Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

If we are to treat these writers, and others who are well spoken of, not as of first-rate importance in themselves, but as indications of what we may hope from the Russian mind when education and civilisation have thoroughly got hold of it, what is the quantum of hope that we may indulge?

I should like to see these questions dispassionately and judicially answered, both with reference to Russia and to the Slavs generally. We are asked to take an interest in Servian ballads and Bulgarian robber songs. I, at least, am very willing to do so. The muse of another tongue,' it has been wisely said, 'is never wooed in vain.' But may we hope for something a little better? Or is Europe to give all and get very little from these countries, except indeed from Poland, which, formerly too exclusively remembered, is oddly enough forgotten in this day of Panslavic sympathies, when anyone may expect the first person he sits next to at dinner to turn upon him as poor Lord Strangford once did upon a friend who asked him about Tirnova. Tirnova! why, it's the very centre of the Bulgarian literary movement.'

Some good judges are of opinion that the Russian is not likely, unless his national character changes, to do very much for us in the way of literature properly so called, but think that in the domain of sociology we may expect a good deal from him. His contributions, practical and theoretic, to that newest of the sciences, if indeed it is yet a science, are the residuum which we may expect when the folly of those who dream as some of Herzen's friends used to do about regenerating the West has burnt itself to ashes.

Leaving, however, behind us the upper and middle classes, education, literature, and all the refinements of life, let us go down amongst the peasantry and see what we shall find there.

Here at last we come upon the real mainstay of the State. It is on the millions of the country population that Russia depends. It is they who pay far the largest portion of her taxes, imperial, local, and communal. It is of them that are composed those patient swarms of troops whose thews, sinews, and dogged endurance have made up for the want of intelligent direction and adequate preparation on so many a bloody field.

When the old ideas of the Nicholas régime broke up like the ice in the Gulf of Finland before a south-west gale, it became the fashion in the drawing-rooms of St. Petersburg and Moscow to see in the Russian peasant an incarnation of the virtues; and it was partly under the influence of dreams of that kind that serf-emancipation took place. The Russian peasant is far from being an incarnation of the virtues; but serf-emancipation was an absolute necessity for Russia, and did not take place an hour too soon.

I take it for granted that my readers have some notion of what the state of things before serf-emancipation was, and what was the general

nature of the change effected. This has been told and retold in many * books and articles.

I may recall, however, one or two facts.

There were in Russia on the morning of the 3rd of March, 1861, about twenty-two and a half millions of ordinary serfs, scattered for the most part over the provinces of European Russia, the serf population being thickest in the provinces round Moscow and thin or nonexistent in the outlying regions.

In all the mighty extent of Siberia, for example, there were only 3,700 serfs, and in the vast province of Archangel and the northern part of Vologda only six altogether.

By the evening of that memorable day the whole of that vast population had ceased to be serfs, and had become free.

A considerable period, however, was allowed for the regulation of their relations to their former masters.

To explain how this was done would carry us far, and would not interest many whom I want to address.

The last and clearest of many descriptions I have read is that of Mr. Wallace, but there have been others sufficient for ordinary English readers.

The great importance of the part of his book which deals with the peasantry is that he is the only writer in English who, so far as I am aware, has given an authoritative answer to a number of questions for which those who are interested in Russia have been longing for answers that should seem at once impartial and based on full knowledge.

If, for instance, we had been asked two months ago how far the emancipation of the serfs had injured their lords, who among us would have ventured to give a positive answer?

Many of us had probably heard dismal accounts which they could not verify, and encouraging accounts which seemed equally doubtful. But these accounts did not come from wholly impartial sources. What were we to believe?

Now things are changed; for if we turn to Mr. Wallace's second volume, we find the whole matter discussed with a fairness and a disposition to weigh all evidence that are most satisfactory.

I will try to present an abstract of his conclusions.

First, serf-emancipation so far benefited all proprietors that it made them realise their position. If they were insolvent, they found out the worst. If they were on the way to become so, they were warned to pull up in time and so save themselves. Before the change,' said one of them to Mr. Wallace, we kept no accounts, and drank champagne; now we do keep accounts, and content ourselves with beer.'

6

In the northern agricultural zone, say roughly in the country around Moscow, serf-emancipation has hit the proprietors very hard.

They have for the most part abandoned farming, let what they could of their land to the peasantry, and retired into the towns.

In the southern agricultural zone, the wide district covered with the rich black earth, they have fared better, and are, if not in an improved, certainly not in a worse position than they were. They have larger expenses, no doubt, but they have at least the opportunity of obtaining larger returns. The apathetic may be about as they The energetic are more prosperous than before.

were.

Still further south the proprietors suffer under various difficulties, from want of labour especially, yet they do not seem to be doing so very badly, and things have a tendency to improve rather

than not.

If we remember the different results in these three regions, comprising the whole of the country where agricultural serfage prevailed to any important extent-if we remember, further, that men of energy and capital have found their account in the new state of things far better than men who wanted either or both these good things-if we remember how many built false hopes upon what was going to be done by serf-emancipation, while many had made up their minds from the first that it was a blunder-we shall, I think, not find it difficult to account for the opposite judgments we may have heard of the effect produced on the Russian gentry by the great changes of 1861, 1862, and 1863.

But the peasant, how has he been affected? To him surely the abolition of serfdom has brought nothing but good?

I am afraid Mr. Wallace will not give to this question an unreserved and hearty 'Yes.' He will say 'Distinguo,' as he is indeed apt to do; for a balancing of opinions, with a lucid summing up, is a short account of his method of writing on all important matters. No one trades so little in fine-sounding phrases and hasty generalisations. ·

He will explain with much clearness that he has taken a great deal of trouble to arrive at a conclusion, and has had many opportunities of obtaining information, but that sufficient materials on which to found a final opinion do not yet exist. It must be recollected that, in the days of serfage, bad and unjust proprietors, although common enough, were the exception and not the rule. The serf generally looked to his lord, and did not look in vain, for a hundred little helps which have vanished with his change of condition. A cow died-the lord did not replace the cow, but he aided her replacement. Firewood was wanted-the serf cut the firewood, and the lord asked no questions. A house took fire-the lord supplied the wood for another, and so on.

Now all that is gone by. The relation, as the jurist would say, is now, where there is any relation at all, one of contract and not of status.

Again, the peasant manages his own affairs very indifferently. I

[ocr errors]

presume my readers to be aware that the Russian peasant manages, and has from time immemorial managed, his own affairs to a great extent. He forms part of a village community or mir. It is the mir, the peasant's world in more senses than one, which is responsible to the State for his taxes. It is the mir which assigns to each peasant the amount of land which he is to cultivate and the proportion of dues which, as cultivator of that land, he has to pay. The village has very considerable power, and exercises its power sometimes with extreme severity. I need not say that the mir is a survival of the ancient village community which once existed all over Europe, and is familiar to everyone who knows anything about India. A certain school of Russian writers, not satisfied with its respectable past, see in it a provision for all kind of good things to come. More especially do they believe that it will save Russia from the evil of a proletariate. It will do nothing of the kind. It has been of great use in bad times. Like a cavern on a sea-beat coast, it has protected the peasant from the sweep of autocratic power. It is a useful institution just now, for it trains the peasant to a higher form of self-government, but it will in time assuredly give way to the mining influences of individualism.

There is nothing in the peculiar circumstances of Russia which should preserve to all time an institution which Europe has outgrown. The notion of its peculiar excellence is only a patriotic illusion. The influences coming from the West, which have lifted Russia out of so many worse things, will lift her out of this also. If some of her children choose to amuse themselves by fancying that Europe is going to learn from them instead of their learning from Europe, no great harm is likely to arise. Both Europe and they may have various phases to traverse before Science has said her last word about the best form of human society. We are not going back to the mir, however, under any circumstances.

But I am digressing. Here is what Mr. Wallace tells us of the way that the peasantry have been managing their affairs since the emancipation:

That the peasant self-government is very far from being in a satisfactory condition must be admitted by any impartial observer. The more laborious and well-to-do peasants do all in their power to escape election as office-bearers, and leave the administration in the hands of the less respectable members. In the ordinary course of affairs there is little evidence of administration of any kind, and in cases of public disaster, such as a fire or a visitation of the cattle plague, the authorities seem to be apathetic and powerless. Not unfrequently a Volost elder trades with the money he collects as dues or taxes; and sometimes, when he becomes insolvent, the peasants have to pay their taxes and dues a second time. The Volost court is very accessible to the influence of vodka and other kinds of bribery, so that in many districts it has fallen into utter discredit, and the peasants say that anyone who becomes a judge 'takes a sin on his soul.' The village assemblies, too, have become worse than they were in the days of serfage. At that time the heads of households, who, it must be remembered, have alone a voice in

the decisions, were few in number, laborious, and well-to-do, and they kept the lazy, unruly members under strict control; now that the large families have been broken up, and almost every adult peasant is head of a household, the communal decision may be obtained by 'treating the mir'-that is to say, by supplying a certain amount of vodka. Often I have heard old peasants speak of these things, and finish their recital by some such remark as this: There is no order now; the people have been spoiled; it was better in the time of the masters.'

[ocr errors]

These evils are very real, and I have no desire to extenuate them, but I believe they are by no means so great as commonly supposed. Public opinion is greatly influenced by the philippics of proprietors who are smarting under some personal annoyance which cannot now be removed by the former summary procedure. I have frequently heard proprietors affirm that it is no longer possible to live in the country, that it will soon be necessary to build fortified castles, and much more of the same kind; but I have never, though I have lived a good deal in the country, seen anything which could afford the slightest foundation for such exaggerated statements. Many demand from the peasant administration a great deal that no administration could possibly effect, and consequently not a few of the most common complaints have no real foundation. To effect what these proprietors desire, it would be necessary to confer on the Volost elders, or on some other officebearer, the patriarchal authority formerly wielded by the proprietor, which would be tantamount to reintroducing the worst element of the old order of things.

The complaints, it is true, do not come from the proprietors alone. Old peasants may be heard to say that there is less order now than formerly. Such statements must not, however, be taken too literally. All old men are apt to regret the good old times, especially if recent changes have deprived them in part of their authority; and to this rule the Russian peasantry are no exception. In the struggle with the difficulties of the present, they are apt to forget, or involuntarily to tone down, the hardships and evils of the past. That the occasional complaints of old men against the present village assemblies are exaggerated, I am convinced, not only by general considerations, but by a very significant fact. If the lazy, worthless members of the commune had really the direction of communal affairs, we should find that in the northern agricultural zone, where it is necessary to manure the soil, the periodical redistributions of the communal land would be very frequent; for in a new distribution the lazy peasant has a good chance of getting a well-manured lot in exchange for the lot which he has exhausted. Now, so far as my observations extend, I have found-much, I confess, to my astonishment -nothing of the kind. In all or nearly all of the communes which I have visited throughout this part of the country, I have found that no general redistribution has taken place since the emancipation. It would be very interesting to know how far my observations on this point represent truly the actual state of things, but unfortunately no statistical data bearing on the subject have as yet been collected.

On the whole it would seem that a conscientious and cool-headed observer cannot report that the balance of advantage to either lord or peasant from the abolition has been hitherto very great. Some things are better, says the latter, some things are worse; and the other party to the arrangement might give much the same account of it. After all, however, only half a generation has passed. It is still far too early to pronounce any very decided opinion. The thing had to be done. The idea that Russia could any longer claim to be a civilised state, with more than twenty millions of her population in a state of serfage, was out of the question. This last reform was a

« AnteriorContinua »