This tremendous indictment seems to be fully justified by past experience, and it is to be feared that many of the worst charges can be still maintained. Recent writers tell new stories that fall little short of the old. Russia is still absolutely given over to the police. It is the most police-ridden country in the world; not even in France in the worst days of the Monarchy were the people so much in the hands of the police. From first to last the Russian citizen is deemed incapable of looking after himself. Not only is he forbidden to take an active part in the management of public affairs, but in the most private matters he must submit to the interference of the police. “The Russian police has a finger in every pie,” wrote the acute observer quoted above.[15] “They meddle not only with criminals, not only with passports, but with hotels, boarding and lodging houses, theatres, balls, soirees, shops, boats, births, deaths, and marriages. The police take a Russian from his cradle and never lose sight of him till he is snugly deposited in a parti-coloured coffin in the great cemetery of Wassily Ostrow. Surely to be an orphan must be a less terrible bereavement in Russia than in any other country; for the police are father and mother to everybody—uncles, aunts, and cousins too.”
Nothing can be done in Russia without police permission. A person cannot build a bathroom in his house without leave. A physician cannot practise without it; he must have leave even to refuse to attend to night calls; he cannot prescribe anæsthetics, narcotics, or poisons without special permission; and no chemist would make up a prescription containing any of these drugs unless the doctor’s name were on his special list. No new journal can be established without permission, no printing office, no bookshop, no photograph gallery; special police leave is needed to sell newspapers in the streets; a reader at one of the public libraries who wishes to consult standard works on social subjects must be armed with a permit; no concert for charitable purposes can be organised without leave from the police, and the proceeds must be handed over to them to be passed on to the recipients or embezzled on the way. All freedom of movement within the empire is checked by the police. A native Russian must have leave if he wishes to go fifteen miles from home. A foreign traveller is forbidden to enter the country without leave, he must have leave if he wishes to remain more than six months, and must ask for leave to go away again; every change of residence must be notified to the police. The passport system, although at times unevenly and unequally administered, is a potent weapon in the hands of the police, by means of which they can control the movements of everyone within the empire.
To give some idea of the wide-reaching functions of the police, the power assumed in matters momentous and quite insignificant, we may quote from the list of circulars issued by the Minister of the Interior to the Governors of the various provinces during four recent years. The Governors were directed to regulate religious instruction in secular schools, to prevent horse-stealing, to control subscriptions collected for the Holy Places in Palestine, to regulate the advertisements of medicines and the printing on cigarette papers, to examine the quality of quinine sold, and overlook the cosmetics and other toilet articles—such as soap, starch, brilliantine, tooth-brushes, and insect powder—provided by chemists. They were to issue regulations for the proper construction of houses and villages, to exercise an active censorship over published price-lists and printed notes of invitation and visiting-cards, as well as seals and rubber stamps. All private meetings and public gatherings, with the expressions of opinion and the class of subjects discussed, were to be controlled by the police. In a word, quoting one high authority,[16] the Russian police collect statistics, enforce sanitary regulations, make searches and seizures in private houses, keep thousands of “suspects” constantly under surveillance, reading all their correspondence, and, of course, violating the sanctity of the post office. They take charge of the bodies of persons found dead; they admonish those who neglect their religious duties and fail to partake of the Holy Communion; they enforce obedience to thousands of diverse orders and regulations supposed to promote the welfare of the people and guarantee the safety of the State. There are 5,000 sections relating to police in a Russian code of laws, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say, as Mr. Kennan puts it, that in the peasant villages, away from the centres of education and enlightenment, the police are the omnipresent and omnipotent regulators of all human conduct—a sort of incompetent bureaucratic substitute for Divine Providence.
Before, however, dealing further with the Russian police of to-day, it will be interesting, for purposes of comparison, to look back for a moment into some of the less recent stories of police proceedings. Travellers who visited the country fifty years ago or more give it as their deliberate opinion that the Russian police was “more stupid, more dishonest and corrupt than can well be conceived.” Even in those days they had enormous powers; everything was submitted to their superintendence, and they carried out their orders just as seemed good to them. Their too literal interpretation of the letter of the law was often productive of the most serious consequences. Thus it was a strict rule that no one might pass the Neva when the breaking up of the ice had set in, and police were stationed on the banks to insist upon its observance. But the rule was also made to apply to any unfortunate persons who were already on the ice when the thaw began; no one was allowed to cross, and therefore no one could be allowed to land. The humane intention of saving life was thus set at naught by the intense stupidity of subordinates, and many accidents happened.
A worse case occurred at the burning of the Lehmann Theatre, about 1840, during the Carnival, a period of great festivity known as Maslinizza. At the time in question the most popular of the many entertainments was that of a German pantomime company, which performed in a temporary theatre erected upon the Admiralty Square, St. Petersburg. This pantomime was the rage, and the theatre was constantly crammed. At one morning performance the alarm of fire was raised, almost instantly flames burst out from behind the scenes, and the whole edifice, of wood, was in a blaze. The audience, wild with terror, rushed to the doors, and found exit altogether forbidden. These doors opened inwards, and the pressure of the frantic crowd closed them as effectually as if they had been barred. A workman, who was on the far side, and who had assisted in the erection of the theatre, called for an axe, saying that he knew what was wrong, and that a way must be cut open for the crowd. But there was a policeman on duty, and he refused to allow any steps to be taken without superior authority. When, at last, his fatal obstinacy was overcome, and admission was gained, it was found to be too late. The whole of the densely packed audience, men, women, and children, were dead; they had been stifled by the smoke that filled the building, and not a single soul was saved.
The extortions of the Russian police have been at all times unblushing. Their rapacity knows no bounds, and it appears to be exhibited by every rank, from the highest to the lowest. George Augustus Sala, in his “Journey Due North,” admirably summed up the situation in his day. He had been struck by the appearance of a man in uniform, seated in an admirably appointed droschky behind a priceless stepper, driven by a resplendent coachman, and he thought that he was gazing upon the Czar himself. The master was not, perhaps, of prepossessing appearance; he was stout and flabby, with pale, trembling cheeks, and close-cropped, shiny black hair, but he was in a smart uniform, with a double-eagled helmet, buckskin gloves, and patent-leather boots. “Who is it?” Sala asked of a Russian friend. “Field-Marshal? Prince Gortschakoff? General
Todleben?” “No, he is a Major of Police.” “Has he enormous pay or a private fortune?” “That dog’s son,” replied the Russian, “has not a penny of his own, and his full pay all told is a sum of £40 a year.” “But the private carriage, the horse, the silver-mounted harness, the luxury of the whole turn-out?” “Il prend; he takes.” And later on Sala proceeds to tell us how the “taking” is done. The Major in his handsome office sits at the receipt of custom; everybody must bribe him—all those who seek for licenses, for privileges. As we have seen, police permission is needed for everything under the sun, and all who come seeking it must pay. They bribe the Major, his employees, even the private policeman at the doors. “It is a continual and refreshing rain,” says Sala, “of grey fifty-rouble notes to the Major, of blue and green fives and threes to the employees, of fifty-copeck pieces to the grey-coats.” And then the writer goes on to give specific instances of robbery on a large scale, telling us how this police body, “organised to protect the interests of citizens and watch over public order and morals, to pursue and detect and take charge of criminals ... simply harasses, frightens, cheats, and plunders honest folk.”