Then again, the first Sunday I was in Moscow, Professor Miliukoff brought out his new paper called Life (Zhisn) on simple and moderate lines. He began with a long and earnest appeal for the unity of Progressive parties against the common enemy of Absolutism. “Let us all combine,” he cried, “into a bloc, and present a solid front to the ancient tyranny and new reaction. When Absolutism is overthrown, there will be time enough to discuss the divergent lines of our own programmes.” Every one respected Professor Miliukoff, and was cheered by his eternal hopefulness. The advice was obviously sensible. Its only fault was that it was sensible to commonplace—just too obviously sensible for times of high exhilaration, when the position of the moderate man is always painful and usually neglected. Neither workmen nor Social Democrats cared in the least for a Liberal alliance. They knew that, in any case, the Liberals would join them in the fight against Absolutism, and to the truly revolutionary spirit Liberalism is always suspect. A significant cartoon came out that week, called “The Hare at the Hunt.” The lion of the proletariat has sprung upon the Bear of tyranny; but in the foreground the Hare of the bourgeoisie is seen hastening up and delicately nibbling at one of the dead Bear’s ears, as much as to say, “Please, give me a little bit too!” A little bit might be given to the Moderates, but the proletariat were determined to keep the lion’s share.
One day, for the sake of comparison with the proletariat of St. Petersburg, I went over a large and very rich factory, which almost holds a monopoly in candles, and the darkness of Northern Russia for six months in the year makes a candle monopoly valuable. At the end of October a serious riot had occurred there, and the front of the mill was still a wreck of bricks and broken glass. The strikers had then demanded a 50 per cent. rise in wages, an eight-hour day, a lodging allowance of 6s. to 10s. a month, pensions of half wages after fifteen years’ work, and pensions of full wages after twenty-five years. When I was there, they had just begun work again on a rise of 16 per cent., an eight-hour day in three shifts, and a lodging allowance of 4s. 6d. a month. That lodging allowance arises from the general old custom of living-in. Hitherto all the single men and single women had lived in barrack dormitories inside the mill, with a room for meals, gas, heating, and washing-troughs provided. These blocks of lodgings—“spalnya,” as they are called—dismal and crowded as life in them must be, were perhaps as comfortable and much cheaper than the accommodation to be had outside. But they lacked the one great charm in life—the charm of liberty. At the time of the strike, the hands demanded the right of receiving friends and relations from outside into the premises. The managers complied, and that evening the whole place was crammed with enthusiastic advocates of family affection. A mass meeting, eloquent of revolution, was held in the mill yard, and the devotees of friendship paraded their red flags in front of the managers’ quarters with trumpet and drum. Next day the managers withdrew their amiable concession, cleared the dormitories of men and women, and turned them neck and crop out into the road to fend for themselves. The lodging allowance was given to prevent further riots and to soothe the conscience. In the matter of money, it is no compensation for what the workmen lose, but liberty is thrown in, and liberty counts so high that I think the workers had the best of it in the end, and probably the old barracks will gradually disappear.
In the last twenty years the rate of pay has gone up fourfold, while the cost of living has only doubled. A good workman in this mill now received from 24s. to 30s. a week, which appeared to be the maximum wage, and since the strike a woman’s wage had risen to 8s. a week, with the same lodging allowance as the men, or about 9s. 2d. a week in all. The standard of food was perhaps a little higher than in St. Petersburg, for, except during fasts, the family expected some sort of meat or stew every day. But this was a particularly rich mill; it prided itself on its high wages, and the Englishmen of its management delighted to display a paternal benevolence to the innocent unfortunates of a lower race. It was certainly remarkable that all the hands had gone back, except those who could not be summoned from their villages owing to the breakdown of the post.
Of course, the prolonged post strike, which had continued for nearly three weeks then, was inconvenient for everybody. Revolutions are generally inconvenient, especially for business people. But it was rather too much when that ancient champion of tyranny, the Novoe Vremya, took this opportunity for working itself up into such a glow of righteous indignation because the strikers were depriving mankind of humanity’s glorious right—the right of communication and speech—the right of corresponding with fellow-men afar off, and calling on others to associate in their joys and griefs. What had the Novoe Vremya cared about that glorious right a few months before? What protest had it ever raised against a censorship that pried into letters, and chuckled over lovers’ secrets, and tracked men down to death through the words of their friends? Or what communication with their fellow-men had been allowed to exiles and prisoners—exiles and prisoners who had been wiped out from human existence for exercising that glorious right of speech? In reading leading articles like that I have sometimes detected limits beyond which even hypocrisy ceases to be decent.
But in times of revolution we must expect and tolerate much wild absurdity among people who are afraid of losing their money, and among the startled cowards who have suddenly realized what revolution is. In a letter to his own paper, the New Life, about this time, Maxim Gorky said that people had been writing to him from all over Russia to ask why it was that the patient workman and the dear, gentle peasant, whom the advanced thinkers used to worship as a saint, had suddenly shown themselves so very disagreeable and dangerous. There was a crudity and innocence about the question which takes us back more than half a century in Western social history, and Gorky’s own answer sounds to us almost as much a truism as a chapter of Charles Kingsley seems now. He merely repeated the weary old truth that in ordinary times the rich and governing classes have never taken the smallest notice of the worker and the peasant. When have they ever turned from their games of ambition or pleasure to consider the poor? In what way have they shared their life, except in the distribution of doles, which are given for their own comfort? If a bad time had now come for them, and if a worse was coming, that was only the natural turning of a wheel which had been slow to turn.
In our country we have long been familiar with such statements. We have long known that the rich man’s charity is but a ransom for himself, so that he may follow enjoyment with undisturbed content. We have long known that the sympathies of comfortable people are limited by their own comfort. We have also learnt how vain it is to preach such truths, if preaching is to end in words. But what to us has become true to satiety may still be a bewildering paradox to less experienced and less sophisticated nations, and the extraordinary influence of writers like Gorky in Russia seems to arise from the simple-hearted earnestness with which thoughtful Russians have received their doctrine. What to us appears so painfully true that we had almost forgotten it, may dawn upon them as a fine paradox of revelation.
The teaching in Gorky’s new play, The Children of the Sun would be rather less familiar to us, for it strikes at the intellectual classes, who generally regard themselves as above criticism, whereas the rich have become case-hardened to sermons and abuse. It was then being performed in his own theatre—the best theatre in the world, airy, admirably planned for hearing, entirely free from the curse of decoration, and provided with a large hall where the audience could discuss revolution during the welcome pauses which extend Russian entertainments through the night. The drama is Ibsenite—a humorous tragedy, with plenty of ironic laughter, though it fades away into a paltry German suicide. But the political point is that the central figure—an excellent man of science, simple, sweet tempered, and devoted with all his heart to the creation of life by chemical means—declares that intellectual people like himself are in reality toiling for the poor, no matter how indifferent they may appear to the poverty of others. They are the children of the sun—the almost divine beings who shed light in the darkness of the world. The simple-hearted chemist is himself a true saint of intellect. When, with the consent of his wife, a rich and lovely lady flings herself round his neck and offers him all her love and a complete laboratory, he accepts the laboratory with rapture, but asks if the love is not superfluous. Nevertheless all his innocence, his devotion, and his real kindliness of heart do not help him in the least when the peasants, infuriated for liberty, come storming down the village and almost choke the life out of that Child of the Sun in his own back garden.
That was likely to be the fate of many excellent people, who were pursuing culture without extravagance. Many who deserved no worse than the rest of us poor intellectual and decently clothed men were caught up in the whirling skirts of revolution and carried shrieking they knew not where. From every side came rumours of burnings and slaughters. The country was spoken of as a wilderness of destruction, into which none dared penetrate. For many days in vain I sought for a guide and interpreter to accompany me among the peasants. To enter a village was sudden death, and not for three pounds a day would a townsman go with me, till at last I found one whose poverty consented.
In Moscow itself we were still revelling in liberty. We lived under an anarchy almost fit for the angels, who by their divine nature are a law unto themselves. But, unhappily, as I said, our liberty was tempered by assassination. For some weeks the average of street murders was one a day. Barefooted, long-haired beggars, the very heroes of Gorky’s tales, the ragged supermen of misery, sprang out from dark corners, and I always thanked them heartily for their mistake in regarding my money as more valuable than my life. People walked warily, and kept one eye behind them, turning sharply round if they heard even the padding sound of goloshes in the snow. Often at night, as I went up and down the rampart of the Kremlin, and watched those ancient white temples with their brazen domes glittering under the moon, I noticed that the few passers-by skirted round me in a kind of arc, and if they came upon me suddenly they ran. My intentions were far from murderous, but all were living in that haggard element of fear. They had not yet realized that the only decent way to live is to take life in one hand and possessions in the other, and both hands open.