Russia: Its People and Its Literature Part 2

At the meeting of the Council of Florence, when the Greek Emperor John Paleologos agreed to the reunion of the two churches, the prince of Moscow, Basil the Blind, showed himself blind of soul as well as of eye, in obstinately opposing such a union, thus cutting off Russia again from the Occident. When the Turks took Constantinople and consummated the fall of the Byzantine empire, Moscow became the capital of the Greek world, the last bulwark of the schismatic church, the asylum of the remains of a depraved and perishing organism, of the senile decadence of the last of the Caesars.

V.

The Russian Autocracy.

Such was the sad situation in Russia at the opening of the period of European Renaissance, out of which grew the modern age which was to provide the remedy for her ills through her own tyrants. For without intending a paradox, I will say that tyranny is the liberator of Russia.

Twice these tyrants who have forced life into her, who have impelled her toward the future, have been called _The Terrible_,--Ivan III., the uniter of the provinces, he whose very look made the women faint, and Ivan IV., the first to use the t.i.tle of Czar. Both these despots cross the stage of history like spectres called up by a nightmare: the former morose, dissimulating, and hypocritical, like Louis XI. of France, whom he resembles; the latter demented, fanatical, epileptic, and hot-tempered, clutching his iron pike in hand, with which he transfixed Russia as one may transfix a fluttering insect with a pin. But these tyrants, gifted and guided by a saving instinct, created the nation.

Ivan III. inst.i.tuted the succession to the throne, thus suppressing the hurtful practice of part.i.tion among brothers, and it was he who finally broke the yoke of the Mongols. Ivan IV. did more yet; he achieved the actual separation of Europe from Asia, put down the anarchy of the n.o.bles, and taught them submission to law; and not content with this, he put himself at the head of the scanty literature of his time, and while he widened the domains of Russia, he protected within her borders the establishment of the press, until then persecuted as sacrilegious.

It is difficult to think what would have become of the Russian nation without her great tyrants. Therefore it is that the memory of Ivan IV.

still lives in the popular imagination, and the Terrible Czar, like Pedro the Cruel of Spain, is neither forgotten nor abhorred.

The consolidation of the autocratic idea is easily understood in the light of these historic figures. No wonder that the people accepted it, from a spirit of self-preservation, since it was despotism that sustained them, that formed them, so to speak. It is folly to consider the inst.i.tutions of a nation as though they were extraneous to it, fruit of an individual will or of a single event; society obeys laws as exact as those which regulate the courses of the stars, and the historian must recognize and fix them.

The autocracy and the unity of Russia were consolidated together by the genius of Ivan III., who made their emblem the double-headed eagle, and by Ivan IV., who sacrificed to them a sea of blood. The munic.i.p.al autonomies and the petty independent princes frowned, but Russia became a true nation; at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the brilliant age of the monarchical principle, no European sovereign could boast of being so thoroughly obeyed as the sovereign prince of Moscow.

The radical concept of omnipotent power, not tempered as in the West by the humanity of Catholicism, at once rushed headlong to oppression and slavery. The ambitious regent Boris G.o.donof was not long in attaching the serfs to the soil, and upon the heels of this unscrupulous act followed the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y days of the false Demetrii, in which the serf, irritated by the burden of his chains, welcomed, in every adventurer, in every impostor, a Messiah come to redeem him. Then the Poles, the eternal enemies of Russia, seized the Kremlin, the Swedes threatened to overcome her, and the nation seemed ready to perish had it not been for the heroism of a butcher and a prince; a suggestive example of the saving strength which at supreme moments rises up in every nation.

But one more providential tyrant was needed, the greatest of all, the most extraordinary man of Russia's history, of the house of Romanoff, successor to the extinct dynasty of the Terrible Ivans. "Terrible" might also be applied to the name of the imperial carpenter whose character and destiny are not unlike those of Ivan IV. Both were precocious in intellect, both were self-educated, and both cooled their hot youth in the hard school of abandonment. Out of it came Peter the Great, determined at all costs to remodel his gigantic empire.

Herodotus relates how the young Anacarsis, on returning from foreign lands wherein he had learned new arts and sciences, came to Scythia his native country, and wished to celebrate there a great feast, after the manner of the Greeks, in honor of the mother of the G.o.ds; hearing of which the king Sarillius impaled him with a lance. He tells also how another king who wearied of the Scythian mode of living, and craved the customs of the Greeks, among whom he had been educated, endeavored to introduce the Baccha.n.a.lian dances, himself taking part in them. The Scythians refused to conform to these novel ideas, and finally cut off the king's head; for, adds the historian, "The Scythians detest nothing so much as foreign customs." The tale of Herodotus was in danger of being repeated at the beginning of the reign of Peter Romanoff. With him began the battle, not yet ended, between old Russia, which calls itself Holy, and new Russia, cut after the Western pattern. While Peter travelled and studied the industry and progress of Europe with the idea of bringing them to his Byzantine empire, the rebels at home conspired to dethrone this daring innovator who threatened to use fire and sword, whips and scourges, the very implements of barbarism, against barbarism itself.

It is a notable fact in Russian history that none of her mighty sovereigns was possessed of moral conditions in harmony with the vigor of their intelligence and will force. Russia has had great emperors but not good emperors. The halo that wreathes the head of Berenguela of Castile and Isabel the Catholic, Saint Ferdinand, or Saint Louis,--men and women in whom the ideal of justice seemed to become incarnate,--is lacking to Vladimir the Baptizer, to Ivan IV., to Peter the Great.

Among Occidental peoples the monarchy owed its prestige and sacred authority to good and just kings, vicars of G.o.d on earth, who were impressed with a sense of being called to play a n.o.ble part in the drama of history, conscious of grave responsibilities, and sure of having to render an account of their stewardship to a Supreme Power. The Czars present quite a different aspect: they seem to have understood civilization rather by its externals than by its intrinsic doctrines, which demand first of all our inward perfecting, our gradual elevation above the level of the beast, and the continuous affirmation of our dignity. Therefore they used material force as their instrument, and spared no means to crown their efforts.

But with all it is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration to Peter the Great. That fierce despot, gross and vicious, was not only a reformer but a hero. Pultowa, which beheld the fall of the power of Sweden, justified the reforms and the military organization inst.i.tuted by the young emperor, and made Russia a European power,--a power respected, influential, and great. Whatever may be said against war, whatever sentimental comparisons may be made between the founder and the conqueror, it must still be admitted that the monarch who leads his people to victory will lead them _ipse facto_ to new destinies, to a more glorious and intense historic life.

If Peter the Great had vacillated one degree, if he had squandered time and opportunity in studying prudent ways and means for planting his reforms, if his hand had trembled in laying the rod across the backs of his n.o.bles, or had spared the lash upon the flesh of his own son, perhaps he would never have achieved the transformation of his Oriental empire into a European State, a transformation which embraced everything,--the navy, the army, public instruction, social relations, commerce, customs, and even the beards of his subjects, the much respected traditional long beards, mercilessly shaven by order of the autocrat. In his zeal for illimitable authority, and that his decrees might meet with no obstacles either in heaven or earth, this Czar conceived the bright idea of a.s.suming the spiritual power, and having suppressed the Patriarchy and created the Synod, he held in his hands the conscience of his people, could count its every pulsation, and wind it up like a well-regulated clock. What considerations, human or divine, will check a man who, like Abraham, sacrifices his first-born to an idea, and makes himself the executioner of his own son?

The race sign was not obliterated from the Russian culture produced by immoral and short-sighted reformers. A woman of low extraction and obscure history, elevated to the imperial purple, was the one to continue the work of Peter the Great; his daughter's favorite became the protector of public instruction and the founder of the University of Moscow; a frivolous and dissolute Czarina, Elisabeth Petrowna, modified the customs, encouraged intellectual pleasures and dramatic representations, and put Russia in contact with the Latin mind as developed in France; another empress, a parricide, a usurper and libertine, who deserves the perhaps pedantic name of the Semiramis of the North given her by Voltaire, hid her delinquencies under the splendor of her intellect, the refined delicacy of her artistic tastes, her gifts as a writer, and her magnificence as a sovereign.

It was the profound and violent shock administered by the hard hand of Peter the Great that impelled Russia along the road to French culture, and with equal violence she retraced her steps at the invasion of the armies of Napoleon. The n.o.bility and the patriots of Russia cursed France in French,--the language which had been taught them as the medium of progress; and the nation became conscious of its own individuality in the hour of trial, in the sudden awakening of its independent instincts.

But in proportion as the nationality arose in its might, the low murmur of a growing revolution made itself heard. This impulse did not burst first from the hearts of the people, ground down by the patriarchal despotism of Old Russia, but from the brain of the educated cla.s.ses, especially the n.o.bility. The first sign of the strife, predestined from the close of the war with the French, was the political repression of the last years of the reign of Alexander I., and the famous republican conspiracy of December against Nicholas,--an aristocratic outbreak contrived by men in whose veins ran the blood of princes. Of these events I shall speak more fully when I come to the subject of Nihilism; I merely mention it here in this general glimpse of Russian history.

Menaced by Asia, Russia had willingly submitted to an absolute power, because, as we have seen, she lacked the elements that had concurred in the formation of modern Europe. Cla.s.sic civilization never entered her veins; she had no other light than that which shone from Byzantium, nor any other model than that offered by the later empire; she had no place in the great Catholic fraternity which had its law and its focus in Rome, and the Mongolian invasion accomplished her complete isolation.

Spain also suffered an invasion of a foreign race, but she pulled herself together and sustained herself on a war-footing for seven centuries. Russia could not do this, but bent her neck to the yoke of the conqueror. Our national character would have chafed indeed to see the kings of Asturias and Castile, instead of perpetually challenging the Moors, become their humble va.s.sals, as the Muscovite princes were to the Khans. With us the struggle for re-conquest, far from exhausting us, redoubled our thirst for independence,--a thirst born farther back than that time, in spite of Leroy-Beaulieu's statement, although it was indeed confirmed and augmented during the progress of that Hispano-Saracenic Iliad. The Russians being obliged to lay down their arms, to suffer and to wait, a.s.sumed, instead of our ungovernable vehemence, a patient resignation. But they none the less considered themselves a nation, and entertained a hope of vindicating their rights, which they accomplished finally in the overthrow of the Tartars, and in later days in rising against the French with an impetuosity and spontaneity almost as savage as Spain had shown in her memorable days.

Moreover, Russia lacked the elements of historic activity necessary to enable her to play an early part in the work of modern civilization. She had no feudalism, no n.o.bility (as we understand the term), no chivalry, no Gothic architecture, no troubadours, no knights. She lacked the intellectual impetus of mediaeval courts, the st.u.r.dy exercise of scholastic disputations, the elucidations of the problems of the human race, which were propounded by the thirteenth century. She lacked the religious orders, that network which enclosed the wide edifice of Catholicism; and the military, uniting in mystic sympathy the ascetic and chivalric sentiments. She lacked the councils of the laws of modern rights; and that her lack might be in nothing lacking, she lacked even the brilliant heresies of the West, the subtle rationalists and pantheists, the Abelards and Amalrics, whose followers were brilliant ignoramuses or rank bigots roused by a question of ritual. Lastly, she lacked the sunny smile of Pallas Athene and the Graces, the Renaissance, which brightened the face of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages.

And as the civilization brought at last to Russia was the product of nations possessed of all that Russia lacked, and as finally, it was imposed upon her by force, and without those gradual transitions and insensible modifications as necessary to a people as to an individual, she could not accept it in the frank and cordial manner indispensable to its beneficent action. A nation which receives a culture ready made, and not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at most it can only hope to imitate well. And so it happened with Russia.

Her development does not present the continuous bent, the gentle undulations of European history in which yesterday creates to-day, and to-day prepares for to-morrow, without an irregular or awkward halt, or ever a trace broken. In the social order of Russia primitive inst.i.tutions coexist with products of our spick and span new sociology, and we see the deep waters of the past mixed with the froth of the Utopia that points out the route of the unknown future. This confusion or inharmoniousness engenders Russian dualism, the cause of her political and moral disturbances. Russia contains an ancient people, to-day an anachronism, and a society in embryo struggling to burst its bounds.

But above all it is evident there is a people eager to speak, to come forth, to have a weight in the world, because its long-deferred time has come; a race which, from an insignificant tribe mewed in around the sources of the Dnieper, has spread out into an immense nation, whose territory reaches from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the borders of Turkey, Persia, and China; a nation which has triumphed over Sweden, Poland, the Turks, the Mongols, and the French; a nation by nature expansive, colonizing, mighty in extent, most interesting in the qualities of the genius it is developing day by day, and which is more astonishing than its material greatness, because it is the privilege of intellect to eclipse force. Half a dozen brains and spirits who are now spelling out their race for us, arrest and captivate all who contemplate this great empire. Out of the poverty of traditions and inst.i.tutions which Russian history bewails, two characteristic ones appear as bases of national life: the autocracy, and the agrarian commune,--absolute imperial power and popular democracy.

The geography of Russia, which predisposes her both to unity and to invasion, which obliges her to concentrate herself, and to seek in a vigorous autocratic principle the consciousness of independent being as a people, created the formidable dominion of the Muscovite Czars, which has no equal in the world. Like all primordial Russian ideas, the plan of this Caesarian sovereignty proceeded from Byzantium, and was founded by Greek refugee priests, who surrounded it with the aureole of divinity indispensable to the establishment of advantageous superst.i.tions so fecund in historical results. Since the twelfth century the autocracy has been a fixed fact, and has gone on a.s.suming all the prerogatives, absorbing all the power, and symbolizing in the person of one man this colossal nation. The sovereign princes, discerning clearly the object and end of these aims, have spared no means to attain to it. They began by checking the proud Boyars in their train, reducing them from companions and equals to subjects; later on they devoted themselves to the suppression of all inst.i.tutions of democratic character.

For the sake of those who judge of a race by the political forms it uses, it should be observed that Russia has not only preserved latent in her the spirit of democracy, but that she possessed in the Middle Ages republican inst.i.tutions more liberal and radical than any in the rest of Europe. The Italian republics, which at bottom were really oligarchies, cannot compare with the munic.i.p.al and communist republics of Viatka, Pskof, and especially the great city of Novgorod, which called itself with pride Lord Novgorod the Great. The supreme power there resided in an a.s.sembly of the citizens; the prince was content to be an administrator or president elected by free suffrage, and above all an ever-ready captain in time of war; on taking his office he swore solemnly to respect the laws, customs, and privileges of the republic; if he committed a perjury, the a.s.sembly convened in the public square at the clang of an ancient bell, and the prince, having been declared a traitor, was stripped, expelled, and _cast into the mud_, according to the forcible popular expression. This industrious republic reached the acme of its prosperity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after which the rising princ.i.p.ality of Moscow, now sure of its future, came and took down the bells of Novgorod the Great, and so silenced their voices of bronze and the voice of Russian liberties, though not without a b.l.o.o.d.y battle, as witnesseth the whirlpool--which is still pointed out to the curious traveller--under the bridge of the ancient republican city, whose inhabitants were drowned there by Ivan the Terrible. Upon their dead bodies he founded the unity of the empire. Nor are the free towns the only tradition of autonomy which disturbed the growing autocratic power. The Cossacks for a long time formed an independent and warlike aristocracy, proud and indomitable; and to subdue and incorporate these bellicose tribes with the rest of the nation it was necessary to employ both skill and force.

We may say without vanity that although the Spaniards exalted monarchical loyalty into a cult, they never depreciated human dignity.

Amongst us the king is he who makes right (_face derecho_), and if he makes it not, we consider him a tyrant, a usurper of the royal prerogative; in acknowledging him lord of life and property, we protest (by the mouth of Calderon's honest rustic) against the idea that he can arrogate to himself also the dominion over conscience and soul; and the smallest subject in Spain would not endure at the king's hand the blows administered by Peter the Great for the correction of his n.o.bles, themselves descendants of Rurik. In Russia, where the inequalities and extremes of climate seem to have been communicated to its inst.i.tutions, there was nothing between the independent republics and the autocracy.

In Spain, the slightest territorial disaffection, the fruit of partial conquests or insignificant victories, was an excuse for some upstart princeling, our instinctive tendencies being always monarchical and anything like absolute authority and Caesarism, so odious that we never allowed it even in our most excellent kings; a dream of imperial power would almost have cost them the throne. In Russia, absolutism is in the air,--one sole master, one lord omnipotent, the image of G.o.d himself.

Read the Muscovite code. The Czar is named therein _the autocrat whose power is unlimited_. See the catechism which is taught in the schools of Poland; it says that the subject owes to the Czar, not love or loyalty, but adoration. Hear the Russian hymn; amid its harmonies the same idea resounds. In all the common forms of salutation to the Czar we shall find something that excites in us a feeling of rebellion, something that represents us as unworthy to stand before him as one mortal before another. Paul I. said to a distinguished foreigner, "You must know that in Russia there is no person more important than the person to whom I speak and while I speak." A Czar who directs by means of _ukases_ not only the dress but even the words of the language which his subjects must use, and changes the track of a railroad by a stroke of his pen, frightens one even more than when he signs a sentence of proscription; for he reaches the high-water mark of authority when he interferes in these simple and unimportant matters, and demonstrates what one may call the micrography of despotism. If anything can excuse or even commend to our eyes this obedience carried to an absurdity, it is its paternal character. There are no offences between fathers and sons, and the Czar never can insult a subject. The serf calls him _thou_ and _Father_, and on seeing him pa.s.s he takes off his cap though the snow falls, crossing his hands over his breast with religious veneration. For him the Czar possesses every virtue, and is moved only by the highest purposes; he thinks him impeccable, sacred, almost immortal. If we abide by the judgment of those who see a symbol of the Russian character in the call of Rurik and the voluntary placing of the power in his hands, the autocracy will not seem a secular abuse or a violent tyranny, but rather an organic product of a soil and a race; and it will inspire the respect drawn forth by any spontaneous and genuine production.

There exists in Russia a small school of thinkers on public affairs, important by reason of the weight they have had and still have upon public opinion. They are called Sclavophiles,--people enamoured of their ancient land, who affirm that the essence of Russian nationality is to be found in the customs and inst.i.tutions of the laboring cla.s.ses who are not contaminated by the artificial civilization imported from the corrupt West; who make a point of appearing on occasions in the national dress,--the red silk blouse and velvet jacket, the long beard and the clumsy boots. According to them, the only independent forces on which Russia can count are the people and the Czar,--the immense herd of peasants, and, at the top, the autocrat. And in fact the Russian empire, in spite of official hierarchies, is a rural state in which the sentiment of democratic equality predominates so entirely that the people, not content with having but yesterday taken the Czar's part against the rich and mighty Boyars, sustains him to-day against the revolution, loves him, and cannot conceive of intermediaries between him and his subjects, between lord and va.s.sal, or, to put it still more truly, between father and son. And having once reduced the n.o.bles, with the consent of the people, to the condition of inoffensive hangers-on of the court, many thinkers believe that the Czar need only lean upon the rude hand of the peasant to quell whatever political disaffection may arise. So illimitable is the imperial power, that it becomes impotent against itself if it would reduce itself by relegating any of its influence to a cla.s.s, such as, for instance, the aristocracy. If turbulent magnates or sullen conspirators manage to get rid of the person of the Czar, the principle still remains inviolate.

VI.

The Agrarian Communes.

At the right hand of the imperial power stands the second Russian national inst.i.tution, the munic.i.p.al commune known as the _mir_, which is arresting the attention of European statesmen and sociologists, since they have learned of its existence (thanks to the work of Baron Haxsthausen on the internal life of Russia). Who is not astonished at finding realized in the land of the despots a large number of the communist theories which are the terror of the middle cla.s.ses in liberal countries, and various problems, of the kind we call formidable, there practically solved? And why should not a nation often called barbarous swell with pride at finding itself, suddenly and without noise or effort, safely beyond what in others threatens the extremity of social revolution? Therefore it happens that since the discovery of the _mir_, the Russians have one argument more, and not a weak one, against the corrupt civilization of the Occident. The European nations, they say, are running wildly toward anarchy, and in some, as England, the concentration of property in a few hands creates a proletariat a thousand times more unhappy than the Russian serf ever was, a hungry horde hostile to the State and to the wealthy cla.s.ses. Russia evades this danger by means of the _mir_. In the Russian village the land belongs to the munic.i.p.ality, amongst whose members it is distributed periodically; each able-bodied individual receives what he needs, and is spared hunger and disgrace.

Foreigners have not been slow to examine into the advantages of such an arrangement. Mackenzie Wallace has p.r.o.nounced it to be truly const.i.tutional, as the phrase is understood in his country; not meaning a sterile and delusive law, written upon much paper and enwrapped in formulas, but a traditional concept which came forth at the bidding of real and positive necessities. What an eloquent lesson for those who think they have improved upon the plan of the ages! History, scouting our thirst for progress, offers us again in the _mir_ the picture of the serpent biting his own tail. This inst.i.tution, so much lauded by the astonished traveller and the meditative philosopher, is really a sociological fossil, remains of prehistoric times, preserved in Russia by reason of the suspension or slow development of the history of the race. Students of law have told me that in the ancient forms of Castilian realty, those of Santander, for example, there have been discovered traces of conditions a.n.a.logous to the Russian _mir_. And when I have seen the peasants of my own province a.s.sembled in the church-porch after Ma.s.s, I have imagined I could see the remains of this Saturnian and patriarchal type of communist part.i.tion. Common possession of the land is a primitive idea as remote as the prehistoric ages; it belongs to the paleontology of social science, and in those countries where civilization early flourished, gave way before individual interest and the modern idea of property. "Happy age and blessed times were those," exclaimed Don Quixote, looking at a handful of acorns, "which the ancients called golden, and not because gold which in our iron age has such a value set on it, not because gold could be got without any trouble, but because those who lived in it were ignorant of those two words, _mine_ and _thine_! In that blessed age everything was in common; n.o.body needed to take any more trouble for his necessities than to stretch forth his hand and take from the great oak-trees the sweet and savory fruit so liberally offered!" Gone long ago for us is the time deplored by the ingenious knight, but it has reappeared there in the North, where, according to our information, it is still recent; for it is thought that the _mir_ was established about the sixteenth century.

The character of the _mir_ is entirely democratic; the oldest peasant represents the executive power in the munic.i.p.al a.s.sembly, but the authority resides in the a.s.sembly itself, which consists of all the heads of families, and convenes Sundays in the open air, in the public square or the church-porch. The a.s.sembly wields a sacred power which no one disputes. Next to the Czar the Russian peasant loves his _mir_, among whose members the land is in common, as also the lake, the mills, the ca.n.a.ls, the flocks, the granary, the forest. It is all re-divided from time to time, in order to avoid exclusive appropriation. Half the cultivable land in the empire is subject to this system, and no capitalist or land-owner can disturb it by acquiring even an inch of munic.i.p.al territory; the laborer is born invested with the right of possession as certainly as we are all ent.i.tled to a grave. In spite of a feeling of distrust and antipathy against communism, and of my own ignorance in these matters which precludes my judgment of them, I must confess to a certain agreement with the ardent apologists of the Russian agrarian munic.i.p.ality. Tikomirov says that in Russia individual and collective property-rights still quarrel, but that the latter has the upper hand; this seems strange, since the modern tendency is decidedly toward individualism, and it is hard to conceive of a return to patriarchal forms; but there is no reason to doubt the vitality of the _mir_ and its generation and growth in the heart of the fatherland, and this is certainly worthy of note, especially in a country like Russia, so much given to the imitation of foreign models. Mere existence and permanence is no _raison d'etre_ for any inst.i.tution, for many exist which are pernicious and abominable; but when an inst.i.tution is found to be in harmony with the spirit of the people, it must have a true merit and value. It is said that the tendency to aggregate, either in agrarian munic.i.p.alities or in trades guilds and corporations, is born in the blood and bred in the bone of the Sclavs, and that they carry out these a.s.sociations wherever they go, by instinct, as the bee makes its cells always the same; and it is certainly true that as an ethnic force the communistic principle claims a right to develop itself in Russia. It is certain that the _mir_ fosters in the poor Russian village habits of autonomous administration and munic.i.p.al liberty, and that in the shadow of this humble and primitive inst.i.tution men have found a common home within the fatherland, no matter how scattered over its vast plains.

"The heavens are very high, and the Czar is far off," says the Russian peasant sadly, when he is the victim of any injustice; his only refuge is the _mir_, which is always close at hand. The _mir_ acts also as a counterbalance to a centralized administration, which is an inevitable consequence of the conformation of Russian territory; and it creates an advantageous solidarity among the farmers, who are equal owners of the same heritages and subject to the same taxes.

Since 1861 the rural governments, released from all seignorial obligations, elect their officers from among themselves, and the smaller munic.i.p.al groups, still preserving each its own autonomy, meet together in one larger munic.i.p.al body called _volost_, which corresponds to the better-known term _canton_. No inst.i.tution could be more democratic: here the laboring man discusses his affairs _en famille_, without interference from other social cla.s.ses; the _mir_ boasts of it, as also of the fact that it has never in its corporate existence known head or chief, even when its members were all serfs. In fine, the _mir_ holds its sessions without any presiding officer; rooted in the communist and equal-rights idea, it acknowledges no law of superiority; it votes by unanimous acclamation; the minority yields always to the general opinion, to oppose which would be thought base obstinacy. "Only G.o.d shall judge the _mir_" says the proverb; the word _mir_, say the etymological students and admirers of the inst.i.tution, means, "world,"

"universe," "complete and perfect microcosm," which is sufficient unto itself and is governed by its own powers.

To what does the _mir_ owe its vitality? To the fact that it did not originate in the mind of the Utopian or the ideologist, but was produced naturally by derivation from the family, from which type the whole Russian state organization springs. It should be understood, however, that the peasant family in Russia differs from our conception of the inst.i.tution, recalling as it does, like all purely Russian inst.i.tutions, the most ancient or prehistoric forms. The family, or to express it in the language of the best writers on the subject, _the great Russian family_, is an a.s.sociation of members submitted to the absolute authority of the eldest, generally the grandfather,--a fact personally interesting to me because of the surprising resemblance it discloses between Russia and the province of Gallicia, where I perceive traces of this family power in the _petrucios_, or elders. In this a.s.sociation everything is in common, and each individual works for all the others.

To the head of the house is given a name which may be translated as administrator, major-domo, or director of works, but conveys no idea of relationship. The laws of inheritance and succession are understood in the same spirit, and very differently from our custom. When a house or an estate is to be settled, the degree of relationship among the heirs is not considered; the whole property is divided equally between the male adults, including natural or adopted sons if they have served in the family the same as legitimate sons, while the married daughter is considered as belonging to the family of her husband, and she and the son who has separated himself from the parent house are excluded from the succession, or rather from the final liquidation or settlement between the a.s.sociates. Although there is a law of inheritance written in the Russian Code, it is a dead letter to a people opposed to the idea of individual property.

Intimately connected with this communist manner of interpreting the rights of inheritance and succession are certain facts in Russian history. For a long time the sovereign authority was divided among the sons of the ruler; and as the Russian n.o.bility rebelled against the establishment of differences founded upon priority in birth, entail and primogeniture took root with difficulty, in spite of the efforts made by the emperors to import Occidental forms of law. Their idea of succession is so characteristic that, like the Goths, they sometimes prefer the collateral to the immediate branch, and the brother instead of the son will mount the steps of the throne. It is important to note these radical differences, because a race which follows an original method in the matter of its laws has a great advantage in setting out upon genuine literary creations.

But while the family, understood as a group or an a.s.sociation, offers many advantages from the agrarian point of view, its disadvantages are serious and considerable because it annuls individual liberty. It facilitates agricultural labors, it puts a certain portion of land at the service of each adult member, as well as tools, implements, fuel, and cattle; helps each to a maintenance; precludes hunger; avoids legal exactions (for the a.s.sociated family cannot be taxed, just as the _mir_ cannot be deprived of its lands); but on the other hand it puts the individual, or rather the true family, the human pair, under an intolerable domestic tyranny. According to traditional usage, the authority of the head of the family was omnipotent: he ordered his house, as says an old proverb, like a Khan of the Crimea; his gray hairs were sacred, and he wielded the power of a tribal chieftain rather than of a head of a house. In our part of the world marriage emanc.i.p.ates; in Russia, it was the first link in a galling chain. The oppression lay heaviest upon the woman: popular songs recount the sorrows of the daughters-in-law subjected to the maltreatment of mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, or the victims of the vicious appet.i.tes of the chief, who in a literally Biblical spirit thought himself lord of all that dwelt beneath his roof. Truly those inst.i.tutions which sometimes elicit our admiration for their patriarchal simplicity hide untold iniquities, and develop a tendency to the abuse of power which seems inherent in the human species.

At first sight nothing could be more attractive than the great Russian family, nothing more useful than the rural communes; and nowadays, when we are applying the laws and technicism of physiology to the study of society, this primordial a.s.sociation would seem the cell from which the true organism of the State may be born; the family is a sort of lesser munic.i.p.ality, the munic.i.p.ality is a larger family, and the whole Russian people is an immense agglomeration, a great ant-hill whose head is the emperor. In the popular songs we see the Oriental idea of the nation expressed as the family, when the peasant calls the Czar _father_. But this primitive machinery can never prevail against the notion of individualism entertained among civilized peoples. Our way of understanding property, which the admirers of the Russian commune consider fundamentally vicious, is the only way compatible with the independence and dignity of work and the development of industries and arts. The Russian _mir_ may prevent the growth of the proletariat, but it is by putting mankind in bonds. It may be said that agrarian communism only differs from servitude in that the latter provides one master and the former many; and that though the laboring man theoretically considers himself a member of a co-operative agricultural society, he is in reality a slave, subject to collective responsibilities and obligations, by virtue of which he is tied to the soil the same as the va.s.sals of our feudal epochs. Perhaps the new social conditions which are the fruit of the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, which struck at and violated the great a.s.sociated family, will at last undermine the _mir_, unless the _mir_ learns some way to adapt itself to any political mutations. What is most important to the study of the historical development and the social ideas as shown in modern Russian literature, is to understand how by means of the great family and the agrarian munic.i.p.ality, communism and socialism run in the veins of the people of Russia, so that Leroy-Beaulieu could say with good reason, that if they are to be preserved from the pernicious effects of the Occidental proletariat it must be by inoculation, as vaccination exempts from small-pox.

The socialist leaven may be fairly said to lie in the most important cla.s.s in the Russian State,--important not alone by reason of numerical superiority, but because it is the depositary of the liveliest national energies and the custodian of the future: I mean the peasants. There are some who think that this _mitjik_, this _little man_ or _black man_, tiller of still blacker soil, holds the future destinies of Europe in his hands; and that when this great new Horde becomes conscious some day of its strength and h.o.m.ogeneity, it will rise, and in its concentrated might fall upon some portion of the globe, and there will be no defence or resistance possible. In the rest of Europe it is the cities, the urban element, which regulates the march of political events. Certainly Spain is not ignorant of this fact, since she has a vivid remembrance of civil wars in which the rustic element, representing tradition, was vanquished. In Russia, the cities have no proportionate influence, and that which demands the special attention of the governor or the revolutionist is the existence, needs, and thoughts of the innumerable peasant communities, who are the foundation and material of an empire justly termed rural. From this is derived a sort of cult, an apotheosis which is among the most curious to be found in Russian modern literature. Of the peasant, wrapped in badly cured sheepskins, and smelling like a beast; the humble and submissive peasant, yesterday laden with the chains of servitude; the dirty, cabbage-eating peasant, drunk with _wodka_, who beats his wife and trembles with fright at ghosts, at the Devil, and at thunder,--of this peasant, the charity of his friends and the poetic imagination of Russian writers has made a demi-G.o.d, an ideal. So great is the power of genius, that without detriment to the claims of truth, picturing him with accurate and even brutal realism (which we shall find native to the Russian novel), Russian authors have distilled from this peasant a poetic essence which we inhale involuntarily until we, aristocratic by instinct, disdainful of the rustic, given to ridicule the garlic-smelling herd, yield to its power. And not content with seeing in this peasant a brother, a neighbor, whom, according to the word of Christ, we ought to love and succor, Russian literature discovers in him a certain indefinable sublimity, a mysterious illumination which other social cla.s.ses have not. Not merely because of the introduction of the picturesque element in the description of popular customs has it been said that Russian contemporary literature smells of the peasant, but far rather because it raises the peasant to the heights of human moral grandeur, marks in him every virtue, and presupposes him possessed of powers which he never puts forth. From Turguenief, fine poet as he is, to Chtchedrine, the biting satirist, all paint the peasant with loving touch, always find a ready excuse for his defects, and lend him rare qualities, without ever failing to show faithfully his true physiognomy. Corruption, effeminacy, and vice characterize the upper cla.s.ses, particularly the employees of government, or any persons charged with public trusts; and to make these the more odious, they are attributed with a detestable hypocrisy made more hateful by apparent kindliness and culture.

There is a humorous little novel by Chtchedrine (an author who merits especial mention) ent.i.tled "The Generals[1] and the _Mujik_," which represents two generals of the most ostentatious sort, transported to a desert island, unable either to get food or to get away, until they meet with a _mujik_, who performs all sorts of services for them, even to _making broth in the hollow of his hand_, and then, after making a raft, conveys them safely to St. Petersburg; whereupon these knavish generals, after recovering back pay, send to their deliverer a gla.s.s of whiskey and a sum amounting to about three cents. But this bitter allegory is a mild one compared with the mystical apotheosis of the _mujik_ as conceived by Tolsto. In one of his works, "War and Peace," the hero, after seeking vainly by every imaginable means to understand all human wisdom and divine revelation, finds at last the sum of it in a common soldier, imperturbable and dull of soul, and poor in spirit, a prisoner of the French, who endures with calm resignation ill treatment and death without once entertaining the idea of taking the life of his foreign captors. This poor fellow, who, owing to his rude, uncouth mode of life, suffers persecution by other importunate lesser enemies which I forbear to name, is the one to teach Pierre Besukof the alpha and omega of all philosophy, wherein he is wise by intuition, and, in virtue of his condition as the peasant, fatalistic and docile.

I have had the good fortune to see with my own eyes this idol of Russian literature, and to satisfy a part of my curiosity concerning some features of Holy Russia. Twenty or thirty peasants from Smolensk who had been bitten by a rabid wolf were sent to Paris to be treated by M.

Pasteur. In company with some Russian friends I went to a small hotel, mounted to the fourth floor, and entered a narrow sleeping apartment.

The air being breathed by ten or twelve human beings was scarcely endurable, and the fumes of carbolic acid failed to purify it; but while my companions were talking with their compatriots, and a Russian young-lady medical student dressed their wounds, I studied to my heart's content these men from a distant land. I frankly confess that they made a profound impression upon me which I can only describe by saying that they seemed to me like Biblical personages. It gave me a certain pleasure to see in them the marks of an ancient people, rude and rough in outward appearance, but with something majestic and monumental about them, and yet with a suggestion of latent juvenility, the grave and religious air of dreamer or seer, different from really Oriental peoples. Their features, as well as their limbs (which bearing the marks of the wild beast's teeth they held out to be washed and dressed with tranquil resignation), were large and mighty like a tree. One old man took my attention particularly, because he presented a type of the patriarchs of old, and might have served the painter as a model for Abraham or Job,--a wide skull bald at the top, fringed about with yellowish white hair like a halo; a long beard streaked with white also; well-cut features, frontal development very prominent, his eyes half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows. The arm which he uncovered was like an old tree-trunk, rough and knotty, the thick sinuous network of veins reminding one of the roots; his enormous hands, wrinkled and h.o.r.n.y, bespoke a life of toil, of incessant activity, of daily strife with the energies of Mother Nature. I heard with delight, though without understanding a word, their guttural speech, musical and harmonious withal, and I needed not to heat my imagination overmuch to see in those poor peasants the realization of the great novelists' descriptions, and an expression of patience and sadness which raised them above vulgarity and coa.r.s.eness. The sadness may have been the result of their unhappy situation; nevertheless it seemed sweet and poetic.

The attraction which _the people_ exercises upon refined and cultivated minds is not surprising. Who has not sometimes experienced with terrible keenness what may be called the aesthetic effect of collectivity? A regiment forming, the crew of a ship about to weigh anchor, a procession, an angry mob,--these have something about them that is epic and sublime; so any peasant, if we see in him an epitome of race or cla.s.s, with his historic consequence and his unconscious majesty, may and ought to interest us. The _payo_ of Avila who pa.s.ses me indifferently in the street; the beggar in Burgos who asks an alms with courteous dignity, wrapped in his tattered clothes as though they were garments of costly cloth; the Gallician lad who guides his yoke of oxen and creaking cart,--these not only stir in my soul a sentiment of patriotism, but they have for me an aesthetic charm which I never feel in the presence of a dress-coat and a stiff hat. Perhaps this effect depends rather on the spectator, and it may be our fancy that produces it; for, as regards the Russian peasant, those who know him well say that he is by nature practical and positive, and not at all inclined to the romantic and sentimental. The Sclav race is a rich poetic wellspring, but it depends upon what one means by poetry. For example, in love matters, the Russian peasant is docile and prosaic to the last degree. The hardy rustic is supposed to need two indispensable accessories for his work,--a woman and a horse; the latter is procured for him by the head or _old man_ of the house, the former by the _old woman_; the wedding is nothing more than the matriculation of the farmer; the pair is incorporated with the great family, the agricultural commune, and that is the end of the idyl. Amorous and gallant conduct among peasants would be little fitting, given the low estimation in which women are held. Although the Russian peasant considers the woman independent, subject neither to father nor husband, invested with equal rights with men; and although the widow or the unmarried woman who is head of the house takes part in the deliberations of the _mir_ and may even exercise in it the powers of a mayor (and in order to preserve this independence many peasant-women remain unmarried), this consideration is purely a social one, and individually the woman has no rights whatever.

A song of the people says that seven women together have not so much as one soul, rather none at all, for their soul is smoke. The theory of marriage relations is that the husband ought to love his wife as he does his own soul, to measure and treasure her as he does his sheepskin coat: the rod sanctions the contract. In some provinces of Finnish or Tartar origin the bride is still bought and sold like a head of cattle; it is sometimes the custom still to steal her, or to feign a rape, symbolizing indeed the idea of woman as a slave and the booty of war. So rigorous is the matrimonial yoke, that parricides are numerous, and the jury, allowing attenuating circ.u.mstances, generally pardons them.

Tikomirov, who, though a radical, is a wise and sensible man, says, that far from considering the ma.s.ses of the people as models worthy of imitation, he finds them steeped in absolute ignorance, the victims of every abuse and of administrative immorality; deprived for many centuries of intercourse with civilized nations, they have not outgrown the infantile period, they are superst.i.tious, idolatrous, and pagan, as shown by their legends and popular songs. They believe blindly in witchcraft, to the extent that to discredit a political party with them one has only to insinuate that it is given to the use of sorcery and the black arts. The peasant has also an unconquerable propensity to stealing, lying, servility, and drunkenness. Wherefore, then, is he judged superior to the other cla.s.ses of society?

In spite of the puerile humility to which the Russian peasant is predisposed by long years of subjection, he yet obeys a democratic impulse toward equality, which servitude has not obliterated; the Russian does not understand the English peasant's respect for the _gentleman_, nor the French reverence for the _chevalier_ well-dressed and decorated. When the government of Poland ordered certain Cossack executions of the n.o.bility, these children of the steppes asked one another, "Brother, has the shadow of my body increased?" Taught to govern himself, thanks to the munic.i.p.al regimen, the Russian peasant manifests in a high degree the sentiment of human equality, an idea both Christian and democratic, rather more deeply rooted in those countries governed by absolute monarchy and munic.i.p.al liberty, than in those of parliamentary inst.i.tutions. The Spaniard says, "None lower than the King;" the Russian says the same with respect to the Czar. Primitive and credulous, a philosopher in his way, the dweller on the Russian steppes wields a dynamic force displayed in history by collectivities, be the moral value of the individual what it may. In nations like Russia, in which the upper cla.s.ses are educated abroad, and are, like water, reflectors and nothing more, the originality, the poetry, the epic element, is always with the ma.s.ses of the people, which comes out strong and beautiful in supreme moments, a faithful custodian of the national life, as for example when the butcher Minine saved his country from the yoke of Sweden, or when, before the French invasion of 1812, they organized bands of guerillas, or set fire to Moscow.