The Shield/The Fatherland for All

by Fyodor Sologub

 

 

Fyodor Sologub is the pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, novelist and poet. A considerable portion of his prose works has been recently made accessible to the English reader. Sologub's poetic output includes lyrical pieces of rare beauty. He was born in 1864.

 

 

THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL

By FYODOR SOLOGUB

THE great war, which we did not want, but which we are conducting with intense fervour, exerting all our spiritual and material forces, has put before our consciousness and our moral sense the fundamental problems of our social and political organisation. Not in vain have the newspapers hastened to style this war a Fatherland War. The question of the Fatherland has suddenly acquired for us a peculiar keenness and significance.

The war has taken Russian society and the Russian people by surprise, but luckily it has come to us at the moment when the questions which were confronting us had already been settled both in our reason and conscience. The heroic labour of the Russian intellectual has not been in vain. And now what we have to do is not to argue and demonstrate, but to determine the meaning of events. And the meaning of what is going on is such that we are forced to consider this war not only as one of defence, but also as one of emancipation. It appears to us not only as a struggle for the rights of small states threatened by large ones, and as a war against German militarism, but also as a strife against . . .^[1] internal danger, whatever may be the various forms this danger assumes.

The first and chief danger which threatened, and is still threatening us, is the danger of internal division and disorder. The equal readiness and zeal to stand up for her which all the peoples inhabiting Russia have manifested has shown how unjust is the preaching of hatred and of narrow nationalism. The peoples who bear the same burdens of our state as the Russians do, who defend our common fatherland just as faithfully as the Russians, thereby assert that our fatherland is for all, that Russia is for every one who is considered a Russian subject and meets his duties toward the state. Russia is not only for those who are Russians by language and birth, she is for all who live under her sovereign dominion. No one in Russia is benefited by the unequal rights of her various peoples; this inequality does not add to our political power, it only supports our internal disorder. Its abolition by no means contradicts the fundamental conceptions of Russian statehood.

You will say that Russia has been created by the Russian race. Well, then, her policy must be determined by the qualities of the Russian popular spirit,—but animosity and exclusiveness are things strange and repulsive to it. The soul of the Russian people is trusting and open to all influences. And this is only natural: only that nation can become the basis of a great state which is able with ease and joy to unite with all the races it meets on its historic road. The history of Russia illustrates this. Besides, who has ever asserted that people born unto the Russian tongue are racially pure Slavs?

You will say that Russia is a Christian state. Agreed. But do not Christ's commandments teach us to see a friend and a brother and one's equal in every man? The more we are Christians, the less of animosity and exclusiveness can be in our hearts. What difference does it make that two men speak different languages and pray in different ways? When it is a question of paying duties and taxes, and bearing arms in defence of the fatherland, religious and race peculiarities do not matter.

The fatherland is for all of us, because we are all for the fatherland. The fatherland is our common home, and this home we build, keep in good order, and defend. We build our common home not like hirelings, to whom, after they get their pay, the building becomes alien. In rearing, decorating and defending it we bargain with no one, we give everything that is necessary for its upbuilding and defence,—we give our property, our labour, our very life. Even when our labour appears selfish, even then—provided it is not criminal—it is for the good of our common home: for, all that adds to the happiness, well-being and freedom of each one living in the home, adds to its strength and beauty.

We build our common home, decorate it and defend it, and we do it with joy and willingness because in our common home we are neither hirelings nor guests. In our common home, then, who are we? We must know and always remember that in our common home we are all masters of the house. It is not our right, but our duty toward our home, of which we must take care just as every good master takes care of his house. The consciousness of the fact that we are the masters of our common home is clear; for it is seen that every one of us in whom conscience and reason do not slumber, feels responsible for the disorder of our life.

Not an outsider, nor a congress of allies, nor some one social class shall regulate our affairs for the best of Poland, Finland, the Jews and the rest. Neither our allies, nor any one of our social classes, nor the wisest and strongest among us,—but all of us Russian citizens, all of us who joyously and willingly bear the burden of statehood, are called upon to settle in conscience and reason, the fundamental problems of our great home-building.

In the face of the common foe we are all united. We have mustered all our forces for the defence of our native land from the hostile invasion. We are all brothers, all children of one fatherland, and to all Russia is a good mother loving all equally well. Many are the peoples Russia has gathered under her dominion and she is to all equally benevolent.

How eager is one to say these words, to have the right to utter them! But we have it not. Not toward all is Russia equally benevolent, and in the hour of great trials and high deeds she is still unable, still unwilling, to tear asunder the fatal chain, the terrible "Pale of Settlement."

Whenever I met Russian Jews abroad, I always marvelled at the strangely tenacious love for Russia which they preserve. They speak of Russia with the same longing and the same tenderness as the Russian emigrants; they are equally eager to return and equally saddened if the return is impossible. Wherefore should they love Russia, who is so harsh and inhospitable toward them?

Strange as it may sound, there are children who love their cruel stepmothers. Of course, they are exceptions; usually such stepmothers are hated. But in the case of Jews such exceptions become the general rule: the Jews love the same Russia that is so cruel toward them.'

Some one's interests demand that the Jews should be oppressed, stabled in the "Pale of Settlement," limited in the right to education, and in other respects. But to whose interest is it? Russia's? Surely not.

Social relations in Russia, as in every civilised state, must rest on the immovable foundations of justice, reason, and conscience. All those persons who are united by the fact of their belonging to the Russian state must have, within the limits of the empire, the minimum of rights, which, to our shame, are refused the Jews. This minimum each one of us receives not for his personal or racial deserts or distinctive traits, but as a citizen of the state. To obey the common Russian laws, to pay the established taxes, to serve in the army,—all these are the duties of a Russian subject, corresponding to the amount of rights of which he can be deprived only by a court ruhng for a crime.

A man not dishonoured by a court decision may not live where he wants to,—because he is a Jew; a boy who has not been dismissed from any school for deficiency or misconduct, may not enter the "gymnasium," where there are plenty of vacancies, but where the few vacancies set aside by a percentage rule for the Jewish brats, are eagerly filled by them; a soldier's wife may not visit her wounded and agonising husband because he happens to be dying outside the "Pale"; the deceased may not be buried in the town where he died, for he had no right of residence in that town,—what does all this mean? Who needs all this?

All these people are Russian subjects, not our enemies, and yet they are treated in this fashion. What is the purpose of it all? Is it in order to kindle among the Jews the fire of implacable hatred of Russia and turn them into our enemies? But then we must be logical and not tolerate them in the "Pale of Settlement"; we must exile or destroy them. But a civilised state will never persuade itself to commit such acts, inhuman though logical. And if it does not decide to do that, it must, for the sake of its safety and dignity, grant to every Russian citizen the elementary human rights. It is imperative that every Russian Russian citizen should have every reason to love Russia and no right to hate her. If that portion of the Russian population which is deprived of rights still loves Russia, it is because the people of purely Russian extraction have no hatred for people of non-Russian birth, and our co-citizens are fully aware of it. They know that their disabilities are a burden to ourselves.

The removal of the Jewish disabilities is most imperatively dictated to us also by our dignity as a body politic. The name of Russian subject must be respected within our country, for otherwise the civilised world will not grow accustomed to respect Russia. Our country is feared for its military might and loved for the fine qualities of its people, but it will be respected only when it becomes a land of free men.

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1. Several words here are crossed out by Russian censorship.—Translator's Note.