressing home-problems. What the Russian people really want are better roads, more railways, better housing, better sanitation, better schools, a more liberal Church, a more liberal administration. But instead of the activities of the Government being turned in that direction, the huge revenue of the Empire had to be largely spent on increasing an already huge and unwieldy army, and the political energies of the ruling classes were being devoted to the ambitious and peril schemes of conquest in Persia, Mongolia, and Manchuria. Only ten years ago the jingo policy brought humiliating disaster to the Russian arms. The Government quickly forgot the awful lesson, and soon returned to the evil of its ways. They were "strangling" Persia. They were preparing to annex Mongolia and part of Manchuria. There lay the danger in the immediate future. The pressing necessities of national defence, a crushing military expenditure, a false and obsolete political philosophy, the imperialism of the governing class and the spirtual despotism of the Orthodox Church, those were before the war the great obstacles in the way of the moral and intellectual enfranchisement of the Russian people.

VIII

We have every reason to hope that those obstacles will be finally removed on the conclusion of peace, and that the war will prove a war of liberation for the victorious Russian people as it will prove a war of liberation even for the vanquished Germans. For this war is pre-eminently not a dynastic war or a war of conquest, it is a national and a democratic war. And it is almost a law of Russian history that a national and democratic war has ever acted as a revolutionary force in Russian politics.

(1) The liberal era of Speranski, perhaps the most picturesque and the most mysterious personality in Russian annals, followed the national war against Napoleon.

(2) The liberation of the serfs and the epoch-making reform of Alexander II followed the Crimean War.

(3) Drastic reforms had been decided upon after the Russian-Turkish War of 1878, and would have been granted but for the insensate murder of the Liberator Tsar.

(4) The establishment of Parliamentary Government followed the Russo-Japanese War.

The present war will prove no exception. The victory of the Allies will mean the end of militarism and the end of militarism will for the first time release the greater part of the huge financial resources of the Russian Empire for the economic development of the country and for the education of the people. And the victory of the Allies will also mean the end of the baneful activities of German reaction and of the German bureaucrats of the Baltic provinces, activities which, as we shall prove in a subsequent chapter, have been the incubus of Russian history. It is inevitable that the Russian Government, closely identified as it is with the great liberal Powers of the West, France and Great Britain, must come under their political and moral influence. We may, therefore, confidently predict that British and French culture will blend with and permeate Russian culture, and will be the leaven of Russian politics for the next generation.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II

THE LESSON OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

I

RUSSIA is the classic land for geographers. Nowhere else have geographical conditions left a more indelible imprint. Nowhere else have men felt more deeply the all-pervading influences of physical surroundings, of climate and of race. There are some countries, like England, where man has conquered Nature, where Nature has become the benevolent and ministering servant of man. There are other countries, like Russia, where it is Nature that always threatens to enslave man. In few other countries have men been compelled to submit to that physical des with a more passive resignation, the resignation of a Tolstoy so representative of the race. And in no other country has Nature given the lie more cruelly and more emphatically to the noble dreams of idealists. Idealists may dream their dreams, proclaim their systems, and claim their reforms. But the great natural, economic, climatic forces in Russia continue to follow their immovable course, heedless of systems and reforms. It would seem as if the political destiny of Russia had been written not in the book of philosophy, but in the stern and sibylline book of Nature; it has followed the bend of rivers and the curves of isothermic lines; and one guesses its mystery, and one catches its meaning more surely and more easily, by listening to the murmur of forest and steppe than by listening to the most plausible theories of revolutionists.

II

In this connexion, and to illustrate my meaning from the outset, and to indicate what I am driving at, I would like to point out the utter futility and folly of most newspaper comments and discussions on the political situation in Russia. In speculating on the probable course of Russian policy, journalists are constantly reasoning on the childish assumption that the ultimate success or failure of political and social reform must entirely depend on the will, weak or strong, just or wicked, enlightened or obscured, of some one man or group of men, the Tsar or the Grand Dukes, their supporters or opponents. If Russia could only be got rid of these Grand Dukes, and "of a few corrupt officials," then all would be right. Not only do they forget that behind the Tsar and the Grand Dukes, and the high court officials, there is the large army of the bureaucracy, millions strong, with their immense power, with their vested interests, who are capable of paralyzing and neutralizing all the efforts of the most enlightened rulers, and of wrecking all the programmes of reform if they so choose, but they also forget that behind both autocracy and bureaucracy there is a factor infinitely more important still, and that is the passive resistance or active co-operation of one hundred and fifty millions of peasants, whom we totally ignore in our calculations, as if they were absolutely of no account. Unfortunately for our speculations and calculations, these one hundred and fifty millions, whether active or pas , must be taken into account, as the ultimate success of any scheme of reform necessarily depends upon them. It may not be true that the people have generally the Government they deserve, and that they deserve the Government they have; or to use the language of Carlyle, that the rights of a people are equivalent to its mights, its needs and aspirations. But in a country like Russia, the needs and the mights of the people cannot be ignored, and those needs and mights are largely determined by the conditions under which they live, and those conditions largely resolve themselves into facts of climate and distance, of soil and of race.

III

One single illustration applicable to the present situation will explain better than any argument the interdependence between climate, economics and politics. All reformers are agreed that the most urgent need of the Russian people, after the introduction of religious freedom, is the establishment of universal popular education. So vital is that need, so strongly is it felt that, as far back as the sixties, Tolstoy for several years relinquished his literary activities and improvised himself a primary schoolmaster. But Tolstoi was driven by his pedagogical experiment to see the futility of all the theories and reforms propounded by doctrinaire publicists. The doctrinaire publicists imagine that universal compulsory education could be introduced into Russia by a stroke of the autocratic pen, and they blame a reactionary bureaucracy and an obscurantist church for keeping the people in darkness. But the bureaucracy is really much less responsible than theorists imagine for the backwardness of Russian education. In a country where winter lasts for seven months, where for those interminable winter months the plains are covered with a thick shroud of snow, where roads are few and bad, in a country which is further sparsely inhabited and where the izbas of the moujik are as scattered as the farms of the Dutchmen on the South African veld—you cannot possibly have primary schools as in Great Britain or France. Even the most progressive Russian Government could not afford a schoolmaster for every twelve families. It could not even establish itinerant schoolmasters as is done in the Scottish Highlands. For the Highlands are much better provided with roads, and they are more thickly inhabited than many parts of Russia. On the other hand you cannot compel little Russian children to tramp in the depth of winter for ten miles to the nearest school centre. In other words the diffusion of popular education is not mainly a question of political development, but of economic development. Again it is largely a question of climate, of good roads and of density of population.

Let us then constantly keep in mind those physical conditions which are amongst the fundamental factors of the political problem. It would be as idle to ignore those geographical factors as it would be to ignore the intellectual and spiritual factors. Without an accurate and minute investigation of the environment, it is as futile to speculate on the relative strength of the forces of liberty and reaction as it would be to speculate on the resistance of the Forth Bridge or the Tay Bridge, without examining the strength of the foundations, without studying the special properties of iron and steel as well as the general laws of dynamics.

IV

The first feature and the essential fact in the physical geography of Russia is the infinite plain, the uniform steppe and prairie, without any other undulations than the tumuli, or pre-historic tombs, or the high banks of streams, or the insignificant hills which separate the basins of the enormous, slow, aimless rivers. The chain of the Ural Mountains which separates Asiatic Russia from European Russia hardly breaks the continuity of the plain. The slopes of the Ural are a passage rather than a barrier, and between the last slopes of the Ural and the Caspian Sea there opens a gate of three hundred miles in width which has always been the highway of invaders and marauders.

And this unity of the infinite plain is still rendered more striking through the unity of climate. In summer the same Continental climate reigns all over the Empire, the same intense heat relaxes and enervates the inhabitants of Lake Ladoga in the north and the inhabitants of the Caspian shores in the south. In winter the same shroud of snow buries the whole Russian Continent from Poland to Siberia. The Sea of Azov and the northern Caspian Sea are frozen as well as the Gulf of Finland. And the traveller might drive and glide in his sledge in a straight line for six thousand miles from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, from Archangel to Astrakhan.

V

Now, my point is that this single feature of the physical geography of Russia has determined beforehand the whole history of the Russian people. We are reminded of the admirable sonnet of Wordsworth on the subjugation of Switzerland by Napoleon:

Two Voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice; In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty.

If it be true that the voices of sea and mountain are the two mighty voices of Liberty, on the other it is even more obvious that the plain has ever been the arena and refuge of despotism. The levelling of the soil seems to be significant and symbolical of the levelling of men. Ernest Renan has told us that the desert is monotheistic, i.e. that the uniformity of the desert suggests and determines a belief in the unity of God. In the same way, one might assert that the plain is monarchic and autocratic. In all times and everywhere the plain has invited the invader, and in order to repel and expel that foreign invader the inhabitants have had to submit to the protecting yoke of a master; they have had to accept a military and centralized monarchy.

Examine on the map the few and scattered historic cities of Russia—Moscow, Novgorod the Great, Nijni Novgorod, Kiev, Kazan—generally situated on the border of the sheltering forest, or at the mouth or on the banks of rivers. The new city or "nov gorod" is generally situated on the lower bank (nijni), but the old city is almost invariably situated on a height, round a Kreml. Each one of those old cities dominating the plain appears to us like a sentinel who watches and like a stronghold which protects, and that Kremlin—which is both an acropolis and a capitol, which is at once a fortress, a church, and a city—tells us by its aspect of the violent destinies of the inhabitants. The whole of Russian history is one continued effort to drive out foreign invasion. In everlasting succession on each frontier arises a new enemy—Tatars of Kazan and of Crimea, Khirgiz of the Volga, Cossacks of the Steppe, Turks, Poles, Lithuanians, Ger , Swedes, towards the south and the west—the external peril has never ceased.

VI

Speaking of the European coalition against France in 1792, Joseph de Maistre has been able to say that France could only be saved by a Reign of Terror. With how much more reason might one affirm that Russia could only be saved by an autocracy? It is Ivan the Terrible, Peter and Catherine the Great who have been the cruel and stern master-builders of the Russian people, the "gatherers" of the Russian soil.

It is hard for a Briton, who has an instinctive worship and almost a superstition for liberty, to get reconciled with the principle of despotism. It is difficult for him not to see in that principle something diabolical, the source of all moral and political evil. And most difficult of all, most repugnant to his feelings, is it to admit that this abhorred autocracy can ever have been the very condition of the salvation of the country. But let us not forget that in the life of nations the principle of authority, as long as it is accepted by the people, and as long as it rests on a moral or spiritual basis, may be as necessary and therefore as legitimate as the principle of liberty. Let us not forget that even in our own history two of the most decisive epochs have been the military dictatorship of Cromwell and the civil dictatorship of Pitt. Let us not forget that the Romans—i.e. the nation who, of all ancient nations, have been the most successful in the practice of freedom and of self-government, did never hesitate to appeal to such dictatorship whenever the country was in danger. Salus populi suprema lex.

VII

Now in Russia for centuries the country has always been in danger. Hannibal has always been at the gates of Rome. Tatars and Poles have always threatened the gates of Moscow. And therefore fatally despotism had to be perpetual. Dura lex sed lex: it was a great evil, but a necessary one.

Let us suppose for one moment that the Russians had adopted another form of government, and had remained loyal to the republican principle which we see prevailing in the most ancient commonwealths of Pskof, Viatka, and My Lord Novgorod the Great. What would have happened if Russia, instead of submitting to the iron hand of the Grand Dukes of Moscow, had risen against them, and if republican freedom had triumphed"?

The reply to that question is written in the whole history of Poland which is inseparable from that of Russia. In the life and death struggle between the two great Slav nations, the Poles seemed to have every advantage: they were a race admirably gifted, brilliant, clever, proud, and bold. They lived in close proximity of the centres of civilization, in communion of sympathy and interest with Western Europe. They were inspired with a passionate love for independence. And yet it was Tartarized and barbarized Russia that triumphed, it was civilized Poland which was crushed and blotted from the very map of Europe. Poland perished through freedom, through the abuse of the liberum veto of the elective principle. She perished because, in the supreme hour of danger, the Poles did not rally around their leaders, because they did not make to their Government the sacrifice of their anarchist instincts. Russia, on the contrary, made that sacrifice; she trusted to the sword of her princes; she allowed herself to be saved by despotism. "Let Poland perish rather than surrender the privileges of a free aristocracy of the Schlachta!" seems to have been the guiding principle of the Poles. "The safety of the country is the supreme law" remained the motto of the Muscovites.

VIII

Let us, therefore, take care not to simplify unduly the tragedy of humanity by rigid adherence to a few doctrinaire principles. By all means let us proclaim that in our modern industrial community, liberty with all its risks is infinitely preferable to despotism with all its security. But do not let us forget the fatality of the past. Let us remember that autocracy is not a mere baneful accident in the annals of Russia, a system born of brutal force and which must perish by brutal force, a despotism only supported by exile and by Cossacks, and only tempered by Nihilism and by assassination. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, although nations may not necessarily have the Government they deserve, and deserve the government they have, yet when a government has succeeded in lasting for generations, it thereby clearly shows that it must be adapted to the needs of and in conformity with the aspirations of the inhabitants. Now autocracy in Russia has endured for centuries; it has survived every revolution. Individual Tsars have been suppressed, Peter III, Paul I, Alexander II, have been murdered. The institution itself could not be suppressed. In times of national disturbance and national distress it has always appeared to the people, rightly or wrongly, as the supreme refuge. It has owed its existence not to chance, but to necessity. And this necessity seems so obvious, so imperative to every Russian who knows his history, that all Slavophiles, even though their tendencies were liberal, as in the case of Aksakov and Yourii Samarine, have upheld the autocracy, the "Samoderjavie," as the corner-stone of the political structure.

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Chapter III

CHAPTER III

THE LESSONS OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

SUCH are the teachings of physical geography. Let us consider what are the lessons of economic geography.

I

Leaving aside the frozen marshes of the extreme north only inhabited by the Laplander and the reindeer, and the salt deserts of the extreme south only crossed by the nomadic tribes and the camel, European Russia is divided into three zones or regions (see map facing page three): the region of primeval forests in the north, the region of the grassy steppes or prairies in the south, and the intermediate region of arable land, that famous "black soil" of inexhaustible fertility, which it is only necessary to scratch for the harvest to burst out as by enchantment. Although those three regions are clearly characterized and distinct, they are nevertheless mutually interdependent. The dwellers of the forest need the produce of the black soil—the granary of Russia. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the agricultural plain need the fuel and the building materials of the forest. Coal and stone are generally wanting. All Russian houses in the country are built in wood, and it has been calculated that all the Russian villages are destroyed by fire every twenty years.

And still more does the plain need the moisture of the forest, without which the droughts and famines which at present are only a periodical scourge of Russia would be her permanent curse. And, finally, the grassy steppe or prairie is the "hinterland" of the black soil. Not only does the arable land encroach every year on the steppe, but without the possession of that "hinterland" the inhabitants of the plain, as in the legendary days of the Cossacks, would have been always at the mercy of incursions and invasions.