Chapter VI: The Average Russian

The great danger in studying Russian life is to pay so much importance to the trees that the wood escapes notice. The temptation to do so where Russia is concerned is all the greater owing to the interest of individual trees; and by individual trees I mean not only individuals, but phases, tendencies, currents of thought, particular types, and political parties. Such types, or schools of thought, or political groups, although often of great interest in themselves, are rarely representative of the average tendency; and yet by foreigners it is often taken for granted that they are not only typical of the whole, but that nothing else beside them exists.

There was a time when Russia was supposed to consist entirely of Nihilists and policemen; at a later period social revolutionaries took the part of Nihilists, and the _agent provocateur_ played the chief part in the opposing camp, in the general view one obtained from the foreign press.

This general view was, of course, founded on fact. At one period Nihilists did exist, did conspire, and did blow up.

As for social revolutionaries, they existed in great quantities, and the _agents provocateurs_, too, became so numerous that it was scarcely worth while to be a social revolutionary. These groups are historically and psychologically worthy of careful study, but they were never representative of the average Russian, any more than the Fabians or the militant suffragettes are representative of the average Englishman and Englishwoman.

Then again, you get the interesting types created by the masters of literature. You get Dostoievsky’s neurasthenic murderer, Raskolnikov; his frigid and calculating political intriguer, Verkhovensky; his undisciplined and centrifugal Dimitri Karamazov. You get Turgeniev’s intellectual and uncompromising Bazarov; his enthusiastic sponger and _génie sans portefeuille_, Rudin; Tolstoy’s Levin, Gorki’s anarchical proletarian. And all these characters are each of them more interesting than the other, and all of them reveal qualities that are Russian and nothing but Russian. But none of them is the average Russian, because the man of genius, when he creates a type such as _Lear_ or _Faust_, is not endeavouring to portray the average man, but is making a synthesis of the human soul; so that every human being can see something of himself in the mirror of the poet’s creation. But that creation is larger and wider than nature; and so far from being confined to the characteristics of the average man, contains within itself all the possibilities and capabilities and passions of the human soul—all the strings of the instrument, its whole gamut, its complete range of expression.

And the creations of a Russian novelist such as Dostoievsky afford us a synthesis of the Russian soul, in its profoundest depths, in its sorest spots, at its widest extremes, at its highest pitch of rapture or despair. The result is that they are no more portraits of the average Russian than _Lear_ is a portrait of the average Englishman; and yet they are profoundly Russian, just as _Lear_ is profoundly English, and _Faust_ is profoundly German—although _Faust_ is hardly a typical portrait of the ordinary German bourgeois.

One of the results which the genius of Russian novelists has had on foreign opinion is to create a general impression that Russia is a country of “inspissated gloom,” because the greater number of the Russian novelists and poets deal with tragic themes, and their characters are painted in sombre colours.

There is nothing very strange about this. Happy individuals, like happy countries, have no history; and if you want to write drama, and especially tragic drama, the domestic affairs of _Œdipus Rex_ or _Othello_ obviously offer more fruitful material to the dramatist than the domestic affairs of Darby and Joan or of Philemon and Baucis. Even if the writer’s aim is comedy, he will probably choose themes and material which give occasion for merciless satire or extravagant mirth, and create characters which on the comic side are as far above or below the average as those of the poets on the tragic side. _Falstaff_ is just as extraordinary a character as _Hamlet_, and _Sam Weller_ is just as exceptional as Napoleon; yet _Sam Weller_, again, is profoundly English.

In Russia, just as in other countries, the cheerful side of life is reflected in literature, and the average man plays a part also—only that branch of Russian literature is less well known. Gogol, for instance, has created innumerable comic types; and Pushkin has, in his masterpiece, _Evgenie Oniegin_, drawn a masterly portrait of an average type, and more especially in Tatiana he has given us a lifelike portrait of the soul of the Russian woman, which is a radiant soul. But Gogol is less well known abroad than Turgeniev; and Pushkin’s work being written in verse, suffers badly from inadequacy—or, rather, impossibility—of translation.

The net result is that the impression the outside reader obtains from such Russian literature as is available to him is that Russia is a gloomy country, and that the Russian people are steeped in a cloud of permanent melancholy. And yet the first thing that strikes you when you go to Russia is the cheerfulness[11] of the people and the good humour of the average man. Not long ago, _apropos_ of an article on Dostoievsky’s _Idiot_, a well-known Russian artist wrote to _The Times_, saying that you might just as well judge the English people by _The City of Dreadful Night_ as the Russian people by Dostoievsky’s characters. The writer of the article explained, in answer, that he was not judging the Russian people at all, but only the faith of Dostoievsky. And although I think the writer’s purpose was plain, and that he achieved it admirably, nevertheless the Russian artist’s complaint, if it did not apply to the writer of that article, was a wholesome reminder to the public in general that the creations of Dostoievsky are creations of genius, and creations of tragic genius profoundly Russian, but dealing almost exclusively with the tragic adventures of the soul (which is, after all, the business of tragedy), and leaving out its sunnier experiences. As the Russian artist pointed out, there is another side to the medal of Russian life, and not only a bright side, but an unusually bright side—the _svietlaya duscha_, the radiant soul of which the Russian poet speaks, whose radiance, in my opinion, is nowhere plainer than in Dostoievsky’s novels, in spite of, and sometimes even because of, the encircling gloom.

It stands to reason that, if all Russians were as melancholy as they are depicted as being in many Russian novels and plays written by men of genius, the great majority of the Russian nation would have cut their throats a long time ago.

It is evident that there must be a great deal of cheerfulness, humour, and joy to counterbalance the gloom, the anguish, and the melancholy which is so vividly and so poignantly described by so many Russian authors, or else life would not go on.

This is just what is the case. The Russian goes easily to extremes: he is not, as a rule, fond of half measures; so that when he is melancholy, his melancholy takes an extreme form. He is fond of going the whole hog; and if he is inclined to neurasthenia and hysteria, he will give full scope to his fancy in that direction: he will be not uninclined to say with Baudelaire, “_J’ai cultivé mon hystérie avec jouissance et terreur._”

But the average Russian is, perhaps, little more inclined to neurasthenia than the average Englishman. The average Russian is well educated, cheerful, sociable, intensely gregarious, hospitable, talkative, expansive, good-humoured, and good-natured. You hear often in Russia the phrase _shirokaya natura_ applied to the Russian temperament—a large nature. It means that the Russian temperament is generous, unstinted, democratic, and kind. Good-heartedness, and sometimes great-heartedness, is the great asset of the average Russian. He is the most tolerant of human beings. He is preeminently indulgent, and extends to the faults and failings of his neighbours the same indulgence which he knows his own faults and failings will receive at his neighbour’s hands. His lack of hypocrisy, and the manner in which he will speak of his own shortcomings and deficiencies, will sometimes strike the foreigner as being the quintessence of cynicism.

One of the most contented Russians I ever met was a man who had got the post of assistant ticket-collector on a small railway line. His duty was to check the ticket collector. This man had once upon a time been enormously rich. He had possessed estates, where he entertained his friends on a large scale, and provided them with every kind of amusement in the way of sport. Besides this, he had a private theatre of his own and a private orchestra. He spent all his money in this way, until there was none left, and he was obliged to accept what post he could get. But as an insignificant public servant on the railway line he was just as cheerful as ever; he said that he had just as much fun. “I used to drink champagne,” he explained, “now I drink vodka; the result is the same in the long run. I used to have a lot of money. I’ve spent it; money is meant to spend. What is the good of keeping or hoarding it? One can’t take it with one when one dies.”

This man had a _shirokaya natura_—a large and generous temperament. There was no trace of neurasthenia observable in his character. Stinginess is a quality which is rare in Russia. Thrift and economy are not among those virtues which are commonest there. On the other hand, broadness of mind and largeness of heart are virtues which are among the commonest.

After Count Tolstoy died a posthumous play of his was published, called _The Living Corpse_. The subject of the play was a story that happened in real life, taken straight from the newspaper, with the names and the _milieu_ changed, and it struck me, when I read it and saw it acted, as being typical of Russian life—a story which could only happen in Russia. It is perhaps worth while retelling it here, as it throws more light on the subject than pages of argument.

The story is as follows. Liza Protasova leaves her husband Feodor, whom she had loved, because he is

“A little slovenly in dress,
A trifle prone to drunkenness.”

Not a bad man, but weak, extravagant, and given to periodic outbreaks, when he spends the night listening to gipsies singing, and drinking champagne. You must know Russia to understand what listening to gipsies means, and you must be well inoculated with gipsy music before you understand the tyrannical spell of it. It is in a lesser degree like smoking opium.

Apart from these more or less venial failings, Feodor, as I have said, is not a bad man, nor is he even an unfaithful husband. Nevertheless, his wife, after one of these periodic outbursts, leaves him and returns to her mother, who thoroughly approves of such a course. But no sooner has Liza taken this step than she repents herself of it, and she sends Feodor a message by one Karenin asking him to come back to her. Karenin is an honest prig and a bore. He is also in love with Liza. He executes the commission; but Feodor is listening to the gipsies, and especially to one of them called Masha, and he refuses to go back.

Weeks go by, and then months. Karenin loves Liza; Liza loves Karenin. Masha loves Feodor. Liza’s mother wishes her daughter to be divorced and to marry Karenin. An embassy with this proposal is dispatched to Feodor. But according to the Russian law in such a case, in order to get a divorce when a wife has left her husband because she no longer wishes to be his wife, the husband must take the guilt on himself. He must declare himself a guilty, unfaithful husband; and if he is not one, he must concoct sham evidence to show that he is, and swear to it. This Feodor refuses to do, because he is not guilty; he has not been unfaithful. He says, “I have been a bad husband, I am a worthless man; but there are things which I cannot do, and one of them is quietly to tell the necessary lies in order to make this divorce possible.” He seeks another solution. He finds a simple one—suicide. But when the revolver is at his temple he hesitates, in an agony; and at that moment Masha the gipsy intervenes, sees what is happening, and suggests another solution—that he should let the world think he had killed himself, and in reality escape with her into the limbo of the disclassed, leaving his wife free to marry Karenin. He does this. He writes a letter to his wife, saying that he is about to kill himself; he leaves his clothes by the river. The plan succeeds; by chance a corpse is found. Liza says it is that of her husband (and it is no use saying that this is improbable, because it all happened). Feodor and Masha disappear, and Karenin marries Liza. All is for the best, for them.

Feodor sinks deeper into the mud; and one fine day, when he is telling his story to a friend in a squalid tavern, he is overheard by a kind of tramp, who, quick to see the possible profit arising out of such a situation, suggests to Feodor a scheme of joint blackmail—that they should blackmail Liza. Feodor tells him to go to what I see now is prettily called “the underground world”; and the tramp, in a rage, calls a policeman and gives Feodor in charge for bigamy. But not only is Feodor had up for bigamy, but his wife and Karenin also: they are charged with conspiracy—if that be the right term—for having been privy to the scheme, and for having paid Feodor to get out of the way and to become a “living corpse.” The maximum penalty of the law for bigamy is exile to Siberia; the minimum what is called “Church contrition.” But in any case the second marriage is cancelled, and if Karenin, Feodor, and Liza were acquitted of conspiracy, Liza and Feodor would nevertheless be bound to resume their interrupted married life. The lawyers do not believe a word of the true story as it is told by the witnesses; and Feodor, to prevent Liza from being bound to him once more, commits suicide in the corridor of the law courts during the trial. That is the story, and such are the facts—such as they actually happened in real life.

In this story Feodor, both in his faults and in his good qualities, is intensely typical of the Russian character.

This story illustrates the melancholy side of Russian life. To convince yourself of the cheerful side of the Russian character, you have only to look at any regiment of Russian soldiers marching through a street and singing as they march. It is the melancholy note of Russian music that is best known abroad. But cheerful songs and choruses exist in great abundance, and if you listen to the people in villages singing in the summer night, it is nearly always a cheerful song that you will hear to the accompaniment of the accordion; and often the songs are not only cheerful but irresistible in their lilt. The sense of rhythm of some of the village singers, and especially of the accompanists, whether they play the accordion or the three-stringed guitar, the _balalaika_, is sure, masterly, and astounding. The accompanist follows the singer with an infinite diversity in unity, and while varying all the time, and introducing fantastic changes and daring improvisations, he never loses hold of the main trend of the subject, of the fundamental rhythm: he varies with invariable law.

Such music is infectious and captivating. It would inspire the lame to dance and the dead to walk. It is untiring. It seems to be able to go on and on for ever without pause or hesitation, and to reveal a fresh energy and to draw a new supply of strength with every new verse.

The average Russian is not only fond of music—he likes noise. Formerly in the restaurants there used to be large barrel organs or orchestrons. Now in the smarter restaurants there are bands of stringed instruments, and in the eating-houses of the poor, gramophones. Indeed, the popularity of gramophones in Russia is extraordinary. A love of gramophones is surely the sign of a cheerful temperament.

The amusement which the Russian is fondest of when he wants to have a really good time is to go and listen to gipsies. The entertainment is worth describing, as it is the unique property of Russia, and is the one thing you can almost be sure the average Russian will understand, just as you will be sure the average Englishman will understand a sporting contest or a music-hall comic turn.

Looked at from the outside, as you see it, for instance, on the stage in Tolstoy’s play, this is what you see. A private room in a restaurant. It is rather dingy. In the corner there is a battered piano, much the worse for wear. On the walls, looking-glasses. At one end of the room a plush sofa. In front of it a table, champagne bottles, and glasses.

The spectators sit on the sofa. In front of them, occupying the whole of the other side of the room, is the chorus of gipsies. The gipsies are not raggle-taggle people in shabby and gorgeous clothes. They are a chorus of men and women in ordinary dress, who, though swarthy in complexion, look like the audience in the upper circle at a Queen’s Hall concert.

The gipsies show signs of the boredom and fatigue common to professionals engaged in the performance of their professional duties. They yawn. One of them has got a toothache and a swollen face. They carry on an undercurrent of irrelevant conversation amongst themselves, while they automatically sing. The outsider will notice the mechanical side of the gaiety and the poetry they are paid to evoke. The candles on the table are guttering, and through the windows of the cheerless private room the cold dawn pierces, or the bright sun streams, as the case may be.

But those who are of the feast, and in it, notice none of these things. They are there for glamour, and they have got it. Oblivious of every sordid detail, and of all the mechanism, they are aware only of the poetry, the romance, and the passion evoked by a wailing concord of piercing, discordant sounds which play on the nerves like a bow upon strings.

The chorus sit in a semicircle, a man with a guitar stands up and leads the chorus, his guitar and his body swaying to the rhythm. A woman takes a solo part. The chorus rises into a wail as loud and as fierce as the howling of a pack of wolves, and then dies away in an unsatisfied sigh.

The first time you hear this monotonous and exasperating music you may think it disagreeable; but the moment you are bitten by the music and infected with it, the sensation is rather like this: first you tremble all over as with a fever; then you are aware that the fever is pleasant. Then you forget all this: you are far away amid white dawns and sleepless midnights, and when you are brought back to reality, you demand—you insist on—one more glimpse of that sweet and bitter, that discordant and melodious, fairyland.

The gipsy music certainly has the quality of growing on you. It intoxicates some people. They are bitten by it to such an extent that they crave for it, as for a drug. They cannot do without it. Others are invincibly bored. But to the average Russian, to go and listen to gipsies, when you wish to enjoy yourself especially, is a common custom, and an expensive custom, so that, as a rule, people club together when they wish to treat themselves to this luxury.

The expense is part of the fun. If the average Russian wants to celebrate a feast of any kind he wishes to add to the festivity the spice of recklessness which the feeling that he is spending more than he can afford will give him. And if on such occasions he falls into the spending mood, he will spend recklessly.

He is generous, and, as a rule, careless about money. An enormous amount of borrowing is constantly going on. A asks B to lend him a hundred roubles. B complies at once, although he hasn’t got it, and borrows it from C. Laxity in money matters, which is fairly common, is probably in some degree the result of the widespread administrative venality in the past, which was in its turn the inevitable fruit of long years of unchecked bureaucracy in a large country. At the height of the old _régime_ venality was in Russia a natural corrective to the narrowness or severity of regulations. Toleration was obtained by bribery. The schismatics, or the Jews, or any class which suffered from administrative disabilities, got round them by bribery. Again, when you have a bureaucracy on a very large scale, a great number of the minor public servants cannot possibly live on their wages: they will be certain to supplement their insufficient incomes by exacting and receiving bribes. Administrative corruption was at one time practically universal in Russia. It has received much more than a considerable check since the creation of the Duma and the increased liberty of the Press, since in the Duma questions can be asked, and transactions can be brought to the public notice which in the old days were securely screened from all possible investigation or inquiry.

The average Russian was probably not more venal than the average native of any other country. Some of the causes of his venality were common to the human race, and were such as produce venality in any time and in any country; and chief amongst these is the one I have already mentioned—the underpayment of the public servant. Another cause of corruption was the irresponsibility of officials. Until the Duma was made, public officials were, as a rule, immune from the law which in theory laid down severe penalties against all abuse of authority and all illegalities committed by officials in the performance of their public duties. All this has changed in the last ten years, and is changing still; there is infinitely less administrative corruption than there was. The average middle-aged Russian of to-day was brought up in an atmosphere in which the public revenue was regarded as a fair game for exploitation, and those who cheated the State, or made money by bribery or any illicit means of any kind, were treated with the utmost tolerance.

In spite of this, the average Russian is not one whit more dishonest or immoral than his fellow-creatures in neighbouring countries. But if he is dishonest, his failing will be far more noticeable than that of the dishonest in other countries: firstly, because he will take infinitely less pains, or no pains at all, to conceal it; he will not hide it under a veneer of hypocrisy—he will wear it on his sleeve; secondly, because he is fundamentally good-natured, and his good nature varies from heights of Christian charity on the one hand, to depths of complete moral laxity on the other. On the one hand you have Dostoievsky’s utterly disinterested Mwyskin, and on the other hand Gogol’s completely venal Khlestyakov. The average Russian will probably have a dose of both qualities.

The average Russian is, above all things, a sociable being, who is fond of eating good solid food and drinking vodka, and who is averse to strenuous mental or physical exertion. This does not mean that you will not find any amount of hard workers in Russia; but I am talking of the average man. And it is just the average man, _Monsieur Tout-le-Monde_, the man in the street, who is left out of the discussion when people think, talk, or write of Russia. The intellectuals are discussed, the Nihilists, the Socialists, the revolutionaries, the extreme reactionaries, the man of genius, the criminal, the martyr, the hero, the scoundrel, the æsthete. But the average Russian is, as a rule, neither a hero, a genius, a scoundrel, nor an æsthete. But he is in the long run the man who counts. It is with his sanction and co-operation alone that any great change has been made in Russian history. At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war, he, the man in the street, was mildly in favour of it. After the initial reverses he was angrily in favour of it. After several months he was angrily against it, and his anger was directed against the Government. So much so, that the Government was compelled to take active steps, and to promise tangible reform. The climax of the hostility of public opinion happened when the whole country went on strike in the autumn of 1905. Then, for one moment, the whole of Russia was in agreement, and public opinion was consequently irresistible. Later on, when political parties were formed, public opinion was no longer at one, and weakness began to set in.

Finally, when the constitutional and peaceable reformers had succeeded in effecting nothing beyond the creation of the Duma (which was in itself an immense step), and the militant reformers had merely achieved a series of sporadic acts of terrorism, one result of which was that the whole of the criminal classes followed their example and adopted their methods for the purposes of individual hooliganism—the average Russian, the man in the street, was alienated from the revolutionary movement, and no longer gave it his support. Naturally enough, for his pocket and his person were no longer safe. The street became no place for a man. He could no longer go for a walk in it without the possibility of having his private purse “expropriated.”

Political theory had become a practical fact with a vengeance so far as the criminal class were concerned. And the political terrorists had taught the impartial burglar the use and convenience of the Browning pistol, and had shown him how easy it was to rob a bank by bluff or dynamite. And as soon as the man in the street condemned revolutionary methods in Russia, the revolutionary movement came to an end. It could not live without his inarticulate support, without his active or passive sympathy.

And what is the average man doing or thinking now?

The answer to such a question must necessarily depend on the exact moment at which it is put. Had it been put in the summer of 1913—in July, say—it would have been safe to say in answer to this question, and in reviewing public opinion during the last two years, that the average Russian was consciously or unconsciously feeling the effects of the increased and ever increasing prosperity of the country; that he was manifesting indifference both towards internal and foreign politics; that he was making and spending money, and falling into a lethargy of prosperous materialism. But the autumn of 1913 has already shown how rash it would have been to make any such definite statement, without qualification, and without leaving a door open upon fresh possibilities.

In spite of the increasing prosperity of the country—in spite of the rapid strides that education is making—seeds of discontent, which so far from being removed from above have been watered from above, have lately been making themselves manifest. And if it is too much—and it is too much—to say that the average Russian is as yet affected, it is at all events true that a considerable section of the educated, political, and commercial community, including many men well known in the political world who had hitherto supported the Government, are complaining in no uncertain voice of the acts of the administration.

There exist in Russia a great many antiquated and useless things in the shape of legislative and hampering regulations which need sweeping away. If the local administration of the country were universally excellent and competent, the average man would not probably trouble his head about them. But the local administration of the country is neither excellent nor competent: its acts are often perilously illegal. And it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise, until the remains of the old _régime_ are swept away from above, and a new _régime_ is inaugurated. So far from anything being done in this direction, the old _régime_ is being bolstered up; and so far from keeping their promises of reform, the central administration has been busy taking away, or limiting, what had already been given. The result of this has been that the Government has succeeded in exasperating a large part of the educated portion of the community. Discontent is being expressed. The Government has succeeded in rousing at least one section of the population from the lethargy brought on by prosperity; and as soon as this discontent has become sufficiently widespread, and sufficiently strong and universal to cause the man in the street not only to speak out, but, if not to act, at least to sympathize with action, then, unless some timely measures are taken from above, it is possible that efforts may be made from below to remove the causes of discontent.

In the meantime the man in the street is certainly aware of the prevalence of discontent, and in many cases and places he is acutely discontented himself. It would be idle to speculate on what proportions his discontent will reach, and what its effect will be either in the immediate or the remote future. The future will answer this question. But ultimately, I think, it is safe to say that the achievement of political liberty in Russia will depend not on the dynamite and the death of revolutionaries however self-sacrificing and however ardent, nor on the measures of a statesman however far-seeing and however wise, but on the will and desire of the average man. On the day the average man really desires political liberty he will get it. So far, the only thing he has desired and obtained is individual liberty—liberty of thought, _liberté des mœurs_. In order to obtain political liberty, he will no doubt have to sacrifice a portion of the unbounded power he now enjoys of doing exactly what he likes in the sphere of personal conduct, because political liberty implies personal discipline, or a certain amount of personal discipline. Will the average Russian make a sacrifice? That depends, perhaps, on what store he will ultimately set on political life and political freedom; on how far indifference will prevail; and also on the future policy and quality of the local and central administration. But in the long run the question as to whether any efforts towards obtaining political liberty will be successful or not, depends on the generation which is growing up, and which is as yet an unknown quantity. But whatever strange and new fruits the coming generation may bring forth, one thing is certain—no vital changes will come about in Russian life without the conscious or unconscious co-operation of the average man.