it was perhaps not altogether accidental that one evening at a social gathering i was introduced to one of the foremost lawyers of st. petersburg, whose biting sarcasm in discussing the events of the day immediately struck me, and aroused in me the desire to have a more serious talk with him. this was immediately granted with that amiability which is never wanting in the intercourse of russians with foreigners. subsequently i learned that i might congratulate myself, for that particular lawyer was said to be not only one of the keenest minds in russia, but one of the men best acquainted with his country. moreover, he was so overwhelmed with work that even greater men were often obliged to wait by the hour in his antechamber before they were able to gain admission. indeed, the time fixed for our interview, near midnight, showed this to be the case. the conversation lasted until long after that hour, but i had no cause to regret the loss of several hours of sleep.
my host rose immediately and gave the inevitable order to bring tea and cigarettes. in a few minutes[pg 183] we were discussing the question which interested me most, as being the key to an understanding of all the other economic conditions of the country—namely, the question of the administration of justice in russia.
"one circumstance makes it uncommonly difficult here to obtain justice," began the lawyer. "i refer to the strained relations between the bench and the bar. here the judge is more hostile to counsel than is the case in other countries, and often enough he is inclined to make them feel his power. this is less serious in civil suits—in which the judge, after all, merely has to do with the parties in the case—than in criminal cases, in which the judge represents the authority of the realm towards the accused and his advocate. in such cases the defendant may easily pay the penalty of the animosity which the judge feels towards his counsel."
"what is the cause of this?"
"it has only too human a cause. it is not unheard of for a busy lawyer of reputation and good connections to earn thirty or forty thousand rubles a year, or more. compare with that the wretched salaries of the judges; consider how costly living is here; imagine the continuous over-burden of work of the bench and the lack of public appreciation, and you will comprehend why our judges do not look at the world in general through rose-colored glasses, and particularly at the prosperous, well-situated lawyer."
[pg 184]
"you say lack of public appreciation. is the position of judge not an honorable one?"
"on the whole, no official in russia is much respected. at the most he is feared. the most lucrative positions, however, are those of the administrative department and the police. in these branches are to be found the most rapid and brilliant careers, and therefore the sons of great families, in so far as they become officials, prefer them. the judge must work hard, and has small thanks."
"does not this evil have a moral effect on the impartial administration of justice also?"
"you mean, in plain speech, are not our judges to be bought? well, i must say, to the honor of these functionaries, that relatively speaking they constitute the most honorable class of all our officials, and that the majority of them are superior to bribery. to be frank, there is professional ambition enough; and the effort to please superiors is almost a matter of course, since the independence of the judges, which had brought us extraordinary improvement in the candidates for the office, has been set aside again."
"your judges are not, then, independent and irremovable?"
"what are you thinking of—under our present régime? we do not wish independent judges. a minister of justice like muraviev, who certainly constitutes the supreme type of all that is meant by the expression, 'a man of no honor,' is the[pg 185] strongest hinderance to justice. therefore, a monetary acknowledgment to the whole senate is expected for each satisfactory judgment. we have such a case just now. here you have a list of names of seven judges who were promoted out of turn by minister muraviev on consideration of the kind support which they gave to the ryaboushinskys, the moscow millionaires, against the bank of kharkov, which was their debtor."
"will you permit me to make a note of this list?"
"certainly. i am not the only man who has it."
i noted down the names davidov, sokalski, vishnevsky, laiming, delyanov, dublyavski, podgurski. they were entered on a type-written sheet with the distinction and encouragement they had respectively received after a suit which brought a considerable profit to a moscow millionaire firm.
"but you said," i objected, "that the judges are not open to bribery. yet they performed an illegitimate service to millionaires."
"certainly i said the judges are not open to bribery; but i did not say that of the minister of justice. on the contrary, i called him a man without honor in a place of the highest power."
"you mean, then, that he was paid for the judgment that was given in the interest of the millionaires?"
"your astonishment only betrays the foreigner. only the little debts of the honorable minister were paid off—good heavens!"
[pg 186]
"it is incomprehensible."
"on the other hand, the judge has everything to fear when he is not compliant. do you suppose that a comedy of justice like that of kishinef can be played with independent judges? and yet there are always heroes to be found who fear no measures, but administer justice according to their convictions. that is the astonishing thing, not the opposite, under a muraviev-plehve régime."
"was it better, then, formerly?"
"it was, and would have become better still if our authorities had remained true to their mission of uplifting the altogether immoral people instead of corrupting them still further. in the system of pobydonostzev, in which politics take the place of morality, no improvement is to be expected. you might as well expect fair play from the spaniards of the inquisition as here, where premiums are set upon all sorts of unwise actions, if only they seem to lead to the levelling of the masses, who are to be kept unthinking."
"you say the people are immoral?"
"they lack—above all things, the sense of justice. no one here has rights. no one thinks he has. the natural state of things is that everything is forbidden. a privilege is a favor to which no one has any claim. to win a lawsuit is a matter of luck, not the result of a definite state of justice. one has no right to gain his cause simply because he is in the right. as a consequence of this, it is[pg 187] neither discreditable nor disgraceful to be in the wrong. you win or lose according as the die falls. i will illustrate from your own experience. you were to-day in the hermitage. at a certain door, before which stood a servant, you asked whether people were permitted to enter. the answer was not 'yes' or 'no,' but 'admittance is commanded,' or 'admittance is not commanded.' this spirit extends to the smallest things. that you keep your child with you and bring it up is not a matter of course, but you are permitted to have children and to bring them up—the latter, be it noted, only in so far as the police allow. if you should to-day suffer heavy loss by robbery or burglary, what should you do?"
"i should report the matter, of course."
"you say of course, because it is a matter of course to you that a crime reported should become characterized as a crime, because in a certain way you feel the duty of personally upholding law and order. when the same thing happens to me, a russian, i must first conquer my natural tendency, and then after a long struggle i, too, will report the matter, because—well, because i, as a lawyer and a representative of justice, am no longer a na?ve russian, but am infused with the usual ideas of justice. the normal russian exceedingly seldom reports a case to the police, because he absolutely lacks the conviction of the necessity of justice. when he says of anybody that he is a clever rascal,[pg 188] his emphasis is laid on the word clever, which expresses unlimited appreciation."
"that must make general intercourse exceedingly difficult."
"certainly. to live in russia means to use a thousand arts in keeping one's head above water. one never has a sure ground of law under his feet. property both public and private is perhaps not less safe in turkey than here. have you heard of the great steel affair?"
"no."
"it is no wonder, for we do not make much ado about a little mischance of this sort. in that affair a capital of eight million rubles disappeared without a trace. it was invested in the coal and steel works. a grand-duke, moreover, was interested in the enterprise, grand-duke peter nikolaievitch. a license to mine iron ore on a certain territory for ninety-nine years had been obtained. a company was formed with a capital of ten million rubles. the grand-duke took shares to the amount of a million rubles. the enormously rich chludoff put eight million rubles into the concern. french and belgian experts were brought on special steamers; champagne flowed in streams. of course the reports of the experts were glowing ones. but after three years there was of the eight million rubles, barely paid in, not a kopek more to be found. it had all been stolen. likewise there was no ore or coal on the territory, nor had there ever been.[pg 189] no one went to law about the affair, so little sensation did it cause."
"when did this affair take place?"
"between 1898 and 1901."
"and can your press do nothing to better this general corruption?"
"we have a saying, 'it is hard to dig with a broken shovel.' talented people like ourselves soon learned from abroad the little art of corrupting the press. with a fettered press like ours, this is less difficult here than in other countries, where a paper respecting public opinion might under some circumstances be unreservedly outspoken. but why should a press with suvorin and the novoye vremya at the head, surpassing absolutely all records of baseness—why should such a press run the risk of bankruptcy? moreover, you must always keep one thing in mind: a press may exert tremendous power by publishing a man's worthlessness, until he is made powerless in society; but since here notorious sharpers are readily accepted in the highest ranks of society, and even grand-dukes do not escape the suspicion of corruption, it does no one any harm to be reported as having dexterously spirited away a few hundred thousands."
"you say even grand-dukes?"
"—are not safe from suspicion. i can personally testify that not one of them takes a ruble himself. but the persons who live by obtaining concessions for joint-stock companies, etc., know how[pg 190] to represent that they need considerable sums for the purpose of influencing the highest persons, the minister and grand-dukes. hence arises this idea."
"and intelligent business men believe that?"
"believe it? no one would understand the opposite. imagine a scene in my office. a business man comes to me with a case. he inquires my fee. i say five hundred rubles. he asks what will be the expenses. i say a few rubles for stamp duties, etc. then he becomes more definite. he means the charges. 'there are none,' i answer. the man of business rises, disappointed. 'ah! so you have no influential connections?' i will not say that this happens very often with me; for the men who come to me once know what i can do, and what not, and what my practice is. the case is, however, characteristic. outside the legal profession, which still lives on the tradition of the time of its independence, every one is open to bribery; and every one reckons with the fact."
"and no one is angry at open injustice?"
"what is injustice? despotism of the great. we have been used to that for thousands of years and accept it like the caprices of fortune. the peasant makes no distinction between a hail-storm which ruins his crop and an authority who oppresses or injures him. there is no way of resisting either; for when one curses god, he sends greater misfortune; and when one disputes with the authorities, one is[pg 191] absolutely lost. 'duck, little brother; everything passes'; that is the final conclusion of our wisdom. we are educated to it by inhuman despots and by an official service of thieves and debauchees. we lack, too, the sharply defined idea of ownership, in which the sense of justice, considered psychologically, has its root. you know that here the peasants own their own land only to an extremely small extent. the individual is merged and lost in the 'mir' (village community), where the trustee, the 'zemski nachnalnik,'[5] the village elder, and liquor rule. this obshtchina, communism, is the strongest fortress of reaction. no ray of enlightenment penetrates it. at the utmost, misery and ever-returning hunger produce finally a condition of despair in which the peasant is capable of anything except an action which might advance him in civilization. in the census of 1898 there were found villages where no one had any idea what paper is, and peasants who did not know the name of the emperor. the 'mir,' moreover, is in its nature opposed to private ownership, and every discussion between the member of the village communism and the property-holder is artfully prevented by the scattering about of compulsory peasants. for property-owners are at present for the most part liberal. the régime, however, stands or falls with the isolation of the peasantry from liberal [pg 192]influences. for the peasant is not unintelligent by nature, and, if he is not prevented, he learns very quickly."
"that is also, then, one of the causes of the ill-treatment of the jews?"
"it is the cause. do not suppose that the holy synod alone has power to influence legislation in favor of orthodoxy. sectarians and jews are demonstrably the only people who have a moral code of their own, and, therefore, know how to distinguish justice from injustice. they are also the only ones who criticise the actions of the authorities. they were, therefore, a dangerous leaven in the community, otherwise slipping off to sleep in a body. therefore, it was a matter of self-preservation for the autocracy to isolate the jews and make them harmless. do not suppose that any anti-semitic feeling is prevalent among us. the autocrats are trying artfully to implant it by means of such people as plehve's intimate, krushevan, of the 'bessarabetz.' but the effect does not go deep, thanks to the same circumstance which makes the progress of civilization difficult; the peasant cannot read, and does not in the least believe the priest. the massacres of kishinef were directly commanded. every man was killed by order of the czar. no anti-semitism exists among the people. whatever anti-semitism there is is sown by the government for the purpose of isolating the peasants in order that 'the urchins may grow up stupid.'"
[pg 193]
"ought not the jews to take that into account and not meddle with politics?"
"in the first place, i see no reason why the jews should become accomplices of this formidable and soul-killing régime of ours. they will be oppressed all the same, whether meek or unruly. they will remain under special legislation, simply because no one can stop the flow of the official's unfailing spring of revenue—the ravaging of the jews. moreover, the jews have never received so much sympathy from us as since they began to place themselves on the defensive and to make common cause with our radicals. now for the first time they belong to us, and yet really only those who actually fight with us and for us. this matter, too, is misrepresented. statistics, which show a percentage of eighty-five jews in every hundred revolutionaries, are falsified, because gentiles are allowed to slip through in order to injure the radical—i. e., the constitutional—movement by representing it as un-russian and jewish, and to mobilize foreign anti-semitism against us. but the jews ought to be grateful to plehve, for, thanks to his machinations, all the intelligent opinion among us has become favorable to the jews, and recognizes the solidarity of its interest and those of the jews. the struggle conduces much, however, to the assimilation of the jews. they are our brothers; they suffer with us and for us, even if also for themselves; for our whole jewish legislation for twenty years past has[pg 194] consisted only in the curtailing of the rights accorded them under alexander ii. why should they not become revolutionaries? but they are enemies of the administration merely, not of the state; therefore, we find ourselves on the same footing."
i closed my interview, as in all cases, with the question, "what hope is there for the future?" and received the same answer as in all other cases:
"everything depends upon how this war ends. if god helps us and we lose the war, improvement is possible; for then ruin, above all, the chronic bankruptcy of the nation, can no longer be concealed. if a man should enter my room now—at this hour only respectable persons enter my room—and i should say to him, 'what do you hope and wish in regard to the war?' his answer would be, 'defeat; the only means to save us.' if we calculate how many men are shot and exiled and how many families are ruined every year by absolutism, the total equals the losses in war—a more terrible one, however, for only a catastrophe can make an end of this war, which has long been destroying us. therefore, i say again, if god helps us we shall lose the war in the east. do not allow yourself to be deceived by any official preparations. every good russian prays, 'god help us and permit us to be beaten!'"
when i left the brilliant lawyer it was, as i have[pg 195] said, long after midnight. it was "butter-week,"[6] and my sleigh had trouble in avoiding the drunken men who staggered across our way, and the shrieking hussies, who, with their companions with or without uniforms, carried on pastimes suitable to the season.
footnotes:
[5] chief of the county council.—translator.
[6] "butter-week" (maslyanitza) is in russia the week preceding lent. meat is forbidden, but milk, butter, and eggs are allowed as food. like the carnival, it is celebrated with popular amusements.—translator.
