Chapter V: Causes of Discontent

I have already said in the preceding chapter that the principles of central and parliamentary government in Russia, and the theory of local administration and local self-government, if investigated on paper, produce an excellent impression, so that the casual inquirer, glancing at the subject for the first time, will be tempted to exclaim, “What more can the Russian people want?”

Moreover, there has perhaps never been a period when Russia was more materially prosperous than at the present moment, or when the great majority of the people seemed to have so little obvious cause for discontent; and yet—it would be futile to deny it—unmistakable signs of discontent exist.

Seeds of discontent have been sown, and are every day being sown broadcast, and unless their early shoots are uprooted in time, it is difficult to imagine that they will not bear momentous fruit in the future, however distant such a future may be.

Whereupon the casual inquirer would probably ask a further question: “If the Russian people are discontented, why are they discontented? What are these seeds of discontent? Whence do they come? And are their grievances substantial or frivolous, real or imaginary?”

The answer is, I think, simple.

The seeds of discontent, where they exist, are the result of one simple fact. In 1905 explicit promises were made to the Russian people, which, if carried out, would insure their complete political liberty and the full rights of citizenship. Those promises have in some cases not been carried out at all, and in other cases they have only been carried out partially, or according to the letter and not according to the spirit.

Practically, political liberty does not yet exist in Russia, and the rights of political citizenship are still a vain dream.

Every now and then the spokesmen of the Government inform us that the Russian people are quite indifferent as to legislative reform, and that all they care for is competent administration. I think, however, putting aside altogether the question whether competent administration can be obtained without legislative reform, that nobody will deny that some people in Russia want political liberty. It would be equally difficult to deny that the absence of political liberty indirectly hampers and annoys and exasperates a still greater number of people, who take no interest in politics and who foster no political theories of any kind.

Hence discontent arises, which will necessarily vary and increase in proportion as such annoyance and exasperation is felt by a greater or lesser number of people.

In the years that followed immediately on the publishing of the Manifesto in 1905, the policy of the Government during the administration of P. A. Stolypin was: “Order first; Reform afterwards.” To P. A. Stolypin fell the ungrateful task of restoring order. He accomplished his task, successfully if drastically. And it is only fair to say that it would have probably been impossible to restore order save by drastic measures. It must also be said in fairness that P. A. Stolypin initiated certain large measures which tend towards reform—his Land Bill and his Education Bill, for instance. But the reforms initiated during his administration, and during that of his successor, have as yet only been partial; and so far the practical policy of the Government has consisted in taking away, curtailing, and limiting with one hand what has been given with the other.

This is partly due to the constant introduction of qualifying clauses and amendments in any new laws that are liberal in spirit—amendments which have the effect of hindering the practical operation of the laws; and partly to the quality of the local administration, whose duty it is to interpret and to execute the laws. As a general rule, the local administrative officials, by the manner of their interpretation, are completely successful in sacrificing the spirit to the letter of the law, and of depriving the laws of their true meaning, and of rendering them null and void in practice.

Such a policy must inevitably have an exasperating effect on the population.

Let us look into the matter a little more closely.

The Manifesto of October 30 promised, firstly, the creation of a deliberative and legislative assembly without whose consent no new laws in the future should be passed; and secondly, the full rights of citizenship—namely, the inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, freedom of the Press, the right of organizing public meetings, and of founding unions and associations.

How far and in what manner have these promises been fulfilled? How far are these things a practical factor in Russian political life to-day?

Let us take the Duma first.

We have already seen that the Duma possesses a considerable indirect influence, and that by its very existence, and quite apart from what it may effect or fail to effect legislatively, a change has come about in the government of Russia; but in spite of this, the powers, or rather the power, of the Duma is to a certain extent paralyzed by the attitude of the Central Government towards it.

The attitude of the Government towards the Duma is a curious one. Firstly, by its interpretation of the law, by the addition of qualifying clauses and amendments, the Government tries, whenever it can, to diminish the powers that have been granted to the Duma, and more especially in so far as they concern the Budget; and secondly, the Government floods the Duma with a great quantity of irrelevant and trivial legislation with the object of keeping the more vital and important issues out of its reach.

This is one reason why any prevailing discontent is prevented from subsiding, since by acting in this manner the Government never ceases to fan the smouldering ashes of discontent into flame, and to feed the flame with slender but continuous supplies of fresh fuel.

So far, then, we have already one cause of discontent—the attitude of the Government towards the Duma; and this attitude consists, in a word, of doing everything it can to prevent the Duma from becoming a reality—a vital factor in the State—and in trying to convert it into a passive annex to the Government machine.

The second question now arises. What has been, and what is, the attitude of the Central Government towards the remaining promises made by the Manifesto of October 30th? I will take the promises separately; but before doing so, it will be as well to point out that, at present, all matters which are affected by the promises laid down in the Manifesto of 1905 are being carried out by temporary regulations, instead of by laws passed through the Duma. It is clear that temporary regulations lend themselves easily to amendment, and amendments signify a deviation from the original intention of such regulations. Moreover, all temporary regulations are interpreted by the local officials, whose powers of interpretation are necessarily arbitrary, and whose powers of evasion, explanation, and general tergiversation are incredibly ingenious, and are almost invariably employed in the interests of reaction. I will now take the various points in order.

(1.) _The Inviolability of the Person._—With regard to this question, practically nothing has been done. A Bill on the subject was introduced by the Government during the third session of the last Duma, but was rejected by the Duma because it did not affect the root of the question. Another Bill was introduced later, but has not yet emerged into the region of fact. The laws of the country on this point are brief and explicit. They guarantee to the subject a slightly protracted form of _habeas corpus_, and are summed up in twelve short clauses; but if you buy the book containing these twelve short clauses, you find they are followed by a whole volume of amendments, explanations, and rules relating to exceptional circumstances. Practically, these exceptions deal for the greater part with so-called political offences; but owing to the ramifications of these manifold amendments, both the central and the local authorities can enlarge their conception of what constitutes a political offence to almost any extent. The interpretation becomes infinitely elastic; and thus it is easy for people who have no more to do with politics than the man in the moon to fall under the suspicion of a political offence, and the life of everyday people is reached and touched by the ramifications of exceptional clauses made to a clear law, which was originally passed in order to deal with cases germane to one exceptional matter, and which could only therefore affect a small minority.

Again, all the ordinary laws of the country can be suspended and overruled by the putting into force of temporary regulations, which are introduced by the authorities as administrative measures in districts which are, or are supposed to be, disturbed.

These temporary measures are in reality minor forms and shades of martial law. They consist of what are called the state of “Reinforced Protection,” and the state of “Extraordinary Protection.”

Both these exception “states” may be proclaimed by the Ministry of the Interior, after a resolution of the Cabinet Council, which must be confirmed by the Emperor.

Under the state of “Reinforced Protection,” governors-general, governors, and city prefects have the right of inflicting punishment for the infringement of any rules they may issue by a fine not exceeding 500 roubles (£50), or by a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months, without trial. They have also, among other things, the right of prohibiting public or private meetings, of shutting commercial establishments, of prohibiting the residence of any person in a given district.

Under the state of “Extraordinary Protection” their powers are enlarged. For instance, a special police can be created, and certain offences can be removed from the jurisdiction of ordinary courts of law and can be tried by courts-martial; newspapers and periodicals can be suspended, and schools can be closed for a period not exceeding one month. The state of “Reinforced Protection” is still in force at this moment in many parts of Russia, and although one reads from time to time in the newspaper that it has been removed from such and such a place, it often happens that it is merely the name which has been abolished. The governor will often continue to exercise rights which are supposed to apply solely to exceptional circumstances.

Further, these “States of Protection” are often left in force in places where there is not, and has not been for a reasonable time, a shadow of disturbance.

(2.) _Freedom of Conscience._—A law whose sole object was religious tolerance was passed a few years ago. Theoretically freedom of conscience is supposed to exist. Practically, it exists only very partially. If there are fifty members of any religious denomination in any place in Russia, they are supposed to be allowed to build a church, where they can worship as they please. But there is a clause in this law forbidding propaganda; and lately the interpretation of this clause has become more and more elastic, and in virtue of it technical objections are raised showing that Catholic or Uniate, or other unorthodox societies, are not in order, and their churches are consequently closed. Sometimes technical objections of another nature are found to meet the case. A case in point is that of the Catholic Uniates who were allowed by P. A. Stolypin to have a church in St. Petersburg. That church has now been closed by the Minister of the Interior, Maklakov, on the grounds that the church building does not fulfil the technical conditions obligatory to buildings where public meetings are held. Nothing could be more typical. The tendency during the last three years has been to take away by means of technical objections, or under the pretence of having discovered traces of propaganda, the larger liberties that were given. And this again irritates all those whom it may concern. As soon as any religious sect is suspected of opening rivalry to the Orthodox Church, some means or other is immediately found for prohibiting it. The Salvation Army are not allowed in Russia. Such things being the case, it would be absurd to say that liberty of conscience exists in Russia; on the other hand, it exists in larger measure than it used to.

(3.) _Freedom of the Press._—Broadly speaking, the Press is free in Russia at present, and this is perhaps the greatest asset which resulted from the revolutionary movement. Before 1905, there existed what in practice, although not in theory, was called “Previous Censure”—that is to say, representatives of the censorship used to visit the newspaper offices and censor the newspapers at their own sweet will. At present people can write what they choose in the newspapers, but the administration has the right to inflict a fine not exceeding 500 roubles (£50) on a newspaper (_a_) for publishing false news concerning the Government; and (_b_) for inciting the populace to rise against the Government; and in the case of “Extraordinary Protection,” newspapers, as we have seen, can be stopped altogether.

The effect of this regulation is felt far more in the provinces than in the large cities, for it stands to reason that a small newspaper with a narrow circulation will be more sensitive to such a fine than a large newspaper with an enormous circulation, to which it will be no more than a flea-bite. Moreover, the regulation is applied more often and more indiscriminately in the provinces than in the large cities.

For instance, the Moscow newspaper, the _Russkoe Slovo_, which I believe has the largest circulation of any Russian newspaper, published on November 7, 1913, the following schedule of the fines imposed on newspapers for comments on the Beiliss trial up to date:—

_October 24 (November 7, N.S.)._
Pamphlets confiscated 1
Newspapers fined 1
Total fines, 200 roubles (about £20).

_Total for 30 days of the Beiliss Case._
Editors arrested 6
Editors summoned 6
Newspapers confiscated 27
Pamphlets confiscated 6
Newspapers closed 3
Newspapers fined 42
Total of fines (up to date) 12,750 roubles (about £1,275).

A similar schedule, with its daily total of fines, appeared every day during the ritual murder trial.

It will be seen that the fines, when added up, do not amount to a very considerable sum, but a succession of such fines, not large in themselves, can end by doing damage to a small provincial paper. In any case they exercise an irritating effect.

Here again the question of interpretation plays an important part.

Almost anything can be interpreted as coming under the head of “false news concerning the Government,” and it is often easy to catch a newspaper out of a technical inaccuracy, although the statement made may in its substance be true.

For instance, if in a schedule such as that I have quoted it were stated that the editor of such and such a provincial newspaper had been arrested, and supposing the fact were true; but supposing also he had been subsequently released, and the news of his release had not reached the newspaper which published the news of his arrest, the newspaper would be fined for spreading false news with regard to the action of the Government.

Supposing, again, a regulation in a provincial district had been infringed by an official, and the news of the infringement were published in a newspaper; if the newspaper made a mistake with regard to the exact rank of the official in question, it would be fined for spreading false news.

Newspapers that copy news from other newspapers which come under the ban of “false news” are likewise liable to be fined.

This state of things, although it leaves the richer newspapers indifferent, exasperates the great mass of the journalistic world beyond measure.

(4.) _The right of holding Public Meetings._—Public meetings are allowed, theoretically, under certain conditions. In the first place, in order to hold a meeting you must apply for permission to the local governor, and state the object of the meeting. If the local governor refuses, you must give up the idea.

Secondly, a member of the police must be present at any meeting, who shall have the right of putting a stop to the proceedings if he thinks the speakers are showing signs of an anti-governmental tendency.

The police have in the last few years continually enlarged their conception of what can be considered anti-governmental, so much so that they often go to a meeting with the sole purpose of stopping it, and seize the first pretext of so doing, especially if it is a meeting of working men. The net result of the policy is that public meetings are rare, even at election times. Even the programmes of concerts must be sanctioned by the police.

(5.) _Associations and Societies._—These had a brief and flourishing existence immediately after the publication of the Manifesto, during the administration of Count Witte and the session of the first Duma; since then they have practically ceased to exist. They are entirely subject to Government control, and have been controlled out of all existence.

These five clauses which I have just analyzed, if they were carried out in practice, would confer on the Russian citizen complete rights of citizenship—in a word, political liberty. As it is, they are either not carried out at all, or in so far as they are carried out they operate in virtue of temporary regulations which are (_a_) liable to constant amendment; (_b_) at the mercy of the interpretation of local officials.

So, if the attitude of the Government towards the Duma is one great cause of discontent, the nature and the tendency of local administration is another.

The local administration is bad in itself, and has the effect of exasperating the people.

One of the reasons why this is so, is the necessity which the local officials feel themselves to be under of keeping up their prestige, and the prestige of the Central Government. The result of the policy of “Order first; Reform afterwards,” as it filtered through the various branches of administration throughout the country, is that the greatest crime in the eyes of the administration is criticism—criticism of any kind—because the slightest breath of criticism is held to be subversive and detrimental to the prestige of Government; and in the eyes of the officials, the Government must be upheld at all costs.

In the country, in the provinces and districts, at the present day in Russia, the illegality practised by Government officials is more flagrant than it was before 1905, because before 1905 illegality came from above, and from above only, and the local Government officials did not dare to infringe their obligations, but now the illegality is decentralized, and disseminated throughout the complicated network of administration. And since any kind of criticism is looked upon as a crime, those who are guilty of it, or are suspected of being guilty of it, are liable to meet with every kind of small restriction, check, and annoyance, and hence the life of the people is interfered with, and discontent is engendered.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the part played by the secret police.

We have said that criticism is regarded as a crime, and as an attack on the prestige of Government, but the reason of this is that criticism of governmental methods or officials is regarded as being synonymous with sympathy with the revolutionaries, and the ideas of the extreme parties, and this wide definition of criticism includes religious propaganda, the spreading of false news, and all anti-governmental speech or action. All these things are regarded as denoting sympathy with revolution, and revolution in its extreme form.

This is the view of the administration as a whole, and the view is strongly reflected in the action of the secret police, which exists all over the country; and the business of the secret police is, if not to spread discontent, to make it appear far more formidable than it is; to make it appear active where in reality it is only passive, otherwise there would be no reason why a large part of the secret police should exist at all.

In order to check and keep an eye on the revolutionary movement, whose existence the administration suspects everywhere, a wholesale system of espionage, of secret reports, of private denunciation, exists. The administration employs a quantity of people who are paid to “sneak” of what is going on in various quarters. Now the step from the office of spy to that of _agent provocateur_ is an easy one. It is obvious that a spy who wishes for further information about people who are thought to be revolutionaries will obtain that information more easily if he pretends to be a revolutionary himself. So the spy easily degenerates into the _agent provocateur_, and the people, knowing that spies and _agents provocateurs_ exist in their midst, feel they are never safe. And this feeling that you are never safe, whoever you are, or wherever you are (for a report may be at any moment being concocted about you, in the very _milieu_ where you live), gives a constantly increasing stimulus to discontent. It is not so much the things that happen, but the feeling that something may happen, that nobody is safe, which prevents discontent from dying out. Here, as in other respects, the life of the people is interfered with, and the people are exasperated.

All that I have written so far applies to Russia proper, but it is applicable in a higher degree to the Ukraines, to Poland, the Caucasus, the Baltic provinces, and to Finland.

In these provinces the arbitrary nature of local administration and the illegality practised by Government officials is felt more strongly still than in Russia. Consequently, in all these outlying dominions, there prevails a greater or a lesser degree of discontent. And this discontent is further increased by the policy of the Central Government towards these dominions; for the Government _vis-à-vis_ of the Duma makes capital out of the question of these different nationalities, and places in the foreground questions of legislation which concern them. They are used as a political weapon, as a spring-board for nationalist theory and practice, and as a means for shelving measures of reform, which deal with Russia proper. This not only exasperates these various nationalities to a high degree, but it also exasperates those Russians who wish to see the reforms that were promised realized in their own country.

Finally, the question arises, “Why is this so?” What prevents Russia from being quietly governed according to the comprehensive laws that already exist in its code, and according to the admirable and perspicuous principles of its political constitution? and further, what prevents the Government from fulfilling those promises made, which are as yet unfulfilled, and from putting into practice reforms which the majority of thinking people in Russia agree are indispensable?

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to give a satisfactory and categorical answer to these questions.

Political Liberals in Russia would probably answer that the old _régime_ which was scotched but not killed in 1905 is gradually recovering strength, and is simply fighting for its existence: that it is a case of self-preservation. On the other hand, there are Independent Conservatives and Independent Radicals who would tell you that what is needful in Russia is a strong executive, a drastic and courageous dictator, who would be strong enough to hew down the impediments, and cart away the rubbish, and govern Russia according to its ancient traditions; that this is the only form of government which has ever been successful in Russia, but that no such man of action is forthcoming at present. Others, more sceptically inclined, would probably remind you that every country has the government it deserves; and that if political liberty in Russia does not exist, it is owing to the fundamental tendency of the Russian character towards indiscipline, and that since every Russian is more or less undisciplined, it is impossible for them to expect that their Government will be anything but arbitrary.

One thing is certain, the drawbacks, the restraint, the impediments, the danger of criticism, the checks on free speech, on free worship, and other forms of freedom, to which I have alluded, naturally touch the educated part of the population more nearly than they do the great mass—the majority, the peasants—who at this moment are better off economically than they have ever been before; and consequently, even if they are discontented, it stands to reason that in the present circumstances it would need a powerful stimulus to increase their discontent to breaking point.

And what is true about the peasants is true, to a certain extent, about the remainder of the population.

The population on the whole are prosperous at the present moment, and their grievances are neither sharp nor strong enough, nor sufficiently abundant, to make the temperature of their discontent rise to boiling point. When the discontent which now exists becomes sufficiently widely and deeply felt to stir the average man to sympathy with action, and the abnormal man to violent action, then there may be an outbreak, unless it be anticipated by timely measures of reform, and the causes of discontent be removed.

At present nothing is being done by the Central Government or the local administration in this direction. At the present moment the local administration is making capital out of the fear of a revolution and a revolutionary movement, of whose existence there is little or no evidence, and infecting the central administration with this fear. Both the local and the central administration are constantly taking steps and issuing minor repressive measures to counteract a danger which, in the opinion of most people, exists only in the imagination of detectives; but if this policy continues, it is more than probable that the administrative powers will in time succeed in transforming the danger from an imaginary one into a real one, or rather, they will create the very danger they are afraid of; and the next revolution in Russia will be the offspring of the fears of the administration—of a bogey.

The last revolutionary movement in Russia had a destructive and demoralizing effect on the population; it produced a wave of hooliganism among the lower classes, and a current of anarchical thought and conduct in the educated classes. It also had a demoralizing effect on the minor officials and public servants; but whereas in the great majority of the uneducated and educated public the balance of equilibrium was automatically restored, owing to the necessities of everyday life and a natural reaction towards common sense, this demoralization had a more lasting effect on the officials, who once having been used to meet exceptional circumstances and lawless acts by arbitrary means and illegal measures, found it difficult to divest themselves of the habit. And the lower the rung of the official ladder the more apparent the demoralization becomes.

Now, it is the small officials who are more intimately in touch with the population. Consequently the effect of their action is being continually felt, and the effect is bad. And until something is done from above to remedy this state of things, the smouldering embers of discontent, as I have already said, will never have a chance of growing cold, and may ultimately burst out in a fire of alarming proportions.