The eclipse of Russia

Witte calmed the fiery passion of the count and the two visitors left. A fortnight later there was a dispute among the cabinet ministers on the subject of the suffrage. The Tsar displayed his interest in the matter, and Witte decided to send for Count B. and Prince U. and to give them an opportunity of laying before the sovereign the views of the population in that province of Central Russia. But when they arrived he stood aghast to hear Count B. inveigh in unmeasured terms against those short-sighted individuals who dared to restrict the suffrage and deprive the Tsar's loyal subjects of their right to vote for, or against, a candidate. "But," expostulated Witte, "was it not you who fourteen days ago said the very opposite and threatened to march on the capital at the head of the armed peasants if we enacted what you now demand?" "Yes, yes, I know all that. But during that fortnight I have been among the peasants and asked them for their views. And what is more, I can tell you that most Russians of the intelligentsia are of the same mind. And I am anxious to tell his Majesty how they think and feel on the subject."

As I was very well acquainted with Count B. I took him aside and taunted him with his sudden change of front, but he defended himself, urging quite seriously, "Most of my friends are for universal suffrage. So is the general public. Surely that is a good reason for yielding to the consensus of opinion." Down to the Revolution Count B. played a prominent but not a helpful part in Russian politics.

The struggle which, since the year 1904, has been going on in the Tsardom was so tremendous, the interests involved were so many and mixed, and the vicissitudes of the contest so frequent and sudden, that to be understood even approximately they need to be approached from more than one angle. The analyses made by the Russian people themselves, which are among the most instructive, are not by any means the most trustworthy. For class misunderstands class hopelessly. Indeed, the extent to which Russian observers have gone astray in their appreciation and forecast of events and situations, and in their interpretation of the nation's ideas {4} and aspirations, would astonish the reader if it could be set forth in detail. A few of the more striking instances may here suffice.

In the 'seventies the two main parties that advocated a revolution were anxious to get hold of the emancipated peasants and to energise them. But they had no knowledge of the people, whose soul was, to use a Russian saying, a dusky forest. They agreed, therefore, that their best plan would be to merge themselves in the peasantry, to live the unenviable life of the tiller of the soil, and to interest them actively in the upheaval that would bring about the millennium. Representative men and women of all the "intelligent" classes accordingly swelled the ranks of these apostles, and with alternating self-denial and self-indulgence, devoid of measure, self-discipline, and coherency, took to the life of squalor and hardship to which the _mooshik_[1] has for ages been inured and diversified it by bouts of looseness and back-sliding. Adoration of the people whom they hoped to indoctrinate and inspire was the new religion which the "intellectuals" preached and for a time endeavoured to practise. They looked upon the nation as a body mystical, somewhat as Roman Catholics regard their Church, but they went further than the Roman Catholic and worshipped the object of their veneration, sacrificed their ease to it, and in some cases died for it. Yet they were aggressive atheists withal, and atheists who took their dogmatic negation second-hand from foreign writers without verification or study. With no attainable goal, no lode star in their strivings, no inspiring dogma to sustain them, no cleanliness, moral or ethical, in their habits, with hardly a trace of conscience and no sense of individual duty,[2] they fancied that having fashioned a deity they could yoke it to their char-à-banc and drive to a marvellous Utopia. Everybody who disagreed with them was anathema, and even those who were not actually with them were under their ban. For they were the most intolerant of despots. My friend Leskoff, one of Russia's most gifted novelists, whose politics were colourless {5} rather than reactionary, was systematically ignored by them, and none of the Liberal reviews or newspapers would dare to publish a favourable notice of his works. Vladimir Solovieff, Russia's unique philosopher, was sneered at as a visionary, and Dostoyeffsky set down as an obscurantist, because they reproached those self-made missionaries with harbouring a fundamentally false idea of the Russian people and with being ignorant of its aims and aspirations. These courageous writers added that it was mischievous presumption in men of unclean lives, changeful purpose, and misty notions of science to hope to bring about the transfiguration of the masses and lead them to an enchanted, unpromised land.

After a long series of disillusions, rebuffs, and humiliations, the zeal of the revolutionary _Narodniki_[3] cooled. They were forced to the conclusion that their reading of the peoples' strivings was wrong, that their own impulsive action was distinctly baleful, and that the success of the cause for which they had sacrificed so much must lie in other directions.

Years after,[4] my friend Witte, together with several of his colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first Duma, fell into a like error. Regarding the peasants as the most conservative element in the Empire he gave them the preponderance in the Chamber and then found that he had wholly mistaken their temper and misinterpreted their aims. The mistakes made by the Kadets[5] ever since they organised their party were equally glaring and much more sinister. More than once this influential party had their own object and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their reach, but by misreading the character of their people and shaping their tactics congruously with this false conception they forfeited their chances. The first of these missed opportunities occurred immediately after Count Witte had jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power and convoking a representative assembly.

Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate aim was to establish on a solid basis constitutional government of a kind adapted to the nation's needs as he understood them, and he agreed with me in thinking that to give the peoples of Russia universal suffrage and parliamentary government, such as obtains in Britain, Belgium, and Italy, would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef and plum pudding. A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most German, constitution, but without universal suffrage, seemed to him to meet the case adequately. But he could not hope to carry his programme without the support of public opinion, and public opinion, as he well knew, was eager for a democratic regime to be instituted at once and was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the Russian principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf. He requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the Jews, and to endeavour to secure their support. I was empowered to dangle before their eyes the perspective--which was no will-o'-the-wisp--that the power which his health would not allow him to retain more than eight or ten months would immediately pass on to them and that they would thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having thrown open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed democracy.