National Geographic Magazine/Volume 16/Number 7/Evolution of Russian Government
EVOLUTION OF RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT [1]
By Edwin A. Grosvenor, LL.D.,
Professor of Modern Government and International Law in Amherst College
COUNTLESS questions arise at the very mention of the name of Russia. Many of these questions are of vital interest and interwoven with the crisis in the Far East. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to push all other issues aside and devote myself entirely to the single subject — The Evolution of Russian Government.
At the beginning I am confronted by one peculiar difficulty. It is that I am an American and that the great majority of my hearers are of the same nationality. I know, indeed, that in no other country under the sun is there so large an acquaintance with foreign matters as in the United States. In no other is there so large an ability to judge of foreign questions, of their causes and ultimate solution. But this advantage is more than counterbalanced by the difficulty created in our minds through the rapid progress of our political life. We have not yet attained, nor are we altogether perfect. Sometimes things are done in this our boasted country which cause us shame. Nevertheless, we have represented during the last 125 years the foremost constitutional, self-governing experiment of mankind. Only a little more than a century ago did our fathers draw up that Constitution which is still our organic law. There did not then exist a single other written constitution, defining civil functions and regulating the relations of different departments of state. We were the first who ever em- barked upon the sea of national self- government under the aegis of a consti- tution formed by the people. Hence it is difficult or impossible for us Ameri- cans to fully realize how rapidly we have advanced under the guidance of a brief but an enlightened experience. The rapidity with which we have rushed for- ward since astounds the beholder, but is barely perceived by ourselves. For we are in the very midst of the progress, and meanwhile receive and share all that is being achieved . The fleet-footed are not tolerant of the slow. Scant pa- tience have we for the tardier progress made by nations in less favorable con- ditions than our own. The same step must they keep and push on with the same tireless speed. Great Britain, sur- rounded by the inviolate sea, and safe from even the threat of a hostile foot, has wrought out farther than any other people, perhaps farther than ourselves, the application of principles to civil and constitutional government. But her as yet unwritten, unformulated constitu- tion has had a thousand years for its making.
The nations move on like troops of soldiers in a long and weary march Some reach the place of bivouac and light the camp-fires while others are straggling far behind. Some of the seeming loiterers have been pressing on all the time toward the bivouac as the rear guard, with their faces to the foe ; and others are struggling forward, wounded and disabled, with slow and uncertain step ; and others still, because of less ability, of less forceful energy, but with just as strong determination and just as good a will, find themselves, when night approaches and time for halt has come, far from the bivouac and the front. Around one nation gleam the watch-fires of the twentieth century; another is fifty years behind ; a third is groping still among the breaking shadows of the eighteenth century, and yet another has only of late emerged from the darkness of the middle ages.
RUSSIA LEFT THE MIDDLE AGES IN 1689, 240 YEARS AFTER THE REST OF EUROPE HAD EMERGED FROM THAT DARK PERIOD
To the close of the middle ages in western and southern Europe are as- signed different dates. There modern times began four or five hundred years ago, perhaps when Constantinople fell or when L,uther and Raphael were born or when America was discovered . Then universal disorder ceased ; centralized states stood forth ; the various peoples felt new thrills of national life. With the ascent of the boy, Peter, to the throne the middle ages were ended in Russia. That was in 1689. Thus in the onward progress the inhabitant of other parts of Europe had by two hundred and fifty years the start of the Russian.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE PLAIN
The Russian had been left thus far in the rear by no fault of his own. In natural endowment the Slav is not in- ferior to the Latin or the Teuton or the Celt. Geographic conditions and geo- graphic environment determined Rus- sian history and molded Russian nature. In that enormous plain, which consti- tutes the Russia of today, mountains, at once a bulwark and defense and inspi- ration, were denied him. The Scotch, the Swiss, like the Vaudois Christian, could sing:
" For the strength of the hills we bless Thee,
Oh ! God, our father's God ;
Thou hast made thy children mighty
By the touch of the mountain sod."
But the dwellers of the plain, exposed to attack from every side in a wild and lawless age, had no other destiny than to suffer and endure.
After the barbaric invasions ceased in western Europe, for generations count- less Asiatic hosts roamed over Russia, sparsely populated and difficult of de- fense, and devastated the land at will. Moreover, the sunless forest and dreary steppe wrought upon human nature their repressive influence. Physical con- ditions fashion character as the sculptor shapes the clay. Thence were devel- oped those traits of sluggish patience, of long endurance, of morbid self-sacri- fice which distinctly mark the Russian people today.
ADVANCES BEGIN AT THE TOP AND WORK DOWNWARD
In most countries each political or economic advance has derived its first impulse from popular feeling which swelled into a resistless demand upon authority — that is, the progress has begun from below and worked upward. In Russia the very opposite is true. There almost every advance has re- ceived its first impulse from the Tsar — that is, the progress has begun from above and worked downward. Thus, for example, were brought about the emancipation of the serfs and the insti- tution of the zemtsvos. Peter the Great was the typical Russian Tsar, though built on the most majestic and colossal scale. He forced his reforms upon an indifferent or unwilling people. While many Russians are, from one point of view, enlightened and others are crudely educated and correspondingly radical, the fact remains that to any proposed change the masses block the way ; nor is it strange that the reforms in other lands extorted from the rulers by the people are in Russia, if they exist at all, forced upon the ruled by the ruler. No other process is possible among a people conservative by instinct and tolerant only of autocracy.[2]
THE PECULIAR ATTITUDE OF THE RUSSIANS TO THEIR TSAR
In May, i8q6, as magnificent a pano- rama as Europe has beheld was presented at the city of Moscow. I leave to poets and word-painters the description of the scene. It was the coronation of the Tsar. Its significance for us is found not in its attendant splendor, but in its enunciation throughout of the funda- mental principle of Russian govern- ment. Though the gorgeous rites con- tinued for hours, the culmination of each ceremony, whether prayer or promise or benediction, was always some fresh as- sertion or acknowledgment of autocracy. The Metropolitan of Moscow, having bestowed the orb and scepter on the new sovereign, concluded his prayer of consecration with the words, "The Lord . . . preserve with His protection the established rule." In the profound silence the kneeling Tsar exclaimed, "Lord God of my fathers, Thou hast elected me to be ruler of this Thy people." Last act of all, the Metropolitan of St Petersburg an- nounced, "God hath crowned this God- given, God-adorned, most God-fearing autocrat . . . Emperor of all the Russias." And then, turning to the Tsar, he said, ( 1 Take thyself the scepter and orb of the Empire, the visible image of the sole sovereignty over the people given by the Most High for their gov- ernment, promotion, and every desira- ble well-being." The Tsar took no oath of obligation like that so many times repeated from the steps of our Na- tional Capitol. He made no promise. He simply accepted the burden placed upon his shoulders. That burden is "sole sovereignty over the people." He personifies the theory of the father who never grows old and never dies, and whose national family is made up of children who never reach maturity and are always young. A few weeks ago at Tsarkoe Selo the Tsar received the deputation of workmen. As they talked of him in the vestibule the only name by which they called him was "The Little Father." They were grizzly veterans of labor, horny-handed by years of toil, and he a stripling, but to them the little father. When ushered into his presence, the first words they heard from his lips were "My children." Despite the difference in years. they were children around their father's feet.
That is the attitude of the Russian Slavs toward their autocratic head. Such an idea of governmental paternalism is absolutely contrary to our own, nor can it be appreciated or credited except as one acknowledges the essential difference of race accentuated by history and environment. When discussing the French we are talking about a Celto-Eatin race ; when the Germans, a Teutonic race; when the United States of America, a cosmopolitan race, a min- gling of all the peoples ; when the Rus- sians, a Slavic race, a stock distinct from every other European race. From its very cradle, through the more than thousand years since, the Russian branch of the Slavic race is, in whatever per- tains to government, the direct antith- esis of our own. It is as difficult for the average Russian to appreciate our modern, twentieth -century sentiment as it is for us to appreciate their docile, submissive sentiment, which has been wrought out in the interminable forest and steppe.
THE TSAR AS THE POLITICAL HEAD
So the Tsar is the all-controlling, all- comprehending political unit. He is the legislative, the executive, the ju- dicial. His authority extends over 8,500,000 square miles and 150,000,000 people. He cannot know the needs of all nor can he reach in relief to all. Consequently he summons to his service advisory boards, on whose intelligence and loyalty he must depend . There is the Ruling Senate — Pravitelstvuyushchiy Senat — established in 17 10 by Peter the Great. It is divided into six sections, each presided over by a lawyer of emi- nence, who represents the Tsar. The sections are at once courts of justice and examining boards. In behalf of the Tsar the Senate promulgates the laws. There is the Council of State, purely consultative, organized in i8or by Alexander I and reorganized on broader lines four years ago. It ex- amines proposed laws and discusses the budget. It is divided into four depart- ments, devoted respectively to legisla- tion, to civil and ecclesiastical adminis- tration, to economy and industry, and to commerce and sciences. There is the Committee of Ministers, varying, like the Cabinet of Great Britain, in num- ber and office, and, moreover, including several high functionaries and,. Grand Dukes. There is the Holy Synod, which superintends the religious affairs. The great metropolitans and bishops com- pose it, but its decisions have force only as approved by the Tsar and are issued in his name. There are several so-called cabinets, mainly philanthropic or eco- nomic. There are the 78 governors general, one over each province of the Empire, and 792 administrative coun- cils, one for each provincial district. The members of all these different Im- perial boards, of whatever name or dig- nity, are responsible to the Tsar.
THE VILLAGE MIR
The Tsar may be called the infinite unit. In Russia there is another or an atomic unit, just as real, but in compar- ison infinitely small. This is the mir. None the less mir is the most important word in the Russian language. It means the village and the village assembly. To the mind of the peasant it means the world. European Russia is made up of 107,676 communes or villages. Each is and has its mir. As in national af- fairs the Tsar decides or acts through his senate or council or synod, so in local affairs the mir acts for him. Apart from affairs of state, in the mir the peas- ant has a political existence of his own. Over the mir, in much akin to the town meeting of New England, presides the starosta, elected by it. Several com- munes united compose a volost or can- ton, of which there are 10,530 in Euro- pean Russia. To the cantonal and pro- visional assemblies, each composed of duly elected delegates, is applied the name, of late become so familiar, of the zemtsvo. The mir or volost decides all questions of local nature, such as con- cern roads, schools, health, justice, and acts as a peasants' court in cases not
involving more than 60 dollars. But 
From "All the Russias," by Henry Norman. Copyright, 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons
The Tsar and Tsarina at Home
over every act or meeting impends the shadow of the Tsar. His delegate or commissioner is always near and may, though he seldom does, reverse all the proceedings. Thus autocracy stands forth alike in the lowly mir or in the Imperial Senate. Not far astray is the Slavic proverb, "In Russia two are everywhere, God and the Tsar."
This system is not the result of usurpation by violence or fraud. The process of its evolution and corresponding sanction is to be read on every page of Russian history.
THE EARLY RULERS OF RUSSIA-THE RURIKS
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Latest Picture of the Tsar of all the Russias and His Interesting Family, including Baby Tsarevitch
A hundred years later the sovereign, Wladimir, then a pagan, became a Christian. At Kief he ordered his subjects to assemble on the banks of the River Dnieper and be baptized. They joyfully obeyed. "If baptism were not good," said they, "our prince and our boyars would not have submitted to it."
The common formula of a royal order was, until the time of Russia's subjugation by the Tatars, "This is my will, and hence the law. Hear and obey."
From 1205 to 1472 the country groaned under the merciless sway of the Mongol Tatars. Resistance was of no avail against the overwhelming numbers of the invading horde. The period is fitly called in Russian history "The Age of Tears" or "The Age of Woe." No other country of Europe has ever been subjected to such horrible and long-continued suffering. The only alleviation to the awful distress was found in the efforts of the royal Russian family—itself tributary and a vassal, always weak, but determined and shrewd—to modify the ferocity of the conquerors and to keep the sense of nationality from dying. Upon their princes, fellow-sufferers with them in a common and intolerable subjection, the people looked as their only hope. When at last Prince Demetrius of the Don won a decisive victory over the horde and made it evident that its final expulsion was only the work of patience and time, the delirious gratitude of the people knew no bounds. They were ready to swear themselves the subjects of Demetrius
From "All the Russias," by Henry Norman. Copyright, 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Home of Romanoffs, Moscow
and his heirs forever. The city from which the deliverance had proceeded was henceforth "Holy Mother Moscow." Autocracy, by its immense services, had enshrined itself in the Russian heart. Gradually the broken horde was pressed back to the waste lands which stretch along the Azoff and the Caspian, nor is it strange if subjection through 273 hideous years to inhuman Asiatic masters left traces, hard to eradicate, upon Russian character.
From 1462 to 1584 three princes occupied the throne—Ivan III the Great, Wassili, and Ivan IV the Terrible, or, more accurately rendering the Russian adjective, Ivan the Awful. Ruthless, sometimes monstrous, but always mighty, always persistent in one purpose, these three built up Russia from its humiliation and weakness into glory and strength. Before Ivan IV, the marvelous madman, died he had made him
From "Greater Russia," by Wirt Gerrare. Copyright by the Macmillan Co.
A Crowd in Theater Square, Moscow
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Priests of the Orthodox Greek Church on a Float upon the Neva River, St Petersburg
Blessing the waters to make them safe for drinking. The ikons or sacred pictures are indsipensable to this ceremony
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
Splendid Temple of Our Saviour in a Western District of Moscow
Built to commemorate the disastrous failure of Napoleon's attempt to conquer the Czar's empire. Seven thousand people attend mass at one time under the dome, which is covered with pure gold. The gilding of the five domes alone cost nearly a million dollars. The procession is a party of school girls coming from the church guarded by a vigilant chaperone.
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Old Defenses of the Kremlin—the Citadel of Moscow
These walls have withstood many mediæval sieges, but would fall at once if modern artillery or bombs attacked them. The clock tower marks the sacred Gate of the Redeemer, where the orthodox Russian removes his hat in reverence for a miracle-working picture of the Saviour.
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Russian Cloth Market in "the Fair" of Nijni-Novgorod, Russia
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Market Place, Viborg, Finland
From "Greater Russia," by Wirt Gerrare. Copyright by the Macmillan Co.
Old St Petersburg
self a "god in the minds of his people." Autocracy had received a fresh sanction in their absolute and whole-hearted submission.
THE FIRST OF THE ROMANOFFS—MICHAEL, A BOY OF 17—IS ELECTED RULER
Suddenly the boy prince, Demetrius, the last heir of Ivan, died. With him the royal line of Rurik became extinct. There followed thirty years of lawlessness and anarchy, of disastrous civil and foreign war. At last, in 1613, a great assembly, made up from every rank and class in Russia, got together in Moscow. A national assembly, equally representative of a nation, neither Russia nor Europe had ever seen. This assembly, after long and fierce contention, chose Michael Romanoff as Tsar. Not a single condition did they impose upon that untried boy of seventeen thus unanimously elected ruler. When he appeared before them, upon their knees they shouted, "Promise that thou wilt graciously consent to rule over us." And so with autocratic power the dynasty of the Romanoffs was seated upon the Imperial Russian throne. There is no other royal house reigning in Europe today which in equal degree owes its elevation to the free voice of the people. There is no other reigning house that does not trace its origin back to some successful warrior and owe its earliest advancement to the sword. In every other country, on some bloody plain, a Hastings or a Marchfield, William the Conqueror, the Hapsburghs, the Hohenzollerns, have carved for themselves and their descendants a title to the crown. The father of Michael Romanoff was no brilliant soldier, only a faithful parish priest, who was renowned for piety and ability, and who because of his noble qualities attained high ecclesiastical distinction.
Upon the autocratic throne, thus broad-based upon the popular will, sovereign succeeded sovereign for more than a century. On each monarch devolved the duty of choosing his heir from among the male or female members of the Imperial family. Always that choice was accepted by the nation. Smallpox caused the sudden death of Peter II, in 1730, before he had expressed any preference as to his successor. There were then living four descendants of Michael Romanoff. Three of them were women—Anna Ivanovna, Catharine Ivanovna, Elizabeth Petrovna— and a male infant a few months old. Eight of the most powerful nobles banded themselves together in what they termed "The High Secret Council." They obtained control of the army and of every department of government and administration.
A CONSTITUTION IS OFFERED
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
A Reservoir After Evaporation. Turning up the Salt, Salt Fields, Solinen, Russia
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Moscow Workmen in one of the Street Markets
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
A Characteristic Russian Troika (three-horse carriage) before the Old Petrofski Palace in the Northwest Suburb of Moscow
The Palace is not now occupied as a royal residence
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Siberian Hides and Village of the Tartars, Nijni-Novgorod, Russia
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Wheat for Export at Russia's Great Southern Seaport, Odessa
From stereograph copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Country Women Tramping into Krief, Russia, with the Morning Supply of Milk
An enormous weight is carried uncomplainingly with the help of the pall over the shoulders to which the milk-jars are attached. These women do the heaviest part of the farm work, milking at daybreak or earlier, and often walking five or six miles to deliver their wares. Very few of them can read or write, and they are helpless under the domination of the priests and village head-men.
and should be consulted by the Tsarina in all state affairs. (2) Without the consent of the council the Tsarina should make neither peace nor war, should levy no taxes, should alienate no public territory, and should appoint no public official of higher rank than colonel.
(3) No member of the nobility should be executed or condemned, and no prop- erty of a noble should be confiscated except after a fair trial by his peers.
(4) The Tsarina should neither marry nor appoint a successor without the consent of the council. (5) Violation by the Tsarina of any of the aforesaid stipulations should constitute forfeiture of the crown. Anna accepted all these conditions, solemnly signed the document, and was then proclaimed Tsarina or Empress of Russia.
Magna Charta, with all its sublime provisions, seemed thus naturalized upon Russian soil. The homo liber of the Norman Latin in the English charter meant practically the same as the word tchin, or noble, in the paper of the High Secret Council. So from the banks of the Thames Runnymead had been trans- planted to the banks of the Neva. The 24 Norman barons who forced the sub- mission of King John lived again, 515 years after, in the eight Russian lords who had secured the acquiescence of Anna. Inviolability of person and prop- erty, habeas corpus, trial by jury, hith- erto the monopoly of distant English islanders, were now the guaranteed right of the Slav. The Slavic Empire, no longer autocratic, possessed a constitution.
THE PEOPLE REJECT THE PROFERRED CONSTITUTION AND REFUSE TO LIMIT THE POWERS OF THE TSAR
The announcement of this constitution was received with general indignant pro- test. Under severe penalties the High Council forbade the people anywhere to assemble ; but they could not disperse and silence the crowds which got to- gether all over Russia and denounced the new system. The Tsarina was put under guard and only partisans of the new order allowed to approach her. Thus the council hoped she might be kept ignorant of the mounting tide of popular feeling. Yet the council found itself powerless, despite its being en- trenched in possession of the govern- ment and despite the rank and wealth and personal influence of its members. On February 25, 1731, a zemski sobor, a national assembly, dared to convene in Moscow. The eight hundred elected deputies belonged to the nobility, the clergy, the professions and trades, and the peasant class. They drew up a formal and unanimous protest against the constitution. The Tsarina entered the hall and was greeted with frenzied shouts, "We will not let laws limit our Tsarina!" "Let our Tsarina be an autocrat just like her predecessors!" The Tsarina calmed the tumult and adjourned the meeting. At the next session a formal petition was voted by the eight hundred for the reestablish- ment of autocracy. The council melted away. Autocracy reigned again as in all the days since the time of Rurik. Thus ended the first, if not the only, genuine attempt at a liberal government in the Muscovite Empire. This is the most important, the most significant, event in the history of Russia.
Through another century successive sovereigns sat upon the autocratic throne. In 1822 the childless Alexander I was Tsar. His brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, had been acknowledged as heir. Constantine desired to marry the Polish girl Jane Grodzinska. Because she was of humble origin, a Catholic, and a Pole, Alexander could not tolerate his brother's choice as the future Tsarina. Between the maiden and the throne Constantine was compelled to choose. To him her love was dearer than the Imperial crown. He solemnly renounced his rights as heir apparent in favor of his younger brother, Nicolas. This renunciation was known only to Alexander and their mother, the Dowager Empress Maria, and kept secret even from Nicolas himself. Two years later Alexander died. Then ensued between the two surviving brothers a contest almost without parallel. Constantine, then governor of Poland, ordered the troops at Warsaw to swear allegiance to Nicolas. Nicolas at St Petersburg ordered the troops throughout Russia to swear allegiance to Constantine. The fraternal rivalry continued for three weeks. It was ended only by the solemn declaration of Constantine that he had once renounced the succession, and that nothing could induce him to go back upon his word.
Constantine was the older. Moreover, he was a soldier and the idol of the army, which had been determined to enthrone him against his will. Nicholas was a younger brother and almost unknown. There then existed in the country two secret organizations — the Society of the North and the Society of the South — both imbued with the ideas of the French Revolution and hostile to the autocracy. By them the devotion of the masses to the principle of legiti- macy was cunningly made to serve an attempt at revolution. Some of the colonels at the capital, though favorable to Constantine, were inclined to this lib- eral party. Those officers ordered their men to shout, "Long live Constantine" and "Long live the Constitution" (Constitutza)! "Who is this Constitutza?" asked the puzzled soldiers. "Long live Constitutza! She must be Constantine's wife." One colonel cried, "Long live the Republic!" The sol- diers said, "Who is Republic? That is not the name of the Tsar." The colonel replied that it was the sort of government they were going to set up and that there would not be any Tsar in it. "Oh," said the soldiers, " then it isn't the right thing for Russia. We have got to have a Tsar." And they themselves arrested the colonel. Nicolas I, his son Alexander II, his son Alexander III, his son Nicolas II, the present Tsar, such is the succession since that time to the present hour. It is not unusual to speak of these men as irresponsible autocrats and to regard the Russian system as an irre- sponsible autocracy. But an irrespon- sible autocrat never has held the scepter, and irresponsible autocracy never has existed, even in phlegmatic Russia. An irresponsible autocrat among people of Indo-European stock is an utter impossibility. Each autocrat is weighed in the balances and judged — if need be punished — by those over whom he reigns. This judgment no Russian autocrat from the accession of Michael Romanoff has escaped. The kindly, well-intentioned, feeble, self-contradictory, ill-starred Nicolas II is being weighed in that balance now. Your judgment and mine, the judgment of foreigners or of posterity, will concern or affect him little. But long-suffering, patient, little exacting as the Russian people are, they are inexorable as fate, merciless as doom once their judgment made.
The dumb popular heart makes no harsh or hard demand upon its sovereigns. It asks that the autocrat shall be profoundly Russian, Russian in feeling and sympathy, in orthodoxy and faith, in fidelity to old tradition, in heart-whole devotion to her whom the peasant reverently calls "Holy Russia." It asks that he shall develop the na- tional resources and augment the na- tional strength ; that he shall increase the national territory and maintain the prestige of the national arms ; that he shall keep Russia's name glorious. This is not too much to require of him to whom the nation has intrusted its all.
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE TSARS
When Peter III, unnatural and debauched, drank in his orgies to the success of foreign troops and gloated over disasters to his own; when Paul, cynic and half mad, flouted the church and betrayed the national cause, the cup of wrath was full. It matters little that the executioners who struck them down were self-appointed, and, no better than hired assassins, held no mandate for regicide. In the line of Russian autocrats those two stand out with a shameful preeminence.
Not all the sovereigns since Michael Romanoff have been great. More than one has been deficient in private virtue. In some there flowed not a drop of Slavic blood. But they all bore the test of being supremely Russian, only Russian, at the core. Save the execrated two, each down to the accession of Nicolas II, in 1894, contributed his full share to Russian power and prestige, both at home and abroad. Like the concentric rings of an oak tree were the territorial accretions of the Russian Empire. Each larger ring indicated a later reign.
In other lands there have been other autocrats, but always alike in this: each has fallen or stood according to his ultimate military failure or success.
Had the mass of the people on whom his power rested really desired equal rights and personal liberty and self-government, the autocrat would not have been tolerated for an hour. The foremost autocrat of all time is the great Napoleon, child of the French Revolution.
"He was a despot—granted!
But the avtos of his autocratic mouth
Said yea i' the people's French; he magnified
The image of the freedom he denied:
And if they asked for rights, he made reply,
'Ye have my glory!' and so, drawing round them
His ample purple, glorified and bound them
In an embrace that seemed identity.
He ruled them like a tyrant—true! but none
Were ruled like slaves: each felt Napoleon."
Thus was it while Marengo, and Austerlitz, and Jena, and Friedland, and Wagram studded like stars his victorious name. The march to Moscow, the retreat from Leipsic, the catastrophe at Waterloo, could have no other meaning than St Helena.
Since February 6, 1904, the on-looking world has beheld an unexampled spectacle. It has seen Russia staggering under such humiliation from a foe, once despised, as no other European nation ever endured at the hand of an Asiatic. In the monotonous story of a dozen months there is not a single alleviating feature to salve Russian pride except the admirable working of the trans-Siberian railway and the stolid, unbroken valor with which the Russian soldier has faced continuous defeat.
The diplomacy of Russia, before and during the war, has been as deplorable as her generalship. Her state papers, whether in the form of protestsorof communication with other powers, have been querulous and almost puerile. Her wily and unscrupulous enemy, equipped with all the appliances of the West and all the subtlety of the East, has so excelled at every point as to render haughty Russia an object of pity and derision.
All this detail the common Russian does not know. He does know that, despite hundreds of millions lavished and thousands of men sacrificed, the blackness has not been relieved by a single victory, and that the total has been defeat, retreat, and surrender. The dull ache of unspeakable humiliation is in his soul. Marvelous is it that in fury, blind as Samson's, the whole nation has not already risen as one man to pull down the pillars of the state. Strikes and riots there have been, and massacres by infuriated men, but neither revolution nor rebellion, no universal outburst commensurate with the hideous tragedy in the East.
There are many voices, but, as in the crowd before the temple, some cry one thing and some another. The only audible sounds breathe indignation and rage.
Now there has come a temporary hush. For a time the gaze is diverted to that forlorn squadron plowing its uncertain way through unknown and treacherous waters. One signal victory of Rodjestvensky's fleet may reverse all that has gone before, retrieve all the battles lost, redeem autocracy and the Tsar. In the anguish of suspense the autocrat and the nation listen and wait.
THE PRESENT TSAR
Upon a train some days ago I sat near two gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation. They were talking about a third, apparently a friend of their youth. They seemed to be summing up his life and character. Said one, "He was always hampered by his inheritance." Said the other, "Well, I think he blundered along just as well as he knew how." Then I caught another sentence, "He never knew whom he was able to trust." Their conversation ended with, "He would have been a great deal happier if he had been a clerk in New York." Despite the distance in race and rank, those random remarks epitomize the life story of Nicolas II.
Far happier for him a simple house in Yonkers or Harlem than the sumptuous halls of the Winter Palace. Better fitted is he for the routine of an office and a desk than for the perils and responsibilities of a crown. Then, when the day's work is done, what joy to reach his home and toss his children in his arms, and picnic on a holiday or a Sunday in the suburbs with his family. Such, they tell us, is the gentle, homely, wife loving nature of the present Tsar. Whatever the destiny of the autocrat and of the autocracy, the Russian people remain. Rudyard Kipling, in "The Man Who Was"—perhaps the most powerful story Kipling ever wrote—puts upon the lips of Dirkovitch the prophecy of that for which the centuries have been waiting: "The Czar! Posh! I snap my fingers—I snap my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done nothing, him I believe. Seventy—how much?—millions that have done nothing—not one thing. Napoleon was an episode! . . . Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the world—out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old peoples. Get away! Seventy millions—get away, you old people!"[3]
- ↑ An address to the National Geographic Society, February 3, 1905.
- ↑ The Tsar's proclamation of religious freedom and equality, issued on April 30 and received with enthusiasm by the European and American world, is probably most unwelcome to the great majority of his subjects. It seems almost irony that this noble message of religious progress will especially benefit the Rascolniki, or Old Believers, the dissenters or sect reactionary even for Russia and bitterly hostile to all western influence and to all attendant progress.
- ↑ Some good books on Russia are: "Greater Russia." Wirt Gerrare. Macmillan Co. 1904. Several chapters deal with Russia, but the larger portion of the work relates to Siberia and the Amur territory. $3.00. "All the Russias." Henry Norman. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1902. A very satisfactory account of the resources and general administration of Russia. $4.00. "The Great Siberian Railway." M. M. Shoemaker. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903. "Russia." Sir D. M. Wallace. Henry Holt. $2.00. The best general account of Russia in the English language. "Russia in Asia, 1558-1899." A. S. Krausse. Henry Holt. 1899. $4.00. A history of Russian advance across Asia. "Story of Russia." W. R. Morfill. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1890. (Story of Nations' series.) $1.50. "The Russian Advance." A. J. Beveridge. Harper Bros. 1903. $2.50. A graphic portrayal of the causes of the sweep of Russia across Asia.