But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel entered into full possession,
When Liberty goes out of the place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.”
There is no going back for the Mariannas of Russia. They must go forward, and to-day they are going forward. Honour to them and theirs, to them who, if forbidden by authority to work in the light, are ready again to work in the dark. Honour to that great party with whom their country’s liberties have remained—Anonymous Russia!
Much water has flowed under the bridge since the preface above was written one-and-twenty years ago, but the author has only deemed it necessary to correct a few lines of his criticism and to modify his statement concerning Turgenev’s funeral. Since 1896, we have seen the spectacle of the Russo-Japanese war, the General Strike, the creation of the Duma, the abortive Revolution of 1905, the excesses of Terrorists, Agent-Provocateurs, “Black Hundreds” and Military Court-Martials, Governmental illegalities, the rapid evolution, economic and political, of a new Russia till 1914; and finally the spectacle of the Great European War, the rally of all parties, under the Prussian invasion, to the patriotic programme of the Progressive Bloc, the falling away of even the old-fashioned Bureaucrats from “the dark forces of the Empire,” and the general situation, in the words of the Times Petrograd correspondent:
“A Delayed Development
“We know that had the Constitution signed by Alexander II. been introduced, Russia might have been spared much suffering. The assassination of the Tsar brought about a delay of 25 precious years. Pobiedonostzeff persuaded Alexander III. that Russia enjoyed a special dispensation of Providence; that the laws of history in other lands did not apply to her. Thus the greatest of reforms, introduced in the ’sixties, the abolition of slavery and the institution of the Zemstvos granting the people a voice in the affairs of their country, became stultified. It is true that serfdom could not be reintroduced, that Zemstvos could not be abolished, but what happened was bad enough. The education of the masses was neglected and the local assemblies were placed under tutelage.
“Not till 1905 did Russia obtain relief from the reaction that followed upon the tragedy of 1881. But Pobiedonostzeff had numerous adherents among his contemporaries in the older bureaucracy, many of whom survive to this day. The governing class in Russia forms a caste which directs a huge and highly intricate mechanism of a centralized administration ruling nearly 200,000,000 of people. These statesmen could not suddenly be eliminated or instilled with new ideas alien to all their habits or traditions. In the Senate or Supreme Court of Justice, which promulgates all laws and sees to their enforcement, and in the Upper House, which is half composed of members appointed from the ranks of these elder statesmen, the old leaven was still unhappily strong.... To these causes and agencies we owe the reaction that has characterized Russian internal politics within recent years....
“Slowly but surely the ranks of the old reactionary party have been declining. By an infallible process of attrition they were bound to disappear sooner or later, leaving the field clear for the New Russia. The Great War came before the elimination was consummated. It has hastened the process by convincing everybody, including the bureaucracy, of the utter failure of the old system to cope with great national problems. At the present time no section of the population, and, therefore, no genuine political party, exists in Russia that has a word to say in support of the Pobiedonostzeff theory. The Nobles’ Congress was the last stronghold to surrender. It did so in the most emphatic manner by endorsing, mirabile dictu! the resolutions of both Houses of Parliament demanding the formation of a strong, united Ministry enjoying the confidence of the people. Between the Army and the nation there is not, and there cannot be, any difference of opinion on this subject.
“Within something like ten years the Russian people have become a new people. What Pobiedonostzeff succeeded in doing 25 years ago cannot, obviously, be attempted now. Russia has finally, irrevocably, turned her back upon the old ideas. She has spoken her mind fully, unanimously.”—The Times, February 8, 1917.
As the writer is retouching his last chapter comes the news of the Russian Revolution, an event of no less import to Europe than was the French Revolution, and one no less fraught with incalculable consequences.
This event carries back one’s thought to the revolutionary attempt of the Decembrists, 1825, and to the successive movements for political reform in Turgenev’s own day, from the men of the “’forties” (Rudin) to the disastrous obscurantism of the heavy, stupid-minded Alexander III., and his reactionary ministers. From Virgin Soil, 1877, one follows in thought the succeeding forty years in which tract after tract of stubborn political virgin soil has been slowly broken up and sown with progressive seed. The changing economic conditions, aggravated by the Great European War, and the weak obstinacy of Nicholas II. have, at last, bankrupted the Autocracy.
The result signally vindicates Turgenev’s political prescience and his rôle as the interpreter of Western culture and Western liberalism to his countrymen. For until the great barrier of petrified Bureaucratic Nationalism was broken down, true democratic Nationalism could not flow in free channels. Slavophilism, with its leading idea of the deliverance of Europe by the Autocracy, by Orthodoxy and the communal love of the meek Russian peasant, must be replaced by a new movement, spiritual in its essence, and give much-needed fresh conceptions to our materialized Western civilization. Every reader of Russian literature, from Gogol to our day, cannot fail to recognize that the Russian mind is superior to the English in its emotional breadth and flexibility, its eager responsiveness to new ideas, its spontaneous warmth of nature. With all their faults the Russian people are more permeated with humane love and living tenderness, in their social practice, than those of other nations. Let us trust that the Russian earth, no longer clouded by a dark, overcast sky, will be flooded with the fertilizing sunlight of this new, democratic Nationalism.