UC— NRLF I III II II I Mill Ml II II II I j«tuiui»tn(iimtiu?iiiiiititHuni4UiiHUiiithif> ^, " V IE HANDBOOK SERIES RUSSIA HISTORY, DESCRIPTION AND POLITICS THE HANDBOOK SERIES Agricultural Credit Americanization, $1.50 European War. Vol. I European War. Vol. H Prison Reform Russia, $1.50 Short Ballot Socialism Vocational Education Each volume, except as otherwise noted, $1.2^ net THE HANDBOOK SERIES SELECTED ARTICLES ON RUSSIA HISTORY, DESCRIPTION AND POLITICS Compiled bg C. E. FANNING THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY NEW YORK CITY 1918 r3 Published April, 1918 EXPLANATORY NOTE • With Russian affairs daily furnishing startling headlines in our newspapers, the American public is searching for the ex- planation back of contemporary events. Our magazines have furnished much illuminating material. Often these periodical articles represent the best thought of specialists in Russian subjects, presented in the popular style the general reader is supposed to demand; sometimes they are the hurried notes of a journalist who opens a new vein of information; again they may be the impressionistic musings of one who takes time to observe the by-ways and by-products of a national life. As brought together for consecutive reading they result in a com- posite view of Russia which is as true as any one writer's view. To understand the revolution of 191 7 the American needs the story of Russia's growth from the days of Rurik, a de- scription of the empire, its political and social institutions, an analysis of the muzhik's habits of thought and his religious faith, as well as a study of the nation's part in this tremendous conflict. As the articles now reprinted bring out, each of these has a bearing on the amazing upheaval of last March. This volume was compiled in the summer of 1917 but pub- lication date was unavoidably postponed to the spring of 1918. It has been found impracticable to omit or to alter the arrange- ment of any of the material originally selected for reprinting, but to bring the volume down to date Miss Edith M. Phelps has added a few recent articles to the reprints and has revised the bibliography. The new articles are grouped at the end of the section dealing with the Revolution. Because there have been so many good books and period- ical articles in the past ten years, few earlier references have been included in the Bibliography. It is hoped that the directions for pronouncing Russian names, the glossary of Russian words and the chronology of important events will prove useful to all readers. C. E. Fanning. April I, 1918. ^8r?n;4'i CONTENTS Bibliography xi Introduction Wright, Richardson. The Empire of Enigmas Catholic World I JIlSTORY Ogg, F. A. Russia: The Vast Empire of the Czars Munsey 9 Hart, A. B. The Romanoffs Outlook 32 Mavor, John. Russia's Part in European History 41 Johnston, Charles. The New Russia. .Review of Reviews 43 Morgan, Gerald. The New Russia North American Review 44 J HE Russian Empire Welliver, J. C. Poland's Story Century 47 m Showalter, W. J. Partitioned Poland .^National Geographic Magazine 63 The Economic Bases for an Autonomous Poland .' Review of Reviews 68 Staley, J. E. Finland and the Finns ... Canadian Magazine 71 Greely, A. W. The Land of Promise 76 National Geographic Magazine 76 The Real Siberia Literary Digest 92 Lethbridge, Marjorie and Alan. Siberia in War Time 94 Foster, P. P. New Ports and Railways in Russia Review of Reviews 97 ^i viii CONTENTS Reynolds, E. K. Economic Resources of the Russian Em- pire Geographic Review (9Q>)f Political and Social Problems Winter, N. O. Autocracy and Bureaucracy in Russia . . . ^^ y North American Review uoq) r Child, R. W. Inside Russia Collier's @> V Russian Municipal Enterprises American City 120 Lebedeff, Boris. Abolition of the Russian Mir /->. Contemporary Review (120) Wright, Richardson. Mostly Mujik — A Glimpse of the Russian Artel and Kustarnui Catholic World 131 Wright, Richardson. The Russian as a Business Man Travel 139 Child, R. W. The Better Half of Russia Century 148 New Freedom for the Russian Woman Reviews of Reviews /'^6;j' (.^j^ Elementary Education in Russia Review of Reviews /'^4/ Christmas in Russia and Her Provinces Travel 166 Two Year's Sobriety in Russia Literary Digest 168 w Religion Simpson, J. Y. Religion in Russia To-day ..Hibbert Journal 171 Begbie, Harold. Holy Russia Atlantic Monthly 184 Jhe Jews Rosenthal, Herman. The Martyrdom of the Russian Jew Outlook 185 Sliozberg, Henry. Situation of the Jews in Russia ...Current History Magazine of the New York Times 201 The Russian Revolution and Jewish Immigration ........ World's Work 209 ^ CONTENTS ix Russia in the European War Washburn, Stanley. Russia's Contribution to the War Review of Reviews 211 Graham, Stephen. The Russians and the War * Atlantic Monthly 21& U^Kropotkin, Sasha. Russians of Today Outlook 228 Yarmolinsky, Abraham. Russia in Arms: Social Aspects . Bookman 233 Child, R. W. The Homeless Hordes of Russia. . .Collier's 241 Russia a Nation United by War Century 244 The Revolution of 191 7 The Russian Revolution Spectator 253 y The Russian Revolution : The History of Four Days Outlook 254' Kennan, George. The Victory of the Russian People Outlook 259 Levine, I. D. Russia in the Throes of Re-Birth • Review of Reviews 264 The Passing of Old Russia Independent 272 Harper, S. N. Zemstvo Russia Independent 273 Russia and the Need for a Supreme Authority Saturday Review 276 Harper, S. N. The Rise of Russian Democracy World's Work 279 Sack, A. J. Factors in the Russian Revolution . . . Current History Magazine of the New York Times Sack, A. J. Russia's Future: The Basis of Hope for Her Permanent Democratic Development Outlook 300 Goldenweiser, Nicholas. "Bolshevism" as a World Prob- lem Review of Reviews 304 Olgin, Moissaye J. Mass Rule in Russia Asia 309 Birth of the Ukrainian Republic Literary Digest 324 0\/ X CONTENTS Ukraine Throws Off the Shackles of Serfdom After 263 Years Literary Digest 328 Lenine, Nicholas. Political Parties in Russia 333 Literature, Art and Music m Magnus, Leonard. Russian Lyrical Poetry Living Age 343 Modern Russian Fiction Living Age 352 Newmarch, Rosa. Some Notes on Modern Russian Art. . . International Studio 356 Rienzi, Alexis. Music in Russia Russian Review 360 Appendix L Directions for Pronouncing Russian Names 371 Appendix IL Glossary ; 373 Appendix IIL Chronology of Russian History 375 Appendix IV. Russian Calendar Minneapolis Tribune 381 Index 383 BIBLIOGRAPHY An asterisk (*) preceding a reference indicates that the entire article or a part of it has been reprinted in this volume. Many of the maga- zine articles listed here, as well as similar material that may be pub- lished after this volume is issued, may be secured at reasonable rates from the Wilson Package Library, operated by The H. W. Wilson Com- pany. BIBLIOGRAPHIES Baedeker, Karl. Russia, p. Ixii-lxiv. *$5.40. Scribner. 1914. Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol. 23. p. 911-12. Goodrich, J. K. Russia in Europe and Asia. p. 285-92. *$i.50. McClurg. 1912. Russia and the Russian people, p. 126-8. *50c. Sully and Klein- teich. 1914, Skrine, F. H. Expansion of Russia, p. 349-58. *$i.5o Putnam. 1915. Wiener, Leo. Interpretation of the Russian people, p. 239-48. ♦$1.25. McBride. 1915. Winter, N. O. Russian empire of to-day and yesterday, p. 477- 80. *$3. Page. 1913. BOOKS AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES History Alexinsky, Gregor. Russia and Europe. *$4.50 Scribner. 191 7. Shows how Russia has been Europeanized. Cambridge modern history, per vol. *$4 Macmillan. 1902-1911. Curtin, Jeremiah. Mongols in Russia. *$3. Little. 1908. Howe, S. E. Some Russian heroes, saints and sinners: legend- ary and historical. *$2.56. Lippincott. 191 7. Howe, S. E. Thousand years of Russian history. *$2.50 Lippin- cott. 1916. "There are few better books for the general reader who wishes to become acquainted with the salient facts of Russian history." — Russian Review. Kluchevsky, V. O. History of Russia. 3v. ea. *$2.5o. Button. 1911-1913. xii BIBLIOGRAPHY Kornilov, Aleksander. Modern Russian history. *$5. Knopf. 1917. From the age of Catherine the Great to the present. McCabe, Joseph. Romance of the Romanoffs. *$2. Dodd. 1917. *Mavor, James. Economic history of Russia. *$io. Button. 1914. See pp. 41-3 of this volume. Morfill, W. R. History of Russia : from the birth of Peter the Great to Nicholas II. o. p. Pott. 1902. Morfill, W. R. Russia. *$i.50. Putnam. 1907. Rambaud, Alfred. History of Russia [to 1882]. *$6. Page. 1916. Skrine, F. H. Expansion of Russia. *$i.5o. Putnam. 1915. *Munsey. 54:641-80. My. '15. Russia: the vast empire of the czars. F. A. Ogg. See pp. 9-31 of this volume. Munsey. 61 :i5-2i. Je. '17. Rise and fall of the house of Ro- manoff. R. H. Titherington. ♦Outlook. 108:456-60. O. 28, '14. Historical roots of the war; the Romanoffs. A. B. Hart. See pp. 32-41 of this volume. The Russian Empire Alexinsky, Gregor. Modern Russia. *$i.50. Scribner. 1915. Attempts to distinguish life from the life of Europe and "to be a small encyclopedia of Russian life in all its manifestations." Baedeker, Karl. Russia. *$5.40. Scribner. 1914. Baring, Maurice. Mainsprings of Russia. $1. Nelson. 1914. Baring, Maurice. Russian people. *$3.50. Doran. 191 1. Tries to supply the reader with a rough idea of those things which, it is generally assumed, the student will have found out for himself. Dobson, George, and others. Russia. *$6. Macmillan. 1913. Fanning, C. E. Russia : history and travel : a study outline, with bibliography. *25c. Wilson, H. W. 191 7. Gerrare, Wirt. Story of Moscow. *$i.5o. Macmillan. 1900. Graham, Stephen. Changing Russia. *$2.50. Lane. 1913. Graham, Stephen. Through Russian central Asia. *$2.25. Mac- millan. 1916. "Probably the best book that Mr. Graham has ever written on Rus- sia." — Russian Review. Graham, Stephen. Undiscovered Russia. *$4. Lane. 1914. "Written with an eye to the ways and thoughts of the Intelligentia." A journal of a tramp in southern Russia and in the Urals. Hubback, John. Russian realities. *$i.50. Lane. 1915. BIBLIOGRAPHY xiii JarintzoflF, Nadine. Russia, the country of extremes. *$4. Holt. 1914. Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole. Empire of the tsars and the Russians. 3v. ea. $3. Putnam. 1893-1898. Lethbridge, Alan. New Russia. *$5. Button. 1915. Describes northern Russia. ♦Lethbridge, Marjorie, and Lethbridge, Alan. Soul of the Rus- sian. ♦$1.25. Lane. 1916. Comment on places, customs, or people in Russia and Siberia. See PP- 94-7 of this volume. Mackail, J. W. Russia's gift to the world, pa. 25c. Doran. 191 5. Brief mention of Russians prominent in literature, music, art, drama, science, history, philosophy and sociology. Meakin, A. M. B. Russia : travels and studies, o. p. Lippincott. 1906. Noble, Edmund. Russia and the Russians. *$i.50. Houghton. 1900. Norman, Henry. All the Russias. $4. Scribner. 1902. Travels in European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus and cen- tral Asia. Russia and the Russian people. *50c. Sully and Kleinteich. 1914. Brief summaries on many topics. Russian year-book, 1916. ids. 6d. Eyre and Spottiswoode, Ltd., London. Contains many statistics and convenient summaries. Sarolea, Charles. Great Russia: her achievement and promise. ♦$1.25. Knopf. 1916. Singleton, Esther, ed. Russia as seen and described by famous writers. *$i.6o. Dodd. 1904. Stephens, Winifred, ed. Soul of Russia. *$3.50. Macmillan. 1916. Many short articles by different authors. Steveni, W. B. Petrograd. *$3. Lippincott. 1916. Steveni, W. B. Things seen in Russia. *75c. Button. 1913. Slight descriptive sketch. U. S. Bept. of Commerce. (Spec. Cons. Report No. 61.) Russia: a handbook on commercial and industrial conditions by J. H. Snodgrass. 1913. Wallace, B. M. Russia. $5. Holt. 1905. "It is regarded by many Russians as the best work about their coun- try ever written by a foreigner." — Review of Reviews. Wiener, Leo. Interpretation of the Russian people. *$i.25. Mc' Bride. 1915. xiv BIBLIOGRAPHY Williams, H. W. Russia of the Russians. *$i.So. Scribner. 1914. "Of the pre-war books none is more illuminating than this." — Spec- tator. Winter, N. O. Russian empire of to-day and yesterday. *$3. Page. 1913. The most comprehensive of recent books on Russia. Wood, R. K. Honeymooning in Russia. *$2. Dodd, 191 1. Wood, R. K. Tourist's Russia. *$i.25. Dodd. 1912, It touches only on the more important things which the tourist would wish to see. Wright, Richardson. The Russians: an interpretation. *$i.50. Stokes. 191 7. Very readable chapters reprinted in part from magazines. Bay View Magazine. 12:1-368. O. '04-Mr. '05. Russia. ^Catholic World. loi :200-7. My. '15. Empire of enigmas. Rich- ardson Wright. See pp. 1-8 of this volume. Fortnightly Review. loi :793-8o3. My. '14. Moscow art theatre. Jean d'Auvergne. Geographical Review. 1:128-32. F. '16. War-time outlets to the sea. *Geographical Review, i :249-65. Ap. '16. Economic resources of the Russian empire. E. K. Reynolds. (Same. Scientific American Supplement. 84:2-3. Jl. 7, '17.) See pp. 99-107 of this volume. Harper. 125 :902-i3. N. '12. Odessa. Sydney Adamson. Library Journal. 42:599-605. Ag. '17. For Russia. R. R. Bowker. Moody's Magazine. 19:473-6. S. '16. Economic future of Russia. Moody's Magazine. 19 :645-50. D. '16. Resources, finances and government of Russia. Arthur Selwyn-Brown. National Geographic Magazine. 23:1043-78. N. '12. Ghmpses of the Russian empire. W. W. Chapin. National Geographic Magazine. 26:423-520. N. '14. Young Rus- sia. G. H. Grosvenor. Review of Reviews. 52:746-8. D. '15. Great seaport near the Arctic circle. *Review of Reviews. 53:709-11. Je. '16. New ports and railways in Russia. P. P. Foster. See pp. 97-8 of this volume. Review of Reviews. 55 :430-i. Ap. '17. Arctic seaports of. Eu- ropean Russia. BIBLIOGRAPHY xv Russia. I :i2-23. Je. 'i6. Great fairs of Russia. World's Work. 34:223-8. Je. '17. Russia's undeveloped riches. A. J. Sack. Poland 'Gardner, M. M. Poland: a study in national idealism. *$i.25. Scribner. 1916. An attempt to illustrate the soul of the nation by a study of its liter- ature. Orvis, J. S. Brief history of Poland. *$i.50. Houghton. 1916. Poland's case for independence. *$3. Dodd. 1916. Winter, N. O. Poland of to-day and yesterday. *$3. Page. 1913. A review of its history and a survey of its social, political and eco- nomic conditions. ♦Century. 90:57-66. My. '15. Poland's story. J. C. Welliver. See pp. 47-63 of this volume. Century. 93:182-92. D. '16. Future of Poland. H. A. Gibbons. Contemporary Review. 110:715-23. D. '16. Polish problem: past and present. J. H. Rose. Fortnightly Review. 104:502-12. S. '15. Poland and her role in Europe. G. de Swietochowski. Fortnightly Review. 107:373-88. Mr. '17. Polish problem. E. J. Dillon. Munsey. 54:241-71. Mr. '15. New kingdom of Poland. F. A. Ogg. ♦National Geographic Magazine. 27:88-106. Ja. '15. Partitioned Poland. W. J. Showalter. See pp. 63-8 of this volume. ♦Review of Reviews. 54:100-1. Jl. '16. Economic bases for an autonomous Poland. See pp. 68-70 of this volume. Travel. 25:22-5. O. '15. Conquered Warsaw. N. O. Winter. Finland Reade, Arthur. Finland and the Finns, ♦$3. Dodd. 1915. Young, Ernest. Finland: the land of a thousand lakes. ♦$2.50. Pott. 1913. ♦Canadian Magazine, 40:65-72. N. '12. Finland and the Finns. J. E. Staley. See pp. 71-6 of this volume. xvi BIBLIOGRAPHY Siberia Beveridge, A. J. Russian advance. *$2.5o. Harper. 1904. Observations of a trip made in 190 1. First half on Asiatic Russia. Goodrich, J. K. Russia in Europe and Asia. *$i.5o. McClurg. 1912. Especially good on Asiatic Russia. Wright, Richardson, and Digby, Basset. Through Siberia. *$2. McBride. 1913. Catholic World. 98:740-8. Mr. '14. Siberian education. Rich- ardson Wright. ♦Literary Digest. 53:1401. N. 25, *l6. Real Siberia. See pp. 92-3 of this volume. Literary Digest. 54:466-7. F. 24, '17. To open up Russian Asia. ♦National Geographic Magazine. 23:1078-90. N. '12. Land, of promise. A. W. Greely. See pp. 76-91 of this volume. Political and Social Problems Baring, Maurice. Year in Russia. *$3.5o. Dutton. 1907. Berard, Victor. Russian empire and czarism. los. 6d. David Nutt, London. 1905. Bubnoff, I. B. Co-operative movement in Russia; its history, significance and character. $1.25. M. Fainberg, 309 Broad- way, N. Y. 1917. Drage, Geoffrey. Russian affairs. *$6. Dutton. 1904. Garstin, Denis. Friendly Russia. *$i.25. McBride. 1915. Very intimate view of every-day life in Russia. Kennard, H. P. Russian peasant. *$i.5o. Lippincott. 1908 Kovalevsky, Maxime. Russian political institutions. *$i.50. Uni- versity of Chicago press. 1902. Traces the growth and development of these institutions from the beginnings of Russian history to the present time. Milyoukov, Paul. Russia and its crisis. *$3. University of Chicago press. 1907. An effort to explain the permanent and lasting elements in the po- litical, social and religious life in Russia. Nevinson, H. W. Dawn in Russia; or Scenes in the Russian revolution. *$2.25. Harper. 1906. Orth, S. P. Imperial impulse, pp. 164-213. Russia. *$i.20. Cen- tury. 1916. Pares, Bernard. Russia and reform. *$3. Dutton. 1907. BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii Petersson, C E. W. How to do business with Russia. ♦$2.25. Pitman. 1917. Rambaud, Alfred, and others. Case of Russia : a composite view. ♦$1.25. Duffield. 1905. Rappoport, A. S. Home life in Russia. *$i.75. Macmillan. 1913. Reynolds, Rothay. My Russian year. *$2.5o. Pott. 1913. Stepniak, pseud. Russian peasantry. *$i.2S. Button. 1905. Urusov, S. D. Memoirs of a Russian governor. *$i.50. Harper. 1908. Interesting and enlightening about the Jewish problem. Villari, Luigi. Russia under the great shadow, o. p. Pott. 1905. Vinogradoff, Paul. Self-government in Russia. *$i.2S. Button. 1915. Vinogradoff, Paul. Russian problem. *75c. Knopf. 191 5. Contains two chapters: Russia after the war; Russia, the psychology of a nation. Walling, W. E. Russia's message. *$i.5o. Knopf. 1917. Walling, W. E., and others, eds. Socialism of to-day. pp. 95-107. *$i.6o. Holt. 1916. ♦American City. 10:163. F. '14. Russia municipal enterprises. See p. 120 of this volume. Asia. 18:106-9. F. '18. Russian land and Russian peasants. Moissaye J. Olgin. Bellman. 20:569-73. My. 20, '16. Understanding the Russ. Richardson Wright. ♦Bookman. 44:598-603. F. '17. Russia in arms; social aspects. Abraham Yarmolinsky. See pp. 233-41 of this volume. ♦Catholic World. 102:216-23. N. '15. Mostly moujik — a glimpse of the Russian artel and kustarnui. Richardson Wright. See pp. 131-9 of this volume. Century. 80:163-76, 403-14, 925-34. Je., Jl., O. '10. Reaction in Russia. George Kennan. Century. 89:737-43. Mr. '15. Bemocratic Russians. E. B. Schoon- maker. ♦Century. 92:622-32. Ag. '16. Better half of Russia. R. W. Child. See pp. 148-62 of this volume. ♦Contemporary Review. 103:81-91. Ja. '13. Abolition of the Russian mir. Boris Lebedeff. See pp. 120-31 of this volume. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 2:1177-82. S. '15. Russia's German bureaucrats. Jean Finot. xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 5:654-60. Ja. '17. Political upheaval in Russia. I. D. Levine. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 7:265-7. N. '17. Socialist parties of Russia. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 7,pt. 2:293-9. F. '18. Life in revolutionary Russia. Ludovic Naudeau. Economic Review. 23:317-20. JI. '13. New peasantry in Russia. H. W. Wolff. Fortnightly Review. 102:552-67. O. '17. Humanity and Russia. Lancelot Lawton. Forum. 44:129-41. Ag. '10. Siberia and the Russian woman. Rose Strunsky. Independent. 63:844-6. O. 10, '07. Anglo-Russian agreement. About spheres of influence in Persia. Journal of Geography. 16:245-54. Mr. '18. Russia in war-time. Horace V. Winchell. ♦Literary Digest. 54:822. Mr. 24, '17. Two years' sobriety in Russia. See pp. 168-9 of this volume. Living Age. 270:880-2. S. 30, '11. Compensations of illiteracy. Stephen Graham. National Geographic Magazine. 32 :238-53. S. '17. Few glimpses into Russia. Zinovi Pechkoff. New Republic. 12:321-4. O. 20, '17. Clue to Russia. H. N. Brailsford. Nineteenth Century. ^T.^2-Zz. Ja. '15. Soul of Russia. Percy Dearmer. *North American. 200:379-89. S. '14. Autocracy and bureaucracy in Russia. N. O. Winter. See pp. 109-19 of this volume. ♦Outlook. 108:413-17. O. 21, '14. Russians of to-day. Sasha Kropotkin. See pp. 228-33 of this volume. Outlook. 108:875-8-1- D. 16, '14. Prohibition in Russia. George Kennan. Outlook. 109:371-4. F. 17, '15. Lights and shades of Russian prohibition. George Kennan. Outlook. 109:680-3. Mr. 24, '15. Russian muzhik. George Ken- nan. Political Science Quarterly. 29:408-22. S. '14. Russian duma. E. A. Goldenweiser. BIBLIOGRAPHY xix Popular Science Monthly. 85:590-603. D. '14. Hope for the Russian peasantry. L. E. Textor. Review of Reviews. 33:89-91. Ja. '06. Russian revolution from various points of view. ♦Review of Reviews. 49:741-2. Je. '14. New freedom for the Russian woman. See pp. 163-4 of this volume. ♦Review of Reviews. 51 :568-72. My. '15. New Russia. Charles Johnston. See pp. 43-4 of this volume. Review of Reviews. 51 :599-6oo. My. '15. German influence in Russia. ♦Review of Reviews. 54:104-5. Jl. '16. Elementary education in Russia. See pp. 164-6 of this volume. Russia: a journal of Russian-American trade, gratis. R- Martens & Co., Inc., 24 State Street, New York City. Russia. 1 : 13-23. My. *i6. Giving peasant farmers a new start. Russia. 2:8-13. My. '17. Russian Union of Zemstvos. Russian Review. (N. Y.) Russian Review Publishing Co., 31 East Seventh Street, New York City. Russian Review. (N. Y.) 2:99-107. S. '16. Russia's parliament. Leo Pasvolsky. Russian Review. (N. Y.) 2:147-52. O. '16. Russian Hquor pro- hibition. Leo Pasvolsky. Russian Review. (N. Y.) 2:186-90. O. '16. Kustari: the peasant industries. Russian Review. (London.) Published by the School of Rus- sian Studies in the University of Liverpool by Thomas Nel- son & Sons, London. Russian Review. (London.) 3:120-30. F. '14. England and Rus- sia in recent years. Boris Lebedev. ♦Travel. 13:130-1. D. '07. Christmas in Russia and her provinces. See pp. 166-8 of this volume. ♦Travel. 28:35-7, 44-5. Ap. '17. Russian as a business man. Richardson Wright. See pages 139-48 of this volume. Religion and the Jews Bury, Herbert. Russian life to-day. ♦$1.40. Young churchman CO., Milwaukee. 1915. The author is interested particularly in religious matters. 2 XX BIBLIOGRAPHY Friedlaender, Israel. Jews of Russia and Poland. *$i.25. Put- nam. 1915. Graham, Stephen. Way of Martha and the way of Mary. *$2. Macmillan. 1915. Deals with Russia's religious ideas and customs. Graham, Stephen. With the Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem. ♦$2.75. Macmillan. 1913. "The journey of the Russian peasants to Terusalem ... is the most significant thing in the Russian life of today. — S. Graham. American Journal of Theology. 21 79-93. Ja. '17. Russian liberal theology. A. Palmieri. ♦Atlantic. 118:768-77. D. '16. "Holy Russia." Harold Begbie. See p. 184 of this volume. Bay View Magazine. 24:363-5. Mr. '17. Russian movement toward freedom. I. D. Levine. Notes effect of the revolution on Jews. Constructive Quarterly. 5 : 76-90. Mr. '17. Orthodox Russia and its orthodox priesthood. N. N. Glubokovsky. ♦Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 5 :209-i3. N. '16. Situation of the Jews in Russia. Henry Sliozberg. See pp. 201-9 of this volume. Dublin Review. 159:52-67. Jl. '16. Russian church. Rothay Reynolds. English Review. 19:324-33. F. '15. Russia and the Jews. Stephen Graham. ♦Hibbert Journal. 14:393-408. Ja. '16. Religion in Russia to- day. J. Y. Simpson. See pp. 171-84 of this volume. ♦Outlook. 97:109-17. Ja. 21, '11. Martyrdom of the Russian Jew. Herman Rosenthal. See pp. 185-201 of this volume. ♦World's Work. 34:133-4. Je. '17. Russian revolution and Jewish immigration. See pp. 209-10 of this volume. Russia in the European War Alexinsky, Gregor. Russia and the great war. ^$3. Scribner. 1915. Gives the Russian democratic view of the war. Bechhofer, C. E. Russia at the cross-roads. ♦$2. Button. 1916. Child, R. W. Potential Russia. ♦$1.50. Button. 1916. Coxwell, C. F. Through Russia in war-time. ♦$3.50. Scribner. 1917. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxl Fraser, J. F. Russia of to-day. ♦$1.50. Funk. 1915. Graham, Stephen. Russia and the world. *$2. Macmillan. 1915. A study of the war and a statement of the world-problems that con- front Russia and Great Britain. Graham, Stephen. Russia in 1916. ♦$1.25. Macmillan. 191 7. Long, R. C. Colours of war. ♦$1.50. Scribner. 1915. Describes Russia and Poland in war time. McCormick, R. R. With the Russian army. *$2. Macmillan. 1915- Pares, Bernard. Day by day with the Russian army. *7s. 6d. Constable, London. 1915. Ruhl, Arthur. White nights and other Russian impressions. ♦$2. Scribner. 1917. Simpson, J. Y. Self-discovery of Russia. *$2. Doran. 1916. Steveni, W. B. Russian army from within. *$i. Doran. 1914. W-ashburn, Stanley. Russian advance. *$i.25. Doubleday. 1917. Washburn, Stanley. Russian campaign: April to August, 1915. *$2. Scribner. 1915. Washburn, Stanley. Victory in defeat: the agony of Warsaw and the Russian retreat. *$i. Doubleday. 1916. ♦Atlantic. 115:387-96. Mr. '15. Russians and the war. Stephen Graham. See pp. 218-28 of this volume. ♦Century. 89:183-8. D. '14. Russia a nation united by war. See pp. 244-51 of this volume. ♦Collier's. 56:8-9, 32-3. Mr. 11, '16. Homeless hordes of Russia. R. W. Child. See pp. 241-4 of this volume. ♦Collier's. 57:10-11+ Ap. 8, '16. Inside Russia. R. W. Child. p. 119 of this volume. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 7,pt 2 :28o-92r F. '18. Russia's parleys for separate peace. Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk conference and text of Russian and German peace programs. 'Tittnok:"'Tl5 :458-9. " Mr. '14, '17. Russia's relation to the war. ♦Review of Reviews. 53:431-8. Ap. '16. Russia's contribution to the war. Stanley Washburn. See pp. 211-17 of this volume. Russian Review. 3:26-36. Jl. '17. Russia's territorial policies, Paul Milyukov. xxii BIBLIOGRAPHY Revolution of igiy Brown, Arthur Judson. Russia in transformation. *$i. Revell. 1917- Dorr, Rheta Childe. Inside the Russian revolution. *$i.5o. Mac- millan. 191 7. Houghteling, James L., jr. Diary of the Russian revolution. *$i.25. Dodd. 1918. *Lenine, Nicholas. Political parties in Russia. i6p. pa. 5c. So- cialist Publication Society, 119 Lafayette St., New York. Reprinted from the November-December, 1917, issue of "The Class Struggle." See pp. 333-41 of this volume. Levine, I. D. Russian revolution. *$i. Harper. 191 7. Marcosson, Isaac Frederick. Rebirth of Russia. *$i.25. Lane. 1917. Olgin, Moissaye Joseph. Soul of the Russian revolution ; with introd. by V. G. Simkhovitch. *$2.5o. Holt. 191 7. Trotzky, Leon. Our revolution; essays on working-class and international revolution, 1904-1917. *$i.25. Holt. 1918. *Asia. 18:188-94. Mr. '18. Mass Rule in Russia. Moissaye J. Olgin. See pp. 309-24 of this volume. Asia: 18:195-8. Mr. '18. Who Is Trotzky? Moissaye J. Olgin. Atlantic Monthly. 120:693-703. N. '17. Kerensky and the revo- lution. E. H. Wilcox. Bookman. 45 :27i-7. My '17. Russia resurgent. Abraham Yar- molinsky. Century. 94:716-24. S. '17. Evolution of liberty in Russia. Ilya Tolstoy. Collier's Weekly. 61 :io-|- Mr. 14, '18 Is There a Ukraine? Arthur Ruhl. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6:1-13. Ap. '17. Russia in revolution. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6:292-7. My. '17. Russia's first month of freedom. ♦Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6:473-8. Je. '17. Factors in the Russian revolution. A. J. Sack. See pp. 291-300 of this volume. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6:478-87. Je. '17. Critical situation in Russia. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxiu Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6, pt. 2 :53-7. Jl. '17. Russia's perilous transition stage. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6, pt. 2:105-14. JI. '17. Story of the Russian upheaval. C. L. Lange. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 6, pt. 2:118-23. Jl. '17. Russian and French revolutions. .-- [Current History Magazine of the N. YTTFImes. 7,pt. 27-14. jRuggi a Z c de g e i't i o H o f i t itT Allies. Current History Magazine of the N. Y. Times. 7,pt. 2:302-7. F. '18. Fall of Kerensky. Fortnightly Review. 107 :727-43. My. '17. Russian upheaval. E. J. Dillon. Fortnightly Review. 109:812-25. D '17. Russia's eclipse. E. J. Dillon. ♦Independent. 89:523, 525. Mr. 26, '17. Passing of old Russia. See pp. 272-3 of this volume. ♦Independent. 90:22-3. Ap, 2, '17. Zemstvo Russia. S. N. Harper. See pp. 273-6 of this volume. Literary Digest. 54:1001-4. Ap. 7, '17. Secret of the revolution: the zemstvos. ♦Literary Digest. 56:47,50. Ja. 12, '18. Ukraine throws off the shackles of serfdom after 263 years. See pp. 328-33 of this .volume. ♦Literary Digest. 56:7-8. F. 23, '18. Birth of the Ukrainian re- public. See pp. 324-8 of this volume. Nation. 105 :530-2. N. 15, '17. What the Bolsheviki really want. Simeon Strunsky. National Geographic Magazine. 31 :2io-40. Mr. '17. Russia's democrats. Montgomery Schuyler. National Geographic Magazine. 31 :37i-82. Ap. '17. Russian sit- uation and its significance to America. Stanley Washburn. New Republic. 13:335-8. Ja. 19, '18. By grace of allied policy. H. N. Brailsford. New Statesman. 10:370-2. Ja. 19, '18. Electing the Constituent Assembly. New York World. D. 23, '17. Message of New Russia. Alex- ander Trachtenberg. Reprinted as a pamphlet. Nineteenth Century. 81 :593-6o8. Mr. '17. Political situation in Russia. Robert Machray. Good record of proceedings in the Duma, xxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY ♦North American, 205:502-10. Ap. '17. New Russia. Gerald Morgan. See pp. 44-6 of this volume. North American. 206:209-17. Ag. '17. Russia three months after the revolution. North American, 207:185-95. F. '18. Russia on the edge of the abyss. Charles Johnston. ♦Outlook. 115:544-5. Mr. 28, '17. Russian revolution: the history of four days. See pp. 254-9 of this volume, ♦Outlook. 115:546-7, Mr. 28, '17. Victory of the Russian people. George Kennan. See pp. 259-64 of this volume. ♦Outlook. 115:691-2. Ap. 18, '17. Russia's future. A. J. Sack. See pages 300-3 of this volume. Outlook. 116:399-401. Jl. II, '17. Eyes left! in Russia. Gregory Mason. Outlook. 116:584-9. Ag. 15, '17. Russia upside down. Gregory Mason. Outlook. 116:649-51. Ag. 29, '17. Aims of democratic Russia. M. I. Tereschenko. Review of Reviews. 55:385-90. Ap. '17. Russian revolution. I. D. Levine. ♦Review of Reviews. 55 :6i9-22. Je. '17. Russia in the throes of re-birth, I. D. Levine. See pp. 264-72 of this volume. Review of Reviews. 56:278-80, S, '17. Changes in Russia. Stanley Washburn. ♦Review of Reviews. 57:188-90. F. '18. "Bolshevism" as a world problem. Nicholas Goldenweiser. See pages 304-9 of this volume. Review of Reviews. 56:493-8. N. '17. Russia: A bird's-eye view. T. Lothrop Stoddard. Russian Review. 3:37-44. Jl. '17. Russian revolution. Mel- ville E. Stone. ♦Saturday Review. 123 :268-9. Mr 24, '17. Russia and the need for a supreme authority. See pp. 276-9 of this volume. Scribner. 62:29-38, Jl, '17, Russia in revolution, Raymond Recouly. Scribner. 62:554-63: N. '17. Russian army and the revolu- tion. Raymond Recouly, BIBLIOGRAPHY *Spectator. 118:357-8. Mr. 24, '17. Russian revolution. Sec pp. 253-4 of this volume. Survey. 37:718-21. Mr. 24, '17. Coalition revolution; an inter- view with Prof. V. G. Simkhovitch. R. Pickering. ♦World's Work. 34:52-62. My. '17. Rise of Russian democracy. S. N. Harper. See pp. 279-91 of this volume. World's Work. 34:255-63. Jl. '17. In Petrograd during the seven days. Arno Dosch-Fleurot. Yale Review. 6:838-55. Jl. '17. Russian revolution. Alexander Petrunkevitch. Russian Information Bureau. A. J. Sack, Director. Wool- worth Building, New York City. The purpose of this recently organized bureau is to give informa- tion to institutions and individuals in the United States interested in Russian cultural, economic and financial life. Russian Literature Baring, Maurice. Landmarks in Russian literature. *$i.75. Mac- millan. 1910. Baring, Maurice. Outline of Russian literature. *50c. Holt. 1915. Bechhofer, C. E. Russian anthology in English. *$i.50. But- ton. 1917. Bruckner, A. Literary history of Russia. *$3.50. Scribner. 1908. Guthrie, A. L. Russian literature: a study outline with bibliog- raphy. *35c. Wilson, H. W. 191 7. Hapgood, Isabel F. Survey of Russian literature, with selections, o. p. Chautauqua Press. 1902. Jarintzov, Nadine. Russian poets and poems: preface by Jane Harrison. 2v. *$3.5o. Longmans. 1917. Kropotkin, Peter. Ideals and realities in Russian literature. ♦$1.50. Knopf. 1915. Persky, Serge. Contemporary Russian novelists. *$i.50. Luce. 1913. Phelps, W. L. Essays on Russian novelists. *$i.50. Macmillart. 1911. Vogiie, E.-M. de. Russian novel. $3. Knopf. 1916. Waliszewski, K. History of Russian literature. *$i.50. Ap- pleton. 1900. Wiener, Leo. Anthology of Russian literature. 2v. ea. *$3. Put- nam. 1902- 1903. xxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY Bookman 43 :424-3i. Je. '16. Russian literature of to-day. Abra- ham Yarmolinsky. Bookman. 45:55-60. Mr. '17. Russia in arms; war literature. Abraham Yarmolinsky. Critic. 41 :50-8, 148-57. Jl.-Ag. '02. Sketch of Russian litera- ture. Leo Wiener. Forum. 53 :37-53. Ja. '15. Some Slavonic ideals. C. G. Shaw. Living Age. 266:700-3. S. 10, '10. Tendency of modern Russian literature. ♦Living Age. 275 1606-13. D. 7, '12. Russian lyrical poetry. Leonard Magnus. See pp. 343-51 of this volume. *Living Age. 281 : 749-53. Je. 20 '14. Modern Russian fiction. See pp. 352-5 of this volume. Living Age. 295:606-14. D. 8, '17. Some Russian noveHsts. George Sampson. Nation. 98:749-50. Je. 25, '14. Russian fiction: recent tendencies of the younger writers. D. A. Modell. Sewanee Review. 16:129-47. Ap. '08. Aspects of recent Russian literature. A. J. Wolfe. Russian Art Benois, Alexandre. Russian school of painting. *$4. Knopf. 1916. Holme, Charles, ed. Peasant art in Russia. (International Studio special autumn number, 1912.) *$3. Lane. 1912. Newmarch, Rosa. Russian arts. *$2. Button. 1916. Appleton's Booklovers Magazine. 7:156-74. F. '06. Russia through Russian painting. Christian Brinton. Architectural Record. 9:21-49. Jl. '99. Monastic architecture in Russia. C. A. Rich. Art World, i : 130-5, 190-7. N.-D. '16. Ten centuries of Russian art. F. H. Snow. Arts and Decoration. 7:241-2, 270, 272. Mr. '17. Decadence in Russian art. J. Finger. Harper. 79:327-48. Ag. '89. Kremlin and Russian art. Theodore Child. ♦International Studio. 21 : 130-6. D. '03. Some notes on modern Russian art. Rosa Newmarch. See pp. 356-60 of this volume. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxvii International Studio. 22:216-21. My. '04. Modern Russian art: some leading painters of Moscow. International Studio. 52: sup. 121-5. Je. '14. Russian art and American. W. G. Peckham. International Studio. 51:107-116. D. '13. Three Russian paint- ers : Konstantin Somoff, Igor Grabar and Philip Maliavine. Vittorio Pica. Open Court. 18:449-53. Ag. '04. Russian icons. Paul Carus. (Same condensed. Review of Reviews. 30:343-4. S. '04.) Russia. 1 :23-32. Jl. '16. Sketches of some Russian peasant arts. Russian Music Montagu-Nathan, M. Contemporary Russian composers. *$2.5o.- Stokes. 1917. Montagu-Nathan, M. History of Russian music. *$i.7S. Scrib- ner. 1914. Newmarch, Rosa. Russian opera. *$i.75. Button. 1914. Pougin, Arthur. Short history of Russian music. *$i.75. Bren- tano's. 1915. Craftsman. 27:166-78. N. '14. Singing Russians. Etude. 31 :i67, 168. Mr. '13. Folk music. Etude. 31 :i67+ Mr. '13. Russian music. Etude. 31 :245, 249. Ap. '13. Russian music. Nineteenth Century. 78:1145-60. N. '15. Peasant songs of Russia. C. H. Wright. Russian Review. (London.) 2:153-69. F. '13. Scryabin and con- temporary Russian music. Rosa Newmarch. ♦Russian Review. (N. Y.) 1:29-33, 98-102. F.-Mr. '16. Music in Russia. Alexis Rienzi. See pp. 360-9 of this volume. Russian Review. (N. Y.) 2:234-9. N. '16. Russian opera. Alexis Rienzi. RUSSIA: HISTORY, DESCRIPTION AND POLITICS INTRODUCTION THE EMPIRE OF ENIGMAS* Of the nations at war in Europe to-day, the youngest is Russia. True, almost a thousand years have passed since the henchmen of the Veriagians — Swedes, Norwegians, Goths, and Angles — came down from beyond the Baltic and established themselves as princes of the old Slav trading cities, thereby laying the foundation of the Muscovite State, yet Russia stands among the nations the adolescent. She is at the point of un- wieldiness. Her physical limits have been extended in obverse ratio to th6 development of her natural resources. The wis- dom of intensive growth has only begun to dawn upon her. Her education is sporadic, her defence on land but recently attained a scientific basis, her navy is still a nonentity, her min- ers have only scratched the surface, her farmers only begun to make the earth give its increase, and representative government has scarcely passed the stage of being a misnomer. Like many an adolescent, she is misunderstood often, and underestimated always, because her failures have been lamentable and her de- feats many. Time and again has she been deliberately misrepre- sented, misinterpreted and maligned. Her weaknesses have proven fat carrion for ghoulish pens to batten on. Some, un- fortunately, believe all the evil told of her; some question. For most of us she remains an empire of engimas. One day we read lurid tales of revolution, anarchy, and exile; the next, the rollicking pages of Gogol and the peaceful scenes of Turgenief. Our souls are agonized to-day at the * By Richardson Wright. Catholic World. 101:200-7. May, 1915. 2 sillected articles appeal or three mill?on people famine-stricken; to-morrow, raised to supreme heights by the art of Pavlowa and Nijinsky, of Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Rimiski-Korsakov. We read of a hundred million being added yearly to the nation's coffers from a state vodka monopoly, then hear that the sale of vodka has been prohibited through the entire eight million, six hundred and sixty thousand square miles of the empire — a nation gone dry by the stroke of a pen! Exiles who once fought against the government are hastening home to fight for the government. Men who six months back were preaching dissen- sion, are dying to-day on the banks of the Warthe. No less paradoxical than are the Russian people themselves, is the fact that while Russia is the youngest nation according to her per capita exercise of what we reckon civilization, she is at once among the oldest. She has a past. Some of it were wiser to forget, some well to remember. Fiendish bloodshed, unbe- lievable cruelty, insane hatred, lust for life and lust for land — all have stained her past. One fact cannot be gainsaid, however : that Europe may thank Russia she has outgrown these things — if outgrown them she has. Russia it was who gave the rest of Europe the chance to grasp and make the most of her oppor- tunities for civilization. While the other peoples were toiling along painfully in "the slow pageant of the race," feeling their way through the economic, philosophic and religious mazes of medisevalism up to modernity, Russia stood as the watcher at the gate, repelling the invasion of Asiatic hordes, often suffer- ing her own land to be laid waste and her cities leveled. For that reason she is, in many respects, backward to-day, given over to what seem half-primitive ideals, an unskilled diplo- macy, and an unenlightened faith. That these things are not wholly such, is the stumbling block. On the other hand, that they are not witolly Eastern, is to many a moot point. Russia is neither the most eastern of Western nations, as some would believe, nor the most western of Eastern nations. She is neither en- tirely Eastern nor entirely Western. She is a mingling of the two. She is a gigantic maelstrom. The Slavs that formed the bulk of the original Russ popu- lation came from the Carpathians, from the very snow-locked mountain fastnesses where the soldiers of Nicholas and Franz Joseph are battling for supremacy. By the seventh century, rumors of the richness of the Dnieper Valley had lured east- % RUSSIA 3 ward a plausible majority, and the Eastern Slavs, who formed the original strain of the present-day Russia, became a distinct people. The earliest record finds them trader* — dealers in fur, honey, and wax — although the bulk of their articles of com- merce, was, as elsewhere in the ancient world, the slave.* Hence the word "slave" — not that the Slavs were slaves, but because they dealt in them. Upon the ownership of slaves rested the foundation of Russian society in the tenth and eleventh cen- turies. By the eleventh century had begun the cultivation of the soil. Side by side with commerce grew up this agriculture, and developed those political changes that an agricultural popu- lace demands. Then came the Tartars. From 1229-1240, the Asi^Hcs swept over southern Russia, driving the Slavs to the north, to the upper Volga. For five centuries they held that territory. Kiev was a wilderness until three hundred years after the occupation. Tribute was paid the Crimean Tartars as late as the end of the seventeenth century. Driven north, their political and economic life destroyed, the Slavs centred about the trading cities that had sprung up in the north — Novgorod and Moscow, which were later united into the federation of trading towns. It was to them that the Veriagians had been called. These "efficiency experts" — the modern term applies, for they were summoned to help govern the cities — became lords, and for a time they and theirs held that position. Eventually, in the rise of a trading and agricultural class, their identity was swallowed up in that of the Slav. This glimpse of history is given not so much to recount the facts as to point out a Slav characteristic manifested thus early and still manifest to-day — the power of assimilating others unto themselves and still retaining some traits of the original people. This absorption was evident after the Tartar invasion — Tartar elements were assimilated. Then came to the Slav an influx of Eastern ideals and Eastern temperament. Russian expansion having been mainly in an eastward direction, the pre- dominating characteristics are of that source, which accounts for the fact that one can scratch a Russian and find a Tartar. But besides the Tartar he also finds more than forty other nation- alities, making of the Russian soul, even as is the nation itself, a maelstrom. The complexity of the Russian soul, the tangled * Vide, An Economic History of Russia, Mavor, vol. i., p. 44. # 4 SELECTED ARTICLES mass of race roots that embed the Slav in the soil of humankind, necessitates patient unraveling. The first and perhaps most important 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 oligarchical form of government and a state religion. Many of us, when we think of Russia, think of it in the light of the repute its government bears. Because its people have suflfered lamentably, we have a subconscious feeling that the land also must be shrouded in darkness. Quite the reverse is the case. No nation, save that of the United States, is so self- contained or possesses such wealth of diversified scenery and un- told natural resources. From arctic Archangel to the sunny Crimea, from Teutonic Poland to the orientalized Pacific mari- time provinces, endless Ipeauty and evidence of incalculable natural wealth greet the eye. You may go among men who have been exiled and fled to this country, you may talk with 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 go back. Nor have I ever found the traveler who has visited Russia, and has not promised himself to return. There is a haunting quality about its scenery, there is an enliven- ing 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 empire hold. In European Russia the difference between social grades is strikingly marked. While the average man might think of them as being only two classes, the nobility and the peasantry, such classification is indeed crude. At the head of the official ladder, below the royalty who govern, stand the nobility. Since the latter number some six hundred thousand, they form quite a little nucleus, albeit many of them are of the common stock, merely possessors of inherited titles that, in many instances, mean little or nothing to-day. You will find noblemen doing the most menial tasks — men and women who have scarcely enough to keep body and soul together, many of them, for all their poverty, cherishing their honors and accepting with fine eclat the petty respect shown by their fellows. RUSSIA 5 Below the nobility come the higher intelligentia, the truly noble body of Russians. 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 view the present sociological and governmental evils in a more calm and philosophic frame of mind, hopeful of im- provement, and strong in the belief that when the time is ripe they will be remedied. Without question they are the finest type of Russian people, patriotic, faithful, believing, living in the light of modern thought — not in the darkness, as does the peas- ant—and still sincere upholders of Russian ideals. There is, in addition, a bourgeoisie intelligentia, and they are as bour- geoisie the world over — people of many words, of rococo cul- ture and wavering or blind faith. The revolutionist might also fall into a class by himself, were it not that the recalcitrant is confined to no one class; in what- ever walk of life you meet him, the Slav is at heart a revolu- tionist. His is that singular nature which is never content un- less it is against something, although he may know not why or what he is against. "An unconscious socialist," one authority has termed him; he is also an unconscious revolutionist. Even here in America we meet the type, for a plausible number of our most ardent |ocialistic and revolutionary propagandists are either Slav by birth or of Slavic descent. The grievances of the Russian people are often exaggerated by the American journalist. The sensational stories we fre- quently read in our daily and monthly press are known to fewer people in Russia than here. As a matter of fact, there has not yet been raised up a man or a woman of sufficient calibre to lead the Russian people out of their wilderness. When that man is created of God — as all leaders are — then will they be led, but not until then. Moreover, there is ffltrch more talk about dissension in Russia than actual dissension, a fact that the American reader does not comprehend. For it must be understood that not alone has the lack of a leader robbed Russia's revolutions of victory, but the fact that the Slav's hatred is of short duration. If you understand the singular convolutions of the wrath of the pro- verbial patient man, you can comprehend the wrath of the Russian 6 SELECTED ARTICLES people. It is long in accumulating and short of endurance. No sooner is the blow struck than the wrath has fled. The life of many a Russian revolutionist is a silent witness to this fact. There is always the gradual gathering of the storm, the feeling that something violent must be done, the sharp quick blow; then a complete finality of anger. The rest of life is spent in self-pity, or theatrical pose or sincere repentance. More than one dead soul has found its resurrection in a Siberian etape. But those classes that have been discussed above form only the fringe of the Russian people. The peasant is by far the most interesting object of study. Composing eighty per cent of the population, his problems, peculiarities and potentialities are the real facts of Russian life. Having lived and traveled with him from one end of his empire to another, I have the advantage of a first-hand view, and my conclusions, albeit they differ from that of the average journalist, may be of interest. I sincerely believe that there has been too much sympathy wasted on the woes of the moujik. Compared with the lot of peasants in other lands, his has much that is to be regretted — and also much to be admired. His home is generally clean, and he himself, that is, his body, is dutifully washed ; the bath has always been part of the peasant religion. Moreover, his women are healthy folk, and it is a fact for which the peasant need not blush that the mothers in Russia add yearly to the population some three million souls. In general, the peasant is a rugged, ^ughter- loving fellow, hospitable, kindly — save in his cups — cijible of much endurance and great faith. Ecclesiastically speaking, he is the most pious peasant in the world. Travelers have not yet turned his picturesque religious fervor into a Cook's attraction, as they have in Brittany. Nor can it be said of him that he ever lacks in patriotism, for the average peasant, although he may detest the Tsar's agents, speaks of the Tsar in the same breath with God. "Our souls are God's, our bodies the Tsar's," runs one native proverb; another observes, "The Tsar is generous — but his generosity passes through the ministerial sieve." Four hundred years of serfdom made the peasant a race apart, and much of that same isolation exists to-day. Read down the list of Duma members where each man's rank is given, and name on name you find it written that this representative and that is a peasant. He may be a possessor of much land and a power in his province, but still he remains in the eyes of the state^a peas- RUSSIA 7 ant. Such social isolation has bred in the moujik a sterling capacity for cooperation. There is no peasantry under the sun whose power of cooperation is greater. And that accounts, if the fact would be known, for the characterization given above : that the average Russian is an unconscious socialist. The mir, which although abolished by law still obtains in many parts of the Em- pire, is sheer socialism in the working. This in the heart of an autocratic government! The artel — that communistic leaguing of workmen who share equally their expenses and profits — is another example of effective cooperation. The kustarnui, the cottage industries for which Russia has become famous, are based wholly on the law of cooperation, each artel of workers contributing to the manufacture of a spoon, a piece of jewelry or a cart wheel, for even so diversified are the products of the kustarnui. Thus it will be seen that the peasant, in a certain sense, has been working "on his own," apart from the develop- ment of the factory which is an innovation of as recent date as the regime of Count Witte. Indeed, the Russian peasant is a singularly independent fellow. He is quite a different person from what the statues would make him, and his faith differs radically from #iat which the Church teaches. The infusion of Oriental blood in his veins, and his having always lived close to nature, make him in essence a pagan. In numberle^^kmes where the icon corner is kept bright and spot- less, tl^MJHy pays due reverence to the domovi, the house fairic^^^Bwmany sections the fishermen make sacrifices to the river ^|H^d goddesses. Farmers sow and reap not so much according ^m season as according to lucky dates. The icon is rarely held a symbol, but rather a living thing, and to offend the icon is to offend the God that the moujik believes resides in that slab of painted tin and wood. These and numberless other super- stitions still hold a spell over the peasant mind despite the vigor- ous teaching of the Church, and the fact that the government has forbidden folk tales being printed in popular form lest they corrupt the moujik mind. In these days when the faithful peasants are falling by the tens of thousands on the field of battle, one often wonders if there is not some little strain of Oriental fatalism in their beliefs. Doggedly they go to their deaths ; wave on wave of men rolls up against the foes, crashes, breaks, recedes, then back again to the flood. The Tsar has said that he will fight this war until his 8 SELECTED ARTICLES last moujik is down. Meantime what does the moujik think of it and of his chances for escaping fearful death? The answer is found in a peculiar element of the moujik's faith, a point wherein he differs from every other peasant. Death has an attraction for him, and dying prepared is his ultimate de- sire. To quote a previous article on The Faith of the Moujik :^ "This peculiar attraction of death is the foundation and super- structure and capstone of his faith. Speak to him of the pre- Crucifixion life of the Lord, and he is not interested. The teach- ings, the parables, the miracles, the daily life of the Master, as He moved among men, as He journeyed from place to place with His disciples — these things the peasant cares little for. But once you begin to talk of those few days following the Resurrection, those appearances and disappearances, those words whispered here and there upon the road by the Stranger — then the Russian peasant begins to take interest. He cannot understand the radi- ant human face of Christ, but he can understand the pale face of the dead Christ in Mary's lap. . . . Should you judge the faith of the moujik in terms of the West, you find yourself utterly at sea. We view life through the eyes of life, the Russian peasant views life through the eyes of death. To him, 'I^fe is the night, death the rising of the sun.' " The Ecclesiastical Review, March, 19 14. 9k HISTORY RUSSIA: THE VAST EMPIRE OF THE CZARS* Geographically, Russia is continuous with the broad plains of northern Asia, stretching eastward to the Pacific. The Urals, low and abounding in passes, could never have interposed a se- rious barrier to the incursion or migration of Asiatic races ; and the presumption still is that it was across the Urals, in successive waves of migration, that the great peoples of the West — the Celts, the Teutons, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Slavs — came into their European habitations. Concerning these prehistoric movements we have not a shred of direct information. The earliest occupants of the Russian territories of whom we have record were the Finns, an Asiatic people whose hardy descendants live in the Russian dependency of Finland to this day. The Finns were not Slavs, but were akin to the Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, Petchenegs, and other Turkish or semi-Turkish peoples whose incursions constituted a disturbing element in the history of eastern Europe from the third to the thirteenth century. The predominating element in the modern Russian is, how- ever, not Finnish, but Slavic. That the Slavs came originally from Asia there . can be no reasonable doubt, although of the time and manner of their westward migration we know no- thing at all. About A. D. 100 the Roman historian Tacitus made mention of Slavs, who then dwelt on the southeastern shore of the Baltic and classed them as Europeans because they built houses, used shields, and fought on foot. In the sixth century Slavic tribes occupied portions of the Carpathian Mountains, whence they raided the outlying territories of the Eastern Empire. The scene upon which the Slavs as a people really began to play their role in history is the irregular patch of territory extending from the lands adjacent to the Baltic southward to the crest of the Carpathians, and fronv the borders of the modern kingdom of * B7 F. A. Ogg. Munsey. 54:641-80. May, 1915. 10 SELECTED ARTICLES Prussia eastward to the site of Voronesh on the middle Don. From their earliest appearance the Slavs are described as a kind-hearted, hospitable, liberty-loving, deeply religious people. They lived by agriculture, and they had a social organization which in its essentials has been preserved to this day. The family was controlled absolutely by the father. The mir, or commune, consisting of a number of families, was governed by a council composed of the family elders. Several communes combined to form a volost, or canton whose affairs also were administered by a council. The people lived in huts at some distance from one another. While each family owned a bit of ground surrounding its dwell- ing, the cultivated land and pasturage were the common posses- sion of the mir. As newcomers in Europe the Slavs seem to have had the robust physique, the eyes ranging from blue to gray, and the auburn or chestnut hair of the Russian peasant of to-day; they wore the same short blouse and the same closely fitting trousers, tucked into the same high boots. The lot of the Slavs in their new home was at first unpromis- ing. They were not numerous, and on every side they were beset by powerful and hostile neighbors. From the sixth to the ninth centuries they lived through various periods of subjection to the semibarbaric peoples who occupied their part of the world. First they suffered from the Goths; then the Avars became their masters; finally, they came under the domination of the Khazars. It was only in the ninth century, when the Khazars were forced to turn their attention to the newly arrived and hostile Petchenegs, that the Slavs regained their independence. And here it is that the history of modern Russia really begins. The principal source of weakness in the earlier days had been the lack of national unity and of political centralization; and the prevalence of internal dissension seemed to preclude the possibility that such unity and centralization should ever be developed. But what not even the pressure of barbarian sub- jugation could accomplish was readily achieved by the con- structive leadership of a foreign element deliberately imported, so we are told, for the purpose. According to the chronicle attributed to Nestor, a monk of Kiev, who lived in the eleventh century, the Slavs dwelling about Novgorod, together with the friendly Finns of the region, at length grew weary of turbulence and disunion. In the yeiir 862 RUSSIA II they sent a deputation overseas to the Varyags, or Verangers, a Scandinavian people reputed for their organizing talent and their military prowess, and invited them to come in and rule. The legend goes on to say that three brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, with their followers, responded to the call, and that the early death of Sineus and Truvor left Rurik sole ruler of the Slavic country. The story may or may not be true. What happened, very likely, was something more nearly resembling a Scandinavian invasion, not unlike the incursions which the so-called North- men and the Danes were making in the same period upon the coasts of France and England. Lake Ilmen and the river Volk- hov, on which stands Novgorod, Rurik's capital, formed links in the primitive waterway from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and we know that by this route there traveled the tall, fair- haired Northmen who composed the famous Verangian body- guard of the Byzantine emperors. The invitation from Novgorod may well be a fiction de- vised subsequently for patriotic reasons, as was probably the invitation supposed to have been extended by the Britons to the Jutish chieftains Hengist and Horsa four hundred years ear- lier. But the important thing is that the Verangers came, that they assumed unrestricted control, and that under their leader- ship the Slavs made their first successful efforts in state- building. It was now that the country, known hitherto as Slavonia, acquired among foreigners the name Rus, from which in the seventeenth century the modern name Russia was formed on the analogy of Graecia and other classical names. The name Russi, first applied by the Finns to the Veranger newcomers, ended by being applied indiscriminately to all of the inhabi- tants of the Veranger dominions. The capital of the new state was at first Novgorod; but Rurik's brother and successor, Oleg, after finally breaking the power of the Khazars over the southern Slavs, took up his residence at Kiev, on the Dnieper, a town which was destined to remain the chief seat of Russian political authority until the rise of Moscow. The Verangian princes were men of much vigor. They conquered broad stretches of territory, and under their protection the Russian population began to spread 12 SELECTED ARTICLES far to the east, northeast, and south. They invaded the Byzantine lands, threatened Constantinople, and ob- tained as a consort for one of their number a sister of a By- zantine emperor. They learned to hold in check the nomadic tribes of the steppe, and formed marriage alliances with the ruling families of Poland, Hungary, Norway, and France. For a time the principality gave promise of becoming the dom- inant power of central and eastern Europe. The promise, however, was only partially fulfilled. Con- solidation within failed entirely to keep pace with expansion without. In effect the Russian country was a gigantic family estate belonging to the Rurik dynasty, and each member of the family expected to have his share. The land had to be divided and subdivided into an ever increasing number of petty prin- cipalities, ruled by princelings whose aim it was to obtain the largest possible measure of practical independence. In this state of affairs dissensions became frequent, and the strength of the nation was wasted in civil strife. Yaroslav the Great was the last Grand Prince of Kiev who tried with any degree of success to hold things together. After his death, in 1054, family feuds became rampant, and the tendencies to dis- integration were left to work out their natural results. It is said that during the ensuing one hundred and seventy years there were in the country eighty- three civil wars. In the course of them Kiev was repeatedly taken by storm and pil- laged, and eventually the entire valley of the Dnieper fell prey to marauding tribes of the steppe. Russian political leadership now passed northward again, and for a time the hegemony of such principalities as survived was held by Novgorod, which in the meantime had become a great commercial city and a member of the Hanseatic League. Novgorod had a prince, but his functions were merely nom- inal, and the real governing power was the vetche or assembly of citizens, which was called together whenever there was need by the tolling of the great bell in the market-place. In this municipal republic, reminding one not a little of contemporary Venice, lay the germ of a possible republican Russian nation; but the germ was destined not to grow. When Russia eventually achieved substantial political unity and national organization, it was rather under the leadership of the autocratic princes of the rival city of Moscow. RUSSIA 13 Meanwhile the Slavic elements of the population were proving that, although not advanced politically, they were made of stern stuff and deserved to survive. They assimilated both their Finnish neighbors and their Scandinavian liberators without surrendering any essential part of their racial char- acter. The small eyes, the large nose, the thick lips, and the high cheek-bones which are not uncommon among the Russian peasantry to-day are evidences of Finnish influence but that influence seems not to have extended beyond matters of physiognomy. The addition of ten words, according to a renowned philologist, represents the total impress made by the Scandinavians upon the Russian speech; and upon the Rus- sian character the Scandinavian intermixture had no effect which can be traced. At one point only did the Slavs in this period yield to foreign influence, and this was in the matter of religion. Shortly after the founding of Kiev, Greek missionaries began to make an assault upon the primitive paganism of the people, and in the later tenth century their efforts were crowned with success. The chronicler tells us that Prince Vladimir I (980-1015), whose grandmother had been baptized at Constantinople, de- cided to adopt for himself and his people some religion that would be superior to his pagan creed, and that, after he had sent ambassadors to investigate the claims of the Hebrew, Mohammedan, Catholic, and Greek doctrines, he made choice of the Greek. After traveling to Constantinople to be bap- tized in 988, in true autocratic fashion he caused his subjects to undergo the same rite en masse. Before the eyes of the as- sembled people the ancient idols were destroyed, some by being hewn in pieces, some by being burned, and the greatest of them all, the enormous image of Perun, by being hurled from a lofty cliff into a raging stream. The story of Vladimir's choice may be only a legend. The circumstances that at the time of his baptism the Kiev ruler married a Byzantine princess suggests strongly that there may have been in the transaction an element of political expedi- ency. But in any event the acceptance by the Russians of Christianity in its Greek form is a fact of first-rate impor- tance. 14 SELECTED ARTICLES Not only did Russia early acquire the headship of the great Greek Orthodox Church; the responsibility which the nation in time assumed for the protection of Greek Christians in all parts of the world from persecution at the hands of Moham- medan powers became an actuating motive, as well as a con- venient pretext, for aggressive policy in Asiatic lands and in the direction of Constantinople. Furthermore, contact with the advanced civilization of the Greek world wonderfully stim- ulated Russian learning, literature, art, music, and wealth; although, of course, at the same time the country was effect- ually cut off from the great intellectual community of which Rome was the center. Passing over a prolonged period — roughly, from the mid- dle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century — which was filled with civil dissensions of minor interest, one comes upon an epoch in which the history of Russia assumes again a stirring and even a dramatic character. This is the era of the Mongol domination, beginning shortly before 1250 and continuing in some degree as late as 1480. Outwardly the period was one of conquest, degradation, and even eclipse; but actually it proved the birth era of the great united Russian nationality of modern times. The Mongols were an Asiatic people, kindred to the Turks, who under the leadership of an ambitious chieftain, Genghis Khan (Ruler of Rulers), became especially active in the early years of the thirteenth century. They invaded China, captured Peking, and in the course of their gigantic marauding expedi- tions fell unexpectedly and irresistibly upon the populations of eastern Europe. "For our sins," writes a pious Russian chronicler of the time, "unknown nations arrived. No one knew their origin, or whence they came, or what religion they practised. That is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men learned in books." In the year 1224 some of the Russian princes were persuaded to join forces with their nomadic neighbors on the east in an effort to repel the invaders. In a great battle on the banks of the Kelka, in southern Russia, the allies were totally defeated, and the country found itself left practically defenseless. It was spared a little while, for instead of ad- vancing, the barbarians fell back upon their Asiatic dominions. RUSSIA 15 Thirteen years later, however, they returned, and this time they chose to remain. They burned Moscow, which as yet was a town of small importance, took Tver and Kiev, ravaged Galicia and Volhynia, and built for themselves a capital, called Sarai, the ruins of which are still to be seen on the lower Volga. Here the commander of the Golden Horde, as the western branch of the Mongol host was designated, established his headquarters and governed in the name of his master, the Grand Khan, who dwelt with the Great Horde in the valley of the Amur. All Russia save Novgorod was brought under his control. The Mongol conquest fixed the low-water mark of Rus- sian history. For more than two hundred years the country, with a swarm of nomads encamped upon its frontiers, was momentarily liable to the shock of invasion. There were re- peated inroads, when towns were burned, property was de- stroyed, and wretched prisoners by the thousands, roped in long trains with sheep and cattle, were driven over the steppes, destined for the slave-markets. Between irruptions the people were compelled to pay tribute, in money or in furs. All sense of patriotism, racial pride, and public obligation disappeared; while the instincts of self-preservation and self-aggrandize- ment ran riot. But the situation might have been worse. In the first place, the conquerors retained their pastoral manner of life anS con- fined their habitation to the steppes of the south, so that they did not greatly disturb the every-day existence of the mass of the subject peoples. Normally, the khans were content with the tribute and homage of the Russian provinces, and had no desire to interfere with their internal affairs. In the second place, the general policy of the conquerors was lenient. They made no attempt to Mongolize their subjects; and even after they embraced Mohammedanism, in 1272, they were entirely tolerant of the Russian faith. The extent to which, during the prolonged period of con- tact, the Russian stock and character were altered by Mongol influences is a matter of speculation. It is an established fact that the Russians were gradually taking on a good many habits that were Oriental. Dress was becoming Eastern, as is illus- trated by the increased use of the caftan, or flowing robe, which Peter the Great subsequently sought to abolish. Cere- i6 SELECTED ARTICLES monialism was growing; likewise the seclusion of women; and punishment with the knout was being introduced. But the best opinion is that Russia's semiorientalization came as a result of contact with Constantinople, and not from Mongol influence. Very few Mongol words crept into the Russian vocabulary; very little Mongol blood entered Russian veins. The old French saying, "Scratch a Russian and find a Tatar," was hardly in accordance with fact. Kipling has declared in one of his stories that the mistake Englishmen have made in dealing with Russia is that they have treated her as the most eastern of European nations, rather than as the most western of Oriental nations. Whether this is true or not, it is distinctly untrue that, as many people sup- pose, Russia lost her European character in consequence of the Mongol subjugation. On the contrary, that subjugation had the general eflfect of checking the deadly internecine strife of the Russian princes. It strengthened the national religion, and gave it its present inextricable connection with the national feeling. It contrib- uted vitally to the eventual consolidation of the country by lessening the strength of the towns and of the aristocratic boyar class, by maintaining the authority of the more powerful princes against the lesser ones, by reducing the princes in number, and by stimulating, quite inadvertently, the growth of the most important princely power of all, that of Moscow. The rise of the principality of Moscow to a position of dominance in Russia was synchronous with the liberation of the country from the rule of the Mongols. It was in 1263 that Moscow became a capital with a permanent princely house, although the real founder of the principality was Daniel Alex- androvitch, who lived forty years later. For a number of reasons the principality flourished from the outset. The city of Moscow was situated strategically in relation to both land and water routes of trade. The population of the region was comparatively dense and prosperous, and the princes early adopted a course of policy toward both their Rus- sian neighbors and the Mongol overlords which brought them large accessions of strength. By war and by Machiavellian diplomacy they annexed ter- ritory until by 1462 they had made theirs the largest princi- pality in the country. Encouraged by the national churchy they RUSSIA 17 broke up free republics, suppressed popular assemblies, and gathered into their hands all the essentials of autocratic power. Instead of engaging in rebellion against the Mongol rule, as their brother princes were prone to do, they craftily got them- selves commissioned as agents of the khan, both for the col- lection of tribute and for the raising of troops; and in 1353 they were rewarded by receiving from the Mongol potentate the title of grand duke and a grant of jurisdiction over all other princes of the country. No expedient of violence or cun- ning was left unused to strengthen their hold. Eventually the Muscovite princes felt strong enough to turn against the now decrepit power that had befriended them — the Mongol khanate. In 1380 Prince Dimitri Ivanovitch, sovereign of practically the whole of northern Russia, inflicted upon the Mongols, on the banks of the Don, the first defeat which they had suffered at Russian hands; and although the Mongol power was by no means broken, never thereafter did it threaten to engulf the Russian world. The hold which it retained upon the southern portions of the country was grad- ually relaxed as the Golden Horde, in the next hundred years, dissolved into petty and powerless khanates. Meanwhile, the princes of Moscow had acquired the ad- vantage of leadership in a great national cause. Moscow be- came the recognized center of the country; its prince, the strongest ruler, the ablest administrator, the people's defender, and — since the seat of the metropolitan had been transferred thither — the eldest son of the church. During the century and a quarter covered by the reigns of three powerful princes, Ivan III, his son Basil III, and his grandson Ivan IV (1462-1584), the policies which had been inaugurated were carried to their logical conclusion. The few principalities that had remained independent were absorbed, and the long and desperate struggle with the neighboring Slavic kingdoms, Poland, Lithuania, and the rest, was begun. The last traces of Mongol authority were obliterated, and un- limited monarchical power was established. Ivan III married a niece of the Emperor Constantine Pale- ologus, who had perished at the capture of his capital by the Turks in 1453. The autocratic tendencies of his rule, already encouraged by the church, were powerfully reenforced by By- zantine influences. The prince ceased to be primus inter pares i8 SELECTED ARTICLES among people of princely rank; he became "the Lord's anointed," who shut himself off from even the nobility, surrounded himself with pomp and luxury, and took on the char- acter of an Oriental Sultan. The people murmured and the nobles protested, but in vain. Finally, in 1547, when the seventeen-year-old Ivan IV — Ivan (John) the Terrible — was being crowned, he compelled the metropolitan to crown him, not as Grand Prince of Muscovy, but as Czar of Russia. From time immemorial the term czar — a contraction of Caesar — had been applied in Russia to the Biblical kings and to the Byzantine emperors ; but never before had it been applied officially to a prince of Russia, although Ivan III, in his treaties, had used an equivalent of it. Its adoption marks the final triumph of the autocratic principle. Ivan the Terrible is a sinister figure. He is one of several monarchs of Russia who began with good intentions and ended by becoming a monster of cruelty. Perhaps it would be fairer to style him, as a recent writer on Russian history has done, Ivan the Terrified. For it was his inborn timidity, increased to nervous terror, and assuming almost the proportions of a disease, that explains the explosive excitability, the mysticism, and the unrelieved barbarity so characteristic of his later life. Notwithstanding his glaring faults, he really had the wel- fare of his people at heart, and was not unpopular. He con- ceived and partially realized the plan of a "democratic autoc- racy," aiming at the promotion of the public interest. No less enlightened a successor than Peter the Great testified that he took Ivan for an example in civil and military administra- tion. Among Ivan's more notable measures were the partial de- struction of the hitherto powerful aristocratic class of boyars, the completion of the subjugation of Novgorod, and the an- nexation of the Mongol khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. He also waged a series of unsuccessful wars, following up the efforts of his grandfather to acquire territory on the west at the expense of Lithuania, Poland, and the Swedes, and with it the advantage for which Peter the Great labored in subsequent years — an outlet to the Baltic. This advantage was destined not to be realized until another century should have elapsed; but during Ivan's reign commer- cial relations were established with England. Following the RUSSIA 19 visit of an English sea-captain, Richard Chancellor, to Mos- cow, an envoy from Queen Mary concluded with the Czar a convention stipulating mutual freedom of trade between the two countries. The death of Ivan (1584) was followed by a period des- ignated in Russian histories as the Time of Trouble — a period, as one writer has characterized it, "which is like a series of Elizabethan chronicle plays, and which contains trenchant characters, scenes and episodes of tragic intensity, glowing with color, dabbled with blood, loud with turmoil and fighting, like those of a tragedy by Marlowe." The Time of Trouble began, strictly, in 1598, upon the death of Ivan's weak son and successor Feodor, with whom ended forever the dynasty of the Ruriks, and it lasted fifteen years. After Feodor, a brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, who for years had been the power behind the throne, was elected Czar by a national assembly. But a rival claimant appeared, insurrection became wide-spread, and in 1605 Boris died, probably poisoned. The rival claimant, reputed to be Feodor's brother Dimitri, but unquestionably an impostor, became Czar; and within a year he was assassinated. Matters went from bad to worse. Pretenders arose on every side, centralized authority disap- peared, and at one time the country narrowly escaped becom- ing a dependency of Poland. But since the rise of the Moscow principate Russia had gained enormously in national consciousness, and at the very moment when utter dissolution seemed inevitable there swept over the country a wave of patriotism and of revulsion against Polish, Lithuanian, or other foreign domination. First the land was cleared of its invaders, and then, toward the ^lose of 1612, the boyars and clergy came to the wise decision to ar- range for the election of a Czar by a zemsky sobor or national assembly. In January, 1613, some five hundred deputies, chosen by the people in fifty towns, and forming by far the most widely rep- presentative body ever brought together in Russia prior to the eighteenth century, arrived in Moscow. In the great Cathedral of the Assumption these men — nobles, boyars' sons, officials, soldiers, merchants, and even peasants — took in hand with much earnestness the problem which had been committed to them. "For many days," writes an annalist of the time, "there w^r^ 20 SELECTED ARTICLES meetings of the men, but they could not settle affairs, and vainly swayed this way and that." At length, on Sunday, February 21, following three days of fasting and prayer, the assembly elected as sovereign a serious- minded lad fifteen years of age, Michael Feodorovitch Romanoff. The boy was a son of the chief dignitary of the Russian Church, the patriarch Philaret Romanoff, who belonged to a popular boyar family. He was also a nephew of the first wife of Ivan the Terrible. It was understood that for a time the father should govern jointly with the son, and in fact the two ruled to- gether until the patriarch's death in 1633. ■^ The new dynasty was destined to become one of the most powerful and enduring in Europe. The three hundredth anni- versary of its accession was celebrated with much acclaim two years ago, and every sovereign of Russia during the centuries since its establishment has been a member of it by birth, save only Catherine II, who was a German. Under the Romanoffs the distracted and relatively small do- minion of Michael has been expanded westward and southward and eastward to the widely separated bounds of the present Russian Empire. Under them the country has multiplied in population many fold, has achieved strong nationality and cen- tralized government, and has pushed its way into the broad cur- rent of modern, western civilization. The rule of the Romanoffs was accepted by all classes of the people, and the country gradually recovered from the effects of the turmoil through which it had passed. Theoretically, the election of Michael involved a fresh assertion of the essentially popular basis of the state — the elective character of the sover- eign power, the limitation of this power by participation of the people in legislation and administration, and its responsi- bility to the people. These ideas, familiar enough in the Kiev period of Rus- sian history, had been suppressed or stifled by the practise of Moscow. They were now reasserted, and from the days of Michael and Philaret to those of Nicholas II they could always be appealed to in combating autocracy. Their role in the history of Russia became not unlike that played in England by those conceptions of individual right and liberty which found expression in the Magna Charta, save in one most important respect, namely, that whereas in England RUSSIA 21 the concessions wrung from the king became from an early period real and permanent, in Russia the liberal ideas attending the early rule of the Romanoffs were gradually obscured, until eventually the dynasty became the most autocratic in all Eu- rope. It is only in our own day that Russia is in some measure getting back to the principles of 1613. The great era in the making of the European Russia of to-day was the eighteenth century, just as the era of the making of Asiatic Russia was the nineteenth. And in the eighteenth century there are two figures which tower above all their con- temporaries, Peter the Great (1689-1725) and Catherine II (1762-1796). The one was the ablest of all the Romanoffs; the other, Romanoff only by marriage, takes rank also as one of the most notable monarchs of modern times, and perhaps the most astute, although far from the most admirable, female ruler in the history of continental Europe. The accession of Peter fell in a period of palace revolutions following the death of his father, Alexis, in 1676 ; but the trouble was confined to the different branches of the Romanoff family, and it did not affect the hold upon the throne which the family in the past three-quarters of a century had acquired. Peter the Great is one of the best-known men of history ; although one must add that he is perhaps the only Russian sov- ereign whose personality is really known at all adequately to people of^ie western world. His predominating mental char- acteristio^^^e alertness, inquisitiveness, restless energy, and %nwillin^H^to admit that anything worth doing was im- possible. His physical endowment included a powerful frame and capacity to undergo great exertion, although offset by a nervous disorder which in time assumed the character of in- curable disease. His interests were as wide as the earth, but centered upon war and military exercises, ship-building, and the study of the arts and ways of foreign peoples. His was a personality of the most violent contradictions — simple, straightforward, pious, yet passionate, revengeful, cruel, and sensual. All his qualities were on a colossal scale. His rage was cyclonic, his hatred meant extermination. A contemporary well said of him that he was a very good and a very bad man, and it may be doubted whether any prince equally great has ever descended to such depths of treach- 22 SELECTED ARTICLES ery and cruelty. But it is quite possible that his very contradic- tions fitted him for his times and his tasks. Russia needed a ruler of constructive power and of far-reaching views, while his restless vigor, his disregard of scruples, and his tyrannous ways suited a backward and uncivilized people, accustomed to despotic rule, and demanding a master who would drive them along the path of progress. In the development of modern Russia, Peter's reign acquires prime importance from two aspects of his policy. One was the acquisition of territory, the consolidation of dominion, and the providing of his country with an outlet to the open sea; the other was the reconstruction of the government, the military system, and the social usages of the land, partly upon western models, partly in sharp reaction against them. From first to last the foreign policy of the reign had as its principal impetus the Czar's consuming love of the sea. In 1689 Russia had not a single port, save Archangel, on the White Sea ; and this, on account of its far northern location, was of use dur- ing only a few months of each year. It was the dream of Peter to obtain for his country a footing on the shores of the Caspian, the Black, and the Baltic, and to link up the waters of the Volgaj^ the Don, the Dnieper, and the N eva, which flow into these seas, with a network~bf canals. Thus Russia would become a great highway of trade and travel between the northwest and the southeast, and would hold a position that would a^^t give her an influential standing among the nations of the -J^^^ That the dream was realized only in part was ^jP< of thl^ dreamer. Attention was directed first toward the southeast, and in 1696, when Peter was as yet but twenty-three years of age, the important territory of Azov, bordering the Black Sea, was wrested from the Turks. This initial success inspired the laying of broader and bolder plans, which required years for their consummation, and in- volved not only travel and observation in western countries, but the remodeling of the army, the building of a fleet, and the amassing of money and supplies. When the time for the re- newal of action came, the purpose of further conquest in the East had given place to an overmastering desire to acquire land upon the Baltic, and thereby to "open a window" toward western civilization. As early as 1699 Peter joined the kings of Denmark and Po- RUSSIA 23 land in a coalition whose thinly disguised object was the con- quest of the Swedish possessions south and east of the Baltic. The eccentric young King of Sweden, Charles XII, performed with unexpected brilliance, and at first defeated the allies roundly one by one ; but after a prolonged and desultory contest there was concluded, in 1721, the important Peace of Nystad, by whose terms Peter obtained for Russia not only the districts of Ingria and Karelia, as had been the original intention, but also the important provinces of Livonia and Esthonia and a part of Finland. In the course of the war Azov was recovered by the Turks, and the planting of Russian sovereignty on the coast of the Black Sea remained to be accomplished by Catherine II ; but Peter had given his country a foothold upon the Baltic, and an outlet to the western ocean, which was never lost. He had made it understood that Russia, not Sweden or Poland, was the great northeastern power with which Europe must reckon. In the course of the celebration of the Peace of Nystad, in 1 721, Peter made a further bold bid for aggrandizement for himself and his country by laying aside the title of Czar and pro- claiming himself Imperator (Emperor) of all the Russias. The foreign chancelleries were taken by surprise, and were inclined to resent the presumption involved in the act; but their protests were futile, and the title at length won general recognition. It remains the official designation of the Russian monarch to-day, although he is almost universally spoken of by foreigners as "the Czar." Meanwhile the program of internal reform, entered upon al- most at the beginning of Peter's reign, was being carried into ef- fect as rapidly as circumstances permitted. The obstacles to be overcome were stupendous. Chief among them was the in- tensely conservative disposition of the masses of the people ; and it was in the main to escape the superstitious and fanatical ob- structionism which centered in Moscow that the Czar projected and founded the new capital at the mouth of the Neva— the city of "weariness, cold, and granite," as Pushkin called it— to which his name was given. The construction of the new city, in a region recently taken from Sweden, was begun in 1703. The site was marshy, and the buildings had to be erected on filled earth and supported on piles, so that the amount and difficulty of the labor required was 24 SELECTED ARTICLES stupendous. Thousands of men from all parts of Russia were employed in the building of the city and of its fortifications, and great numbers died of exposure and harsh treatment. Emigra- tion thither was forced, and shortly after Peter's death the population had risen to one hundred and fifty thousand — a figure which by the close of the eighteenth century was almost doubled. The embellishments which make the city one of the hand- somest in Europe to-day were added principally during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Antedating them, however, is the remark- able bronze statue of the capital's founder which stands in the broad square surrounding the Admiralty. Completed by the French sculptor Falconet in 1782, it represents its subject on horseback, at full gallop, ascending a rocky slope and pointing to the Neva. The new city was designed, as Peter declared, to serve as a window through which the Russian people might look into Europe, and there can be no question that throughout its exist- ence it has led both in the development of Russian thought and in the naturalizing of western science and philosophy in the country. It has fitly been said that Petrograd is the head of Russia, while Moscow remains the country's heart. The model which Peter followed in his reconstruction of Russian society was mainly German, and in a portion of his work he had the assistance of the German philosopher Leib- nitz. Like the Japanese in more recent times, however, he did not hesitate to borrow from any source ideas or usages which seemed to him desirable. The governmental system was overhauled, although with no concession to western principles of liberalism. The army was reorganized and much enlarged. The office of patriarch was abolished, and in its place was set up a Holy Synod presided over by a procurator-general, often a soldier, who was the im- mediate representative of the head of the state. Taxation was readjusted. Monasticism was restricted. Elementary and tech- nical schools were established, and teachers were brought in from foreign countries. The seclusion of women was discour- aged. Western styles of dress were introduced. The wearing of a beard was made a privilege entailing the payment of a special taa?, RUSSIA 25 It must not be supposed that the penetration of Russia by western ideas and habits began only with the measures of Peter. From the court of Poland, dominated alternately by Frenchmen and Italians, some Occidental innovations had already been in- troduced. Peter's father, the Czar Alexis, had shocked the orthodox of Moscow by appearing occasionally in western dress, just as his wife had caused no end of scandal by failing to con- ceal her face from the public gaze when she was being borne through the streets of the old capital. But Peter's acts and measures went vastly beyond anything hitherto dreamed of; and it must be admitted that he used little tact in conciliating public opinion. Not infrequently he wantonly provoked opposition, as when he shaved off his beard and compelled his chief officials to do likewise, although he well enough knew that the performance was regarded by the igno- rant masses as a sinful defacing of the image of God. By some he was declared to be a foreigner in disguise, by others Antichrist; but he persisted to the end, and, although his reforms proved less effective than he hoped, for the reason that human nature and long established habits cannot be changed as quickly as can laws or armies, in the aggregate Russia was carried forward an immeasurable distance on the road toward modernization. His whole task, it has been observed, consisted in scratching away the Tatar and setting the inner Russian free. Following the death of Peter, at the early age of fifty-three, the country passed for almost three-quarters of a century, with the exception of two brief intervals, under the control of wo- men. First came Peter's wife, Catherine; then the daughter of his brother Ivan, Anne, Duchess of Courland, noted for her strong German predilections; then Peter's daughter Elizabeth, proudly Russian, and one of the most engaging of the em- presses; and finally the ablest of the group, Catherine II, some- times called Catherine the Great. As has been stated, the last Catherine was a native of Germany. As Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst, she was married, in 1745, to a grandson of Peter the Great, Charles Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, who, as his name and title indicate, was hardly less German than herself. The Ro- manoff dynasty had reached the point, indeed, where for the time being there was no possible heir, even in the female line, who could be called a genuine Russian. 26 SELECTED ARTICLES Upon the death of Elizabeth, in 1761, the duke became em- peror under the name Peter IIL From the outset he was in- tensely unpopular. He was devoid of character and capacity, and he took no pains to conceal his dislike of all things Russian. His wife, on the other hand, deftly turned to advantage her naturally winsome disposition until she fully ingratiated herself with her adopted people. She mastered their language, became a member of their national church, and made herself one of them. The outcome was inevitable. Within a few months of his accession, in December, 1761, Peter was deposed, and a little later he met his death — accidentally, it was given out, in a brawl. Without delay Catherine was proclaimed sovereign. Under the energetic administration of this most statesman- like of European female rulers since Elizabeth of England, Russia entered upon a fresh era of advancement comparable with the period of Peter the Great. The policies and achieve- ments of the empress attract less attention than do those of her illustrious predecessor, for the reason that there was less about them that was novel or startling; but they were equally am- bitious and fruitful. On the side of foreign affairs, the principal object of the reign was the completion of the work which Peter had begun — the extension of the western and the southeastern frontiers to the sea, and the raising of Russia to a position of greater in- fluence in the councils of Europe. In both the west and the southeast there were large additions of important territory. In the west, the unhappy kingdom of Poland was dis- membered by the three successive partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, and the spoils were divided among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Russia obtaining the lion's share. And in the year of the last Polish partition the Duchy of Courland, cutting off Russia from the Baltic between the mouths of the Niemen and Duna rivers, after being held for decades in tutelage, was form- ally annexed. By these steps the Russian boundary was pushed westward a distance of three hundred and fifty miles. In the southeast, a war with the Turks, instigated in 1768 by France, was terminated in 1774 by a treaty which gave Rus- sia a firm hold on the Black Sea. Ten years later the independ- ence of the Mongol khans of the Crimea, recognized in 1774, was extinguished, and the peninsula — destined to become the RUSSIA 27 scene of some famous events in Russian history — was incor- porated in the empire. Catherine conceived a plan to bring about a partition of Tur- key similar to that of Poland ; but the obstacles were too formi- dable to be overcome. A second war with the Turks, however, begun in 1787, led to the acquisition of the coastal region be- tween the Bug and the Dniester, containing the great port of Odessa. At home, Catherine's policies were essentially those of Peter — the opening of the country to western ideas and influences, the reforming of the administrative system, and the rigid main- tenance of autocracy. Less stress was placed, however, upon the purely material and utilitarian aspects of national progress. Rather, the effort was to impart to the country some measure of the refinements and ornamental attributes of western, mainly French and German, civilization. The empress was a professed disciple of Montesquieu, and friend of Grimm and Voltaire. Early in her reign, when she heard that the publication of the great French "Encyclopedic" was in danger of being stopped by the government of Louis XV, on account of the irreligious spirit of the work, she proposed to Diderot that he should carry his task to completion in Russia under her protection. Her liberalism, however, was purely philosophic and theoretical, and there are reasons for thinking that she always entertained a quiet contempt for the French writers whom, in return for the advertising they gave her in the West, she flattered and pensioned. At one time she went so far as to convene a national rep- resentative assembly; but the powers which the body was per- mitted to exercise were limited, and in a short while it passed out of existence. And when the Revolution came on in France no one was more assiduous than Catherine in whetting the hostility of the European sovereigns to the democratic move- ment. The nineteenth century opened with Russia awaiting an op- portunity to take advantage of the Napoleonic wars to solve the Eastern question in a fashion agreeable to herself. The opportunity did not come in Napoleon's time, nor has it ever fully come. Instead, the Czar Alexander I, who in 1801, suc- ceeded Catherine's capricious son Paul, found himself at first, in 1807, drawn into a hollow alliance with the western conqueror, 28 SELECTED ARTICLES and later, in 1811, forced by circumstances to make war upon him. '' The principal result of the Napoleonic alliance was the con- quest from Sweden of the extensive territories of Finland and Bothnia, This acquisition, organized as a constitutional grand duchy in 1809, gave the empire substantially the western bound- aries which it has since possessed. The outcome of the Czar's turning against Napoleon was the memorable expedition to Mos- cow in 1812, and the assumption by Russia of leadership in the campaigns of 1813-1814, from which the Napoleonic ascendency received its finishing blows. The empire emerged from the long struggle enlarged in area and population, increased in prestige, and more nearly the dictator of Europe than any other power. Since 1815 the main interests of Russian history have been /three. One is the increase of territory; a second is the revo- /lutionizing of the country's industrial condition; a third is the ' development of political liberalism. Russia has not pushed her frontiers westward during the last hundred years, except that in 1878 she recovered a strip of Bes- sarabia lost after the Crimean War. She has extended her Caucasian province southward at the expense of Turkey and Persia; but her great expansion has been to the east, and in her Asiatic dominions she has accomplished one of the most remarkable conquering and colonizing achievements in the his- tory of the world. Meanwhile, she has abandoned her outlying possessions in North America, transferring Alaska to the United States in 1867 for seven million dollars in gold — a price which seems' paltry in comparison with the present importance of that rich 'territory. From the days of the Verangers the Russian Slav has had a bent for pioneering, and in the vast stretches of Siberia he finally found an opportunity to indulge his colonizing proclivi- ties to the utmost. Russian penetration eastward from the Urals began systematically as early as 1581, when the indefatigable Cossack chieftain Yermak headed an unauthorized expedition to Sibir, capital of one of the Asiatic khanates, and captured the place. In Russian hands Sibir — whence is derived the name Si- beria — declined, and eventually disappeared. But the Russian settlement was maintained, and the neighboring city of Tobolsk, founded in 1587, became the permanent outpost of a colonizing RUSSIA 29 movement which has since had for its field the whole vast plain of northern Asia. Step by step the hardy Cossacks worked their way east- ward, building forts and planting settlements, until in 1636 they came upon the only limit to their enterprise which they deigned to recognize — the shore of the Pacific Ocean. By the begin- ning of the eighteenth century the flag of Russia waved over all the territories of northern and eastern Siberia. It remained '^ to acquire the lands farther south, and especially the fertile and n^,^ populous valley of the Amur. This was accomplished shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century; and between 1891 and 1902 there was constructed the great Trans-Siberian rail- )' way, nearly five thousand miles in length, which cut the time > *• and cost of transportation from Europe to the Pacific to about one-half. The Russian losses in the Far East in consequence of the war with Japan in 1904- 1905 were considerable, but in no way vital. They have had the not undesirable effect of centering the government's attention upon the colonization of the Siberian lands — the Canada of Russia — and during the past decade the number of Russians migrating thither has varied from two - hundred thousand to more than six hundred thousand annually. The bad name which Siberia acquired from the exile system was never wholly deserved, and is fast passing. The economic transformation which Russia has undergone in the past fifty or seventy-five years involves as its principal factors the emancipation of the serfs under Alexander II, the introduction of machinery and ot the factory systernpfhe''grbWtfl "" of capitalism, the building of railways, the rise of cities, and, in general, the development of those aspects of modern civilization which are associated with the idea of "industrialism." Only in the present generation has Russia really entered that stage of industrial transition through which England passed in the sec- ond half of the eighteenth century, France in the second quarter of the nineteenth, and Germany in the third quarter of the nine- teenth. As in economic matters, so in poHtical affairs, Russia is still a country in the making. Despite an earlier tradition of limited monarchy, the nation's present political inheritance is autocracy; and it is too much to expect the weight of that inheritance to be thrown off suddenly, or even rapidly. 30 SELECTED ARTICLES During the past hundred years the country has oscillated be- tween absolutism and constitutionaHsm. Alexander I (1801- 1825) began as a liberal, but ended as an absolutist. Nicholas I (1825- 1855) was never anything but a thoroughgoing absolutist. Alexander II (1855-1881) was a liberal whose apprehensions narrowly checked him from reform measures transcending even the emancipation of the serfs. Alexander III (1881-1894) was another Nicholas I; and the present Czar was committed un- reservedly to the maintenance of autocracy until the exigencies of war and threatened revolution, in 1904-1905, compelled him to make some concession to liberalizing principles. How, step by step, within the past decade, Russia has achieved a style of government at least nominally constitutional, is a matter of familiar history. There is a written constitution, the first the country ever had, which consists of a series of "or- ganic laws" promulgated in 1906. There is the Council of the Empire, an aristocratic body which serves as an upper chamber of the national legislature; and there is the Imperial Duma, whose members are elected, usually indirectly, by the people. The history of the nation under the new regime has, however, been stormy. Factional strife and the spirit of reaction have many times imperiled the constitution's very existence. The first two Dumas were short-lived. The third lasted from 1907 to 1912, and the fourth is still in existence. The new system has hardly fulfilled its earlier promise, and the government of the empire is to-day very far from being democratic, or even wholly constitutional. Yet, measured by the conditions of a century, a generation, or even fifteen years ago, the advance in governmental responsiveness to the will of the na- tion looms large. The winning of the form of constitutionalism is something, for in time it may lead to the attainment of the reality. As a factor in shaping the conduct of the affairs of the world at large, Russia declined perceptibly in consequence of her de- feat by Japan and her internal disorders of ten years ago. Her army was decimated and her military system discredited; her navy was practically destroyed; and her finances were strained to the last degree. There has been, however, remarkable re- covery, which has demonstrated convincingly the empire's re- serve strength; and her position among the powers at the out- break of the present war was one of commanding importance. Her army had been rehabilitated and enlarged, her flee't had RUSSIA 31 been in a measure rebuilt, her finances had been reduced to order, her diplomacy had lately achieved some of its most no- table successes. The alliance with France, which for a quarter of a century has been a capital fact in her international position, was firmly buttressed by both political and financial interests. In 1907 she had signed a convention with Japan guaranteeing the integrity of China and mutual respect for treaty and territorial rights, and in succeeding years the two formerly hostile powers had arrived at a status of genujne friendship. In 1907, also, the prolonged period of mutual suspicion be- tween Russia and Great Britain was brought to a close by a convention for the amicable adjustment of all questions likely to disturb the relations of the two powers in Asia, including the division of the decrepit state of Persia into "spheres of influ- ence." The ambition to acquire the political and economic domi- nance of the entire Black Sea basin remained to be gratified, but important steps had been taken to that end. The effect of the present war upon the Russian position in the world cannot be foreseen in detail ; but it is a safe guess that, whatever happens, the Muscovite empire will be saved by her immensity, her immobility, and her reserve strength from suffer- ing a setback more serious than that from which she so speedily recovered after the war with Japan. Defeat can mean no serious loss of territory or impairment of resources; victory would probably mean accessions, and perhaps very important acces- sions, to both. Politically, Russia is one of the great enduring facts of the modern world. Culturally, her role has been, and is, likewise of fundamental importance. As Dante among the great men of history, so Russia among the great nations has been the Janus-faced. Her outlook has ever been in two quite opposite directions. All the troubles and sufferings and miserable discords which run through the life of her people, no less than their achievements and their victories, are the consequences of the intermediate position between East and West which fate has decreed that the nation shall occupy. Europe and Asia still carry on their age-long quarrel within the empire's confines ; the imperial emblem, the two-headed eagle, remains a fitting symbol of the nation's dual character. First it was Asia that overflowed Europe; latterly it is Europe which has overflowed Asia. 32 SELECTED ARTICLES Russia's role in civilization has been to preserve an equili- brium between those forces which are distinctively eastern and those which are distinctively western, and her greatest geniuses have ever reconciled in themselves eastern and western tenden- cies. As it was with Peter the Great in the sphere of state- craft, so it was with Pushkin in that of poetry, with Solovieff in that of philosophy, and with Tolstoy in that of religion and morals. But it is important to observe that, at least since the period of Peter the Great, the whole aspiration of Russia in matters of culture has been toward Europe, not Asia. Russia is a Christian nation. Her administrative and economic reforms are planned and executed on Western lines. Her science is the science of France and Germany, and her art, whether sculpture, painting, poetry, or music, is being assimilated ever more completely to European forms and standards of esthetics. No important political, social, or intellectual movement in the West is without its reflection in Russia. And, even if Russia were several times more Oriental than she is, it would hardly be gracious of peoples situated farther west to taunt her with her un-European character, seeing that through all the centuries she has served them ^s a protecting buffer against Asiatic invasion and domination. X '^ THE ROMANOFFS* The Great White Czar. Among the royal families which are actually at the head of the various warring na- tions the most powerful is commonly supposed to be the Romanoffs, who for three centuries have furnished the Czars to all the Russias. At this moment the King of Great Britain and Emperor of India rules over more millions than any other poten- tate; but the Emperor of Russia counts within his dominions about twice as many European subjects as Germany, three and a half times as many as France, and three times as many as Great Britain. Russia has a greater area than all the rest of Europe together, and can enlist, and perhaps put in the field, about two- thirds as many soldiers as all the rest of Europe. The absolute rulers of that mighty Empire are therefore — at least on paper — 1 By A. B. Hart. Outlook. 108:456-60. October 28, 19 14. RUSSIA 33 the most powerful sovereigns since the fall of the Roman Em- pire. The Imperial family of Romanoff stands alongside the houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg as a line of monarchs. In prac- tical affairs neither the line nor its members are so great as statistics and theories of sovereignty seem to indicate. On the average, Russia is the poorest country in Europe, except some of the Balkan States; it has the smallest average personal income; the least number of schools, colleges, and technical institutes in proportion to population ; the smallest relative internal and for- eign commerce. Russia is great because it is an enormous mass, the aggregation of tens of thousands of villages and scores of millions of people. Russia is mighty, not as a power, but as a potentiality; the Bear has never realized his own strength and possibilities. Whether conquered or victorious in the present war, Russia will therefore arise with a new sense of her weight in the world, and her rulers will realize their future importance as the directors of the destiny of the broadest world power. House of Romanoff. While the German and Austrian sover- eign lines go back about six centuries, the Romanoffs are com- paratively newcomers. Michael, the first Romanoff Czar, was chosen out of the ranks of the great nobles in 1613 by a Grand National Assembly. This was Michael Romanoff, son of the Patriarch of the Russian Church, and connected by marriage with the earlier dynasty of Rurik, the Scandinavian. He was Russian by ancestry, but his descendants have repeatedly mar- ried Germans, and the present family is almost as German in origin as the Guelphs of Great Britain. Here is the succession : I. Michael (first Romanoff; elected Czar) 1613-1645 II. Alexius (son) 1645-1676 III. Theodore III (son) 1676-1682 IV. Ivan V (brother) 1682-1689 Regency of Sophia Alexeyerna (sister of Ivan) 1682-1689 V. Peter I, "the Great" (brother) 1689-1725 VI. Catherine I (wife) 1725-1727 VII. Peter II (grandson oi Peter I) 1727-1730 VIII. Anna (daughter of Ivan V) 1730-1740 IX. Ivan VI (grand-nephew, infant) 1740-1741 X. Elizabeth (daughter of Peter I and Cather- ine) 1741-1761 34 SELECTED ARTICLES XL Peter III (nephew of Elizabeth, grandson of Peter I) 1761-1762 XII. Catherine II, "the Great" (wife) .'. 1762-1796 XIII. Paul (son of Peter III and Catherine II) ... 1796-1801 XIV. Alexander I (son) 1801-1825 XV. Nicholas I (brother) 1825-1855 XVI. Alexander II (son) 1855-1881 XVII. Alexander III (son) 1881-1894 XVIII. Nicholas II (son) 1894- Slavs and Mongols. The place of the Romanoff house can be understood only against the background of the experience and traditions of the Russian nation. It is a, composite people: more than thirty races can still be found in the population of the present European Russia, and thirty more in Asiatic Russia. Moreover, it is the only European country, except Turkey, in which there are still large elements of pure Asiatics, besides a considerable strain of Asiatic blood in the European peoples. The main race element is that Slavic folk which when recorded history begins — about twenty-five hundred years ago — was seated in what is now the interior of Russia. Despite the pres- ent habit of calling them "Asiatic semi-barbarians," they are a European race, first cousins to the Teutons and Celts, second cousins to the Greeks and Romans, and no nearer relations to the Mongols and Turks of Asia than are the present French- men. Yet their geographical situation drew them under the suc- cessive waves of Asiatic invasion. Thus an Oriental influence has molded the Russian Slavs. During the Roman Empire the Slav tribes and Germanic tribes were interspersed. The Goths and Vandals who overthrew the Roman Empire started from the great plains of Russia and the coast of the Black Sea. After that time flourishing Slav states sprang up in southern Russia, with cities, laws, and commerce. The Slavs in what is now Russia were in the tenth century con- verted to Christianity by the Byzantine missionaries. Their civilization was almost annihilated by the terrible in- roads of hordes of Mongols from northern and central Asia — the most awful scourge ever experienced by Europe. Although the Russians were allowed to keep their faith and even their or- ganization into principalities, they were subjected to the crush- ing and barbarous rule of absolute masters far inferior to them in civilization. The Mongol rule, which lasted from about 1237 RUSSIA 35 to about 1380, was an abject tyranny which made tyrants of the native Russian princes. One effect of this century of Mongol rule was to teach the Russians that the only way to break loose from the curse was to stand by some Russian leader who could concentrate all their authority. Thus the Slavs, whose race instinct was to live in villages and cities, each governing itself by the unanimous vote of those entitled to take part, were forced into the mold of Asi- atic despotism. When in 1380 Russia was at last set free, the native princes followed the Tartar example of calling themselves czars, and exacted from their own blood brethren the instant and unquestioning obedience which the Tartar rule had taught them. Absolute government was an acquired habit, like the long beards and flowing robes which the boyars, or great nobles, still affected. Serfdom, which was neither a Tartar nor a Slav prac- tice, sprang up in Russia two centuries later, just as it was dying out in England. For seventy-five years after Michael became Czar the Ro- manoffs slowly gathered power and settled the question that a Czar was superior to the ecclesiastical chief, the Patriarch, and was practically himself the head of the Russian Church. They were hedged off by a circle of enemies from the great outside world: on the north, Finns, Swedes, Lithuanians, and Poles shut them from the Baltic Sea; on the west, the Poles interposed be- tween them and Austria; on the south, the Tartars and the Turks cut them off from the Black Sea. Only toward the east could they slowly expand across the Ural Mountains into Asia. The Great Peter. Unexpectedly arose out of this confusion and helplessness a Romanoff monarch upon whom mankind has bestowed the title of "Peter the Great." For once the theory of absolute government was justified: inherited monarchy brought to the front the one man in the Russian Empire who was best fitted to lead and animate his country. At seventeen years of age he took the authority from out the hand of a regency; and from 1689 to 1725 he was the greatest man in the East. Peter soon discovered that Russia must have a sea-front, and must be able to use it by means of ships. Hence the amazing episode of the Czar of All the Russias going incognito to Ger- many, Holland, and even to England, and learning the trade of a ship carpenter at Zaandam. He began at once to push the Russian boundaries southward to the Sea of Azof, and then to 36 SELECTED ARTICLES the Black Sea, and northward to the Baltic. Twenty-one years a northern war raged, and in the end his sole spoils were four little provinces on the Baltic ; but they brought him seaports and river connections to the interior. In 1703 he founded the city which he was willing to call St. Petersburg, but which a suc- cessor has renamed in our time Petrograd. When he became Czar, Russia was neither European nor Asiastic, but a midland shut off from direct connection with the great stream of Western progress. Peter broke through the barriers, and during the last two centuries Russia has been a member of the Western group of nations. Peter throughout his life followed the princi- ple set down in an early letter to his mother : "Your little boy, Petruska, still at work. I ask for your blessing and wish to hear how you are. Thanks to your pray- ers, we are quite well; and the lake thawed out on the 20th of this month, and all the vessels except the big ships are ready." German Influence. — Poland was already falling to pieces through pushing to its extremity the Slav doctrine that nothing but unanimous consent could give validity to the action of a commonwealth. Germany was the next nearest western neigh- bor, and from Germany came many influences upon Russia. The situation of the country was very much like that of Japan in our time: recognizing the power and success of the West, the peo- ple were eager to take anything that was Western. Many Ger- mans settled in central Russia from Germany and from the German-speaking Baltic provinces of Russia; and, as they had a capacity for public business much above that of the ordi- nary Russian, they were used as ministers, diplomats, and ad- ministrators. In the peace negotiations at Portsmouth in 1905 the two Russian representatives were Rosen and Witte — both of them evidently of German origin. Following Peter came the first reigning Czarina in Russian history, Catherine, his wife, who was sovereign because Peter so willed it. From 1725 to 1798 the Imperial authority (except for three intervals, making five years altogether) was exercised by four women — Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II. Anna was the wife of a German Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Czar Peter III also married a German Protestant princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, whose memoirs contain a picture of the coarse, ungovernable, and riotous life of that Emperor and his Court. He is best known to fame because he came to the RUSSIA 37 throne when the armies of the Empress Elizabeth, after captur- ing the city of Berlin, were about to finish the Hohenzollern Frederick II — commonly called Frederick the Great. In 1762 Peter, who greatly admired this world-famous soldier, hastened to make peace, and thus saved Prussia. The Great Catherine. At Peter Ill's death his wife, though a German, took the new name of Catherine, was received into the Greek Church, and for thirty-four years was one of the most famous and infamous figures in Europe. Poland, which stretched across Europe in a narrow band most of the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea, was finally disrupted. The last King, Poniatowsky, was forced on the country by Cather- ine, because (she says) "among all the pretenders to the throne he has the least right, and consequently was bound to be the most grateful to Russia." Austria shared in the spoil, France opposed in vain, and England was indifferent. In 1772, therefore, came the first partition of Poland, which lost about one-third of its population and territory. Catherine fought the Turks and pushed the boundaries south to the Black Sea. In the second partition, in 1793, Prussia shared, and to that transaction owes her present province of Posen. In 1795, by a third partition, Poland was extirpated. This was Slav con- suming Slav, and the effect was to tear down the buffer state which had for ages stretched between Russia and the Western nations. The private character and life of Catherine are, like Theo- dore Roosevelt's opinion years ago of a victory of Tammany Hall in a New York City election, "not fit for publication." Nevertheless, she was the first intellectual and literary leader of her country, set up an academy, encouraged poetry, science, and intellectual society; she even made some attempt to set the serfs free. Catherine had all sorts of ideas for reforming other peo- ple than herself; and the tale is that whenever she made a progress through her realm she always passed by tidy villages, occupied by well-dressed and happy peasants, who came out and asked her blessing. The great Empress never suspected that those people were all deported from elsewhere and new houses were built, solely for the sake of impressing their Queen with the happiness of the Empire. Or did she suspect and realize, like many of her successors, that sovereigns are more comfor- table if they master their curiosity about their own realm? 38 SELECTED ARTICLES Alexander I and Napoleon. After the brief reign of Paul, Catherine's son, Alexander I came to the throne ; and he was in many ways the first modern Czar. He had a plan for giving Russia a constitution, and consulted no less a person than Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States. Under Alex- ander Russia accepted a place as one of the Great Powers of Europe, and therefore was bound to take notice of the rise of Napoleon. In 1805 a Russian army, in alliance with Austria, met the world conqueror in the Battle of Austerlitz, and was overwhelmingly defeated. In 1806 Russia came to the defense of Prussia, and again Russia and her ally were defeated. The result was the famous meeting between the sovereigns of Russia, Prussia, and France on a raft in the river Niemen in 1807. Alexander seemed to be hypnotized by Napoleon, and they struck up a friendship and a sort of alliance, which lasted for five years. John Quincy Adams, then American Minister to Russia, later noted that the Russian Government was no longer friendly with the French; and while he was at St. Petersburg, in the fall of 1812, the Russians proved that Napoleon was made of human clay by grinding his Grand Army to pieces. Thus Russia was the only country in the world which unaided by allies defeated the greatest soldier in history in a land cam- paign. Then the tide of conquest turned westward, and Russian armies joined in campaigns which brought about the abdication of Napoleon in 1814. In the Congress of Vienna which fol- lowed, Russia was the leading spirit and Alexander the most brilliant leader. In this period of exaltation, under the influ- ence of Madame Kriidener, he evolved the famous "Holy Al- liance," the principle of which was that the sovereigns of Europe were designated by the will of God to act as "elder brethren" (with appropriate disciplinary powers) towards their subjects. Thenceforward governments were to be conducted entirely on a basis of Christian brotherhood. Just at this time ties were forming between Russia and the United States, and it was a rude interruption of concord to have this doctrine interpreted to mean that Europe ought to practice muscular Christianity upon the new Latin-American states. John Quincy Adams, almost the only man in America who knew the Russians, expressed his opinion of that doctrine in the preparation of the announcement commonly called the RUSSIA 39 Monroe doctrine of 1823. Alexander was an enlarger of his Empire. He secured Finland from Sweden in 1809, annexed a large part of the Caucasus, and pushed the Russian boundary to the mouth of the Danube. Nicholas I. His brother, Nicholas I, who became Czar in 1825, was a soldier rather than a diplomat ; put down revolutions in his own country, and sent his army to force the Hungarians back to their relations with Austria in 1849. He pushed into Persia, took the side of the Greeks in their revolt from the Turks, and his fleet aided in smashing the Turkish power at the battle of Navarino in 1827, which made modern Greece possible. Nicholas inherited the result of four centuries of conflict with the Turk. The "Sick Man of Europe," as Nicholas dubbed that Power, was on the point of decently dying, and thus conferring a favor on all his neighbors, when England and France made the political and social mistake of carrying on the Crimean War to prevent Russia from accelerating that demise. Nicholas died apparently of disappointment and grief. Alexander II to Nicholas II. Nicholas I's son, Alexander H, reigned twenty-six years, from 1855 to 1881. He was a man of high character, and had a genuine desire to modernize and re- form his Empire. He succeeded in at last breaking down the formal side of the system of serfdom under which twenty mil- lions of his fellow-Russians had been bound to the soil on which they lived. The decree was solemnly made public, as it chanced, March 5, 1861, the day after President Lincoln became President. It was a period of agitation for popular rights in many parts of Europe, and Alexander in 1881 drew up a constitution for his people, when he was murdered by the bomb of Nihilist assassins. The creation of even the semblance of popular government was delayed for thirty years. Under him, and his son, Alexander III, Russian power, which had for two centuries been advanc- ing into Siberia, was pushed all the way to the Pacific, into the heart of Asia, and to the gates of India. The present Czar, Nicholas II, has now had twenty years' reign. He seems to be an amiable and likable man for whom the surroundine: forces arc too strong. He passed through the ordeal of the Japanese War, ending in a military defeat and a diplomatic triumph, for somehow Russia came out of that strug- gle a stronger influence both in Asia and in Europe than before. 40 SELECTED ARTICLES Absolutism. Both in historical influences and in her present form of government Russia is notably different from other European Powers, and the easy, off-hand explanation is that it is a Slav country. This disposal of the question seems less obvious w^hen you reflect that it is as unlike other Slav countries in Europe as it is unlike Germany or France. Servia is a land of peasant proprietors, Russia of communities of landholders. Servia takes its sovereign as a bad joke; in Russia the "Little Father" nominally makes all the important decisions. Russia in the twentieth century is simply where Germany and France were in the seventeenth century, when Charles V and Louis XIV claimed absolute power by divine right. Socially and economically Russia is better organized and better off than Italy was three centuries ago, or even a century ago. Politically Russia has a national legislature, which Prussia did not possess until 1850. Russia is a slow-developing, backward country, which, however, so far as we can judge by the history of its neighbors, may be on the road to full modern civilization. The Romanoffs and their Empire have a bad reputation for cruelty to prisoners, persons charged with crime, convicts, and the common people. The knout, the dungeon, administrative deportation, the mines, are a fearful evil; but in that respect Russia is only a century behind France, which habitually broke criminals on the wheel till 1789, and Prussia, which used judicial torture till about 1810. The Russian, like other Slavs, is by temperament good-natured, but when roused can be as savage as an Albanian or a Mexican. National education, which cannot be much longer delayed, will go far to teach the Russians that cruelty does not accompHsh its object of compelling obedience, and that it gives a nation a black character among civilized men. Just now the country is going through the same kind of con- stitutional struggle as that between the Stuarts and the English Parliament. The Russians have long been accustomed to local as- semblies of very limited powers, and in 1905 the first Duma was summoned by the Emperor. When it began to show its authority it was dissolved, and so another and another ; but if the experi- ence of England, Hungary, Germany, and France is worth any- thing, the Duma will acquire more and more power; and in the end is likely to be at least as strong in Russia as is the Reichstag in Germany, which is saying less than is generally supp9sed. RUSSIA 41 No sovereign house in Europe has gone through such a history of conquest and territorial annexations as the Romanoffs. They found Russia a large, confused, and turbulent nation, shut up within itself; they have seen it grow to the broadest world empire of modern times. Yet to this day Russia is shut out from any ice-free approach to the open ocean. Hence the policy of that country is, and will be till their want is satisfied, to acquire the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, and there will be no permanent peace in Europe till that is accomplished. Toward the west, since the partition of Poland, Russia has never shown a con- quering spirit. Nobody yet knows how far such a spirit may now be driving the nation forward. In any case, the Imperial house seems firmly seated. RUSSIA'S PART IN EUROPEAN HISTORY^ Russia stood between Asia and Europe, and in order that her people might exist, the Asiatic hordes had to be repelled or subjugated. The geographical position of Russia has thus de- termined at once the unity of the empire and the role of her people. If they have acquired some Asiatic blood, and if they exhibit some Asiatic traits, they have at least kept the frontier of Europe since the middle ages from Asiatic conquest. The Mongols defeated her but broke themselves upon her. Even when the Kiev Russ were ground to powder and dispersed, the exhausted Tartars penetrated Europe no farther than Moravia, while in later centuries they were crushed by the Russians who held them constantly on her own frontier. If Russia has ab- sorbed some Mongolian elements, she has at least saved Europe from Mongol invasion. This great service, in the view of some Russian writers, has enabled Western Europe to pursue the arts of peace, saving during internecine quarrels, and to accomplish rapid progress in civilization. The rise of numerous nationalities and the democratization of their political systems was, according to this view, possible only on condition of immunity from attack by external hordes. The gain to Europe was however offset by the great sacrifice to Russia involved in the deprivation of im- mediate share in that progress. The stability of European civili- zation has been secured by continuous settlement in the same * By John Mavor. Economic History of Russia. (Dutton.) p. viii-x. t^ 42 SELECTED ARTICLES comparatively restricted region for a thousand years, while not only were the Russians migratory by habit during a large part of the time, but the pressure from without caused on more than one occasion wholesale migrations. The continuity of the na- tional life was thus interrupted and the progress of it retarded. Only since the disappearance of absolutism in Western Europe can Russia be held to occupy an unique position in a political sense. In spite of the great advantages of position, the victory of the revolution over absolute authority was not by any means rapidly accomplished in the West; where traces of absolutism lingered until quite recent days. In Russia, notwithstanding enormous difficulties both within the government and outside of it, important modifications have at last been effected during the past few strenuous years. It must be said also that at no period of their history were the Russian people entirely quiescent under autocratic rule. Anciently the people, in spite of their generafly peaceful character, were by no means infrequently engaged in violent disputes with the representatives of authority, and in modern times the country has on several occasions been plunged into chaos by revolutionary movements. External causes have at frequent intervals profoundly affected Russian development. The defeat of Peter the Great at Narva by Charles XII of Sweden occasioned the reorganization of the Russian military system ; and through that the reorganization of Russian society. The invasion of Russia by Napoleon drew Russia into the vortex of European diplomacy. The defeat of Russia by England and France in the Crimea led on the one hand to the emancipation of the serfs and on the other to the build- ing up of the Russian Far-Eastern empire. The defeat of Russia by Japan occasioned the revolution and endowed Russia with a quasi-constitutional system. From the time of Peter the Great until now Russia has benefited rather by her defeats than by her victories. She has the Asiatic quality of resilience. She is never more to be feared than when she has just been beaten. To the spiritual and intellectual energy of Russians Europe already owes much. Russian social life has made for the de- velopment to an extraordinary degree of critical acuteness — witness the penetrative literary criticisms of Byelinsky; as well as of artistic power — witness Pushkin in poetry, Turgueniev and Tolstoy in prose, Tchaikovsky in music, and Repin in painting; and of ethical enthusiasm — as in Tolstoy, for instance. The con- RUSSIA 43 ditions of Russian life, sordid enough for the cultivator and the artisan, have preserved the best minds of the nation from falling victims to commercial materialism. If sometimes, to the practical Western European many Russians seem visionary and imprac- ticable, it is well that self-complacent satisfaction with comfor- table material fortune resulting from the exercise of mercantile shrewdness should receive a mental and moral jolt from those who consider none of these things, but who look upon life from a detached point of view. If the Western European points out that Russian culture and the idealism to which it gives rise have been rendered possible by serfdom, the Russian may retort, as in high probability he would, that European culture is similarly depend- ent upon the e->^n]nitatipn of the free labourer , but that, compared with Russian culture, it is rather destitute of idealism. The maintenance of serfdom in Russia long after it had been abandoned in Western Europe, and the maintenance of absolute government until now, have contributed importantly to the retar- dation of the development of the country in a social as well as in a political sense. From the point of view of social progress this has been a deplorable disadvantage; but from the point of view of the student the retardation has led to the survival of customs and institutions which in somewhat similar forms pre- viously existed in Western Europe, and which have there dis- appeared at a more or less remote age, leaving indefinite indi- cations of their former existence. The structural changes which have brought Russia from a mediaeval to a modern economic and social state have been going on during the past sixty years under the eyes of close and competent observers. THE NEW RUSSIA* "With the war and without vodka, Russia is more prosperous than with vodka and without the war." This, the greatest single sentence ever uttered for prohibition, comes, not from a profes- sional Prohibitionist, but from M. KharitonoflF, Controller of the Treasury, speaking before the Budget Committee of the Russian Parliament on January 25. The Controller added that, owing to the extraordinary increase in the national savings due to pro- hibition, the enormous outlay occasioned by the war had caused ^ By Charles Johnston. Review of Reviews. 51:568-72. May, 1915. 44 SELECTED ARTICLES no widespread hardship in Russia. As a proof of this, M. Kha- ritonoff cited the figures. The national savings, as shown in bank deposits between December, 1913 (seven months before the war) and December, 1914 (after five months' war), had been in- creased by 147 per cent. What a contrast, this, with the countr3^s condition just ten years ago! For it is exactly ten years since the fall of Port Arthur, and the great battle of Mukden, which broke the power of Russia in Manchuria, was fought and lost in March, 1905. In these ten years Russia has gained : 1. Civil and religious liberty. 2. A Parliament, of two houses, rapidly becoming fitted to the national genius. 3. A new principle of citizenship, affecting a hundred million Russian peasants. 4. A new ideal in education. 5. A new cultivated area of 50,000,000 acres. 6. An increase in national revenue of $500,000,000. 7. A new epoch of agricultural and industrial prosperity. 8. An added population of 40,000,000. It is doubtful whether, since the world began, any nation has ever made an equal ten years' gain. THE NEW RUSSIA* The real awakening of the new Russia came with the Japan- ese War. The policy of the court party was at that time an Eastern policy, conversely peaceful toward the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. Port Arthur and Vladivostok had been fortified. Special interests crossed the Yalu into Korea, clashed with the Japanese over certain timber and mineral concessions, and at once demanded imperial support. The giving of that support led to a disastrous and highly unpopular war, in the course of which Austria and Germany noted Russia's weakness, and treated her thereafter, in Balkan matters, as her military record appeared to deserve. The consequent unpopularity of the court party obliged them to make concessions at home. Beaten by their Japanese enemies, browbeaten by their Teutonic friends, they recognized the exis- 1 By Gerald Morgan. North American Review. 205:502-10. April, 1917- RUSSIA 45 tence of a Russian nationalist party because they had to. They allowed its representatives to help reorganize the army and navy, and to assert themselves unofficially but generally. Their power was shaken ; their hand was forced ; where violence was no longer safe, they resorted to subterfuge — a sure sign of weakness. It was at this time that the growth of the new Russia might have been observed in the West, but in America particularly the obsessing idea continued to prevail that the New Russia must be born by a sudden bloody revolution; and such slow progress as was known to obtain elsewhere in the world could not be imagined in Russia. It is true that the all-important Ministry of the Interior was usually represented by a reactionary or else con- trolled by reactionary influences; but nevertheless reform after reform has since 1908 been conceded by the Czar. But the main result of the hostile Teutonic policy since Mukden, and, even more, of the present hostilities, has been the nationalization of the Russian army and navy. Russia's army is Russia in arms, Russia intent on the destruction of the Hohenzollem-Hapsburg breakwater, behind which, in the stagnant water of the Petro- grad bureaucracy, the reactionaries have been trembling with apprehension. They feared the fall of Teutonic conceptions of autocratic government which must inevitably have been followed by the fall of their own conceptions ; they feared equally the tri- umph of German arms, which would have been succeeded by a revolution of new Russia, already armed, not longer to be with- stood, bound to be victorious. Like many another government, they were in the position of a man who has started a fire which he could not check. At the beginning of the war, in the exas- peration of the moment, the Czar said he would sacrifice his last moujik in the cause of victory; but today it is the moujik himself who is going to do the sacrificing. The tables are turned. The old Russia is passing, and has been passing for some time. The Russia of Kipling — the Russia of the 'eighties, of The Man Who Was, of the Bear that Walks Like a Man — the Russia which threatened the Khyber Pass, is gone. That was the Russia of the Grand Dukes, the Russia which was defeated by Japan be- cause she was unsupported by the Russian peoople. The Bear that Walks Like a Man is today a stuffed and hollow sham. Gone also is the old Russia of the anarchist and intellectuals, of George Kennan's Siberia, of those wonderful spies, the "agents provocateurs," who committed crimes themselves in order to de- 46 SELECTED ARTICLES tect criminals, and who could scarcely be distinguished from their quarry. All this is past or passing. The Russian Cossacks riding down the crowds, slaughtering Jews, are today as fabulous as the Russian wolves. It is true, conspirators are still treated with a harshness unknown in the West. It is true that equality of opportunity is still denied to the Jews. It is true that the special reactionary interests tried to the last to hold the Russian people in subjection. It was against those interests, as represented not only in Petrograd but also in Berlin and Vienna, that the new Russia was fighting. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE POLAND'S STORY^ The traveler in old Russia finds no more interesting place than the Kremlin at Moscow, that collection of the memorials of East's contacts with West through many centuries. In the Kremlin he will find no more pathetic relics than those which testify to the victory of Russia in the long rivalry that decided whether the great power of eastern and northern Europe should be Russia or Poland. Russia won, and in sign thereof may be seen, in a wonderful carved casket in the Kremlin museum, the Constitution of the Polish Kingdom, adopted May 3, 1791. The American traveler will bethink himself that there is a striking proximity of this date to that of the adoption of our own Federal charter. If he pur- sues the subject, he will discover that the Polish Constitution of 1 791 was, as nearly as it might be made, an adaption to Po- land's conditions of the Constitution of the United States of America, submitted by the convention at Philadelphia on Sep- tember 17, 1787. To-day that Polish Constitution is a relic in a Russian mu- seum, testimony to the last effort of an expiring nationality to deserve perpetuation. It recalls that the fires of the American revolution of 1775 and the French revolution of 1789 found reflec- tion in the skies of eastern Europe. But it was too late for Poland. Torn by factional dissensions, victim of the intrigues of more stable neighbors, menaced by the rising Russia at the east, the covetous Austria in the west, the ambitious Germany in the north, and the rapacious Turks in the south, Poland fell in the moment of the finest inspiration that had marked all its pitiful career as a nation. The first child of democratic genius among Slavic peoples was stricken down as the penalty for too early dis- closing his talents to a sordid world. » P7 J. C. Welliyer. Century. 90:57-66. May, 1915. 48 SELECTED ARTICLES For the memorials of Poland in its power and glory we may go to ancient Cracow, where the ashes of a long line of kings lie in the great cathedral which is both the Westminster Abbey and the Valhalla of the lost nation; but for the present-day testimo- nies that the spirit and purpose of a Polish nation yet survive, we must visit the Swiss village of Rapperswil, where for safety's sake the patriots of the disinherited race have set up their na- tional museum. But Poland's is not all a story of martyrdom. It is also a story of the tragedy of retribution. It may well be doubted whether Poland ever possessed in any single generation the attri- butes of a true nation. It was ruled by a land-owning aristocracy which tried to keep the king from getting too much power, and at the same time insisted that the people should not get any. The Polish aristocracy succeeded where other medieval aristocracies failed, and its success was Poland's ruin. The king was kept a figurehead, isolated from the mass of people largely by reason of the Polish custom of electing kings. It all looked very demo- cratic; but in fact it merely served to keep aliens or weaklings on the throne much of the time. Thus suppressing the king and oppressing the people, the aristocracy became a military and political caste, lived in barbaric splendor, despised trade and in- dustry, cultivated the arts of war and social decadence, affected the use of alien languages and devised institutions of government which ultimately deprived it of capacity for exercising the very governmental functions it had monopolized. The Polish people are Slavs, and Poland is literally the plain- land, the great central European depression. There was hardly a time when a surveying party could have laid down accurate limits of the country, nor a generation throughout which those limits would have remained stationary. Nature provided no obvious frontiers, but in general old Poland included the valley of the Vistula River — Galicia, which belongs now to Austria- Hungary; the westernmost projection of Russia, commonly called Russian Poland ; and East Prussia. All this represented perhaps a third of the present area of France. Beyond, extending northeast, east, and southeast, lay the Polish hinterland, comprising Courland and Livonia on the Bal- tic Sea; farther south, the great extent of Lithuania; south of this, Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, extending to the Black Sea. RUSSIA 49 We commonly think of Poland as a country without frontage on the salt seas; yet at its widest extent it touched both the Baltic and the Black; and Polish ambition clung fiercely to the thought of a national heritage looking out on these twain win- dows of the cold and warm seas, with western Europe before it, and the illimitable East at its back. If Polish national policy had been as vigorous and effective as Polish ambitions were magnificient, the state might have led in subduing the east of Europe, and Poland to-day have been the mighty empire of the steppes, its heart at Cracow instead of Moscow, its head at Warsaw instead of St. Petersburg. At the time when the cavaliers were settling in Virginia, Po- land was the great state of eastern Europe. Touching both the Baltic and the Black seas, it reached in the west to well within a hundred miles of Berlin, and in the east about as near to Mos- cow. The extreme north-and-south length of the country was about seven hundred miles ; that east and west approximately the same. It embraced little less than 300,000 square miles, or nearly the combined areas of France and Italy. Only Russia had so wide an extent; and Russia then signified about as much to the Western world as Nigeria does to us. Warsaw, the capital, was almost the geographic center of Europe. The geographic Poland of that day, now restored to its place among nations, would have more population than France, and this number would include, besides the Poles, fully half the Jews in the world, together with millions of Mongols, Turks, Fmns, Scandinavians, Teutons, Latins— the greatest conglomerate of races and tongues in any nation, if perhaps Austria-Hungary be excepted. Indeed, Austria-Hungary gives us an idea of what Poland was in its greatness. We think of the dual empire of to-day as a mid-European jumble of fragments of races, languages, and religions, crowded together in an empire that yet is not a nation ; held together by pressure from without, not cohesion within. Poland also was a dual kingdom, composed of Poland proper and Lithuania. In Poland, as in Austria-Hungary, the union was one of convenience rather than of felicity. Whether Austria and Hungary can be held together after the life of the present ruler has been for decades a favorite speculation with European politicians. That same speculation as to Poland and Lithuania was in the forefront of eastern-European politics for centuries. 50 SELECTED ARTICLES As Warsaw in the time of Poland's greatness was the pivot on which turned the contest between East and West, so is Vienna to-day. The East at last captured Warsaw. Now it is pressing on to Vienna. The glacial Slavic race is the western outpost of east, forever pushing toward the west. That unknown and un- knowable East is both age and youth — age, with its power to bide in calm assurance; youth in its impetuous demand that it be served. Who can contemplate Poland's fate of yesterday and not forecast the future of Austria-Hungary? Who, vision- ing the sweep of these huge forces through the centuries behind, and projecting it just a little way into the tomorrows, can feel assurance that the world is fighting its last great war? Some ethnologists claim to find the earliest Poles in a Slavic people along the Vistula in the second century of our era. His- tory safely identifies them only six or seven centuries later as an agricultural people, with those institutions of communism in the soil, patriarchal authority in the family, and democracy in the small community that were characteristic of all the Slavs. There is a legend of a good peasant King Piast, putative progenitor of Poland's rulers for many generations. Under King Mieczyslaw, in the latter half of the tenth cen- tury, the country was converted to Christianity, and claimed as tributary to that German Empire which yet survived in some of the greatness Charlemagne had won for it. But Germany re- linquished the claim, and Boleslaus, the next king in Poland, was saluted as equal by a German Otto, who in sign of their kingly equality gave Boleslaus the lance of a good old saint. As proof of Poland's rightful status among the kingdoms, they will still show this lance to visitors in the cathedral at Cracow. Boleslaus conquered most of the western Slavs; he and his successors warred constantly with Russia, and a later King Boleslaus fell into a quarrel with Pope Gregory VH, who placed the kingdom under an interdict, so that several successive kings in Poland were refused recognition as such by Rome. For gen- erations an almost constant warfare was carried on by the Poles against the German emperors, who repeatedly tried to reassert their suzerainty ; against the eastern Slavs in what is now Russia ; against Bohemia and Hungary. The Mongols, then the terror of all eastern Europe, made various irruptions even as far west as Poland. RUSSIA 51 During this period, down to the accession of Casimir the Great in the first part of the fourteenth century, the poHtical and social evils which were at last to ruin Poland began to develop clearly. The peasants were extremely miserable, because the nobility were warring among themselves when there was no con- venient foreign enemy to oppose. The nobles held the land, but were too busy with their feuds to develop it. No noble might engage in trade or industry. The peasants had been originally divided into two classes, those who were mere chattels attached to the land, and those of better estate who were entitled to live where they pleased, even to hold a little land. But the tendency, as always in such a state, was toward bearing down the free peasant to the level of the enslaved. During this period the Teutonic Knights come into Poland's story. In the Teutonic Knights, originating in far-away Pales- tine, we see the beginning of that militarist power that is the Prussia of today. During the crusades the Hospital of Saint Mary was established at Jerusalem. When the infidels at last captured the city, the memory of this institution was perpetuated by the creation of the Order of the Teutonic Knights of Saint Mary's. Two other orders were created for the defense of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Perhaps the Teutonic Knights have played the largest part, for they founded the power of the Prussian state. While the other two orders continued in the fatuous purpose of recovering the Holy Land, the thrifty Teu- tonic Knights transferred their seat to the lower Vistula, promis- ing to Christianize the pagan Prussians, which, with fire and sword and the barbaric zeal of medieval Christianity, they cer- tainly did. When they ran out of a supply of convenient pagans to proselyte, they turned attention to Poland, which was generally in a state of sufficient turbulence to warrant intervention. The quarrels between the Polish state and the Knights went far to break both. Each in its time was the most important power in northern and eastern Europe. The great Casimir came to the Polish throne in 1333, and in- troduced Poland into the European family of nations. He fought Russians, Tatars, and Lithuanians successfully; gave his approval to the organization of a rudimentary parliament; and, because he had no son, permitted the convocation of the nobles to choose his successor, thus allowing the precedent to be es- S^ SELECTED ARTICLES tablished which made the throne elective, and ultimately brought Poland to ruin. For the nobles imposed conditions on the crown, and these conditions they afterward expanded into the pacta conventa, which proved a chief cause of Poland's failure. We may vision the greatness that might have grown yet greater in the Poland of this time. From the East and the Medi- terranean countries came a commerce so rich that Dantzic and Cracow won their way into the Hanseatic League; furs came from Russia; fabrics and spices, perfumes and jewels, from the East. Warsaw was founded seemingly with the destiny of being one of the entrepots of the world, a half-way house between East and West. The nephew whose election to the throne Casimir had pro- cured was Louis of Hungary. With his demise, his daughter Jadwiga, a good and beautiful woman, was elected queen. She wedded Jagello, Duke of Lithuania, and thus Lithuanian and Polish crowns were united, and Lithuania was Christianized. The Jagellon family ruled in Poland — always, however, through elections — the greater part of three centuries. The first Jagello reigned nearly half a century. His crowning military exploit was the utter defeat of the Teutonic Knights in a great battle (1410), almost at the identical place where the battle of Tannenberg was fought between Germans and Russians a few months ago. For centuries Poland was the buffer for western Europe against Tatars, Turks, and Russians ; but instead of appreciating Poland's services, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Prussia, and Bo- hemia were commonly quarreling with her. Poland of to-day, dismembered and prostrate while East and West fight over her, is merely living again the agonies that have been her part for a thousand years. It is impossible here even to outline this con- tinuation of struggles. Early in the sixteenth century the liherum veto gained recog- nition in the Polish diet. This and the pacta conventa were twin causes of the country's ruin. The liherum veto was the power, claimed and finally granted, of a single member to veto all busi- ness by refusing to make it unanimous. The pacta conventa took almost all power from the king; the elective system com- pelled long interregnums between rulers while domestic faction and foreign influence were intriguing to dictate the succession; the liherum veto rendered the diet impotent to give real par- RUSSIA 53 liamentary government. Thus weakened within and beset from without, Poland could only be sacrificed. Yet there were periods when the country came near rising to its opportunities. Under Sigismund Augustus, latter sixteenth century, the nation saw one of these eras; but when he died, Austria, France, Sweden, and Russia presented candidates for the crown, a rich prize. Henry of Valois, brother of the French king, was elected after a long and ruinous interregnum. He was brought to Poland in great state, hailed as the sign of a glori- ous union with France, crowned at Cracow, and in less than a year later ran away from the kingdom on learning that his brother had died and he was successor to the throne of France. He left a banquet-hall at midnight, sneaked to the outskirts of his capital, and rode madly the rest of the night to get beyond the country's border. The diet declared the throne vacant, and Stephen Bathori, a Translyvanian prince, was elected king. Bathori was successful enough in war, but unable to get on with the turbulent, selfish, unseeing nobility, who considered the country their oyster. When he died the country was widely extended and seemingly powerful, but institutionally rotten. After a period of riots, murders, and turbulence it elected a Swedish prince, another Sigismund. The election was accom- plished only after a battle had been fought to drive the insist- ent Austrian candidate out of the country. Such were the woes Poland periodically experienced in picking for itself a king who commonly knew neither it nor its people, and to whom it gave no power. During this reign occurred the strange affair of the false Demetrius, a bogus claimant to the Russian throne. The ac- tual heir had been disposed of, probably by murder. The pre- tender was backed by a junta at Cracow, and apparently also by Rome. At any rate, he had ample funds, and a Polish army went to Moscow, placed him on the throne, and maintained him there for a short time, till he was murdered in an outbreak. Somebody who will clear away the mystery of this imperial adventure will illumine one of the strange pages of history. It is believed that a document in the Vatican archives, if accessible, would prove who he was and what backing he had. If it was a Polish Catholic plot to bring Russia under the Latin church, it failed; but it brought Poland nearer than it ever was again to domina- tion of Russia. 54 SELECTED ARTICLES The seventeenth century saw the country overrun by a Swed- ish invasion, Cracow and Warsaw being taken. The king, John Casimir, was driven into Silesia, and after the Swedes had made peace and retired, he warned his subjects that unless they ceased their internal strifes the country would surely be taken from them by their neighbors. Indeed, the idea of a partition of Poland was undoubtedly seriously considered at this time, more than a century before it actually took place. The closing years of the seventeenth century saw the last burst of the old Polish glory. The Turks prepared their great raid on western Europe, and in 1683 appeared before Vienna. The Austrians were pitifully incapable of helping themselves, and Louis XIV of France was willing that Austria should suffer. So Poland, headed by the splendid John Sobieski, who had been elected king because of earlier victories over the Turks, sent an army to save Vienna. The Turkish horde, supposed to be irre- sistible, was overthrown just outside Vienna with terrific slaughter, and Sobieski made Poland the savior of Europe, as Charles Martel, on the field of Tours, had made France its savior near a thousand years before. But proud as they were of the glory he had garnered for them, the Polish grandees would not let even Sobieski rehabilitate their country. He lived a dozen years after the Vienna campaign, often on the verge of abdicating in disgust. A weak king suc- ceeded him, who fell into a quarrel with Charles XII of Swe- den. Charles conquered the country, deposed the king, set up a new one, and marched on to conquer Russia, just as Napoleon did a century later. Like Napoleon, Charles took Moscow ; and taking it cost him his army. He went into exile in Turkey, as Napoleon went to Elba; he came back as did Napoleon, and tried again. He rehabilitated his fortunes so far that he was able to launch new projects of empire which looked to the conquest of Norway first, then to the invasion of England. He was killed while be- sieging Frederikshald, in Norway, almost exactly a century be- fore Napoleon lost Waterloo. It is a strange parallel between two men who sought to rule Europe at intervals of a century; the more suggestive, in view of the present-day effort of another ambitious prince, after another century, to achieve what both failed to do. RUSSIA 55 When Poland escaped from the Swedish conqueror, the Russians restored a weak king, Stanislaus Leszcynski ; next, the Germans came uppermost, and placed the Elector of Saxony on the throne of Poland. He reigned till his death in 1763. Then came the last act in the tragedy — the dictation by Russia and Prussia, jointly, of the election of Stanislaus Augustus Ponia- towski as king. He was destined to be the last king in Poland, and it is worth while to tell a little of his election. He was a Pole of noble family, born in 1732, and raised in the elegant and cosmopolitan fashion of the wealthy Poles. He went as a secretary to the English ambassador at St. Petersburg, where he met the Grand Duchess Catharine, already beginning to shine in that process of plot and intrigue that brought her to the throne as Catharine the Great. Among the amours of this marvelous woman none was fraught with more significance in history than that with young Poniatowski. There seems no doubt that the woman did the courting. In her memoir Catharine frankly tells of her affection for this man and her long liaison with him, which she coolly says might have lasted indefinitely had he not become bored ! Not so the lady; though the affaire had ended long before, she as empress kept a warm place for him in her regard. Opportunity present- ing, she not only supported him, but induced Frederick the Great to join her in placing him on the Polish throne. Looking back, it is plain enough that Frederick and Catharine intended to take Poland from the day they set this weakling on the throne. Maria Theresa of Austria came in for a part of the spoil, and suffered the only conscientious scruples that seem to have assailed any of the triumvirate of imperial freebooters. In May, 1764, the Convocation Diet, a sort of nominating con- vention, met in Warsaw. The city was full of Russian and Prussian troops, with no few Tatars carrying bows and arrows. Poland still pretended independence, but it had only the shadow of a national existence. Stanislaus Augustus was forced upon the country, and later the convention of electors, gathered in the famous field at Warsaw, ratified the choice. There were 80,000 qualified electors, but only a few thousand appeared. The soldiers of Catharine and Frederick were probably more numer- ous than the Polish electors, and their show of power insured the result. Under this coercion, the Polish convention elected the last king of their country. 56 SELECTED ARTICLES Great indignation over this usurpation swept Poland. The Con- federation of Bar was formed at the town of that name to throw off the Russian domination. It improvised an army, attempted to force reforms, and was overthrown by Catharine's troops. Count Casimir Pulaski, a soldier of fortune and of freedom who afterward fought in the American Revolution and to whom Congress has recently erected a statute in Washington, was a son of the man who headed the Confederation of Bar. Count Pu- laski organized a strange plot to kidnap the king, right in the heart of Warsaw, at night. A handful of conspirators actually seized the king and got him well out of the city. Ignorance, treachery, and superstition foiled the plan, which seems to have been aimed not at the murder or even dethronement of Stan- islaus, but at getting him securely into the power and influence of the patriots. The plot failed, as did the whole effort of awakening patriot- ism and understanding among the Poles. In 1772, Russia, Austria, and Prussia began the division of territory, taking perhaps two fifths of the national area, Russia getting everything east of the Dnieper; Austria getting Galicia and some adjacent lands to the southeast, and Prussia receiving a liberal slice in what is now eastern Prussia. After this rape of their domain, the Poles tried to reform their country and save it. The liherum veto was abolished, but the upper classes had no serious notion of giving real freedom to the peasants. Religious and race prejudices were more bitter than in the progressive countries of the Continent. There were some earnest and thoughtful people who watched the American revolution, and these guided the deliberations of Poland's Long Parliament, the famous diet that met in 1788 and continued four years. This diet convened just a year after the Constitution for the United States had been framed. It was marked throughout by a sincere effort to save the country by adapting to it the scheme of the much-admired American union. The crown was made hereditary, and a very fair scheme of constitutional monarchy was adopted. But the nobles, facing loss of their political authority, fled to Russia, protested against the wicked radicalism, and in- duced Russia to send armies into Poland, exactly as the exiled French nobility a little later enlisted the toryism of monarchial Europe against the revolution in France. RUSSIA 57 Suppressing corrupt and wretched Poland was easier than suppressing inspired and frenzied France. Again foreign troops entered the country, and another partition took place in 1792, and a third in 1795, which finished the business by wiping Poland off the map. In 1814 the lines were somewhat reorganized by the Congress of Vienna; but this was merely writing the epitaph. Of course there were afterclaps. The revolutionary move- ment centering in France kept the fires of Polish ambition burn- ing. When Napoleon rose to power, the Poles looked for him to restore their country. He established the Duchy of Warsaw, which seemed the promise of a later Kingdom of Poland; and when he marched away to Moscow, a great force of Poles joined him, fatuously imagining that the conqueror had been raised up to restore their ancient country. When the Corsican was at last subdued, Russia took over his Duchy of Warsaw and promised to make it an autonomous kingdom, with the czar as king. But the promise was shadowy, and its realization still less substantial. In 1830 there was a revolt which, being suppressed, ended the fiction of this Polish-Russian kingdom. Another uprising in 1863, marked by assassination, terrorism, and all the horrors of guerilla warfare, brought further devastation to the Russian parts of the country. After this Russia set about deliberately to suppress the Polish language, break down the national spirit, and Russify the coun- try. Under a policy instigated by Bismarck, Prussia has Prus- sianized the German parts of Poland with methods about as objectionable, though perhaps less effective. Austria has come nearer discouraging Polish national feeling than either Germany or Russia, partly because Galicia, the Aus- trian part of old Poland, was never fully Polish ; partly because the Poles have been given a generous part in governing their own provinces and in the affairs of the dual empire. A Pole has even been premier of the empire. The present is a time to discourage prophecy about Poland's future. Russia at the beginning of the present war pledged her- self to restore Poland. More recently Germany and Austria have given a like promise. After the war the council of Europe will decide whether Poland shall be restored or whether the old partition shall be confirmed. Restored, it would likely be no more capable of united action than formerly, for the various parts 58 SELECTED ARTICLES have been knitted more or less firmly by ties of education, in- dustrialism, travel routes, and economic relationship into their several places in the present-day scheme of European affairs. The peasant masses are yet poor and uneducated; much of the land has passed away from the old noble families; the Poles, even in their restored country, would number a doubtful ma- jority; and the non-Polish elements would have little enthusi- asm about returning to the ancient regime. At best it would be little more than another buffer state, like the little powers of the Balkan States. To-day Poland is once more the battle-ground between Ger- mans and Slavs ; its fate, more awful than in any war of the past, is yet merely a twentieth-century presentation of its ex- perience in all the other centuries since the irrepressible con- flict of Slav and Teuton began. In the light of history's experi- ence and to-day's realizations of Europe's complex problems, its future is anything but promising. Much pretty sentiment and more foolish sentimentality have been written about the "fate of the lost republic." But no man who regards to-day's conditions in Mexico as a menace to our own country can be far from understanding the pretext that served Catharine and Frederick for taking Poland. Na- ture did not mark out its territory in big, bold strokes as the domain of a nation. Napoleon saw in rivers, mountain ranges, and oceans the natural boundaries of states; Poland had none of these. She was right in the middle of the European world, pressed on all sides, without natural defenses. Turks, Tatars, Slavs, Northmen, Austrians, Germans — all were her natural enemies, and to all she was accessible; for all she was at one time or another a buffer. A people of stronger genius for government might have ex- tended their influence and become a great power; but the Poles were without the genius. They were basically democratic, as all Slavs are, but they were woefully without constructive faculty. Calling their country a republic, the ruling class, composed of the landowning nobles or the decadent members of the caste who had lost their land, while still possessing the proud tradition of having once held it, was willing to fight among themselves for freedom, but always to unite in preventing the masses from get- ting it. This caste became numerous, and as its economic power diminished, its jealousy of its political authority increased. A RUSSIA 59 noble might wear a sword, and vote for king in the convocation of electors, though he owned not a foot of land. He might sell his vote for king, or he might run a peasant through with his sword on penalty of a modest fine. He was much given to both practices. It has been observed that the authorities attribute the institu- tional weakness of the Polish state to the pacta conventa and the liherum veto. The pacta conventa, or contract between nobles and king, deprived the king of almost all real power, save when, in war, he headed the army. The nobles took no chances of turning up a king who might make common cause with the peasants, as had often happened in western Europe, and clip the wings of the privileged class. In other states the curtailment of the regal power was always accompanied by an increase of the parliamentary authority. In Poland the power taken from the king was given to nobody. Instead, the nobles actually sur- rendered their own powers by yielding to the liberum veto in the diet. The pacta conventa at its full development must strike a twentieth-century reader as rather a charter of liberties than an apple of discord. The king was elective ; only the parliamen/ could make war, impose taxes, or commission ambassadors; parliament must be convened at least biennially; the king's cabi- net was to be elected by the diet once a year. The sovereign might not even wed except to the candidate named by the diet ! Manifestly, the powers so liberally shorn from the king would seem well reposed in the parliament; but Poland's parliament never rose to a realization of its own dignity. It would be in session only a very short time ; commonly, the shorter the better, because it could seldom agree on anything save the privilege of florid oratory. This incompetent diet was reduced at length to absolute impotence by the liberum veto. The liberum veto was the privilege of a single member of the diet to nullify any piece of legislation, or a whole session's legis- lative work, by simply rising in his place and solemnly pro- claiming, "I forbid !" When first asserted it was bitterly opposed, but the principle was at length accepted. If it seems utterly in- explicable that a legislature would thus surrender all its power, a medieval Pole might with reason retort that in the American Senate unlimited debate is even now permitted; that, according to high parliamentary authority, the great bulk of legislation is 6o SELECTED ARTICLES done virtually by unanimous consent ; and, most suggestive of all, that a single member, by a point of order, may strike from a supply bill any proposed limitation on the use of the funds. . Despite the pacta conventa and the liherum veto, Poland might have built up a constitutional system suited to a limited monarchy if it had had responsible cabinet government. But the cabinet, while chosen by the diet, was not responsible. If the privy treasurer had stolen the revenues, an investigation by the diet could be ended instanter by the liherum veto, and there were always corrupt personages to exercise it. But it was not for want of "Rules of Order" printed entirely in the aspirated consonants that Poland fell. The Poles called their country a republic, and their institutions might have justified their claim if only they had understood that a republican govern- ment must be truly representative. It must represent all the people; Poland's represented a select upper class only. It was the world's most undemocratic attempt at a republic. The frailties of its institutions were a reflection of the misconception which its ruling classes entertained of the relation of govern- ment to the people. Throughout the period of its importance as a nation Poland elected its king. Like almost all peoples habited to the mon- archic idea, the Poles imagined that a king must be of the kingly caste, born to the purple. Whether he was competent to rule, whether a Pole or not, whether he understood or sympathized with the people, was not so important. Because of a dread of building up too great a power in the reigning family, there ap- peared repeatedly a positive prejudice against allowing the suc- cession to remain in the direct line. So Poland was found con- stantly shopping about the courts of Europe for an amiable prince willing to wear its crown on terms which involved the sacrifice of his self-respect. The king was the merest figurehead; the nobility ruled. And never was there a class in any state more devoted to liberty — strictly for its own use — than this Polish aristocracy. Never a caste more determined to have no real power above or no real freedom below. Members of this class might do honest work in agriculture; never in industry, trade, finance. The peasants were too poor and ignorant to dream of themselves as real partners in the na- tion. Their backs burned and bled under the burden of the turbulent nobility and its sport of everlastingly quarreling with RUSSIA 6i itself. Some of the kings, indeed, in despair of ever getting on with the nobles, bethought themselves of that stratagem of the old British monarchs, who enlisted the peasants on their side, and united king and people against the barons; but in Poland the nobility always managed to frustrate such efforts. So treason- able a project on the king's part was sure sign that if he were not driven to abandon it, he would at least be succeeded by a king weak and acquiescent enough to undo whatever he had accom- plished. When a king died and a successor was to be chosen, there was a great scramble among the princely families of neighboring states for the advantage of providing a sprig of royalty to wear the crown. Austria, France, Russia, Saxony, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, and Bohemia were constantly intriguing for the Polish scepter. Austria was peculiarly successful in marrying its prin- cesses to Polish kings. This continual plotting for the throne inevitably inspired the idea of partitioning Poland. In the long interregnums between the demise of a king and the election of a successor, other nations, espousing the cause of this or that aspirant, often sent armed forces to support the fac- tions with which they were intriguing. The country was thus kept in a demoralization that made the constant foreign wars almost a relief because for the time they compelled a certain cohesion and cooperation. We may stratify the Polish people roughly into four social layers : at the top, the impotent king and his gorgeous, profligate court ; next, the small group of rich and really powerful nobles who owned the land, maintained as many armed retainers as -they could, and ruled in their several castellans and palatinates ; next, the minor nobility, or sczlachta, who owned little or no land, but were none the less proud of their rank and privileges as nobles; and underneath all this the peasantry free and the bond, but the freeman tending constantly toward the level of the lower class. These classes constituted the PoHsh people. They did not in- clude any industrial or merchant classes; these were introduced from the outside, and were mainly Germans and Hebrews. These were never considered a part of the Polish community; they were in it, not of it. The Germans were long ruled in a curious extra- territorial fashion under the lex Magdeburgicum. Aliens in race, denied political participation, socially despised, these out- landers became largely the burghers of the towns, the merchants. 62 SELECTED ARTICLES Finally, there were the religious divisions among the people: Jews and Gentiles, Tatars and Teutons, Turks and Slavs, Protestants and Catholics and Greek orthodox. Lithuania was largely disposed toward the Greek Church. Roman Catholic and Lutheran reform forces struggled for domination, the Catholic power asserting itself. The kings were latterly sworn to enforce religious toleration, but the oath meant chiefly that the nobles were denying the king power to exercise an intolerance that they themselves displayed with the greatest ardor. The differences of language were accentuated as a national weakness by the fact that the ruling class of Poles were never very loyal to their native tongue. They cultivated Latin as the language of literature and government long after it had been gen- erally abandoned in more Western countries, and they dropped from it into French and Italian as the tongues of culture and elegance. Thus while other north-of-Europe peoples were per- fecting their native languages, the Poles were dissipating that most potent of all national ties, a common and beloved tongue. Here one of the greatest opportunities of Slavonic leadership was lost. The various strata and parts of the Polish people never be- came acquainted with one another. The superior classes did not take any interest in the peasantry, but regarded themselves as the nation, and the peasantry as if they might have been an inferior order of beings. Nobility and peasantry alike looked upon the Germans and the Jews, who were willing to submit to the degra- dation of trade and industry, as mere outlanders. When the era of discovery and of widening vision came, Po- land was lost from the main-traveled highways of the world. There had been a time when a great commerce between far East md West passed in considerable part through Poland, but the Tatar irruptions closed the northern caravan routes, and the fall of Constantinople clogged the more southerly. This had a large part in cutting off the commercial classes of Poland from inti- macy with the progressive communities to the west. The ex- clusive classes in Poland did, indeed, continue relations with the West, but they were the relations of a sycophantic social class rather than of the virile, enterprising body of the nation. The discovery of America and of the ocean routes to the east left Poland off the revised map of the world, and the country, too RUSSIA 63 late, was thrown back on its own scant resources of capacity for modernistic development. If Poland in the era of chivalry could have been blessed with more isolation, more chance to develop a phase of that fine, in- dividualizing provincialism that England produced, and if later Poland could have established its touch with the awakening world, there might have been a different and a happier story of the nation. But Poland was cosmopolitan too early and provincial too late. PARTITIONED POLAND^ What we now know as Russian Poland is that neck of terri- tory stretching westward between the Prussias and Galicia. This territory has an area almost exactly equal to that of New York, yet, in spite of the fact that its extreme southern boundary lies north of the latitude of Winnipeg, its population is as great as those of New York and New Jersey combined. Russian Poland, in this Hmited sense, consists of a great plain, somewhat undulating, with an average elevation of about 400 feet, sloping upward toward the highlands of Galicia on the south and toward the swelling ground paralleling the Baltic on the north. It joins the lowlands of western Germany with the great plain of western Russia. Its rivers are slow and slug- gish, with their mouths often but a few dozen feet below their sources and seldom more than a few hundred feet below. Their basins intricately interpenetrate one another, and the frequent inundations of these basins have covered them with a very rich alluvial soil. Russian Poland usually has a winter somewhat similar to that of New England. There is an even cold, with not a great deal of snow, but often with razor-edged winds from the north- ward. The rivers of this region usually freeze over about the middle of December, and the Vistula is under ice for approx- imately 80 days during the average winter. In the eighteenth century, when the city of Warsaw, next to Paris, was the most brilliant city in Europe, this flat plain was * By W. J. Showalter. National Geographic Magazine. 27:88-106. Janu- ary, 1915. 64 SELECTED ARTICLES unusually rich in herds and in geese flocks, though almost bare of manufactures. Warsaw has never been able to forget that it was the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, and it still conscientiously main- tains the vivacious gayety for which it was famed during the days of its highest fortunes. It is still Russian Poland, but in- stead of a native king and court it has a Russian governor gen- eral and a Russian army corps. The gayety of the city, long ago modeled upon that of Paris, is one of the few distinctive characteristics which it has been able to retain from the past. The city is well situated. It is built in the midst of a fertile, rolling plain, mostly upon the left bank of the Vistula, which is navigable here for large river boats. The main part of the city lies close to the river and is compact and massive. Its streets are very narrow and very crooked, wriggling in and out regard- less of all logic of direction. The more modern parts of the city, on the other hand, are laid out in broad, straight streets. In these parts one occasionally finds bathtubs, steam-heating, and various devices of sanitary plumbing in the private homes. There are many magnificent palaces of the old Polish nobility in the city. A number of these sumptuous buildings are being put to public use, such as the renowned Casimir Palace, which now houses the university. Other palaces are being made to serve the needs of municipal and garrison administration. Warsaw has become under Russian rule a great industrial and commercial center. It manufactures machinery, carriages, and woven goods, and it trades in these things and in the animal and food products of Russian Poland. A large export of leather and coal to Russia passes through Warsaw. A great deal of the city's production is the output of handwork, and here are to be found some of the poorest, most patient, and persistent artificers of the western world. There are 50 book-printing establish- ments in the city, most of them engaged in the labor of pro- moting the supremacy of the Russian language. Russian is the language of instruction in nearly all of the Warsaw schools. It is also the language of the government and of polite and learned society. This currency of the conquerors' tongue has deeply tinged the life of old Warsaw, and the Polish spirit of proud, ostentatious frolic has taken on a color of mel- ancholy and meditative reflection. The Warsaw medical school is famous, as is also its school of art. Its musical conse/vatory RUSSIA 65 is modeled upon those of Petrograd and Moscow, and the un- PoHsh music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Caesar Cui, and Chaikovsky has replaced the Hghter of native fancy. If Russia got the bulk of Poland's territory and the major portion of the Polish population, she also got by far the larger part of the PoHsh problem. Russian Poland was the cradle of the Polish race — a land in which both ruling aristocrat and serving peasant were Poles. The result was that Poland became a thorn in the side of Russia, causing the Empire no end of trouble and bringing upon the heads of the Poles in turn no end of repressive measures. Indeed, at times this became so great that more than one Russian statesman came to advocate turning Russian Poland over to Germany. For a long time the Poles were forbidden even to use their native tongue. Even the railway employees could not answer questions asked in Polish. The word "Polish" itself could not be used in the newspapers. For a while no letter could be ad- dressed in Polish. Outside of what is now known as Russian Poland, in the provinces acquired before the final partition, one still encounters notices in and on all public buildings reading: "The speaking of Polish is forbidden." In one of these prov- inces street-car conductors were fined because they answered questions asked in Polish. The national dress was forbidden, even as a carnival costume or in historical dramas in the theater. The coat of arms of Poland had to be erased from every old house and from the frame of every old picture. The singing of the national songs was strictly taboo. Yet with all the efforts at repression, and with all the re- sistance made against that repression, when the present war broke out the Russian Pole seems to have been as loyal to his government as the German Pole was to Germany or the Austrian Pole to Austria. The whole war in the eastern theater has been fought in territory which once belonged to Poland, territory largely peopled by Poles, and yet there is no evidence that any of them have betrayed their respective flags. Germany has tried in every possible way to transform her Poles into Germans. It has used the Russian tactics in quench- ing the fire of their nationalism, but with no better success than Russia had. Heretofore Poles were not appointed to office; let- ters addressed in Polish went undelivered. Marriages between 66 SELECTED ARTICLES German men and Polish women were discouraged, for Bismarck had not let it escape his notice that "a Polish wife makes a Polish patriot out of her husband in the twinkling of an eye." There were laws forbidding the use of Polish in public meet- ings, and Polish children who refused to answer the catechism in German were punished. In the hope of making Germans out of the Poles, the Prussian government decided to colonize German settlers among them. First this was undertaken by private enterprise, but the Poles boycotted the settlers, and their lands finally were bought back. Then a law was enacted that no Pole could build upon lands ac- quired after a certain date. The result is that one who travels through Polish Germany today occasionally will see farmhouses, barns, dairies, stables, and even chicken-coops on wheels. The people live, move, and have their being in glorified wagons. When private enterprise failed to Germanize Prussian Poland the government made appropriations, which up to the present time have amounted to a hundred million dollars, to acquire Polish lands and turn them over to German settlers ; but with all that was done, the Poles are still Poles, and in spite of the law forcing some to sell their lands and preventing others from buy- ing, the German settler has not succeeded in getting much of a foothold on Polish lands; and Germany has about four million Poles in her population. The lot of the Polish peasant is always a hard one, whether he live in Russia, Germany, or Austria. His food is simple, if not poor. His whole family must toil from the hour that the sun peeps over the eastern horizon to the hour when twilight falls into dusk. If he can say that his wife works like a horse, he has bestowed the acme of praise upon her. Hard work, many cares, and much childbearing make a combination that takes all pride out of the wife's heart and gives to the women of peasant Poland a haggard look, even before the third decade of their lives is closed. You may even see them working as section hands on many of the railroads, and they are reputed to make good ones. It is not exceptional to see them carrying mortar for bricklayers and plasterers or to find them painting or paper-hanging in the cities. Every, peasant wants his daughters married off as soon as they reach womanhood, and little hands are drawn upon, the RUSSIA 67 lintel of the door to indicate to the world that there is a mar- riageable daughter inside the house. And the wedding day among the peasants is about the one bright spot in a girl's life. Where the children of the United States roll eggs on Easter Monday, those of peasant Poland pour water over one another in a spirit of fun. Poland was a republic of landowners, in which the serf did not count. The man who owned land, or whose ancestors owned land, was a noble. He might match poverty for poor- ness, he might not have a single sole between his feet and the ground, he might have only a rusty old sword to tie to his girdle, and only a piebald blind horse to drive, and that a hired one, but he still was a noble if ownership of land had ever set its ap- proving stamp upon him or his family. With him the peasants were as but worms of the dust. The Russian noble is proud of his peasants, the German noble was proud of his, and the Austrian noble had nought but words of praise for his ; but the Polish noble was not proud of his. Nothing illustrates better how the Polish peasant felt toward the Polish noble than the insurrection of the Poles of Austria in 1846. That was a movement of the nobles. The government did nothing to check the outburst, and it is said that the loyalty of the peasants to the government and their hatred of their aris- tocratic brethren caused the insurrection to die aborning. Whatever may be said about the relations between the Polish aristocrat and the Polish peasant, however, the hospitality of the former has always been whole-hearted and sincere. Tact- fulness is as natural with them as taking to the water is natural with a duck. They like company and love entertainment, and are as fond of dancing as any other people in the world. It takes vigorous men to stand all the liquor that is provided by the Polish host. Polish women are among the most beautiful in the world. The perfect shape of their hands and feet is commented upon by every visitor to the home of the Polish aristocracy. When they visit the shoe stores in Vienna, it is averred that the shop- keeper exclaims : "We know those are Polish feet," and pro- ceeds to go to cases that are not drawn upon except when Polish women come into his store. With their beauty they combine unusual linguistic abilities and almost unprecedented devotion to the lost cause of their 68 SELECTED ARTICLES fair Poland. It has frequently been asserted by those who know the Poles, from intimate social relations with them, that but for the women the national spirit of the Pole would long since have succumbed to the wound-healing processes of time. As it is, there is a proverb that while there is a single Polish woman left the cause of Poland is not lost. "Four ladies do not meet on a charity committee without promoting the national cause under its cover," is the way one writer shows their devotion to the cause of Poland. Poland has contributed a long list of great and near great to civilization. It was Copernicus, a Pole, who first taught that the sun is the center of the solar system and laid the foundations of modern astronomy. It was John Sobieski who saved Europe from the Turks as Charles Martel hammered it out of the grasp of the Saracens. Kosciuszko and Pulaski served the cause of freedom both in Europe and America. The "Quo Vadis" of Sienkiewicz will never be forgotten as long as literature and history are appreciated by man. The music of Paderewski en- titles him to a place among the immortals, and the histrionic art of Modjeska gave her a foremost place in the history of the stage. The compositions of Chopin, a Pole by birth, though a Frenchman by education, will float down through the corridors of time along with those of Wagner, Beethoven, Handel, Verdi, and the other masters. THE ECONOMIC BASES FOR AN AUTONO- MOUS POLAND' In the past winter the Polish press in Europe was engaged in extensively discussing the question whether Poland's political independence would not cause her economic ruin. The discus- sion has become so general that it overflowed the boundaries of the press and for a time became the subject of public debates and lectures in Petrograd Polish circles. Polish public opinion was divided in two camps, each expounding an opposite theory. The old, generally accepted view that Poland owed its economic prosperity to Russia, and that to retain that prosperity it was in the interests of Poland to remain a unity with Russia, is cham- pioned by Professor Petrazhitsky, an eminent scholar and pub- 1 Review of Reviews. 54:100-1. July, 1916. RUSSIA 69 Heist. The new theory that Poland could be economically self- supplying, and that political autonomy, would also mean an economic blessing to Poland, is being effectively preached by Stanislav Pekarski, Polish editor, and a cohort of journalists and economists. In the Retch (Petrograd) for March and April, I. Clemens, a Polish publicist, reviewed in a series of articles the arguments of the two factions, and summarized their reasons and deductions. He first outlines the facts form- ing the foundation of the former view. The total value of Russian Poland's industrial products reached in 19 10 the sum of 860 million rubles. To this sum the textile industries had con- tributed 390 millions, and the metallurgical — no millions. Three-fourths of the products of these two chief industries went to Russia. The same phe- nomenon is observable in the haberdashery industry. When one should add to this the various other industries, like shoe, clothing, furniture, etc., the total Polish export to Russia will eloquently speak for itself. Also, in the life of Poland the most important part was played by those events which in one way or other helped to promote closer economic unity be- tween Russia and the Polish provinces. In this respect the year 1851 marks a historic occasion, as on that date custom-duties between Poland and Russia were abolished. Then, the connection of Warsaw and Lodz with Petrograd, Moscow, South Russia and Siberia by a railroad system was of tremendous import. The Russian markets on one hand, Russia's protective tariff, guarding her industries from foreign competition, on the other hand, furnished the bases for the industrial development of the "Russian Belgium" — Poland, the "Polish Manchester" — Lodz, nourishing and supporting them. The economic tie, binding Russia and Poland, having become an or- ganic tie, was ignored by the Polish press, it being in contradiction to the traditional Polish ideals and aspirations. But tacitu concensu it was rec- ognized by all, and considered as a fact. Nevertheless, no party but the Social Democratic dared to proclaim this view as a starting point for a Polish political program. Only in the critical hour of the outbreak of the war in Poland, when the economic unity of Poland and Russia was clearly proved by events, there began to appear groups and factions in Poland whose political orientation was based on that unity. In 19 14 these elements gained much strength, drawing their power from the masses that have been bound by a thousand ties and links to that social-economic structure which came into existence as a result of Polish-Russian rela- tions. These forces, even before the Grand Duke's manifesto, were awaiting some kind of a real or superfluous move, in order to go over to the Russian side and put their trust in Russian policies. "Our Polish press," wrote at that time Pekarski, "evidently considers the question of the benefit to Poland of its economic union with Russia as settled, and therefore evades reference to this ticklish problem, dreaming, one imagines, that we, Poles, will get not only the opportunity for a political existence as would satisfy our nationalistic aspirations, but — that we shall also retain the opportunity for further exploiting Russia economically." IQ SELECTED ARTICLES The latest theory, however, is fully contradictory to the above statements. The modern school of Polish economists claims that conditions have so changed that it is no longer prof- itable for Poland to be united with Russia economically, that it is Russia which is now interested in Poland as a market for her products, and that Poland's economic independence would guard against foreign industrial aggression and promote her economic interests. M. Clemens goes on to review the history and argu- ments of the new view. As far back as 1905 the Polish economist Radishevski came to the con- clusion that Poland could be a self-supplying economic organism, given her natural resources, her own government, and her outlets to the sea. . . . In 19 1 3 V. V. Zhukovski wrote that "the Polish industries . . . are unable to capture their own home markets. More than a third of the textile products consumed in Russian Poland are supplied by Russian plants. And this import from Russia is constantly growing." Poland's industrial power is her textile industry. It furnishes Poland a yearly profit of 150 millions, derived from exports to Russia. But at the same time it is Poland's sore spot, as not a single other Polish indus- try is as much dependent upon Russian markets as the textile. In this fortress of Polish industries — Hannibal ante portas: The Russian prod- ucts, imported from Russia, like cotton, wool and linen material, beat the Polish products in their own markets. Moscow triumphantly competes with Lodz within the boundaries of Poland. In the years 1900-19 10 the export of textile products from Poland to internal Russia was growing at the annual rate of one per cent, while the export of the same products from Russia to Poland was growing at the rate of J,'^ per cent annually. "If this process should continue," writes Pekarski, "in the near future the Empire would cease being a market for Poland's textile products, and an entirely opposite situation would arise — Poland would become a market for Russia's textile industry." The case of Belgium proves that separation from industrial markets, the formation of a state in a portion of the original state, is not economically dangerous. When Holland and Belgium were one state, the latter was sup- plied with raw material by the former and its colonies, while they in return were supplied with manufactured products by Belgium. Since 1831 Belgium is separated from Holland by a tariff barrier, and Belgian industries, in spite of the predictions of the manufacturers of Ghent and Li6ge, have not only refused to perish, but prospered greatly. Poland, therefore, can have no fear of becoming an inde- pendent state. Her political autonomy would, if the views of the modern school are correct, be the cause of her economic prosperity, and not ruin. What Poland will need then is not Russia, but capital. With her dense population, enterprise, and political independence she would have no trouble in securing foreign capital, and this would assure for her, from the stand- point of these writers, a brilliant economic future. RUSSIA 71 FINLAND AND THE FINNS^ "The Land of Many Waters" is the poetic designation of their beloved country most cherished by the people of Finland. Mountain ranges and forest stretches — bold and verdant — are in- terspersed with valley waterways and fragrant meadowlands. In summertime the foam and spray of rushing torrents hang spark- ling dewdrops on the golden pine-needles whilst the vaporous mists of the marshlands weave fairy rainbows among the rus- set fruit of the bronzy hazels. The greenest of green moss and the most tender gray stonewort spread softest carpets for the feet as with the hand are plucked the sweetest wild flowers. "The Thousand Lakes" of Finland, placid in the sunshine but whipped to fury by autumn storms, resemble clusters of precious gems cast by beneficent deities upon the bosom of Na- ture. The eye delights in the serenity of the panorama till the ear catches the impressive thunder of the cataracts and water- falls. A river-lake-land trip is an experience at once novel and thrilling. Light boats, too frail they look, push off boldly into the rapids, manned by sturdy young fellows in red flannel shirts, slouched felt hats and leather boots far up the thigh, singing snatches of plaintive folk-lore as their craft clears rock and boulder daringly. The long wooden paddle thrown out behind and the supple oars dash showers of crystal water over the traveller. Groups of white-kerchiefed women and bare-legged children toss cheery welcome all along the course whilst the crafty boatmen take vigorous pulls at the ubiquitous cigarettes. Winter brings about a marvellous transformation. True, the rude storms expend their fury upon the rock-bound coast but the deadly blizzard tears away Nature's beauty spots. When the "Lady of the Snows" has spread her glittering mantle far and wide peace, white and lasting, reigns everywhere. Ice crys- tals depend from every bough and eave and frost diamonds sprinkle on the ground. Above all and everything the great horizon is flashed with the dazzling Northern Lights giving promise of life and constancy. Spring, which saw vegetation leap like magic out of the melt- ing snows, is swiftly followed by brief and brilliant summer, and autumn comes on apace, reaidy, so it seems, to be devoured * By J. E. Staley. Canadian Magazine. 40:6572. November, 1912. 72 SELECTED ARTICLES by the greedy frost king. Seed time and harvest hold each other by the hand to resist the grip of ice. Forest work ceases, and, the short day of winter over, old and young assemble in the homestead's long common room and together weave and spin, and read and smoke, and dance and sing. Certainly by sledge and ski and skate distances are covered, and happy school chil- dren glide hither and thither, sometimes scurrying home for fear of wolves. Physically the Finns are tall and vigorous. Their faces, it is true, lack the handsome and expressive features of the South but they possess intelligence and determination. The women are even plainer than the men. Among the working class there is little time to spend upon the elegancies of the toilet. They have to toil day in day out like men — manning boats, feeding cattle, doing forest work, and making bricks. What hair they have, and it is not superabundant, is bleached and coarse, and their faces are without colour and vivacity. In the extreme north there is an extraordinary absence among men folk of hirsute adornment. This is due possibly to their diet, which consists almost exclusively of rye-bread and milk, without meat or vegetables. The Finns came originally from the Altai Mountains. They took possession of the "Land of Many Waters" away in the seventh century. The language spoken by the country people had a similar origin; it is an unique tongue, soft and sonorous, not unlike modern Italian. The people of the Eastern Province, touching upon Russia, exhibit the Mongolian type — thick lips, high cheek bones are narrow eyes. The inhabitants of the West- ern Province are mostly of Swedish origin and speak the Swed- ish language. The word "Finn" means wizard. Among their many super- stitions is the tradition that a trinity of spirits presides over their destiny — "Ukko," the spirit of the air; "Tapo," the spirit of the forest, and "Abte," the spirit of the lakes. The mountain ash is sacred, its ashes, after burning, are carefully preserved, for when sprinkled on the ground they decry luck or the re- verse in wooing. Frogs. and swallows are hallowed; they are the reincarnation of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Teeth after extraction are hung up in the way of spiders; should the web be woven above it is a token of good fortune, if below of evil omen. RUSSIA 73 Land tenure and the land service in Finland present many in- teresting features. The more salient points are actual survivals of feudal times. The class of peasant which may be called "la- bourer-farmers" consists of men who receive no wages. They occupy buildings belonging to the landowner, which they are re- quired to keep in repair. The land-owners make grants of seed and other necessaries, and of certain lands which the labourer- farmers cultivate for their own benefit. They have free access to the forest for fuel and for lumber for repairs. In return they are obliged to work for the land-owner with their own families and horses. On holdings, where there is clay, the labourer- farmers are allowed to make bricks and to earn what they can by sales, paying so much per cent on their gains to their land- owner. Many labourer-farmers are quite well off, and, whilst they retain their status as peasants, their sons and daughters are sent to excellent schools and enter government and commercial employments. This class of men must not, however, be confounded with the "free" peasantry. The latter, although generally poorer, have superior civil rights and form an Estate of the Realm with direct representation in the Finnish Parliament. Finland was first occupied by the Russians in 1809. Alexan- der I granted the inhabitants autonomy under their ancient laws and institutions. Recent events have greatly curtailed Finnish liberties, but like the patriots the Finns abide and sing: "Land of a Thousand Lakes, Where faith and life are ours. Past wrongs inspire our powers, For us the future wakes 1" Like other folk, the Finns rejoice in festivals — religious and profane. Christmas is the greatest of them all. Ever so long before the eve of the Nativity the stores are crowded with peo- ple choosing klapps, gifts for family and friends. In each town and village the snow-covered market-place becomes a pine for- est full of Christmas trees, for every home keeps Christmas thus. If they do not rejoice in beef and plum pudding they have their seasonable dishes all the same — lutfisk, dried cod, soaked in brine and boiled to a jelly; with it they eat a sort cf pease pudding. Smoked roast pork follows and then comes a rice pudding full of almonds — the more almonds you get the 74 SELECTED ARTICLES more happy months you will have. Plum tarts, served with paste and clotted cream, form the dessert. On Christmas Eve each house and cottage exhibits a burning candle in every window ; the peasants' dwellings are littered with clean straw and the cattle in their stalls have extra supplies of food. A popular observance is to arrange inverted saucers around the festive board — one for each guest — under which are placed objects bearing significant meanings. Each person in turn raises a saucer. May be it has covered a piece of red rib- bon — that presages a wound or some bodily injury; or a coin^ riches ; or a key, for a girl the token of her direction within a twelve-month of some household, for a boy the entrance on a commercial career; or a piece of fuel, which foretells death; or a ring for matrimony, and so forth. The "Christmas Buck" visits every home in Finland, He is an old man with long white hair and beard and heavily clad in fur. He drives his team of reindeer over mountains and frozen lakes and enters unannounced each doorway. He makes a cir- cuit of the family and inquires whether the children have been good or bad. Before leaving he throws down klapps for all. At Twelfth Night the "Star Boys" make their appearance. They are five young men in fancy dress. Three represent the Three Holy Kings of the Epiphany, one is King Herod, and the last a goat with hoofs and horns. They enact a legendary play which has for its finale the death of Herod, whilst the goat is thrust outside the door. Wherever they go they collect alms for poor people who have no Christmas cheer. After the gaieties of Christmas two months elapse during which one is able to restore one's digestive organs, and then comes Lent. A distinctive Lenten diet is blines and caviar; the former are large thick pancakes which are eaten with butter^ sour cream and fruit juice. At mid-Lent a fresh water fish is much esteemed — lake it is called. It is caught in nets sunk through holes in the ice of rivers and lakes. It is boiled in milk. On Easter Eve everybody eats hard boiled eggs. A uni- versal diet is memma, the principal ingredients being malt and syrup which, forming a brown dough, is packed, after being boiled, in boxes made of birch bark. When quite cold and set it is eaten with whipped cream and sugar. The first of May is an ancient festival of general observance, especially by students and youths. They meet in the public RUSSIA 75 parks of Helsingfors, the capital, and in country market-places, and there sing old folk-songs to the spirit of Spring. Then they drink deeply of sweet mead and consume vast quantities of struvor — rich puff-paste tarts — and then they dance and flirt with buxom maidens to their hearts' content. Midsummer day is of universal observance in Finland. Birch trees are planted at all the house doors and twigs of birch are stuck all over every room. The sun sets in the eve at eleven o'clock, and rises in the day at two. During those three brief hours the young people kindle big fires. All are bent on dancing around and above the blazing embers. They call the fires kokko, "love's flame." Rye harvest is a very important season. On the first day the labourer-farmers, with their wives and families, foregather at the mansion of the land-owner. They are divided into squads — one man, two women and three children. To each squad is as- signed a certain area wherein the man cuts the crop, the women shock and the children glean. They work from four in the morning until eight at night, with intervals for breakfast and dinner. These meals, together with the supper at the end of toil, are substantial in every sense. They are provided gratis by the land-owner and are eaten at long tables placed in front of the mansion, whereat the land-owner and his family serve. After supper all join in singing the plaintive national song, kalewala, and then a happy time is passed with games and dances. The rye crop, which provides the Finns with their staff of life, does not dry in ordinary seasons in the fields. It is con- sequently carried to the rias, or barns, and laid on racks and rafters. Fires are kindled in each corner and the smoke per- meates the crop imparting a much-loved and peculiar flavour. The country people's diet consists chiefly of talkumma, a sort of porridge made of rye. This is carried, when well set, in birch bark knapsacks. It is also baked hard and hung in great round, thick cakes, with holes in the centre, from the ceilings of the houses. Their favourite beverage is coffee which they brew to perfection. Corn-rye brandy is a liquer much esteemed by all classes and sometimes indulged in to excess. The greatest refreshment of the Finns is the bath; every homestead has a bath-house. It is their unfailing remedy in sickness. "If bath and brandy fail," they say, "then comes death." In the bath-houses are stone ovens wherein wood fires are kindled and every orifice is closed. After the fire has burnt 76 SELECTED ARTICLES itself out and the smoke has somewhat vanished buckets of water or shovelfuls of snow are dashed upon the embers and red hot stones. Dense clouds of steam arise and into them the bathers plunge. The whole body is switched with small birch rods, and then follow thorough massage and rubbing down with soap. As the bather quits the bath-house sousings of cold water or snow are administered; sometimes a header into deep snow is preferred! Then for a while to cool they all sit on benches in the open air, and then they resume their clothes. During harvest time such baths in common are taken every evening after work is done; in winter the Saturday night tub suffices. Few spectacles can be more weird and astounding for the traveller than, when driving to night quarters, he suddenly comes upon the family at bath. The British royal motto has at last its due significance: Honi soit qui mal y pense! THE LAND OF PROMISE^ Our journey across Siberia confirmed the opinion of the au- thor, formed from previous geographical studies, that no other country approaches Russia in the extent of its territory, the di- versity of its people, or in variety of climates; and, further, created the belief in its unsurpassable superiority as to the latent and fast-developing productivity of its agricultural, forest, and mineral resources. Vladivostok After an uncomfortable and somewhat tempestuous voyage across the Sea of Japan, at the end of May, our eyes viewed with refreshing delight the green and graceful hills that fringe the covered waterways on approaching Vladivostok. Soon, how- ever, our thoughts turned from Nature's smiling aspect to mat- ters of human interest as we approached the city, with its won- derful dry-dock, its green-domed churches, its railway terminals, and the outlying shipping, all glorified by the spring sun and smiling skies. Before us was the stir of civil life and the bustle of com- mercial activity in the city proper, but from our decks we saw *By A. W. Greely. National Geographic Magazine. 23:io78»90. No- vember, 19 12. RUSSIA ^^ the smooth fields and gentle hill-slopes alive with the morning drills and operations of a Russian army corps. Apart from the rhythmic evolutions, novel to all and thrilling to a soldier's ear, were the melodious and stirring sounds of martial songs — anthems of loyalty to the Czar and devotion to country which are chanted by Russian soldiers on the march. Although having many business buildings of the latest mod- ern types, Vladivostok is plainly in the transitory stage attendant on its struggles to assume metropolitan importance. With a permanent population of about 50,000, its outlying military forces were estimated to be somewhat more numerous. There were apparent the usual concomitants of camp followers, ambulatory merchants, army contractors, and speculators. Despite the inevitable reaction and commercial depression consequent on the end of a great war, Vladivostok will steadily grow in commercial importance, apart from its assured advan- tages through dry-docks, military depots, and railway facilities. Large areas of northeastern Manchuria and the whole of the great Amur Valley must always be tributary to Vladivostok. On the lower Amur there are already 50 or more villages of Russian pioneers,' who are developing the agricultural possibilities be- sides exploiting the extensive fisheries. The vast timber re- sources of the Amur and of the maritime province are on the point of development. Their forested areas exceed half a mil- lion acres, which are gradually passing under foreign control, with the wise governmental policy of requiring the labor to be done by Russian workmen. Rude tarantasses and antiquated droskies in scanty numbers furnish the local transportation. The rude vehicles are dragged by Siberian ponies slowly and painfully through almost impas- sable streets, where the mud was axle-deep during our stay. A Railway Without a Parallel The railway journey on which we entered is without a paral- lel elsewhere, extending across the entire Empire of Russia from east to west, the distance exceeding 6,400 miles from Vladivostok via Moscow and Warsaw to Alexandrov, on the frontier of Germany. This Russian railway system, covering III degrees of longitude, extends practically one-third of the way around the world near the 6oth parallel of latitude. While there are now various lines comprised in the Siberian 78 SELECTED ARTICLES system, the main stem, crossing northern Manchuria and passing around the southern shores of Lake Baikal, has its termini at Vladivostock, on the Pacific Ocean, and at Moscow — 5,600 miles apart. Unique in its length, the railway was constructed with unparalleled rapidity. The strictly Siberian sections of 3,300 miles were built in seven years, 1891-1898, the rate of construc- tion approaching two miles for each working day, from which are excluded Sundays and the numerous Russian feast days. It is the recognition of conditions to say that the construction of this great transcontinental railway is one of the most re- markable feats of man's energy, persistency, and industry re- corded in the annals of human history. There has been a tendency outside of Russia to underestimate this railway through irrelevant or unfair comparisons of the equipment and road-bed with those found on the standard systems of Europe and America. The cost of the entire Siberian railway systems has been vari- ously stated, but it probably approximates $400,000,000 — far ex- ceeding the amount spent on any previous work of public utility, although it will be equaled or surpassed by the total cost of the Panama Interoceanic Canal. The Siberian railways may be viewed as yet in conditions of transition as to rails, road-bed, and equipment. Originally of the lightest and least expensive character, not unsuited for the level, thinly settled country of western Siberia, they have of necessity been improved and modified so as to meet the growing traffic, to suit the changing conditions of the mountainous country to the east, and especially to provide for the exigent demands involved in the transportation, feeding, clothing, equipment, and opera- tions of armies of hundreds of thousands of men. This road is being gradually brought up to European standards. Much work was progressing in the direction of reduced grades, modified curves, improved alignment, and other betterments. Enlarged sidings and yards, improved freight facilities, and extended sec- tions of double track are adding greatly to the transporting ca- pacity of the road. It may be added that in the year 1910 the railroad transported 1,869,183 passengers, an average journey of 957 miles, and 7,5o8,- 675 tons of freight — military, private, and service. The rolling equipment is being increased, and beautiful, powerful locomo- tives of various types — wood, coal, and oil-burning, as economy RUSSIA 79 demands — were in evidence. As will be shown later, the accom- modations and facilities for passengers are excellent. The Transbaikal Railways Excluding the main Manchurian stem (which across North Manchuria is organized and technically known as the Eastern Chinese Railway), there are three Russian branches to the Transiberian Railway. The original plan looked to a system en- tirely within Russian territory, and the perfection of this scheme caused two roads to be built — one of 178 miles, from Karimskaia to Stretensk, on the Chilka River, and the other of 337 miles, from Nikolsk, near Vladivostok, to Khabarovsk, on the Amur. Stretensk and Khabarovsk, it may be added, have intercom- munication by river steamers during the navigable season some- what irregularly, about once a week. By far the most important branch is that toward China proper, which by a road 139 miles in length from Harbin con- nects with the South Manchurian Railway system, of which the center is Mukden, 190 miles farther to the south. From Muk- den there is one Japanese road of 258 miles to Dairen (formerly Dalny), Port Arthur, while another light Japanese military rail- way, now in course of reconstruction, extends from Mukden to Antung, there connecting with the Korean road to Seoul and Fusan. Especially interesting, however, is the Chinese exten- sion, over which one travels comfortably 756 miles via Peking to Hankau whence via weekly steamers down the Yang-tse-kiang to Nanking and over another railway 196 miles in length, Shang- hai is reached. ^ Excellent Accommodations •These railways have brought Peking within 14 days' travel of London, the fare, including sleeping car, being about $150 for second-class and $230 for first-class passengers. The following information is of practical value regarding fares, distances, and time. The distance from Vladivostok to Moscow is 5,426 miles, which were traversed in 9 days and 21 hours. There are three through trains each week — an ordinary express, the state express, and the international train de luxe. On the last our journey was made. Except a transfer at Irkutsk, 3,425 miles east of Moscow, there is no change of cars. The international is a steam-heated, electric-lighted, well-ven- 8o SELECTED ARTICLES tilated corridor train with an attached dining car. There are no» ordinary passenger coaches, but there are first-class and second- class sleeping cars, divided into state-rooms for two and for four persons, the fare for each person being, respectively, 3^^8.50 rubles (about $165) and 213.82 rubles (about $107). Breakfast (bread and coffee, chocolate, or tea) cost 0.55, lunch 1.25, and dinner 1.50 rubles. The food is plain but well cooked, the service good, and the cars clean. There is practically no difference between second and first- class accommodations except better jipholstery and an indifferent toilet for the latter. Each compartment has leather-lined fittings (easily washed), a small table with a movable electric light, snd very ample room for all baggage that can be needed in the ten days' journey. The free registered baggage is strictly limited and charges are high for extra weights. While each compartment is private, there are no curtains to insure privacy of the separate berths. Other notable defects are scarcity of towels, lack of good drinking water, and the indif- ferent toilet conveniences, there being no separate provision for women. Bathing was possible in a section of the baggage car. The road being broad gauge and the speed low made night travel most comfortable. East of Manchuria there are excellent buffets at the larger stations, and at every stop during daylight there were present venders of bread, butter, fruit, milk, chickens, etc., all of excel- lent quality and at moderate prices. Manchuria is Rich Beyond Calculations The slow-moving train and long stops enable one to form clear opinions as to the physical characteristics of Manchuria during the travel of 926 miles which bisects this great region. There can be but one conclusion — that its agricultural, mineral, and other possibiHties are valuable beyond present computa- tion. It resembles in appearance and approximates both in area and fertility that part of the United States which lies be- tween the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Al- though in the main a level, disforested, and agricultural country, Manchuria presents in its northwestern section, in the valleys of the upper Sungari and Yalo rivers, not only valuable virgin for- ests, but also vast mineral deposits, of which the most valuable, coal, is already in process* of utilization by the railway. ^ RUSSIA 8i Whatever opinions may be held regarding the past policy and conduct of Russia as regards Manchuria, it is evident to any ob- servant traveler that its railway construction and attendant de- velopments have vastly benefited this Chinese province. Brigand- age has been largely suppressed, life and property made more secure, local industries stimulated, and distant markets made accessible. With settled conditions since the war, the trade in agricultural products was reaching tens of millions of dollars in value, and within ten years' time should aggregate annually hun- dreds of millions in amount. Although a Russian block-house flanks every railway station, and its garrison doubtless rules with a rod of iron, yet the long- established Russian policy obtains and the racial susceptibilities of the Chinese are regarded to an extent that would be impos- sible for Americans to observe. In addition to other instances in evidence, there was noted the decorations of the small attrac- tive railway stations at lempo. The ornamentation was strictly Chinese, the graceful roof-trimmings being a series of the sym- bolated Chinese dragons pursuing their fleeing prey. All along the railway Manchurians of every grade and class were seen mixing with Russian civilians and soldiers, pursuing their vari- ous affairs with such freedom and assurance as would not be tolerated in most localities in the United States. The Aladdin City While Russian activities have thoroughly affected the peoples of northern Manchuria, yet they have centered in the Aladdin- like city of Harbin, which very lately was unpleasantly brought to the world's attention as the scene of the deplorable assassina- tion of that great statesman, Prince Ito, of Japan. The most populous of European cities in Asia, the former medical center of the Russian army — with a hospital so immense that 10,000 patients were cared for at one time — it seems an irony of fortune that Harbin should recently have lost thousands by pestilential plague. It is, however, a logical outcome of the gov- ernmental defects at Harbin. With unsanitary habits almost universal among its cosmopolitan population, there was, strangely enough in autocratic Russia, no dominant central au- thority over this collection of cities to enforce proper sanitary regulations, even if such were ever planned. 82 SELECTED ARTICLES The existence of Harbin is due to the conjoined action of the Russian government and the Russo-Chinese Bank. The cor- poration obtained from China exclusive rights for 36 years to a region 100 miles square. Lavish expenditures, aggregating from ID to 12 millions of dollars, built up a modern town near the .point where the Transiberian Railway crosses the Sungari River over a fine steel bridge of modern type and standard construc- tion. With great and fluctuating business interests, Harbin has va- ried in population from 50,000 to 100,000 or more. It appeared to be a collection of heterogeneous communities rather than an administrative unit. There then existed nine practically inde- pendent administrations — the official, the army, the military hos- pital, the business, the manufacturing, the milling, the river, the Chinese quarter, and on the outskirts the original Manchurian village. The milling facilities are adequate to care for more than one and a quarter millions of souls; the railway equipment is so extensive and well arranged that an army corps with its entire impedimenta can be entrained or detrained in a day.^ From observation and by report the Russians maintain a most conciliatory and tactful attitude towards the Chinese in general and Manchurians in particular. The enormous expendi- tures of the Russians yet continue at Harbin, whereby the Chi- nese — laborers, traders, and officials — have profited beyond their wildest expectations. As we tarried, there were in evidence a number of Chinese officers of the new army, smartly uniformed, alert in action, and prepossessing in appearance. While many public and some private buildings are large and costly, there was that unmistakable cast of crudity to Harbin which causes it to somewhat resemble a thriving frontier city of America. The cosmopolitan character of the city was markedly emphasized by the incoming South China mail-train, which brought naked coolies and full-robed mandarins, the turbaned Hindu and the German merchant, the silent Korean and com- placent Japanese, the somber English official and the active American tourist. * Mr. Putnam Weale Simpson names nine flouring mills at Harbin with an output capacity of about 1,700,000 pounds daily, and nine others near that city which raise the capacity of Central Manchuria to more than 1,500 tons of flour daily. ^ RUSSIA 83 A 4-berthed compartment of our Siberian train received as occupants a Japanese, a German, an Italian, and an Australasian, no two of who^ could speak the same language. The Mukden route is fast gaining favor, as from Harbin one reaches Peking in two days at an expense of $29, first-class. Out of Manchuria After crossing the Nonni River near Tsitsihar, the prairie soon gives place to a hilly ascending country, where from time to time there were interesting glimpses of weird Bouriat camps. Occasionally parties were seen on the march, all mounted, as the women are expert riders. Novel in costume and pastoral in tastes, they yield slowly to Occidental civilization. The country becomes more rugged and the route more cir- cuitous as we ascend the eastern flanks of the Great Khingan range, where the summit is pierced by a tunnel two miles in length at an altitude of about 3,500 feet. Dense forests, wild torrerrts, narrow valleys, and sharply uprising ridges are the sali- ent features of the western slopes, welcome changes from the treeless plains of central Manchuria. Between the greater and less ranges of Khingan the railway crosses a corner of the eastern Gobi Desert, which there resem- bles closely the so-called desert of our Rocky Mountain regions, with more or less vegetation and an occasional shrub or stunted tree. With the view vanished childish illusions wherein the Gobi Desert was pictured as the dreariest and most desolate region of the world. The prolonged stay at Manchuria, the customs station on the Russo-Chinese frontier, was not without interest The accustomed tediousness of such examinations was re- duced to the minimum by the marked courtesy of the inspectors. There were hundreds of small bales of caravan-tea awaiting shipment by rail to European Russia. This tea trade has been pursued for centuries, the trains of tea-loaded camels winding their slow way over the rough trails which lead hither from the remote tea-farms of inland China. Formerly they traveled west- ward to Irkutsk and Omsk, but now the railway displaces still further the camel, who gave way in part to the Suez Canal years ago. 84 SELECTED ARTICLES The Transbaikal Region The Transbaikal, a country of great forests, with extensive areas of arable land interspersed here and there, charmed all by the quiet beauty of its varied landscapes and its attractive as- pects. Although called a mountainous country in comparison with the low plains of western Siberia, where the highest eleva- tion does not exceed 400 feet, the Transbaikal is really a region of moderate hills, like our own Catskills, the highest point on the railway being but 3,100 feet. The mountainous regions of Manchuria are practically unin- habited, save by wandering hunters and pastoral people, so that the presence of permanent settlements and signs of human ac- tivities were welcome signs in the Transbaikal scenery. In the watershed of the upper Amur, especially in the Ingoda Valley, and within sight of the railway, were lumber camps along and timber rafts on the river, pioneer huts in the forest clearings, small herds of cattle, newly broken land, and quickly growing grain, which marked the western limits of that vast im- migration that is rapidly transforming uninhabited Siberia into a land of wealth and prosperity. The cloudless sky, pure air, countless flowers, lofty trees, and luxuriant vegetation set off to great advantage the new country that is passing under the domination of Russian colonists. Crossing the Ingoda, the thriving town of Karimskaia was reached, whence a branch railway of 177 miles extends to Stretensk, which is the inland center of the navigable waterways of nearly 2,000 miles in the watershed of the Amur. To the westward the way is pleasant and picturesque across the low Yablonoi Mountains, with their many striking bits of landscape, especially while descending their wooded slopes, which led through the beautiful Selenga Valley to the precipitous shores of the wondrous inland sea. Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal For nearly 150 miles the railway skirts the southern shores of this great lake. It is one of the lacustral wonders of the world, with its depth of 5,000 feet, its average width of 40 miles, its length of 375 miles, and its great distance— nearly 3,000 miles — from the ocean. Frozen over between four and five ;months RUSSIA 85 each year, there were at the end of May large drifting ice-fields within view as the train passed. The warm, balmy airs, lovely scented flowers, the tuneful chorus of singing birds, a luxuriant undergrowth, and the spring dress of the huge forest trees— all gained in sweet contrasting attractiveness from the drifting ice- floes, the occasional snowdrifts in sheltered spots, and the white- topped peaks of Chamanka and other mountains. Now the way stations had their quota of gazing but never- rude Russian colonists, and with them came shy peasant girls in quaint costumes and bright, becoming colors, whose welcome wares of wild flowers, sweet cream, soft cheeses, etc., were daily proffered and purchased from Transbaikalia to the Ural Moun- tains. Irkutsk Much is not expected from a subordinate city, some 3,500 miles distant from the formal center of all Russian power — Saint Petersburg — especially when such city has been cursed through- out its history as a selected destination for political and criminal exiles. Every traveler is therefore surprised to find Irkutsk a well- built, prosperous, modern city, with a population of about 75,- 000. Among Siberian cities, Irkutsk is noted for its churches, orphanages, hospitals, schools, observatories, and museums. It is a city of imposing buildings, beautiful homes, and is given to lavish hospitality, while its extended business operations are supplemented by all modern municipal equipments, including tele- phony and an efficient fire service. It must be added that it has in summer nearly impassable streets, that the prevalence of unpunished crimes is notorious, while it is said by free-speaking Russians that the inefficiency of its police is only surpassed by the corruption of its officials. With a steady inflow of honest immigrants, conditions are be- lieved to be slowly improving and the future is more promising. The capital of a province of nearly a million people, Irkutsk on the Angara is admirably located to control a very large and lucrative trade. Lake Baikal, with its five contributory rivers, affords unusual transportation facilities inland, while the Angara, the discharging stream of Lake Baikal, leads to the Yenisei, with its 10,000 miles of navigable waterway. The government assay 86 SELECTED ARTICLES office at Irkutsk handles the gold produced in the province, which averages annually $10,000,000 in value. Siberian Immigration The real creative force of a country's material prosperity, and the most essential element of its grandeur, is its population. Far-seeing statesmen have realized that within the twentieth century Siberia will be the center of Russian trade and com- merce. In consequence a prominent feature of the empire's do- mestic policy has been the economic evolution of Siberia. In former years hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to main- tain Russia's prestige and power in the Orient through military establishments and strategic lines of railways, but to scant avail.^ Now a wiser policy is appropriating millions of dollars an- nually for a peaceful invasion of Asia. In a single year more than $5,000,000 was spent to promote emigration from European Russia to Siberia, which is systematically and successfully pro- moted. Emigration agencies have been established, traveling agents employed, surveyors utilized, and occasionally allotments have been made for travel expenses. Along the Siberian Rail- way there have been established suitable stations where immi- grants are cared for through barracks, kitchens, and hospitals. Schools and churches have been provided for the newcomers, who are also helped over the first year by grants of seeds, loans of stock and machinery, and other practical methods. Timber, pasture, and arable lands are allotted to newcomers, which -may be either rented or bought on very favorable terms. Instruction is given along practical lines, and valuable, up-to-date machinery has been bought in large quantities for rent or sale to actual settlers. In the Transbaikal region there were incoming pioneers, as they termed the immigrants, by the score, and in Irkutsk prov- ince by the hundreds. It was only in the region of Omsk that the travel was in full tide, with from 2,000 to 4,000 arrivals each day. Travel was in fourth-class cars at an expense of a quarter of a cent a mile. The cars were fitted up with berths, three- tiered, the lower changeable at will into seats. Here could be seen an arriving train, from which ran at top * In ten years, 1898-1907, Russia spent $994,500,000 on railways. RUSSIA 87 speed the men on their way to obtain hot water for tea, which is provided free at each station, and later to buy bread at the emi- grants' market. The women and children await in the train the arrival of bread and water for their frugal meals. Again, at an important station would be seen several hundred pioneers, huddled in family groups on the main platform or in sheltered places. Surrounded by large bundles which contained their worldly goods, they slept or ate, awaited their turn in bar- racks, or looked forward to the arrival of the train that carried them to the Orient Official statistics show that in 1908 there were 785,712 kho- doki, or pioneers, who entered Siberia, and that 121,204 returned to European Russia, making a net gain for Siberia of 637,608 settlers — a marked increase over 1907, when the net gain ap- proximated 550,000. It is said that a bad harvest in Europe would swell the annual figures to a million or more. From observation of pioneers en route (of whom about 7,000 were personally seen) and of actual settlers, it seemed certain that Siberia is receiving a hardy, courageous, and resourceful immigration. In physique and deportment they appeared to be superior to the peasantry between the Urals and Moscow. Nat- urally the provinces nearer to Europe profit most largely, and the destination of incoming pioneers is not far from 50 per cent between the Urals and Omsk, 30 per cent to Tomsk prov- ince, 15 per cent to Irkutsk province, and 5 per cent to Trans- baikalia. The Yenisei Valley Descending the Angara Valley, the road passes through the pastoral country of the Russian Bouriats, offshoots of the tribes seen in China, and cross to the watershed of the Yenisei. In- coming pioneers are rapidly settling this region, already beauti- ful with extensive fields of grain, for which the soil is especially suited. Crossing the Yenisei by a fine steel bridge, half a mile long, brought the train to Krasnoyarsk, the capital of the prov- ince, the thriving business center of the fertile upper valley. The Yenisei watershed, in area more than one-quarter the size of all Europe, is destined to be one of the great grain-grow- ing centers of the world. The grain grown in these and other regions in easy water communication already aggregates three or more millions of tons annually, which can be readily increased 8 88 SELECTED ARTICLES to five million tons. There exists uncertain and irregular water communication with Europe, which can be so improved as to furnish cheap transportation and assure wonderful prosperity to these inland regions. The Taiga, or Virgin-Forest Country The train soon enters the Taiga, an immense region of dense forests, largely of the well-known Russian birch and Siberian cedar. Here appears one of the strange vagaries connected with the engineering of the Siberian railway, which left to the north Tomsk, the capital of Siberia, now reached by a branch line of 46 miles. Time failed in which to visit this city, the center of the well-known mining district of the Altai, to the south, and of the vast and unique hunting grounds to the north, from which come the renowned Russian furs, the martin, ermine, otter, etc. Tomsk province bids fair to be in the near future one of the leading gold-producing centers of the world, as the gold mines of the Altai are now supplemented by extensive and widespread placer deposits in the forest regions. As we passed there were seen thousands of pioneers who had come to Tomsk province to seek their fortunes. Some were joining the bands of trappers, but most were augmenting the hordes of gold-seekers who are fast invading this region. The Siberian Steppes To the west the gloomy Taiga gradually fades away, and one comes into the bright, open steppes or great Siberian plains, which strikingly resemble the prairies of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Extending 1,000 miles north and south, and as far from east to west, the vast watershed of the Obi (nine- tenths the area of the Mississippi and Missouri combined water- sheds), despite its long winters in the north, is unsurpassed in its suitableness for stock-raising, dairy farming, and other agri- cultural pursuits. Its level and well-watered plains, dotted here and there by light growths of birch, alder, willow, and Siberian cedar, are covered by vigorous growth of nutritious grasses. The soil is fertile, stock of all kinds thrives, transportation fa- cilities are good, coal is abundant, modern agricultural methods largely obtain, markets are accessible, and the population is rapidly increasing. RUSSIA 89 The Most Important City of Siberia The capital, Omsk, on the Irtish, a tributary of the Obi, is now the largest (about 100,000) and commercially the most im- portant city in Siberia. Here centers the river transportation of western Siberia, an interior system elsewhere unsurpassed in extent, which, through a large canal connecting tributaries of the Obi and Yenisei, aggregate about 15,000 miles of navigable waterways open six months in the year. In the Obi fleet alone there are 242 steamers and numberless other crafts. As the area of the watershed of the Obi alone is more than double that of Denmark, France, Germany, and Italy combined, the future im- portance of the fertile region may be vaguely estimated. The great Omsk station was the scene of business activity and of railway travel such as characterize the large railway sta- tions in America. The force of uniformed, self-important rail- way officials, led by the gorgeous station-master, were full of fuss and fury between the important train-de-luxe, the hordes of immigrants — arriving, encamping, departing — and the groaning, shunting freight trains which were disentangling themselves in the spacious train yards. Immigrants by the hundreds swarmed over and around the station — men and women in the flush and vigor of life, gay and careless youth, the aged bordering on the verge of the grave, and the tiny babe at its mother's breast. Their humble belongings were in bundles and portable packages, among which spinning- wheels, cooking utensils, and the indispensable samovar were most evident. There was nothing disconsolate in act or face, but all looked forward hopefully to the promised land. Their quiet, orderly deportment was quite impressive ; no quarreling or bickering, no drunkenness or dissipation was to be seen. Here was a picturesque Tartar, there a little Russian; here an assertive Cossack, there a determined Khirgis chief. The national sombreness of dress was generally relieved by a bit of gay color; most pioneers were equipped with the Russian high boots, and their outer garments were of sheepskin, long since past its pristine whiteness. The Siberian is Stolid and Silent As a rule — natives and pioneers — the Siberian is stolid and silent, but he was found to be kindly, interested, and invariably 90 SELECTED ARTICLES courteous. The contented and satisfied appearance of the peas- ant was generally remarked. They were well fed, well clothed — though the outer garments were often dirty — of very decent appearance, and had a self-respecting manner far from grovel- ing or sycophantic. They appear more manly and energetic than the European peasants, and doubtless are so. It takes energy and determina- tion to break loose from the environment of a lifetime, and to build a new home thousands of miles away under unknown con- ditions — this even with a paternal government to aid. From Omsk westward to the Ural Mountains, about 800 miles, extends the Baraba country, the great producing region for for- eign markets. In two provinces from Omsk west there are es- timated to be about 12 million head of stock, one-half sheep, one-quarter cattle, and one-quarter horses with nearly a quarter of a million camels. Tons of Butter Are Shipped Each Year to Europe The country is one of quiet beauty, luxuriant in vegetation, interspersed with groves of birches, willows, and alders, its soil evidently of great fertility and apparently equally divided be- tween stock-raising, grain-growing, and dairy farming. Here and there were visible the rounded tents of the Khirgis, but in general the region along the railway has been taken up by pioneers, whose new huts and cultivated fields are much in evi- dence. There was a constant succession of attractive sights: Bands of dromedaries, troops of ponies, stretches of purple heather, herds of cattle, scattered Khirgis tents, groves of white birches, fields of grain, files of carts, and miles upon miles of fragrant white lilacs. The shipments to foreign markets from the Baraba region consist almost entirely of meat and butter. While the greater portion of the meat goes to St. Petersburg and other cities of European Russia, yet large and increasing shipments are made to Germany and England. The most wonderfully developed industry in west Siberia is dairy farming. The latest methods and most improved ma- chinery are used in the production of butter. The shipments to foreign markets are increasing year by year. More than 65,000 tons of butter are shipped to Europe annually. The butter is of RUSSIA 91 the finest quality and commands the highest prices in England and in Germany, where the demand is steadily increasing. Cheliabinsk, at the eastern foot of the Ural Mountains, is the point at which the western section of the Siberian Railway bifur- cates, the newer road running to St. Petersburg via Ekaterinburg and Perm, while the older main line, crossing the Urals, con- tinues via Samara to Moscow. Cheliabinsk is the point from which were distributed in for- mer years the exiles to Siberia. In these later days it has been made a resting place for immigrants, of whom it is estimated that about 4,000,000 have passed through the city. There are bar- racks, hospitals, laundries, baths, and summer camps, vv'here everything essential for the health and necessities of the immi- grant are provided. Twenty-five hundred can be comfortably cared for in winter and thirty-five hundred in summer. Crossing the low-crested Urals at 1,800 feet elevation, the plains of the Volga were found unattractive as compared with Siberia, while the peasants seemed inferior, in appearance at least. Although the city of Toula exhibits Russia in its new role of industrial establishments, all were glad when, practically on schedule time, the Transiberian train rolled into the great Koursk depot of the holy and busy city of Moscow. Of unique and absorbing interest was "little mother" Mos- cow, with its praying pilgrims, countless icon-decked chapels, with its multi-colored houses and holy sanctuaries, culminating in the church-crowned walls of historic Kremlin, with their glittering cupolas and towers brightly beautiful in green and gold ; but, however, they were symbols of a vanishing past. One's thoughts turned from these sensuous attractions to the things of the present and near future, exemplified by the vast em- pire just crossed; for Siberia, somewhat relieved from the dead- ening bonds of autocratic officialdom, is teaching individual re- sourcefulness and independence through its vast plains, dense forests, lofty mountains, and great rivers. Slowly but surely the fuller, freer life of Asiatic Russia is bringing into higher and harmonious relations with its environment the godlike soul of 92 SELECTED ARTICLES THE REAL SIBERIA' Exile, Prisons, and Snow rise before our minds at the mere mention of the word Siberia, but we are told, these preconceived notions are now radically wrong. The Russian Horace Greeley of to-day is wont to say, "Young man, go East." East to Si- beria, that pleasant land of promise, which fidouard Blanc, the well-known explorer, tells us in the Paris Annales de Geographie, so strongly resembles our own Golden West. None the less, the colonization of Siberia is but a matter of yesterday. Mr. Blanc writes : The real colonization started with the year 1896, when the Transibe- rian railroad reached the river Ob, and a special law, dated April 15 of that year, permitted the farmers of European Russia to settle in the open re- gions. At the same time, the whole system of criminal transportation was modified. With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the entire movement suddenly came to a stop, to be started again almost as suddenly in 1906, when, for the first time, the isolated efforts of the gov- ernors of the various provinces were systematized and the problems of transportation and irrigation seriously taken up by the central government. This sudden zeal for colonization on the part of the Russian government was due to an agrarian crisis resulting from the rapid growth of population in European Russia, so great that the peasants complained that they had not land enough to keep themselves and their families from starvation: The Russian government was therefore forced to open new territories in order to avoid a revolution. In 1906, a special Department of Coloniza- tion was established, and, with an annual appropriation of $500,000,000, it has done marvels in Asia. The Czar, to show his personal sympathies with the new colonization movement, made the farmers a present of his Imperial Altai Domain, which had been in his family for more than a century and embraces a territory almost as large as that of France and able to support over 6,000,000 colonists. . . . Siberia, up to 1906, was practically an empty country. Besides the sparsely settled native tribes of the Yakuts, Samoyedes, Tungus, and Kara Kirghiz, there were only a few functionaries, political delinquents, hunters, and fishers, and a handful of colonists. The arrival in quick succession of several millions of farmer families revolutionized the whole administration of the vast territory. The elaboration of a new code is contemplated, and it is more than probable that Siberia will gradually evolve into a kind of Russian Canada or Australia. The average acreage allotted, in the first stage of colonization, to the family of five (including three males) was about no acres; these had to be reduced gradually to 20-25 acres. * Literary Digest. 53:1401. November 25, 1916. RUSSIA 93 The Russian villages often send a representative as advance agents. The government advances about $400 to each family for transportation, con- struction of farm buildings, and purchase of cattle. The colonization of Siberia has been rapid and successful, how rapid can be seen from a few of Mr. Blanc's figures. In one year, 1903, 111,338 immigrants passed through the frontier town of Tcheliabinsk, in 1907 the figures had risen to 752,812, while the city itself had grown from 8,800 inhabitants in 1893 to 70,500 at the present time. Going into further details, Mr. Blanc writes : Western Siberia, comprising the two provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk, has, of course, received the largest immigration contingent, for it is, to a certain extent, the continuation of European Russia. Central Siberia is much less favored than the steppes situated north of Turkestan. This latter province itself has been almost overlooked by the emigrant, and this for the natural reason that the country has a dense native population, which combines the cultivation of agriculture, commerce, and industry with rare success. The province of Syr-Darya alone attracted some Russian colonists: 3,500 in 1908, 5,000 in 1909. As soon, however, as the Orenburg-Tashkend Railroad line will have reached the region, with its terminal at the entrance- gate to China, and the great irrigation work, started some time ago, will have been completed, the country will be able to receive its proper quota of the surplus population of the European provinces. These folks will join, there, among others, the curious colony which is composed of the descend- ants of the Nestorian pioneers, dating back to the Middle Ages, German Mennonites who settled in those regions half a century ago, and, finally, Chinese refugees who fled from their fatherland, fearing the consequences of their participation in the various lebellions against the Peking Govern- ment. The colonization of eastern Siberia offered, relatively speaking, the greatest difficulties. A couple of years before the outbreak of the war with Japan, Russia attempted to establish a strong colony, ready made, with a Viceroy as governor, at the eastern terminal of the Transiberian Railway, to secure the control of northern China. The issue of the war crossed the program. But the Russian bear, by no means discouraged and not fearing the arctic climate, climbed up to the slopes of the left shore of the Amur River, a rich forestland never trod heretofore by a European foot. The three provinces of Amur, Maritime Province (Primorskaya), and Transbaikalia received from 1906-1909 an immigration of 61,000, 154,000, and 7.175. respectively. . . . The law of 19 13, granting the colonists individual property rights, will, no doubt, present one of the safest guaranties of success in this gigantic work of redeeming Siberia and the Asiatic steppes for the benefit of the European settler. 94 SELECTED ARTICLES SIBERIA IN WAR TIME* The last decade of the nineteenth century had witnessed a change. Russia — official Russia — had moved. The Transiber- ian railway had acted on the nerve-centres of the Umb, towns had been roused from their lethargy, and there was a general feeling that the dawn was near. That it was delayed was due rather to outside influences than internal volition. True, Ger- many, with her usual perspicacity, was already arranging to cap- ture the nascent markets, but, as has ever been her policy, her campaign was directed towards the disposal of her own manu- factures in preference to the utilisation of Siberia's latent re- sources. England remained aloof; she was still under the spell of the sensational novelist and the penny-a-line writer, whose stock-in-trade consisted of snow, convicts, wolves and a brutal soldiery. Then came the war with Japan — for Siberia a blessing, since hundreds of soldiers from the West crossed the Urals to defend the fatherland, and remained as settlers in the Trans-Baikal districts. But their number was as a drop in the ocean as com- pared to the territory open to occupation, and for strategic rea- sons it was urgent that the frontiers, at least, should be well populated. Cossacks there were, but the essential features of permanent colonisation were absent. Thus arrived the era of assisted immigration which, in the main, has been satisfactory, though at great cost to the Imperial treasury. Certainly no complaints could legitimately have been levelled at the methods employed to ensure the newcomers the best possible chances in their fresh venture. Apart from land grants and free transit, apart from farm equipment, machinery and buildings, practical assistance in all branches of agriculture was forthcoming from a paternal Government. In fact the colonists were dry-nursed to a degree which, in the opinion of many fitted to judge, was liable to destroy initiative. Naturally, also, there were failures. Some sections of the country were found, too late, to be unsuitable for settlement owing to the swampy character of the ground; some parties of immigrants (as far as possible groups were always recruited from the same villages) lost heart, suffered from unendurable home hunger, * By Marjorie and Alan Lethbridge. Soul of the Russian, p. 149-53. RUSSIA 95 and gave up the struggle. But on the whole the scheme was successful, only there was not enough of it. Remember that Canada, prior to the war, was touting for fresh blood, not from Great Britain only, but from Europe in general, that same Canada which had long been in process of evolution, and which now boasts of one of the most progressive civilizations of the world. Then recall the fact that Siberia has hitherto lacked the vitalising stimulus of foreign immigration, and has been dependent solely upon parent effort. Her immi- grants have been agriculturists, pure and simple. The element of the artisan, the constructive element, that is to say, has been lacking. Ever has that been the case with Russia. Her people are of the land, and though they have conquered millions of acres with the plough and the spade, unaided, that method does not spell the rapid advance which has distinguished the newly-opened regions of the Canadian West. As time passed the Siberia settle- ment became the town, and it was then that outside enterprise stepped in and completed the edifice. For its completion was re- quired practical organisation, and the Russian is a theoretician from birth. Hence, the Danish control of the Siberian butter market, the German control of the grain, the American control of machinery for agricultural purposes, and the British — their con- trol in the future depends literally upon their own determination. For with the advent of war came a great change, a sudden upheaval, which not only dislocated things as they were, but completely disassociated what had been from what was to be. On that day the endless Siberian steppe heaved a sigh of relief as the Teutonic influence, which had taken all and given nothing, passed forever from its midst. At no time was there panic as to final issues. There was surmise, certainly, and a reassess- ment of resources. The harvest was swiftly and effectively garnered by the womenfolk. Immense troop movements in no wise taxed the food supply. There was enough and to spare for all— in fact the Siberian peasant for the first time tasted his own butter and approved of it. Then commenced the arrival of strangers from afar — prisoners. They came not in hundreds, but in thousands, and the manner of their reception was in fullest accordance with the Russian tradition, which is most effectively translated into the common phrase parcere suhjectis. Mean- while, the provincial governors had issued proclamations ex- 96 SELECTED ARTICLES pressly stating the fact that these quondam enemies were not Germans — that they were, in fact, first and second cousins of their own by nationality, who had been pressed into the firing line against their kinsmen by force majeure. And the proclama- tions concluded with appeals to the inherent kindness and sympa- thy of the mujik to treat these uninvited guests as he would himself like to be treated under similar circumstances. A motley crowd they were. Ruthenians and Poles from Ga- licia, Slovaks and Southern Slavs from Hungary, they were mak- ing acquaintance for the first time with territory to which, by sentiment and nationality, they were allied. As prisoners they were under no obligation to work ; they were, so to speak, boarded out, their expenses being defrayed by the authorities. If they liked to work, however, they could, and thereby could earn money. That was the position, and thus was the seed sown. The strangers quickly discovered that their speech was of a common origin, and that, without much difficulty, not only could they make themselves understood, but that it was a milestone on the road towards friendship. And thence it was borne in upon their intelligence that they were more literally at home in this distant land than they had ever been under the domination of Austria. Speedily they grew to understand, respect, and ap- preciate the innate kindness which is the hall-mark of the Si- berian peasantry. Even the vast steppes seemed to smile a wel- come to them and bid them dwell upon the future rather than on the past, and in truth no country can be more compelling in its loveliness than Siberia in the early summer. What wonder then, that almost subconsciously these men dropped into their allotted niches as though of the country bom! Now they were, many of them, industrialists. They had learned trades, they could read and write, they were hardy, and, in fact, they had the makings of ideal colonists. That is pre- cisely what they have become. Without difficulty they found congenial and remunerative employment. With zest they occu- pied themselves with the tasks of those called away for military service, and by their industry they have already actually estab- lished fresh undertakings of precisely that character for which the need was most urgent. To give an instance : at a large mine near Pavlodar, no fewer than five hundred of these prisoners, so-called, are being employed, and the manager, a Briton inci- dentally, besides being enthusiastic over their steadiness, has RUSSIA 97 been enabled by their skill to start a new and complicated process of ore extraction. Thus it is no exaggeration, speaking broadly, to say that these victims of the war have provided just that complement to the existing Siberian population which was, to a great extent, lack- ing. A vast industrial army — its numbers must be enormous — has entered Siberia for Siberia's good, an army which intends to remain, which is thoroughly happy and content, and which, after the war, will connect up the broken threads of its family life and will bring its kindred to its new home. That will spell a fresh acquisition of excellent material and a corresponding ad- vance of the clock as regards Siberian development. Had Aus- tria wished to prove a friend indeed to Russia, she could scarcely have devised a more happy solution of Siberia's industrial prob- lem. NEW PORTS AND RAILWAYS IN RUSSIA' Russia, as is well known, has for years desired improved access to the open ocean, an ice-free seaport to the north, and the war has hastened the realization of this long-cherished pro- ject. Although the Arctic Ocean is the last place in the world where one would expect to find an all-the-year ice-free port, Novo-Alexandrovsk (formerly Catherine Harbor), on the Kola Peninsula, in Lapland, is not only free from ice the year around, but affords a safe and convenient terminus for the trade with America and England. This harbor is situated about 200 miles east of North Cape, in Norway, on an indentation of the Murman Coast of the Kola^ Peninsula, which closes the White Sea from the north and forms a sort of eastern continuation of the larger Scandinavian Penin- sula. Although Novo-Alexandrovsk is even farther north than Archangel, lying well within the Arctic Circle, the so-called Gulf Stream, which here reaches the last stages of its journey, pre- vents the formation of more than a thin film of ice, and the mouth of the bay is always open. Russia long ago saw the advantages of a port at this spot, and the outbreak of the war gave the matter a new importance. The Government at once decided to connect this harbor with Petro- grad by an efficient railroad. American engineers and contractors 1 By P. P. Foster. Review of Reviews. 53:709-11. June, 1916. 98 SELECTED ARTICLES were consulted and thousands of men were engaged for the work, which was begun simultaneously at both ends. The railway was pushed forward with great energy in spite of the great difficulties presented by the nature of the ground (a land of morass and swamps), the lack of population, supplies, and other causes. The railway runs from Ivanka, south of Lake Ladoga, lo Petrozavodsk, on the west side of Lake Onega, and thence to Soroka, at the southwest corner of the White Sea. This section is already completed, as well as the section running south from Catherine Bay to Kandalaksha, at the northernmost comer of the White Sea. The intermediate section is the most difficult one, owing to the prevalence of lakes and swamps, but it is probable that the present summer will see the completion of the entire line. Even as it is, the transshipment of freight from Kanda- laksha to Soroka over the White Sea will greatly relieve the pressure at Archangel. The general direction of the new line to the Arctic Ocean is nearly due north from a point about eighty miles east of Petro- grad. The whole length of the line will be about 650 miles, and it will be standard-gauge and double-tracked throughout. The military value of this new warm-water port cannot be overesti- mated, for the opening of the new harbor and the extension of a railway to this point will remove the final obstacle to the con- tinuous reception and dispatch of munitions and supplies, an immense advantage to Russia and her allies. Eventually this port will greatly increase Russian export trade in agricultural and dairy products, which has been shut off when winter closed the doors at her other outlets. Novo-Alexandrovsk is 400 miles nearer the Atlantic than Archangel, its temperature is more equable, and the railroad connects directly with Petro- grad. The construction of the Novo-Alexandrovsk-Petrograd Railway is a triumph for American engineering, for not only is it being built under tremendous difficulties by American engi- neers and contractors, but most of the rolling stock and the great Mallet locomotives, fitted to burn wood, come from this country. RUSSIA 99 ECONOMIC RESOURCES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE* First of all in the extreme north, from the White Sea to Bering Strait, there lies the region of the tundras — waste frozen marshes stretching inland from the sea for from three hundred to a thousand miles. It is often difficult to determine the point separating the land from the sea, for the surface of the ground is frozen some forty feet deep ; even the heat of summer can thaw only about two feet of top soil. The only possible vegetation consists of moss and a few berry bushes — scant food for the millions of birds and beasts of all kinds that flock northward in July and August to escape their enemy, the hunter. By the end of August, however, the heavy frosts set in, and the tun- dras become a barren, lifeless desert, covered with snow for hundreds of miles, with never a living speck of any kind on which to rest one's eyes. To the south of the tundras is the great coniferous forest belt, which stretches from Finland to the Sea of Okhotsk. At its western end, where it is more settled, this is perhaps the most beautiful part of the great Russian plain. The countryside is dark with the shadows of the fir trees, but frequently shot with the light, lithe trunks of silver birches. The aspect of the land, too, is slightly rolling in parts, and cradled between these slight elevations there are thousands of charming little lakes fringed around with reeds. In Siberia, the forest region is called the taiga, which means a vast, more or less unknown surface, covered with dense, impass- able forests. Heavy underbrush, fallen trunks, and endless quantities of game are its chief characteristics. Comparatively little of the taiga has been reclaimed, that is, turned into farming land. One reason is that the climate here is so extreme and the winters so endlessly long. TiLe_celjLi§_so intense that an occa- sional tree splits open, making a noise like the report of a pistol. It is 50 6old that the warmth from the body of a bird, as it rises from the ground, will leave a jtre^.pf steam. Added to this is the annoyance from the swarms of insects characteristic of Arctic summers. The pioneer settlers had to live in houses filled * By E. K. Reynolds. Geog^raphical Review. 1:249-65. April, 1916. 100 SELECTED ARTICLES with smoke to get any relief from them, and they had to build huge bonfires in the pasture lands to protect the cattle. Vpf ihis fpiQ^ ^>'ffnff of tbp grf'at*"^'^^ t*-p?gi^*-ps in Russia's long HstjofjaatuxaLresaurcjes. In round figures it is said to represent ninety million acres of m.a gnific-ent ^.timber. That is less than one-tenth of all the timber resources of the Empire, which are estimated at ^^^ZJ^^ ^' ^^''^^^^^ billjfl^, acres. In addition to the great northern forest belt, there are extensive forests on the Urals and the Caucasus. The trees of the taiga are pines, firs, spruces, larches, and allied species, intermingled here and there with vari- ous kinds of birches, aspen, and a few other leafy trees. At its western end, in the central provinces of Russia, the taiga abuts upon the mixed deciduous forest which covers all of cool-tem- perate Europe. Oak, maple, elm, ash, and poplar are the chief trees. The Mediterranean vegetation of southern Crimea and the eastern Black Sea littoral contains such species as the cork-oak and the yew. Even to guess at the actual value of these forests would be futile, for they are barely touched as yet. Nevertheless, Russia has exported yearly of late $81,800,000 worth of timber of vari- ous kinds, principally to England, Belgium, Germany, and Austria — this in spite of the enormous home consumption. All northern and central Russia is built of wood, stone being scarce and in- accessible. It is said that all Russia burns down every seven years ! The Russians use wood almost exclusively as fuel, both on the railroads and for heating. It is interesting that in renting an apartment one pays a round sum which includes so many cords of wood for heating purposes. The Russians also employ wood very extensively for utensils and implements of various kind^. Fortunately, there are forest preservation laws. These do not enforce the replacing of trees, as is the case, for instance, in Germany, but a forest cannot be cut more than once in a period of eighty years. In any case, Russia has an abundant supply of timber for the present and a good bit of the future in her great forest regions, enough for herself and her friends. These same regions are a source of great wealth for a second reason. They are teeming with game of all kinds. Hunting, therefore, is naturally the means of support for many, whether Great Russian peasants in the west, Siberian hunters and trappers in the east, or wild tribesmen in the forests of the Urals or out- of-the-way places of the Empire. Here, again, it is impossible to RUSSIA loi ascertain the extent of the hunting done, except from the skins and birds that are brought to market. There are regular centers for trading in skins. Vnkiif«s^ jn pa«stprn Siberia is one of the largest markets, and there is a fair held in Irbit, in the Urals, every year, which is given up entirely to barter in skins. Here the traders buy up the sables and ermines for which the Ostiaks have hunted along the Ob, or the Tatars and Soiols in the Altai ranges, or 'the Yakuts in the region of the Yablonoi or Stanovoi Mountains. The variety in the game is astounding. The skins range from $10.00 for Arctic fox to $50.00 for dark sable. With this abundance of supply, it surprises at first that furs ready for wearing apparel should be so expensive in Russia. The reason for this is that no furs are dyed in Russia. The skins are sent mostly to Leipzig, prepared and dyed, and then shipped back to Russia, laden with duties. On the outskirts of the forest zone, in the provinces of Vo- logda and Yaroslavl (east and southeast of Petrograd) and in the Baltic provinces, lies the great flax-growing country — 4.0.^0.000 acres given up solely to this industry. Flax has been grown here for centuries and has given to Russian linen its high reputation. The flax for the finer uses comes from the Baltic provinces and that for the coarser products principally from Vologda, the home of the strikingly beautiful Russian laces, drawn-work, and em- broideries which have brought to the outside world a realization of the unusual artistic ability of the Russian peasant. To the south of the forest zone in European Russia and west- ern Siberia, lies the open country, usually known as the steppe region. At the very mention of the name "steppe" many assidu- ous readers of pseudo-Russian fiction will smile knowingly and conjure up visions of a Russian Wild West — overrun with ferocious Cossacks, and probably a sprinkling of Kalmyks. As a matter of fact, however, the wild riders of the plain have been superseded by the farmers. The plow has robbed the horses and sheep, even in the southernmost parts, of their fertile pastures. In traveling southward now one sees nothing but farm lands, fields of grain everywhere, until the very edge of the Black Sea is reached. The steppe is principally the granary of Russia. Hundreds ancT tKousands of tons of wheat, rye, oats, and barley are harvested every year. In the crop of 1914 there was nearly 400,000,000 hundredweight of spring and winter wheat alone. Some of the best grain-raising tracts are found in the "black- 102 SELECTED ARTICLES earth" region, the chernoziom. This is a band of unusually fer- tile land, stretching from the neighborhood of Kiev in south- western Russia in a general northeasterly direction to Tambov and the middle stretches of the Volga and somewhat beyond. It covers an area of 270,000^000 acres and, if farmed to its fullest extent, could more than feed the whole population of Europe. To the south and east, though the climate is much drier, the grain is very good and plentiful. It was from these driest parts of the grain-producing country that Russia sent help to our state of Kansas when the continued droughts there had ruined the en- ' tire crop. The state was in a very sad predicament for a time. The situation was saved, however, by introducing the Russian grain, which had adapted itself to drought, and could therefore flourish in Kansas. / The best wheat comes from Siberia. The frozen ground thaws with the rays of the summer sun and gives to the grain a steady but just sufficient supply of moisture to produce a full, but firm wheat. Western Siberia is given up more to Jiay fields than to wheat fields. This is the center of the dairy industries. In 1913, 123,000,000 pounds of butter were exported — enough nd% only to feed Russia, but also to send to England and, in small amounts, to the United States. To the south of the steppes of western Siberia lie Russia's Central-Asian possessions, the fourth largest cotton-producing_ area of the world. Since ancient times this territory has been irrigated and cotton has been raised here, though not in very great quantities. Russia used to obtain most of her cotton from China. Now the tables are somewhat turned, and many of the blue cotton coats worn b}'' John Chinaman come from Russia. There has been a great increase in cotton growing in Central Asia and in eastern Transcaucasia; during the last decade the sowings have multiplied by three hundred and fifty times. Although over 1,300,000 acres, with a yield of over 91,250,000 hundredweight, are planted, the domestic supply is not equal to the demand, and nearly half of Russia's supply of raw cotton has still to come from abroad, from America or the British possessions. Central ^§ia, particularly Tiixk£Siaar-is also" the original home of RussiaYi silk. From time immemorial the raising of Bagdad cocoons and the weaving of silk have been a staple means of sup- port for the population. From Persia, Russia took a section of RUSSIA 102 her silk-producing country when the Caucasus was conquered, and with it the province of Erivan, whose silks were famed even in the old epic tales of Russia. A great many cocoons, of the Italian variety, are raised in southern Russia. The industry, however, is quite sporadic, and it is difficult to know exactly how much is produced there. The total yield of cocoons in all three of these areas amounts to nearly 160,000 hundredweight a year. The fact that here, as usual, the domestic supply cannot meet the demand agrees strangely with the fact that Russia in 1913 ex- ported $2,322,QQajK£)rth of cocoons, in raw silk and silk fabrics. The reason is that Russia has not yet built enough silk-winding factories. Sfie is still dependent on foreign countries, France particularly, for fine silk fabrics and for wound silk (which is often made from Russian cocoons!) Since the construction of the Transcaspian railroad, which opened up markets in European Russia, and consequently abroad, for the products of Russia's Central-Asian possessions, these regions have proved themselves a source of great wealth, not only because of their cotton and silk, but also because of the magnificent fruit which is being raised there in increasing quanti- ties — luscious and fragrant apples, which turn translucent in the sun, apricots, pomegranates, figs, etc. The gardens of Central Asia are able to grow an extraordinary variety of products. Fruit culture is also increasing in the Caucasus and southern Russia ; extensive orange plantations have been set out, and their fruit has become extremely popular now that the war has cut off the usual supply of oranges from Italy. Land is being reclaimed and set out in fruit farms around Astrakhan. The Crimea, with its extremely mild climate, has, of course, always been a great fruit-growing center; and Bessarabij t. near the Rumanian fron- tier, is particularly noted for its apples and vineyards. The Russians are very fond of fruit, particularly dried, or in the form of fruit pastes or preserves, often using jam in their tea instead of sugar. The real Russian tea, not that generally known to us and which comes to Russia from China, is being grown now in fairly large quantities. In 1913, 2,130 acres in the Caucasus, on the Black Sea coast, produced nearly 1,200,000 pounds. Russia is the only tea-growing country in Europe. The plantations, started by Chinese workers, are growing quickly and giving very satisfac- tory results. ■IP4 SELECTED^ ARTICLES , , , f. Tobacco is raised either from native, American, or Turkish seeds. In 1912 there were over 175,000 acres under tobacco, in southern Russia, Siberia, and CenlranSsta, with an annual yield of over 2,350 hundredweight ; seventy per cent of this is grown from native seeds. This tobacco is called makhorka; the ordi- nary peasant smokes it, and it is recognized from afar because of its extremely pungent odor. American and Turkish tobacco is also raised in southern Russia and in the Caucasus. These are but a few items in Russia's vast storehouse. She has nearly 2,000,000 acres in sugar beets, Little Russia, the south- western region of tTi^ country, giving the highest yield and the best beet. / But she possesses one especial jewel which places her in the front rank of the wealthy nations of the world, her mineral re- sources — iron, oil, copper, gold, and precious stones. In the province of Ekaterinoslav, north of the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, lies in the great Donetz coal basin, the largest coal field in Europe, containing about a billion tons of flame and coking coal and two and a half billion tons of anthracite. These are the best exploited of the coal mines of the Empire, because of the facilities of transportation and because of their close proximity to enormous beds of iron ore. This region, from being pastoral and agricultural, has become the "black country" of Russia. Busy industrial settlements have sprung up, and, as at Pittsburgh, the sky at night is lurid from the flames of many gigantic blast furnaces. Then there are the great Dombrova coal fields of Poland, said to contain 855,000,000 tons ; and millions of tons of inferior coal in the Moscow region. The rest of the coal deposits are still almost inaccessible. The Caucasus, for instance, is very rich in coal and is said to contain billions of tons, while the coal fields in Asiatic Russia, particularly in the province of Irkutsk, are even richer. One hundred and fifty billion tons are claimed for that one region alone. The supply in the Urals is destined to play an important part in the industrial life of the country, as soon as railroads and labor make these mines sufficiently acces- ible. One must always add labor to the obstacles in the way of developing the mines, because, being primarily agriculturists, the miners prefer td^eave their work and go back to their farms dur- ing the harvest time, so that, while the grain is ripening and being gathered in, the amount of labor available for the mines is RUSSIA 105 reduced to a low figure. Nevertheless, in time, the seventy-five billion tons of coal in European Russia and the one hundred and seventy-five billion tons of Asiatic Russia are bound to come into exploitation in the natural course of events. This is also true of the iron resources of Russia. There are big iron centers in southern and cehtraT Russia, Poland, and the Urals. The largest deposits, and those with the purest ore, lie along the southern border of the province of Ekaterinoslav con- tiguous to the Donetz coal fields. This region supplies seventy per cent of the output of pig iron for European Russia, and although all the Russian ore is very easy to reduce, this ore is particularly so, and its fortunate position in regard to the coal beds nearby will probably soon make of the region one of the most important sections of Russia, and an iron famine, such as was experienced in 1913, will be made impossible. Somewhat the same happy juxtaposition of coal and iron and facilities for transportation obtain in the Altai, in western Siberia, and the temporary dearth of this valuable material will soon be over- come, and Russia will have enough and to spare. Another of Russia's valuable natural resources is her petro- leum. In this, America is her successful rival. Her principal oil wells, discovered centuries ago by fire worshippers, were badly injured by having water turned into them during the revolution of 1905-1906. In 1901 the output of Russian petroleum was 50.6 per cent of the whole world's product, while the American petro- leum was only 41.2 per cent. The Russian production in 1901- 1905 fluctuated 10 per cent, but the American production was de- veloping more rapidly, and Russia began to lose, so that in 1913 Russia had only 18 per cent and the United States 63 per cent of the world's output of petroleum, but the export of naphtha and naphtha products from Russia reached $24,000,000 in that year. Russia is also rich in copper, an uncomputed wealth. In this industry, America is again her more than successful rival, pro- ducing 55 per cent of the world's total output, while Russia pro- duces only 3>2 per cent. Russia uses about 4,000 tons of Amer- ican copper a year — after it has been metamorphosed in Germany into lamp-burners, etc. Nevertheless, Russia has extensive copper ore in the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, in the Altai Mountains, and in Siberia. In that part of the Urals which extends into the Arctic immense beds of copper have been dis- covered. io6 SELECTED ARTICLES Zinc and lead are also among Russia's undeveloped resources ; Poland, now in German hands, has the richest deposits, but the Caucasus is full of both metals. North of Vladikavkaz, on the northern slope of the mountains above Tiflis, large quantities have been discovered, and immense deposits of lead have been found in the sea coast region of the extreme east, north of Vladivostok. The smelting industry, however, is still quite undeveloped, and the crude ore is very often shipped to European Russia or western Europe to be smelted. Of precious metals and stones, Russia also has her share. The whole hem of her frontier towards the southeast and China is embroidered with gold, silver, platinum, and precious stones. In the Altai Mountains, part of the chain that closes in the Em- pire to the southwest of Lake Baikal, there are some of the largest gold mines of the world, surpassed only by those of Cali- fornia and the Transvaal, and all along the Lena River and the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk, there are vast deposits of gold. The Urals are, perhaps, the greatest treasure house, for besides the enormous quantities of metals, base and precious, which they contain, they have a wealth of beautiful semi-precious stones, clear and colorful. In Perm, a city in the Urals, a large stone- polishing industry has been developed on account of them, and here they are transformed into the most delicious and radiant drops of color. Then there are the fisheries, the salt works in the steppes, and an infinitude of industries, big and little, taking form, most of them being established by foreigners, for the Russian very frankly says that his industrial gift is very slight and languidly presents the samovar as the only Russian invention — an over- statement of the case perhaps, but the fact remains that for the understanding of machinery and business, he has continued to use other people's brains, so far mostly English and German. But whatever the tool Russia may choose, there is an extraordi- nary unanimity of belief in the greatness of her future. Is it to come from her potential economic wealth, or from the evident genius of the Slav race? By virtue of her national landscape or from the greatness in the soul of her peasant? To us Americans, Russia has long been an unknown quantity. Distorted expressions of her spirit have come to us from time to time, but of the conformation and content of her land we RUSSIA 107 have known little and cared less. Of this one seventh of the world's surface we have remained in almost total ignorance, but now, at last, we are trying to see the whole figure of this youngest child of Europe, both spirit and form, and we find we have many mutual bonds. We both know the hunting of game and the felling of trees in the forests of the north; we both feel the pulse of our national life as the wind sweeps over the grain- fields or the prairie pastures ; we both have our high mountains, deep mines, and swift-flowing, full-flooded rivers. Outwardly we are much alike. But there is a difference — a very great differ- ence. Russia is a country of age-long culture, a culture which she has preserved at the point of her bared sword, in the presence of death. We are the baby of golden-spoon fame ; all conditions have combined to favor the prosperous economic development of our country. In struggling to preserve her traditions, she has been unified, and strengthened. She has lived continually in the presence of the other world. History has made Russia into a heart. We have not been knit together as a race in the face of a common foe ; we have not had to suffer — history is making of us a brain. Yet, given the practically identical geographical con- ditions under which to live, it is only natural that we should lean towards each other and on the basis of what we share in common perhaps pave the way to an exchange of those things which we need from each other. Russia's needs are easily read : she is an all-on-land empire, and she needs railroads and more railroads; she needs machinery; she needs the organization and puslr~m business enterprises for which we have become famous. All that side of our life could be profitably shared by Russia; and for us, besides the material gains which needs must result from such relations, will come a know^ledge of the spirit which has made and kept her a great nation and which promises so much for the future. In human beings the balance between head and heart is known as genius, and something akin to genius might surely be expected from such a bond. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS AUTOCRACY AND BUREAUCRACY IN RUSSIA" "We, Nicholas II, by God's Grace Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russiao," etc. This is the official style of all imperial proclamntions, or ukases, of the Czar of Russia. It is a big job, this matter of be- ing the Little Father to one hundred and sixty millions of peo- ple, of many diverse nationalities, and spread over almost one- sixth of the landed surface of the globe. "You will find the burden heavy," said Nicholas I to his son Alexander, as he lay dying. And, indeed, it is a weighty load that rests on the shoulders of the Czar. It has caused the un- timely death of more than one of the predecessors of Nicholas II. His father, Alexander III, was strong and vigorous when the nihilist bomb brought about his accession in 1881. Attempts upon and threats against his own life, and the unceasing efforts made to combat the revolutionists, broke him down after thir- teen short years. His death was doubtless as much the result of his terrible experiences as if he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825 to 1855, welcomed the approach of death while his country was almost rent asunder by the Crimean War. Alexander I (1801-1825) started out with liberal impulses, and did more than any one else to free Europe from the domination of Napoleon, but his later years were filled with unhappiness over what he considered the ingratitude of his people. It is needless to give more examples of the unfortunate Auto- crats of Russia. The five who have held that title within the past century have all been men of honest intentions, and gifted with a genius for hard work, but less happiness has been their lot than that of the majority of peasants within the empire. Sa do not envy the Czar his autocratic power, for he himself is ihe victim of a system and circumstances. * By N. O. Winter. North American Review. 200:379-89. September, 19 14. no SELECTED ARTICLES Russian autocracy was not a spontaneous development, but was rather a growth. A study of history clearly shows that the Russian autocracy was a product of the people themselves. Furthermore, it may be said that in after years, when the people might have thrown off this yoke, they preferred to re-establish it. In the early days of Russian history, before the consolida- tion of the petty principalities, the death of each Grand Prince brought about a struggle among his various heirs until the strongest came into control of all that his father had governed. In the years 1228-1462 Russia suffered no fewer than ninety in- ternecine conflicts, and almost twice as many foreign wars. Beggars cannot be choosers, and a people who had endured so many troubles, as well as a hard alien yoke — that of the Tartars — would be thankful for any change that promised bet- terment and came from Moscow. That city had already become the home of the head of the Russian Church, and the Prince of Moscow was looked upon as the eldest son of the Church. Ivan III married Sofia Paleologa, a niece of the last of the Byzantine emperors. Sofia never gave up her title of Byzantine Empress, and she left to her descendants an unquenchable longing to es- tablish themselves again at Constantinople. In so far as it was possible, Sofia transferred her prestige to Moscow and shared it with her husband. From this time the Byzantine coat of arms, the double eagle, appears on the Russian Imperial seal. At the same time the outward ceremonial and pomp was increased. His son, Ivan IV, known as the Terrible, took the full Csesarean title — Czar is a corruption of Caesar — and proceded to eclipse all Byzantine records in cruelty, treachery, and superstition. Peter and Catharine, both called the Great, the first real reform- ers, accomplished even more for the ultimate benefit of auto- cracy than for the profit of the people. In theory autocracy, as represented in Russia, means that all the functions of power, the legislative, the administrative, and the judicial, are concentrated in the hands of the sovereign. Jn other words, the three functions of government into which our own co untry is divided are g*^^^^<^ vl phgnniT^ly npnn tHa T var" As a matter of fact, none of the Czars have ruled alone, unless it was Peter the Great. They have always had the support of a powerful ruling caste, or oligarchy ] In addition to theT func-~ tionsoFtHe secular government the Czar is also the official head of the Russian Orthodox Church — the Pope, so to speak. Ac- RUSSIA III cording to the school of sentimentalists, who uphold this form of government, the Czar is mystically commissioned and in- spired not only from the bosom of his own people, but even from a higher source. The proclamations from the throne al- ways have this semi-religious tone, as though the Autocrat and Divinity were in some way linked together. Even a slight consideration of the subject will show that such a government in reality is an impossibility, unless the sovereign should be gifted with the omniscience of the Almighty. It would be a physical impossibility for one man to decide all the details of government over the Russian Empire. For compari- son, consider all of our state governments wiped out; state governors, who were merely appointees of the central govern- ment; county and township officials, who were responsible only to the head government and not representatives of the people; eveiy detail over our entire country ruled from Washington by a single executive. And yet we have neither so many people nor so many problems to meet as Russia. In addition to the primary acts of government, not a single charitable institution can be founded, a business corporation formed, a school established, or a bed endowed in a hospital, without the solemnly registered consent of the Autocrat. No man, even though he might be superhuman, could make himself even superficially acquainted with more than a small fraction of the acts which are every day done in the name of the Czar of all the Russias. Where the oversight o f the Autocrat ceases, the power of the oligarchs, the men who have been able to captiiretHe prestige of the AuBcrat, begms^ and thev use it in snc hjyaWaXTtlPv^ necessary or desirab le. The system results in no responsibility and no individual competency. It strikes where it would not strike, is too late in being lenient, and never forsees what is under its very nose. In this twentieth century, with the acces- sion of immense Asiatic territories and their many complicated questions, it is impossible for the Autocrat to rule even as did Peter the Great in his time. But Peter the Great himself was an unusual man, gifted with almost superhuman energy and en- durance, while the present Czar, Nicholas II, is, according to those who have made the closest study of modern Russia, the weakest emperor that Russia has had for at least a century. "In Russia," says a writer, "the Emperor is often officially described as the 'Supreme Will/ but what is to happen if the Supreme Will 112 SELECTED ARTICLES ceases to will, that is, disappears? At that moment Autocracy- disappears too, and gives place to wholesale oligarchy." The Russian supporters of autocracy would say that the ex- ercise of the various functions of government is delegated to special departments, whose powers are rigorously determined by law. One less in love with the government would sum it all up in the one word Bureaucracy. There are bureaus for this, bureaus for that, and bureaus for the other. The bureaus are grouped under departments. At the head of each of the bureaus is a chief, and at the head of each department is a Minister. Under the chiefs are subchiefs, and so on down to the humblest clerk. Everything must be referred to an upper official; that official refers it to the one next higher; this official passes it on to his bureau; the bureau official relieves himself by submitting, it to the department, and so on. It is little wonder that every department is months behind with its work. At the head of this system there is generally some commanding figure, who exer- cises the real power of government through his ascendancy over the man who, by the accident of birth, occupies the throne. With a man who is himself rather weak and vacillating, it is much more easy for some strong personality to acquire such as- cendancy than if the sovereign himself were a man of indomi- table will. This man — or these men — not only exercise the ordinary function of an executive, but also have heretofore done all the acts which are ordinarily left to a legislative assembly by means of decrees and official ukases. The Duma has as yet not greatly changed this condition of affairs. Through their con- trol of the Judiciary they also practically exercise this most im- portant function of the government, which should dispense jus- tice impartially to the many milHons of subjects. Although the Emperor is officially regarded as its head, he does not take part in judicial decisions. The Senate, however, which is appointed and can be removed at any time by the Autocrat, is now the Supreme Court. It is divided into nine sections, of which two render judgment in political cases and charges against officials. Its members are generally men of rank and substance. At the head of the Bureaucracy, until the advent of the Duma, stood the Council of the Empire, which was composed wholly of nominees made by the Emperor and his Ministers. Some of the members are now elective. The initiative in all leg- islation was and still is supposedly left to the Czar, or at least ON RUSSIA 113 is promulgated in his name. After being thus launched, these projects are supposed to be studied by the Ministry interested, or by special commission appointed for this purpose, and after- wards in a general meeting. After this formality had been gone through with, under the old order, they were presented to the Emperor, together with the opinions of the Council, if it should be divided in opinion, and it was at this point that the strong will of the master-mind was exercised. The decision arrived at became the law. The Emperor might ignore the opinions of the Council, might refuse to listen to any suggestions, and pro- ceed to legislate independently. Regardless of the Duma, and promises made to the people for it, such an act was promulgated not more than a couple of years ago. There are a number of instances since the meeting of the first Duma in 1906. At the head of the civil administration are two bodies. One of these, the Council of Ministers, which consists of all the Ministers and any person whom the Czar likes to call to his aid, appears only occasionally. The Committee of Aiinisters, a larger body with wider and undefined powers, has taken its place. The Minister of the Interior, who has control over the police, press censorship, provincial governors, and the Zemstva, and the Minister of Finance, who has control over taxation, the tariff, and the liquor monopoly, together with the Procurator of the Holy Synod, are the governing chiefs. The other ministers are those of War, Marine, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Agricul- ture, Commerce, Ways of Communication, Public Instruction, the Imperial Household, and Imperial Domains. In local affairs there are two important centers of popular power — the zemstva and the mir. In the central government there is no representative of the people, and no tie, excepting that which would bind a master and subject. The Autocrat is a law unto himself, acknowledging no responsibility. But the fact that contradictory decrees have appeared in recent years, one closely following the other, shows that either his own mind is very unsettled or there is at least a temporary master over him. It is little wonder that with this arbitrariness and vacillation, the hatred of Bureaucracy is a sentiment that is rapidly growing among all classes of Russians. If some satisfactory vent is not given to this feeling, or the Duma made a freer body, the same resentment will eventually be directed against the throne. The influence of the Church, and the natural conservatism of the ag- 114 SELECTED ARTICLES ricultural peasants, have up to this time crushed such sentiment. The laboring classes in the cities are not so conservative. The central government, it may be said, is an unwieldy body, with a hopeless confusion o£ functions. .An unfortunate dualism of control and overlapping of authority likewise limits the ef- ficiency in many instances. The most noticeable overlapping is in the police service. The local police are under the control of the provincial governor, who is subject to the Minister of the Interior. The political police receive their orders direct from St. Petersburg. The political police have the authority to order the local police to help them. Hence the orders of the governor are inferior to those of the political police. The political police themselves are divided into the Defense Section and the gen- darmes, but they are under dual control. Between the various ministries there is no affection, and the officials are frequently personal enemies as well as rivals for the Imperial favor. The most noted instance in recent years was during the incumbency of Witte and Plehve. Both of these were men of strong will, great energy, and remarkable ability. The efficiency of each was lessened by the antagonism of the other. Add to the faults of the central body those of provincial administration, and the complexity increases. In most countries local government is self-government; in Russia, it is the field of the worst tyranny. Along administrative lines the Empire is quite artificially di- vided into many governments; these are subdivided into dis- tricts, which are again parceled out into "stations." At the head of each of the governments stands a governor, who acts for the central government in general by promulgating laws and making decisions which have the force of law in matters of public de- cency and safety. He also represents the Ministry of the In- terior, which makes him practically chief of police of the prov- ince. It is a powerful position, and is more often than not held by a soldier, who knows little about civil affairs, and is used only to the arbitrary methods of the army. If the governor does not become a tyrant, it is because there is a despotic su- perior over him. Each Ministry likewise has its own bureau in each province, which is independent of the governor, and these still further complicate the situation. The minor districts into which the government is divided are practically ruled by police colonels RUSSIA 115 nominated by the governor. Each official is an autocrat in a way, subject only to the autocrats over him. The "stations" are each under the control of a police captain. These men receive small salaries, and aim to recruit their finances by perquisites and "tips" of many kinds. There are many more officials than will be found in similar offices in the United States or England. The city of Moscow has a Governor-General, and there are some other local variations to the general rule. Absolute autocracy might be expected to result in a simple, even if rigid, form of government ; as a matter of fact, in Russia it is one of the most complicated systems of government to be found anywhere. "There are thousands of laws in Russia," says one writer, "but there is no law. The country is cursed with over-legislation of the most freakish and mischievous kind," The official ukases of the Czar and other officials, which have the force of law, fill scores of volumes. This condition would probably exist even if the autocracy was little less than divine, as it is in theory, be- cause the Czars themselves differed much in temperament. "Obedience to the sovereign power of the Emperor," says the Russian code, "is commanded by God himself, not only by fear, but in conscience." "What does religion teach us as our duty to the Czar ? " is a question in the catechism imposed on all schools. "Worship, fidelity, the payment of taxes, service, love, and prayer; the whole being comprised in the words worship and fidelity," is the prescribed answer. Complete freedom of religion is granted by the same code, but should a non-Orthodox church admit to its membership an Orthodox Russian, it would not only submit itself to reprisal, but will subject the Russian himself to a loss of all civil rights, and even imprisonment or exile. A recent law has granted a little more of religious freedom. Permission is now given to erect an edifice wherever there are fifty members of any de- nomination. But there is a clause forbidding all propaganda, and this clause is wide and vague. Propaganda is not defined, and would be left for interpretation to local authorities. Laws governing the Press fill a large volume, but special secret cir- culars are often issued covering the petty details of journalism. For a considerable period prior to the present national and international troubles the matter to be published in newspapers was not censored before publication, but the owner was held re- Ii6 SELECTED ARTICLES sponsible for what appeared. If the proprietor overstepped the bounds, he was punished by forbidding the publishing of adver- tisements for a period, thus taking away the principal revenue; by prohibiting the public sale of the journal; or by entirely sus- pending his publication for a limited period, or absolutely. This method does not always prove successful, for a journal sus- pended one day will appear a day or two later under another name, and oftentimes in a still more virulent tone. The gov- ernor in any province can issue a standing order forbidding a newspaper to say anything abusive of the government or publish any false news. A violation will bring a fine of two hundred and fifty dollars. The decision as to what comes under these heads lies with the governor. A series of such fines will soon ruin the average newspaper. One can justly say that the free- dom of the Press is still only comparative. The circulation of written or printed documents calculated to create a disrespect for the Czar are subject to severe penalties. Any disrespecting cartoon or slighting statement about the Czar in a foreign peri- odical will be blacked out before it is forwarded to the person to whom it is addressed. An American living in Russia told me of a recent experi- ence. A certain issue of Life reached him with a paragraph blacked so that it could not be made out. Curious to know what it was that aroused the ire of the censor, he wrote to the pub- lishers and inclosed the page. This blacked paragraph, the orig- inal article, and the American's letter were then printed. When this copy reached the subscriber in Russia, the whole article, ex- planation and all, had been treated as before. The original ar- ticle was simply a cartoon and harmless joke about the Czar. An absolute ignoring Oif the rights of the individual is a natural development of such a bureaucracy. They seem to have transposed the common axiom of a democratic government to read that it is better for ten innocent men to suffer than one guilty man to escape. Conditions have not changed much in spite of recent official ukases guaranteeing the rights of in- dividual freedom. On May i, 1912 — Labor Day — all men with- out collars were chased off the Nevski Prospect in St. Peters- burg on to the side streets, in order to prevent a demonstration of working-men. A few days later, while memorial serA'^ices were being held in one of the cathedrals of that city for the vic- tims of the Titanic, the Cossacks, four abreast, rode down the RUSSIA 117 sidewalks of the Nevski with their terrible whips in their hands, in an effort to antevert a meeting of the students who wanted to hold a memorial for some two hundred miners recently killed in the Ural Mountains. No one was hurt, as they got out of the way. This whip, called the nagaika, is heavy and solid, and made from twisted hide. At the butt is a loop for the wrist. Near the end is a jagged lump of lead firmly tied in the strands. When a Cossack rises in his stirrups to strike he can break a skull, and an ordinary blow is sufficient to slit the face or cripple for life. It is no wonder that the people run when they hear the cry "The Cossacks are coming." The passport system has not been modified. When in Mos- cow, just prior to the Czar's memorable visit in June, 1912, the police made a house-to-house search for persons without pass- ports, I saw squads of twenty and thirty persons — men, women, and children — marched through the streets between a solid phalanx of soldiers — poor peasants without these important papers. Most of them had come to the city in search of employ- ment. Thousands were thus placed under arrest — as many as three thousand in one night, according to an account that I saw in London papers. Most of them were sent back to their vil- lages, while others were held in confinement until the visit had ended. It was certainly a record "round-up." Cellars and at- tics were searched; the attics of houses along the hne of march were locked up, for fear some one might get out on the roof and throw a bomb. The manager of one large establishment told me that he was obliged to board up a fire-escape which he had built for the protection of his employees. A special police officer called on me and put me through a searching category of questions. It was done very politely and considerately, and even apolegetically, as if doing an unpleasant duty; and every stranger had the same experience. "The people have as good a government as they deserve," said several foreigners to me. I cannot believe it in the face of the facts set forth here. It is little wonder that in such a government official venality is not only a very ancient but a present evil in the Empire of the Czar. It is aggravated by the fact that officials are above the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and are only open to prosecu- tion by their superiors. As these officials may be guilty of the same offense, how can they be expected to take the initiative ii8 SELECTED ARTICLES against the minor official? The Crimean War opened the eyes of Alexander II to the corruption which had pervaded every de- partment of the government. That sovereign began the seem- ingly impossible task of cleaning his Augean stables. Much re- form was undoubtedly accomplished. The war with Turkey, a little more than twenty years later, showed that the same abom- inable conditions had grown up right under the eyes of that as- tute monarch. Officialdom was reeking with depravity. A quarter of a century later another great awakening came to Russia with the opening of the Russo-Japanese war. Like a deadly virus, corruption had spread throughout the entire politi- cal anatomy of the nation. The scandals in connection with the incompetency of the navy have been set forth by many writers. Some of the armor plate on vessels built in Russian ship-yards was made of wood instead of steel, an English authority states. Externally the fabric of Russian military and naval power was more imposing than it had ever been. The nominal expenditure had been increasing at the rate of fifty million dollars each year. The bugaboo of a powerful Russian navy and a nation with a million soldiers under arms had been frightening many govern- ments prior to that time. The menacing shadow of the Russian bear had caused many a European monarch to shudder. But the corruption reached down to the very lowest officials. The ordinary police are notably inefficient. "Every police- man," said more than one foreigner to me in Russia, "has his price." Their method was explained to me by one fellow-coun- tryman, who represents large American interests. The offices of the company were robbed one night, and the police were promptly notified. Everything was left in the disorder in which it was found for their inspection. No policeman appeared for two hours pr more, and then they came in droves. The first question the officers asked was, how much loss had occurred. This the manager told them he was unable to say until he bal- anced the books. The poHce then began to look through every paper and envelope that they could find, opening up those which were sealed and scattering the contents about. When protest was made at this useless annoyance, they said that the matter was now in their hands and they would make investigations in their own way. Other droves of police continued to come in, and it was several hours before they left to endeavor to find the robbers. The matter was never heard of again officially until RUSSIA 119 protest was made through diplomatic channels, and then only an assurance that a proper investigation would be made. The Russian officials are usually pleasant gentlemen. There is generally an air of indolence and indifference present in the office. There are many people about, smoking cigarettes and sipping at their tea. While this is being done, there may be a crowd awaiting their attention or that of the chief. It takes about three men to do the work of one. Each one waits for orders from some one else ; if orders do not come, it is safest to do nothing. Initiative will likely be punished. Each one feels that he is only bound to loyalty to his chief. In the government itself he has no part. If he is ambitious, obsequiousness is an excellent quality. But salaries are small, money is necessary, and opportunities for making money out of his office open up. The official is only human. Were local self-government estab- lished, there would undoubtedly be less corruption, for there would be responsible officials near at hand. The bureaus in St. Petersburg would not have to be consulted. The bureaus and ministries would not only be freed of much detail and annoy- ance, but blame would not be placed on them for every fault or neglect of a lower official. INSIDE RUSSIA* I had heard that all petty officials would hold out their palms ; I traveled about Russia and was impressed by the fact that, with the pleasant smile of those who regard the foreigner as a guest, my offers, almost without exception, were refused by policemen, gendarmes, customs' examiners, and soldiers. I bought a rail- road ticket and, wishing to resell it, I called one of the aged messenger "boys." I offered to give him all above 20 rubles which he could get for the ticket. He came back with 30 rubles, but would not take 10 of them. The old man stood before me with his gray head bowed. The interpreter said: "He wishes you to know that 2 rubles suffices — more would be disproportion- ate to the service rendered and unfair to your generosity." There is more of the heart than the pocketbook in the smiles of the Russian masses. »By R. W. Child. Collier's. 57:10-11-}- April 8, 1916. 10 120 SELECTED ARTICLES RUSSIAN MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISES^ Municipal enterprises in Russia embrace a large variety of business. Russian towns undertake the direct management of water-works, sewerage, lighting, slaughter-houses, scavenging, dispensaries and baths, the manufacture of bricks, stone quarries, butchers' and bakers' shops, pawnshops, flour mills, the building of country roads, warehouses for wood, oil, fuel and coal, print- ing offices, cheap restaurants, dairies and night shelters. There are municipal banks in 285 towns. The Russian laws encourage rather than impede towns from undertaking municipal enterprises, first, because of the absence of sufficient private capital and enterprise; and, second, because of the necessity for revenue which the towns cannot otherwise obtain owing to the restrictions on their powers of taxation. The charge for these municipal enterprises is generally a large one. The price of water ranges from 5 to 10 cents per 100 gallons; electric lighting from 14 to 18 cents per kilowatt ; municipal pawn- shops levy from 18 to 24 per cent on loans. The net profits de- rived from the municipal pawnshops for 191 1 amounted to $230,000, although their nominal capital was $5,350,000. ABOLITION OF THE RUSSIAN MIR' Communal land-tenure, which has played such an immense part in the history of Russia, and has left a deep mark on the character of the Russian people, has been for the last half-cen- tury the subject of an acute controversy between its adherents and its adversaries in Russian literature, ^ut it is especially since the promulgation of the edict of November 9-22, 1906, by means of which the Prime Minister, M. Stolypin, intended to abolish the mir, that the vast and complicated problem of com- munal land-tenure has aroused a particular interest all over Russi»C The late Premier attached great importance to this edict; he used to say that under its influence Russia would be entirely changed in twenty years, and that the working of this law could not be stopped "even with cannon shots. 'V^ 1 American City. 10:163. February, 1914. 2 By Boris Lebedeff. Contemporary Review. 103:81-91. January, 1913. RUSSIA 121 Whether this prophecy will prove to be correct or not, we cannot yet say; but we must admit that since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, no legislative act more daring and revolutionary has been carried out in Russia. And yet a measure of such im- portance was passed first in a purely bureaucratic way, without obtaining the sanction of the Duma, and became a proper law, accepted by the Duma, only four years later, on July 14-27, 1910. We will not discuss here the controversial points about the advantages and the drawbacks of the communal system. To en- deavour to give a true picture of what has been occurring lately in Russia in connection with the new law will be the object of this article. V^Before the revolutionary movement of 1905-1906 the Russian government regarded the mir with entirely different eyes, and considered it as the corner-stone of the whole political and economical fabric in Russia.'^It was recognized to be an his- torical institution, characteristic of the Russian nation, any alter- ation of which it would be dangerous even to attemptl^ Only the reactionaries, like M. Katkoff, held a different view, saying that the communal land-tenure hindered the peasant masses from differentiating into a richer class and the proletariat, and thus blocked the way for the development of a large industry in Russia — curiously enough the same view was taken later on by the Russian Social Democrats. Besides, apart from its his- torical value, the mir was a valuable asset for the government from the financial point of view. It is known that when the serfs were liberated in Russia they were granted land, for which they had to pay to the State during forty-nine years about £9,000,000 per annum. UThe village commune, with the "joint responsibility" of all its members, was considered then to be the surest means for collecting this money, as well as the rates and taxes, from the peasants. It was also the most convenient way of keeping them together as a separate class. *» When, in the 'nineties, the government intended to enact some reforms in the peasant laws, the Minister of the Imperial House- hold, Vorontzoff-Dashkoff, advised against touching the com- mune. "Before the liberation," he said, "the peasants believed in God, the Tsar, and the landlord; now they have instead of the latter, the 'mir.' " Individual peasants were, however, per- mitted to leave the commune, if they could pay at once all the money they owed to the Exchequer for their allotments. This 122 SELECTED ARTICLES was by no means an easy thing to do, and, in fact, few of them availed themselves of this right. The government was nevertheless disturbed by the small but steadily growing exodus from the commune, and by the transfer of the outgoers' allotments to speculators. Consequently, in 1893, the Minister of the Interior brought before the Imperial Coun- cil of the Empire a bill by which peasants were forbidden in- dividually to redeem their lands and to leave the commune with- out its consent. Defending the bill in his report to the Council, the Minister said that the mir was growing weak, and that the process of proletarisation was threatening the great masses of the people. He pointed out that strong measures were urgently needed for protecting the commune, which was a most valuable asset in the hands of the government. The bill became law in the same year, 1893. At that time the government considered it their duty to stand by the commune and to prevent its weakest members from be- coming paupers. The general policy of Alexander III, though strictly conservative, was in some respects intended to be favour- able to the peasants. The Emperor liked to call himself a "Peas- ant Tsar," and insisted that it was necessary to keep up the eco- nomic welfare of the peasant class, and to check the growth of the proletarian class. During his reign the capitation tax was abolished, the redemption payments were reduced, and the ex- cise on salt was diminished; while at the same time political re- action was in full swing, and special "land captains" (zemsky nachalnik) were introduced with a view of putting the peasants under the strong hand of the local administration. In 1906 the Government suddenly took a diametrically opposed view. It decided to protect the richer peasants^he "stronger elements," as M. Stolypin said in the Duma, by attacking the commune and by bringing administrative pressure to bear on it for the purpose of destroying it. This was the means by which the government tried now to solve the great agrarian problem, and to calm the uproarious waves of the peasant riots of 1904- 1905. The position of affairs requiring rapid measures, the gov- ernment abolished, on March 12-25, 1903, the "joint responsibility" of the members of the commune. Then, on August 11-24, 1904, corporal punishment was wiped out at last from the Russian, law; and on November 3-16, 1905, when the Constitution had already RUSSIA 123 been granted, the government freed the peasants from the pay- ment of what remained still unpaid of the redemption money for their allotments. However, these measures came too late and they proved to be insufficient, the chief reason of discontent amongst the peasants being the smallness of their allotments. wn The Statistics of Landownership in 1905, published officially by the Central Statistical Committee, we find that, in the fifty provinces of European Russia there were 1,067 million acres of land, out of which 40 per cent were owned by the State, the Church, and other institutions, 35 per cent bv the peasant com- munes, and 25 per cent by private persons.^ The population of these fifty provinces was at that time 109,331,600 out of which 77 per cent were peasants, and 1.5 per cent belonged to the landed gentry^ Each peasant household thus owned on the average about 27.5 acres of land, but at the same time there were about 2,200,000 peasant households, which had no land at all, and 2,900,000 which owned only 13.5 acres each. Altogether about 7,849,000 peasant households had an insufficient quantity of land in their possession, and, as was stated in the Second Duma, the peasants ought to have had 140 million acres more than they possessed at that time, to enable them to live on that land with their families. V There were two ways out of the difficulty. One of them was, to increase the area of land owned by the peasants, by aiding them to buy it from the landlords, or by selling or granting them allotments from the large domains of the State and the Crown. And the other was, to come to the aid of the peasants in ren- dering their agriculture more intensive, so that they should ob- tain more produce from the same surface of land. M. Stolypin's Government endeavoured at first — and quite rightly— to act in both these ways; but unfortunately the im- provement of agricultural technique was not understood as a change in the methods of tilling the land, but chiefly as a change in the forms of landownership: communal land-tenure was con- demned, and individual ownership had to take its place. The economical aspect of the problem was thus eliminated, and its political aspect was pushed to the fore. The government de- cided to create amongst the peasants a new class of conservative and economically strong individual proprietors, in order to check the SociaHstic "tendencies of the mir," which were held re- 124 SELECTED ARTICLES sponsible for the attitude of the peasants' representatives in the First and Second Dumas. In a speech deHvered in the Second Duma, M. Stolypin positively said "it is necessary to give to all those peasants who have not enough the chance of getting the quantity of land they require, on good terms, from the existing Land Fund." Such was the intention of the Government at that time. Accordingly, the Peasant Land Bank was to help the poorer peasants by buy- ing land from the landowners, and selling it to the peasants. By the Decrees of August 12th and 28th, 1906, about 21,600,000 acres of State and Crown lands were ordered to be transferred to the Bank for the same purpose. But, de facto, this was never done. A much smaller quantity of land was transferred to the Bank, and out of it only 856,000 acres were actually sold to the peasants. As regards the promised facilities for buying private land, the Bank had in 1905 in its possession about 4,050,000 acres of land already bought from the landowners, and at the same time about 22,410,000 acres were offered for sale to the Bank by the land- owners. But while the peasants, hard pressed by the land famine, were quite willing to buy as much land as possible, the Bank, on the contrary, steadily reduced its operations of acquiring land from the gentry: the more the peasants wanted to buy, the less the Bank was disposed to provide land from its own funds. Besides, the Peasant Land Bank, after having begun by favouring transactions with the village communes, changed its policy, and, after 1907, began to deal by preference with individual buyers. What was the reason of it all? It appears that when the peasant riots of the years 1904-1906 were suppressed, the govern- ment decided to give up the first item of their agrarian pro- gramme, which was to increase the quantity of land owned by the peasants ; they concentrated their attention upon the second item, namely, the attack on the commune and the creation of individual peasant-ownership. In the official Survey of the Activity of the District Land Commissions, published in 1910, we find that it was decided to continue "the liquidation of the State Land Funds only in those cases where the organisation of strong peasant households may be expected." And in 1910 MM. Stolypin and Krivosheyin, the Minister of Agriculture, after their joint journey through Siberia, reported to the Tsar that "at present the principal aim of the agrarian policy must be — not to increase the quantity of land RUSSIA 125 already in possession of the peasants, but to introduce order in the peasant households." The chief obstacle to the "introduc- tion of order" was found in the system of communal land-tenure, and it had to go. While protecting in this way the interests of the richer peas- ants, who were to become individual landowners — what was the government going to do with the poorest elements of the commune, with the landless proletarians, whose increasing ranks grew threatening, as the Minister of the Interior said in 1893? It was decided that they were to emigrate to Siberia and to colonize her vast and limitless spaces. It is needless to say that the organisation of emigration on a vast scale required from the administration a very great amount of work, energy, and foresight; otherwise the whole enterprise could only end in a useless waste of time, effort, and money. Such was really the case, as now appears from recent reports, with the emigration to Siberia. The latest statistics show that the number of emigrants to Siberia is rapidly decreasing. There are now far fewer than there were in 1908, and — what is still worse — more than one-half of last year's emigrants have already returned, not having found suitable land in Siberia to settle upon; and this — after having lost their homes and lands in Russia, and spent all the money they had. But perhaps the government have succeeded better in their policy of abolishing communal land-holding? Five years have already passed since the first promulgation of the new law passed to this effect, and it is interesting to see how it works, and how far the abolition of the mir has gone. Briefly stated, the substance of the new law is this. It does not really abolish communal ownership in Russia, but it grants great facilities to those members of the mir who prefer personal ownership to communal landholding, and who may desire to become individual proprietors. To begin with, in those com- munes where no general repartition of land-allotments had taken place since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the land was de- clared to be considered henceforth as held in individual owner- ship. Accordingly, every member of such a commune acquired the right to claim at any time the recognition of his rights of in- dividual ownership upon his share of what formerly was com- munal land. He could sell it either to his co-villagers or to strangers, who thus acquired rights on those common meadows 126 SELECTED ARTICLES and pasture grounds which remained undivided. As to those communes where a general repartition of land had taken place since the abolition of serfdom, communal land-tenure continued to be recognised by the State as such; but every member of the mir also could claim his portion of the communal land as personal property. The mir in this case had to satisfy the claim, even if it were against the will of the majority of its mem- bers. Otherwise, the case would be taken in hand by the "land captain," who would invariably decide it in favour of the mem- ber desirous to quit the mir. Active measures were taken, and quite a staff of land-surveyors and "assistant land-surveyors" was created, in order to quicken the procedure, as the govern- ment thought that their ordinary forces would not be sufficient to cope with the great exodus from the communes which they expected. The peasants, as is typical of them, took the new law in a quiet, good-humoured way, but they showed no disposition to break up the mir. In many cases the communes refused to give their consent to the separation; but they soon understood that they were helpless against the "outgoers," who had on their side the services of the land-captains and of the whole administration. Gradually, the number of those who wished to leave the mir be- gan to increase. Of course, there were many peasants who had long since severed all connection with the village, and had taken up some occupation in the town or elsewhere. These people at once availed themselves of the new law ; they received their par- cels of land as personal holdings and immediately sold them, either to their co-villagers or to land-speculators. But that was not the real object of the law, which was intended, not to elimi- nate those elements of the commune which were already dying off, but to create a new, healthy life in the villages. In many official documents, like The Land Settlement, 1907 to 1910, published by the Chief Board of Agriculture, "A Survey of the Activity of the District Land-Commissions," and others, as also in many articles recently published in the Russian reviews and magazines, we find interesting data which show the real position of affairs in the Russian villages under the new law. Thus from the table given in the foot-note we can see that up to June 1st, 191 1, nearly one-fourth part (23 per cent) of all the heads of communal households in Russia (2,160,867) had notified their desire of leaving their respective communes; but of them, RUSSIA 127 only 1,531,620, i.e., 16 per cent had adopted as personal property the land they owned in the commune. It appears at first sight as if communal land-tenure in Russia had sustained a great blow and was falling to pieces. But a more careful analysis of the facts brings us to an entirely different conclusion^It may not be known to English readers that in communal land-tenure each householder owns several parcels of land in different places, so that there may be a fair distribution of land of different qualities between all the house- holds. All arable land is usually divided, in consideration of its quality and its distance from the village, into three categories — good, medium, and indifferent — and each sort of land is divided in its turn into the usual three "fields" allotted to winter crops, spring crops, and fallow respectively, each member of the com- mune having his strips in each sort of land. This sub-division evidently offers great inconveniences for the peasants, and it is used as the chief argument against the commune, although the same scattering of plots exists in an equal degree in villages under a system of individual ownership of land. It is the result not of the commune as such, but of the fact that peasants live to- gether in compact villages, and not in separated farms ; but under communal ownership there is also this important compen- sation, that the fields become a common pasture-ground for the peasants' cattle, as soon as the crops have been harvested. With the usual want of meadows, this is one of the advantages of communal land-tenure. However, when the land that formerly belonged to some members of the commune has passed into their individual ownership, the narrow strips scattered in the different "fields," being unfenced, evidently represent an immense draw- back, and become a source of continual conflicts with the neigh- bours wh^ quite naturally look askance at those who have left the mir. The Chief Board of Agriculture are thus quite right in saying that the mere fact of receiving separate plots of land as personal holdings "does not guarantee the economical independence of the peasant; the liberation of the peasant's work from the com- mune can be reached only through his receiving his plots of land in one block in one place." The plain fact of leaving the mir certainly does not yet mean the constitution of an independ- ent individual ownership. The whole process of leaving the commune, therefore, con- snt i V/T 128 SELECTED ARTICLES sists of four different stages: (i) the notification of the desire to leave the mir, made to the village community; (2) the sanc- tion of this desire by the authorities, and the consequent transfer of the parcels of land into personal holdings; (3) a petition to the Land Commission about getting the separated parcels of land in one block in one place; and (4) the actual receiving of that block of land.^And unless these four stages are gone through, no peasant, who is anxious to get rid of the commune, can be really considered as a free, independent landowner. But up till January ist, 191 1, the number of peasants who applied to the Land Commissions for the necessary redistribution of land was only 729,603, or 8 per cent of all the communal householders in European Russia, and the number of those who actually re- ceived their lands in one block was only 319,148, or 2.6 per cent of the whole. We cannot say that this means much, when we remember the extraordinary energy with which the agents of the government worked to obtain the coveted results, and what pressure was brought upon the village communities in order to make the peas- ants leave the mir. Besides, it must be noted that even the numbers of peasants who merely declare their desire of quitting the commune, without going through the further stages, is steadily decreasing, ^n 1908 it was 840,059, while in the first five months of 191 1 it was only 114,447. It means that after the first moments of passivity and fear, the peasants are now begin- ning to resist the law more energetically; at any rate, they are in no hurry to free themselves from the "communal yoke," as was predictedv At the risk of wearying the reader with statistical quotations, I will permit myself to give a few more characteristic figures concerning twenty-two provinces of European Russia, where nearly 96 per cent of all the peasants live under communal land- tenure. These provinces represent the real stronghold of com- munal life in Russia, and it is most interesting to learn that in this vast region, which is typical of Russia, and includes Great Russia proper, the percentage of those peasants who have made the first non-committal step towards leaving the commune is even smaller than for all Russia. It is only 16.7 per cent, as against 23 per cent, of all the households ; and the number of thosp who have actually left the mir is even less than 2 per cent ! It means that in the twenty-two provinces, where the commune prevails, RUSSIA 129 hardly two households in each hundred have become individual owners, after four years of continual pressure exercised by the government. Of course, the position is different in those places where the commune was weak before the new law was passed. Such was the case in those Western provinces which had for a long time been under Polish rule or influence. Taking, for instance, the province of Kieff, we see that already before 1907, 91 per cent of the peasants were holding their lands in individual ownership, and only 9 per cent lived under communal ownership. In this province about one-half of the communal householders left the mir after the promulgation of the new law, but this has not materially affected the state of affairs which existed there before. Urhus we see that in spite of all the efforts of the government, and contrary to the expectations of the Russian Social Demo- crats, the Russian mir still exists, and shows no symptoms of decay. On the contrary, there is now all ever Russia a new and strong life developing within the communes : their members have been aroused to activity by the new law which threatened to break up their partnership, and they are beginning to practise more rational methods of agriculture, grass-sowing, the four- fields system, improved implements, and so on. They are also endeavouring to get rid of the usual defects of communal land- tenure, especially of that of having separate holdings situated in different places, far from their villages. For this purpose the so-called "group system" is now introduced — that is, the large communes, and especially the "compound communes," consisting of several villages, divide into independent groups, in order to avoid the wide scattering of their strips. V^ It appears, however, from the official figures that, although the Land Commissions were more frequently asked by the peas- ants to help the "group-land-settling," than to help the "outgoing" movement, they did the opposite and endeavoured to keep in check this new and natural development of communal life. Another important feature of the new law was that the Land Commissions were given the right to grant aids in money to those peasants who had left the commune and intended to settle on separate farms. In virtue of this right the Commissions dis- tributed, during the years 1907-1909, £450,000 in loans between 56,000 householders (about £8 per head), and £32,000 as free 130 SELECTED ARTICLES grants to 7,000 householders (about £4 per head). This money- was intended for the improvement of agricultural technique ; but in reality it was spent on the building of new houses, acquiring new implements, cattle, and so on. The methods of agriculture remained the same as they had been before. Another important difficulty arose in connection with the new law, when it had to be determined in whom the property rights upon the individual allotments should be vested. When the Duma and the Council of the Empire discussed the new land bill, much attention was given to the question, whether the parcels of land allotted to separate householders ought to belong to the head of the family or jointly to the whole family. In conformity with the principle of individual ownership on which the bill was based, the question was finally decided in favor of the head of the family. However, this clause of the law, so far as may be seen from the facts communicated to the press, became a source of very serious conflicts, and even dramas, amongst the peasants. Formerly it was the custom that the old peasants who could no longer work themselves did not interfere, as a rule, with the management of their households, leaving it entirely in the hands of their sons. Now, they felt themselves masters of the situation, since they had obtained a legal right of doing as they liked with the land. The law thus became the cause of many personal re- criminations, numberless quarrels, and even eventually of mur- ders. ^^t is also worth noting that in many cases the peasants who had left the mir expressed after some time their desire to return. As a rule they were received with friendliness by the "mother- commune," sometimes, on the condition of paying a certain fine of from £3 to £4.Kln the province of Voronesh, all the 234 "outgoers" of three villages went back to their communes. In one village the matter was more complicated: the mir flatly refused to receive back its seventy- four unloyal members, and the latter no longer wished to be individual proprietors ! The author- ities were puzzled, and did not know what to do. Then, by a resolution of the land-captain the outgoers were nevertheless in- corporated into the commune, but without the right of using the communal lands ! In another village those peasants who had left the commune under the influence of the land-captain, S0I4 their holdings, and soon became beggars; they then considered them- selves cheated, and their indignation against the new law was so RUSSIA 131 great that when the land-captain came again to the village for the further "propaganda" of new separations, he was received with insults — the result being that eight peasants were arrested and deported. Such cases were not isolated. 1/A.ltogether, from the data now published by the Land Com- missions, we can arrive at some general conclusions. The new law has undoubtedly contributed to the destruction of the com- mune in such places where communal ownership was already in decay ; and it has helped to eliminate from the mir those elements which had already begun to fall away. But in Central and Northern Russia, in the real stronghold of the commune, the influence of the new law is comparatively insignificant, and the antipathy of the peasants towards it, so far as can be judged/' from the published facts and figures, is undoubtedly growing. ^ MOSTLY MOUJIK— A GLIMPSE OF THE RUS- SIAN ARTEL AND KUSTARNUP In 4iie heights above Fersoova we fell among artelchiks. The hare track that skirts the Shilka Ridge was too narrow at that point, and too slippery for our ponies and them to pass a- breast. Besides, passers-by on the Shilka Trakt are few — that is, desirable passers-by. Trans-Baikalia bears an unenviable re- putation for brodjagi, the murderous vagrants and escaped con- victs of Siberia. But these strangers appeared harmless enough, despite their fearsome beards. They were fully a dozen — stalwart, middle-aged men led by an ancient of days bearing a kit of carpenter's tools. Some had bulging sacks slung over their shoulders ; some tea kettles dang- ling at their belts. All were poorly clothed — rude sheepskin tulups or great coats, gaudy red and blue work shirts, with tails flaunting above trouser tops, knee-high boots, and black sugarloaf sheepskin hats. They were journeying up the river to Blagowestchensk to build a house, they said. Yes, we were right, they formed an artel, one of those communistic bands of workmen that comprise the nucleus of the Russian peasant in- dustrial system. True to Russian hospitality, they begged us to ride back to a clearing in the wood where a fire could be built » By Richardson Wright. Catholic World. 102:216-23. November, igis. 132 SELECTED ARTICLES and tea made. And there it was that we talked of artels and kustarnui, and all those unaccountable socialistic things that exist in the heart of oligarchic Muscovy. "So you are Americanski," began the ancient after the man- ner of the peasant. "Americanski A great country yours. I have a brother in Erie, Pennsylvania. I have a picture of him at home. He is getting very rich. Everyone gets rich in America." "No, only a few are rich," I hastened to assure him. "The working people are mostly poor — and most everyone works." "And do they have artels?" "They have unions. . . ." "No, artels, like we are. I have read of your unions. We can't have them here. They're not allowed." He seemed to catch the look of confusion on my face and went on to explain. "We work together, we men. We are a carpenters' artel. When you want to build a house, you hire us. When you pay, you pay us. I take the money and pay the expenses and then we share up. I am the starosta." He went on further to explain how the artel works, how it may be devoted to one trade or a part of one trade or to several trades, but the rule holds throughout that the members earn share and share alike. A leader known as the starosta is chosen, and upon him devolves the management of the band's affairs. He arranges for passports, finds work, provides tools, materials and supplies, collects wages and distributes the profits equally. When he had finished and was sipping noisily the hot tea, we sat wondering where else on the globe was there such confi- dence in the honesty of a leader. Had we discovered Utopia here in the heart of Siberia? We let the question rest for a time, and satisfied ourselves with asking if all the artels wan- dered about from place to place. "Not all," he said thoughtfully, "but you meet us every- where." And he swept the horizon with an inclusive gesture. "On every road, on every farm, in every town and city from Vilna to Vladivostok you will find us. Even in the baron's houses the servants form an artel; even the convicts and the exiles do the same. Some stay in one place, others just wander about from place to place, taking the work where they find it. Some get very rich. We are very poor." RUSSIA 133 The last he had said not in any spirit of discontent, but just as a statement of the fact. Riches and poverty alike come from God, the faithful Russian believes. "Your men must trust you," we interposed. "Workmen in America do not often trust their foremen as your men do." He began to laugh and stroke his beard, for the compliment pleased him. "They aren't like us, that's why. We have learned to trust -each other. Whom else can we trust?" He seemed as though he would have liked to pursue the subject further, but well he knew the proverb that in Russia €ven the trees have ears, and being a wise man did not express to strangers his recalcitrant ideas. This much we were able to extract from him and his men — a fact the student of Russia and her history well knows — that the saving power of the Rus- sian peasant, who comprises eighty per cent of the population, lies in his ability to cooperate with his fellows, and his singular economic position. "We have always been peasants," the starosta went on naively. "And for four hundred years we were serfs, bound to the soil. We learned in those long years to help one an- other and to work together. We could not trust our masters, because they did us wrong, so we clung together. A peasant is always a peasant." "Even to-day?" "Yes, even to-day. Have you seen the names of the Duma members printed? There you will see them listed, each man according to his rank. Some are captains, some are merchants, and some peasants. We didn't cease being peasants because we were freed. We ceased being slaves. We have been free now fifty years, but we still work together, because we still have enemies. That is why we have artels. You have unions — yes, I have read of them. Instead we have artels. Unions are na- tional — all over the country, and those the government forbids here. But the artel is just a few — like we are." He fell to his tea again, and we chatted with the other men, who with equal naivete described the simple workings of their societies. To them it seemed that forming an artel was as nat- ural as their breathing, and this seemed true of the entire or- thodox peasant body. Over the vodka glasses, for example, a project is discussed, and forthwith an artel formed and a 134 SELECTED ARTICLES starosta elected. Next to no funds are required, some artels starting with as little capital as fifteen dollars. The work may- be sweeping the streets, building houses, or, as in many sections, the development of the kustarnui, the cottage industries for which Russia has become famous of late years. As we went on our way down the trakt, the words of the starosta began to arrange themselves in their proper category. What he had said was the peasant view of the matter. Their power of cooperation was due to the fact that they had been obliged for four centuries to cooperate that they might defend their all too-few rights. And not yet had they ceased being peasants, although they had been free men for half a century. Later in the journey we called upon the president of the local bank at Blagowestchensk, the New York of Siberia, a thriv- ing town on the Amur that is truly American in many aspects. Having been in America. Gaspadrine Gordhon knew our institu- tions and spoke our tongue. To him we applied for the other side of the peasant's story. Yes, our friends of the Shilka Trakt had been right, cooperation had been born of class suf- fering. "But you must make this distinction," he said with emphasis. "Whereas the peasant did suffer many things and is suffering them to-day, their masters were not altogether cruel. In no country is so much being done for the furtherance of the peas- ant's interests. Have you seen the handicrafts of the peas- ants?" We mentioned places where we have seen them for sale, and the villages where they were being made. "Well then you know. They are born artists. And so long as they remain craftsmen, their work will be artistic. These cottage industries are only being heard of in the big world out- side. London flocks to an exhibition of the wares. Paris goes wild over them. They bring large sums in New York. And yet the cottage industries of Russia have been going on for generations. You used to have them in America." "A few exist to-day," we assured him. "In Deerfield, an old town of the Connecticut Valley, and at Hingham, in Massa- chusetts, and in other places." He smiled, though he tried to hide the scorn. "What would you say if 1 told you that there are eight RUSSIA 135 to ten million people in Russia employed in cottage industries alone?" He let the figure settle in our minds, lit another cigarette, and went on in that thoughtful manner bankers the world over seem to have when they discuss economic matters. "During the past twenty-five years Russia has seen an unprec- edented growth of her urban industries. The factory hand had become an element to conjure with. Foreign capital and our national desire to foster home industries, furthered by a high tariff, have turned many cities into thriving manufactur- ing centres. Compare Moscow of twenty-five years ago with Moscow to-day. I remember it. The growth has been wonder- ful ! Peasants who used to live on their crops are flocking to the cities in winter. In summer many are back on the farm again. The number of factory hands totals one and a half million, this not including Finland and Poland." "You mean then that the cottage industries are falling off?" "Quite the reverse, quite. Compare the figures — eight to ten million workers in the kustarnui to one and a half workers in the factories! No, the development of the kustarnui during the past three decades has been spontaneous and widespread through the Empire. Whole villages that used to depend on farming for their livelihood have now formed themselves into artels, and are working the full twelve months at these indus- tries. Some farm half the year and work indoors the rest of the time. It is most astonishing." "But how do you account for such a contradictory state of affairs?" we asked. "There is no denying that the peasant makes only a meagre living out of his crops, and when his crops fail he starves. If he goes to the city, there is work in the factory. He no longer has to bother his head about agra- rian troubles. It is human nature to expect the factory element to overcome the native industrial element." "It may be human nature, but it is not the Slav nature," Mr. Gordhon replied slowly. "When you sound the depths of the Slav you will find that he exercises to a remarkable degree what might be called spiritual frugality. He is self-contained, just as Russia is self-contained. We were speaking of the cot- tage industries. They are worked by artels. It is true that this power for cooperation as shown in the artel, is due to the peasants having cooperated for their own benefit through 11 136 SELECTED ARTICLES four centuries, but it is also true that the peasant has within himself many talents. He is primarily a farmer, a tiller of the soil, a man with the hoe. But he has learned many other arts. Though he is slow to learn them, years of training and years of necessity have taught him to develop his own natural talents." "Then the knack for making things is not native with the peasant?" "Partly yes, partly no. You must remember that while much has been written on the sufferings of the Russian peasant dur- ing his days of serfdom, little mention is made of the great good rendered him by his master. There are two sides to every story, and there are two sides to this. An honest and persistent effort was made by the nobility all over the empire to furnish employment for their serfs during those long winter nights and days when inclement and frigid weather prevented their tilling the soil. Where else than Russia could you find such generosity ?" "It was done by slave owners in the Southern States of America," I proffered the information. "I beg pardon, I did not know that. Well then you have an analogy. What some of your slave owners did, the serf owners here in Russia were doing. The negro and the peasant alike owe their knowledge of handicraft to their masters. Of course, there was their own innate gift for making things with the hands that all people of the soil possess, and there was their mutual endeavor which has found expression in the artel. And there you have both sides of the story of the artel." "The government is encouraging these cottage industries, of course." "Yes, I was going to mention that." He reached for a book behind his desk and ran his finger down a column of figures. "The report of the Department of Rural Economy shows that there are twelve technical schools teaching handicraft, that large sums were loaned the artels on long credit, and that the kustarnui stores and workshops were subsidized, the budget for this work amounting to over half a million rubles an- nually." He glanced up from the book. "There is, in addition, the assistance rendered by the Zemstovs or local governments. They often act as middle men, supplying the raw materials and handling the finished product. Here you can see on the map RUSSIA 137 just where the kustarnui are located." He unfolded the colored map and read us rapidly figures and facts. "The Governments of Moscow, Vladimir, Tver, Kostroma, Nijni Novgorod and Jaroslav is where they thrive especially. Though the products and the labor are widely diversified, the output falls into five groups: wood, metal and other minerals, leather and woven goods. Of these the largest and most im- portant is the wood industry. One district supplies two thou- sand sleighs annually in addition to carts and other vehicles. Seven thousand tarantasses come from Vladimir alone each year. Kaluga with its two thousand and two hundred work- men and nine hundred shops turn out barrels. Eighty-seven vil- lages of the Moscow Government make rude peasant painted furniture. One hundred and twenty shops in the same district are devoted to toys, employing two thousand peasants, and turn- ing out each year a supply worth a quarter million dollars. In the Tver Government six thousand peasants make nothing but pump handles, whilst another two thousand are employed extracting tar from the trees. It is reckoned that fully one hundred thousand men are engaged in making cart wheels in the various Great Russia villages. In the point of output, the wooden spoon is the largest. These painted and lacquered spoons are used all over the empire, and find a ready market in the Far East, China being the chief customer, with Persia as a close second. Fully a hundred million are made each year, most of them coming from the Vladimir and Kursk Govern- ments. To make a spoon often requires the labors of fifteen different artels— think of it fifteen artels, although for the poorer quality one man is sufficient. A good handicrafter can turn out one hundred and fifty of these a day. The bulk, how- ever, goes through at least three separate processes, employing three artels. The profits for a worker rarely amount to more than twenty dollars a year. "Bast and lime wood sandals worn by the peasantry generally come from the village of Simeonofka and the city of Nijni Novgorod, where, during a season of five months a rapid worker can finish four hundred pairs. Baskets are made prin- cipally in the district of Zwenigorod, and mats in Kostroma. Linen is woven at Jaroslav, and in most villages spinning wheels and distaffs are made. Tver is the main book country; in one town fifty-five per cent of the population being employed. in vJL tie ' 138 SELECTED ARTICLES At Tver three hundred and fifty workmen prepare annually forty thousand dollars worth of finished leather, "There, you see what staple articles are made. Those are only a few." He swept the room with a gesture. "Look at the finer arts. Peasant jewelry is made in fifty villages on the Volga in the Kostroma Government. Some of it is valuable in- deed, much is cheap and tawdry. A secret process of gilding is employed, a process learned from the Tartars, it is said. The natives guard it jealously. In the same manner do the makers of icons guard their secret in the Government of Vladimir, which furnishes practically all the icons in Russia. A special process of mixing and grinding the paints to produce a glossy finish has been discovered. The natives draw and paint the reli- gious figures after patterns handed down through generations. Few of them know the first elements of drawing, though their work lacks nothing in artistic effect. As in the making of spoons, the manufacturing of icons employs several artels. "Everywhere in the bazaars you see native pottery. To be sure, it is crude, but it has many redeeming elements, mainly its beauty of line and durability. Poltava and Viatka are the centres for the industry, some thirty thousand being employed, making an output valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The workers' wages range from twenty-five rubles ($12.50) to one hundred a year. The making of locks is practi- cally a monoply of the kustarnui. Pavlovo is the centre. The wages rarely go above two dollars a week." "But do these kustarnui artels employ only men?" "Oh, by no means. The women play a great part. Russian women of all classes are good housewives. They are constantly employed in sewing, embroidering and in some instances, weav- ing. This is no less true of the peasant housewife. In their hands the weaving industry has become a business of first im- portance. When they do not work in the home, they meet in the community workshop or svietelka. The best linen comes from Jaroslav, Kostroma, Moscow and Vladimir, where fully sixty thousand families find employment. The wages are fifty copecks — twenty-five cents — a day. The peasant women of Vla- dimir make a specialty of embroidering aprons, towels and table linen. At one time lace making was a thriving industry, but of late it has fallen into decay. The making of shawls and scarfs, limited to the Government of Orenburg, has shown a RUSSIA 139 decided increase. The output is valued at seventy -five thousand dollars annually. "But you can see by these figures what I meant in saying that the kustarnui thrive. Many of these peasants live miles from the railroad and centres of civilization, most of them are un- derpaid and exploited by wily middlemen, and still the work is increasing yearly. And it will increase so long as the peas- ant in Russia maintains his singular position in the social scale. Once he has learned the ways of what we term urban civili- zation, much of his artistic and handicraft ability will be lost." We rose to go. We had long overstayed our time, even for a Russian banker, and hurried to the offices of an American Harvester Company, whose representative had invited us to luncheon. We found him in the yard talking busily to a group of men. They were all respectably dressed. Some had fur coats and hats, though all wore high boots. One or two wore white collars and cravats. They were examining a harvester of the latest type with the name of an Illinois firm painted on its side, while the agent was showing them how it worked and answering their questions. When they had gone he came in. "Not a bad morning's work," he said, throwing off his coat. "They bought two, and I'll get *em to take another if they don't look out. They've plenty of money." "Looked prosperous enough," we rejoined. "Why I guess that artel even has money in the bank," he said. "Was that an artel?" "Surely, that's the way they get it." He smiled at me and said: "Cooperation, my boy, cooperation. . . ." THE RUSSIAN AS A BUSINESS MAN* Until the war started, the best Russian business men were Germans. For the extraordinary fact about the Russian as a business man is that he is such a poor business man — judging him by American standards of business efficiency. The concept of public service, which is fast becoming the foundation of all our commerce and industry, is a lesson the average Russian »By Richardson Wright. Travel. 28:35-7; 445. April, 1917. 140 SELECTED ARTICLES merchant has still to learn. The principles of business co-opera- tion, and sometimes even of personal business honesty, have still to be mastered. In this, as in so many other phases, Russia is a gauche adolescent. Much has been written of late about Russian credits and commercial hands across the seas. America, rich in gold and efficient in business methods at home, seeks new markets in the great Slav Empire. This is as it should be. Russia is an im- porting nation rather than an exporting; she needs our wares and we need her trade. Doubtless the day will come when the United States and Russia will be the two great commercial na- tions of the world. Meantime, there are many lessons for both peoples to learn and great improvements to be made on either side. While every effort will be made by Berlin and by London to capture Russian credits and Russian markets after the war, the facts remain that Russia is old enough now to carry her own dinner pail and that America can both furnish the pail and put something into it. The vast resources of Russia's arable lands — her wheat lands in Europe alone are larger than the American fields — will always keep her an agricultural country, yet the growth of her industries, the growth of her mining, petroleum and railway projects has already made her a power in industry worthy of American consideration. To the average American merchant intent on finding a new market for his wares, these questions generally arise ; "Can I sell him anything?" "How good pay is he ? " "What can he sell me?" This simple analysis has formed the basis of American com- merce abroad. Because it lacked another very important ques- tion, our markets in foreign parts are not as secure as they might be. Time and again American exporters find themselves beaten out and undersold by foreign firms. In doing business with Russia the American exporter's first problem should not be about what he can persuade the Russian to buy, but "What is the Russian merchant like ? " "What sort of people does he sell to ? " "What are the needs of those people individually and collectively? " The best way to settle such questions is for the merchant to go to Russia himself and find out. Certainly he will not want RUSSIA 141 for a hearty welcome; no people under the sun are more hos- pitable than the Russ. In lieu of that, he can send a represent- ative. American colleges each year graduate scores of men who can speak French and German, bright, brisk young lads with an eye to business who, after a year or so studying the home plant and its output, could be sent to Russia to scout around for the an- swer to these questions. Or, if that is not feasible, the manu- facturer can avail himself of our Consular Trade Reports, which are the most up-to-date and efficient — even the British concede this. Finally, the American exporter may find it to his interest to communicate with the American-Russian Chamber of Com- merce in New York, which was organized in 1916 for the pur- pose of encouraging and promoting a closer union in industry, commerce and finance, and "to create bonds of mutual sym- pathy between the two great nations — Russia and the United States." Its motto is, "To be close to Russia means first of all to know, to understand Russia." Just what form the actual exporting might take can best be learned from the experience of other nations. The Germans, who know more about Russian trade than any other people, have given up the idea of branch houses as impractical. The English have about reached the same conclusion. Instead, they have lately been developing the market through travelers who carry large assortments of samples, quote prices F. O. B. a Russian port and, if necessary, include the price of duty and local delivery in their estimate of the cost. The American merchant, once he has learned the needs of the market, had best employ a Russian selHng agent or avail himself of the facilities of an exporting firm. For the convenience of local dealers, he should see to it that prices, sizes, weights, et cetera, are worked out in Russian figures and that packages are marked so that the native can read them. In dealing with Russian merchants, Americans must remem- ber that there are great differences in the methods and concepts of business. The Russian merchant has still much of the East in his veins. He is accustomed to the interminably slow methods of the East, to haggling, to looking for his own little bakshish, to enjoying the advantages of long credits, and to having a thor- oughly good time. Moreover, this merchant has to deal with hosts of people who neither read nor write and for whom ocular proof is the only advertisement 142 SELECTED ARTICLES Enter a Russian bank, for example. The business is usually conducted on the second floor, as second-story men have not be- come so expert in Russia as here. At the front door stands a soldier in uniform, a sabre at his side and a bayonetted gun over his shoulder. You mount the stairs. Another soldier, armed to the teeth, stands onjthe landing. You step on to the banking floor. A third soldier eyes you from the corner. You have a notion that you've gotten into a barracks by mistake. You are quite wrong. The soldiers are there to assure the people that their funds are being safely guarded. It is another phase of the ocular proof that the native requires. You step up to the cash window and present your checks. The teller is playing with an abacus — our electric-run counting machines are practically unknown in Russian banks. Courte- ously, although a bit languidly, he receives your papers and asks you to wait. You retire to a corner. Fifteen minutes pass, twenty, half an hour. You step up to the window to see what action you can get. The teller and the other clerks are drinking tea and nibbling snacks of luncheon. You go back to your seat wondering what it is all about. Now the Russian banker, merchant, machinist, day laborer — all classes, in fact, stop at eleven and four for tea. To drink unboiled water in Russia is to fly in the face of Providence, so tea is regularly served out twice a day and many times in be- tween. This, of course, halts the wheels of industry and bank- ing, but you must accustom yourself to it. Finally, when tea is over, the matter of your checks is taken up again, and after half an hour or more, you are handed over to a higher official. He will chat with you pleasantly about America, about relatives he has there, about the Woolworth tower, the Singer building, the Grand Canyon, and the seven other wonders of America. He will be persistent, for even the busiest Russian is courteous enough to show interest in you and your land. When you have satisfied him with bits of news from America, he will, like as not, ask you personal questions — "Have you been to Russia before? What do you think of our tea? Our churches? Our music? Our cigarettes? Our padded coachmen?" Then about two hours after you have entered the building, you begin to see light ahead. And when a good part of the day has passed, you are able to take your leave of the banker and pass between the rows of sentries again to the street. RUSSIA 143 All this is very exasperating to an American to whom the business of cashing a traveler's check is only a matter of seconds, but it is the way of the Russ and one must do as the Russians do so long as he deals with them. There is no use trying to talk about American speed and efficiency; it will be like speaking in a foreign tongue. The Russian is slow, he likes being slow, he has been slow for generations. But, despite that, he manages to accomplish a fair amount of business. I am often tempted to think that one reason why the Rus- sian merchant is such a poor business man is that he is too fond of enjoying himself. Eating and drinking are the chief indoor sports for this Russ. The proverbial protracted New York busi- ness luncheon is only a hasty bite compared with the collation to which the Russian sits down in mid-afternoon. Business is such a bother and eating is such fun that, on the whole, the Russian merchant would rather eat. There is another way of looking at the same situation. The Russian has learned a salient truth that Americans utterly lack. He believes— and acts accordingly — that it is far more important to make a life than to make a living. According to his stand- ards, American business men are merely machines, slaves to commerce, dollar grabbers. The more I see of American busi- ness, the more I am inclined to believe that there is much to be said for this Russian view. Despite your efforts to the contrary, the Russian merchant will insist on bartering. Americans sell, Russians haggle. Rus- sia has not yet grown out of the habit of fairs where haggling is a fine art. Nijni Novgorod is still a big factor in her business year, and there are hundreds of such fairs on a smaller scale all over the Empire where you buy everything from sewing ma- chines to fossil mastodon ivory. Likewise, the Russian merchant is often amenable to a per- sonal financial inducement. Add to every bid made in Russia about 25 per cent for distribution among worthy traders, and you have struck a safe average on which to do business. This may be lamentable, but it is true, and one must adjust himself to the situation. He will find that in practically every walk of Ufe and in every sort of business, there are Russians capable of be- ing bribed; more, they expect to be bribed. Here, again, is a situation an American merchant may fail to comprehend. Imagine if you can, a New York merchant being 144 SELECTED ARTICLES amenable to a bribe. . . . But possibly you can imagine it! The Russian is out and out in his dickering about such things. On the whole, we are more honest than the Russian, but I am inclined to beheve that the difference is merely a matter of terms and that no invidious comparisons can be made. Russia is young in business, her methods are the blunt, stumbling methods of youth. Some day she may become polished and subtle in com- merce, and then we shall call her shrewd, capable, masterly ! The classic example of graft in Russia happened during the building of the Trans-Siberian railway. We generally conceive of that railroad as a straight line cleaving the heart of the con- tinent. Far from it. When the road was building, a brilliant band of agents traveled ahead of the construction gangs and visited the city fathers of the towns on the proposed route. They told what the proximity of the railroad would mean to the town, and in glowing colors painted the far-famed American "Boost." Then the agents got down to business; for such and such con- siderations they would see that the lines came to the town, etc., etc. Tomsk, then the largest city in Siberia, shooed these agents away. They could afford to shoo. But the agents made good their word. The tracks were run south of Tomsk by 48 miles, and to-day Tomsk, the intellectual and mining center of Siberia, is on a branch line ! The results of this tariff can be seen all along the route to- day. Here is the station settlement; yonder on the horizon, is the suggestion of the town. When the agents came to explain to Petersburg the snaking of the line, they offered a plausible excuse — had the railroad gone through the center of the towns they would not grow so rapidly as though it were laid some dis- tance away; as it was, the towns would now grow to the rail- road. And this, luckily, is what has happened! Another outcropping of the East can be seen in the Russian's readiness to go into bankruptcy and his insistence on long time payments. Here are two situations against which the American exporter must safeguard himself. Until recently, the money in Russia was tied up in the hands of the few ; with the growth of industries consequent on the war and just previous to it, much of the money has been transferred to the people. This distribu- tion will result in a more healthy financial situation. Instead of spending their money, as heretofore, for vodka, the confmon people have been saving it, and with the increased sense that RUSSIA 145 comes from abstinence from drink, will come intelligence in spending money and paying debts. Several American firms have met this situation by the install- ment paying plan, and they have been successful. The results have come slowly, but they have come through this patience and belief in the people. American sewing machines, American harvesters, American lamps will be seen in every part of the Russian Empire. They are there to stay, despite German com- petition, because in these instances, American goods are superior to others and because American merchants have met the Russian consumer on his own ground. The other day a banker asked me these two leading ques- tions : "Why is it so difficult for us to float a Russian loan, whereas, during the Japanese War, we had no trouble in floating a Jap- anese loan?" "Is there any chance of Russia repudiating her debts accrued during this war? " My answer took the following form : During the Japanese War, Japanese bonds were hawked about America and they had the backing of Jewish banking firms. Scarcely a Jewish pawnbroker in America but was approached to buy them. Hundreds did. You can never consider any finan- cial situation regarding Russia without taking into account the bitter hatred of the Jew for the Russian. It comes out in a thousand different little ways, and it has as many sources of power to draw on. There is as much to say against the Jewish methods as there is against Russia's methods in handling the Jewish problem; the blame is about equally divided. Meantime, neither will concede the other a point and the fight is a draw, with the Russians quiescently and sometimes violently anti- Semitic at home and the Jews actively anti-Russian in every quarter of the globe. German influence has also to be counted. As they used to say in Europe, of all the colonies Germany possessed, Russia was the most profitable. The industries were almost entirely in Ger- man hands and much of the mining was maintained by German money. German influence was so strong that it could foment revolutions and call strikes whenever there was the slightest chance of foreign capital beginning to endanger German inter- ests in Russia. When France began to be financially interested 146 SELECTED ARTICLES in Russia, Germany made it clear that should Russia enter into agreement with France, the act was tantamount to a declaration of war. In short, Germany has held Russia in the hollow of her financial hand, and she will use every influence in other lands that is available against the floating of Russian loans. If Russia can free herself from the German industrial and commercial yoke, if the German merchants (there are some 400,000 of them interned there) are made to return to their own country, after the war, then there will be a legitimate chance for fair competition for Russian markets. Fortunately, Russia has had sufficient power to hold on "to some of her industries and during the war to develop other industries. It is to be hoped that after peace is declared, she will hold her own against a repetition of Teutonic commercial subjugation. The idea of Russia repudiating her debts is rather fantastic. A nation repudiates its debts only when it is permitted to do so. Were Russia utterly lacking in natural resources and were she not allied with powers that have strong financial founda- tions and keen financial understanding one might fear for Russia's future action. But she has endless resources and un- told wealth, and she is leagued with nations that hold her so in debt that they can both guide and force her hand, if that is necessary. France, which among the powers has the clearest understand- ing of international finance, was not loath to loan Russia money. Should she permit Russia to repudiate her debts, thousands of French investors would be wiped out. England has done the same. Russia owes too much money to repudiate a copeck of her debts. In the great game of dollars that underlay this conflict, Ger- many placed her money on the wrong horse. She believed that she held sufficient power at Petrograd to control the Russian government, even though Russia were her enemy. Constant ru- mors of a separate peace, drifting out from Berlin news agencies, indicated this belief to be strong even as late as the fall of 1916. Even at that hour Germany's horse was leading. Then came the flare-up between the Duma and the Government, between the people and the pro-German element at Petrograd. Germany dis- covered that this was a people's war and that the people "vj^ere dictating to their government. In 1912, the war was a juggling of finance; in 1914-16, it became a conflict of ideals, the struggle RUSSIA 147 of the Russian people to assert their own nationaUty in their own land. Upon these people will depend the development of the re- sources, upon their wiUingness to work in legitimate competition and just co-operation. A nation is no longer great merely for its statesmen, hut great because of its workers — its farmers, its puddlers, its spin- ners, its shop keepers. In these Russia is great indeed. She has the workers and the raw material and the willingness. The productivity of the people has increased 40 per cent during the war. Russia now needs only capital to develop these vast re- sources and to bring them to the markets of the world. She needs railroads. Even though the war has commanded most of the government's attention, there has been found suf- ficient time, funds and energy to push ahead the work on new lines that total some 8,000 miles through untouched parts of the Empire. There are 45,000 miles of railroads in operation to-day. Two-thirds of them are operated by the government, the other third being owned and operated by private companies working under state control and with state guarantee. Plans are now made for the completion of 25,000 miles of tracks by the end of 1922, in addition to thousands of miles of canals. The lack of an all-year port has been the greatest deterrent to Russian commercial progress. It has forced her into playing into German hands. On all sides she is faced with alien con- trol. In the south the Turk has maintained his grip on the Dar- danelles; England holds the Persian Gulf; Japan holds Dalny and a goodly strip of the Laotung Peninsula. Archangel and Vladivostok are frozen tight as drums for several months each year. The new port of Alexandrovsk on the White Sea is free from ice all the year, and a new trunk line links it up with the main arteries that radiate from Petrograd and Moscow. While Alexandrovsk will help the situation somewhat, Russia can never grow commercially until she has a warm water outlet for her immense stores. That she would be awarded this in Constan- tinople, has been the dream of her people in this war. Self-contained though she is, Russia requires the c(«ntact of commerce to develop her. She needs to rub against other na- tions. Too long has she been isolated and exploited by one power. Her rich wheat fields, her bountiful oil supplies, her gold deposits, her platinum mines, her cattle and her timber — 148 SELECTED ARTICLES all these she has to offer the world. The continent needs her wheat, her butter, her meat. Under the guise of Danish butter, England eats the Russian product regularly. New York tasted Siberian butter in the winter of 1913-14. Russian butter on American bread — what a combination to contemplate! Once let Russia open her granaries directly to the world through the Dardanelles, and the food situation both on the continent and in America will be radically changed. Chicago will be forced out of her wheat pit deals against the American people. But so long as this, the second greatest granary of the world, is closed and no competition is permitted, our wheat kings will have us in the hollow of their hands. THE BETTER HALF OF RUSSIA* "You will learn in America that this great war will have its benefits," the doctor said. "It is teaching us that we are strong ; it has issued a call commanding us to organize and act not only in war, but in peace ; it has taught us to see a world larger than the world of our family door-step. It has shown us that we can do all the necessary old duties and have energy and desire to accept new labors. This morning at breakfast my children spoke of Russian victory. I said to them that the great Russian victories were in the new thought and visions of the people." The doctor did not speak of any class or sex; she made no distinction between different kinds of Russian hearts and Rus- sian heads. There are almost twice as many men, women, and children in the empire as in our States, and the doctor seemed to include them all. The doctor was nearing middle age, but was still pretty even in a severe woolen suit. She was an at- tractive and competent woman. The reason for her disregard of sex is not difficult to define. Russia is the foremost undeveloped country in the world. Like its own flat, gray expanse of physical surface, beneath which un- touched treasures of resource lie, a crust of mystery covers the human resource of the Russian millions. The charm of Russia is not in its romantic, hazardous, youthful past, but in the suppressed seething of human force beneath the crust. What will burst 1 By R. W. Child. Century. 92:622-32. August, 1916. RUSSIA 149 up through it. What will this war, cracking open the surface, rending the cover, let loose? When I went to Russia to put my ear where I could hear be- neath the crust the new bubble and heaving of potentiality, the volcanic seething which the war has filled with new tremors, I did not think of the Russian woman at all. Yet she is of extraordinary importance, not, however, as a part of a woman's movement, but as a part of a great human movement. • Her progress and her potentiality are so interwoven with the progress and potentiality of her country that the story of the woman parallels the story of the new war-awakened Rus- sian nation. It is the women, I think, who to-day possess a vision calmer than that of the Russian men. From a woman I received the coolest and the wisest analysis of the politics of the empire and the most sensible forecast of the struggle between the people and the bureaucracy. Through a woman I obtained the greatest fund of information about the future commercial development of the land and about the opportunities for American business. A wo- man drew for me the clearest picture of what was needed to organize for military victories. It was the woman of Russia who, without distortion of self-interest or prejudice or fear, could see what the new human growth required of compromise with the present form of the Government and what of a fight to a finish. And that is the most delicate question which Russia must deter- mine in the decade which follows the final peace. In Russia there are three classes of women, just as there are three classes of men, that those who know little of the empire must distinguish from one another. The first is that of the peasants. Perhaps it cannot be reiterated too often that Russia is a land of peasants. The first thing that one will be told in the capital is this: "Petrograd is not Russia. Russia has more than a hun- dred and twenty-five million peasants. About three-fourths of the people in the empire live in rural communities or on isolated farms; three- fourths are engaged in agriculture; two-thirds are illiterate, and eighty-seven per cent of the peasant women can- not read or write. To know the true Russian one must go to the villages." To consider the Russian woman without due regard for the overwhelming numbers of peasant women varying in types and ISO SELECTED ARTICLES customs according to the districts from which they come is to exclude the mass. The women of the nobility and the small merchant class make up the second group ; but there is only one of these to about 130 of the class of peasants. But there is a third class. Among Russian women, as among Russian men, this third class is characterized not by its exclusion from the other two classes, which are classes of high birth or wealth or lack of wealth and birth, but by intellectual charac- teristics. This class is called the intelligentsia, and an individual member of it is called an intelligent. "Define an intelligent," suggested a war correspondent from the United States who had a distaste for generalities. The Englishman who writes articles upon Russian manners and customs slid down into his chair, the French diplomatic attache scowled, an American who for seven years has done business in Kieff, Moscow, and Warsaw coughed, and the two Russians, one a journalist and the other a member of the Duma, smiled sourly. The Petrograd editor, running his long forefinger about his collar as if seeking relief from asphyxiation, said: "An intelligent is an educated person, from a university, per- haps engaged in a profession, and perhaps with ideas of reform for Russia." "And yet there is Leonid H ," said the Frenchman, dream- ily, looking across the tables, at which well-gowned and smiling ladies, vastly different from the women of London and Paris, sat just as if war was not going on. "He never saw a university; his hobby is individual study. He is in no learned profession, has no idea of reforming Russia, and is a bureaucrat." "But he, too, is an intelligent," the Englishman said, and the others nodded. "Ah, there it is as always — an intelligent is an intelligent," the journalist cried out in despair. The member of the Duma said : "Let us say that an intelligent is one who thinks." "Who thinks — " repeated the Englishman, waiting for more. "Who thinks or talks or writes of change," finished the Rus- sian. "An intelligent is an intelligent." "It will do," they all said. The Russian intelligentsia, however, has in its vague mem- RUSSIA ISI bership a startlingly large proportion of women. The last two I heard conversing together were a countess of immense wealth and the daughter of a peasant of the Tver district who speaks six languages and at the age of nineteen has pubHshed two pamphlets. It was two o'clock in the morning, and two profes- sors in the university were present; but it was I, an American, who first felt that it was necessary to go. The zealous intelli- gent will sit up until dawn, apparently believing that this, the latest discussion, may summon the destiny of the country. There is a taste for debate, an apppetite for the last dregs at the bottom of the world's barrel of intellectuality; and among all the eager Russian minds, most of which, as an incident, suffer from the inevitable pains of theories and pretenses which cannot be made realities, I found none so eager as those of Russian women. But the women of these groups are touched by this fact: the war has served to bring into higher light the character of the Russian people as a people. Something of the veil behind which the Slav finds a complacent content has been torn aside by the emergencies of belligerent days. A titled Englishwoman, pour- ing soup for the miserable refugee stream near the Warsaw sta- tion in Petrograd, said to me : "You know by this time how baffling is Russia. It is a coun- try of extremes and contradictions. It accepts life as life comes, saying, 'What does it matter?' but in meditation it builds a new world for itself. It flares up in emotional tests of its power and sinks back into philosophic lethargy. It is cheerful four-fifths of the time and contemplates suicide for a contrast. It is aware of autocratic suppression, but maintains the strongest kind of in- dividualism. It is irreverent, but none the less religious feeling and religious forms grip the daily life of it. It is without con- ceit, admits its shortcomings with excellent good nature, and yet has profound faith in its own irresistible destiny. And will you believe that it is the women of all classes who have shown the largest response?" The position of women is a reasonably accurate barometer of the civilization of men, and from their history in Russia there is evidence that the empire is not badly named "back- ward Russia." As to the woman of the first class, the peasant woman, she has been the victim of endless labor. She is expected to care for the house, provide clothing, and prepare all food. She often tills a n 152 SELECTED ARTICLES plot of ground on her own account, and labors in the planting and the harvest. "And education has barely touched our peasant woman," said my friend, leaning over the wall of the River Neva in a thought- ful mood. "Those who go away from the villages to the cities and the gymnasia? Ah, yes; but I refer to the education which reaches out to the country. And yet it is education which has already done something to help the position of the peasant wo- man. It is badly needed, for not only does it give the woman a sense of being more than a beast of burden, but it will raise her in the respect of our men. You see, we think women who are beasts of burden are much nearer emancipation than they would be if they were uncreative parasites. That is the strength of the peasant woman of Russia. Here is a bit of paper. I have gone to a bureau for these figures, and you must show them to Amer- icans." She had taken her statistics from compilations made over ten years ago, but the figures of the Russian census showed that in rural economy and in industry and manufactures more women were employed than men! "You may be sure that education is needed by the peasant wo- man," she went on. "You see what a part she plays in our farm life, which is the life of the nation. Well, she as well as the man must be prepared to receive instructions in modem methods of farming. With our great resource in soil and our tremend- our production, we are still primitive farmers." I remembered that the average yield of wheat per acre in England and Germany was over twenty bushels and in Russia less than eight. "And we are backward even in the fight to live," she added. "Russia, particularly peasant Russia, has the highest death-rate in the world, and the infant-mortality in the country districts is beyond belief, increasing despite all the work of the zemstvo doctors. Russia has a vast resource of healthy human beings, but she may lose it. "The point, however, is this: the woman of Russia is wholly different from the woman of America. I understand that in America a party of women seeks to have a right to other oc- cupations than motherhood; they call that their woman's move- ment. Ah, what a cruel jest it appears to the women of Russia! Our peasant women have almost an equality with men in pro- RUSSIA IS3 ductive labors. While this is labor of the hands and is done in detached communities and there is no education, the position of our women will be very bad. Fundamentally the question of right and wrong is settled by the fact that the man can strike harder with the fist than can the woman. "So the problem of our peasant women is different from the problem of the women of America. But industry has been coming in, and it makes a change. First of all, men go to the centers. Women follow, and even displace the men. And chil- dren follow the women. But in this way the peasant woman becomes freer, no matter what the cost." She had touched upon a great problem of Russia, that of underpaid female and child labor. Cotton and hardware manu- facturers had already told me something of the fearful competi- tion of men, women, and children for employment in industrial centers. Recently Russia's industry has shown a marked tend- ency to centralize in a few industrial cities of mushroom growth. The peasants leave the country, and the ancient communal idea of the agricultural class shows signs of fading away. At first the peasant, always land-mad, but whose land-holdings grow smaller because the population is increasing faster than acreage is acquired, plans to earn money in the cities to buy new fields. But the drift is really in the other direction. The women follow the men to the gregariousness of the centers. The war has aug- mented the movement, and the cities are molding the new social life of Russia despite the fact that probably even with the refu- gees and the congregating movement which the war has brought not more than sixteen per cent of the population is in them. The factory wage-earner is the new type of lower-class Rus- sian woman, and her influence spreads back into the agricultural class. "For the moment we see some horrible things," I was told by a settlement worker. "We see the peasantry furnishing vast numbers of prostitutes, most of them very young. We see the great supply of female labor driving itself into starvation wages through its willingness to work in industries. But, after all, it is promising of a better position for women. On the farm the woman has been too often a beast of burden. Once she or her relatives have a taste of the outer world, there will be a new life of the intellect and a new and better relation between husband and wife. The independent earnings of women will tend to 154 SELECTED ARTICLES create new property laws fairer to women. The Slav woman will find herself. Put education within her reach, and she responds in a way that surprises us all." To this settlement society, which, like others in Petrograd, exists through the gifts and energy of advanced Russian wo- men and despite the misgivings of some authorities, there come on Sundays hundreds of peasant girls who are now industrial workers. The contrast between their faces and those of girls in the villages is astonishing. The girl who has stayed on the soil has a happier expression, but the film of an inactive mind often covers her countenance. These settlement visitors, whose clothes are much uglier and whose faces are much harder, look into one's eyes without the rural shyness, and send forth a friendly chal- lenge. They have tasted of thinking life. And this fact lifts their heads and perhaps their spirits out of the mire into which they may have had to put their feet. I do not believe that this new thinking life comes to them with any consciousness of sex- differences. Women who for generations have shared in produc- tive manual labor, and now have not been behind the men of their class in finding a way through the muck of Russia's industrial growth toward larger expressions of self, look upon themselves as Russians and human beings before the idea occurs to them that they wear long hair and by its symbol are set apart in a class to fight with self-interest some kind of class battle. I have seen evidence enough that when they are aware of fighting a battle at all they are aware only of fighting the battle of all the people, men and women, for new freedom. In the industrial communities the men, too, slide into the point of view that regards a woman first as a co-worker. She is capable of bearing children, but that is not against her; she is a co-worker. The whole drift is toward this recognition. Women are not only accepted as members of political parties, but they are accepted in the labor organizations, which, by the way, the gov- ernment prohibits, and are admitted to the cooperative societies that came to perform the "harmless" function of the unions. "The industrial labor class is our great menace," I was in- formed by a Reactionary bureaucrat. "The rural peasantry is controllable; it does not seek innovations. But the working- class is dangerous. It organizes for revolt, furnishes the, terror- ists, and seeks to become intelligent. And the women you men- tion are in the forefront." RUSSIA 155 I confess that I found some sympathy with the bureaucratic fear of revoU. The autocratic government of Russia is at least a government. At times^ it' takes terrible and often stupid meas- ures to suppress the people. A censorship, whether in war or peace, that aims to deceive is in the eyes of awakening intelli- gence a fact more irritating than those truths which the censor- ship can conceal. The fact that only half-truths go about in rumors leads to exaggerations. Secret police activities have stimulated rather than restrained the spirit of revolt. . But were revolt to come successfully, the people of Russia could not to-day supply a government which would last. The intelligent class might set one up ; but it would be too idealistic to be firm, and the unintelligent mass and mob would tear it down. It would be a Mexico raised to the nth power ; and it is fortunate that the war and other influences have come to give the people a national spirit and a sense of restraint and, in the end, a more deliberate manner of seeking reform. "And yet even if the radical women are too eager for action, they must be credited with a large contribution of singleness of purpose," said a woman professor in one of the institutes. "I believe they wait with more restraint than the men. You must not forget the pain that comes to those men and women who acquire the education to see clearly, to think theories out, and then are utterly incapable of doing anything. This explains why reforms have appeared almost hysterical. I am an old woman, and I have seen the gloom and cynicism and the bitterness which have come to men of the intelligentsia when reaction has surged back, sweeping the people off their feet because they were ex- hausted by their own march of protest. Nothing is so unwhole- some as the desire to put thoughts into action without the ability to do so. This produces diseased minds and accounts for waves of suicide and for the Russian trait which you have named badly 'Oriental sullenness.' " She had turned the subject from the uneducated Russian wo- man to the educated Russian woman, the nobility and the intelli- gentsia. Unconsciously, however, she had expressed her pri- mary interest, which lay in the "intelligent" Russian woman, whether she be countess or schoolmistress. And, after all, when one speaks of advanced Russian women, one is speaking of that class. Though it is numerically slight compared with the unedu- 156 SELECTED ARTICLES cated peasants, it is the significant class. Every new day of the many I spent in Russia added to my admiration for it. The conception of Russian women to which many Americans cling, reluctant to let it go, as if it were a sacred tradition, is that of sabled, cooing, powdered, lithe, and languorous ladies who are irresistible, and invite from hearthside to suicide. Any one who has seen Russian gentlemen in Moscow or Petrograd, with opera-glasses, lost in admiration for cabaret singers and dancers who would disgrace the management of a patent-medi- cine show could be convinced that the American notion of Rus- sian beauty must be in some particulars faulty. There are wo- men of too much weight of body and features whom one sees about in the cities, and there is a large class of most refined and hospitable ladies who represent society and whose many titles mean little, because titles in Russia descend on the all-inclusive principle. It is nice to say, "I have just been at the princess's to lunch," or, "The countess dropped me a note," but it means little. One day a maid in a Russian home in which I was having tea announced that the prince had come back from the front with a little wound, and was again at the door offering to buy rags. The ragman was in fact a prince ; but I have ceased to give my word for it, because many Americans, even in Russia, refuse to take the fact seriously. One who wishes to be gallant will mark the charm of the minds and the graciousness of the manner of many in the class of society women, which includes many titled per- sons. Many are fascinating women whose minds are better trained and whose manners, though more direct, are more con- siderate and whole-hearted than those of our own "best people." But the "intelligent" woman in Russia looks without admiration upon the woman who is living as a respectable ornament. One of them, who has wealth and yet works eight hours a day in social service, spoke of the charming idlers as "the mewing wo- men." "I do have affection for some of them," she said, "but they mew so ! This war is helping them to find out that they may stop mewing and do something; I have seen many of the young daughters of their kind plunged in work in our hospitals for the wounded. I have two nieces who are going every day and really working. Ah, a good taste of usefulness will change them so that they will never be content to be dolls again. They will cease to mew. The flatness is truly leaving their faces." RUSSIA i5^ The active, educated, self-expressive women of Russia who from whatever cause owe their stimulus to gymnasia, institute, or university do not have flat faces. Russian women are not pretty; many are ugly, but they have that beauty of active minds and excellent hearts. The modern Russian woman has not much art in dress; there is little between the furbelows of those who pay much attention to styles and the dowdiness of the woman who is dowdy by nature or merely too busy to pay attention to clothes or too restricted in means. There is more modesty in Petrograd or Moscow than in New York or Chicago ; in Russian cities the adventuress imitates the woman of society rather than the woman of society the adventuress. "Education has produced this type of woman," I said to a young American girl who had come to Russia in war-time to study the Russian women. "There must be something else," she answered. "The women of Russia have fought for their education for over sixty years. And more than that, the Russian woman seeks her education for reasons in the main different from those of the American. Many of us at home go to schools and universities with a general idea of absorbing culture and preparing ourselves to make a good intellectual appearance; but to-day I have been at the woman's college, and through one of the teachers I have talked to a great number of the students, and it began to dawn upon me that in Russia most women seek education as means to actual service in life, as a pathway to real productive labor. They, like ambitious Russian boys, have a desire to join in the actual fight for prog- ress." The impression that the bureaucracy has constantly opposed elementary education is not correct. Scattered responsibility, clumsy plans, and financial limitations have been the real enemies of general and compulsory education. The population of Rus- sia is rural, and to bring schools to all at once is nearly im- possible. Furthermore, the schools maintained by the organiza- tion of the orthodox religion under the Holy Synod are suspected by the intelligent Russian of being seats of reaction. On the other hand, the liberal teachers of the city and district, the mu- nicipal and zemstvo schools, are suspected by conservatives of being the sources of radical and heretic doctrines. The zemstvos, or local self-governments, have done more practical work in ex- tending the system of education than any other agency. Their IS8 SELECTED ARTICLES schools, of which there are more than twenty thousand, are usually open to both boys and girls and give a four-year course. The city schools usually require a longer training. But toward these two classes of schools even the most reactionary supporters of the autocracy are forced to take an indulgent attitude. Why? Because if any educational system is to be set up, and no one dares to oppose it, then it is better for the bureaucracy that the system be in charge of authorities rather than a system which exists by private or cooperative management of the peo- ple and beyond government control. Above the elementary schools which are beginning to lift the mass of Russian women from a wretched illiteracy there are gymnasia and institutes. The latter are mainly for the daughters of landed gentry, bureaucrats, and the nobility, and correspond, except in tuition fees, to our expensive boarding-schools for girls of affluent families. The members of the court have founded many such institutes, and these turn out the cultivated, unproduc- tively brilliant "mewing women." They furnish opportunities for the girl not a member of the upper class who is striving to find a career of usefulness and ambition. "Into higher education the Russian woman has pushed her way," I was told by the secretary of one of the institutions for women on the Vassily Ostrov. "To be sure, there has been no marked resistance on the part of men as men. Keeping women out of institutions would appear to the average Russian intelli- gent as sensible as keeping out men with light hair and admitting those with dark complexions, or distinguishing between fat and thin persons. I believe we have less sense of sex difference than even you American men, who are said to look with indulgent good nature upon women's desire to be your mental equals. And yet our women had to assert their right to the fullness of in- tellectual development and to their right to enter the learned pro- fessions." The college in which these words were spoken is a vast rec- tangular, gloomy structure filled with endless classrooms and laboratories. As the president took us about, introducing us to both men and women professors and instructors, I noticed that the curriculum had in it much of the exact sciences and little of history, sociology, or political economy; the thumb of govern- ment authority had left its mark. But six thousand girls are en- rolled in this one institution in Petrograd, and there is in the RUSSIA 159 direct, cheerful, active manner of these girls a promise which it would be hard to find among any other group of women in the world. Those students to whom I was introduced looked squarely into my eyes without self-consciousness, and though hand-shaking is much more of a custom in Russia than in the United States, there was something in the thrust and grip of these girls which spoke of better partnership between the sexes than yet has reached full development. "The higher education for women began early in Russia," said the president. "You will hear of the young woman who in 1861 walked into a medical-school lecture in one of the provinces, and, with note-book opened, but without comment, took up the course. The faculty had never thought of such a situation, and there being no good reason to refuse, they admitted her. But it was before that year that this college was founded with an endow- ment of not more than fifty English pounds." From the middle of the last century the women of Russia have asserted their eagerness for professional training. Teach- ing, surgery, medicine, and government service have attracted the greatest number. When the medical schools were closed to them, they went to Switzerland and other foreign countries. A Russian girl took a doctor's degree at Zurich in 1867. In the early seventies the admission of women to medical courses be- came a settled practice in Russia. In 1876, women surgeons in numbers distinguished themselves at the front in the Servian-Tur- kish War ; the same distinguished service has been given by them in the Russo-Japanese War and in the present conflict. To-day women physicians are as prominent as men, and in some cities there are many more female than male dentists. More than sixty-two per cent of the teachers in the zemstvo schools are women, and the census of 1897 showed that there were four wo- men to every five men in the state and public services. I went to a Sunday-night musicale at the home of a Petrograd merchant. The hostess has five children. The eldest daughter has left school to enter the relief work of the war; the wife has to manage the household, and at present is taking care of two refugees from Poland. She belongs to many organizations of women, but despite her outside interests, her children— if one is tolerant of the unaffected self-assurance of Russian children — are attractive young persons, and her hospitality is of the constant, all-hours, and informal kind. i6o SELECTED ARTICLES "Will you have a cigarette?" a guest asked her. "Oh, no," she said. "I have my work to do this evening. Cigarettes are bad for one's efficiency." I asked about her work. "Why, she is a distinguished mathematician," I was told "She has been engaged for several years in work the govern- ment is doing — charting the Northern seas. She is a government hydrographer." The women of Russia are not self-conscious concerning their abilities. If one expresses surprise at their work, they express wonder at the surprise. "Why not?" they ask. The Russian monthly for women, patterned after our own women's magazines of "fashion, fiction, and fact," and many other periodicals, are edited by women, and women are often in charge of the business management as well. One of my acquaintances in Petrograd was an active, diminu- tive widow whose son asked eternally, and to my embarrassment, questions concerning the fighting strength of the United States. His mother does not regard it as remarkable that she is a politi- cal reporter and an international correspondent, sending daily telegrams to a London publication about the fortunes of war on the Russian front. In her study she has covered the walls with military maps and her book-shelves with manuals of military sci- ence, and it is impossible to convince her that there is anything extraordinary in her attempt to master strategy. "I have a mind. It can grasp these things or it cannot," she says. "If it can, well and good. It will not be because I am a woman that it can. If it cannot, it will not be because I am a a woman that it cannot. And so — " Women in Russia have not advanced to the degree that they do not foster women's organizations. No people are fonder of societies and associations than Russians. There are associations of arts, technical associations, musical clubs, and endless societies, but efficiency in joint action is not yet a virtue of the Russians. They are too individualistic. The government frowns upon any cooperative body which aims to do anything, and the Russians lack practice in acting together. Assembly is always dangerous even when it is not clear that there is any political significance in it. Not many months ago members of the American and Eng- lish colonies in Petrograd went out into the country for a picnic. The affair was conducted in a somewhat stately fashion, and RUSSIA i6i proud men and elegant dames joined in the celebration. They were all put under arrest by the local police for conducting an unlawful assembly. Russian women, however, have shown skill in making their organizations effective. I went to t)rpical settlements which are maintained by women's societies. Unlike our own settlements, they rely upon the cooperative labors of members more than upon their endowments. When the national relief committee under Prince Oldenburg called upon districts of cities and upon towns for the establishment of hospitals, the "intelligent" women of Russia came to the forefront in the business administration in these. "The movement for woman suffrage in Russia occupies a peculiar position," I was told by one of the women reporters who had been attached to daily papers in Moscow and Petrograd. "We feel the influence of Finland, where women vote and hold office just as men do," she went on. "There are many reasons why women in Russia would want to vote, and occasionally they are granted the privilege. For instance, when long ago, before the war, the first steps were taken against drunkenness and local option was tried, the women were allowed to cast ballots because it served the purpose of the imperial council to allow them to do so. But you must not forget that even male suffrage in Russia is not what it seems under our so-called constitutional rights. The first desire of the people is for any extension of suffrage, but whether to men or women is not for the moment vital. The question of women suffrage is somewhat lost in that larger ques- tion." None the less there are active suffrage societies. They are forbidden to maintain an existence, but under various guises they persist. The presiding officer of one of them in Petrograd talked freely enough about their work. "We increase our membership-list constantly, and some promi- nent members of the government who are considered reactionary would be surprised to find their wives and daughters secretly in- terested in our movement," said she. "Russian women are sent abroad to attend international conferences of the suffrage move- ment. We keep ourselves informed as to what other countries are doing, but we are very different from your woman-suffrage societies. We spend much of our energy trying to show that women can be practical and efficient in government. For in- i62 SELECTED ARTICLES stance, I understand that in America if one goes to a woman- suffrage society and says, 'We need better education; therefore draw a bill for the assembly,' your women say: *We do not understand education. If we did, we would draw no bill. We bother with no political questions but woman suffrage.' " I smiled. "Well, how can they say so?" she exclaimed. "They must convince by showing in deeds how worthy they are in politics. They must seize all opportunities for political expression. How can any one know their worth until they do so ? So we are busy working for good measures. I have helped to draw a bill for compulsory education to be put before the new Duma. We wo- men must practise for political fitness." When I left Petrograd for Mohileff in an army-train, a young soldier who shared my compartment, on his way to the front, leaned out of the window to say good-by to a young girl. An old artillery officer explained to me in French that they were married, but both had been attending universities, and both ex- pected to be doctors. The young Slav giant, with his flaxen hair and clear skin, roared with laughter, though somewhat nervously, and the girl, tall, well-poised, rested her large hands on the win- dow-sill and chatted with a smiling countenance. They were Spartans. The train started. The girl ran behind a post, where he could not see her, but I could, and buried her face in her arm, shaking with emotion. The young blond giant turned to me, and with tears in the comers of his eyes gripped my knees and poured forth in a low, thick voice a flood of Russian words. "Ah, he desires to communicate to you," the old artillery officer said in French — "he desires to communicate to you that it is not difficult to say good-by to an ordinary pretty woman to whom one is married and whom one loves, but that it is much more difficult if she is also one's best friend." Perhaps there is in this a deserved tribute to the best of the better half of Russia. RUSSIA 163 NEW FREEDOM FOR THE RUSSIAN WOMAN* A new law revolutionizing the position of married women in Russia received the assent of the Czar early in April. Some interesting and significant facts about this new law are given by Dr. Sofia Gordon, of Moscow, in a recent issue of The New Statesman, the London weekly. She says, speaking of the for- mer status of Russian wives: The Russian wife was not in such a humiliating position as the German wife — for the Russian law (outside Poland and the Baltic Provinces) has long recognized a married woman's separate estate, which the well-to-do woman can dispose of without asking her husband's permission, thus being able to transact business and engage in trade on her own account. Yet the millions of wives without separate estate had but scanty economic inde- pendence. A wife could not even obtain a passport without her husband's sanction, and was consequently unable to travel, or to take a lodging, with- out his permission, or even to dwell apart from him. A separated wife was always liable to be brought back to her husband's house by the police. For a whole generation the Holy Synod has successfully opposed any legal sep- aration of husband and wife. Divorce was (and still remains) a difficult and costly business, out of the question for ninety-nine per cent of Russian households. Where husband and wife chose to live apart, the wife without separate estate was unable legally to acquire property, to set up her own business, or even to enter into a wage contract. By the new law, the "separated wife" is set free. It gives her full liberty to travel and enjoyment of property, even if she is under age. She will apply for her own passport. There will be no judicial order for a restitution of conjugal rights and no summary bringing back by the police. An aggrieved wife may obtain a judicial separation for rudeness, violence, dishonesty, immorality, dangerous illness or loathsome disease in her husband; with the right, if she is the aggrieved party, to the custody of her children, and, where possible, to an order on the husband for alimony. Formerly, Dr. Gordon reminds us, Russian women had many rights and freedom to work. For a whole generation the women's fight for political freedom was but part of the general revolutionary movement. It is unnecessary to describe the zeal and devotion with which thousands of women sacrificed themselves, slaving away at the work of propaganda and organization, going to the jail and the gallows, or enduring the horrors of the long march to Siberia, like the men. The Russian movement specifically for woman suffrage begins only with the present century. * Review of Reviews. 49:741-2. June, 1914. i64 SELECTED ARTICLES The reaction, after the revolution of 1905 and 1906 had been put down, swept all this away. However, the Russian woman has patiently begun all over again. In 1909 a new "League for Woman Suffrage" was formed at St. Peters- burg on a non-party basis, and this spread to Moscow in 1910, and to Char- cow in 19 1 3. Its membership is small and its task difficult; but it makes progress, and is influencing opinion. Women's claim to vote is also sup- ported by the more powerful "Association for Defense of the Rights of Women" at St. Petersburg, and by many philanthropic and social organiza- tions of women all over the country. It is some evidence, says Dr. Gordon further, that the long- continued educational campaign, the women's devotion to the revolutionary cause, and the more recent suffrage agitation have not been in vain that practically all the "progressive" parties of Russia include in their programs complete equality of rights for men and women. Motions for redressing the special legal grievances of women are fre- quently discussed in the Duma. The new law which accords personal free- dom to the married woman is one outcome of these discussions. The Labor Party has boldly demanded adult suffrage. Even the "Center" Party, the so-called "Octobrists," has supported equality of sons and daughters in inheri- tance, admission of women to practise as lawyers, to the State examinations entitling to degrees, and even woman's franchise (but only for female heads of households) for the local committees for regulating the sale of alcoholic liquor. Women heads of households already possess an indirect vote at municipal and communal elections, in that they may depute a male member of their family to vote for them. During the past few months great meet- ings have been held in St. Petersburg and Moscow to urge women to take part in these elections. A widespread agitation is being set on foot by the League for Woman Suffrage to obtain votes for women in the forthcoming revision of the electoral system by the Duma. ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN RUSSIA^ Since the outbreak of the war in Europe much has been said and written about the many factors that are working for the regeneration of Russia. The social, financial, industrial and political phases of Russian life have received considerable atten- tion in the press, but practically nothing has been said about the progress of elementary education, the greatest of all factors in modern civilization, in the Russian empire. In a recent'issue * Review of Reviews. 54:104-5. July, 1916. RUSSIA i6s of the Russkia Vedomosti (Moscow) there appeared extracts from a report issued by the Ministry of Popular Education in February of this year. This report was the result of five years of work of investigation conducted by the Ministry of Educa- tion among the schools of the empire under its control, for there are also in Russia parochial and private elementary schools, though their numbers are not large. In the report are also not included the schools of Finland and the Province of Kamtchatka. The report "covers" a period of four years, from January ii, 191 1, when the first general school census was taken in Russia, to January i, 1915. On January i, 1915, there were in the empire 80,801 elemen- tary schools (with the above exceptions), 9,006 of which were in cities and towns and 71,795 in villages and hamlets. In the four years that passed since January 11, 191 1, the number of schools increased by 19,764, or 32.3 per cent, which is several times more than the corresponding increase in population. In this connection it is of interest to note that in the last twenty years the number of schools grew from 29,000, in 1895, to 81,000, in 1915. From the year when the plan for universal ele- mentary education had been first drafted, 1907, the number of schools grew from 46,000 to 81,000, i. e., an increase of 35,000, or 74.6 per cent in seven years. These figures speak eloquently for the strides Russia has been making of late in her elemen- tary education. The statistics as to the numbers of pupils, teachers, and their sexes are also not void of significance. Thus the number of pupils increased from 4,411,000 on January 11, 191 1, to 5,942,- 000, on January i, 1915, an increase of 1,531,000, or 34.7 per cent. The growth in the number of female pupils was marked everywhere, but especially so in the rural districts, where the increase in female scholars amounted to 47 per cent in the period of four years. The percentage of female pupils in the entire student body of the elementary schools increased from 32.5 to 34.5 within the four years. The total teaching force in the Russian elementary schools consisted of 146,000 instructors on January i, 1915 — an increase in the four years of 41,000, or 38.6 per cent. As the increase in the student body was for the same time only 34.7 per cent, it follows that the number of pupils to each teacher has de- i66 SELECTED ARTICLES creased in the same period. On January i, 1915, there were 40.7 pupils for every instructor. Another interesting phenomenon is the constant increase in the number of female teachers at the expense of the male. Thus, in 191 1, the percentage of male teachers in the entire force was 43.5. But in the beginning of 1915 the percentage of male teachers decreased to 37.1, while that of the female force rose correspondingly to 62.9. However, these statistics are not equal for all the provinces of the empire. In the forty-three Zemstvo provinces (the more advanced and civilized parts of the country) the percentage for the male teachers was only 30.2, while in the forty-nine remaining provinces there were as many as fifty-six male teachers in every hundred. CHRISTMAS IN RUSSIA AND HER PROVINCES^ Russia is a large body and correspondingly slow moving, so she has not yet made up her mind to submit to the changes Pope Gregory made in the calendar centuries ago, and the 25th of December still comes according to the calculations made by Julius Caesar, on what the rest of the world calls January 6. Soon it will come on January 7, for the empire is steadily losing a minute or two every year. Russia doesn't mind — time is not so important there that they can't spare that much — and they have just as good a time on Christmas, even if they do have to wait for it, as anywhere else. Such home-festivals are especially delightful in that country of the snows, when all Nature is frozen outdoors and the pit- iless winds of the great plains sweep to the cities with force sufficient to penetrate sometimes even the double and triple win- dows behind which the Russians barricade themselves. The length of the winter makes this people so fond of green things that they turn their houses into veritable bowers whenever they can. Lovely plants grow everywhere and even between the double windows (sealed and never raised during the winter) artificial flowers are put, so that one looks out not on a desola- tion of snow, but at a mass of climbing vines. All these prepa- rations have just been completed when Christmas comes round, for it is December that brings the great freeze that will last all winter, the "frost of St. Nicholas." 1 Travel. 13:130-1. December, 1907. RUSSIA 167 The orthodox church has ordered many fasts, and the rule is that the whole of Advent shall be kept by abstinence from meat eating. Even fish is only occasionally to be indulged in, so when Christmas day comes round everybody is in a mood for a general rejoicing. Customs vary in different parts of the vast empire as well as in different classes of society, and many of the old ways are passing fast, but the day is still marked by some curious customs, especially in the remote country dis- tricts, where the new ideas have not much of a foothold. In St Petersburg and other centers, the Christmas is kept much as it is with us, giving presents, lighting gayly-decked trees at family reunions. A few old games are played still in the houses of the aristocracy, but not as they used to be. To see a genuine Russian Christmas party of the old style one must go into the provinces. In far country districts it is still the custom to give a great celebration lasting several days in honor chiefly of young girls. A messenger is sent to bid all the families of consequence to this Homeric entertainment and the guests arrive a day or two before Christmas. Russians are a ceremonious people and hours pass in compliments and assurances of esteem. The young girls are to remain several days, each accompanied by a maid, and the parents are careful to express their pleasure at leaving their daughters under the honorable care of the host and hostess. All the girls call one another "little playmate," although they may never have met before, and all sleep in one large room. The peasants of southern Russia have a pretty custom of welcoming the "Christmas guest." A young man chosen by the village for the purpose calls at the door of all the houses and says, "Christ is born," throwing a handful of corn over the threshold. The housewife responds, "In truth he is born!" and throws corn over the guest. The young man walks to the fire, takes up the largest log and strikes it until the sparks fly. Then he says, "Even so may blessings come to this house," and puts on the end of the log an orange, stuck with a small coin. The housewife gives him knitted leggings and he takes his leave, turning, however, to say at the door, "How did Christ- mas come to you?" The housewife replies, "As a welcome guest. All have enough and are merry." In other districts peas- ant boys dress themselves as animals and knock at the doors of 13 i68 SELECTED ARTICLES the houses. It is etiquette to express great fear at their terrible appearance. Then they are invited in, the host expressing his relief at the gentle manner of these bloodthirsty beasts. The boys dance and sing and are given pennies and cakes. In the capital the Christmas ceremonies have from almost time immemorial ended with the solemnity of the blessing of the Neva. The river is always frozen over at this season and a little temple is erected on the ice adorned with pictures of the Saints. The dignitaries of the church and the court, headed by the emperor, wind in stately procession over the ice to the queer little structure, which surrounds a large hole bored through to the water. Here the river is blessed with great pomp and cir- cumstances. It is a really beautiful ceremony, with splendid symbolism and exquisite prayers. The popular ways of cele- bration may be abandoned, but this ceremony of the blessing of the Neva is one that will last, as long as the mighty church and the mysticisms of the nation endure. TWO YEARS' SOBRIETY IN RUSSIA' Drawing sober breaths of rejoicing, Russia does not forget the time when "there were entire drunken villages, drunken cities, a drunken army, a drunken Russia," So the Petrograd correspondent of the Neue Ziiricher Zeitung presents a survey of the results of the prohibition ukase of July 29, 1914. "What would have become of Russia without the revolutionary proc- lamation?" is a question put by many. A representative of the Duma has said that "the very thought of the fateful conse- quences on the battlefields and in the country itself of a con- tinuation of the inveterate alcohol regime makes every patriot shudder." The writer continues : We are, therefore, more than overjoyed to know that it has been statis- tically proved that the daily producing capacity of the workingman, since the promulgation of that message of salvation, has been increased by fifteen per cent, and that Monday, the day when millions of muzhik (farmers) were found in the gutters, has become a normal work-day in Russia. But not only the mir (village community) felt the consequences; the life also in the city was as if of a sudden transformed. The population rushed to the schools and savings-banks, cooperative societies opened their counters by the hundred. The whole aspect of the family life, the very looks of the people * Literary Digest. 54:822. March 24, 19 17. RUSSIA 169 on the street were changed. How quickly the population grasped the pros- pective benefits of the great reform is best shown by the fact that when it became known that the Imperial ukase, in order to become legally valid, will need the express consent of the majority of the mirs, only an exceedingly low percentage refused the indorsement. To-day there is hardly a village in the vast Empire where the blessings of heaven are not called down on the Little Father in Petrograd. January last (1916) the Zemstvo (County Assembly) of Moscow circu- larized the peasants in order to ascertain in the most direct possible way the impression of the population. A few of the replies made by the village elders, most of them as illiterate as their charges, have a great economic and psychological value: "The men feel stronger. Their treatment of their women folk and atti- tude toward their neighbors is not the same as before." "The children are now nicely drest and have even shoes on their feet. One hears no more quarreling in the izbas (farmhouses)." "I was amazed to find among our farmers some who subscribe to news- papers." "The people have become more honest." There are, however, some who do not give up all hope to see again the vodka bottle in its ancient glory: "The war will end with our victory; our heroes will return, and then, of course, moderately, one will have to drink again." Our authority states that the malcontents are mostly found among the lazy farm-hands and the city loafers, who try to replace the old wine and alcohol by all possible substitutes. The substitutes offered by the govern- ment and the municipalities are theatres, moving pictures, reading-rooms, clubs, tea-houses, and similar institutions. Nobody has so quickly and completely grasped the import of the social revolution as woman, the greatest sufferer from the old alcohol curse. We are, therefore, not astonished to learn that as soon as the saloons were definitely closed the peasant women marched to the churches in Indian file to burn a candle each, thanking the Lord for the great delivery. When, last spring, the question of repermitting the sale of beer and red wine came up in the Duma, Tarasov, a farmer-deputy, exclaimed: "If the women could hear you, they would pull you down from this platform." RELIGION RELIGION IN RUSSIA TO-DAY* The Oriental orthodox church — for the designation "Greek church" is really a misnomer — has a history which perhaps means more to it in its actual consciousness of to-day, and par- ticularly to that branch known as the Russian Church, than is the case with any other branch of Christendom. To Jerusalem, the cradle of Christianity, there succeeded in ecclesiastical im- portance Constantinople, the centre from which Northern Europe was evangelised. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, the deposit of the Oriental orthodox church was committed to a country that had been Christian since the tenth century, where it has since been preserved with an affection and in a purity that are both vivid elements in the modern Russian re- ligious consciousness. Perhaps it is in the Oriental orthodox church that we can see the best contemporaneous representative of the Early Christian church of the first three centuries. At any rate, it has conserved without alteration the teaching of the Apostles and the decrees of the seven Ecumenical Councils. The greatest event in the history of this Oriental orthodox church was tlie schism with Rome under the Patriarch Photius in the ninth century. Hereby, in the thought of the cultured orthodox Russian, it was saved from the spiritual despotism and the dogmatic and disciplinary innovations of its rival, from those alterations of doctrine and waywardness in morals that produced the fruitful protest of the sixteenth century, from celibacy of the priesthood with its attendant evils, from the sacri- legious commerce in indulgences, from the horrors of an Inquisi- tion, from the baneful might of excommunication. The Oriental orthodox church has never monopolised the Holy Scriptures for its profit, nor proclaimed that to it alone belonged the right to present them to the faith of its people. It places their authority * By J. Y. Simpson. Hibbert Journal. 14:393-408. January, 1916. 172 SELECTED ARTICLES above all else; it calls upon its members to find within those pages their daily food and sustenance. "To be the pure reflec- tion of the Word of God" — says Boissard, attempting to show the standpoint of the Russian church — "that is, for every church, to participate in its infallibility." Broken up to-day into more than a dozen different bodies and transformed in a certain measure, it still stands firmly upon its ancient foundations, and will stand. To traverse afresh the course of the ages, fixing our attentive gaze upon ancient Kiev, mother of all the towns of Russia, or on the Holy City of Moscow, the principal centre of orthodoxy; to contemplate with admiration mingled with respect the noble traits of pastors such as Cyril, Nikon, Philip Martyr, Hermogenes, and Philaret, or of pious ascetics such as were Anthony, Theodosius, Sergius, and Sozimus, or of princes like Vladimir Monomachus, Alexander Nevsky, and Michael Ro- manov; or yet of countless martyrs and confessors, both men and women, of every age and condition — to do all this provides not merely an entrancing story, but is necessary to the complete understanding of what one sees in the Russian church of to-day. But that, after all, the actual expression of the rehgious con- sciousness, is the principal thing to understand; for religious Russia, direct though her contact be with the past, and proud of it as she always will be, does not altogether live there, as so many seem to think. "There is no book on the Russian church," wrote one of her most distinguished sons to me in answer to an inquiry; "there is no book on the Russian church, because our church cannot be discussed in a book. Better than from any book will you understand it if you go to such a religious centre as to the Troizko-Sergievskaya Lavra (a famous pilgrim-fre- quented monastery near Moscow) or the Kiev Petcherskaya (the oldest and most highly revered monastery in Russia) and others, especially on the great festivals, or even if you go to our churches, particularly in Lent." In endeavouring to bring out that which the Russian church means to the best of her people and what they hope for from her, I do not know that it is possible to do better than attempt to reproduce parts of conversations to which I certainly owe much. The speaker is now an old man, and a layman holding high office in connection with the Holy Synod. He began by correcting wrong impressions. "You must know," he said, "that the 'Em- peror is the protector, but not the head, of the Russian Greek RUSSIA 173 church. The head of the Church is our Lord." In his develop- ment of this point I came to see that the views of the Oriental orthodox church and of the United Free Church of Scotland were practically one, and that the opinion ordinarily held in this country of the relation of the Emperor to the Russian Church would be blasphemy to the true orthodox believer. "That is the great distinction between us and the Romans," continued my friend. "There is no necessity to have a head of the church upon earth when we have such a Head in heaven. Again, the Greek church is the dominating church, but it is not the state church. We do not use the term 'state church,' because we have not the thing. We speak about the 'Gospodstvoyustchaya Tzer- kov' — the 'dominating,' the predominant church. But in that description there is nothing juridical, simply a statement of fact." Of these talks, of which I had two or three, what lingers chiefly in my memory were animated passages in which he strove to show what in great measure we had lost. And it is just here that the Russian church has most to teach us, owing to the deep mysticism of her most devoted sons, the ingrained certainty in practically every Russian mind that there is a great deal more in the world than shall ever be compassed by measuring rod or test tube, the unremitting sureness that we are wrapped about by a spiritual world which is the real world. "Ah, the Com- munion of Saints," said my friend; "how real and precious that is to us, to-day more than ever! I think that you have just a little lost the sense of it in Protestantism, and that the spiritual world perhaps seems more remote to you than it is to us. The living and most patent example and proof of the vitality amongst us of this feeling of the nearness of the spiritual world are the periodical beatification and canonisation of new saints." On in- quiry as to who were the most remarkable of those to whom the hearts of believers had thus gone out, the following names were given amongst others : — St. Mitrophane of Voronesh, who lived under Peter the Great and was canonised in the reign of Nicholas I in the fifth decade of last century; St. Tikhon of Zadonsk in the province of Voronesh, who lived under Catherine in the second half of the eighteenth century and was canonised fifty years ago ; and more recently, during the present Emperor's reign in 1903, St. Seraphim of Sarov, in the government of Tam- boff (died 1833), who is said to have foretold the present war. It is probable that to many Western minds all this represents 174 SELECTED ARTICLES but so much superstition. Such a hasty judgment would be of the same quahtative value as superstition. It was impossible not to proceed further in inquiry as to process. "The rules," continued my informant, "under which such canonisations take place are severe. A register is made of any cures and miracles : they are written down and kept by the local clergy. If these occur in striking numbers or in an unusual degree, the local clergy apply to the Holy Synod for canonisation. But parallel to this outward working of miracles an inward movement is going on. People who hold those saints in veneration go to their tombs and pray for the soul of the saint, asking our Lord that his soul should be blessed. This is done during many years: the believers continue to hold those requiems. The fact that so many come and do this through long years assures the higher clergy of the veneration in which this man is held. These two circumstances eventually determine the Holy Synod to make a .strict examination on their own account. A commission is then appointed whose business is to make thorough investigation and ascertain that there is nothing in the way of fraud. An advo- catus diaboli is given the fullest rein, and only after the most critical investigation and full discussion is the decision made. Thus we ensure that there is no fabrication of saints. It is quite possible that one day Father John of Kronstadt will be canon- ised: men and women never cease to pray at his tomb." So he spoke. I do know if St. Mitrophaen actually did this or that, or whether any proportion of the stories of St. Seraphim are true, but I do know that in the Russia of to-day there is a great belief that God is working in the world both through His servants who still remain and through those whom He has taken to Himself. There is an attitude of expectancy, a sense of wonder, in the Russian mind. He believes in God with a work- ing belief, and looks for signs of His activity in the world; and just as the expectant shepherds watching by their flocks angels appeared, so to the humble, believing Russian peasant come great certainties of God. We do not expect, and so we do not receive. We are too sure that we know exactly what kind of a world it is in which we find ourselves, and vision dies amongst us. It is just here that our Ally has a message and a mission to the world. Further, they realise how close they are to Protestant Britain even with that long history of separation. "Have you not often RUSSIA 175 considered," continued my friend, "that what is common to all forms of the Christian faith is ninety-nine per cent, and what is different is but one per cent? Is it not" — and here he leaned forward earnestly, — "you will excuse me, but I feel it so — is it not the hand of the Devil himself that makes trifles appear in our eyes as important matters, and puts serious differences be- tween us and Rome, when the importance of union is so much greater than any or all of our differences? We understand the Protestant opposition to Rome: Rome has deserved it. We only feel our regret that Protestants as a whole in the time of Hus did not renew their memory of the fact that there exists an- other old church. Hus, indeed, tried to bring about such a re- union, sending his friend Jeronym of Prague to Russia with a view to bringing his own people back to the Greek church. Rome seceded from us. Protestantism stands on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, but has lost the tradition, whereas we have both. We are descended from the Church of the Ecumenical Councils." Then he continued: "Inter-ecclesiastical history is much more important than international history, because the life of nations is limited to this earth, whereas a church is a body con- stituted both on earth and in heaven. I often think about the question of reunion. It will come first between the Greek church and the Protestantism, not between Rome and the Greek church. Churches like the Anglican church and the Greek church have more psychological affinity with one another than with Rome. Rome is based on subordination, whereas the Eastern church is based on co-ordination. The Church of Rome is a monarchy and a despotism, whereas the Greek church is a federation of fourteen different churches, a sort of ecclesiastical republic. In this matter of union no church should be asked to cede something to the other. They must endeavour to recognise one another as perfectly orthodox, as true, i.e., to Scripture and to the spirit of the teachings of the seven Ecumenical Councils. "Humanity has been — is — going through awful experiences. Is not this a miracle, that the German philosophy and the whole German spirit have brought that country under the sway of Beelzebub? Yet in our land there is a great revival of religious interest to-day. Russia was under the French infleunce of Vol- taire till 1812: then in a struggle Napoleon was vanquished and the result was a widespread religious movement We were 176 SELECTED ARTICLES again becoming materialistic when the Japanese war and the revolution after the war shook us from our spiritual torpor, and the religious life of the nation was quickened. The same is happening at the present moment. From the court to the peas- ant's hut a spiritual movement is in progress." If now the question be asked, How is this religious conscious- ness expressing itself in Russia to-day? I do not think that the answer will be found to differ so very much from the kind of an- swer that could be truly given in connection with our own coun- try. The religious life of Russia has assuredly been deepened by the war. Men are face to face with the realities of life and death in a degree that compels them to think. The needs of the hour are driving men and women to pray. Far more people are seen in the churches. I recollect in particular a service in the Temple of the Redeemer in Moscow, one of the most beautiful churches in all Russia. It is a church of the people, and was crowded. What impressed me was the very large number of men, particularly of wounded soldiers. They must have out- numbered the women worshippers by nearly ten to one, and it was just an ordinary service. Then again there has been a re- markable development of interest in the consideration of re- ligious questions. Public lectures have been given by men like Professor Prince Eugene Trubetzkoy, Professor Bulgakoff, and Nikolai Berdyaev dealing with various aspects of the political and spiritual present and future of Russia: for the two are one there in a degree in which that is true of no other country in the world. These lectures have been attended by crowded audi- ences, and listened to with an almost strained interest. The de- mand for religious literature has also greatly increased, although it is mainly satisfied by the sale of the older Russian classics. Yet in one quarter I learned that "the translation of a book called The Ideal Life, by a Mr. Henry Drummond," was espe- cially treasured by those who knew it. Religious conversation has also become much more frequent and natural in drawing- room and trench alike. Such subjects were never very far at any time from the speculative, questing Russian mind: to-day it is no exaggeration to say that they dominate it. Have we a minister -of state who, in discussing the future of a city which was the cradle of Christianity to his people, and therefore re- garded with quite a peculiar longing by them, would or could say, "We are a religious people, and I believe that in our branch RUSSIA 177 of the Greek church there has been preserved a real religious life, whereas the other branches of the Greek church have be- come somewhat barren and dogmatic, content with that external crust of things which has been very much for the Greek church what the Latin theology has been for the Church of the West"; or in discussing the future of a country would say, as part of his political point of view, "Russia does not want Palestine for herself. Such an attitude is really distinctive of Russia. She could not be imagined as wanting it for herself. Christ's re- demption is for all the world" ? Similarly, at the other end of the social scale, religious and political thought blend in the peas- ant mind, with the former element as the determinative one, nor do I know any more exquisite expression of the fact than in an incident related by Prince Trubetzkoy in one of the lectures re- ferred to above. It opens avowedly with a discussion of what Constantinople as expressed in the Church of St. Sophia has meant and means to Russia, but passes quickly into the larger thought of what Sophia, the wisdom of God in His purpose of the redemption of humanity, has meant to the world. The whole theme is developed with the haunting mysticism of the Russian mind, and his endeavour is to show how this thought of the salvation of the world through the power of Christ is, as it always has been, close to the heart of the Russian people. "It is no matter for surprise," he says — and this poor translation can give little impression of the beauty of the original — "it is no matter for surprise that the soul of our people was from the earliest times united to the idea of St. Sophia with the greatest hope and with the greatest joy, and it would be vain to think that the deepest sense of this idea can be understood only by in- telligent and educated people. On the contrary, for the very highly educated this idea is especially hard to understand: it is much nearer to the life-understanding of our people. As proof of this take the following personal reminiscence. Four years ago I returned to Russia from a long foreign journey through Constantinople. In the morning in the mosque of St. Sophia they showed me on the wall the imprint of the bloody hand of the Sultan who spilled the Christian blood in this greatest of the orthodox cathedrals on the very day of the taking of Constan- tinople. Having killed the worshippers who came there for safety, he wiped his hand on the column, and this bloody imprint is shown there still. Immediately after this visit I went on 178 SELECTED ARTICLES board a Russian steamer going to Odessa from Palestine, and at once found myself in a familiar atmosphere. On the deck there was gathered a very large group of Russian peasants — ^pil- grims returning from the Holy Land to their homes. Tired with the long journey, badly dressed and hungry, they were drinking water with hard bread, they were finishing their simple everyday toilet, they were listening, reclining, to tales about Constantinople. They were listening to tales about its churches and, of course, about the bloody Sultan and about the streams of Christian blood which, during more than five centuries, peri- odically were spilled in this once Christian kingdom. I cannot convey to you how deeply I was moved by what I saw. I saw my own country in Constantinople. There on the mountain had just disappeared the Holy Sophia lighted by the sun, and here before me on the deck was a real Russian village; and at the moment when our boat gently moved along the Bosphorus with its mosques and minarets, the whole crowd firmly and solemnly but, I do not know why, in a subdued voice, sang 'Christ is Risen' (i.e. the Easter hymn of the Greek church). How deep and long-developed was the instinct which I heard in this sing- ing, and how much of soul understanding there was in it ! What other answer could they find in their souls but this to what they heard about the cathedral, about the Turks who defiled it, and of the long-continued persecutions of the nation over whom they ruled? What other answer could they find in their souls in such a country, except this, except their joy in the thought of a com- mon resurrection for all people and for all nations? I do not know whether they understood their answer. For me it is un- important v/hether the peasants thought or not about the cathe- dral itself — it is of Holy Sophia that they were singing. It is important that in their singing the real Sophia was understood so as no single philosopher or theologian could express it. The peasants who sang 'Christ is Risen' could scarcely interpret very well what they understood. But in their religious feeling there was far more than any deep understanding. They understood the ferocious Turkish power under which the blood of perse- cuted peoples flowed: they saw (in their soul) the whole human- ity joined in the joy of the Holy Resurrection, but at the same time they felt that they could not express this joy, this hope, which always lives in the soul of the people, now, in the centre of the Turkish power, except with a subdued voice, because so RUSSIA 179 long as this power exists and the temper produced by it, Sophia is still far from us; she is in a different sphere. But the time will come when heaven will descend to earth, and the eternal idea of humanity will be realised; then this hymfi will sound loud and powerful — this hymn which now you hear in a subdued tone. I think no other proof seems necessary that Sophia lives in the soul of our people. But in order to see and to feel her reality, it is necessary to experience that which these peasants on the steamer felt, and about which they sang." Is it at all remarkable that amongst such a people there should be signs of a great religious awakening, none the less wonderful that it is going on so quietly that perhaps as yet the mass of the people know little about it? One of the foreign Bible societies has distributed over three and a half million por- tions and gospels amongst the soldiers since the beginning of the war. They were sent by the Imperial supply trains to the front, and on the opening page may be found the following in- scription : "This book is given by His Imperial Highness the Tzarevitch Alexei Nikolaevitch, presented by a Sunday school scholar in America." Already those who have concerned them- selves with the organisation and direction of this distribution have become aware of its issue in a movement which is ul- timately due, as one of them said to me, "to no human means: it is , nothing less than the Spirit of God moving amongst the people." Through letters from the soldiers they learn how in a hospital one has taught his fellows to sing a grace before meals, whilst in a trench the others have gathered round the only mem- ber of their company who happened to get an Evangile, and he reads aloud to them. Yet I do not wish to give any one-sided impression. There is no assemblage in any country to-day, whether camp or commune, where the words of the prophet are not as true as when they were written: "Many shall purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be refined : but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall under- stand: but they that be wise shall understand." It is interesting to note that a movement is going on amongst the Greek clergy themselves which, if it continues to progress, will provide a very sympathetic atmosphere for the furtherance of the awakening already described. The movement is not new, and it is confined as yet to very few comparatively, but it is the beginning of a line of advance that history shows cannot be ul- l8o SELECTED ARTICLES timately checked. Already in 1905 there had come into existence a group of priests who were called Priest Renewers. They also published a project for a reformed parish life. In those times the universal cry of the clergy was that the parish life should be renewed. The Holy Synod worked out a scheme for the Duma on this matter. But the project was not considered to be satis- factory either for the government or for the clergy, and it did not pass. Briefly put, the parish was to be converted into a church — the parish, that is to say, in the sense of a certain con- gregation of the people who have no right to manage the affairs of their own congregation, the minister (priest) doing all this for the bishop, while the people did not discuss their own needs or conditions. A church, on the other hand, would be a group of people who elect their own minister and manage their own affairs by their own discussion and vote. The most distinguished representative of this reforming and regenerating movement in the orthodox church to-day is An- dreas, Bishop of Ufa. He wants the church free from official- dom. Svoboda, freedom, the rallying call of the revolutionaries of 1905, is his catchword. He is especially anxious about the reform of the parochial system, considering that it must be car- ried out under any circumstances. In Russia the parish priests are elected by the bishops, and the election is confirmed by the Holy Synod. The local clergy, that is to say, are appointed without any reference or regard to the wishes of the people. To Andreas' mind, such a system is obsolete. The parishes, he says, must be reformed on the principle of election of the priests by the people, and with a certain autonomy granted to every parish in relation to national interests like education, etc. "We bishops must surrender this right of election to the churches." Again, in the activities of the Holy Synod the de- termining voice is that of the Procurator, the lay member, and he is really there to give expression to the wishes of the Im- perial Protector of the Church. "Now," say Andreas and his co-thinkers, amongst whom may be numbered Bishop Nikon of Krasnoyarsk and Demetrius of Tauria (Crimea), "this is not canonical. In the early days of the reign of Peter the Great and previously, the Patriarch was free from the bureaucracy, but that great Emperor established the collegium of bishops, and abolished the Patriarchate, replacing it by the Synod, and in- stituting the office of Procurator. We must return to the older RUSSIA i8i arrangement." When to this we can add that he speaks against the exercise of any kind of intolerance, we can surely look forward to a day of great things in the Greek church. The religious condition of the Greek orthodox church is, then, indeed promising. Amongst her priests are many in whom there is a longing for the revival and redemption of religious life generally. Amongst her people there are brotherhoods or unions of zealous orthodox souls who gather in special houses, listen to the preaching of particular priests, and sing evangelical hymns. And when we further consider the definite situation produced by such a step as the prohibition of vodka, we see how, taken in conjunction with this religious temper of her people, yet greater and farther-reaching results may be achieved in this already admirable land. The liquor-traffic reform has left the Russian government with a concrete yet difficult problem. Vodka and the public-houses have been taken from the people, but little has been done to provide them with good pastimes and reason- able and useful entertainment. The Ministry of the Interior attempted to supply the lack by a project to build People's Pal- aces in eveiy city. The scheme was submitted to the Council of Ministers by Mons. MaklakoflF, a recent Minister of the Interior, but the Council framed a remarkable resolution to the effect that this question cannot be settled merely by building special Peo- ple's Palaces with cheap entertainments, but that there must also be educational and religious means applied to this end. Under the former are envisaged lecture-halls, libraries, and special evening classes for the village people. With regard to religious means, the Council in a delicate way indicated to the Holy Synod that they are bound to bring certain spiritual influences to bear upon the people, and to provide them with a high religious in- fluence that will fill their Hves. It is quite certain that after the war all these questions will be raised and discussed, and a new movement inaugurated amongst the orthodox Greek church and the people generally. Hitherto we have dealt with the orthodox church. But ras- kol, or dissent, and religious fragmentation generally, has been as characteristic of Russia as of our own country. It testifies indeed to a certain vitality of religious life, but we believe that we are entering a period when the centrifugal tendencies of the past will be replaced by movements that are centripetal. It is so in Russia to-day. Of the various dissenting bodies, the Old Be- i82 SELECTED ARTICLES Jievers are the most important, of whom there are more than twelve millions, living mostly on the Volga and in Central Rus- sia generally. Their origin goes back to the second half of the seventeenth century, and was in part a protest against the issue of corrected texts of the religious books initiated by the Patri- arch Nikon. The most aggressive points of difference between them and the orthodox church lie, however, in such futilities of ritual as making the sign of the Cross with two fingers instead of with three, or leading the church processions of their clergy "according to the sun" instead of "against the sun." They are intensely literalistic — practically fetichists — in their attitude to the Scriptures, and there is a great development of ritual in their services. On the other hand, their communities choose their own priests, and they have their own bishops, archbishops, and metropolitan uninterfered with by the Holy Synod; that is to say, they have already secured many of the conditions which Andreas of Ufa desiderates for the orthodox church. There is little doubt that a reunion of the Old Believers with the orthodox church will come. Already some who look for a great future for their beloved church, regenerated and transformed, are planning in their minds a local council at which the first steps of this movement will be inaugurated. If the men to whom will be given the direction of such a work include those who have the penetration to say, as one of them said to me, "It is easier to fight with our national enemies than with our prejudices," we can be certain that the thing will be done. And when this is done and as the movement grows, we may see things even yet more wonderful. Such at any rate are the dreams of those who love their church in Russia. "I am very pravoslavny (ortho- dox) myself," writes one of the most devoted of her sons to me, "and I have no doubt of the universal importance of the Russian church, but you will see this better in the future. The immediacy of her influence on Russian life depends largely upon our 'intelligent' society; the more quickly they give up their re- ligious indifference, the sooner will that influence be felt. If her spiritual resurrection shall be as fully accomplished as we expect it after such a world-convulsion, then the power of the Russian Church will show itself visibly even on the surface of Russian life." It will have been observed that throughout this description of religion in Russia to-day there have been expressions of hope RUSSIA 183 and belief in a regenerated and revitalised church on the part of those who have supplied us with our subject-matter; nor are they unaware of how all this alone can come. When, however, we still consider such a movement on its purely human side, we cannot altogether refuse to recognise what may be done, and in- deed for that matter has been done, for Russia by other bodies, dissenters also, who have no historical connection with the Eastern orthodox church. Under the ukase of 17th April 1905 the right was given to all subjects who so desired to separate from the orthodox church. Of this "Charter of Tolerance" great advantage was taken. Again, the ukase of 17th October 1906 gave the right to all dissenters to form their own religious associations, and have their own churches and ministers. It also gave them important personal rights : under it they became in- dividuals before the law. A church could now found chapels, schools, and other institutions, and own its property. Protected by these laws, dissenters were able to spread their activities throughout Russia. Further, under the political manifesto of October 1905 — "The Charter of the Constitution"' — con- cerned with the constitution of Russian life generally and grant- ing the Duma, etc., dissenters along with the Russian population as a whole acquired a certain liberty of the press : they had now the right to publish their own books and periodicals. How great the contrast was with the condition of affairs previous to 1905 can only be appreciated by those who knew the country be- fore and after. Previous to that year dissenters could not sep- arate officially from the orthodox church : such separation was considered to be a crime. The dissenter in this narrower sense of the term, whatever he was, was described in his passport as belonging to the orthodox church. The man who announced his separation was tried and sent to Siberia or to Transcaucasia. Any kind of propaganda — preaching, speaking about evangelical religion — was considered a crime. There were no meeting- houses or institutions; no periodicals might be published. All sacred songs were written out on paper, with the exception of certain editions which were issued in the time of Pashkoff in the closing year of the reign of Alexander II. Meetings were arranged in a secret way in Petrograd, with small numbers, and held in private homes and lodgings. From 1905 onwards, accordingly, there has been a great change. One immediate result was that a great many people 14 i84 SELECTED ARTICLES who had separated from the orthodox church, though described as orthodox upon their passports, appHed for separation. In some cases they tried to gather into communities and associations and obtain recognition from the government as a new associa- tion. Some of these bodies have founded their own schools and philanthropic institutions, hold their own conferences, publish their own periodicals, tracts, and hymn-books. Now these bodies, although small, cannot have failed to exert some influ- ence upon the activities of the orthodox church. Till 1890, for example, there was hardly any preaching in the orthodox church: since then, preaching has greatly increased, due to the influence exerted on the people by the preaching of Stundists and other dissenters. There is a law of spiritual induction whereby energetic conditions prevalent in one body can influ- ence other bodies in the vicinity without actual contact. It is impossible to estimate how far these other bodies may thus react on the "predominant" body, but it is certain that by the Charter of Tolerance Russia permitted* the development of a spirit that will eventually work throughout the country for good. HOLY RUSSIA' From the literature of Russia we learn that this patient, persisting, and absorbing people is conscious above everything else of the existence of God. Nothing else really interests the Russian. He looks at politics, he takes a hand in trade, and he does what he can for art : but the supreme obsession of his mind, his heart, and his soul is the thought of God. But mark well, the Russian's obsessing thought of God is concerned with only one attribute of the Divine Father. He can think of nothing but God's love. I should say there has never been in the whole world a nation less influenced by the thought of Jehovah. .A Russian does not understand what you mean when you speak to him of Odin or Jove or Jehovah. He smiles and shakes his head. It is something he cannot conceive — this God of unbend- ing justice and black-frowning wrath. His Russian soul has been stunned centuries ago by the tremendous thought that God is Love. It can receive no other impression. To this hour he is absorbed in contemplation of this single aspect of the Ever- lasting God — that He loves, that He is Love itself. 1 By Harold Begbie, Atlantic Monthly. 118:768-77. December, 1916. THE JEWS THE MARTYRDOM OF THE RUSSIAN JEW* / Few persons beyond the borders of Russia have any con- ception of the actual conditions that prevail among the Jewish subjects of the Czar^ The Russian government has seen to that. Press censorship and "influence" are fairly effective in minimizing the publication of damnatory truths, while press sub- sidies and again "influence" are very useful aids in neutraliz- ing the effect of such truths as have crept into the light, and in spreading the impression that the devil is not so black as he is painted and that Russian bureaucracy can be tender- hearted. /' As a cold matter of fact, the policy of the Russian govern- hient toward the Jews is brutal, tyrannical, and cruel. In three decades one and a half million Jews were forced to leave the Empire. ) In a series of terrible pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots — outbreaks stimulated and countenanced by subtle govern- mental policy — thousands of helpless Jews have been murdered, many more thousands crippled or wounded, and robbery or de- struction of the property of the victims has left their widows and children destitute. There are, of course, a few wealthy Jews who buy complete immunity — everything is for sale in Russia — and these few live in peace. But the masses of the Russian Jewish population of over five millions are very poor. For the most part the Jews are herded together in the cities of the provinces known as the Pale. They may not live in the country districts, nor buy, lease, or manage real estate therein. Those who because of their occupations have under the law been privileged to reside in cities outside the Pale now, after years of legal residence, find the privilege withdrawn through some arbitrary distortion of the law, and are suddenly driven from their homes. The >By Herman Rosenthal. Outlook. 97:109-17. January 21, 1911. i86 SELECTED ARTICLES *^Jew is almost excluded from state service. Legally the calling of judge is not barred to the Jew; yet, in spite of the great number of Jewish jurists, there is in the whole empire only one Jewish judge, a relic of former years, while the few Jews who were formerly employed as state attorneys or court justices now belong to the history of the past. Similar is the Relation of Jews to public instruction. Excepting the teachers in Jewish schools and teachers of Jewish reHgion, there are no Jewish teachers in the primary, secondary, or high schools. Equally "free from Jews" are the various professorships; and of the Jewish lecturers who succeeded in establishing them- selves during the more liberal era, but few remain. Jews are taxed, and heavily taxed, for education, but only a small per- *^ntage of their children may enter the Russian schools. No fc^Jew may enter the navy, the frontier or quarantine service, or the gendarmerie. Jews may serve in the army — in fact, they furnish from thirty to forty per cent more soldiers than their , proper allotment — but no Jew may become an officer. The Jew may die for "Holy Russia," but he need look for no reward. Sixty thousand Jews served in the war with Japan. A ukase of 1904 promised a general right of residence within and without the Pale to all of these who should be found to have served worthily. But the Russian government is bound by no prom- ises. This privilege was denied even the Jewish volunteers who endured privations and sustained wounds in the defense of Port Arthur. The Jew is the daily sport of oppressive special laws so constantly distorted by conflicting "interpretations" that he knows not what "common right of man" may be withdrawn from him to-morrow. It seems that the Jew has no right that the Russian Government is bound to respect. He is, more- over, at the mercy of a rapacious police. It is estimated that every year the Jews pay from twenty to twenty-five million rubles blackmail. Bribery is their sole, humiliating defense. But from the Jewish point of view it is not robbery, de- privation of rights, or even murder itself that is most to be deplored. More terrible than all these is the inevitable conse- quence of ever-present fear and persecution — the moral degra- dation of a race. For this crime Russia will be responsible, but not Russia alone. Civilization cannot escape the penalty for the deeds that civilization has permitted. /; RUSSIA 187 Russians Jewish Policy Russia's present unpardonable policy, appealing as it does to the brutal instincts of the ignorant masses, has been followed ever since the accession of Alexander III in 1881, when the first pogroms shocked the civilized world. Since that time the persecution of the Jews has been unre- mitting, with periodical massacres and wholesale expulsions. The atrocities of the Romanov dynasty have finally culminated in a tendency toward the complete extinction of the Jewish race in Russia. The originator of this policy was Pobyedonostzev, called the Grand Inquisitor of Russia. His plan aimed at the expulsion or forced emigration of one-third of the Jews, the*r absorption of another third into the fold of the orthodox Ar church, and the complete annihilation of the remaining third by ^ the gentle expedient of depriving it of the means of subsistence. This apparently impossible and suicidal policy was not taken seriously abroad. But the brutal treatment of the Jews during the past two years shows that the Russian bureaucracy "that make their wills their law" are attempting to realize even the impossible. Jews are hunted from place to place like common v^ criminals. Expulsions, persecutions, and the inevitable black- ^ mail create an economic distress and an industrial confusion which compel vast numbers to seek safety in emigration, and wreck the careers of many who cannot even take refuge in flight. From time to time short cable items appear in our daily papers under such headings as "Russian Pale Enlarged," and we read that "the Emperor Nicholas to-day approved the Cab- inet resolution opening up new sections for the residence of Jews." Then follows a list of the supposedly new localities. To non-Russians this list is slightly misleading. How many American readers would be likely to know that the provinces mentioned in the cable — Vitebsk, Volhynia, Mohilev, Poltava, and Kherson — always belonged to the Pale of Settlement? It is^^^ecret to the initiated that before launching a new loan the iJlj^ authorities expel Jews from villages, so that the cen- tral government may later allow them to return to their places, and thus blazon its liberality to the world! This pleasant ex- pedient has been employed so frequently of late, and has caused so much misery, that last summer one hundred and sixty dele- gates, in spite of the triumphs of the reactionaries, were moyed i88 SELECTED ARTICLES to introduce in the Duma a bill aiming to make an end to the greatest calamity of the Russian Jews — the unceasing struggle for the right of domicile. Thirty other members of the Duma have promised to support the bill. Whatever the fate of the proposed act, its discussion may at least reveal the true situa- tion of the Russian Jews. Recent, and evidently inspired, arti- cles in Russian reactionary periodicals show clearly that the government is attempting to counteract the impression that will be created by the debates on the measure. / The Pogroms It is now nearly thirty years since the existence of the Rus- sian Jewish masses was first made unbearable by pogroms and legislative oppression; In the years 1881-1883, the records show, there were two hundred and twenty-six pogroms in various cities and towns of South Russia and Poland. In these riots, with all their murders and unspeakable cruelties, more than seventy thousand Jews, mostly from among the poorest classes, were despoiled of their possessions to the amount of ten or eleven million rubles. Yet the pogroms and atrocities of these years were greatly surpassed by those of the epoch of Kishenev- Syedletz. In the October days of 1905 alone, seven hundred and twenty-five places were disgraced by riots whereby over two thousand Jews suffered a direct loss of nearly sixty-three million rubles. In two governments, Chernigov and Yekaterino- slav, every fifth Jew was among the sufferers, while in a great number of other places almost the entire population was directly affected by the pogroms. In the riots covered by the period October, 1905, to September, 1906, more than a thousand Jews were killed and many thousands were wounded or crippled. The murdered men left 386 widows and 1,641 orphans. The direct loss sustained by the Russian Jewry in this era of po- groms exceeded one l^undredjiiillion^ rubles. But even this is a small fraction of the vastly greater lois occasioned by general economic demoralization. The actual losses that have, .been thus inflicted may be safely estimated at hundreds of millions. The Restrictive Laivs The system of special enactments concerning Jews and the arbitrary interpretation of these laws have reached into the most vital economic relations and have created a mass of legal RUSSIA 189 ambiguity that invites extortion by major and minor officials. The Jewish masses have always served as a rich source of graft for the insatiable ch iriQvn iks. or officials, for the interpretation of the law has been largely left to these gentry, and they do not neglect their opportunities. According to a calculation of Prince Urussov in his "Memoirs of a Russian Governor," the "extra income" of the police in his government of Bes- sarabia alone amounted to over a million rubles annually. Most of this sum was exacted from Jews. On the basis of this state- ment it may be estimated that the Jews in the whole country pay annually for protection to the police officials amounts of from twenty to twenty-five million rubles. The Russian bureau- cracy will certainly oppose with all its might the emanicipation of the Jews, since with the repeal of exceptional laws all the special income of the police would be abolished. The extent to which the exceptional laws are interpreted according to the pleasure of the bureaucracy is evident from the fact that more than three thousat^d Senate interpretations since 1881 deal with the Jewish question. In these interpre- tations the Senate — the highest tribunal of justice in Russia — has exhibited the most shameful inconsistency and subservience, at different times construing the same laws in various ways to suit the changing moods of the government. State Service and Professions The restrictions as to the employment of Jews in State ser- vice are most sweeping, extending down to the position of scribe in the police court, and even to police guard. The great Rus- sian police machine employs Jews as stool-pigeons only, thus demorahzing those among them who are inclined toward police activities, in order to heap upon them the greatest odium. While there are in the various Russian Ministries individual Jews who, on account of their special knowledge of affairs, are made use of in certain departments, these few officials are glar- ing exceptions. Theoretically the only requisite for state ser- vice is a high school diploma. The law merely stipulates that preference be given to a Christian over a Jew. In practice, however, a Jew can enter state service only after baptism. A notable exception was made in the more liberal era in the case of Jewish physicians, who, especially in the Russo-Turkish War, distinguished themselves and reached the grade of superior 190 SELECTED ARTICLES officers— even of generals. But the pressure of anti-Semitic tendencies in 1882 led to the establishment of a military regu- lation whereby the appointment of Jewish physicians in the army was limited to five per cent. In consequence of this regu- lation and of the discriminations in other directions, the Jewish physicians have been almost eliminated from the army. How- ever, at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian military administration tore away without any regard hundreds of Jewish physicians from their civil professions and drove them to the most dangerous points of the theater of war, dis- missing them immediately after the conclusion of peace. Military Service But if the rejection of the Jews from state service in Rus- sia is generally only an administrative practice, their exclusion from the rank of commissioned officers is a matter of law. Since 1887 the Jewish volunteers have not even been allowed to take examinations for promotion. Additional restrictions are also in force in the army. As I have said, no Jew may serve *^ in the navy, in the frontier or quarantine service, or in the t^ gendarmerie ; and since 1889 no Jewish soldier serving in a mili- tary orchestra may occupy the position of leader, while the proportion of Jewish musicians in a military orchestra is limited •^ to one-third. On the other hand, it has been statistically demonstrated that the oft-repeated assertion that the Jews do not furnish enough soldiers is a malicious invention. The truth is precisely the contrary. In consequence of special regulations and of adminis- trative quibblings, the annual levy of recruits from among the Jewish population of Russia is proportionately far greater than that drawn from any other class of subjects. The Russian Jews furnish every year from thirty to forty per cent more soldiers than their legal quota. Thus it happened that the Jewish soldiers who fought in the war against Japan amounted to the enormous number of nearly sixty thousand. Yet, in spite of the fact that the census of 1897 has indis- putably proved that the Jews bear the heaviest burden of mili- tary service, the Russian administration always manages to as- cribe to them a deficit — and for two good reasons. In the first place, the anti-Semitic press is supplied with more material for the calumny that the Jews evade their military duties. In RUSSIA 191 the second place, here is another pretext through which mil- lions are extorted from the already burdened and impoverished Jewish masses. There is a regulation of 1886, applicable to Jews only, establishing "family responsibility" for recruits. The effect of this provision is that should any Jew whose name has been drawn as a recruit fail to report for service at the proper time, even though he may delay but a few hours, his relatives must pay a fine of 300 rubles. It makes no difference if the name of the "recruit" is that of one who emigrated years ago, or died, even in infancy; no matter what proofs may be offered, the penalty still remains. This oppression hovers like a ter- rifying ghost over the Ghetto, descending on those who have least reason to anticipate it. Suddenly the poor Jew is in- formed that he must pay the government the unattainable sum of 300 rubles because some relative over whom he had no con- trol has emigrated or has died. Thousands, already poor, are thus made still poorer; while many, their last belongings sold to pay the fine, are driven to beggary. Civic Disabilities In municipal affairs the Jew must bear the heaviest burdens of taxation without receiving the ordinary rights of citizenship. Under a degrading law of 1892, no Jew can either vote for, or be elected, alderman. The governors of the provinces compris- ing the Pale of Jewish Settlement are empowered to select from among the Jewish inhabitants of each city several representa- tives for the municipal assembly. Their number must not ex- ceed one-tenth of the whole body, and is usually fixed by the Minister of the Interior. Even in cities where the Jews consti- tute three-fourths of the population they have in reality neither a direct nor an indirect voice in the regulation of municipal affairs. In such places illiterates and drunkards, in virtue of the fact that they are not Jews, often rule over an intellectual and well-conducted populace. Those Jews who are appointed to the assembly by the governor, far from being representative, are likely to be men of inferior character, out of all sympathy with the governed. Educational Restrictions From the American standpoint, every child is entitled to an education; but even education is denied to a great proportion 192 SELECTED ARTICLES of the Jewish youth. Under Nicholas I and Alexander II the Russian government wisely made great efforts to induce the Jews to renounce their traditional Talmudic studies and to enter the State schools, offering concessions and privileges to students. This far-sighted policy was productive of results advantageous both to the Jews and to the Empire. But times have changed. Since 1886 the Ministry of Education has adopted regulations limiting the proportion of Jews to be admitted to secondary in- / stitutions, high schools, and colleges — in the capital cities to / three per cent of the total admissions, in other towns to five per cent, and in the cities of the Pale to ten per cent. Moreover, a number of secondary institutions and high schools are entirely closed to Jews. It is only in the commercial schools that the regulations have been relatively mild, but the present Ministry of Education is endeavoring to shut out Jewish children even from these schools. Such cruel limitations bring about a condition that is simply barbarous. Only a small proportion of the Jewish children can be admitted to the schools, and which shall be the favored ones is supposedly determined by competitive examinations. There- fore the Jewish youths for years are drilled, tutored, and crammed in order that they may pass brilliantly, while the parents zealously seek all means to further the chances of their offspring, naturally in the Russian atmosphere of corruption often resorting to bribery of teachers and directors. Nothing could be more demoralizing to both parents and children. What with the fierce struggle for the privilege of schooling, and the struggle to retain that privilege when secured, it is small wonder that so many brilliant Jewish youths are exhausted in body and broken in spirit at the threshold of the university. And there the same struggle must be repeated. Jewish applicants for vacancies in the university wait year after year for the oppor- tunity of matriculation. Thousands, at length grown hopeless, give up the fight or emigrate to complete their education abroad ; /nd the Russian government refuses the privilege of general ^residence to Jews who hold the diplomas of foreign universi- ties. Even the Jew who obtains the coveted Russian university diploma finds his progress in his profession hampered by numberless restrictions. RUSSIA 193 Landholding and Farming A Jew may not buy, lease, or manage real property except in / the towns and cities in the Pale of Settlement. This prohibition has altogether paralyzed the developments of a Jewish peasantry in Russia. At the beginning of the eighties there was a strong "back to the land" movement among the Russian Jews. A sub- stantial fund to promote this agricultural enterprise had already been subscribed, when the enactment of the May Laws put an end to all efforts in this direction by rendering it impossible for Jews to develop the established agricultural colonies, or to found new ones within the limits of the Russian empire.- The 200,000 Jews now engaged in agriculture in Russia are mostly the de- cendants of farmers of earlier times, or are engaged in garden- ing within the limits of towns and boroughs. Under the law Jewish artisans are privileged to reside in almost all parts of Russia, but they may not acquire real estate in the cities outside of the Pale, for the Senate has pointed out in an interpretation that the Jewish artisan enjoys the common right of residence only so long as he exercises his handicraft; should he give up his trade he would lose this right; therefore every Jewish artisan dwelling outside the Pale must be con- sidered a temporary resident who cannot acquire property for life. The Right of Residence The greatest affliction of the Russian Jews, and the cause of the recent exhibition of Governmental violence against hun- dreds of these unfortunate people, is the limitation of the right of residence. The great majority of the Russian Jews are rigorously herded in the large cities of Poland and the so-called Pale of Jewish Settlement, for only in these cities may -they reside. Comparatively small numbers have been able to pre- serve old residential rights in the villages or country districts of the Pale. Scattered through the rest of the Empire are about a quarter of a million Jews, some of whom have retained old rights of residence in their localities, others belonging to cer- tain privileged classes to whom the right of general residence is accorded by law. But the whole policy of the Russian govern- ment is to withdraw all rights of external residence, and to pack the Jews closer and closer in the great cities of the Pale. 194 SELECTED ARTICLES The Pale of Settlement consists of fifteen provinces, compris- ing a twenty-third part of the empire, namely: Bessarabia, Wilna, Vitebsk, Volhynia, Grodno, Yekaterinoslav, Kovno, Minsk, Moghilev, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida, Kherson, Cher- nigov, and Kiev. Russian Poland is not in the Pale, but there also Jews may live. The other thirty-five governments of Euro- pean Russia, the Caucasus with its eleven governments, Siberia with its nine provinces, and the provinces of Middle Asia, are generally closed to the Jews. Rights of Jewish Artisans Under the law the privilege of residence in any part of the empire is supposedly accorded to Jewish old soldiers, merchants of the first guild, members of certain professions, and artisans pursuing their calling. But while even members of the higher "privileged classes" are deprived of their rights on many pre- texts, their condition is idyllic in comparison with that of the artisans and skilled laborers. These are subject to a degrading and costly espionage, and are in continual fear of sudden ex- pulsion. Should an artisan give a night's lodging to a relative who has no right of residence, he forfeits his rights. For a Jewish artisan to have some side line besides his handicraft is also fatal. Watchmakers have been expelled because they sold watches and chains; bakers because they sold coffee; ritual butchers because they sold meat to non-Jews. Such "crimes" as these, moreover, afford the inventive police enviable oppor- tunities for making money. As soon as the sons of a Jewish artisan become of age, if they have not themselves acquired the right of residence, they must abandon the paternal home and return to the Ghetto., Similarly, married daughters whose husbands do not belong to the privileged classes cannot remain even temporarily in the house of their parents. Should the Jewish artisan become in- capacitated by old age, he must wage a long fight with the police administration over his right of residence in a place where he has lived and worked for years. Moreover, the Senate has repeatedly declared non-privileged many callings that formerly conferred the general residential right. Thus tobacco workers, piano-tuners, fish salters, butchers, rubber-menders, bricklayers, diggers, and others have been declared not to be artisans and have been sent back to the Ghetto. Considering these oppressive RUSSIA 195 conditions, it is hardly surprising that, in the course of decades, only about ten thousand Jewish artisans — that is, about two per cent of the half million Jewish workingmen in Russia — have found their way to the interior governments, while hundreds of thousands of this class have emigrated to transoceanic coun- tries. Expulsions In addition to the legally privileged, there are unquestionably large numbers of non-privileged Jews whom economic con- ditions have compelled to break through the artificial territorial barriers and to settle in prohibited places. These unfortunates are the sport and prey of the police. The richer pay enormous sums to be allowed to remain, always in fear and trembling, while the poor are pitilessly driven back to starve in the over- crowded cities of the Pale. Inevitably the privileged suffer with the non-privileged. Recently the administration has not hesitated to include in its proscriptions children and paralyzed old men. Whenever a particularly strong wind of anti-Semitism agi- tates the official atmosphere, local authorities are quick to show their zeal. Then follow raids, arbitrary expulsions, and the im- prisonment of non-privileged Jews as examples. At such times Jews, or persons whose features are considered by the police to have a Jewish cast, have been actually stopped in the streets and required to prove their right of residence. The constant governmental harrying is naturally productive of great economic distress. At one time, for example, at least forty per cent of the Jews of Odessa were forced to resort tem- porarily to the public charities. Worse yet, the victims are broken in spirit and degraded in the eyes of their neighbors. Such spectacles as night raids on the homes of privileged Jews and the public expulsion of troops of innocent Jews, herded by squads of police, arouse cowardly, brutal mob instincts that find vent in the murderous pogroms for which the government seeks to evade responsibility. The Jews of the Pale And now, what is the lot of the Jews in the Pale of Settle- ment? In this great Ghetto, created by the strong arm of government, ninety-five per cent of their ntunber are confined. 196 SELECTED ARTICLES Here their condition might not be insupportable, if only they had freedom of movement. But the assertion that even a twenty-third part of the Russian empire is open to Jews is a fiction. In reality only a two-thousandth part of the empire is free to them. For the May Laws of 1882 definitely forbade the yj'ews to settle in the villages, and since 1887 they have even been •^ forbidden to move from one village to another. Only those who were residents in a village in 1882 may continue to live there, and the number of these is steadily diminishing. A temporary absence from the village is sufficient to forfeit the privilege, and women usually lose it by marriage. For a long time Jews who had gone to the cities for the holidays in order to partici- pate in the divine service were not allowed by the poHce to re- enter the villages, under the pretext that they had forfeited their rights. Many have been expelled, in spite of the testimony of their neighbors, simply because the police failed to register them as residents when the May Laws went into effect. If one pre- text fails, another will serve a despotic government in a war against helpless individuals. In some villages the Jews can- not even obtain cemetery plots, because the acquisition of real property by them outside the city limits is contrary to the spirit of the May Laws. They are forced to drag their dead to the neighboring towns. Another device was beautiful in its simplicity. Hundreds of , places which in the official directories had figured as townlets / suddenly, in the early nineties, were declared to be parishes, and as such not open to Jewish settlement. So enormous was the injustice of this movement, supported by Senatorial decisions, that even Plehve relented so far as to restore to a considerable number of these places their urban standing. But this mitiga- tion was applied ten years after the catastrophe, after thousands of Jews, especially in the governments of Chernigov and Poltava, had sustained irretrievable loss. The Jews are fairly driven into the great centers, and then they are upbraided for their tendency to gather in the cities. The Rights of Foreign Jews Russia is practically closed to foreign Jews. Of the great number that formerly lived there but few remain. Under a regulation of 1891, foreign Jews representing known firms may RUSSIA 197 obtain a permit for a three months' sojourn in Russia, and after their arrival the permit may be extended for six months at the utmost. All other Jews wishing to visit the country must re- ceive special permission from the Minister of the Interior. Per- manent residence in Russia is allowed only to the following classes of foreign Jews: (o) physicians and rabbis when invited by the government; (b) founders of factories; (c) foremen when engaged by manufacturers for factory work. Members of all these classes must overcome great official obstacles, and their entry into Russia is a rare occurrence. But if a foreign Jew de- sires to engage in commerce in Russia, he must obtain special permission from three Ministers — the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of Finance — and must pay the tax of the first guild. Such are the precau- tions taken by the Russian government to prevent Jewish capitalists from becoming a power in Russia or exploiting the wealth of the empire! Yet the same government is more than ready to resort to the same capitalists when confronted by the problems of a depleted treasury. Governmental Duplicity Recently the attitude of the Russian government and of local administrations toward the Jews has varied according to the political tendency of the moment. Promises of reform have in- variably been followed by bitter reaction. And the vacillations of the government have served to trick many Jews out of their rights. Sometimes it seems as though contradictory govern- ment circulars were designed for that very purpose. Thus the ( Stolypin circular of May 22, 1907, induced large numbers of Jewish merchants and artisans to discontinue observing the formalities necessary to maintain their residential rights, by promising permanent rights of residence. But the wavering Minister of the Interior, yielding to reactionary forces, in 1909 issued a supplementary circular which actually annulled this promise. Then the Jew who, relying on the first circular, had lost his old rights by non-observance of formalities, even though he had been a legal settler for thirty years, lost all privi- leges. No better trick to defraud old residents could well be devised; but anything is possible when a government can tie a string to every promise. 198 SELECTED ARTICLES The Expulsions of 1910 The Jews were not long left unconvinced of their error in trusting the promises held out in the first circular. In many places the new, supplementary circular gave a long-desired oppor- tunity for persecution. In Kiev thousands were marked for ex- pulsion. The police inaugurated a series of night raids, invad- ing hotels, the homes of private citizens, surprising clerks in the shops, and expelling many singly and in groups. In the spring of 1910, acting on orders from St. Petersburg, the local authori- ties sent orders of expulsion to 1,150 families in Kiev and to 238 families in the suburb of Demiyevka. The petitions of non- Jewish merchants who protested to the government that the wholesale expulsions would cause great economic damage, the protests of Jewish delegations, and, lastly, the attacks of the foreign press, had but little ultimate effect. The names of a small fraction of the proscribed were stricken from the list, but for 1,200 Jewish heads of households with their families the order remained. Those who could not obtain the right of resi- dence by paying the guild tax — and but few could afford it — ^had to quit the locality. Most of the expelled went voluntarily to Odessa, Warsaw, Cracow, Lemberg, or emigrated to America. Among these a girl, deranged by her experiences, flung herself from the window of the express train that was taking her to Odessa, and was killed. Typical Instances Many expulsions are the results of direct orders or hints from St. Petersburg. Officials everywhere are incited to inquire carefully into the rights of residence of the Jews within their jurisdiction. Lack of zeal in this direction is not tolerated. Thus the Governor of Livonia was reprimanded for his indiffer- ence to the question, whereupon he soon found the required vic- tims. In Rostov, hotels and restaurants were suddenly raided, and many Jews, large numbers of them legally privileged, were expelled. Among those listed by the police for expulsion from Tula were four women of from sixty to eighty years who had long lived there. To evade expulsion they contracted fictitious marriages with old soldiers of Nicholas I, and thus secured im- munity. In Tashkent forty families were ordered out, A^ith but three days' grace. In the middle of winter, with the thermo- RUSSIA 199 meter far below zero, dozens of Jews were driven from Irkutsk, among them children, and men seventy years old. In Vladi- vostok the Governor directed that every expulsion from the capi- tal should be communicated to the other cities of the province, so that the expelled might find no refuge. In Smolensk, in the winter of 1910, twenty-one dentists were first expelled. A goodly number of artisans followed, the order for their expulsion stating that "their applications for the right of residence have not been looked into, and until this has been done they must leave the city." Acting under orders of the Governor, the police, on May 17, sur- rounded the townlet of Potchinok, consisting of two hundred houses, but at first secured only ten Jews for expulsion. A regu- lar hunt in the neighboring forest, however, resulted in the cap- ture of sixty more, chiefly young clerks. In consequence of the expulsion of these young men several wholesale houses were obliged to close for a time for lack of employees. From city after city artisans were expelled on the easy claim that they had lost their rights of residence by not pursuing their trade. The artisans are usually meek victims, for most of them are too poor to defend their rights, and injustice to them makes but little stir. All other persecutors, however, yield the palm to Dumbadse, of Yalta. After violent denunciations and brutal inquisitions, he expelled a large number of Jewish artisans, and, when some of these in their extreme misery offered themselves for baptism, he declared that this would not save them. In his hatred of the Jews, Dumbadse issued the most frantic orders. He expelled from Yalta all the Jewish soldiers of the Wilna regiment which garrisoned the town, thus even daring to affront the military authorities. Emulating the exploits of Dumbadse, Governor-General Hoershelman, of Moscow, signalized himself by expelHng from the city three little children because they did not hold the privilege of residence in their own right! Their father, Raitzy, had ob- tained a personal right of residence in Moscow as an employee of a merchant of the first guild. Their mother, in her capacity of midwife, possessed a similar right. Being unable to deprive of their right either husband or wife, the Moscow authorities, with the consent of the Minister of the Interior, expelled their three children, respectively four, eight, and ten years old. The Senate canceled this order on the ground that it is not only a right but also a duty of parents to keep their children. But 15 200 SELECTED ARTICLES this Moscow decision is illustrative of many similar cruelties perpetrated by the bureaucrats and police that are not even re- viewed by the higher authorities. Travelers and Sojourners In some places the authorities have conceived the idea of preventing Jews, while traveling, from setting foot in their do- main. The priority in this annoyance belongs to Dumbadse. He did not allow Jews coming by steamer to disembark in his city. A Jewish physician, from his profession belonging to the first privileged class, was, on his arival at Yalta, ordered to de- part on the first steamer leaving for Theodosia. His request to be allowed to continue his voyage to Eupatoria was denied, be- cause this would entail his staying overnight in Yalta. It happened that this physician had served with distinction through the Japanese War, carried official testimony to his "political reliability," and still belonged to the reserve. But why should the military record of an army physician have any weight with the capricious satrap of Yalta, when his own Imperial govern- ment had withdrawn the promised general right of residence even from the Jewish volunteers who fought at Port Arthur! As for Jewish invalids seeking health at Russian resorts, the barbarities to which they are subjected, in the face of the pro- tests of physicians, furnish but too many additional instances of the brutal whims of a bureaucracy. On every side the Russian Jew is beset with chicanery, extor- tion, and numberless annoyances, great and small. He cannot tell what future a benign government may next prepare for him. Until the great iniquity of the laws of exception, the restriction in the right of residence, is removed, he cannot hope to struggle upward. It seems too much to hope, but some day, perhaps, the rulers of Russia may recognize the truth that Frederick the Great phrased long ago : "Bigotry is a tyrant that depopulates the countries. Toleration is a tender mother who nourishes them and makes them flourish." RUSSIA 201 SITUATION OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA* During the years just preceding the war the Jews in Russia were passing through a grievous period; the government's anti- Semitism had increased, being expressed in a more intensified system of limitations of rights and in a tendency to extend this system not only by the application of already existing limitations but also by the elaboration of new legislation. The laws con- cerning Jews have always been characterized by a remarkable vagueness; they had to do with such elementary human rights as the right to live in this or that locality, the right to carry on trade and industry, the right to receive an education, and so forth; yet these laws constantly and invariably raised doubts when they had to be applied to the complicated and varied con- ditions of life which did not fit into the framework of the pro- hibitory laws. They were so all-embracing that the mere ap- plication of the laws in a more restrictive or in a more liberal sense, without any change in the law itself, would mean either the oppression of many millions of Jews in Russia or a slight alleviation of their condition. Official Anti-Semitism The vital interests of this popi!!?8tion and the corresponding interests of the whole population were therefore more dependent on the practice in the application of the laws than on the laws themselves. It was the government's policy to adapt the admin- istrative apparatus of circulars and edicts to the requirements of its anti-Semitic state of mind. The government did not need to issue new restrictive laws in order to manifest its anti-Semit- ism; the same results — restriction and limitation — could be se- cured by a simple circular or by an edict of the Senate. This is why it was always possible for every local administra- tor — not to speak of persons in the higher central government, from Governors of provinces down to the lowest police agents — to follow their individual policy with regard to the Jews. At any given moment one could divide Russia into regions, and on a general background of absence of rights, note that the * By Henry Sliozbcrg. Current History Magazine of the New York Times. 5:209-13. November, 1916, 202 SELECTED ARTICLES situation of the Jews was comparatively better or worse, accord- ^ ing to the administrator of the district, although the laws were equally binding for all localities. There was still greater variety '^ according to epochs, in spite of absence of new legislative meas- ures. For more than twenty-five years I have been in very close touch with the question of the application of the restrictive laws on Jews, and I must state that there never was a more oppressive period than that of the several years just preceding the war. Without the enactment of any new laws, the noose of legal limi- tations on Jews was pulled tighter every month by interpretative circulars of the Minister of the Interior, Maklakov, and by edicts of the Senate, under the direction of the Minister of Justice, Shcheglovitov. (These two Ministers resigned in June, 1915, under the pressure of public opinion. — Translator.) Again the political law was confirmed of the direct corre- spondence between the increase of reaction in general and the ^>rlcrease of governmental anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has for a long time been a political question; and recently, from 1905 on, it has been the main axle around which turned the wheel of reaction. The center from which the reaction derived its strength supplied the governmental circles with the energy in their anti-Semitism. This centre was the frank, and, to a greater degree, the concealed, activity, of the so-called Council of the United Nobility, which introduced in the Gov- ernmental circles the policy of limitations on the rights of Jews. To Bar Jews From Army Immediately before the war the United Nobility began to take the initiative, to put through a law excluding Jews from the army, and substituting for military service in the case of Jews either taxes in money or a special form of military service. This project of the law naturally met with the approval of the former Minister of War Sukhomlinov, who was acting under the direct influence of the Chief of the General Staff, General Yanushke- vich, one of the most active members of the Council- of the United Nobility. Perhaps in no other branch of public life has anti-Semitism been imposed from above with such insistence as in the military. RUSSIA 203 The documents on this side of the question are unbelievably eloquent. During the last years before the war there was no instance of the promotion of a Jewish soldier to the rank of non-commissioned officer; Jewish volunteer recruits were unable, without the help of special protection, to gain admittance to regiments of their choice; and the attitude of the regimental officers toward the Jewish soldiers was tinged with hate, and inspired constant animosity toward them in the army. Just as the attitude of the Minister of the Interior always went rapidly down the hierarchic ladder to the very lowest steps, so the atti- tude of the Minister of War, and, particularly, that of the Chief of the General Staff, was passed on to the lowest commanding ranks in the army. Thus governmental anti-Semitism reached its highest point during the last few years, and, similarly, the legislative bodies showed the same degree of anti-Semitism. To one who knows Russian political life it is quite clear that both the Third and the Fourth Dumas, in their majorities, performed simply the wishes of the Government and were under the exclusive influence of the governmental policy. Though there could be difference of opinion on any general question among the parties forming the majority of the Duma, nevertheless, on the Jewish question — the main axle of reaction — unanimity prevailed. The Octobrist Party, trained to obedience from the time of the late Stolypin, never had the courage to give evidence of its comparative liberal- ism when it came to the Jewish question. Masses Sound at Heart On the other hand, the better section of Russian public opinion remained true to the best traditions of genuine liberal- ism. It always recognized, as did the Jews, that the governmental action and anti-Semitism were Siamese twins. Therefore, not by reason of any agreement, but by a common, similar under- standing of the political situation, the Jews always went hand in hand with the genuinely liberal groups of the public. The latter, struggling against reaction, also struggled against the govern- mental policy toward the Jews; and the Jews, fighting for their civil and national rights, fought reaction. If one adds that anti- Semitism in Russia has never had any roots, or at least any deep roots, in the psychology of the broad popular masses, it becomes clear that the Jews of Russia had no ground for refusing to be- ^04 SELECTED ARTICLES lieve in a brighter future, and confidently to wait till the gloom of reaction should be dispelled, and with it the limitations for the Jews. Such was the situation in the Jewish question when the war ;^y broke out. Contemporaries will never forget, and history will l^Ocertainly note, the general enthusiasm which seized also upon the rY Jewish population of Russia in August, 1914. It would have been hard to presume a few weeks before that the Jewish popula- tion, so oppressed and exhausted morally and physically, would be able to show such enthusiasm for the common cause of Russia. But such was the fact. Instinctively, the whole Jewish population felt that events of world importance were beginning, and that these events must lead to a general, radical change and to a re- valuation of all values. Jews, together with others, felt instinctively that this was a war of liberation. The Jews also showed every variety of public enthusiasm. The general state of mind of the Jews was re- flected in the declarations of representatives of various parties and national groups in the Imperial Duma, not excluding Jewish representatives. But the army that went to the front did not witness this gen- eral state of mind; it went off to the war, educated during the preceding years in the policy of Sukhomlinov and General Yanushkevich. Propaganda in the Army Military operations began in Poland, and from the very first day one was made to feel the extremely aggravated Jewish-Polish relations. I shall not stop to describe in detail these relations. By indisputable documents and facts it is, however, established that there was an unheard-of propaganda in the army of (calumnies against the Jews — calumnies which gradually developed into legends of Jewish espionage. These legends found a solid backing, already prepared, and, in the main, they were supported by the fact that the army met in the Jewish population of Poland, as well as of Galicia, a society quite strange to it, differing from the Jewish population of Russia both in language and in exter- nal appearance. The customary and inevitable occurrence of separate instances of excesses, which in many places reached the point of destruc- tion of property, immediately terrified the local Jewish popula- RUSSIA 205 tion. This state of mind supported the estrangement, which, in turn, kept alive the legends which were being spread along the whole front. The very same stories, all absolutely absurd, were spread everywhere, finding an echo in the orders of the higher army commanders, under the direction and leadership of the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Commander in Chief, General Yanushkevich, the author of the law to exclude Jews from the army and a member of the Council of the United Nobility. The result of all this was the issuing of military orders re- ferring exclusively to the Jewish population. The wholesale expulsion of Jews from various cities and towns laid the founda- tion for the so-called fugitive movement. Fugitives began to rush to Warsaw from the localities near the line of battle, and very soon there were gathered in Warsaw more than 120,000 fugi- tives, left without roof or food. Gradually the attitude toward the Jewish population began to influence the attitude toward Jewish soldiers and, in general, toward all Jews having to do with the army. Hundreds of documents, absolutely authentic, testify to the constant issuing of orders by commanders of armies and by the staff of the Commander in Chief, referring not only to the Jewish population, but also to the Jews in the army. The Jew- ish population was literally dum founded by the events which followed, feeling them with particular sensitiveness because of the crisis just experienced. The next events — the wholesale ex- pulsion of Jews from the provinces of Kovno and Courland even t^^ before military operations had reached these localities — created an atmosphere of complete perplexity and dejection. One must note that by this time the difference between the attitude of the military and the civil authorities toward the Jews had become clear. Not as the result of a weakening of govern- mental anti-Semitism, but by reason of the realization of the eco- nomic and social consequences of the policy adopted by the army commanders in their relations to Jews, the government, in a series of representations, attempted to temper the severity of the military orders. The government was able to stop the whole- sale expulsions of the Jewish population from the western prov- inces, gradually substituting an expulsion of the entire population from localities threatened by the enemy. 2o6 SELECTED ARTICLES Breach in So-Called Pale Under the influence of the expulsions, and as the result of the occupation by the enemy of certain portions of the western prov- inces, a breach was made in the so-called Pale of Settlement. At first Jews were forcibly transferred to eastern provinces, (Voronezh and Penza.) On Aug. 4, 191 5, came the well-known order of the Council of Ministers, and, in a circular, the Minister of Interior, Prince Shchebatov, stopped temporarily, until a general revision of the laws on Jews, the application of the re- strictive law on residence of Jews in the interior provinces of Russia, not excluding Siberia, except the capitals, Petrograd and Moscow, regions under the authority of the military, the Terri- tory of the Don Armies, the Ter and Kuban Territories in the Caucasus, and cities under the control of the Minister of the Court. This measure, which at any other time would have meant a considerable reform in the field of the Jewish question, could not, however, make a serious impression when expulsion of Jews from western provinces continued to be the practice. One cannot deny that the Jewish population received this measure, essentially one of beneficence, with distrust, which has not been dispelled at this moment of writing. For the Jews this was simply a measure called forth by the war. It was felt that, if the attitude toward the Jews was not radically altered, this measure might be repealed after the war, if it were not sanctioned by the legislative author- ities. The present phase of the government's policy with regard to the Jews is, therefore, somewhat different from that which we had before. If a few months ago, as I have pointed out, the governmental authorities opposed, to a certain degree, the spread- ing of malicious calumnies against the Jews, and repealed certain measures taken by the military authorities, now, however, there is no such attitude of opposition, and the best evidence of this fact is the well-known circular of Jan. 9, 1916, of the former Minister of the Interior, Hvostov, which gave rise to an interpel- lation in the Duma. It is clear to any one acquainted with the internal life of Rus- sia that a bitter internal struggle is going on, with the war as a general background, between the government and the various organizations of Russian society. In this struggle, which is a RUSSIA 207 struggle of reaction against liberal tendencies, the Jewish ques- tion continues to play the same role which it played before the war — the role of a lightning rod, all the more necessary because the war has introduced notable complications into the internal life of the country. Now here, now there, attempts are being made to put off on the Jews the responsibility for the high cost of living and for various other manifestations of disorder. [The circular, addressed to local Governors, suggested that the Jews were responsible for the increase in the cost of living because of speculative operations conducted by them, and urged that local officials keep their eyes open to this possibility. The circular was not made public at the time, and the Minister interpreted this as indicating that it was simply a measure of precaution, and not in any sense a measure of anti-Semitic propaganda, — Translator.] Aid from Duma Progressives A very important factor bearing on this Jewish question was the formation in the Imperial Duma of the Progressive mem- bers; apart from its general political significance, the Progres- sives indicated the practical isolation of the government in the popular representative bodies. The Progressives had a direct relation to the Jewish question, for its program included certain points indicating a desire and tendency to relieve the weight of the restrictive laws on Jews. But unfortunately the expectations inspired by the Progressives — expectations, however, which not all had entertained — were not realized, and at the present moment it has become clear that the Jews cannot expect from the Pro- gressives in the near future, in view of the policy being adopted by the government, any amelioration of their position. But at the same time one must note that there is no Jewish group, representing this or that political tendency, which would not recognize that the events that are taking place today, so far as they affect the Jews, are simply the fruit of the policy of the last ten years, and that neither the war itself nor the events con- nected with it — that is, all that preceded the war — created that strained situation which is now felt. All recognize that now, as formerly, the solution of the Jewish question is closely connected with the solution of the general question of the internal policy in Russia. Reaction will be accompanied by anti-Semitism. All thinking Jewish groups, who are able to understand the politi- cal events that are taking place, are absolutely unanimous on 2o8 SELECTED ARTICLES this point. They are unanimous in the belief that after the war reaction must give way to a liberal regime, and that there- fore the Jewish question, though at the present moment in a most difficult situation, is not, however, without hope. Concerning the attitude of the Jews toward the war itself, one must note that there is not. a single category among Russian Jews which would not bind its lot to the lot of Russia in general and see in a Russian victory the guarantee of well-being for Russia, and, in particular, for the Jews within Russia. This attitude is dictated especially by the realization that the 7,000,000 Jews of Russia are so closely attached to Russia in their moral and material interests that it is quite impossible for them to think of their own welfare except in terms of the welfare of Russia. Thinking Jews have always recognized that Germany is the home of anti-Semitism, and that the most reactionary ele- ments in Russia have been the officials of German origin. Thinking Jews believe that the more decisive the victory the quicker will Russia proceed along the road of progress in her internal life. Victory in this war will not be a victory of the government, but a victory of the people, a victory of the social forces, and, in view of the constant opposition of government to society, the coming victory will mean the victory of these same social forces. The social forces of Russia have always been opposed to reaction, and, by this same fact, opposed to the main flag of reaction — anti-Semitism. Recognizing all this, we are now passing through a very com- plicated state of mind. Jews are experiencing great bitterness; they are outraged by the injury to their national and human feelings and their feelings of common citizenship. This bitter- ness increases as the attitude dictated by the spheres of the commanding personnel of the army does injury not only to their material and civil rights, but also to their national rights. The prohibition to publish newspapers in the Jewish popular lan- guage has made a crushing impression, equal only to the im- pression resulting from the wholesale expulsions from the prov- inces of Kovno and Courland. The Jewish population has been deprived of proper leadership, and it is therefore very difficult for an outside observer to grasp the actual state of mind jof the Jews. kUSSiA 4G0 To what has been said I must add that Jewish political circles were astounded by the impudence of two Jews who took part, it would seem, in some kind of declaration against Russia, addressed to the President of the United States, drawn up in Stockholm in the name of all non-Russian elements of the em- pire. I stand very close to all Jewish political spheres, and must testify directly that these persons are unknown to Jewish political leaders in Russia and that they ha^no authorization from any Jewish groups or circles. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND JEWISH IMMIGRATION' The ramifications of the Russian revolution have apparently no end. It affects American Hfe in countless ways. The best- informed believe that it will not only check Jewish immigration to the United States but that the emancipation of the Jews, which is already assured, will cause thousands of Russian Jews, perhaps millions, to go back to Russia. Despite the infamous treatment that the Jews of Russia have experienced at the hands of the Russian autocracy, they still have the greatest affection for that country and look upon it as their fatherland. There is also a saying current among the Jews that Russia, except for its reactionary government, is the least anti-Semitic country in Europe. A decrease in Russian Jewish immigration would prob- ably be welcome here, for it would make less acute the assimila- tion problem of the United States, the tendency of these people having been to settle as a mass in large cities, instead of dis- tributing themselves throughout the country. This has strained our economic resources to the utmost. The new immigration law, which went into effect May 1st, assumes a new interest in view of the changed conditions in Russia. This excludes all alien immigrants more than sixteen years of age who cannot read some language. But it excepts certain classes — exceptions that were inserted mainly in the in- terest of Russian Jews. Any immigrant who can show that he comes to the United States to escape religious and economic persecution is admissible whether he can read or not. This is * World's Work. 34:i33-4- June, 191? 210 SELECTED ARTICLES the motive that has impelled practically all the Russian Jewish immigration of the last thirty years. Thus the new immigration law, had conditions remained intact, would have excluded prac- tically no immigrants such as congregate in large numbers on the East Side of New York. With the removal of all religious and economic disabilities in Russia as a result of the Russian revolution, this claim can no longer be made, and Russian Jews will now have to be able to read, like all other immigrants. Thus the Russian revolution, which liberalizes Russian insti- tutions with regard to the Jews, will give them fair opportunity where they are now and will not force them upon us in undue numbers, and the literacy test will apply to them as well as to others, so that they will have at least to read some language when they come, which gives some ground for hope that they will learn English after they come here. / RUSSIA IN THE EUROPEAN WAR RUSSIA'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE WAR' What one knows about Russia in this war may be likened to what one sees of a floating iceberg. About seven-eighths of the iceberg is submerged. It seems to the writer that at least seven- eighths of the Russian achievements and sacrifices are not un- derstood or appreciated outside of Russia. Even within the country itself lack of publicity has prevented the public from learning the extent to which Russia has contributed to what is to be the ultimate success of the war. Fairly to judge the situa- tion, one must in the first place realize that this is not a war be- tween Russia and Germany. It is a war between the Allies and the group of powers hypnotized by Germany into believing that a community of interest exists between her and these misled na- tions that she has dragged into her world adventure, or perhaps one might better say misadventure. General Effect of Russia's Campaigns In dealing, therefore, with the Russian campaign one must always keep in mind that each success or failure in the East is of importance only in the degree that it tends to influence the great world situation. Which of the Allies is to give the final blow is of no importance. But it is important that all of the Allies weaken the enemy, so that in the final struggle one of them may give the decisive stroke. It is quite immaterial whether that one be Russia, or France, or England. Every week in the campaign presents changes and it is impossible to judge now from what quarter this decision may ultimately come. To judge of Russia's contribution to the war, one must get and preserve a great perspective of the whole theater of war and realize that if Russia breaks the final German strength under the walls of Moscow and gives the French the chance to get the de- ' By Stanley Washburn. Review of Reviews. 53:431-8. April, 1916. 212 SELECTED ARTICLES cision in the West, she has as much played her part as though she had allowed the Germans to get to Paris and then herself ended the war before the gates of Berlin. With this perspective, then, let us consider what Russia has been able to offer on the altar of the common cause as her portion toward the ultimate success of the Allies. Russian Sacrifice Saved Paris At the beginning of the war, as is now well understood, the Russians had not planned an immediate offensive. Their policy was to defend their frontiers while their huge strength was mo- bilizing. The rush on Paris in the West, however, threatened the cause of the Allies, and almost over night the Russians de- cided to embark on a hastily planned offensive in East Prussia. The impetus of this attack swept the Russians through the favor- ite province of the Kaiser, and in ten days the Unter den Linden was filled with panic-stricken refugees that had fled before the avalanche so suddenly launched from the East. At a critical moment in the West, when the German vanguard was almost within sight of the Eiffel Tower, the Germans shifted an im- portant body of troops from the West to protect the East from Russian inroads. The Russians say that six corps were sent to East Prussia, while the French claim it was but four. But the figures are not material. What we know is that after their de- parture for the East came the battle of the Marne and the turn- ing point of the war. The Russians paid for this by the loss of almost their entire East Prussian army, but they say their sacrifice saved Paris. History, no doubt, will establish the facts, but on the evidence available at present their claim seems logical and will, I believe, be ultimately credited to them as their first great contribution to the Allies' cause. This single phase of the war alone proves that there is such a thing as victory in defeat when that defeat was achieved by the enemy at the cost of the weakening of an- other front and the consequent victory of an ally in a more strategically important theater of operations. The loss of East Prussia and of one entire army was a mere drop in the bucket of Russia's sacrifices, while, on the other hand, the faijure of the Germans to take Paris in 1914 promises to stand out of the war as one of the great turning points in the world's history. RUSSIA 213 So much for Russia's first entrance into the European theater of operations. Drive to Calais Thwarted by Russia In October, 1914, the Germans, piqued perhaps by their failure to follow up their northern successes, decided to take Warsaw. What happened? They reached the very outskirts of the city and were hurled back to their own frontier at a time when they were just beginning their fierce drive to Calais. And what was looming in the East just then? Another group of Russian armies, this time threatening the invasion of Prussia from the Polish frontier at one point and Silesia at another. At a time when the Germans needed every possible man to break through in Belgium, they were again obliged to divert huge bodies of troops to protect their own frontiers in the East. Army corps after army corps came into the Polish theater of operations. Outnumbered in men and munitions, the Russians fell slowly back on the Bzura line in the North and the Dunajec line in Galicia, fighting battle after battle and taking their toll of hundreds of thousands of Teutons and Austrians. But they were defeated, says the critic in America. True enough, the Russians gave back. But what happened in the West? A point which the Germans believed spelled destruction to the English was saved, and to balance this what had the Ger- mans to show in the East? Losses for themselves and their ally that ran not far short of 300,000 to 400,000 and the gain of — what? — nothing in particular except the opportunity to attack Warsaw itself, which they did for nearly ten months longer. I cannot say how many troops the Germans diverted to the East at this time, but probably not far short of between fifteen and twenty army corps were operating against Russia. Here again we have a Russian defeat and Allied victories, but again Russia must be credited with having made a great contribution to the common cause. Importance of Austria's Defeats in Galicia The early fighting in Galicia cannot, I think, be counted as much of an asset to the Allies, inasmuch as it represented in its early stages what might be called a private quarrel ; but when it became so successful as to threaten Silesia there developed a real menace to Germany. This menace was checked with the 214 SELECTED ARTICLES second advance on Warsaw. The Russians, however, never dis- appointed or discouraged, began immediately to do to the Aus- trians what they had failed to accomphsh against the Germans; and in the early days of January and February, 1915, we find the Russians pushing the Austrians back over the Carpathians and at last taking their great fortress Przemysl in March of that year. Heavy drives in the Bukowina by Russian corps so threatened the Hungarian plain that Hungary itself became dissatisfied and for a brief period the Dual Monarchy was threatened with a collapse which would have seriously imperilled the German plans. Russian successes, too, no doubt helped to bring Italy into the arena. In May, then, when beyond a shadow of a doubt the one thing that the Germans longed for was to strike de- cisively in the West, they found their neighbor, on whom they depended for protection on the South, so involved in disaster and with dissipated morale, that they were obliged practically to suspend their big movements in the West and turn toward im- perturbable Russia, who, inch by inch, was eating away the pres- tige and the armies of their ally. Strategic Value of the Great Retreat There followed then the terrific drive in Galicia and the cam- paign in the Baltic provinces. The Russians — again outnum- bered and practically destitute of munitions — were forced to re- tire and they did so in perfect order, trading Galician acres which had formerly belonged to Austria for German lives which the Germans could not spare. Corps after corps of Germany's best came by express train to the East, until at last the Germans were maintaining between thirty-three and thirty-seven corps on the Russian front and sending thousands to fill the losses which the Russians were taking daily from their ranks. Then came the fall of Warsaw and the spectacle, which must have been a sad one to the Germans, of their iron jaws snapping at air, while the Russian army in excellent order slid away into its wind- swept spaces to the Eastward. In their fury to secure a decision the Germans followed on and on into that desolate plain of Rus- sia, always losing heavily and scoring little, until at last their momentum ceased entirely. Many of them will say and do say that the German line stopped because it had reached its ap- pointed place. But I, who have been there and know the coun- RUSSIA 215 try, can say that the German line stopped its advance for the same reason an arrow falls to earth — because it had no longer any impulse to advance. Their line to-day runs through meadow and forest and swamp just where it stopped in the fall, because it could not advance further. What then is the summing up of the summer campaign? Russian Defeat Gained Valuable Time For the Allies in the West^ It is simply this. Germany pursuing the entire summer a will-o'-the-wisp until fall, when we see the German army settled down in the snow with spirit gradually evaporating for want of local success to keep it going. What has Germany gained? Russian prisoners and limitless acres of bleak landscape which will come back to Russia by treaty without a fight at all when the decision comes for the Allies, which, I believe, is inevitable, whether it be now or whether it be one or two years from now. And what has Germany lost? Perhaps a million in casualties in the East since March and the loss of the opportunity to strike during the summer in the West. And what has been going on in the West all this time? Preparation. With what result? We have seen it in the last weeks at Verdun in the spray of German infantry dashing against the rocks of the French phalanx and the French defenses, Germans gaining each inch and foot of ter- rain by the shedding of German blood in torrents. The reader will say, "Ah, yes, but the Russians have been de- feated in the East." True enough; but it has taken so much to defeat the Russians that the Allies have had time to prepare themselves, so that the Germans, as it now seems, cannot break the Western line with the hope of gains commensurate with the cost. Does the reader imagine that if the thirty-five German corps operating in Russia this past summer had been available in a block to throw against the Allied line in France or Belgium in May that Paris would still be in French hands? Russian de- feats purchased for the Allies these priceless days during which they were able to make their line almost impregnable. And thus again we can trace Russia's contribution to the war. Plenty of Munitions Now I have written a little about Russian reverses, but I think so far there has been little to indicate to the outside world how 2i6 SELECTED ARTICLES very little these reverses mean to Russia as a whole. The re- tirements were due to practically no other cause than the lack of rifles and munitions. Warsaw was lost because there were no shells for the Russian guns. The Germans may deny this, but a million denials would never convince me because I was there. Time and again I saw Russian caissons coming at a gallop from fifteen miles in the rear to replenish batteries that were silent for want of shells. The day before Warsaw fell I saw battery after battery limber up and come- out of strategic positions because there was not a shell left. The condition as to rifles was almost as bad. Millions of men were in uniform, but could not go to the front for want of rifles. When the world learns, as it will eventually, the meager effective force with which Russia was fighting all last summer, it will consider it an amazing thing, not that the Russians were beaten, but that the Germans did not ut- terly destroy them. By late September the scale began to turn, and with the final check of the Germans in the fall was dissipated their last great chance against the Russians. It is true that they may this year push them here and there, but never again will they find Russia unprepared. With millions of men available for her colors and with the arsenals of the world working for her, tools are daily being placed in the hands of the Russians with which to hew out their destiny this coming summer. The Janiiary Offensive in Galicia In considering Russia's contribution to the general campaign one must not overlook the January offensive in southern Galicia which began almost where it was left off in May — the drives toward the Bukowina. All of this happened since I left Russia and I am not able to speak authoritatively of the strategy or tactics of the campaign but from a knowledge of the situation there in July and August and acquaintance with the generals in- volved I am not inclined to believe that this is or will be a major theater of Russian operations. The effect was aimed, I believe, to accomplish two results : First, to interfere with and impede the German- Austrian movements in the Balkans, and, second, to create a moral effect not only on the enemy but more e§pecially on Bulgaria and Rumania. That these results have been achieved seems to be moderately clear. The menace on the Bukowina RUSSIA 217 rendered it necessary for the central powers to divert heavy masses of troops from other fronts to send against the Russian army, which forces would otherwise have been available against the Allies operating from Salonika as a base. It is clear that the operations of the central powers in the Balkans have faded into insignificance since this recent Russian advance, and for the moment, at least, we are hearing nothing more of the Teuton campaign in the Serbian theater of operations. The moral effect of this January offensive of the Russians has been, I think, of enormous value. To realize the important bearing that it must have in Bulgaria, one must understand the situation that has existed in that country since the beginning of the war. German Propaganda in Bulgaria The sentiment in Bulgaria was always intensely pro-Russian and somewhat pro-English, though possibly indifferent to the French. During the first months of the war there was every reason to believe that Bulgaria might have been induced to side with the Allies, but at that time her participation was not con- sidered important and the golden moment slipped by. In the meantime German propaganda was working night and day in Bulgaria to convince the people that the Allies' cause was doomed. Moving pictures, lectures, newspapers, and every other means of publicity known in this day and generation were used by the Germans to present to the people of Bulgaria an un- broken picture of German successes. With the King himself German and with everyone who could be bought working for the Cjerman ends, the Bulgarians were half convinced by May of last year that Germany was going to win. Then came the Gali- cian drive and the spectacle of Russia thrown out of all but a corner of Galicia, and on top of it the shouts of the Germans that Russia was finished. Still Bulgaria hesitated. Then followed the fall of Warsaw and the apparent melting away of the Russian army into the heart of Russia. Simultaneously with this Ger- man troops appeared in constantly growing numbers on the Ser- bian fronts. The Bulgarians, convinced now that Russia was hopelessly lost and the Allies' cause doomed, joined the Teutons. 2i8 SELECTED ARTICLES THE RUSSIANS AND THE WAR^ The Russian peasant soldier regards the enemy as vermin that must be destroyed. He has no doubt that he is clearing away something ugly and full of evil. He is fighting something pestilential, like the cholera or the plague. The bodies of the Germans and the Austrians lay rotting on the fields of Poland this autumn and early winter, and infecting the air with odors. It was with difficulty that the Russian sol- diers could be persuaded to bury them. "Bury these corpses," said a general to one of his servant soldiers. "No, your excellency," said the latter, "let them lie there like dogs ; they are not fit to be buried in the good earth." When I told some soldiers of the sinking of the Emden and the capture of Von Miiller, they could not understand our leni- ency toward the German admiral. "Such people ought to be destroyed directly they are caught," said one of the soldiers, "He ought to have been executed at once." In this spirit, of course, the peasant soldier goes forth to any of the Czar's work; and whether it be war against Japan, or suppression of the Trans-Caucasian cutthroats in North Persia, or a pogrom of the Jews, he has much the same outlook. He is unswervingly loyal to the word of the Czar, or what is told him is the word of the Czar. There has been no bandying of wit between German and Russian soldiers. For one thing the Germans do not understand Russian. For another, the Russian soldiers are carefully trained not to enter into any sort of converse or familiarity with their enemies. During the time of the revolutionary outburst in Russia it was indeed rather difficult for ordinary Russian civ- ilians to joke or talk with Russian soldiers. One could, how- ever, offer them cigarettes. This necessarily adds value to the peasantry as reliable fight- ing material. Then the religion of the peasant helps him to be brave. The Russian army on the offensive is something like an elemental '^ By Stephen Graham. Atlantic Monthly. 115:387-96. March, 1915. RUSSIA 219 destructive force. There is no hesitation about the Russians, little giving of quarter, little seeing of white flags, no malice, no lust, not much delight in cruelty, but on the other hand no squeamishness. The blood flowing does not turn the Russian sick ; the sight of the dead does not make him pale. He is strik- ing with the sword of the Lord. True, the principal function and purpose of war is going to kill. And tlierein lies not only a denial of Christianity but of the primitive Judaic law, "Thou shalt not kill." But the func- tion of Russian war that has struck me most was that of going to be killed. When, in the Altai Mountains, in the middle of the consecra- tion service, I learned that it was Germany that had declared war upon Russia, I felt that the consecration was consecration unto death, that the strapping of the knapsack on the back was like the tying on of the cross. The religion of Russia is the religion of death. As I wrote in my book on the Russian peasant-pilgrims journeying toward the Sepulchre at Jerusalem, "All pilgrimages are pilgrimages to the Altar, to the place of death. Protestantism reveals itself as the religion of the mystery of life; orthodoxy as the religion of death." The Russians march to battle as they tramp to shrines. Death is no calamity for them. It is the thrice beautiful and thrice holy culmination of the life pilgrimage. Watch the Rus- sian soldiers at one of the many funerals of fallen comrades. They are calm and reverent, but it is the calm and reverence that are the accompaniment of an exaltation of spirit. When the wounded soldier is brought to the hospital and laid in his bed, his first wish is that the priest may hold the cross for him to kiss. The priest who visits every bedside every morning carries a little cross in his hand, and each poor soldier presses his lips to the centre of it and kisses it vehemently. War to the Russian soldier is a great religious experience. "He liveth best who is always ready to die," says a holy prov- erb of the Russians. And readiness to die is the religious side of war. The Russian soldier kills his enemy without religious qualm, yet without hate. He does not feel that to shoot at a fellow man, to charge at him with a bayonet, is doing an evil thing to him. The great reality that confronts him is not that he may kill others, but that he himself may suffer terrible pain or may lose the familiar and pleasant thing called life. In order 220 SELECTED ARTICLES to face this, the Russian has to dive down deep in himself and find a deeper self below his ordinary self; he has to find the common spirit of man below his own ego ; he has to live in communion with the fount of Life from which his own little stream of life is flowing. No relic of the war is more precious than the Httle loaf of holy bread which the soldier saves from his last communion before going to battle or going under fire for the first time. The Russian soldiers go to war in very much the same spirit in which the Russian pilgrims go toward Jerusalem. Indeed many a man was just about to start for Jerusalem when the war broke out and he was summoned to fight against the Ger- mans. In the fields of East Prussia and of Poland he found as veritable a Jerusalem as that he sought in Palestine. It is per- haps a shorter way thither. The priests serving in the army and in the hospitals tell won- derful stories of rehgious experience, of touching peasant mys- ticism, of holy patriotism. A dying soldier lies on the battlefield and the visiting priest thinks him gone too far to receive the Holy Communion. So he says the otkhodnaya, the prayer for the departing soul. Sud- denly the dying man opens his dim eyes and whispers just audi- bly: "My countrymen, my dear countrymen — No, not that — Little Father — my own one — thou hast come to save me." He tries to get up, crosses himself widely — that is, from shoulder to shoulder and from brow to chest — and repeats, "Thou hast come to save me." There is a short confession, as of a child. Communion. The soldier with a great effort crosses himself once more, drops back on the wet mud of the battlefield, and slips into oblivion, with glazed eyes, set lips, but white, calm brow. The priest, bending over him, lays a cross upon him, and goes on to the next suffering or dying one on the field. The Russian religion is the reHgion of suffering and death, the religion, that helps you to meet suffering calmly and to be always ready to die. Many Catholics and Protestants among the Russian ranks ask the Orthodox blessing. In the moment of the ordeal they know that true religion is never divided against itself. RUSSIA 221 The war is the great wind that blows through our Hfe so that the things that can be shaken may be shaken down and that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Religion is never shaken down by war. But strange to say, the logicians are shaken in their logic, agnosticism is shaken, materialism is shaken, atheism is shaken, positivism is shaken. The intellectual dominance is shaken and falls; the spiritual powers are allowed to take possession of men's beings. "Many is the time," said a priest to me, "that an officer has called me to his side and has said, *I am an atheist : I believe in nothing'; but I have confessed him and he has emptied his life to me — to the very dregs — and I have put him in Holy Com- munion and left him all melted and holy." The Cossacks are different in their religious temperament. They are the descendants of robber tribes and mercenary bands. To realize what the Cossacks have been you must read Gogol's Taras Bulba, and when you have realized what they used to be you have a notion of what they are. There is much Russian blood in them, but there is also much of the Tartar and the Mongol. They have not much in common with the gentle Slav. Their conception of Christianity is very different from that which animates the mujiks. The Cossack is always a soldier. In Cossack villages every man has to serve in the army; only sons have no privileges. It is rarely that a Cossack is rejected on medical grounds, and rarer still is his acceptance of rejection. By his passport he is a soldier. When he is farming he is said to be "on leave." The village is not called a village but a station, a stanitsa. Almost every man in the station works in trousers that have a broad military stripe. By that stripe you may tell the Cossacks and the Cossack stations in the country. I tramped through several hundred miles of Cossack country last summer, and I have a very bright impression of the people. They have a considerable quantity of land. The government pursues a set policy of giving the Cossacks land, space wherein to live well and multiply. The whole of Central Asia and Tur- kestan is preferably settled by Cossacks. The Russian govern- ment trains the men for two or three years, and when the time of training has been run through, the authorities propose to them that they settle down near the place where they have been en- camped. Land will be given them free. They can bring their 222 SELECTED ARTICLES sweethearts and their wives. The docile Kirghiz and Chinese and other aborigines can be practically forced to build houses for them and dig out irrigation canals and plant poplars and wil- lows. A company of Cossacks accepts the government proposal, and so a new station is marked on the map. A church is built. A horizontal bar and a wooden horse and a greasy pole are put up. A vodka shop is suppHed. And that constitutes Cossack civilization. (Now the vodka shops are all closed, and there is talk of reopening them as schools.) The talk and the songs and the life of the station are all military in nature. The talk. is of battles lately and battles long ago and the battles of the future; the songs are recruit- ing songs and war songs; the life is ever with the gun and on horse back. Children ride on horseback as soon as they can walk and jump. Little boys get their elder brothers' uniforms cut down to wear : the trousers, be they ever so ragged, have still the broad colored stripe that marks the Cossacks. Siberian Cos- sacks have red stripes, Don Cossacks have blue stripes. March- ing songs are on the children's lips, and one of the most frequent sights is that of a company of Cossacks riding up the main street of the stanitsa, carrying the long black pikes in their hands and singing choruses as they go. The pike is another distinction of the Cossack; it is a long black wooden lance, steel-pointed like a spear. No woman grudges her children to the war. War is the ele- ment in which they all live, arid the official manoeuvres are so wild and fierce that many get killed in them, kill one another even, forgetting that they are only playing at war. The Cos- sacks even in remote Asia take themselves seriously as the per- sonal bodyguards of the Czar; formerly robbers and border riders of the wildest type, they are now, thanks to tactful handling, the most loyal subjects of the Czar, and are bred — out on the Seven-Rivers-Land and the Altai Mountains, for instance — much as one might breed a type of horse, for sterling qualities. They are called orthodox Christians, but have seldom any mys- tical sense of Christianity. They are baptized barbarians and are of course extraordinarily superstitious. They hand down their icons and their battle-charms from generation to genera- tion, and worship them almost with idolatry. Their homes are neither comfortable nor clean — the homes of RUSSIA 223 eagles rather than of men. The women are lazier than ordinary Russian peasant women, and eat more and sleep more. As a fair companion of the road explained to me, — "It's the women who must be blamed for the dirt in their cottages. After dinner the women always lie down and fall asleep, and they leave all the dirty dishes on the table, and let the pigs and the chickens come in and hunt for food." That is true. You enter the little room that is all in all of a home, and you find fifty thousand flies buzzing over everything. Often, of an afternoon, I have entered a cottage in order to get milk and have found every one asleep, even the dog, who but opens one eye at the noise of my step. The baby lies in the swing cradle and tosses now and then and cries a little. He would be almost naked were he not black with flies. The chil- dren keep picking flies off his body and hurting him — that is why he cries. None the less that baby will grow up to be a sturdy Cossack. And they seem none the worse for dirt and disorder, to judge from the fine young men we see: tall, agile, hawk- faced — the rising generation no weaker than the fathers. They are hospitable, but because of the biting flies I have found it more comfortable to sleep out of doors, even in bad weather or when mosquitos are thick. They always give you full measure and running over when you buy from them. But they are altogether left behind in hospitality by their neighbors the Kirghiz or the Mongolians. The Cossack has settled where of old the Kirghiz had his best pastures. He has harried the gentle man of the East into the bare lands and wildernesses, and over the border to China. The winter pastures that the ICirghiz has discovered for himself and marked out with stones, the Cossack has pitilessly mown for hay. Even his houses, the long village street of them, the Cos- sack makes the Kirghiz build, while he stands by like a barin or a master. The Kirghiz will work for lower wages than the Chinese; sometimes he can be persuaded to work for nothing. **You are entering Kirghiz country now; there are no Rus- sian villages, no Cossack stations," said one to me. "No mat- ter; you can always spend the night in a ICirghiz tent and you will always get food from them, as much as you want. Don't ever pay them anything. They don't expect it. They will give you the best they have, but don't pay. You needn't. They are that sort of people: glupovaty, stupid-like." 224 SELECTED ARTICLES The favorite adjective applied by Russians to Cossacks is otchainy, which is supposed to mean "desperate," but certainly does not mean it in the ordinary sense of hopeless. It means past-praying-for, wild-beyond-all-hopes. "The Siberian Cossacks, they are the wildest of all," you will hear. They are spoken of by ordinary Russians much as the High- landers are spoken of by the English, and in some respects they resemble the clansmen. They are brave beyond any qualifica- tion. They are all expert horsemen and ride like the wind. Their favorite exploit is to charge the enemy lying close to their horses' sides, even under their bellies, so that it looks to the enemy as if a drove of riderless horses were plunging to- ward them. And when the Cossacks arrive at the object of their charge, Heaven help the poor Uhlans or ordinary Euro- pean troops who happen to be in the way! The Cossacks de- light in the cutting off of heads. It was the Siberian Cossacks who turned the scale at the first battle of Warsaw; and with them, as brothers in arms, were the Caucasian cavalry. The Caucasian tribesmen are if any- thing more warlike than the Cossacks; they are stronger phys- ically, always wear arms, understand life as military gallantry, have much less regard for the value of life, and are much more given to fighting in time of peace. Murder has no moral stigma in the Caucasus; the man who has killed another man is not troubled about his crime — not upset in his mind, not obliged to return and look at the corpse, not obliged to confess at last. Indeed, many of the pleasantest and most courteous men you may meet in the mountains have several "murders," as we should call them, to their charge. Their success in fighting gives them more confidence and more politeness. They are not quite so brave as the Cossacks, being consider- ably more intelligent and a very calculating people. They are also not so loyal to the Czar; they consider themselves liberals. They are corruptible, and the Russian system of bribery has been much improved by them. They are more cruel than the Cossacks, less Christian. A fine body of people, however — the handsomest men in Europe, the hardest. War for them is also the most interesting thing in life, and conversation over the endless stoups of red wine always turns to battles. By the way, the prohibition of the sale of vodka RUSSIA 225 and beer leaves the Caucausus just as drunken as before. The government had no monopoly there in the sale of spirits. Every one could sell who wanted to. Vodka, however, was never much drunk, owing to the fact that the Caucasus has its own good vintage and the natives despise the use of spirits as a sign of lower caste. They are a poor people as money goes. It is marvelous that they retain their physique, considering the poorness of the food they eat and the quantity of wine they drink. Many villages sub- sist on black bread and wine. They are always hungry. They could live much better than they do. They love clothes, love rich carpets and elegant ornaments. They would put jewels on their wives, would be princes not only in title but in estate, and would hold court and go out hunting or to battle with retainers in the good old way. One of the phenomena which show how popular the war is in Russia is the participation of the children in the conflict. There is scarcely a town school in Russia from which boys have not run away to war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes, and tried to pass themselves off as boys and en- list as volunteers; and several have got through, since the med- ical examination is only a negligible formality, required in one place, forgotten in another — the Russians are so fit as a whole. So among the wounded in the battle of the Niemen was a broad-shouldered, vigorous girl from Zlato-Ust, only sixteen; nobody had dreamed that she was other than the man for whom she was passing herself off. But not only boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen, but children of eleven and twelve, have contrived to have a hand either in the fighting or in the nursing. Whilst I was in Wilna there was a touching case. A little girl of twelve years, Marusia Charushina, turned up. She had run away from her home in Viatka, some thousand miles away, and had got on the train "as a hare," that is, without a ticket. The conductor had smiled on her and let her go on. At Wilna, she was a little bewildered by the traffic of the great Pohsh city, but she asked a passing soldier the way to a hospital; he took her to one, and she explained to him that she had come to nurse the wounded* At the hospital a Red Cross nurse ques- tioned her, and she gave the same answer. The nurse tele- graphed to the little girl's father and asked his permission for 226 SELECTED ARTICLES her to remain in the hospital nursing the wounded soldiers. The father gave permission, so little Marusia was allowed to re- main. A uniform was made for her, and now, as the small- est Sister of Mercy of all, she tends the soldiers and is very popular. There was Stefan Krafchenko, a boy of ten, who said he wanted to fight the Germans and so was taken along by the in- dulgent soldiers. He was attached to the artillery, and handed up shells out of the shell-boxes during three battles, and came out of all unscathed and glorious and happy. Then Victor Katchalof, a boy of thirteen, had his horse shot under him and was himself wounded in the leg during the fight against the Austrians below Lfof. Bonstantim Usof, a boy of thirteen, was wounded by shrapnel at Avgustof. Perhaps the greatest schoolboy hero of Russia is a boy named Orlof, from Zhitomir town school. He fought in eleven battles, and was eventually decorated by the Czar with the Or- der of St. George. While reconnoitering he came into collision with a great force of the enemy. He lay in a trench with his fellows and fought all day. But ammunition ran very low. Orlof saved his corps by creeping out in the dark and finding his way through heaps of corpses to the main Russian force. He was under gun and artillery fire all the time, but he succeeded in getting across, and so saved his friends. These are but random instances. The Imperial Academy of Science is collecting, and will probably edit and publish, all manner of printed and unprinted impressions of the war — dia- ries, minor dispatches, or authenticated stories of deeds of der- ring do. When these are issued it will be seen to what an ex- tent the children of Russia have been fighting this war. Ten years ago, war was unpopular in the playgrounds. The war with Japan did not fire the minds of the young ones, who were all agog then with the idea of revolution, so precocious are the young in Russia. Now Russia is pulling all together — not only school-children and students and police and soldiery, but all the various tribes and races — Russians, Cossacks, Georgians, Finns, Poles, Jews. I have now just returned to London after a year in Russia — after three months of Russia in wartime; and I am surprised at the difference in atmosphere. There is an unmistakable de- pression in London. Among those who have no personal stake RUSSIA 227 in the war, no one fighting in the trenches, no one drilling, no one serving on special duty, there is a certain amount of apathy and pessimism. But in Russia there is no apathy. There the whole atmosphere is one of eagerness and optimism. They are full of thankfulness for the things the war has brought to Rus- sia: national enthusiasm, national tenderness, national temper- ance, and moral unanimity. The war has closed the vodka shop ; it has healed the age-long fratricidal strife with Poland; it has shown to the world and to themselves the simple strength and bravery of the Russian soldiers and the new sobriety and ef- ficiency of their officers. It has in fact given a real future to Russia to think about; it has shed, as from a great lamp, light on the great road of Russian destiny. Russians have always dimly divined that they were a young nation of genius; they have held faith in themselves despite dark hours; but now they feel confirmed and certain of their destiny, of their progress from being an ill-cemented patchwork of countries to being a single body feeling in all limbs the beat of a single heart; of their progress from quietness and vast illiteracy to being con- fident possessors of a strong voice in the counsels of nations; of their progress from denial and anarchism and individual ob- stinacy to affirmation, cooperation, and readiness to serve. As nations go, Great Britain is like a man of forty-five, Ger- many like a man of thirty, but Russia like a genius who is just eighteen. It is the young man that you find in Russia : virginal, full of mystery, looking out at a world full of color and holi- ness and passion and sordidness. Despite the beauty and self-sufficiency of the old life, Russia is definitely committing herself to the new. She is going to have a puritan intolerance for sin ; she is beginning to manifest that passion for solid education that has marked Puritan Scot- land, America, Germany. More and more people are going to take up with materialism and ethics and agnosticism. Not that Russian pilgrimaging or asceticism or religious observance can ever cease, or that the mystical outlook will be lost. But Westernism and success and national facetiousness and light- heartedness will be more clamorous. 228 SELECTED ARTICLES RUSSIANS OF TODAY* War and the Russian Village It is only when one has traversed Russia in different direc- tions that its enormous size becomes a fact in one's conception of the country; one, moreover, to be counted with in every de- velopment and phase of the nation's life and history. During the hours that the train crawls through pasture and forest and steppe, and the villages become exciting breaks in the beauty which has grown monotonous, you gradually realize that, while the roads are during many months impassable, links forged by the peasants themselves or by the powers which rule the country must somehow connect these scattered groups of people. When, early one morning in the train bound for St. Peters- burg, I got my first view of Russia, the thought struck me, after I had watched for twenty minutes to see some village, "How can an army be gathered here ? How is it possible to collect the scattered reservists in time of war? " And later, when I had learned to know the Russian peasant — and it is he who forms the bulk of the army — that question answered itself in one word, "Patriotism." That is the quality which makes the mobilization of the Russian army possible. It is the good will with which the peasants answer the call to arms that carries them to the distant centers whither they are sum- moned. The mujik has been a serf, he has been beaten and merci- lessly taxed by his Government at various times, yet his love for his country is even more deeply rooted and stronger than his religion. Perhaps it is to some extent a love for the land — for that which is the greatest factor in his life, feeding body and soul alike. Its beauties appeal to his imagination, its changes and its immutability to the strain of mystic fatalism in his na- ture. To be parted from the land is a tragedy for every Russian peasant. Some weeks ago I came upon an extraordinary group^in the London street which is still known as "Petticoat Lane." In the * By Sasha Kropotkin. Outlook. 108:413-17. October 21, 1914. RUSSIA 229 middle of the street stood a sturdy girl, a handkerchief on her head. She was singing one of the slow, plaintive, and most beautiful of our Russian folk songs. Round her stood a group of Russian peasants in long kaftans, utterly unconscious of everything around, the tears trickling down their cheeks, their bodies swaying slowly to the melody. As the girl finished, one of them drew the back of his hand across his eyes and said, in a hushed voice, "Brothers, at home now they're cutting the hay." It is small wonder, then, that when in times of peace the des- siatski— a chosen representative of the village — begins to gather the conscripts, the women weep, the older men grumble, and the whole village is plunged in gloom. Nevertheless the young men prepare for departure. They gather in some big isba for the last time, and sit around the table on which stands the in- evitable samovar. When they have drunk innumerable glasses of tea, their parents bless them before the icon, there is gen- eral leave-taking and kissing, and befofe they go, according to the usual Russian custom, every one "rests for a moment," sit- ting stiffly and silently. Then begins the real departure. Half the village accompanies the young men to the nearest town where the recruiting center is, the women, in their best sara- fans, singing mournful songs bewailing the fate of the unfortu- nate youths who are being torn from their homes. In the town the young men draw numbers, and those who receive the lowest ones go to serve their country for four years— that is, in time of peace. In time of war the picture changes. During the Russo-Japanese War, when the reservists were called, even though the war was not popular — partly because it was so far away — there were cheerfulness, a desire to fight for their country, no matter where, and great resignation. I myself witnessed a deeply moving scene at a station near Moscow. As a train filled with reservists was steaming out, a group of peas- ants lined up in a row along the platform. Holding their tat- tered caps in both hands, pressed against their breasts, they bowed deeply and solemnly, inclining their whole body, to the reservists in the outgoing train. When the trains go now, there will be more than bowing, there will be enthusiasm, for the war is nearer home this time. When one knows what it means to an agricultural population to lose its strongest workers, the cheerfulness with which they are given up becomes awe-inspir- 230 SELECTED ARTICLES ing; for, once the villages are emptied of the capable men, the entire work falls on the women. It is not for nothing that the Russian peasant woman is respected by her men and counted as their equal in all labor. She plows and sows and reaps with them, rising before the sun and ceasing work only when the day fades. And the work she has to undertake when her men have gone to the war is no light one. Each family has at least five or six acres to cultivate. The pasture land the village holds in common. It is usually the custom in time of stress for the workers to do all the field work in common. At three in the morning the women, and even the children, turn out to work ; at eleven they have a meal of dry black bread and perhaps a small cucumber. Then, while the sun is high, they sleep; and from four o'clock they work again, till sunset. The fete of Saint Eliyah, on August 2, is the day by which the reaping is usually finished and the crops stand ready to be garnered for the win- ter. This, among others, is a fact which the Germans have miscalculated. They thought that the crops were still standing, whereas they had all been cut by the date of the declaration of the war, and as I write the women are threshing the corn hur- riedly and the crops are already safely stored for the winter. There is other work too for the women to do — shoeing horses, mending plows, scythes, wheels, and so on. The blacksmith has gone to the war, the wheelwright also; so the peasant woman wields the hammer and sends the chips flying with the ax. In the autumn she fells the trees and shears the sheep. And all the winter she spins and weaves, waiting for her men to come back, hoping always and teaching her children to love their coun- try and their father, who has gone to defend them against a strange foe. The Russian Officer of To-day An intrepid horseman, a magnificent dancer, dashing and smart, clad in uniform and spurs (those spurs were inevitable), often drunk and always charming, such was — or is still — the popular conception of a Russian officer. Many years ago in a very modified degree this may have been somewhere near the mark. But this was indeed long ago. Above all, it was before the Russo-Japanese War. Though there were thousands of Russian officers in that war who distinguished themselves in the face of terrible odds and displayed qualities of RUSSIA 23t foresight, organizing power, and resistance, yet there were others who proved inefficient, lacking in knowledge and often in moral stamina. It was necessary that such men should be elim- inated by the time Russia went to war again. And that she would go to war at no very distant date was an acknowledged fact even at that time. Every Japanese victory was hailed with delight in Germany. Also a sinister fact, one not known to the general public, was the absolute unreliableness of the projectiles supplied by German firms to the Russian army. It was impos- sible, owing to the inaccuracy with which they had been made, to calculate in firing them where they would fall. Whether these projectiles were manufactured so inaccurately by design or accident is not known, but the fact was considered significant of Germany's attitude. Immediately after the Japanese War Russia set about reorganizing her army, paying great attention, among other things, to the officers. Of the then existing staff thirty-seven per cent were eliminated from active service. Officers of the Russian army are drawn from all classes, any one having finished a gymnasium (secondary school) course and completed two or three years in a special military academy being eligible. Great numbers of them are also men with a university education. These qualifications, though sufficient to procure a commission, will not help a man to promotion, which formerly was largely automatic. To begin with, special attention is paid to the moral caliber of the men. Drunkenness and gambling are no longer winked at by superiors, nor is looseness in money or other matters. The lodging of complaints by soldiers against their officers has been greatly facilitated, and a number of complaints against the same man will certainly lessen his chances of promotion. A man who is known to be a drunkard now can never reach the rank of captain. It is obvious from this that the officers, taken as a whole, are far steadier and more reliable to-day than they were some years ago. But an even more important innovation is the tremendous amount of up-to-date knowledge of military matters which is re- quired from the officer. To this end evening lectures have been arranged in each regiment, attendance on which is compulsory. These lectures deal with tactics and every branch of military science. Problems of all possible kinds are set, and their solu- tions must be presented at the following lecture. Every facility 17 2Z2 SELECTED ARTICLES is afforded in obtaining the latest works in all languages on military matters, and the officers are expected to keep au cour- ant of all innovations. On the other hand, far less time is devoted to unnecessary parades, and much more time is spent in camp and in maneuvers. Where formerly only six weeks were spent in maneuvers now six months are devoted to them, and three months of these are spent in camp. The Russian is by nature generally anything but bellicose. He is too good- natured, often too lazy and easy-going, to be what is usually considered an ideal soldier. But he has another quality which goes further than sternness in holding an army together, es- pecially when the tide is going against it— and that is a truly democratic spirit. The married officers usually spend only such time as is ab- solutely necessary with their men, but the unmarried ones spend every moment they can spare with them. They write intermi- nable letters for the soldiers (who are often completely illiterate) , beginning with, *T send my greeting to mother, father. Grand- mother Maria and Great-aunt Anna, to Grandfather Nicholas and my brothers and sisters." A list follows, and then the whole village is enumerated. Sometimes a ruble accompanies the letter, often contributed to by the officer, who also provides paper and stamps. When these items, small in themselves, are drawn from a salary of loo or no rubles a month, a certain amount of self-denial is involved on the part of the officer. Then also the officers spend much of their time reading to the men, teaching them, taking them to cinematographs where there are films of educational value, and generally doing what they can for their welfare. As a result the men trust their officers com- pletely, and the ties which bind them together are very strong. And since it is not what every man can do, but what he can't do and still does, which wins battles, it is of incalculable value that the officers should be men who can inspire their soldiers to that supreme effort. That the Russian officer of to-day who lives on such good terms with his men is of this stuff will be proved in the present campaign. In time of war the officer of the reserve also plays an im- portant part in the success of an army. There are supposed to be seven officers to every battery; usually there are only five. In time of war the battery is en- larged and split into two. There are therefore only two or three RUSSIA 233 ordinary officers to each half; the rest are officers of the re- seFve. Sixty per cent of these are men of university education, and, though their knowledge of military matters cannot obvi- ously be as complete as that of a proper officer, they have been well grounded, and the fact that at various times since serving their term of military service they have been in camp for cer- tain periods fits them for service. What they lack in knowledge they will more than make up in enthusiasm in this war. Ger- man culture is respected in Russia, but the appalling results of fanatical militarism have been realized only too well; and, be- sides, every Russian is a patriot and will fight for every inch of his country. The army which Russia has put into the field is indeed a dif- ferent "proposition" from the one she sent out man by man to the Far East ten years ago. The entire army has been com- pletely rearmed and reorganized, especially the artillery, which is magnificent. The officers are efficient, steady, willing and ready to die, and, above all, absolutely confident of the loyalty of their soldiers. RUSSIA IN ARMS: SOCIAL ASPECTS^ The present clash of nations has brought into play vast forces and deep-seated energies; it has called anew into being im- memorial brutalities as well as long vanished sanctitudes; it has put to the test of fire not only the flesh but also the spirit; in fact, it is, in a sense, an event of the spiritual order. The changes which the war has so far wrought in the map of Rus- sia's territory are surely less significant than those wrought in the map of her spirit. While the body of the country has suf- fered losses, its soul has grown — grown with the fabulous rapid- ity which is so characteristic of these days when Time seems to have increased infinitely the speed of its ceaseless race. The light-bearing ray often comes to us in the shape of a thorn, and Pain is a harsh but efficient master. Under its ferule, men and women in Russia have gone through mighty transformations, the effect of which cannot as yet be appraised. Some of the processes that to-day ferment Russian minds and hearts throughout the length and breadth of the country are still latent, hidden in the deep undercurrents of conscious- * By Abraham Yarmolinsky. Bookman. 44:598-603. February, 1917. 234 SELECTEt) ARTICLES ness. Others have already resulted in definite and visible changes, which conjure up the vision of Russia, emerging from the crucible of this war regenerated, chastened by losses, in- ternally strengthened, free from age-old fetters and sins, ready for great tasks and high missions. "Retro, Satanas! " He who in these days would go to Russia and enter her silent villages and bustling towns, would find there fewer concrete changes than he might be led to expect. But he could hardly fail to notice that a multitude of new ideas and evaluations have eaten their way into the minds of the people and have prepared the soil for the seeds of the future. Our hypothetical visitor, in wandering along the endless streets and roads of Russia, would be struck by the amount of constructive work which is going on everywhere in the country. Even more impressed would he be by the change on the part of the Russians in their general at- titude toward practical, socially organised activities. "Somewhere deep in the Russian soul," says Maxim Gorky, "no matter whether it be the master's or the muzhik's, there lives a petty and squalid demon of passive anarchism, who in- fects us with a careless and indifferent attitude toward work, society, and ourselves." There is a great deal of bitter truth in this utterance of a man who has a deep and intimate knowledge of his people. It is impossible to understand the Slav type of civilisation without allowing for the fact that to the Russian culture is essentially a spiritual phenomenon, not to be projected into the outer world, but to be lived internally. The Russian is a dreamer who loves fairy-tales of beauty, but his interest in the practical activities which lead to the upbuilding of a beautiful life is but weak and transient, and his distate for every-day un- assuming duties and responsibilities is often appalling. These peculiarities, in combination with the Slav individualism and the chaotic, unbalanced and undisciplined social will of an over- governed race, have been both the glory and the tragedy of Rus- sian culture, this living conglomeration of glaring contradictions, this treasure-house of created beauty, lacking the elementary norms of law and order, which are the very atmosphere of Western civilisation. Now, under the influence of the crisis brought about by the war, people in Russia are realising that it is necessary to say to RUSSIA 235 the demon of passive anarchism : "Retro, Satanas ! " They have awakened to the necessity of freeing and educating their vast innate powers and applying them to the solution of prac- tical social problems. "Matushka Rossia," Mother Russia, meek, passive, essentially feminine, is striving to develop all her man- hood potentialities. Mary, lost in contemplation, has heard the insistent call of life and has come to envy Martha's part. Hence, the propaganda of organised public effort, which is to assume the form of "organisation," either in the sense Wilhelm Ost- wald uses it or in the peculiarly Russian sense of a kind of co- operation which does not restrain the spiritual autonomy of the co-operating individuals. The propaganda of organisation goes hand in hand with the so-called "economism." This movement deals with the mighty economic problems which face Russia, such as the exorcising of German influence and the utilisation of the inexhaustible natural wealth which lies dormant in the Russian soil. Another manifestation of the same tendency is the interest society is taking nowadays in the growth of higher educational institutions, especially technical ones. Several such institutions, which owe their existence mainly to private initia- tive and enthusiasm, have already begun functioning. The gov- ernment is planning to add a number of universities to the ten which existed before the war. Organising For Victory Nowhere did Russia's newly awakened constructive energies find a more brilliant expression than in the patriotic work of the zemstvos (county councils) and municipalities. The story of how the people of Russia fought for the right to take a direct part in the jnobilisation of the forces of the country in the rear, and how free public organisations were formed for that purpose, in spite of the opposition of governmental agencies — an opposi- tion which is still in full force — this story, it is hoped, will be some day told in detail. It will once more reveal to the world all the utter inefficiency and lack of vision manifested by the Russian bureaucracy in the hour of crisis. As early as July 30, 1914, the zemstvos, organs of self-gov- ernment, in peace-time exclusively local, organised into an All- Russian Union, under the leadership of Prince G. E. Lvov. Somewhat later, the towns formed a similar union, with its main centres in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Voronezh, Tiflis, and 236 SELECTED ARTICLES Irkutsk, and the manufacturers and merchants organised the so- called Military-Industrial Committees. After a while, the two unions consolidated into a combination called Zemgor. At first, the activity of the Unions was restricted by the government to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers. But, as the inability of the heavy bureaucratic machine to cope with the situation became more and more apparent, the authorities yielded re- luctantly, and the Unions' sphere of activity has gradually come to include a vast range of tasks. Nowadays Zemgor is a most important factor in the life of the army, and it is with these public organisations that the hopes of the country are bound up rather than with the bureaucratic agencies. The Unions not only take care of the wounded, the refugees, the families of sol- diers; through their local branches they also build mills, fac- tories, workshops, garages, and manufacture munitions and clothing for the army. Alexander Kuprin, the eminent author, has recently visited one of these newly built zemstvo factories. He conveys in the following terms the impression which the headquarters of the local branch of the Union made on him (quoted from The Soul of Russia, edited by Winifred Stephens) : This place is like a government office, but a government office without arrogant, irascible, and uncivil bureaucrats, with useless and aimless wan- derings from department to department, whither one is waved by indolent arms, without fatiguing and humiliating hours of waiting in corridors and vestibules, without crowds of insolent extortioners, without surly door- keepers, without the ominous "To-morrow — in a week — in a month." Every- thing, great or small, is done at the Union quickly and smoothly, accurately, as upon a war footing. Exit Vodka In one of his numerous utterances, connected with the prob- lems of the day, Leonid Andreyev, the well-known author, says : "The thirst for self-respect — that is, the fundamental feeling which now, in the days of the most terrible war, has seized the entire Russian society, which has exalted the people to the heights of heroism, and which makes us fear all that reminds us of our sad past." It is this feeling, aided by a tremendous ef- fort of the national will, awakened by the world conflagration, that accounts for the success with which the "miracle measure,*' to use the expression of an American author, of prohibition has been carried out in Russia. As is known, the government wine-shops were closed and the RUSSIA 237 free sale of alcoholic liquors strictly prohibited in Russia right after the outbreak of hostilities. Many sins will be pardoned Russian officialdom for this measure. The ukase of July 18, 1914, was truly an act of genuine faith and great courage. For years the governmental traffic in vodka was one of the main sources of Imperial revenue. In 1914, for instance, the income from the governmental vodka monopoly amounted to 936 million rubles, while the entire income was 3,080 million rubles. It may be said that, in a sense, drinking was forced on the population by the government, which lived by what was the scourge of the country and which, hence, was far from encouraging the pro- hibition movement among the people. Enthusiasts compare the prohibition act with the Emancipa- tion of the Serfs and even with the reforms of Peter the Great. In fact, it is hardly possible to over-rate the salutary effect of the measure, especially on the life of the village. Here all the observers of Russian life are perfectly unanimous. As high an authority as Professor Ozerov asserts that "the universal so- briety of Russia has been equivalent to an annual investment in our national industries of vast sums of money." The economic value is but one side of this social experiment. The reports of Provincial Chambers of the Exchequer, summarised and recently published by the Ministry of Finances, as well as other author- itative studies, show that universal abstinence has been highly instrumental in the adjustment of the population to the new burdens of the war and that it has laid a solid foundation for the happiness of innumerable homes. If things keep on going as they have been for the last two and a half years, the classical Russian tramp, eternalised by the writings of Maxim Gorky, is seriously threatened by the danger of becoming a fossil. Im- morality, pauperism, and criminality have decreased, the health of the population has been improved and the standard of living raised, while a new era of economic prosperity and thrift has been inaugurated — all this as a direct result of the prohibition measure. It is true that in some places, especially in the towns, a number of deaths have been caused by the use of poisonous substitutes for vodka. In this connection Mr. Richard Wash- burn Child, in his book Potential Russia, retells a Moscow anec- dote about a little girl who was asked by a kindly old gentleman why she was wearing mourning. "Father is dead," answered the child candidly. "Father could not get any vodka because 238 SELECTED ARTICLES the Czar has forbidden vodka to be sold. So father drank the fuel spirits from mother's stove, and now he is dead. God bless our dear Emperor ! " The abolition of alcohol in Russia is only a temporary meas- ure. After the war, the government wine-shops may be re- opened, although public opinion is decidedly for the maintenance of prohibition. It is believed in Russia that the spread of ed- ucation and the organisation of rational forms of recreation, such as are furnished by libraries, neighbourhood centres, cine- matographs, will keep the country permanently temperate, whether or not the prohibition act will remain in force. Here is one of the many fields in which American experience can be of great use to the Russians. The New Nationalism The mighty momentum of the struggle has overcome Rus- sia's immense inertia and brought forth all her powers of re- sistance and aggression. In addition, the concerted efforts and common trials have vastly intensified her national self-con- sciousness. The reality of this New Nationalism is to-day plainly written across Russia's complex mind. In fact, it is nowadays one of the most conspicuous features of her life and one of the storm centres of her thought. It would be rash to assert that this nationalistic spirit is free from Chauvinism or "zoological" — as the Russians say — patriotism. This is but the spiritual counterpart of the physical scars and deformities left by the war. It is essentially, however, a progressive phenome- non: it stands above all for national self-knowledge and self- criticism. It is primarily an emotional attitude — a feeling of a new responsibility and a new devotion, even unto death, to otcheezna, the abstract entity of the fatherland. The intel- lectuals have been especially affected by this change of heart. They have always felt themselves in their own country strang- ers, homeless and superfluous. And now they have suddenly discovered, so to speak, their native land and learned to love it not only as one loves his mother, but also as one loves his child, frail and needing all your loving care and help. And if Russian Intelligentzia has seen in these days the fall of many of its long- cherished ideals, it had never been nearer the realisation of its old longing to see filled the gulf between it and the plain peo- ple, the voiceless millions of bast-shoed peasants. RUSSIA 239 This newly awakened national spirit has nothing to do with official Nationalism, which has heaped upon Russia an un- speakable disgrace by practising most ruthlessly what Treit- schke calls "Volkermord." It must not be forgotten that the leviathan, stretching over one-sixth of the entire land-surface of our planet, and commonly known as Russia, is a polyglot con- glomeration of races, some of which are bearers of ancient cul- tures, more or less impervious to assimilation. One of the many ideas this war is driving home to people in Russia is the ab- solute necessity of giving these various nationalities full freedom of development, instead of forcing down their throats the civ- ilisation of the sovereign Great-Russian race, as it has been done until now. It is the hope of progressive Russia that the war will lay a firm foundation for the future peaceful co-opera- tion of the various people who go to make the huge empire and who are now shedding their blood for their common fatherland. A sign of the times is the interest which has arisen to-day in Russia in the cultural strivings and achievements of the inor- odtzy (Russian subjects of non-Russian birth), and which has brought into existence a number of special publications. One of these is a series of volumes, edited by Maxim Gorky and de- voted to the literature of the various non-Russian languages spoken in Russia, including the literatures of the Tartars, Finns, Lithuanians, Jews, and so forth. In this connection, it is inter- esting to mention another publication edited by Gorky, in col- laboration with Leonid Andreyev and Fyodor Sologub, and en- titled The Shield. It is a symposium of representative Russian men-of-letters and scientists on the Jewish question in Russia. There can be no better proof that the best minds of Russia side with the Jews in their struggle for equal rights. In these days, when the ancient nation is living through the most tragic period of its troubled history, thinking Russia has done well to have raised her voice to demand the removal of Jewish disabilities and to protest against the unspeakable crime which the Russian state has been committing for years against an entire people. Prophetic Russia A goodly portion of the speculative thought produced by the ♦var in Russia is devoted to the national problems and cognate matters. In the light of her newly awakened self -conscious- ness Russia is pondering over the riddle of her existence. The 240 SELECTED ARTICLES storm of the war has wrecked many of the Western idols which had commanded the worship of intellectual Russia. By a natural reaction the minds of men are turning to their own na- tional altars and shrines, and the pendulum of Russian thought once more comes near the pole of Slavophilism, with its belief in Russia's predestined mission on earth. It is remarkable that the religious element plays a conspicuous part in the philo- sophical manifestations of the New Russian Nationalism, and the vision of future Russia is often mingled with the mystic vision of New Jerusalem. In this connection an interesting at- tempt to interpret Russia's soul has been recently made by Nik- olay Berdyayev, a brilliant philosopher of the Moscow school of mystic thought. To this religious thinker the symbol of Russia is a pilgrim journeying in quest of Kitezh, the City Invisible of the old Rus- sian legend. While German mysticism is a plunging into the depths of the spirit, the mystic temper of the Slav expresses it- self in a quest for the City Divine, in a yearning for absolute and final values, in moods intensely apocalyptic and prophetic. Russia's religion is that of prophets, not that of priests. It is in the light of this inner restlessness, this ceaseless seeking of God, this spiritual thirst, that Russia's national mission must be inter- preted and the "Russian Idea formulated. It is also these es- sential characteristics of Russia's spirit, that distinguish her from the West, with its genius for the relative and the practical; its age-old domesticity and its deep-rooted amor loci. In contrast- ing Russia with the Western culture, Mr. Berdyayev does not, however, share the traditional contempt of the Slavophils for "the rotten West." He would rather agree with Goethe that "Gottes ist der Orient, Gottes ist der Occident." It is his belief — a belief characteristic of Russian thought to-day — that the great schism of war will result in the union of East and West, and that after the conflict Russia, conscious of her separate mis- sion in the world, will be finally ushered into the family of Western nations. In fact this union of the two worlds is, ac- cording to Berdyayev, one of Russia's world tasks. But she is not as yet ready for her mission ; her mystic spirit is thwarted and marred by a fatal tendency to passivity. Her eyes ever on the vision of the City Heavenly, she has neglected to build up her City Terrestrial, and so "Holy Russia" is in many respects a most unholy place, swayed by dark powers. Mr. Berdyayev RUSSIA 241 believes that Russia will reach the active paths of ihe spirit not by importing ideas and methods essentially strange to her inner- most nature — and here our philosopher is again a Slavophil — but by revealing and developing the masculine, creative element which is potentially present in her mystic quest for truth and holiness. This interpretation is one of the many contributions made by philosophers and publicists to the store of Russian national self- knowledge. Whatever their value may be, they all point to the fact that amidst the storm and stress of the struggle, Russia is realising that she has come of age. This feeling of maturity leads her to the desire for an independent and untrammeled de- velopment of her native powers. The new Nationalism is thus necessarily a freeing and constructive force. It stands back of the young and frail constitutionalism and marches at the head of the armies. Without this national spirit the war would be little more than "a revolt of the conquered," as the Germans are said to have referred to the Russian campaign at the out- break of the hostilities. And it is well to remember that Rus- sia's success in this war will be eventually a double triumph. For the war which she is now waging against the Teutons is also a war against her inner foes, whose stronghold is Russian of- ficialdom. It is unthinkable that the people, having discovered and tested their strength m shaking off the German's grip, should long tolerate the swaddling-clothes of an inefficient and superan- nuated political system. THE HOMELESS HORDES OF RUSSIA^ In Russia, when one speaks of refugees, one does not mean, as one might in other belligerent countries, those who, for safety's sake only, have moved away from danger: one means men or women or children who have fled from the scorch of war as countless animals and insects fly before the approach of fire in grass or timber. In Russia "refugee" usually means one who has had all past association permanently rubbed out as one rubs writing from a blackboard; the Russian refugee usually has lost village, home, animals, personal belongings, and often all friends, relatives, and even sense of the points of the com- pass. In front of him is the vast Russian plain and the future; >By £. W. Child. Collier's. 56:8-9, 32-3- March 11, 19 16. 242 SELECTED ARTICLES behind him is the lost past. ^Life, constructed year after year;J the cup from which he drank, the room in which his grand- father died, and even the view from the back door have been wiped away now. Life is erased. Dazed, frostbitten, sick, footsore, a human being stripped of most of the distinctions which had separated him from his cow or his pig, clinging now to existence as his most precious possession, herding with others, as sheep in a storm, or broken off from the herd as a lame animal falls behind: on and on he goes. Where? God knows. I asked a member of one of the war committees in Moscow how many refugees were in Russia. He said : "Fourteen mil- lion." A government official told me: "Probably eleven mil- lion." I said : "I do not believe that we realize this thing in the United States." The Russian artillery officer at Vitebsk to whom I spoke then replied : "Nor do we. But it has been ex- aggerated. There are not over eight or nine million refugees." Eight or nine million! His low estimate was more than the total population of Canada! After a time I asked : "Where do they go ? " He said: "Ah, about such a thing who can tell? There is nothing so sad. I have seen with my own eyes a woman whose journey over the fields and roads had been interrupted by child- birth. She had to stop. They were both frozen." In Petrograd there are a million new residents, and many of these are refugees who have stood the long journey from Po- land or elsewhere on the war front. In Moscow the number is over a million. Thus the population of these two cities alone has been swelled by a number of persons larger than the entire population of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island; this is the contribution that war has made to the two cities, and in the main it is a contribution of individuals whose lives have been uprooted, whose pasts are obliterated, and whose futures are as blank as unprinted pages. "What will be their destiny? " I asked of one of the editors best known in Russia. He said : "IJ^ar that Destiuy^has too muchLjust now in her head to make any plans for these migrating millions. The spar- row's fall of the past has assumed great significance as com- pared to the fate of one of these." RUSSIA 243 Nowhere could I receive any clear answer to the question of what was to become of all this homeless horde. I went to Vladislas Zukowski, perhaps the most prominent man in the public affairs of the Poland of yesterday, and considered the Polish leader in the Third Duma. He shook his head. "I can only speak for Poland," he said. "The number of Polish refugees in Russia, as distinguished from the other refugees, probably is nearly a million and a half. The Russian government contributes five or six millions of rubles every month for their maintenance and about ten millions of rubles have been spent on their clothing. But — " He paused and we both understood that six million rubles a month meant an expenditure of a little over a dollar per refugee. "In August and September, and even later, no relief action had been organized," he went on. "Thousands upon thousands of children were lost or perished from exposure and exhaustion, all over the fields and roads of western Russia. The land is loaded with unidentified burials. Polish national institutions have centered their efforts of relief to-day in the Congress of Polish Institutions in Moscow. The Russian government re- garded the relief action favorably and granted large credits. Many of our refugees are secure from starvation. "It is not only the peasant who has suffered; understand that the land owners and professional classes have also lost everything. No compensation is in sight. Sometimes the army authorities can act quickly to protect those who have lost every- thing by army service, but the civil authorities will have to de- lay indefinitely relief to ruined land owners and those in the professions. Owing to the uncertainty of what is to become of them, the refugee Poles in Russia, whether peasants or not, are in terrible bitterness. Moral depression is evident. There is nothing to live for. "Perhaps this depression could be relieved materially by sym- parthy from the western nations. But remember that such ex- pressions of sympathy must not be of the kind to irritate Rus- sian opinion, for that would be fatal. Remember, too, that after the Russian army retired from Poland the Polish question was no longer an internal question of the Russian Empire; it is now an international question." The real truth is that Russia herself cannot conceive the magnitude of the hordes of homeless staggering out of the 244 SELECTED ARTICLES West, wandering Russian fields and roads, fleeing this way and that without plan or purposes, dazed by war : of men and women and children driven eastward across the great plain, as insects scurry out of fields aflame, and in their countless numbers mak- ing ridiculous the importance of the human individual. RUSSIA A NATION UNITED BY WAR* I do not think it is yet realized outside Russia how good a turn Germany served the Russian government, and ultimately the Russian people, when she dictated Austria's note to Servia and compelled Russia to make preparations for war. During the days that preceded this, not only St. Petersburg, but every big manufacturing district of Russia, was shaking with revolt of a peculiar kind, and a civil war of the most horrible was on the point of being declared. There was much more serious evidence of this than ever got into the papers, although no doubt it was all reported in Germany, and strengthened the case of the Kaiser's councilors who were convinced that this was a propitious moment for the war for which during forty years military Germany has been steadily making ready. Only a few days before the war I had gone up to St. Peters- burg from Finland to get my rooms ready, as I wished to see as much as possible of the attempt at revolution that then seemed inevitable. There were barricades up in the streets of the workmen's quarters. One hundred and twenty thousand workmen were on strike, and, this is the point, they were not on strike for higher wages. In no single case did the men make a demand from their masters. In no single case had a man gone on strike because of a visible grievance which his master could put right. No concession by the masters could have brought the men back to work. The only answer they returned, when asked why there was a strike, was that they were dissatisfied with their lives, with the present conditions of the working-man, and that they intended to disorganize the state until these con- ditions were altered. They began, as I suppose is known, by smashing up the tram- cars and by desultory attacks on the police. Many of the fac- tories were garrisoned in expectation of attack. I may perhaps * Century. 89:183-8. December, 1914. RUSSIA 245 give an idea of the state of affairs if I describe an incident that took place in a St. Petersburg factory. A manager had sacked a small number of men some little time before, and one of these thought to take advantage of the rebellion (for it was that rather than a strike) and to revenge himself on this manager. The factory was guarded by Cossacks, and the manager's private room had been turned into a bedroom for the Cossack officer. A cartload of provisions were being taken into the yard, and the workman slipped in with it, dashed across to the door, knifed the sentry there, and, knowing his way, rushed, knife in hand, through the corridors to the manager's room. He burst open the door, and was confronted not by his enemy, but by the Cos- sack officer, who promptly shot and wounded him. A number of soldiers in close pursuit then arrived, and very nearly killed him with the butts of their rifles. This is only one incident of the many that never got into the papers. The Threatened Revolution That War Stopped St. Petersburg was in momentary fear of another and a far more serious revolution than that of 1905. The police captured the people supposed to be the leaders, but it soon appeared that there were no leaders, for these arrests had no influence what- ever on the enormous body of men who had left their tools with no clearer aim than to disorganize the state in the hope of some- thing better. Things seemed to the Russian government about as bad as they very well could be, and orders were actually given for the severest possible repressive measures, which would perhaps have involved a large-scale battle, probably a massacre, certainly a state of war in the capital. It has been suggested that the stirring up of this unrest was done by German influ- ence, and it is an undoubted fact that the first men to strike were the employees of a German firm. Germany's Faith in This Disaffection Whether or not German influence had had a share in creating this state of things, Germany was certainly fully informed of it, as well as of the English trouble in Ireland. This may be known by the announcements, a little premature, in the German press that Ireland had revolted and that there actually was a revolution throughout Russia. In both cases the Germans had underestimated the incalculable factor of loyalty. The moment 246 SELECTED ARTICLES it became clear in St. Petersburg that Germany was determined on war, the repressive measures were countermanded two days before they were to have taken effect, and the workmen went instantly and quietly back to work. Many of those who were not called to the colors by the mobilization orders themselves volunteered for the front. During the first few days, however, the government showed its sense of insecurity by actually organizing demonstrations to excite the patriotic feeling of the masses. These were not spon- taneous demonstrations of enthusiasm. Small groups of the worst hooligans were given flags and a portrait of the Czar and sent off to patrol the town, singing hymns, and knocking off the hats of people who did not themselves remove them. There was, however, no need for any such meretricious aids to patriotism, and after a little harm had been done, the hooligans lost their state employment and, though no one else wanted that kind of demonstration, the police, no doubt with their tongues in their cheeks, pasted up notices prohibiting it. However, during the time of the demonstration enthusiastically reported in the official and foreign press, I had ample opportunity to observe that the crowds of respectable people who, with real enthusiasm, at- tached themselves to these processions, were of an entirely dif- ferent character from that of their disreputable paid leaders. And there could be no doubt of the sudden and genuine unity of feeling among the people. Even the police, usually hated, were no longer regarded as enemies. I myself saw a detach- ment of mounted police heartily cheered in the Nevski Prospekt by the crowd waiting to read the news pasted up in the windows of a newspaper. They had probably never been cheered before in their lives, and were so surprised by this change of feeling that they saluted the populace and laughed shamefacedly, like flattered children. As the mobilization proceeded, the streets were filled with companies of reservists marching to the depots, where they were examined by the doctors and given their uniforms The men for the most part were admirably built, and even out of uniform looked good soldiers. They marched through the streets with a sturdy, swinging gait, carrying their bundles and their tin ket- tles in extreme seriousness. There was a complete absence of jingoism. These men did not love fighting. They realized that fighting was necessary, and that it was for the moment their RUSSIA 247 business. They went oflF, like Cromwell's soldiers, singing hymns. In many cases their wives and children marched with them, to see the last of their men before they finally took train for the front. Barracks were improvised for them out of pri- vate houses, riding-schools, and workhouses. Every man was allowed seven rubles for a pair of top-boots, and they marched along with these comfortable Russian boots, loose below the knee. Each man had a large wooden spoon tucked, handle downward, into one of his boots, and when they fed, ten or a dozen together round great tubs and bowls of food, they used these spoons, now and then giving spoonfuls to the women, and afterward replacing the spoons in their boots. Whole streets were turned into something like horse-fairs, where the horses commandeered were examined and allotted to the men. The Champ-de-Mars, a huge grassless field once used for reviews, was for days covered with horses. Then the horses disap- peared, and their place was taken by hundreds upon hundreds of motor-cars, they, too, requisitioned for the front. The sight of the men actually going to war, the whole face of the city changed by these gigantic preparations, made it im- possible for the population not to realize that the war was an actual, imminent thing. They realized it with extreme serious- ness. From every house some one had gone, and, besides their tenants, many houses had lost all their porters, as well as the guards whose business it is to watch outside the doors at night and to share the duties of the police. The Welding of a People All this prepared the way for the great meeting in the Palace Square, when the Czar and the Czarina appeared on the balcony before their people. In England, in France, in America, such a meeting would not have had the same significance. King and Presidents have long been accustomed to show themselves freely to their people, and to appear in public without a hedge of sol- diery. It is not so in Russia. Throughout the reign of the pres- ent Czar such a meeting has been thought impossible. I was fortunate enough to be present. All the streets lead- ing to the square were choked with cabs and hurrying pedes- trians. The square is an enormous cobbled space, with the gigantic Alexander column rising in the middle of it. On the southern side, between the square and the Neva River, is the 18 248 SELECTED ARTICLES long building of the Winter Palace, blood-red. Far away on the other side, also red, are the buildings of the general staff and a great archway, with a bronze group above it. Beside the column in the middle were a crowd of cabs, with men and women standing on the seats. The whole square was a sea of hatless people. There were twenty or thirty policemen, no more. On our left, within sight, was the place where, only a few years before, a vastly smaller crowd had been shot down on Bloody Sunday by soldiery standing where we were standing. Nothing could have better illustrated the new unity between Government and people than this unmarshaled meeting on this historic place. The Russian hostility to Germany is partly founded on fear, but has deeper roots in a psychological antipathy. The Russian has never been able to sink his personality in that of the busi- ness man. He brings to the towns the comfortable, slow method of the country. He dislikes nothing more than hurry. For him business is like corn that, once sown, grows by itself. He is consequently hopelessly outdone by the town-bred Ger- man, with his attention to detail, his attention to copecks, his ceaseless efforts to cheapen this or to improve the efficiency of that. In St. Petersburg alone a very large proportion of the trade is in German hands. The Russian sees the wealth of his country slipping visibly into German pockets. Thus it is in the towns. German Tactlessness in Russia These considerations do not count for the peasants. For them the Germans are atheists, and for that reason alone the natural enemies of the most religious people in the world. The English church is said to be very like the Greek orthodox. It is not so, in fact, but in Russia it is believed to be so by all classes of the population. That is, indeed, the one thing about England which they all know. I have known more than one peasant ask me, "Is England far beyond Germany? Or beyond Siberia?" and then add, "But your religion is like ours." The origin of this belief is to be found in the fact that we are not Lutherans, and we do not acknowledge the pope. Very well, then. We have the greedy German for the rich, the atheist German for the poor, the successful German every- where tactlessly, in the German way, accentuating his success RUSSIA 249 and allowing himself an amount of self-assertion which, bad taste at home, is incredibly exasperating when exhibited in a foreign and hospitable country. An illustration of the German spirit in Russia is provided by the German embassy itself. This is a huge granite building in the great square behind the Cathedral of St. Isaac's. It spoils that square artistically, being even larger than the Russian state offices. An enormous build- ing, in itself sufficiently pretentious, a strange contrast to the old-fashioned house that holds the English embassy, it had on the top of it a monstrous group in bronze, two gigantic horses, led up from the west by two naked giants. It was a threat, taken as such by the people of St. Petersburg, a clear allegory of Germany proudly advancing, and here in the capital of Rus- sia had an air of really astonishing insolence. I had often won- dered that the Germans could have been so blunt in flaunting their ambition on their embassy, and that the Russians had al- lowed such a symbol of all-conquering foreign progress. Much though the educated classes deplored the sacking of the place and its probable effect on public opinion abroad, they understood the motives of the government in permitting it. This event has not yet been accurately described. A band of hooligans (one of the organized demonstrations I have already described) was al- lowed, or ordered to march down the Nevski Prospekt, to tear down the sign-boards of a German newspaper, to break the windows of one or two big German shops, and to proceed to the embassy. The police, despite warnings, did not make any at- tempt to interfere, and the hooligans broke into the building and completely sacked it, throwing papers and furniture into the street. They got on the roof, and with hammers and chisels cut down the two giants, who fell into the square, and were dragged to the Moika Canal. An unexpected and unfortunate incident was the murder of a German, called Kettner, whom the hooli- gans found in the building. The newspapers covered this by talk- ing of the supposed finding of the body of a Russian youth in a garret of the embassy, with three bullet-wounds and a knife in his neck. These excesses were regretted, but next day the square was crowded with people who came to see the huge building, with all its windows broken, and those two great horses on the roof, now leaderless and ridiculous. During the next night the police boarded up the windows and removed the horses, lest unauthorized persons should be tempted to emulate 250 SELECTED ARTICLES the hooligans. As the insolence of that building typified to the inhabitants of St. Petersburg the German insolence, so perhaps the government intended its ruin to be a promise to them of the German fall. One of the characteristics of the Russian government is that it treats the people like children. The Russian Fear of Germany An important source of the Russian fear of Germany has been the Baltic provinces. These provinces, taken by Peter the Great from Sweden, are only sparsely populated by Russians. The bulk of the population is neither Russian nor German. In Livland, for example, the language of the country is Esthonian, and a Russian may find himself quite unable to talk even to an innkeeper. Many of the landowners are Germans, whose fam- ilies were settled in the country long ago. Many of the land- owners are extremely loyal and more Russian than the Russians. A large proportion of the officers in the Russian army bear Ger- man names and come from these provinces. There is, however, another side to it. German pupils at the University of Dorpat in Livland have amused themselves by forgetting the Russian language as soon as they were outside the doors. And year by year there has been a steady influx of German middlemen, neither landowners nor peasants, so that in the towns of these provinces German has been in a fair way of becoming the official language of the shops. Russians have been made to feel that Germany was not only knocking at the door, but had already placed a foot across the threshold. An Explanation of the Speedy Mobilization by Russia The Russians, however, had not contemplated an immediate German attack, though she dreaded German proximity and the too clearly manifested desires of Germany's rulers. Nor did she in any way provoke the war. She has no need of further provinces on the German frontiers and no ambitions. Her statesmen already saw that territorial expansion would make her topheavy and involve some kind of dismemberment. I have heard it said that Russia wished for war, and made it inevitable, and that a proof of this may be found in the surprising speed with which she was able to mobilize. She did, indeed, mobilize with surprising speed, but that is, as it happens, a proof that her intentions had not been warlike. No one was more surprised RUSSIA 251 at this speed than the officials whose business it was to manage the mobilizations. The plans for mobilizing on the German and Austrian frontiers were so old that the officials found that things were being done twice as quickly as they had expected, because, forsooth, they had omitted to consider the fact that the speed of trains had been nearly doubled since the plans were made, and that there were now double lines where before there had been only a single track. Such miscalculations as these, and others not so fortunate, have had a most astonishing effect in St. Petersburg, and prob- ably on the whole future of Russian history. I have not men- tioned the sudden unity of opposing parties in the Duma. That has been sufficiently chronicled in the newspapers. But this unity is now much more thorough than mere speech-making in harmony. Various accidents have brought into official and semi- official positions many of the old-time bitterest enemies of the Russian government. For example, the officials superintend- ing the commissariat department found their arrangements dis- astrously inadequate, and were pulled out of their difficulty by a very able revolutionary who is now one of the government's most valued advisers. Much of the Red Cross organization is in the hands of revolutionaries, and revolutionaries (only lately under the supervision of the police, who made a habit of search- ing their houses) now sit on the committees, in some cases con- trolling them, which deal with the housing and feeding of the women and children whose husbands and fathers have gone to the war. It is so throughout. It is impossible for those who do not know the conditions to realize the extraordinary nature of these events. THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION^ Nothing that has happened in the past two and a half years has been more charged with promise for the future of civilized men than the Russian revolution. We believe that we see be- fore us, not one of those frothy movements which are an easy prey to reaction, but the beginnings of a steady and wise ameli- oration of political and social conditions in Russia that will cast its influences into every quarter of organized human society. The revolution began on Saturday, March loth, when the late government unjustifiably resorted to the argument of the rifle in trying to disperse the unarmed crowds in the streets. These crowds were composed partly of strikers who had stopped work as a protest against the bungled distribution of bread, and partly of men, women, and children who were looking on at the demon- strations and processions. A great many persons were killed and wounded on the Saturday and Sunday. This was more than the soldiers could stand. They knew that the misery of the people who were without bread was real; they knew that there was enough food if only it were brought into the city; and probably they also knew that food was being deliberately withheld from the people in order that the dark political pur- poses of some of the late Ministers of the Tsar might be helped by means of an artificially procured discontent. On Monday, March 12th, the famous Preobrazhensky Regiment mutinied. They refused to fire on the crowds when ordered to do so. Other soldiers on being brought to suppress the mutiny joined it. The example spread like wildfire. Within a dozen hours nearly every regiment in Petrograd was ranged on the popular side. We do not know who was the Hampden who stood forth and said the first word that shook the foundations of the ancient regime. All we know for certain is that the Army made the revolution. * Spectator. 118:357-8. March 24, 1917. 254 SELECTED ARTICLES The Petrograd garrison quickly made common cause with the Duma. M. Rodzianko, the President of the Duma, gathered together a governing body of twelve styled the Executive Com- mittee of the Imperial Duma, and soon this provisional body took a further shape, though still provisional, under the Premier- ship of Prince Lvoff. The government have announced that they will summon a Constituent Assembly as soon as possible to decide upon the future methods of administration. The policy of the national government under Prince Lvoff is so important that we must quote in full the reforms promised to the Russian people : — (i) An immediate general amnesty for all political and religious offences, including terrorist acts, military revolts, and agrarian crimes. (2) Freedom of speech, of the press, of association and labour organiza- tion, and the freedom to strike, with an extension of these liberties to offi- cials and troops in so far as military and technical conditions permit. (3) The abolition of all social, religious, and national restrictions. (4) Immediate preparations for the summoning of a Constituent As- sembly, which, with universal suffrage as a basis, shall establish the Gov- ernmental regime and the Constitution of the country. (5) The substitution for the police of a national militia, with elective heads and subject to the self-government bodies. (6) Communal elections to be carried out on the basis of universal suffrage. (7) The troops that have taken part in the revolutionary movement shall not be disarmed, but they are not to leave Petrograd. (8) While severe military discipline must be maintained on active service, all restrictions upon soldiers in the enjoyment of social rights granted to other citizens are to be abolished. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: THE HISTORY OF FOUR DAYS^ When river ice breaks up in the spring, it breaks suddenly. But the break comes only after a process of thawing, which may have been unnoticed by the casual observer of the flat upper sur- face. When people say that the Russian revolution came unex- pectedly, they indicate that they have ignored the long undermin- ing which gradually melted away the supports of the autocracy, so that when the Russian people struck they struck an empty shell. 1 Outlook. 115:544-5. March 28, 1917. RUSSIA 255 Persons who are familiar with Russia have known since the beginning of this war that a revolution might come any day, and come with a suddenness characteristic of many movements in Russia. A comparison of the most stupendous event since the French revolution with that revolution is interesting. There was much similarity in the superficial causes of the great French up- heaval of 1789 and the revolt of the Russian people. The fail- ure of the harvest of 1788 in France and the severe winter that followed caused poignant suffering and much smoldering antag- onism for the existing political order. In Russia the scarcity of food brought about the great popular demonstrations which were the premonitory signs of the revolt. But in France just before the revolution t he governmen t was openly despised, its power flouted. In Russia, however, so far as surface indications to the* outside world went, up to the time that men of the first Cossack regiment joined with the people they had been ordered to shoot on the Nevsky Prospect the Russian autocracy seemed almost as formidable as ever. There were, to repeat, few indications of impending revolt in Russia to any but the most acute observers on the outside. Some suspicion might have been aroused by the bread riots in Petrograd the week before the revolution, but such occurrences are nothing new in Russia, and even in Petrograd on the morn- ing of a day now never to be forgotten, Sunday, March 11, very few persons noticed any real revolutionary spirit in people who taunted the police in the streets and good-naturedly cheered the Cossacks who had been ordered to disperse the crowds. General Khabaloff's order to the police and soldiers to shoot in order to disperse crowds, which was posted on Saturday, March 10, smacked strongly of provocation, yet when the Cos- sacks refused to use their rifles and later when they fired noth- ing more deadly than blank cartridges from their machine guns the revolution still seemed a make-believe revolution. Not until' the regiment of soldiers, ordered to shoot into a crowd of hungry civilians, mutinied and after shooting their own officers made common cause with the people did it seem probable that Russia's new birth was imminent. In short, the world had little advance notice that a revolution was to come at this time, but had every reason to be sure that a revolution would come sooner or later unless the unexpected should happen and the government should yield voluntarily. 256 SELECTED ARTICLES The anger of the people at the shortage of ammunition, which was caused by inefficiency and corruption in the government, gradually grew when Russia was hampered again and again by this deficiency. The removal of Grand Duke Nicholas as Com- mander-in-Chief of the Russian armies, the arrogant treatment of the Duma by the Czar and his reactionary Ministers, and the appointment of such pro-Germans as Stiirmer and Galitzin to the position of Premier, all goaded the people into a state of frenzy from which there could be only one outlet. Most of all were they aroused by the dawning belief that the lack of mu- nitions, the removal of the Grand Duke Nicholas, the appoint- ment of incapable and treacherous officials, were all parts of a pro-German propaganda headed, it seemed to many, by their Empress, and certainly by the notorious degenerate Rasputin, whose assassination recently should have warned the government, if anything could have warned it. Never did so great a revolution gain headway so rapidly. Regiment after regiment joined the people and fought with them against the few regiments which remained loyal and against the hated Petrograd police. By Monday morning, March 12, the situation in Petrograd was far beyond the control of the govern- ment. A few hours later the revolution was virtually won and the Duma, in defiance of the Czar's ukase proroguing it, con- tinued in session and telegraphed the Czar: "The hour has struck. The will of the people must prevail." Michael Rodzianko, the President of the Duma, had previously twice telegraphed the Czar urging him to avert disaster by giv- ing the people a Ministry which they could trust. General Alexis Brusiloff, Commander-in-Chief on the southwestern front, and General Nicholas Ruzsky, Commander of the northern armies, had both sent similar messages to the Czar at the request of the Duma. Perhaps but for his fatal characteristic of never yielding anything until too late, the Czar might have saved his crown by eleventh-hour concessions. Instead, by the time he reached Petrograd or its environs abdication was the only course that remained open. In his foolish stubbornness Nicholas II was like Louis XVI in 1789 and George III in 1776. Though the Czar abdicated in favor of his brother the Grand Duke Michael as Regent, the Grand Duke had no illusions as to his own position and hastened to announce that he would rule only if his selection as monarch were to be confirmed by a vote of the people. RUSSIA 257 The spark that was ignited in Petrograd carried a flaming enthusiasm for liberty and a new government over all Russia. In Moscow Cossacks who attempted to ride down the people in the celebrated Red Square beneath the gray old walls of the Kremlin leaped off their horses and joined in the huzzahs for the new government when their intended victims shouted the news of the coup d'etat in Petrograd. In Moscow, it is said, the revolution cost only four lives ; and even in Petrograd, where the bloodshed was greatest, the cas- ualties were evidently surprisingly few. By the evening of March 12 the last supporters of the Czar in the capital were holding out in two small groups, one firing from behind barricades around the yellow Admiralty buildings overlooking the Neva, the other sniping stubbornly from the windows and roof of the Astoria Hotel at the revolutionaries, who sent back a hotter fire from such scant cover as could be found in the square south of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Later that evening, when the revolution- aries broke into the Astoria Hotel, which had been considered a hotbed of pro-German intrigue since the beginning of the war, the last organized resistance of the loyalists was broken. For two days more there was sniping. But at the outside the re- sistance to the revolution in Petrograd lasted not more than four days. Long before that time had expired the streets were filled with civilians and soldiers flaunting the red flags of the French revolution and singing the "Marseillaise." With a few exceptions, the army and navy of Russia stood loyal to the revolution from the first outbreak. The Executive Committee of the Duma, which practically became the provisional government of Russia when the Czar abdicated, restored order and began at once the work of adjustment with a force and com- prehension that would have done credit to any government. One of the first acts of the provisional government was to pledge Russia's allegiance to the cause of the Allies and her unswerving determination to prosecute the war against Germany to a finish. In the meanwhile the late Czar, whom some despatches facetiously refer to as Mr. Nicholas Romanoff, has gone to his personal estates at Livadia, in the Crimea. The Em- press apparently is still in or near Petrograd with her children, two of whom were ill when the outbreak came. It is significant that the Russian people seem to hold no personal grievance against their late autocrat, whereas enmity toward the Empress is 258 SELECTED ARTICLES common. But this is only a continuation of the situation which has existed since the beginning of the war, the Empress, who was a Princess of Hesse, being disliked as the supposed head of the ring which included Rasputin, ex-Premier Stiirmer, and Protopo- poff, who have been trying to betray Russia into a separate peace with Germany. The people seem to believe that the Czar, although both a weakling and a tyrant, is, after all, a Russian. In conclusion, it remains to sum up the three outstanding characteristics of the Russian revolution as they appear to us: First, its apparent suddenness and its comparative peaceful- ness. The world may never know, certainly does not yet know, the whole inside story of the Russian revolution. There seems good evidence, however, to support the theory that there was not a widespread plan for the Russians to revolt when they did. There is a good deal of evidence indicating that even the mem- bers of the Duma and the three great popular leaders of the revolution, Rodzianko, Milyukov, and Lvoff, were surprised by the tremendous support which they found in the army. But the tighter the dam, the more complete its restraint of the waters within, the more abrupt and explosive is its bursting. The second great feature of the revolution is that it was won wholly and solely by the Russian people. It could not have suc- ceeded without the help of the army, but the army of Russia to-day is an army of the people. The autocracy was destroyed by the very weapon which it built to keep the people in restraint. Not only was this a revolution of the people, however, but it seems to have been peculiarly a revolution of the Russian people in the narrow sense of the word. In America we have often heard of the grievances of the Poles, Jews, Armenians, Finns, and other racial groups within the Russian empire. Espousers of the cause of these submerged nationalities have often said in America that the people that they represented had no hope of aid from the real Russian masses. But it is the millions of true Muscovites who have thrown off the oppressive yoke, and it is for the Poles, Finns, Jews, and Armenians now to admit that they have under- estimated the power of the Russian masses. Finally, as to the third predominant feature of Russia's new birth, a feature in which the outside world is especially interested, that is this : The war made this revolution possible. RUSSIA 259 The war taught the Russian people their own strength. United from the outset in the determination to beat Germany, because they realized that a war against Germany was a war against their own oppressive government, the Russian people have gradually come to know one after another of their own powers as they have been forced to take over the management of the war through their provincial assemblies and co-operative societies as the inefficient and corrupt government has dropped the burden. Without a long war like this, which has killed off the old professional army that was loyal to the bureaucracy, Russia never would have had an army of the people to side with the people in a national crisis. We may be sure that the Russian people know what this war has done for them, and that they know what they must yet do in this war. A year ago — in fact, only recently — the Russian people were saying, "We have two wars on our hands, an outside war and an inside war. But we must vanquish the external enemy before we turn on the foe within. Beat Germany first." Only the stupid arrogance of the Russian Government brought it to pass that the Russian people did not "beat Germany first;" but now that they have reversed their task and conquered the in- ternal foe, we may be sure that they will return to the other half of their labors with renewed confidence and vigor. The preparations which the Russian people made toward the end of victory over Germany taught them their own strength, and were, in fact, measures which made the success of the revolution possible. There may not have been much plot behind this revo- lution, but certainly there was much preparation. THE VICTORY OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE* The struggle for freedom in Russia, which began with the revolutionary conspiracy of the Decembrists almost a century ago, and which was renewed again and again, with constantly increasing violence in later years, has ended at last in the com- plete triumph of democracy. For the first time in more than a millennium the Russian people are free from despotic control, and are at liberty to shape their future destiny with their own * By George Kennan. Outlook. 115:546-7. March 28, 1917- 26o Selected articles hands and in their own way. The monarch has been deposed, the bureaucracy has been overthrown, and the new rulers of the country are the Executive Committee of the Duma and the Ministry that it has chosen. The provisional government cannot yet be regarded as securely established, but the abdication of the Czar, the arrest and imprisonment of the bureaucratic leaders, and the frank recognition of the "plenary power" of the Duma by the Grand Duke Michael would seem to exclude the possi- bility, or at least the probability, of any serious internal dis- sension. There may be some friction or disagreement between the provisional government and the fraction of extreme radicals who favor the immediate establishment of a Socialistic republic; but the struggle over this question will probably be postponed until the National Assembly meets to decide what the permanent institutions of Russia shall be. The most noteworthy feature of the recent revolution was its comparatively peaceful character. Seldom if ever before in the world's history has so sweeping and momentous a change been brought about with so little conflict, turbulence, and bloodshed. Revolutions in the past have generally lasted months if not years, have been attended with widespread rioting and disorder, and have cost thousands if not tens of thousands of lives; but the struggle that ended in Russia on the 17th of March occupied less than a week, there were no popular excesses, and the victory was won with a sacrifice of life that seems relatively insignificant. What made the difference between this and previous revolu- tions? How was it possible to overthrow in four or five days and in such an orderly way a government that was thought to be one of the strongest in Europe? In an article on "The Chances of Revolution" which I wrote for The Outlook about a year ago I ventured to say : "No revolutionary movement can possibly succeed in Russia without the co-operation of the army. It may have in its ranks nineteen-twentieths of the whole civilian popu- lation; but without military support it can accomplish nothing. Success will depend upon concentration of purpose, competent leadership, and the support of the army." In the revolutionary movement that has just swept the Czar from his throne all of these conditions were fulfilled. The Duma had for its sole purpose seizure of the reins of governmental power; it acted under direction of the best brains that the Empire could furnish ; and it was supported by all the troops in the national capital, in- RUSSIA 261 eluding even the Cossacks and the Imperial Guard. Success, under such favoring conditions, was almost certain. The decisive factor in the struggle was unquestionably the army. The troops in Petrograd, recently recruited from the people, were in full sympathy with the latter's representatives in the Duma, and when the first clash came in the streets they threw off their allegiance to the crown, joined in the revolu- tionary movement, and chased the Czar's police and gendarmes to the housetops. Even the Cossacks, who had been employed so many times in previous years to crush the first manifesta- tions of incipient revolt, fraternized with the insurgents and defended them from the attacks of the police. The Duma, with such support, became not only formidable but irresistible. It immediately ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the reac- tionary leaders, as a means of preventing such a counter-revo- lution as that which defeated the people in 1905; took into custody all the higher officials of the government, including the Ministers, and completely paralyzed in less than three days all the energies and activities of the bureaucratic administration. The progress of the revolutionary movement in the provinces was equally rapid and successful. In Moscow, Tver, Nizhni- Novgorod, Kazan, Kharkof, Saratof, and Odessa the local rep- resentatives of autocracy submitted, almost without resistance, to the will of the people, and on Saturday, March 17, when the Czar abdicated, the Duma was left in full control of the situa- tion. During the brief interregnum there was comparatively little disorder and still less bloodshed, the people displaying through- out the trying week "amazing courage, patience, and sound sense." The Executive Committee of the Duma, too, acted with praiseworthy moderation and self-restraint. When the bureau- cracy, under the direction of Prime Minister Stolypin, put down the insurrection of 1905-6, it immediately shot scores of revolutionary leaders without even the form of trial, and hanged more than two thousand by order of military courts. The pro- visional government of the Duma showed a more chivalrous and magnanimous spirit. It did not order the execution of a single one of its vanquished opponents, and gave pubHc notice that no official of the old regime should be punished, much less put to death, until he had had a fair trial before a legally con- stituted tribunal. 262 SELECTED ARTICLES The provisional government which now rules Russia, and which will continue to rule until a constitutional assembly shall have decided upon permanent institutions, is composed of very strong and able men. The Ministry, as a whole, is moderate rather than extreme in its political views, and may be said fairly to represent the flower of Russian knowledge, experience, and culture. Most of its members have, in the Duma debates on the annual budgets, shown expert knowledge of governmental problems, and it may well be doubted whether Russia has ever had in the Council of Ministers so able and experienced a group of men. The task set before them is one of extraordinary difficulty and complex- ity, but if they are not confronted by some sudden and threat- ening emergency before they have had time to consolidate their power they will give the country a brilliant and successful ad- ministration of public affairs. The most important question raised by this change of gov- ernment, so far as the outside world is concerned, is the effect that it will have on the prosecution of the war. The fear has been expressed that it may weaken, temporarily at least, Rus- sia's offensive and defensive power. That there will be some friction and lack of co-ordination at first is more than probable ; but ultimately the war will be carried on with greatly increased vigor and effectiveness. The hopeless incapacity of the old gov- ernment disheartened the people and half paralyzed their ener- gies; but with the Duma and the new Ministry in full control of national affairs, public confidence will revive and enthusiasm will take the place of discouragement. The Russia of the peo- ple never has been able to bring all its forces into action, but now that it is free it will make a new record of heroic achieve- ment. Nobles, peasants, zemstvos, boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and co-operative societies will all combine and co- ordinate their efforts in support of the Duma, the Ministry, and the armies in the field. Germany may gain a temporary advan- tage if she strikes quickly, while Russia is in a state of transi- tion from the old to the new but the rasputisa — the breaking up of the winter roads — is now near at hand, and this will greatly embarrass offensive military operations on all the fronts. Be- fore the spring floods pass and the swamps and marshy^ fields become dry and hard the new government will have organized RUSSIA 263 and consolidated its power and will be prepared for any thrust that Germany may make. One of the most serious problems with which the new gov- ernment will have to deal is that of food distribution. Russia is not short of grain; on the contrary, she has an available sur- plus above all needs of at least four million tons ; but, on account of bad management and divided responsibility in the Ministries of Agriculture and the Interior and incompetence and corrup- tion in the railway administration, there has been great difficulty in moving foodstuffs from places where they were abundant to places where there was a shortage. Remembering the important part played by railway men in the revolutionary movement of 1905, the government in recent years has adopted the policy of discharging experienced but "politically untrustworthy" em- ployees and appointing in their places, as far as possible, petty bureaucrats from the provinces and "loyal" men from the ranks of the Black Hundreds. This has resulted in the partial de- moralization of the railway service at the very time when na- tional safety required the utmost possible efficiency. This state of affairs will soon be remedied by M. Nekrasoff, the new Minister of Ways and Communications, and there is every rea- son to believe that when the railway system is as well managed as the Union of Zemstvos has been, its carrying capacity will be very greatly increased and possibly doubled. Viewed in its larger aspects, the change of government will bring about in the near future a complete regeneration of the people. Within the space limits of a short article it is impos- sible to do more than refer briefly to a few of the reforms that are likely to be made and measures that will probably be adopted. In the first place, there will be a great and rapid extension of edu- cational facilities for the peasant class. The old government did not provide elementary schools enough even to keep up with the growth of the population, and consequently the percentage of illiteracy is almost as great now as it was twenty-five years ago. The present Ministry and the liberal majority in the Duma are virtually pledged to secure "universal education," and the new schools required will be opened as fast as possible. In the second place, an end will quickly be put to anti-Jewish restrictions and limitations. The Pale of Settlement will be abolished, and Jews henceforth will enjoy all the rights of citi- zenship. One hundred and sixty members of the present Duma 19 264 SELECTED ARTICLES asked the old government to abolish the Pale, and future Dumas are likely to be even more tolerant and broad-minded than this one has recently been. When the Jews are fully emancipated, as they almost certainly will be, every field of Russian life is likely to be enriched by the efforts and contributions of this gifted race. In the third place, Finland, whose ancient liberties were taken from her and whose Diet was almost deprived of legislative power by a faithless monarch, will again receive the autonomous rights granted her by Alexander I a century ago. Finally, the Russian revolution in its relation to the welfare and progress of the world seems likely to be an almost unmixed blessing. Not only will it sow the seeds of democracy in other despotically governed countries, but it will add greatly to the world's material and intellectual resources. Under the despotic regime of the bureaucracy, Russian literature has recently been almost choked to death by the strangling noose of the censor- ship; but when the novelists, essayists, and poets of the present generation shall be set free there will be a new flowering of national culture. The Slavs, moreover, have moral as well as intellectual power; and when their latent capacities are fully developed by freedom and education they will not only make great contributions to science, literature, and the industrial arts, but will exert an uplifting and ennobling influence in the realm that we call spiritual. RUSSIA IN THE THROES OF RE-BIRTH^ To understand the seemingly puzzling events in the new Rus- sia since the revolution last March, it is necessary to bear in mind one cardinal fact which was disclosed only recently. And this is that the Russian revolution was not the work of the Duma and the upper classes, but wholly of the labor masses. This was not made clear by the Petrograd correspondents at the time of the upheaval. On the other hand, they tried to con- vey the idea that the Duma was the ring-leader of the revolt. This impression became so deeply rooted that the minds of the world were utterly confused by the developments of April and May. * By I. D. Levine. Review of Reviews. 55:619-22. June, 1917. RUSSIA 265 Labor's Initiative in the Revolution Here are the revised facts about the revolt: Demonstra- tions occurred in Petrograd the first week in March. The gov- ernment of Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, provoked the masses to further excesses in order to spread unrest and create a basis for a separate peace. When the demonstrations first oc- curred the workers said: "This is not a Zabastovka, but a Protopovka," which meant : "This is not a strike, but a trap of Protopopoff." However, the continued provocations of the poHce drove more and more workers into the ranks of the strikers. On March 10, when the strike assumed the proportions of a general movement, the leaders of the various secret Socialist and revolutionary organizations met in conference with several labor chiefs, to have control of the strike. A temporary Coun- cil of Labor Deputies, such as had directed the revolution of 1905, was formed. This council placed itself immediately in charge of the spreading revolutionary tide, of course, without knowing whither this tide would carry it. In 1905 the Council had been swept into jail and Siberia. The Council of 1917 was ready for the same fate. The Duma's Part While this was going on, the Duma was in session. Fiery speeches were being made. The government was denounced from every quarter. But the Duma remained inactive. The Duma was rather sure that any attempt at revolution would be crushed by the police. As Paul Miliukoff said, when informed j of the first revolutionary outbreaks : "The revolution will be ^ crushed in a quarter of an hour." The Duma watched, with fear for Russia and the Allies in its heart, the expanding wave of rebellion. The only revolutionary act of the Duma was its refusal to be dissolved after the Imperial decree calling for its dissolution was issued. When the revolution was at its height — a vast throng of rebel soldiers and workers marched to the Duma to find out where it stood. After that, the Duma formed on its own initiative a Committee of Safety. But all the time there was a labor council in charge of the revolution though the world was informed only of the Duma's Committee. 266 SELECTED ARTICLES The Duma and Council then conferred and decided upon a provisional government. The Council's stand was not to par- ticipate in any government till the Constituent Assembly met. Meanwhile, the Duma pulled all the time to "the right." The Council and the masses wanted the abolition of the monarchy, but the Duma decided to make Russia a Constitutional Mon- archy. When Miliukoff announced to the waiting multitudes that Czar Nicholas would be deposed, there were cheers; but. when he added that the Czarevitch would be retained and Grand Duke Michael made regent — there were cries: "Again the Romanoffs ! Down with the Monarchy ! " The masses, therefore, found themselves early dissatisfied with the Duma. Through their Council they urged the ending of the monarchy altogether, and succeeded. Work of the Council of Labor Deputies The labor class awoke to find that after it had originated and brought to a successful conclusion one of the most remarkable revolutions in history, the power was really taken out of its hands by the Duma — a liberal body, but not radical enough to satisfy the revolutionists. The latter grew suspicious of the provisional government. The Council of Labor Deputies, com- bined with those of the soldiery, issued appeals to the masses to be on guard lest "the conquests of the revolution" be wrested from their hands. Intoxicated by the sudden rush of freedom, the Socialists composing the Council imagined that the millen- nium was at hand ; that a revolution in Germany was imminent ; that universal peace was, therefore, a matter of days; and that a new social order for humanity was about to be inaugurated. The Council's function was to preserve the "conquests of the revolution" till the Constituent Assembly, elected on the basis of direct, equal and universal suffrage, should meet. It was a laudable function. The Council's insistence on the abolition of the monarchy will be remembered in history as a great and glorious achievement. But still the "conquests of the revolu- tion" is a rather uncertain term, which cannot be defined with exactitiideTj This resulted in many complications, mainly spring- ing from foreign rather than internal policies. / RUSSIA 267 Internal Reconstruction The internal policies certainly presented a remarkable rec- ord. Independently or under pressure of the Council, the pro- visional government began the reconstruction of Russia as soon as the old regime fell. A political amnesty freed more than a hundred thousand prisoners and exiles in Siberia. Finland re- gained her autonomy; the Jews were fully emancipated; the Poles were promised independence; Armenia's restoration was pledged; while the Lithuanians and Ukrainians were promised autonomy. The Czar's and Grand Duke's estates were con- fiscated. Many radical labor laws were enacted, including an eight-hour working day. The police were superseded by mili- tia. The peasants were promised the land. Naturally, all the promises relating to fundamental legislation will be carried out only by the Constituent Assembly. The army was reorganized on a more democratic basis. In a word — all essential reforms were promulgated promptly and through the proper channels. Division on Foreign Policy But differences soon developed between the Council and the provisional government on matters relating to foreign policy. First, the Council was convinced that a revolution could be en- gendered in Germany through the Allies' restatement of their war aims in accordance with President Wilson's declaration last January in his famous Senate speech that all peoples should have the right to settle their own fortunes and destinies. The French Socialists, it will be recalled, made a similar demand on their government soon after President Wilson's address. The Russian Socialists in the Council believed that once the Allies ' came out with such a statement, renouncing annexations and ' indemnities, that the German proletariat would rise, overthrow the Hohenzollerns, and bring about the end of the world slaughter. Certainly there was nothing dangerous about their proposed experiment. But a couple of episodes occurred which lent to their demands a complexion that seemed disturbing to the world. First there was the case of Nikolai Lenin, the noted Socialist leader, who returned to Russia from Switzerland via Germany, and who is an extreme radical. Lenin's view is that the war is an imperialistic affair; that the proletariat of the 268 SELECTED ARTICLES world will suffer as much from British capitalism as from Prus- sianism; and that consequently its interests demand peace, peace at any price, so that it can devote itself to a European social revolution. Lenin's point of view was not understood by the Petrograd foreign correspondents, and they proceeded to paint him as a German agent, which irritated even his opponents. A word or two may be said at this juncture of the Russian attitude toward the British after the revolution. The British showed little rejoicing at the fall of Czarism, regarding the revolution only from the point of view of its effect on the war. The British press also shed crocodile tears over the fate of Czar Nicholas, whom the Russian democracy considered a despot. Some of the leading London papers described the revolution- ists as anarchists and outlaws. This British stupidity could have had but one effect on the Russian radical masses. The latter felt irritated against Britain for her treatment of Ireland, and for her former agreement with Czarism for aggressive pur- poses, as in the case of Persia. This created a fertile soil for Lenin's peace propaganda. A Separate Peace Never in View Misinformed correspondents and German agents spread the legend that the new Russia was ready to conclude a separate peace. But this was at no time true. There never was any danger of such an occurrence. Lenin and his followers were from the very beginning in the minority. The President of the Council of Labor and Soldiers' Deputies, Tcheidze, declared soon after Lenin's arrival in Petrograd that he would be ab- sorbed by the new Russia. It was a remarkable prediction, and came true within a ffew weeks. Lenin lost followers by the thousand. The Russian masses, like the British and French masses, desired universal peace on certain radical conditions, but no separate peace under any circumstances. One cannot emphasize too much the statement contained in the preceding sentence. It explains in a nutshell the real stand of the Council and its activities. Thus the first Miliukoff inci- dent occurred on account of the Council's attitude toward peace. Paul Miliukoff, Foreign Minister in the provisional govern- ment, had always favored Russia's acquisition of the Dardanelles and Constantinople. In April he made a statement to that ef- fect to a newspaper correspondent. This caused violent op- RUSSIA 269 position, since the masses and its Council wanted no annexa- tions. The rest of the Cabinet hastened to announce that Miliukoff spoke for himself, and not for the government, thus averting a crisis. But the wedge was already driven between the Council and the Cabinet. The former felt that Miliukoff stood in the way of a German revolution, and did not express the will of the ma- jority of the people, which undoubtedly was true. The Council, therefore, assumed a more watchful attitude than ever toward the provisional government. At the same time it began to ex- ercise authority of its own, thus creating a duality of power. A national congress of all the Councils of Workmen's and Sol- diers' Deputies, held in Petrograd in the middle of April, adopted, among others, the following resolution : The Congress calls upon the revolutionary democracy of Russia, rallying around the Council, to be ready to vigorously suppress any attempt by the Government to elude the control of democracy or to renounce the carry- ing out of its pledges. The Foreign Minister Opposed Two weeks later the Council found in an act of Miliukoff an "attempt by the government to elude the control of democracy." The Foreign Minister, in transmitting to the Allies the govern- ment's earlier repudiation of all annexations and indemnities, said: "The provisional government . . . will maintain a strict regard for its engagements with the Allies of Russia." This caused a storm. What those engagements were was un- known, but that they provided for Russia's acquisition of the Dar- danelles was divulged last year by Premier Trepoff. The Coun- cil demanded an explanation of the provisional government. The revolutionary masses, incited by extremists and German agents, were turbulent. For a day or two Petrograd was the scene of some very dramatic events. There were cries of "Down with Miliukoff ! Down with the provisional government ! " An- other revolution was in the air. Fortunately, the Council had full control of the situation. Its orders were obeyed by the populace. Paul Miliukoff him- self courageously came out to defend his stand. He found many supporters in the crowds. It became clear to the Council that on its decision the fate of Russian freedom hinged; that civil war was inevitable in case it voted lack of confidence in 270 SELECTED ARTICLES the provisional government; and the radical council voted, by a small majority, it is true, its support of the government. Demoralisation in the Army At the same time, early in May, a serious condition devel- oped in the Russian army as a result of the Socialist peace agita- tion. The soldiers, carried aw^ay by beautiful dreams, began to fraternize with the Germans. Discipline was rapidly declining. The authorities were powerless. Only the Council of Deputies had influence over most of the soldiers. And the Council was obviously not in full harmony with the provisional government. It even adopted a resolution calling for an international Social- ist Conference for the purpose of forcing the Allies to restate their war aims and of bringing about universal peace. The rank and file of the army interpreted this as complete license to act without restraint. This afforded the Germans an oppor- tunity to withdraw large forces from the eastern front to the western during last month. The demoralization increased so rapidly that General Kor- niloff, the man who arrested the Czarina, resigned from the post of Petrograd commandant, protesting that the Council was interfering with his duties. The popular hero. General Brusiloff, and General Gurko had requested to be relieved of their offices, warning against the disintegration threatening the army. The provisional government had invited the Council to par- ticipate in the Cabinet and end the duality of authority, but the Socialist Council by a majority of one rejected the proposal. The situation grew desperate. The Council had the power and influence, but refused responsibility. The government had all the responsibility but lacked power. War Minister Gutchkoff resigned in protest. The Socialist Minister of Justice Kerensky made a passionate appeal to the people, declaring he wished he had died two months before, when the revolution was still a beautiful dream, rather than witness the reality of Russian free- dom. He addressed bitter words to the democracy, asking if free Russians are serfs in need of a master's whip or citizens realizing their responsibility. The masses and the Council then awoke. A Coalition Cabinet A coalition cabinet was noV decided upon by a larg^ major- ity. Paul Miliukoff resigned as Foreign Minister to give way RUSSIA 271 to M. I. Terestchenko, who held the post of Minister of Finance. Prince George E. Lvoff remained Premier and Minister of the Interior. Minister of Justice Kerensky became Minister of War. Several new Ministries were created for the Socialists. Victor Tchernoff, a leader in the Social-Revolutionary party, became Minister of Agriculture, while A. Shingaroff, who had held that post, was slated for the Ministry of Finance. Skobeloff, Vice- President of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers* Deputies, entered the Cabinet. Altogether about six or seven Socialists became members of the government in a total of thirteen or fourteen. The transfer of the patriotic and socialistic Minister of Jus- tice, A. F. Kerensky, to the post of War Minister was a fortu- nate stroke. The masses and the army idolize Kerensky. A visit of his to the front will do a great deal toward the restora- tion of the military organization and its fighting spirit. His knowledge of military affairs is, to be sure, very negligible. But his passionate love for the people may prove more of a motive power in the present circumstances than actual business experi- ence. One of the first effects of Kerensky's assuming the office of War Minister was the return of Generals Brusiloff and Gurko to their posts, Michael I. Terestchenko, the successor of Miliu- koff in the Foreign Office, is only thirty-two years old, but pos- sesses enormous energy. He is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, his estates being worth about 60,000,000 rubles. His father was one of the leading sugar manufacturers in Europe, and perhaps the most generous philanthropist in all Russia. During the present war, Terestchenko has been Vice-Presi- dent of the War Industries Mobilization Committee, of which the resigned War Minister Guchoff was president. This com- mittee was one of the leading social factors in the rehabilita- tion of the army after the military disasters of 1915. The new Foreign Minister was also a member of the Southwestern Zemstvo Union with the headquarters in Kieff. Terestchenko's political creed is not very different from that of his distin- guished predecessor in the Foreign Office, Paul Miliukoff. This new Coalition Cabinet means one power and one au- thority in Russia. It means the end of uncertainty. While dis- agreements between the opposing factions are yet likely to occur, there is certainly no reason to despair of Russia. The Russian radicals have proved that they are not insane fanatics. They 272 SELECTED ARTICLES can rise to the demands of the hour. The new Russia to-day- holds out nothing but bright promises. She stands for very- definite things, and if they can only be understood, it will be- come clear that to think of Russia in terms of anarchy is nothing short of a crime. Considering the vast changes wrought in her organism, Russia is behaving very well indeed. And those who know her feel that she will yet lead the world to true democracy, humanity, justice, and a higher civilization. THE PASSING OF OLD RUSSIA^ Such a stupendous change as the conversion of an autocracy into a democracy cannot be accomplished in a week, yet it ap- pears that the center of power has been definitely, and we be- lieve permanently, shifted. The Russian revolution was as sudden and promises to be as permanent as the French. In spite of the fallacy of historical parallels one cannot avoid comparing them. Nicholas II was much the same sort of monarch as Louis XVI, well meaning and weak, stupid and stubborn, a good hus- band and a bad king. Both were under the influence of a for- eign wife, distrusted by the people, Marie Antionette, the Aus- trian, and Alexandra Alixe, the German. Nicholas, like Louis, was justly suspected of secret negotiations with the enemies of his country, Germany and Austria. Nicholas, like Louis, began by concession, then turned too late to repression. He ordered the Duma to disperse as did Louis the States-General. The Duma, like the States-General, refused to obey and declared it- self the rightful government. The Czarevitch, like the Dauphin, becomes the innocent victim of his royal birth. The Russian revolution, like the French, was the offspring of two forces, hunger among the people and liberalism among the educated. So the Russians rose like the French, attacked their Bastille, the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul, liberated the political prisoners, and made bonfires of the archives of the secret police, as the French did of the tax rolls. But, fortunately for humanity, his- tory does not have to repeat itself, and we have good reason for hoping that in the Russian revolution neither a Robespierre nor a Napoleon will appear. *^ Independent. 89:523, 525. March 26, 1917. RUSSIA 273 The charges which the representatives of the Russian people brought against the bureaucracy for its conduct of the war were three : 1. Inefficiency. 2. Corruption. 3. Treachery. In spite of the stringent censorship enough has leaked thru to prove that there are abundant grounds for these accusations. We have heard of millions misspent, of shells that would not fit the guns, of munitions piled up at Archangel or shipped to Vladi- vostok when needed at the front, of the complete breakdown of the transportation system, of regiments sent into action without ammunition and left without food. Russia, with more soldiers than any other belligerent, has suffered the most ignominious defeats. Russia, which grows grain for western Europe, has more starving people than insular England or imprisoned Ger- many. And we know that this inefficiency was in large part due to the venality of officials who filled their own pockets at the ex- pense of their country. Contracts were let to the highest bidder — to the purchasing agent. Goods were ordered that were never intended to be delivered, but were paid for just the same. A long chain of chinovniks had to be "seen" before business could be done. Supplies for the front were sometimes sent forward too far and went to equip or feed the German army. Maps and campaign plans also went over the line in the same way. Hin- denburg knew the disposition of the Russian troops among the Mazurian Lakes of East Prussia before he made his attack, for a Russian officer supplied him with the information. ZEMSTVO RUSSIA* "We may be forced to have a revolution in order to win the war." This statement, made to me by many Russians last sum- mer, was often supplemented by the phrase, "We hope America will understand that any such revolution is a political revolution, and one which will not weaken Russia for the prosecution of the * By S. N. Harper. Independent, 90:22-3. April 2, 19 17. 274 SELECTED ARTICLES war." At a small gathering of radicals, which was called speci- fically to help me understand what was going on in Russia last summer, one man insisted that a revolution was absolutely neces- sary. The others unanimously answered him, "If you can guar- antee to complete the revolution within a month, go ahead; but if it takes more than a month, and is accompanied by serious disorders, the army will deal with you according to your de- serts." This was the situation the Russian patriots had to face. As at other crises in her history, Russia, that is the Russian people, was equal to the emergency. The revolution was therefore first and foremost a war meas- ure, and was justified as such. All reforms that will be intro- duced will also be proclaimed as war measures. Justice will be done to the Jews, as a war measure, to secure and maintain the unity of the country, which was threatened by the shortsighted — perhaps deliberately conceived — policy of the former rulers. It might be added that the real Russia, which has now come into its own, has never accepted without protest the policy of in- tolerance toward the non-Russian elements of the Empire. The revolution was not essentially anti-dynastic. The mon- archial idea is very strong in the broader masses of the people. Among the workmen and the intellectuals of the liberal profes- sions, republicanism is theoretically at least talked and accepted. But if the coming constituent assembly can be made to represent truly the majority opinion of the country — it is to be elected on the basis of universal suffrage — the present writer feels that Russia will establish definitely responsible government, but un- der the form of a constitutional monarchy. The abdication of Michael is only suspended until the opinion of the country is formally stated. Will the new government, instituted by a purely political rev- olution, conceived and carried out in order to hasten the victori- ous conclusion of the war, be able to accomplish the great task it has to face, and maintain the confidence of the public? The second part of the question will in large measure be answered by the solution of the first problem. The food supply problem must be solved without delay. On the whole it is a comparatively simple problem. The food is there, and only has to be dis- tributed. The means of distribution are at hand. All the organizations, especially the Zemstvo Uniorf, thru which the peasants also could act, were originally and primarily RUSSIA 275 started to support the army. They will now serve to control and direct public opinion. They have been supplemented by pro- fessional unions, which will bring in the groups which before could not directly participate in the work of organizing — "organ- izing for victory" as the motto read. Thru these organizations the new government will work to solve the problem of food sup- ply in the rear, and provide for adequate equipment and support of the army. The vast majority of the lower bureaucracy, ex- cluding always the political police — the main weapon of self-de- fense which autocracy perfected and employed — will fall into line. Russia has not been further disorganized by the coup d'etat. The aim of the revolution, and we see that the aim is already being realized, was to make possible the most thoro organiza- tion of all the resources of the country for a more vigorous prosecution of the war. The revolution was the work of a peo- ple facing a crisis in sober seriousness and without vindictive- ness. Recalling what thousands of individuals have suffered at the hands of the irresponsible bureaucracy, one would not have been surprised at manifestations of extreme bitterness, and cor- responding excesses, perhaps even acts of vengeance. But the Socialist member of the new government, Kerensky, gave an- other keynote of the revolution when he proclaimed that the new Russia would not have recourse to the methods used under the old regime. As Minister of Justice, he promised that every one, including the former ministers now under arrest, would be as- sured of a fair and public trial. The new government is composed of representatives of vari- ous political parties. But they have been working together for over a year in the Progressive Bloc of the Duma, and for over two years in the various organizations, such as the Zemstvo Union and the War Industries Committee. The program of the Progressive Bloc has been formulated and discussed for eighteen months. Every measure included in the program is justified as a war measure, to strengthen and unify the country. The head of the new government is an "organizer," known not as a purely political leader, but as the feeder of the armies, the leader of Zemstvo Russia. For it must be always emphasized that the first aim of the revolution — its justification — was to create con- ditions that would make it possible for Russia to put forward the full measure of her strength in the coming military cam- paign of these next months. 276 SELECTED ARTICLES RUSSIA AND THE NEED FOR A SUPREME AUTHORITY' The Russian position at the beginning of March was a double war. Each of the opposing sides in the internal conflict foresaw and planned a revolution, the patriots because they saw no other way of securing free national action, and the bureaucrats be- cause they believed that a popular outbreak bloodily suppressed would force the Tsar to withdraw from the external war and to make the German peace which would perpetuate their own in- fluence and power. The revolution came, with bread scarcity as its proximate cause and the fraternising of troops and people as its deciding factor. We can see how each side had prepared its plans. M. Protopopoff, who had promised the bureaucrats that he would "see them through," had his police well posted and well supplied with machine guns. He failed completely be- cause he could not distinguish between a popular revolt and a national resolve. The Duma leaders, on the other hand, had evidently assured themselves beforehand that they had with them all the main forces of the nation, with the possible excep- tion of the clergy. It was very naturally remarked that in all the reports from Russia we had heard no word of the Orthodox Church : but now we know the Holy Synod has approved. The three cities which have successively been Russian capitals, and stand for the successive stages of Russian history — Kieff, Mos- cow, Petrograd — were unanimous. The Council of the Nobility and the Zemstvos were at one with the Duma, and, most im- portant of all, the army, through the Grand Duke Nicholas and Generals Alexeieff and Brussiloff, declared itself on the same side, while the Germans heard the Russian soldiers cheering in their trenches as James II heard his army cheering on Hounslow Heath. Unanimity such as this, of princes, nobles, merchants, people, and army could certainly not have been secured from the "social revolution," and we misconstrue a great event if we do not perceive that its genesis is in the national resolve to win the war. "Without doubt," says the Cologne Gazette, "England has conquered in Petersburg." We can smile at the malicious in- nuendo that we are responsible for this purely Russian move- 1 Saturday Review. 123:268-9. March 24, 1917. RUSSIA 217 ■ment, and we can whole-heartedly rejoice that Germany has been of t he war. Russian democracy again started the revolution and gloriously accomplished it, also for the sake of the war. The Czar's government showed itself incapable not only of governing but also of defending the country. Inefficiency, grave and in many cases direct treachery, marked the activities of the Czar's government, which was not very enthusiastic in the war for democracy and justice in Europe. When it became evident that under the old government the defeat of Russia was inevitable, Russian democracy raised its hands and took into them the fate of the country. Among the events occurring in Russia immediately after the revolution, one of the most important was the National Confer- ence of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, the leader of which. Professor Paul Miliukoff, became Secretary of Foreign Affairs 21 296 SELECTED ARTICLES after the revolution. As I have said before, the Constitutional- Democratic Party held the majority in the First Duma, and had strong, influential factions in the Second, Third and Fourth Dumas. This party, led by such prominent men as the late Professor S. A. Mouromtzeff, Professor Paul Miliukoff, A. L Shingareff, Prince Paul Dolgoroukoff, Prince D. Shakhovskoy, M. M. Vina- ver, and others, rendered invaluable service to the cause of Rus- sian liberty. It would surprise no one in Russia if, out of the about 600 proposed seats in the future Constituent Assembly, the Constitutional Democratic Party hold from 300 to 350. About 1,500 delegates from all parts of Russia came to the National Conference of the Constitutional-Democratic Party. Prince Paul Dolgoroukoff, the Chairman of the Central Com- mittee of the party, opened the conference, presided over by M. M. Vinaver, the newly appointed Jewish Senator. Two Important Reports There were two important events at this conference. The first was the report by Professor F. F. Kokoshkin, member of the First Duma and one of the greatest authorities on constitu- tional law, who insisted that the party abandon the principle of constitutional monarchy and proclaim for a republican form of government. Professor Kokoshkin declared himself in favor of Presidential election by direct vote and responsibility of the Cabinet to the Parliament, as in France. Professor Kokoshkin's report was eagerly supported by Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy, one of Russia's leading men, former Pro- fessor of the University of Moscow and member of the Imperial Council, who, as a big landowner thoroughly acquainted with conditions in the Russian villages, reflected the spirit of the Rus- sian peasantry toward the revolution. Prince Troubetzkoy re- ported that under the terrible experiences of the war the peasants had, during the last two and a half years, lost entirely their former almost religious belief in the Czar. According to Prince Troubetzkoy's report, "the Czar is now for the peasants only a symbol of police, graft, and all kinds of vice." The convention accepted unanimously the recommendations of Professor Ko- koshkin and Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy, proclaiming for a republican form of government. RUSSIA 297 It may be expected that, aside from the Constitutional-Demo- crats, with their 300 or 350 seats in the Constituent Assembly, 150 to 200 seats will belong to different Socialist factions. The decision of the Constitutional-Democratic Party practically de- cides the question of the form of the future government of Rus- sia. If not unanimously, then by an overwhelming majority the Constituent Assembly will proclaim a republican government for Russia. The other significant moment in this National Conference occurred when Professor Paul Miliukoff, the leader of the party and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, made his speech. Probably, for the first time in his political career, Professor Miliukoff paid tribute to his political adversaries, the Russian Socialists. In a speech enthusiastically greeted by the entire conference. Professor Miliukoff pointed out the invaluable service rendered the country by the Socialists during these critical days. The Socialists were the fighting power of the revolution ; they bravely faced the police and the troops, and paid with their blood for Russian freedom. In addition, it was Socialist organization that kept order in Rus- sia after the revolution and saved the country from the worst kind of anarchy. In the same spirit as Professor Miliukoff's speech was the speech of Mr. Nekrasov, a prominent leader of the Constitutional-Democratic Party and the new Secretary of Means of Transportation. Result of a Coalition The revolution in Russia was accomplished by a coalition of liberal and Socialist forces. And this coalition will build the new Russia. To understand Russian political life at the present time means to understand the real nature of liberalism and socialism in Russia. Russian liberalism, as represented by the Constitutional-Democratic Party, is quite well known in this country. As for Russian socialism, until now it has been terra incognita for the American public. First of all, socialism is one of the most powerful factors in Russian political life. In the United States the labor move- ment and socialism are two distinct forces, whereas in Russia these two forces are united in one. In the United States the Federation of Labor, representing over 2,000,000 workers, has no relation to the socialist movement of the country, whereas 298 SELECTED ARTICLES in Russia every organized worker is a Socialist and all the labor unions are socialistic. The Socialist Party of the United States has only one repre- sentative in Congress, whereas Russian socialist factions had 120 representatives in the Second Duma and about thirty in the Third and Fourth Dumas, chosen during the time of darkest re- action under the most undemocratic suffrage system. Hence, we have the difference in the nature of the Russian and American socialism. Socialism in the United States is a small movement, without any real influence on the political life, and therefore I would venture to say without any sense of responsibility for its actions. If it were an influential factor it would probably not have accepted resolutions of the kind passed by the last conference of the American Socialist Party at St. Louis. Russian socialism is more like Belgian and French socialism. As Belgian and French Socialists from the very beginning in- dorsed the war on the side of the Allies, so did the Russian Socialists. As the Belgian and French Socialists, who, under- standing their responsibility toward their countries and humanity, delegated Vandervelde, Guede, Semba, and Toma as their rep- resentatives in the Cabinets, so did the Russian Socialists, send- ing as their representative the new Secretary of Justice, Deputy Kerensky. Authority of Present Cabinet Several facts in connection with the recent revolution really illumine the present political situation in Russia. The first fact is that the present Russian Cabinet was appointed at a joint ses- sion of the Executive Committee of the Duma and the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Council of Workingmen and Soldiers. It was at the moment when all Petrograd was in the hands of the revolutionists, and there is no doubt that at that moment the Executive Committee of the Council of Workingmen and Soldiers had sufficient power to take all the political ma- chinery in its own hands. At this critical moment the Russian Socialists showed real statesmanship. They agreed to a Coalition Cabinet and to the appointment of A. I. Gouchkoff as Secretary of War and Navy. This appointment was very significant. Mr. Gouchkoff until the revolution was a very conservative man, very unpopular in Russia for his political views, but everybody in RUSSIA ^ Russia respected his sincere patriotism and his organizing ability.* Russian Socialists consenting to the appointment of Mr. Gouchkoff indorsed thereby, once more, the war against Germany, and the necessity of strong discipline on the fighting lines. Con- senting further to the appointment of Professor Paul Miliukoff as Foreign Secretary, Russian Socialists consented to the prin- ciple that no separate peace is possible for Russia, that the only peace she will conclude will be a general peace in full accordance with her allies. The latest events in Petrograd do not contradict this state- ment. We may disagree with this movement entirely, or we may see certain weak points in it, but it is only fair to recognize that this is a movement not for a separate but for a general peace. One of the leaders of this movement is Prince Tzeretelli, the former leader of the Social-Democratic faction in the Second Duma. Prince Tzeretelli is one of the most noble figures in Russian life. A brilliant speaker, always enthusiastic, always idealistic, he is respected in Russia by all factions. Career of Tzeretelli When the Second Duma was dismissed and it became known that the Socialist Deputies would be arrested and tried, some of the influential friends of Prince Tzeretelli prepared every- thing for his escape abroad, but Tzeretelli flatly refused to go. "I am a representative of the people," he answered his friend in a quiet but determined tone. "I work for the people and do not see why I should escape if the police want me." He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hard labor. He was sent to Siberia, and then from time to time news came to Petrograd that he was dying of tuberculosis in his prison cell. In spite of many petitions the Czar's government refused to do anything to ease Tzeretelli's fate, and nobody in Russia expected to see him again leading the democratic masses. Being liberated after the revolution, Tzeretelli went directly to Petrograd. Knowing from dispatches that the Council of Workingmen and Soldiers in Petrograd was engaged at a special meeting preparing a resolution which would show the council's position toward the provisional government and the war, Tzere- telli sent a telegram to the meeting introducing his own resolu- • Mr. GouchkofT, Secretary of War, resigned from the Cabinet on May 14, 1917. 300 SELECTED ARTICLES tion. The resolution insisted on support for the provisional government and the war until German militarism be entirely broken, and it was enthusiastically accepted by the council. Tzeretelli's name is almost holy for the Petrograd workers and for the Russian workers in general. He is, together with his friends, Chkheidze and Skobeleff, practically the ruling spirit of the movement in Petrograd. Neither Tzeretelli nor Chkheidze or Skobeleff is for a separate peace. According to their views the allied democracy must fight until not a single German soldier is left in Belgium, in the northern provinces of France, in Serbia, or in Russian Poland. Peace is impossible for them without the full restoration of all parts of the Allies' territories occupied by the Central Powers. The future peace for Russian Socialists is a general peace that will bring peace for all Europe and bring it forever. Their peace program is quite misunderstood in this country, although probably it possesses all the qualities which should make it meet with approval here. The allied countries need not fear. The Russian democracy is not thinking of and would never consider a separate peace. As for a general peace, Russian democracy de- sires the kind of peace outlined by the President of the United States in his famous address to Congress. RUSSIA'S FUTURE: THE BASIS OF HOPE FOR HER PERMANENT DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT The development of Russian economic life during the ten years between the Russo-Japanese and the present war has been very remarkable even under the most adverse circumstances. It must be remembered that these ten years were the years of darkest reaction in Russia, probably the most pitiful, the most unfortunate years in Russian national history. Nevertheless, during these ten years the national wealth of Russia had almost doubled. Before the Russo-Japanese War, in 1901, Russia produced 16,750,000 tons of coal. Ten years later, in 191 1, Russia yielded 31,116,667 tons of coal, about eighty-six per cent more' than in *By A. J. Sack. Outlook. 115:691-2. April 18, 1917. RUSSIA 301 1901. Just before the present war Russia was producing more than 40,000,000 tons annually. The amount of copper smelted in Russia in 1901 was only 9,633 tons. In 191 1 this amount had increased to 26,060 tons. Just prior to the war it totaled about 40,000 tons. The progress in copper production is analogous with the development in all the metallic industries in Russia. The quantity of pig iron pro- duced was almost doubled during the last three years, reaching an amount more than 5,000,000 tons just before the war. Agricultural production in Russia developed along the same lines. In 1901 an area of 214,500,000 acres was sowed in main agricultural products, whereas in 1910-11 the number of acres planted was 246,000,000. The yield in 1901 was 54,167,000 tons, and in 1910-11 it amounted to 74,168,000 tons. Naturally, with the development of Russian industries Rus- sian trade developed also. The number of Russian commercial houses increased from 862,000 in 1901 to 1,177,000 in 1911. Just preceding the war the number of commercial houses amounted to about 1,500,000. The joint stock company is a very important feature of Rus- sian industrial development. Many Russian manufacturing es- tablishments are organized in the form of joint stock companies. During the five years 1903-7, 419 joint stock companies be- gan operating in Russia, with a capital of $180,540,000. Dur- ing the following five years, 1907-11, 778 joint stock companies were in action, with a capital of $453,900,000. Just prior to the war, in 1913, 235 new joint stock companies were organized, with a capital of about $204,000,000. The capital of the joint stock companies has increased about half a billion dollars since 191 1, reaching a total of $2,022,150,000 before the war. Of this $299,370,000 was foreign capital. Simultaneously with the wonderful economic and trade de- velopment in Russia there developed also the finance of the vast country. The money in Russian banks and in circulation multi- plied from $918,000,000 to $1,938,000,000 during the last ten years, an increase of about one hundred and eleven per cent. The amount of securities in circulation grew from $4,233,000,000 to $6,783,000,000, an increase of about sixty per cent. The de- posits in the Russian State Bank, Societies for Mutual Credit, share banks and city banks on January i, 1913, amounted to $1,669,230,000 — about one billion dollars more than on January 302 SELECTED ARTICLES I, 1903. The deposits in the Russian savings banks multiplied from $399,840,000 in 1903 to $812,940,000 in 1913. During the ten years between the Russo-Japanese War and the present war Russia's wealth had doubled. The giant whose name is Russia has been developing remark- ably in spite of the chains holding him down. You can imagine how great will be his development now that the chains are torn off and the most powerful factor of efficiency, the sacred prin- ciples of democracy, are established. Our new cabinet, our new government, is the flower of our country. The existence of local, self-governing bodies for a period of more than fifty years and the existence of the Duma during the past ten years have enabled our country to produce, among the elements opposing the old regime, real statesmen — men of sound education, broad-minded, with deep and noble souls, great workers for a great Russia. No country, even with hundreds of years of parliamentary regime, could create more able statesmen than Prince George Lvoff, Professor Paul Miliu- koff, A. L. Shingaref, A. I. Guchkoff, A. A. Manuilloff, and others of the new cabinet. These are the leaders of the new Russia. Russia, eifervescing with enthusiasm, breathing creative energy, looking forward as a boy of nineteen, joyous, healthy, with a bright future ahead. Watch this Russia growing. Watch Russia developing her im- mense natural resources. Watch Russia repeating the wonderful industrial development of the United States since the Civil War. Four elements combined made possible the development of the United States. The first element was its youth, energetic and eager for work. The second was the natural resources of the country. The third, the sacred principles of democracy, which recognize for everybody a certain amount of right and give everybody his chance. The fourth was the foreign capital which flowed into the United States after the Civil War, and, with the work of the free democracy, made possible the development of its natural resources. Two of these elements we Russians have always possessed. I take the liberty to say that we always possessed a wonderfully talented people; a people with great latent power; a people which, under the strain of the most unfortunate national iiistory, produced a wonderful culture; a people which, under the strain of the most barbarous despotism trjdng to kill every bit of spirit RUSSIA 303 in Russia, gave to the world during the nineteenth century alone such writers and poets as Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoievsky; such musicians as Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchai- kowsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and Scriabin; such scientists as Mendeleyev, Lebedeff, Timiraseff, and Metchnikoff ; such philos- ophers as Vladimir Solovieff and Prince Sergius Troubetzkoy. On the other hand, we possess almost endless and priceless natural resources. Well-informed Americans know what promise there is in our Caucasus, Turkestan, and Siberia, not to mention other parts of vast Russia. We desire to work, we have ground to work, and we are going to work for our country. These two elements, a capable people and immensely rich natural resources, we have long possessed. Only recently there has been bom the third element necessary for the proper devel- opment of every country. Like a burst of sunshine after a ter- rible storm came the news of Russian freedom. Russia is free, as all the countries of Europe will be free after this terrible struggle. All we now need is the fourth element, foreign capital, which, together with the work of the free Russian democracy, will help us to develop the immense natural resources of our country. In this time, in this trying time in our national history, our eyes are turning to the United States, to our old friend, to the great- est and wisest democracy in the world, which certainly will not refuse to help and to work together with the new-born democracy of Russia. European capital developed your country. During the war, from a nation debtor you have become a nation creditor. With the immense concentration of capital in your country you have a noble opportunity to play in our industrial development the same most important role which foreign capital has played in your own industrial development since the Civil War. Will Americans lose this opportunity? We believe they will not. We believe that the glorious Russian revolution has re- moved the last barriers in the way of the American-Russian economic rapprochement and strengthened forever the bonds of friendship between the great Republic of the United States and the new-born Democracy of Russia. 304 SELECTED ARTICLES "BOLSHEVISM" AS A WORLD PROBLEM^ A new enthusiasm is arising among the Russian masses. A war for the defense of a sacred principle, the principle of free self-definition of all nations, is looming on the eastern horizon. And it becomes more and more probable that the "pacifist" revo- lution, brought about by the Bolsheviki, will lead to a resumption of a passionate warfare by the revolutionary armies of Russia. And who knows whether a Russian army, electrified by these newly acquired principles, will not work miracles, just as the French troops did during the great French Revolution? In the meantime, several parts of Russia have declared their independence. Among the many mushroom "republics" which have appeared, only to vanish in a few days, there remain five instances of a stable self-assertion of separate governments within Russia. Siberia, the Caucasus, the Don region (of the Cossacks), Ukraine, and Finland. All of them have been prompted by the fear of a Bolshevist chaos. Finland — ^besides having always been a practically separate state, only loosely connected with Russia in her spiritual and economic development — ^has fallen under the influence of the kindred Swedish culture, which in its turn is closely related to German. Moreover, Finnish currency, having been comparatively little depreciated during the war, runs a risk of being drawn into the whirlpool of Russian financial difficulties. Siberia is a land of sturdy farmers and practically no. indus- trialism. She will not be swayed by extreme socialistic doctrines. The Cossacks of the Don, through all their history, were strongly inclined to find some single leader and to follow him with great loyalty. The youthful General Kaledine enjoys at present their unswerving allegiance and support, which, however, would not go as far as the renunciation of democratic and republican prin- ciples. The Ukraine is a country which deliberately joined Russia in the seventeenth century. It had previously been a province of Poland. Being Greek Catholic, it suffered many persecutions from the Roman Catholic Poles. It never was sufficiently strong 1 By Nicholas Goldenweiser. In Review of Reviews. 57:188-90. Febru- ary, 19 18. RUSSIA 305 to stand alone, and in the future it also will have to join some larger federation. The Caucasus consists of small nations tied together only by the common Russian culture. It cannot fail to join Russia. In fact, it never seceded from Russia, but merely from Bolshevist Petrograd. A "United States of Russia" Whenever the chaotic conditions within Russia proper, created by the Bolshevist extreme radicalism, finally abate, and a ground for a federated republic is firmly established, there is no doubt that all thesfe "independent" states will readily join in a "United States of Russia." Even Poland is economically interested in having the Rus- sian market open for its flourishing industries, and in being pro- tected by high duties against German competition. Finland may stay out if Germany succeeds in drawing the three Scandinavian kingdoms within her sv/ay. At any rate, here again the Bolshevist policy of letting all nations choose freely their own lot may prove the most effective means of eliminating emotional nationalism and of making all parts of Russia realize in cold blood the principle of all political wisdom, "united we stand, divided we fall." In the meantime, the only honest and reasonable policy which can be pursued by those who intend to serve the democratic de- velopment of Russia and of the world is to abstain from any violent opposition to the present de facto Russian Government, and to join their efforts in helping Russia (irrespective of her government) to get back on her feet. The Failure of Lvoff and Kerensky The government of Prince Lvoff was too abstractly "con- stitutional" to satisfy the masses. Patient waiting for a far-away Constitutent Assembly, without taking a step toward the coveted peace and the redistribution of land, was too much to expect of a population exasperated by two centuries of talentless and sense- less tyranny. Lvoff resigned. Kerensky took his place, only to attempt (to use a Russian expression) to "sit between two chairs." He de- parted from the "constitutional method" of postponing all re- forms until the coming Assembly. He introduced fundamental 3o6 SELECTED ARTICLES reforms without consulting the elected representatives of the people — as, for instance, his proclamation of a republican form of government. At the same time he stuck to the old principles of inter- national diplomacy and opposed an immediate change of social order. The slogan "Peace with the German people, over the heads of the German Government," overthrew Kerensky. The Russian masses, having disengaged themselves with seeming ease from their own oppressors, could not and would not believe that the German people should support Kaiserism. And the natural conviction arose among them that a stubborn continuance of the war was due exclusively to the imperialistic tendencies of Rus- sia's allies and the Russian capitalists, whereas a direct appeal to the German workmen and farmers would make them immediately lay down their swords. Peace Negotiations with Germany This conviction was bound to lead to some sort of direct nego- tiations with the Germans. Men like Lenine and Trotsky, who were plucky enough to pledge themselves for an immediate armistice and an opening of direct peace negotiations, could not fail to win support of an army bluntly believing in the immediate advent of a "reunion of all the proletarians of the world" (the famous formula of Marx and Engels). The revelation of a bitter truth awaited them in Brest-Litovsk. The German delegates — who could be recognized as representing not the workmen and farmers, but the army headquarters and the palace at Potsdam — readily consented to the principle of no annexations and no indemnities for Russia and her Allies, but politely declined to renounce annexations by Germany and re- fused to evacuate occupied Russian territory. In their brutal cynicism they did not stop even before a grim joke, declaring that the population of the occupied Russian provinces had already pledged its allegiance to the German Empire by its tacit acqui- escence in being severed from Russia by German troops ! They also refused to transfer the conference to a neutral place, in- sisting upon a continuance of negotiations in a fortress occupied by the Germans. Not only the Allied nations, but the peoples of the Central Powers themselves, were officially enlightened at last as to the RUSSIA 307 true spirit of German peace proposals. The results were not slow to follow. A passionate battle between the Pan-Germans (reactionary annexationists) on the one hand, and the reasonable majority of the middle classes and socialists on the other, is now raging within Germany, thus adding a powerful new adherent to the principles proclaimed by the President of the United States. Lenine (who, by the way, comes from an old and respected family of Russian noblemen) and Trotsky (who is a revolution- ary of long-established standing among the fighters for Russian freedom) have succeeded in what seemed impossible for their moderate predecessors. They have diverted the attention of the nations inhabiting Russia from internal dissensions towards the burning questions of the hour — the struggle against Imperialistic aspirations and Militarism, and for the self-definition of all na- tions on a democratic basis. They have also raised high above diplomatic evasiveness the issue of war aims, thus forcing the German government to a strict accountability before the German people. At the same time, they started on a large scale the contamina- tion of the German soldiers with the same ideas which brought about the disintegration of the Russian army. What Is "Bolshevismr Lenine and Trotsky, as well as the majority of their parti- sans, are by no means traitors or cowards. They are honest men, with good intentions. Their main fault lies in their dis- regard of human nature and of the fundamentals of the doctrine of historical materialism, which is their main hobby. They do not think of the vast, undeveloped sparsely populated areas within the Russian boundaries which clamor for individual enterprise and the concerted action of highly centralized organi- zations. They waive aside the obvious impossibility of an in- dustrial development, and of the improvement of agricultural pro- duction in Russia without the help of foreign credit and foreign experience. They do not consider the fact that in a socialized Russia — with all industries, financial institutions and land tenure "nationalized" — each individual workman or farmer will be in- finitely worse off than he has been even under the Czar. 3o8 SELECTED ARTICLES The world will never be without its visionaries and dreamers, who do not notice the imperfections of human nature and whose aim is to right immediately all the wrongs, to brush aside in one sweeping movement all the inequalities, and to remedy at once all the shortcomings of modern human society. "Bolshevism" is nothing but a combination of both of those elements : an irresponsible multitude of long oppressed, humble laborers and tillers of the soil, driven into frenzy by a handful of uncompromising idealists ; a vision at the top, supported by an elementary emotion at the bottom; a crowd of youngsters, armed with bayonets and machine guns, led by a group of fanatical reformers. The former Russian army has been suddenly transformed into a conglomeration of full-fledged, though very youthful citizens with rifles in their hands and an extremely exaggerated notion of their rights and privileges in their heads. One would hardly expect anybody who might remind them that rights and privileges entail duties and obligations to be very popular with those freshly baked republicans. On the other hand, those who declare their will to be supreme and their de- mands to be sacred cannot fail to win unflinching support. The rest of the country — the vastly greater part of the un- armed "civilians" — does not count, because no arguments or con- victions are sufficiently strong to oppose machine guns and bayo- nets. Undoubtedly these Bolshevists are narrow, but it is equally certain that they are perfectly honest and straightforward, per- haps too straightforward for practical use. Why, then, oppose their narrowness with a still greater partisanship? Why declare that everything which is connected with Lenine and Trotsky is bound to be rotten to the core and utterly unacceptable to polite society? Why imitate the Pharisees and their famous sneer: "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Lenine and Trotsky have so far, against all expectation, solved one problem which seemed insoluble under Lvoff and Kerensky. They have, by sheer force, eliminated all class struggle. They proclaimed one class supreme. They introduced the undisputed "dictatorship of the proletariat." Intoxication from unbounded freedom will pass. The armed youngsters will return to their villages and lay aside their rifles. RUSSIA 309 Experience will soon teach them the difference between the de- sirable and the possible, the natural limit of all aspirations. They will learn that by dividing private lands and private for- tunes among all, they will never reach any improvements in their own conditions of life, but just the opposite. They will under- stand that a 2 or 3 per cent, increase in their holdings will not bring the advent of a Golden Age. They will comprehend the importance of long experience, education, technique, traditions, organization, concentrated creative energy, of the qualities of that hateful state of things which is called "capitalism." The older and saner elements will come into their own and become, through sheer numbers, the controlling element of Russia's future destinies. MASS RULE IN RUSSIA^ Absolutism is dead, yet the black shadows of the old regime are still hovering over the vast Russian plains. Absolutism col- lapsed in March, 1917, yet the sinister inheritance of the Roman- offs will press its dead weight on the minds and actions of the people for many a year to come. Absolutism left the country in a state of chaos. Transportation was crippled. Industries were half ruined. Finances were shattered. The army was de- moralized. Order and prosperity had to be brought out of this monstrous condition. Such was the task that confronted the Revolution. Yet absolutism left its black inheritance also in the minds of the people. The great mass of the people were not used to self-control and to concerted action for the benefit of all, — which is the sign of real freedom. The intellectual groups were wont to fight over details of written programs and shades of theoretical opinion, though they had no experience in actual political life and no habits of leadership on a national scale. The entire coun- try lacked culture, efficiency, organization, and that broad-minded tolerance which overlooks insignificant differences for the sake of the common task. With this inheritance and with the great war on its hands, the young democracy started its singular race which has kept the world astir for the last ten months. 1 By Moissaye J. Olgin. Asia. 18:188-94. March, 19 18. 310 SELECTED ARTICLES The forces that overthrew the Romanoffs and that seemed to be so wonderfully unanimous in the beautiful days of the "bloodless" March Revolution, were in reality far from being united. The revolution itself was simply the work of two heterogenous camps, similar in dissatisfaction but wide apart in aims. When the party leaders denounced the old regime for criminal negligence in the conduct of the war, the masses of the people were getting tired of the war itself. While Liberals and Radicals in and outside of the Duma branded absolutism as trea- son to the country, the hungry population of Petrograd and Mos- cow were simply clamoring for bread. In the crucial days of March, the Constitutional Democrats and the Trudoviki were hastily forming a provisional government and working out a program of action. At the same time the throngs that jammed the streets of Petrograd had one goal in mind; to save them- selves from misery and starvation. Thus from the very begin- ning two factors were discernible in the turmoil of the revolu- tion: those who reasoned, who tried to adapt means to ends, having at heart the interest of the nation; and the uncontrollable masses who acted on the spur of material needs or political passion. In days of the youth of the Revolution, every true adherent of it strongly hoped that the two camps would become one: that the spirit of caution and deliberation would restrain the people, transforming them into organized, clear-sighted units, — and that the fresh breath of genuine popular emotion would keep the leaders alive to the real needs of Russia. In the spring- tide of the new order, it seemed almost certain that mass-move- ment and reasoning would form a happy alliance, to the advan- tage of the country and the benefit of democracy at large. Soon, however, bad omens became quite frequent. The discrepancy between far-sighted national aims and blind gropings of uncon- trollable forces was evident in every realm of life. It is impos- sible to understand new Russia without distinguishing clearly between the two great factors already mentioned. The country needed food. This was the first prerequisite to a new life. Agricultural Russia, which prior to the war pro- duced foodstuffs far in excess of her own requirements, ought not to have suffered hunger. The interests of the nation de- manded that all available land be planted and cultivated with the utmost care. True, the peasants had expected from the revo- RUSSIA 311 lution an increase in their land holdings. True, a radical solu- tion of the agrarian problem was imminent for the young democ- racy. But, first of all and above all, the country had to be provided with food. Agricultural production had to be increased* Rural Russia had to help the nation through the most dangerous crisis. Reasoning Russia, in the persons of the provisional government and the organized political parties, urged the peasants to abstain from arbitrary settlement of their land claims, from violence against the landlords and from hoarding their grain. "Work your fields and await the agrarian legislation of the Constitutent As- sembly," was the slogan. To adjust temporary difficulties be- tween landlord and peasants, land committees were established, whose main task, however, was the collection of data for the great land reform. The land committees were also authorized to fix rents and wages pending the final adjustment. All this provisional machinery was created to keep agricultural produc- tion going up. The Russian peasant, however, was impatient. He was anxious to get hold of the landlord's estate. The local land committees, composed largely of local peasants, with a slight sprinkling of radical party agitators, became active in agrarian revolts. "It's our land," declared the free villager, and without hesitation he took possession of the landlord's cattle and agri- cultural machinery, — sonrefimes of his furniture and kitchen utensils. The proprietor's land was in many cases taken over and divided among the peasants, model estates under high cul- tivation not excluded. In other cases, wages for farm hands were fixed so high that it was impossible for landlords to work their estates. Prisoners of war used for agricultural labor, were removed from the rich estates and put at the disposal of the peasants. Nor was this movement wholly unorganized. Conven- tions of peasants* representatives were held in various provinces ; radical party agitators of all kinds were given a hearing ; an All- RMssian Council of Peasants' Delegates was formed. Yet all the decisions, both of the local and of the central peasants' councils, tended towards one demand : that the land should be given over to the local land committees for distribution among the peasants. This was a local solution of the problem. Each community, or group of neighboring communities, were supposed to seize the estate of "their own" landlord, whether large or small. No 312 SELECTED ARTICLES member o£ another community was allowed to share in the newly acquired land. Thus, inequality in land distribution was introduced from the very start. Communities with large land- lords' estates became owners of great stretches of land, while other communities could hardly increase their holdings. Should the government — any kind of a government — try now to dis- possess the happy holders of new land, great struggles, bitter- ness and even civil war might ensue. It is easy for the peasant to seize land, but hard for him to give it up. The agricultural production of the rich estates was enormously decreased; agri- cultural machinery was left idle; model farms, with highly in- tensive agriculture, were completely destroyed. Chaos took the place of the previous order, which, although a bad order indeed, secured enough food for the country. As a rule the peasant, hav- ing only a limited supply of labor, preferred to sow that piece of land which he took over from the landlord, leaving his own untilled. The underlying motive was clear: "My old land is mine anyway, while here I have to establish my new property rights." In the noise and clatter of the land revolution, the national aims were entirely lost sight of. There was no reason for this haste. Nobody threatened the revolution. A popular govern- ment was secured. The Constitutent Assembly was not far off. Yet the unbound millions were not governed by sound consid- erations. The Russian peasants were hardly thinking at all. The ministers of supplies and agriculture, — among them famous revolutionaries and Socialists such as Peshichonov and Tcher- nov, — repeatedly appealed to the peasants to help the nation in her distress. The Socialist Revolutionary Party, enjoying the greatest influence among the advanced peasants, conducted a vigorous propaganda in favor of national as opposed to selfish local aims. But voices of reason were of no avail. The peas- ants actually destroyed the productivity of land. The crop of 191 7 was considerably smaller than that of the previous years. The sugar beet plantations of Southern Russia were greatly re- duced. Revolutionary Russia was unable to feed herself. The critics of the provisional government put the blame on its in- efficiency and weakness. Could a "strong" government have im- proved the situation? Could it have mastered millions of peas- ants who saw their dream of generations become real and whose RUSSIA 313 soldier sons were backing them, rifle in hand? Was there a power on earth strong enough to keep the peasant patiently wait- ing for the decisions of the Constitutent Assembly? When the crop was harvested the peasant refused to part with it for the sake of the city population. Industrial products became scarce and their prices jumped up madly. Money lost its value in the eyes of the rural population. Prices fixed by the govern- ment seemed to the peasant to be unjust. As a result, hoarding became the practice. In many instances barter began to flourish on the ruins of the money exchange. The peasants were willing to give flour for cotton goods or nails, but not for money. The committee of supplies of the city of Nishni-Novgorod decided to manufacture boots in order to barter them in the villages for grain. The peasant was inclined to blame the city workingmen for the high prices of commodities ; high wages and fewer hours of labor, he thought, were the causes of the evil. Antagonism between village and city become rampant. The industries of the country underwent a similar process. After absolutism was swept away, the workingmen began to organize, — which was good. They formed trade unions, co- operative organizations and Councils of Workmen's Deputies, — which was advantageous for their class as well as for the coun- try. They tried to improve their conditions, — which was legiti- mate. As a result, however, the productivity of labor decreased ; which became an ever increasing menace to the safety of the country. The output of mines, foundries and factories showed an alarming tendency to diminish. In the first half of 1916 the average output of coal in the Donetz region, which feeds the greatest part of Russian industry with fuel, was 656 pood (a pood is equal to 36.07 lbs.) per workingman; in the first half of 191 7, it was only 485, — a decrease of over 25 per cent. This was partly due to the lack of repair of worn out machinery, also to the lack of wood for stanchions and to other technical causes. To a large extent, however, it was due to the unrest among the labor masses. Similar tendencies were evident in other indus- tries. As early as June, 1917, the Minister of Labor, Skobelev, a Social-Democrat and by no means an opponent of organized labor, reminded the workingmen in a stirring appeal that "ele- mental movements often drowned organized activities;" that workingmen "often ignored the situation of the state as a whole, 314 SELECTED ARTICLES overlooked the specific conditions of the enterprise in which they were employed, and to the detriment of their own class interests demanded an increase in wages which disorganized industry." Even the Isvestia, the central organ of the executive committee of the All-Russian Labor Council, called attention to unorganized movements resulting in a decrease in the productivity of labor, which "makes the enterprise reach the limits of exhaustion." "The workingmen ought to have the courage to admit," the Isvestia wrote, "that the accusations against labor, as far as diminution of productivity is concerned, are not always un- founded." It was natural that the peasants should become impatient. They had suffered too long under pressure of the landlords, — who were protected by the bureaucracy of the Romanoffs. It was natural that labor should overstep the limits drawn by eco- nomic necessity. Labor had been too long restricted by a gov- ernment both ignorant and cruel. It was natural, yet it was dis- astrous for the new republic. Russia was paying heavily for the sins of her former oppressors. Transportation difficulties were added to the other miseries. The railroads had been brought to ruin under the old system. Rolling stock deteriorated, tracks were not repaired, terminals became overcrowded. After the revolution, lack of fuel became acute. The collapse of the old and the lack of experience of the new government, increased the tangle. Abused liberty was by no means the smallest of the handicaps of transportation. Armed soldiers became practically masters of the situation. Priority in shipments, fixed schedules, obedience to legal authori- ties, were often put aside by arbitrary decisions of army units. The "soldier train" has become a familiar sight in present-day Russia. The soldiers mount the first and best train they can get hold of, fill the cars and platforms, sit on the buffers, and climb on the roofs. The train runs madly with no time schedule at all. The car windows are broken; the brakes work with dif- ficulty. While passing a bridge many of the roof riders are killed or wounded. Under such conditions hardly any well ordered transportation can be established. The tangle was growing, industries were closing down; lack of employment became widespread towards the end of the sum- mer. The SociaHst press put part of the blame on the "sabotage" RUSSIA 315 of the employers, who purposely let their affairs go from bad to worse so as to teach their employees a lesson. There is truth in these accusations of sabotage, yet this only adds to the list of uncontrollable forces that did not rise above their selfish group conceptions. The country as a whole suffered increasing hard- ship. In the first seven months prior to 1916 the amount of rye (grain and flour) that passed Rybinsk — the central point of the Mariinski canal system, through which a large portion of the southern crop passes yearly to Northern Russia — was over seventeen million pood. In the first seven months of 191 7, it was only 4.6 millions. The figures for wheat in these periods are 11.5 and 2.4 millions; the figures for oats, 10.2 and 2.9, a de- crease of nearly 75 per cent. That meant hunger and starvation for the North. In" the first weeks of the new order the masses had believed that the millenium was at hand. Hadn't they overthrown the old hated enemies of the people? Hadn't they become the sole masters of their fate? As time passed, however, a heavy gloom began to spread over the country. The enthusiasm died down. Practical everyday matters loomed up. The unstable situation made people nervous. It may sound like a joke, yet it is a fact that the peasants of the village of Tatarka, province of Stavropol, in village council assembled, decided : first, to elect no representatives to the circuit council ; second, to dissolve all com- mittees, such as the land, supply, and public safety committees; third, to ask for the appointment of a Zemski Natchalnik, or country chief of police with judicial functions under old regime. Absolutism had not taught Russia to be patriotic in the demo- cratic sense of the word. When the fetters were broken, two processes— organization and disruption— began to cross each other. On one hand, thinking elements, party units, democratic organizations, governmental offices, individuals of authority and knowledge were doing the great work of organizing, enlighten- ing and uniting the country ; on the other, the vast millions, now shaken up to new life, were trying in their own crude ways to improve their conditions. The grave problem was: Which of these two processes would prevail? The attitude of the small nationalities in Russia was an instance in point. Autocratic Russia had roused nation- alist feelings among the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Ukrain- 3i6 SELECTED ARTICLES ians, the Caucasians and the Finns; but she had not taught the small nationalities to distinguish between Russia and the Rus- sian yoke. When the dynasty was overthrown, the process of disintegration began. Thinking Russia, both liberal and radical, was opposed to an independent Ukrainian, Don Cossack, Kuban Cossack, Siberian State. Those provinces are essentially connected with the main body of Russia; how can Russia give them up? How can Rus- sian industry exist without the coal of the Donetz region? How can the Ukraine exist without the metal or cotton goods of Nishni-Novgorod, Yaroslav and Moscow? And is not Kiev as much a Russian as it is a Ukrainian city? Democratic Russia pledged herself to secure for each nationality in Russia the right to receive education in its own language, to develop its national culture, and to enjoy national autonomy within the boundaries of the Russian State. Yet democratic Russia could not permit the Russian State to be torn to pieces to the detriment of the Rus- sian as well as the other nationalities. The inheritance of the old regime, however, prevailed. The non-Russian nationaHties mistrusted Russian democracy. Russia witnessed the springing up of new republics, which, as was the case with the Don Cos- sacks, even threatened the liberty of Russia herself. Confronted with these processes, what ought the provisional government to do? Could it, for example, send soldiers to quell the peasant upheavals? Could it put workingmen in jail for ex- cessive demands ? Could it declare railroads under martial law ? Could it declare war on Finland or Ukraine? It was a revolu- tionary government, and it was confronted with an enormous, heterogenous country taking its first draughts of freedom. Was it not doomed to inaction? Only from this angle can we judge the attitude of Russia towards the war; and this, perhaps, will give us a clue to an understanding of the present situation. The war was an inheritance of the old regime ; this was the sentiment that prevailed among the masses. The country had not wanted war. The Tsar had joined the war with an aim of conquest and had brought misery on the people. The Tsar was gone; why should the soldier still remain in the trenches? This was an overwhelming instinct, a sentiment stronger than reason, an elemental motive of tremendou's power. It was particularly the attitude of the soldiers. The sentiment RUSSIA 317 was an inheritance of the old regime. Russian absolutism had taught the Russian people to look with suspicion at every meas- ure that came "from above;" it held the Russian masses in ignorance of its real motives and aims in international affairs. The Russian people were not wont to think in broad political terms. When absolutism finally gave way to unrestricted free- dom, the current of popular emotion turned against the con- tinuation of the war. "Why fight? We have no quarrel with anyone in the world. We do not want to rob the Germans of their land. We have plenty of it at home. Why should the Germans do harm to us?" In this naive way the mind of the Russian moujik, which is fun- damentally religious, decided the problem of war and peace. Besides, the new freedom had a bewitching lure for the peasant, calling him out of the trenches. Over there his village was divid- ing the land of the Count. Over there a new life was shining in glorious colors. Ought he to stay in the "muddy hole" and die for things he knew nothing about? Many, a grave controversy has arisen concerning the inter- national policies of the provisional government. There is no doubt that the Constitutional Democratic Party, which formed the first Cabinet and whose influence was strong with the Coali- tion Cabinet, never abandoned the idea of annexations. At the eighth convention of the party, in May, 1917, Paul Milukov de- clared amid great applause that it was "his great pride, never till the very moment of his resignation from the post of Foreign Minister, to have given the Allied Powers an occasion to think that Russia had disclaimed the Straits." There is no doubt that the Constitutional Democratic Party cherished ideas of diplomacy that were far from democratic. As late as October, 191 7, less than two months before the declaration by President Wilson of an open covenant of nations as a guarantee of international peace, the Retch, the official organ of the Cadets, declared the abolition of secret diplomacy to be a "monstrous levity," a "ridicu- lous product of upripe amateurish thought." There is no doubt that the uncertain position of the provisional government in in- ternational policies added fuel to the fire of radical dissatisfaction with the war. The failure of the Allied Powers to state their war-aims in definite terms soon after the Revolution, and the ap- parent reluctance of the provisional government to insist on such 3i8 SELECTED ARTICLES a statement, gave occasion to the Extremists to denounce the entire war as a war of conquest and the Provisional Government as captured by the Russian, EngUsh and American imperialists. There is no doubt that some of those ideas leaked down to the masses and added to the general repugnance of the war. It is very doubtful, however, whether any statement of war aims, however definite and democratic, would have stopped the decay of the Russian army. After all, not the Bolsheviki alone were trying to influence the masses. "Save the Revolution" — "Defend Russian freedom against German autocracy" — these are sentiments that can appeal to every Russian heart and make it throb with patriotic enthusiasm. Why, then, did they not give that mental intoxication that moves masses to heroic exploits? Why were the clarion calls of Russian revolutionary veterans a voice in the wilderness? Why was a pathetic appeal of Korolenko, a man rightly called "the conscience of Russia," less effective than the appeal of a Bolshevik? Why were Krapotkin Plechanov, Breshkovskaya, repeatedly warning the nation to "beware of the German danger," less heeded than Lenin and Trotzky? Why were the Social Revolutionary Party, the People's Socialist Party, the Menshevik Social Democratic Party, the Council of Peasants' Delegates, the various other factions, groups and organizations favoring a vigorous defense of the Russian revolution against German invasion, — why were they all less successful than the sole faction of the Bolsheviki? Wasn't Russian territory occupied by Ger- man arms? Weren't Russian peoples suffering under the Ger- man yoke? Wasn't it the duty of democratic Russia to restore to herself the torn members of her body? Wasn't it a task worthy of a free and freedom-loving nation? Why, then, was the de- nunciation of the war as imperialistic more convincing to the masses than all the other appeals? It was because the masses did not want to fight. The de- moralization of the army had begun even under the old regime. Centrifugal forces had developed long before the revolution. The new order, necessarily shaking the very foundations of mili- tary discipline, only increased the confusion. Army committees sprang up in every unit. The commanding officers were put under control of the ordinary soldiers. Old generals vfere dis- missed, and their successors spoke a language that made the RUSSIA 319 soldiers feel their own power. Soon they became aware that they — the soldiers — were the actual rulers. They could make and unmake governments; they could impose their will on the coun- try. Why should they continue fighting? Why should they face mortal danger? The Constitutional Democratic Party put forth the slogan, "Keep the army out of politics !" It was easy to dream about a non-political army ; it was impossible, however, to shut off politi- cal propaganda from the army and in the very midst of a revolu- tion. Moreover, it would have been a dangerous venture. Left without political enlightenment, the army would have necessarily become an obedient tool in the hands of ambitious generals whose natural inclination was toward an aristocratic order. The Cadet agitation against politics in the trenches added greatly to popular resentment against this party. The history of the army since May-June, 1917, is a history of an increasing deterioration. It suggests something fataL Lack of food, lack of munitions, lack of management, lack of transportation facilities — these defects only added to the inherent destructive forces. The Galician drive headed by Kerensky in June was the last attempt to attain the impossible. The drive was a complete failure. The attack of the Liberal press on the army for its humiliating retreat, the epithets "cowards," "trai- tors," "rascals" applied to the soldiers by over-zealous patriots, only increased the hatred of the army towards war partisans. Under such conditions, no government favoring a war policy could meet with success. Anything that the provisional govern- ment did was wrong. Anything that had even a flavor of "peace" was right. Any measure that tried to stem the current of popu- lar sentiment was doomed to failure. Any measure, including the overthrow of the government,— if it only promised cessation of war, — commanded a hearty support. Herein lay the cause of Kcrensky's weakness. He strove against elemental forces. The Korniloff affair was the last drop in the cup. It gave the anti- Coalition propaganda a new momentum. The revolution was in danger! Kerensky's government was declared to be the gov- ernment of treason ! The people ought to take their fate in their own hands, the Bolsheviki urged. The collapse of the Coalition was imminent. In the meantime the mass of the people became disgusted with the revolutionary clatter. Anarchy was spread- 320 SELECTED ARTICLES ing. Industries were collapsing. Unemployment assumed men- acing propositions. Famine stared whole provinces in the face. Mob violence, pogroms, robberies, lynchings became every-day occurrences. No power in the world could have stopped this mad rush of the nation down hill to misery, suflfering and des- pair. The Central Committee of the army loyal to the provisional government thus describes the situation in an appeal to Ker- ensky and the Soviet at the end of October, 1917: "The material and spiritual forces of the army are exhausted. The attempts of the committee to keep up the fighting spirit of the army meet with insurmountable obstacles which increase every day. There can be no fighting spirit in an army which is naked, hungry, forsaken and forgotten by its own country and which receives no reinforcements from the rear. There can be no fighting spirit in the army when in the rear there is no authori- tative power, when the land is in the grip of anarchy, when the peasants hide their grain from military requisitions, when the workingmen refuse to make munitions, when the bourgeoisie refuse to pay war taxes, and the reserve regiments refuse to go to the front. There can be no fighting spirit in an army which is called to defend freedom and the revolution, when freedom has degenerated into disorder and the revolution into pogroms. We know that it is impossible to conclude an immediate peace which would secure Russian freedom, yet we know also that the con- tinuation of war under given conditions is a thing impossible" {Isvestia, No. 195, October 12-25, iQi?)- In the weeks preceding the Bolsheviki revolution it became more and more apparent that the army was gone. Delegation after delegation of army units appeared before the Council of Workmen's Delegates stating that the army was unable to fight. On October 17 a delegation from the Rumanian • front stated: "The army is tired of fighting. Conditions are intolerable. There is no food. There are no necessary clothes. The soldiers are freezing and hungry. They are utterly fatigued after three years in the trenches. The soldiers demand that immediate peace be concluded without any delay under any pretext whatsoever." A delegation of the thirty-third army division declared before the same body : "If the Council gives no guaranty that the campaign in favor of peace is making progress, the soldiers may conclude RUSSIA 321 an armistice of their own accord." Similar warnings Were made nearly every day. The Menshevik Tcherevanin, a well-known economist, in a report to the Workmen's Council on the economic situation of Russia, said: "We cannot continue the war until spring, 1918. The economic situation of Russia imperatively de- mands the immediate conclusion of peace. Otherwise, economic death is facing the country." Thus the morale of the army, the general sentiment of the people and the economic and financial situation made continua- tion of war impossible, notwithstanding any ideal the government might have cherished. The Bolsheviki propaganda only gave utterance to what lurked in the minds of the people. The Bolsheviki were in a favorable situation. For years this faction had been denouncing any kind of compromise between the working class and the bourgeois parties of Russia. For years they had been preaching a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" as the only means to secure democracy in Rus- sia. As early as 1905 and 1906 many of the Bolsheviki had already laid the foundations of their theory, though at that time it could not be put into practice. Since the beginning of the war they had belonged to the InternationaHsts, whose programme was framed at the Zimmerwald conference of the Socialist minorities of the belligerent countries. The Bolsheviki saw now a vast field open before them to apply their theories to real political life. Theoretic conceptions of a group of idealists and strong un- reasoning emotions of the masses met together in the maze of the revolution. The result was the November upheaval. Bolshevism in theory became Bolshevism in practice. The Bolsheviki were in a position to find a theoretical foun- dation for all the elemental movements that were shaking the country. The peasants were illegally seizing land : the Bolsheviki approved of their actions, declaring the land, together with the houses of the landlords, to be the property of the people and urging the peasant communities to take possession of the new national acquisition. The workingmen decreased the productivity of labor by unreasonable demands and by lack of discipline and foresight; the Bolsheviki found no fault in this, proclaiming the country to be ready for a social revolution and urging the work- ingmen to assume control over production. The finances of the country were ruined and the country was shaking in violent 322 SELECTED ARTICLES economic convulsions; the BolshevikI nationalized the banks of the country, declared foreign debts null and void, and undertook a series of encroachments upon the private savings of individuals. The country was disintegrating, numerous portions of Russia proclaiming their independence; the BolshevikI approved of it on the principle of self-determination of each nationality in the world. The soldiers were fraternizing with their German enemies at the front; the BolshevikI hailed this breach of dis- cipline as a manifestation of the brotherhood of man. The army was unwilling to fight, the masses loathed the war, which the Bolsheviki branded as a war of English against German capital- ism; the Bolsheviki proclaimed their readiness to conclude a general democratic peace between the nations over the heads of the existing governments. The provisional government was des- perately striving to maintain a semblance of order and authority; the Bolsheviki whipped the provisional government with merciless accusations, blaming It for all the chaos, misery, poverty and an- archy, past and present, that held the country In an iron grip. The Bolsheviki were bold enough to put on the provisional gov- ernment even the blame for disorders caused by the propaganda of the Bolsheviki themselves. It was unfair, — ^yet it appealed to the masses. The masses gave their support to the Bolsheviki. Kerensky was wrong, because he tried to swim against the cur- rent. Lenin was right, because he expressed In terms of ideal aspiration the uncontrollable popular sentiments that spread among the masses. Lenin became the leader because he allowed himself to be led by the people. It Is futile to approach the BolshevikI movement with measures of moral estimation. It is useless to make Individuals respon- sible for what has turned out to be the new phase of the Rus- sian Revolution. The Socialists and other radical parties that had for years enjoyed the confidence of the people wished to see the road of the Russian revolution a road of amicable cooperation of all progressive forces for the sake of a free, healthy, demo- cratic future. Thinking revolutionary Russia hoped to find the shortest and least painful way to secure a free development of the people. Had the BolshevikI joined the other representatives of revolutionary Russia the revolution might have taken a totally different aspect. RUSSIA 323 It is too early to speak of the success or failure of the Bol- sheviki program. The peace negotiations have taken a turn, un- foreseen, perhaps, by the Bolsheviki themselves. A division of opinion among the Bolsheviki is reported: one faction is said to favor the conclusion of peace under all circumstances; an- other is for the declaration of a **holy war" against German au- tocracy. Whatever the decision may be, it is apparent that Rus- sia has no army to continue the war. The internal situation seems to represent a series of difficul- ties of unheard-of magnitude. Lenin has dissolved the Con- stitutent Assembly and declared parliamentary rule to be obsolete. How is he going to conduct the affairs of the State with the support of only one class? How long will the other classes, especially the peasantry, suffer the hegemony of the Workmen's Councils? Lenin has announced the beginning of a Socialist order in Russia. How is he going to introduce communistic pro- duction and distribution in a backward, war-ridden and dis- organized country? How is he going to make Russian labor efficient and productive and Russian industries to flourish? Lenin has proclaimed a stupendous land reform which ought to secure justice in agrarian relations. How is he going to over- come the inherent aversion of the peasant to things Socialistic and that strong spirit of private ownership that is most stubborn in the village? Russia seems to be on the threshold of a long era of novel social experiments. Internal strife is inevitable. Confusion, suffering, even periods of stagnation probably will follow. What ought to be the attitude of all the friends of the Russian people? Shall one wish the reactionary Cossacks to come and break the new revolutionary forces? Shall one turn away with disgust and disdain and declare Russia unworthy of the aid of the civilized world? Both ways have been suggested, and either would con- tradict the best democratic traditions. Whatever the difficulties may be, Russia is a free democratic country; Russian liberty is so far the greatest achievement of humanity since the beginning of the world conflagration; young Russian democracy, notwith- standing mistakes, has become one of the greatest champions of the world's freedom. Along with fantastic hopes and impractical plans, which are natural in times of revolution, the Russian genius manifested a great human love for freedom and that 324 SELECTED ARTICLES inflexible devotion to an ideal which moves men to great sac- rifices and great deeds. BIRTH OF THE UKRANIAN REPUBLIC' The first peace compact in the world-war, signed by repre- sentatives of the Central Allied Powers and the Ukrainian Peo- ple's Republic on February 9, at 2 a. m., is recognized by some editorial observers as a shrewd stroke of German diplomacy, and a distinct blow to the diplomacy of the Allies. How it seems to the Austro-Germans at home is shown by Geneva dispatches, which state that the news sent the Viennese "mad with joy." The city was dressed with flags and business came to a stand- still. In the crowded streets women wept for happiness, men embraced one another. Special editions of the newspapers were sold out instantly. The people cheered for the Emperor and Count Czernin and shouted : "Now we shall have plenty of food !" Schools were closed for the day. The same exultation greeted the news at Budapest, Prague, and Innsbruck, although the people were less demonstrative than the Viennese. The New York Evening Mail thinks that the Ukraine peace means in all probability the solution of the most pressing food problems of the Central Empires, wherefore the ringing of joy-bells in Ber- lin and Vienna. Ukrainia means southern Russia, the "black- earth" country, the granary that drains through a funnel at Odessa, and this journal reports that peasants there hold plenty of grain, unwilling to part with it for worthless Russian cur- rency. The Mail goes on to say that no one must minimize the significance of the victory of the Central Powers, who see before them "food, relief from the terrible strain of starvation, an in- crease of thirty per cent, in their fighting forces against the main Allies, over a million war-prisoners returned, an enemy pulled off their backs." Germany's adroit the brutal diplomatic moves, backed by military power, remarks the Baltimore Ameri- can, add to the confusion and the difficulties of the task that lies before the Allies and will make the peace conference "fraught with many opportunities for trading and evasion that will be peculiarly irritating to the straightforward policies of the United States." 1 Literary Digest. 56:7-8. February 23, 1918. RUSSIA 325 Press dispatches advised us that the Ukrainian Rada, whose representatives signed the peace agreement with the Central Powers, is the bourgeois legislature established by the Ukrain- ians, a few weeks before they declared their independence of the Russian republic. The Bolsheviki attempted to overthrow the Rada administration and establish their own form. At the begin- ning of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik delegates allowed Ukrainians at the conferences, but later re- pudiated them on the ground that the Ukraninians were acting independently. The distinction drawn in the New York Times's news-columns between the Ukrainians and the Bolsheviki is that the Ukrainian movement is partly a national and partly a land question. The Bolsheviki who believe in a re-distribution of the land, emphasize this question, while the Rada group stand alone on their separate and proclaimed nationality. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian informs us that the Ukrainian question, well known to the political student, has been obscured from the gaze of the public because of the clever maneuvers of the ethnographical and historical "science" of the old Czarist regime, which turned the Ukrainians into a subordinate branch of the Russian people under the name of "Little Russians," proclaimed its language — despite the findings of its own Academy of Science — to be a mere local dialect, and, above all, had with unparalleled coolness appro- priated the entire Ukrainian history as part of the history of its own Empire. We read then : "As a matter of fact, the Ukrainian people — at present count- ing, in Russia alone, about thirty million souls — though akin to the Russians, was and has ever been as distinct from them, physically, mentally, and culturally, and for many centuries politically, as the Poles or the Bulgarians, and its history was, down to the seventeeth century, that of an independent political community whose earlier stages figure in the Russian historical text-books as the Kief period of Russian history. "For Kief, with its long list of princes — from St. Vladimir, who adopted Christianity in 988, through Vladimir Monomachos, whose wife was Gytha, a daughter of Harold of England, down to Danilo, the father of Lev, who founded the city of Lvoff (Lemberg) — was never the capital of a Russian state. It was the capital of a Ukrainian feudal state, extending from the Don 326 SELECTED ARTICLES to the Karpathians, and from the Pripet to the Black Sea— an agglomerate as large as, or even larger than, present France or Germany. The Tatar invasion of the thirteenth century was a mortal blow inflicted on that state, whose center of gravity now shifted to the west, to the present Galicia and Volhynia, with its capital cities of Halicz (hence the corrupted name of Galicia) and Vladimir. This part continued its independence for another hundred years, until it fell under the power of the princes of Lithuania, and, finally, through the union of Lithuania with Poland in 1536, under that of the Polish kings. "What became of eastern Ukraine? For a long time trampled under foot by Tatar horses, it gradually evolved a military state, the republic of the Cossacks — the real, the original Cos- sacks, of which the subsequent Cossacks of Russia were mere imitations — which, in incessant fighting against the Tatars, then the Turks and the Poles, gradually recov- ered for that part of the Ukrainian people security and in- dependence. Kief once more blossomed forth — this time chiefly as a cultural center with a remarkable academy, libraries, and a host of savants — and hetmans of the Cossacks became the rulers of the non-Polish Ukraine. The pressure of Poland was, how- ever very great, and in the end the Hetman Bogdan Klhmelnitsky, in 1654, applied to the Czar of Moscow for protection and con- cluded with him a treaty for joining the Ukraine to the Muscovite state on the basis of a personal union and with the preservation of the full autonomy of the Ukraine. "That was the end of the Ukrainian state, because no sooner was the Muscovite Czar's protectorate established than he began to encroach upon the rights and liberties of the Ukrainian peo- ple." No matter what the terms of the peace contract may be, says the Providence Journal, it is quite certain that the Ukraine will become a German province in everything but name, and would remain so if the war were to end without compelling Germany to abandon her Mitteleuropa dream — the nightmare of democ- racy, and it is explained : "With Poland as a Teutonic appanage and the Ukraine also in the Kaiser's grip, Germany would gain an alternative route to Persia and India. Just one glance at the map shows that it is a shorter cut from Berlin to the Far East than the original RUSSIA 327 route. Odessa, the great port on the Black Sea, is in the Ukraine, and, with that for an outlet by water to Constantinople, the Kaiser could console himself, even if he were to be shut off in the Balkans or if he should fail to reach Asia by another all- rail route through Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus. . . . "But unless Germany is to indicate the fate of all the nations arrayed against her, she can not, even with Russian consent, be suffered to dominate the region to the north of the Black Sea, which would give her a pathway to world-dominion in the Far East. Through whatever countries that route leads, civilization, for its own security, must impose a barrier." The New York Evening Sun also gets from the treaty the impression that the Ukraine is to subserve the Central Empires just as these subserve Hohenzollern Prussia, and thinks "the outcome in itself is worth to Prussia the whole war to date; but the gainers need peace in order to realize their winnings. To permit them to have it, save on terms acceptable to the sense of security and justice, would be to do the world a grave disad- vantage." Says the Brooklyn Eagle: "The signing of such a peace treaty is a victory for the Cen- tral Powers, regardless of its ultimate value. It enables the Teu- tonic governments to exhibit one concrete result of the peace pourparlers at Brest-Litovsk and strengthens their hand in deal- ing with all questions in the East. It is a significant first step in the complete disintegration of Russia preparatory to the ex- tension of Teutonic domination over the vast territory of the old Slav empire. And the worst of it is that Ukrainians themselves have sold their birthright to get peace." The New York Sun points out that there are two distinct parties in the new Ukraine, one opposed to any terms that the Germans and Austrians have offered, the other, from the first under German influence as the result of German propaganda. Evidently the latter party, at present nominally in charge of the government, The Sun thinks, is the one with which the German peace negotiations have been successful. Again, the Central Powers face the difficult fact that the Ukraine is merely a mem- ber of the confederation of states which the Bolsheviki have sought to establish in Russia. The negotiations, to become effec- tive, therefore, must be accepted by the government at Petrograd, and The Sun believes that it is very likely that they will refuse 28 328 SELECTED ARTICLES to recognize the treaty made by the Ukrainian Rada. The gain announced by the Central Powers will thus be of very uncertain value, and "it is doubtful, in fact, if it results in any material advantage to them." On this point a Washington dispatch to the New York American says : "Administration officials predict that Germany's separate peace with Ukraine will be a boomerang. They say it will tend further to increase the distrust of the German people for their masters, as the great grain stocks of Ukraine do not exist. . . . "In the face of this, figures on the Ukrainian food resources were made public. They were compiled by J. Ralph Picket, a Chicago grain expert, who made a four-months' study of the Rus- sian food situation. Kerensky wanted to make Mr. Picket food dictator of all the Russians. His figures have been submitted to Herbert C. Hoover. They show: "i. That Ukraine produced in 1915, 70,000,000 bushels of wheat. Of this Russia got about 10,500,000 bushels. "2. In 1916 the production fell to 41,000,000 bushels. There was no surplus for Russia. "3. In 1917 the production was only 37,000,000 bushels. Ukrainia herself lacked grain. UKRAINE THROWS OFF THE SHACKLES OF SERFDOM AFTER 263 YEARS' "Ukraine has formed a definite alliance with the Cossacks." This statement, recently published, introduces into the war- situation a nation little known and seldom heard of in America. And yet it numbers fully 30,000,000 people who for 263 years had been in subjection to the Czars of Russia. George Raffalovich, the son of an Ukrainian father and a French mother, an author of repute under the pen-name of Bedwin Sands, is an authority on Ukrainian history. In an article in the New York Sun he gives some enlightening and interesting facts concerning the reborn nation: Ukraine covers 850,000 square kilometers, an area greater than that of France and only a little less than that of Italy, Spain, and Portugal together. ^Literary Digest. 56:47, 50. January 12, 1918. RUSSIA 329 Taking the figures usually given by European writers of repute, there are to-day 29,000,000 Ukrainians in the southwest- ern provinces of Russia, between one and two millions in Siberia, where they have, especially in the Amur region, exten- sive settlements; three and a half millions in eastern Galicia, four hundred thousand in northern Bukowina, and pefhaps half a million in northern Hungary on the southern slopes of the Karpathian Mountains. To these figures should be added the half-million Ukrainians who are at present in the United States, probably as many in the Dominion of Canada, a few thousand in Australia, and about fifty thousand in Brazil. There are Ukrainian settlements in Turkey, in the Dobrudja, and in south- ern Hungary, but they are very small. The bulk of the Ukrainians consists, therefore, of those in Ukrainian Russia, in Galicia, and in Bukowina, for they inhabit the compact territory which is only artificially — or shall we say politically? — divided between Russia, Austria, and Hungary. Leaving out the Rusniaks, or Ukrainians of Hungary, who ex- press no desire to work politically with the other members of their nation and who insist, even in America, upon societies of their own, we have a population of over 33,000,000 stretched between the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Karpathian Moun- tains, and the San River. The purely Ukrainian governments of Russia are: I. Ukraine of the Right Bank (of the Dnieper), Podolia, Volhynia, Kief, and Kholm. 2. Ukraine of the Left Bank (of the Dnieper), Tchernihov, Poltava, Kharkov, southwest Khursk, Voronezh, and the region of the Don Cossacks to the Sea of Azov. 3. On both sides of the Dnieper lies the Steppe Ukraine, comprising Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, and the eastern parts of Bessarabia, and Tauris. 4. North Caucasus, adjacent to the region of the Don Cossacks, comprising Kuban and the eastern parts of the Stavro- polskoi and Therska governments. In all these districts the Ukrainians form from 76 to 99 per cent, of the total population, the rest being Jews, Poles, and lastly Russians. Ukraine's popular form of government attracted settlers from near-by countries, and the fame of the freedom of its institu- 330 SELECTED ARTICLES tions reached as far as Ireland, as is shown by the Celtic names that are still preserved in Ukraine. The writer says ; The Rurik dynasty founded Ukraine. When it disappeared, as all monarchies must, the next organization that kept the Ukraine lands together was the republic of the Cossacks, whose dominion overlapped Lithuania and Poland, who occupied much of the Ukraine soil. The Cossacks were organized something on the lines of the chivalry of Western Europe. Their precepts were obedience, piety, chastity, and equality. The Assembly was the only au- thority they recognized. The Hetman (headman) was elected by, and was responsible to, the Assembly for his actions. If he offended he was incontinently deprived of office. The Assembly, called Rada, was periodical and comprised rep- resentatives of all classes of the community who often criticized freely the policy of the Hetman. In the interval between Radas the Hetman ruled the country by a series of decrees. When any section of the Ukrainian community was dissatisfied with the person or the policy of the Hetman it was entitled to call to- gether a Rada, which in such cases was called a Black Rada. If the Black Rada happened to be representative enough, and the complaint met with the approval of the majority, the Hetman might be compelled to resign. While the Muscovites lived under an absolute monarchy, while the Poles were ruled by a haughty and exclusive aristoc- racy, in Ukraine all were free under the Lithuanian kings, and republican institutions were gradually taking root. Many people would leave the surrounding countries and go to settle in Ukraine. Such names preserved in the Ukraine as O'Brien and O'Rourke tend to prove that people came from much farther to settle in the happy land. "It has been said that the Ukrainian race seemed qualified to put into practise the idea of universal equality and freedom. The science of war was there brought to high perfection. At the same time a literature was produced which glorified the Cossack life in attractive ballads and tales. The Slavonic world is proud of the history of this free State. It is on the Poles that lies the stigma of wrecking t)iis prom- ising nation, since it was under Poland that Ukraine was at that time. The whole of Ukraine, or rather all that was left RUSSIA 331 of it after the Tatar incursions, was easily conquered by Lithu- ania, and the principalities of Kief, part of Podolia, and Volhynia became part of the Lithuanian kingdom. Being, however, of higher culture than the conquerors, the conquered provinces gave their language and their laws to Lithuania. After various social and political disturbances the situation in Ukraine grew worse and worse. She lost all her rights one by one, and finally her name was almost forgotten by men. Then, says the writer: Came the Japanese war and the first revolution. The Constitution of 1905 was a sincere act of the Czar. It was not perfect, it left many restrictions which should have been removed, but it was a good beginning. The first and second Dumas contained an important proportion of nationalist deputies elected by the Ukrainian peasantry. The bureaucratic clique, the Black Hundreds, and the pan- Russians set their minds to the solving of two new problems — how to poison the minds of the Czar and his advisers and how to explain the Constitution in such a way that its effect could be nullified. They succeeded with the help of an unlooked-for ally. The Socialist parties showed fierce opposition to the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The result of this unholy alliance for the crushing of a people was that the Constitution was gradually explained away and lost all its meaning. For instance, in the first Duma there was a Ukrainian club composed of forty-four nationalist deputies. It worked through the first and second Dumas, when the members exceeded sixty. This was too much for the government. The regulations con- cerning the electoral system were revised. In the third Duma there was no such nonsense as a Ukrainian party. As if by magic the problem of how to deal with rebels had disappeared. The anti-Ukrainian press took what comfort it could in the thought that these sixty Ukrainian members elected to represent 29,000,000 people enslaved by Russia had been a bad dream. Confiscations, prohibitions, arrests, exiles followed. The anti- Ukrainian propaganda was resumed in Galicia and spread even to France and England, where writers and journalists otherwise sober-minded were led to believe that there was no Ukraine 332 SELECTED ARTICLES nation, no Ukraine nationalism. "There was not even such a word in the Russian dictionary, unless it meant frontier." The new nation will not bear the stamp "made in Germany," as many writers have asserted, for says Raffalovich: The newly won independence of Russian Ukraine does away with the charge of pro-Germanism which was freely leveled at all those who advocated this autonomy. The birth of the nationalist movement in Russian Ukraine was automatic. Its life was fostered by the Ukrainians them- selves, financed by Ukrainians of all classes. As a matter of fact, the Ukrainians who know the Germans best like them least. Muscovites of Great Russia may admire the Teuton system of efficiency. The Ukrainians are too much of an artistic nation to care overmuch for Kultur without polish. If there are pro-Germans in Russia they are cer- tainly not the individualistic, essentially democratic Ukrainians. Americans need not fear betrayal from that quarter. Of the great natural resources of the new nation the writer says: The famous black soil of Ukraine covers three-quarters of the country. To the north as well as in the Karpathian Moun- tains are some 110,000 square kilometers of forests. The agri- cultural soil covers 53 per cent, of the aggregate territory of Ukraine and 32 per cent., if we take in the whole of European Russia, which is, however, six times greater than the Ukraine itself. The annual production of cereals in Ukraine is two-thirds of the whole production in the Russian Empire. It is greater than that of Germany or France. The exportation of grains from Ukraine amounts to 27 per cent, of the production, and of all the wheat exported from Russia nine-tenths comes from Ukrain- ian lands. As a matter of fact the trade of Ukraine is mere developed than that of any part of the empire. Ukraine ranks highest amCng all the countries that comprise the vast Russian Empire as to the annual agricultural production. Wheat, rye, and barley are the staple crop of Russia's agriculture, and the annual production in Ukraine of these products amounts to one-third of Russia's output. As to other farm products, Ukraine's position is also very conspicuous. RUSSIA 333 Beet-root, for instance, is especially cultivated in the Ukraine provinces of Podolia, Volhynia, Kief, and Kherson; those provinces together yield five-sixths of the sugar-beet production of all Russia. Ukraine produces almost all the tobacco of the empire, and she has the largest and finest orchards and vine- yards of European Russia. The immense natural resources of Ukraine furnish splendid opportunities for the development of manufacturing industries. As a matter of fact, 62 per cent, of Russia's annual production of pig iron and 58 per cent, of Russia's production of steel comes from Ukraine. These few facts may furnish sufficient indication of Ukraine's economic significance to Russia. POLITICAL PARTIES IN RUSSIA^ The following is an attempt to formulate, first, the more im- portant, and second, the less important, of the questions and answers characteristic of the present situation in Russia, and of the attitude the various parties take to the present state of affairs. QUESTIONS I. What are the chief groupings of political parties in Rus- sia f ANSWERS A (more to the right than the Cadets). Parties and groups more right than the Constitutional Democrats. B (Cadets). Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets, the National Liberty Party) and the groups closely attached to them. C (Social Democrats and Social Revolutionists). The S. D.'s, S. R.'s and the groups closely attached to them. D (Bolsheviks). The party which ought properly to be called the Communistic Party, and which is at present termed "The Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, united with the Central Committee"; or, in popular language, the "Bolsheviks." 1 By Nicholas Lenine. Reprinted from the November-December 19 17 issue of "The^ Class Struggle," a bi-monthly magazine, devoted to in- ternational socialism. 334 SELECTED ARTICLES 2. What classes do these parties represent f What class standpoints do they express^ A. The feudal landholders and the more backward sections of the bourgeoisie, B. The mass of the bourgeoisie, that is, the capitalists, and those landholders who have the industrial, bourgeois ideology. C. Small entrepreneurs, small and middle-class proprietors, small and more or less well-to-do peasants, petite bourgeoisie, as well as those workers who have submitted to a bourgeois point of view. D. Class-conscious workers, day laborers and the poorer classes of the peasantry, who are classed with them (semi-pro- letariat) . 3. What is their relation to Socialism? A and B. Unconditionally hostile, since it threatens the profits of capitalists and landholders. C. For Socialism, but it is too early yet to think of it or to take any practical steps for its realization. D. For Socialism. The Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates must at once take every practical and feasible step for its realization. 4. What form of government do they want now? A. A Constitutional Monarchy, absolute authority of the official class and the police. B. A bourgeois parliamentary republic, i.e., a perpetuation of the rule of the capitalists, with the retention of the official (chinovnik) class and the police. C. A bourgeois parliamentary republic, with reforms for the workers and peasants. D. A republic of the Council of Workers', Soldiers and Peasants' Delegates. Abolition of the standing army and the police ; substituting for them an armed people ; officials to be not only elected, but also subject to recall; their pay not to exceed that of a good worker. 5. What is their attitude on the restoration of the Romanoff Monarchy? A. In favor, but it must be done with caution and secrecy, for they are afraid of the people. RUSSIA 335 B. When the Guchkovs seemed to be in power the Cadets were in favor of putting on the throne a brother or son of Nicholas, but when the people loomed up the Cadets became anti-monarchial. C and D. Unconditionally opposed to any kind of monarchic restoration. 6. What do they think of seizure of power f What do they term "Order," and what "Anarchy'? A. If a czar or a brave general seizes control, his authority comes from God; that is order. Anything else is Anarchy. B. If the capitalists hold power, even by force, that is order; to assume power against the capitalists would be anarchy. C. If the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors' Dele- gates alone are in power, anarchy threatens. For the present let the capitalists retain control, while the Councils have an "Ad- visory Commission." D. Sole authority must be in the hands of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates. The entire propa- ganda, agitation and organization of millions upon millions of people must at once be directed toward this end.^ 7. Shall we support the Provisional Government? A and B. Unquestionably, since it is the only means at this moment of guarding the interests of the capitalists. C. Yes, but with the condition that it should carry out its agreement with the Councils of W. S. and P. Delegates and should consult with the "Advisory Commission." D. No; let the capitalists support it. We must prepare the whole people for the complete and sole authority of the Coun- cils of W. S. and P. Delegates. 8. Are we for a single authority or for a dual authority? A and B. For sole power in the hands of the capitalists and landholders. C. For dual authority. The Councils of W. S. and P. Dele- gates to exercise "control" over the Provisional Government. But it would be pernicious to consider the possibility that this control might prove illusory. 1 Anarchy is a complete negation of all government authority, but the Councils of W. S. ana P. Delegates are also a government authority. 336 SELECTED ARTICLES D. For sole power in the hands of the Councils of W. S. and P. Delegates, from top to bottom over the whole country. 9 Shall a Constitutent Assembly he called? A. Not necessary, for it might injure the landholders. Sup- pose the peasants at the Constitutent Assembly should decide to take away the land of the landholders ? B. Yes, but without stipulation of time. Furthermore, the learned professors should be consulted, first, because Bebel has already pointed out that jurists are the most reactionary people in the world; and, second, because the experience of all revolu- tions shows that the cause of the people is lost when it is en- trusted to the hands of professors. C. Yes, and as soon as possible. As to the time, we have already discussed it in the meetings of the "Advisory Commis- sion" 200 times and shall definitely dispose of it in our 201 st dis- cussion to-morrow. D. Yes, and as soon as possible. Yet, to be successful and to be really convoked, one condition is necessary: increase the number and strengthen the pozver of the Councils of W. S. and P. Delegates; organize and arm the masses. Only thus can the Assembly be assured. 10. Does the state need a police of the conventional type and a standing army? A and B. Absolutely, this is the only permanent guarantee of the rule of capital, and in case of necessity, as is taught by the experience of all countries, the return from Republic to Monarchy is thus greatly facilitated. C. On the one hand, it may not be necessary. On the other hand, is not so radical a change premature? Moreover, we can discuss it in the Advisory Commission. D. Absolutely unnecessary. Immediately and unconditionally universal arming of the people shall be introduced so that they and the militia and the army shall be an integral whole. Capi- talists must pay the workers for their days of service in the militia. 20. Shall the peasants at once take all the land of the land- holders? A. and B. By no means. We must wait for the Constitutent Assembly. Shingarev already pointed out that when the capital- RUSSIA 337 ists take away the power from the Czar, that it is a great and glorious revolution, but when the peasants take away the land from the landholders, that is arbitrary tyranny. A Commission of Adjustment must be appointed, with equal representation of landholders and peasants, and the chairman must be of the offi- cial (chinovnik) class, that is, from among those same capital- ists and landlords. C. It would be better for the peasants to wait for the Con- stitutent Assembly. D. All the land must be taken at once. Order must be strictly maintained by the Councils of Peasants' Delegates. The produc- tion of bread and meat must be increased, the soldiers better fed. Destruction of cattle and of tools, etc., is not permissible. 21. Shall we limit ourselves to the Councils of Peasants' Delegates only for the management of lands and for all village questions in general f A and B. The landholders and capitalists are entirely opposed to the sole authority of the Councils of Peasants' Delegates in agrarian matters. But if these Councils are unavoidable, we must adapt ourselves to them, for the rich peasant is a capitalist, after all. C. We might for the present accept the councils, for "in- principle" we do not deny the necessity of a separate organiza- tion of the agrarian wage workers. D. It will be impossible to limit ourselves only to general Councils of Peasants' Delegates, for the wealthy peasants are of the same capitalistic class that is always inclined to injure or deceive the farmhands, day laborers and the poorer peasants. We must at once form special organizations of these latter classes of the village populations both within the Councils of Peasants' Delegates and in the form of special Councils of Delegates of the Farmers' Workers. 22. Shall the people take into their hands the largest and most powerful monopolistic organisations of capitalism, the banks, manufacturing syndicates, etc.? A and B. Not by any means, since that might injure the land- lords and capitalists. 338 SELECTED ARTICLES C. Generally speaking, we are in favor of handing over such organizations to the entire people, but to think of or prepare for this condition now is very untimely. D. We must at once prepare the Councils of Workers' Dele- gates, the Councils of Delegates of Banking Employes and others for the taking of all such steps as are feasible and completely realizable toward the union of all banks into one single national bank and then toward a control of the Councils of Workers' Delegates over the banks and syndicates, and then toward their nationalization, that is, their passing over into the possession of the whole people. Resolution on War, Passed by the General Russian Con- ference OF THE Russian Social- Democratic Workers' Party. April 26-May 9, 1917. (All voting in favor except seven, who refrained from voting at all). The present war, on the part of all the belligerents, is an im- perialistic war, that is, it is fought by capitalists for the division of spoils through their domination of the world, for markets, for financial capital, for the suppression of the backward nations, etc. Each day of war enriches the financial and industrial bour- geoisie and impoverishes and weakens the powers of the prole- tariat and the peasantry of all the belligerents, and later of the neutral countries. In Russia the prolongation of the war in- volves also a grave danger to the revolution and to its further development. The passing of government authority, in Russia, into the hands of the Provisional Government, that is, the government of the landholders and capitalists, did not and could not alter the char- acter and significance of the Russian participation in this war. This fact became particularly apparent w'hen the new gov- ernment not only did not publish the secret treaties concluded between the late Czar and the capitalist governments of England, France, etc., but even formally confirmed these secret treaties, which promised Russian capitalists a free hand in China, Persia, Turkey, Austria, etc., without consulting the Russian people. The concealment of these treaties from the Russian people com- pletely deceived them as to the true character of the war. " RUSSIA 339 For this reason the proletarian party can support neither the present war, nor the present government, nor its loans without breaking completely with internationalism, that is, with the fra- ternal solidarity of the workers of all lands in their struggle under the yoke of capitalism. No confidence is to be placed in the promises of the present government to renounce annexations, that is, conquests of for- eign territory, or in the promise to renounce forcible retention within the confines of Russia of this or that nationality. For, in the first place, since capitalists are bound together by the thou- sand threads of banking capital, they cannot renounce annex- ations in the present war, as they have not renounced the profits of the billions invested in loans, in concessions, in war indus- tries, etc. And, in the second place, the new government, hav- ing, in order to deceive the people, renounced annexations, then proceeded to state, through the mouth of Milyukov (Moscow, April 9 (22), 1917, that it had no intention of renouncing annexations and to confirm, in the note of April 18 and the eluci- dation of the note (April 22), the aggressive character of its policy. In warning the people against the empty promises of capitalists the Conference takes pains to point out the necessity of a sharp distinction between a renunciation of annexations in words and a renunciation of annexations in fact, that is, the immediate publication and abrogation of the secret treaties for conquest, and the immediate granting to all nationalities of the right to determine whether they wish to become independent gov- ernment or to become part of any other state. II The so-called "revolutionary defense," which, in Russia, has taken possession of all the nationalist parties (national-socialists, laborites, social-revolutionists, etc.), as well as the opportunists, party, of the social-democratic mensheviks (Organizing Com- mittee, Tseretelli, Cheidze, etc.), as well as the majority of the non-partisan revolutionists, embodies in itself, by reason of its class position, on the one hand the interests and the standpoint of the wealthier peasantry and a part of the small landlords, who, like the capitalists, draw a profit from their domination over the weaker nationalities. On the other hand, the "revolutionary defense" is the outcome of the deception by the capitalists of 340 SELECTED ARTICLES part of the proletariat and semi-proletariat of the cities and vil- lages who by their class position have no interest in the profits of the capitalists and in the waging of an imperialist war. The Conference declares that any form of "revolutionary de- fense" is completely intolerable and would actually betoken a total break with the principles of socialism and internationalism. As for the "defensive" tendencies present among the great masses, our party will struggle against these tendencies by cease- lessly emphasizing the truth that any attitude of uncritical con- fidence in the government of the capitalists at the present mo- ment is one of the greatest obstructions to an early conclusion of the war. Ill As for the most important question of the manner of con- cluding as soon as possible the present capitalist war, not by a dictated peace, but by a truly democratic peace, the Conference recognizes and declares the following: This war cannot be ended by a refusal of the soldiers of one side only, to continue the war, by a simple cessation of warlike activities on the part of one of the warring groups only. The Conference reiterates its protest against the low intrigues cir- culated by the capitalists against our party, with the object of spreading the impression that we are in favor of a separate peace with Germany. We consider the German capitalists to be the same band of robbers as the capitalists of Russia, England, France, etc., and Emperor Wilhelm to be the same crowned bandit as Nicholas II and the monarchs of England, Italy, Ru- mania and the rest. Our party will explain to the people, with patience and pre- ciseness, the truth that war is always bound up indissolubly with the policies of certain definite classes, that this war may only be terminated by a democratic peace if the governing powers of at least some of the belligerent countries are handed over to the class of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, who are really capa- ble of putting an end to the bondage of capitalism. The revolutionary class, having taken into its hands the gov- erning power in Russia, would inaugurate a series of measures to abolish the economic rule of capitalists, as well as of measures RUSSIA 341 to bring about their complete political sterilization and would immediately and frankly offer all peoples a democratic peace on the basis of a definite relinquishment of every possible form of annexation and contributution. Such pieaisures, and such an open offer would create a perfect understanding between the workers of the belligerent countries and would inevitably lead to an uprising of the proletariat against such imperialist govern- ments as might resist the peace offered them under the above conditions. Until the revolutionary class in Russia shall have taken over the entire authority of the government, our party will consistently support those proletarian parties and groups in foreign countries as are already, during the continuance of the war, fighting against their imperialist governments and their bourgeoisies. Particu- larly, the party will encourage any incipient fraternization of masses of soldiers of all the belligerent countries, at the front, with the object of transforming this vague and instinctive ex- pression of the solidarity of the oppressed into a class-conscious movement, with as much organization as is feasible, for the tak- ing over of all the powers of government in all the belligerent countries by the revolutionary proletariat. The above was written early in April, 1917- To the possible objection that now, since the forming of the "new" coalition government, on May_ 6, 1917, it may be a little out of date, I should like to make the following answer: "No. for the Advisory Commission did not really disappear, but simply changed its quarters, which it now shares with the cabinet members. The moving of the Chernovs and Tseretellis into their new quarters did not change either their policy or that of their party." LITERATURE, ART AND MUSIC RUSSIAN LYRICAL POETRY^ The lover of poetry may feel especially baffled if left with- out a guide through the vast steppes, the drear and limitless lands of Russian thought, at once so alien, so cheerless, with, as it were, neat Dutch gardens of modern origin interspersed — where the observer must peer at the new horizon through the borrowed glasses of translation. One fundamental difference between Russian and English poetry is that we English can boast of such vigorous antiquity of poetry, and are so prone to judge others by ourselves that, in condemning lands which have thriven later and more scantily, we do ourselves an injustice in supposing that all peoples can be equally favored. As the Eastern nations with their con- tinuous civilization of three thousand years might condemn ours, which has flourished but for one thousand, and yet un- justly condemn, so the Western nations of Europe should not be too quick to censure the god of Parnassus for showering his gifts so comparatively late in the day on the Russian peo- ple, for the returns from the soil so slowly matured have been very great and very swift. In Russian history there is one turning-point — the age of Peter the Great, than whom no more colossal figure has ap- peared. Before him, Russia was an Oriental State with no language save the Russian variety of Church Slavonic, and possessing no literature save a formless mass of popular legend. There was also some monastic lore — dim, shadowy, and of little historical value. This poetry, which preceded the Great Re- vival, has some outstanding features: it consists of the byliny or the chansons de geste, which were attached in the main to the mediaeval court of Kiev; these poems have a pecuHar char- acter and metre. They were meant to be sung to the Russian * By Leonard Magnus. Living Age. 275:606-13. December 7. 1912. 24 344 SELECTED ARTICLES zither and to a primitive melody, with either three or four beats, hence the syllabization, irregularity and accentuation often seem arbitrary. The conventional epithet and still more the conventional verse mark them out, such as are indeed found in all primitive oral balladry. The metric scheme is very simi- lar to the alliterative verse of the early Teutonic poems, with this difference: that alliteration has not been developed, and the continuity is maintained by the repetition of words. In this short poem of Sorrow an attempt has been made to reproduce something of the untutored genius of the Russian — "Whence, Oh Sorrow, is thy origin? She was born, was Sorrow, from grey earth. From under the stones that are grey. From under the briars, the clay-clods. And Sorrow shod her in shoes of bast. And Sorrow clad her in clothes of rushes, Apparelled her in thin bast waistband, And Sorrow approached the goodly champion. "He saw her, the champion, and must escape her, And fled from Sorrow to the open meadow. To the open meadow like a grey-clad hare, And Sorrow followed him. She tracked him out and stretched her meshes. Stretching her meshes, her silken fetters, 'Stand and deliver, avaunt not, champion!' He saw her, the youth, and must escape her; And from Sorrow he fled to the swift-flowing river. To the rushing river, like the pike-fish; And Sorrow followed him. She tracked him out, her nets she cast. Stretching her nets, the silken fetters. 'Stand and deliver, nor go thou champion!' He saw her, the youth, and must escape her. From Sorrow he fled to the fiery fever. To fever and illness, and laid him to bed. And Sorrow followed him. She tracked him out and sat at his feet; 'Stand and deliver, avaunt not, champion!' He saw her, the youth, and must escape her. From Sorrow he fled to the coffin-box, To the coffin-lid, to his little grave-mound, To his little grave in the gray dun earth. And Sorrow followed him. She tracked him out, in her hand her shovel. In her hand her shovel and drove in her carriage: 'Stand and deliver, avaunt not, champion!' Scarce was the breath alive in the champion, But Sorrow raked in his little grave-mound. Into his grave, into gray mother earth. And they sing the fame of the goodly youth." Peter the Great revolutionized Russia; he found her an Oriental State with a dead tongue, and a formless mass of writing, to leave her a European power (which had been able to conquer Charles XII of Sweden), with a cultured -litera- ture and a polished language. RUSSIA 345 He made the Russians use Russian, and modified the Slav- onic grammar and alphabet so as to be Russian. The byliny are poetry, but only share the same influence with the chansons de geste, or the Scotch balladry. Cultivated poetry, such as might be internationally recognized, came in with Lomon6sov. This great grammarian (not, indeed, the very first to write strictly accentuated verse in Russian) during his life 171 1- 1765) composed many odes based on French models. They were formal and dull. We must remember that modern Eng- lish and German verse re-fashioned itself after French, and the first essays were not successful — and that the great dis- aster of the Tartar invasion rolled back the Russian Renais- sance by two centuries; indeed, the Russia of to-day still ex- hibits many mediaeval ways of thought. In this new poetry the loom was foreign and the web also; but soon the garment was woven of national stuff, and itself became transformed into the national costume. The French models were themselves artificial — romanticism had yet to im- plant the great truth that the story of a people's childhood is the best lesson and guidance for its manhood. But classicism had one of the two constituents of poetry— form; and form had been lacking before; the period in which the inspiration becomes clothed with genuine national form is the true be- ginning of Russian artistry in verse. In this first period there was no public but the Court; con- sequently literature, which is the reflection of life, was as un- natural as this exotic life. Catherine I carried on Peter's work, founded the Academy and had the Western classics translated; amongst others, the essayists of England, Addison and his contemporaries, founded a school of thought somewhat less remote from observation of national character. Under her Bogdanovich, Kostrov and Petrov composed pseudo-classic effusions, and Krylov his won- derful pointed fables, which have often been Englished. Novi- kov and Shcherbatov were superior, because they did not study Court taste, but strove after a Slavophil ideal; the evil days on which they fell were an unwilled proof of the rectitude and depth of their tendencies. Of this first period of Russian literature little needs to be said. After Peter the Great, Russia had a Janus face — point- 346 SELECTED ARTICLES ing towards the East in her manners and religion, to the West in her intellectual life. And her literature henceforth forms an organic part of European literature, rising and falling with it. The Russian eighteenth century imitates that of Western Eu- rope. Unincited by any international wars of ideals, worldly even in the spiritual realm, the age of prose still plied its dusky wings over the Western world, with some faint gleam of occasional religious fervor. After the fashion of Voltaire's Henriade, and Klopstock's Messias, uninspired epics poured forth, as from Tredyakovski. Comedy flourished, and satire found congenial themes. Fon- Vfzin's comedies, though modelled upon Moliere, still live and have furnished many idioms and common quotations. The glory of this age is Griboyedov's Gore ot umd (the mishaps of wit). But then comedy and satire had a real basis; there was so much to decry, and security lay in laughter: "Who would die a martyr to sense when religion is folly?" Ridicule was levelled against bureaucracy, serfdom and society; and, in so far as the meagre inspiration of a satirist can extend, was inspired and sound. One weapon against itself Russian abso- lutism fostered — the study of history; it will be observed that Russia only exemplifies the universal law that the greatest literature is national, and from national themes sprang the grandest dramas and lyrics of the ninteenth century. Karam- zfn, the historian of Russia, is the forerunner of Khomyakov, the Slavophil, who championed national polity as against that of Germany or France. It is the paradoxical fashion of literary historians to con- struct definite periods and then acknowledge their inexactness by admitting they overlap. The inconsistency is really non- existent. Literature is an organic growth with regular sea- sons, but not all plants flower at the same time; and espe- cially when development is rapid, the old and the new come together in discordant juxtaposition and the forest seems a strange tangle of rotten trunks and freshening bushes. So Karamzin lived on in the age of Pushkin, and the duelist's weapon smote Lermontov only four years later than his master Pushkin. Vyazemski lived through the Byronism of the rev- olution, the romanticism and the nationalism of the l^^^apoleonic wars, the realism of the age of social reform, though he him- self was almost of the pseudo-classic school. Zhukovski in like RUSSIA 347 fashion outlived his sphere of activity. Literature follows na- tional life; and, as the crowning fact of the age of Lomonosov was the westernizing by Peter and Catherine, so Russian lit- erature felt the shock of the French Revolution, breathed the anarchic freedom, best typified in Shelley's and Byron's topical verse, and shook off the yoke and constraint of obsolescing form and thought. Literature followed Sidney's motto — "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write." The Revolution blew the cobwebs of classicism away with a rude blast of individualism. Glinka inaugurated the first school of pure lyric; it is very crude. This presentation may be very well compared with the Kiev of Khomyakov — Pligh upon the hill before me Lo, the walls of Kiev frown! Swift below them flows the Dnieper Twisting silvery past the town. Kiev, hail! Of Russian glory Thou the candle West of old, Dnieper, hail! The ever-welling Fount of Russia crystal-cold. . . . As in bygone days departed, They shall seek the holy place Come for peace and sure asylum Once again to thy embrace. (Translated by H. C. F.) Khomyakov was succeeded without warning by Delvig, who, not without some individuality of his own (he has a tuneful despondency with some direct natural coloring), is best taken in conjunction with his greater friend Pushkin, who is without doubt the greatest genius Russia has produced. Pushkin's work is in part very Byronic his Yevgeni Onycgin is a very success- ful adaptation of Don Juan to the Nevski Prospekt. His great dramas, Boris Godunow and others, show real power, and are none the worse for being inspired by Shakespeare. His short lyrics sometimes show the influence of Goethe, but have the admirable terseness which is conferred by the synthetic character of the Russian language and supreme polish, whilst the lyric in- sight into nature is very strongly marked. In his ballads, very largely framed on foreign models, he dealt in cultivated metre. with the great epics of early Russian history. Apart from the tremendous stride in form and in metre, Pushkin proved one still greater achievement: he made Russia 348 SELECTED ARTICLES at last look into her own heart and write. Yazykov, Alexis Tol- stoy and others followed in his wake. Pushkin and his wonder- ful school — Delvig, Baratynski, Tyutchev, Yazykov, etc., etc., are all Russian to the core, Russian too, in an evil way, with that subtle melancholy which is still that of a nation enslaved, when it is not Byronic, e.g. Through clamorous streets my feet go straying Or into some frequented fane, Or where the maids assemble playing, And nought my dreamings can constrain . . . My senseless corse can never care Where it may chance to waste away. I love my home. Let it be there It rest from e'er the last long day. Albeit when I shall lie decaying. New life will spring in joy and light, iheeding Nature still displaying > Eternal beauty, burning bright. Unheeding Nature still displaying (Pushkin.) There were two great schools of reformers at this time — the Slavophil, who looked to the resurrection of the Slav tradition, and found their leader in the great poet Khomyakov; and the revolutionaries, who spoke of the rights of man and looked to the West for guidance : Ogaryov is the principal name in this school. In the "'twenties and 'thirties" of the past century, as in Eng- land, lyric poetry reached its height, and balladry and drama were also consummated. The art was perfect and the concep- tion was popular; it was popular to an extraordinary degree. Koltsov, coming after Pushkin, ventured back to a lyrical adapta- tion of the old free metres of mediaeval Russian — I sit at my table And fall a-pondering How can I live on All solitary? No wife have I wedded, A maid for a man, Not a friend is my own now, A friend I can trust. . . . He bequeathed me poverty. My father mine. And one thing besides, A strong right hand. And all my vigor I have lost in vain: I must needs be servant To stranger-folk. His pastoral and agricultural pictures can hardly be equalled for their deadly appositeness and their utter simplicity. And, out- side the realms of the official Russian language, in Little-Russia, RUSSIA 349 Shevchenko instituted a new school of Little Russian poetry, consisting mainly of modernizations of the ancient ballads, but all pregnant with life. When the Decembrist revolt, in which Kiichelbecher and Rylyeyev suffered, was put down, and reform postponed by its failure, a change came over literature: Slavophilism was repro- bated; domestic reform remained. On the ebb of the romantic tide came Lermontov, the most Byronic of Russian poets, and in some respects the greatest. His temper is essentially morbid and introspective. The Demon is perhaps his greatest work. He conceived the Evil Spirit as wandering for ages, weary of evil-doing, and at last on Mount Kazbek in the Caucasus (that most fortunate place of exile for the great Russian poets — it inspired them all, and gave them leisure from engaging in plots which might have landed them in Siberia or on the scaffold), lights upon the unearthly beauty of the Caucasian maid Tamara. He falls in love with her, and forswears all his world dominion, and she consents at last to his embraces, which spell for her pos- sible apotheosis, but instantly death. Some passages out of thft Demon are quoted below — The Demon, the outcast went his way, Beneath the blue vault of the sky, He shone pure like the cherubim, And memories of a happier day Thronged through his mind tumultuously. Far days, when in the abode of light, When, where the racing comet ranged. It gleamed its welcome, spoke with him. . . . (The Demon to Tatndrd) Through the sky go ever traceless. In those fields aye unsurveyed. Clouds inviolate, embraceless, Woven like a fine brocade. Unto them nor jov, nor sorrow. Lovers' meetings, lovers met, No desire for the morrow. For the past no vain regret. Think of them, like them be careless, When the pangs of grief torment, Of all earthy shadows shareless, Be like them indifferent. CTamdra's love) A sail from the depths of the sea. Or the gleam of a star in the west, An angel appeared before me, Unforgotten that force of the blest. But whom was he flying to meet? All in vain my endeavor to learn: I saw him perhaps in my sleep: Alas, sleep then can never return. . . . 350 SELECTED ARTICLES Softly I slept, When near he crept: He is for ever more My Star Of hope in that strange clime, To atone my crime. Great God, incline! — If he know nought of love; then how Didst Thou, Make love Thy whole design? Lermontov's lyrics are all tinged with that same fatalistic pessimism, and it is only in his poems of legendary lore and love that this trail can be escaped. To the same period Alexis Tolstoy may be assigned : a great dramatist, lyrist and novelist, but as a poet there was something more of the studied and uninspired. His greatest gem is, per- haps, this little patriotic poem to his native land. The love of the steppe is, after all, fully as natural as the love of English poets for their native hedgerows — Country mine, land of my birth, Steeds that range without rein, Cry of eagles aloft, and on earth Wolves that howl o'er the plain. Oh, my country, hail all hail! Tree-tops slumber-bowed. Midnight song of the nightingale, Wind and steppe and cloud! After 1825, as in England, there is no great poet for sixteen years. The wild floods of revolution had run their course, and had been dammed, lost their froth and gathered strength for the next assault. As Tennyson and Browning were, in a sense, Liberals compared with the Radicalism of Shelley and Byron, and the Rossettis, artists in words and feelings, full of pathos and tenderness, but devoid of the energy and fierce passions of the Napoleonic era, so in Russia Polonski, Shenshin, Maykov and others represent the tendency to pure poetry for its own sake, and Nikitin, Nekrasov, Nadson, the yearnings for civil, civic freedom : they also rebel against the tradition of poetic form, like Browning; Nadson in one of his letters remarks "he cannot stomach Apukhtin" (the almost finicky lyrist) ; the re- forming poets and the artistic, as in England, meet in strange combination of contrast. And in them the key is lower; for hope had been long de- ferred, and mediaevalism was obstinate. It might well be asked, what was the moral effect on poetry of the Crimean war? Per- haps very little. The great battle was for the emancipation of RUSSIA 351 the serfs and the erection of some representative body; their freedom and the zemstvos followed as a consequence of the de- feat before Sebastopol; and thus, in a way, although a national conflict strains the brain and sinews, and rudely awakes the imagination of a people from the lethargy of peace, the vivify- ing work of this war was discounted in advance. The autocracy was then almost at breaking-point, and throne and people were completely at variance. Novelists and poets were all preaching social xef orm, and when the defeat in the war came to stamp the despotism with the brand of inefficiency, Nicholas I resigned the task. He left his heir, Alexander II, express directions to emancipate the serfs and create some local authorities; and in this great period the floodgates were opened and the reproofs of the pen poured forth. Indeed, it was only the assassination of Alexander that prevented a kind of Parlia- ment being constituted. The melody of this new school is called realism. No longer is the poetic instinct satisfied to idealize the figures of legend — it must portray the sufferings and wrongs of the people. Poetry cannot altogether accomplish this ; poetry shows forth the inherent beauty of life too visibly to be believed, too bare of the drab disguises of the present; prose is more of time, and we have the great names of Russian realism, the great novelists of the 'fifties, Gogol, Turgenyev, Dostoyevski, who by actual experience know what the great masses of the Russian people suffered in resigned silence. There is a gulf between this style and the ultra-romantic tales of Pushkin {e. g. A Contemporary Hero). Some remarks may still be made on what differentiates Rus- sian poetry from that of Western Europe. By the nature of the language, Russian has no monosyllables, very few prepositions, and is as synthetic as Latin, and only less exact than Greek. This confers on Russian poetry a strange feeling of terseness and directness, something like what might happen if a Horace were to arise in modern times to write in modern metres and his own language. A translation from the Russian loses more than from any other language, as the clean-cut edge has been moulded into the rounder form of the analytical languages of the West of Europe. 352 SELECTED ARTICLES MODERN RUSSIAN FICTION^ Considering the enormous proportions of some of our modern English novels, and the conviction of some publishers that it is length that counts, it is really a human relief to turn to con- temporary Russia and to find that most of the works of genius are contained in the space of fifty pages each. They are humbler in Russia; they do not protest such an encyclopaedic knowledge of life; and to-day, at least, Russia believes that brevity is the soul of wit. The era of long novels seems to have definitely passed with Tolstoy. Chekhof has delivered to Russia a new art, that of giving the essential poignancy or delight of a long story in a few pages, the art of making a story out of three sentences and an interrogation mark. Fiction stands on a considerably higher level to-day in Russia than in England. The standard set by the public is higher — or I suppose it would be truer to say that the general run of conver- sation in life is more interesting and therefore the literature is more interesting. You will seldom sit in a railway carriage or go to a gathering of Russians anywhere without hearing con- versation which, if taken down in shorthand and re-copied, would be found to contain matter of literary interest. If small talk is generally sand, Russian small talk is the alluvial gravel from which you can wash out gold. For that reason Russian litera- ture is great, and is becoming greater. Russia is surely the great literary country of the future. It is a custom to say in England that Russian literature is contained and ended in the works of Turgeniev, Dostoevsky, Gogol, ancf Tolstoy. Thii is a mistake of the conventional; these are what may be called the classical novelists of Russia, and they correspond more or less to our Jane Austen, Dickens, Fielding, and — but we have no one we can even remotely liken to Tolstoy. There have followed a whole host of wonderful writers — Chekhof, the inimitable talewriter and planter of question-marks ; Kouprin, the Russian Kipling; Gorky, the gentle, tender, rebellious tramp; Andreef, the chiaroscuro, horror-striken mourner which the Revolution and the War produced; the fantastic Sologub; Rem- izof, the writer of beautiful tales; Biely, the occult ^and sym- 1 Living Age. 281:749-53. June 20, I9i4' RUSSIA 353 bolical ; Bunin, the Russian Hardy, and many others— a fair new June of Russian fiction. Chekhof is most beloved of Russians. He is perhaps the dearest of all their writers, for he told simple stories in such a way that you smile over his characters, you shed tears at what he said. He always leaves you tender towards mankind. He is Russia's supreme optimist. He lived in a sunbathed datcha at Yalta in the Crimea and loved his roses; he had a great rose- garden, and every morning might be seen tending his flowers and leaves. "In three hundred years the world will be all one garden like this," said he one day to Kouprin. He has written some twenty odd volumes of stories, all of which have been trans- lated into French and German. In Germany Chekhof is very highly appraised. In England unfortunately there are only two volumes of his stories — "The Black Monk" a very good selec- tion, well translated, and "The Kiss," a. poor selection. Russian literature is so popular in England just now that it shows con- siderable lack of enterprise and understandmg on the part of pub- lishers that Chekhof is not being systematically translated and published. After Chekhof the most popular Russian tale-writer is Kou- prin, the author of ten volumes of astonishingly clever and touch- ing stories. He is occasionally coarse, occasionally too senti- mental, but he gives great delight to his readers. With him everything is taken from life; his are rough-hewn lumps of con- versation and life. He seems to be a master of detail, and the characteristic of his style is a tendency to give the most divert- ing lists. Often paragraph after paragraph, if you look into the style, will be found to be lists of delicious details reported in a conversational manner. He is also the inventor of amusing sentences which can almost be used as proverbs : He knew which end of the asparagus to eat. We looked at our neighbors through a microscope; they at us through a telescope. Every one of Kouprin's stories has the necessary Attic salt. I have said he is like Kipling. He is also something like the Amer-r ican O. Henry, especially in the matter of his lists of details and his apt metaphors, but he has not the artifice nor the everlasting American smile. Kouprin, moreover, takes his matter from life and writes with great ease and carelessness; O. Henry put to- gether from life and re-wrote twelve times. 354 SELECTED ARTICLES Kouprln is a most charming writei*. The English especially would like him, for he does not philosophize or symbolize; he gives his story and allows the reader to make the comment. He ought certainly to be translated into English. Such a selection as the following would obtain hundreds of grateful readers — "For Fame," "The Slavonic Soul" "Psyche" "The Garnet Bracelet" "The River of Life," "A Dog's Happiness," "The Last Wordy "The Tramp's Gambit," "How the Professor Trained My Voice," "The Machine for Castigation," "Moloch," "Olecia." Gorky, who has just returned to Russia after eight years' involuntary exile, has been almost entirely translated into English, and is familiar to the English reader. His first works had a great success all over Europe — "Three Men," "Foma Gordyef," and his many short talks. Despite the gross details and ugly immorality that Gorky has not the strength to keep back from the tender reader, he was undoubtedly the greatest novelist of the revolu- tionary period. Though he is living and hoping now, yet his best work really belongs to a past era. "Three Men" and "Foma Gordyef," though they vigorously survive, are not expressive of the national mood of today. Gorky's talents have unfortunately been killed by exile. He has scarcely written a line worth read- ing since he went to Capri. He has now come back to Mother Russia and is living quietly in the country. His next work of art may tell the world whether he can still speak for Russia. He is, however, very delicate and ill, and the tremendous excitement and stimulus of Russia may kill him. Andreef's work has come to England, and it is evident that the English do not care for him. His psychology of hysteria and delirium does not appeal to the British temperament. "The Red Laugh" was a fair example of his work, the story of a man who went mad at the sight of the blood shed in the Russo-Japanese War. "The Story of the Seven Hanged," was his most popular work in Russia, and was evoked by the terrible number of exe- cutions of young revolutionaries and expropriators. It was meant to strike terror into the heart, but as Tolstoy said of the book and its author — "He is always taking one into dark places and say- ing, 'Aren't you afraid?' — but I am not frightened." "Judas Iscariot" and "Lazarus" were interesting studies translated by the Rev. W. H. Lowe, but sensational in treatment. Andjeef has shown that if it is necessary to stoop to conquer, he will stoop, and today he is writing pieces for the cinema. RUSSIA 355 Sologub is a remarkably gifted and eccentric writer of tales. His genius suggests that of Poe, but if so it is a new Poe living in a clearer element. His work lacks the preliminary fee-fo-fum of mystification, the motive which may be expressed by the Shakespearian sentence — Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves And set them standing at their dear friends' doors. Sologub might have written "The Cask of Amontillado" but could not have touched "The Descent of the Maelstrom" or "The Murders of the Rue Morgue." Remizov in these days becomes a great man, and, despite one fantastic novel on the sexual question perpetrated years ago, ma> be said to be the writer of the most beautiful stories that Russia is bringing forth to-day. Biely, theosophist, follower of Rudolph Steiner, is also in the field as a novelist, but gives forth matter not likely to be trans- lated, since much of it is obscurely and fantastically written. His best book is "The Silver Dove" a story of the sects of Russia. He is now writing "Petersburg" appearing in the Sirion maga- zine, an original piece of work, new in form and in intention, an effort to register and indicate the occult life of the great capital. It has been called a sequel to Dostoevsky's "Demons" Bunin is a characteristically Russian writer, not of great gift.t but knowing the country and the peasants. He loves to describe' storms, forlorn and desolate scenery, the midnight hour ; and his slight stories sometimes suggest those cinematograph romances played out against absurdly picturesque landscapes, and flickered on the screen to a rapturous accompaniment of Tchaikovsky or Rubinstein. The wild heath should be kept for Macbeth or King . Lear; there are other places in which Lorenzo and Jessica can make love. I Of those who have come to the forefront in the last fifteen years there remains Artsibashef, the author of the notorious book "Sanin," the vulgar outcome of mistaken Nietzscheanism. Russia is the living East as India and China are the dead East, and as America is the living West and we the dying West. Rus- sian literature will exhibit many unsightly phenomena and sur- vive them. Its genius is the polarization of all that is living in the mystical East. All lost ideas tend to find a home there. All that is mystic finds its kin and crystallizes and becomes organic. 356 SELECTED ARTICLES SOME NOTES ON MODERN RUSSIAN ART When, at the close of the tenth century, the first ikons, or sacred pictures, were imported into Russia, the few enhghtened spirits of the time were engaged in the hard task of Christianis- ing the masses, and striving to create a social life out of chaos. The sparse population of Russia, scattered over a vast region of bogs and forests, was slow to adopt the most primitive elements of political and religious culture, and wholly indifferent to aes- thetic interests. To this predominance of religious influences we must attribute the phenomenon of an exclusively sacred art, subordinated to ecclesiastical authority for a period of fully eight centuries. And, except to the specialist learned in the rival pe- culiarities of the "traditional Greek," or the friajsky styles of ikonography, this long period offers nothing of variety or interest. Even more dreary is the imitative period of the eighteenth century, when a host of second-rate French and Italian painters ministered to the uncultured taste of the aristocracy. Nor was there much improvement when, after the foundation of the Acad- emy of Arts in 1757, these foreign imitators of Guido Reni and Lebrun found themselves driven out by a "parasitic" school of native copyists. "Like a new Minerva," says Muther, "armed with diplomas and arrayed in Academical uniform, Russian art now descended to earth, ready made." It is impossible to understand nowadays the indiscriminate admiration lavished upon Brulov's colossal painting The Last Days of Pompeii (1831), not only by the crowd, but by such men of culture as Poushkin, Gogol and Sir Walter Scott. The ten- tative effort towards truth and historical accuracy displayed in Ivanov's long-neglected work, Christ Appearing to the Nations, seems far more admirable from our present standpoint than the pompous romanticism of Brulov. What Ivanov did to vitalise the "grand art" in Russia, Fedotov effected for genre-painting. Such matter-of-fact and simply humorous pictures as The Newly Decorated Knight and The Choice of a Bride are the artistic counterparts of Gogol's earlier novels. But the chief interest in Russian art can only be said to begin with that wonderful renaissance of the social and spiritual life which followed the accession of Alexander II, and the^great * By Rosa Newmaxch. International Studio. 21: 130-6. December, 1903. RUSSIA 357 Act of Emancipation. The jester's cap and bells was the disguise under which art and literature frequently escaped the rigorous censorship of the fifties. But the second generation of genre- painters belongs to an entirely new time and regime. These men regarded their art as a moral and educational force. Like the writers of the day, they not only "went to the people" for their inspiration, but they strove to make their pictures a form of protest against existing abuses. The greatest representative of this didactic school was Perov, with his Hogarthian presentments of every-day Hfe. Near him we must place Savitsky and Prian- ishnikov. The former, in his choice of subject and treatment of an every-day crowd, recalls our English artist. Frith. But he is far more dramatic and emotional. The picture Off to the War, in the Alexander III Museum of St. Petersburg, is considered his masterpiece. Less sensational than Verestshagin's exposures of the horrors of war, it is, nevertheless, a strong protest against the hardships of conscription. Prianishnikov's Procession of the Cross, from the same gallery, deals with a totally different phase of life in an equally realistic spirit. The procession, with the holy and miracle-working pictures, has just left the monastery across the water. The entire population of the district, rich and poor alike, is assembled on the shore to do honour to these symbols of the orthodox faith. In the blinding sun old bareheaded men and fashionably-dressed women will follow the cortege along the dusty road to the church. In the foreground a shaggy moujik bends down to kiss the sacred ikon. The picture is at once touching and sad; for it shows the simple faith that makes life possible to the bulk of the Russian people, and also the blind superstition which holds them back from a nobler destiny. Among these realistic pictures there is nothing more distinctive than Found Drowned, by Dmitriev-Orenburgsky. It is a life-like study of rural life. The pompous village constable writing up his re- port on the back of a patient moujik, gives a touch of inimitable humour to this otherwise sombre scene. But as the feverish, reconstructive, activity of the sixties calmed down, these didactic and positive ideals underwent a change. Art developed in more legitimate courses, while remain- ing intensely national. Form and colour took their rightful places, and "the purpose" became subordinate to the emotion. In the works of Pastnernak and Bogdanov-Bielsky there is a decided tendency to impressionism ; but the most important rep- 358 SELECTED ARTICLES resentatives of modern Russian painting have developed each according to his own strong individuality, attaching little import- ance to schools and catch-words, and united only by the tie of a strong national feeling. In 1872, thirteen of the most prominent students, rebelling against its conventional routine, seceded from the Academy un- der the leadership of Kramskoi. They instituted the "Society of Travelling Exhibitions," and sent their works far and wide over the vast area of their native land. Thus art, for the first time, became truly popularised in Russia. With "The Travellers" have been associated all the most brilliant talents of the last three decades. Kramskoi is the elegiac poet among Russian painters. He died comparatively young, and his output of work was not great ; but he inaugurated a period of freedom in Russian art of which we cannot, as yet, predict the ultimate results. Constantine Makovsky is a many-sided genius. His historical scenes are considered impeccable as regards costume and arch- aeological detail. Of late years a fatal facility for pleasing the popular taste has drawn him further and further from the na- tional idea. His picture of The Roussalkas, or Watersprites, is a poetical conception of one of the popular Russian legends. The greatest of living Russian artists is undoubtedly Elias Repin. He has represented in the light of his own strong in- dividuality almost every type of mediaeval and contemporary Rus- sian life. He is especially successful in dealing with a number of figures, and in giving startling animation to a crowded canvas. To borrow a musical simile from a Russian critic, "Repin is greater in chorus than in solo." The graceful and the miniature lie completely outside his province. He has a gigantic elemental strength that has won him the name of "the Samson of Russian painters." A superb example of his vitality and realistic force is the picture of Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Sul- tan of Turkey. Himself of Cossack descent, Repin has under- stood the uncouth mirth and exuberant animal spirits of this race of fighters and revellers. The picture is worthy to rank with Gogol's romance of Cossack-life, "Taras Boulba." As might be expected from a race whose art and literature are preeminently realistic, the Russians are admirable in portrai- ture. Almost all their painters of note have done good work in this direction; but here, as in other respects, Repin has excelled RUSSIA 359 them all. He has endowed his country with a collection of por- traits which, for value and interest, we may compare with that of Watts. Repin has painted several portraits of Tolstoi. About a year ago, shortly after the excommunication of the Count, the latest portrait was missing from its place in the Alexander III Museum; rumor said it had been temporarily removed because Tolstoi's admirers showed their disapproval of the Church's methods by laying flowers and wreaths before the pic- ture of their favorite. Landscape remained under the thrall of foreign influence longer than historical or genre painting. Russian artists went abroad for their subjects, or, when they painted what was at hand, they showed it in an artificial light. The sober charms of Northern Europe took on the glow and colour of the South. The Steppes became indistinguishable from the Campagna; a street in Moscow suggested Rome. Such travesties are the works of Vorobiev, Rabuse, and the rest of their school. Then came a sudden reaction from all that was false and conventional when the works of Shishkin raised landscape painting to a new level, making it worthy to compare with the art of Corot and Daubigny. Shishkin had a number of followers, of whom Klever may be accounted one of the most gifted. To him, as to Shishkin, the mystery and horror of the forests, as well as their grace and tranquility, have been revealed and reproduced in many fine paintings. Religious art, so jealously fenced in from contact with the secular world, was naturally the last to be reached by the national realistic tendency. The earliest expression of freedom in sacred art is noticeable in Cue's picture of The Last Supper. Here we have travelled far from the unyielding Byzantine tradition, or even from the tentative realism of Ivanov. There is no trace of the old iconography, nothing of the pompous academical pose of the period of Brulov and Moller. The treatment is natural and picturesque, the attitudes unstudied. That of the Christ, extended Oriental fashion on a couch, is strikingly unconven- tional. There is more elegiac sentiment than power in the pic- ture. The drooping figure and bowed head of the Saviour sug- gest human discouragement rather than divine force. Among the everyday figures of the Apostles, that of Judas strikes a dis- cordant note of melodrama. The "literary" movement in relig- ious art led the way to psychological and ethnological phases, 25 36o SELECTED ARTICLES The strongest reflection of these ideas is seen in Pelenov's Woman Taken in Adultery, Repin's St. Nicholas Thaumaturgus, and Kramskoi's Christ in the Wilderness. The last-named has many exquisite quaHties. The painters, like the composers of Russia, have discovered that the way of nationality is the way of salvation. The final development of Russian art depends therefore upon its sane and inviolate patriotism. Since Perov, Schwartz, and Repin expressed in painting the spiritual secrets of their race, Russian artists have accomplished great things. They have overtaken the Western nations in the matter of technique; and now, with their deep feeling for humanity, their youthful energy and strong originality, a glorious future lies before them. Year by year, the conviction surely gains upon us that Russian painting, like Russian music, is a quantity we can ill afford to neglect. MUSIC IN RUSSIA^ /. Its Spirit There is perhaps no other people in the world so musical as the Russian, and perhaps no other people whose body of national music approaches so near to the real psychology and philosophy of the nation's life, the people's joys and sorrows, aspirations and strivings, achievements and failures. For the Russian, music is a delight. It is the natural, inevitable expression of an emo- tional people, and Russians are highly emotional. It may be said that the most characteristic feature of the so- called Russian "popular" song (which forms the real basis of the truly native musical art of the country) is, that it not only per- meates, but actually dominates the whole spiritual life of the people. The peasant sings these songs as he follows the rhyth- mical movements of his plow, and in moments of hunger, joy, or grief. The workingman in the city, the mechanic, the servant, the student, the teacher, — all sing them, pouring into their strains their stifled longings for the ideal which is denied to them, but which unconsciously attracts them and beckons to them through the mist of life's grim realities. 1 By Alexis RIenzi. Russian Revieiy. (N. Y.) 1:29-33, 98-102. Febru- jiry-l^arch, 19 16, RUSSIA 361 No matter to what page you open the book of Russia's life, you will find running through the narrative a thread of eternal yearning, of poignant regret for things gone into the story, with nothing in the present to take their place. It is this strain, plain- tive, and sometimes sad, which you find predominating in Russian folk-song, whose unpremeditated pathos springs from actual pas- sion, actual pain, actual sorrow. But though plaintiveness is the prevailing note, the folk-songs express a wide and varied range of emotion. Sometimes they speak of sorrow, and solitude, and a great monotony, as if the vast plain of Russia had become ar- ticulate, and was expressing its spirit. Mournful too, are the wedding-songs of the Russian peasant-women, though sometimes the melody is a lighter one, telling archly of the ways of win- ning a bashful swain. And in many of the native airs there is conveyed a sense of the broad expanse of the steppe, where one can breathe free and deep, and know himself a man. To be fully appreciated, Russian folk-music must be heard in its native surroundings. Rendered on the concert stage, under artificial surroundings and to the accompaniment of instruments that are not really popular, the songs lose their true effect. The place to hear them in their purity is in some out-of-the-way vil- lage, far from the main roads of civilization. But it is when the villagers are engaged in "communal" work, especially during harvesting-time, that the harmony between the surroundings and the people and the strains that arise, is most complete. In Russian folk-songs, words and music are closely linked. They are an invitation to the dance; they set the peasant's feet a-dancing and make him clap his hands. It is not the words so much, as the melody that makes the songs so infectious. Far more definitely than language can do it, the melodies express the true national spirit. It is this distinctive quality that the great Russian composers have recognized, and they have done well in taking the Russian folk-music as the basis for the development of a native school of music. In the great Russian musical compositions, the national song does not serve merely as a theme, a subject. It dominates, it rules, it gathers about it the best of the ornamentation that a musical genius can produce for its appropriate setting. The composer merely embellishes it, as he truthfully and skillfully makes its meaning, its aim, and its origin apparent to the listener. It is not surprising, therefore, that Russian music, when at its 362 SELECTED ARTICLES best, is so profoundly national, so deep, so truthful, so humanly appealing. Take Borodin's "Song of the Black Forest." Whoever has heard this marvelous bit of Russian music will readily under- stand what national music is when produced by the accumulated spiritual wealth of generations, and shaped into musical forms by the mighty genius of a great composer. The words, adapted by Borodin himself, may serve to give a glimpse into the beauty and the power of this song. The dark forest stood, full of noises strange,^ and a song he sang. Ah, an ancient song! A tale true to life, the dark forest told: How freedom bold midst its trees once dwelt; how the power and strength of a people great, gathered, mustered there; how that freedom bold played in liberty, how that power and strength gaily sported there; how that freedom bold into battle went, how that power and strength cap- tured cities strong, scorned and mocked the foe, drank and spilled his blood; freedom bold, power, and strength. The falling cadences at the end of the piece, wonderfully expressive in the musical rendering, seem to tell a whole story of the glories that were, and are no more. To hear a song like this is almost to read a whole book that tells the tale of a mighty movement throbbing with life and aspiration. And yet, despite its many virtues, despite its wonderful qual- ities of beauty, and simplicity, and depth, and truthfulness, Rus- sian music has met with tragic fate on the road of its artistic development. Russian composers, like Russian men of letters, are compelled to wait a long time for their well-deserved tri- umph, both in Russia and outside of their native land. And sometimes recognition does not come until long after their death. While some European composers of fashionable music conquer the whole world with their productions almost before the ink on their manuscript is dry, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and even the father of Russian mtisic, the great Glinka, waited many years for the appreciation which they so richly merited. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that Russian crea- tors of music are not possessed of commercial ability. A Rus- sian composer, with few exceptions, will never dream of selling his opera before it is written. He is not looking for managers, and "orders" and royalties. He begins to create when he feels the impulse to do so, when his feelings and his thoughts blend together and clamor for expression. The possibilities of market- ing his work seldom occur to him. RUSSIA 363 And during the process of creating, the composer literally forgets about himself and pays no heed to the things around him. Even when his work is done he is still in no hurry to offer it for sale. It is as if he were sorry to part with the product of his soul. It is for this reason, perhaps, that so many composers in Rus- sia die prematurely, long before their genius receives due recog- nition. Wasily Kalinniko^^n almost any one of whose short songs there is more feeling and genius than in many an opera popular today, died very young. Starvation, neglect, excessive labor, — these sum up the tale of his brief life. He died before a single one of his compositions was published, without hearing one of them played in public. It was only after his death that they were performed, with signal success. Moussorgsky, whose musical genius, combined with the poeti- cal inspiration of Pushkin, created the wonderful drama of "Boris Godounov," died in 1881. Yet it was not until twenty- \ five years after his death that his great work was staged for the first time. And the immortal Glinka ? He died fifty-eight years ago, and as yet his marvelous opera, "Rouslan and Ludmila" is practically unknown outside of Russia. And some think that any act of this magnificent opera has more of the true spirit of music than most of the fashionable operas that flash like rockets across the sky of music and disappear into oblivion. "Boris Godounov" has, at last, gained recognition, but "Rouslan and Ludmila/' although superior to it, is still awaiting a hearing in the West. Koltzov, who of all Russian poets has given perhaps the best expression of the national soul of Russia, wrote a charming poem, which Rimsky-Korsakov set to music. Charmed by a rose's radiance bright. The nightingale sings day and night. Yet silent hears his lay the rose. A singer, thus, upon his lyre, Before a maid pours out his fire; And yet the maiden never knows To whom he sings, and why his lay Is ever sad, and sad alway. Like the nightingale, like the poet, the Russian composers sing long, long before they are understood and welcomed. A com- mercial age encounters even more difficulty than the "Maiden" in understanding the subject of Russian music, because the music of Russia is almost, if not entirely, free from the sensual element. It is truly spiritual. 364 . SELECTED ARTICLES Russian vocal music is not suited to mechanical reproduction. It must be heard as a living thing, from a living artist. It is the offspring of the song of the long-suffering Russian people. And whoever knows the Russian songs will understand why Russian music is so truthful, so sincere, so heart-felt, so hu- manly appealing. It is possible that, in the future, this music is destined not only to bathe in the sunlight of glory and suc- cess, but also to exert a tremendous influence upon the spiritual and moral tenor of our social life. Russian music does not strive to please, to cater to the popu- lar taste; its aim is to educate. Like the truthful historian, it tells the story of the Russian people, of its life, its beliefs, its sufferings, its love, and its spiritual might. One need not be pessimistic about the future of Russian music. It is an outlook that is rich and full of promise. Already one can see the gratifying indications of a growing interest in the native art. The composers of the past generation have given it an impulse that will take Russia to the foremost ranks of musical achievement. Her period of imitation and adaption is past. In the wake of her literature, that has made its influence felt throughout the West, is now flowing the tide of Russia's music. //. Its Development The development of Russian music consists of a continuous struggle between the ideas of the composers of Western Europe and the peculiar genius of national music. Almost every Russian composer shows traces of such a struggle. And it is when the national spirit dominates over the foreign, that the musical art of the country rises to its sublimest heights. Before the nineteenth century, music in Russia was introduced almost exclusively by German and Italian musicians and com- posers, who were brought over by the Court and the aristocracy. They did not care to study the national music of the country, but composed according to their Western ideas. At times it hap- pened that they did introduce into their work national motifs and tunes, but this was usually done "to order" and the result lacked all artistic value. There were also several Russian composers during this first period of Russian music. Among these were Titov, called "the grandfather of Russian song," Varlamov, Yakovlev, Aliabiev, RUSSIA 365 Donaurov, Verstovsky, and others. But the musical education olE these men was not thorough, and their work was too German- Italian to be of any great service to Russian music. Verstovsky even attempted to write an opera called "Askold's Tomb*' but this opera had nothing of the native flavor. The second period in the development of Russian music begins with Glinka (1804-1857). In his earlier works he was still under the influence of the German-Italian school, and even his national opera, "Life for the Tsar," did not escape this influence. If it were not for the characteristically Russian strains in the chorus of the last act, and the fugue, the trio, and Vania's aria, this opera would have had to be classed with his other early works, all of them foreign in their provenience. It was only after his trip to Italy, in the thirties, that Glinka came to the conclusion that Italy had nothing to give him. He then wrote to his friend Kukolnikov, that his eyes were finally opened, and that he realized that "we Russians are different, and what we want is something different." After this, he discarded foreign ideas and came to rely upon his own original genius. It was at this time that he began to produce the series of composi- tions that have earned for him the title of "Creator of Russian Music." While we cannot here go into a critical study of GHoka's works as a composer, it must be said that his opera, "Ruslan and Ludmila," is the starting point of the truly Russian school of music. Among his instrumental pieces the most remarkable ones are "Chota," "Kamarinskoye," and "Nights in Madrid.'* Glinka wrote many songs, but only one of them, the "Night Review," occupies a really high place. There is another composer whose name is extremely important in the consideration of the second period in the development of Russian music. J}^ rs'^"''y^^ ^]^'o_.-o t- A^t- Js jn many ways like that of Glinka. He, too, at first, bowed to the influence of foreign models. He even imitated Glinka for some time. Among his many songs is one called the "Night Review," which is in struc- ture similar to Glinka's song of the same name. One of his pieces, however, "Palladin," is a gem, and many think that it has never been surpassed in the treasure-house of songs. Dargomyzh sky's opera, "^Rusalka" (The Nymph), with the libretto based on Pushkin's dramatic poem of the same name, is perhaps more Russian than Glinka's "Life for the Tsar," but in V 366 SELECTED ARTICLES it Dargomyzhsky is still far from attaining to the height he reached in his later operas, "Rogdana" and "The Stone Guest." It was Glinka who laid the foundation for the Russian school of music, but it was Dargomyzhsky that reared the walls of the structure. There is, perhaps, no other Russian composer, with the ex- ception of Moussorgsky, whose music expresses so realistically the truth of life. "I want the sound to express the word," said Dargomyzhsky, and this was his watchword to the end. It was the legacy he left to that wonderful group of composers which followed him and which came to be known as the "Moguchaya Kuchka" (The Mighty Group). It was Dargomyzhsky's house that became the meeting-place of the men who were destined to carry on the noble task of creating a national music. Dargomyzhsky was the first to recog- nize the mighty musical genius of Moussorgsky. Through him, the young army officer, brimful of talent, became intimately con- nected with Balakirev and Cui. These three men were soon joined by Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, and the "Moguchaya Kuchka" came to be. The work of this group of composers forms the third stage in the development of Russian music. Among them, the most faithful follower of the precepts of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky was Moussorgsky. Everything that he composed is permeated with truly Russian coloring. All his subjects were taken from the actual life of the Russian people. This genius, "this god of the new Russian music," as Debussy once called him, represented in his glowing tones, with marvelous power and truthfulness, every phase of human life, — be it of peasant or boyar, — from childhood to death. There is scarcely another composer who has approached as near as Moussorgsky to Dargomyzhsky's great precept, "I want the sound to express the word." Balakirev is sometimes called the leader of the "Moguchaya Kuchka." But he was a leader only in a certain sense. When the little group came into existence, Balakirev was already a well- known musician. Naturally, the others, much younger than he in years and in musical experience, grouped themselves about their more accomplished and maturer colleague. But Balakirev's in- fluence was not such as to affect the development of the musical work of the younger composers. It is true they often sought his advice and criticism, but each followed his own road, although RUSSIA 367 all these roads converged to the same goal, the realization and the extension of the precepts of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky, As a composer, Balakirev made several very valuable contribu- tions to the music of his country. While not very numerous, all his compositions are remarkable for their originality, polish, and finish. Among his best compositions are his symphony "Russia/* his symphonic poem "Tamara," and his overture "On Russian Themes" He edited an excellent collection of Russian popular songs. A.. P. 5orodin_^was one of the most brilliant exponents of the Russian national music that was being created by the "Moguchaya Kuchka." It is as a symphonist that he attained prominence, and his compositions were instrumental, rather than vocal. Except for a few exquisite songs, Borodin's larger vocal compositions, like his opera, "2liriceJ[gorj^[' for example, appear to be unfinished, as though he did not devote to them the painstaking attention which results in brilliancy and polish. His orchestral pieces are his most distinctive works. C. A. Cui was a devoted member of the "Moguchaya Kuchka." But his contribution to the work of this musical cenacle was not so much in the capacity of composer, as of musical critic, always ready to defend the ideas and the strivings of the "Moguchaya Kuchka." As composer, he can scarcely be classed with the school of Russian national music. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the later Western composers of the classic school, Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz. His works are romantic,. in character, and even his subjects, with the exception of several songs, are not taken from Russian life. The last member of the "Moguchaya Kuchka," N. AJimsky^ Korsakov, was the most prolific and many-sided composer of the group. All his works, no matter what their character, seem equally brilliant, and it is impossible to say whether the palm is to be given to his orchestral, or his vocal compositions. Some of his most remarkable works for the orchestra are his symphony in E-moll, "Scheherazade," and his Capriccio on Spanish themes. He wrote many operas, the best known among which are "Snie- gurochka" "Mlada" "Pskovitianka" "Tale about Tsar Saltan," and "The Royal Bride" His efforts comprise, moreover, whole volumes of songs, duets, choruses, and cantatas. The cult of the Russian national music, whose prophets were Glinka and Dargomyzhsky, and whose apostles were Balakirev, 368 SELECTED ARTICLES Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and Cui, was, and still is, religiously worshipped by a whole group of talented compos- ers. Among them are men honored not only in Russia, but also in the countries of the West. Glazounov, Rachmaninov, Ilinsky, Kalinnikov, Grechaninov, Liadov, Arensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Taneyev — all these are the men whose works are slowly being revealed to the music-lovers of the world. There are two more names of which musical Russia is justly proud. These are P. Chaikovsky (1840-1893) and A. Rubinstein (1829-1894). Both of these composers have done yoeman's ser- vice in the cause of music in Russia, although they followed dif- ferent paths. Chaikovsky stands apart from the rest of the Russian com- posers. Many and invaluable were his contributions to the wealth of Russian music, and yet his creative genius as a composer be- longs not to Russia alone. A Russian by spirit and temperament, he is, at the same time, cosmopolitan in his creative work. It is for this reason that his wor^*wefe produced in Western Europe before any other Russian had a hearing. In speaking of Rubinstein, one cannot help comparing him with Glinka. If Russian national music would, perhaps, have been impossible without Glinka, without Rubinstein the blos- soming out of the native music would have been delayed many decades. Rubinstein's efforts to arouse interest in music were unending. He was responsible for the establishment of the first Russian conservatory of music; he organized various musical societies, and worked indefatigably to make Russian music a possession of the Russian people, not of the chosen few. But as a composer, he has done almost nothing for the music of Russia, although he has written much. His works include several operas, among them "Gorusha" and "The Demon." Rubin- stein was almost fanatically attached to the standards of the Western classical composers. He distrusted innovations, and not only avoided them, but actually opposed them. He wrote an in- teresting little booklet, which he called "Finita la Musica." In this pamphlet he attempted to prove that after Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Glinka, there can be nothing new in music. Rubinstein was a bitter opponent of the "Moguchaya Kuchka." Modern Russian music presents many interesting develop- ments, but it is yet too new to be judged fairly and impartially. RUSSIA 369 Such men as Gliere, Stravinsky, and Spendiarov, are among the creators of the new Russian music, which recently sustained the loss of one of its most prominent interpreters, Alexander Skriabin. The future will show what offerings these "moderns" have brought to the treasure-house of Russian music. APPENDIX I DIRECTIONS FOR PRONOUNCING RUSSIAN ' NAMES* Pronounce b, d, f, k, m, n, p, t as In English. a, as in father ; ai as in ItaHan mai— Eng. my. ch, as in church. c, at the beginning of all but a few foreign words, as ye in yet, or ya in Yale; after a consonant the y is less distinct but is always present except after sh, ch, zh and ts. t, a special letter whose sound is identical with that of e, ey as yea. Accented e is sometimes pronounced yo, o, but e never. g, always hard as in gate. i, as in machine. kh, as Scotch or German ch in loch, ach. 1, "hard" between / and w, as in people : "soft," between / and y as in Fr. ville. o, accented open as oa in broad; unaccented as a in balloon. r, strongly trilled, when soft between r and y, but not like ry. s, always as s in size, case, never as in cheese. sh, as in shuts; shch as in Ashchurch. u, as in rule, rarely as in tube. V, as in English, at the end of words like /. y, English usage has necessitated an inconsistent employment of y. As a vowel it has been used to denote a peculiar sound between i and «, not unlike its value in rhythm ; immediately after a labial the u element can be clearly heard. As a consonant it has been used to denote its sound in year, Goodyer, boy. When combinations such as iy or yy would logically have re- sulted, y alone has been written as this gives the sound fairly well. z, as in English («o/=/j). ^ In A. Brfickner's Literary history of Russia, p. xix. 372 SELECTED ARTICLES zh, — Fr. j, Eng. z in azure or si in vision. Consonants before a, o, u, vowel y are mostly pronounced "hard," f. e., more or less as in English ; before i, e, and con- sonant y, "soft" — that is, run together with a y sound, but this must not be overdone. The accented syllable is very strongly brought out, the others rather slurred over. APPENDIX II GLOSSARY Artel. A Russian form of labor union, in which from six to fifty or more men unite to do a particular piece of work, or to labor together for a certain specified time. It is virtually a small joint stock company, whose members share equally in the work, expenses, and profits of the enterprise in which they are engaged. (George Kennan.) Boyar. Great noble. Copeck. One one-hundredth of a ruble=$o.oo5. Datcha. House in the country. Summer home. Droshky. Low four-wheeled open carriage. Duma. Lower house of the Russian parliament. Great Russians. Inhabitants of Great Russia (north, cen- tral, east and southeast Russia). They are the standard bearers proper of the Russian feeling of nationality. They are easily dis- ciplined, so make excellent soldiers, but have little power of in- dependent thinking or initiation. The normal Great Russian is thus the mainstay of political and economic inertia and reaction. Great Russian is the literary language. Icon. Holy image, picture or mosaic. Intelligentsia. In current phraseology it has a double sense. It is used to designate the "general intelligentsia" or those who in all classes of society are engaged in the pursuit of intellectual interests, whether they earn their living by this pursuit or not; and it is also used to designate those who obtain their living ex- clusively by mental labor. hba. A log cabin in which a peasant lives. Izvoschick. Droshky driver. Kustarnui. Cottage industries. Little Russians. Inhabitants of the Black Earth district (south and southwest) and the Ukraine. They include the Ruthenians. They have the emotional southern temperament. 374 SELECTED ARTICLES Mir. A village community constituting a local administrative unit. Muzjik. A peasant. Nitchevo. "Nothing," "never," "all the same," "good." "bad," "wretched," according to the stress and intonation one puts on the word. Pale. Legally the name Jewish pale or "established zone" is reserved for the fifteen governments of Lithuania and White and Little Russia; but in practice there is no, or hardly any, distinction between these fifteen Jewish provinces and the ten Polish governments where the Jews are equally tolerated by the law. Pogrom. A local disturbance, as a riot, pillage, etc., in- stigated by officials under the direction of the central govern- ment. Usually against the Jews. Pood. Thirty-six pounds avoirdupois. Prospect. An avenue. Ruble. Russian monetary unit=$o.5iS. Tchinovnik. Government official. Traktir. Cheap restaurant, tea-house, or vodka shop. Troika. A vehicle drawn by three horses abreast. Ukase. An edict or order given out by tzar or the govern- ment. Ukraine. Approximately Little Russia. Contains basin of the Dnieper southward of the 51st parallel of latitude. Verst. Two-thirds of a mile. Vodka. Russian brandy. Any strong spirituous drink. Volost. A district composed of a number of communes, and having one joint administrative assembly. Volshak. Head of the family. White Russians. Inhabitants of western Russia. They are the poorest and least advanced of the three stocks. Zemstvo. A form of district and provincial assembly created under Alexander II (1864), and endowed with powers of self- government in the fields of local economic and social interests. APPENDIX III CHRONOLOGY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY* I. Old Riussia. Period of the Local Principalities 862 — Invasion of the Norsemen, led by the Variags Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, in answer to the invitation of the Slav republic of Novgorod, worded, according to the Chronicles, as follows: "Our land is great and fruitful, but there is no order in it; come and reign and rule over us." On the death of his kinsmen, Rurik became sole ruler. 879-912 — Oleg, regent during the minority of Rurik's son Igor, conquered the duchy of Kiev in 882. 912-945 — Igor. Treaty made with the Byzantine Emperor, 945. — Christianity established at Kiev. 945-957 — Olga (St.), widow of Igor and regent for her son Svyatoslav, accepted the Christian faith at Kiev in 957. 957-972 — Svyatoslav I Igorevitch. Division of the territory among Svyatoslav's sons. Civil war. 980-1015— Vladimir I (St.; the apostle). Greek church estab- lished as the state religion (988). Vladimir married the Greek Princess Anna, sister of Theophano, wife of Emperor Otho II. Succession disputed on Vladi- mir's death. 1019-1054 — Yaroslav I, the Wise, married a daughter of Olaf, King of Sweden. Of his daughters, the eldest mar- ried Harold, King of Norway; another Henry I of France ; a third, Andreas I of Hungary. Many towns founded. The first Russian Code issued. On his death, the kingdom was divided, and civil and foreign wars ensued. H13-1125 — Vladimir II Monomakh. Defeated the Polovtsi. His >KarI Baedeker. Russia, p. xlyiMii. 376 SELECTED ARTICLES wife was Gyda or Gytha, daughter of Harold II, of England. 1 125- 1 132 — Mstislav I, Grand-Prince of Kiev. Innumerable divisions and endless wars. Great Novgorod be- came an independent republic. 2. Period of the Mongol Supremacy 1224 — First invasion of the Tartars under Genghis or Jenghiz Khan. Defeat of the Russians on the Kalka. 1237-1242 — Second Tartar invasion under Baty-Khan. The king- doms of the Bolgars, Polovtsi, etc. destroyed. 1238-1246 — Yaroslav II Vsevolodovitch. Grand-Prince of Vladi- mir. The whole of Russia under Tartar suzerainty. 1252- 1263 — Alexander Nevski, Grand-Prince of Vladimir, the Russian national hero and saint. His son, Daniel, as Prince of Moscow, founded the line of Moscow princes of the Rurik dynasty. Alexander's victory over the Swedes on the Neva (whence his surname), 1240. Defeat of the Teutonic order on the ice of Lake Peipus (1242). 1328-1340 — Ivan I Danilovitch Kalita, Grand-Prince of Moscow, Vladimir, and Novgorod. The Metropolitan removes his seat from Vladimir to Moscow. 1363-1389 — Demetrius of the Don (Dmitri Donskoi) ; defeated the Tartars on Kulikovo Field on September 8th, 1380. 1425- 1462— Vasili II Vasilyevitch. 1462-1505 — Ivan (loann) III Vasilyevitch, Grand-Prince of Mos- cow, and the real founder of the Russian empire. Marriage with Sophia Palaeologos, 1472. Perm re- duced to subjection, 1472. Novgorod overthrown, 1478. Rout of the Golden Horde, 1478. Overthrow of the tribes of the Ob and the Irtuish, 1483-99. Kazan conquered and held for a short time, 1487. Karelia captured, 1496. Unsuccessful campaign against the Livonian order, 1501-1503. 3. Period of Muscovite Unification Formation of the Russian Empire 1505-1533 — Vasili III Ivanovitch united most of the independent principalities with Moscow. 1 533- 1 584 — Ivan (loann) IV Grozni (the Terrible) ruled at first under the influence of Shuiski, Glinski, and the Bo- RUSSIA 377 yars; then under that of the monk Sylvester and Alexis Adashev. Title of Tzar of the Russias as- sumed, 1547. Conquest of Kazan (1552) and Astra- khan (1557). The English begin to trade with Mus- covy via Archangel, 1582. Beginning of the conquest of Siberia by the Stroganovs, Yermak and other bold Cossack chieftains. Russian Law Code (Sudebnik) formulated; printing introduced at Moscow. 1584-1598 — Feodor or Theodore I Ivanovitch, the last sovereign of the line of Rurik. Peasants deprived of right of free migration. Patriarchate established. After the murder of all the blood-relatives of Theodore and also of his step-brother Dmitri or Demetrius, (d. 1591), Boris Godunov, the brother of Theodore's wife, became sole ruler. Interregnum. Period of the False Demetrius 1 598- 1 605 — Boris Feodorovitch Godunov. Appearance of the First and Second False Demetrius, both of whom were supported by the Poles. The First False Deme- trius (1605-1606) was murdered on May 17th, 1606. The Second False Demetrius appeared after the boyar Vasili Shuiski (1606-10) had been elected Tzar. 1610-1613 — Interregnum. Kosma Minin and Prince Pozharski; the Poles driven from Russia. Rise of the Romanov Dynasty 1613-1645 — Mikhail Feodorovitch Romanov, kinsman of Theo- dore I, elected Tzar and founder of the present dynasty. Peace of Stolbovo, 161 7 cession of In- germanland to Sweden) ; Armistice of Deulino, 1618; Peace of Polyanovka, 1634 (territory ceded to Po- land; claims to Livonia, Courland and Esthonia re- nounced). 1645-1676— Alexis I, Mikhailovitch. Introduction of the new code (Ulozheniye) 1649. Treaty of Andrusovo (oc- cupation of Smolensk and the Ukraine, suzerainty established over Kiev and the Cossacks), 1667. Schism in the Russian church due to innovations by Nikon. 1676-1682 — Feodor (Theodore) Alexayevitch. Abolition of the system of preferment by "hereditary rank" (Myestni- 378 SELECTED ARTICLES tchestvo). On the death of Theodore, Grand duch- ess Sophia Alexeyevna (1682-1689) became regent on behalf of her half-brothers, the Tzars Ivan and Peter (b. 1672). 4. The St. Petersburg Period 1689-1725 — Peter I, the Great, immured Sophia Alexeyevna in a convent and became, with the free consent of his brother, Ivan (d. 1696), sole ruler of the empire. Far-reaching innovations; introduction of W. Euro- pean customs and culture. Northern War (1700- 1721), carried on, in alliance with Frederick IV of Denmark and Augustus II of Poland, against Charles XII of Sweden. Victory of Poltava, 1709; loss of Azov, 171 1. By the treaty of Nystad (1721) Russia gained Livonia and Esthonia. Foundation of St. Petersburg, 1703. War with Persia; Russian do- minion extended to the S. shore of the Caspian Sea. Peter's son Alexis (Alexei) died in 1718. Assump- tion of the imperial title, 1721. 1725-1727 — Catherine I, widow of Peter I, ruled under the in- fluence of Prince Menshikov. Foundation of the Academy of Sciences, 1725. 1727-1730 — Peter II Alexayevitch, grandson of Peter the Great, removed the court to Moscow and ruled during his minority under the influence of the Dolgoruki. 1730-1740 — ^Anna Ivanovna, daughter of Ivan, half-brother of Peter the Great, took part (at the instigation of her favorites Biron and Field-Marshal Miinnich) in the War of the Polish Succession (1733-38), and re- gained Azov in a war waged against Turkey (1735- 39). 1740-1741 — Ivan VI, great-grandson of Ivan, half-brother of Peter the Great, succeeded as an infant to the throne, which he occupied for a short time under the regency of his mother, Anna (Elizabeth) Leopoldovna. He was deposed in 1741 (d. at Schliisselburg in 1764). 1741-1761 — Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great. In 1742 Elizabeth's nephew, Karl Peter Ulrich of Hol- stein-Gottorp was created heir-apparent. War with Sweden (1741-43) resulting in the Peace of Abo, by RUSSIA 379 which Russia acquired Finland as far as the Kymme- ne-Elf. Alliance with Austria against France and Spain, 1746; alliance with Austria and France against Prussia (Seven Years War), 1756. Foundation of Moscow University (i755) and of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, (i757). House of Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp 1 761 -1 762 — Peter III died six months after his accession. 1 762- 1 796 — Catherine II, widow of Peter III. Russia becomes a Great Power. Russian territory greatly extended by the three Partitions of Poland. First Turkish War (cession of parts of the Crimea and the Caucasus; protectorate of the Danubian Principalities), 1768-74. Rebellion of the Cossack Pugatchov put down, 1773- 75. Conquest of the Crimea, 1783. Second Turkish War, ending in the Peace of Jassy, by which Russia acquired the whole district up to the Dniester, 1787- 92, Unsuccessful war with Sweden, 1788-90. An- nexation of Courland, 1795. 1 796-1801 — Paul I Petrovitch, son of Catherine, entangled Rus- sia in a war with France (1798). 1801-1825 — Alexander I, Pavlovitch, son of Paul I. War with France terminated by the Treaty of Tilsit (June 25th, 1807) ; that with Austria by the Peace of Vienna (1809) ; that with Sweden by the Peace of Fredrik- shamn (Sept. 5th, 1809) ; that with Turkey by the Peace of Bucharest (May i6th, 1812). Napoleon's invasion of Russia; annihilation of the Grande Armee, 1812. Treaty of Paris (April 21st, 1815). 1825-1855— Nicholas I, Pavlovitch, third son of Paul I. War with Turkey and Persia, 1828. Publication of the final and complete form of the Russian Code of Laws, 1830. Opening of the Nikolai (Nicholas) or Niko- layevski railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, 1851. Crimean War (1853-1856). 1855-1881— Alexander II, Nikolayevitch. Treaty of Paris, 1856. Conquest of the Caucasus. Liberation of the serfs, 1861. Introduction of the new Judicial Procedure, 1866. New Municipal Law, 1870. Institution of com- pulsory military service, 1874. Russo-Turkish war 38o SELECTED ARTICLES (1877-78) ended by the Treaty of San Stefano and the Berlin Congress. 1881-1894— Alexander III, Alexandrovitch. Conquests in Cen- tral Asia. Beginning of the Trans-Siberian railway. i894etseq. — Nicholas, II Alexandrovitch. Completion of the Trans-Siberian railway, 1903. Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) ending in the defeat of the Russians. Peace of Portsmouth (U.S.A.), 1905. Opening of the first parliament (Imperial Duma), 1906. APPENDIX IV RUSSIAN CALENDAR* Petrograd, May 27. — Bringing up to date of the Russian calendar will be one of the earliest reforms of the new govern- ment in Russia, although opposition is expected from ecclesias- tical quarters. Any alteration of the calendar has always been regarded as an act of impiety by a large section of the Russian people. When the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582 as a correction of the Julian or Roman, three countries in Europe — Russia, Sweden and England — refused to come into line with the others. It was not until 1752 that England brought the calendar up to date. Sweden followed the next year but Russia has persisted in remaining isolated up to the present. The Julian calendar was eleven minutes, ten seconds out of reckoning each year, and the accumulation would now amount to about 13 days. ^Minneapolis Tribune. May 27, 1917. INDEX Absolutism, 40, 309-10 Alexandrovsk, 87, 98, i47 Andreas, Bishop of Ufa, 180 Art, 356-60 Artels, 1 3 1-9 Autocracy, 109-12 Begbie, Harold, article by, 184 Bolshevism, 304-9. 320-4 Bulgaria and the European war, 217 Bureaucracy, 1 12-19 misconduct of war, 273 See also Revolution of 191 7 Business methods, 131-47 Calendar, 381 Catherine the Great, 21, 25-7, 36-7, Catherine Harbor. See Alexan- drovsk Child, R. W., article by, 241-4, 119, 148-62 Christianity introduced, 13-14 Christmas customs, 166-8 in Finland, 73-4 Church. See Religion; Russian church Classes of society, 4-8 Communal ownership. See Land tenure Co-operation, 7, 285-6 See also Artels; Kustarnui Cossacks, 221-4 Cottage industries. 5"^^ Kustarnui Czar. See Tsar Democracv, its evolution, 279-91 Dimitri the False, 19, 53 Duma, 30, 282-3, 284-5, 287-90 first, 292 second, 292-3 Economic development, 29, 300-2 Education, 157-9. 164-6 European war, 211-51 children's participation, 225-6 effects on Russia, 227, 233-41, 244-51 Fiction. 3525 Finland, 71-6 Foster, P. P., article by, 97-8 German influence in Russia, 36, 145-6, 248-50, 287 Goldenweiser, Nicholas, article by, 304-9 Graham, Stephen, article by, 218- 27 Greely, A. W., article by, 76-91 Harper, S. N., article by, 273-5, 279-91 Hart, A. B., article by, 32-41 Honesty, 1 18-19, 143-4 Icon, 7, 138 Intelligentsia, 5, 150-1 Ivan the Terrible, 18-19 Jews, 185-210 employments, 189-91, 202-3 hatred for Russia, 145 immigration to the United States, 209-10 Jewish Pale, 193-6, 206 pogroms, 188 treatment by government, 185- 208 Johnston, Charles, article by, 43-4 Kennan, George, article by 259-64 Kerensky, Alexander Feodorovich, 305-6 Kiev, II, 12 Kola, 97 Kropotkin, Sasha, article by, 228- Kustarnui, 134-9 Land tenure, 120-31 by Jews, 193 Lebedeff, Boris, article by, 120-31 Lenine, Nicholas, 306-9; article by, 333-41 Lethbndge, Marjorie, and Alan, article by, 94-7 Levine, I. D., article by, 264-72 Literature, 343-51 Little Russia. See Ukraine Magnus, Leonard, article by, 343- 51 Mavor, John, article by, 41-3 Mir, 120-31 Mongol domination, 14-16, 34-5 Morgan, Gerald, article by, 44-6 Moscow, Principality of, 16-18 Municipal enterprises, 120 Muscovite supremacy. See Moscow Music in Russia, 360-9 384 INDEX Muzhik, 13 1-9, 228 characterization, 6-8 co-operation by, 7 Napoleonic wars, 2T, 28, 38 Neva, Blessing of, 168 Newmarch, Rosa, article by, 356- 60 Nicholas II, 3^, iii compared with Louis XVI, 256, 2^2 irony of his fate, 2^^ Novgorod, II, 12 Officers in army, 230-3 Ogg, F. A., article by, 9-32 Olgin, Moissaye J., article by 309- 24 Oriental orthodox church. See Russian church Persia, Russian influence in, 31 Peter the Great, 21-5, 35-6, 344 Petrograd, 23-4 Poetry, 343-5 1 Poland, 47-70 compared with Austria-Hungary, 49-50 . economic position, 68-70 history, 47-58 partitioned, 26, 37, 56-7 Russification, 57, 65-6 Poles, Classes, 61-2 famous, 68 origin of, 50 Political parties, 333-41 Political progress, 29-30 See also Democracy Press, freedom of, 1 15-16 Railroads, 98, 147 See also Trans-Siberian railway Refugees, 241-4 Religion, 171-84, 218-21 Resources, 99-107 See also Economic development Reynolds, E. K., article by, 99-107 Revolution of 19 17, 253-324 characteristics, 258, 260, 274 coalition, 270, 298-9 comparison with French revolu- tion, 25s, 272, 277 effect on Jews. 209-10 events of March 10-12, 253-8 made possible by war, 258-5 reforms promised by provisional government, 254 Rienzi, Alexis, article by, 360-9 Romanoff dynasty, 20-1, 32-41 Rosenthal, Herman, article by, 185- 200 Rurik, 1 1 Russian^ expansian, 28-9 her role in civilization, 31-2 her role in European history, 4V3 , origin of name, 11 progress, 1905-1915, 44 Russian church, 171-84 Russo-Japanese war, effects, 44-5 effect on Siberia, 29, 94 Russo-Turkish war, 39 Sack, A. J., article by, 291-300, 300-3 St. Petersburg. See Petrograd Serfs, Emancipation of, 29, 39 Showalter, W. J., article by, 63-8 Siberia, 76-97 benefit from European war, 95-7 effect of Russo-Japanese war, 29, . 94. immigration, 86-7, 92-5 origin of name, 28-9 resources, 99-100, 102 Simpson, J. Y., article by, 171-84 Slavs,_ 2-3, 9.13, 34, 35 origin of name, 3 Sliozberg Henry, article by, 201-9 Sobieski, John, 54 Socialism, 297-9, 334 Soldiers, 218-21 Staley, J. E., article by, 71-6 Sweden, war with, 23 Tatars, 3 Trans-Siberian railway, 29, 77-80 Trotzky, Leon, 306-9 Tsar elected, 19-20 Ukraine, 324*33 Verangers, 11- 12 Vladimir I, 13 Vodka prohibition, 43, 144-5, 168- 9, 236-8 Warsaw, 64 Washburn, Stanley, article by, 211- 17 Welliver, J. C, article by, 47-63 Winter, N. O., article by, 109-19 Woman suffrage, 161-2, 163-4 Women in Poland, 66-8 Women in Russia, 148-64 Cossack women, 222-3 peasant women, 149-50, 151-3, 230 Wright, Richardson, article by, 1-8, 131-9, 139-48 Yarmolinsky, Abraham, article by, 233-241 Zemgor, 236 Zemstvo, 281, 283, 285 Zemstvo Union, 235-6 r "^ W:"^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. IfilO 1948 I SiaaS.k AM 7 OecS4Vll REC*P LD 23Nov'60LF MOV 2 3 1954 Lll \<^^^ "^ F DEG2 9! feB241985 ^ ^^OV 9 '960 (|ec C-^ JUN 6 1984. LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl DEC 11 19^2 •'^.2PM7 385544 ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY i^'M n