Great Russia/Chapter 1
PART I
The Geographical Foundations
of Russian Politics
Bartholomew, Edin.r
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
I
RUSSIA is not a country, but a continent, extending for thousands of miles in one uninterrupted expanse (except for the break of the Ural Mountains) from Central Europe to the Far East, and from the ice-bound wastes of the White Sea to the sub-tropical shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Russia is not a nation, but a bewildering conglomerate of nations, speaking every language—Polish, Finnish, Roumanian, Swedish, German—professing every form of religion—Pagan, Buddhist, Mahometan, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic—with every degree of civilization, from the nomadic semi-savage tribes of the Steppes to the progressive Finns, with their Parliament of women and their universal popular education.
II
The first and most important fact to remember about the Russians is that they are, with the Chinese, the most prolific people of the earth. Add the aggregate population of Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Norway, and you will not reach the hundred and seventy-five teeming millions of the Russian Empire. And that population, notwithstanding an awful death-rate, notwithstanding plague and famine, increases automatically by three millions a year. Every year three-quarters of the entire population of Scotland are being added to Russia. In twenty-five years Russia will number two hundred and fifty millions! When we consider that those two hundred and fifty millions will by that time be fully equipped with every instrument of modern civilization, we realize that Russia will be one of the most formidable world-forces, for good or evil, before the first half of this century has run its course. We realize that the future belongs, not to England, or to France, or to Germany, but to Russia. After generations of suffering, the Slav is at last coming into his inheritance.
III
The vast plains of Russia, the most extensive in the planet, include three parallel zones—in the north the forest zone, in the centre the agricultural zone—with the "black earth" of wondrous fertility—and in the south the waving prairie inhabited by the Cossacks. If we add to those three zones the vineyards of the Crimea and of the Caucasus, we find that the soil of Russia produces every form of agricultural wealth. And the mineral resources of the country are no less varied and no less inexhaustible. We need only refer to the coalfields of the Donetz, to the oil-fields of Baku, to the gold and silver mines of the Ural Mountains and of Siberia. If to-day Russia is one of the granaries of the world, to-morrow she will also be one of the greatest industrial areas.
For the transport of her agricultural and industrial produce Russia possesses not only sixty thousand miles of railroad, but what is vastly more important—the most magnificent waterways of Europe. The Russian complains that he has no outlet on the ocean, that all his seas are inland lakes: the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, and Lake Baikal. But he forgets that he possesses the Don, the Dnieper, and the most glorious river of the world—the Volga! Let the tourist take his passage at Tver, where the river becomes navigable, on one of the floating hotels of the Kavkaz and Mercur Steamship Company—Tver is only eight hours' railway journey from Petrograd—and let him drift in an eight days' journey on the "Mother Volga" down to the Caspian Sea, and he will then conceive the unrivalled possibilities of Russian inland commerce.
IV
It is true that a large proportion of the Russian Empire has not yet been assimilated. The alien races—the Catholic Poles, even the Germans and Finns, the Jews and Armenians—have not yet been won over by the conqueror. Still, the Russian element forms the enormous majority of the population. When the Government gives up its stupid methods of compulsion, when its alliance with the great liberal Powers of the West will be spiritual as well as political, it is probable that the process of Russification will proceed at a very rapid pace. For let us not be deceived by superficial appearances. The Russian race possess many of the characteristics of a superior and imperial people. They have survived a struggle for life of ruthless severity. They have resisted the continued pressure of hunger, war, plague, of a cruel climate, and a more cruel Government. The Russians have got a splendid physique, they have a capacity of endurance which is surpassed by no other race. And although they emerged only yesterday from barbarism, they have already produced giants in every department of Art, of Literature, and Philosophy—scientists like Mendeleieff, philosophers like Soloviov, musicians like Tschaikowsky, painters like Verestchagin, men of letters like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
V
European Russia is surrounded by an industrial belt in the west, in the south, and in the east. But in the meantime Russia remains pre-eminently a nation of peasants. The moujik is still the backbone of the Empire. He is a splendid worker when he is given a chance, and in Siberia and Central Asia he proves an ideal colonist. It is true that technically he is still a bad agriculturist. He is ignorant. He has no capital. He scratches the earth with his primitive plough, as in the days of Abraham. But enormous progress is being made, and great changes are impending. The Russian Government is instituting gigantic experiments in land reform, which our own land reformers would do well to follow very closely. Hitherto the communal system of property seems to have proved an insurmountable obstacle to agricultural progress. That form of collective primitive agriculture has now broken down. The ancient institution of the "mir," or village community, is being disintegrated. Communism is giving way to peasant proprietorship and social co-operation.
VI
But it is obvious that no reform of any kind will be carried through successfully until the methods of government in Russia have undergone drastic changes. Those hundred and seventy millions are still badly ruled. In the first place, they are misgoverned by their spiritual rulers. The Greek Orthodox Church, with her parish priests, or white clergy—who are compelled to marry—with her hierarchy of monks and bishops, or black clergy—who are forbidden to marry—remains grossly ignorant and slothful, and maintains the people in sloth and ignorance. She is out of touch with modern life, and continues in abject mental submission to a despotic State.
Nor do the Russian people fare much better with their temporal rulers. The Tsar is the nominal head of the Empire. But the reality of power is vested in an irresponsible bureaucracy, corrupt by tradition, and what is worse, corrupt by necessity, because they are badly paid, because despotism must needs breed corruption, and because the huge distances from St. Petersburg make supervision and responsibility impossible. The immortal comedy of Gogol, "The Inspector-General," denouncing the abuses of the provincial bureaucracy, remains partly true to this day. No doubt since the heroic rising of 1905 the Russian people have received representative institutions; but the Duma is only a beginning. No reforms can be fruitful unless they are attended by a large measure of Home Rule in Finland, in Poland, in Trans-Caucasia, in Little Russia, and unless they are attended by an even larger measure of local self-government, and last, not least, unless they are attended by a concession of religious liberty—which has ever been the foundation of political liberty. The main condition of any future progress in Russia is that the Edict of Toleration of 1905 shall cease to be a dead letter.
VII
Unfortunately for the prospects of reform the ideals and the activity of the Government were still being diverted before the war, by the menace of the German Peril and the fascination of the Far East, from the pressing home-problems. What the Russian people really want are better roads, more railways, better housing, better sanitation, better schools, a more liberal Church, a more liberal administration. But instead of the activities of the Government being turned in that direction, the huge revenue of the Empire had to be largely spent on increasing an already huge and unwieldy army, and the political energies of the ruling classes were being devoted to the ambitious and perilous schemes of conquest in Persia, Mongolia, and Manchuria. Only ten years ago the jingo policy brought humiliating disaster to the Russian arms. The Government quickly forgot the awful lesson, and soon returned to the evil of its ways. They were "strangling" Persia. They were preparing to annex Mongolia and part of Manchuria. There lay the danger in the immediate future. The pressing necessities of national defence, a crushing military expenditure, a false and obsolete political philosophy, the imperialism of the governing class and the spirtual despotism of the Orthodox Church, those were before the war the great obstacles in the way of the moral and intellectual enfranchisement of the Russian people.
VIII
We have every reason to hope that those obstacles will be finally removed on the conclusion of peace, and that the war will prove a war of liberation for the victorious Russian people as it will prove a war of liberation even for the vanquished Germans. For this war is pre-eminently not a dynastic war or a war of conquest, it is a national and a democratic war. And it is almost a law of Russian history that a national and democratic war has ever acted as a revolutionary force in Russian politics.
(1) The liberal era of Speranski, perhaps the most picturesque and the most mysterious personality in Russian annals, followed the national war against Napoleon.
(2) The liberation of the serfs and the epoch-making reform of Alexander II followed the Crimean War.
(3) Drastic reforms had been decided upon after the Russian-Turkish War of 1878, and would have been granted but for the insensate murder of the Liberator Tsar.
(4) The establishment of Parliamentary Government followed the Russo-Japanese War.
The present war will prove no exception. The victory of the Allies will mean the end of militarism and the end of militarism will for the first time release the greater part of the huge financial resources of the Russian Empire for the economic development of the country and for the education of the people. And the victory of the Allies will also mean the end of the baneful activities of German reaction and of the German bureaucrats of the Baltic provinces, activities which, as we shall prove in a subsequent chapter, have been the incubus of Russian history. It is inevitable that the Russian Government, closely identified as it is with the great liberal Powers of the West, France and Great Britain, must come under their political and moral influence. We may, therefore, confidently predict that British and French culture will blend with and permeate Russian culture, and will be the leaven of Russian politics for the next generation.