CHAPTER XXIII
ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA
(March 13, 1881)
THE assassination of Abraham Lincoln leads up to that of the other great emancipator of the nineteenth century, Alexander the Second of Russia, which occurred on the thirteenth of March, 1881, and which filled the world with horror.
In one of Goethe’s most famous poems a magician’s apprentice, in the absence of his learned master, sets free the secret powers of nature which his master can control by a magical formula. The apprentice has overheard the formula, and has appropriated it to his own use; but lo! when the apprentice wants to get rid of the powers he has let loose, he has forgotten the magic words by which to banish them, and miserably perishes in the attempt. The poem is symbolical of the life and experience of Czar Alexander the Second of Russia. As a young man, enthusiastic and desirous to promote his country’s welfare, he set loose the turbulent and revolutionary powers slumbering in his gigantic empire, and they grew to such enormous proportions that even his power, great though it was, was insufficient to curb them; finally he paid with his life for his attempt to confer blessings upon his subjects. In order to comprehend the difficulties which confronted Alexander the Second on his accession, it is necessary to take a retrospect of the preceding reign.
The Emperor Nicholas the First died on the second of March, 1855. He had reigned twenty-nine years and nine months. During all these years he had ruled his gigantic empire with an iron hand and had stood before the world as the most brilliant as well as the most imperious ruler who had sat upon the throne of the Czars since the death of Peter the Great. He was the model for the other sovereigns of Europe, and his policy was adopted with almost servile humility by the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the former of whom he reinstated on his throne by overthrowing the Hungarian revolution, while the latter was allied to him by ties of marriage. His dislike for reform and “the modern spirit” was caused, it is said, by the sad experience he had made but a few weeks after his accession, when a rebellion of the Imperial Guards in his own capital compelled him to throw shot and shell into his own regiments, and to quell a widespread conspiracy by the severest measures. At that time cheers coming from the ranks for “Constantine and the Constitution” had made the very name of a constitution odious to him. He might not have taken the demonstration so seriously if he had known that the soldiers, on being asked by their officers to cheer for Constantine and the Constitution had asked: “Who is the Constitution?” and were told that she was Constantine’s wife, whereupon the soldiers cheered lustily. At all events, Nicholas, who had intended to introduce a number of Western reforms, took suddenly a great aversion to anything which deviated in the least from the most autocratic form of government; he punished the slightest disagreement in political opinion or the most timid opposition to his imperial will as an act of rebellion. The whole system of government had been fashioned upon a half Asiatic, half European model; it combined the absolute—almost divine—power of the Oriental ruler with a formidable and well-drilled bureaucracy blindly obedient to the Czar and knowing no other law than his will.
Nicholas the First was a man of superior intelligence, of indomitable will, and of great vigor of mind, which enabled him to pay strict attention to the different departments of the public service. His most effective instrument was the third section of the Czar’s personal bureau,—a secret political police by which he overawed the empire and whose very name caused terror in the heart and home of every Russian family. Whosoever was unfortunate enough to fall under the suspicion of this terrible Hermandad—more cruel and more vindictive than the Spanish Inquisition—might just as well resign himself at once to his fate,—life-long exile to Siberia or a secret execution, most probably by strangulation, in one of the prisons of Russia. It was the office of this secret police, which reported directly to the Emperor, not only to ferret out crime and bring criminals to justice, but to protect the subjects of the Czar from contact with hurtful foreign influences, to confiscate books and newspapers from abroad, to open and read letters, and to learn family secrets which might be used against the correspondents or their friends. Everything, in fact, which the imperial government could think of to cut off Russia from the current of European ideas, to prevent its subjects from receiving a liberal education at the universities, to expand their minds by travelling abroad, to become familiar with the great political and philosophical questions of the day by a study of literature and newspapers, was done with rigorous care by the police and approved by the Czar.
Occasionally the Emperor became indignant at the venality and corruption of high public officials; but he did not see that this venality and corruption were but the logical consequence of the system of despotism and Byzantinism which his will imposed even on the highest members of the aristocracy. His smile, his praise, was the highest distinction, the highest aim of the ambition of the aristocracy, and for this servile subjection to the imperial will they compensated themselves by unbridled licentiousness and beastly excesses, and by robbing the public treasury. Because it was well known that the Emperor looked with suspicion on the universities as nurseries of liberal or revolutionary ideas, the nobility did not send their sons thither, for fear that the young men might become infected with these ideas, and that transportation to Siberia might suddenly interrupt their studies. The nobility, therefore, deemed it more prudent to send the lads to court or to the military schools, where they were safe at least from the contagion of European liberalism. It is really a wonder that, with such an organization of society and with a system of police surveillance perhaps never equalled in the world, with a Damocles’ sword always suspended over their heads, there still remained a number of liberal-minded men, who never abandoned the hope of better days, never renounced their dream that the time would come for Russia, as it had come for western Europe, to enter socially and politically the family of enlightened nations, blessed with liberal institutions and freed from the despotism of semi-Oriental rulers. These liberal-minded men and true patriots—professors of the universities, literary men, and a very small number of young noblemen—lived mostly at Moscow, where the distance from the observing eye of the ruler and his court saved them from detection, although their secret influence pervaded the whole empire, and kept the flame of liberalism burning in the hearts of the intellectual élite. While Nicholas had thus succeeded in building up an Eastern despotism on the banks of the Neva, he endeavored at the same time to impress Europe with the idea of his unrivalled power. His army was considered one of the best in Europe, and the immense population of his empire—larger than that of any two of the other great powers—gave him almost unlimited material for recruits. The generals commanding these armies were also renowned throughout Europe. They had won their laurels in the battles against the revolutionary armies of Poland and Hungary, in conquering the warlike population of the Caucasus, and subjecting large territories in western Asia to the white eagle of the Czar. The Russian diplomats had the reputation of being the shrewdest in Europe, and had either by secret treaties or by matrimonial alliances succeeded in making Russian influence preponderant on the continent of Europe. The Emperor Nicholas stood, therefore, on a commanding height when he provoked the great western powers of Europe, together with Turkey, to mortal combat. It was a challenge born in arrogance and political short-sightedness, and it found its deserved rebuke in a total defeat of the Russian armies and a thorough humiliation of the Russian Emperor. Nicholas ought to have known that, in engaging in war with the western powers, he not only endangered his military prestige, but put to the test also his system of domestic administration, based entirely on his autocratic will, and silently, although reluctantly, submitted to by his subjects, as a tribute to his dominant position in Europe. When by the disasters of the Crimean War that position was lost, when it became clear to the Russian people that the Emperor was not absolutely the universal dictator of Europe, not only his military prestige was destroyed, but his system of domestic government lost immensely in public estimation. Nicholas felt this double humiliation so keenly that it was just as much personal chagrin as physical disease which caused his death even before the war was over.
It was therefore a heavy burden which his successor, Alexander the Second, assumed when he ascended the throne on the second of March, 1855. His first duty—and it was a painful and humiliating duty—was to terminate the Crimean War by accepting the unfavorable terms demanded by the western powers. In the exhausted condition of the Russian treasury, and after the disorganization of the Russian armies by a series of disastrous defeats, nothing was left to the young Czar but to submit to the inevitable. In doing so he also signed the sentence of death of the autocratic rule established by his father. A general clamor for reform, for greater freedom and more liberal laws arose, and Alexander the Second was only too willing to grant them. He was liberal-minded himself and kind-hearted, and he was anxious to let the Russian nation partake of the progress of European civilization. He opened the Russian universities to all who desired a higher education. He reduced to a reasonable rate the price for passports, which had been enormous under Nicholas, he rescinded the burdensome press laws, and modified the law subjecting all publications to a most rigorous government supervision; he issued an amnesty to Siberian exiles, including many who had been banished for political crimes; and he finally crowned this system of liberal measures by the emancipation of many million serfs, freeing them from their previous condition of territorial bondage and placing them directly under government authority. Important changes were also made in the personnel of the different departments of the public service; a thorough investigation of these departments proved that the grossest abuses existed throughout the empire. The army magazines were filled with chalk instead of flour, and officers who had been dead for twenty years still remained on the pension lists. Numerous other frauds and depredations were disclosed, which were eating up the public revenues, and which had been practised for years by high officials who had enjoyed the protection of the late Czar. The reforms which Alexander the Second introduced did not find favor with the officials, and the emancipation of the serfs fully estranged the nobility, whose interests were damaged by the loss of their slaves. The Czar therefore soon found himself between two fires: the Liberals were immoderate in their demands for still greater liberty, and the nobility attacked the government for having granted those liberal measures, predicting that the new policy would terminate in disaster, revolution, and assassination.
It should not be supposed, however, that Alexander was liberal-minded in the American sense of the word; he was not,—not even as liberalism is understood in the western states of Europe. What he tried to be during the first years of his reign was a liberal-minded autocrat like Frederick the Great of Prussia and Joseph the Second of Austria; but the slightest attempt to limit his authority by any constitution he resented as a personal insult. When the landed proprietors of the province of Tver sent him a petition worded in the most humble language, in which their desire for a constitution was expressed, he flew into a rage, and sent the two leaders of the meeting to Siberia. But he was inclined to grant as a personal favor what some of his subjects demanded as their right, which they wanted guaranteed by law. The system of police espionage and persecution ceased, because Alexander hated police denunciations. This change had almost immediately its marked effect on public life; the people commenced breathing easier. The nightmare of Siberian exile or perpetual imprisonment ceased haunting their minds.
After a few years Russian society seemed to have changed its character, its ideas, its manners; it showed its independence openly, and acted as though its liberties and rights were safely secured by a magna charta or constitution. Many thousands of Russian noblemen went to France and England, no longer simply to amuse themselves and to live well, but to study western institutions or to place their sons in the colleges; and no nationality has a greater faculty of assimilation than the Russian. The ideas of central and western Europe found ready and intelligent reception in their minds. Hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines were founded, and most of them found numerous and eager readers. Some of these papers became a real power and shaped public opinion to a remarkable degree. While direct criticism of Russian affairs and Russian institutions was prohibited, the newspapers nevertheless found a way to keep their readers posted on all public events and public men. They published sketches of every-day life in which every particular was true except the names, and in this human comedy, scarcely veiled by the transparent fiction, the governors of provinces, the generals of the army, and especially the directors of the police, and all the high government officials were exhibited in their true character; their frauds were exposed, their arbitrary actions, their abuses of power, and their excesses were denounced. The reading public were in the secret, and the daily and weekly newspapers became a regular chronique scandaleuse without subjecting the editors or publishers to prosecution.
While these periodicals, published in Russia under the very eyes of the Czar and of Russian censors, did their share in undermining the authority of the government, there was another class of Russian periodicals, published at Paris, London, and Leipsic, which were free from the embarrassing observation of Russian censors, and which consequently could speak openly, mention names, attack high officials and the imperial family. The most famous of the editors of these periodicals (which were printed abroad, but had nearly their entire reading public in Russia) was Alexander Herzen, the famous editor and publisher of “The Bell” (Kolokos). Mr. Herzen was a man of great talent, and his newspaper soon gained an influence in Russia which became a real danger to the government. “The Bell” did more for the spread of socialism in Russia than all other publications combined. It was more active and more successful than all other newspapers in showing up the official wrong-doers of the empire and breeding among the masses contempt for the government and its officers, because every Russian who could read, read “The Bell,” and got his information about Russian affairs from Alexander Herzen. The mystery always was: How did “The Bell” get into Russia? since the government made a most relentless war on the paper. Nobody could ever tell; the most searching investigations of the secret police failed to discover the mysterious channel through which the dangerous paper found its way into Russia. As soon as it had crossed the frontier, secret printing establishments, unknown to the police, struck off many thousand copies and circulated them gratuitously throughout the empire. It was evident that a socialistic or revolutionary committee was identified with its circulation in Russia.