Scribner’s Magazine VOL. XXVIII OCTOBER, 1900 NO. 4 A Gate of the Old City, Moscow. RUSSIA OF TO-DAY BY HENRY NORMAN THE TWO CAPITALS USSIA ! What a flock of thoughts take wing as the word strikes the ear ! Does any word in any language, except the dear name of one’s own land, mean as much to-day ? What is Russia ? The unfettered, irre¬ sponsible, limitless, absolute rule of one man over a hundred millions of his fel¬ lows—is that it ? The ikon in the corner of every room where the language is spoken, the blue-domed basilica in every street of great cities, the long - haired priests chanting in deep bass, the pedes¬ trian ceaselessly crossing himself, the Holy Synod, whose God-given task it is to co¬ erce or to cajole a heathen world to ortho¬ doxy—is that Russia ? Or is it the soci¬ ety of the capital, speaking all languages, familiar with all literatures, practising every art, lapped in every luxury, esteeming man¬ ners more highly than morals ? Or is it the vast and nearly roadless country, where settlements are to distances like fly-specks to window-panes; where the conveni¬ ences, the comforts and the decencies of civilization may be sought in vain outside the towns and away from the lines of rail¬ way ; where entire villages are the prey of unnamable disease; where seven people Copyright, 1900, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. All rights reserved. i 388 Russia of To-Day out of every ten can neither read nor write ? Siberia is Russia—five million square miles, in which whole countries are a quiv¬ ering carpet of wild-flowers in spring, a rolling grain-field in autumn, an ice-bound waste in winter, stored full of every min¬ eral, crossed by the longest railway in the world, and chiefly inhabited by a popula¬ tion of convicts and exiles. Central Asia is Russia—a million and a half square miles of barren desert and irri¬ gated oasis, the most famous cities of Asia and the greatest river, a few years ago the hot-bed of Mussulman fanaticism, prob¬ ably the cradle of the human race, and possibly the scene of its most fateful con¬ flict. The Eastern Question is—how will Russia try again to get Constantinople ? The Far Eastern Question is—will Russia succeed in dominating China ? The ques¬ tion of questions for the British Empire is —will Russia attempt to invade India ? The Triple Alliance is a league against Russia. The Dual Alliance is Russia’s re¬ ply. Russia called the nations to the Con¬ ference of Peace. It would be easier to say what is not Russia. In world-affairs, wherever you turn you see Russia ; whenever you listen you hear her. She moves in every path; she is mining in every claim. The “ creep¬ ing murmur” of the world is her footfall— the “ poring dark ” is her veil. To the challenge of the nations, as they peer from their borders, comes ever the same reply—- “ Who goes there ? ” “ Russia / ” A troika dashes down the Nevski Pros¬ pect, the horse in the shafts trotting des¬ perately, the others galloping on either side, their heads bent outward. Over the housetops rise the five blue bulbous domes, like inverted balloons, that crown the church now standing where Alexander II. fell. At the corner of the great bazaar is a little votive chapel to the saint who caused people to subscribe so liberally to rebuild the bazaar when it was burned, and as they pass, the well-to-do cross them¬ selves and the poor doff their caps. All these are incongruities. They look as odd as a leather bottel would amid silver and cut-glass. They are bits of real Russia— St. Petersburg is a foreign city, and a hy¬ brid one to boot. Any quarter of it would be at home in Paris or Potsdam or Pesth. Peter the Great built it in the Neva swamps as “ a window toward Europe,” in Algarotti’s memorable phrase; and that is precisely what it remains. For a long time every educated Russian wished to make his country like western Europe ; he resented above all things being called uncivilized, and civilization meant to him French architecture and English manners. St. Petersburg is the embodiment of this wish. Provincial Russians still hugely ad¬ mire their capital, but if it were to be re- The Fortress and Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Petersburg. The Nevski Prospect, St. Petersburg. The Kremlin, Moscow, from the Kamenny Bridge. built now it would resemble Moscow and not Milan. The fashion of imitating the West has passed ; to-day to be patriotic is to be Russian, and so far from following the mode of the outside world, to wait con¬ fidently till the outside world shall learn that the Russian mode is better and shall lay aside its heathenism, its parliament- arianism, its socialism, the license it calls liberty, and all its other wickednesses, and walk in the only path of religious truth and social security. So to the Russian, St. Petersburg is no longer Russia, while to the visitor it is cosmopolitan and there¬ fore, as a whole, uninteresting. I say, as a whole, for the city of Peter the Great and all his successors cannot fail to contain many things to arrest the atten¬ tion. Its churches, for example, are the most splendid of any modern churches in the world. In other countries cathedrals are magnificent through the faith and the munificence of men of old time ; here our contemporaries have set their creed in gold and gems. St. Isaac’s Cathedral, from whose magnificent dome the best view of the city is obtained, whose gloom hides untold wealth upon its altars, whose four sides of great granite monoliths are 39 ° unsurpassed, and whose pillars of malachite and lapis lazuli are unapproached else¬ where, was consecrated the year in which I was born. A semicircular colonnade leads from the Mevski to the cathedral of our wonder-working Lady of Kazan, where the name of the Almighty blazes in diamonds, where half a ton of silver marks an outburst of Cossack piety, where pearls and sapphires seem to have no value, so lavishly are they strewed, and it dates from 1811 . One church only, meagrely endowed in comparison, is profoundly rich in association. A spire like a needle rises almost from the Neva, and at its base are the heavy casemates where the water laps drearily forever at inscrutable dun¬ geons behind. This is the island where Peter first established his camp, and where his original little log cabin, enclosed in protective roof and walls, still stands. The church and the dungeons are alike dedi¬ cated to St. Peter and St. Paul. All you can see of the prison whose name has been made a synonym of horror are the dank walls, the water-gate, and the long row of one-storyed barracks inside. And it is useless to ask questions. Very few people know what passes within, and these few Russia of To-Day 391 never open their lips But the horror has departed from this place, for nowadays prisoners of State are carried to the fortress of Schlusselburg, also an island in the Neva, forty miles away. Concerning this prison absolute secrecy prevails. I made the acquaintance of an intimate relation of the Governor, and he assured me that never in the closest family talk had he ever heard a syllable concerning it. So far as silence goes, it is indeed a living grave, the stony replica of the closed lips of au¬ tocracy. But all the world may drive through the low red-brick gate of the citadel to the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, and gaze through its narrow gloom upon all the mouldering flags of conquered enemies and all the rusting keys of surrendered towns. These are but poor things, however, to what lies below them—the long rows of square white mar¬ ble tombs, where, each under the same gilt cross and with nothing but a name to mark the difference, repose forever all the Tsars, save one, of all the Russias, since Tsars and Russia were. Of this long line, two only impress their personality in St. Petersburg to-day. One, the first, the great Peter, who did every¬ thing, designed everything, foresaw every¬ thing. The other, the emancipator, whose blood stained the street nineteen years ago, impressive because of the contents of one little room. At the Hermitage, once Catharine’s pavilion, but since 1850 the magnificent home of the world-famous collection of pictures, you may see Peter in his habit as he lived. A life-size wax portrait model, sitting in his own chair, dressed in the very clothes he wore, grasp¬ ing the sword given to him by that de¬ posed ruler of Poland once called “ the strong,” shows you his great height and his vigilant black eyes. In a glass case is the yellow charger he rode on that July day at Pultava when he founded Russia upon the ruins of Sweden, and beside it, almost as big—for the moth-eaten handi- The Kremlin Square and Memorial of Alexander 111., Moscow 392 Russia of To-Day Gate and Chapel of the Old City, Moscow, work of this early taxidermist must have shrunk pitifully since it bore that royal load—runs his favorite yellow hound. All around are hundreds of his instruments and lathes and tools, and the things those strong busy hands made with them. And an attendant, observing with pleased un¬ ity it has been done, these smooth roads, these solid embankments to pro¬ tect the edges of the lagoons, these miles of silver birches and furs and other graceful trees ! Indeed, this is a reflection that rises often to one’s lips in Russia, meaning not only what money—and money has always wel¬ tered forth—but what time, what la¬ bor, what tenacious clinging to an ideal seen afar off ! Flying along these soft roads come the Russian horses, beautiful black stallions, flecked with white foam, driven with outstretched arms by a coachman of Gargantuan size in his wadded gown of blue cloth. He calls out as he goes, he leans over his beasts, his narrow waistbelt of east¬ ern silk emphasizes his enormous girth, the reins, half of leather and half of blue or orange webbing, flap their buc¬ kled sides upon the horses’ flanks—he scorns a whip. The master or mistress of all this sits firmly back in the diminutive dark blue or green drosky—a light phaeton with tiny front wheels— and the big Orloff plunges forward, his wooden arched collar framing his proud head, his flowing tail streaming out be¬ hind — it is the most familiar sight in St. Petersburg and an exhilarating one. ticipation your great interest, selects from a group of walking-sticks his heavy iron staff, and catches it as it falls from your unready grasp, and then, placing a tall stick upright be¬ side you, shows you the notch at Peter’s height a foot above your head. Since Peter the Great foresaw so many things, it is possible enough that when he crushed the aboriginal frogs of the Neva marshes beneath his heel he foresaw the Island Parks too. The Neva, with its broad, slow, silver flood, stealing to the sea by many ways, holds netted certain flat islands, called Kamennoi and Yelagin, in its watery strands, and these have been laid out and planted with an art which worked hand in hand with nature. The result is a series of parks, among which summer villas, called date has , nestle and sandy roads wind fanci¬ fully, but all with an artlessness of which other European parks have lost the secret. But with what a prodigal- The Home of the Romanoffs, Moscow. The Cathedral of St. Basil the Beatified, Moscow—Sixteenth Century. Napoleon ordered his soldiers to “ destroy that Mosque," but they used it as a cavalry stable instead. Suddenly, “ B-r-r-r ! ” says the driver, the horse pulls up and you are at the Point, with one of the loveliest water-views in the world before you. From the end of the farthest island you gaze toward Kron¬ stadt down the Neva, so shallow in her vast width that only a few yachts flutter across her breast, for the steamers may not venture out of a dredged channel be¬ tween close-set buoys. After the green shade of the woods and the little eye-like pools looking out of their seclusion, the open of blue sky seems enormous, the water is a silver floor, and something in this peep into the infinite—it may be the tumble of opalescent clouds piled upon the horizon—reminds you of the other great water-view of Europe, down the Sea of Marmora. To my eye, the isl¬ and parks of Petersburg—they are within half an hour of the centre of the city —are the most beautiful town drive in Europe. But though the Neva brings beauty, it brings misery, too. Along its quays in the populous parts of the city are thou¬ sands of cellar-dwellings, where the poor live. When a certain wind blows back from the sea the river rises and floods these tenements, and the wretched inhab¬ itants have to forsake them till the water subsides, when they return with their bits of furniture to their reeking homes. A paternal government, however, thought¬ fully causes a gun to be fired from the citadel when the river is rising, and its boom across the waters warns the cellar- dwellers to escape. St. Petersburg, it is perhaps needless to add, is an unhealthy place, damp and depressing, and in sum¬ mer, when water is low and sewage is high, the canals with which it is intersect- 393 394 Russia of To-Day ed smell horribly. Only in winter, when damp and other evil things are frozen solid, is it bracing and clean, and even then, you must remember, that every window in every house is hermetically sealed. The little room I have spoken of as conveying the impression of the second personality is in the Winter Palace. After endless marchings through the countless chambers, great and small, from the Throne Room to the private apartments of visiting royalties, which seem in al¬ most all the palaces of continental Europe to have been designed by the same archi¬ tect and furnished by the same uphol¬ sterer, the official with you knocks at a door and retires. The door is slowly opened by an old man with many medals. He is the keeper of the private apart¬ ments of Alexander II., which have been sacredly preserved exactly as he left them. On Sunday morning, March 13, 1881, the Tsar was writing in his room, smoking a cigarette. It was his custom to inspect some regiment on Sunday mornings, and on this day he was due at the parade of the marines in the Michael Riding School. Five times had the Nihilists tried to kill him, and at least twice they had nearly Count Tolstoy at Home. Russia of To-Day 395 Is succeeded. They almost blew up the are his toilet articles—-a plain small set of Imperial train, and they actually blew up bottles and brushes, from a rusty morocco the guard-room and dining-room of the folding case, evidently bought in England Winter Palace and failed only because before we invented the modern luxurious the Imperial dinner had been arranged dressing-bag. It is all modest beyond belief, and the brushes are half worn. Here was a monarch who did not care to spend any of his incalculable wealth upon personal luxuries. The walls of the room are covered by bookcases, all quite full of books obvi¬ ously read. Among them, just behind his chair, I noticed the two volumes of Drumont’s La France Juive , show¬ ing signs of much hand- Yasnaya Polyana. Count Tolstoy’s Home (front and back). for half an hour later than usual, in order that a royal visitor, Prince Alex¬ ander of Hesse, might be present. The air was once more full of terror¬ ist threats, and the Tsar’s son and heir and his most trusted adviser, begged him not to go to the in¬ spection. But Alexan¬ der, brave and obstinate and fatalistic, was not to be deterred. He laid his half -smoked cigarette upon an ash-tray, picked up a loosely folded clean handkerchief from the table, slipped his little silver-plated, ivory-handled revolver into his pocket, buckled on his sword and left the room. An hour later he was car¬ ried back, fast bleeding to death, one leg shattered to the thigh, the other to the knee, and placed upon the narrow iron bed in the recess, and there he breathed his last. As the room was, so it remains. The half-smoked cigarette lies upon the ash¬ tray in a glass tube. The little revolver lies before the mirror. Upon each of the tables and several of the chairs is a loose¬ ly folded clean handkerchief, for it was the Tsar’s wish to have one of these always within reach of his hand. Here ling. Opposite the foot of the camp-bed hangs a portrait, rather crudely painted, of a little daughter who died, and below the portrait, neatly folded, lies the last frock she wore, which her father kept always by him. It is all extraordinarily affect¬ ing. Had he lived, I could never by any chance have thus known his private life and looked at his intimate belongings. He would have been merely the great remote Tsar, the Liberator of the Serfs, the suppressor of Poland, the war-maker against Turkey, the object of the Nihilists’ bloodthirsty pursuit. But because he died a royal martyr, I may see him for the man he was, learn his little personal ways, see what he carried in his pockets, The Gateway of Yasnaya Polyana. know how simple a life he chose to live inside his outer shell of impenetrable pomp, and be permitted to discern how he worshipped the memory of his little dead child. By more vivid means still, however, is the memory of Alexander II. nourished in St. Petersburg. In three places is his actual shed blood to be seen. As I stood by his bed, my own guide, taking advantage of the old official’s back being turned, lifted the coverlet and pointed silently to the broad rusty stain upon the faded linen. The act was an outrage, and I reproved him sharply. Again, in a glass case by. the altar of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration is the uniform Alexander wore upon the day of his death, and the scabbard of his sword bears a wide splash of rusty red. Finally, the very paving stones and soil upon which his torn body lay and bled have been preserved and will remain forever in the gorgeous Memorial Church of the Res¬ urrection, built over them. His descend¬ ants have indeed determined that here, too, the populace, as Antony would have it do in Rome, shall mark the blood of Caesar. 396 St. Petersburg might be anywhere, and without turning one’s self into a guide-book (precisely what I would wish to avoid) there is hardly anything in it to describe. My impressions of it have only covered a few pages ; but it would be easy to write for a year about Moscow. Here is Rus¬ sia indeed—every bit of her faithfully rep¬ resented. The magnificent white railway station, with “ God save the Tsar ” in per¬ manent gas-letters over the portal, is where the Great Trans-Siberian train starts for Vladivostok and Port Arthur. (We shall steam out of it, together, reader, you and I, before long.) These strange, dark- robed men, sitting by themselves at the bourse, turbaned or fur-hatted, are Rus¬ sian subjects from Central Asia. (We shall see them at home by and by.) Rus¬ sia is a great manufacturing country now; Moscow is one of the manufacturing cities of the world, and her cotton-spinning mills think nothing of paying sixty per cent, dividends. Napoleon looms large in Russian history; from those low hills a few miles away he looked down upon the splendid prey he was about to seize ; 397 Russia of To-Day through this gate he entered the citadel ; in that church his horses were stabled. A Romanoff Tsar rules Russia ; this is the house where the first Romanoff to become a Tsar lived, as a simple seigneur ; and here are the tombs of all the Ruriks and Romanoffs who ruled when St. Peters¬ burg was a swamp. Russia is a theoc¬ racy ; Moscow is the holy city, conse¬ crated and consecrating. Under whatever aspect Russia of to-day presents herself to you, in Moscow you may find it em¬ bodied, for Russia sprang from Moscow and the Dukes of Muscovy laid her foun¬ dation-stones. It is the most highly colored city in Europe, to begin with, and it displays the quaintest architecture. To me it recalled at once, of course with many differences, Seoul, the capital of Korea. Sometimes, when its old buildings rise above trees, it suggests the embowered eaves and ridges of Peking, seen from the walls. Its many white-washed buildings remind you of the towns of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its pavement, rough stones on which the wheels make so deafening a noise that conversation is impossible as you drive, is almost as bad as that of Belgrad, where you may quite well fracture your skull in a drive down the main street in a closed carriage. But what you notice first in Moscow and forget last is its ecclesiastical red and blue and green and gold. The second capital of Russia has a population of a million, it is the commer¬ cial centre, and the greatest Russian man¬ ufacturing town, and it has four hundred and fifty churches; but to the visitor Moscow is the Kremlin, and the Kremlin is Moscow. The remaining forty-nine fiftieths of the city do not count. The learned have not yet agreed what ‘‘Krem¬ lin ” means—probably fortress, or Acrop¬ olis, or central official quarter, for many other towns have one. Actually it is an isosceles triangle, one side resting upon the river Moskva, and all three marked by enormous pyramidal walls of pale pink brick, broken at intervals by square watch- towers and pierced by five gates. One of these leads from the river—a prison or secret gate—and everybody who passes under another, the Gate of the Redeemer, so called from the miracle-working portrait over it, must remove his hat. The best Women in the Sunday Market, Moscow. flaSt ■ Russia of To-Day 399 view is from the Kamenny Bridge, and is is a stratum of enthusiastic idealism of shownm my photograph |p. 39 oJ. Without disbelief in the thing that is and belief in color, however, the Kremlin loses half its the thing that may be. Scratch a Mus- charm. Inside the triangle, the visitor is covite and you find a transcendentalism conducted through the arsenal square, past Drop into conversation with your neigh- eight bundled and seventy-five cannons bor in the railway carriage and in ten of all shapes and sizes which Russia has minutes you will be disputing hotly over at one time or another captured from her some purely abstract proposition; con- enemies (Napo leon contributed three hundred and sixty-five); to the top of the tower of Ivan Veliki, otherwise the Englishman, John Villiers, who de¬ signed it, whence the multi-colored panorama sur¬ passes anything of the kind you have ever seen or will see ; through the Great Palace, built upon the stone basements which are older than Tsars; to the tombs of the Ru- riks and Roman- Broken Down on the Steppe—Tapping the Telegraph for Help. offs; and to the Cathedral of the Assump¬ tion, where Tsars first wear their crown. It is an area of infinite interest, and he must be dull indeed who is not brought to a standstill more than once by the pressure of his own reflections. My object in these papers, however, is not to re-describe well- known sights and places, but to seek, in both familiar and unfamiliar scenes, the underlying facts and motives and mean¬ ings which go to make the Russia of to-day, and from which the Russia of to¬ morrow may be inferred. Therefore I leave the Kremlin and old Moscow to the guide-books and many previous travellers, and speak only of the longer thoughts this Holy Mother-City suggests. d he name of Moscow will always bring back to my mind, before anything else, my visit to Tolstoy. And indeed, he is as much a part of Russia, as signifi¬ cant of Russian character, as prophetic of Russian development, as the Kremlin itself. At the bottom of every Russian nected, nine times out of ten, with the possibility of a perfect social state. With us the classes of those who do things and those who dream them are sharply dissevered; the typical Russian is doer and dreamer in one, and Tol¬ stoy is the dream¬ er incarnate in ev¬ ery Russian heart. Tula, “ at once the Sheffield and the Birmingham of Russia,” as a guide - book pre¬ tentiously informs you, is a night’s journey from Moscow, and Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy’s estate, is seven miles from Tula. It is a delightful drive in the crisp bright autumn morning ; there is actually some good farming to be seen—a rare thing in this country—long plantations of little forest trees, miles of half-grown wood. Then over a hill-top comes an aspect of very modern Russia— the huddle of buildings forming a great ironworks, huge chimneys belching smoke, the clang of the rolling-mill, the enormous slag heaps. An ant-like stream of men pours out, and across the road are the long barracks and the half-underground hovels where they live. They are not attractive men, either, and we are glad to be in the green country once more, with the quiet figures of browsing beasts, the rumble of springless carts jerking along, a peasant asleep, his boots dangling, on each one, the horses with bits beneath their chins, thoughtfully picking their way and giving elbow-room to passing vehicles. For six miles a fair road, then our driver turns sharply aside into a mere wheel-track and for a mile the little car¬ riage is thrown from side to side as it plunges in and out of the ruts. At last something which at home would be called a village green, and two little white¬ washed towers forming the end of an avenue of old birches. This is Count Tolstoy’s famous place—not, by the way, that he is “Graf Tolstoy,” to anybody hereabouts, as I found when I hired the carriage. He is just “ Lef Nikolaievitch,” Leo, the son of Nicholas. The birches are hoary as is their master’s head, and great in stature even as himself, and their way winds upward, past an exquisite willow grove by a lake, till it brings you in sight of a white low-spreading cha¬ teau, with roof painted green, like almost all roofs in Russia, close set round with trees. Tolstoy works in his room till one o’clock, and nothing is ever allowed by his devoted family to disturb him. Miss Tolstoy, a woman whom it is a privilege to have met even for so short a time, takes us round the farm. It is not like the farms of England, still less like the West ; it resembles more the neglected homesteads of New England. The till¬ age is of the roughest, two ploughs by the 400 barn door might have been fashioned by Tubal Cain, there is no stored wealth in a yellow stack-yard, the fields are deserted. No landowner can live by his land, Miss Tolstoy assures me, and estate by estate is passing out of the hands of those who inherited it from a long line of an¬ cestors, into the possession of the rich merchants and manufacturers of the city, who are careless as to produce and seek only the social prestige that land alone gives in old countries. She is pessimistic this morning, for she goes on to say that even of these, the third generation is always ruined and has to begin again. “ No Russian,” she avers, “ever ‘founds a family,’ as you say. A man makes a fortune, his son lavishes it, his grandson disperses it.” I suggest modern agri¬ cultural machinery, pedigree crops and stock, chemical fertilizers. She shakes her head—“ It would never pay here.” In his youth, Tolstoy was a mad sports¬ man, from dawn to nightfall in the sad¬ dle, or with gun and hound. Then the estate was watched and cherished for the chase’s sake ; now he thinks of it but as an appanage of the people which he mo- J nopolizes. But here he comes, walking sturdily down the narrow woodway, his dogs leaping joyously about him. 401 Russia of To-Day The photograph reproduced here [p. 394), which he afterward permitted me to take, shows him precisely as he appeared that day. The prophet’s brow, the patri¬ arch’s beard, the peasant’s blouse—they are familiar to all the world. He was wearing an old black cap, round his waist was a leather strap, his shoes were unblacked and split—a strange negli¬ gence in practice for the advocate of manual labor, who made himself a cobbler on principle. But the lens cannot por¬ tray the infinite sweetness of his expres¬ sion, nor the pen convey the exceeding gentleness of his words. For him the law and the prophets, the ten command¬ ments and the categorical imperative, are all comprised in the one word—Love. Who has it, has everything—religion, ethics, law, politics ; who has it not, has nothing. “ Write me as one who loved his fellowmen,” would be also Tolstoy’s request to the recording angel, if he were not far too modest to wish to be written down at all. And his devotion to the race marks his attitude to the individual. He greets you with genuine pleasure, he asks your opinion almost with deference, he considers your answer with respect. Your personality is evidently a thing he regards as sacred. You struggle in vain to reverse the relationship, but without much success, for his soul dwells apart and you cannot get on the same plane with him—there is so little common ground between you. To your question about his view of some matter of current interest he replies as a mathematician might reply to a question about the rota¬ tion of crops. I asked him if he sympa¬ thized with M. Witte’s fostering of Rus¬ sian manufactures at the expense of agriculture—that seemed a home-query that he must consider. Vain expecta¬ tion ! He replied that he did not see what difference it makes to the engine that does the work whether it is painted red or green. Not until next day did I interpret that Delphic reply. He meant that in comparison with the question whether the relations of man to man and man to men are inspired by love, all matters of tariffs and bounties are as infinitely irrelevant as the paint on the boiler is to the stroke of the piston. But I ran him to earth, so to speak, over the Vol. XXVIII.—47 Dreyfus case, at that moment being re¬ heard at Rennes. And to my unspeak¬ able astonishment I found him a believer in the preposterous “ secret dossier ,” a de¬ fender of the egregious General Staff, ac¬ cepting the guilt of Dreyfus as an easier alternative than the conspiracy of his fel¬ low-officers against him. “ The people are hypnotized,” he said ; “they know nothing and they all shout the same thing. After all, why should I con¬ cern myself with Dreyfus—are there no innocent men in the prison of Tula ? ” He asked me to tell him of the progress of socialism in England, and could not understand my reply that there was no progress at all. “Then what is said now about the Single Tax ? ” “ Nothing is said about it,” I replied. “ It is very strange,” was his comment. So far as the authorities are concerned, Tolstoy seems to bear a charmed life. The story about the Tsar meeting him at a railway station and holding a long con¬ versation with him, was a pure invention. Indeed when an important official from St. Petersburg came to Tula in the course of certain investigations, and desired to ask Tolstoy’s advice, the latter refused to receive him. But except the suppression of some of his writings, the authorities leave Lef Nikolaievitch alone, though his views must seem to them the quintessence of subversive propagandism. “ Three things I hate,” he said to me: “autoc¬ racy, orthodoxy, and militarism,” and these are the three pillars of the Russian State. I asked him point-blank, “ How is it that the government has never arrest¬ ed or banished you ? ” “I cannot tell,” he answered, and then, after a moment’s pause he added, slowly, in a tone of much solemnity : “ I wish they would. It would be a great joy to me.” The general opin¬ ion among advanced Russians is that the police are restrained in this instance by the world-wide scandal that any harsh treatment of Tolstoy would cause. But I am inclined to think that Tolstoy’s influ¬ ence, which is probably greater out of Russia than in it, being almost confined to the spiritual sphere, is not found run¬ ning athwart the administration in practi¬ cal life. How should it ? Here, for ex¬ ample, is one of his proposals. “ My land here,” he said to me, when I pressed 402 Russia of To-Day him for some immediate practical reform, “ is worth to me, let us say, six roubles an acre a year. I would have the Gov¬ ernment impose upon this land a tax of nine roubles. I could not pay it. Very well, let them take it away from me and give it in cultivation to peasant families in small quantities sufficient to support them. They could well pay the higher rate for it.” Such views as this do not endanger the Russian social fabric. Tolstoy’s influence, indeed, is first that of his noble personal character ; and sec¬ ond, that of the artist. It is in this latter light that educated Russians esteem him. I have often heard people speak with pro¬ found respect of his work as a creative artist, and in the next breath laugh at his theories of reform. What are these, in a word ? I tried to summarize them, imme¬ diately after my conversation with him, as follows : No more nations and frontiers and patriotism, but the world ; no more rulers and laws and compulsion, but the individual conscience; no more multitu¬ dinous cities and manufactures and money, but simply the tiller of the soil, eating of the fruit of his toil, exchanging with his neighbor the work of his hands, and find¬ ing in the changing round of natural proc¬ esses alike the nourishment of his body and the delight of his eyes ; while, like some directing angel poised above, the law of love, revealed in Christ, lights each man’s path, and so illumines the world. It is, of course, a species of nihilism, for realization of it would mean the annihila¬ tion of science, of invention, of art, of lit¬ erature, but it is the nihilism of the vision¬ ary, and has no terrors for the autocrat, the priest, or the major-general. I have dwelt thus long upon my visit to Yasnaya Polyana, partly because Tolstoy is one of the most striking of living figures, and anything at first hand about him, es¬ pecially now that we can hardly hope he will be included in this category much longer, is probably of interest, and partly because, in his vague and facile idealism, he is the typical Russian. There are, of course, compact groups of Russian re¬ formers working directly for practical ends which they keep steadily in view. Among these the bimetallists are not the least numerous or energetic. But the vast majority of reformers, so far as I could judge from my own experience, are dreamers. Almost every serious student, for instance, is a socialist, but a pure the¬ orist, seeking the line of development along which human nature can perfect it¬ self. No doubt of this perfectibility ever occurs to him. Half of them label them¬ selves Marxists, and the other half—some local name I have forgotten. When any new solution of the social problem is ad¬ vocated anywhere, it immediately finds disciples in Russia. Thus during the last American Presidential Election a Populist group of students sprang up, and still ex¬ ists. As Sir Donald Wallace has pointed out, Russians, having received their politi¬ cal education from books, naturally attrib¬ ute to theoretical considerations an impor¬ tance which seems exaggerated to those who have been educated by political ex¬ perience. “ When any important or trivial question arises, they at once launch into- the sea of philosophical principles.” So far as the students are concerned, the re¬ sult of this national habit is that they, the best educated and most intelligent class of the community, exert little influence in the direction of change. When the next lib¬ eralizing movement comes—and such a movement is being unconsciously prepared from above—not they, but an entirely dif¬ ferent class, will have constrained it. This, forecast, however, belongs to a later article. The Russian has an affection for things, which are new, therefore when he enters the great Square of the Kremlin his en¬ thusiasm vents itself upon the gorgeous green and gold memorial of Alexander III. The foreigner, on the other hand,, though he is charmed with the towers on the wall embowered in trees, delighted with the quaint monastery and the nun¬ nery where the Tsaritsas are buried, dazzled by" the treasury, and duly im¬ pressed by the Great Palace, is not halted by emotion until he finds himself in the painted gloom and amid the buried pa¬ triarchs of the little Cathedral of the As¬ sumption, “ fraught with recollections, teeming with worshippers, bursting with tombs and pictures from pavement to- cupola,” as Dean Stanley said. But his. emotion is not for these. Then it is be¬ cause the Tsar is crowned amid these 403 Russia of To-Day “ infinite riches in a little room ? ” Not at all. It is because the Tsar crowns him¬ self there. He is so incomparably greater than all other men that nobody but him¬ self can hallow and ordain him King. So exalted and remote and sacred is he that not even the chief servant of God is high enough to place the crown upon his brow. Therefore, in the holiest spot of the Holy City, amid all the pomp of the living and all the solemnity of the dead, sur¬ rounded by the royalty of the world, while bells clash and cannon roar and multitudes throng without, the hereditary heir of the Romanoffs—though but a trace of real Romanoff blood is left—crowns and con¬ secrates himself Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, and—for the whole list is well worth recalling—of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Nov¬ gorod ; Tsar of Kazan, of As¬ trakhan, of Poland, of Siberia, of Kherson-Taurida, of Grusi; Gosudar of Pskov; Grand Duke of Smolensk, of Lith¬ uania, of Volynia, of Podolia and of Finland ; Prince of Esthonia, of Livonia, of Kurland; of Semigalia, of the Samoyeds, of Bielostok, of Ivorelia, of Foer, of Ingor, of Perm, of Viatka, of Bulgaria, and of other countries ; Master and (Brand Duke of the Lower Countries in Novgorod, of Tchernigov, of Riazan, of Polotsk, of Rostov, of Yaroslav, of Bielosersk, of Udork, of Obodsk, of Kon- disk, of Vitelsk, of Mstilav, and of all the countries of the North ; Master Ab¬ solute of Iversk, of Ivastalnisk, of Kabar- dinsk, and of the territory of Armenia ; Sovereign of the Mountain Princes of Tcherkask ; Master of Turkestan, Heir Presumptive of Norway, and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein,of Stormarne, of Dith- marschen, and of Oldenburg. And it is sober truth, that to the majority of the people who live in these places the man who thus crowns himself in the House of God becomes thereby something more than human — a tsemi - divine person. One is reminded of the vigil of Fes- tus : —those bright forms We clothe with purple, crown, and call to thrones, Are human, but not his ; those are but men Whom other men press round and kneel before— Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind ; Higher provision is for him you seek Amid our pomp and glories : see it here ! Behold earth’s paragon ! Now, raise thee, clay ! There is nothing like it in the world ; probably no such claim has ever been put forth elsewhere as is regularly made in this church when Tsar suc¬ ceeds Tsar—certainly no such claim has ever been so widely and so sincerely allowed. And to understand Russia it is ab¬ solutely necessary to appre¬ ciate this fact. Unless you realize that in Russia the Tsar is everything, literally every¬ thing; that not only is his will law but that it is also heaven- inspired right, that his land and his subjects are his to dis¬ pose of wholly as he will—I am speaking, of course, of the masses of the people — you will not grasp the fundamental condition of Russia to-day. In a Russian battle not so long ago, the artillery, urgently needed in front to save the day, was stopped by a deep ditch. The soldiers thereupon flung themselves in until the ditch was full, and the artillery galloped over their bodies. The incident illus¬ trates the relation of the common peo¬ ple of Russia to their Sovereign. As you go higher in the scale the fact re¬ mains, but on a different basis. Official rank— tchin —is the standard of position —a greater or less tchin determines a man’s honor and influence, and of course all conceivable tchin culminates in the Tsar. If you have not yourself a high tchin , you must be “protected” by somebody who has. Officials of high rank will hardly deign to notice you at one minute, and the next they are wholly at your service, if they have learned that you are well “protected.” And in the highest society of all, whatever views they may privately hold and express, the Tsar, as the source The Russian Policeman. 404 Russia of To-Day of promotion and the fountain of honors and emoluments, dwells still alone upon the heights. In material things it is the same. I was once discussing with a Russian administra¬ tor the military capabilities of the Trans- Siberian railroad, and I remarked that there would not, be rolling-stock enough to convey masses of troops in a short time. “ Every engine and carriage in Russia would be put there if necessary,” was the reply. “ But,” I objected, “ that would disorganize the whole commerce of the country, and bring tens of thou¬ sands to ruin.” “ You don’t understand,” answered this official; “if the Tsar gave the word to take every railway carriage in Russia and run it across the Siberian Railway and throw it into the China Sea at the other end, who, I should like to know, would prevent it? ” The influence of the throne is increasing rather than diminishing, for I heard many complaints from educated Russians that certain Ministers of State were taking their pro¬ posals direct to the Tsar, whose signature made them irrevocably law, instead of submitting them first, as is customary, to the Council of Ministers. The Tsar alone determined to build the Trans-Si¬ berian Railway ; it will cost five hundred million dollars. Tradition alone is more powerful than autocracy ; if it were not, the world would have even greater reason to admire the aspirations of Nicholas II. He cannot command a policy which no Minister will undertake to carry out; he is unable to control and helpless to set aside a mass of statistics or unfavorable information which they lay before him. Sometimes, as in the case of Alexander III., he is deliberately overwhelmed with details in order that he may not espouse principles. Thus a Tsar might possibly not be able to preserve peace against all the facts and warnings and arguments brought to bear upon him. But he could declare war, by a word, at any time. And it is to the everlasting honor of Alexander III. that he set his face so steadfastly against war, waged either by himself or by others, and of Nicholas II., that his first great act should be to call a Conference of Peace, although his Minis¬ ters both by private word and official deed made it almost a mockery. From ruler to ruled is a natural transi¬ tion, and especially so in Russia, where there is no middle class in which the two qualities coalesce. Indeed this is the most striking aspect of Russian society : at the top, the imperial family, surrounded by the nobility ; at the bottom, the “ com¬ mon people.” The development of in¬ dustrialism, with its rapidly made fortunes, is changing this condition so far as the large towns are concerned, but it still re¬ mains true of the country as a whole. What impressions of the Russian people does one gather from several months’ travel through the whole empire—a jour¬ ney of fifteen thousand miles ? The first thing that attracts your attention in the two capitals themselves, is a curious de¬ tail. All the shops which offer wares to the people do so, not in words, as with us, but with pictures. The provision- merchant’s shop is a veritable picture- gallery of sausages and cheeses and bread and butter and hams and everything eat¬ able. The ironmonger hangs out illus¬ trations of knives and forks and scissors and chisels and foot-rules and the like. The tailor shows paintings of coats and trousers. Why is this ? Simply because a majority of potential customers cannot read ! I noticed the same thing later in going over barracks. In one large frame, for instance, is a series of “ penny dreadful ” pictures showing all the duties of a sentry—what the good sentry does if a fire breaks out, if a burglar is ( seen entering a house, if a citizen is attacked, if a sportsman comes shooting birds near a powder-magazine, and so on. Very few of the soldiers can read, and this is the only way to impart information. In a class-room at another barracks was a schoolmaster teaching the letters of the alphabet on a blackboard to a large num¬ ber of men. “ This is the class for me to join,” I remarked, to the great glee of these good-tempered grown-up children. The Russian people, then, is illiterate, in the strict sense of the word. And mill¬ ions upon millions of people who read no books and no newspapers, write and re¬ ceive no letters, must inevitably be the helpless victims of superstition and preju¬ dice. This is, of course, the fact. Rus¬ sia is the home of more religious manias and crazy notions than could be enumer- 405 Russia of ated. Not a month passes without some almost incredible instance of religious fanaticism. 1 he end of the world is a constantly recurring belief. The horrible skoptsi, whose practices one cannot more nearly describe than by saying that they carry out literally the exhortation, “ If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out,” are represented all over Russia, and in spite of the severest measures the police cannot stop their abominable propaganda. A friend told me of a travelling impostor he had seen, who went from village to village offering, for a small fee, to show some hairs from the head of the Virgin Mary. One person at a time was admitted, a small parcel was produced and many wrappings taken off in succession, until in the last paper of all the visitor was in¬ vited to gaze upon the miraculous hairs. Thepaper was quite empty and the peasant would aver that he saw nothing. Then the impostor would sorrowfully explain that the hairs were invisible to sinful eyes, and that only the pious could see them. In order to escape the reproach, his cus¬ tomers would loudly and proudly assert that they saw them clearly, and so he did a brisk trade. The Russian Government is anxious to change its old Gregorian Calendar to that of the rest of the world (the Russian date is now twelve days be¬ hind our own), but it cannot do so, be¬ cause the peasants would be furious if the favorite saints were robbed of their proper birthdays. Sunday, by the way, is a per¬ son to the Russian lower classes. Poverty and illiteracy naturally go hand in hand. In no other great country of the world is poverty—universal, monot¬ onous, hopeless poverty — the national characteristic of the people. The only parallels I know are in some of the Balkan States. At almost any point in rural Russia you might think yourself in the interior of Servia or Bulgaria, except that even in these countries the poor peasant is not quite so poor, and his bearing is more in- L dependent. Long train journeys in Rus¬ sia are depressing experiences. Once past the limits of the towns, every village is the same—a wide street or two—not really streets, of course, but deep dust or mud, according to the season, and from a score to a couple of hundred gray, one-story wooden houses, usually dilapidated, and a To-Day church. Russia is still first and foremost an agricultural country; she produces (including Poland) two thousand million bushels of grain, and grain products form more than half her total exports to Eu¬ rope ; therefore at the right season there are great stretches of waving fields, and later the huge mounds of straw, whence the grain has been threshed. But it is in her most fertile districts that the worst famines occur, for famine—a little one eveiy year, a big one every seven years —has now become a regular occurrence. And the country as one flies across it, leaves the general impression of indi¬ gence. In sharp and painful contrast with western Europe, there are virtually no fat stack-yards, no cosey farm-house, no chateau of the local land-owner, no squire’s hall—pitiful assemblages of men and women just on the hither side of the starvation line. And, from all one learns, disease is rife. Whole villages, I was told by men who knew them well, are poisoned with syphilis, and the author¬ ities, gravely alarmed at this terrible state of things, have appointed of late several commissions of inquiry to devise remedial measures. Drunkenness, too, is a national vice, the peasant having his regular bout whenever he has saved up a small sum. The new government monopoly of the sale of vodka, which is gradually coming into force over the whole country, will, I believe, exert a beneficial influence in this matter, and much of the denunciation levelled at it is, in my opinion, unjust. Nothing is more common in the towns than to see a policeman drag a sleepy, half-drunken peasant from his cart and set him to walking by the side of his horse. In all Petersburg, however, I never saw anything precisely corresponding to the “ saloon ” or “ bar ” of the United States and England. But opposite my hotel was a shop where tobacco and liquors were sold, and on each of the many occasions when I went in to fill my cigarette-case I saw children come with empty bottles, put down a few kopecks, and take the bottles away half-filled with the fiery spirit. The vast void spaces of rural Russia, by the way, may be imagined from the fact that every train carries a ladder and tools and electrical appliances for cutting the tel¬ egraph wire and calling for assistance in 406 Russia of To-Day case of accident or breakdown. The lines are, of course, nearly all single ones, so there is no opportunity to stop a train going in the opposite direction. My photographs [pp. 399-400] show how this experience happened to me once on a long journey. Personally, the Russian common people are attractive. They are simple, good- natured, kindly, very ready to be pleased or to laugh. Nobody can fail to like them. The ordinary Russian policeman— the gorodovoi , not the secret police—is the gentlest specimen of his kind I have ever met. And the soldier, typical of his class, is a great child, and is treated as such. Nothing is left to his intelligence or his in¬ itiative. Of virtues he has many—he is brave, obedient, faithful; of wits he is not supposed or even desired to show any signs. The very words he is to say are put in his mouth. If an officer asks him a question that he cannot answer, he may not say, “ I do not know he must re¬ ply, “I am not able to know.” When his Colonel greets him collectively, he has one answer; when the Tsar greets him he has another—a whole sentence carefully learned by heart and shouted in unison by the whole regiment in a long series of ex¬ plosive syllables. His pay is about forty- four cents every three months. From the point of view of the military martinet, he is ideal Kanonenfutter—chair a canon. To his number there is no limit. To this general characterization of the Russian populace I must add one impor¬ tant qualification. The extraordinary— the almost incredible—growth of industri¬ alism in Russia is bringing about a great and vital change in the masses of the peo¬ ple. The peasant who works with hun¬ dreds or thousands of his fellows in a mill or factory soon becomes a different being from the peasant toiling on his bit of vil¬ lage land and migrating hither and thither, in seasons of agricultural work, for em¬ ployment. This, to my thinking, is by far the most significant and important aspect of Russia of to-day, and I shall have much to say about it hereafter. In this place I have only endeavored to show the two great characteristics of the Russian social fabric, without an appreciation of which no Russian question or prospect can be intelligently judged—autocracy, the semi¬ divine, unquestioned, unbounded author¬ ity at the top ; its counterpart, illiterate, superstitious, brute-like dependence, au- tomatonism, at the bottom. But Russia is the land of paradox, and though all this would seem to show that Russia is poor and weak, I shall have to point out, in another connection, that it would be far truer to say she is in reality rich and strong. I must turn back for a moment to old Moscow, before leaving the two capitals of Russia, and their associations and sug¬ gestions. In a crowded street of banks and merchants’ offices, in the “ Chinese City ”—all foreigners in Russia used to be called “ Chinese,” just as to-day they are called “ Germans”—stands a little mediae¬ val house, skilfully and sympathetically restored-—the home of Michael, the first Tsar of Romanoff race. And within the Kremlin stands the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, the mausoleum of all the Ruriks and Romanoffs till Peter built his city on the Neva and laid him down forever in its island fortress-church, to be followed by all the Tsars unto this day. In the one place you see the little, low, many-colored rooms (much like the old royal apartments in the Kremlin palace), the narrow bed, the modest clothes-chest, the great wooden kvass bowl, the green leather boots with their pointed spur-heels, of Michael Romanoff; the night-dress and the needles and the flat-irons of his wife ; the cradle and the playthings of his chil¬ dren. In the other place he lies beneath a wine-red velvet pall, and six and forty of his race, similarly habited for eternity, are his silent companions. When one thinks of what these Romanoffs were, what they are, what they desire to be, and what are the colossal and ever-grow¬ ing forces they control, at the motion of a single will, to turn their all-embracing and fanatic desire into fact, I know of few more impressive spots on modern earth.