The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-04-04
The Gar as a Reformer.
written for the Irish World by Ro
ert Ellis THOMPSON

! After all the Russians themselves are
the best placed for estimating the worth
of the cars offer, and outsiders are but
secondary critics of the matter. We all
know enough of Nicholas II. to believe
that he is governed by good motives
when he really acts for himself. and
also we know enough of the Russian
system of government to be aware that
the best and most resolute of czars
would be hampered more or less by the
almost omnipotent bureaucracy, and
especially the police system, in under
taking any reforms whatever. But
hampered is not defeated. and the czar,
with the support of all the enlightened
and liberal minds of Russia, may be
too much for the officials.
The religious federation the car
promises is not so easy to carry out in
Russia as in western countries, because
! of the presence of a welter of fanatical
sects, who need to have the strong hand
of the government upon them to keep
them within the bounds of civil order.
1t wc>&d really seem as if all the wild
gnostic heresies of the early days of the
church We're living on in Russia, after
dying out everywhere else. Several
times | have tried to make a sort of
list of them with their peculiarities,
but l have been baffied by their num-
Der, their subdivisions and their rami-
fications. Besides the extravaganza
sects, there are the Raskolniks. or Old
! Dissenters, of score of kinds, who
! have left the Greek church because Of
some trifling alterations in the litur-
gical books; and the Stundists, who
copy the ways of the German Pietists.
And, of course, in the western parts
of the empire there are the Lutherars
of Finland and of the Baltic provinces,
and the Catholics of Poland and the ad-
! jacent Russian provinces.
Entire religious federation would
mean the abandonment of part, at least,
of the policy of classification, which is
being used upon the Catholics of Poland
/ and the Lutherans of the Baltic prov
inces. The Greek church, through its
complete subserviency to the Russian
| government, has come to be regarded
as an especially useful agent in the
work of destroying the national senti-
ment of subject peoples, just as the
Garrison church in Ireland was to con-
vert the people into loyal adherents
to English rule. Does the car abandon
the steady pressure of his police upon
the religious beliefs of the Poles, and is
he going to give the Catholic church of
Poland the free exercise of her pas
toral and missionary activities? Will
he allow the United Catholics of Lithu-
ania to return to the communion, from
which they were so frequently coerced
by Greek eccesiastics, with the coop
GRAFTON of the Russian police?
In America it is asked whether he is
going to do anything for the Jews of
Russia. Probably he is not. The very
terms of the proclamation indicate that
it is Christian religionists he has in
iY,I = +o1y lxr 1,o
Russian government all along is that
the Jews of Russia have not been sub
! jected to any religious oppression. They
have been allowed to worship accord
mig to their rites in all the localities
where they have been allowed to settle
and live. That they have not been al
lowed to settle and live everywhere, or
to engage in any kind of occupation
they may choose, is justified by consid-
erationS of the economic order, and
especially the interests of the peasant
ry, who are said to suffer from their
usury. I am not vindfcating this view
of the matter; but that it has been
taken by the car and his advisers in
dicates that he has no intention to eX-
tend further indulgences to them.
Probably the educated classes of Rus
STA are more delighted by the promise
OF reforms III SOCIAL ddlllillSl+ dlioii
than by anything else in the cars
proclamation. The misery of the RUS
sian peasantry is profound, and il
grows ever deeper. 1t has been doing
so for every year of the forty which
have elapsed since their nominal eman-
cipation by Alexander II. That eman-
cipation was merely nominal, because
it handed the mujiks over from one
master to another-from the landlord
to the Mir (Village Commune).
! Through the labors of a set of mere
theorists the car was kept from estab-
fishing anything like personal liberty
for the mujiks. These theorists,
through a German traveller. the Baron
Won HaXthausen, had made the dis
covery that the Russian Mir was
communistic organization, and they
pleaded for its retention as the Sc
curity of Russia against pauperism. 1t
does thus secure against individual
pauperism by dragging the whole peo-
pie down to pauperism. 1t takes away
from the mujik all motive to improve
his method of farming, or to engage
in some other occupation than farm
ing. 1t makes him responsible formal
ly for the taxes, and really for the
support of every lazy dog in the vii
lage who prefers to lounge about
at work. Hence, the frightfuI growth
or intemperance, the recurrent famines,
the slow growth of manufactures, the
destruction of forests and the eXter-
mination of the cattle throughout a
very large part of Russia. The Mir
owns the peasant as thoroughly as did
the noble whom the Car Alexander
deprived of ownership, and the Star
ostas (village elders are the only peo-
pie who have grown fat on the new
order of things. Their fine houses dom
mate the villages. just as did those of
the mobiles before 1868.
1t is a good sign, therefore that the
car promises that he will provide
means to render it easier for the indf-
vidual to sever connections with the
community to which he belongs if he so
desires" This shows that he has
learned something from the depression
of the mujiks and their farming during
the last forty years. and that the COM
munistic theorists have not the ear of
Nicholas as they had of Alexander
When the tiller of the soil is sure of
reaping what he has sown, and knows
that he viii not be compelled to sup
port others in their wilful idleness. he
will farm better. When he can sell out
his share in the village property. he
j." III "O - &C " uiluCi ant OlIeI Minus VI
labor without mourning a heavy loss.
Russia will then cease to be famine
country, when its peoples lives are no
longer dependent upon the years rain
fall.
Not less important for Russia are the
promises to adapt local government to
the needs and the wishes of the people.
Bureaucracy is never more oppressive
than in it's dealings with those local pc
culiarities and traditions which are d
part of the popular mind and cannot be
set aside without confusion and suffer-
In, rEho Of Itnlz- In,