Russia: Its People and Its Literature

by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

Servitude, or serfdom, did not succeed throughout the empire, however. Siberia and the independent Cossacks of the South rejected it; only passive consent could sanction a condition that was not the fruit of conquest nor had as an excuse the right of the strongest. Even in the rest of Russia the peasant never was entirely submissive, never willingly bent his neck to the yoke, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed bitter and sanguinary uprisings of the serfs, who were prompt to follow the first impostor who pronounced words of promise; and, strange to say, what was most galling was his entail upon the land rather than the deprivation of his own liberty. He imagined that the lord of the whole earth was the Czar, that by his favor it was temporarily in possession of the nobles, but that in truth and justice it belonged to him who tilled it. Pugatchef, the pretender to the title of Peter III., in order to rally to his standard an innumerable host of peasants, called himself the rural emperor, and declared that no sooner should he gain the throne of his ancestors than he would shower treasure upon the nobles and restore the land to the tillers of it.

Those who forged the fetters of serfdom had little faith in the stability of it, however. And although the abuses arising out of it were screened and tacitly consented to,—and never more so than during the reign of the humane philosopher, friend, and correspondent of Voltaire, the Empress Catherine II.,—yet law and custom forever refused to sanction them. Russian serfdom assumed rather a patriarchal character, and this softened its harshness. It was considered iniquitous to alienate the serfs, and it was only lawful in case of parting with the land whereon those serfs labored; in this way was preserved the thin line of demarcation between agrarian servitude and slavery.

There were, however, serfs in worse condition, true helots, namely, the domestic servants, who were at the mercy of the master's caprice, like the fowls in his poultry-yard. Each proprietor maintained a numerous household below stairs, useless and idle as a rule, whose children he brought up and had instructed in certain ways in order to hire them out or sell them by and by. The players in the theatres were generally recruited from this class, and until Alexander I. prohibited such shameless traffic, it was not uncommon to see announced in the papers the sale of a coachman beside that of a Holstein cow. But like every other institution which violates and offends human conscience, Russian serfdom could not exist forever, in spite of some political and social advantages to the empire.

Certain Russian writers affirm that the assassination of masters and proprietors was of frequent occurrence in the days of serfdom, and that even now the peasant is disposed to quarrels and acts of violence against the nobles. Yet, on the whole, I gather from my reading on the subject that the relations in general between the serf and the master were, on the one side, humble, reverent, and filial; on the other, kind, gentle, and protecting. The important question for the peasant is that of the practical ownership of the land. It is not his freedom but his agrarian rights that have been restored to him; and this must be borne in mind in order to understand why the recent emancipation has not succeeded in pacifying the public mind and bringing about a new and happy Russia.

Given the same problem to the peasant and the man of mind, it will be safe to say that they will solve it in very different ways, if not in ways diametrically opposed. The peasant will be guided by the positive and concrete aspect of the matter; the man of mind by the speculative and ideal. The peasant calculates the influence of atmospheric phenomena upon his crops, while the other observes the beauty of the sunset or the tranquillity of the night. In social questions the peasant demands immediate utility, no matter how small it may be, while the other demands the application of principles and the triumph of ideas. Under the care of a master the Russian serf enjoyed a certain material welfare, and if he fell to the lot of a good master—and Russian masters have the reputation of being in general excellent—his situation was not only tolerable but advantageous. On the other hand, the intelligent could not put up with the monstrous and iniquitous fact of human liberty being submitted to the arbitrary rule of a master who could apply the lash at will, sell men like cattle, and dispose as he would of bodies and souls. Where this exists, since Christ came into the world, either there is no knowledge, or the ignominy must be stamped out.

We all know that celebrated story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the famous Abolitionist novel by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. There were also novelists in Russia who set themselves to plead for the emancipation of the serfs. But there is a difference between them and the North American authoress, in that the Russians, in order to achieve their object, had no need to exaggerate the reality, to paint sensitive slaves and children that die of pity, but, with an artistic instinct, they appealed to æsthetic truth to obtain human justice. "Dead Souls," by Gogol, or one of the poetical and earnest brochures of Turguenief, awakens a more stirring and permanent indignation than the sentimental allegory of Mrs. Stowe; and neither Gogol nor Turguenief misrepresented the serf or defamed the master, but rather they present to us both as they were in life, scorning recourse to bad taste for the sake of capturing tender hearts. The noblest sentiments of the soul, divine compassion, equity, righteous vengeance, the generous pity that moves to sacrifice, rise to the inspired voice of great writers; we see the abuse, we feel it, it hurts us, it oppresses us, and by a spontaneous impulse we desire the good and abhor the evil. This enviable privilege has been granted to the Russian novelists; had they no greater glory, this would suffice to save them from oblivion.

The Abolitionist propaganda subtly and surely spread through the intelligent classes, created an opinion, communicated itself naturally to the press in as far as the censor permitted, and little by little the murmur grew in volume, like that raised against the administrative corruption after the Crimean War. And it is but just to add that the Czars were never behind in this national movement. Had it not been for their omnipotent initiative, who knows if even now slavery would not stain the face of Europe? There is reason to believe it when one sees the obstacles that hinder other reforms in Russia in which the autocrat takes no part. Doubtless the mind of the emperor was influenced by the words of Alexander II., in 1856, to the Muscovite nobles: "It is better to abolish serfdom by decrees from above than to wait for it to be destroyed by an impulse from below." A purely human motive; yet in every generous act there may be a little egotistical leaven. Let us not judge the unfortunate Emancipator too severely.

The Crimean War and its grave internal consequences aided to undermine the infamous institution of serfdom, at the same time that it disclosed the hidden cancer of the administration, the misgovernment and ruin of the nation. With the ill success of the campaign, Russia clearly saw the need for self-examination and reorganization. Among the many and pressing questions presented to her, the most urgent was that of the serfs, and the impossibility of re-forming a prosperous State, modern and healthy, while this taint existed within her. Alexander II., whose variability and weakness are no bar to his claim of the honored title of the Liberator, exhorted the aristocracy to consummate this great work, and (a self-abnegation worthy of all praise, and which only a blind political passion can deny them) the nobles coincided and co-operated with him with perfect good faith, and even with the electrical enthusiasm characteristic of the Sclavic race. One cannot cease to extol this noble act, which, taken as a whole, is sublime, although, being the work of large numbers, it may be overloaded with details and incidents in which the interest flags. It may be easy to preach a reform whose aims do not hurt our pride, shatter our fortunes, alter our way of living, or conflict with the ideas inculcated upon us in childhood by our parents; but to do this to one's own detriment deserves especial recognition. The nobility on this occasion only put into practice certain theories which had stirred in their hearts of old. The first great Russian poet, Prince Kantemire, wrote in 1738, in his satires, that Adam did not beget nobles, nor did Noah save in the ark any but his equals,—humble husbandmen, famous only for their virtues. To my mind the best praise to the Russian nobility is for having offered less hindrance to the emancipation of the serfs than the North American democracy to the liberation of the slaves; and I solicit especial applause for this self-sacrificing, redeeming aristocracy.

The fruits of the emancipation were not what desire promised. The peasants, from their positivist point of view, set little value on liberty itself, and scarcely understood it. "We are yours," they were accustomed to say to their masters; "but the soil is ours." When it became known that they must go on paying even for the goods of the community, they rebelled; they declared that emancipation was a farce, a lie, and that true emancipation ought to abolish rent and distribute the land in equal parts. Did not the proclamation of the Czar read that they were free? Well, freedom, in their language, meant emancipation from labor, and the possession of the land. One mir even sent a deputation to the governor, announcing that as he had been a good master he would still be allowed the use and profit of his house and farm. The peasant believed himself free from all obligation, and even refused to work until the government forced him to do so; and the result was that the lash and the rod were never so frequently laid across Russian shoulders as in the first three years of emancipation and liberty.

What cared they—"the little black men"—for the dignity of the freeman or the rights of citizenship? That which laid strongest hold of their primitive imagination was the desire to possess the whole land,—the old dream of what they called the black partition, the national Utopia. One Russian revolutionary journal adopted the name of "Land and Liberty," a magic motto to a peasant country, giving the former the first place, or at least making the two synonymous. The Russian people ask no political rights, but rather the land which is watered by the sweat of their brow; and if some day the anarchists—the agitators who go from village to village propagating their sanguinary doctrines—succeed in awakening and stirring this Colossus to action, it will be by touching this tender spot and alluring by the promise of this traditional dream. The old serf lives in hopes of a Messiah, be he emperor or conspirator, who shall deliver the earth into his hands; and at times the vehemence of this insatiable desire brings forth popular prophets, who announce that the millennium is at hand, and that by the will of Heaven the land is to be divided among the cultivators thereof. From his great love to the autocrat the peasant believes that he also desires this distribution, but being hampered by his counsellors and menaced by his courtiers, he cannot authorize it yet. "For," says the peasant, "the land never belonged to the lords, but first to the sovereign and then to the mir." The idea of individual proprietorship is so repugnant to this people that they say that even death is beautiful shared in common.