# National Geographic Magazine/Volume 16/Number 2/Russia

RUSSIA
By Hon. Charles Emory Smith
Formerly Minister to Russia and Ex-Postmaster General
At the very outset I shall throw myself on your kind indulgence, I hope you will not think me oneof that rash company, more numerous in enrollment than polite in name, that rush in where angels fear to tread. Believe me, I know full well the difficulty and the delicacy of my venture, and have known it from the start. The only excuse that can be pleaded in extenuation of the hazard is that the persuasiveness of your committee, if not greater than the restraint of my warning good sense, was at least more potent than the firmness of my resolution.
Russia just now is at the best a tempting but perilous theme. Half a century hence it will be possible to look back through the clear perspective of years and measure the true relations of the events of today to a new career of progress and greatness. But in the present hour we see the portents without the promise, and Russia is shadowed by the gloom of the clouds without the gleam of the sun. The inherent difficulties of the subject are enhanced by the personal position of the speaker. There are phases on which it is becoming that I should speak with reserve—perhaps, to use an Hibernianism, with silence—on the principle, "the wisest word I ever said was the word that wasn't spoken." It is true that the diplomatic trust was laid down some years ago, and the easier, if not higher, diplomacy of American free speech was resumed; and you will permit me to amend the words of the poet and say:
More true joy returned Marcellus feels
Than exiled Minister with a Senate at his heels.
But there are obvious proprieties which follow the minister even in retirement; yet while they should be respected, there is still large room for free expression. I did not hesitate to say in St Petersburg, looking out from the Foreign Office upon the broad Alexander Place, from the center of which rises the stately and splendid memorial shaft to the first Alexander, that there were things in Russia which we of the United States, in the best spirit of sincere friendship, could wish otherwise, ​and I do not hesitate to say it here. Russia does not resent honest criticism. She criticises herself. Her statesmen are sensible of her relations to the spirit of the age and are conscious of her difficulties and shortcomings. She only asks—and does she not rightly ask?—that judgment shall be pronounced in good faith, and with an honest purpose to be fair. She is often silent when in justice to herself she ought to speak. To my mind it is a mistaken policy, for while it avoids answer where answer would sometimes be difficult, it leaves a hundred misrepresentations to pass unchallenged; but, mistaken or not, it is the tradition of a power which meets political hostility or thrifty sensationalism with disdain.
And certainly, if there be a grateful sense of invaluable service, we of America ought at least to seek to be fair. We never can be deaf to the call of humanity. We cannot be blind to the errors which have followed unfortunate counsels. We must deal with living issues and with present events as truth requires; but we can and we ought to fulfill the obligations of duty and speak the voice of judgment in the spirit of honest and manly friendship. For Russia was our truest friend in the hour of our supreme trial. Tradition has handed down this impressive truth, and both the public archives and the unwritten records confirm it. You know that in the critical period of the civil war, when we were threatened with French and English intervention, the Russian fleet appeared in the harbor of New York. The testimony is not wanting which discloses the inspiration and the purposes that placed it within that friendly and protecting proximity. There has been some dispute over this question, and the attempt has been made to discredit the sympathetic attitude and the actual service of Russia, but the evidence is clear and conclusive.
Shortly after the war began in 1861, the Secretary of State, Mr Seward, addressed the European governments, setting forth the American position. Prince Gortchakoff, the great Russian chancellor, wrote these words in reply: "The Union is not simply in our eyes an element essential to the universal political equilibrium. It constitutes besides a nation to which our august master and all Russia have pledged the most friendly interest, for the two countries, placed at the extremities of the two worlds, both in the ascending period of their development, appear called to a natural community of interest and of sympathies, of which they have already given mutual proofs to each other."
That unequivocal answer, made at the very beginning, plainly indicated the friendly attitude of Russia. Through the Russian government, with its special sources of information, President Lincoln's administration was kept advised of what the other governments of Europe were meditating and proposing. Official France was hostile. The French people were sympathetic, as they had been from the days of the American Revolution. But Louis Napoleon, who was then on the throne, had his own designs, which were disclosed in Mexico. Official England, unlike the official England of these later years, was also hostile. A large proportion of the English people, many of whom in Lancashire deeply suffered on account of our war and the deprivation of cotton, were right in their instincts. The great and good Queen was our steadfast friend. But Palmerston and Lord Russell, and even Mr Gladstone, whom we have all so greatly admired and honored, looked on our struggle with unkindly thought.
In the early days of the war Secretary Seward was apprised, through the legation at St Petersburg, that the French and English governments had come to an understanding for joint action ​respecting the American war involving the possible recognition of the Southern Confederacy. When, soon afterwards, the French and English ministers appeared at the State Department together his information prepared him to meet them. Knowing their object, Mr Seward politely avoided receiving them jointly and adroitly turned one off with a dinner invitation while he saw the other alone. But the joint movement of the two governments went on. Joint action on neutrality pointed the way to joint action on intervention. Who could measure the dangers of such a portentous step? Would Mr Lincoln's government, already absorbed in a life-and-death grapple with a giant rebellion, also accept the gage of war with the united strength of the two great nations of western Europe? Could it hope to prevail against these combined perils, or would the unequal struggle leave the Union irretrievably divided and broken?
That was the startling menace. Russia's feeling was known, and before the blow was struck it was important to know what Russia would do. Louis Napoleon took steps to ascertain—I have reason to believe through an autograph letter to the Czar, Alexander II, advising him that the French and English governments believed the time had come when they ought to mediate or intervene between the North and South, and inviting him to join in the movement. The Czar declined to do so unless Mr Lincoln's government should request it. But the menace continued, and thereupon the Russian fleet steamed into the bay of New York and cast anchor within sight of Trinity spire. All the world knew what that act meant; Louis Napoleon knew, and the threatened intervention never came.
This chapter of past judgments does not justify any misjudgments now, but it does impose the obligation of seeking to pronounce present judgments in a fair and just spirit. Russia is engaged at this hour in a foreign war which has thus far been full of surprises and disasters, and she is at the same time in the throes of a domestic agitation which, let us hope, will lead to a great advance for the Empire. No treatment of the general subject can ignore these phases, and they will be the better understood if we look at them against the background of the national structure and organization and character.
Russia is a country of extraordinary contrasts; of imperial splendor and of widespread poverty; of the magnificence of the court and of the squalor of the moujik; of the stately grandeur of St Petersburg or the picturesque orientalism of Moscow, and of the dreary, dead level of dull and endless plains; of the highest culture and the broadest ignorance; of the boundless treasures of the unequaled Winter Palace, with its 500 opulent rooms, or of imposing St Isaac's, with its malachite columns and its golden dome, and of the boundless destitution of almost uncounted millions; of the literary genius of Poushkin and Gogol, of Tourgenieff and Tolstoi, and of the dense illiteracy of the masses; of the pictorial wonders of Verestchagin and of the most primitive agricultural and industrial arts—in a word, of the highest development of grace and culture in social life and of the deepest penury and hardship on the broad national field.
And as it is a country of extremes in condition so it has been portrayed in extremes of opinion. On the one hand it has been painted in the blackest of colors. It has been pictured as a land of Tartar barbarism and of Muscovite tyranny, where the Siberian exile is the expression of all cruelty and the Jewish proscription as the embodiment of all intolerance and persecution. Its government has been described as a despotism tempered by assassination. On the other hand it has been delineated in some quarters as a benign and ​patriarchal system, where the sole thought of the Little Father is the welfare of the millions of his people, and where the acknowledged grace of the throne is accepted as the proof of the general practice. It is easy to produce striking effects with strong pigments. There would be a ready and startling sensationalism in a vivid picture of terrors and in a flaming outburst of rhetoric. But, as generally happens, the truth lies between the extremes. It is not all black or all white, but it has its lights and its shadows, and the faithful delineator must sacrifice the bold outlines of a fanciful sketch for the more subdued tones of historic verity.
The character of autocratic rule manifestly depends very much on the character of the autocrat. It is true that in these modern days even the autocrat is largely the creature of conditions. Imperial will is molded and circumscribed by historic tendencies, by overmastering public opinion, and by the spirit of the age. But, on the other hand, the currents of national development fall into the eddies of personal impulse. With the vast machinery of a great modern nation autocracy becomes bureaucracy. But the autocrat makes the bureaucrats, and so determines the trend. There are settled traditions and tendencies in Russia, but they are affected and modified by the dominant temper and influence of the hour. When Russia passed from the scepter of Nicholas I to that of Alexander II she advanced from the virile and robust imperialism of an iron dictator to the progressive and expanding liberalism of an enlightened ruler. When she passed from the control of Alexander III to that of Nicholas II she went from the secure, harsh, rigorous sway of a firm, self-poised, austere monarch to the turbulent reign of a kind, well-meaning, and uncertain sovereign.
The present Czar is conscientious and devoted in public purpose and amiable and exemplary in personal life. He has been surrounded by conflicting influences, and each of the opposing forces has appeared at one time or another to be dominant. The Czar's disposition and tendency have been liberal, as was indicated in the noble impulse which convoked The Hague Conference. If at times there has been a backward movement it was because reactionary elements outside of the throne gained a temporary ascendancy, and if lamentable errors plunged the empire into a war for which she was so illy prepared, it was because irregular influences, outside of the ministry, that were mistakenly trusted, gave evil counsels.
As a rule, Russian ministers are not personal favorites, but are often able statesmen, marked for their places by capacity and fitness. Their commission comes, not from title of nobility, but from the higher title of brains. Curiously as it may cross the prevailing conception of the Russian system, many of them have sprung directly from the ranks of the people. M. de Giers, the astute Minister of Foreign Affairs, who succeeded Gortchakoff and who so long guided the foreign policy of his country, did not inherit rank or fortune. Equally without rank was Vishnegradski, the Minister of Finance, a remarkably able man, whose range of vision covered the finance of all nations, who carried on his table the first free-silver bill just as it was lying on the desks of the American Senate, and whose acute and profound observations, if they could have been properly reported, would have instructed and startled the American people. His successor, de Witte, who was so long the master spirit of the Russian government, who then fell into disfavor, and who in the present crisis appears to be again rising into favor and ascendancy, is no less a man of the people. He made his first mark as a subordinate railway official, and was rapidly promoted until he became the most ​powerful minister of the empire. Many others might be named to illustrate the same truth of high individual advancement without title or favor and solely on merit. Russia has ministers, but no ministry. There is no united, coherent, responsible governing body. Each minister acts only for himself and is responsible only to the Emperor. Oftentimes ministers antagonize and intrigue against each other. Witte and Plehve were at swords' points. Thus the bureaucracy lacks unity, coöperation, and efficiency. It is disorganized and discordant. Sometimes an individual minister shows tremendous energy in the administration of his department, but the coördinated work which gives united force and strength is missing.
Below the chiefs the system has the vice of venality. It is this which has sapped the strength of the navy and impaired the efficiency of the army. It is this which has provided the gun of inferior range and imparted structural weakness to the battleship. Russia has prodigious resources and almost unlimited power, if it can be made available. She has the giant's strength, but the giant's strength enfeebled by a vicious system and an improvident sloth. There is personal valor and symptomatic defect. There is the brilliant dash of the daring Makaroff, but a strange paralysis and fatality of the fleet. There is the skillful generalship of Kuropatkin, with the patience of Fabius and the fight of Marius, but a want of preparation which leaves him always with inferior numbers. There is the intrepid courage of the heroic Stoessel and his fire-tried troops at Port Arthur, which has excited the admiration of the world, but there is at the same time the lack of equipment which crippled his defense. The fighting quality and the latent power are there, but reconstruction is needed to bring the fruits.
In some directions Russia has made remarkable advances in recent years. The energetic and far-reaching policy of Witte as Finance Minister, with its striking results, has been the subject of great praise and great criticism. It had two central and fundamental conceptions. The first was to make Russia wholly self-sustaining and industrially great by a system which should protect and foster her own manufactures. The second was to concentrate all power and control in the hands of the government by substituting state for local taxation, by the promotion of state ownership of railroads, and by the creation of great state monopolies, like those in spirits, drugs, and kindred articles. The fruits have been tremendous, though possibly in some directions open to question.
The industrial progress of Russia in the face of serious obstacles has been signal. Within ten years the number of hands employed increased from 1,318,048 to 2,098,262 and the value of the output more than doubled. The chief industries are textiles and mines and metals. Cotton manufactures have been rapidly developed. The consumption of cotton has increased in little more than a decade from 117,000,000 kilograms to 257,000,000, and the number of spindles in operation is about 7,000,000. In iron manufacture Russia holds the fourth, place among the nations, ranking next to Germany and ahead of France. From 1892 to 1900 the annual production of metallic articles rose in value from 142,000,000 roubles to 276,000,000.
The advance was so rapid that after 1900 there was a reaction, followed by an industrial crisis. In his report on the budget for 1902, M. Witte ascribed the depression to a succession of bad harvests and a withdrawal of foreign capital, caused by the Boer war and the resulting stringency in the European money markets. Doubtless also the extraordinary development had engendered speculation and overproduction. ​The great growth had come in spite of deficient transportation, of ignorant and debilitated labor, and of the meager purchasing power of the mass of the people. Russia has made much headway in recent years in remedying the first defect. From 1892 to 1902 more than 17,000 miles of railroad were opened. Within the Russian Empire, not including Manchuria, 4,100 miles of railway were under construction in 1901. With his early training, M. Witte naturally made railroad development a vital part of his great and vigorous policy of national upbuilding—a policy which was largely instrumental in this industrial and commercial expansion. In ten years the passenger traffic on the Russian railroads has multiplied almost five-fold and the freight traffic more than eight-fold.
But there is a deeper and more radical difficulty. It is suggested in the observations of Prince Mestschersky, the bold and brilliant editor of the Grashdanin, of St Petersburg. Writing in 1901, he said: "It would be more logical for the development of mills and works to begin with the development of the people, so as to create a consumer, than to begin with the development of factories, mills, and railroads for a people wanting in the very first elements of prosperity." His conception is that the hope of Russia lies in an improved condition and advancement of the peasantry. The weakness of the Russian system is in the backwardness of agriculture. The agriculturists constitute 78 per cent of the population, and for the most part are surrounded by the most unfortunate conditions. Their implements are of the most primitive character. The crop yield per cultivated des siatin is lower than in any other country in Europe. Belgium, which ranks first, produces an average of 128.5 poods of grain per des siatin, a pood being equal to 36 pounds, while the Russian average is only 38.8 poods. Even this disparity does not indicate the full gravity of the case, for Russia produces less grain per head than is consumed per head in other countries, and at the same time she is the second grain-exporting country in the world.
This fact tells the story of her own deprivation, and it is emphasized by some particular inquiries. It is estimated that the people on the farms require from 20 to 25 poods of grain per head for their support and that of their live stock during the year, and these figures are much below the consumption in other lands. Yet it often happens that in a considerable number of provinces the harvest is far less than even this meager requirement. The result is that Russia is frequently afflicted with famines, that the consumption of bread has fallen off about 70 per cent, and that the number rejected from the military service through physical disqualification has increased 14 per cent within seven years. During the great famine of 1891, which extended over ten provinces, more than a million horses perished, leaving many of the peasants with no means of cultivating the land. The crop failure of 1898 did not cover so wide an area, but it was even worse where it prevailed. It left over 12,000,000 people in abject destitution and more than 8,000,000 suffering from actual famine. In 1900 and 1901 famine again desolated the land. All this entails chronic impoverishment. The arrears in the redemption of the land on the part of the former serfs are constantly increasing, and the economic conditions which affect them are growing worse.
The amelioration of this situation lies at the foundation of the present agitation for political reform and enlarged freedom. Undoubtedly, the popular restiveness has been quickened by the war and its demonstration of the defects of the existing system; but the recent ​striking manifestations are only the sudden culmination of a movement which has been in progress for some time. To understand it we must grasp some fundamental elements of the Russian polity. Russia presents a curious paradox. Theoretically it combines the most extreme autocracy with the most extreme democracy. The great body of the people are divided and organized into "mirs," or communes. The mir is what we would call the township organization. Land is held in common and is apportioned for cultivation among the families of the mir according to their respective needs. The communal assembly makes the apportionment and the periodical redistributions; it governs other questions relating to the land, the harvest and other local affairs, and its government is more like that of the New England town-meeting than anything else. As far as it goes, it is a perfect democracy. All the people assemble on the village green, under the presidency of the starosta, or village elder, and determine all questions within their scope by a majority vote.
The mirs are grouped into cantons or districts, and the districts elect representatives to the zemstvos, which are the provincial assemblies. Without going into minute details, all classes are represented. The ultimate elective bodies are not large in proportion to the total population, but they are distributed among peasants, individual landholders, merchants, nobles, and urban electors. In 361 district assemblies, with 13,196 members, 38 per cent were peasants, 35 per cent nobles, 15 per cent merchants, and the remainder officials or priests. The provincial assemblies or zemstvos have over 1,200 members in all, and they operate chiefly through executive committees, of which the nobles constitute far the larger proportion. The mir deals with the land, farming, and the immediate local concerns. The district assembly, which corresponds more nearly with our county organization, looks after roads, schools, sanitary matters, and like questions. The provincial assemblies have the care of prisons, hospitals, charities, main roads, mutual insurance, and other subjects of more than local range.
The zemstvos were among the reforms instituted by the liberal and enlightened Emperor, Alexander II. They were created in 1864, and sprang from a commission appointed for the purpose of "conferring more unity and independence on the local economic administration." Theoretically they went far toward establishing a system of local autonomy, but practically they have been largely nullified by the overruling power of the provincial governors, who stand for the bureaucracy. Their authority and independence have from time to time been curtailed. Nevertheless, in their form as local representative assemblies, even with their limited electorate and scope, they furnish the basis and nucleus for wider representative institutions. Their liberal spirit and independent purpose have been the most characteristic features in the new reform movement.
In January, 1902, the present Emperor created a Central Committee of Agriculture, under the presidency of M. Witte, to consider the measures necessary to meet the existing difficulties. This body was supplemented by local advisory committees, which, rather by local choice than by central design, were made up largely from the zemstvos. The majority of these committees made some significant recommendations. They urged that elementary education should be increased; that zemstvos should be established in provinces where they did not exist, and made more representative, with larger powers; that the system of village communes should be reconstructed so as to give the peasants equality with others, and that free discussion of economic questions should be allowed. ​A little later a memorandum was presented to the Czar recommending that their old powers should be restored to the zemstvos, that they should be arranged in groups, and that these groups should elect delegates to a central or national zemstvo.
The effect of these various demonstrations was seen when in February, 1903, the Czar issued a manifesto holding out high promise. He declared that the fundamental principle of property in common must be held inviolable, but he said that relief for the individual must be found, and added: "A reform is to be effected by local representatives in provincial government and district administration." These assurances were neutralized when the influence of Witte waned and the reactionary Plehve gained more power; but they and the manifestations which led to them were the forerunners of the more impressive demonstrations that have recently been witnessed. The meeting of the zemstvo presidents at St Petersburg in November last was in many respects the most remarkable assemblage in Russian history. It was almost like a states general. It put forth a declaration of principles which is equivalent to a demand for a national representative assembly with political voice and rights and with a direct advisory part in legislation and government. It plainly declared that there is an estrangement between the government and the people; that it is due to fear of popular initiative, and that it has led to great wrongs in the arbitrary bureaucratic system which has come between the throne and its subjects. It calls for the overthrow of this centralized administration of local affairs; for independent legal tribunals for the protection of personal rights; for free speech, free press, and free conscience; for equal civil and political rights for peasants; for the greater independence and extension of the zemtsvo institutions, and for national representation through an elective body which shall participate in legislation.
These demands are unprecedented in Russia, and their concession would inaugurate a revolutionary change. It was not to be expected that they would all be granted at once. The ukase which the Czar has issued in response to this call marks a large advance. It charges the Council of Ministers with the duty of framing measures to secure equal rights to the peasants; to safeguard law and unify judicial procedure for the protection of personal rights; to assure a more independent and complete administration of local affairs through local institutions; to deal with state insurance for workmen; to reduce the discretionary authority which has bred the administrative process; to promote larger religious toleration, and to provide greater freedom of the press. This is a long step in liberalism. It does not establish representative institutions; it does not provide for elementary education; but it does look toward a larger local control of local affairs, toward the relief of the peasants from the rigorous conditions which surround them, and toward the removal of the arbitrary restrictions which now burden the people; and the ukase itself distinctly treats these reforms as the beginning of "a series of great internal changes impending in the early future."
In considering the character, trend, and methods of these changes the peculiar conditions of Russia must ever be remembered. Whatever advance has been made there upto this time has come from the top and not from the bottom. The great mass of the people are simple, illiterate, and inert. The disturbances which have occurred from time to time have been mostly on the surface. The great deeps have not been moved, though the caldron is now seething as never before. The new industrial conditions of recent years, to which reference has been made, have produced a class of ​workmen and artisans in the cities who are more alert than the supine peasantry and who are the source of the present discontent and uprising.
The whole fabric of society, it must also be borne in mind, rests upon the church which is the very foundation of the state and to which in its ritual and observances all, from the Czar to the humblest moujik, are supremely devoted. The first need of the people is economic improvement and their release from the harsh conditions of their restricted communal life. The report of Witte on the elevation of the peasant contemplates some reconstruction of the mir and the opening of broader callings and opportunities to those who are practically bound to the soil. It is urged with force that real social emancipation cannot come without political enfranchisement. The one will undoubtedly promote the other, and under the quicker impulse of these later days the nation is moving forward to both.
Russia is passing through the dark valley of deep trials. She is paying the appalling cost of grievous mistakes; but enormous as that cost is, it will still be cheap if, through these bitter experiences and this new awakening, the great empire shall be put upon the higher pathway of wiser counsels and liberal advancement. The history of Russia is a varied story. It is illuminated with the progressive measures of the great Emancipator. It is darkened with the shadows of Kishinev and the Finnish oppression. The far-reaching reforms which are now dawning on the nation give promise of a new and more hopeful era. Russia has prodigious recuperative power. She was prostrate after the Crimean war, but soon recovered her strength. She was humiliated and straitened after the Turkish war, but started again upon a new career. She is patient, tenacious, and persistent; she has the traditions and the indomitable faith which have come down from Peter the Great; she has the vast though dormant resources of imperial domain and power; and if through the disasters she is now suffering she shall throw off the shackles of the bureaucracy that have weighed her down and come to share the progressive spirit of the age, she will through present tribulations and final regeneration enter, as we hope she may, on a new and brighter epoch.