The War and Democracy Part 12

and he parried the further question, "What about _pogroms_?" with another of his own, "What about lynching?" The problems are not, of course, quite on all fours, nor do two wrongs make a right, but a reminder that similar problems exist in other parts of the world will perhaps be enough to show that the Jewish question in Russia is neither unique nor at all easy to solve. Let us, instead of visiting the sins of a few townships upon the heads of the entire Russian nation, be thankful that we have no such problems in our own islands. Recent riots outside the shops of German pork-butchers in different parts of the country do not, it must be confessed, lead one to hope that our people would behave much more calmly and discreetly than the Whites of the Southern States or the Christians of South-West Russia, were they placed in the same circ.u.mstances.

The Polish question is at once simpler and its story less damaging to the Russian Government than that of the Jews. The part.i.tions, an account of which has already been given,[1] were of course iniquitous, but, as we have seen, Prussia must bear the chief blame for them. In any case, the Tsar Alexander I. did his utmost for Poland at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

He pleaded eloquently for a reunited Poland, and he almost won over Prussia by making arrangements to compensate her for her Polish territory at the expense of Saxony. But France, England, and Austria opposed his project, and he was obliged to yield to the combined pressure of these powers.

Russia is, therefore, not more but less guilty of the present dismembered state of Poland than her Western neighbours, among whom we must not forget ourselves;[2] and she is to-day only attempting to carry out the promise which she made, but was not allowed to fulfill, a century ago. Disappointed as he was, Alexander I. made the best of a bad job by granting a liberal const.i.tution to that part of Poland which the Congress a.s.signed to Russia. Indeed he did everything possible, short of a grant of absolute independence, which at that time would have been absurd, to conciliate public opinion in the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. Unfortunately the experiment proved a complete failure, largely owing to the factious and self-seeking Polish n.o.bility who have always been the worst enemy of their country.

Alexander after a time lost patience, and in 1820 he felt compelled to withdraw some of the liberties which he had conferred in 1815. After this the breach between the Russian Government and the Polish people began to widen, partly owing to stupid and clumsy actions on the side of Russia, partly to the incurable lack of political common-sense on the side of the upper cla.s.ses in Poland, partly to the fact that the country could never be anything but restless and unsatisfied while it remained divided. The history of Russian Poland since the time of Alexander is the history of two great failures to throw off the Russian yoke, the failure of 1830 and of 1863. These risings were marked by heroism, disunion, and incapacity on the one side, and by relentless repression on the other. The upshot was that Poland was deprived of her const.i.tutional rights one by one, until finally she became nothing more than so many provinces of Russia itself. To some extent, however, the failure of 1863 proved a blessing in disguise. The rising had been almost entirely confined to the n.o.bility; Russia therefore turned to the peasants of Poland, released them from all obligations to work upon the estates of the large landowners, and handed over to them at least half the land of the country as freehold property. The result of this measure, and of the removal of the customs barrier between the two countries in 1877, was twofold: the power of the factious n.o.bility was shattered for ever, and a marvellous development of industry took place in Poland which has united her to Russia "with chains of self-interest likely to prove a serious obstacle to the realisation of Polish hopes of independence."[3] It is indeed doubtful whether at this date the Poles cherish any such hopes. What they desire is national unity and self-government rather than sovereign independence, and they know that they are at least as likely to receive these from Russia as from Prussia.

[Footnote 1: Pp. 24-27.]

[Footnote 2: As a matter of fact our representative, Lord Castlereagh, was Alexander's chief opponent at the Congress in the question of Poland. See _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. x. p. 445.]

[Footnote 1: _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vol. xi. p. 629.]

While of late years the relations between Russia and Poland have steadily improved, those between Russia and Finland, on the contrary, have grown rapidly worse. Until 1809 Finland was a Grand-Duchy under the Swedish crown, but in that year, owing to a war which had broken out between Russia and Sweden, she pa.s.sed into the control of the nearer and more powerful State, after putting up a stubborn resistance to annexation which will always figure as the most glorious episode in the annals of the country.

Alexander I., who was at that time Tsar, adopted the same policy towards Finland as he did towards Poland. He refused to incorporate the new province into the Russian State-system, he took the t.i.tle of Grand-Duke of Finland (thereby implying that she lay outside the Empire), and he confirmed the ancient liberties of the Finns. Later on they even secured greater liberty than they had possessed under Sweden by the grant of a Finnish Diet, on the lines of the Swedish Diet in Stockholm, which should have full control of all internal Finnish affairs. Finland, therefore, gained much from the transfer; she possessed for the first time in her history complete internal autonomy. This state of things lasted for practically ninety years, during which period Finland made wonderful progress both economic and intellectual, so that by the end of the nineteenth century she was one of the happiest, most enlightened, and most prosperous countries in Northern Europe. "As regards the condition of Finland," Alexander I. had declared, "my intention has been to give this people a political existence, so that they may not feel themselves conquered by Russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage; therefore, not only their civil but their political laws have been maintained." This liberal policy was continued by the various Tsars throughout the century, the reformer Alexander II. taking particular interest in the development of the Grand-Duchy, which he evidently regarded as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked out that might later be applied to the rest of Russia. The weakness of Finland's position lay in the fact that her liberties really depended upon the personal whim of the Grand-Duke: in theory her const.i.tutional laws were only alterable by the joint sanction of monarch and people; in practice the small but courageous nation had no means of redress should the Tsar, swayed by bureaucratic reaction, choose to go back upon the policy of his ancestors. And in 1894 a Tsar mounted the throne, Nicholas II., who did so choose.

The word went forth for the "Russification" of Finland. After picking a quarrel with the Diet on the military question, the Tsar on February 18, 1899, issued a manifesto suspending the Finnish Const.i.tution and abolishing the Diet. Finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the Russian Empire. A rigorous Press censorship was established, the hated governor-general Bobrikoff filled the country with gendarmes and spies, native officials were dismissed or driven to resign, an attempt was made to introduce the Russian language into the schools, and, though the Finns could only oppose a campaign of pa.s.sive resistance to these wicked and short-sighted measures, at the end of seven years the nation which had for almost a century been the most contented portion of the Tsar's dominions was seething with ill-feeling and disloyalty. The inevitable outcome was the a.s.sa.s.sination of General Bobrikoff by a young student in June 1904; and when the Russian universal strike took place in October 1905, the entire Finnish nation joined in as one man. Finland regained her liberties for a time, and immediately set to work putting her house in order by subst.i.tuting for her old mediaeval const.i.tution a brand new one, based on universal suffrage, male and female, and employing such up-to-date devices as proportional representation. The only result of seven years'

"Russification" was the creation of a united democracy, with a strong socialistic leaven, in place of a nation governed by an antiquated aristocratic Diet, and divided into two hostile political camps on the question whether Swedish or Finnish should be the language of the national culture. But the fortunes of Finland were accidentally but inextricably bound up with those of the party of reform in Russia, and when the bureaucracy, after the downfall of the revolutionaries, found itself once more firmly seated in the saddle, it returned to the attack on the Finnish Const.i.tution, not indeed with the open and brutal methods of Bobrikoff, but by gradual and insidious means no less effective. And it must be admitted that the Russian Duma, as "reformed" by Stolypin, so far from being of any help to Finland in the struggle, has been made the instrument of the destruction of her liberties.

Finland is in a very unfortunate position. Geographically she is bound to form part of the Russian Empire; even the extremest Russophobes in the country have long ago given up hopes of re-union with Sweden; and yet the frontier between Finland and Russia is one which divides two worlds, as all who have made the journey from Helsingfors to Petrograd must have noticed.

In literature, art, education, politics, commerce, industry, and social reform Finland is as much alive as any of the Scandinavian States from whom she first derived her culture. In many ways indeed she is the most progressive country in Europe, and it is her proud boast that she is "Framtidsland," the land of the future. Lutheran in religion, non-Slavonic in race, without army, court, or aristocracy, and consequently without the traditions which these inst.i.tutions carry with them, she presents the greatest imaginable contrast to the Empire with which she is irrevocably linked. Finland is Western of the Westerns, and keenly conscious of the fact just because of this irrevocable link; Russia is--Russia! And yet, as part of the Russian system, she must come to terms sooner or later with the Empire; she cannot receive the protection of the Russian military forces, a protection to the value of which, if reports be true, she is at the present moment very much alive, and yet retain her claims to be what is virtually an independent State. That these claims have been pitched on a high note is no doubt largely the fault of the blundering and cruel policy of the Russian bureaucracy. But it must be admitted that Finland has never tried in the very least to understand her mighty neighbour; she has always sat, as it were, with her back to Russia, looking westwards, and her statesmen have not even taken the trouble to learn the Russian language. There has, in fact, been something a little "priggish" in her superior att.i.tude, in her perpetually drawn comparison between Russian "barbarism" and Finnish "culture." Though her capital, Helsingfors, is but twelve hours by rail from Petrograd, Finland knows as little of the interior of Russia as people do in England.

The policy of the Russian Government, on the other hand, has been marked by that inconsistency, political blindness, and arbitrariness which one expects from an irresponsible bureaucracy. For ninety years Finland was left alone to work out her own salvation, entirely apart from that of the rest of the Empire; and then suddenly it was discovered that her coasts were of the highest strategical importance, and that she was developing a commercial and industrial system in dangerous compet.i.tion with the tender plant of commerce and industry in Russia itself. The Slavophils raised an outcry, and the decree went out that the Russian whale should swallow this active and prosperous little Jonah. The former policy was really as stupid, though less cruel, than the latter. Had there been anything like that steady political tradition and wide political experience in Russia which we can draw upon in England, the Imperial Government would have from the first endeavoured to draw Finland closer to the Empire, not by bands of steel and iron but by the more delicate and more permanent ties of considerateness, affection, and self-interest. It is political stupidity, based upon ignorance and inexperience, and not inhumanity, which is the real explanation of Russia's unfortunate relations with her subject peoples during the past century. Moreover, the political machinery which has. .h.i.therto served her own internal needs is the worst possible instrument for dealing with provinces which possess a full measure of Western political consciousness together with the traditions of political liberty. Russia, therefore, requires representative inst.i.tutions not merely for the political education of her own people and as a check upon bureaucratic tyranny and incompetency, but also in order that she may adopt some fair and _consistent_ policy towards her subject nationalities.

It may be optimistic, but I cannot help feeling that the present war will do much for Russia, much for Finland, much for Poland. Russia is fighting to defend a small nation against oppression, she is fighting a life-and-death struggle with the military bureaucracy which we call "Germany" for the moment, she is fighting on behalf of "liberty" and of the "sc.r.a.ps of paper" upon which the freedom of States and individuals depends.

All this will leave a profound effect upon the national consciousness, and may even bring home for the first time to the people at large the meaning of political freedom. Russia is so vast, so loose in structure, so undeveloped in those means of intercommunication such as roads, railways, newspapers, etc., which make England like a small village-community in comparison, that it takes the shock of a great war to draw the whole people together. That it has done so, no one who has read the papers during the last two months can doubt. War, as a historical fact, has always been beneficial to Russia; the Crimean War led to the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, the j.a.panese War led to the establishment of a Duma, and the present war has already led to surprising results. The consumption of alcohol has been abolished, concessions have been promised to a reunited Poland, and, except against the unhappy Jews in the Polish war-area, there has been a subsidence throughout the Empire of racial antagonism. It is the hope of all who love Russia, and no one who really knows her can help loving her, that these beginnings may be crowned not only with victory over Germany in the field of battle but with victory over the German spirit in the world of ideas, a victory of which the first-fruits would be the firm establishment of representative government, a cleansing of the bureaucratic Augean stables, and a settlement of the problem of subject nationalities upon lines of justice and moderation.

But whatever the outcome may be, let us in England be fair to Russia.

The road to fairness lies through understanding; and we have grossly misunderstood Russia because we have not taken the trouble to acquaint ourselves with the facts, the real facts as distinct from the newspaper facts, of her situation. When those facts are realised, is it for us to cast the first stone? Russia needs political reform, the tremendous task of Peter the Great needs completing, the bureaucracy must be crowned with representative inst.i.tutions; but is Russia's need in the sphere of political reform greater than ours in the sphere of social reform?

Look at our vast miserable slums, our sprawling, ugly, aimless industrial centres, inhabited by millions who have just enough education to be able to buy their thinking ready-made through the halfpenny Press and just enough leisure for a weekly attendance at the local football match and an annual excursion to Blackpool or Ramsgate; who seldom, if ever, see the glorious face of Nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony--monotonous toil, monotonous amus.e.m.e.nts, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar;--until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." And then look at those other millions--the millions of Russia--look at the grand simple life they lead in the fields, a life of toil indeed, but of toil sweet and infinitely varied; Russia is their country, not merely because they live there but because they--the peasants--now actually possess by far the greater part of the arable land; G.o.d is their G.o.d, not because they have heard of Him as some remote Being in the Sunday School, but because He is very near to them--in their homes, in their sacraments, and in their hearts; and so contentment of mind and soul is theirs, not because they have climbed higher than their fellows, whether by the acc.u.mulation of knowledge or wealth, but because they have discovered the secret of existence, which is to want little, to live in close communion with nature, and to die in close communion with G.o.d.

BOOKS

MAURICE BARING. _The Mainsprings of Russia._ 1914. Nelson. 2s. net.

This is an excellent introduction to the subject, recording as it does the general impressions of an acute and sympathetic observer; it does not, of course, pretend to be comprehensive, and says nothing, for example, of the Jews, Poles, Finns, etc.

BERNARD PARES. _Russia and Reform._ 1907. 10s. 6d. net.

MILYOUKOV. _Russia and its Crisis._ 1905. 13s. 6d. net.

MAURICE BARING. _The Russian People._ 1911. 15s. net.

These three books may be consulted for the Revolution of 1905 and the events which led up to it. Professor Milyoukov's book was actually published before the Revolution, but its author was leader of the Cadet party in the First Duma, and it is therefore something in the nature of a liberal manifesto. Professor Pares' book, which is perhaps the most penetrating and well-balanced of all and contains most valuable chapters on the _Intelligentsia,_ does not, unfortunately, deal with the years of reaction which followed the dissolution of the First Duma. Mr. Baring's book may be recommended especially for the later chapters which deal with the causes of the failure of the Revolution. All three contain a good deal of sound historical matter.

H.W. WILLIAMS. _Russia of the Russians._ 1914. 6s. net.

ROTHAY REYNOLDS. _My Russian Year_. 1913. 10s. 6d. net.

Two good books dealing with life in contemporary Russia. The first is the best and most comprehensive treatment of the new Russia which has emerged from the revolutionary period, and gives one not merely the political but also the social and artistic aspect. The other book is lightly and entertainingly written.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _Undiscovered Russia_. 1911. 12s. 6d. net.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _Changing Russia_. 1913. 7s. 6d. net.

STEPHEN GRAHAM. _With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_. 1913. 7s. 6d.

net.

Mr. Stephen Graham may be said to have discovered the Russian peasant for English people, and his books give an extraordinarily vivid and sympathetic picture of Russian peasant-life by one who knows it from the inside. They afford also the best account of religion in Russia as a living force, while those who wish to know more of the Orthodox Church as an inst.i.tution may be referred to chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of Mr. Baring's _Russian People_; chap.

viii. of the same writer's _Mainsprings of Russia_; and chap. vi. of Sir C. Eliot's (Odysseus) _Turkey in Europe_ (7s. 6d. net). The second of Mr.

Graham's books deals with the threatening industrial changes in Russia. The third is a fine piece of literature as well as being the only account in any language of one of the most characteristic figures in modern Russian life--the peasant-pilgrim.

SIR D.M. WALLACE. _Russia_. 2 vols. 1905. 24s. net.

_Russia and the Balkan States._ Reprinted from the _Encyclopedia Britannica._ 2s. 6d. net.

Both these accounts, though written many years ago, have now been brought up to date in view of present events.

R. NISBET BAIN. _Slavonic Europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net.

F.H. SKRINE. _The Expansion of Russia, 1815-1900._ 1903. 4s. 6d. net.

W.R. MORFILL. _Russia_. 1890. 5s.

W.R. MORFILL. _Poland_. 1893. 5s.

Are all useful for the history of Russia, and of her relations with Poland, and Finland. Readers may also be referred to the _Cambridge Modern History_ (vol. ix. chap. xvi.; vol. x. chaps. xiii., xiv.; vol. xi. chaps. ix., xxii.; vol. xii. chaps. xii., xiii.).

V O. KLUCHEFFSKY. _A History of Russia._ 3 vols. 1913. Dent. 7s. 6d. net each.

The standard economic and social history of Russia up to the reign of Peter the Great.

H.P. KENNARD. _The Russian Year-Book._ Eyre and Spottiswoode. 10s. 6d. net.

Excellent for facts and figures.

E. s.e.m.e.nOFF. _The Russian Government and the Ma.s.sacres._ 1907. 2s. 6d. net.

An account of the _pogroms_ in Russia from the Jewish point of view.

J.R. FISHER. _Finland and the Tsars, 1800-1899._ 1899. 12s. 6d.

The best account in English of the history of Finland's relations with Russia up to the beginning of the reactionary period.

K.P. POBIEDONOSTSEV. _Reflections of a Russian Statesman._ 1898. 6s. For Slavophilism.