Large quantities of revolutionary literature had been distributed among the garrisons, and many of the reservists had already professed Socialism. But when it came to action none of these things counted against the cowardice of obedience and the fear of death. It is true that comparatively few of the garrison infantry were employed, though, as I have noticed, even the disaffected Rostoff regiment clamoured to be led to the front. But the gunners, who were supposed to be very uncertain, were the chief instruments of suppression, and both the dismounted Sumsky Dragoons and the Semeneffsky Guards, when they arrived, displayed a bloodthirsty lust for massacre which could not have been surpassed by the most loyal mercenaries.
Put a man in uniform, feed him, give him arms, and he may generally be depended upon to shoot as directed. Obedience is only a temptation to sloth, and it becomes almost irresistible when the temptation is supported by fear of death. The soldier who “fraternized” had everything to lose, and the revolutionists could offer him nothing—nothing but a revolver, a dubious payment for three days without food or clothing, and a prospect of almost certain death if they failed. To win over an army, the revolutionists must first command a public purse. They must point to some Parliament, Assembly, Committee—some authoritative body which can supply food, clothes, and pay. This was the advantage of our own Parliament in its struggle against despotism; it could draw upon legitimate taxes, the King could only melt down plate. And under modern conditions, unless the revolutionists can win over the army, a revolution by violence appears almost impossible. That was why the immediate occasion of our own revolution was the dispute between the King and Parliament about the command of the militia at Hull. Add to these instincts of obedience and self-preservation the promise of better food held out to the army in the Tsar’s Christening-Day Manifesto; add the weariness and irritation of street fighting, the terror of sudden death lurking at every window, the memory of women’s jibes and taunts during the past few weeks, and you get a temper which will stick at no methods and be troubled by no remorse. Among poverty-stricken and uneducated men, with no employment or home or resources of their own, I doubt if enthusiasm for freedom should ever be counted upon against the restraining powers of habit, uniform, and rations.
That was the main lesson of Moscow, and the Government was quick to learn it. They knew their power depended entirely upon the command of the army and police, but for the present that was secure. The command of the army and police depended again upon their ability to pay them, and, with an estimated deficit of £50,000,000 for the coming year and a real deficit of about £80,000,000, finance was the weak point in the Government’s defences. But Kokovtsoff was now in Paris negotiating a loan by which at least the French might pay their own interest on their own advances for one year, and for the future everything might be hoped from the power of reaction. On January 9th, Witte replying to a deputation of the gently Conservative “League of October 30th,” announced his conversion to violent and repressive measures with characteristic tearfulness. Whining like an apostate who blubbers over the God he has betrayed, he cried—
“There was a time when I sought the confidence of the people, but such illusions are no longer possible. I have always been opposed to repression myself, but am now compelled to resort to it, merely as the result of having trusted my countrymen.”
While he was thus speaking, I myself was moving very slowly south-west from Moscow towards Kieff, over indistinguishable spaces of snow marked only by rare and desolate villages of wooden huts and sheds. During the twenty-eight hours of the journey, we passed a few miserable towns as well, and on the side platforms of every station I noticed great piles of sacks sopping in the snow and rain; for a premature thaw had set in and there was hardly a shred of tarpaulin to cover them. I found out afterwards that these sacks held the last summer’s harvest—the grain which ought to have been feeding Russia and Europe. But it lay rotting there while peasants starved, because the thousand trucks which should have taken it to market were standing idle in Siberia or dragging men and horses slowly home, and the Government which had made war upon Japan was now entirely occupied in flogging or shooting the men and women who differed from their policy.
Kieff, like Moscow and other towns, was exposed to all the violence of martial law, which, indeed, for various reasons had become almost chronic there. The city has often shown herself the birthplace of revolution, and she is kept in almost continual ferment by the opposition between her piety and her intellect. She boasts herself the ancient centre of Russian religion and, at the same time, of Russian thought—a strange combination, but that the religion is mainly subterranean and the thought dwells in the upper air. As objects of pilgrimage her holy shrines are unrivalled. Peasants from all over Russia visit Kieff by hundreds of thousands a year. They come to pray at the ancient church of St. Sophia—a circle of dark and unexpected chapels clustering round a central dome, where mosaics on golden ground dimly gleam to the few tapers below, but all else is dark, and invisible forms are heard moving in shadow, as a priest intones, or an outburst of deep chanting sounds from unseen altars. But most pilgrims are more attracted by the mummied forms of Russian saints who lie at rest in catacombs far underground, below the churches and monasteries of the sacred Lavra hill, which looks across the Dnieper to the great plain of unenclosed fields and forests beyond. With coffin lids open to preclude deception, the saints are laid in the rock-cut passage or niche where once they spent their dull years of suffering because the torments of ordinary life upon the surface were insufficient for their zeal. Nay, one who, regardless of health, lived buried in earth to his shoulders for thirty years, stands buried so still. The rest lie wrapt in coloured cloth through which their face and form may only obscurely be discerned; but when I examined the cloth I found it genuine. Year after year their holy shrines are watched by silent monks, who sit beside them with lighted tapers, religiously idle, while the long files of peasants pass and give their pence, and kiss the cotton coverings, and gulp the holy water which as a final blessing is presented them to drink from the hollow of a silver cross. Or if any one refuses to drink, the monk pours the water down his back, in the hope that even upon a heretic the efficacy of so great a blessing may not be entirely wasted.
But above ground, Kieff is the mother of science and intellectual progress, as far as such things can exist in Russia at all. Upon the surface of her pretty hills, stand a famous University, a great Polytechnic, and many schools. Ever since the fourteenth century, when there was no such great distinction between divine and human knowledge, Kieff has been conspicuous for her learning, and she still claims equal rank with Moscow and St. Petersburg. Hers was the first printing press of Russia, and it is she who has provided the training for most of Russia’s recent politicians up to Witte himself—politicians as distinct from officials, who are produced according to regulation type by the more passive and unimaginative races of other districts. For Kieff is the real capital of Little Russia, and the Little Russians have no doubt that they are the intellectual people. They call themselves the Midi of Russia, the Provençals, the people of the sunny south. They are Slavs themselves, but they claim the Slavs of Galicia or such Slavs as are found in Prague as their nearest relations, and though their language is only a Slavonic dialect, it is unintelligible to other Russians, and is a bond of union only among the dwellers in the Ukraine or marches or borderland of the south-west.
Even in winter the dress of Little Russian peasants is brilliant and distinctive. They go in cheerful crimson and orange, and their skirts and aprons are worked with barbaric embroidery, as among the Bulgarian Slavs of Macedonia. Their music and dances are like no other in Russia, being comparatively gay. The artistic instincts run in their blood, and the women supply the Empire with singers, actresses, dancers, and others among whom beauty counts for wealth. In ordinary life even a stranger notices at once that the people are better mannered and more cheerful, though that does not imply an unseemly excess of merriment.
A LITTLE RUSSIAN.