iTHE RUSSIANS 
 
 TO DAY
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELLS
 
 k 
 
 \
 
 THE 
 RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 FRENCH PICTURES IN ENGLISH 
 
 CHALK. By the Author of ' The Member for Paris ' 
 &c. &c. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d. 
 
 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS: a Tale of 
 
 the Second Empire. 3 vols, post 8vo. 31.?. 6d. 
 
 YOUNG BROWN ; or, The Law of Inheri- 
 
 tance. 3 vols. . . . -.^ ■ ' ' 
 
 London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
 
 THE 
 
 RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 'THE MEMBER FOR PARIS' &c. 
 
 
 yis CO 
 
 fi' — Horace 
 
 3^ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1878 
 
 \Ail ttfiiiit r esurvei/l
 
 DK 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 • TO 
 
 HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND, K.G, 
 
 AS A TOKEN OF HIGH ESTEEM AND AD.MlliATIoN 
 
 FOR HIS COURAGE AND PATRIOTISM 
 
 1231940
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 Introduction . . ix 
 
 I, A Squire among many i 
 
 II. An Emancipated Village lo 
 
 III. A Co-operative Village i9 
 
 IV. The Temperance Question 28 
 
 V. Through the Streets 3^ 
 
 VI. The Briskatstartine Hussars . . . .46 
 
 VII. A Victorious General 5^ 
 
 VIII. A Prosperous Merchant 65 
 
 IX. Judicial Business 75 
 
 X. Forged Bank-notes 84 
 
 XI. The White Clergy 94 
 
 XII. The Daimoniks of Ekaterinoslav . . .102 
 
 XIII. A Bookseller and Publisher m 
 
 XIV. Newspapers and Reviews 119 
 
 XV. Marriage Customs 127 
 
 XVI. Monks and Nuns 136 
 
 XVII. Society HS 
 
 XVIII. The Government of Poland . . . • i53 
 
 XIX. Orders of Knighthood 162 
 
 XX. Travelling 17° 
 
 XXI. The Czar 178
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXII. The Chancellor Gortschakoff . . . .188 
 
 XXIII. The Conquests in Turkestan . . . . 196 
 
 XXIV. The Tribes in Turkestan 204 
 
 XXV. Siberia. — On the Road 214 
 
 XXVI. Siberia : the Free Colonies and Mines . . 224 
 
 XXVII. Charities 233 
 
 XXVIII. Schools . . . ■ 240 
 
 XXIX. Military Academies and Universities . . . 249 
 
 XXX. Political Agents. — Ladies 257 
 
 XXXI. Political Agents. — Men 264 
 
 XXXII. English Colonists in Russia .... 272 
 
 XXXIII. Frenchmen in Russia 280 
 
 XXXIV. Diplomatists 289 
 
 XXXV. The Future of To-day 297
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 EPITOME of the HISTORY of RUSSIA. 
 
 The ancients only knew the South of Russia in 
 Europe. 
 
 They divided it vaguely into Sarmatia and Scy- 
 thia, and believed those regions to be inhabited by a 
 number of independent tribes : the Roxolani, lazy- 
 ges, Agathyrses, Hippomolgi, Cimmerians, Taurians, 
 Moeotians, and others. These hordes were said to live 
 in tents, and the earliest reports of their customs des- 
 cribe them as drinking fermented milk mingled with 
 horse's blood, which made them tipsy. 
 
 In the second century of the Roman empire, the 
 Slavs, who were the primitive inhabitants of Northern 
 Russia, invaded Sarmatia and Scythia and conquered 
 all its tribes one by one. These Slavs, the oldest of 
 European peoples, had Indian blood in their veins 
 and were settled on the western shores of the Volga 
 fifteen centuries before the Christian era. Their
 
 X Introduction. 
 
 manners, were Oriental and their religion was a mix- 
 ture of Brahminism and of the forest worship of the 
 Germans. They were polygamous, fierce, and thievish. 
 
 In the 3rd century A.D. the Slavs were in their 
 turn conquered by the Goths, who gradually extended 
 their domination over all the hordes encamped between 
 the Baltic and the Black Sea ; and founded between 
 the Dnieper and the Niemen, the Volga and the Don 
 a vast empire which comprised approximately the 
 Russia in Europe of to-day. 
 
 This empire was overthrown in 376 AD. by the 
 Huns, and during the next four centuries the south of 
 the Gothic country, as it was called, became the scene 
 of constant wars. The Huns, the Alani, the Bulga- 
 rians, and Khazares successively reigned there and 
 were expelled. 
 
 As yet no towns existed in the country, but 
 towards the middle of the 6th century Kiew and 
 Novgorod the Great were founded. The former as 
 being the cradle city of the empire is known as Holy 
 Kiew to this day. It was the place where Christianity 
 was first preached in Russia and where Wladimir the 
 Great was baptized in 988. 
 
 By this time the dynasty of Rurik, chief of the 
 Varegi, had established themselves on the throne of 
 the fallen Gothic empire.
 
 Introduction. xi 
 
 Rurik subdued' the Huns and Khazares and cap- 
 tured Novgorod in 862, and from this time the history 
 of Russia (name derived from Rurik) properly begins. 
 Rurik was a mighty conqueror and seems to have had 
 governing abilities. His posterity rapidly consoli- 
 dated their rule over the south of Russia and over 
 Gallicia and settled their capital at Kiew. Under 
 Wladimir I. they had become a powerful race and 
 became the stronger for embracing Christianity, 
 whose priests consecrated their authority to rule by 
 divine right. 
 
 Under Jaroslav I. in 1020 they threatened Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 Then as now religious zeal was pleaded as the 
 excuse for coveting the Byzantine city, and from that 
 day to this the provinces of Turkey in Europe have 
 tempted every sovereign who has reigned securely 
 whether at Kiew, Moscow, or St. Petersburg. 
 
 Jaroslav was unable to conquer the Turks and 
 under his successor Isiaslav (1054-78) feudal wars 
 commenced and raged intermittently during the next 
 four centuries. Christianity having organised Russia 
 on the feudal system of Western Europe, Rurik's 
 descendants scattered themselves as semi-independent 
 princes at Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk, Tchernigov, 
 Pereiaslav, Smoutatakan, Halicz, Tver, Vlodimierz,
 
 xii Introduction. 
 
 Souzdal, and at Moscow founded by Dolgorouki I. in 
 1 147. Every prince did homage to the Grand Prince 
 who reigned at Kiew, but disputes about fiefs and 
 appanages were continually arming the vassals against 
 their sovereign or against one another. 
 
 Profiting by these civil wars the peoples of the 
 East began invading Russia and several times were 
 nearly bringing the empire to ruin. The Petchenegks 
 and the Polovtses twice marched to Kiew and obliged 
 the Grand Prince and his vassals to put aside their 
 quarrels in order to make common cause against the 
 enemy. After one of these invasions which had been 
 victoriously repulsed ; a schism arose between Jourie 
 (or George), Grand Prince of Kiew, and Dolgorouki I. 
 prince of Moscow, who set up an independent throne. 
 The separation lasted for eighty-six years, until in 
 1 1 56 Isiaslav III. routed the Moscovites and restored 
 the supremacy of the dynasty at Kiew. 
 
 At last in 1224 came the great Mongol invasion, 
 which had about the same effect on Russia as the 
 Ncrman Conquest had on England. 
 
 Touchi, the Mongolian chief, crossed the Volga 
 with an army of 100,000 men and having conquered 
 all the southern provinces of Russia instituted the 
 empire of Kaptchak or the Golden Horde. His son 
 Batou, reinforced by fresh myriads of Mongols, cap-
 
 Introdtcction. xiii 
 
 tured Kiew in 1240 and obliged Michael I. to fly to 
 Vladimir and thence to Moscow. Soon Podolia, 
 Volhynia, and Eastern Gallicia passed under the yoke, 
 and the Russians of the north, unable to keep up the 
 struggle, laid down their arms and submitted to be 
 Batou's vassals. 
 
 The Mongolian domination lasted 150 years, from 
 1240 to 1389. 
 
 The sovereignty of Kiew was abolished ; and 
 Jaroslav II. prince of Moscow received the title of 
 Grand Prince for himself and his descendants on con 
 dition of paying a yearly tribute to their conquerors. 
 Novgorod freed itself from the Moscovite connection 
 and set up as an independent republic under the pro- 
 tection of the Mongols. It looks odd to read of a 
 republic in Russia, but Novgorod became to all in- 
 tents a democratic commonwealth much more truly 
 republican than the so-called republics of Italy which 
 were oligarchies. The citizens had community of 
 goods ; and it is believed that socialist organization 
 of the modern 'Mirs' took its rise among them. 
 Anyhow Novgorod is proud to this day of having 
 once governed itself in freedom. 
 
 The rule of the Mongols in Russia came to an 
 end owing to their fratricidal wars with the Tartars. 
 The latter growing arrogant after their conquests in
 
 xiv Introduction. 
 
 India under Timour Beyg or Tamerlan, wearied the 
 Mongols with their exactions, and forced them several 
 times to call on their Moscovite vassals for assistance. 
 A day came when the Russians got tired of shedding 
 their blood for oppressors who burdened them with 
 taxes and who in times of peace often pillaged their 
 cities. In 1481 Ivan III. or the Great arose, like a 
 Robert Bruce, vanquished both Mongols and Tartars, 
 and drove them from the country. This done, he sub- 
 dued Novgorod, Pskov, Biannia, Severia, annexed 
 the Eastern portion of Siberia, and welded all his pro- 
 vinces into a strong empire of which he remained un- 
 disputed master. 
 
 Ivan III. was the first absolute sovereign of 
 Russia, but he was satisfied with the title of Grand 
 Prince. It was his grandson Ivan IV. who first as- 
 sumed the title of Czar, derived from Caesar, in 1533. 
 
 This Ivan IV., surnamed the Cruel, had to wage 
 against his feudal princes the same sort of war as 
 Louis XL had waged against the French barons 
 seventy years previously. He had inherited the 
 throne when four years old, and during his long 
 minority the boyards had had time to grow factious. 
 Not content with subduing them, Ivan put to death 
 as many as he could catch with the most refined 
 tortures. He deluged his country with blood, and
 
 Introdtiction. xv 
 
 having restored obedience, burned the titles of nobiHty 
 of all his boyards great and small, and decreed equal- 
 ity among his subjects. While doing all this he car- 
 ried on successful wars against the Poles, Swedes and 
 Tartars, conquered Kazan and Astrakan, and tried, 
 though ineffectually, to seize upon Livonia. He has 
 left a terrible name among the Russian aristocracy, 
 but the common people are rather inclined to revere 
 his memory, and a popular legend, similar to that of 
 King Arthur in England, prophesies that he will re- 
 turn to earth at some period of national danger and 
 free the mujicks from the oppression of their lords. 
 
 In 1598, fourteen years after Ivan's death, the 
 dynasty of Rurik came to an end in the person of 
 Fedor I., who was poisoned by Boris Godunow, his 
 wife's brother, whom he had made prime minister. 
 Boris Godunow seized upon the throne, but after a 
 short and troublous reign was himself poisoned. He 
 was succeeded by his son Fedor II.; but one Gregor)- 
 Otrepiew, a monk, started up proclaiming himself to 
 be Dmitri, or Demetrius (the son of Ivan IV,), whom 
 Boris Godunow had murdered, and finding many par- 
 tisans he deposed Fedor II. Soon afterwards he was 
 dethroned by another pretender, who was in his turn 
 routed by Vladislaw Vasa, a Pole. 
 
 It now looked as if Russia were going to perish, 
 a
 
 XV i Introduction. 
 
 for the Swedes and Poles had fallen upon it and 
 threatened to march upon Moscow ; but taking alarm 
 at the danger, the leading boyards met in the capital 
 in the year 1613, and sinking their differences elected 
 Michael Romanow to be their Czar. 
 
 Michael soon made peace with Sweden and Poland. 
 By the treaty of Stolbova he yielded Ingria and 
 Russian Carelia to Gustavus Adolphus ; and in 16 18 
 signed a fourteen years' truce with the Poles, who had 
 advanced within sight of Moscow, and surrendered to 
 them Smolensk, Severia, and Tchernigov. A second 
 treaty signed in 1634 confirmed the Poles in the pos- 
 session of these provinces. But by this time Michael 
 Romanow had fortified his country by judicious 
 government ; and his two next successors, following 
 his policy, became so strong that the Poles were at 
 length beaten and had to give back Severia. The 
 accession of Peter the Great in 1682 added to this 
 prosperity and caused Russia to enter into an 
 altogether new era of might. 
 
 Until Peter's reign Russia had been more of an 
 Oriental than a European country. Peter set about 
 Europeanising it and endowed it with a civilization 
 according to his lights. He had to contend with the 
 fierce opposition of a fanatical clergy and of the 
 boyards : but he broke the power of the former by
 
 Introdiiclion. xvii 
 
 declaring himself to be spiritual head of the Church, 
 and reduced the nobles to order by abrogating their 
 privileges and abolishing their titles as Ivan IV. had 
 done. As he was liked by the mujicks and possessed 
 all the qualities of a master mind, he succeeded in 
 everything he attempted. He founded St. Petersburg 
 in the midst of a swamp, causing 60,000 houses to 
 spring up there in ten years ; he extended his empire 
 to the Caspian and the Black Sea ; saw the decline of 
 Poland, and destroyed the military power of Sweden 
 at Pultowa. 
 
 From this time Russia began to hold a foremost 
 place in the councils of Europe. 
 
 Peter the Great died in 1725, and his immediate 
 successors followed the lines he had laid down for 
 Russia's guidance in his famous will, which has become, 
 so to say, the charter of Russian Imperialism. They 
 kept Russia mighty, without, however, adding much 
 to its territory, and it remained for Catharine II. to 
 take up the Great Czar's ideas and prosecute them in 
 a spirit worthy of him. 
 
 This strong-minded princess, the Scmiramis of the 
 North as Voltaire called her, who reigned from 1762 
 to 1796, conquered Little Tartary, Lithuania, Cour- 
 land, and the Caucasus, extended her empire to the 
 furthest confines of Siberia ; and in the two partitions
 
 xviii Introduction. 
 
 of Poland which occurred in 1772 and 1795, obtained 
 half of that ill-fated country. She also cast her eyes 
 on Constantinople as Peter himself had done, but she 
 did not live to realise the dream of her life, which was 
 to transfer her capital to the shores of the Bosphorus, 
 
 Her weak, half-crazy son Paul only reigned long 
 enough to join in the Coalition which Great Britain 
 had raised against revolutionary France ; but he had 
 a secret admiration for General Bonaparte, and was 
 suspected of not acting fairly by the Coalition. Had 
 he lived he would probably have made friends with 
 Napoleon at the expense of England ; but his extra- 
 vagant behaviour, bordering on madness, caused him 
 to fall a victim to a palace conspiracy. He was mur- 
 dered in 1801, and the crown passed to his son 
 Alexander HI., better known as Alexander I. 
 
 This Czar was also an admirer of Napoleon, but 
 British policy kept him constantly in the anti-French 
 Coalition except after the brief Peace of Tilsitt in 
 1807. Repeatedly beaten by Napoleon's armies, he 
 yet contrived to add unceasingly to his dominions by 
 the successive annexations of Finland, Eastern Bos- 
 nia, Georgia, and Bessarabia. In 1812 Napoleon's 
 invasion of Russia having ended in a fearful rout, 
 caused rather by the severity of the winter than by 
 Russian generalship, Alexander cast in his lot with
 
 Introduction. xix 
 
 the Allies, and after two years' campaigning in Ger- 
 many and France entered Paris in 1814, and had a 
 chief hand in the restoration of Louis XVIII. to the 
 French throne. The treaties of 18 15 confirmed him 
 in the possession of all the provinces he had annexed, 
 and gave him about two thirds of Poland into the 
 bargain. 
 
 Alexander I. dying in 1825 was succeeded by his 
 brother Nicholas I., the hardest autocrat whom Russia 
 had known since the time of Ivan IV. 
 
 It was Nicholas I.'s main object to prevent the 
 Liberal ideas propagated by the French Revolution 
 from spreading into Russia. He inaugurated a sys- 
 tem of despotism which allowed no vent for public 
 opinion and which bowed a huge nation of 70 millions 
 of souls helplessly under his will and that of his 
 creatures. It is computed that during his thirty-one 
 years' reign not less than two millions of persons were 
 transported to Siberia for alleged political offences. 
 
 In foreign affairs his policy was directed mainly 
 against the Turks. He had made it the ambition of 
 his life to conquer Constantinople. 
 
 He began in 1827 by fomenting the cry for the 
 independence of Greece, and having drawn Great 
 Britain and France into a league against the Turks,
 
 XX Introduction. 
 
 had the gratijEication of bringing about the naval 
 battle of Navarino. 
 
 The Greek kingdom having been set up, England 
 perceived a little too late that she had been drawn 
 into a trap. Nicholas, proclaiming the Holy War of 
 the Christian against the Infidel, prepared to cross 
 the Balkans and march upon Constantinople. An 
 injunction from the great Powers under the leadership 
 of England stopped him just in time. But Turkey 
 had already suffered immensely from this Holy War. 
 Besides losing Greece, her sovereignty over Servia, 
 Wallachia, and Moldavia was virtually broken. The 
 treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, signed in 1833, ratified these 
 spoliations, and by hopelessly weakening the Ottoman 
 empire paved the way for the Crimean War. 
 
 Nicholas calculated that Great Britain and France, 
 who had been enemies for so many centuries, would 
 never form a fast alliance for the defence of Turkey, 
 and it was this mistake which impelled him to send 
 his armies across the Pruth in 1854. The answer to 
 this aggression was a declaration of war from the 
 Allies, who were intent not on upholding Turkey but 
 on maintaining the balance of power. The defeats of 
 Alma and Inkermann proved too much for the ambi- 
 tious Czar. He saw his prestige gone, his great dream
 
 Introdtiction. xxi 
 
 laid in ruins, and it is suspected that he committed 
 suicide. Anyhow he died broken-hearted. 
 
 Such is the summary of the history of Russia up 
 to the time of Alexander II.'s accession. The prin- 
 cipal events of the reign of the present Czar will be 
 found alluded to and explained in the following 
 chapters.
 
 THE 
 
 RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SQUIRE AMONG MANY. 
 
 Our scene lies near the province of Kherson, in a 
 dilapidated country mansion, built during the time 
 when the refugee Due de Richelieu was requiting 
 Russian hospitality by converting Odessa into a 
 flourishing city. 
 
 The kniaz — or Prince, as we indiscriminately 
 translate that title in English — who reared the 
 mansion was a noble of the third degree, who, 
 reckoning his riches by ' souls,' as the custom was 
 until sixteen years ago, boasted some 20,000 serfs. 
 He was doubtless a friend of the French duke's, 
 and tried to give his residence the look of those 
 semi-castellated chateaux which are still pretty com- 
 mon in the midlands of France. He erected the 
 
 V
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 two gabled turrets and the lofty dovecot which on 
 French ground betokened seignorial rights ; he did 
 not forget the windmill, where his affectionate slaves 
 were to have their corn ground for a yearly fee to his 
 miller ; and he set up a granite pedestal, which still 
 moulders in the centre of the entrance-yard, and 
 marks the spot where the enlightened nobleman must 
 have contemplated putting his own statue as a fit 
 completion of the work which his architect had done 
 for him. 
 
 But, like many other things begun in Russia 
 under the impulse of a temporary enthusiasm for 
 progress, Prince Wiskoff's country house was never 
 finished, though a goodly number of plate mirrors 
 were hung up in the grand drawing-room before 
 the roof was fairly slated. Prince Wiskofif, seeing 
 these mirrors become mildewed, and finding himself 
 rewarded with a touch of lumbago for his too great 
 zeal in wishing to inhabit his mansion while the 
 walls were still damp, took a dislike to the place and 
 went off to St. Petersburg, vowing that men who 
 devoted themselves to progress had always cause to 
 repent of it. The Prince's son never came near the 
 crumbling new house at all. The next Prince paid 
 occasional visits to it, when he wanted some money 
 and had a suspicion that his steward was robbing
 
 A Squh'e ainong many. 3 
 
 him. As for the present Prince, if we find hiin 
 permanently located in a house with which rains, rats, 
 and years have played such havoc, it is for the painful 
 reason that his finances will not allow him to- live 
 elsewhere. Serge Wiskoff is forty years old, and 
 spent the gay years of his youth in Paris. He 
 married ten years ago, and, having left his wife's 
 dower on M. Blanc's tables at Monaco, is now kopeck- 
 less, the father of five children, and a councillor of 
 Court. 
 
 This does not mean that Prince Wiskoff ever eoes 
 to Court to impart his counsels ; it simply signifies 
 that he belongs to the seventh grade of the Tschinn, 
 or organization of the nobility, and is supposed to 
 hold a rank in the Civil Service equal to that of 
 lieutenant-colonel in the army. Enrolment in the 
 Civil Service was in his case a mere formality, in- 
 tended to give him a position in that official hierarchy 
 outside of which a Russian nobleman counts for 
 nothing. 
 
 Prince Wiskoff began, at the age of twenty, as a 
 college registrar, and, having never registered any- 
 thing, was in due time promoted to a provincial 
 secretaryship, whence, by the same process of doing 
 nothing, he passed through a succession of high- 
 sounding dignities, till he reached the present grade,
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 which qualifies him to be appointed to higher steps, 
 each one of which will entail a disbursement of fees 
 to the Treasury. As these fees are pretty large, there 
 is no chance of Prince Wiskoff being passed over 
 when his turn of promotion arrives ; indeed, the pro- 
 motion of Russian noblemen to functions which they 
 never discharge seems to be an ingenious method for 
 taxing them beyond their means now and then, while 
 keeping them in good humour at the same time. 
 
 The Princess — or barina, as they call her on the 
 estate — is so far from objecting to her husband's costly 
 advancements, that she would cheerfully part with the 
 few diamonds remaining to her if she could get him 
 pushed forward at once to the ranks which would 
 entitle her to be addressed as 'your high origin,' 
 instead of ' your high nobility ' as now. 
 
 We do not say there is anything of feminine 
 jealousy in this, though the Runoffs, who own the 
 neighbouring estate, are well known to be intriguers, 
 who, by scraping together a little money to bribe 
 clerks with, have become ' high origins ' much before 
 their time, and stick up their heads in an insufferable 
 fashion at the triennial assemblages of the nobility in 
 the starostate. There was even some fear a twelve- 
 month ago that Alexis Runoff would be elected 
 marshal of the nobility in his district, but the barina
 
 A Squire among many. 
 
 Wiskoff was spared this crushing humiliation by one 
 vote — that of old Count Stampoff, whom the Runofifs 
 had made so happy with a champagne breakfast, 
 before the meeting, that he voted for the right man 
 by mistake. 
 
 Let no one be surprised that the barina should 
 take such an interest in the triennial assemblage of 
 nobles, for this is the solitary occasion in the course 
 of three years when a Russian provincial nobleman 
 finds anything of importance to do. 
 
 His important doings last about a couple of 
 hours, and consist in the election of a marshal, 
 nobiliary delegates or committeemen, inspectors of 
 local police, schoolmasters, and petty justices. All 
 the other business is abandoned to the committee- 
 men, who may have a taste for such questions as 
 claims for nobiliary inheritance, charges of dishonour- 
 able conduct brought by one noble against another, 
 land transfers, road-mending, rate-levying, and so 
 forth. However, the session as a whole fills up some 
 three days, and during that time all the princesses and 
 countesses round about meet in the district town, 
 make merry, and dispense hospitality. The barina 
 Wiskoff invites friends to stay a week at her palace, 
 and orders a slaughter of lean calves and pigs in their 
 honour.
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Out of the 650,000 hereditary nobles wherewith 
 Russia is blessed — not counting the 380,000 who are 
 not hereditary — many thousands stand in Prince 
 Wiskofif s dignified position, of having spent all their 
 money and having nothing to do. It may be urged 
 in excuse for them, that it was because they had 
 nothing to do that they spent their money ; for, if a 
 nobleman has no taste for garrison life or for employ- 
 ment in a Government office, what resources are open 
 to him in a country whose political system has been 
 devised expressly to check independent enterprise ? 
 
 Prince Wiskofif has thousands of good acres lying 
 waste because it would not pay him to sell them. There 
 are no decent roads near him, no canals or railways ; 
 and if he and some brother nobles were to club 
 together for an attempt to establish roads or railways, 
 the bribes they would have to administer to the 
 bureaucracy in order to get their plans licensed would 
 swallow up almost all the capital they could raise. 
 
 Ride through the provinces of Southern Russia, 
 and you come upon miles and miles of fruitful corn- 
 land, which might be converted into a granary for 
 Europe. Here you see acres of fine wheat rotting 
 uncropped, here herds of dust-coloured cattle wander- 
 ing about masterless and tainted with disease for want 
 of looking after ; farther on you come upon a luxuriant
 
 A Squire a7no7ig many. 
 
 plantation of tobacco, started as an experiment by 
 some speculative boyard, who left it to its fate, 
 because the tax he would have had to pay to the 
 inland revenue for cutting the plants, and the trouble 
 and cost he must have incurred in setting up a tobacco 
 factory, would have left him no margin for profits. 
 
 Beetroot, maize, hops, vines might all be growm in 
 Southern Russia ; and it is not for want of foreign 
 capital repeatedly tendered that the land remains a 
 comparative wilderness, but the eternally grasping 
 tschinn stands in the way of the foreign speculator, 
 even more than of the native ; and Serge Wiskoff, 
 who is a tschinovnik himself in a small way, knows 
 enough of the system not to ram his head against it 
 by calling strangers to his aid. 
 
 One cannot wonder that the Prince should have 
 found his estate a dreary place, and have lived in 
 Paris so long as his money lasted, and if he ran 
 through his fortune and his wife's more quickly than 
 was proper, it must be remembered that he had been 
 brought up to consider himself the everlasting owner 
 of 20,000 slaves, and that men in such a case are not 
 wont to haggle with their roubles. 
 
 The fact is, the emancipation laid the Prince on his 
 back ; for it was not accompanied by such a general 
 reform as would have developed the capabilities of
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 the country by striking off the official trammels that 
 fetter it : in other words, the nobles, being stripped 
 of the revenues their serfs yielded, were not free to 
 make themselves incomes as country gentlemen do 
 in other lands. 
 
 So poor Prince Wiskoff and his matronly barina 
 yawn in their dilapidated mansion, whose walls are 
 cracked and whose roof shakes at the least wind. 
 They have a few gaunt, thin pigs grunting about 
 their yards ; the village pope comes to give lessons 
 in Greek to the children ; the district land-agent 
 steps in now and then of an evening to drink vodki 
 and play ecarte with the Prince ; and the barina, 
 when not troubled with household cares, lies on a 
 sofa and reads French novels. 
 
 Yet Serge Wiskoff is an intelligent man, who, 
 before he had grown rusty and crusty from poverty 
 and idleness, was fitted for a better life than this ; 
 and the barina herself is so conscious that she was 
 fashioned to adorn the highest spheres of society that 
 for years her one idea was whether money might not 
 be begged, borrowed, or obtained by inheritance to 
 enable her and her husband to go for another trip to 
 Paris and enjoy themselves in hotels. 
 
 The present war naturally overturned these laud- 
 able schemes, for, like a good woman, the barina
 
 A Squire among many. 
 
 sent half her few diamonds and all her husband's 
 spare cash to the Army Fund, firmly persuaded that 
 while laying up treasure in heaven she was also 
 putting out her gift to good worldly interest. So 
 did the Prince think this. Like many another 
 tschinovnik, he looked to the conquest of Turkey 
 as certain to secure him a lucrative berth, and has 
 for some months pictured himself as installed in 
 Bulgaria and initiating that misused province into 
 the benefits of the government system under which 
 he has himself thriven.
 
 lo The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AN EMANCIPATED VILLAGE. 
 
 Prince Wiskoff's tumble-down palace stands on the 
 outskirts of a village more than a mile long, whose 
 main street is twice as broad as Pall-Mall. The great 
 size of this typical village comes of the fact that every 
 hovel in it is fronted by a yard of an acre or two in 
 extent, which serves no purpose but to accumulate 
 dust in summer, and mud and slush during the three 
 other seasons. 
 
 The idea of converting these plots of good ground 
 into kitchen -gardens has never occurred to any of 
 the peasantry ; and Government, which meddles with 
 so many things, has not thought it worth while to 
 point out to them that if they planted potatoes, 
 turnips, salads, and fruit-trees they might enjoy 
 decent fare all the year round, and pick up some 
 money into the bargain. 
 
 The Russian peasant grows white-headed cabbages 
 and little else. These vegetables flourish in patches
 
 An Emancipated Village. ii 
 
 behind the hovels; when fermented they form the 
 stock of the tcJii, which is the soup of the lower 
 orders, and of the borsch (mixture of cabbages and 
 dried mushrooms) eaten by the middle classes. It 
 is on cabbage alone, with an addition of maize por- 
 ridge, that the peasantry may be said to feed ; for 
 eggs, bacon, milk, butter, cheese, and all the other 
 edibles of country life in Western Europe are un- 
 known in the village. Nor have the peasants the 
 hale looks of Western rustics. 
 
 The women, flat faced, tow haired, with red- 
 rimmed eyes and broad nostrils, prowl about in knee- 
 boots and long sheepskin garments like the men. 
 They are lazy, smileless, and silent, except when 
 drunk on corn brandy, which makes them howl and 
 romp. The men also require vodki to rouse them 
 from the indolent moroseness which is their habitual 
 mood, though they are active enough in rendering 
 any service that may bring them a ten-kopeck piece. 
 
 Peep into the huts of these odd creatures, and 
 you find a floor of hardened manure, a table, a 
 couple of benches, a stove, and an iron statuette of 
 the Virgin in a niche. There are no beds, chests of 
 drawers, or anything to suggest the use of linen and 
 the washing of the same. The stove-top is the 
 favourite sleeping-place during cold weather ; in the
 
 12 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 hot months father, mother, and children curl them- 
 selves up like caterpillars, and lie down in corners. 
 
 One need not wait for night to find a whole 
 family thus sleeping. After the midday meal has 
 been eaten, the peasant will as often as not lie down 
 and snore away the whole afternoon, as if, next to 
 vodki, he knew of nothing on earth so good as idle- 
 ness. 
 
 Why should the man work, since he has never yet 
 been taught that work is profitable 'i 
 
 We are passing through a village, whose inha- 
 bitants, before the emancipation, were all serfs of 
 Prince Wiskofif. The Prince's agent in those times 
 used to thrash them into industry in order that his 
 master might have money to gamble with and he 
 himself money to filch ; but as the serf's condition 
 was never bettered by his hard labour — as, on the 
 contrary, the more he toiled the more was expected 
 of him — he naturally took a distaste for the practice 
 of exerting himself ; so that when the emancipation 
 was decreed, he concluded that his working days were 
 over. 
 
 He has stuck to that idea ever since. 
 
 He would work for a fair wage if it were offered 
 him ; he would even accept a hint about planting 
 those potatoes and turnips if he were furnished with
 
 An Emancipated Village. 
 
 the seed and assured that he might eat the produce 
 when it came up ; but he has a shrewd sort of notion 
 that if he bettered his lot overmuch by labour he 
 would draw upon himself the attentive eye of the 
 taxgatherer. This exacting official, the exciseman, 
 the land-agent from whom the cottage is rented, the 
 peripatetic Jew from Odessa from whom money has 
 been borrowed — all seem to be in a league to pocket 
 the mujick's earnings ; and from what little remains 
 when they have all had their share the parish priest 
 begs the biggest half. 
 
 But the peasant gives willingly enough to the priest 
 — or rather to the Church ; for priests individually are 
 neither liked nor respected in Russia. In this mise- 
 rable village, so filthy and poverty-stricken that the 
 fierce, spare-ribbed dogs who gad about can scarce 
 find a bone or bit of offal — in this place of dust, mud, 
 and squalor — rises a church which would be deemed 
 an ornament to any Western capital. Fair without, 
 it glitters inside with splendid treasures bought in the 
 holy city of Kiew. The altar is of marble, the 
 candlesticks of silver, many of the images, crosses, 
 and pictures are thickly encrusted with gold ; so are 
 the vestments of the priest, the Communion-plate, 
 and the font— this last being cut out of a solid block 
 of malachite.
 
 14 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 For ages the piety or superstition of Prince 
 Wiskoff and his ancestors, of the land-agents, of 
 the mujicks — of everyone, in short — has enriched 
 this church with voluntary gifts. In old days a serf 
 who obtained his freedom never failed to bring his 
 votive offering, and if he went away to prosper as a 
 merchant in one of the inland cities he would send 
 offerings annually till his death, to the end that luck 
 might not desert him ; the Wiskoffs, also, whether 
 they won at the gaming-tables or lost, always found 
 money to pay for some new chalice or statue, and to 
 this hour the peasants will club together every year 
 to make some costly present the richness of which 
 consoles them for their own poverty. 
 
 To the Russian peasant, indeed, the church is far 
 more of a home than the hovel where he dwells. 
 He enters it at all times, and may be found kneeling 
 for hours opposite the shrine of his favourite saint, 
 and gazing with ecstasy at the gorgeous things which 
 fill his foggy mind with visions of Paradise. Perhaps 
 he dreams of being himself clothed some day in gold 
 brocade like the saint in question ; anyhow, be he 
 never so poor, drunken, and desperate, he would not 
 steal so much as a pin from his church. Nor would 
 a professional brigand dare to commit such sacrilege. 
 Sometimes in travelling over the windy steppes
 
 An Emancipated Village. 15 
 
 you come across a gang of small-eyed, wiry little men, 
 mounted upon yeo -necked galloways, with uncombed 
 hair of rusty brown floating down their backs and ugly 
 weapons stuck in their girdles ; and you know these 
 men to be banditti, who would make no more fuss 
 about robbing a Jew pedlar than about sticking a 
 stray pig and roasting him for dinner. But let the Jew 
 have consecrated ornaments in his pack, and they will 
 piously sign themselves, leaving these things to his 
 care, and purloining only his furs, knives, horn cups, 
 pinchbeck trinkets, and such like, whereof, as we 
 know, the saints take no account. 
 
 One day a pedlar being overtaken with a rather 
 valuable cargo of profane jewellery got out of his 
 scrape by flourishing in the faces of his would-be 
 depredators the shin-bone of a holy martyr which 
 he had purchased in the Kiew catacombs. The pious 
 brigands only waited to see whether the Kiew mark 
 (a dove and cross) was duly imprinted on the bone, 
 and then scampered off, disgusted that such a precious 
 article should be in the hands of an infidel, and yet 
 not daring to rob him of it. 
 
 Look now and see a cloud of dust whirling up in 
 the village road, and hear from the midst of it the 
 wild 'yahoop' of a coachman. This is Prince Serge 
 Wiskoff being driven to mass in his paradadnoi — a
 
 1 6 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 thing like a springless donkey-cart, drawn by three 
 shaggy ponies, which gallop like the wind. The 
 bearded driver, perched on a high seat, belabours his 
 team without mercy, and yells because a noiseless 
 progress would not befit the dignity of his master, 
 least of all when going to divine service on a saint's 
 day. 
 
 For this is not Sunday, only one of those fre- 
 quent saints' days when what little work is done at 
 other times is suspended and the entire population 
 devote themselves to religion and vodki. The Prince 
 is too well versed in French literature not to be a 
 Voltairian, but he has prudence enough not to neglect 
 the outward observances of his faith ; for if he did, 
 the prestige which he still retains among his former 
 serfs would vanish. 
 
 As it is the peasantry treat their old master with 
 a fair show of slavishness. They no longer duck 
 down on both knees when he alights among them 
 at the church porch, as they would have done of 
 yore ; but they bow with a profound humility, 
 address him as ' little father,' and fawn upon him for 
 gifts of money. Before the day is over he will be 
 obliged to empty his purse among them and, having 
 refilled it (with very small coin), to empty it again ; 
 for although he can so ill afford to give, it suits him
 
 Art Emancipated Village. 17 
 
 to play the magnificent, just as it suits the barina to 
 be gracious and charitable to the women folks. 
 
 The Wiskoffs well know the peasantry nowadays 
 have got imbued with some ideas which might prove 
 very awkward in time of trouble to noble families who- 
 are unpopular. No newspapers penetrate among them,, 
 the village pope does not talk politics, the publican, 
 who keeps the brandy shop is a loyal, taciturn person,, 
 and yet here is not a peasant but grumbles that the 
 Czar — their good father — would do a great deal for 
 his people if the nobles would only let him. 
 
 He hears these things from the righteous pilgrims 
 who pass through the village, begging their way from 
 place to place as far as Kiew ; he hears them from the 
 Jew pedlars, who hate the Government, its Tschinn, 
 and its nobles, with an intensity of hatred, and who, 
 as they tiamp about the country, scatter discontent 
 broadcast ; he hears them from soldiers returning, 
 sullen and penniless, after fifteen years' service ; from 
 bands of howling fanatics belonging to some new- 
 fangled sect, who start up in the village one day, shriek 
 nonsense for a couple of hours, and then troop away, 
 to be no more heard of; and he hears them again 
 from emissaries of secret agrarian societies, who spread 
 their treason with the greater ease as they can afford 
 to bribe the police to let them alone. 
 
 C
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 The mujick has no wish to hurt the Czar, whom 
 he worships as the fountain of all good ; but let the 
 signal of revolt be given, and he will rise up, in the 
 Czar's name, against the nobles and tax-collectors, and 
 woe to those who will try to make him hear reason in 
 those days when he will have taken up arms for one 
 of those wild, unrealizable dreams such as can only 
 dawn in the skulls of the ignorant and wretched !
 
 A Co-operative Village. 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A CO-OPERATIVE VILLAGE. 
 
 How comes it that Prince Wiskoff, having many 
 thousand acres of fertile land, can afford neither to 
 till nor sell them, and remains poor } How comes 
 it that his peasants in the village we have visited are 
 as idle as if they had a direct interest in being so } 
 
 The peasants are idle because plots of ground are 
 rented to them on short leases of a year, and they 
 find no profit in improving these holdings since they 
 have no security of tenure. If they brought up fine 
 crops their rents would be raised and so would their 
 taxes. Moreover, they are all, without exception, in 
 debt either to usurers for advances made to buy tools 
 or to their landlord himself for arrears of rent ; so that 
 if they appeared to be earning money they would be 
 asked for more than they had got, and their last state 
 would be worse than the first. 
 
 As it is, they give the tax-collectors what they 
 must and their landlord what they can, which is not a
 
 20 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 great deal ; the landlord, on his side, must be content 
 to see them ruin his land by barbarous methods of 
 cultivation sooner than turn them off and get nothing. 
 It may be asked why he does not farm out his estate 
 in large holdings and at long leases, but the difficulty 
 is to find farmers. Men who have capital and experi- 
 ence enough to undertake a farm are scarce. 
 
 In places where the experiment has been success- 
 fully tried the landowners were themselves good agri- 
 culturists who resided upon their estates and kept a 
 constant watch over the farmers, who else would have 
 impoverished their soil and dragged them into costly 
 lawsuits ; besides, both farmers and proprietors have 
 to contend against this obstacle — that hired labourers 
 cannot be got to fulfil their contracts. For fair wages 
 the best among them, if well coaxed, will do a fair 
 day's work, but, if they hear of better wages being 
 paid elsewhere, they will troop off in a body, leaving 
 the hay on the ground or the cut corn to take care of 
 itself. 
 
 Others will hire themselves out to two masters, 
 and after receiving a month's prepayment (which is 
 customary) go away to drink and work for neither ; 
 others, again, besotted by habitual intemperance, will 
 at ordinary times scarcely work their wages' worth, and 
 in mid-harvest will altogether decline touching scythe
 
 A Co-operative Village. 2 1 
 
 or rake for days together, because of church festivals 
 which have to be kept sacred. The justices of the 
 peace, who sometimes Hve dozens of miles from the 
 aggrieved hirers, cannot easily be appealed to ; and 
 when at hand do little towards enforcing a contract 
 beyond sentencing the delinquent to three days' im- 
 prisonment — the complainant having generally to pay 
 the costs of the process as well as the delinquent's 
 carriage to prison. 
 
 All this brings agriculture to a standstill. Prince 
 Wiskoff, like many others, is waiting for better times, 
 without exactly seeing how they are to come under 
 the present system of government. However, the 
 vague hope that the extension of railways may put 
 things straight in his children's time, if not in his own, 
 prevents him from parting with his unremunerative 
 property for the very low price which its sale would 
 fetch him at present. 
 
 But let us leave this perplexed nobleman's village 
 and proceed to another, which once formed part of 
 the Wiskoff estate, but is now the property of a Mir, 
 or peasant association. 
 
 The Mir system may be summed up in a few 
 words : it has simply caused the peasant to exchange 
 the domination of his old master for the more grinding 
 tyranny of many masters. Nominally, he is the free
 
 2 2 The RiLssians of To-day. 
 
 member of a co-operative agricultural society ; virtu- 
 ally, he is a bondsman tied to the soil he tills by a 
 load of debt, and unable to free himself or better his 
 condition by any amount of individual exertion. The 
 Mir village is as beggarly to look at as the other we 
 have seen, but there is this difference : that when you 
 have passed a mile's length of battered hovels and come 
 in sigrht of the usual beautiful church, with its inevi- 
 table sky-blue dome and gilt minarets, you suddenly 
 descry a row of quite handsome cottages, built of red 
 brick, with substantial doors and windows, and rather 
 resembling new Swiss villas. 
 
 These are the residences of the startchina (mayor) 
 and of the starostas (elders or aldermen) ; and their 
 prosperous state at once tells a story, for the Mir offi- 
 cials are not supposed to possess a kopeck more than 
 their fellow-commoners ; and if they do it is because 
 they peculate, and are furthermore influential enough 
 to get themselves re-elected over and over again that 
 they may go on peculating. 
 
 Here we see the startchina step out of his house — 
 a yellow-bearded, blue-eyed person, with a square 
 furred cap and a fine new sheepskin touloupa, girt at 
 the waist with a black silk sash. He is in deep con- 
 versation with a commercial traveller, from whom he 
 has been buying some agricultural machinery for his
 
 A Co-ope7'ative Village. 
 
 Mir ; but he leaves him at once to welcome you, and 
 with soft winning Russian courtesy introduces you to 
 his house, where one of his sons, a boy in red-topped 
 boots and a white calico tunic, soon brings in some 
 capital tea, vodki,and cigarettes. The startchina does 
 not present his wife and daughters, for Russians of the 
 middle-class cling to the Oriental custom of secluding 
 their women ; but he comes and sits down with you 
 near the white-faced stove, and he has a most satis- 
 factory account to give you of the village which he 
 governs. 
 
 At the emancipation, he says, the villagers (500 
 able-bodied men, not counting women and children) 
 entered into a bond to buy of Prince Wiskoff the land 
 which they occupied, for which they had been paying 
 him an obrok, or fief-rent, of 6,000 roubles. This sum, 
 at the legal rate of interest, 6 per cent., represented a 
 capital of 100,000 roubles, w^hich the Mir proceeded to 
 borrow of the Government Land Bank. That bank, 
 however, in pursuance of its rules, would only lend 
 80,000 roubles— that is, four-fifths of the value of the 
 land — while taking a mortgage on the whole ; and the 
 loan was not advanced in money, but in bonds bearing 
 6 per cent, interest and payable in thirty-seven years. 
 Prince Wiskoff, being in need of cash, and only 
 able to convert his bonds at heavy discount, naturally
 
 24 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 insisted that the Mir should make good this discount, 
 as well as pay him the 20,000 roubles they had been 
 unable to borrow by instalments extending over forty- 
 nine years, with 6 per cent, on the unpaid sum. The 
 terms of the bank were also 6 per cent, with forty-nine 
 years of annual instalments ; so the Mir started into 
 life with habilities amounting to something like 12,000 
 roubles a year. 
 
 But another loan from usurers was soon needful to 
 buy agricultural machinery ; and if we add to this the 
 land taxes — the weight of which may be judged from 
 the fact that the peasantry pay 195,000,000 roubles a 
 year to the Treasury, as against 13,000,000 roubles 
 paid by the landowners — it will be seen that this Mir 
 works under rather depressing conditions. If the 
 startchina thinks otherwise, the reason is very simple 
 — it is he who, as mayor,, negotiated all the loans; 
 who, with the elders, buys all that is wanted in the 
 Mir for the common good (vodki included), and sells 
 the produce of the community ; and it is he who, when 
 a member of the Mir wants to go off and better him- 
 self as a workman or tradesman in towns, decides on 
 what terms leave shall be granted him, and on what 
 terms he shall buy himself out of the community, 
 should he subsequently be able to do so. 
 
 Tot us hope there are some mayors and elders who
 
 A Co-operative Village. 
 
 rule their Mirs honestly; but there ' is no public or 
 press to keep an eye on them, no officials charged to 
 audit their accounts ; and it must be recollected that 
 the more corrupt a municipal body are, so much the 
 greater is their chance of being re-elected, for with 
 the electors' own money they can buy all the votes 
 they want. 
 
 Now, under this system a peasant is much more a 
 slave than of old. He can marry at his pleasure, and 
 he is not liable to be cuffed or flogged (save illegally 
 as sometimes happens) ; these are the advantages he 
 has won ; but he is more heavily amerced than he used 
 to be, and nothing that he has is his own. If he 
 works too little his comrades abuse him ; if he works 
 his best he is no gainer, for all his earnings go into the 
 common stock, which somehow never yields a surplus. 
 
 There are years when the Mir cannot pay its 
 taxes. As the members are collectively responsible 
 to the tax-gatherer, it stands to reason that no one 
 of them cares to seem richer than the rest, lest his 
 superfluities should be seized for the common debt. 
 Thus, one will not think of breeding cattle unless all 
 the rest do, he will not dare to exhibit money he has 
 saved, and, in fact, what little he can lay by all goes 
 in vodki, which is the safest investment. 
 
 Of vodki there is always enough in the Mir, for it
 
 26 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 is a means of government. It circulates by the pailful 
 at election time ; it is plentiful on saints' days, when, 
 if not drunk, the men might muster and grumble 
 about their hardships ; it comes forth again in mys- 
 terious abundance whenever, from some cause or other, 
 the mayor gets into evil odour and wants to regain 
 his popularity. 
 
 Note that this mayor and his elders are never 
 plagued by the tax-gatherer when taxes run short. 
 The State official closes his eyes to the snugness of 
 their homes ; he professes to find nothing seizable 
 among their chattels, and always screws the deficit 
 out of the peasants. 
 
 Some mujicks with more brains than others go 
 away if they can find a chance of employment, and 
 then, as we have said, it becomes a question between 
 them and the mayor as to how much they shall pay. 
 The least they can be charged is their full share 
 towards the Mir's debt ; but if, growing rich, they 
 want to liberate themselves for good, the mayor can 
 assess a fancy value on their co-operation, and order 
 them back if they refuse to pay it. The affair gene- 
 rally ends in a compromise. A sum is paid, of which 
 the lion's share goes into the pockets of the startchina 
 and elders, while the rest furnishes a good carouse for 
 some or all of the other vilbgers.
 
 A Co-operatize Village. 27 
 
 Anything better calculated than all this to breed 
 general idleness, wretchedness, and depravity can 
 hardly be imagined ; but it also breeds this idea 
 among the peasants — that they did not get a fair start 
 after the emancipation, and ought to be exonerated 
 from all their debts to the Land Bank and Prince 
 Wiskoff. 
 
 As the soft-spoken mayor shows us round his 
 domain and purrs complacently about the blessings 
 of co-operation he is obliged to confess that the Mirs 
 will never be happy till the Czar by a stroke of his 
 fatherly pen shall rid them of their liabilities ; and he 
 opens wide his blue eyes on being told that the Czar 
 dare not do this thing. He thinks it would be the 
 simplest affair in the world, needing nothing but to 
 defy the Tschinn.
 
 28 The R^issians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 
 
 We have come on a flying visit to Odessa, and are 
 living in a many-storied house, whose dvornik or 
 porter is a responsible person, and we are sorry to 
 say that he is often drunk. Sorry, because his multi- 
 farious duties require a sober mind. 
 
 He takes the rent of lodgers and gives receipts for 
 it ; he must keep bad characters and vagabond dogs 
 out of the house-yard ; he has to raise an alarm in 
 case of fire, to see that the sewers are clear, to light 
 the petroleum lamps on the staircase after dark, to 
 scatter ashes over the pavement when it is slippery 
 with frost, and to sweep away the snow. If he neglects 
 any of these tasks he is liable to be fined, and even 
 chastised in private, by the police ; yet he drinks 
 himself incapable every feast-day, and our istvoschik, 
 or coachman, gets still more drunk in his company. 
 
 Happily, coachman and porter make no pretence 
 of attending to their duties when the boozing fit is on
 
 The Temperance Question. 29 
 
 them. They simply vanish out of sight, and leave 
 you to get on without them as you can. The tip- 
 siness of the dvornik always leads to a big theft of 
 the fuel stacked in the front yard ; that of the ist- 
 voschik obliges you to hire a public droschi, which is 
 after all better than being driven about by a fuddled 
 coachman, who might charge the acacias that border 
 the dusty streets or plunge at full gallop off the quay 
 into the port, as some have been known to do. Both 
 the men are good, industrious fellows when sober, 
 and express regret for their weakness ; but they have 
 a doleful story to tell of how they once tried to 
 become total abstainers and got into trouble with the 
 authorities in consequence. 
 
 This was about a dozen years ago, when the liquor 
 traffic was farmed out by Government to speculators, 
 who abused their monopoly to sell vodki at exorbitant 
 rates. The peasantry, knowing that there was a tariff 
 which was only eluded by connivance with the pro- 
 vincial authorities, whom the monopolists bribed, 
 banded themselves into temperance societies, with a 
 view to forcing down the prices. Hereupon the 
 farmers complained to Government, and the teetotal 
 leagues were dissolved as illegal secret societies. 
 
 This had already happened in 1854 and 1859, 
 before serfage was abolished ; and on both these
 
 30 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 occasions very summary measures were taken towards 
 forcing the people to contribute to the revenue by 
 their intemperance. Policemen and soldiers were 
 sent into the disaffected districts, and the teetotallers 
 were flogged into drinking ; some who doggedly held 
 out had liquor poured into their mouths through fun- 
 nels, and were afterwards hauled off to prison as 
 rebels ; at the same time the clergy were ordered to 
 preach in their churches against the new form of 
 sedition, and the press-censorship thenceforth laid its 
 veto upon all publications in which the immorality of 
 the liquor traffic was denounced. 
 
 These things sound incredible, but they are true. 
 In 1865 the people fancied that because they were no 
 longer serfs they could not be treated so unceremoni- 
 ously as of yore, but they found out their mistake. 
 They were simply dealt with as insurgents, and, 
 though not beaten, were fined, bullied, and preached 
 at till there was no spirit of resistance left in them. 
 However, this new rising led to the abolition of the 
 monopolies. An excise was substituted, the price of 
 vodki fell by competition, and the lower orders of 
 Russia are now drunker than ever. According to the 
 latest returns (' Wesselowski's Annual Register'), the 
 liquor duties yield the revenue 800,000,000 roubles 
 (;^ 32,000,000 sterling) a year.
 
 The Teynperance Question. 31 
 
 One mornini^ a soft-spoken policeman, in a ^rey 
 top-coat, calls to say that our coachman, who vanished 
 overnight, is lying at the station under a charge of 
 assault committed while inebriate. Is it our pleasure 
 that he should be made to act as public scavenger 
 for three days in the 'drunk gang'? We have a 
 private idea that to sweep the streets would do our 
 istvoschik no harm, but the point is really this — shall 
 we bribe him out of his scrape, or by declining to do 
 so stir up the police to prefer a charge which may 
 keep him in prison, not for days, but months ? We 
 produce three roubles, reflecting that we can deduct 
 them from Ivan Ivanowitch's wages, and by-and-by 
 Ivan turns up, sober and thankful, to explain that he 
 would never have been arrested at all if the police 
 had not felt sure that his master would buy him 
 off. 
 
 This is so true that the man will be sacred in the 
 policeman's eyes for perhaps three months to come. 
 Let him stagger about as rowdily as he pleases, be 
 quarrelsome and insolent, the police will take no 
 notice of him till the time has arrived when they 
 think they may decently claim three more roubles. 
 
 As influential persons, such as great noblemen, 
 bishops, diplomatic and consular agents, cannot be 
 called upon for black-mail, their servants enjoy full
 
 32 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 licence as to intoxication ; so do petty Civil servants 
 and military officers in their own persons, for a police- 
 man who meddled with them might find himself in 
 trouble : but all non-official people whose servants 
 exceed sobriety, or who do so themselves, must bribe 
 or take the consequences, which are unpleasant. 
 
 A person may also be severely punished for not 
 getting drunk, as a certain Polish schoolmaster whom 
 we met one day disconsolately wielding a besom on 
 the quays in company of a dozen kopeckless rogues 
 who are being made examples of because they have 
 no friends. The crime of our schoolmaster was that 
 he lifted up his voice in his school and in tea-shops 
 against ' King Vodki,' and tried to inveigle some uni- 
 versity students into taking a temperance pledge. He 
 was privately warned that he had better hold his 
 peace, but he went on, and the result was that one 
 evening as he was walking home somebody bumped 
 against him ; he protested ; two policemen forthwith 
 started up, hauled him off, charged him with being 
 drunk and disorderly, and the next day he was sen- 
 tenced to sweep the streets for three days — a sentence, 
 which fortunately does not involve the social annihi- 
 lation which it would in other countries. 
 
 The fact is that in Russia you must not advocate 
 temperance principles ; the vested interests in the
 
 The Temperance Question. 2,7) 
 
 drink trade are too many and strong. Nobody forces 
 you to drink yourself ; the Raskolniks, or dissenters, 
 who are the most respectable class of the Russian 
 community and number 10,000,000 souls, are in 
 general abstainers, but they, like others, must not 
 overtly try to make proselytes. There are many most 
 enlightened men who hate and deplore the national 
 vice, who try to check it among their own servants, 
 who would support any rational measure of legislation 
 by which it could be diminished ; but if one of them 
 bestirred himself too actively in the matter he would 
 find all his affairs in some mysterious fashion grow 
 out of joint. Authors and journalists are still less in 
 a position to cope with the evil, for the press censors 
 systematically refuse to pass writings in which the 
 prevalency of drunkenness is taken for granted. 
 
 Before the abolition of the monopolies a land- 
 owner might set up a distillery on his estate, but he 
 was compelled to sell the produce to the vodki- 
 farmers, and these speculators might build a public- 
 house on his land against his consent, though he was 
 entitled to fix the spot and to receive a fair rent. At 
 present, the trade being free, licences to distil and sell 
 are conferred by Government {i.e. virtually bought of 
 the Tschinn), and almost every landowner of con- 
 sequence has one. 
 
 D
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Prince Wiskoff might get one if he pleased, and 
 has more than once thought of so doing ; but he has 
 been deterred for want of capital to compete with his 
 intimate enemy and neighbour, Prince Runoff, who 
 has a distillery in full swing and floods the whole 
 district with its produce. The Prince's chief agents 
 are the priests, who in the farming days were allowed 
 a regular percentage on the drink sold in their pa- 
 rishes, but who now receive a lump sum, nominally as 
 an Easter gift, but on the tacit understanding that 
 they are to push the sale of vodki by every means in 
 their power. 
 
 The pious men do not go the length of urging 
 their parishioners to get drunk, but they multiply 
 the church feasts whereon revelry is the custom ; 
 they affirm that stimulants are good for the health 
 because of the cold climate, and they never reprove 
 a peasant whose habitual intemperance is notorious. 
 The Prince's land agent, the tax-collectors, the con- 
 scription officers, all join in promoting the consumption 
 of vodki by transacting their business at the village 
 dram-shop, with glasses before them ; and even the 
 doctor, who lives by the Prince's patronage, prescribes 
 vodki for every imaginable ailment. 
 
 The inducements to drink in the towns are not 
 less than in the country. When the coachman, Ivan
 
 The Temperance Question. 35 
 
 Ivanowitch, goes out for a stroll among the fine streets 
 of Odessa he is lured into the tea-shops by the loud 
 music of barrel-organs, and vodki is served him with 
 his tea as a matter of course. If he drives his master 
 to a party, he has no sooner drawn up his trap under 
 the shed in the host's yard, than the servants invite 
 him into a lower room and give him as much spirit 
 as he will drink ; if he goes to the cornchandler's for 
 oats, to the veterinary surgeon about his horse's legs, 
 to the harness-maker's or coachmaker's, the preface 
 to all business is vodki ; and when he sets out to 
 visit his kinsmen upon holidays, vodki greets him 
 upon every threshold. 
 
 It is the same with the dvornik when he ascends 
 to the different flats of the house to collect rent or 
 carry letters ; vodki is offered him before he has had 
 time to state his business ; and under these hospitable 
 circumstances the wonder is not that the man should 
 occasionally exceed sobriety, but that he should so 
 often be sober. But in Russia a sober servant means 
 — exceptis excipiendis — one who only gets drunk upon 
 the festivals of the Church.
 
 36 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THROUGH THE STREETS. 
 
 In most Russian towns the houses are small, and 
 every family has one of its own as in England. St. 
 Petersburg and Odessa are exceptions. 
 
 Here the population live in flats, within six and 
 seven storied houses, higher than those of Paris. In 
 the poorer quarters of Odessa the giant houses have 
 an odd look, owing firstly to the dust from the 
 steppes, which paints them the colour of pea-soup, 
 and secondly to the smallness of the windows and 
 the number of absent panes which have been re- 
 placed by layers of greased paper on account of the 
 dearness of glass. 
 
 A watch-glass costs a rouble in Odessa, a foot- 
 square window-pane about six shillings. In the inland 
 towns the prices are still higher ; so that a Russian 
 boy who puts his fist though a pane commits one of 
 the heaviest crimes in the domestic decalogue and does 
 not escape the wrath of an usually apathetic father.
 
 Through the Streets, 37 
 
 Odessa enjoys the reputation of being the most 
 Liberal city of the Empire (Moscow and Kiew being 
 the most Conservative), and next to the capital the 
 fairest. About ten years ago it succeeded in getting 
 itself paved after fruitless efforts in that direction as 
 strenuous and as remarkable in their way as those of 
 Geneva struggling for the Protestant faith. 
 
 First a paving rate was levied in 181 5, after the 
 great peace, and the tschinovniks put the money in 
 their pockets. Then Prince Woronzow, governor of 
 the Chersonese, raised a new rate, but on second 
 thoughts concluded that the money would be better 
 spent in constructing a monumental staircase from 
 the handsome boulevard that faces the sea down to 
 the beach. A lean statue of the Due de Richelieu 
 in Roman undress stands at the top of that Baby- 
 lonian flight of steps, which not a dozen persons 
 descend in the course of the day. After this a 
 British contractor presented himself, offering to pave 
 the city very cheap ; he bribed the tschinovniks all 
 round, got an advance of money and disappeared. 
 
 Nothing daunted, a very intelligent golova (bur- 
 gomaster) of Odessa conspired with some wealthy 
 fellow-citizens to pave the city by a public sub- 
 scription under the form of a voluntary rate ; but, 
 having forgotten to administer douceurs in the proper
 
 38 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 quarters, he was suspended by the civil governor 
 for being a meddlesome person, and the paving plans 
 were forwarded for the fourth time to the Office of 
 Public Works in St. Petersburg. The answer came 
 back at the end of two years, ordering the work 
 to be carried out by the Government engineers ; the 
 rate-collector went his rounds afresh, and for the next 
 year or two every quarterof the town was succes- 
 sively visited by cartloads of paving-stones. 
 
 But nothing came of these visits, except too rash 
 anticipations, briefly dispelled. After a cartload of 
 stones had encumbered a thoroughfare for a month, 
 another cart would come and remove it elsewhere. 
 Meanwhile a canopy of dust hung over the city, 
 obscuring the sun in fair weather, while in rainy times 
 the streets were often wholly impassable, certain 
 quarters becoming afflicted with a drought of water, 
 because the water-carriers could not ply their trade 
 either on foot or in carts. Nothing less than a visit 
 from the present Czar was needed to obtain for the 
 Odessians the great boon of getting the pavements 
 they had repeatedly paid for and were willing to pay 
 for again. So at length the city was paved ; not 
 cheaply, indeed, nor over well, but still paved. 
 
 These facts are worth noting, because hundreds 
 of other Russian towns are struggling with the
 
 Through the Streets. 39 
 
 question of paving, or else with that of water supply 
 or street-lighting, as patiently and hopelessly as 
 Odessa did for half a century. The Czar cannot 
 spend his life in travelling. 
 
 The streets of a Russian city are picturesque, for 
 signboards abound and shop-fronts are painted in 
 staring colours — light blue, yellow, and apple-green. 
 There are no posters on hoardings, for advertising 
 constitutes a monopoly in the hands of a company, 
 who have hitherto confined themselves to the news- 
 paper branch of puffing and have not mustered enter- 
 prise enough to disfigure public thoroughfares. At 
 the corner of almost every street you come upon a 
 Byzantine-looking shrine of the Virgin, with a number 
 of Russians signing themselves bareheaded in front. 
 You meet the Virgin in various other unexpected 
 places — in railway stations, in post-offices, with a little 
 oil-lamp flickering at her feet — even in the frowsy 
 lock-ups, where tipsy mujicks can be heard yelling all 
 day and night. 
 
 The behaviour of the people in the streets is quiet 
 and civil. If a Russian knocks against you he begs 
 your pardon with a sincere show of contrition ; if he 
 sees your nose turning white in the cold weather, 
 he picks up a handful of snow and rubs it with 
 brotherly ofiiciousness till the circulation is restored.
 
 40 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 All along the populous streets pedlars saunter sell- 
 ing dried mushrooms, cotton handkerchiefs, religious 
 prints, white bread, and vareniches (cheese fritters) ; 
 but none of them shout except the Greeks, who each 
 make noise enough for a dozen. Pigeons infest the 
 roadways with impunity, for they are held sacred ; 
 even if a Russian were starving it would not occur to 
 him to knock one of these birds on the head and cook 
 it. Dancing bears are also to be seen in great numbers, 
 and though not sacred are great favourites, and always 
 draw crowds, who laugh at their antics like children. 
 There is no man so easy to amuse as a Russian. 
 In the popular theatres, which stand on about the 
 same level as London ' penny gaffs,' he testifies his 
 merriment by shrieks till the tears run down his 
 cheeks, and it is not rare to see him in the streets 
 roaring before some farcical French print exposed in 
 a shop window. The more indecent these prints are 
 the better for his taste, and some windows exhibit 
 pictures of the kind that are reserved for the secret 
 albums of the dissolute in other countries. Russians are 
 also fanatically fond of music, and all the tea-houses 
 are provided with some kind of organ on the musical- 
 box system. These instruments are manufactured at 
 Moscow, and are accounted better than those of 
 Switzerland, the larger ones, such as enliven the big
 
 Through the Streets. 41 
 
 tea-houses^ playing as many as a hundred tunes and 
 costing many hundreds of pounds. An organ of this 
 sort makes as much noise as a full orchestra. 
 
 In the smaller tea-houses the organ tunes are 
 frequently varied of an evening by the performance 
 of some strolling minstrel in Caucasian costume, who 
 strums on a triangular guitar the melodies of Lithuania 
 and Little Russia. Very sweet melodies these are, and 
 Chopin introduced many of them into his waltzes. 
 The Caucasian minstrel, dressed in a black velvet 
 tunic adorned on either breast with rows of silvered 
 cartridge-tubes (into which he puts tobacco in time of 
 peace), generally begins with the plaintive airs which 
 the roussalkas (water-fairies) are supposed to sing as 
 they lure their admirers into deep water ; he goes on 
 by-and-by to the twanging war songs which console 
 men for broken heads ; but as evening advances he is 
 always called upon for a vritska, or dance, and, the 
 tea-tables being pushed aside, the natives prepare for 
 a hop of the wildest kind. It is a veritable French 
 can-can, more unbridled if anything than that of the 
 Quartier Latin ; and when joined in by Russian 
 servant-girls with big boots and stolid faces it is irre- 
 sistibly comic. Some girls, however, dance with grace 
 and keep time to the music by rapping their heels on the 
 floor like clog dancers.
 
 42 The Russiaiis of To-day. 
 
 Bells are another of the Russian's deh'ghts ; and 
 on Sunday mornings the riot of chimes, triple peals, 
 and bob-majors that ring from church domes is enough 
 to gladden the most enthusiastic lover of campano- 
 logy. Moscow is the place where these bells are cast, 
 and most of them are sent to the holy city of Kiew 
 to be blessed. A church never seems to think it has 
 too many bells. 
 
 Thieves and policemen are the great pests of Rus- 
 sian towns, but especially policemen. Russians are 
 not thieves by nature, judging by their honesty in 
 country districts, where there are no police ; but once 
 they get into towns the evil example set them by 
 official persons and the venal connivance they can 
 obtain from the police prove too tempting. A man 
 who has resided some time in Russia even grows to 
 doubt whether the notions of vicuvi and tumn are 
 comprehended there as they are in other countries. 
 If you pay a visit and leave a cloak on the seat of 
 your carriage, that cloak is gone when you come out. 
 If you walk out with a dog unchained, the dog 
 vanishes round a street corner. Shopkeepers are afraid 
 to place articles of value in their windows. House- 
 holders are liable to have their horses and carriages 
 stolen if they do not keep a sufficient number of 
 stable servants, and take care to see before going to
 
 Through the Streets. 43 
 
 bed that one at least of these menials is sober. A 
 man who goes out for a night-stroll unarmed may be 
 set upon within sight of a droschky stand and stripped 
 of every article he wears, including shirt and small 
 clothes. The droschky drivers will not give him a 
 helping-hand ; they will rather start off altogether in 
 a panic lest they should be summoned to give evi- 
 dence ; as for the police, they hurry up afterwards, 
 and make the despoiled man pay twice the value of 
 the things he has lost in fees for investigation. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that a person influential 
 enough to make himself unpleasant to the police gets 
 back his lost property in no time ; the police will even 
 restore him the equivalent if they cannot recover the 
 actual articles. A Frenchman of rank who had left an 
 opera-glass in a box at the Odessa opera missed it, 
 as a matter of course, and mentioned his loss to the 
 Civil Governor, who took up the matter forthwith. It 
 appeared, however, that the article had been purloined 
 by a free-lance having no connection with the police ; 
 so an official waited upon the Frenchman with a glass 
 three times as good as the one he had lost, saying 
 that the authorities would consider themselves dis- 
 graced if a stranger lost anything in their country — a 
 speech which must have given the Frenchman a rosy 
 idea of Russian honesty.
 
 44 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Merchants and tradesmen often pay thief-insurance 
 money to the police ; but as the thieves can generally 
 afford to pay still more for the privilege of being let 
 alone, the insurance is only accepted ad valorem, so 
 to say. For instance, a man may insure his watch, 
 great-coat, and dog, but not his safe if burglars can 
 manage to rifle it. Besides, the police do not play 
 fair, and continually shield themselves by pretending 
 that there are too many independent rogues about 
 who meanly work on their own sole account. One 
 comfort is that the Russian who waylays and strips 
 you seldom does you bodily injury. He is a gentle 
 thief, who pulls off your furred boots as considerately 
 as if they were his own which you had put on by 
 mistake. It takes time to accustom oneself to Russian 
 character ; but you end by learning that the Russian 
 appears in his softest light when he is bettering him- 
 self in some way at your expense. 
 
 Improbable as it may sound, governors of gaols 
 often let out prisoners on purpose that they may 
 thieve. Last year the Moscow papers reported the 
 case of a celebrated burglar, who, having been lodged 
 in the penitentiary, was one night caught ' cracking 
 the crib ' of a wealthy merchant. This led to in- 
 quiries, and the burglar confessed that, having planned 
 his robbery before entering gaol, he had spoken about
 
 Through the Streets. 45 
 
 it to one of the turnkeys, who had let him out on con- 
 dition of going with him and sharing the proceeds. 
 The turnkey did not deny this, but said he had acted 
 under instructions from the governor, who had bar- 
 gained to have the Hon's share. The governor in his 
 turn tried to throw the blame on the police, alleging 
 that they had given him orders to let out the prisoner 
 for some purpose not stated ; but the story was dis- 
 believed and the governor was dismissed. Soon after- 
 wards the burglar was tried by a jury and acquitted, 
 but the turnkey was not even indicted.
 
 46 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BRISKATSTARTINE HUSSARS. 
 
 In a number of villages dotted about over the 
 steppe within a dozen versts of Odessa, troops and 
 half-troops of the Briskatstartine Hussars were quar- 
 tered before the war. It is the custom to station 
 Russian cavalry in villages because of the facilities for 
 getting forage. There is a cavalry barrack inside 
 Odessa which serves as depot, and where at this 
 moment a major of the Briskatstartines is drilling and 
 clothing droves of shy tow-haired recruits sent to him 
 from as far as Esthonia, Livonia, Jaroslav, and Ark- 
 hangelsk for consignment to the seat of war. 
 
 This major we shall call Strengmann. He is a half- 
 German from Courland — poor, hardworked, as good a 
 soldier as ever wore spurs, but one who will never rise 
 above his present grade, because he fulfils its duties too 
 well and because he is not a nobleman. An officer 
 does not count in Russian society until he reaches the 
 rank of lieutenant-colonel ; and, though the son of
 
 The Briskatstartine Hussars. 47 
 
 a high-class tscJdnovnik must pass for form's sake 
 through the subaltern grades, he is generally detached 
 on staff duty till he can be hoisted to the rank be- 
 fitting his birth. Strengmann's colonel, Prince Topofif, 
 is just twenty-eight; the lieutenant-colonel, Prince 
 Tripofif, recently kept his twenty-sixth birthday, be- 
 tween two defeats near Kars. 
 
 Strengmann was never on familiar terms with 
 these gentlemen, who lived in high state in houses 
 of their own at Odessa and who treated him with 
 courteous haughtiness. They never invited him to 
 dinner, and he did not expect they should. Streng- 
 mann has never sat at an aristocratic table in his life. 
 When he went to make his reports to Topofif or 
 Tripofif he usually found them in bed, sleepy after an 
 agreeable night's baccarat at the Club of Nobles. 
 They would keep him standing while he told his 
 business, then sign his reports without a word, and 
 dismiss him with a nod. On reviews and other gala 
 occasions the two princes used to figure at the head 
 of their regiment in glittering uniforms of skyblue 
 and silver; but at other times the management of 
 the regiment, in all but financial matters, was left 
 wholly in Strengmann's hands. The finances Prince 
 Topofif managed with his private steward, as the 
 custom is among Russian colonels. It was in keeping
 
 48 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 with these arrangements that when the war broke out 
 and a chance of glory appeared Topoff and Tripoff 
 should have been sent off to take it, while Strengmann 
 remained behind. 
 
 To be sure, if the elegant Topoff and the fasci- 
 nating Tripoff had been relegated to depot duty they 
 could never have succeeded as Strengmann does in co- 
 ordinating the polyglot elements of which a Russian 
 regiment is composed. As a matter of policy natives 
 of the north are sent into regiments quartered south, 
 and vice versa. Soldiers are also sorted, as far as pos- 
 sible, according to their size and complexion. Under 
 Nicholas there was a hussar regiment altogether made 
 up of dark-haired men pitted with the small-pox, and 
 another of light-haired men in the same case. There 
 was a regiment whose soldiers all had fair hair, slim 
 figures, and blue eyes; and another where swarthy 
 features and eagle noses were the rule. 
 
 These happy assortments have been less strictly 
 adhered to under the present reign, but enough is 
 done in the way of sizing to bring men of twenty 
 different dialects into each regiment, and thereby 
 greatly to obviate the risks of mutiny. Strengmann 
 knows a few dozen words out of every language 
 spoken from the Oural Mountains to the Caucasus, 
 and when he cannot piece a whole sentence together
 
 The Briskatstartine Hussars. 49 
 
 he makes up for deficient parts of speech with so 
 many strokes from a cane which he is always switch- 
 ing behind his back. He ought not to beat his 
 soldiers, but he does, because he has found out that 
 cane is the only tongue universally understood. His 
 adjutant, depot-captain, and lieutenant have likewise 
 made this discovery. So have the sergeants and cor- 
 porals ; and, as there is no one to prevent all these 
 officers from conducting discipline in their own way, 
 they deal their blows right and left. 
 
 One word about blows in Russia. A nobleman 
 who should strike a mujick or a soldier in anger would 
 be obliged to pay a sum of money to escape the con- 
 sequences, which might be serious. Since the Eman- 
 cipation a ukase has abolished the knout, the rattan, 
 and even the birch in State schools. Noblemen have 
 been especially ordered to abstain from assaults; and 
 an infringement of this rule, if not compounded by the 
 victim, might lead to the nobleman being degraded 
 from his rank in the Tschinn by the marshal of the 
 nobility in his district. But mujicks continue to 
 pummel one another, and to be pummelled by their 
 superiors who are not of noble blood, for this is 
 custom. The policeman thumps the droschky-driver, 
 and the driver thumps the ostler; the ostler thumps 
 the beggar, and the beggar thumps whom he can. 
 
 E
 
 50 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Blows cause no bad blood. Strengmann thwacks his 
 
 soldiers without mercy but without wrath, and they 
 
 yell without stint but without rancour. 
 
 Here is a long-haired Livonian who is bleating 
 
 like a calf in the barrack-yard because he has been 
 taken away from his village, which he will not see 
 again for a dozen years. What would be the use of 
 sending him to snooze in the guard-room .'' A few 
 touches with the cane serve the much more practical 
 purpose of despatching him skipping towards the 
 barber, who will clip his poll and pass him on to the 
 clothing sergeant, who will rig him out in boots and a 
 grey coat which will engross his attention for the rest 
 of the day. 
 
 Here, again, are a batch of soldiers who have slept 
 out of barracks and been brought in drunk ; and an- 
 other batch who are being dragged in by the police 
 for looting in shops. Expostulation would be of no 
 use, and imprisonment, if systematically applied, would 
 soon have the effect of clearing out the barracks. 
 So the major's awful cane is set going, and the culprits 
 make no complaints. 
 
 The soldiers like Strengmann fairly well, and he 
 is good to them after a fashion, like that of a keeper 
 with young bears. He knows that soldiers must get 
 drunk, for they have nothing else to do, and must
 
 The Briskatstartine Hussai^s. 5 1 
 
 loot, for they have often not enough to eat. Their 
 barracks is a fearful place of stenches, mouldiness, 
 and dirt. The soldiers have no bedding, but sleep on 
 wooden cots wrapped up in their cloaks. Their food 
 is tchi, served twice a day with an occasional lump of 
 beef in it, and a pound of black bread, ill-baked, be- 
 cause damp bread weighs more than dry and brings 
 so much profit to the baker. 
 
 On pay-day a soldier is supposed to receive one 
 or two kopecks; but the majority of them are on 
 permanent stoppages because of articles of their kit 
 which they have sold to buy drink with, or because 
 of alleged barrack damages committed while drunken. 
 As not one soldier in a hundred can read, the 
 account-book which the paymaster fills up for him 
 every month is a volume of cryptography; and he 
 can be made to pay for a pair of boots a dozen 
 times over without being any the wiser. When by 
 chance an atom of pay is doled out it goes to the 
 canteen immediately. So does the money which a 
 soldier can earn by picking up an odd job or two by 
 working for landowners or tradesmen in towns. 
 
 Nothing can stop a soldier from accepting these 
 jobs with or without leave. Sometimes in harvest a 
 regiment will melt clean away, and scouts will be 
 employed for a month in riding after the runawa}'s 
 
 £^2
 
 52 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 and whipping them back to barracks Hke a pack of 
 straggling hounds. More commonly, however, the 
 colonel, or rather his steward, contracts for hiring out 
 a few hundred men at a time for harvesting, and puts 
 two-thirds of the money into his pocket. The other 
 third comes to him through the canteen, which is his 
 property. It is the colonel who clothes, feeds, and 
 pays his regiment and keeps the barracks in repair; 
 so perhaps Prince Topoff's steward would be able 
 to explain how the bread, boots, and barracks of the 
 Briskatstartine Hussars are such sorry things, and 
 how the soldier's pay generally comes to nothing as 
 above said. 
 
 If a stranger visit the barracks of the Preobajentski 
 Guards at St. Petersburg he will see quarters which 
 are all that such places should be. The rooms shine 
 with kaolin varnish, the men's kits are magnificent, 
 the rations are of good weight and wholesome, the 
 drains emit no odours, and pay comes in regularly. 
 But then the Czar often visits the barracks of his fa- 
 vourite regiment, which have become a show-place for 
 foreigners. 
 
 And every time the Czar announces his intention 
 of visiting another barrack that place immediately 
 becomes a show too. When his Majesty went to 
 Odessa the Colonel of the Briskatstartines spent se-
 
 The Bris /cat star ime Hussars. 53 
 
 vcral thousand pounds in making his men and their 
 quarters look sumptuous. For three days the soldiers 
 lived in clover — new clothes, good dinners, money in 
 their pockets, vodki to drink, and clean rugs to lie 
 down upon. No wonder their loyalty was pleasantly 
 stimulated towards the Sovereign whose presence 
 could conjure up such blessings; but as soon as the 
 well-intentioned but not ubiquitous monarch had 
 turned his back things relapsed into their old groove, 
 which is one of squalor. The money that is set down 
 in the estimates for the keep of a regiment is amply 
 sufficient if it reached its destination ; but a part some- 
 how sticks in the War-Office; another lump gets lost 
 between the fingers of the general commanding the 
 division ; the brigade general next mislays a portion ; 
 finally the colonel comes, who thinks he should be a 
 zany if he did not levy his due commission upon the 
 remainder. 
 
 The impulse thus given from above extends to the 
 lowest officer who is entrusted with a single rouble 
 for regimental use. Major Strengmann filches all he 
 can because he does not get his pay regularly; the 
 captain follows suit, and the sergeant-major plays the 
 ^ame card. The surgeon who directs the infirmary 
 sends in a long bill for medicines, and gives his 
 patients vodki, which cures them quite as well. The
 
 54 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 quartermaster pockets the money that should go to 
 mend the drains ; the adjutant gets a bonus from the 
 contractors who supply rotten wheat and tainted 
 meat. 
 
 Say that from fire or some other cause a part of 
 the barracks becomes so damaged as to require re- 
 pair. The quartermaster estimates the cost at lo 
 per cent, more than is needed, the major claps on 
 lo per cent, more, the colonel another lo per cent., 
 and so on till the War Office is reached. Here the 
 tschinovniks, having taxed the bill, allow about two- 
 thirds of the sum asked (though they enter the whole 
 on their books), and the money passing through the 
 series of hands already mentioned eventually reaches 
 the quartermaster under the form of a trifle not suf- 
 ficient for the purpose in hand. So the repairs are 
 effected in a shoddy fashion, if at all; and some day 
 one hears that a high wind has blown down a whole 
 wing of the barracks, and killed two or three score of 
 men in it. 
 
 But there is no free press to take note of these 
 things, so the old game goes on. Those who remem- 
 ber how the British soldier was robbed not more 
 than forty years ago, when newspapers were already 
 pretty plainspoken, may reckon what chances there 
 are of the Russian military administration being im-
 
 The Briskatstartine Htcssars. 55 
 
 proved under a system of government which is about a 
 hundred years behind what the English circumlocution 
 departments were in 183c. Meanwhile, the Russian 
 soldier is not discontented in the midst of his filth 
 and hardships. He plods on like one who is under- 
 going man's fated lot, and in war he fights like a 
 hero for the men who plunder him, happy if he can 
 win a copper medal with a smart ribbon which he will 
 sport when he goes back to his village to the admi- 
 ration of his somnolent, ill-washed sweetheart.
 
 The Russians of To-day, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A VICTORIOUS GENERAL. 
 
 One of Prince Topoff's predecessors in the colonelcy 
 of the Briskatstartine Hussars was Prince Falutinski, 
 now general, and commonly known as the hero of the 
 Daghestan war. He is a splendid-looking personage, 
 six feet high, well whiskered, and not yet fifty. He is 
 perfumed with musk and wears two or three diamond 
 rings. His eyes are soft and his manners charming : he 
 has been employed in diplomacy, he has been governor 
 of a province, he is a privy councillor, and acted for a 
 while as manager-general of the Imperial theatres. 
 No man is appointed to this high post who has not 
 first proved his science on fields of battle ; and General 
 Falutinski is universally admitted to have displayed 
 at once tact and courage in his delicate duties of 
 engaging Italian prime-donne and French comics. 
 It is only a captious mind that could contend there 
 is anything unmilitary in such functions. General 
 Falutinski, in his glittering uniform all covered with
 
 A Victorious General. 57 
 
 stars, was much more potent in maintaining harmony 
 among rival songstresses than any puny civiHan could 
 have been ; and as to the fiddlers in the orchestra, 
 who but a general could have made these gentlemen 
 tremble in their shoes when they once threatened to 
 strike because of an unpopular conductor ? 
 
 But every man, except the Czar, has his failings, 
 and the general had once, perhaps, the defect of 
 bragging too much. It was not, however, the ponder- 
 ous pragmatical brag which makes victorious Germans 
 so offensive, nor yet that vapouring French bombast 
 which is so easy to see through. It was brag which 
 those hearing it took for solid truth. The General 
 impressed everybody with a sense of his country's 
 power and of his own unlimited worth ; he appeared 
 to be earnest and thoughtful ; one fancied, after 
 listening to him, that Russia was exercising a won- 
 derful self-control in not launching her legions to 
 subjugate all opponents of her philanthropic policy. 
 
 Philanthropy and Russian policy were in Falutin- 
 ski's mouth convertible terms. He ecstatized innu- 
 merable journalists and sentimental politicians by 
 means of them ; he even succeeded in puzzling some 
 second-rate statesmen, who were more pervious to his 
 personal fascination than alive to the interests of the 
 countries they were paid to serve. Russia never
 
 58 The Russiajis of To-day. 
 
 commits the mistake of getting her foreign business 
 transacted by square-toed respectabiUty. Falutinski 
 had the well-bred haughtiness which keeps the vulgar 
 at a distance, the grace in trifling which pleases wo- 
 men, and that affable art of appearing to be confi- 
 dential which dupes persons on the look-out for ' early 
 information'— to be used in Parliament, on 'Change, 
 or in the press. 
 
 Among all who could serve him by influencing 
 public opinion the General squandered the small coin 
 of courtesy and kind words most lavishly ; so that 
 he never went anywhere without making himself a 
 useful friend or two. Besides, his interlocutors were 
 always bound to remember that he was the great 
 Falutinski of the Daghestan war — not a commonplace 
 person by any means, nor one who could be suspected 
 of brag. He had led his victorious army over the 
 sand plains of Anketer, had crossed the swollen river 
 Terek in face of a murderous fire, and routed the 
 hordes of the fierce Bagallyou Khan in their fastnesses. 
 Special correspondents had written in the most lau- 
 datory terms of these acts of valour and skill ; and 
 these independent observers have so much to do with 
 the making of military reputations nowadays that it 
 was no wonder Falutinski should have been classed 
 high in the estimation of the world and in his own.
 
 A Victorious General. 59 
 
 He was not obsei-ved to study strategy in his leisure 
 hours, for he was too busy with diplomatists and 
 opera-singers as above said ; and it was not even 
 proved that he had ever read military books in his 
 youth, for he was a colonel at twenty-five, and had 
 till then chiefly distinguished himself by leading the 
 cotillons at Court balls. But a man who has innate 
 military genius need not pour over books as Von 
 Moltke does ; and when riding on horseback at the 
 State reviews in the Admiralty Square of St. Peters- 
 burg Falutinski looked the very beau-ideal of a warrior. 
 Indeed, if he and Von Moltke had been placed side 
 by side, women, who are known to be infallible judges 
 of masculine character, would have had no hesitation 
 in deciding which of the two was best fitted to lead 
 soldiers to victory. 
 
 The plain truth is, however, that the Daghestan 
 war was one of those Russian military games of which 
 outsiders do not always see most. We forget how 
 long ago this philanthropic crusade took place, and 
 for what precise reason it was that Bagallyou Khan 
 incurred the wrath of the Holy Empire ; but the man 
 had to be chastised, and the Grand Duke Rurik was 
 sent to do it. He chose Falutinski, his boon friend, 
 as chief of the staft", and with an army of 30,000 men, 
 ever so many guns, and a dozen hospitably enter-
 
 6o The Russians of To-day. 
 
 tained correspondents, marched to the shores of the 
 Caspian Sea, where Bagallyou Khan smote him hip 
 and thigh. 
 
 But this was only the outset of the campaign, and 
 the world heard little of the defeat ; for the Grand 
 Duke courteously informed the correspondents that 
 he would prefer they should not report Russian 
 failures for the present, owing to State reasons. The 
 correspondents thought this request most reasonable. 
 It was made to them with very good grace after a 
 dinner in the Grand Duke's tent, and Falutinski, as 
 they well knew, had charge of the post-office through 
 which their letters must have gone. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Grand Duke sent off to St. Peters- 
 burg an account of his first battle, in which he forgot 
 to mention that he had been beaten ; so that a Cabi- 
 net courier arrived, bringing decorations and other 
 honours for him and Falutinski just as they had 
 finished fighting their second battle, in which they 
 were more badly worsted than the first time. In 
 this second disastrous affair the Grand Duke's kitchen 
 battery was captured, along with his French cook ; 
 and rumours came from the enemy's camp of atro- 
 cities committed on this foreigner, who had been 
 made to swallow six quarts of the soup he had pre- 
 pared for the ducal table.
 
 A Victorious General. 6i 
 
 It now turned out that his Imperial Highness 
 and his staff commander had erred through not being 
 very clear as to their geography. They had mis- 
 taken the exact position of a river, a chain of moun- 
 tains, or something of that sort ; so that having 
 made a gallant dash onwards they found themselves 
 upon a sand plain of several hundred miles in extent, 
 instead of in the heart of the enemy's country as they 
 had imaginatively hoped. 
 
 The Grand Duke Rurik, who was a brave young 
 man, very headstrong and sentimental, was for push- 
 ing on over the plain to be beaten again and die ; but 
 Falutinski, though equally courageous, opined that 
 it would be better to conquer and live. He knew 
 that Russia, having once begun the war, would go 
 on with it regardless of cost ; and thought he might 
 as well finish it by hook or crook as leave the credit 
 to some other general. So the correspondents were 
 told to be patient, for the end was not yet ; and Fa- 
 lutinski held numerous councils with the Grand Duke, 
 after which, in the dead of the night, parliamentarians 
 were sent off with a flag of truce to Bagallyou Khan's 
 camp. 
 
 Soon an armistice was announced ; Falutinski was 
 missed for a few days, and the correspondents learned 
 that he had gone in person to carry an ultimatum to
 
 62 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 the barbarous chief demanding of him an uncon- 
 ditional surrender. One bright morning, however, he 
 returned, declaring that Bagallyou Khan would not 
 hear reason, and once more preparations were made 
 for a grand set-to. 
 
 Somehow, though, from the time of Falutinski's 
 visit to the Khan things began to go badly with that 
 barbarian's army. His soldiers left off guarding an 
 important ford ; some others were surprised by a force 
 ten times superior to them, and were cut to pieces ; 
 another detachment who should have held a mountain 
 pass got into the wrong pass by error, and, being 
 attacked in the rear, had to capitulate. 
 
 The correspondents now began to write home in 
 fine style. Falutinski's strategy was extolled as a thing 
 at once deep and beautiful. The Russian soldiers, 
 decimated by the previous encounters, but ever dog- 
 gedly brave, picked up fresh heart, and one morning 
 Europe heard with feelings of wonder and admiration 
 of Falutinski's glorious march over the plains of 
 Anketer. 
 
 It is always grand to see a soldier surmounting 
 natural obstacles ; but, according to the strategists 
 who reviewed Falutinski's proceedings on paper, no 
 general ever had defied drought, heat, mosquitoes, and 
 savages with such a combination of tactical wisdom
 
 A Victorious Gaicral. 
 
 and devil-may-care recklessness as he. Then came 
 the final pitched battle on the river Terek, where the 
 flower of Bagallyou Khan's army bit the dust by 
 moonlight. It was a thunderlike stroke of genius, 
 wrote the correspondents. The valiant general fell 
 upon the infidels like Sennacherib, started them out 
 of sleep, hewed, slew, and pulverized them, ultimately 
 scattering their remnants as dust in a high wind. 
 
 In this historic fight the Grand Duke recovered 
 his kitchen battery and French cook. There was 
 glory enough and to spare for all. Six standaids, 
 the sacred kettle of the tribe, and four of Bagallyou 
 Khan's plumpest wives were among the spoil ; but 
 the chief himself w^as not to be found, to the great 
 regret of all concerned. 
 
 He turned up a few months later at St. Petersburg. 
 Then it was learned that he had not come as an im- 
 pertinent rebel with bristling moustache, but as a 
 humble suppliant for Imperial grace, confessing his 
 sins and stedfastly purposing to lead a new life. 
 Accordingly, a grand levee was appointed for his 
 public obeisance, and his victors, the Grand Duke 
 Rurik and General Falutinski, stood on either side of 
 the throne upon the solemn occasion. All present 
 were much touched to see the proud Khan walk in 
 erect with the dignity of misfortune, and, bending his
 
 64 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 knee before the throne, make a gesture as of heartfelt 
 readiness to let his head be chopped off ; but he was 
 graciously bidden to rise, and Muscovite clemency I 
 was carried to the point of allowing him a high rank 
 in the Imperial service, a palace on the Neva, and a 
 handsome pension to keep up his state. 
 
 He became a devoted subject after that, and, 
 adapting himself to the civilization of the West as 
 well as to the religion of his conquerors, drank cham- 
 pagne like a true Christian and learned to play whist. 
 It is pleasant to add that he and his old enemy Falu- 
 tinski lived on terms of mutual esteem and friendship 
 as became valorous men. They did not speak much 
 when they met, but an almost imperceptible contrac- 
 tion in their left eyelids testified to that inner emotion 
 which proceeds from the contact of natures fitted to 
 understand and admire each other. 
 
 The moral of this little story is that diplomacy is 
 no bad adjunct to force in certain campaigns.
 
 A Prosperous Merchant. 65 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A PROSPEROUS MERCHANT. 
 
 In one of the dingiest pcrcoidoks, or slums, of Odessa 
 stands the office of Simon Iscariotivitch, a Jew worth 
 several millions of roubles. His private house is 
 situated in a finer quarter of the city, and he transacts 
 business there too as a money-lender. 
 
 His sources of income are multifarious, and he 
 calls himself vaguely a merchant, without saying 
 merchant of what. He belongs to the first class of 
 the Commercial Guild. Merchants of this first class 
 have to declare a capital of ;^2,400, and to pay a 
 yearly licence of i^ 105 \2s. (600 roubles) ; those of the 
 second declare a capital of ;^920, and pay £\2 ^s. i od ; 
 and those of the third are supposed to be worth 
 ^^384, and pay £\2 i \s. 2d. Beneath these three guilds 
 there is a class of petty traders who pay from £}, to £\ 
 a year — a heavy tax to many of them ; and you might 
 suppose Simon Iscariotivitch to belong to this last 
 category, if you judged by the shabbiness of his office. 
 
 F
 
 66 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 But Simon is often absent from Odessa, travelling 
 among the pomcscJiiks (landowners on the steppes) ; 
 and it is in the course of these visits to the squires 
 that he gets through most of his business, which 
 requires no showy counting-house. He is a small 
 snuffling man dressed in what looks like a decayed 
 dressing-gown and in flat, round hat scabby with age. 
 He sells tea, French novels, agricultural machinery, 
 vodki, silk, turquoises, pianos, and musical boxes ; 
 and he buys corn, wool, horses, and ponies. A little 
 transaction which he had two years ago with Prince 
 WiskofF will explain one of his favourite methods 
 of assisting aristocrats in difficulties and bettering 
 himself at the same time. 
 
 One scorching summer day, when the Prince was 
 drowsy from heat and ennui, the Jew's telega, dusty 
 from travel, scampered into the courtyard of the 
 ramshackle palace. A visit of any sort is so pleasant 
 to a rusticating prince that he would welcome a 
 creditor sooner than see nobody ; and Serge WiskofF, 
 who knew Simon right well, saw many a reason to 
 rejoice at his coming. However, he maintained the 
 dignity befitting a Christian in the presence of an 
 infidel ; and Simon, having humbly kissed his hand, 
 proceeded by circumlocutory methods to hint that he 
 was ready to buy the Prince's crop of standing corn.
 
 A Prosperous Merchant. 67 
 
 The Prince was equally ready to sell it him, and the 
 following year's crop as well. Simon took time to 
 consider, but at length said he would buy next 
 year's crop too. Then the Prince said, 'Why not 
 buy three, four, five years' crops ? ' And so the pair 
 haggled till, by dint of coaxing supplications on the 
 Prince's part and steady but doleful bargaining on the 
 Jew's, who swore he should be ruined, Simon even- 
 tually agreed to take five years' crops at something 
 like a third of their value in the market. 
 
 The Prince was greatly excited, for the sum offered 
 was enough to allow of his starting at once for Paris 
 with his wife and having a year's fun there — the only 
 thing on earth for which he cared. Accordingly a 
 printed form of agreement was extracted from Simon's 
 greasy travelling bag, the Prince filled it up and ap- 
 pended his signature, whereupon Simon, having taken 
 possession of the document, drew from the inner breast- 
 pocket of his blue kafian, not a roll of bank-notes, but 
 a parcel of the Prince's dishonoured bills from divers 
 Western capitals, which he restored to their owner with 
 an obsequiousness most cringing. 
 
 The disappointment was awful, and the Prince used 
 bad language ; the barina, too, who had come into the 
 room and had already commenced building French 
 hotels in the air, clenched her plump hands and talked
 
 68 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 of having the infidel tallyman whipped off the estate. 
 But Simon was lamentably humble : no creature alive 
 can be so humble as a Russian Jew. He had bought 
 the bills for good money, whined he, knowing that a 
 Wiskoff's bond was worth gold, and he was sure their 
 high nobilities would believe that he had thought to 
 render them a real service in acting as he had done. 
 Their high nobilities were in a vile temper, but they 
 had to submit. There was luckily a residue to be paid 
 in real money — two thousand roubles or so — which 
 consoled them for their misadventure by giving them 
 the wherewithal to live high and fast for six weeks, 
 which they religiously did. 
 
 But Simon's profits on this affair were not ended 
 here. In the ensuing August a long caravan of carts 
 set out from the Prince's estate, carrying the corn to 
 Odessa. The Prince's steward, a sly, flat-nosed Kal- 
 muck, had charge of the carts ; and he and Simon 
 were in league, having had a secret and mutually 
 agreeable interview before the corn was bought. So 
 it somehow befell that the caravan tarried on its road, 
 then got lost in a steppe fog, then went many scores 
 of versts out of its way, and finally was overtaken by 
 the September rains, which spoiled a good half of the 
 wheat. Moreover, when Odessa was reached it was 
 raining still, and there were no barns to be let.
 
 A Prosperous Merchant. 69 
 
 Simon and the Kalmuck walked down to the port 
 together, and satisfied themselves as to this fact. 
 Meanwhile the caravan, with its oxen and peasants, 
 could not be left to take care of itself in the streets, 
 where the police were already flocking to levy blackmail 
 of the carters for obstructing the thoroughfare ; so the 
 Kalmuck was fain to beg that the Jew would find him 
 a store-house on any terms, which the Jew kindly did 
 by procuring him a barn of his own which had been 
 empty all the while, as the Kalmuck well knew. The 
 next thing to do was to sift the good wheat from the 
 bad, for the Jew had not agreed to buy damaged corn. 
 He had covenanted for the number of quarters of 
 wheat which the Prince's crops were supposed to yield, 
 not for the crops as they stood, and it had further 
 been agreed that the corn should be delivered within 
 some covered building ; hence the necessity for the 
 Kalmuck's getting a barn. 
 
 When the corn had been inspected all that was not 
 up to sample was naturally declined, and the question 
 arose as to what should be done with the damaged 
 quantity .'* The Kalmuck readily decided that it was 
 of no use to carry it back to the estate, and still less 
 expedient to pay for keeping it stored in Odessa ; so, 
 upon Simon's offering to buy it for a small sum as 
 pigs' food, he accepted the small sum, privily minded
 
 70 The Russians of To-day, 
 
 to give no account of the same to his master, but to 
 declare that the damaged corn had been thrown into 
 the sea by order of some market inspectors. As for 
 Simon, he gave nothing to the pigs, but, shipping the 
 damaged wheat on to a worthless vessel, insured the 
 cargo as good corn, and gave the Greek captain orders 
 to run himself ashore — which was done, and Simon 
 pocketed the insurance money. 
 
 On the whole, it will be seen that the honest mer- 
 chant played his cards well. Prince Wiskoff, having 
 been unable to fulfil his engagement towards him 
 with one year's crop, was obliged to make up the deficit 
 (6 per cent, interest added) with next year's ; but, as 
 the next year brought fresh accidents which saddled 
 him again with arrears, it came to pass that in parting 
 with five years' harvests he was found to have virtually 
 alienated eight, if not ten. 
 
 Simon Iscariotivitch does many other strokes of 
 business in this fashion. For instance, he purchases 
 sheep of the ponieschiks, and, having contrived with 
 the stewards that a good number of them should be 
 brought to Odessa diseased, buys these last for a trifle, 
 as he did the bad corn, and sells them as prime mutton 
 (by agreement with military authorities) to feed the 
 Briskatstartine Hussars and other valiant regiments. 
 He is also great at purchasing spavined ponies, which
 
 A P^'ospcrous Me7'cJiant. 71 
 
 turn out to have not so much the matter with them 
 once they get into his hands ; and ugly knock-kneed 
 colts, which the pomcschiks, who sold them cheap, have 
 the pleasure of seeing by-and-by spanking about the 
 Boulevard of Odessa as first-rate Orloff trotters. 
 
 In fact, Simon trades upon the incurable repug- 
 nance of Russian gentlemen to looking after their 
 landed interests, and if his profits be so great the fault 
 is theirs. He is a curious, shambling man, whose 
 sharpness in business is set off" by a humility of 
 demeanour difficult to describe and painful to witness. 
 He fawns before a nobleman as if he were afraid of 
 being kicked, and in this resembles most of his 
 Russian co-religionists who are past middle age and 
 have retained a scaring recollection of the days when 
 kicking and cuffing were their common lot and when 
 the law oppressed them with grinding disabilities. 
 
 Up to the death of Nicholas Jews were not allowed 
 to possess land, to give evidence in civil suits, to have 
 synagogues, nor to inhabit the holy cities of Kiew and 
 Moscow. They were obliged to wear a particular 
 dress, and out of every Jewish family one child was 
 always taken by the State to be educated as a Chris- 
 tian at his parents' cost. 
 
 It requires more than one lifetime to outlive the 
 remembrance of such social inferiority, even when the
 
 72 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 law has removed it. Simon Iscariotivitch has now his 
 synagogues, his Jewish schools, his municipal privi- 
 leges, and he is suffered to celebrate the festivals of his 
 Church with public displays ; and if anybody kicked 
 him it would be a bad thing for the kicker. Some- 
 times a band of riotous university students in their 
 cups will try their hands at the old game of assaulting 
 a Jew, whereon that Jew begins to howl, and all the 
 other Jews within earshot howl too, till, the streets being 
 filled with their uproar, the culprits are summarily 
 punished by a police-judge, in order that tranquillity 
 may be restored. This howling device has been found 
 of great protection to the long-suffering community ; 
 but, though it secures the Jews against ill-treatment, 
 nothing has been able to diminish the contempt felt 
 for them by all classes of Russians, but especially by 
 the upper. 
 
 They still labour under many disabilities not within 
 the law. Simon's wealth is enormous, but he cannot 
 hope to be ennobled. The nobles will not admit him 
 to their clubs nor to their houses as a guest ; they 
 would leave their stalls at the opera if he came and 
 sat down among them ; they would not dine at his 
 house for any consideration ; and if he were to send 
 his sons into the army no exertions on his part and 
 no amount of merit on that of the young Iscarioti-
 
 A Prosperous MerckauL jt, 
 
 vitchs would enable these latter to rise higher than 
 subaltern's rank. 
 
 As a consequence, Simon and his brethren hate 
 the Tschinn with a bitterness all the more dangerous 
 as two-thirds of the trade of Southern Russia, and at 
 least one-third of that in the North, is in their hands. 
 Being virtually tabooed from public functions, they 
 have no public spirit ; and, holding no land, they do 
 not care what befalls the soil and the haughty lords of 
 it. The large sums of specie amassed by them are 
 invested out of the country, and do nothing to promote 
 native industry ; but of late years they have begun to 
 show themselves alive to the political uses of wealth, 
 and it is more than suspected that most of the agrarian 
 agitation which is making the peasant minds simmer 
 is subsidized by Jews. 
 
 Simon Iscariotivitch never goes on his travelling 
 rounds without dropping into the ears of peasants 
 cunninEf theories which would have caused him to be 
 hanged twenty-five years ago, and which even now 
 would bring him to trouble if there were any 
 shorthand writer present to take them down. At this 
 time of war Simon contributes his share towards 
 promoting popular distress and discontent by refusing 
 to accept Government paper for less than 30 per cent, 
 discount. He predicts in whispers a national bank-
 
 74 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ruptcy, and will not advance a bank-note to impecu- 
 nious nobles on bills or land mortgage, but only on 
 such portable security as plate and diamonds. Exclu- 
 sive laws and fanatical prejudices have made him an 
 alien on Russian soil, and he acts as aliens ever do 
 among a hostile people.
 
 judicial Business. 75 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 JUDICIAL BUSINESS. 
 
 The first article of the French Civil Code says, • No 
 man is supposed to be ignorant of the law.' If a 
 Russian were expected to know the laws of his 
 country he would have to master twenty-one folio 
 volumes, containing some 2,000 pages apiece. But, 
 then, in Russia every conceivable act of man is regu- 
 lated by Imperial decree. 
 
 Whenever some influential tschinovnik has found 
 his private affairs disordered by the advance of pro- 
 gress, he has procured an Imperial ukase to bar that 
 progress. There are laws regulating the cut of one's 
 beard, the fashion of one's hat and coat ; a man cannot 
 light a cigar in the streets without peril of infringing 
 some decree which might be enforced against him by 
 any rich man desirous of getting him into trouble. In 
 other countries everything that the law does not forbid 
 is allowed ; in Russia everything is forbidden which 
 the law does not expressly permit.
 
 76 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 People get out of this predicament by purchasing 
 as much liberty as they require for their individual use, 
 as Englishmen do gas and water. If the decrees were 
 stringently enforced no man could breathe ; but the 
 system of corruption serves as a check upon compres- 
 sion, just as smuggling does upon prohibitive tariffs. 
 The Baltic Provinces are the only parts of the empire 
 where the administrative screwis systematically pressed 
 down to the grinding of men's souls ; for Germans are 
 formidable bureaucrats, and find more delight in making 
 themselves disagreeable than in being bribed. But 
 here despotism is tempered by the frequent assassina- 
 tion of tschinovniks, and the country is so profoundly 
 disaffected that it will seize upon the first convenient 
 opportunity for getting annexed to Germany. Every- 
 where else where the pure-bred, lazy, venal Russian 
 sits in places of power a man jogs on fairly well till he 
 crosses another man with a longer purse ; then he 
 goes to the wall. 
 
 There is no mistake about this ; it is the unwritten 
 law which dominates over all the printed edicts in the 
 twenty-one-volumed code. A tschinovnik who has a 
 quarrel with another tschinovnik does not think of 
 going to law about it ; he refers the dispute to the 
 marshal of the nobility in his district, and this official, 
 assisted, if need be, by the standing committee of
 
 yudicial Business. jy 
 
 nobles, arbitrates in private — sometimes equitably, 
 sometimes not, according as there may or may not be 
 reasons for putting the less influential party in the 
 wrong. 
 
 But when a tschinovnik falls out with an ordinary 
 citizen, then one of two things occurs : either the 
 tschinovnik's order stands by him, in which case the 
 other party collapses, or he is left to fight his own 
 battle ; and then it becomes a question whether he 
 can make head against an opponent who probably has 
 an artel, or mutual relief society, behind him. 
 
 Almost every Russian exercising a trade or pro- 
 fession belongs to an artel. The droschky drivers 
 have one, so have the tea-house waiters. The Jews 
 form an artel by themselves, besides belonging to their 
 respective trade artels ; and they are the toughest 
 opponents of all, from their loyalty in standing by 
 one another. The Tschinn would not care to make 
 common cause with one of its members who had a suit 
 concerning private matters with a rich Jew ; the 
 nobleman would rather be advised to compromise the 
 quarrel, and would take the hint. 
 
 Jews seldom go to law with one another : if im- 
 pleaded by Russians of the trading class, they win by 
 force of money. If two Christian traders go before 
 the courts it must be for spite, for they well know that
 
 78 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 a suit will cost both of them ten times more than a 
 private agreement. Bribes are not handed direct to 
 the judges, but conveyed through the notaries — an 
 astute corporation. A judge of first instance, com- 
 monly a tschinovnik, is paid £^0 a year, and has bought 
 his office secretly for about £4,000. His income con- 
 sequently depends on his perquisites ; and he must 
 use the scales of justice in no metaphorical sense to 
 weigh on which side the roubles lie. Like Lord Bacon, 
 all these Russian judges might contend that they sell 
 justice, not injustice ; for whichever way they may 
 decide they have some Imperial decree to rest upon ; 
 and if their judgments be quashed by a court of appeal, 
 that court has law on its side too. A civil suit is, in 
 fact, an auction in which the highest bidder prevails 
 on the judge to select from the code the decree which 
 he requires to put him in the right. 
 
 Foreigners, when they first come to settle in the 
 country, are very apt to be dragged into lawsuits by 
 people who want to extort money from them. If a 
 man resists the imposition, bribes a judge to uphold 
 him, and so gets boldly out of the scrape, he is likely 
 to be let alone for the future, just as in duelling 
 countries a man who has stood fire once is said to 
 have fait ses preuves. 
 
 In criminal causes defendants fare according to
 
 yudicial Business. 79 
 
 the animosity and wealth of the persons who prose- 
 cute them. Russian judges have a kindly feeling for 
 petty thieves, and, if not paid to punish them severely, 
 can easily be cajoled into passing a light sentence. 
 But, of course, a prisoner who throws himself upon 
 the mercy of the court must be perfectly destitute ; 
 for, if he were to hire an advocate without having 
 bribed the judge, the latter would naturally make him 
 smart for the oversight. The mistake is scarcely pos- 
 sible, however ; for an attorney would take care that 
 the prisoner spent his money rightly. A judge can 
 be bribed to acquit, but if he have been already bribed 
 to convict he can be bribed to pass a light sentence ; 
 or if he be pledged to inflict a heavy penalty, then the 
 attorney would advise his client to save his money, in 
 order to bribe himself out of prison, or, failing that, 
 to procure himself relaxations therein. 
 
 Juries only sit in cases of felony and of the worst 
 crimes of violence ; and they too are amenable to 
 bribery and sentiment. He must be a dull advocate 
 who cannot make a Russian jury weep. The well- 
 known story of a jury who acquitted a prisoner be- 
 cause it was Easter eve, and they thought they could 
 best solemnize the holy week by forgiving transgres- 
 sions, can be capped by another of an Odessa jury who 
 acquitted a wife-murderer because the deceased had
 
 8o The Russians of To-day. 
 
 beaten him for being tipsy. It has passed into a pro- 
 verb that it is safer to kill a rich man outright than to 
 maim him ; for if alive he can pursue his vengeance 
 himself, whereas if he be dead his heirs may forget to 
 spend money in assuring the conviction of the murderer, 
 who thereupon escapes by pleading provocation. 
 
 In a general way it is the rich who by their prose- 
 cutions keep the prisons and penal colonies of Siberia 
 populated ; and they are terrible persons to offend in 
 person or property. The civil and criminal laws are so 
 intermuddled that a breach of contract, a trespass, or 
 a mere debt may be construed into a felony at the 
 suit of a vindictive tschinovnik ; and malice would be 
 wreaked in manifold and horrible ways but for the 
 artels which protect the poor. As it is, an artel has 
 occasionally to spend enormous sums of money in 
 rescuing an innocent member from what would in any 
 other country be deemed a frivolous and vexatious 
 prosecution. 
 
 In the country districts the peasantry have a 
 remedy against this sort of thing by burning down the 
 houses and ricks of the landowners who oppress them ; 
 and they are so prompt to do this that a nobleman 
 who is brutal towards townspeople becomes quite mild 
 among his peasantry. 
 
 Domestic servants are the worst sufferers from
 
 ytidicial Business. 8i 
 
 plutocratic spite, for, while most liable to give offence, 
 they are defenceless, having no artels. There is an 
 artel of cooks and another of coachmen in St. Peters- 
 burg, but footmen, maids, and valets have to take care 
 of themselves. A confidential servant incurs the wrath 
 of his master and finds himself arrested one morning 
 on the easily proved charge of stealing. The fact that 
 all servants steal, and that the culprit had been stealing 
 for years before his master condescended to notice it, 
 is of course not accepted as an excuse ; and it depends 
 entirely on the master's readiness to bribe whether 
 the poor wTetch is sent to Siberia on the count of 
 major felony or consigned to prison as a petty rogue. 
 But if the minor count be admitted the valet soon 
 discovers that his master's power over him does not 
 cease at the prison doors. By gilding the palm of 
 the prison governor the master can have his domestic 
 whipped for alleged breaches of gaol discipline, till 
 the miserable fellow becomes supple as a glove and 
 bewails the day when he was saucy. Great ladies 
 sometimes try this curative system on their maids, 
 and more than one French soubrette in St. Petersburg 
 has discovered in prison what it costs to trade upon 
 the secrets of a Russian grandc danics boudoir. 
 
 That prisons should exist in Russia for the punish- 
 G
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ment of murderers and maimers is conceivable ; but, 
 when one considers that peculation is the very main- 
 spring of all business in the country, it certainly seems 
 odd that any judge should have the face to imprison 
 a thief Possibly the authorities are struck with the 
 incongruity of this arrangement, for whenever the 
 Czar travels he releases prisoners wholesale ; and 
 these discharged ragamuffins are welcomed by the 
 population as though they were brothers whose only 
 crime had been ill-luck. 
 
 A curious thing it is to see a Russian court of 
 justice during the trial of criminal cases. The judges 
 are in uniform and wear the medals or stars of some 
 civil order of knighthood on their breasts. The 
 counsel wear uniforms too in their capacity as subal- 
 terns in the legal hierarchy. It looks to a foreigner 
 as if he were witnessing a court martial in which the 
 thief was being tried by field marshals and defended 
 by a captain. The jury are tradesmen or petty 
 squires, but it often happens that the majority can 
 neither read nor write. They kneel when being sworn ; 
 and give free rein to their emotions while the witnesses 
 are deposing. The judges have to threaten them with 
 fines when they all begin shouting ' Oh ! ' and ' Ah ! ' 
 together. Their distaste for convicting is so great
 
 judicial Business. ^2> 
 
 that they will frequently sing out to a prisoner : ' Will 
 you promise not to do it again ? ' Once when a jury 
 had been locked up three hours an impatient judge 
 sent an usher to see what they were doing, and it was 
 found that they had all escaped through a window, to 
 avoid sivin" a verdict.
 
 §4 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 FORGED BANK-NOTES. 
 
 In the town of K , of the province of Kharkov, 
 
 Otto, the son of Herr Dicker, hotel-keeper, one 
 morning received a parcel of forged bank-notes, in 
 payment for a tun of Crimean wine supplied to the 
 venerable Archimandrite. Forged notes are as common 
 as genuine ones in Russia, and if Herr Dicker had 
 been a Russian he would have simply passed on the 
 notes to some one else. 
 
 Being a German, it behoved him to be cautious. 
 First he scolded his son for not having scrutinized 
 the water-marks ; after which he pondered for a while 
 whether he should treat the transaction as a dead loss, 
 or go to the Archimandrite's majordomo, who had 
 paid the notes, and ask him for others. 
 
 He had the misfortune to choose the latter course, 
 and was coldly received by the majordomo, who 
 doubted whether the notes had been paid by himself 
 As the sum was rather large, Herr Dicker became too
 
 Forged Bank-notes. 85 
 
 persuasive, and was bundled out of the house. A few 
 hours later, as he was brooding over the business apti- 
 tudes required in dealings with Russians, he received 
 the visit of a police inspector and two underlings, who 
 wanted to know why he had not made a declaration 
 at the police-office of having forged notes in his 
 possession ? Herr Dicker ought now with alacrity to 
 have ordered up a bottle of his best, and, while 
 regaling the inspector, he should have slipped into 
 his hands as many genuine notes as he could spare ; 
 meantime Otto Dicker should have refreshed the 
 underlings in another room, and have made little 
 presents to them also. Then all would have gone 
 well with the German household. 
 
 Unluckily, the German was in a bad temper, 
 and began to talk nonsense about giving the 
 Archimandrite's servant into custody. The inspec- 
 tor, seeing no signs of coin, threw off the con- 
 ciliatory attitude he had adopted upon entering, 
 and announced that he was going to search the pre- 
 mises. His two men, a pair of bullet-headed churls 
 with grey coats and brass-hilted swords, thereupon 
 went to work, and in less than an hour the German's 
 house looked as if it had been ransacked by 
 thieves. 
 
 Dicker was made — and not gently either — to open
 
 86 The Rttssiaiis of To-day. 
 
 every cupboard, desk, and box ; his clothes, his wife's 
 and daughter's, were strewn over the floors ; the pockets 
 of himself and family were turned inside out ; finally 
 the police went down to the cellars and set the barrel- 
 cocks running to see whether these receptacles did 
 really contain liquor, and not implements of forgery. 
 
 Herr Dicker imprudently stamped about, yelling 
 imprecations in the dialect of Pomerania. He was 
 exhorted to hold his peace. The police made up all 
 his notes, money, and portable trinkets into a parcel 
 with one of his own napkins, telling him that every 
 article proved to be lawfully his would be restored to 
 him. Then the inspector said sharply, 'Now come 
 along.' 'Where \.oV asked Herr Dicker, with his 
 hair-roots stifiening. 'To prison,' answered the in- 
 spector ; and off they all went, to the amusement of 
 the people in the streets, who are always gratified at 
 seeing a German in trouble. 
 
 A Russian gaol is not built on any wasteful plan 
 of keeping prisoners warm and comfortable. A black, 
 mouldy house situate in one of the slums of the town, 
 it is guarded by a dozen crop-headed soldiers and has 
 a painted 'scutcheon with the Imperial double-headed 
 eagle over the gate. There is a whipping post in 
 the front yard. Thieves, murderers, boys, lunatics, 
 women are all huddled together in a room of foul
 
 Foro^ed Bank-notes. 87 
 
 ii 
 
 stenches warmed by a stove, and the only food served 
 out to them is a pound of black bread in the morning 
 and a mess of rancid soup at midday. The sexes are 
 separated at night. 
 
 By day the prisoners busy themselves as they can. 
 Some are driven out in gangs to repair the roads or 
 <;lear the snow from the streets ; others make shoes 
 or sculpture wooden toys ; and others do nothing 
 but snooze in corners, sleeping off the effects of the 
 vodki which they have bribed the warders to buy. 
 Acts of insubordination are punished by whipping, 
 and the women get as much of this punishment as 
 the men. It is no longer customary for judges to 
 sentence prisoners to be flogged, but gaol governors 
 are empowered to maintain discipline by stripes ; and 
 thus a servant girl, who is committed for trial on a 
 charge of thieving, often gets a smart flagellation or 
 two at the hands of a stout-armed wardress by private 
 arrangement between the governor and her mistress. 
 In these gaols it is only well-to-do prisoners who are 
 placed in solitary confinement. 
 
 Herr Dicker being well-to-do was thrust into 
 a cell furnished with a bundle of straw and floored 
 with damp flags. Water dripped from the walls 
 and rats poked their noses out of holes, staring at 
 him in the twilight. He had a piece of black
 
 88 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 bread for supper, but remained from dusk to dawri 
 without lights, for no candles were allowed. All 
 this did not tame him, but made him gnash his teeth 
 and swear to be even with the Archimandrite's servant. 
 In the morning a hungry-looking gaoler hinted that 
 he could have a decent room and good food by paying 
 for them. Herr Dicker shouted that he would pay 
 nothing. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he was called into an upper 
 chamber to see an examining magistrate in a black 
 uniform with pewter buttons, who significantly told 
 him that justice was resolved to make an example 
 of those who uttered forged notes. Herr Dicker 
 looked as if he were going to have a fit; he was,, 
 indeed, so blinded by wrath as not to notice that he 
 was alone with the magistrate, and could consequently 
 prove his innocence by the promise of a small cash 
 payment. The dignitary gave him every chance by 
 throwing out some feeling allusions to the discomforts 
 of being sent to work in the silver mines of Siberia ; 
 but the dull German would take no hints, and it was 
 too late when the magistrate's clerk was summoned 
 in to copy down the prisoner's depositions. Then the 
 magistrate began browbeating as if he had got a con- 
 firmed rogue in his clutches. He abused Herr Dicker,, 
 and asked him if he would confess. 'Confess what.^"^
 
 Forged Bank-notes. 89 
 
 asked the German. 'Oh, we'll bring you to your 
 senses,' cried the tightly-buttoned little gentleman ; 
 and, as the hotel-keeper would do nothing but protest 
 his innocence, he was taken back to spend another 
 day with the rats. 
 
 Meanwhile Frau Dicker, a sagacious woman, be- 
 thought her that when a man falls into a pit or a 
 Russian prison, the first thing to do is to pull him out 
 without caring how he got there. Her husband's 
 hotel was much frequented by officers who came 
 thither to drink ; and, among others, the lieutenant- 
 colonel, chief inspector of forage, owed a bill of 300 
 silver roubles for bottles of Rhenish wine. It grieved 
 the German housewife to receipt this account unpaid,, 
 but she bravely did so ; and, moreover, put into a 
 basket six bottles of Liebfraumilch (which the inspec- 
 tor of forage loved); then, having donned her best 
 catskin cloak, she set out to see the colonel along with 
 her daughter L.isa, a personable damsel, who cried as 
 she went. 
 
 The honest colonel was touched by the tears, 
 the wine, and the receipted bill, and promised that 
 the mistake which had led to Herr Dicker's arrest 
 should be explained in the proper quarters. But it 
 turned out that the hotel-keeper was in perilous 
 plight ; for the Archimandrite was much shocked that
 
 90 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 his servant should have been accused of uttering 
 forged notes, while as to the servant himself, he de- 
 clared that nothing would atone for the injury he had 
 suffered. 
 
 However, a plaster for the servant's wounded 
 feelings was found in the shape of a hundred-rouble 
 note ; after which nothing remained but to plaster the 
 examining magistrate, the inspector of police (whose 
 plastering in the first instance would have saved all 
 this trouble), and the prison governor, who else might 
 have made a hubbub. This done, Herr Dicker was 
 released from gaol after a confinement of three days. 
 But sad it is to say that he behaved wrong-headedly 
 as soon as he got home ; for, thinking that his libera- 
 tion was due to his own blamelessness, he flew into 
 the worst of rages with Frau Dicker for having be- 
 haved as if he had been guilty. The wives of innocent 
 men have often much to put up with. 
 
 One of the results of this little adventure was that 
 Herr Dicker looked very sharply at his bank-notes in 
 future. He nearly got into trouble a second time for 
 refusing a true note which he alleged to be false. 
 Then he had a disturbance with his wife's friend, the 
 forage colonel, for paying him a false note which was 
 traced up to the military paymaster, who had got it 
 from the Bank, whose manager took a long time to
 
 Forged Bank-notes. 91 
 
 convince himself that it was sham, and only exchanged 
 it for a good one after much grumbling. It befell at 
 this juncture that the Holy War against the Turks 
 was declared, when an Imperial decree ordered all 
 Russians to carry their bank-notes to the offices of the 
 tax-receivers, who, by stamping them, took 5 per cent, 
 off their value. The effect of this ingenious war-tax 
 was to increase the circulation of false notes prodigi- 
 ously, so that people soon ceased to trouble themselves 
 whether they held good paper or bad. 
 
 But Herr Dicker troubled himself, because he 
 owed a grudge to the Archimandrite's servant and 
 wished to catch that worthy tripping. He had a 
 keen eye for flash paper, and mentioned to some 
 friends Avhom he knew to have dealings with the 
 servant that if they could catch that person uttering 
 a false note they should be rewarded for their trouble. 
 This reached the servant's ears and made him uncom- 
 fortable, for he did not wish to put his good master 
 to the expense of bribing him out of the scrape ; so he 
 prayed the Archimandrite to be careful about the 
 notes he received, and that pious man became, in truth, 
 so careful that all who came into contact with him 
 caught the contagion. 
 
 Three or four suspicious men in a town can play 
 havoc with a paper currency ; and, owing to Herr
 
 92 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Dicker's grudge, business relations grew extremely 
 
 difficult in K . The Civil Governor, noting the 
 
 general disaffection resulting from this and tracing the 
 evil to its source, decided that if Herr Dicker could be 
 put back into prison and kept there for a season the 
 public weal would be enhanced. 
 
 It is not difficult to get an hotel-keeper into 
 trouble. Herr Dicker was arrested for neglecting 
 to make a passing stranger, who slept a night in 
 his house, exhibit his passport, whereby, said the 
 police, a person presumed to be a dangerous con- 
 spirator had gone off, leaving no clue. Herr Dicker 
 once under lock and key, the Archimandrite's servant 
 ceased to vex himself about his bank-notes ; so did the 
 Archimandrite, the forage colonel, and many others ; 
 whence in an incredibly short space of time the flow 
 of false notes and of mutual confidence was resumed, 
 to the general satisfaction in the town of K . 
 
 As for Frau Dicker, remembering how her hus- 
 band had treated her, she avoided incurring his re- 
 proach by bribing him out a second time, and managed 
 the hotel by herself — not uncheerfully. Herr Dicker 
 was released after three months, lean as a herring 
 and sadly rheumatic. And he was an altered man in 
 mind as well as body. The first time that a flash note 
 was brought him he respectfully gave change for it in
 
 Forged Bank-notes. 
 
 other flash notes, doing in Russia as the Russians do ; 
 and he took an early opportunity of resuming convi- 
 vial relations with the Archimandrite's servant. Thus 
 the chastening of experience works for the good of 
 us all.
 
 94 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE WHITE CLERGY. 
 
 The ' white ' clergy in Russia are the ordinary popes 
 and deacons who hold cure of souls : the ' black ' 
 clergy are the monks, from whose ranks all the Church 
 dignitaries are chosen. 
 
 Black and white detest one another with a cordi- 
 ality not often seen in less pious countries. A man 
 cannot become a white clergyman unless he is mar- 
 ried ; he cannot retain his benefice after his wife's 
 death, and he must not marry a second time ; so upon 
 becoming a widower he relapses into civil life or turns 
 monk. But as a monk he cannot aspire to dignities, 
 for his marriage disqualifies him from becoming a 
 bishop ; he must possess his soul in patience, and see 
 all the mitres given away to monks who have been 
 single all their days. 
 
 Until recently a man was compelled to enter the 
 Church, either as pope or monk, simply from the fact 
 that he was a clergyman's son ; nowadays, the bishop
 
 The White Clergy. 95 
 
 may release a young- man from this obligation, but 
 they are not bound to do so whenever applied to. 
 They refuse if their dioceses be ill stocked with 
 clergy ; and at best they will only allow a clergy- 
 man's son to enter the civil or military service of the 
 Crown ; they will not permit him to become a trades- 
 man. 
 
 A layman's son finds it easy to become a monk, 
 for candidates to the black clergy are rare ; but 
 if he wants to turn pope he must * prove his voca- 
 tion ' by paying a fair sum of money and fur- 
 nishing numerous certificates of his own and his 
 parents' morality ; but even then he will only be 
 admitted if the diocese which he seeks to enter 
 stands in need of recruits. 
 
 The white clergy form a close caste, and it has 
 been the policy of the synods to maintain this state 
 of things by strict laws as to clerical marriages. A 
 candidate for orders must marry the widow, daughter, 
 or sister of a pope, and his bishop often compels him 
 to choose his bride within the diocese. A clergyman's 
 widow or daughter who would like to marry a layman 
 has to deny herself that pleasure unless her lover is 
 prepared to pay a thousand roubles or so privately to 
 the bishop to purchase her ; on the other hand, clerical 
 families find an inducement to adhere to their order
 
 96 The Russians of To-day, 
 
 from the fact that benefices are hereditary. A son 
 succeeds to his father almost as a matter of course ; 
 and if a pope leaves only daughters, his benefice will 
 be kept open for a reasonable time, till the eldest mar- 
 ries and brings it to her husband as a dower. 
 
 Popes have to pay lighting and paving rates 
 (in places where there are lights and pavements), 
 but they are exempted from all Government taxes, 
 from military recruitment, and billeting. In cases 
 of offence against the common law they cannot be 
 sentenced to corporal punishment, nor in prison are 
 their heads shaved ; and all these privileges and im- 
 munities extend to their wives and to the children 
 born to them after ordination. However, a pope 
 who commits some very disgraceful offence, or who 
 incurs the wrath of Government — which comes to 
 the same thing — can be unfrocked and drafted into 
 the army, or be transported to Siberia, without any 
 tedious formalities. 
 
 The white clergy accuse the black of diverting 
 from them the benefactions of the faithful, and of 
 misappropriating the Church revenues generally ; the 
 black reply that the white are a set of dissolute fellows 
 who have more than enough money as it is, and grow 
 fat by roguery. The people, viewing with an equal
 
 The White Clei'gy. 97 
 
 eye the merits of the two clergies, think there is little 
 to choose between them in the matter of peculation ; 
 but they despise the white clergy most because the 
 malpractices of the popes arc more palpable. The 
 budget of the secular clergy amounts to ;^ 5,000,000, 
 which, distributed among 36,000 parishes, gives about 
 ;^ 140 to each. By rights there should be in each 
 parish a pope, a deacon, and two clerks, but there are 
 only 12,000 deacons and 60,000 clerks in the whole 
 empire ; consequently, as half the income of each 
 parish should go to the pope, every pope ought to 
 receive about ;^85 a year. He gets nothing like that, 
 for the bishops act as if the establishment of deacons 
 and clerks was complete, and put the surplus salaries 
 into their pockets. The synods also rob him, and at 
 tim.es (for instance, during the war) neglect to pay 
 him at all. 
 
 The pope therefore swindles for a living. But 
 one need not pity him overmuch, for the sums which 
 he makes by his extortions more than counter- 
 balance the salary of which he is defrauded. In the 
 towns the popes live high ; in the villages their homes 
 are always comfortable. As we mentioned in a former 
 chapter, the popes are generally agents for the sale of 
 vodki ; and in addition to this they make money by 
 the Easter gifts of the rich, by subscriptions raised 
 
 H
 
 98 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 among the poor to buy church images (from which 
 they ahvays deduct a good percentage), by requiring 
 fees for baptisms, burials, weddings, &c., by signing 
 eucharistical certificates and certificates of character, 
 by intimidating and ransoming dissenters, and by 
 wringing death-bed donations out of the sick, which 
 they often do with impious menaces. 
 
 A Russian priest will do nothing for you with- 
 out payment, and there are few things he will not 
 do if well paid. He will accept a kopeck sooner 
 than nothing, but he takes care to get a rouble 
 out of you if he thinks you can afford it. The 
 loathing felt for the white clergy by rich as well as 
 poor would drive millions of Russians into overt 
 Nihilism, if it were not for the fearful penalties to 
 which persons are liable when they desert the Ortho- 
 dox faith in which they have been bred. 
 
 A Russian who is born a Jew, Catholic, or Raskol- 
 nik (dissenter) may live in his heresy, subject to certain 
 restrictions in the exercise of his religion and to 
 numerous civil and social disabilities. But a man 
 born in the Orthodox faith may be transported to 
 Siberia if he publicly abjures it. And transported he 
 will be, unless he compounds with the parish priest 
 according to his means. Dissent is therefore a source 
 of revenue to the established clergy, and they wink
 
 The White Clergy. 99 
 
 at it to such an extent that there are more than two 
 hundred heretical sects flourishing among the nomi- 
 nally Orthodox Russians. The Church of the Holy 
 Empire is, in fact, cankered and honeycombed with 
 infidelity. Every form of craziness, grotesqueness, 
 sanguinary wildness and obscenity is embraced in the 
 tenets of the heretical sects ; and all the members of 
 them who want to be left alone pay black-mail. They 
 cannot avoid doing so, for the law obliges every 
 Orthodox Russian to provide himself with an eucha- 
 ristical certificate, setting forth that he has duly 
 shriven himself and partaken of the Communion at 
 Easter. 
 
 On these eucharistical certificates, which can 
 always be bought for a fee, is based the pompous 
 report which the Procurator of the State Synod ad- 
 dresses yearly to the Czar on the subject of religion 
 in the empire. This functionary makes no allusion to 
 dissent, and he gravely writes of the clergy that they 
 ' set a shining example of all the Christian virtues.' 
 Nevertheless he lets slip some admissions which read 
 oddly. Thus, according to the last report published, 
 it is in the army that religious duties are most zealously 
 performed — this military zeal being a matter of com- 
 pulsion. Next in order of piety come the peasants, 
 
 then the Civil Serxants of the Crown, then the publi- 
 
 H 2
 
 lOO The Russians of To-day. 
 
 cans, and lastly, polite society. The commercial 
 classes are nowhere ; and there are 25 per cent, of the 
 supposed Orthodox Russians who do not show up 
 eucharistical certificates at all. 
 
 How comes there to be such an immense num- 
 ber of persons who defy the law } The thing 
 would be inexplicable but for the corruptness of 
 the priests in making capital out of dissent, and 
 for a peculiar fanatical twist in Russian character 
 which will impel a man who has bought an eucha- 
 ristical certificate out of prudence to tear it up, 
 stamp and spit upon it afterwards, to vent his spite 
 against the priest who sold it to him. Or, again, a 
 heretic will bribe a priest to let him alone, but will 
 decline to take out a certificate lest it should defile 
 him ; in either case the pope shrugs his shoulders and 
 has no interest in proceeding against the man, nor will 
 anybody else proceed against him if the pope does not. 
 
 One can understand after this how it comes that 
 in popular songs the pope, his wife, and clerk should 
 appear as butts for the most savage satire ; but the 
 peasants who laugh loudest against the priest will be 
 foremost in prostrating themselves inside the churches. 
 The Russians sever the Church and the clergy alto- 
 gether, and the foulest dissenting sects go to the 
 places of worship. As for the popes, loose fish as they
 
 The WJiitc Clergy. loi 
 
 are, they are not sceptics. They believe in the bodily 
 presence of the Evil One, so much so that they are 
 afraid of meeting him after dark. They howl during 
 thunderstorms ; they bang their heads against the 
 altar steps when they have dipped in some unusual 
 piece of roguery ; and they have a queer theology of 
 their own by which they hope to be saved if they stick 
 faithfully to rubrics. 
 
 A Russian priest will seriously tell you that 
 it is allowable to get drunk but not to smoke, 
 because ' not that which goeth in but that which 
 Cometh out of the mouth defilcth a man ; ' and he 
 will argue that the saying * a priest must live by the 
 altar ' means that he should make the altar yield all 
 it can — that it is a talent confided to him, and that he 
 would be a slothful servant if he hid it in a napkin. 
 But it is in devising salves for the consciences of rich 
 penitents that the Russian clergy shine most. One 
 of them, desirous of soothing a wealthy barina, in- 
 formed her that it is not good to be faultless ; for 
 perfect virtue is apt to beget pride, which is a deadly 
 sin, and consequently quite as grievous a matter as 
 the particular sin of which the lady in question had 
 accused herself The author of this comforting axiom 
 in morals was, however, not a humble pope, but a 
 bishop ; as doubtless he deserved to be.
 
 I02 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DAIMONIKS OF EKATERINOSLAV. 
 
 One of the prettiest towns of Southern Russia is 
 Ekaterinoslav, founded by Catherine II. under circum- 
 stances strongly suggestive of the manner in Avhich 
 things were done in the Empire a hundred years ago, 
 as now. 
 
 Potemkin, having conquered the vast district 
 at present called New Russia, prevailed upon the 
 Empress, whose favourite he was, to come and visit 
 it in state ; but there was nothing for her Majesty 
 to see beyond steppes covered with vultures and 
 avrotchkis (corn-eating rats), so the general gallantly 
 extemporized a series of sham villages all along the 
 Imperial route. Wherever the Empress stopped she 
 was regaled with the sight of brightly painted cottages 
 and peasantry in holiday attire, who yelled hymns 
 in her honour. Delighted with all she saw, the kind- 
 hearted Empress instituted serfdom among her new 
 subjects, and, coming to a picturesque spot on the
 
 The Daimoniks of Ekaterinoslav. 103 
 
 Dnieper, with hills, birch trees, and so forth, decided 
 she would there found a city which should be the St. 
 Petersburg of the south. 
 
 This programme has not yet been fulfilled ; but 
 there is no guessing the possibilities of a town 
 which stands in the middle of an immense tract 
 of coal-mines, and whose river may become navig- 
 able some day when Russians may go to work 
 without having the Tschinn to reckon with. Mean- 
 time Ekaterinoslav has a showy boulevard, a min- 
 eralogical museum (formerly the palace of Potemkin, 
 who was presented by his mistress with a million 
 acres of land in the neighbourhood), a French hotel 
 with beds, which are unusual luxuries in Russian hos- 
 telries, and a number of half-built palaces, in which 
 the nobility of the district come to lodge at the trien- 
 nial assemblies of nobles. 
 
 The inhabitants of Ekaterinoslav not being much 
 occupied in overreaching one another in commerce, 
 and the Civil servants finding time hang heavy on 
 their hands, there is a great deal of leisure for the 
 cultivation of small talk and metaphysics ; and, in 
 fact, the town plumes itself on being one of the 
 centres of Russian thought. The ladies dress in the 
 Parisian fashions of the year before last and babble 
 a sort of French derived from the novels of M. Paul
 
 I04 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 de Kock. Many of the shops afifect French sign- 
 boards, and the place seems to have attractions 
 for Gascon barbers and cooks, who having failed in 
 business on the banks of the Garonne, come here 
 to quarrel with square-headed Germans who sell 
 musical instruments and teach arithmetic in the 
 schools. 
 
 In Ekaterinoslav, as elsewhere, the ' thought ' 
 of society is disloyal ; for whenever Russians fall to 
 thinking they think ill of their rulers. Ladies who 
 receive you to tea chatter about constitutionalism, the 
 immorality of the priesthood, and the latest fads in 
 political economy, as if these refreshing topics were 
 the best things to promote conviviality. Men are 
 equally babblesome with the frondeur spirit, and, pro- 
 vided neither the civil nor military governor be pre- 
 sent to act as wet blanket, will talk of an impending 
 revolution as of a coming family dance in which all 
 good Russians will be delighted to join. For a long 
 time strangers mistook these signs for the mere mag- 
 pie garrulousness of people who were bored and 
 wanted to show off before foreigners as intellectual 
 beings ; but the prestige of the Romanoff dynasty is 
 chiefly based on the supposition of the Czar's invin- 
 cible military might and would not bear the stress of 
 defeat. For the sake of invincibility— for the sake of
 
 The Daimoniks of Ekatei'inoslav. 105 
 
 maintaining that mammoth army of four miUion 
 men, on paper, which is beheved to make Europe 
 tremble — the Russian would put up with a great 
 deal ; but, let the Czar be once well beaten, his flag 
 disgraced and Russian credit destroyed, then it would 
 be seen that the national discontent is no superficial 
 thing. 
 
 In Ekaterinoslav there arc several hundred Ras- 
 kolniks, who walk about with the flowing beards and 
 long robes of the Old Russians, and protest against 
 the depravity of their contemporaries by a style 
 of living austerely Puritan ; there are Nihilists, 
 and Steouriks, and Bejemschiks, whose gods are 
 Voltaire, Stenko-Razin, and Pougatchefl" (the revo- 
 lutionary Socialists) ; there are Daimoniks, whose 
 worship resembles adoration of the Evil One ; there 
 are Mirskites, or members of country mirs, who, being 
 allowed to work as servants or workmen in the towns, 
 have to pay their communes more than half their 
 earnings and grumble at this obligation with a fero- 
 cious sullenness ; and there is an official journal, 
 which comes out twice a week, printed on grey 
 candle-paper, and takes no more heed of these excited 
 sects and factions than if they were cutting their 
 capers in China. 
 
 Latterly, however, the candle-paper journal did
 
 io6 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 have to notice the strange goings-on of a Countess 
 Olga Nervski, who, at a time when the authorities 
 had their hands full with raising recruits for the war, 
 suddenly threw the town into convulsions by espous- 
 ing the tenets of the Daimoniks just mentioned. 
 One Sunday the Countess, who is a widow, began 
 shrieking in church at the top of her contralto voice. 
 The pope stopped in the middle of his prayers ; 
 the sacristans bustled forward to her assistance ; but 
 it was soon seen that the Countess was not labouring 
 under a mere fit of hysterics, but intended to go on 
 shrieking until others joined her. The church was 
 soon filled with howling, for a Russian has only to 
 give tongue for another to chime in without caring 
 why ; and so the congregation broke up in disorder. 
 Then the Countess, tearing off her French bonnet and 
 letting her hair flow down her back, rushed out of 
 church, followed by a sympathetic crowd, among 
 whom the driver of her droschki tried to plough his 
 way, thwacking his horses and shedding tears of ex- 
 citement 
 
 It was soon known that Olga Marienvna, as 
 her intimates called her, had been ' illuminated ; ' 
 but with what sort of a light only appeared in the 
 evening when, amidst a circle of guests who were 
 drinking punch a la Grassot and tea flavoured with
 
 The Daimoniks of Ekaterinoslav. loy 
 
 lemon-juice, she announced that she would die in the 
 faith of the Daimoniks. The faith in question pro- 
 ceeds from the assumption that as the Evil One has 
 the largest share in the government of this world, and 
 of Russia in particular, insomuch that there is no 
 avoiding his decrees, the best way to act is to try and 
 make friends with him by throwing aside all moral 
 restraints whatsoever. The Daimoniks trust that 
 Diabolos, being touched, will refuse to admit into any 
 place of torment the soul that served him so well. 
 Nay, that the very weakness which induced the soul 
 to rely on Diabolos may be accepted as a plea for 
 mercy in the courts above ; or that in any case the 
 soul, being refused above and below, will float about 
 in space enjoying eternal sleep. 
 
 If the Countess Olga had lived in the Emperor 
 Nicholas's time she would not have joined these Dai- 
 moniks, for the civil governor would have had her 
 taken to the police-office and privately whipped ; 
 but the present Czar has never understood his father's 
 policy of treating Russians like schoolboys and school- 
 girls, though, on the other hand, he has failed to see 
 that in raising his subjects to the dignity of grown- 
 up persons he should have given them employment 
 fit for adults. 
 
 The natural result of the half-and-half policy has
 
 io8 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 been that educated Russians like the Countess and 
 her friends — finding no scope for their independent 
 energies, and being nevertheless continually inflamed 
 by the liberal literature of the West, which comes 
 pouring over the frontier like so much lava — are liable 
 to grow crazy. After expounding her faith hysteri- 
 cally for a couple of days in her own home, to the 
 conversion of her attached domestics and dinner-table 
 hangers-on, the Countess one morning vanished into 
 the country and began to scatter the doctrines of her 
 new faith among the peasantry. 
 
 It is not rare in Russia to meet with hallucinated 
 ladies devoting themselves to missions of this sort ; 
 and had there been no war going on the Countess 
 Olga might have been left to compound her heresy by 
 payments to the clergy, and afterwards go her ways 
 until her demoniacal fever spent itself, which would 
 doubtless have been soon. 
 
 But in times when the popular nerves are strained 
 to the tightest tension-point religious outbreaks may 
 become the rallying-points for political disturbances ; 
 wherefore the authorities of Ekaterinoslav grew un- 
 easy. For some time past the humour of the towns- 
 folk had been sulky and obstreperous, for this was at the 
 outset of the campaign while the Turks were getting 
 the best of it. The little candle-paper journal, after
 
 The Daimoniks of Ekaterinoslav. 109 
 
 telling untruths about the war with surprising efifron- 
 tery, had been at last compelled to own that things 
 were not going on as they ought ; private letters from 
 the Danube told the same story ; and in fact the pro- 
 pagation by a rich and comely widow of a heresy 
 which flaunted, defiance at everything and everybody 
 was just likely to commend itself to the mood of a 
 population sick to death of showing respect to their 
 betters. 
 
 So a batch of policemen were sent in quest of 
 the Countess Olga, and she was brought back ; but 
 the Civil Governor, being a gentleman and coated over 
 with a French polish of scepticism and urbanity, 
 thought it better to reason laughingly with the lady 
 than to punish her ; and this device succeeded. Olga 
 Marienvna ended by laughing too, and went back to 
 her house saying that her illumination (in which, 
 mayhap, she had seen a vision of Siberian snows) had 
 passed away. But it did not pass away from the 
 minds of others, whose brains she had set on fire, and 
 it must have caused Olga Marienvna a thrill of horror 
 to hear that the police and the military were going 
 about apprehending all the low-class Daimoniks, with 
 a number of Nihilists and Bejemschiks into the bar- 
 gain, and enrolling them by force into the army. 
 
 This is the usual upshot of such affairs. The
 
 no The RiLssians of To-day. 
 
 Russian army must have soldiers ; and, as the 
 peasantry hide away like field mice from the search 
 of the recruiting officers in times of disaster, a con- 
 spiracy or a riot comes as a welcome pretext for 
 impressment. The Daimonik business saved the Go- 
 vernor of Ekaterinoslav the trouble of resorting to 
 the expedient adopted by his colleague at Novgorod, 
 who pounced upon all the able-bodied buyers and 
 sellers who had come to the annual fair. It also 
 purged his town for a while of discontented spirits, 
 and gave the little candle-paper journal an opportu- 
 nity of writing that the pressed men had all enlisted 
 voluntarily, and ' had, indeed, gone away anxious to 
 atone for a passing aberration by loyal service to their 
 country thenceforth.' That is the way they manage 
 official journalism in Holy Russia.
 
 A Bookseller and Publisher. 1 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER. 
 
 Over the front of a shop painted bright yellow in the 
 Czarina Prospect of Ekaterinoslav are these words in 
 Russo-French : 'Trikniefif — Libraire et Publieur.* 
 Triknieff has been told a hundred times that the 
 French for publisher is editettr ; but a Russian takes 
 tender liberties with the languages he loves — as 
 witness that barber lower down the street, who, to cut 
 out a French rival over the way, goes in for Anglicism 
 with the announcement : * Ruzski ; Inglish Shaver.*^ 
 Triknieff, though, is not an ignorant man, for he 
 holds a mart for the works of human intellect pub- 
 lished all the world over. His shop is full of French, 
 English, and German books. He publishes works in 
 the Russian tongue, he owns a monthly magazine, 
 and would have started a weekly newspaper before 
 now if the town where he flourishes had possessed 
 that inestimable boon, a censor. Scores of Russian 
 towns are crying out for censors, but there are only
 
 112 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 nine censorial commissions in the whole empire, and 
 every book or magazine essay which Triknieff wishes 
 to put forth must be sent to Odessa for approval. 
 
 Three months is the shortest time that can elapse 
 before he gets back his manuscript, more or less 
 embellished with corrections in red pencil ; but 
 sometimes six months slip by, for the censors have 
 a great deal to do. If a work contains strictures 
 upon anything connected whith Government service 
 it must be referred to the State department in 
 St. Petersburg which those strictures concern ; and 
 this often involves a delay of years. For these reasons 
 Trikniefif has to get his magazine made up months 
 beforehand ; but even then he is not sure of being 
 able to sell it ; for an essay which was innocuous at 
 the time when it received the imprimatur may, 
 through a turn in circumstances, become perilous 
 reading, in which case the magazine is seized. Last 
 year Triknieff received a well-written work upon the 
 difficulties of a campaign on the Danube ; but as 
 these difficulties regarded the War Office, the book 
 was forwarded thither, and there it is lying now. 
 Perhaps Triknieff will be allowed to publish it, with 
 amendments, towards the beginning of 1879, if he 
 should think the subject still retains interest then. 
 
 Triknieff would be a happy man if Government
 
 A Bookseller and Publisher. 113 
 
 would instal a censor in his town and arm him with 
 full powers ; but he and Government look at this 
 question from opposite points of view ; for Triknieff 
 wants to promote the sale of literature and Govern- 
 ment desires to check it. It is more than enough for 
 the authorities that publications should come out with 
 tolerable frequency in the nine university towns — St, 
 Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Dorpat, Vilna (Lithuania), 
 Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and Warsaw. All these 
 places possess censors, and most of them one or two 
 daily independent newspapers, whose articles have to 
 be submitted for revision three clear days before 
 going to print ; but, if country-town censors were 
 appointed, Triknieff and his fellows would soon get 
 bribing them, and there would be no damming up the 
 torrent of prints that would well up, to the flooding of 
 institutions that could no longer stand if the waters 
 of publicity were let into them. 
 
 These things have been benevolently explained 
 to Triknieff by the civil governor more than once, 
 and the shrewd old gentleman has advised the 
 publisher to be content with such wit as he has 
 for cheating the censorship as often as he can, 
 Triknieff understands what this means, for he is 
 only trammelled by the censors so far as outward 
 appearances go. What these gentlemen \irtually 
 
 I
 
 114 The Russiajis of To-day. 
 
 do is to hinder his publication of works by respect- 
 able native writers and to mutilate foreign works 
 forwarded to him by his agent at Leipzic ; but 
 in the matter of issuing anonymous Socialist pam- 
 phlets, or boudoir romances such as could not 
 be suffered to lie on any decent boudoir table, 
 Triknieff, like the rest of his craft in Russia, is free. 
 
 He has a clandestine press and numerous secret 
 hawkers who help him to disseminate tons of foolish 
 and foul literature, with the tacit connivance of the 
 police, whom he suborns. If you asked him for Mill's 
 * Political Economy ' over his counter, he would tell 
 you that the work is forbidden ; if you wanted to buy 
 Thackeray's ' Virginians ' you would find about five 
 dozen pages cut out. The works of Voltaire, Thiers, 
 Macaulay, and Victor Hugo are not to be seen on 
 Triknieff's shelves ; those of Dickens, Balzac, and the 
 elder Dumas are only purchasable (publicly) in an 
 incomplete form ; but, if the honest bookseller has to 
 deal with a man of position or with a lady \\ horn he 
 can trust, he will come after dark, bringing a cargo 
 not only of the works asked for, but of numerous 
 others of which it would not be expedient so much as 
 to utter the names aloud. 
 
 The Russians are great readers, and the dif- 
 ficulty of procuring good foreign works in open
 
 A Booksellei' and Publisher. 1 1 
 
 day makes every one privy, more or less, to the 
 malpractices of booksellers. Long before the cen- 
 sors have made up their minds as to M. Victor 
 Hugo's last production, 'The History of a Crime,' 
 the work will have been read by every Russian who 
 cares to pay the high price for which smuggled or 
 pirated copies can be bought. But extravagant prices 
 are naturally a bar to persons of moderate means ; 
 and that is how it comes that the pomeschiks, or small 
 squires, the trading classes, university students, and 
 subaltern officers have exhausted the frivolous in litera- 
 ture ; and when they have exhausted the frivolous then 
 hawkers tempt their jaded appetites, as above said, 
 with licentious books under alluring titles. 
 
 Much of the corruption of women in Russian society 
 — corruption which often finds vent in hysteric outbreaks 
 towards Nihilism, Daimonism, or what not — comes of 
 the fearful books that are devoured for want of better 
 mental food. The Russian bookseller is, in fact, a 
 wholesale polluter of morals ; and yet such a one as 
 Triknieff, in the Czarina Prospect, only traJes in vice 
 because he would have to shut up shop if he confined 
 himself to the lawful sale of books allowed by the 
 censors. Give him freedom of bookselling, and he 
 would be the first to suppress the clandestine branch 
 of his trade, being a respectable man often to be seen in
 
 1 1 6 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 church along with his wife — who, it is to be hoped, 
 knows nothing of the strange works piled up in his 
 cellars. 
 
 Trikniefif's expenses are high, for he keeps three 
 founts of type — Russian, German, and French — and 
 has a staff of compositors who can print in three 
 languages. Skilled labour is always dear in Russia, 
 and the artels of printers have latterly forced up the 
 wages of their hands to three paper roubles a day. 
 It needs a sale of many books to cover such prices ; 
 but when it is considered that Trikniefif keeps about 
 half a dozen police officials in hush-money, and has to 
 pay two or three yearly visits to Odessa to propitiate 
 censors and get whole boxes of foreign books through 
 the custom-house uninspected, the only wonder is that 
 he can make the two ends meet at all. His shop is 
 almost always empty, and he gives away so many 
 gratis copies of his uninteresting magazine that its 
 selling circulation can hardly meet the cost of printing. 
 
 Probably he keeps up this periodical for the respect- 
 ability it gives him. He is an honorary member of 
 several provincial academies ; an inspector of schools 
 (which confers on him the right to a bright blue 
 uniform and a star with three points) ; he sits in the 
 municipal council of his town and on the jury at 
 assizes ; and he is generally regarded as a first-class
 
 A Bookseller and Publislie7\ 1 1 7 
 
 savant. His magazine treats of science and agricul- 
 ture ; publishes adaptations of French and English 
 sensation novels ; and is of course profoundly and 
 gushingly loyal. The contributors are generally 
 amateurs in the service of the Crown who like to see 
 themselves in print ; but there is a sub-editor, a 
 polyglot Pole, who pads the pages with translations 
 from foreign periodicals when original matter fails. 
 
 Triknieff is great at piracies, and when a foreign 
 novel is passed by the censors and seems likely to have 
 a good sale, he will reprint it sooner than go to the 
 expense of ordering copies from abroad. Some of these 
 reprints read oddly, for, with a view to economy, all 
 that is not ' action ' in the book — disquisitions, descrip- 
 tions of scenery, &c. — are expunged. The polyglot 
 Pole has a marked talent for compressing three volumes 
 into one, and will often give a work the touch of literary 
 finish, either by an addition of sensationalism or by a 
 readjustment of 'scenes,' which in his opinion it 
 lacks. More often, however, the works which Triknieff 
 pirates are those which the censors have banned ; and 
 then the Pole is useful for dressing up these books in 
 Russian garb, denationalizing the characters and their 
 names. 
 
 Triknieff prints more things in Russian than in 
 French or German ; though works in these last two
 
 1 1 8 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 languages always command a sale among those whO' 
 aspire at gentility. His magazine is Russian, and 
 as such is viewed with favour by the authorities,, 
 who like to be able to show by palpable proof how 
 the Czar's Government encourages native literature. 
 It is probable, indeed, that if from some cause or other 
 Triknieff was compelled to c.bandon the publication 
 of his periodical, somebody else would be assisted to 
 bring it out, so that it might not be said that gravely 
 instructive literature had ceased to be in demand in 
 any of his Majesty's provinces. As it is, the magazine 
 undoubtedly does Triknieff a good turn by giving him 
 the decent name which he could hardly derive from 
 his other literary transactions. It is like the reputable 
 flag which a pirate hoists when he sails with a cargo 
 of contraband.
 
 Newspapers and Reviews. 1 1 9 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS AM) REVIEWS. 
 
 It would be unfair to class all Russian reviews along' 
 with the magazine published by TriknicfT, of Ekater- 
 isnoslav. St. Petersburg and Moscow have some 
 excellent reviews, a few well-written daily papers, and 
 half-a-dozen comic journals that are really funny and 
 very licentious. Among these last the Svistok 
 (' Whistle ') and the Iskra (' Spark ') deserve an 
 honourable mention, both for their letterpress and 
 caricatures. Their artists are trained in the French 
 school, but go further than Parisian cartoonists would 
 dare to do. They valiantly attack all but the strong 
 — the smaller tyrants of the bureaucracy, private per- 
 sons, monks, ladies, foreigners ; and nobody has any 
 remedy against them, for they are protected by power- 
 ful persons whom these attacks amuse. 
 
 Some years ago a facetiously abominable little 
 print, called the Vcseltchak (' Wag '), was suppressed 
 for a series of bitter lampoons on the pri\'ate life of a
 
 I20 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 foreign Sovereign ; but it was no secret that these 
 attacks had been inspired by a high official not uncon- 
 nected with the Ministry of Police ; and the editor 
 forthwith reissued his paper under a new name, the 
 Gondok, thereby proving that he had sufficient interest 
 in official quarters, for otherwise he could not have 
 obtained the necessary licence. A Russian news- 
 paper proprietor must first obtain permission to print, 
 then lodge 2,500 silver roubles as caution money ; 
 after which he becomes subject to a regime of ' admo- 
 nitions,' two of which entail a suspension for a term of 
 two months. Those who cannot affiard to lodge 
 caution money — which they are not likely ever to 
 see again, for it is forfeited in case the paper 
 is suppressed — have to submit to a prev^entive 
 censorship by sending their articles to the censors 
 three clear days beforehand. 
 
 In provincial towns where i"here are no censors, 
 and where a man does not care to throw away 
 ^400, journalism is non-existent ; but even in the 
 two capitals, and in such large cities as Kiev and 
 Odessa, a proprietor who has paid caution money 
 finds it prudent to let the censors have a peep 
 at the articles he is going to print — or, at least, he 
 submits them to one or other of the great people 
 whom every Russian newspaper has behind it. Inde-
 
 Newspapers and Reviews. 1 2 1 
 
 pendent journalism, as understood in other countries, 
 does not exist in Russia. If a man were guilelessly 
 to suppose that because he had fulfilled the legal 
 formalities he could carry on a newspaper without 
 official support, it would not take him a week to dis- 
 cover his mistake, for all the profits of his circulation 
 would be swallowed up in compounding with tschino- 
 vniks, who would threaten him with admonitions and 
 lawsuits. 
 
 There are at this moment 475 daily, weekly, or 
 bi-weekly journals in Russia, l']'] of them being pub- 
 lished in the native tongue. Of this total '^^6 papers 
 are the property of universities and colleges, 161 
 belong to trade guilds or professional artels, 10 1 
 are official journals published under the direction of 
 provincial governors, and the remainder are all in the 
 hands of influential magnates, who employ them more 
 to gratify private malice or ambition than to serve 
 public ends. 
 
 The most eminent of so-called independent papers 
 in the capital, the Golos ('Voice'), is the organ of 
 the Czar's intimate friends, the Bariatinskis, and 
 the liberalism it affects has its source at Court. The 
 Journal de St. Pctcrsboiirg, edited by a Belgian, and 
 published in French, is the pet paper of Chancellor 
 Gortschakoff and his friends. The Invalidc is sup-
 
 122 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ported by the War Office and is the mouthpiece of 
 the old Russian Chauvin party, while its rival, the 
 Russian World, edited by General Fadeieff, a clever 
 man, advocates military reforms under the aeg-is of the 
 Czarewitch. The St. PettTslvirg Neivs, also called 
 the Academical Gazette, was recently purchased of the 
 Academy by the Ministry of Public Instruction, and 
 has no definite policy, but goes in for personalities 
 against all who make themselves disagreeable to 
 official authors, artists, doctors, and the ladies of the 
 Imperial operas. It was this journal that clamoured 
 for the recall of the Russian female students at Zurich, 
 and egged on the prosecution which has resulted in 
 the transportation of several of these poor girls to 
 Siberia. Among the best known provincial papers 
 the Odessa Messenger, whose literary articles are re- 
 markable, belongs to the Lycee Richelieu ; the 
 Kievlanine of Kiev is the property of monks ; finally, 
 there is the Moscow Gazette, edited by M. Katkoff, 
 which for brilliancy and fearless hard-hitting excels 
 the other papers in the Empire. 
 
 This journal belongs to the University of Moscow, 
 but M. Katkoff has lately hired it on lease for twelve 
 years in consideration of a yearly payment of 74,000 
 silver roubles (^^ 11,840). This is a great rental, but 
 the circulation of the paper exceeds 40,000 copies 
 
 I
 
 Nc'a'spapers and Reviews. 123 
 
 a day, and it has a monopoly of the advertisements 
 in Moscow. M. Katkoff is the most eminent jour- 
 nalist in Russia, and, being a friend of the Czar, 
 as well as the pet of the Panslavist party, wields 
 unquestionable power, though not so much as he 
 did ten years ago. In 1866 he had influence enough 
 to overthrow M. Valouief, Minister of the Interior, 
 who had presumed to suspend his journal, and 
 he caused M. Milutine to be set up in his stead. 
 Since then he and M. Milutine have grown cool 
 towards each other ; for M. Katkoff is not the man to 
 go in leading-strings, and lashes out now and then 
 against official abuses in a style which does not dis- 
 please the Czar, but which cannot commend itself to 
 placemen. 
 
 M. Katkoff was originally a fervent advocate of 
 British Constitutionalism ; the Polish insurrection 
 changed his ideas, and now there is not a Russian who 
 hates England politically more than lie. But he 
 speaks English faultlessly ; and his fancy for British 
 literature appears to have survived his love of other 
 things English, for a review which he conducts toge- 
 ther with the Moscow Gazette is almost entirely 
 devoted to the reproduction of English novels and to 
 the criticism of works published in London. 
 
 This review, the Russian Messenger, is one of four
 
 124 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 periodicals which occupy a foremost place in the litera- 
 ture of the Empire. The others are the European Mes- 
 senger, published in St. Petersburg, and dealing chiefly 
 with French works ; the Annals of the Country, and 
 the Diclo {' Work '). M. Katkoff's erudite reviewers 
 have a strong conservative bias : the essayists in the 
 other three magazines are more or less lively and 
 liberal. Russian society looks forward to the first of 
 each month, when these reviews appear, with keen 
 interest, for under cover of literary criticism the 
 essayists deal unsparingly in political and social satire. 
 Most of them are men of great culture, and carry to 
 a high point of perfection that art of innuendo which 
 has always to be cultivated under despotic govern- 
 ments. However, Government allows a much greater 
 latitude to reviewers than to journalists ; and much 
 more licence to writers in the two capitals generally 
 than to those in the provinces. Many a literary essay 
 is published in the Die/o which, if cut up into leaders 
 and printed at Kharkov, would send its writer to 
 prison. 
 
 The Die/o is very fond of dallying with Nihilism, 
 and takes the works of Renan, Strauss, and Darwin 
 as texts for veritable sermons on infidelity — most 
 delightful for Russian ladies to read between two
 
 Newspapers and Reviews. 125 
 
 cups of tea flavoured with rum. Most well-to-do 
 people subscribe to all four of the reviews : and, 
 besides finding therein the intellectual feast of satire 
 and atheism just mentioned, get a montiily supply of 
 serial stories by the most popular Russian novelists 
 — Ivan Tourguenicfif, Dostoievski, TolstoT, Salhias, 
 Averkief, and others. 
 
 Many English readers arc acquainted with the 
 romances of Ivan Tourguenieff, the author of* Smoke,' 
 who could hold his own against any Western novelist ; 
 but those of Tolstoi and Dostoievski are little known 
 outside Russia, although they would well deserve 
 translation. As much cannot be said as to the works 
 of Averkief, Salhias, Avsienko, and Markevitch, who 
 are the inaugurators of the Russian ' new school,' 
 which calls itself realistic, but is a compound of ex- 
 travagance and sensualism. The gods of this new 
 school are evidently MM. Gustave Flaubert and Emile 
 Zola ; but, while striving to imitate the defects of 
 these Frenchmen, the Russian realists delight to copy 
 the mannerisms of M. Victor Hugo's latter-day method 
 in prose, which is hardly suited to the minute por- 
 trayal of social turpitudes. Immorality described in 
 pompous language and with far-fetched metaphors 
 has a queer effect upon the Western reader ; but
 
 126 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Russian ladies and gentlemen are swearing at present 
 by the works of Averkief and Salhias, whom they 
 affect to rank above Tourguenieff, and so it must be 
 presumed that these gifted writers hold up mirrors hi 
 which the society of the Holy Empire sees itself faith- 
 fully reflected.
 
 Marriage Customs. 127 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 
 
 Russian marriages are generally arranged through 
 priests. Being matters of business, it is desirable that 
 there should be no mistake as to the amount of dower 
 which the bride is to bring, and there would very 
 likely be mistakes if some member of the upper clergy 
 were not to act as an intermediary in preparing ihc 
 settlements. An archimandrite does much of the 
 work that falls to notaries in other countries ; only he 
 charges more, and a portion of the dower is apt to 
 stick between his fingers. A well-bred bride_^room 
 must present a gift to a monastery and another to his 
 parish church ; the bride, through her friends, is 
 expected to clothe some statue of a Virgin with a 
 gown of silver brocade, enriched with more or less 
 jewels according to the piety of the donor ; and in 
 some parts of Southern Russia she adds a gift of two 
 white doves to the pope, which looks rather like a 
 relic of the worship of Venus. The consent of parents
 
 T28 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 is necessary for a marriage : until the age of thirty in 
 the case of men, twenty-five in that of women ; but 
 young people are at liberty to appeal to the civil 
 authorities if consent be arbitrarily withheld. In this 
 event the parents are called upon to show reason for 
 their refusal. The reason must not be mercenary 
 unless one of the young people be heir to a landed 
 estate ; then the question is referred to the marshal 
 of the nobility in the district, whose decisions are 
 based upon expediency rather than upon fixed prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 These appeals are rare, because the Russians are 
 a marrying people and dispose of their children 
 early. In the middle and lower classes men marry at 
 twenty when not drafted by the conscription ; in the 
 higher aristocracy a young man goes the 'grand 
 tour ' before settling down, but he is often betrothed 
 before starting to a young lady not yet out of the 
 schoolroom, and he weds her immediately upon his 
 return. There is no country which has so few old 
 maids as Russia. The great ridicule attached to the 
 title, when not borne by a nun, has possibly something 
 to do with the unwillingness of ladies to sport it. 
 When a girl has reached the age of twenty-five 
 without finding a mate, she generally sets out on what 
 she calls a pilgriniage if poor — on a round of travels
 
 Marriage Cjtstovis. 129 
 
 if rich ; and in either case she turns up some years 
 after as a widow. Widows are as plentiful as old 
 spinsters are scarce ; and widows whose husbands 
 were never seen are more numerous than the rest. 
 Etiquette forbids any allusion to a lady's dead husband 
 in her presence ; and this is, perhaps, sometimes 
 convenient. 
 
 When a couple are engaged, a betrothal feast is 
 held, and the bride elect has a lock of her hair cut off 
 in the presence of witnesses, and given to the 
 bridegroom, who in return presents a silver ring set 
 with a turquoise, an almond cake, and a gift of bread 
 and salt. From this moment the two are plighted ; nor 
 can the relatives break the match except with the 
 consent of the parties themselves, which is signified by 
 a return of the ring and lock of hair. So much 
 importance is attached to the ring, at least in the 
 north of Russia, that among poor people who cannot 
 afford silver and a turquoise, tin and a bit of blue 
 stone are substituted. These betrothal rings are kept 
 as heirlooms, but must not be made to serve twice — a 
 son cannot give his bride the ring which his mother 
 received, for instance ; though why this should be so 
 is a mystery which the clergy, who sell the rings, 
 could best explain. 
 
 On the wedding day the bride comes to church 
 K
 
 130 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 dressed in white ; but it is only among the highest 
 classes, who copy Western fashions, that the bridal 
 costume is entirely white, and that a wreath of 
 orange-flower blossoms is used. Among Russians 
 pure light blue is the nuptial colour, and a coronet 
 of silver ribbon stands in place of the wreath. The 
 wedding-ring for the bride is of gold or some yellow 
 metal, but not a plain hoop ; it is generally a double 
 ring with enchased stars. The bridegroom has a ring, 
 too, which the bride puts on his finger in the presence 
 of the Pope after she has received his, and this is 
 mostly a plain one. The clergy make much ado 
 about the rings being of pure metal, and thereby 
 keep the sale of them in their hands, though it would 
 not always be safe to test the purity of the eccle- 
 siastical gold with a touchstone. After the wedding 
 service, which comprises in some of the less civilized 
 districts the breaking of an earthenware vessel in 
 token that the bride renounces her own possession 
 (or is ready to smash all her father's crockery for 
 her husband's sake — explanations differ) — after this 
 there is an adjournment to a banquet in which 
 mulled kvass (small beer) and almond cakes play a 
 great part. 
 
 Weddings need not be celebrated before midday, 
 nor must they take place in a church. In fashionable
 
 Marriage Customs. 131 
 
 circles it is the custom to solemnize them in a drawing- 
 room, and by candlelight. There is no departure on 
 a honeymoon tour. The banquet is followed by a ball, 
 then by a supper ; and at this last repast, when held 
 in houses where old customs are obscrv^ed, a new satin 
 slipper, supposed to be the bride's, is produced, and 
 used as a drinking vessel by the bridegroom's 
 friends, who pass it round and drink the bride's health 
 in it till it is soaked through and will hold liquor no 
 longer. In houses where speeches are made it is not 
 the bridegroom, but the bride's father, who returns 
 thanks when her health is drunk — this usage being 
 owing to the fact that a father still retains authority 
 over his child after she is married. He may summon 
 her from her home to tend him when he is sick. If 
 he lose his wife he may claim his married daughter's 
 services as a housekeeper during the first three months 
 of his widowhood : and he very often does so. If the 
 daughter's husband die, her father may order her to 
 return to his roof, and he becomes de jure the guardian 
 of her children. None of these privileges is retained 
 by a married woman's mother. 
 
 Divorces are not properly allowed in Russia, but a 
 marriage can be annulled for informality ; and so 
 divorces are pretty frequent. It is only a question of 
 money, like most Russian things. In Lithuania and
 
 132 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 some parts of Little Russia it is the custom for the 
 bride's nearest relative to give her a slap on the face 
 at the moment of leading her to the priest, the object 
 of this being to establish, in case of need, that the bride 
 married under compulsion — which would be enough 
 to break the marriage. Russians themselves assure 
 strangers that the slap is only a reminder to the bride 
 to behave well in future ; but the true sense of it is 
 that just stated, for otherwise the reminder would 
 presumably be given by the bridegroom. 
 
 In some parts of the Empire the date of the 
 marriage is left blank on the certificate ; and this 
 again furnishes grounds for a divorce. In the Cher- 
 sonese the pope intentionally omits to register the 
 ages of the parties ; but there is no real need for 
 any of these precautions, for the marriage laws are 
 so complex that two parties willing to pay for the 
 luxury of a separation can easily ferret out an ukase 
 whose prescriptions were not scrupulously observed 
 at their nuptials. It is the clergy who declare a 
 marriage null, and they will connive at any trick 
 for this purpose. It is not by any means rare for 
 a lady of fickle affections to get her new lover to pay 
 her husband a sum of money that he may consent 
 to a divorce ; and this has been done even in social 
 circles where a regard for decencies might have been
 
 Marriage Customs. I'^i 
 
 expected. About a dozen years ago an Imperial 
 decree was launched forbidding servants of the Crown 
 below the fifth rank to apply for annulments of 
 marriage except with the permission of their chiefs, 
 which would have been absurd if such annulments 
 had only been asked for, as a rule, upon sufficient 
 grounds. Annulled ladies, whether remarried or not, 
 are received into society; so are those who have 
 annulled marriages two or three times ; and, indeed, 
 Russian morals as to the sanctity of marriage are 
 nothing if not lax. 
 
 Russians make good husbands, according to their 
 own ideas of good — that is, they are indulgent, good 
 tempered, and not jealous ; but in the higher classes 
 they are incorrigible flirts, and in the lower they 
 drink, and, being drunk, settle all connubial dif- 
 ferences by blows. It is a common sight in a village 
 to see a mujick cuffing his wife with might and 
 main ; nor do her howls bring any of her own sex 
 to her assistance. It seems to be admitted among 
 all but the upper classes that a man has full right to 
 beat his wife, and she gets no sympathy whether she 
 vociferates or hits back. In case of flagrant infidelity 
 a Russian may have his wife put in prison for a year, 
 and if she be not of noble blood or of a priest's family, 
 he may have her once flogged besides ; but this
 
 134 ^-^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 prerogative is more honoured in the breach than in 
 the observance. Women have no counter-hold over 
 their husbands, and herein appears the Oriental view 
 still prevailing in the Empire as to the ascendency of 
 the strong sex. A husband may appear as a witness 
 in a lawsuit against his wife, but a wife is not heard 
 against her husband ; a man may oblige his wife to 
 work for him, but a wife cannot sue her husband even 
 for necessaries, and she has no redress against him if 
 he deserts her. 
 
 OrientaHsm appears again in the almost total 
 seclusion of Russian middle-rank women within their 
 own homes. You must have known a Russian of 
 the trading class for some time before he thinks 
 it advisable to introduce his wife ; and you must 
 have been his intimate friend for years before he 
 would take the liberty of letting her sit down to table 
 in your presence. Russian women go out of doors 
 with their children, but seldom with their husbands ; 
 and a man is not expected to take notice of another 
 man's wife by bowing to her if she passes him in the 
 streets. One of the sights which surprises a Russian 
 of the midland cities most when he goes to St. Pe- 
 tersburg, Moscow, or Odessa is to notice the promis- 
 cuous flow of both sexes in the streets and in places 
 of amusement. As to the spectacle of married ladies
 
 Marriage Customs. 135 
 
 sitting in the boxes of theatres with their shoulders 
 bare, this amazing Hcence is enough to take his breath 
 away. 
 
 In writing of marriage customs one must not 
 forget the marriage fairs, which are still held in some 
 provincial towns during Easter week. It was for- 
 merly the practice, even in Moscow and St. Peters- 
 burg, for all the marriageable men and maidens to 
 resort to the public gardens on Easter Sunday, and 
 return there every day of the week. Rich men could 
 take their pick. When a pretty face pleased them 
 they addressed its owner directly, and asked the 
 names of her parents. If open to an offer she gave 
 the required information, and negotiations were com- 
 menced without delay. Country people used to travel 
 from afar to attend these marriage fairs, which were 
 not unlike the statute hirings in English markets, 
 only that the damsels were hired for life ; but now- 
 adays girls of the better classes have gradually 
 abandoned the old custom, and in places where the 
 fairs still exist they are chiefly frequented by servant 
 girls. In some towns they have degenerated into 
 saturnalia. Housemaids, who ask leave to attend 
 them, stay away a week, and return at the end of that 
 time unmarried often, and much the worse, physically 
 and morall}', for their seven days' carousing.
 
 136 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 MONKS AND NUNS. 
 
 Writing of Russian nuns nearly forty years ago, 
 M. de Custine gave them a character for the most 
 dissolute morals. They were as bad then as some of 
 their French sisters in the seventeenth century who 
 provoked Diderot to write his 'Religieuse;' and they 
 have not improved since. They may have renounced 
 the devil, but the devil does not renounce them. 
 
 There are only about 7,000 of them in the whole 
 empire, as against 9,000 monks ; and the orders 
 of both sexes are scattered among 800 convents. 
 This would give each establishment an average of 
 no more then twenty inmates ; but a number of 
 postulants and novices must be added who act as 
 servants to those who have taken their vows. The 
 four great lauras, as the large monasteries are called, 
 contain about 150 monks apiece; two of the first-class 
 nunneries have more than one hundred sisters; but 
 many country-town conventual institutions boast but
 
 Monks and Nuns. v-^^] 
 
 three or four friars or nuns, who are all scandalously 
 fat and rich, and lead lives which one might think 
 would tempt the lazy and good-for-nought among the 
 people to look upon them with envy. 
 
 It is just the contrary, and the monastic orders are 
 extremely difficult to recruit, notwithstanding that the 
 bishops resort to coaxing and even to coercion for the 
 purpose. Originally a man could only become a monk 
 at thirty and a woman a nun at forty ; and postulants 
 for orders were obliged to prove that they were of 
 noble or ecclesiastical family ; but these conditions 
 have been abrogated, and nothing is required now 
 but a knowledge of reading and writing. Vows are 
 not eternal either, but may be recanted after form- 
 alities which can be much simplified by the cus- 
 tomary national talisman of a bribe in the proper 
 quarters. On the other hand, monks and nuns arc 
 constrained to celibacy ; they lose what property they 
 possessed as civilians (it goes to their heirs, as if they 
 were dead), and if they re-enter civil life they are 
 debarred during a term of seven years from entering 
 the service of the Crown, inheriting or buying land, 
 or inhabiting the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. 
 
 It may be that these rules have something to do 
 with the repugnance of Russians for monastic life, 
 but one must rather attribute the feeling to the
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 universal abhorrence and contempt in which the 
 ' black clergy ' are held. They are wealthy, powerful, 
 and arrogant, but pariahs for all that. However, a 
 Russian who can surmount his objection to enter an 
 execrated caste finds his lines cast in very pleasant 
 places. All the high dignitaries of the Church — 
 metropolitans, archbishops, archimandrites, abbots, 
 and priors — are chosen from among the monks ; and 
 the nuns can rise to such dignities as abbesses, 
 prioresses, and holy mothers. It is computed that 
 the abbots of the lauras pocket ^10,000 a year 
 apiece, and those of the smaller monasteries at least 
 ;^ 2,000. The abbesses are equally well off. About a 
 year ago one who had held her office ten years created 
 a scandal by going off to France without leave to get 
 married, and the Moscow Gazette revealed that she 
 had amassed more than a million of roubles. 
 
 All this money is earned through the gross super- 
 stition which in Russia does duty for religion. Monks 
 and nuns sell tapers, holy relics, images, wedding-rings, 
 and indulgences ; they sell prayers, blessings, and the 
 right of burial within monasteries, which wealthy 
 Russians prize highly and for which they pay by 
 sums bequeathed in their wills. It is seldom that 
 a Russian of high rank is buried elsewhere than 
 in a convent. Then the monks are sturdy beggars,
 
 Monks and Nuns. 139 
 
 and it is considered unlucky to send them away- 
 empty-handed. They knock at every door ; and 
 turn to account every domestic event which may 
 induce generosity — weddings, christenings, windfalls 
 of money, or promotion in the service. They have 
 been known to call upon fashionable gamblers who 
 were reported to have won largely at cards, and upon 
 opera-songstresses who had been lucky in the matter 
 of diamonds. A rich foreigner, alighting at a fashion- 
 able hotel, is waited upon by a monk who begs for 
 a charity ; if he give readily a nun comes on the 
 morrow, then another monk, a second nun and so 
 on — all bearing the same stereotyped smile of abject 
 humility. Towards the rich they are obsequious, 
 with persons of the middle-class familiar, to the poor 
 insolent ; but, whatever contempt may be felt for them 
 by boyard or mujick, no one cares to cross them, for 
 it is as true in Russia to-day as it was in England be- 
 fore the Reformation that ' if you do but speak ill of 
 a friar's dog, a thousand monks exclaim " An heresy ! 
 an heresy ! " ' 
 
 If monastic property had remained inviolate 
 through centuries, the Russian orders would by this 
 time own half the land in the country ; but Peter the 
 Great, Elizabeth, and Catherine II. all laid ruthless 
 hands upon their estates, and for this reason monks
 
 140 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 no longer care to be presented with lands. Offer 
 some productive acres to an abbot, and he will tell 
 you plainly that he prefers cash or jewels, as ' easier 
 to distribute among the poor,' the truth being that the 
 friars never give away a kopeck. They live subject 
 to no rule, and do not even eat or pray in common. 
 
 Enter the laura of Troitza, some sixty miles from 
 Moscow, which is the largest monastery of the coun- 
 try, and you find a regular city full of churches and 
 image-shops. There are no fewer than five-and-forty 
 churches within the walls, some large, some small, but 
 all full of the tombs of noblemen, and also of shrines 
 amazingly rich and beautiful. The chapel of St. 
 Serge, the founder of the order, is one mass of gold, 
 diamonds, and emeralds, which will sorely tempt the 
 cupidity of the Government whenever Russia gets a 
 needy ruler bold enough to brave the prejudice which 
 has hitherto held monastic jewels more sacred than 
 monastic lands. 
 
 The monks of the Troitza live in the image-shops, 
 each according to his fancy ; and it is generally 
 understood that after remitting half the earnings 
 of their beggary and pious sales to the abbot, they 
 may keep the rest for themselves. They all wear 
 long black gowns, with rope girdles and flowing 
 beards, and they are waited upon, as above said, by
 
 Monks and Nuns. 141 
 
 the postulants, who are trained to religious habits by 
 carousing in their company. Not so long ago it was 
 the custom to recruit the ranks of monkery by regu- 
 larly impressing some of the worst-behaved pupils 
 in the four ecclesiastical academies of St. Petersburg, 
 Moscow, Kiew, and Kazan ; but nowadays bishops 
 institute inquiries as to schoolboys and university 
 students who have a taste for study and disputation^ 
 and interest is brought to bear upon their parents, 
 who send the lads to be cowled often sorely against 
 their will. 
 
 Some few sons of clergymen take the habit from 
 ambition, and some noblemen's sons for the purpose 
 of enriching their ruined families ; and there is a 
 percentage of monks who were popes, but became 
 disqualified from holding benefices owing to the 
 deaths of their wives. No man, however, becomes a 
 friar in Russia from ardent spiritual vocation or from 
 disenchantment at the v^anities of this world ; for the 
 monkish life is one of money-making, turbulent im- 
 posture, intrigue, and notorious licence. M. Katkoff, 
 who cannot be suspected of iconoclastic proclivities, 
 has over and over again clamoured for the abolition 
 of the monasteries and the appropriation of their 
 property to educational purposes. He forgets, how- 
 ever, that a great deal of this property, being portable,
 
 142 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 would melt away with startling suddenness if there 
 were any serious rumours of disestablishment. 
 
 The Government has no present intention of 
 meddling with the black clergy, because they serve it 
 too well. The monks and nuns act as spies and pro- 
 pagators of religious fanaticism, which is often useful 
 for political purposes. Despised as they are, the 
 superstition which brings so much money into their 
 hands is a great force ; and they can work it like a 
 lever for the doing of mighty things. Nothing is 
 more incomprehensible than the sentiment which 
 makes a Russian grovel before a holy image while he 
 sneers at the church servant who carries it ; but it is 
 a fact that the evil reputation which monks and nuns 
 enjoy, and deserve, does not prevent them from bow- 
 ing the necks of the haughtiest boyards and worming 
 all their secrets out of them. For instance, if a lady 
 of rank falls ill, a nun presents herself as nurse, and is 
 admitted without parley, because public opinion would 
 accuse the lady's husband of heartless indifference to 
 his wife's recovery if he turned away a woman whose 
 presence would bring divine blessing into the house. 
 Of course the nun does no nursing, but she feeds well, 
 mumbles some prayers by the patient's bedside, and 
 works upon her superstitious terrors with a plausibility 
 bred of long practice. Before she leaves the house
 
 Monks and Nims. 143 
 
 she knows all about its concerns ; and that knowledge 
 is soon conveyed, if needful, to the police office. 
 
 So it is with the monks, who visit hospitals, fairs, 
 schools, and barracks. Russians are quite aware that 
 the inviolability of confession as understood by their 
 clergy, but especially by the black clergy, is a 
 mockery: but this does not make them more reticent; 
 for they speak out of a terrified feeling that the un- 
 worthiness of the minister has nothing to do with the 
 sacredness of his ofiSce, and that to tell a monk un- 
 truths would be to court ill-luck. That dread of ill- 
 luck, which makes a Russian wear turquoises and ban 
 opals, carry a bit of scarlet cloth in his pocket and 
 start if he upsets a spoonful of salt, acts as efificiently 
 upon the free-thinker as upon the Old Muscovite who 
 believes that the dry bones in the catacombs of Kiew 
 come to life every year on the feast of St. Paul at 
 midnight. 
 
 A Russian may scoff at the powers above, but 
 he has a great respect for those below ; and the 
 theology which bishops inculcate both in the pulpit 
 and in the boudoirs, where they are admitted because 
 of the tattle they would retail if kept out, is largely 
 descriptive of pranks which Satan plays upon the 
 unfaithful by the agency of ghosts, apparitions, crosses 
 in love, and money. When the Government were
 
 144 T"^'-^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 minded to embark in the Turkish war, the clergy were 
 ordered to kindle public enthusiasm for a crusade 
 against the infidel Turk ; and they did so with 
 remarkable zeal and unanimity. The pious move- 
 ment, begun in the Empress's drawing-room through 
 the metropolitan of St. Petersburg, was carried into 
 all the drawing-rooms of the nobility by the archi- 
 mandrites, and among the people by the monks and 
 nuns, who took care to be no losers by the general 
 outburst of orthodox piety. For weeks and months 
 the convent churches were crowded with officers and 
 soldiers, who brought their swords or bayonets to be 
 blessed by being placed, for money, upon some shrine ; 
 and so long as the war lasted the wives and mothers 
 of the unlucky men at the seat of war were pouring 
 more and more money into the hands of the monks 
 by the purchase of amulets, to render their beloved 
 ones invulnerable. Religion is a paying concern when 
 conducted in this way.
 
 Society. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Russians are extremely sensitive to the opinion of 
 foreigners ; and this renders them amiable to a point 
 which quite charms a stranger on his first arrival in 
 the country. The stranger's second impression, 
 formed at the end of a week or two, is that there 
 is a good deal of acting in the .society-manners of 
 his hosts ; his third, which begins to shape itself 
 towards the close of a month, is that he has heard an 
 uncommon number of untruths. The humility with 
 which Russians affect to speak of the backwardness 
 of their country covers a deep feeling of pride in its 
 strength ; and while they seem to invite criticism, 
 they really resent it. 
 
 This appears when a Russian has become suffi- 
 ciently intimate with you to throw off the mask 
 and challenge comparisons between your country and 
 his ; then he brags of his superiority with brutal 
 bluntness. His Czar is popular ; his country won- 
 
 L
 
 146 The Russians of To-day 
 
 derfully advanced, considering the drawbacks of 
 climate ; his army is the largest and finest going ; 
 and the people are religious and contented, which 
 is more than can be said of those in other States 
 which he has visited. A Russian's dislike for des- 
 potism, as expressed in drawing-room conversa- 
 tions, comes chiefly from the fact that despotism is 
 unfashionable abroad ; so that the advocacy of it 
 seems ridiculous to cultivated foreigners. A Russian 
 is also afraid that any apology for autocracy coming 
 from his lips might be construed into a servile fear of 
 his masters ; so that he forces his liberal utterances to 
 a pitch which is often extravagant. In pursuance of 
 the same spirit he dabbles in conspiracies, and would 
 join in a revolution without having any clear end in 
 view, but simply under the belief that he was 
 discharging his duties as an enlightened being accord- 
 ing to Western notions. 
 
 Fashion is the upper class Russian's god, and all 
 his efforts tend to show strangers that he is on a 
 level with the latest theories in politics, religion, and 
 social ethics. He is the most difficult creature to 
 instruct, because he professes to know everything ; 
 and he is hard to learn from, because he invents 
 with unblushing effrontery. A visitor in Russia must 
 believe a tenth of what he hears, and keep his eyes
 
 Society. ' i^y 
 
 about him ; then he soon comes to the conckision 
 that if Russians were what they affect to be, their 
 country would not be what it is. 
 
 All that has been written for politico-sentimental 
 purposes as to the Russian's love of fair play is 
 pleasant nonsense ; for chivalry of conduct is not 
 compatible with the total absence of moral rectitude 
 and entire scepticism as to the value of truth. A 
 Russian will talk like a Bayard, because he has 
 learned to do so in books ; and he will out of vanity 
 do splendidly ostentatious things ; but he is impact 
 with the treachery of the Greek and Tartar races, 
 and both in love and war will compass by stratagem 
 what he cannot win by might. 
 
 As to humanitarianism, the kindness of a people 
 may be pretty accurately gauged by its treatment of 
 political offenders ; and it is enough to say on this 
 head that no Russian seems to have any notion that 
 punishment should be proportioned to an offence. 
 Tell a boyard that you have seen prisoners who have 
 lain for a couple of years in a foul gaol awaiting trial 
 and he will answer naively that they w^ere ' accused 
 of conspiracy,' as if the mere fact of their being under 
 suspicion was a sufficient excuse for any indignity or 
 hardship that could be inflicted on them. There are 
 plenty of Russians who, in Nicholas's reign, have seen 
 
 L 2
 
 148 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 women knouted to death for seditious words ; but the 
 recollection has left no such shocking impression on 
 their minds as it must have done if the sympathy 
 which they claim to feel for the ' oppressed Christians' 
 were anything better than a mockery. 
 
 Russian hospitality is dazzling. The entertain- 
 ments which are given by the richest nobles in 
 St. Petersburg excel anything that can be seen 
 elsewhere, because nowhere else can people afford to 
 spend so much upon show. The rich in Western 
 States have claims upon their fortunes, and spend a 
 good deal in improving their estates ; but a Russian 
 draws all he can from his land and gives back little 
 or nothing. He disburses prodigally for wines, music, 
 diamonds, and rich dresses for his wife ; he keeps an 
 immense retinue of servants ; gambles largely, what- 
 ever may be his age or profession ; and the surplus of 
 his income goes to defray journeys to Paris, Nice, and 
 the German watering-places, where he seems to set 
 his ambition on enriching hotel-keepers. 
 
 Art is but little patronized, and it may even be 
 doubted whether Russians are so fond of music as 
 they seem to be, for the music one hears at concerts 
 and operas is always the newest, and for old there is 
 no demand. Gounod and Lecocq are mentioned in 
 the same breath, as if they were composers of equal
 
 Society. 1 49 
 
 excellence ; and during the ephemeral craze for 
 Wagner, Meyerbeer and Mozart were alluded to as 
 though their reign had definitively vanished. 
 
 No man catches the cant of a passing Western 
 fashion so fast as a Russian ; but he can seldom 
 attune himself to foreign thought, so that all his 
 tact in observing strangers does not save him from 
 occasionally committing amusing blunders when he 
 talks of things about which he affects to know much 
 more than he really does. In this respect the 
 Hiultless accent of Russians in speaking foreign 
 languages (which comes from the multitude of conso- 
 nances which they have to master in learning their 
 own) is apt to blind one to their ignorance of the spirit 
 of the tongues which they prattle so well. It is their 
 own fault if one remarks this ; for if they were content 
 to be and to seem Russians they might still claim 
 credit for being the best linguists in the world : it is 
 only because they aspire to be thought ' Parisians of 
 the North ' that one is forced to see that they have 
 only the outer varnish of their models. However, 
 Russians of the upper classes are in general very well 
 educated, and if they continued to instruct themselves 
 after leaving their private tutors, they would be the 
 most accomplished aristocracy in Europe. Unfortu- 
 nately the young boyard, whose attainments at twenty
 
 150 TJie Russians of To-day. 
 
 excite surprise and admiration, has learned nothing 
 more at thirty, and at forty has unlearned much, and 
 settled into the grooves of official thought. 
 
 This rule is universal ; there are scarcely any 
 exceptions to it. Many a young Russian who has 
 been admirably brought up at home by French and 
 German masters starts in life with ardent hopes and 
 generous desires to aid in righting some of the abuses 
 which he sees ; but he is enrolled in the Tschinn as 
 an officer or Civil servant, and soon learns that 
 originality of thought is dangerous. If he persists 
 in airing crotchets of reform after his relatives have 
 all adjured him to keep quiet, St. Petersburg will 
 become too hot to hold him, and his ultimate fate 
 will be exile to the Caucasus, if not something worse. 
 A man may be a frondeur in Russia so long as he 
 confines himself to talking ; the instant he shows 
 himself bent upon action there is an end of him, 
 socially speaking. 
 
 The strength of the German element in Russian 
 government has much to do with the perpetuation of 
 this state of things ; for if the genuine Muscovites 
 had their country to themselves they could hardly 
 command energy enough to rule it with an iron hand 
 and prevent it from going to pieces. The Russian 
 has Oriental qualities as well as vices. He is good-
 
 Society. 1 5 ^ 
 
 humoured and indolent ; he will not oppress as a 
 system, but only if he have an immediate interest in 
 doing so ; his vanity makes him dignified, and he will 
 not brook much snubbing ; so that he abandons all 
 the posts of official drudgery to the more patient, 
 plodding Germans, who will submit to anything 
 provided they can only force their way up slowly and 
 surely. 
 
 The number of Germans in the Tschinn is enor- 
 mous, and, while they leave the brilliant show ap- 
 pointments to the Russians, they fill all the situa- 
 tions where power is wielded covertly. The Ministers 
 of State, governors of provinces, and generals of 
 divisions are Russians ; but the permanent clerks of 
 departments, the governors' secretaries, and the officers 
 of the military staffs are mostly Germans ; conse- 
 quently a man cannot assail an abuse without 
 attacking a German and bringing up a host of the 
 latter's countrymen to the rescue. The consciousness 
 of this induces many Russians to speak of their 
 Government as if it were a thing in which they had 
 no part or parcel ; and it accounts for the number of 
 conspiracies fomented by men who profess loyalty to 
 the Czar, but declare themselves to be aiming at the 
 overthrow of the official clique by whom their monarch 
 is held in bondage.
 
 1 5 2 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Of course these conspiracies fail miserably, and 
 it is only very guileless enthusiasts who could 
 expect them to succeed, considering the power of 
 the police system which rests in German hands. 
 The cautious old-stock Russians hold aloof from 
 such things, and resign themselves to a trust in 
 Providence for the remedying of such evils as they 
 may individually deplore. Meanwhile the depravity 
 of Russian society proceeds from the enforced idleness 
 of its richest members. Being allowed no initiative 
 in any matter of reform, political or social — afraid to 
 act, afraid to disturb anybody, confined to intrigue or 
 frivolous Court duties — they are consumed with ennui, 
 and seek in extravagance, licentiousness, and sensa- 
 tionalism a relief from the overpowering monotony of 
 existence. Nature has endowed many of them with 
 brilliant gifts, but Government compression dwarfs 
 their moral growth and causes them to remain big 
 children, whose only object is to amuse and be 
 amused, to pose and evoke from foreigners if not real 
 admiration at least wonder and benevolent flattery.
 
 The Government of Poland. 1 5 . 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE GOVERNINIENT OF POLAND. 
 
 Sentimental admirers of Russian policy would be 
 much assisted in forming a conclusion as to the 
 happiness that awaits any Eastern provinces w^hich 
 the Holy Empire may conquer if they would first 
 visit Russian Poland. A preliminary journey to Posen 
 and Gallicia, belonging respectively to Germany and 
 Austria, would be desirable, because else the senti- 
 mentalist might fancy that the things to be witnessed 
 in and around Warsaw are but hardships inseparable 
 from foreign domination. The Prussian and Austrian 
 Poles are, however, as much conquered peoples as 
 their countrymen under Russian sway ; and if it be 
 necessary to persecute the latter then it might be 
 justifiable to grind down the former also, and by a 
 similar process of reasoning Germany could not do 
 otherwise than brutally oppress the lately annexed 
 populations of Alsace-Lorraine. But it may be safely 
 said that if the Alsace-Lorrainers had been made to
 
 154 ^-^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 endure one thousandth part of what the Russian 
 Poles have suffered and are suffering now, every 
 Englishman would exclaim in disgust ; and there is 
 not a man of heart in this country who would find a 
 word to excuse the authors of such iniquity. 
 
 Russian cruelty has only been seen dimly through 
 a haze, because Poland is far off and the means of 
 collecting information there are few and precarious. 
 There is no independent Polish press. A Pole who 
 should write letters from Warsaw to Western news- 
 papers would soon be detected and sent to Siberia. 
 If an Englishman visits Poland as a tourist, he finds 
 the natives fearful to speak the truth, for they well 
 know what it might cost them to do so ; whence he 
 falls back for his facts upon the polite Russian officials, 
 who are always communicative about things to their 
 own advantage, and perhaps he goes away with the 
 impression that, since the Poles continue to buy and 
 sell and are not flogged in the streets, they cannot be 
 so wretched after all. Nevertheless, books full of 
 fearful records have been published by Polish gentle- 
 men of unimpeachable good faith, and the extoller of 
 Russian chivalry might learn the truth from them if 
 he pleased. He might also learn it from Polish 
 refugees, who are not scarce in England or France, 
 and whose tales of atrocities are by no means things
 
 TJie Government of Poland. 1 5 5 
 
 to smile at. The materials for judging Russian 
 conduct in Poland exist plentifully around us, and 
 they are such as, if honestly investigated, would show 
 up the vapourings about Russian Christian zeal as 
 trumpery which it is not seemly for rational men to 
 credit. 
 
 After the crushing of the Polish rebellion of 
 1863-4 — which the Russians had fomented for some 
 years with a view to more thoroughly crushing it— the 
 policy inaugurated by the conquerors was that of 
 totally eradicating the national element in the country. 
 Every landowner who had not taken an active part 
 against the insurgents had his property confiscated 
 and was exiled ; all who had personally joined in the 
 rebellion and could be caught were transported to 
 Siberia, and are there still, if alive. Women and girls 
 shared the fate of the men, so did boys. In some 
 disaffected districts whole villages were transported ; 
 and by a refinement of cruelty the rule which allows 
 ordinary criminal convicts to correspond at intervals 
 with their friends was not applied to these political 
 offenders, so that the poorer among them, who could 
 not bribe itinerant Jew merchants to carry letters for 
 them and bring back replies, have been entirely cut 
 off from the outer world. To this day Polish refugees 
 in England who write to the Russian Government to
 
 156 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 inquire whether their fathers, mothers, or brothers are 
 still living obtain no answers, nor is it of the slightest 
 use for them to send money in hopes that it will 
 reach Siberia. 
 
 Once Poland had been cleared of its rebel popu- 
 lation, German and Russian immigrants were put 
 into the vacant peasant holdings, and the larger 
 estates were given to Court favourites, who seldom 
 reside on them but leave the management to their 
 agents. The next thing was to prohibit the teach- 
 ing of the Polish language in schools, and its use 
 in commercial transactions in public documents, and 
 even in churches. In 1867 the attempt made against 
 the Czar's life in Paris by Berezowski induced the 
 Government to dismiss all French masters from the 
 schools, and now French is not taught. The Pole is 
 bound to learn Russian. He could not get on without 
 it, for every official from the highest to the pettiest 
 insists upon being addressed in that tongue. 
 
 The publication of books or newspapers in Polish 
 has been made a penal offence, and the Polish works 
 accumulated in private libraries have long ago been 
 seized. The press censorship may be evaded in 
 Russia, but not in Poland, where information is only 
 allowed to penetrate through the medium of official 
 journals and works Avhich have received the iinpri-
 
 Tlie Govc7'nmcnt of Poland. 157 
 
 maUtr of the Public Instruction Department at St. 
 Petersburg. Strangers on arriving in the country are 
 stripped not only of their books and periodicals, but 
 even of such scraps of newspaper as they may have 
 used to wrap up their boots, and these are only 
 restored to them when they recross the frontier. 
 Polish boys are educated out of Russian histories 
 which treat of their countr}- with contempt, and at 
 the university they have to sit still while professors 
 demonstrate to them that their patriot fathers were 
 brigands. 
 
 Public spirit has been stamped out by this im- 
 placable tyranny; but resignation offers no defence 
 against the ill-treatment of officials, for it is part of 
 the governing system to make the Poles feel the 
 yoke constantly on their necks. A Pole who is 
 molested by a Russian brings his case before Russian 
 judges, and cannot get redress. If a Russian is 
 molested by a Pole, man or woman, the latter is 
 thrown into prison and flogged. Polish women have 
 been forbidden to wear mourning, because they used 
 to attire themselves in black on national anniver- 
 saries. They also come to trouble if their costumes 
 show any assortment of scarlet and white, which are 
 the national colours. 
 
 All the professions, even the medical, have been
 
 158 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 closed to Poles who refuse to take an oath which would 
 make them renegades to their country's cause and to 
 their religion, for the first pledge exacted of a Christian 
 Pole ' who submits,' as the term goes, is that he shall 
 embrace the Russian Orthodox faith. Failing this, he 
 cannot open a shop in his own name, nor buy land, 
 nor become a school teacher. When he has served his 
 term of ten years in the army (and no money can buy 
 him exemption) he may come back and till the soil, 
 or work as a mercantile clerk, or enter into secret 
 partnership with a Jew trader. The Jews are better 
 treated than the Christians, for they took a less overt 
 part in the last rebellion, and are not in general 
 disposed to conspire. Besides, they have contrived to 
 remain wealthy as a body, and are protected by 
 the influence of their still richer co-religionists in 
 Russia. 
 
 As many Catholic Poles as could escape from 
 their unhappy country have done so, and some others 
 have turned renegades from weariness ; but a large 
 number remain, adhering to the customs of their 
 nationality, their religion, and even to their hopes of 
 future independence, with a quiet tenacity which no 
 persecutions can shake. The Poles are naturally 
 a quick-witted people, genial and sensitive. The 
 women are proverbially beautiful and sweet-tempered,
 
 The Government of Poland. 159 
 
 but they arc endowed with a courage which used to 
 make the iron-handed Count Berg say that a PoHsh 
 woman and a priest together could checkmate any 
 police-office. 
 
 Since these words were uttered care has been 
 taken to break the power of the priests ; for almost 
 all the Catholic churches have been closed, and such 
 few as remain have priests who are generally in 
 the pay of the police and use the confessional as 
 a means for extracting information as to alleged 
 conspiracies. None of the conspiracies one hears of 
 from time to time in Poland are genuine, for a Pole 
 would be out of his senses who took to plotting under 
 present circumstances ; but it suits the Government 
 to keep Russian opinion in continual alarm as to 
 Polish designs, besides which the frequent punishment 
 of accused rebels is intended to strike terror among 
 the Poles serving in the army. These men never 
 amalgamate fairly with their conquerors. Notwith- 
 standing the precautions that are taken in consigning 
 them to regiments far from their country and to put 
 as few of them together as possible, the handful of 
 Poles in every garrison will be sure to consort with 
 one another and to keep aloof from their comrades, 
 although they may have no seditious purpose in so 
 doing, but be simply following the law of attraction
 
 i6o The Rttssians of To-day. 
 
 which makes men of superior mind associate with 
 their fellows. 
 
 It is this intellectual supremacy of the Pole over 
 the Russian which gives the conqueror so much 
 difficulty in prosecuting the odious task he has under- 
 taken, and which makes him hate his enslaved foe 
 with incredible bitterness. He finds that the Pole 
 remains a Pole in spite of all. He comes back from 
 the army a Pole. If he have abjured his faith, taken 
 service in Russia, and made profession of abhorring 
 his countrymen, he is a Pole still, and secretly 
 hankers after the country which he has betrayed. He 
 remains a Pole in Siberia. If he goes abroad, he 
 asserts his separate nationality ; if he works his way 
 by apostasy to the higher Government circles, he 
 advocates Polish interests almost insensibly. 
 
 When the Russian police pay one of their frequent 
 domiciliary visits to the houses of respectable Poles 
 they are surprised to find toddling children beginning 
 to lisp Polish, and they lay hands on Polish books 
 and French reviews which have got into the coun- 
 try Heaven knows how ; and if they cross-question 
 children who are of age to answer, they discover them 
 to be fully alive to the fact that the history taught 
 them in the public schools is a mockery. The 
 pretext taken for inventing conspiracies is often some
 
 Orders of Knighthood. 1 6 1 
 
 seditious word which a child has innocently uttered, 
 and which is imputed to his parents ; but more 
 frequently the authorities avail themselves of some 
 intercepted letter tending to show that a Pole is in 
 correspondence with one of the National Committees 
 in London, Paris, or New York. 
 
 These committees are the bugbears of the Russian 
 Government, although, having spies to watch the re- 
 fugees, the Russian police need have no great fear 
 of their machinations. But it is the perpetuation of 
 Polish Nationalism which incenses the champions of 
 the ' oppressed Bulgarian,' for so long as there re- 
 mains a man to speak the Polish language the work 
 which they have in view will not be completed. The 
 Russians have set themselves to reduce Poland to a 
 mere geographical expression, and they will persevere 
 in their task as they have begun it unless some 
 unforeseen events should occur to check them. 
 
 M
 
 i62 The Russians of To-day 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 
 
 A STRANGER vvho attends an official reception in 
 Russia is surprised at the quantity of stars glittering 
 on the breasts of persons who seem to be of no great 
 account ; but this surprise increases at reviews of 
 troops, where colonels are as profusely constellated as 
 the field-marshals of other countries, and where subal- 
 terns are often adorned with a dozen medals, as 
 though they had spent their whole lives in warring. 
 
 Distinctive symbols have been so multiplied in 
 Russia that every man in the Crown service gets a 
 cross or star soon or late ; but these decorations are 
 not the less valued from being common, for they are • 
 only common within certain spheres, and they enable 
 a connoisseur in orders to tell by a glance at a man's 
 coat what his degree of influence is. It makes all the 
 difference in the awe which a tschinovnik inspires 
 whether his waistcoat be crossed by a pink ribbon 
 passing from left to right, or by a scarlet one slung
 
 Orders of Knighthood. 1 6 
 
 o 
 
 from right to left. The knight in dark blue envies 
 the one in red and yellow ; the latter sighs to think 
 that there are men so supremely happy as to walk 
 about in yellow and black ; and this last class raise 
 their trembling eyes towards the serener regions where 
 Olympian beings have the glory of showing themselves 
 with a band of heavenly azure blue on their dress 
 shirts. 
 
 The light blue ribbon belongs to the order of St. 
 Andrew, which is the first in the Empire. Founded 
 in 1698 by Peter the Great, it ranks with the highest 
 foreign orders —the Garter of England, the Spanish 
 Golden Fleece, the Black Eagle of Prussia, and the 
 order of St, Stephen of Hungary. It is reserved for 
 members of the Imperial family, foreign sovereigns of 
 the higher kind, and men of universal fame as states- 
 men or commanders, like Gortschakoff, Bismarck, and 
 Von Moltke. The insignia include a gold collar- 
 chain and an eight-pointed star, with a blue eagle on 
 it, which the Czar usually presents in brilliants. 
 
 The second order is that of St. Catherine, for ladies, 
 also founded by Peter the Great, in remembrance of 
 the services which his wife had rendered him in his 
 campaign against the Turks. The Empress acts as 
 Grand Mistress, and the members wear a broad pink 
 ribbon with silver border, to which is suspended an
 
 164 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 image of St. Catherine, and on the left breast a silver 
 star with a white cross on a red ground. The members 
 are mostly queens and princesses or ladies belonging 
 to the very highest rank at Court. 
 
 The Order of St. Alexander Newsky, which has 
 a plain pink ribbon, a red enamelled cross, and a 
 six-pointed star, is the third in importance. It was 
 founded by Peter the Great, and sports the motto, 
 * Za troudi i otechestvo ' (for fatigues and the father- 
 land). All Knights of St. Andrew belong to it of 
 right, and the other members are mostly personages of 
 the first three ranks in the Tschinn, who are supposed 
 to have * wearied ' themselves in their country's ser- 
 vice. Next we have the Order of St. Anne, which 
 has four classes and corresponds somewhat with the 
 Bath in England. The ribbon is scarlet with a yellow 
 border ; and is worn across the breast with a star by 
 the first class ; round the neck with a red enamel 
 cross by the second ; at the button-hole in a small 
 bow by the third ; and at the sword-hilt in a knot by 
 the fourth. This fourth class is confined to military 
 and naval officers, but rewards staff services rather 
 than those rendered in the field. 
 
 The chief military order is that of St. George, 
 which was founded by Catherine II., and also com- 
 prises four classes of very unequal importance. To
 
 Orders of KnightJiood. 165 
 
 be a first-class member of the Order of St. George, a 
 Sfcneral must have commanded in chief before the 
 enemy, and have won several battles. Even the Czar 
 is not exempted from this condition, and the present 
 Emperor was till lately only a knight of the second 
 class. For a long time Marshal Bariatinski was the 
 only first-class knight, but since the Franco-German 
 vv^ar the Emperor of Germany and Prince Frederick 
 Charles have been added. The second and third 
 classes of St. George are conferred without much 
 restriction as to merit, and into the fourth all officers 
 are admitted as a right after twenty years of service 
 and good conduct. The ribbon of this decoration is 
 yellow and black, and the cross is of white enamel 
 with a golden efiigy of St. George and the Dragon. 
 
 The Order of St. Wladimir, whose ribbon is pink 
 and black, was instituted by Catherine II., to recom- 
 pense civil and military merit and serve as a stepping- 
 stone to the higher orders. Its insignia may be seen 
 on the tunics of Court colonels who are scarcely 
 twenty-five years old. Then come two Polish orders, 
 which were made Russian in 1832 — that of St. Sta- 
 nislas, which has a dark blue ribbon and a golden star 
 with eight points ; and that of the White Eagle, which 
 has a red and white ribbon and a red cross, on which 
 two silver eagles are mounted.
 
 1 66 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 This last order has four classes, and it was origi- 
 nally leserved for persons who had held some civil or 
 military post in Poland ; but now it is conferred 
 pretty indiscriminately upon the aides-de-camp of 
 provincial governors, upon provincial tschinovniks 
 and members of the clergy. When a young ofificer 
 of rank has got the St, Wladimir, he looks to obtain- 
 ing the St. Stanislas three or four years later as a 
 matter of course. If war comes on, he gets the St. 
 George, and perhaps the fourth class of St. Anne at 
 the same time ; so that by the time he is thirty his 
 coat is fairly encumbered. 
 
 But in addition to these stars and crosses each 
 order has its medal, which is given to private soldiers 
 and non-commissioned officers, tradesmen holding 
 municipal office, merchants, manufacturers, and other 
 such small folks who are not connected with the 
 Tschinn. Thus, a private soldier may win the medal 
 of St. George, with yellow and black ribbon, that of 
 St. Anne, with red, &c. ; and a mayor, a banker, a 
 country justice of the peace may be regaled with the 
 blue ribbon and medal of St. Wladimir, the red and 
 white of St. Stanislas, &c., though he will never be 
 admitted to the honour of cross or star. 
 
 Artists, literary men, civil engineers, and inventors 
 stand in a category apart and may be rewarded
 
 Orders of KniglUhood. 167 
 
 either with medals, stars, or crosses, according to 
 their merits, or, rather, according to the value placed 
 upon the same in high quarters. These extra-official 
 nominations are, however, concessions reluctantly 
 made to the spirit of the age, and the Russian Chan- 
 cellerie has still such old-world notions as to the 
 social position of mere geniuses that queer mistakes 
 are often made concerning them. The singer Tam- 
 burini used to strut proudly about the Newski Pro- 
 ijpect some years ago with the medal of St. Andrew 
 round his neck, thinking he had been favoured with 
 the first-class order, whereas this distinction placed 
 him on about the same level as a well-conducted 
 Court footman. Alexander Dumas the elder received 
 the medal of St. Anne for a novel of Russian life ; 
 but, hearing the small social value of it, he sent it 
 back with a politely ironical letter, and received a 
 cross of the second class by return of post, with profuse 
 apologies for the error. To this day Parisian jour- 
 nalists, who are indefatigable beggars of decorations, 
 often receive medals in return for the articles which 
 they transmit to St. Petersburg, and they wear them 
 innocently as decorations, causing Russians who see 
 them to laugh in their sleeves. 
 
 Besides their own native decorations, Russian 
 tschinovniks sport many foreign ones, for there is a
 
 1 68 The Rtissimis of To-day. 
 
 constant interchange of stars and letters patent 
 between the Courts of the three Emperors, as also 
 with the little Courts of Greece and Germany. 
 A Russian collects stars as an Englishman would 
 curiosities ; and the mania is not an inexpensive one, 
 for it entails a disbursement of fees which are always 
 large and sometimes exorbitant. 
 
 Some Russian generals and senators are knights 
 of more than thirty orders ; and nobody will be sur- 
 prised to hear that it is these who affect most to 
 wear no ribbons at all. The custom of going out to 
 evening parties in plain clothes unadorned — a ran- 
 glaise, as it is called in Russia — is one of recent birth, 
 but it is growing apace ; and now high-class Russians 
 no longer show their stars at the theatre and at private 
 parties as they did as lately as ten years ago. At 
 official receptions they have no choice, but must wear 
 all the stars and crosses they possess, even though 
 their bosoms should resemble a jeweller's shop-front 
 in consequence. This is a matter of discipline — of 
 respect for the august giver of decorations ; and a 
 man who should omit to wear any particular order 
 would soon be asked whether he were ashamed of it. 
 
 It cannot be denied, though, that the multiplicity 
 of decorations, still respected as they may be by the 
 lower orders, has induced a contempt for such things
 
 07'ders of Knighthood. 1 69 
 
 among those who are obliged to wear them ; insomuch 
 that a Russian whose breast is one blazing mass of 
 gold, silver, and diamonds looks a little shamefaced in 
 the presence of an Englishman of rank equal to his 
 own whose coat is as ' distinguished ' for its plainness 
 as that of Mr. Canning which Prince Talleyrand 
 admired at the Court of Charles X. The Russian 
 seems to admit that he cannot possibly have done 
 enough to deserve such liberal constellating, so he 
 laughs off his splendour by saying, ' It is the custom 
 of the country ; ' or else remarks, as the late Count 
 Nesselrode did, ' On nous decore dans ce pays pour 
 eviter de nous payer.'
 
 170 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 TRAVELLING. 
 
 Russia is the most uncomfortable of countries to 
 travel in. Such railways as there are run mostly in 
 straight lines from terminus to terminus, without 
 taking any account of the towns on their road. 
 
 If you want to alight at a town half way down 
 the line you find that the station which bears its name 
 is some twenty miles distant from the town itself. 
 You climb into a paracladnoi, the three-horse truck 
 without springs, and ask that your luggage may be 
 put in with you. The station porter, clad in a tou- 
 loupa reaching to his feet, smiles kindly, but cannot 
 give you your luggage without the permission of some 
 official who is absent. It takes money to find this 
 official. When he has consented to inspect the lug- 
 gage, he proceeds to examine every article as if it 
 were a new and curious invention. More money is 
 required to stop him ; then you scramble into the 
 truck again, and off it goes like wildfire, the Kal-
 
 Travelling. 1 7 1 
 
 muck driver yelling all the way, and thwacking the 
 shafts with the stump of his whip to make you fancy 
 that he is dragging the vehicle by himself 
 
 The bumping is something to remember ; for the 
 roads are left to mend themselves, and in winter 
 some of the ruts are big enough to hold coffins. In 
 some districts a chance of being chevied by a pack 
 of dinnerlcss wolves adds to the interest of the 
 journey; but if it be night a lantern with a strong 
 reflector hung at the back of the carriage will be 
 enough to keep them from approaching. At length 
 the town of your destination is reached, and, pounding 
 along the unpaved streets with a last flourish of howls, 
 the isvostchik gallops into the courtyard of the place 
 that calls itself an hotel. Out tumbles a flat-nosed 
 ostler, whom the driver begins to thump and swear at, 
 just to show a zeal in your service. Then comes the 
 landlord, generally a German who talks broken 
 French, and whose accommodation for travellers con- 
 sists in two or three rooms without beds and some hot 
 water. 
 
 It is expected that a traveller should bring his 
 own provisions ; if he have not done so, he must pay 
 for food at famine prices — and what food ! It is no 
 use asking for a chop or a steak, for the last gridiron 
 seen in Russia (except in private houses) was the one
 
 172 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 which Ivan the Terrible used for the broihng of re- 
 fractory courtiers. A chunk of beef stewed in sugar 
 and vinegar and served with a saucerful of salted cu- 
 cumbers and pickled cherries will be about the extent 
 of the bill of fare ; though if there happen to be a 
 wedding going on in the town, the landlord will run 
 off to beg some choicer dainties, and return in triumph 
 with the leg of a goose stuffed with cloves, or a piece 
 of pork braised with nutmegs and marsh-mallows. 
 
 As to beds, they are quite a modern innovation in 
 Russia, and many well-to-do houses are still unpro- 
 vided with them. Peasants sleep on the top of their 
 ovens, middle-class people and servants curl them- 
 selves up in sheepskins and lie down near stoves ; 
 soldiers rest upon wooden cots without bedding, and 
 it is only within the last ten years that the students 
 in State schools have been allowed beds. A traveller 
 must therefore roll himself up in rugs and furs, and 
 spend his night on the floor of his inn-room. Russians 
 see no hardship in this, even if they be rich and ac- 
 customed to luxuries. They rather prefer boards to 
 mattresses, and are first-rate travellers, for they make 
 shift to sleep anywhere. 
 
 A man had better not fall ill while in a Russian 
 country town, for all the doctors outside the large 
 cities are believers in phlebotomy and violent purga-
 
 Travelling. 173 
 
 tives. They prescribe tea, but drug it without telling 
 you, and the effects are felt for days afterwards. 
 Their fee is anything you like to give ; but whatever 
 you may offer they will be sure to ask more, and must 
 therefore be dealt with as bluntly as tradesmen. 
 
 The prices of goods in Russian shops are assessed 
 according to the apparent wealth of the customer. A 
 stranger must first choose the article he wants, then 
 offer what he thinks reasonable, and turn on his heel 
 if the tender be declined. Should the tradesman 
 hurry after him into the street, he may be sure that 
 he has offered too much ; should he be allowed to go, 
 his bid has really been too low ; and of course this is 
 liable to happen with persons accustomed to Western 
 prices, for the cost of everything in Russia is exorbi- 
 tant. A suit of fairly good clothes costs £1^; 3. pair 
 of knee boots, £6 ; an average cigar, a shilling. The 
 only cheap things are tea, vodki, and articles made of 
 leather ; but even these cannot be had at a reasonable 
 price unless bought through a native. 
 
 In the large French hotels of St. Petersburg, where 
 Parisian furniture and beds are to be had, the day's 
 board for a bachelor without a servant cannot be put 
 down at less than ^2. The price of a single room will 
 range from I5f to 2or ; a table d'hote dinner costs I2f 
 without wine ; a bottle of pale ale, i rouble ; one of
 
 174 '^^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 champagne 5 roubles, and so on. Amusements, 
 such as theatres and concerts, cost about three times 
 as much as in England. On the Patti nights at the 
 Italian Opera of St. Petersburg the stalls are bought 
 up by Jews ; and one can scarcely be procured under 
 ;^5. At the French theatre there is often a similar 
 agio on the seats, and the habitual playgoer has to 
 add a reckoning for donations which he is expected 
 to make in order that testimonials in jewellery may 
 be .presented to the leading performers at the end of 
 the season. 
 
 The theatres and restaurants of the capital are 
 luxurious, and so are the first-class railway carnages 
 on the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow. If a 
 stranger confined his travels to a journey on this line 
 he would go away with a fine idea of Russian com- 
 fort, for all the latest American improvements in the 
 way of sleeping and dining cars, dressing-rooms, and 
 attendance are available. Nor on this one line are 
 there any vexatious formalities about luggage and 
 passports. Everywhere else a passport is in constant 
 request, and the only way to avoid exhibiting it a 
 dozen times a day is to produce a twenty-kopeck 
 piece in its stead. The traveller who forgets the coin 
 is liable to be invited to step into the police-office, 
 where he will have to prove, by showing other papers,
 
 Travelling. 1 75 
 
 that the passport is really his and not one that he 
 has stolen. 
 
 There is one good side to travelling in Russia, and 
 it is this : — If a stranger be not faring for commercial 
 purposes, he will be made a welcome guest at the 
 houses of the authorities in any town where he may 
 wish to spend more than a day. The civil governor 
 will despatch a secretary to his hotel, and be glad to 
 have him to dinner for the sole sake of hearing what 
 news he has to bring. 
 
 This is pleasant enough, and the hospitality is the 
 more gracious as the passing stranger cannot make 
 any return for it beyond thanks. On the other hand, 
 a stranger who settles for any term exceeding a week 
 in a country town will have to be careful of the com- 
 pany into which he falls ; for Russian friendship soon 
 turns to familiarity, and one of the first manifestations 
 of familiarity is to ask the stranger to take a hand at 
 ecarte. Then it becomes a question of refusing and 
 being deemed a boor, or accepting and being promptly 
 cleaned out. 
 
 The Russians are fearful gamblers, and a stranger 
 with circular notes in his pockets is a godsend to 
 them. They do not cheat ; but play and play until 
 the result is utter impecuniousness to one of the two 
 parties to the game. The women are as bad as the
 
 176 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 men, and think nothing of winning a few hundred 
 napoleons from a stranger whom they have not 
 known more than a week. It must be borne in mind 
 that the ladies here alluded to are those of a certain 
 rank, who affect to copy Parisian manners ; for those 
 of the middle class do not show themselves to their 
 husbands' guests. 
 
 In country houses card-playing is the ordinary 
 evening's amusement, counters being used when 
 money is not forthcoming ; but in these places a 
 stranger will often get two or three days' excellent 
 shooting in return for the bank notes he drops on 
 his host's table at night. Russian game consists of 
 wolves, foxes, hares, partridges, and several varieties 
 of wild fowl ; and a day with the guns leads to a turn 
 out of all the rabble doggery of the country. All the 
 mujicks round about leave their work to see the sport, 
 and almost everyone brings a dog with him. Hap- 
 pily, the game is not wild, else it would be all scared 
 away by the frantic shouts raised by the peasant 
 every time a bird rises on the line of sight or a grey 
 fox slinks away down a furrow. 
 
 Another favourite country-house amusement is 
 dancing, and a foreigner will be delighted by the 
 pretty jigs which Russian ladies dance with scarves 
 or shawls something after the fashion of the almces.
 
 Travelling. 177 
 
 They will sing, too, accompanying themselves with 
 triangular guitars rather like banjoes. It should be 
 mentioned that there is no colloquial equivalent in 
 Russian to 'Sir' or 'Madam,' and this puts social 
 relations at once on a very friendly footing. Tschi- 
 novniks and their wives are addressed by their in- 
 feriors as 'Your High origin' or 'High Nobility,' 
 as the case may be, but amongst equals the usual 
 formula is to address a person by his Christian name 
 coupled to that of his father — as thus, Paul-Petrowitch, 
 i.e. Paul son of Peter ; and the same in regard to wo- 
 men, ' Maria-Nicolaievna,' Mary, daughter of Nicholas. 
 Needless to remark that the guest-chamber in a 
 Russian country house is as devoid of beds as a 
 country hotel. At most a foreigner will be accommo- 
 dated with an ottoman spread with catskins ; but 
 even if he have to lie on the floor, he will be sure to 
 sleep, for a ' nightcap ' will be given him in the shape 
 of a pint bowl, full of a mixture of tea, &^^ yolks, 
 and arak punch, enough to make him cry when he 
 swallows it, and warranted to procure him a grand 
 series of nisfhtmares till morninir. 
 
 N
 
 178 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE CZAR. 
 
 The Swod, or Russian code, describes the Czar as an 
 * autocrat whose power is limitless,' and in a catechism 
 drawn up for the use of Polish schools it is stated 
 that every subject owes him * adoration.' He has no 
 settled Civil List, but draws what he wants from the 
 Imperial Exchequer, every rouble in which is sup- 
 posed to be his. When he attends cathedral service 
 in state the native press reports that ' his Majesty 
 deigned to kneel down ; ' if he falls ill and gets phy- 
 sicked he ' deigns to feel better.' 
 
 He is not surrounded with that glamour of awe 
 which encompassed his iron-handed father, Nicholas ; 
 but the lower orders revere him with heart and mind, 
 and he needs no escort to protect him when he drives 
 about St. Petersburg alone in his three-horse sledge. 
 Wherever he passes heads are bared in the piercing 
 cold, and the mujicks bend double with their hands 
 crossed over their breasts. At parades of his Guards 
 
 I
 
 The Czar. 179 
 
 he passes down the lines and cries, 'Good day, my 
 children ; ' to which the men answer with one shout, 
 * Good day, father.' If he calls a soldier out of the 
 ranks to reward him, the man plumps down on both 
 knees and addresses him as ' father,' or * little father,' 
 with a fawning affection which is not assumed for the 
 occasion, but is deeply felt. 
 
 The Czar would be waylaid in every street by 
 petitioners if it were not a penal offence to address 
 him without his permission ; for all Russians believe 
 in his power to remedy their grievances by a mere 
 word. He can pardon, degrade, or exalt ; he can 
 ruin or make rich ; and being, as he is, a large-hearted 
 man, he has occasionally used his power to perform 
 startling acts of grace, which popular admiration has 
 embellished into legends. But he has very little real 
 might, for his character is not strong enough to bear 
 down obstacles, and he cannot endure to see sulky 
 faces around him. He is a doting father, a generous 
 friend, and a kind master. If his good impulses are 
 combated by those around him, he resists for a time ; 
 but then succumbs, disheartened, for the good he 
 might achieve would not compensate him for the 
 coldness he would have to encounter among those 
 who had opposed it. 
 
 Nicholas had no friends ; and no voice of wife or
 
 i8o The Russians of To-day. 
 
 child ever shook his purpose once he had made up 
 his mind that a thing ought to be done. Alexander, 
 who was bred in the atmosphere of this icy despotism, 
 loathed it, and from the first he showed that he wished 
 to be served with love rather than obeyed with fear. 
 All the firmness there was in his nature exhausted 
 itself in the grand act of authority by which he in- 
 augurated his reign — the emancipation of the serfs ; 
 but this act — as bold as it was noble — could never 
 have been performed if Alexander's courtiers had 
 known him then as they do now. They were old in 
 servility, he was young and imperious, and they 
 imagined that he was going to be like his father. 
 Many hardened old boyards have deplored since that 
 they did not read their new master's character more 
 shrewdly ; but even as it was the opposition which 
 the Czar had to ride down was tremendous, and 
 the doing so all but cost him his throne. If one of 
 his brothers had been willing to lead the malcontents, 
 a palace conspiracy would have deposed him. Hap- 
 pily, his brothers loved him and sympathized with 
 his magnanimous declaration that he would not rule 
 over a nation of slaves. 
 
 The old nobility have never forgiven the emanci- 
 pation. It impoverished many of them ; it destroyed 
 the power and prestige of them all ; it was an act
 
 The Czar. i8i 
 
 repugnant to their semi-Asiatic fondness for pomp 
 and command ; and they have revenged themselves 
 by stubbornly combining to thwart all the other re- 
 forms which the Czar had in view. 
 
 This short-sighted policy has deprived them of 
 the compensating advantages they might have ob- 
 tained ; for Alexander was willing to establish consti- 
 tutional government, and to remove the weight of 
 administrative trammels which prevents the country 
 from developing its resources. This, however, would 
 have involved the abolition of the Tschinn — that is, 
 of the last stronghold by means of which the boyards 
 were able to weigh upon the country and to keep all 
 its wealth to themselves : and such a sacrifice could 
 not be wrung from them by the promise that they 
 might exercise legitimate influence over government 
 as hereditary magnates under a limited monarchy. 
 
 It would have required another imperial burst of 
 authority to daunt the tschinovniks; the Emperor 
 hesitated, and from the moment he did so the sceptre 
 passed out of his hands. After all he could hardly 
 do otherwise than hesitate, for every man whom he 
 consulted entreated him not to entrust his throne to 
 the hazards of popular rule. From the Prussian and 
 Austrian Courts, from his own family (for the alarms 
 of his brothers had by this time been aroused), and
 
 1 82 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 even from foreign ambassadors whom he sounded, 
 he received the advice to let well alone. Why should 
 he destroy the only autocracy in Europe for the sake 
 of experimenting fads which had only produced con- 
 fusion elsewhere ? The democratic craze would smite 
 Russia all too soon, and it was folly for an emperor 
 to advance its coming by a single day. Let him 
 rather show that despotism could do as great things 
 as popular government, and by such means enhance 
 the glory of kingship, at which it was the fashion 
 of the age to carp. If he saw need for reform, let him 
 reform sharply and unflinchingly as his father did ; 
 but, for Heaven's sake, let him keep the credit of 
 everything he did for his own crown. 
 
 Such was the advice given to a man who meant 
 as well as ever Sovereign did mean, but who, if he 
 had closed his ears to counsel, would have been 
 obliged to throw himself for support on to a mass of 
 fifty million manumitted slaves, who were steeped 
 in the crassest ignorance and superstition, and who 
 might soon have been deluded into taking him for 
 an enemy. 
 
 The risks were too great to run ; but the Czar 
 did not at once renounce his projects of administra- 
 tive reform, and for a while he sought to recover 
 favour with the offended boyards by summoning them
 
 The Czar. 183 
 
 to confer with him in devising improvements in every 
 branch of the State service. From this period dates 
 the institution of juries, the municipal enfranchise- 
 ment of the Mirs, and some concessions as to reHgious 
 and commercial liberty ; but none of these inno- 
 vations achieved what was expected from them, for 
 the boyards gave only such advice as was calculated 
 to further their own independence as landowners, 
 and for the rest they took care that all reforms likely 
 to assist the people overmuch should be strangled in 
 the red tape of the Tschinn. 
 
 The Czar saw at length how the wind blew, and 
 abated a zeal which led to nothing. He had fits of 
 impatience, and occasionally broke out into passion- 
 ate threats, which made his obstructive sei'vants 
 tremble. More than once, on detecting an act of 
 injustice or disobedience, he punished the offender 
 with prompt and blighting disgrace ; and then so 
 sternly insisted upon the execution of his orders that 
 what he desired was done. But these eruptions were 
 as the last efforts of a volcano which was exhaustin"; 
 itself Everyone at Court knew that the Czar's weak 
 spot lay in his heart, and that the coldness of those 
 whom he loved could bring him to subjection. He 
 was soon cajoled, hoodwinked, and led about by his 
 weak points like a boy. Sundry placemen who had
 
 184 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 been his companions in boyhood had the reputation 
 of being able to do with him as they pleased. He 
 dreaded to offend them. If one of them wanted some 
 impossible favour or was huffed at the exposure ot 
 some abuse in which he was concerned, he had only 
 to leave St. Petersburg, and the Czar would mope 
 about dismally for days. These tiffs always ended in 
 the favourite getting everything he had schemed for. 
 
 Alexander has never quarrelled with a personal 
 friend. Intrigues are hatched at Court, calumnies 
 reach his ears, but nothing ever shakes his faith in a 
 man whom he has once admitted into his intimacy, 
 liked, and trusted. It is only a pity that the men 
 who have most enjoyed his confidence should in ge- 
 neral have been conspicuously undeserving of it. He 
 is not a shrewd selecter of friends. Like many men 
 of good heart, his unwillingness to give pain and his 
 sensitiveness at receiving it tend to a softness which 
 craves for constant soothing ; not the flattery of ser- 
 vile compliments, but that of friendly attentions, 
 good-humour, and kindness. The Czar likes to be 
 thought a good fellow, and the men who have suc- 
 ceeded best in managing him are those who had 
 treated him with adroit familiarity, as if they were 
 his equals and liked him for his personal qualities. 
 A few of these very close cronies— Schouvaloff, Tre-
 
 The Czar. 185 
 
 poff, Adlerberg II., and Bariatinski— are addressed 
 by him as ' Tu,' and he keeps a kind of common 
 purse with them, allowing them to draw ad libitum on 
 his private treasury which is inexhaustible. 
 
 He is a good linguist ; he read much French 
 literature when he was young, and he still delights in 
 French novels, plays, and music, but his heart is 
 German. He corresponds much with the Court of 
 Berlin, and is always glad to get away to Ems, where 
 he may be seen walking about the grounds of the 
 Kursaal with a big Newfoundland dog on one side of 
 him and some Prussian general on the other. The 
 Czar drinks the waters on account of a disease in his 
 throat, which renders his articulation indistinct and 
 prevents him from talking much. But he likes to be 
 talked to, and is a great lover of hospitalities en petit 
 comite, chiefly after the manner of those soupevs de 
 beaux csprits which Catherine II. used to give at the 
 Hermitage, and where a great deal of champagne is 
 consumed. All this has made his mind indolent, and 
 he is so altered from the Alexander of twenty years 
 ago that the ring of courtiers who compose his inner 
 circle of intimates have never cause to fear his 
 breaking out into wrath if things go wrong. 
 
 Mostly he never hears that things go wrong. 
 During his voyages the institutions which he visits
 
 1 86 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 are placed in trim order before his coming ; and no 
 petty functionary cares to incur the animosity of 
 the Tschnin by reveahng abuses to him. He signs 
 the documents which are submitted to him, but 
 seldom reads them. Should he give an order on his 
 own account, the Tschinovniks obey it if convenient ; 
 if not, they palter and delay till he grows tired of 
 alluding to the subject. Corruption is rife around the 
 Czar, but he does not see it ; or, if he does, he either 
 finds himself at a loss on whom to throw the respon- 
 sibility, or else discovers that the culprit is one whom 
 he could not bear to punish. 
 
 Nicholas, who had tried in vain to check adminis- 
 trative corruption, revenged himself by fierce sarcasm 
 which he levelled point-blank at his courtiers like 
 pistol shots, but Alexander II. never says disobliging 
 things to anybody. He is not epigrammatic or 
 jocular : one might think him devoid of the sense of 
 humour but for the vague smile that flits over his 
 mouth now and then when some droll piece of mean- 
 ness is revealed to him. His habitual mood is melan- 
 choly. A very tall, strikingly handsome man, as all 
 the Romanoffs are, he carries himself with an erect 
 bearing, looking every inch an autocrat ; but there is 
 a sorrowful dreaminess in his eyes, which deepens at 
 times into a vacant and almost haggard gaze. He
 
 The Czar. 187 
 
 seems to be imbued to the full with the responsibili- 
 ties of his station, but to be conscious that a power 
 more than mortal would be needed in order to enable 
 him to do all the good which an Emperor should do. 
 Melancholia has been the malady of his family. 
 Paul, Alexander I., Nicholas, were all afflicted with 
 it ; brooding as if their heads ached under the crush- 
 ing weight of the crown, living in dread of palace 
 conspiracies, of assassination, of omens which they 
 discerned in the most trivial events. Alexander II. 
 is a believer in omens, and as he advances in age, the 
 more will his religious faith, which is deep, incline 
 to superstition and mystic musings. 
 
 Meanwhile, nothing in Russian policy must be 
 taken as the outcome of his own resolutions, for he 
 has long ceased to have any will but that of the men 
 who have perverted his better nature. In foreign 
 affairs, as in palace matters, he acts as he is goaded 
 to do. He may be pushed to do wrong, but he will 
 think he is acting rightly, for he has an infinite belief 
 in the advice of those who have most often misled 
 him.
 
 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE CHANCELLOR GORTSCHAKOFF. 
 
 Prince Gortschakoff is one of the most agreeable 
 men in Russia. Those who Hke him least acknowledge 
 that, but few who have been brought much into 
 contact with him have failed to like him as a man ; 
 and those who appreciate him best are the men who 
 have served constantly under his orders. He was 
 born in 1798, and has been Prime Minister of Russia 
 since 1856. 
 
 He is the richest man in Russia, the subject of 
 highest rank in it, and ruler of the Empire ; nor could 
 anything shake him from his post except a great 
 national disaster, leading to a unanimous public out- 
 cry against the Government. He is not a blunderer ; 
 he has not had to fritter away his prestige in public 
 speeches, as the statesmen of constitutional countries 
 are obliged to do ; and he has kept so steadily to the 
 policy of aggrandizing his country, that if he failed he 
 would be pitied for having been ill-served by his
 
 The Chancellor Gortschakoff. 189 
 
 instruments rather than condemned for his patriotic 
 ambition. 
 
 Prince Gortschakoff would not have prospered as 
 the Minister of a Parh'amentary State, for the gifts 
 which make him supreme at the council-table, in 
 drawing-rooms, and in private colloquies with am- 
 bassadors would have been thrown away on popular 
 assemblies. He has none of the bluff petulancy of 
 Bismarck, nor of the smirking readiness of retort 
 which enables Count Andrassy to manage the Austro- 
 Hungarian Parliaments. He talks slowly, writes 
 grandiloquently, and gives high-minded reasons for 
 everything he advises or does. 
 
 Persons who might have expected him to explain 
 some tortuous piece of policy on cynical grounds are 
 staggered by his semblance of perfect good faith and 
 by the reassuring promises which he makes in a tone 
 of stately gentleness, to which his venerable appear- 
 ance gives the stamp of wisdom and truth. His strength 
 is patience ; his talent lies in seizing opportunities the 
 moment they arrive ; and these opportunities come 
 through the simplicity of the foreigners who trust him. 
 If he had been obliged to define his policy in noisy 
 parliaments, to remould it agreeably to the crotchets of 
 agitators, and to listen to the Babel tongues of factious 
 newspapers, he would ha\-e achieved nothing ; and as
 
 i"90 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 to his inflation of language, it could have been pierced 
 through in no time by the thrusts of debate — all the 
 sharper to a man of his character, as he has no sense 
 of humour. 
 
 Gortschakofif is a statesman on stilts. He sees 
 over the heads of other men because he has never 
 been forced to climb down and meet them on equal 
 terms ; and he has the assurance which is natural in a 
 man who has never experienced a difficulty in mis- 
 leading his fellows, and who has seen all the schemes 
 which he based on human credulity succeed. Many 
 a Western statesman whose finesse has been blunted 
 by the wear and tear of parliamentary life might have 
 done greater things than Prince GortschakofF had he 
 enjoyed that diplomatist's exceptional opportunities. 
 But it has not been Gortschakoft's ambition to do 
 great things. The work which he cut out for himself 
 was to prevent his country from changing, not to 
 shunt it into new grooves of civilization or glory ; 
 and patriotism, as he practises it, has nothing in 
 common with the sentiment which prompts a ruler to 
 promote the welfare and honour of his countrymen 
 at large. 
 
 Prince Gortschakoff is an Imperialist-Conserv^ative, 
 who looks at all things from the point of view of the 
 caste to which he belongs, and who has sought to 
 
 I
 
 The Chancellor Gortschakojf. 191 
 
 serve no interests but those of that caste. If the mo- 
 tives of his policy were put into words they would be 
 these : — ' The lines of a Russian boyard are cast in 
 pleasant places, but how long this may last we don't 
 know. There is a democratic wind abroad which will 
 some day blow upon our Court, our Tschinn, our 
 large estates, and the enjoyable lives we lead inside 
 our palaces ; but this is no reason why we should help 
 to raise that evil wind. On the contrary, the best 
 thing we can do is to ward it off as long as we can, 
 and, when it does come, to contrive so that it does us 
 as little damage as possible.' 
 
 Prince Gortschakofif is not an ignorant man who is 
 blind to the drift of popular currents ; it is because he 
 knows these currents so well that he endeavours to 
 lead them and divert them from their proper course. 
 Few men have done more than he to baulk a nation's 
 advance ; but he does not rashly boast that it is his 
 object to resist the tide of progress like those French 
 Legitimists who are for ever building up brick walls 
 in sight of the waters. 
 
 He had a great admiration for Lord Palmer- 
 ston and for M. Thiers ; he likes all the politicians 
 who have succeeded in leading the people without 
 doing much for them. Having to deal with a Czar 
 who was eager for reform, and with a nobility who
 
 192 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 were sullenly resolved to thwart all their Monarch's 
 tendencies, he had a most difficult part to play ; but 
 he played it shrewdly. In the matter of the emanci- 
 pation he stood by the Czar without helping him, but 
 once that great reform had been accomplished he was 
 the most fluent among the many advisers who depre- 
 cated further innovations on the loftiest moral grounds. 
 
 The Czar saw in him a servant the mainspring of 
 all whose acts was loyalty, while at the same time the 
 Tschinovniks recognized in him an ally who would 
 not let one of their privileges fall to the ground if he 
 could help it. It is not too much to say that Gorts- 
 chakoff possibly saved his master's Crown, for if he 
 had let himself be carried along by the Emperor's 
 reforming impulses they might have both been swept 
 away by the Tschinn ; whereas if he had stubbornly 
 withstood the Imperial will he would have been dis- 
 missed, and his place given to some more pliant 
 Minister, under whose rule a catastrophe of some sort 
 would have been equally probable. 
 
 To be sure, that catastrophe might have affected 
 the Tschinn most ; for with another Minister the 
 Czar might perhaps have been able to override oppo- 
 sition, and, by breaking the power of the boyards, 
 have rendered Russia a very different country from 
 what it is.
 
 The Chancellor Gorlschakoff. 193 
 
 There is no saying, indeed, how the struggle be- 
 tween the Emperor and his nobles would have ended ; 
 and it is enough to remark that the Tschinovniks 
 have cherished a debt of gratitude towards Gortscha- 
 koff which has impelled them to uphold his policy 
 with all their might. In home affairs that policy has 
 been extremely simple, for it has consisted in granting 
 the people nothing but what was imperatively called 
 for, in then giving them the minimum of what they 
 desired, and in doing so with as much ostentation as 
 was required to make them think they had obtained 
 a great thing. 
 
 The Russians who asked for judicial reforms got 
 juries which made their law courts worse than they 
 had ever been, but satisfied the national vanity by 
 making people think they were now on a level with 
 other States. Those who wanted commercial and 
 religious liberty obtained a reform of the guilds 
 and a kind of tolerance in faith which set all the 
 trades wrangling amongst each other and all the 
 religious sects by the ears ; finally, the craving for 
 parliaments was diverted into a safe channel by the 
 institution of municipal franchises and nobiliary as- 
 semblies, which enabled people of a talkative turn to 
 expend their verbiage upon local affairs, instead of 
 applying it to the disturbance of State business. All 
 
 o
 
 194 ^-^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 this, however, would not have sufficed to keep the big, 
 simmering nation quiet if Gortschakoff's foreign 
 poHcy had not been conducted with a view to give 
 the Russians continued satisfaction by diplomatic and 
 military victories. 
 
 The Crimean campaign had been a fearful national 
 humiliation : it was an obvious act of policy to efface 
 all traces of it, and not an opportunity of so doing was 
 neglected. First the crushing of the Polish rebellion 
 was flaunted about the country as a triumph, not over 
 the wretched Poles only, but over France and England, 
 who were known to sympathize with the rebels ; and 
 after this came the series of brilliant raids in Turkes- 
 tan, the taking of Taschkend, the defeat of the Emir 
 of Bokhara, and the campaign of Khiva. All over 
 Russia the official papers declared, and so did the 
 popes, that these successes were so many blows at 
 Great Britain ; and people were consoled for their 
 squalor, their poverty, and for the oppressions of the 
 Tschinn by seeing soldier relatives come home to 
 them with their breasts covered with stars and medals. 
 
 Among the mercantile classes the gratification 
 was equally great, for the opening up of easy com 
 munications with India has long been the Russian 
 merchant's dream ; and in society enthusiasm fairly 
 overflowed, for it delighted the Russian to see his
 
 The Chancellor Gortschakoff. 195 
 
 Government outwit the diplomatists of England, 
 hoodwink her press, and sow dissensions among her 
 people. Truly the respect for parliamentary institu- 
 tions is not likely to be developed in Russia by the 
 reflection of how British statesmen were duped and 
 their policy weakened by the scheming of the vene- 
 rable Chancellor. 
 
 The war against Turkey will have brought Prince 
 Gortschakoff's fame to its climax, although the only 
 Russians who are likely to profit by the ' chivalrous 
 deliverance of the oppressed Christians ' will be the 
 Tschinovniks. It w^as for them that this war has 
 been fought, and for them only. The welfare of the 
 Russian people, which might have been served by 
 military defeats, can only be retarded by victories, 
 which, by making the Government strong, will prolong 
 the misrule for which it has been traditionally distin- 
 guished. Russia victorious means the realization of 
 Prince Gortschakoft's ambition ' to die leaving Russia 
 as he found it ' — that is, a poor country for any but 
 princes to live in.
 
 196 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE CONQUESTS IN TURKESTAN. 
 
 The Russian conquests in Turkestan have not only 
 been the means of keeping the Government supplied 
 with the prestige requisite for despotic rulers ; they 
 have enabled it to find occupation for the discontented 
 spirits who might have got into mischief at home. 
 
 The garrisons and the civil administration in the 
 subject provinces are mostly recruited with men who 
 have found their country too hot to hold them. The 
 young boyard who has ruined himself at cards ; the 
 tschinovnik-clerk who has made a mess of his accounts, 
 but is too well connected to be sent to gaol ; the man 
 with a troublesome grievance ; the officer of a crusty 
 temper who cannot get on with his comrades ; the 
 fashionable swindler ; the clever adventurer ; and, in 
 fact, the men whose room society generally prefers to 
 their company, are despatched to try their hands at 
 humanizing the Uzbeks, Tadjiks, and Khirgiz-Kas- 
 saks.
 
 The Conquests in Turkestaii. i()j 
 
 If they can get rich by screwing illicit taxes out 
 of these bewildered tribes, so much the better ; if they 
 be killed in border warfare, nobody misses them ; but, 
 anyhow, Government does its best to make their new 
 start in life pleasant by sending them to their posts 
 in showy uniforms covered with stars. 
 
 It might sound queer to an Englishman to hear 
 that an officer who had misappropriated regimental 
 funds had been honoured with a Companionship of 
 the Bath and appointed Commissioner in India ; but 
 something of this sort is done when a Russian good- 
 for-nought is sent off to Samarcand with the orders 
 of St. Anne and St. Wladimir on his breast. Glitter 
 is the great point, and must be obtained without 
 question as to the fitness of a functionary to wear 
 decorations ; for the Uzbeks, who are sulky warriors, 
 and the Khirgiz-Kassaks, who are superstitious hordes 
 dwelling in tents and ever ready for some piece of 
 devilry with their lances, and the Tadijks, who, though 
 a mild race, are cunning as foxes, must all be im- 
 posed upon by the pomp of their rulers. 
 
 The Russians have forced upon these men a 
 system of government which reads well on paper, but 
 which to their primitive minds is full of preposterous 
 anomalies which make them howl impotcntly. What, 
 for instance, can the wild Uzbek know of a Court of
 
 198 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 Appeal ? In the old days he used to ride up to the 
 office of the kazi, appointed for life by the Khan, 
 and he got his justice cheap and ready. The kazi 
 was not likly to cheat him, for he had no interest in 
 doing so, besides his having Mussulman regard for 
 the sanctity of the judicial function, and being hon- 
 oured of the people in proportion as he was indepen- 
 dent. But nowadays the kazis are old rogues elected 
 by a number of other rogues called elders, who are 
 all in Russian pay and have no object beyond currying 
 favour with their conquerors. The Turcoman knows 
 that these fellows wrong him ; but if he have a suit with 
 a Russian he almost prefers being condemned straight 
 off, for otherwise the Court of Appeal, before which 
 his adversary drags him, burdens him with costs which 
 oblige him to sell off the jewelled bridle of his horse 
 and the silver stirrups which are the pride of his 
 cavalcading race. 
 
 Then the passport system, which has been intro- 
 duced with all its Russian vexatiousness and extortion 
 of petty fees, sickens the soul of the Turcoman, who 
 has been accustomed to range free as the wolf He 
 cannot understand why he should be forced to carry 
 about with him a sheet of paper which is always being 
 declared irregular, and compels him to put his hands 
 into the ill-filled pur.se which hangs at his girdle.
 
 The Conquests in Turkestan. 199 
 
 Add to this the mystification of being rated for the 
 repair of strategic roads which are of no use to him, 
 and the disgust at having to pay a tax on every com- 
 mercial transaction, even the selHng of a colt or dog 
 to a friend, and it will be seen that there is some 
 policy in keeping the Turcoman overawed by the 
 splendour of the garments of the men who grind 
 him down. To the simple populations of Khokand, 
 Bokhara, and Khiva gold-laced coats and stars are 
 symbols of a power too mighty to be trifled with ; 
 and they are the more inclined to revere such things 
 as they see Russian private soldiers look up to them 
 with lavish worship. 
 
 The story of the Russian advances in Turkestan 
 exhibits a grand mixture of daring and craft ; but so 
 stubborn a display of conquering qualities only proves 
 the importance which was attached to securing the 
 countries beyond which lies the great goal — India. 
 
 It was in 1864 that operations regularly com- 
 menced, by the double raid of Colonel Verevkin upon 
 Turkestan, and Colonel Tchernaieff upon Tashkend. 
 Tchernafefif's force amounted to 2,000 men and twelve 
 field-pieces ; while the capital of Khokand, which is 
 sixteen miles in circuit, and has a population of 
 100,000 souls, was defended by 30,000 men, well 
 armed and provided with artillery. But bribery had
 
 200 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 been at work in the city for years before the invading 
 force came in sight ; and, though the Russians had to 
 make a gallant fight of it against the masses who had 
 not been bribed, it was certainly gold and not steel 
 which enabled them to take the town by surprise and 
 win the victory. 
 
 Tashkend once captured, the Russians found 
 themselves in collision with the Emir of Bokhara,, 
 who claimed a part of the khanate. The bloody 
 battle of Irdjar in 1866 obliged the Emir to waive 
 his pretensions, and gave the two fairest provinces 
 in Khokand to the invaders. But this was not all ; 
 for two years later, the Bokhariots having raised their 
 standard for a holy war, General Kaufmann was sent 
 with an expedition which captured Samarcand and 
 the valley of Zarafshan, one of the most fertile in 
 Central Asia. It was in this campaign that 772 
 Russians, who had been left in Samarcand to guard 
 450 wounded, defended themselves for three days 
 with amazing valour against 20,000 natives headed 
 by the Bey of Sherisal. Kaufmann arrived with rein- 
 forcements just in time to save them ; but there was 
 something very suspicious in the suddenness with 
 which the Bokhariots decamped at sight of the 
 Russian general, as well as in some later circum-
 
 The Conquests in Turkestan. 20 r 
 
 stances of the war which seemed to show that the 
 Emir had been * t^ot at.' 
 
 At any rate he was content to accept the Russian 
 yoke in consideration of being allowed to retain a 
 nominal kingship ; and in 1872, during the Khivan 
 campaign, he did his former foes the service of 
 keeping their communications with Russia open. 
 
 The Khivan campaign could never have succeeded 
 but for this accommodating Emir, and it was some- 
 thing pitiful to see the unfortunate Bokhariots, who 
 loathe the Russians, deluded by the fables of their 
 corrupt chief into working as allies for the oppressors 
 whom they had then a fine opportunity of crushing. 
 
 Two Russian corps cVarniee, lost in the desert, had 
 been obliged to retrace their steps ; the third, under 
 General Kaufmann, was also on the point of perishing 
 of privations, but the timely succour of the Bokhariots 
 saved them, and settled the fate of the Khan of 
 Khiva, who was forced to surrender a part of his 
 dominions to his brother-potentate of Bokhara, and 
 to accept Russian protectorate for the remainder. 
 
 It Avill be remembered that Count Schouvaloff had 
 given the British Government an assurance that Khiva 
 should not be annexed, and it is in part fulfilment of 
 this promise that the Khan of Khiva has not yet
 
 202 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 been allowed to commute his sovereignty for a pen- 
 sion, as he desires to do, finding his position among 
 his disgusted subjects somewhat precarious. Perhaps, 
 now that the Turkish war has ended so well, arrange- 
 ments may be made to humour his wishes. Mean- 
 while it must be noted that Russian encroachments 
 did not end with the war in Khiva, for in March, 1876, 
 the Khokandians, having grown tired of the civili- 
 zation presented to them under the guise of courts 
 of appeal, passports, and taxes upon barter, deposed 
 their spiritless Khan, and rose in a formidable in- 
 surrection, which, being crushed, left them poorer 
 than before. Russia proceeded to annex the whole 
 principality, thereby gaining a hundred square leagues 
 of soil more fruitful than any in Russia ; but as a 
 drawback it is obliged to maintain a garrison of 
 50,000 men in this one province, so inimical to 
 civilization. 
 
 A glance at the map will show what giant strides 
 the aforesaid conquests have enabled the Holy Empire 
 to make in the direction of India ; but one conquest 
 makes another imperative, and the Russians have seen 
 for some time that they will be obliged to try conclu- 
 sions with the Khan of Kashgar. This chief, Yakoub 
 Beg by name and a Khokandian by birth, has been 
 up to the present an ally of England, and he is an
 
 The Conquests in Turkestan. 203 
 
 able man, who has succeeded in keeping up an 
 army of 40,000 men, wonderfully well disciplined, and 
 in establishing gun foundries and manufactures of 
 small arms. If left to himself he would make of 
 Kashgar a powerful State ; but the Russians have 
 incited the Chinese against him, and he and the 
 Celestials are probably busy fighting at this hour. 
 Should Yakoub Beg be victorious, he has energy 
 enough in him to rouse all the Mussulman population 
 in Tashkcnd, Khokand, and Samarcand to rebellion ; 
 should he be beaten, or should Russia by other 
 influences bring him over to her side, the southernmost 
 province of Turkestan will lie at the mercy of Eng- 
 land's worst enemy, and there will remain but a 
 small stretch of undefended territory to cross before 
 reaching the Indian frontier. 
 
 We have given here but a bird's-eye view of the 
 Russian conquests in Central Asia. Some of the 
 political and social features of those conquests require 
 fuller notice.
 
 204 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE TRIBES IN TURKESTAN. 
 
 The chief strength of the Russian Government lies 
 in its having no Parliament to control its expenditure. 
 It can bestow immense sums in secret service, and 
 buy up Asiatic chiefs as fast as it wants them. It can 
 also buy up foreign journalists who will persuade the 
 world that it buys nobody. 
 
 Since the demise of the East India Company, 
 Great Britain has laboured under a distinct disadvan- 
 tage in this respect. Its Government no longer 
 bribes, and must depend for its prestige in the East 
 on military might only. Now the quelling of the 
 Indian Mutiny did beyond doubt cover British arms 
 with a glory which made every Rajah and Khan, 
 from Astrakan to Ceylon, blink with a wholesome 
 respect, and the subsequent Abyssinian campaign did 
 much to confirm the notion that when Eastern 
 potentates come to blows with the British Govern- 
 ment they do somehow get terribly the worst of it.
 
 The Tribes in Turkestan. 205 
 
 There is not a chief in Turkestan but knows how 
 Delhi fell and how Magdala was stormed ; and when 
 the British name is mentioned in the bazaars of 
 Tashkend and Samarcand the fierce valour of the 
 ' red soldiery ' is recalled too in cautious terms. 
 
 But Russia also has its military fame ; and when 
 gold is used to back it, when chiefs are bought and 
 humbler Asiatics dazzled, oppressed, and hoaxed with 
 fables as to British decadence, it becomes a question 
 with them whether after all Russia is not the stronger 
 of the two Powers. If she be not, why does England 
 allow her to extend her domination over tribes who 
 were not unfriendly to British rule t Why is she 
 suffered to bully Persia and spoil Turkey } Why does 
 every Russian brag of the coming time when the 
 standard of his Czar shall float over Calcutta } 
 
 These are questions which cannot be satisfacto- 
 rily answered for the understanding of a Bokhariot or 
 Khivan, The sly elders and warriors of Turkestan 
 know what Russia is doing, within India as well as 
 without, by fomenting disaffection among native 
 princes ; and it seems to them that the proper time 
 for withstanding so dangerous an enemy is the time 
 when she is still struggling towards the boundary 
 line — not when she shall be actually on the frontier 
 with huge hosts, communications assured, and allies
 
 2o6 The Rzissians of To-day. 
 
 inside the country, whose mutiny must cause the final 
 struggle for supremacy to assume gigantic proportions. 
 Add to all this that the Russians, while behaving 
 cruelly and insolently towards the masses in their 
 subject provinces, know how to make themselves 
 popular with men of influence by a display of qualities 
 and vices more congenial to the Asiatic mind than 
 the formalism of the English. 
 
 British policy in the East tends to protect the 
 people against the malpractices of their native rulers ; 
 the policy of Russia is just the reverse, for it gives 
 carte blanche to the chiefs so long as they remain 
 loyal to their conquerors. The British official in 
 India is generally speaking a gentleman — upright, 
 just, and decorous, but not genial. Having to be on 
 his guard against trickery, he is often cold and blunt; 
 and, being pretty strict in his morals and addicted to 
 religious observances, he is apt to seem a great deal 
 too virtuous to the rajahs, whom he neither corrupts 
 nor will suffer to corrupt him. 
 
 The Russian, who is half a barbarian at home, 
 gives free rein to his licentiousness in Asia, and is 
 swift to adopt all Mussulman customs, even to the 
 harem. The Governors of Samarcand and Taschkend 
 surround themselves with a pomp which is not onh- 
 confined to State ceremonials, but royalizes their
 
 TJie Tribes in Ttirkestan. 207 
 
 luxurious mode of livini^ in private ; and as their in- 
 feriors imitate them, the least official sets up as a 
 petty satrap, with droves of natives to fetch and 
 carry for him, and troops of dancing girls to amuse 
 him while he loimges <o\\ an ottoman and drinks. It 
 may not please the Turkestaner to watch these goings 
 on. It may exasperate him to see the swaggering 
 foreigners make free with the daughters of his tribes, 
 and throw his chiefs into merry madness with the 
 ' heavenly sherbet ' (as champagne is called out there); 
 but if these and the worse hardships of extortion and 
 injustice drive him to rebellion, he is always betrayed 
 by his leaders ; and after a brief fight, followed by a 
 drastic massacre, he finds the wooden yoke on his 
 neck turned to iron, and the whips that flayed him 
 changed to scorpions. 
 
 The tribes of Turkestan might long ago have got 
 rid of the Russians if they had been united, and if 
 their chiefs had played them fair. It has lately been 
 reported that Khudayar, the ex-Khan of Khokand, 
 who was deposed in 1876, has fled from Orenburg, 
 where he was residing as a pensioner of Russia ; and 
 it is hinted that his machinations may shortly lead to 
 a new uprising of his countrymen. Perhaps ; but then 
 Khudayar is the same against whom the Khokandians 
 revolted last year because of his servility towards the
 
 2o8 The RiLssians of To-day. 
 
 Russians. He is a wily old fellow who has been intri- 
 guing, warring, and trimming turn-about for thirty 
 years ; and if the Khirgiz should again put faith in 
 him they will certainly rue it. 
 
 The story of these insurrections is always the same. 
 When the ringleaders are ready they stir up the der- 
 vishes to go and yell in a village against the last act 
 of savagery or rapine committed by some Russian 
 underling. Howling mobs are immediately collected. 
 The small company of soldiers guarding the village are 
 slaughtered ; bands of fanatics are formed, who bind 
 themselves by a frightful oath to slay each their ten or 
 twenty Christians ; and the Khirgiz, galloping on their 
 fleet horses from village to village, make the sedition 
 spread like the flames of a prairie fire. Within a 
 couple of days hundreds of these hamlets, which even 
 in times of peace look like camps, because of their 
 tent-shaped huts and the weapons which the villagers 
 carry, are up in arms, and the Russians have to begin 
 a hand-to-hand fight for life, blood being poured out 
 like water, and each side butchering without mercy. 
 
 This may go on for weeks, and more Russians are 
 slain than are ever counted in the official gazettes of 
 St. Petersburg ; but suddenly all this blaze, which be- 
 gan like the burning of a city, goes out tamely as a 
 straw fire. Some chiefs have committed treason.
 
 The Tribes in Turkestafi. 209 
 
 They waited till they had given proof of their power 
 and forced their foes to offer them prodigal bribes, 
 then they sold themselves, and led their followers into 
 some ambush, where the miserable wretches were 
 exterminated like flies. The treacherous chiefs are 
 seen soon afterwards robed in the red velvet dressing- 
 gowns which are bestowed as marks of honour upon 
 loyal native dignitaries ; they carouse with their 
 whilom foes, and peace continues until some other 
 chiefs, ambitious of red velvet and champagne, begin 
 the old game over again. 
 
 The fault of the peoples of Turkestan is that they 
 are all too credulous as regards the leaders of their own 
 respective tribes, and too suspicious of the others, so 
 that if peradventure one honest man keeps the field 
 after others have consummated their treachery, none 
 but his own tribe will give him credit for sincerity, and 
 the rest slink home, leaving him to capitulate against 
 overpowering odds and to be hanged. Khudayar of 
 Khokand had more than once authority enough to have 
 led the whole of Turkestan to emancipation if he had 
 not had such an itching palm ; but Yakoub Beg of 
 Kashgar is now probably the only Khan under whose 
 banner all the tribes would fight with perfect and en- 
 during trust. These tribes are many, but the Tadjiks, 
 the Uzbeks, and the Khirgiz may be taken as the 
 
 P
 
 2IO The Russians of To-day. 
 
 three typical varieties of the country, and they have 
 differences of character which make it difficult to 
 work together unless they be led by a man of excep- 
 tional stamp. 
 
 The Tadjiks are descendants of the old Aryan 
 race who first peopled Central Asia. They are fine 
 men to look at, tall, well knit, not too dark, with large 
 bright eyes full of shrewdness, and soft civil manners ; 
 unfortunately, having long lived in subjection to the 
 Uzbeks, they have lost their martial spirit and acquired 
 the vices of slaves. They thrive capitally as trades- 
 men, they make good clerks and mechanics ; but they 
 are frivolous, braggarts, cowards, and liars, so that in 
 every insurrection they are the first to backslide. 
 
 The Uzbeks are of Turkish origin, and form an 
 aristocratic caste, each tribe having its customs and 
 traditions, and paying the same allegiance to its head 
 as Scottish clansmen used to do. These men are 
 warriors ; thin of face, gaunt, and simple in their habits ; 
 they have adhered to their own tongue, while the 
 Tadjiks talk a bastard Persian, and they are much less 
 easy to corrupt than any of the other races, for they 
 despise effeminate luxuries. If one of them turns 
 traitor it is generally because he has a grudge against 
 some other chief 
 
 The Khirgiz, who occupy a great part of Khokand,
 
 The Tribes in Tzcrkestan. 2 1 1 
 
 are divided into two races — the Kara-Khirgiz, who 
 are mountaineers, with a tendency towards bandittism, 
 and the Khirgiz-Kassaks, who live in the plains, and 
 would be the most prosperous people in Central Asia 
 if their innate cleverness were not overlaid with the 
 crassest superstition. They carry mutton-bones about 
 with them to ward off the Evil One. If a Khirgiz has 
 a singing in his ears down he goes on his knees to pray, 
 thinking that one of his friends is going to die ; if you 
 whistle in his presence he imagines you have designs 
 upon his wife, and must be appeased with gifts and 
 incantations ; if one of his children yawns he is per- 
 suaded that a wicked spirit has dived down the child's 
 throat to cut out a piece of its heart, and he falls to 
 cuffing the poor brat to make him wary of gaping in 
 future. The Khirgiz have all the Mongolian facial 
 type, which comes of their affection for Kalmuck 
 wives, whom until recently they were in the habit of 
 carrying off by main force from Chinese territory. 
 
 It used to be thought derogatory to a Khirgiz to 
 marry any woman but one whom he had carried off 
 in a raid, and a relic of this practice survives in some 
 very singular marriage customs. When a Khirgiz 
 wants a wife he buys her of her parents for so many 
 camels or horses, and on the wedding day the young 
 lady is turned loose upon a pony and armed with a
 
 212 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 heavy kourbatch, or ox-nerve riding-whip, and her 
 bridegroom is supposed to carry her off against her 
 will, and for this purpose posts after her with a troop 
 of friends, all being mounted. The bride defends 
 herself with the kourbatch, and slashes the faces of 
 the friends pretty vigorously, but the bridegroom gets 
 off cheap, and, after a sham struggle, bears back the 
 young lady on his saddle amid the triumphant shouts 
 of his village. 
 
 The Khirgiz live in peaked huts, made of felt, like 
 tents, and take great pride in having their horses 
 richly caparisoned, their bridles being often encrusted 
 with jewels. They are also very particular about 
 their own dress, which consists of leather trousers, a 
 black velvet dressing-gown, more or less braided with 
 gold, and a conical felt hat with curly brim. When a 
 Khirgiz can win the red velvet gown given by the 
 Russians he is mighty proud of it, though his loyalty 
 to the bestowers has to be kept alive by continual 
 gifts. As the Russians cannot be for ever giving, 
 they prefer to persecute all but the more influential 
 Khirgiz, and their cupidity finds free scope among 
 those jewelled bridles already mentioned. 
 
 It is through the Khirgiz that political rumours 
 are chiefly disseminated in Turkestan, for they have 
 an Athenian fondness for reports of all kinds, and are
 
 The Tribes in Turkestan. 2 1 3 
 
 simple enough to swallow any fable. When one of 
 them gets hold of any piece of news he takes no rest 
 till he has scattered it to the four points of the compass, 
 and will ride about all day to do this, leaving his busi- 
 ness to take care of itself The Khirgiz are great 
 breeders of silkworms, camels, and horses, and manu- 
 facture felt, silk, and ornaments of gold as dexterously 
 as the Chinese. Russia has not done anything to 
 promote their industry, but has rather baulked it by 
 her excessive taxes on trade, and the lot of the people 
 under their civilizing conquerors may be said to be 
 infinitely worse than it was in the days when they 
 were free to mind their own business in their own 
 primitive ways. 
 
 For a fuller account of the doings of Russia in 
 Asia, and of their menacing purport towards England, 
 one must refer the reader to Arminius Vambery's ex- 
 cellent and exhaustive work, ' Central Asia, and the 
 Anglo-Indian Frontier Question.' It has been ably 
 translated into English by Mr. F. E. Bunnet.
 
 2 1 4 The Russians of To-day 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 SIBERIA. — ON THE ROAD. 
 
 Capital punishment has been aboHshed in Russia, 
 that foreigners might no more be able to call the Czar's 
 subjects a barbarous people ; and instead of it the 
 process of doing offenders slowly to death in Siberia 
 has been advantageously substituted. 
 
 A Russian may be sent to Siberia by sentence of 
 the courts or by an Imperial decree issued through 
 the Police Ministry ; in the latter case he is said to 
 be 'awaiting the Czar's pleasure,' and no publicity 
 is given to his fate. His friends may inquire for him 
 in vain. He has been privately arrested ; he has 
 disappeared ; but whether he be lying in some gaol 
 awaiting trial, or have been spirited away to the quick- 
 silver mines beyond Lake Baikal, there is nothing to 
 show unless some police official, taking pity on the 
 grief of a bereaved wife, tells her to hope in the Czar's 
 clemency, which is just as though he informed her 
 that she was a widow. What shocks one in all this is
 
 Siberia. — On the Road. 215 
 
 not the despotism that stamps out an enemy by a 
 ruthless process, but the canting pretence of humanity 
 which confronts one at every step in Russia, and 
 would lead strangers to believe that these iniquities 
 are obsolete. 
 
 Russians assure strangers that arbitrary transporta- 
 tions ceased long ago, but they confess the contrary 
 when you have known them long enough to get the 
 truth from them. Then it appears that almost every 
 man of note can quote a case in which some person 
 was transported by decree for mysterious reasons. 
 The excuse offered is always that there are crimes 
 which would cause too much scandal if made public ; 
 but Government never recoils from the scandal of bring- 
 ing Nihilist conspirators to trial, even when ladies of 
 rank and generals are implicated. The truth seems 
 to be that when a Russian commits an offence which 
 the law courts are sure to punish he is arraigned in 
 the regular way ; but if he has rendered himself offen- 
 sive in high quarters without having laid himself open 
 to any specific charge, he is sent to Siberia quietly. 
 
 It is said that almost all the persons who are 
 transported to Siberia, with or without trial, admit the 
 justice of their punishment. This is very likely ; for 
 their only chance of getting pardoned or of being 
 allowed to communicate with their friends lies in their
 
 2i6 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 making a full and penitent acknowledgment of their 
 guilt on paper. One hears nothing of the captives 
 who refuse to do this. They pay the penalty of their 
 high-spiritedness by never being allowed a chance of 
 letting the world know that they have suffered un- 
 justly. 
 
 Siberia is a territory covering about six times the 
 area of England and Scotland. It contains a great 
 number of penal colonies scattered at long distances 
 from one another, and differing much in the degrees 
 of discomfort they offer to their inhabitants. The 
 colonists are divided into three categories — those who 
 live at their own expense and are allowed to have 
 their families with them ; those who are supported by 
 Government, but are suffered to eke out their small 
 pittance by acting as servants to the richer colonists 
 or working at trades ; and, thirdly, those who are em- 
 ployed at hard labour on public works or in the 
 mines. 
 
 The miners are supposed to be the worst offenders, 
 and their punishment is tantamount to death by slow 
 torture, for it is certain to kill them in ten years and 
 ruins their health long before that time. A convict 
 never knows until he reaches Siberia w^hat sort of life 
 is in store for him ; for in pronouncing sentence of 
 hard labour the judge makes no mention of mines.
 
 Siberia. — On the Road. 2 1 7 
 
 If the convict have money or influential friends he had 
 better use the time between his sentence and trans- 
 portation in buying a warrant which consigns him to 
 the lighter kinds of labour above ground ; otherwise 
 he will inevitably be sent under earth and never 
 again see the sky imtil he is hauled up to die in an 
 infirmary. 
 
 The convicts are forwarded to Siberia in convoys, 
 which start at the commencement of spring, just after 
 the snows have melted and left the ground dry. They 
 perform the whole journey on foot, escorted by 
 mounted Cossacks, who are armed with pistols, lances, 
 and long whips ; and behind them jolt a long string 
 of springless tumbrils to carry those who fall lame or 
 ill on the way. The start is always made in the 
 night, and care is taken that the convoys shall only 
 pass through the towns on their road after dark. 
 Each man is dressed in a grey kaftan, having a brass 
 numbered plate fastened to the breast, knee boots, 
 and a sheepskin bonnet. He carries a rug strapped 
 to his back, a mess-tin and a wooden spoon at his 
 girdle. The women have black cloaks with hoods, 
 and march in gangs by themselves, with an escort of 
 soldiers, like the men, and two or three female 
 warders, who travel in carts. 
 
 In leaving large cities, like St. Petersburg, all the
 
 2i8 The Rttssians of To-day. 
 
 prisoners are chained with their hands behind their 
 backs, but their fetters are removed outside the city, 
 except in the case of men who have been marked as 
 dangerous. These have to wear leg chains of 4 lb. 
 weight all the way, and some of the more desperate 
 ones are yoked by threes to a beam of wood, which 
 rests on their shoulders, and is fastened to their necks 
 by iron collars. 
 
 Any foreigner who has been at St. Petersburg 
 during the spring, and has chanced to come home 
 late from one of the Easter balls, may have met one 
 of these dismal processions filing through the broad 
 streets at a quick march. Nobody may approach 
 the men to inspect them. The Cossacks crack their 
 whips loudly to warn loafers off, and scamper up and 
 down the line with lanterns tied to their lance-points, 
 which they lower to the ground at every moment to 
 see if letters have been dropped. Murderers, thieves, 
 Nihilist conspirators, felon clergymen, mutinous sol- 
 diers, and patriotic Poles all tramp together as fast as 
 they can go, and perfectly silent. Then come the 
 women, shivering, sobbing, but not daring to cry out, 
 because of those awful whips. There are sure to be 
 some young girls among them — ex-students of Zurich, 
 convicted of Nihilism, or Polish girls accused of hatch- 
 ing plots — and these are mixed up elbow to elbow
 
 Siberia. — On the Road. 219 
 
 with hardened adventuresses, sentenced for bank- 
 note forgeries, and with flat-faced Muscovite drabs 
 who have killed a husband or child under the influence 
 of vodki. 
 
 At the first church outside the city there is a halt, 
 and the two gangs are driven into the building to attend 
 a parting mass and hear a short sermon. The preacher, 
 speaking from the altar, never fails to extol the Czar's 
 clemency, and to advise submission and penitence. 
 The girls, the Poles, the alleged conspirators here get 
 a foretaste of the language that will be held to them 
 every time they make an appeal for mercy. When 
 the prisoners leave the church their chains are re- 
 moved, and they receive permission to talk for the 
 rest of the way, except when they pass through towns. 
 They may sing, too, if they like, and sometimes do, 
 trying to drown their misery in plaintive yells about 
 the homes they shall never see again. 
 
 Meanwhile a rumour has somehow got abroad that 
 a convict convoy is on the move, and in all the vil- 
 lages the compassionate peasantry bring out steaming 
 tureens of tschi, piles of newly baked bread, and jugs 
 of kwass or vodki. They set these offerings by the 
 roadside as the vanguard of the convoy comes in 
 sight, and then retire, for they must not speak to the 
 prisoners.
 
 2 20 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 The pity felt for Siberian exiles is universal, 
 and is only too natural in a country where it is by 
 no means the worst rogues who habitually come 
 to punishment. A villager will bring out his last 
 crust to feed one of the poor wretches whom he 
 pathetically mentions as having been 'unfortunate,' 
 and even the Cossack guards show a rough sort of 
 sympathy for their charges. They allow them to 
 take freely of whatever is put out for them, and only 
 make use of their whips in cases of insubordination. 
 Unfortunately, the delirium of fever is often taken for 
 insubordination ; so that a delicately nurtured convict, 
 man or woman, whose intellect gives way under the 
 fatigues of the march and the horrors of impending 
 slavery, is liable to be stripped and brutally flogged as 
 an example to the rest. 
 
 The rations served out to the prisoners are 
 biscuit and salt beef, and they must drink when 
 they find water, which at some periods of the march, 
 when crossing the immense steppes, is hardly to 
 be got. At night the convoys bivouac in pine 
 forests, on the outskirts of villages, or on the steppes 
 aforesaid. They have nothing to guard them against 
 rains or capricious spring frosts but their rugs and 
 clothes. Numbers die on the road, and are buried 
 in the steppes by fatigue parties who are told
 
 Siberia. — 0?i. the Road. 221 
 
 off to dig their graves. The march from St. Pe- 
 tersburg to the Ourals takes six weeks at the least, 
 and many of the convicts have to trudge on for weeks 
 more after crossing the mountains before they reach 
 their ultimate destination. Long before the Siberian 
 frontier is attained the paucity of human habitations, 
 the barrenness of the soil, and the increasing bleakness 
 of the climate have had their effect on the hardiest ; 
 and the poor wretches plod on with a settled look of 
 terror on their faces and all desire for conversation 
 gone out of them. 
 
 A correspondent writing to the Pall Mall Gazette 
 lately called attention to another method of conveying 
 prisoners to Siberia — a method chiefly used for prisoners 
 from Central and Southern Russia. He says : — ' I 
 have seen in the middle of the day 500 men of all 
 ages, in ranks of four, chained together, marched 
 through the fair at Nijni Novgorod, and followed by 
 the women and children on foot, only the sick and 
 disabled being in the country carts which brought up 
 the rear. Business on the " Birsja " was hushed as the 
 procession passed, and only compassionate remarks 
 were heard as to their sad fate. They were locked 
 up in the citadel, and on the Saturday morning as 
 many as could be stowed into a 1,000-ton barge were 
 put on board. On the deck of the barge there is
 
 222 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 erected a cage 6 feet high or thereabouts, exactly Hke 
 a hen-coop, only the wires are iron bars ; and here 
 the prisoners are permitted to take air. The warders 
 and guards live in wooden houses built at either end of 
 the cage, and keep a sharp look-out on the prisoners. 
 A steamer takes the barge in tow down the Volga 
 and up the Kama river to Perm, where the land 
 journey to their destination commences. For two or 
 three months at least detachments of prisoners were 
 sent off once a fortnight ; probably it goes on during 
 the whole time of the navigation. It is a very dis- 
 tressing sight to see a large body of prisoners. Not- 
 withstanding the uniform grey dress and their closely 
 cropped heads, the differences in physiognomy came 
 prominently out, and one can distinguish those who 
 have mixed in good society and may be there for 
 some trivial misdemeanour from those who, from their 
 ferocious, forbidding aspect, have given the rein to 
 their evil passions and are undergoing their just 
 punishment.' 
 
 All exiles do not travel to Siberia in convoys. If 
 a prisoner be well off and have not incurred the spe- 
 cial animosity of a tschinovnik anxious to avenge 
 himself by heaping up hardships which may hurry 
 him out of life, a judicious amount of bribing may 
 procure him the privilege of travelling at his own
 
 Siberia. — On the Road. 223 
 
 expense. In this event he is allowed to take his wife 
 with him, and as much furniture and luggage as he 
 can afford, also servants, if he can find any devoted 
 enough to follow him. But he must also pay for his 
 escort of guards, never less than five, including an 
 officer, and sometimes twice that number. 
 
 Exiles of this sort, who are occasionally to be met 
 with on the steppes, travelling with carts full of their 
 goods, look as if they were tourists going on a plea- 
 sure party. The women always try to make the best 
 of it, and it may be remarked that nothing is more 
 admirable in Russian women than their readiness to 
 follow their husbands to Siberia when they can obtain 
 leave. Women who have moved in fashionable life, 
 and who have not seemed to be particularly affection- 
 ate wives, often become transformed by the stroke of 
 misfortune, and bravely confront a fate whose miseries 
 cannot be unknown to them. Those who refuse to 
 accompany their husbands are the exception, and their 
 lot is not enviable, for society closes its doors on 
 them. A Siberian exile is accounted civilly dead, his 
 wife may claim a divorce and remarry, but in the few 
 cases when this has been done it has generally been 
 suspected that the wife had the chief hand in her 
 husband's transportation.
 
 2 24 TJie Russians of To-day 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 SIBERIA : THE FREE COLONIES AND MINES. 
 
 The Siberian convicts of the richer sort, who are 
 allowed to maintain themselves, live in villages whose 
 male population never exceeds 200 souls. The colo- 
 nies are scattered at least twenty versts apart, and 
 each is guarded by a company of forty soldiers and 
 three officers. 
 
 The commander holds lieutenant-colonel's rank 
 and governs the colony, administering martial law 
 with his two subalterns. In the event of a murder, 
 or an attempt at rebellion, he despatches a Cossack 
 to a neighbouring village to fetch a couple of other 
 officers, and so composes a court of five, who have 
 power of life and death. No communication is al- 
 lowed between the exiles of different colonies, and if 
 two brothers or a father and son are transported 
 together they are always placed apart. The dwellings 
 vary in size and in comfort. Some, built at the 
 expense of aristocrats in trouble, are decent villas well
 
 Siberia: the Free Colonies and Mines. 225 
 
 furnished ; others arc mere huts, whose principal fur- 
 niture is a big stove. 
 
 In those terrible regions beyond Tomsk, and still 
 farther beyond the Jenissa, winter prevails during 
 nine months of the year, and for twelve weeks of that 
 time the days are scarcely six hours long. The 
 colonists organize evening parties and drinking bouts, 
 in which the officers and the village popes often join. 
 All these functionaries are men who have got into 
 some disgrace themselves, and the private soldiers 
 are the refuse of the army, who have been sent to 
 Siberia as a punishment. This fact does not give the 
 colonists a better chance of mutiny or escape, for a 
 commander who allows an exile to slip from his cus- 
 tody is consigned to penal servitude in the mines. 
 He also risks being degraded to the ranks if he suffers 
 a convict to send off a clandestine letter, and for this 
 reason the strictest watch is kept on the caravans of 
 Jews who come once or twice a year to bring goods 
 for sale. 
 
 The arrival of these caravans affords a holiday- 
 time to the wretched colonists. For a day or two the 
 villages are converted into fairs, and those who have 
 money lay in a six months' provision of garments, 
 books, and luxuries of the table. The Jews do not 
 object to acting as postmen if well paid, and, possibly, 
 
 Q
 
 226 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 a governor will often connive for a good bribe ; but if 
 an exile is detected in passing out a letter without 
 having previously corrupted the governor, he gets 
 flogged. Women are flogged as well as men ; and if 
 a wife who has come into voluntary exile for her 
 husband's sake commits an offence, she has to choose 
 between being whipped or being sent back to her 
 country and never seeing her husband again. 
 
 Corporal punishment is the chief method of 
 discipline in Siberia. In the mines, in the gangs 
 working on the roads, a saucy word is enough to 
 bring blows ; but in the well-to-do colonies exiles are 
 doubtless exempt from harsh usage so long as they 
 have money. The governors are not bad fellows, 
 though drunkards to a man, and it is their interest to 
 keep on good terms with their charges. They suffer 
 the latter to roam within a radius of five versts from 
 their villages, and to kill time according to their fancy. 
 Twice a year an inspector-general goes the round of 
 the colonies to collect reports and bring pardons ; and 
 then the governors have the privilege of recommend- 
 ing to the Czar's clemency exiles who have committed 
 acts of courage in saving life or helping to quell 
 mutinies. Unfortunately, such recommendations are 
 seldom listened to, because it is notorious that gover- 
 nors have often invented acts of courage for a pecu- 
 niary consideration.
 
 Siberia: the Free Colonies and Mines. 227 
 
 There comes a fearful time in the lives of the exiles 
 who have their families with them. Their sons grow 
 up and must go away to serve in the army ; their 
 daughters, at the age of twenty, have to choose 
 between returning to Russia or marrying an exile and 
 remaining; settled in Siberia. Once the sons and 
 daughters have gone their parents see no more of 
 them ; but, cruel as this separation is, many parents 
 prefer it to allowing their children to linger all their 
 lives in the wastes where they themselves have suf- 
 fered so much. 
 
 Sometimes a young exile falls in love with the 
 daughter of a fellow-colonist, and then there is a dis- 
 mal romance, for it depends on the governor whether 
 leave shall be granted for a marriage, and this func- 
 tionary, acting on orders from headquarters, may re- 
 fuse. It has happened, again, that a female exile has 
 been courted, and has obtained her pardon just after 
 she had sent in her application for permission to 
 marry. Her entreaties to be allowed to stay and 
 share her lover's fate are of no avail, for a pardon is 
 often more of an act of ostentation than of mercy, 
 and the recipient must accept it in order that the 
 inhabitants of the Russian town appointed for his 
 or her residence may have the opportunity of admir- 
 ing a living example of Imperial clemency. 
 
 g 2
 
 2 28 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Pardons are seldom granted to exiles who have 
 been more than ten years in Siberia, for they would have 
 too much to relate on their return. They are gene- 
 rally conceded at the end of two or three years ; and 
 it has now and then happened that an exile has found 
 a pardon awaiting him on his arrival in the colony. 
 This has served to feed the popular notion, often 
 retailed to foreigners, that unless a man has com- 
 mitted some heinous offence he is sure to be pardoned, 
 the truth being that pardons have very little to do 
 with the nature of an offence, but are bestowed out of 
 pure caprice. A rogue having influential friends may 
 get one at once, and another who has committed a 
 peccadillo, atoned for by years of good conduct, may 
 exhaust appeals for mercy in vain. 
 
 The discharged exiles leave Siberia in caravans 
 during the summer, and each receives orders to go 
 and reside in some inland town or village, where he 
 remains under police surveillance. His lot here is 
 that of a leper, for the inhabitants are afraid to speak 
 to him lest they should compromise themselves. He 
 is forbidden to exercise any profession ; he cannot 
 trade, for the merchants will not admit him to their 
 guilds ; and were he to write the police would make 
 sure that he was going to publish his Siberian experi- 
 ences, and would seize his papers. If he have no
 
 Siberia: the Free Colonies and Mines. 229 
 
 private means the Government allow him the pay and 
 rations of a common soldier, and he must contrive to 
 live on that, beguiling his time as he can. It depends 
 on his loyalty, and, above all, on his reticence of 
 tongue, whether, after a few years of probation, he 
 shall be permitted to return to his former home ; but 
 he never gets leave to live in St. Petersburg, Moscow, 
 or Odessa unless he joins the Crown service as a 
 police spy. 
 
 The exiles who live in the mines are convicts of 
 the worst type and political offenders of the best. 
 The murderer for his villainy, the intelligent and 
 honest Polish rebel for his patriotism, are deemed 
 equally worthy of the punishment of slow death. 
 They never see the light of day, but work and sleep 
 all the year round in the depths of the earth, extract- 
 ing silver or quicksilver under the eyes of taskmasters 
 who have orders not to spare them. Iron gates 
 guarded by sentries close the lodes, or streets, at the 
 bottom of the shafts, and the miners are railed off 
 from one another in gangs of twenty. They sleep 
 within recesses hewn out of the rock — very kennels — 
 into which they must creep on all-fours. 
 
 Prince Joseph Lubomirski, who was authorized to 
 visit one of the mines in the district beyond Lake 
 Baikal at a time when it was not suspected he would
 
 22fO The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ever publish an account of his exploration in French, 
 has given an appalling account of what he saw. 
 Convicts racked with the joint pains which quick- 
 silver produces ; men whose hair and eyebrows had 
 dropped off, and who were gaunt as skeletons, were 
 kept to hard labour under the lash. They have only 
 two holidays a year, Christmas and Easter ; all the 
 other days, Sundays included, they must toil until 
 exhausted nature robs them of the use of their limbs, 
 when they are hauled up to die in the infirmary. 
 Five years in the quicksilver pits are enough to turn 
 a man of thirty into an apparent sexagenarian, but 
 some have been known to struggle on for ten years. 
 
 No man who has served in the mines is ever allowed 
 to return home ; the most he can obtain in the way 
 of grace is leave to come up and work in the road 
 gangs, and it is the promise of this favour as a reward 
 for industry which operates even more than the lash 
 to maintain discipline. 
 
 Women are employed in the mines as sifters, and 
 get no better treatment than the men. Polish ladies 
 by the dozen have been sent down to rot and die, while 
 the St. Petersburg journals were declaring that they 
 were living as free colonists ; and more recently ladies 
 connected with Nihilist conspiracies have been con- 
 signed to the mines in pursuance of a sentence of
 
 Siberia: the Free Colonies and Mines. 231 
 
 hard labour. It must always be understood that 
 a sentence of Siberian hard labour means death. 
 
 The Russian Government well knows that to live 
 for years in the atrocious tortures of the mines is 
 humanly impossible, and, consequently, the use of an 
 euphemism to replace the term capital punishment is 
 merely of a piece with the hypocrisy of all official 
 statements in Russia. 
 
 Once a week a pope, himself an exile, goes down 
 into the mines to bear the consolations of religion, 
 under the form of a sermon enjoining patience. By 
 the same occasion he drives a little trade in vodki. 
 The miners, who live habitually on tschi and black 
 bread, are allowed a kopeck for a good day's work ; 
 and this sum invariably goes in drink. Perhaps the 
 raw, rancid spirit serves to keep up their strength ; 
 anyhow, the intoxication it brings on affords the 
 unfortunates the only dreg of comfort they can expect 
 on this earth. 
 
 One shudders to think of the state of the better 
 educated men who refuse the consolation of occa- 
 sionally drowning their sorrows in liquor. What 
 must be the plight of professors, journalists, land- 
 owners, who have been condemned to die by inches 
 for the crime of emitting Liberal opinions, which in 
 England bring a man to great honour and comfort
 
 232 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 on every side ? Perhaps those English Liberals who 
 feel kindly towards Russian humanitarianism would 
 pick up a notion or two if they could interview some 
 of their Muscovite colleagues earning the reward for 
 their progressive theories underground, with a drunken 
 priest to whine them homilies.
 
 Charities. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 CHARITIES. 
 
 Every Russian charity is an incomplete copy of 
 something French or German. 
 
 Under Nicholas, if a foreign philanthropist was 
 presented to the Czar their conversation was sure to 
 bear fruit in the shape of an order for building some 
 new hospital or asylum on a gigantic scale. Architects 
 went to work, the Finance Minister groaned at having 
 to pay so much money for a caprice, and the insti- 
 tution when founded generally did but little of the 
 good that was expected of it ; but the Emperor was 
 satisfied, and that was enough. 
 
 The Foundling Hospital at Moscow offers a good 
 example of the ostentation of Russian charity and of 
 the abuses which are begotten by ill-management. 
 The place, which covers as much ground as a village, 
 contains 1,700 wet-nurses and 2,000 babies. 
 
 Fifty children are admitted daily on mere presen- 
 tation at the gate, no questions being asked. After
 
 234 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 having been washed, dressed, and ticketed, each child 
 is consigned to a nurse, and remains in the hospital 
 from three to six months, after which it is boarded 
 out, its foster-mother receiving Sj-. a month for five 
 years. At the expiration of this time the board is 
 reduced, and the nurse must contract to keep the child 
 for one rouble a month till it shall be able to earn 
 its own living ; or else the little creature is transferred 
 to an industrial school. The boys are trained as 
 soldiers or mechanics, the girls as domestic servants ; 
 and the number of these young people whom the 
 Foundling annually supports exceeds 30,000. 
 
 There is something grandiose in this charity, and 
 although the mortality in the hospital is very large, 
 owing to bad ventilation and unskilful medical attend- 
 ance, all the show part of its arrangement is very 
 striking. 
 
 Unfortunately, this famous foundling refuge has 
 corrupted all the villages round Moscow. Peasant 
 girls who have forgotten to get married send their 
 babies to the institution, then offer themselves in per- 
 son as wet-nurses. Having tattooed their offspring, 
 each mother contrives to find her own, and takes 
 charge of it by private arrangement with the nurse to 
 whom it has been assigned. As babies are so much 
 alike the authorities cannot detect these interchanges,
 
 Charities. 235 
 
 and do not attempt to do so. In due time the 
 mother returns to her village with her own baby, 
 whose board will be paid for by the State at the rate 
 of Si", a month, as above said ; and possibly next year 
 and the year after she will begin the same game over 
 again. 
 
 Thus a fine premium is placed on immorality and 
 fraud. The authorities know this ; they joke about 
 the Foundling Hospital among themselves ; but Go- 
 vernment persists in keeping up the institution in its 
 unreformed state for the bewildering of foreigners. It 
 is not in every country that one can see 2,000 babies 
 and 1,700 wet-nurses under one roof, and herein 
 again is the superiority of Russia asserted. 
 
 The present Czar founded a big refuge at St. 
 Petersburg for workmen who had become disabled by 
 accident. It was the realization of some Frenchman's 
 idea for the creation of ' Invalides Civils,' upon the 
 theory that a mechanic who is crippled at his work 
 deserves as much consideration as a soldier who gets 
 maimed in war. But the refuge was organized on 
 such a luxurious plan, that idle workmen began to in- 
 jure themselves on purpose to obtain admittance to it. 
 The place was full of malingerers, who by their con- 
 stant drunkenness frightened away genuine sufferers 
 who wanted rest.
 
 236 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 One day all the inmates were turned out together 
 with a few roubles apiece to help them to set up else- 
 where ; and then the place became a lunatic asylum ; 
 but in a very quick time most of its old residents 
 were back in its walls, only they pretended to have 
 become mad. 
 
 There were sham melancholies, alcoholics, but 
 chiefly epileptics, because a rogue who feigns fits is 
 not suspected owing to the mere fact that he is 
 rational at ordinary times. The doctors tried to 
 counteract the sham epilepsy by vigorous douches 
 and doses of bromide of potassium ; and sometimes 
 they tried what galvanic shocks would do with a 
 hardened offender. But a mujick will stand a good 
 deal of doctoring for the sake of getting free quarters 
 throughout the winter. 
 
 To this day the asylum gets crowded with pseudo 
 lunatics whenever there is a slack season in trade ; 
 and the authorities have discovered that it is best to 
 let the abuse flourish, seeing that a patient who is 
 accused of shamming instantly howls and gives trouble 
 to prove that he is really afflicted. 
 
 The fault of the system lies in the lavish extra- 
 vagance which is used to convey an idea of the 
 breadth of Imperial philanthropy. Workmen who 
 have lived in sorts of pigstyes all their lives look upon
 
 Charities. 237 
 
 the giant asylum, with its clean beds, refectories, 
 baths, musical performances, and substantial dietary, 
 as a terrestrial paradise. Outside St. Petersburg and 
 Moscow Russian madhouses are squalid prisons — as 
 bad as Bedlam was a century ago ; but to these only 
 genuine lunatics resort. 
 
 There are no private charities in Russia, because 
 no Muscovite is so silly as to subscribe money which 
 \\\W be handled by irresponsible persons. Govern- 
 ment takes the initiative in everything, and issues 
 orders for the building of hospitals and asylums with- 
 out much reference to the needs of the locality where 
 these institutions are set up ; but principally with a 
 view to having a good account of charities to show 
 in its yearly Blue-books. 
 
 So many hospitals and asylums must be erected 
 yearly, no matter where or how. A provincial town 
 which has few paupers gets a command from St. Pe- 
 tersburg to build a poor-house, perhaps at a moment 
 when its finances arc at a very low ebb. The mayor 
 writes humbly to remonstrate that the ratepayers 
 have been heavily assessed of late for the paving of 
 their streets ; but he is answered by a report from a 
 Government inspector setting forth that his town is 
 notoriously in need of a poor-house, and there is 
 nothing for it but to obey.
 
 238 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 No charity would ever be started if Government 
 listened to the wailings of ratepayers. Provincial 
 governors, again, who wish to earn a brilliant repu- 
 tation, often go in for a course of building regardless 
 of expense. Many Russian towns have hospitals of 
 imposing size, far too large for their requirements. 
 As soon as the governor who ordered them has gone 
 away they are abandoned and go to ruin or get con- 
 verted into barracks. 
 
 Russian hospitals are mostly sordid, and the doc- 
 tors in them ignorant quacks. It is not uncommon 
 to hear of two patients afflicted with different diseases 
 being put in one bed, and of money voted for drugs 
 being spent in medical feasts. However disgracefully 
 managed a hospital may be, the municipal authorities 
 take good care to report it to the Home Office as 
 a pattern establishment ; and they will not spend a 
 kopeck on its improvement, lest after having done so 
 they should be abruptly called upon to build another 
 on some new-fangled plan sent from the capital. 
 
 Government meddlesomeness paralyzes local im- 
 pulses. If a whole city became leprous, the mayor 
 and his council would hesitate to cope with the evil 
 until they had received orders from headquarters as 
 to how they ought to act. 
 
 Monks and nuns are required to be charitable ;
 
 Charities. 239 
 
 and to obey this official injunction they generally 
 have very pretty little infirmaries attached to their 
 convents ; but this costs them nothing, for, being 
 allowed to beg from door to door for the support 
 of such places, they collect a great deal more than is 
 wanted. They are also very prone to convert these 
 refuges to purposes of clandestine midwifery. Hence 
 a ' retreat ' in a Russian convent has come to bear a 
 sense not usually attached to it in other countries.
 
 240 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 SCHOOLS. 
 
 Count Dimitri Tolstoi, who has been twelve years 
 Minister of Public Instruction in Russia, is a man of 
 large ideas who would like to see every mujick pro- 
 ficient in the three R's. Prince Gortschakoff, who is 
 of a different opinion, lets him talk but will not allow 
 him to act ; insomuch that whenever Count Tolstoi' 
 wants a grant, M. de Reutern, the Finance Minister, 
 tells him with a doleful face that the State coffers are 
 empty. 
 
 There is always money for troops and Imperial 
 fetes, never for schools. Taking account of the in- 
 crease of population and the greater facilities for 
 spreading knowledge, Russia has retrograded rather 
 than advanced in education since the time of Nicholas. 
 
 The late Czar had no notion of popularizing know- 
 ledge, but he provided a good sort of official edu- 
 cation for the higher classes among his subjects, and 
 insisted that they should avail themselves of it. As
 
 Schools. 241 
 
 to the commercial classes, he allowed them to take 
 care of themselves, which they did by establishing 
 private schools with German professors. 
 
 Chancellor Gortschakoff saw the dangers of this 
 system, and altered it. He encourages rich noblemen 
 to have their children educated at home and to send 
 them to France or Germany for the finishing touch 
 but he has laid a sweeping interdict on all private 
 schools for the middle class, because these used to 
 afford a better education than was to be obtained in 
 official academies. A highly cultivated aristocracy, 
 an officially taught, or mistaught, middle class, and a 
 totally illiterate populace — this would fulfil the Chan- 
 cellor's ideal of a governable State. But he does 
 not confess these views aloud, and baulks education 
 by the adroit device of seeming over-ready to aid 
 
 it. 
 
 About a dozen years ago the city of Nijni-Novgo- 
 rod wished to found a university, and applied for a 
 charter, promising to raise the endowments by local 
 subscriptions. The answer that came from St. Peters- 
 burg was most encouraging, and assured the appli- 
 cants that the Czar had expressed a great interest 
 in their scheme, and was graciously minded to help 
 them with a grant. If they would wait a little till 
 the Imperial Council had discussed the matter, they 
 
 R
 
 242 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 would learn the amount of the grant and its condi- 
 tions. They have been waiting ever since. 
 
 It is of no use attempting to set up any edu- 
 cational establishment by private initiative. The 
 project is always favourably entertained by the autho- 
 rities, but is invariably shelved. If the promoters 
 grow importunate, they receive a despatch full of 
 high-flown language, pointing out to them how in- 
 expedient it is to do things by halves. Their original 
 scheme was either too small, and needed enlarging 
 for the public good, or too extravagant, and required 
 cutting down. In any case the Czar has it under his 
 august consideration, &c. 
 
 Count Tolstoi is not responsible for these circum- 
 locutory proceedings, but he has no power against 
 the clerks in his department. He himself feels a 
 scholar's enthusiasm for new plans, and has drawn 
 up an admirably comprehensive project of national 
 education, which has been ' approved in principle ' by 
 the Emperor, and is only awaiting the good pleasure 
 of the Tschinn. Meanwhile the plan of approving 
 great schemes in principle has the advantage of lead- 
 ing foreigners to think that the Russian Government 
 is always going to begin a good many noble things 
 next New Year's Day. 
 
 The empire is divided for academical purposes into
 
 Schools. 243 
 
 ten scholastic circuits — St. Petersburg, Moscow, Dorpat, 
 Kiew, Warsaw, Kasan, Kharkov, Wilna, Odessa, and 
 the Caucasus. Each of these is presided over by a 
 curator, who is chosen less for his learning than for 
 his urbanity as a courtier. In theory he is omnipo- 
 tent ; in practice he docs nothing without the advice 
 of his Academical Council — a body of six members, 
 two of whom are retired professors, three (generally) 
 military officers, and one a police official. These 
 people settle what books are to be used in the schools, 
 grant professorial diplomas, and act as a court of 
 appeal in questions of academical discipline. All the 
 educational funds pass through their hands; and a 
 good share of them remains there. 
 
 If a foreigner desire leave to teach in a Russian 
 school he must apply to this council, who, after tap- 
 ping a few fees from him, cause him to be examined 
 as to his knowledge of history. Now, Russian history 
 sets forth that Napoleon I. was defeated entirely by 
 the Czar's generals (no mention is made of the winter 
 of 1812 which froze the Grand Army), and that 
 Waterloo was a Russian victory, Wellington being a 
 servant of the European coalition of which Alexander 
 I. was chief. If a foreigner be ignorant of all this, he 
 is requested to learn it before he can get his diploma; 
 as to natives, having been instructed in these legends 
 
 R 2
 
 244 T^^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 from their youth, they can gabble them fluently, 
 and do. 
 
 There are nine grades in the professorate. The 
 first, which confers the title of College Councillor, 
 ranks with colonel, and belongs to the sixth degree in 
 the Tschinn ; the lowest, that of College Registrar, be- 
 longs to the fourteenth ; below these are school ushers, 
 or apparitors, who do not count as tschinovniks. 
 
 Each grade of the professorate has allotted to it a 
 curriculum of studies, and the lecturer must not trench 
 on subjects which appertain to a higher grade. Not 
 very long ago a master at the Lycee Richelieu of 
 Odessa got into disgrace because in his lessons on 
 Roman history he had expatiated upon the political 
 results bequeathed to modern societies by the domi- 
 nation of Rome. He was told that these results were 
 no business of his. How could scholastic order be 
 maintained if a lower-form master imbued the minds 
 of his pupils with views at variance with those which 
 would be taught them by superior masters in the 
 upper forms "^ 
 
 The Russian professor must be humble. If he be 
 set to teach the first book of Euclid, he must be wary 
 of showing that he knows anything about conic sec- 
 tions. Lest he should forget this, he is made to wear 
 a uniform, and has only to glance at the breadth of
 
 Schools. 245 
 
 the silver palm-branch on the sleeve of his black tunic 
 to remember what things he must teach and what 
 avoid. Not till he can sport the gold lace of councillor- 
 ship may he speak out all he knows, and by that time 
 he will probably have learned that the politics of 
 ancient Rome are hot ground to tread upon. 
 
 Every city in the Empire has its lyccum, and 
 every town its grammar-school. In the lyceums 
 French and German are taught ; in the grammar- 
 schools German sometimes, but not always. English 
 can only be learned at St. Petersburg, Moscow, and 
 Odessa, except by private tuition. The charges for 
 maintaining a boy as a boarder vary from ^^40 to 
 ;^I50, and at the aristocratic military school of 
 St. Petersburg extras generally bring the sum up to 
 ;^25o. These rates are not higher than those at Eton, 
 but the style of living cannot compare with that of 
 English public schools. 
 
 Russian boys sleep in dormitories ; and it is only 
 within the last fifteen years that they have been 
 allowed bedding. Formerly they curled themselves 
 up in rugs and lay down on wooden cots. Possibly 
 this practice still prevails in some of the inland schools. 
 Their fare is the eternal cabbage soup, with beef; and 
 tea, with bread but no butter. They wear a uniform 
 — a tunic in summer, and in winter a caftan, like an
 
 246 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ulster coat, with the number of their class embroi- 
 dered on the collar. Their heads are cropped close, 
 and they walk upright as ramrods ; for the most 
 thorough part of their education consists in drill. They 
 are usually quiet boys, very soft-spoken, and not much 
 addicted to romping — having no national game be- 
 that of leap-frog, which they play in a large empty 
 room warmed like a hot-house. They spend their 
 pocket-money in cigarettes and in sweetened rum to 
 put into their tea. These delicacies are forbidden, 
 but can always be had of the school porter for a little 
 overcharge. 
 
 There is no corporal punishment nominally, since 
 the present Czar abolished the birch by a special 
 ukase ; but discipline could scarcely be maintained 
 among Russians without cuffing, so the professor cuffs 
 his scholars and they cuff one another with national 
 heartiness. 
 
 When a member of the Tschinn dies without 
 leaving sufficient to educate his children, these are 
 often sent to a public school and afterwards to the 
 university for nothing ; but this grace depends much 
 on the deceased father's good conduct. Foundation 
 scholarships are also conferred upon the sons of living 
 tschinovniks as a reward for their father's zeal in the 
 public service.
 
 Schools. 247 
 
 The recipients of these charities are required to 
 enter the Crown service, and mostly furnish subalterns 
 for the army, or else they go into the Church. The 
 professors push them on more than the other boys ; 
 for their attainments have to be specially reported to 
 the district governors, and arc particularly inquired 
 into by the curator's delegates, who visit the schools 
 once a year to hold examinations. If a foundation- 
 boy distinguish himself conspicuously, he sometimes 
 receives a commission in one of the regiments of 
 Guards, and along with it a yearly allowance from the 
 Czar. Most of the adjutants and quarter-masters in 
 the Guards are former charity-boys, and it may be as 
 well to state that they soon enrich themselves in these 
 functions. 
 
 There are few village schools in Russia, and such 
 as there are have sprung from the benevolence of 
 good-natured landowners, and arc little approved by 
 the authorities. However, if a landowner chooses to 
 start a school the Government does not prevent him, 
 and contents itself with providing a teacher thoroughly 
 orthodox and ignorant. 
 
 In the Mirs it is very rare to find a mujick who 
 can read, and even the mayor has to depend on the 
 pope for the keeping of his accounts. A movement 
 was started a year or two ago for instituting a staff of
 
 248 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 perambulating schoolmasters on the Swedish system, 
 who should go about and disseminate the rudiments 
 of knowledge among villages which w^ere too poor to 
 support permanent schools. Government, as usual, 
 lent a ready ear to the scheme, but, having usurped 
 the management of it, has done nothing hitherto but 
 give promises. 
 
 Now and then it will happen that a village pope, 
 taking a fancy to a young mujick, instructs him, and 
 the lad in his turn imparts his knowledge to his 
 fellow-villagers. But if this gets known to the police 
 he may come to trouble for teaching without a 
 diploma. Even the A B C in Russia must be taught 
 in the official way.
 
 Military Academies and Universities. 249 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 MILITARY ACADEMIES AND UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 Everything worth having in Russia is got by favour, 
 and merit, as revealed by literary or scientific acquire- 
 ments, counts for little. Commissions in the army 
 are nominally bestowed after an examination, pre- 
 ceded by a two years' preparation in a military school ; 
 but well-connected youngsters get their first commis- 
 sions at fifteen, and are staff" captains by the time an 
 industrious student has plodded his way to the top of 
 the school and qualified for a sub-lieutenancy. 
 
 As efficiency cannot secure promotion, and as, 
 indeed, a man without connections seldom rises above 
 the rank of captain, few students think it worth while 
 to work. They are safe to get their commissions from 
 the mere fact of having been cadets, and the exami- 
 nation set them is a pure farce. 
 
 Subaltern commissions are so little prized in Russia 
 that cashiered officers from the German and Austrian 
 armies and adventurers from the Danubian provinces
 
 250 The Rttssiaizs of To-day. 
 
 obtain them without difficulty ; they are bestowed as 
 charities upon young men who have never passed 
 through the mihtary academies, and inflicted as 
 punishment upon others who have led scapegrace lives 
 and require taming. 
 
 An ordinary Russian subaltern can be detected 
 from a field-officer at a glance. His clothes, manners, 
 language, and physiognomy all mark a man of coarser 
 clay. He can just read and write, and perhaps 
 speak a few words of German ; but mostly he knows 
 only his own tongue, and finds it difficult to under- 
 stand his colonel, who afiects to speak only French, 
 and the regimental major, who is a Teuton and can 
 stammer but a few words of Russian in the vilest 
 accent. 
 
 The majors, who form the connecting link between 
 the superior officers and the subalterns, and upon 
 whom the heaviest part of regimental work devolves, 
 almost all come from Germany ; so do the professors 
 in the military schools. These persons are \h& fruits 
 sees or failures of the German academies, just as most 
 of the professors in the civil universities are the 
 * wooden-spoonsmen ' of Bonn, Gottingen, and Heidel- 
 berg — gentlemen who passed their student days in 
 drinking more beer than Pierian waters. Unaccom- 
 plished as they are, however, in comparison with the
 
 Military Academies and Universiiies. 251 
 
 high standard of their own country, they are intellectual 
 giants in Russia, and make their pupils feel it. 
 
 Nothing is more ludicrous than to see one of these 
 professors talk clean over the heads of a class of crop- 
 haired boys, who stare at him with open mouths. Their 
 stupidity confounds him, and he flies into a German 
 rage, calling them ' schafskopfen ' and ' dummerjun- 
 gen.' He asks to see their note-books, and, finding 
 only blank pages, wants to know how they can have 
 the presumption to think of leading armies '> At ex- 
 aminations he takes his mission an scrienx, and pro- 
 poses coolly to pluck the whole lot of candidates as 
 an example. The school governor, with a quiet Rus- 
 sian shrug, passes them all, and at this the professor's 
 disgust knows no bounds. But time, and the hope- 
 lessness of attempting reforms, sober his pedagogic 
 zeal, and he consoles himself with his pipe and glass 
 of kwass for abuses which he can gain nothing by 
 assailing. 
 
 One merit these German professors have, for they 
 touch no vodki. Kwass is weaker than their lager 
 beer, and they can tipple quarts of it without being 
 roused from their native stolidity. Then, having 
 much spare time, they can make up for past idleness, 
 and occasionally read so deep that they are enabled 
 to make a good income by coaching private pupils.
 
 252 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 In every academy there is naturally a small nucleus 
 of hard workers. Some are wealthy young m.en who 
 have been well brought up at home, and see the ad- 
 vantages of learning ; others, poor drudges who toil 
 hopelessly out of love for books. The former are 
 sure to find their industry serve them by-and-by ; the 
 latter go to swell the ranks of half-educated malcon- 
 tents with which the army abounds. 
 
 Rich and poor who study in earnest become Nihil- 
 ists, for the philosophy which German tutors teach 
 under the rose conduces to the grossest materialism. 
 It uproots all the illusions of youth. It dams up all 
 those noble impulses which make a young man yearn 
 towards the traditions of the past or urge him to hope 
 in the future. It is a philosophy of sneer, sensualism, 
 and selfishness, which dwarfs intellectual development 
 as surely as it blights the moral character. 
 
 The young Englishman who has been at a univer- 
 sity, and led a studious life there, is sure to look back 
 afterwards with pleasure to the lessons of some tutor 
 who in private intercourse sought to draw his mind 
 towards lofty objects. The young Russian can look 
 back only to the pipe-smoking churl, who scoffed him 
 out of conceit with all the fancies of his boyhood. 
 He learns that the world is a battle-field, in which a 
 man must do the best for himself by hook or crook —
 
 Military Academies and Universities. 253 
 
 that principles are mere conventional rules which a 
 man must outwardly observe to gain the good opinion 
 of his fellows, but which need not bind him in his 
 secret actions ; and that, in sum, politeness and cun- 
 ning are the two cards which when played together 
 win most games here below. 
 
 All this, grafted on to the religiousness which a boy 
 has acquired at home, makes a curious compound ; 
 for the boy can never quite extirpate his belief in 
 genuflexions and the saving power of icons. These 
 linger like the stumps in a piece of woodland which 
 has been roughly cleared for building a log-hut, and 
 they crop up through the floor of the crazy structure 
 with an odd effect. The Russian remains superstitious 
 while professing to be a sceptic. He denies the Deity, 
 but is trammelled by a religion of omens ten times 
 more tormenting than the one which he has dis- 
 carded ; for it comes athwart everything he does. He 
 is afraid to wear an opal ; he grows pale at the sight 
 of a loaf turned wrong side up ; he wears a relic in 
 a locket next his skin ; and is miserable for days 
 if he has caught sight of a new moon over his left 
 shoulder. 
 
 The life of Russian students in the Civil universi- 
 ties is a cross between that of French and German 
 students. At Moscow and Kiew only does the
 
 2 54 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 English plan of boarding within college exist. The 
 college is a kind of barracks in which every student 
 has one room, where he lives as it suits him, taking 
 his meals by himself or in messes which he forms 
 with others. There is no common refectory, except 
 for the theological students, who wear black gowns 
 and follow a semi-monastic rule. The other students 
 wear uniforms with facings according to the career 
 which they are going to enter. The medical students 
 sport grey and green ; the future lawyers black and 
 blue, those who are going into the army black and 
 red ; and these carry swords. 
 
 The most aristocratic university is that of St. 
 Petersburg, where all the members of the Imperial 
 family and all courtiers' sons are entered even when 
 they do not mean to graduate. The chairs of modern 
 languages and Latin literature are ably filled at St. 
 Petersburg ; but Moscow enjoys a greater reputation 
 for law and medicine, Kiew for theology and history, 
 and Odessa for Greek and mathematics. 
 
 The University of Odessa is also the most liberal, 
 and was for a long while the resort of Poles. There 
 is some law now which limits the number of Poles 
 who can be educated here, and when the list is com- 
 plete fresh candidates for matriculation are requested 
 to go elsewhere. This rule applies even to the sons
 
 Military Academies and Universities. 255 
 
 of Polish noblemen who are supposed to be well 
 affected to the Russian Government. 
 
 The discipline of the universities is very lax as 
 regards morals ; for the masters have no authority to 
 ask a student for an account of his time, or to insist 
 that he shall be back within his lodgings by a certain 
 hour of the evening. On the other hand, as students 
 are much addicted to forming secret political clubs, 
 either with a view to conspiracy or for the milder 
 purpose of importing prohibited foreign literature, 
 nothing is more common than to hear that a batch of 
 them has been transferred by Imperial order from 
 one university to another. Thus a St. Petersburg 
 student will be ordered to Kazan or one from Odessa 
 to Wilna. 
 
 These transfers are effected at the cost of their 
 relatives if the students be well off, if not at the ex- 
 pense of Government ; but in either case the trans- 
 ferred student lives under strict supervision during the 
 rest of his academical career. He must reside within 
 lodgings appointed for him, receive no visits from 
 brother students in the same case as himself, and is 
 not allowed to go home during the vacations. 
 
 Sometimes the Government adds to these penal- 
 ties that of debarring an offender from the profession 
 on which he had set his heart, and sending him with
 
 256 The Russians of To-day 
 
 a commission to a regiment quartered in Siberia or 
 the Caucasus. Such examples ought to make students 
 cautious, but they do not ; although it is notorious 
 that since the famous conspiracy of 1824, which was 
 quenched in blood, down to the present time there 
 have been hundreds of university plots not one of 
 which has succeeded. 
 
 There is a simple infatuation in Russian character 
 which pushes young men to think that they can 
 always outwit their rulers. It should be added that 
 many of the so-called conspiracies, which bring such 
 dismal consequences upon their authors, are nothing 
 but childish plots to buy French or English reviews. 
 The student deems it incumbent upon his growing 
 manhood to nourish his mind with the literature 
 which his Government forbids ; and he equally risks 
 condign punishment whether he purchases the Russo- 
 Socialist tracts published in Switzerland, or a London 
 newspaper which happens for the nonce to be under 
 an interdict — say the Pall Mall Gazette.
 
 Political Agents — Ladies. 257 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 POLITICAL AGENTS — LADIES. 
 
 Everybody is aware that in all the capitals of the ci- 
 vilized world there flourishes some Russian lady of 
 rank who helps to lead the fashion and is very 
 successful in making friends. She is not the ambassa- 
 dress, but she is always to be seen at the embassy 
 parties. She is on the right side of forty, and if not 
 always pretty she is invariably fascinating, and speaks 
 to perfection the language of the country where she 
 resides. 
 
 Her husband is in Russia. Little is known of him 
 beyond his name and the fact that he is a nobleman 
 having general's rank. But he is a living though 
 unobtrusive reality ; and his wife sports on gala occa- 
 sions a star and a diamond shoulder-knot, proving 
 her to be a member of the Imperial order for ladies, 
 and one of the Empress's dames d'atoiirs to boot. 
 
 That this lady is fulfilling some mission as a Rus- 
 sian agent none among those who know her much 
 
 S
 
 258 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 doubt ; but the suspicions she excites in no wise 
 hinder her from obtaining social influence ; nor does 
 the part which she plays require any unusual craft, 
 but simply the tact and penetration common to all 
 accomplished women. 
 
 The Princess, as she is called, has plenty of money, 
 goes everywhere, and soon gets to be liked. Then 
 she takes to dispensing hospitality to a very select 
 circle. Politics are freely talked at these little gather- 
 ings where tea is drunk a la Rnsse. There is no 
 mystery as to the hostess's objects. She is the first 
 to declare that it is her chief wish to clear up ' mis- 
 conception ' as to Russia's designs ; but she professes 
 to be doing this from pure patriotism, from humanity, 
 from the desire to see two great countries understand 
 each other, and so forth. 
 
 Thus stated, her aims seem legitimate ; and her 
 admirers would ridicule the notion of her being a paid 
 agent. Perhaps she is not. Her money may come 
 from her own friends, and it is possibly to her hus- 
 band that she addresses those long letters full of con- 
 fidential notes as to social and political doings in the 
 land where she sojourns. She has an eye everywhere 
 and faithfully reports all society scandals before they 
 have burst upon the world. She knows who are the 
 people holding occult influence, and will not mind
 
 Political Agents — Ladies, 259 
 
 patronising a lady of tarnished reputation if any man 
 of status — be he journalist or statesman — can be ' got 
 at' through her. 
 
 Her heart is in her work, just as much as is that of 
 a duly accredited diplomatist. She is a passionate 
 partisan. All her vanity as a woman, her family 
 interests, perhaps her heart's affections, are enlisted 
 in the cause which she represents ; and it would be as 
 absurd to dub her doings with a bad name as it w^ould 
 be to despise the hoary old plenipotentiary who, in 
 discharging his duty, often uses far more duplicity 
 than she without having the excuse of her illusions. 
 
 The game of the feminine agent is always the 
 same. If the Government in the land where she re- 
 sides be well disposed towards Russia, she becomes 
 the intermediary of unofficial civilities between the 
 two Courts. She helps to negotiate a marriage, or 
 prepare an exchange of august visits. She smooths 
 away little grievances that have come from ruffled 
 etiquette ; gets an unpopular ambassador removed, 
 and conveys those secret assurances which form the 
 hidden basis of treaties. 
 
 On the Continent she dispenses decorations ; and 
 procures honorary colonelcies in Russian regiments 
 for Imperial or Serene Highnesses in their teens. 
 She is a letter-carrier for monarchs who think it im-
 
 26o The Russians of To-day. 
 
 prudent to correspond with their foreign relatives by 
 post or through the legations ; and now and then she 
 may be found dipping her active fingers in the pre- 
 liminaries of a loan. 
 
 But these occupations are comparatively unex- 
 citing, and our Princess is much more in her ele- 
 ment when she has to foil the policy of a hostile 
 Government by raising cabals among the Opposition. 
 The intrigues by which the Princess Lieven sought 
 to throw the Duke of Wellington out of office are well 
 known. 
 
 Statesmen in opposition are not always scrupu- 
 lous ; sometimes they can be misled by erroneous 
 information, and sometimes it will happen that an 
 emotional leader of men, full of spleen at having been 
 turned out of place, and full of ardour for a ' new cry,' 
 will let himself be worked into a state of sentimental 
 hysteria, and convulse his country by his antics. The 
 emotional politican, at once vain, ambitious, and rash, 
 offers a fine prey to Russian agents. He is sure to be 
 followed by a number of other emotionalists, just as 
 in revival meetings when some ' saint ' begins to howl 
 all the other saints fall to howling, without well 
 knowing why. The malcontents, the ignorant, the mys- 
 tical shrieking sisterhoods, the sects of semi-religious 
 fanatics who are always ready to give tongue in be-
 
 Political Agents — Ladies. 261 
 
 half of any cry with a mystical twang in it — all these 
 swell the ranks of those who join the standard of 
 Holy Russia. 
 
 The active Princess triumphs : her statements 
 have been accepted as gospel truth. The emotional 
 politican has been softly bantered by her out of his 
 antiquated fears about Russian aggressiveness ; and 
 he is truly so ashamed of having entertained such 
 fears that he and his men go about laughing in their 
 turn at all who have not been cured of the alarmist 
 folly. So does the Princess laugh, but in her sleeve. 
 
 The Russian agent in petticoats has no need to 
 scatter much gold about her. Human credulity, 
 weakness, and vanity give her servants enough for 
 her purposes. In continental cities she always has a 
 troop of journalists at her orders, and she takes care 
 to have them rewarded with bits of ribbon to put in 
 their buttonholes ; but there are some who do not 
 serve her for the mere sake of these insignia. They 
 believe in her, and value her friendship. Some, more 
 tenderly inclined, make love to her. 
 
 In Paris and Vienna she gives large parties, to 
 which the adventurers of the quill think it an honour 
 to be admitted ; while others, more indifferent to 
 social baits, are cajoled by the glamour of a possible 
 Russian alliance, or by that attraction towards Mus-
 
 262 The Russia7is of To-day. 
 
 covite things which is felt by men of despotic minds. 
 Joseph De Maistre has left not a few disciples on the 
 Continent who rejoice in what they call the 'auto- 
 cracy of the North.' Men who loathe mob rule and 
 despise parliaments, newspapers, and all other things 
 modern turn their eyes with a refreshing sensation 
 towards the country where Liberalism is treated like 
 the cattle-plague. 
 
 In France the Legitimists, in Germany and Austria 
 the old Feudalists, are always friends of the Russian 
 agent. She does much by their means ; and, when 
 she cannot succeed in making them shape national 
 policy, she extracts information from them which 
 assists her in thwarting liberal policy. On the Con- 
 tinent liberal sentiment is always anti-Russian ; and 
 this is especially the case in France and Germany. 
 During Louis Philippe's reign, the Princess Lieven, 
 having left England, became the Egeria of M. Guizot, 
 and had not a little to do with the events which threw 
 out M. Thiers in 1840 and kept his Conservative suc- 
 cessor in the Premiership for seven years. Perhaps 
 it was the remembrance of this circumstance that 
 induced M. Thiers to act very cautiously towards 
 Russians after the Franco-German war. To the day 
 of his death the Russian Ambassador, Prince Orloff, 
 and that engaging lady, Princess Lise Troubetzkoi,
 
 Political Agents — Ladies. 26 
 
 o 
 
 were among his most assiduous visitors ; but M. Thiers 
 was a profoundly astute man, who never let himself 
 be caught with chaff. His Russian friends must have 
 been greatly abashed at learning, after his death, that 
 he took a quite anti-Muscovite view of the Eastern 
 Question, and that, had he returned to the presidency, 
 he would have let Europe know it.
 
 264 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 POLITICAL AGENTS — MEN. 
 
 When the bully of a private school wants to pick a 
 quarrel with a boy smaller than himself, but is at a 
 loss for a pretext, he will, maybe, incite his younger 
 brother to go and be saucy to that boy. The younger 
 brother having received a well-deserved cuff on the 
 ears and beginning to blubber, the bully interferes by 
 accusing the other boy of bullying, and thrashes him. 
 This is what has been happening in the East, where 
 Russia, after stirring up Bulgarians and Servians to 
 revolt, has trounced Turkey for defending herself. 
 
 Supposing that Ireland were overrun with Russian 
 emissaries, promoting a Fenian insurrection, distri- 
 buting arms, inciting the populace to refuse paying 
 taxes, to insult English officials, and to murder Pro- 
 testants for the sake of fanning religious passion — 
 how long would English longanimity bear with such 
 a state of things } 
 
 Or change the scene to India, as can be done
 
 Political Agents — Men. 265 
 
 without any stretch of imagination ; for when the 
 Turkish question has been disposed of the Indian 
 question will crop up, and Russia will begin sowing 
 discontent from Calcutta to Ceylon. Will England 
 then be accused of atrocities if, confronted by a new 
 mutiny, she has to quell it as she did that of 1857-8 ? 
 Who are the ' atrocious ' men — those who provoke 
 strife or those who are dragged into it, and, being in, 
 have to fight for bare life ? 
 
 All Englishmen who have relatives or friends in 
 India will soon have to bear in mind that the propor- 
 tion of Europeans to natives in that country is of i to 
 250. The Russians, who will goad the 250 to rise 
 up against the i, will therefore, according to doctrines 
 prevalent in the Bulgarian case, be fulfilling a mission 
 of humanity. The late Sir Henry Havelock might 
 not have thought so, but sons sometimes reason upon 
 principles unknown to their fathers. 
 
 Russian emissaries have been infesting the Danu- 
 bian Principalities for the last sixty years ; and three 
 times — in 1827, 1853-4, and in \'^']6-'j — their machi- 
 nations have brought about a bloody issue to that 
 Eastern Question which but for them would have 
 been no question at all. 
 
 The question is, in fact, simply whether the Rus- 
 sians shall have Constantinople .-' Coveting the pro-
 
 266 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 vinces of Turkey in Europe, but being long baulked 
 of taking them by British vigilance, the Russians 
 adopted the plan of making the Christian districts 
 ungovernable in order that they might have an excuse 
 for saying that the Sultan could not govern them. 
 
 No people were ever so wantonly provoked as the 
 Turks, and no Government ever did so much as the 
 Turkish to allay discontent by heaping concession on 
 concession. In Roumania and Servia the hospodars 
 gradually became independent in all but the name. 
 They had their armies, Parliaments, courts of justice, 
 hereditary succession to the throne ; and the slender 
 lien which bound them to Turkey was rather a pro- 
 tection than a bond. 
 
 In Bulgaria, Roumelia, Albania, and Montenegro 
 the Christians ''were free to own land, trade, and have 
 their own schools and churches. Their clergy was 
 much more independent than that in Russia. The 
 popes were appointed by the Patriarch of Constanti- 
 nople, with whose selections the Porte never inter- 
 fered ; and if the clergy were corrupt, ignorant, and 
 dissolute in their morals, that was no fault of the 
 Turks. 
 
 The only inferiority of which the Christians had 
 to complain was that they were exempted from mi- 
 litary service ; but they would never have discovered
 
 Political Agents — Men. 267 
 
 that this was a grievance if Russian emissaries had 
 not put it into their heads that human felicity con- 
 sists in spending ten years of one's life as a private 
 soldier on a halfpenny a day. 
 
 The French peasant proprietor, who curses the 
 conscription every February, would have thought the 
 lot of the Bulgarian rustic enviable beside his own. 
 The Bulgarian paid few taxes and lived a life of rude 
 plenty, besides getting his liquor and tobacco much 
 cheaper than they are to be had in France. No 
 exciseman troubled him for setting up private distil- 
 leries. If he drove his cows and pigs to market he 
 was not bothered with octroi dues ; and when his 
 father died he inherited his fields without paying a 
 piastre of succession duty. 
 
 A big grievance has been made out of the fact 
 th^t when a Turkish pasha passed on horseback the 
 Bulgarian had to climb off his donkey and salute 
 him ; but the Russian mujick who meets a deputy- 
 provincial governor ducks down on both knees in 
 the mud, and the Bulgarians themselves do homage 
 to their own noblemen in a similar style of their own 
 choice. 
 
 Again, the Bulgarian who refused to pay his 
 small taxes was bastinadoed. Well, the Turks have 
 not yet had time to build model penitentiaries, and,
 
 268 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 even if such institutions had existed, the conveying 
 of gangs of refractory Christians to fill them would 
 have been a costly and roundabout way of dealing 
 with an evil which called for prompter remedies. 
 
 Thanks to Russian instigation, the Bulgarians 
 were always resisting the tax-gatherer ; but the basti- 
 nado was not the immediate, or even inevitable, con- 
 sequence of such resistance. The pasha heard what 
 the man had to say for himself, and if he was in real 
 difficulties he would give him time ; but if the fellow 
 lied — as he mostly did — and pleaded penury when 
 there was every reason to suppose that he had hidden 
 his money underground, he got a whipping, and it 
 served him right. 
 
 The men who were thinskinned were always ready 
 with their money, whereas the sturdier churls, to whom 
 two dozen cuts with a bamboo were no great matter, 
 lived in permanent debt to the Exchequer. You could 
 see them rubbing their backs after their castigation 
 and running off among their women folks to be petted 
 and complimented on their pluck. They had a way 
 of putting their tongues in their cheeks and winking 
 which was refreshing to see. 
 
 If anything, the Mussulman officials were rather 
 too indulgent, in their fear of giving these trouble- 
 some Christians offisnce. Over and over again has a
 
 Political Agents — Men. 269 
 
 pasha been called sharply to task at Constantinople 
 for alleged acts of cruelty which he had never com- 
 mitted, or which had been grossly exaggerated and 
 distorted. The Bulgarians knew that they had the 
 Russian ambassador at their back, and they abused 
 this circumstance to raise a hullaballoo upon the 
 slightest pretexts. 
 
 They are incorrigible liars, who sorely try the 
 temper of any man who has dealings with them. 
 If a strong man collars one of them in anger, the 
 creature shrivels up in his sheepkin and whines till 
 from very pity the other throws him off. But let 
 six Bulgarians meet a Turk unprotected on a dark 
 night, and it will be a bad look-out for that Turk. 
 
 The Christian subjects of Turkey have never raised 
 themselves to dignity or honesty, because their Rus- 
 sian counsellors have fanned their worst passions to 
 convert them into arrant grievance-mongers. Through- 
 out all the Danubian provinces Russian agents were 
 constantly on the tramp, deluding them with fables, 
 flattering them, exciting them, and pretending to pity 
 their hard condition. 
 
 Some came as pedlars or horse-vendors ; others 
 were permanently located in the villages as school- 
 masters, and many popes, who were in Russian pay, 
 joined in the agitation. Hearing from scores of
 
 270 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 mouths that he was an ill-used being, the Bulgarian 
 naturally learned to think so. Though he had every- 
 thing he wanted, he set to dreaming of what other 
 things he should like to have. He was told that 
 when Turkish rule was broken his fields would be 
 worth thrice their present value, he would have four 
 times as many oxen, and fowls more than he could 
 count. 
 
 The Russians said nothing about extra taxes;. 
 but what they said was enough to make the Bulgarian 
 feel that the pasha was his fierce oppressor, whereas 
 the indolent Turkish gentleman protected him against 
 the low-class Turk, who but for this would have eaten 
 him up. 
 
 Long before the Turkish Government had opened 
 its eyes to the fact that it was no use trying to con- 
 ciliate men who would not be conciliated, the low- 
 class Mussulman had discovered this, and he hated 
 the Bulgarian with all his heart. He despised him, 
 too, as being a man less truthful, upright, and tem- 
 perate than himself, and far less courageous. Some- 
 times his intense dislike, exasperated by some wilful 
 insult, found vent in blows ; and then he was bam- 
 booed. Many a Turk has been whipped for molesting 
 a Bulgarian, though admirers of the latter have taken 
 no account of these stripes. 
 
 i
 
 Political Agents — Men. 271 
 
 The truth is the Turkish authorities endeavoured 
 to carry the dish even so long as it was possible. They 
 dispensed justice according to their light ; they kept 
 the antagonistic races from flying at each other's 
 throats ; and it is not at their door that the blame 
 lies if the smouldering fires which they more than 
 once nearly extinguished always blazed out anew, 
 thanks to the cunning, treacherous hirelings who 
 were constantly squirting fresh oil. 
 
 If England should feebly allow the day to come 
 when Hindoos shall treat her officials as the Turks 
 were treated by the Christians of Bulgaria, she will 
 learn what it costs to try and do good to a people who 
 wdll not be coaxed, and who have been urged to look 
 upon kindness as a sign of fear justifying more and 
 more energy in disaffection.
 
 2/2 T/ic Russians of To-day, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ENGLISH COLONISTS IN RUSSIA. 
 
 Russia has always been overrun with foreigners, and 
 until recently Englishmen were encouraged to settle 
 there ; but the English who were most encouraged 
 throve worst, whereas those who were not made par- 
 ticularly welcome generally got on pretty well. 
 
 Adventurers of good address were sure to thrive. 
 If a man had outrun the constable at home or fallen 
 into trouble with the authorities in India, Russia 
 offered a fair field for his energies ; and if he had 
 the good luck to be taken up by some tschinovnik 
 who had been his travelling companion in better days, 
 he could be drafted into the service of the Crown 
 without difficulty. 
 
 British consuls have often been abashed at meet- 
 ing a gorgeous being with a strong Irish brogue who 
 held some such post as deputy-inspector of imports 
 in a sea-coast town. He wore a braided coat and a 
 star, and was known as the Colonel Count O'Toole,
 
 English Colonists in RiLSsia. 
 
 /o 
 
 or O'Rooncy, or McPhunn. A jovial fellow, of 
 course, and a fine thief to boot, who was hand-in- 
 glove with all the smugglers on the seaboard, and 
 paid a rent for his inspectorship to the Russian mag- 
 nate who had procured it for him, by gifts of contra- 
 band cigars and wine. 
 
 He had always a good story to tell of the reasons 
 which had induced him to enter the Russian service, 
 which he would declare, with a wink, to be the finest 
 in the world ; and if the consul countenanced him, he 
 was ready with offers of small services, and tried to 
 instal himself as an official hanger-on of the con- 
 sulate. If the consul gave him a wide berth, he would 
 become troublesome, and go about saying that he had 
 quarrelled with his country for political reasons, and 
 felt only scorn for the flag which symbolized op- 
 pression of Ireland. 
 
 It is from these gentlemen that Russians get their 
 notions about British tyranny in Erin- -notions which 
 find such eloquent expression in the articles of the 
 Golos favouring Home Rule. 
 
 That same Golos, by the by, published two years 
 ago as a serial the account of the Irish Rebellion of 
 1795, modernizing it, however, so as to make it 
 appear as though all its sanguinary incidents dated 
 no further back than the period of the Fenian non- 
 
 T
 
 2 74 1^^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 sense in 1867-8. The achievements of Emmett and 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald were laid to the credit of 
 Barrett, who was hanged at Newgate for the Clerken- 
 well explosion, of Allen, Larkin, Gould, and other 
 such heroes ; and all this was so cleverly done as to 
 indicate that a genuine Irish hand must have revised 
 the proof-sheets — if no more. 
 
 The English university passman who has gone out 
 to Russia as a tutor, married there, and obtained a 
 civil service appointment, is another pretty common 
 type ; so is his sister, the governess, who likewise 
 marries and becomes a convert to the Greek faith, 
 after a study of its dogmas, which seem to her ' so 
 like our Church of England/ 
 
 In many princely houses there is an English go- 
 verness, and the members of the Imperial family have 
 generally an English lectrice attached to their house- 
 hold. The Empress, who prefers British literature to 
 French, has always had an English lady to read 
 novels to her; and it must be owned that the po- 
 sition of Englishwomen engaged in Russia to read 
 or teach is one of comfort and dignity. They are 
 handsomely paid and courteously treated ; but, if any 
 lady reading this should think the Czar's empire just 
 the place for her, she must be warned to stand on 
 her guard against matrimonial deceptions.
 
 English Colonists in Russia. 275 
 
 Russians are swift to propose marriage, especially 
 when bored inside their country houses ; but a tschi- 
 novnik who marries without permission of the marshal 
 of the nobility in his province sees his wife tabooed, 
 and it is the custom of the marshals always to refuse 
 permissions for mesalliances. So the young English 
 wife who had hoped to sail into society on the arm of 
 a prince, finds to her disgust that every door is closed 
 against her ; and should her husband grow weary of 
 her, he soon offers her a lump sum to consent to a 
 divorce and go home. If she refuses she stands a 
 chance of being divorced without the lump sum. 
 
 There are few girls' schools in Russia ; and if a 
 governess, losing her situation and yet washing to 
 remain in the country, hunts for employment in the 
 big cities, she will only be allowed to receive pupils at 
 her house after passing an examination in attain- 
 ments and orthodoxy, which requires money. She 
 will equally have to abjure her religion if she seeks 
 to open a shop or a boarding house for officers, as 
 some do. 
 
 Talking of orthodoxy reminds us of a couple of 
 very pale and earnest young English curates whom 
 we once discovered officiating in the Russian church 
 of a town on the Black Sea. They had come out 
 there under the common impression that the Russian 
 
 T 2
 
 276 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 ritual and their own were akin, and because ' they 
 wished to learn church Greek,' said they ; and they 
 were unable to get home, in the first place because 
 they had no money, and in the next because they had 
 signed a year's engagement with the local pope, 
 negotiated through a Jew bagman. It turned out 
 upon inquiry that this pope had been showing them 
 off for money, and that the archimandrite of the 
 diocese had been trumpeting their alleged conversion 
 as an important event in politics. The two converts 
 were well pleased, to be repatriated at their consul's 
 expense, and their experience of Russian Ritualism 
 seems to have been, on the whole, bewildering. 
 
 English engineers, vendors of agricultural ma- 
 chinery, and tea and leather merchants were to be 
 found in fair numbers about Russia some years ago ; 
 none of these could succeed until they had got imbued 
 with the Muscovite way of doing business, by bribes 
 and overreaching. There was no chance for the man 
 who would not let himself be robbed of twopence in 
 order to obtain five pounds. 
 
 An unlucky merchant one day came to a British 
 consul and complained bitterly that he had received 
 a consignment of pickles from England and that the 
 custom house officials wanted to open all his jars and
 
 English Colonists in Rnssia. 277 
 
 bottles and turn out their contents to see if they 
 contained any prohibited literature. 
 
 The consul hinted at the manners of the country 
 in respect of douceurs ; but the merchant answered 
 that he had never submitted to extortion and never 
 would ; so all his pickles were turned out, the officials 
 politely telling him that since M, Herzen's subversive 
 Kolokol had penetrated into Russia inside sardine- 
 boxes, they were obliged to be particular. In an 
 amusing novel by Mr. Sutherland-Edwards, 'The 
 Governor's Daughter,' in which the darkest features 
 of Russian domination in Poland are faithfully and 
 yet humorously portrayed, may be found a droll 
 account of this device for introducing seditious lite- 
 rature into Russia inside sardine boxes. 
 
 As to engineers, many who have gone out to 
 Russia on the faith of brilliant contracts have had to 
 serve a rough apprenticeship till they discovered that 
 contracts are of no avail without fees. As these fees 
 would take 50 per cent, off a salary, the question soon 
 presents itself to the engineer in this shape : ' Go 
 home ; or stop, pay and recoup myself as I can } ' 
 Most stop and recoup themselves by doing scamped 
 work, which explains why Russia has scarcely a 
 single bridge, canal, or line of rail but swallowed up
 
 278 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 twice its original cost in repairs within ten years of its 
 inauguration. 
 
 Not very long ago an English merchant, who 
 had lately arrived in Odessa, walked into the post- 
 office to ask for his letters, and found a postman in 
 the act of emptying a bag on to the table in the 
 public room. A well-dressed man, who was standing 
 by, began instantly selecting some of the bulkiest 
 parcels, and fingering them, evidently with a view 
 to feeling whether there was any money inside. The 
 merchant happened to see a parcel addressed to 
 himself thus dealt with, and recovered it, not without 
 protesting. The well-dressed man, who was a thief, 
 apologized ; but the merchant learned the same day 
 that if he wished to insure his letters for the future he 
 must pay a post-office clerk on purpose to look after 
 them, and have them delivered at his office. These 
 early lessons in Russian customs soon bear their fruits 
 in the mind of a foreigner who wants to get on. 
 
 Russia is no place for Englishmen at this moment, 
 for they would be exposed to continual insults. The 
 Muscovite, who can be so mellifluous when he pleases, 
 reveals his Tartar attributes very quickly when he 
 thinks to curry favour with his Government by treating 
 a foreigner with contumely. 
 
 At this time it is known all over Russia that the
 
 English Colonists in Russia. 279 
 
 English are in bad odour, and that nothing would be 
 risked by snubbing them. So the English mercantile 
 community are not precisely enjoying a good time of 
 it, and those who can get on with merely an extra 
 amount of bribing, and without having to show their 
 fists now and then, may esteem themselves lucky. 
 
 Fists are always a remedy against the insolence of 
 Russians of the lower class, and even against petty 
 officials, who think that a man who has the pluck to 
 beat them must of needs be a somebody. But 
 against the slights of higher people there is nothing 
 but to grin and bear it, unless a man would resort to 
 duels, in which he would soon be worsted, for the 
 Russians cultivate duelling arts better than the Eng- 
 lish. A gentlemanly Muscovite, who knows little else, 
 can generally slash a face with a sabre a l allcmande, 
 or pink with a foil in the last approved style, that he 
 has learned from a pupil of Pons or Gatechair.
 
 2 8o The Russians of To-day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 FRENCHMEN IN RUSSIA. 
 
 It was a Russian who said that France is the only- 
 country that would be seriously missed off the globe 
 if an earthquake were to swallow it up. Paris is the 
 Russian's paradise, and French people are his minis- 
 tering angels. He employs them as cooks, hair- 
 dressers, dancing-masters, professors in fencing and 
 riding— to say nothing of actors and actresses. 
 
 Since the Franco-German war the boyards who 
 belong to the Czarewitch's party, which is anti-Ger- 
 man, affect more than ever to surround themselves 
 with French servants, to read French books, and to 
 extol French generals at the expense of German. 
 
 A favourite piece of impertinence practised by 
 divers distinguished ladies consists in feigning a total 
 ignorance of the German language in the presence of 
 persons whom this ignorance must especially irritate 
 — Teuton tschinovniks, Prussian attaches, and serene 
 highnesses on their travels.
 
 Frenchmen in Rtissia. 281 
 
 At the theatre, again, Parisian troupes are patro- 
 nized with a liberality never shown to the strolling 
 companies engaged at Berlin, and any allusion made 
 on the stage as to the glories of France is sure to be 
 hailed with prolonged applause. Last year the Ger- 
 man ambassador was so ill-advised as to protest against 
 a patriotic ' gag ' introduced by a songstress in one of 
 Lecocq's operettas. The manager forbade the gag, 
 but at the next performance three of the actresses ap- 
 peared in costumes which seen side by side formed 
 the tricolour — one being red, the other white, and the 
 third blue. As soon as the audience detected this 
 device there arose a prolonged acclamation, in which 
 the applause of the Czarewitch was especially noticed ; 
 and thus proof was given that the alliance of the two 
 Emperors is not one which the popular opinion of St. 
 Petersburg ratifies. 
 
 However, for all the kindness which French people 
 receive in Russia they do not like the Russians. The 
 actress who returns to Paris loaded with diamonds and 
 furs presented to her by prodigal admirers laughs at 
 the veneer of good manners which covers the deep 
 grain of Muscovite coarseness ; and artists who are 
 employed to decorate the palaces of the nobility soon 
 get tired of the eternal pose which does duty among 
 the boyards for grandeur.
 
 282 The RtLssians of To-day. 
 
 There is all the difference between a French grand 
 seigneur and a Russian prince that there is between a 
 good picture and cheap copy of the same in loud 
 colours ; and although a French Legitimist nobleman 
 often pretends to admire the Russian system of 
 government, he never cares to live long in Russia, 
 for he is shocked at eveiy moment by that absence 
 of mesiire in manners which in France is accounted 
 the criterion of good breeding. Russians who fre- 
 quent the gambling-tables of Monaco or the Cercle 
 de la Mediterranee at Nice flatter themselves that 
 they produce a fine impression by ostentatiously 
 squandering immense sums, but even French news- 
 paper reporters have ceased to be electrified by such 
 performances. An Englishman or an American will 
 lose twice as much money without a tenth of the 
 fuss. 
 
 The French Liberal who admires Russia has yet 
 to be found. The bitterest satirists of Russia, from 
 M. de Custine downwards, have been Frenchmen ; 
 and there is not a Frenchman of any brains, among 
 the many who are employed in the country, but 
 expresses his opinion of the Empire and its people 
 after a few months' sojourn there in terms of con- 
 tempt. 
 
 How can it be otherwise, considering how straight
 
 Frenchmen in Russia. 283 
 
 is a Frenchman's logic, how deep his hatred of injus- 
 tice, brutality, and hypocrisy ? Perhaps a brilliant 
 pupil of the Parisian Ecolc Normale has gone out to 
 Russia as tutor to the sons of a wealthy boyard 
 holding high rank in the Tschinn. He proceeds to a 
 fine palace on an estate within a day's journey of the 
 capital, and the first month of his stay there is fraught 
 with all sorts of pleasant hospitalities. His hosts 
 regale him with a bear-hunt and make him a present 
 of bruin's skin. He has a luxurious apartment. 
 Two or three servants are told off to attend him. He 
 is informed that the horses, sledges, guns, and dogs 
 of the establishment are all at his disposal, and his 
 employers treat him on a footing of perfect equality. 
 
 But what pleases the tutor more than this is the 
 philanthropic and progressive spirit of the Russian 
 prince, who discusses questions of social and political 
 economy with the grace of a courtier and the spirit 
 of a sage. He knows what his country wants, and is 
 full of noble schemes for improving the condition of 
 his tenantry. He means to build some model cot- 
 tages and a village school. He will not be content 
 until he has uprooted superstition from his estates, 
 and converted all his dependants into thinking crea- 
 tures ; he relies upon his young friend to help him in 
 this good work, and so forth, until the inexperienced
 
 284 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 Normalian reflects that he has truly fallen upon a 
 jewel of a prince. 
 
 But months pass and nothing comes of the gran- 
 dee's noble schemes. The tenantry are steeped in 
 dirt, ignorance, and drink ; the serv^ants of the house- 
 hold cringe like slaves, and when the winter season 
 arrives, and the prince betakes himself to St. Peters- 
 burg, leaving the tutor and his young charges in the 
 country house, the disgusted Frenchman finds that he 
 can scarcely get his orders obeyed for the constant 
 tipsiness of the domestics. Reflecting that Rome 
 was not built in a day, he concludes that it may 
 require time to erect model cottages and a school ; 
 but he ends by discovering that the time of the 
 boyard is taken up with ecarte and backstairs in- 
 trigues having for their object the obtaining of some 
 ornamental Court appointments ; while Madame la 
 Princesse, whose health is delicate, is touring it in 
 France with a retinue of servants and a Wallachian 
 count, half courier, half cavalier-servente. 
 
 Sometimes the prince swoops down on his estate 
 to kiss his children and levy supplies from his agent, 
 and each of these visits is followed by prolonged 
 lamentations on the part of the tenantry, who have 
 been shorn to the quick. The tutor, meanwhile, finds 
 that his employer has not only grown cool on the sub-
 
 Frenchmen in Rtissia. 285 
 
 ject of social improvement, but shows a disposition to 
 yawn when the topic is mentioned. The exactions of 
 some French actress are what now chiefly concern his 
 princely mind ; and, taking the tutor as a confidant of 
 his amourette, he asks him kindly to compose a few 
 gallant sonnets, which shall be forwarded to the charmer 
 inside bouquets. 
 
 Thus years roll on until one day it inevitably hap- 
 pens that prince and princess, having run through 
 more money than they can afford, announce their 
 intention of coming to reside for a year or two on 
 their estate in order to recruit both their health and 
 their finances. They arrive soon afterwards, they and 
 their servants, in a caravan of muddy landaus poorly 
 harnessed. The prince has grown bald, and his hands 
 shake as in palsy, from too much champagne. The 
 princess has grown fat and querulous ; there are 
 crows' feet round her eyes, and the flush of stimulants 
 on her puffy cheeks is but half concealed by a thick 
 layer of violet powder. 
 
 Then the French tutor has a fine time of it, for the 
 prince tries to convert him into a boon companion, 
 while the princess expects him to read French novels 
 to her. If the tutor, taking his educational labours an 
 scrietix, declines these frivolous occupations, his em- 
 ployers soon vote him a bore, and get rid of him by
 
 2 86 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 showing a supercilious impertinence which his French 
 temper will not brook. If, on the contrary, being a 
 man of convivial mood, he accepts his new lot, he will 
 possibly be drawn into playing ecarte with the prince 
 of an evening, after a champagne dinner, and will lose 
 two or three years' salary in a few evenings. 
 
 A Russian has no tact, and thinks nothing of 
 winning money from a person in his own employment. 
 A French artist who had gone out to paint the palace 
 of a boyard was once cleaned out of the price of his 
 labours by his affable host, who chanced to have been 
 unlucky with cards at the Cercle des Anglais. How- 
 ever, if a tutor be so unfortunate as to gamble away 
 his earnings, he will at least not lose board and 
 lodging, for his employer will keep him to his life's 
 end if only he be amusing. Of course, he will have to 
 drop all reference to model cottages ; for when once a 
 boyard has aired his philanthropic fads for the enter- 
 tainment of a newcome foreigner, there is an end of 
 the matter ; and he is as incapable of a second per- 
 formance as fireworks once exploded. 
 
 Among the minor hardships which Frenchmen 
 have to endure in Russia is that of stomaching the 
 national cookery. At dinner parties you are ushered 
 into a room where a table stands spread with caviare, 
 ham, salt fish, cheese and liqueurs. Many take this
 
 Frenchmen in Russia. 287 
 
 for the dinner itself, and wonder why chairs are not 
 provided. M. de Molinari, editor of the Journal dcs 
 Dc'bats, relates that on his first journey to Russia he 
 fell into a mistake of this sort and astonished his hosts 
 by eating a slice of smoked salmon, twelve sardines, 
 and a hunk of gruyere. When he had done, and was 
 reflecting what a queer dinner he had -made, he dis- 
 covered that this was only a preface, for the door was 
 flung open and he beheld another chamber with a 
 splendid table laid out a la francaise. 
 
 In ordinary Russian houses you must not expect 
 French dishes. As a treat you will be served with 
 batiuinia, a cold fish soup, made with small beer, cider, 
 and salt cucumbers. The next dish will be some 
 frozen turbot from Lake Peipus or the Volga, stewed 
 in a sainnure of rancid herrings with vinegar. Mutton 
 is not eaten in the North, for it tastes of tallow, but 
 hashed veal mixed with cloves and cinnamon passes 
 for a dainty ; and so does braised beef garnished with 
 pickled cherries or apples. One must see a French- 
 man munching a pickled apple to understand what 
 consternation is. By and by a salad is brought in — 
 potatoes, chicory, dandelion, and radishes mixed up 
 with anchovies, vinegar, and brown sugar. Here the 
 polite Frenchman's brow breaks out into moisture ; 
 but he revives at the sight of a sponge cake steeped
 
 288 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 in rum, which has at least the merit of being so pung- 
 ent as to take away the taste of all the previous 
 courses. As soon as the cloth is removed cigarettes 
 are brought in with tea and lemons, instead of cream, 
 and the Russian host begins to puff away until what 
 with the fumes of tobacco, the heat of the stove, and 
 the indigestion which the dinner has produced, the 
 guest's head begins to turn. Then the host says com- 
 passionately, ' Try a little vodki.'
 
 Diplomatists. 289 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 DIPLOMATISTS. 
 
 Russian diplomatists have long enjoyed the repu- 
 tation which Epimenides gave to the Cretans — Kp?)Tfy 
 ail ■\Jrsv(TTai ; but it must be considered that if they 
 had not so constantly practised Telleyrand's maxim 
 about speech being given to man for the purpose of 
 disguising thought, their country would never have 
 thriven as it has. 
 
 Russia has gone on expanding and encroaching b}- 
 blinding and deceiving other nations ; and we sa)- 
 nations advisedly, for it is only the masses who have 
 been deceived, not the statesmen, who have never 
 rated Russian good faith above its value. But if a 
 statesman having suspicions cannot get his country- 
 men to share them, his perspicacity serves little ; so it 
 has been the aim of Russian diplomatists to mislead 
 peoples rather than the men who ruled them. 
 
 If they could hoax a statesman, so much the 
 better — they bagged him, so to say, and made him 
 
 U
 
 290 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 comfortable ; but in constitutional countries their object 
 has always been the Parliament ; and in States where 
 the popular voice counts for little, the Court. 
 
 Russian diplomatists are always clever men who 
 have served an apprenticeship in their craft by plotting 
 in those boudoir cabals which in St. Petersburg are 
 the mainsprings of home politics. No dullard could 
 carry off an important post amid the fierce competi- 
 tions which these cabals excite ; and this may lead us 
 to remark, by the way, that there is no system of 
 government which brings talent to the front so well as 
 a thorough-paced despotism. 
 
 When a Russian secures an ambassadorship, it 
 does not mean merely that he is in the good books of 
 Prince Gortschakoff ; it signifies that he has a strong 
 official party at his back, and leaves behind him a 
 number of persons, including ladies, who will sing his 
 praises under all circumstances. If he falls it is be- 
 cause his cabal has ceased to be powerful ; but so long 
 as he holds his post he enjoys an independence of 
 action unknown to the diplomatists of other countries. 
 
 And he possesses two other points of superiority : 
 first, his unlimited command of secret-service money ; 
 and, secondly, his total irresponsibility as regards pub- 
 lic opinion in his own country. The lie that would 
 damn an English plenipotentiary if clearly brought
 
 Diplomatists. 291 
 
 home to him is accounted no disgrace to a Russian in 
 his own land. Ninety-nine-hundredths of the people 
 never hear of it, and the few who do are the polite 
 classes, who hold that fibbing is a part of the science 
 of life. As for the foreigners to whom the untruth 
 has been told, they may console themselves by reflect- 
 ing that they had never believed it, or if they had let 
 themselves be duped, they deem it prudent not to 
 murmur, feeling, 'honteux comme un renard qu'une 
 poule aurait pris.' 
 
 The importance of the different embassies varies 
 according to circumstances, and one capital may 
 sometimes require an astuter man than another ; but 
 Russia seldom changes her envoys from post to post, 
 each Ambassador being accounted specially fitted for 
 the country to which he is accredited. 
 
 Baron Brunnow, who so long filled the embassy in 
 London, would not have shone in Paris, where his 
 ponderous placidity and smileless hauteur would have 
 passed for arrogance. He was a genial man after the 
 English fashion, and was seen at his best when talking 
 to some Tory nobleman about agriculture and sports 
 which he understood and loved. He spoke English 
 faultlessly, and liked English books, customs, and 
 dinners. He could make an after-dinner speech, pick 
 out a good horse among the Derby favourites and back 
 
 u 2
 
 292 The Rtissians of To-day. 
 
 him ; and few appraised so shrewdly as he the merits 
 of the rising- men in Parliament. 
 
 But he twice made a capital mistake in discrimi- 
 nation — the first time when he thought the days of 
 England's warring had entirely ceased, which mistake 
 led to the Crimean War ; the second mistake, which 
 pervaded all his conduct to the time of his retirement, 
 was to think that by continually fomenting British 
 jealousies as to French ambition he could draw Eng- 
 land and Russia along with Austria into a concert for 
 the partition of the Turkish Empire. Baron Brun- 
 now's hobby was a Tory England allied to Russia 
 against France, which was his bugbear. 
 
 His successor. Count SchouvalofF, is a man of 
 fewer illusions, and endowed with much less sym- 
 pathy with things English, though he, too, has 
 manners which Englishmen like. A former general 
 of cavalry, who aftenvards filled the office of Minister 
 of Police, he has that quiet urbanity which nothing 
 can ruffle and that patience in listening (seeming 
 to agree with the speaker all the while) which is a 
 great art. 
 
 Painfully polite with small folk, from whom he 
 has nothing to hope ; cheery when it is his business 
 to look pleasant, and earnestly persuasive when he 
 has • assurances ' to give, he is perhaps of all diplo-
 
 Diplomatists. 293 
 
 matiststhc best fashioned for 'talking over' politicians 
 of shallow wit. Now and then the bluntness of the 
 cavalry officer breaks out in his utterances and he 
 strokes his thick moustache with a scowl. But he 
 masters himself in a moment. It must be a very stupid, 
 shuffling minister who provokes him to grimace in 
 this way ; and he seems to reflect on second thoughts 
 that it is not worth his while to be angry with the 
 creature. Count Schouvaloff has a peculiar mordant 
 wit which he uses upon occasions ; and his contempt 
 for popular institutions, journalists, and Liberal poli- 
 ticians is so complete that it verges upon indulgence. 
 Think of what must be felt towards Liberals by a 
 former Minister of Police — a man who has trans- 
 ported more of these gentlemen to Siberia than would 
 fill Westminster Hall and Trafalgar Square too ! 
 
 A very different person is Prince Orloff, the Am- 
 bassador to Paris, who is French to his finger-tips, and 
 uses no flattery when he tells Frenchmen that theirs 
 is the country of the globe which he most esteems. A 
 simpering, emotional statesman, who shed tears publicly 
 at M. Thiers's funeral ; a lover of art, who crowds his 
 drawing-rooms with artists and authors ; a sceptic, 
 who assiduously attends the debates at Versailles and 
 looks as if he keenly enjoyed himself every time he 
 sees the Republicans play a bout against the Church,
 
 294 '^^^^ Russians of To-day. 
 
 monarchism, or militaryism — Prince Orloff has made 
 more friends for himself than for his country. 
 
 As a diplomatist, indeed, he has been a failure, for 
 all his attempts to allay French suspiciousness of 
 Russian aggression have failed. Even M. Thiers, 
 whom the Prince used affectionately to call 'cher 
 maitre,' remembered very well how Russia had 
 abetted Germany in 1 870 ; and he was aware that 
 in present times the voice of the Prince d'Oubril is 
 more potent in Russian councils than those of the 
 Orloff family. Moreover, it is Princess Lise Trou- 
 betzkoi who is the real Ambassador to Paris. This 
 small, dainty lady, with the sharp grey eyes and 
 chirping laugh, is more trusted than Prince Orloff. It 
 is she who holds Gortschakoff's carte-blanche to make 
 terms with French statesmen, and who for some 
 time past has been trying her blandishments on 
 the ' coming man ' of France — M. Gambetta. But 
 M. Gambetta will not be caught. 
 
 Prince d'Oubril is the Russian Ambassador to 
 Berlin — a diplomatist who looks cut out of a book of 
 military tailoring patterns, so very stiff and Prussian 
 is he. He and his first secretary, Count E. von Kotze • 
 bue, are the two chief links in the family alliance be- 
 tween the Romanoffs and Hohenzollerns. 
 
 Their mission seems to be to persuade the Emperor
 
 Diplomatists. 295 
 
 William that the Russian Court is infatuated about 
 everything German. 
 
 Prince d'Oubril never misses a review or a military- 
 levee. Holding an honorary lieutenant-colonelcy in 
 some Prussian regiment, he wears its uniform in 
 preference to his own. He speaks German to his 
 attaches and servants ; he gives dinners on all the 
 Prussian patriotic anniversaries, and clothes his re- 
 sidence with bunting on all the kaiserliche-konigliche 
 birthdays. He devours beer-soup and potatoes stewed 
 with prunes to prove that his palate as well as his 
 heart is German. 
 
 Whether Prince Bismarck likes this so Prussian 
 Russian it is difficult to say ; but, an}'how, Prince 
 d'Oubril exercises his influence through other chan- 
 nels than the Chancellor's ; he is less of an ambassador 
 than a confidant, who acts as intermediary for the 
 relations of two reigning houses whose friendship is in- 
 dependent of political considerations. He dines with 
 Kaiser Wilhelm on days when no other diplomatists 
 are invited ; and at Court parties he may be seen 
 conversing with his Majesty for half-hours at a time. 
 
 His authority is so well established that it over- 
 shadows that of Count Novikofif, who is ambassador 
 to Vienna, and has had for several years past a most 
 difficult part to play. The Hapsburgs used once to
 
 296 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 be even greater allies of the Russian Imperial family 
 than the Hohenzollerns, but the Crimean War upset 
 the good understanding ; and now, since the Sadowa 
 campaign, the Emperor Francis Joseph has been fain 
 to perceive that every friendly demonstration from 
 Alexander to William and vice versa can bode no 
 good to himself. 
 
 M. Novikoff, who is known to be a Prussophobian, 
 or who at least affects so to be, has doubtless spent 
 a good deal of his time in explaining privately to 
 Count Andrassy that the Russo-Prussian alliance is 
 only a make-believe, and that Alexander II. would 
 gladly recall the days when Francis Joseph's bust in 
 marble was the sole ornament of Nicholas's study. But 
 whether he will succeed in converting a Hungarian 
 nobleman who saw his country invaded by Russian 
 troops in 1S48, and who was himself sentenced to be 
 hanged as a rebel in that year, remains to be seen. 
 
 The drawback to Russian diplomacy is that all 
 its exponents seem to be pulling different ways, so 
 that if a statesman be inclined to credit what one 
 Ambassador says, he soon learns that another in a 
 neighbouring Court is insinuating just the contrary, 
 and swearing to it too. Even so must the Cretans 
 have transacted business in the days when they had 
 ambassadors.
 
 The Future of To-day. 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE FUTURE OF TO-DAY. 
 
 If anybody had inquired two years ago as to the 
 future of Russia, the answer he would have received 
 would have been very different from the one that 
 would be vouchsafed to him now. Russia seemed then 
 to be hurrying towards her fall. 
 
 Embroiled in financial difficulties, distracted by 
 intestine plots, plagued with an administrative cor- 
 ruption so deep that its effects were felt under the 
 form of a festering discontent in all classes, it was 
 evident that a fierce crisis was approaching, and that 
 the first phase of it would be war. 
 
 Corrupt States in difficulties always think of war ; 
 and Russia had one of those big, ill-paid, ill-officered 
 armies which if not turned to account for the purpose 
 of slaughtering foreigners are apt to become mutinous 
 at home. 
 
 The danger was so pressing that the Czar became 
 hypochondriacal. This was perceived by all who
 
 298 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 came near him. The melancholy madness that had 
 run through the veins of Paul, of Alexander, of 
 Nicholas in the last months of his life seemed to 
 have marked out a new victim in the Prince who 
 had begun his reign with noble acts, but who had 
 been turned from his natural bent of graciousness by 
 the influences of a dissolute Court and by evil coun- 
 sellors. 
 
 Evidently the Czar feared war scarcely less than 
 peace ; but there lay the implacable alternative 
 between some savage revolution in which the Throne 
 would be overturned or a war in which, by hook or 
 by crook, some glory might be won to consolidate 
 his throne for a little while longer — and so he chose 
 war ; c r rather his advisers chose it for him. But 
 in his heart he had little hope of success ; and cer- 
 tainly those who watched his reckless adventure had 
 at first still less. 
 
 There was not a politician in Europe but knew 
 that the grievances of the oppressed Christians in 
 Turkey, which the most bloody-handed Government 
 in the world took for its war-cry, were but a paltry 
 pretence ; and it was considered certain that England, 
 whose interests were menaced by a Russian war of 
 aggression, would interfere, amid the approval, if not 
 with the alliance, of every free State in Christendom.
 
 The Future of To-day. 299 
 
 Had England done this, Turkey, saved from 
 destruction by British arms, must have yielded to 
 British advice a.>, to the government of her subject 
 provinces, which would then have got better terms 
 than they are ever likely to obtain from Russia; and 
 the latter country, overthrown as a dominant military 
 Power, would before long have found regeneration as 
 a free community. 
 
 It may be said that a European war might have 
 resulted from British interference in the East. Per- 
 haps ; but with England, France, Austria, Italy, Den- 
 mark, Holland, and Belgium all on one side, the 
 outcome of a general war Avould have been the 
 satisfactory settlement of all the questions pending 
 between State and State. Europe would have entered 
 into a long and strengthening peace like that which 
 followed Waterloo ; and certainly if there was a class 
 of men who, more than another, had a solid interest 
 in seeing this state of things come to pass, that class 
 ought to have included the Liberals in eveiy country. 
 
 But it was precisely the British Liberals who 
 caused matters to take a different turn. Led on by 
 the statesman who had formerly denounced the des- 
 potic rule of King Bomba in Naples, these men, 
 blinded by party passion, and amid the astonishment 
 of the Liberals in every other country, raised the cr}-
 
 300 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 of Russian humanity and disinterestedness, forsooth ! 
 They gave Russia a strength which her arms would 
 never have secured for her. They sealed the fate of 
 Turkey, threw their Bulgarian proteges under the 
 Russian heel, and sowed ' the seeds of many a future 
 war. It would have taken a clearsighted Liberal to 
 predict that a party of peace and progress would 
 ever act in this way, at the bidding of a man soured 
 at having lost his popularity and burning to revenge 
 himself by hampering his successor in ofhce. 
 
 But the mischief has been done, and it behoves 
 one less to mourn over what is irrevocable than to 
 examine the probable results of the most stupendous 
 piece of political waywardness that ever placed a great 
 country in jeopardy. 
 
 First, the progress of Russia in civilization has 
 been indefinitely adjourned ; for the condition of po- 
 pular sentiment in the country is such that the Go- 
 vernment cannot concede one reform without yielding 
 many ; and, as these reforms would involve the 
 sweeping away of the Tschinn, the tschinovniks who 
 hold the power in their hands will prefer to yield 
 nothing. Why should they do so when, now that 
 the nation is elated by victory, they can keep it under 
 control by turning its thoughts towards new and 
 greater conquests in the future ?
 
 TJie Future of To-day. 301 
 
 A people that is being trained in the arts of war 
 for some specific purpose forgets its burdens and 
 grievances. Present discomforts are lightened by 
 prospect of a better time coming, when there will be 
 spoils to share and honours to show; and if some 
 reflect that there cannot be spoils and honours for 
 everybody, whereas all may count upon a share of 
 hardships and wounds, these are the few whose voices 
 are not heard amid the general martial clamour. 
 
 Russian peacemongers are going to have a poor 
 time of it ; for a greater war than Russia ever waged 
 before is held to be preparing, and this time the 
 enemy will be England. There will be no conceal- 
 ment about it. All over that vast country, which 
 covers an extent half as large as Europe, it is known 
 already that Russia has given England a buffet, and 
 to-morrow it will be known that England, fretful 
 under her humiliation, has become a menace for 
 Russian interests. 
 
 With such fables as ignorant, half-barbarous 
 peoples easily swallow, it will be told to the hungry 
 mujick that England is the country which prevents 
 him from bettering himself at the expense of the 
 sunny kingdoms of Hindustan. Where these king- 
 doms lie the mujick does not know ; but he will
 
 302 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 dream of them, and be ready to fight for them when 
 the time comes. 
 
 Meanwhile, there will be no stinting of Russian 
 armaments — no questioning as to whether six millions, 
 or sixteen, or sixty can be afforded for the work of 
 making Russia fit to satiate her ambition. The money 
 will be found somewhere by loans and heaped-up 
 taxes ; and every year gold will be squandered in 
 piles to provide artillery, improved rifles, and gaudily- 
 equipped regiments, for a country which has scarcely 
 any schools, pavements, or drains. 
 
 To keep pace with so gigantic an armament, 
 England will have to put forth her best too, or else 
 she will lose India. It is of no use to blink this issue. 
 There will be no need to invade India : a new mutiny 
 would serve Russia's purpose quite as well, and better. 
 From the moment when Turkey was struck down 
 England had no ally in the East, and, what is worse, 
 Turkish influence under Russian direction will stir 
 up the fanaticism of forty millions of Indian Mus- 
 sulmans against us. 
 
 England's possessions must now be guarded by 
 herself alone, and it will be the better for her if she 
 at once accepts the fact that she cannot guard them 
 with such forces as have hitherto sufficed. Liberal
 
 The Futtire of To-day. 303 
 
 policy has laid upon her the necessity of soon 
 quadrupling her army and doubling her fleet ; and 
 the best that an Englishman can hope is that his 
 countrymen will proceed to do this while it is yet 
 time, and not wait till a disaster lights upon them. 
 
 Ultimately, of course, Russia must be overtaken 
 by the fate that comes upon all barbarous States that 
 grow too big. It must fall to pieces. 
 
 The old Muscovites, who foresee this, have never 
 been anxious for the conquest of Constantinople, 
 knowing that this city would shortly become the capital 
 of the Empire ; and that between the races established 
 in indolent ease among the provinces of the sunny 
 south and those hardened in the cold climate of the 
 north there would be a disruption. 
 
 Neither can Russia eternally stave off the diffi- 
 culties engendered by the Socialism that lurks in 
 country districts and the fanatical Nihilism which is 
 smouldering in the towns. The day will come when 
 the sword must be sheathed, and when home questions 
 will struggle to the front ; and then the dangers of a 
 mighty convulsion that will heave up the whole coun- 
 try and plunge it into anarchy will arise. 
 
 But this is looking far afield ; and it is enough for 
 England that when Plevna fell Russia renewed her 
 lease of military power and turbulence for another
 
 304 The Russians of To-day. 
 
 generation at least. She has become an overt enem 
 whom Englishmen cannot afford to ignore — least ( 
 all to despise. England can still prevent her froi 
 doing her worst ; but it is only vigilance and strengt 
 that will check her, not sentiment and weakness. 
 
 And we are bound to remember that in stayin 
 Russian aggression we shall be discharging a sacre 
 duty, incumbent on us as Christians and true Liberal 
 We have taken upon ourselves to reclaim a hundre 
 and fifty millions of Indians from a barbarism int 
 which they would soon relapse if our guiding hand 
 failed them. It is a holy task, from which we mu; 
 not suffer ourselves to be diverted. Posterity \\\ 
 hold us accountable for it, and God's blessing will nc 
 fail us in prosecuting it now, if we are steadfast, as w 
 ought to be, in so good a cause. 
 
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