i had a long and exhaustive conversation about the material welfare of the russian people with a statesman to whose identity i am not at liberty to furnish even the slightest clew, if i am faithfully to carry out my promise to guard against his recognition as my informant. they were several hours of searching criticism, such as i had never listened to, from a man who through long years had himself been active in a prominent position, an outpouring quite permeated by the most hopeless pessimism, and stated with a passion that contrasted oddly with the gray hair and deeply furrowed face of the speaker. my references to him were of such a nature that he felt it safe to allow himself the most uncompromising plainness of statement. but i carried away the impression that it would be sufficient to give the russian statesmen the possibility to speak freely, and there would be left no stone unturned in that wicked structure that is called "the russian government," so great is already the accumulation of bitter anger even among those of whom it would be supposed that[pg 112] they are the real leaders of the state. the autocracy cannot even utilize the forces that are at its disposal.
"yes, fate is cruelly upsetting all our calculations with this war," said the statesman, in answer to my question as to the probable effect of the war on the russian economy. "no one even suspects what catastrophe we are facing, thanks to the policy that is just now celebrating its greatest triumph."
"is not that a paradox, your excellency?"
"no, not at all. the triumph of our policy is the money reserve at our disposal, which enables us to mobilize without borrowing. but only nearsightedness can find therein additional justification of this economic policy, which, on the contrary, receives with its triumph also its death-blow."
"may i have a fuller explanation?"
"it may be easily given. financial and fiscal considerations have destroyed our economy. you are surprised at this statement. but one must understand this system. the creation of a gold-reserve, the formation of a fiscal balance even at the expense of the internal forces of the nation, are, under certain conditions a necessity. for a backward agrarian state it is necessary, before all else, to join the more advanced countries in fiscal economy and guaranteed values, and if that requires sacrifices, it pays, in the end, in the greater credit facilities, i might say by the greater financial defense of the state."
[pg 113]
"and your excellency believes that the internal development of the nation was thereby neglected, just as an athlete develops the muscles of his limbs at the expense of his heart muscles?"
"certainly; i accept the analogy. we have increased our fighting efficiency, and have paid for it by internal weakening. i repeat that there was no other way, if we ever were to pass from the natural to the money system. this would be the right time to employ the credit thus secured for internal strengthening. but the war has upset our calculations and not only has it consumed our cash reserves, but will also compel us to make new sacrifices. we are in the position of a man who is still out of breath from running, but must begin running anew in order to save his life, and may only too easily get a stroke of apoplexy."
"has not the industrial development in the western part of the country strengthened the national finances?"
"no; on the contrary, it has involved sacrifices. and we cannot expect salvation from these either. we have a yearly increase of two million souls, and our entire industry does not employ more than two million workmen. our national existence must still depend for a long time on our agriculture, and this, so far from advancing, is becoming poorer from year to year."
"on account of the industrial policy?"
"no; but you should not forget that this [pg 114]industrial policy has by no means mastered the system. nay, had the spirit whence our industrial policy originated been the ruling spirit, our agriculture would also have been in a better position; for that is the spirit of enlightenment. but now the strength of the soil is decreasing; and the peasant has no manure, nor is he acquainted with any system of cropping under changed conditions of fertility."
"and why is nothing done for the uplifting of his economic insight?"
"you must ask that of the gentlemen of the almighty police and not of me. i am of the humble opinion that hunger is beneficial neither to the soul nor to the body; but in that department where there is more power than in ours, it is believed that knowledge is under all conditions injurious to the soul. also, that too many people should not come together and take counsel of one another; in the opinion of our government, no good can come of it. we had appointed commissions for the uplifting of the peasantry, for road-construction, for the regulation of questions of credit; but always the results were only conflicts between the provincial corporations, the zemstvos, and the government."
"what was the cause of these conflicts?"
"the tradition and the guiding principle of the present system, which i can only designate as the principle of gagging. an administration that does not oppress the peasantry is not yet to be thought of.[pg 115] our peasant needs nothing so much as travelling agricultural teachers. but what would be the end of such teaching? to siberia direct. fear of the intelligent classes has already become a mania. intelligence, if it pleases you, is revolution; only no contact with liberal elements. the salvation of our people lies in its isolation."
"but that is the régime of a conquered country! are not the rulers themselves russians? how can they be so cruel to their own flesh?"
"the police official is no russian. he is quite free from national sentiment; he is only an oppressor, a detective. our ministry of the interior is merely a great detective bureau, a monstrous and costly surveillance institution. when the notorious 'third division' was abolished and subordinated to the ministry of the interior it was considered a step in advance. but it was not the ministry of the interior that absorbed the 'third division,' but the reverse. we no longer have administration, but only surveillance, arrest, deportation. shall i tell you? our commission worked honestly. it consisted of noblemen, high-minded patriots, who took part in working out a project for the improvement of economic conditions. only three hundred copies of the report were printed; it was not meant for general circulation. but the result of the labors undertaken at our instance was the arrest of the outspoken, upright critics. do you consider that an encouragement for patriotic endeavor? our merchants and[pg 116] our zemstvos have opened, in the last six years, one hundred and thirty-six schools without one kopek of state aid, and with a yearly expenditure of four million rubles. the instinct for what is necessary is therefore present. our society should only be let alone and we also might go through the same development, perhaps in a slower measure, which germany has passed through with such momentous success in the last thirty years—from an agricultural state dependent on the weather to a mighty industrial country. but germany is a constitutional state and we are a police state. germany has a middle class; we have none, and the formation of such a class is prevented by every possible means. the commercial schools are subjected to annoying conditions because they are under the jurisdiction of the ministry of finance, where, naturally, a different spirit prevails. the commercial guilds are making enormous material sacrifices, spending annually, besides the four millions for maintenance, five additional millions on buildings, only to retain their autonomy, to keep in their own hands the staffs of instruction and inspection, and to possess a greater elasticity of adaptation to local conditions. this sacrifice is overlooked, and the slightest exhibition of free initiative is jealously suppressed."
"your excellency, i find that one cannot discuss the least question of pedagogy or economics in russia without touching high politics."
"very true. you may see from that to what[pg 117] a pass we have come. we have been going backward uninterruptedly for the last twenty years. the nobility is losing its estates because it has not learned to manage them, and has not recovered to this very day from the abolition of serfdom. but the land does not fall into the hands of the peasants, who need it, but into those of the merchants. the agricultural proletariat remains unprovided for. the peasant cannot raise the taxes. the soil here gives fourfold returns; in germany eightfold returns. it pays at the same time, this side of the dnieper, ten to fifteen per cent. annually for tenure; in england two to three per cent.; in france and germany four to five per cent.; and on the other side of the dnieper, where long tenures are in vogue, five to six per cent. remember that this is a yearly tenure. it is a premium on soil robbery. sixty rubles for the tenure of one desyatin. the peasant cannot raise that amount, and yet he is compelled at the same time to pay taxes. year after year hunger visits entire governments, for the peasants are utterly impoverished and have not even seed. with an empty stomach and a dark mind the peasant must bear family, communal, and government burdens."
"i read something similar two years ago in a book by an englishman."
"you mean the russian conditions, by lanin, from the fortnightly review."
"quite right, your excellency. but i considered[pg 118] the description overdrawn. moreover, i cannot conceive how abuses could be so clearly painted as in that book, the statements of which your excellency now confirms, without any prospects of redress."
"who is to give redress?"
"the czar."
"the czar is living behind a wall of china. he has never visited a 'duma' (city council), never a zemstvo (district council), never a village, never an industrial centre. he is kept by the camarilla in constant dread, and is so closely watched that he sees not a finger's-breadth of heaven, much less of earth. he rejoices when an occasional quarrel breaks out among the ministers, for he then has the opportunity to learn here and there a fragment of truth."
"and does no one succeed in representing to him conditions as they are?"
"i will make a confession to you. not very long ago i myself prepared a paper, not bearing my name—that would have offered certain difficulties—but anonymous, and had it transmitted to the czar by a trustworthy person. for eight days there was great joy at the court. the emperor and the empress were delighted to know where the trouble lay and how it was to be remedied. then the whole matter, as it were, vanished and was forgotten."
"then that already is pathological."
a shrug of the shoulders was his answer. "above[pg 119] all things there is the great anxiety and fear at the responsibility. there is also a weakness on account of conscientious scruples. the emperor knows nothing thoroughly enough to enable him to overcome the arguments of a skilled sophist, and he is too indulgent to say to one of his counsellors, 'sir, you are a cheat.' he hears in the reports only praise of somebody, never any censure. for he has a great dread of intrigue, and not without good reason. the atmosphere is a fearful one in the vicinity of every autocrat. the czar is pathetically well-meaning, and is modesty itself, but he is not the autocrat for an autocracy, who must be equal to his task."
"and what, in your excellency's opinion, should be done to help the country?"
"no more than the rest of the world has already accomplished. abolition of the police system, security of personal freedom, abolition of the censorship, discontinuance of the persecution of sectarians, who are our best subjects, and—i say the word quietly—a constitution."
"and would the country really be helped thereby?"
"unconditionally. with these little concessions to-day any political convulsion could be avoided, and the intelligent class freed from its fetters. no one knows what will be offered ten years from now."
"are there prospects of this concession?"
[pg 120]
"not the slightest. on the contrary, whoever falls under the suspicion of unconditional approval of the present system may be morally destroyed at any time."
"what will then be the end?"
"that the terror from above will awaken the terror from below, that peasant revolts will break out—even now the police must be augmented in the interior—and assassination will increase."
"and is there no possibility of organizing the revolution so that it shall not rage senselessly?"
"impossible. our rural nobleman is, to be sure, not a junker; but the strength of the régime consists in the exclusion of any understanding between the land-owners and the peasants because of the social and intellectual chasm between them."
"your excellency, i remember a saying of strousberg's, who was a good business man, 'there is nowhere a hole where there once was land.' one learns to doubt that here in russia. there is not one with whom i have spoken who would fail to paint the future of this country in the darkest colors. can there be no change of the fatal policy that is ruining the country?"
"not before a great general catastrophe. when we shall be compelled, for the first time, partly to repudiate our debts—and that may happen sooner than we now believe—on that day, being no longer able to pay our old debts with new ones—for we shall no longer be able to conceal our internal[pg 121] bankruptcy from foreign countries and from the emperor—steps will be taken, perhaps, towards a general convention. no sooner."
"is there no mistake possible here?"
"martin luther hesitated as long as he had not seen the pope, no longer after that. whoever, like myself, has known the state kitchen for the last twenty-five years, doubts no longer. the autocracy is not equal to the problems of a modern great power, and it would be against all historical precedents to assume that it would voluntarily yield without external pressure to a constitutional form of government."
"we must wish, then, for russia's sake, that the catastrophe come as quickly as possible?"
"i repeat to you that it is perhaps nearer than we all think or are willing to admit. that is the hope; that is our secret consolation."
such was the substance of my long interview with one of the best judges of present-day russia, from which i have omitted only those places and versions which would render their author easily recognizable. for the rest, i must say here that, with slight variations, the statements of all the other competent persons whom i had the opportunity to meet agreed with those of my present informant. the unwritten public opinion of russia is absolutely of the same mind in its judgment of existing conditions; it differs only as to the remedies.
[pg 122]
"we are near to collapse—an athlete with great muscles and perhaps incurable heart weakness," repeated the statesman at parting. "we still maintain ourselves upright by stimulants, by loans, which, like all stimulants, only help to ruin the system more quickly. with that we are a rich country with all conceivable natural resources, simply ill-governed and prevented from unlocking its resources. but is this the first time that quacks have ruined a hercules that has fallen into their hands? whoever shall free us from these quacks will be our benefactor. we need light and air, and we shall then surprise the world by our abilities and achievements."
