Russia: Its People and Its Literature Part 5

The idol takes no notice of his fanatical adorers, nor perhaps does he understand them any better than the peasant-woman of Toboso understood the amorous suit with which Don Quixote wooed her malformed and dishevelled person. The Russian peasant cannot make anything of theories and apotheoses evolved from an intellectual condition amounting to rapturous frenzy. "Oh that I might die," exclaims a devout nihilist, "and that my blood like a drop of hot lead could burn and arouse the people!" This thirst for martyrdom is common, but above all is the anxiety to be amalgamated with the people, to know them, and if possible to infuse them with the enthusiasm they feel themselves.

It requires more courage to do what Russians call _going to the people_, than to bear exile or the gallows. In our society, which boasts of its democracy, the very equalization of cla.s.ses has strengthened the individual instinct of difference, and especially the aristocrats of mind, the writers and thinkers, have become terribly nervous, finicky, and inimical to the plebeian smell, to the extent that even novels which describe the common people with sincerity and truth displease the public taste. Yet the nihilists, a select company from the point of view of intellectual culture, go, like apostles, in search of the poor in spirit, the ignorant and the humble. The sons of families belonging to the highest cla.s.ses, alumni of universities, leave fine clothes and books, dress like peasants, and mix with factory hands, so as to know them and to teach them; young ladies of fine education return from a foreign tour and accept with the utmost contentment situations as cooks in manufacturers' houses, so as to be able to study the labor question in their workshops. We find very curious instances of this in Turguenief's novel "Virgin Soil." The heroine, Mariana, a nihilist, in order to learn how the people live, and to _simplify herself_ (this is a sacramental term), helps a poor peasant-woman in her domestic duties.

Here we have the way of the world reversed: the educated learns of the ignorant, and in all that the peasant-woman does or says the young lady finds a crumb of grace and wisdom. "We do not wish to teach the people,"

she explains, "we wish to serve them." "To serve them?" replies the woman, with hard practicality. "Well, the best way to serve them is to teach them." Equally fruitless are the efforts of Mariana's _fict.i.tious husband_, or _husband by free grace_, as the peasant-woman calls him,--the poet and dreamer Nedjanof, who thinks himself a nihilist, but in the bottom of his soul has the aristocratic instincts of the artist.

Here is the pa.s.sage where he presents himself to Mariana dressed in workman's clothes:--

"Mariana uttered an exclamation of surprise. At first she did not know him. He wore an old caftan of yellowish drill, short-waisted, and b.u.t.toned with small b.u.t.tons; his hair was combed in the Russian style, with the part in the middle; a blue kerchief was tied around his neck; he held in his hand an old cap with a torn visor, and his feet were shod with undressed calfskin."

Mariana's first act on seeing him in this guise is to tell him that he is indeed ugly, after which disagreeable piece of information, and a shudder of repugnance at the smell of his greasy cap and dirty sleeves, they provide themselves with pamphlets and socialist proclamations and start out on their Odyssey among the people, hoping to meet with ineffable sufferings. He would be no less glad than she of a heroic sacrifice, but he is not content with a grotesque farce; and the girl is indignant when Solomine, her professor in nihilism, tells her that her duty actually compels her to wash the children of the poor, to teach them the alphabet, and to give medicine to the sick. "That is for Sisters of Charity," she exclaims, inadvertently recognizing a truth; the Catholic faith contains all ways of loving one's neighbor, and none can ever be invented that it has not foreseen. But the human type of the novel is Nedjanof, although the nihilists have sought to deny it. There is one very sad and real scene in which he returns drunk from one of his propagandist excursions, because the peasants whom he was haranguing compelled him to drink as much as they. The poor fellow drinks and drinks, but he might as well have thrown himself upon a file of bayonets. He comes home befuddled with _wodka_, or perhaps more so with the disgust and nausea which the brutish and mal-odorous people produced in him. He had never fully believed in the work to which he had consecrated himself: now it is no longer scepticism, it is invincible disgust that takes hold upon his soul, urging him to despair and suicide. The lament of his lost revolutionary faith is contained in the little poem ent.i.tled "Dreaming," which I give literally, as follows:--

"It was long since I had seen my birthplace, but I found it not at all changed. The deathlike sleep, intellectual inertia, roofless houses, ruined walls, mire and stench, scarcity and misery, the insolent looks of the oppressed peasants,--all the same! Only in sleeping, we have outstripped Europe, Asia, and the whole world. Never did my dear compatriots sleep a sleep so terrible!

"Everything sleeps: wherever I turn, in the fields, in the cities, in carnages, in sleighs, day and night, sitting or walking; the merchant and the functionary, and the watchman in the tower, all sleep in the cold or in the heat! The accused snores and the judge dozes; the peasants sleep the sleep of death; asleep they sow and reap and grind the corn; father, mother, and children sleep! The oppressed and the oppressor sleep equally well!

"Only the gin-shop is awake, with eyes ever open! And hugging to her breast a jug of fire-water, her face to the pole, her feet to the Caucasus, thus sleeps and dreams on forever our Mother, Holy Russia!"

To all nihilist intents and purposes, particularly to those of a political character, the ma.s.ses are apparently asleep. Many eloquent anecdotes refer to their indifference. A young lady propagandist, who served as cook on a farm, confesses that the peasants spitefully accused her of taking bread from the poor. In order to get them to take their pamphlets and leaflets, the nihilists present them as religious tracts, adorning the covers with texts of Scripture and pious mottoes and signs.

Only by making good use of the antiquated idea of distribution (of goods) have they any chance of success; it is of no use to talk of autonomous federations, or to attack the emperor, who has the people on his side.

The active nihilists are always young people, and this is reason enough why they are not completely discouraged by the sterility of their efforts. Old age abhors fruitless endeavors, and better appreciating the value of life, will not waste it in tiresome experiments. And this contrast between the ages, like that between the seasons, is nowhere so sharp as in Russia; nowhere else is the difference of opinions and feelings between two generations so marked. Some one has called nihilism a disease of childhood, like measles or diphtheria; perhaps this is not altogether erroneous, not only as regards individuals but also as regards society, for vehemence and furious radicalism are the fruit of historical inexperience, of the political youth of a nation. The precursor of nihilism, Herzen, said, with his brilliant imagery and vigor of expression, that the Russia of the future lay with a few insignificant and obscure young folks who could easily hide between the earth and the soles of the autocrat's boots; and the poet Mikailof, who was sentenced to hard labor in 1861, and subsequently died under the lash, exclaimed to the students, "Even in the darkness of the dungeon I shall preserve sacredly in my heart of hearts the incomparable faith that I have ingrafted upon the new generation."

It is sad to see youth decrepit and weary from birth, without enthusiasm or ambition for anything. It is more natural that the sap should overflow, that a longing for strife and sacrifice, even though foolish and vain, should arise in its heart. This truth cannot be too often repeated: to be enthusiastic, to be full of life, is not ridiculous; but our pusillanimous doctrine of disapproval is ridiculous indeed, especially in life's early years,--as ridiculous as baldness at twenty, or wrinkles and palsy at thirty. Besides, we must recognize something more than youthful ardor in nihilism, and that is, sympathetic disinterestedness. The path of nihilism does not lead to brilliant position or destiny: it may lead to Siberia or to the gibbet.

V.

Herzen and the Nihilist Novel.

But it is time to mention some of the precursors of nihilism. First of all there is Alexander Herzen, a brilliant, paradoxical writer, a great visionary, a keen satirist, the poet of denial, a romanticist and idealist to his own sorrow, and, in the bottom of his soul, sceptical and melancholy. Herzen was born in Moscow in the year of the Fire, and his mind began to mature about the time the December conspirators forced Nicholas I. into trembling retirement. He was wont to say that he had seen the most imposing personification of imperial power, had grown up under the shadow of the secret police and panted in its clutches.

Charmed by the philosophical doctrines of Hegel and Feuerbach, which were then superseding the French, he became a socialist and a revolutionary. Just at the time when to have a const.i.tution was the ideal and the dream of the Latin peoples, who were willing to tear themselves to pieces to obtain it, this Sclav was writing that a const.i.tution was a miserable contract between a master and his slaves!

Herzen was but a little more than twenty years old when he was sent to Siberia. On his return from exile he found at home a mental effervescence, a Germanic and idealist current in the wake of the eminent critic Bielinsky, Sclavophiles singing hymns in praise of national life and repudiating European civilization which was in turn defended by the so-called Occidentals; and lastly he found a set of literary, innovators who formed the famous _natural school_, at the head of which was the great Gogol. Herzen fell into this whirl of ideas, and his aesthetic doctrines and advanced Hegelianism had great influence, and after some more serious works he published his celebrated novel, "Who is to Blame?"--a masterly effort, which gained him immense renown in Russia. It was masterly more by reason of the popularity it achieved than by its literary merit, for Herzen is, after all, not to be counted among the chief novel-writers of Russia. Herzen was born to point the way to a social Utopia rather than the road to pure Beauty. He invented new phases of civilization, societies transformed by the touch of a magic wand. The star of Proudhon was at this time in the ascendant, and Herzen, attracted by its brilliancy, left his country never to return; but he did not on this account cease to exercise a great influence upon her destinies, so great, indeed, that some profess to think that had Herzen never lived, nihilism would have perished in the bud.

Herzen hailed with delight the French revolution of 1848. He expected to behold a social liquidation, but he saw instead only a conservative republic,--a change of form. Then he cried out in savage despair, and his words have become the true nihilist war-cry: "Let the old world peris.h.!.+ Let chaos and destruction come upon it! Hail, Death! Welcome to the Future!"

To sweep away the past with one stroke became his perennial aspiration.

He drew a vivid picture of a secret tribunal which every _new man_ carries within himself, to judge, condemn, and guillotine the past; he described how a man, fearful of following up his logical conclusions, after citing before this tribunal the Church, the State, the family, the good, and the evil, might make an effort to save a rag of the worn-out yesterday, unable to see that the lightest weight would prove a hindrance to his pa.s.sage from the old world to the new. "There is a remarkable likeness between logic and terror," he said. "It is not for us to pluck the fruits of the past, but to destroy them, to persecute them, to judge them, to unmask them, and to immolate them upon the altars of the future. Terror sentenced human beings; it concerns us to judge inst.i.tutions, demolish creeds, put no faith in old things, unsettle every interest, break every bond, without mercy, without leniency, without pity."

This was his programme: Not to civilize or to progress, but to obliterate, to demolish; to replace what he called the senile barbarity of the world with a juvenile barbarity; "to go to the very limits of absurdity,"--these are his own words. They contain the sum of nihilism; they include the pessimist despair, and the foolish proscription of art, beauty, and culture, which to an artistic mind is the greatest crime that can be laid at the door of any political or philosophical doctrine.

A tendency that aspires to overthrow the altar sacred to the Muses and the Graces can never prevail.

Herzen went to London, established a press for the dissemination of political writings in Russia, and organized a secret society for Russian refugees, among whom he counted Bakunine; and having refused to return to his country, he founded a singular paper called "The Bell"

(_Kolokol_), of which thousands of copies, though strictly prohibited by the censor, crossed the frontier. They were distributed and read on every hand, and a copy was regularly placed, by invisible hands, in the chamber of the emperor, who devoured it no less eagerly than his faithful subjects. From the pages of this illegal publication the sovereign learned of secret intrigues in his palace, of plots among his high officials, and scandalous stories reported by the socialist refugee with incredible accuracy. By the side of these evidences of dexterity and cleverness, some of the stratagems recounted of the times of our own Carlist war seem mere child's play.

As the precursor of nihilism Herzen excites great interest, but there is much to be said of Tchernichewsky and Bakunine. It is said that the latter's influence was more felt abroad than at home, and that he fanned the activity of the Internationalist societies, and of the Swiss, Italian, and Spanish laboring cla.s.ses. Be that as it may, Bakunine was a cla.s.sic type of the conspirator by profession,--in love with his dangerous work. He adopted as his motto that to destroy is to create.

Caussidiere saw him and watched him during the insurrections in Paris, and exclaimed, "What a man! The first day of the revolution he is a treasure; on the second we must shoot him!" Paris was not the only witness of his feats; he fought like a lion at the barricades in Dresden, and was elected dictator; he took an active part in the Polish insurrection; he quite outshone Carl Marx in the International, and with him originated the anarchist faction, and that last grade of revolution, amorphism. As for Tchernichewsky, he is considered the great master and inspirer of contemporary nihilism, his princ.i.p.al claim to such a place being based on a novel; and at the bottom of the Russian revolution we shall always find the epic fictions of our day exerting a powerful influence.

With Herzen's novel the tendencies of nihilism were first revealed; with Tchernichewsky's they became fixed and decisive. Novels of Gogol and Turguenief overthrew serfdom, and novels of Turguenief, Dostoiewsky, Tolsto, Gontcharof, and Tchedrine are the doc.u.ments which historians will consult hereafter when the great contest between the revolution and the old society shall be written. When Tchernichewsky wrote his famous novel, he had already tried his hand at various public questions, had made a compilation from the "Political Economy" of John Stuart Mill, and was a prisoner on the charge of organizing the revolutionary propaganda in Russia along with Herzen, Ogaref, and Bakunine, who were refugees in London. Before setting out to suffer his sentence of fifteen years'

imprisonment and perpetual residence in Siberia, he was tied to a stake in a public square of St. Petersburg, and after the reading of the sentence a sword was broken over his head. What a blow was dealt at absolute power by this man, shut up, annihilated, suppressed, and civilly dead! Happy the cause that hath martyrs!

His novel produced an indescribable sensation. The nihilists were inclined to resent Turguenief's "Fathers and Sons," whose hero, the materialist Bazarof, represented the new generation, or, according to them, caricatured it. Tchernichewsky's book was considered to be a faithful picture, and a model besides for the party; it was the nihilists painted by one of themselves, so to speak. Although it is tedious and inconsistent in its arguments, the book shows much talent and a fertile imagination; the author declares that it is his purpose to stereotype the personality of the _new man_, who is but an evanescent type, a sign of the times, destined to disappear with the epoch he has initiated. Writing about the year 1850, he says, "Six years ago there were no such men; three years ago they were little noticed, and now--but what matters what is thought of them now? Soon enough they will hear the cry, Save us! and whatever they command shall be done." Farther on he says that these _new men_ in turn shall disappear to the last man; and after a long time men shall say, "Since the days of those men things go on better, although not entirely well yet." Then the type shall reappear again in larger numbers and in greater perfection, and this will continue to happen until men say, "Now we are doing well!" And when this hour arrives, there will be no special types of humanity, there will be no _new men_, for all shall realize the largest sum of perfection possible. Such is the theory of this famous martyr, and it is certainly as original as it is curious.

The admirers of Tchernichewsky's novel compare it to "The City of the Sun," by Campanella, "Utopia," by Sir Thomas More, "The Journey to Icaria," by Cabet, and the phalansterian sketches by Fourier's disciples. This comparison is alone sufficient to decide the rivalry in favor of Turguenief; for the Siberian exile wrought only in the interest of socialist propaganda, while the author of "Virgin Soil," whether accurate or not in detail, was a consummate artist. Only political excitement can dictate certain judgments and decisions. If I speak now more at length of the exile's novel, it is for the sake of its representative value, and as a reflection of nihilism in literature. The t.i.tle is, "What to do?" The author wishes to solve the problem put by Herzen in the t.i.tle to his novel, "Who is to blame?" and under the guise of a love-quarrel he delineates the ideal of the contemporary generation represented by two favorite characters, the two cla.s.sic types of the nihilist novel,--the student of medicine, a _new man_, saturated with science and German metaphysics, and a brave girl longing to be _initiated_ and thirsting to consecrate herself to some lofty cause.

Among other curiosities there is a nihilist husband, who, on discovering that his wife is enamoured of somebody else, calculates his moral sufferings as equivalent to the excitement produced by four cupfuls of strong coffee, and he therefore takes two morphine pills and declares that he feels better! In spite of being prohibited by the censor, this novel, as might be expected, had a great success; the editions multiplied clandestinely; the heroine's type became immensely popular; the young girls took to the study of medicine with an enthusiasm and a will to which I can personally testify; and if report be true, a part of the new ideas concerning conjugal equality and the const.i.tution of the family proceeded from this novel. The popularity of the author, glorified by the halo of his sufferings and imprisonment, far superseded that of Herzen.

Materialism and positivism soon came also to replace the visions of Herzen; for when Alexander II. opened the frontiers which the inflexible Nicholas had closed, the students brought home new idols from the German universities. Schopenhauer and Buchner superseded Hegel and Feuerbach.

Schopenhauer, with his pessimism, his theory of Nirvana and universal annihilation, arrived just in time to foster the germs of fatalism dormant within the Russian soul; and Buchner, by means of his very superficial but eloquent book, was also in season to offer an accessible, clear, and popular formula to unthinking minds and negative or indolent temperaments; "Force and matter" was for a time the Bible of Russian students. It will be readily seen that the revolutionary formula and methods in Russia always came from abroad; but they met with tendencies which were unexpected, even though they proved favorable to development. The philosophy of nihilism was drawn from Western sources, no doubt; yet this phenomenon made its appearance only in Russia, a land predisposed to realism and mysticism, to brutality and languor, and above all to melancholy limitless as its plains.

We are told of the now famous saying of a nihilist, who, being asked his doctrines, replied, "To see earth and heaven, Church and State, G.o.d and king, and to spit upon them all!" Although the verb to _spit_ is not so offensive in Russia as here, and is rather a sign of repugnance than of insult, such a reply contains the sum of negative nihilism; and negation, the critical period, cannot last longer than the despairing sigh of the dying. The active phase of nihilism, the reign of terror, pa.s.sed by quickly, and now the party is beginning to lay aside its ferocious radicalism and deal with realities.

VI.

The Reign of Terror.

The reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen that the active nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced youths without position or social influence, armed only with leaflets and tracts. This handful of boys furiously threw down the gauntlet of defiance at the government when they saw themselves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with such sincerity that almost all the a.s.sociates who bound themselves to execute what they called _the people's will_ have died in prison or on the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword _man for man_. When the sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one end to the other, the frightened people imagined an immense army of terrorists, rich, strong, and in command of untold resources, covering the empire. In reality, the twenty offences committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under the two capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the palace at St. Petersburg, the many a.s.sa.s.sinations, and the marvellous organization which could get them performed with circ.u.mstances so dramatic and create a mysterious terror against which the power of the government was broken in pieces,--all this was the work of a few dozens of men and women seemingly endowed with ubiquitousness, so rapid and unceasing their journeys, and so varied the disguises, names, and stratagems they made use of to bewilder and confound the police. It was whispered that millions of money were sent in from abroad, that there were members of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy, that there was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed the threads of a terrible executive committee which pa.s.sed judgment in the dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly. Yet there were only a few enthusiastic students, a few young girls ready to perform any service, like the heroine of Turguenief's "Shadows;" a few thousand rubles, each contributing his share; and, after all, a handful of determined people, who, to use the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a covenant with death. For a strong will, like intelligence or inspiration, is the patrimony of the few; and so, just as ten or twelve artist heads can modify the aesthetic tendency of an age, six or eight intrepid conspirators are enough to stir up an immense empire.

After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the first spark of discontent), the government augmented the police and endowed Muravief, who was nicknamed _the Hangman_, with dictatorial powers. In 1871 the first notable political trial was held upon persons affiliated with a secret society. Persecutions for political offences are a great mistake.

Maltreatment only inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors had to be closed; the public had become deeply interested in the accused, who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved at the sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising modestly and explaining before an audience tremulous with compa.s.sion her revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family, anarchy, property, and law? Power is almost always blind and stupid in the first moments of revolutionary disturbances. In Russia men risked life and security as often by acts of charity toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In Odessa, which was commanded by General Totleben, the little blond heads of two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the children of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a collection for political exiles, and these two little ones were sentenced to the deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet Mikailof chides the revolutionaries with the words: "Why not let your indignation speak, my brothers? Why is love silent? Is our horrible misfortune worthy of nothing more than a vain tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to threaten and to wound?"

The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political rights by means of terror. The executive committee of the revolutionary socialists--if in truth such a committee existed or was anything more than a triumvirate--favored this idea. Spies and fugitives were quickly executed. The era of sanguinary nihilism was opened by a woman, the Charlotte Corday of nihilism,--Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper that a political prisoner had been whipped, contrary to law,--for corporal punishment had been already abolished,--and for no worse cause than a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and fired a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her friends seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited her away lest she should fall into the hands of the police; the emperor thereupon decreed that henceforth political prisoners should not be tried by jury.

Shortly after this the subst.i.tute of the imperial deputy at Kief was fired upon in the street; suspicion fell upon a student; all the others mutinied; sixteen of them were sent into exile. As they were pa.s.sing through Moscow their fellow-students there broke from the lecture-halls and came to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the University of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair, was found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an officer of the _gendarmerie_, was mortally stabbed in a crowded street. The clandestine press declared this to have been done by order of the executive committee; and it was not long before the chief of secret police of St.

Petersburg received a very polite notice of his death-sentence, which was accomplished by another dagger, and the clandestine paper, "Land and Liberty," said by way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave warning of it." Months pa.s.sed without any new a.s.sa.s.sinations; but in February, 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the hand of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled, and no trace of him was to be found, though sentence of death against him was announced upon the walls of all the large towns of Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine was a furious revolutionary, and conducted a socialist paper in Geneva at that time. In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the _gendarmerie_, who was a.s.sa.s.sinated in his own house, and beside him was found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive Committee. So will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices." A pretty nihilist girl killed a man at a ball; it was at first thought to be a love-affair, but it was afterward found out that the murderess did the deed by order of the executive committee, or whatever the hidden power was which inspired such acts. On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of the new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated, and the walls of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary justice was about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons. It rained crimes,--against the governor of Kief, against Captain Hubbenet, against Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was riddled with wounds in his own room; and lastly on the 14th of April Solovief attempted the life of the Czar, firing five shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin swallowed a dose of poison, but his suicide was also unsuccessful. Solovief, however, had reached the heights of nihilism; he had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the ideal nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to _go with the people_, and became a locksmith, wearing the artisan's dress; he was married _mystically_, and by _free grace_ or _free will_, and it was said that he was a member of the terrible executive committee. He suffered death on the gallows with serenity and composure, and without naming his accomplices. "Land and Liberty" approved his acts by saying, "We should be as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when a.s.sa.s.sination must be counted as a political motor." From that day Alexander II. was a doomed man, and his fatal moment was not far off.

The revolutionaries were determined to strike the government with terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred emperor was a man like any other, and that no supernatural charm s.h.i.+elded his life. At the end of 1879 and the beginning of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were forced upon the emperor: first, the mine which wrecked the imperial train, and then the explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace in ruins, which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time the office of a surrept.i.tious paper was attacked, the editors and printers of which defended themselves desperately; alarmed by this significant event, the emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof, who was a liberal, an almost omnipotent dictators.h.i.+p. The conciliatory measures of Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind; but just as the Czar had convened a meeting for the consideration of reforms solicited by the general opinion, his own sentence was carried out by bombs.

It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and the revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of having been the first to inflict the death-penalty, which was contrary to Russian custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so appropriately as Spain to be called the country of _vice versas_, it is nevertheless worth while to note how she long ago solved the great juridical problem upon which we are still employing tongue and pen so busily. Not only is capital punishment unknown to the Russian penal code, but since 1872 even perpetual confinement has been abolished, twenty years being the maximum of imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon political criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisabeth Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punishment. The terrible Muscovite whip probably equalled the gibbet, but aside from the fact that it had been seldom used, it was abolished by Nicholas I. If we judge of a country by its penal laws, Russia stands at the head of European civilization. The Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of the scaffold, that when the first one for the conspirators was to be built, there were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it.

VII.

The Police and the Censor.

It is not easy to say whether the government was ill-advised in confronting the terrors of nihilism with the terrors of authority.

Public executions are contageous in their effect, and blood intoxicates.

The nihilists, even in the hour of death, did not neglect their propaganda, and held up to the people their dislocated wrists as evidences of their tortures. One must put one's self in the place of a government menaced and attacked in so unusual a manner. Certain extreme measures which are the fruit of the stress of the moment are more excusable than the vacillating system commonly practised from time immemorial; and which is foster-mother to professional demagogues, and dynamiters by vocation and preference.

The police as organized in Russia seem to inspire greater horror even than the nihilist atrocities. In the face of judicial reforms there exists an irresponsible tribunal, called the Third Section of the Imperial Chancellors.h.i.+p. The worst of this kind of arbitrary and antipathetic inst.i.tutions is that imagination attributes many more iniquities to them than they in reality commit. Russian written law declares that no subject of the Czar can be condemned without a public trial; but the special police has the right to arrest, imprison, and make way with, rendering no account to any one. Thus absolute power leaps the barriers of justice. It must be acknowledged that the dark ways of the special police only reflected those of their nihilist adversary. Nowhere in the world, however, is the police so hated; nowhere do they perform their work in so irritating a manner as in Russia; and the public, far from a.s.sisting them, as in England and France, fights and circ.u.mvents them. The p.r.o.neness to secret societies in Russia is the result of the perpetual and odious tyranny of the police. The Russian lives in clandestine a.s.sociation like a fish in water; so much so that after the fall of Loris Melikof the reactionaries were no less eager for it than the nihilists, and bound themselves together under the name of the Holy League, taking as a model the revolutionary executive committee, and even including the death-sentence in their rules.

War without quarter was declared, and the police organized a counter-terror characterized by impeachment, suspicion, espionage, and inquisition. There were domiciliary visitations; every one was obliged to take notice whether any illegal meetings were held in his neighborhood, or any proscribed books or explosive materials were to be seen; no posters were allowed to be put on the walls, and every one was expected to aid the arrest of any suspicious person; a vigilant watch was kept upon Russian refugees; the rigors of confinement were enforced; and all this made the police utterly abhorred, even in a country accustomed to endure them as a traditional inst.i.tution since the last of the Ruriks and the first of the Romanoffs.

The chief of the Third Section became a power in the land. The Section worked secretly and actively. The chief and the emperor maintained incessant communication, and the former was made a member of the cabinet, and could arrest, imprison, exile, and put out of the way, whomever he pleased. During the reign of the kind-hearted Alexander II.