The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 2/The Actual Position of Russia

by Sergey Mikhaylovich Stepnyak-Kravchinsky

THE ACTUAL POSITION OF RUSSIA.
(Narodnaia Volia's “Messenger,” January, 1885.)

In a country like Russia, where all manifestations of public opinion are checked, and every exposure of public wrongs considered as a crime, the clandestine papers have a twofold interest. Whilst tracing the progress of the revolutionary idea, and furthering this by means of propaganda, such publications are at the same time the only windows through which one can have insight into the internal conditions of the country, as no other publications are allowed to lay bare the truth.

A paper like Narodnaia Volia's Messenger—a large review, published abroad, and having no urgent questions of daily politics to deal with—is particularly adapted to this double office. It is from that point of view that the paper has particular claims upon the attention of foreign readers. Let us, then, gather up some hints as to the actual condition of Russia as reflected in the newly-published number of Narodnaia Volia's paper.

The movement first. Arrests, sentences, deportations, executions—here is the only measure of the intensity of a struggle carried on by conspiracy. If this is so, we may fairly presume the battle to be as fierce and unrelenting as ever. There are arrests everywhere. In some of the principle cities of the empire the number of arrests is very considerable. In St. Petersburg it reached 200 in a few months; in Moscow 250 for the year 1884. In Odessa in a few days there were 65 arrests. Hardly a single considerable city has been spared. Every class, every grade of society, is represented in the lists of proscription. There are numbers of students and young people generally, but these make no more than half of the whole number of victims. Workmen and magistrates, tradespeople and men of the liberal professions, functionaries of the government, professors of the universities, painters, singers, stage-players, members of municipalities or provincial assemblies, men of letters, men of the sword—all society is faithfully represented. No clas—hardly a section of a class—is missing. There is even a clergyman (John Voinoff, of Toula) arrested for having proclaimed from the pulpit that “it is a sin to call the present emperor ‘pious,’ because he is the most impious of all the tzars, having inflicted loss and sorrow on all honest families.” For Russia such a fact is the same as if a Turkish pasha proclaimed the sultan a scoundrel. The general discontent, the growth of opposition and the spreading of revolutionary tendencies through all the country are obvious.

But what is more alarming still for our present masters is the fact that the revolution is in a fair way to inflame a large part of the class that is now the only support of the Government—the army. The progress of revolutionary ideas in the army is certainly a point of great interest. But I will not dwell on this subject, already exposed by M. Tichomiroff to the readers of Socialist papers.

I pass to the general condition of Russia. Many interesting documents received by the editors give us a picture of the corruption at which official circles have arrived. A full account of the last disorders of Kieff University, so misrepresented in official reports, shows us what the head of a learned body and who is but a common informer, sending denunciations even against the chief of the Kieff police, M. Mastizky, accusing him of helping the Socialist propaganda. And when this rector be his pusillanimity and lying, produced a student “rebellion,” the government, without asking information even from the Governor-General of the province, expelled 1,000 students from the university.

The general administration is represented by a series of extracts from the private reports presented to the emperor by Senator Polov-Zeff. It is shown to demonstration how in Russia every swindler can obtain complete immunity if he contrives to make a partner of some police-agent. And as there is no country where you cannot find a heap of swindlers anxious to take advantage of impunity, it results that Russia is given as a prey, not to a reactionary policy, but to a gang of rogues who, under the cover of imperial irresponsibility, are plundering the country, ruining the state, and reducing to a chronic starvation the too patient peasantry.

But even the bovine endurance of Russian peasants seems to have its limits. At the same time that in the upper strata of the nation we witness the progress of revolutionary movement, there are facts showing that in the lower strata not all is quiet and safe. The marshalls of the nobility of the districts Uffa, Sterlitamak, Belebeier, Birsk and Slatoustorsk, have stated in the name of their electors, that the nobility of their respective districts are quite unable to enjoy their landed property. peasants of Russian as well as Bashkir origin, who commit from time to time acts of plunder on their property, have within the last two years declared open war against them. In open daylight in bands of 50, 80, even 100 men, armed with axes, clubs and guns, they come, take possession of the land and behave themselves as masters. They mow down dozens of acres of grass and cut entire forests of wood, carrying their booty on cars (under escort) to their respective villages. At the slightest sign of resistance from the manager, proprietor, servants, or representatives of local authority, the peasants use arms, inflicting severe injuries or death upon their enemies, and plunder or burn the buildings. There are many cases where their audacity goes further. The peasants turn out the third labourers of the proprietors and begin to work on their own account large pieces of land belonging to landlords. Sometimes they are still bolder. To M. Rall, for instance, they sent a message intimating him that they had passed at their meeting a resolution to take their use of his fields of fifty acres, and were firmly decided to carry their resolution into effect. An identical intimation was made to the colonel of the Body Guard, M. Tevkeleff. And the proprietor cannot but resign himself to his fate—the attacks and intrusions being repeated “every day,” as one of the nobleman's representatives declared. The landlords were driven to despair—many of them have abandoned their property to its fate and fled to the towns, awaiting better times and laying complaint of these outrages before the government.

Better times will come to the Uffa nobility; there can be no doubt of it. Stirred by their laments the government will send a number of troops that will put all things right. But will it be for long? Will the peasants desist from attacks after the soldiers retire? And what is much more serious, are not those small disorders merely forerunners of general disorders on the part of peasants who stand face to face with the dilemma of either starving or taking the law into their own hands. Last summer outrages of a similar character occurred in the Don province. They were suppressed by the troops; now they are repeated much more strongly and in quite spontaneous fashion at the other end of Russia. One need not be a prophet to say that if the present conditions of Russia are not changed, they will be repeated again and again.

Russia is marching towards a general revolution, a complete re-organisation of her social conditions. No opposition, no amount of obstinacy or cruelty can prevent it. But a partial revolution has taken the lead; a revolution which we may call a town revolution, a revolution of instructed classes—a political revolution, in a word. Upon the success or unsuccess of this partial revolution, it depends whether the general Russian revolution will be a pacific and humanitarian one, having at its head the most enlightened part of the working classes and the intellectual proletariat—or will be a violent, barbarous, sanguinary one, made by the outburst of despair, which knows no mercy and no laws.

STEPNIAK.