Chapter XXX (2)

“He simply said he wasn’t going to have any nonsense, and he meant to keep order in the town,” said the commercial traveller.

“Provocation! Provocation!” said the workman and the young lady in chorus.

“The people in Manchester ought to have waited for Parliament to be summoned,” said the old gentleman, who was reading the _Standard_.

“Wait, wait, wait; that’s all everybody has to tell us,” said the young man. “We got very little from the first Parliament, and now they’re going to dissolve this one, I suppose.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Why, the Government, of course,” said the young man.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I am a stranger and I don’t quite understand. I don’t know what’s been happening in this country.”

“Well,” said the old man, “I suppose you know that two years ago after the disastrous war in South Africa, and the disorders and the general strike which followed it, the Government, acting under the advice of Sir Ernest Cassel, the Prime Minister, decided to re-establish the old liberties granted by the Magna Charta and to summon a Parliament--a thing which had not occurred since the days of Oliver Cromwell. A manifesto was issued in this sense, promising that henceforth no new laws should be passed without the consent of the people, and that a Parliament would shortly be summoned. This was taken by the whole population to mean that the autocratic powers of the Monarch were to be limited, and that the Government would henceforward be constitutional. In the meantime no laws were promulgated, but the newspapers for the first time for three hundred years began to write what they pleased; all the Jews in the East End were massacred by hooligans at the instigation of the Jacobites; many of the University dons were sent to the Hebrides, and some of them to the Isle of Man and New Zealand; the administration of the country continued to be in the hands of the military governors instituted by Cromwell and confirmed by Charles II., and everything went jogging on until January, and since there was to be a Parliament general elections had to be held. The task of making an electoral law was entrusted to an official belonging to the Board of Trade, who devised a law according to which the labouring class should elect a member of their class for each borough, and besides this should have a vote in the election of the remaining representatives of the borough. This was done because the Government believed that the labouring classes were fundamentally loyal and would prove Conservative. The result of the elections was a triumphant majority for the Liberals, who were represented by the flower of the English gentry, among them being Lord Lansdowne, Lord Wemyss, and also by the most eminent names of the Bar, science and literature, such as Asquith, Haldane, Morley, Butcher, and Sir Charles Dilke. Whereas among the gentry only six Jacobites were returned.

“The Liberals, who were nicknamed the C.B.’s, owing to one of their leaders’ names being Campbell-Bannerman, were practically led by Mr. Balfour, who was not allowed to stand for Parliament by the Government for having edited the _Fortnightly Review_ during some months previous to the elections. The labouring class returned fifteen Jacobite peasants and one hundred men who professed to belong to no party, but who as soon as Parliament was opened formed themselves into a Radical group called the Labour Party; there were also about fifty Irishmen and Scotchmen, who formed separate groups. The Parliament as soon as it met demanded a responsible Minister, and, the Government refusing, passed a vote of censure on the Ministers; Cassel had resigned before Parliament met and been succeeded by Sir Thomas (afterwards) Lord Sanderson, and Lord Methuen was appointed Minister of the Interior. The Government being unwilling to yield on the subject of responsible Ministry, dissolved Parliament, and declared that a general election should be held in five months’ time. But the C.B.’s regarded the sudden dissolution as unconstitutional, and published an address in which they advocated passive resistance. For this they were disenfranchised. Sir Thomas Sanderson resigned and was made a Peer, and Lord Methuen was made Prime Minister. As disorders were feared, London and all the large towns were placed under martial law. All the newspapers except the _Times_ were suppressed, but the _Morning Post_, _Standard_, and _Daily News_ were ultimately allowed to appear on certain conditions; and the provincial Governors were given powers to hang people within forty-eight hours without trial. On the other hand the revolutionary element enormously increased. Oxford and Cambridge were closed, and the undergraduates devoted their leisure to blowing up officials and soldiers with dynamite. From two to three hundred high officials perished in this manner, besides nearly all the rank and file of the police in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Edinburgh. Before the next elections were held the Government took measures by which it hoped to obtain a moderate Conservative result, and a majority composed of men who considered Mr. Balfour’s policy too advanced. They disenfranchised therefore the most educated portion of the lower class and ostracised the Liberals; the election was therefore held under double pressure, under that of the Government on the one hand and that of the revolutionaries on the other. The Socialist Party was allowed greater liberty than the Liberal Party, although the system of excluding any individual who was superior in any sort of way to his fellow-beings was rigorously adopted as regards the Socialists as well as regards the Liberals. At the time of the dissolution of the first Parliament many people, and among some who had great influence at Court, maintained that it would be a good thing to form a Ministry either of the C.B.’s or of leading men of the country gentry, such as the Duke of Devonshire. This latter possibility was taken into consideration and _pourparlers_ took place between the Prime Minister and the Duke; but the Duke refused to take office unless guarantees for the adoption of a thoroughly Liberal régime were given. As regards the C.B.’s the Government said they were a set of doctrinaires, that Mr. Balfour was a Jesuit, and that it was impossible to expect that a man who had written a defence of philosophic doubt and spent many hours on the golf links could possibly be capable of administrative work. The same argument was applied to Mr. Haldane and Mr. Morley; these men, it was said, were philosophers and men of letters, and could not be called statesmen. They were without experience.

“Mr. Winston Churchill, also a C.B., was said to be a Socialist at heart, and Mr. Belloc, a member of the Labour Party, had to leave the country to avoid arrest and emigrated to Russia, where he gave lectures on English literature.

“The result of the second General Election proved to be a great disappointment to the Government. Mr. Balfour and Mr. Morley stood as candidates for London, but a week before their election Mr. Balfour was disqualified on the grounds that he had only spent nine months of the preceding year in London and Mr. Morley was also disqualified, because there had appeared in the _Spectator_, a newspaper to which he had been a leading contributor, a letter from an officer of the 60th Rifles, stating that the policy of the Government was revolutionising the Army. He was, however, shortly afterwards made a Peer and took his seat in the House of Lords. In spite of the persecution of the Liberals all the big towns returned Liberal members; Professor Butcher was returned for Cambridge, and Mr. Strachan Davidson for Oxford, and in all 90 Liberals were returned, 100 Socialists, 100 members belonging to the Labour Party, 60 Irishmen, 30 Jacobites, and 30 Conservatives. The Government brought forward a programme of elaborate reforms, which, however, eschewed Ministerial responsibility, and it was soon clear that the Liberals were dancing on a tight-rope over an abyss, and had to depend for support either on the Conservatives or on the Socialists. Shorn of all that constituted their strongest elements, their position was pitiable, and they had among them no statesman strong enough to build bricks out of straw, to dominate the situation and force his will on the Assembly. That was the position the day after Parliament was opened. During two months, however, the Centre managed to obtain a working majority, but last week they were defeated by the alliance of the Jacobites and the Socialists. And we are told that we may expect a dissolution any minute, although it is, perhaps, to the influence of the Government for Parliament to continue its existence, since it is too weak to prove a serious danger. That is the situation at present.”

“Lord Lansdowne’s country house, Bowood, was burnt yesterday,” said the young man in flannels, looking up from his newspaper.

“Yes,” said the commercial traveller, “and houses are being burned and looted in the Midlands every day; that comes of having a weak Government.”

“Three policemen were shot at Leeds by a youth seventeen years old,” continued the young man, “and the foreman of the ironworks at Wolverhampton was stabbed.”

“How cruel of the Government,” said the young lady, “to force people to do such things!”

“Lord Althorp has been asked to leave the Turf Club by the Jacobites,” said the young man.

“Why?” said the young lady.

“Because of his principles,” said the young man.

“Why,” said the young lady, “he’s a C.B., that is to say, almost a Jacobite.”

“The C.B.’s are a Liberal Party based on sound democratic and constitutional principles,” said the old man, much ruffled.

“Hear, hear,” said the clerk.

“The C.B.’s are a set of revolutionary liars paid by the Jews and the Germans,” said the commercial traveller.

“The C.B.’s ain’t no good,” said the workman. “They’re in a funk of the Government.”

“They’ve become Conservative,” said the mechanic.

“Yes, Jacobite,” said the young lady.

At that moment the train stopped. From one of the first-class carriages a gentleman in uniform got down.

“Lord Kitchener,” said the young man, looking out of the window.

The young lady got out, carrying her hamper with her. As she walked past the General she took something from it and flung it at him. There was a terrific explosion, and I woke up.

A ZEMSTVO REPORT

The Zemstvo report of a large district in the centre of Russia for the year 1907, the district of Morshansk, government of Tambov, is in the highest degree illuminating as to the difficulties and the problems with which Russian administrators and reformers are beset at the present moment. Before proceeding to an analysis of the report it will perhaps be as well to remind the reader of what the Zemstvo consists. The Zemstvo is a County Council consisting of about thirty-two members, of which twelve represent the nobility (practically the large landowner class), twelve the peasants, and six the city or cities of the district, one the clergy, and one the official class. To represent the nobility a candidate must possess a certain quantity of land (in the district I am speaking of, about 500 acres). Each member is elected by his class. This County Council has in its hands the management of nearly all the primary schools, the public health department, the support and management of the roads and means of communication, and various small but important matters connected with farming and agriculture, besides the organisation of the county post. To pay for all this the Zemstvo has the right to levy taxes on the land. The Council elects a Standing Board of four members including the chairman, which carries on the business from one yearly meeting of the Council to the next, and is elected for three years. The Council also sends representatives to another Zemstvo Council representing the whole province, which is managed on similar lines.

The Board in the report in question starts by saying that the most salient fact in the present state of the Zemstvo in the district of Morshansk for the past year is a want of funds, owing to the fact that the taxes due both from peasants and landowners by which the Zemstvo is supported are no longer forthcoming. The taxes are not forthcoming because neither the peasants nor the landowners are willing to pay them, this unwillingness being in some cases a matter of principle and in others the result of the peculiar psychology of the Russian landed class at the present time. The peasantry is neither sufficiently developed nor does it possess the requisite knowledge to form conceptions of principle with regard to the payment or the non-payment of taxes consciously. Conceptions of this kind, however, obviously exist, and they have reached the mass of the peasantry in the form of ready-made watchwords or party cries. These watchwords have the characteristic of releasing the peasantry from some kind of moral tie or obligation; it is not therefore surprising that being sown broadcast among the masses at a time of popular excitement they are eagerly absorbed. In the Daily Press stress was laid on the significance of not paying the Zemstvo taxes. The idea was spread among the peasants that the Zemstvo of the present day is an aristocratic institution, which draws on the resources of the peasant without giving him anything in return. Such was the elementary philosophy which was absorbed by the peasants. And now, although the cry against paying the Zemstvo taxes is no longer heard, doubt and confusion have been instilled into the peasant as to what is truth, and in what the Zemstvo taxes in reality consist, as to whether they are simply a “squeeze” or a matter of public necessity and local interest. Such a question can only be settled by an inspection of figures and facts, but before going into these it is necessary to say a few words with regard to the non-payment of taxes by the landowners. The landowners were not so much actuated in this case by a principle as by a feeling of alarm resulting from the horrors of the Agrarian agitation. At one moment it seemed as if the end of private property had come, and that the only course left was to liquidate one’s affairs and to flee from one’s burning house, and if such was the case the landowner said to himself, “What is the use of paying taxes when my house is on fire, and I am lucky if I get off with my life?” In the places where, as in this district, there were no such violent incidents, a cooler argument obtained, namely, “If the peasants were not paying, why should we pay?” Some landowners, an infinite minority it is true, went so far in the organs of a reactionary character as to invert and apply the simple party-cry of the peasants, speaking thus: “The Zemstvo is simply a peasants’ institution drawing on the resources of the large landowners, and is incompatible with State interests; let it therefore be abolished.” Thus the Zemstvo in its effort to satisfy the universally recognised needs of the population found itself between Scylla and Charybdis. Let us now return to the question, which is more important, of the boycotting of the Zemstvo by the peasants. If the Zemstvo is an aristocratic institution which would therefore deserve to be boycotted by the people, it should above all and before all consider its own class interests and satisfy them at the cost of the Zemstvo funds, otherwise the accusation is meaningless. A glance at the balance-sheet subjoined will satisfy the reader as to whether this is the case or not.

Total estimated expenses for 1907-8: 243,504 roubles 60 kopecks (£24,350, 5s.) divided as follows:--

1. Public health, 61,429 roubles 54 kop. (£6142, 9s.), or more than 25 per cent. of the total estimate.

2. Education, 52,682 roubles (£5268), or quarter of the total.

3. Share in the expenses of Government institutions, 41,204 roubles 7 kop. (£4120), 17 per cent. of the total.

4. Paying off of debts, 36,777 roubles 60 kop. (£3677), 15 per cent. of the total.

5. Costs of the Zemstvo Administration, 25,554 roubles 58 kop., more than 10 per cent. of the total.

6. Roads and means of communication, 9816 roubles 90 kop. (£981), or 4 per cent. of the total.

7. Relief and other funds, 9807 roubles 21 kop. (£980), or 4 per cent. of the total.

8. Old age pensions, widows, orphans, etc., 3296 roubles 80 kop. (£329), or 1 per cent.

9. Veterinary department, 2150 roubles (£215), or less than 1 per cent.

10. Various, 1768 roubles (£176), or less than 1 per cent.

From the above figures it will be seen that one-fourth of the whole expenses is devoted to the support of hospitals, doctors, accoucheurs, nurses; and these hospitals are exclusively devoted to the peasants, who are relieved free of charge. Another fourth of the whole amount is devoted to the support of teachers and schools, in which the peasants’ children, and peasants’ children alone, are educated.

In fact, 75 per cent. of the total expenses are devoted by the Zemstvo to the needs of the peasants, and 25 per cent. to the needs of the population at large, but not exclusively to any special class. The charge, therefore, of the Zemstvo being in this district an aristocratic institution falls to the ground. It might be said that although the Zemstvo devotes 75 per cent. of its expenses to the needs of the peasantry it does not give as much as it receives from them. But the Zemstvo for this district should receive out of the Zemstvo taxes paid by the peasants for 1907 86,000 roubles (the rest being paid by the landowners), and it returns them 15 per cent. of the expenses, that is to say, 182,000 roubles. In other words, the peasant receives for every rouble he pays 2 roubles 12 kopecks worth of medical aid, education, etc. There is another argument which has likewise become a catchword and is used as a party-cry against the Zemstvo, namely, that the peasants are overburdened by Zemstvo taxation and are not in a state to be able to pay additional Zemstvo taxes. Besides the Zemstvo taxes, the following is a complete list of the total taxes paid by the peasants:--

1. State land tax, about 43,000 roubles (£4000).

2. Canton rates (a Canton is an administrative unit consisting of several villages), 89,000 roubles (£8000).

3. Village rates, 84,000 roubles (£8000).

4. Compulsory insurance, 91,000 roubles (£9000).

Total, 307,000 roubles (£30,000).

The Zemstvo taxes form, therefore, one-sixth of the total taxation, but the Zemstvo Board does not consider the peasants to be overtaxed for the following reason: During 1906 the total amount spent by the peasants in the district on alcohol was 1,800,000 roubles (£180,000). The population of the district amounts to 300,000; this means 6 roubles a head, or over 36 roubles a farm (there being 40,000 farms in the district), and as the total taxation amounts in round figures to 500,000 roubles (£50,000) the amount of taxes paid by each farm is 12 roubles 50 kopecks.

If a farm can pay a yearly voluntary tax in alcohol of 36 roubles it is absurd to speak of its being overtaxed by a yearly payment of 12 roubles 50 kopecks, and still more absurd to talk of the burden of the Zemstvo tax, which amounts to 2 roubles 15 kopecks per farm.

This is the gist of the Zemstvo report of this district for 1907. At first sight two conclusions might be drawn from it: (1) that the political agitators and the Liberal Press in general have been guilty of criminal folly in urging the peasants to boycott the Zemstvo; (2) that it is useless to try and improve the condition of peasants who refuse money for the support of the means of bettering their condition, and spend it on drink. Such conclusions would be too sweeping. Political agitators have, indeed, done endless mischief in advocating such futile and wicked measures as, for instance, the boycotting of the Zemstvos, and this testifies to their total lack of political experience; but the very existence of such a propaganda, and the very fact that the watchwords quoted above can be accepted presupposes a frame of mind which can only result from the persistence of bad Government and the constant putting off of reform. With regard to the peasants and their drink, the autocratic system is again to a certain degree at the root of the matter, since so far from discouraging drink among the peasants, it lives upon it, the money spent on drink by the peasant forming a substantial part of the State revenue.[6] And in cases where the peasants have demanded that the Government spirit store may be closed in their village the local Government Magistrate has refused them the permission to do so. Moreover, it is sufficiently well known that the autocratic system of Government--that is to say the old régime--never of its own accord took a single serious step to raise the condition of the peasants by education, civilisation, and culture. On the contrary, it leant with all its might against the closed door.

[6] To abolish the State monopoly now a Peter the Great would be needed. However difficult the task, there can be no doubt that in the present circumstances the monopoly is a source of unmixed evil.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN RUSSIA

The fundamental error underlying the main theories of people who write with indignation on the massacres of Jews in Russia seems to me to contain in itself everything which makes it difficult for Englishmen to understand current events in Russia. The error is that the Russian Government, which such writers would be the first to proclaim incompetent, imbecile, stupid, ineffectual, purposeless, without a policy, shifting, distracted, fickle, wavering, unstable, weak, corrupt, insolvent, dislocated, tottering, and rotten to the core, should at the same time be so competent, so united, so perfect a machine, so drastically single-minded, so unfaltering in design, and so masterly in execution that one man in St. Petersburg can by pressing a button have his anti-Semitic will carried out in the smallest detail in any village of the immense Russian Empire. The great error is to think that attacks on Jews or anything else which has occurred in Russia during the last three years has been the result of one policy conceived by one master mind and executed by well-trained and perfectly organised instruments responding directly to that one mind. The truth is that there has been no policy in Russia during the last few years, but an ever-shifting mass of contradictory currents. During the last three years[7] it can be said that there has been no Government at all; nothing but the anarchy resulting from civil war, a civil war which is not fought in pitched battles--as that which was waged in England between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads--but carried on in the ordinary course of everyday life by what are termed peaceful citizens of the community, during their everyday avocations, by every means at their disposal. The anarchy resulting from such a state of things is rendered doubly anarchial because one of the sides in the conflict is recruited in some degree from the very officials and public servants on whose service the proper administration of the State depends.

[7] 1904-7.

But why, it will be asked, are the Jews killed? First of all, at the root of the matter, there is the following cause: In a country which is as politically unripe and undeveloped as other European countries were in the sixteenth century, in a country which is at the present moment engaged in fighting for its Magna Charta, you are certain to find the phenomena which accompanied similar conditions and processes in other countries. And one of the phenomena inseparable from political immaturity, in a country where the desire for reform is struggling to get the upper hand, is a prejudice against Jews and a desire to render them responsible for the evils and disorders which are the natural result of all processes of change. It was so in England in the days of King John. It was so in France at the beginning of the French Revolution. With the exception of the peasants, who follow their own line, the whole of Russia, as well as the whole of the administration, is a blend like pepper and salt of a numerically large mass of people without any political knowledge and a strong Liberal enlightened but inexperienced faction. In the administration, at all events, the Liberal element is in the minority, since it has been drilled during ages by the old régime to a system of prejudice and reaction. The conflict which is being fought at the present moment between the obscurantist majority and the enlightened minority (beneath which the proletariat seethes independently, and from which the peasants hold aloof in the special groove of their own particular interests) is the cause of the present state of anarchy. The one consoling element in the situation is that revolutions have always been carried out by influential or energetic minorities who have finally rallied the people round them. In the obscurantist element all political prejudices have strong roots. One of the strongest of these prejudices is the anti-Semite prejudice, which all Europe shared in the sixteenth century, deeds of violence being the result, and which many countries still share at the present day. Only in such countries now (as in Hungary, for instance, where the natural anti-Semitism is stronger than it is in Russia) the Government is strong enough to quell it and to prevent its finding its natural expression.

In Russia there is no government. In Russia there is civil war. The civil war is being carried on between two parties, one which desires reform and one which does not; one which is nationalistic, and one which is not. The Jews form one of the most effective and capable factors of the former. Therefore it is scarcely surprising that the Nationalists should attribute the whole evil to the Jews. They wage war with equal violence against all their opponents, all the “intellectuals,” only it is simpler to label the whole side as consisting of Jews, and say that the whole revolution and the whole desire for reform is the work of the Jews. When these people therefore strike a blow, the first people whom they attack are the Jews. That is one reason why the Jews are killed.

The Government depends for its existence, as I have already said, on a multitude of instruments steeped in prejudice and possessing no political knowledge or experience; one fact is obvious to these people, namely, that they are being violently attacked by a formidable opponent, in which they know there is a considerable Jewish element. When they see on the other hand their own partisans attack these enemies, and in attacking them massacre the Jews, it is scarcely likely that they will interfere to prevent the massacre of the people whom they rightly regard as playing the most prominent part in blowing them up. The attitude of the Central Government can only have an indirect influence, since it is plain, at the present moment, that there is not a Central Government strong enough to impose its will on its subordinates. If the Government were capable and strong, it could, of course, prevent the Jewish massacres, but if the Government were capable and strong there would be no revolution, and probably also no massacres to prevent. Another point lies in the fact that anti-Semitism in Russia is more artificial than in other countries. The greatest anti-Semites are men who have probably never seen a Jew in their lives. In the middle-classes in Russia the Jews assimilate themselves rapidly to the rest of the population. Among the peasants there are no Jews in the north and centre of Russia at all, and it is where they do not exist that the prejudice against them is strongest. In a word, therefore, anti-Semitism in Russia is the reflection of the present politically uncultivated condition of a great mass of people who are concerned in the administration of the country. The massacres are the result not of any individuals, but of the general state of anarchy and civil war that exists at present in Russia.

Here is a striking example of the powerlessness of individuals in the matter. When Count Witte took office it is obvious by his acts that he tried to come to terms with all parties. He wished to restore order and to obtain a foreign loan. It would therefore be childish to suppose that he can have desired his administration to start off with a series of Pogroms, or that he would not have prevented it, had it been in his power.

But now we come to the question of the “Power” behind the throne which is supposed to have organised these massacres. That such a power or powers existed, apart from the Government, working against it obscurely, is a fact. In October 1905 this power consisted, in practice, of a police officer of inferior rank who carried on a work of printing Anti-Jewish propaganda, in which Count Witte was violently abused without the knowledge of his superiors or his colleagues. It is also a fact that they encouraged anti-Jewish riots and attempted to organise them by distributing printed proclamations. But the existence of these powers would not have been sufficient in themselves to cause the massacres. Any one who was travelling in Russia at that moment, as I was, and who is impartial in the matter, will testify to the fact that no organisation was necessary. There existed a spontaneous counter-revolution against the “strikers,” as all the “intellectuals,” and not only the Jews, were then called. That the officials and the police sympathised with this counter-revolution is not surprising, since they represent the thing against which the revolution was being made. Neither General Trepoff nor any one else could, however much he had wished, have created this sporadic counter-revolution, nor could any individual in the central administration have prevented it. The counter-revolution was the logical sequence and the indispensable attendant factor of the revolution. Only the officials who did sympathise with this counter-revolution whenever massacres occurred, took no steps to prevent them, knowing that their inactivity would be approved, even if it was not actually encouraged and directly instigated by the Dark Powers behind or alongside of the Government, and knowing also that the Government itself would be powerless to punish them. They felt they were on the Right side and that, whoever might be blamed, they would be immune.

With regard to the Jewish massacres, which took place in the south-west of Russia before the revolutionary movement, there is more to be said. The anti-Jewish riots there are mainly the result of the special legislation to which the Jews are subjected. But I will discuss this matter in the next chapter.

PRINCE OUROUSOV’S MEMOIRS[8]

A small book has lately been published in Russia which perhaps throws more light on the subject of the Russian Administration and the causes of the troubles through which Russia is at present going than any other work which has appeared during the last five years in Russia or elsewhere. This book is a volume of Memoirs by Prince Ourousov. Prince Ourousov took his degree in the Moscow University in 1885, and after being employed in the Zemstvo administration in the government of Kalouga he was appointed Vice-Governor of the province of Tambov in 1902; towards the end of May 1903, he suddenly, and, as far as he was concerned, unexpectedly, received a telegram from the Ministry of Home Affairs appointing him Governor of Bessarabia. The volume which has now appeared from his pen consists of a record of his administrative rule in Bessarabia, which lasted from 1903-4. It is a portion of a larger work covering a period from 1872-1906, the publication of which Prince Ourousov has put off to a later date.

[8] Since this was written a translation of Prince Ourousov’s book has been published in English by Messrs. Harper & Bros.

Prince Ourousov writes in the preface that he has been led to publish this section of his Memoirs immediately by the rapid development of political life in Russia; he considers that nothing which can throw any light on the conditions of administrative life, the reform and transformation of which are the main object and task of the thinking population of Russia at this moment, should be concealed, and in publishing these recollections it is his object to give an accurate account, derived from first-hand knowledge, of those administrative proceedings with regard to which Prince Ourousov states there prevails a completely wrong impression, side by side with wild exaggerations. The interest and importance of the book are immense, and it is earnestly to be hoped that the book will speedily be translated into English, because it provides the exact kind of knowledge for which Englishmen are continually asking in regard to Russia.

There are two questions which Englishmen who are interested in Russian political life are continually asking: first, “What is it all about?” and, secondly, “Why are the Jews killed in Russia?” In connection with the first question I have heard Englishmen, after their first journey to Russia, ask questions such as these: “What do the Liberals want? Do they know themselves?” On the other hand, we have been flooded with books of all kinds by Englishmen, by Russians, and by Germans, who have obscured the Jewish and indeed every other question in their zeal to prove that the Central Government in Russia has for the last five years combined the qualities which a Babu journalist in India once attributed to Lord Cromer: “The oiliness of a Chadband and the malignity of a fiend.”

This book of Prince Ourousov’s throws a flood of light on both these questions. It shows, not by any enunciation of doctrinaire principles or political theories but by a record of facts, the causes of the evils of the present administrative system, and it points out (by fact, and not by theory) where reform is needed, why reform is needed, and how it can be effected. It also provides the reader with a clear idea of the Jewish question and its possible solution. Prince Ourousov was a member of the first Duma. The speech he made in a debate on the Jewish question not only made a great stir in Russia and in Europe, but was certainly the most statesmanlike utterance that has proceeded from the lips of a member of the Opposition since the struggle for constitutional reform opened in 1905. Prince Ourousov’s plain speaking on this occasion won for him the applause of the Liberals and the hatred of the reactionaries. It must also be borne in mind that Prince Ourousov was a member of Count Witte’s administration before the opening of the first Duma, which he left owing to his disgust at the proceedings of certain officials connected with the Minister of the Interior. He will not, therefore, be suspected of partiality towards the autocratic régime and its scaffolding of bureaucrats. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable to find in this book no trace of unfairness or exaggeration towards the representatives of the old régime. The book is fair, luminous, and honest, and here at last we have the truth about Russia unleavened by political bias, unvarnished by cheap sensationalism, and not distorted by doctrinaire principles and theory. Besides which the book is in itself, and on account of the facts it records, of surpassing interest and amusement to the ordinary reader.

When Prince Ourousov was appointed Governor of Bessarabia he says that he knew no more about that province than he did of New Zealand. The foreign newspapers had been full of the Jewish Pogrom which had occurred in Kishineff from 7th April to 9th April 1903. They had openly accused the Russian Government of having instigated the disorders, and a letter was published in an English newspaper, said to be written by Plehve, then Minister of the Interior, to the Governor of Bessarabia, von Raaben, containing clear hints not to interfere with the doings of the anti-Jewish rioters. I will quote Prince Ourousov’s appreciation of this letter later on. Before leaving for Kishineff Prince Ourousov was received by Plehve. The Minister’s final injunction to him, he says, was, word for word, the following: “I give you no advice and no directions. You are entirely independent. Act as you please, as long as the results are good. I will say only one final word: Let us have as few speeches as possible, and as little sentimental Hebrophilism.” These words, Prince Ourousov adds, proved Plehve’s perspicacity, since during his Administration he made several speeches, and he left Kishineff with the established reputation of being a Hebrophil.

When Prince Ourousov arrived in Kishineff he was met by his predecessor, General von Raaben. In mentioning him Prince Ourousov writes as follows: “I wish before all things in the clearest possible manner to refute the accusations made against Raaben of complicity in the Jewish Pogrom, and to explode the legend of the letter which he is said to have received on this subject from the Minister of the Interior. Apart from the fact that Plehve insisted on the peremptory dismissal of Raaben, it is improbable that the Minister would have relied in such a case on a man whose gentleness and straightness would have excluded all possibility of his executing such a cruel, diabolical plan. I do not mean to imply that I consider the Minister capable of having been the initiator of the Pogrom. On the other hand, I think that Plehve was too clever and too experienced to have recourse to such means in his struggle with the Jews, in spite of his hatred towards them. But if Plehve might consider that the Pogrom would have disagreeable consequences for the Government, Raaben was incapable, owing to his character and his qualities, of organising and executing a massacre. This is not only my own conviction, but it is shared by all his fellow-workers, and by the local representatives of the Jewish commune whose opinion is of special weight.”

Further on in the book Prince Ourousov deals with the question of the origin of the Kishineff Pogrom in 1903 in greater detail. In the Pogrom of April 1903, forty-two Jews were killed, and the survivors incurred material damage amounting to at least a million roubles (£100,000). What were its causes? Prince Ourousov deals first with the theory that it was directly initiated by the Minister of the Interior. He disbelieves in this theory for two reasons: first, that in the Department of the Secret Police, to which he had access before going to Kishineff, and in which he made a searching investigation in all that related to Kishineff, there was not a hint that the Administration was inclined to consider desirable any anti-Jewish riots whatever or even anti-Jewish demonstrations. Moreover, at this moment this Department was in charge of M. A. Lopouchin, who has become famous for having brought to light the anti-Jewish propaganda of certain police officials in the autumn of 1905, which led to Pogroms, a man who was, and is, well known for his straightness and his strong Liberal bias. Secondly, Prince Ourousov does not believe Plehve to have been capable of such gross thoughtlessness as to place proof of his complicity in the hands of a Governor whom he scarcely knew, and whom he did not trust. Raaben was, moreover, a gentleman; he paid little attention to his superiors, and lived on excellent terms with the Jews, towards whom he acted with great tolerance. Moreover, he was summarily dismissed on account of the Pogrom, and was not rehabilitated in the public service until after the death of Plehve.

Prince Ourousov then considers the theory that the Pogrom was a sudden and irrepressible outburst of long-suppressed fury, a payment of old scores, a movement of elemental force and anger against the Jewish race. He holds that this explanation is one-sided, untrue, and entirely artificial. “It is impossible to deny,” he writes, “that in the governments inhabited by the Jews, Jews will be more easily the objects of assault and robbery than any one else. And the chief causes of this are the special laws which develop among the population a special point of view with regard to the Jews, namely, that they are citizens without rights, and a dangerous element in the State. One can admit that in certain cases questions of race and religion cause the Jews to clash with the rest of the population ... there are also complaints of Jewish exploitation, although they far more often proceed from the outside observers of this exploitation than from among the people exploited. But all these reasons are not sufficient to cause a Pogrom; an immediate cause is necessary for the explosion of popular passions, and it has been impossible to discover that immediate cause; on the other hand, in Kishineff in 1903 certain phenomena were observed. The daily Press played a large part in preparing a suitable frame of mind for a Pogrom among the population, and the preponderant part was played by the local newspaper of Kroushevan (the notorious anti-Jewish agitator), and publications issued in St. Petersburg of similar colour. These newspapers were filled with accusations against the Jews, and with facts and comments calculated to stir up popular passion. The authority of Kroushevan, in the eyes of his readers, was to a certain extent strengthened by the open protection he received from the chief administrative Department dealing with the Press, the result of which made it impossible for the local administration to moderate the anti-Jewish ardour. (Prince Ourousov develops this point at length, pointing out that complaints against the violence of the local Press had no result. The agitators were looked upon by the Press authorities in St. Petersburg as patriots.) The action of the police in Kishineff, as probably in other places, where the Jewish population preponderated, gave rise to the view that anti-Jewish action was looked on with favour, and the conviction became widely spread among the ignorant masses that there was no penalty for hostile action against the Jews; so much so that the legend arose in Kishineff that the Emperor had authorised a three days’ Pogrom in Kishineff, and early on the morning of the third day of the disorders a crowd of peasants was stopped by a police officer; they had come from a neighbouring village in full consciousness of a duty to be performed: to beat the Jews, by order of the Emperor. I am especially anxious to underline this characteristic of the Kishineff Pogrom. The chief motive of the rioters was neither hatred nor revenge, but the fulfilment of such action which in the opinion of some coincided with the aims and desires of the Government, and in the opinion of others was even authorised, and finally in the eyes of the ignorant peasantry was the fulfilment of the Imperial Word. Therefore, in my opinion, it is impossible to absolve the Central Administration from _moral_ responsibility in the Kishineff plunderings and murders. I consider our Government guilty on account of the patronage afforded to a narrow Nationalist idea, on account of its short-sighted and summary dealings towards the provinces inhabited by alien races, and on account of the fact that this policy fostered mutual hatred and distrust among the various nationalities; finally, because the central power encouraged these brutal phenomena, which disappear as soon as the Government openly declares that Pogroms are a crime for which the local administration will have to answer.”

Prince Ourousov concludes, therefore, that whereas the idea that Plehve had deliberately organised anti-Jewish riots is a legend, nevertheless his Government cannot be absolved from the suspicion that it exerted indirect influence on the riots through the action of minor anti-Jewish-minded officials who knew that their action would not meet with disapproval alone, and by its constant refusal to check the violence of the anti-Jewish Press. If one realises, therefore, that the Pogrom was not a natural and fortuitous occurrence, it is morally not difficult to say that it was effected “by order.” But the chief cause of the mischief which makes such riots possible is the existence of the special legislation to which the Jews are subjected in Russia. As long as one part of the population is legally and civilly inferior to another part, the legally superior portion will always, especially if it consists of uneducated peasants, think that it is acting patriotically in ill-treating the legally inferior portion. Moreover, the endless bother incurred by every small official, owing to the carrying out or the neglect of the innumerable preventive regulations respecting the Jews, is sufficient in itself to embitter the local officials against the Jews. I have selected this portion of Prince Ourousov’s book out of many other interesting things, and dwelt upon it at length, because the question is still vital and actual.

Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Odessa in August 1907. The violence of the anti-Jewish Press and the reluctance of the central authorities to keep it in check were as much features then as they were in 1903. When a newly appointed Governor-General declared in Odessa that he was not afraid of protecting the Jews because he considered them equal in the eyes of the law to other citizens, he was considered to have done an act of daring courage. Finally, it is plain not only from Prince Ourousov’s book, but also from the experience of all capable officials in Russia, that as soon as energetic measures are taken against anti-Jewish agitators the riots cease. Only the sad fact remains that, as Prince Ourousov points out, since 1903 there is not a high post in Russia which has not changed hands: but the unfortunate thing is that the changes have one and all been for the worse; for M. Stolypin, or whoever advises him in these matters, lacks even a particle of the quality which Napoleon possessed in the highest degree: an eye for men.[9] The result is that excellent Governors (among them staunch Conservatives) have been dismissed on ridiculous pretexts, and have in some cases been replaced by unamiable and incompetent blunderers.

[9] It should be said, in justice to M. Stolypin, that it is extremely difficult to find people to accept these posts. Those who are capable of filling them competently refuse them.

STORIES

POGROM

Count X. was a landowner who lived in the south of Russia, not far from one of the large manufacturing towns. He spent the whole summer in a small country house, about six miles from the town, with his wife and children. Not far from the house, at about a mile’s distance, was a village which was bigger than an ordinary village and less big than an ordinary town. The greater part of the population consisted of Jews; they were poor Jews mostly, some of them very poor indeed. The Count and his wife knew the people of the place well, and their relations with the poor Jews were of the friendliest description; they were constantly employing them to do small jobs, and their special friends were the tailor and the bootmaker, whose shops were in the Jewish bazaar, the poorest quarter of the place. The bootmaker’s name was Gertzel, and the tailor was called Daniel.

When the Dreyfus case was drawing to its close, the whole of this population was in a great state of excitement, and the Countess X. used every afternoon to go and give Gertzel and Daniel the latest news. Just before the result of the final court-martial at Rennes was known, Countess X. received a telegram from a friend of hers abroad saying that Dreyfus had been acquitted. She went post haste with the news to the village, and soon the whole place was in a tumult of thanksgiving and rejoicing. Next day, when the authentic news of the verdict arrived, she was obliged to go and tell the disappointing news.

During all those summer months nothing else had been discussed in this little place; and, as everywhere else, the world was split up into two factions; and in the Countess’ family, while she and her husband believed violently in the innocence of Dreyfus, her brother-in-law and her uncle were equally firmly convinced of his guilt, and equally violent in their affirmations of it. In the village there was a strong orthodox faction which earnestly longed for the death of the traitor, and the Jewish populace cared more for his acquittal than for their own affairs. When Countess X. imparted to them the disappointing verdict, they lamented bitterly: all the more so on account of the false joy they had experienced the day before. And in the whole population there were no two beings more downcast and upset by the result than Gertzel and Daniel.

It was in the autumn of that year, shortly after the result of the Dreyfus case became known, that one morning Gertzel and Daniel appeared in Countess X.’s garden and requested to see her.

Gertzel was a thin, solidly built man, with dark tangled hair and mild soft eyes. He had a thick, untidy beard, a dirty loose shirt with a torn collar. Daniel was smaller, and younger; he wore no beard, and his eyes were penetrating and glistening; he was quiet and modest, and was passionately fond of reading books.

The Countess came out and asked them whether they wanted work.

“No, it is not work that we want,” said Gertzel, “we want to know if we may bring our furniture to-day, and put it in your stables? It will not take up very much room,” he added.

“Certainly you may,” said the Countess; “but why do you want to get rid of your furniture? Is it your feast day?”

“No, it is very far from being our feast day--it is little enough a feast day,” said Gertzel; “but we want you in your kindness to let us store our furniture in your stables--in the barn perhaps. It will take little room. There are some chairs, a table, and the tools and implements that are necessary for our work. And Daniel has a lot of books he would like to bring, too--some of those which your Brightness gave him, if your Brightness remembers, last year.”

“You may certainly bring your things,” said the Countess, “and put them in the stables or in the barn or anywhere else you please. But why do you want to do this?”

“It is because,” said Gertzel, “to-morrow morning there will be a Pogrom.”

“How a Pogrom?” asked the Countess.

“A Pogrom,” said Gertzel, “an ordinary Pogrom. It has been arranged; the date is fixed for to-morrow. It will be all right if we may store our furniture in your barn; and if we may ask as much, we have several friends who would like to do the same. For in that case all will be well, and we shall incur no loss. We cannot afford the loss this year: we are all poor people; we cannot afford to lose our property.”

“But,” said the Countess, “I don’t understand. Who is going to make this Pogrom? The people here?”

“God forbid!” said Gertzel. “We are living with all the people here in peace. They are coming from O. (O. was the big manufacturing town) and from A. (another town about fifty miles distant). They are coming by train; they will arrive early to-morrow morning. The Pogrom will take place in the morning; it will be all over by the evening, and they will go back by the night train.”

“But who?” the Countess asked, “and what are they?”

“They say they have been sent; some people say it is the Tsar’s orders; others that it is the Governor, but what does it matter? In any case, they have been sent to make a Pogrom.”

“Surely,” said the Countess, “if you inform the police, measures will be taken to prevent this. It is absurd! It can’t possibly happen!”

“It must be,” said Gertzel, and Daniel nodded his head in agreement, and repeated: “It must be: it is so decreed!”

“It has all been arranged,” said Gertzel. “To-morrow there will be the Pogrom. Let us bring our furniture to your barn, our furniture and our friends’ furniture, and all will be well.”

“It must be prevented!” said the Countess, “You must go to the police.”

“It is useless,” said Gertzel; “it cannot be prevented; it has been arranged for to-morrow.”

And no argument was of any avail; they merely repeated over and over again that the Pogrom was to be, and they left, with tears of gratitude in their eyes for having been allowed to store their furniture in the Count’s stables.

The Countess went to her husband and related what had happened. They sent for Ivan, the moujik, who washed the plates, and who, being a native of the place, would be likely to know what was going on, and they asked him if it were true that there was to be a Pogrom.

“Yes, your Brightness,” he said, “it is quite true. There will be a Pogrom to-morrow; it has been arranged.”

“Who has arranged it?” asked the Countess.

“I cannot know,” answered Ivan; “but it has been arranged.”

“You mean the people here?” asked the Countess, “they will attack the Jews?”