The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

In speaking of the Poles in St. Petersburg, I have already described a Polish restaurant there which was sharply divided by an invisible but impassable line into two camps, both violently Polish, and both so hostile to each other that the girls of one would not speak or eat with the girls of the other, nor even with the men. Warsaw displayed a similar division in almost every street. Very likely it is the price that Poles pay for the strong individuality which has given them so many poets, artists, and musicians. The consequence is that in Warsaw, the parties are continually shifting, and grow like polyps by splitting themselves into fractions, so that the political student, after weeks of labour, goes to bed one night happily conscious of having mastered the situation at last, and wakes up in the morning to find the whole thing changed.

But before describing what I believe to have been the condition of Polish parties one post time on a February morning, it may be well to estimate the strength of the common enemy’s position, as one of the enemy’s leaders himself defined it. Of the three highest officials in Poland he was the most experienced in the country and spoke with the greatest authority. Even the extra number of footmen who took my coat symbolized a power of life and death.

“Martial law,” he began at once, “will be unflinchingly maintained, at all events till the Duma meets. These Poles are an unreasonable, unpractical people, full of crazy notions. They need a strong hand. They mistake kindness for fear. They must be firmly dealt with. They like it really—in his heart every Pole likes it. Since we proclaimed martial law last November there has been no disturbance. And for forty years before that—ever since we crushed the Polish revolution in 1864—order had reigned.”

I smiled inwardly, remembering that well-worn quotation about the order that reigned in Warsaw, and I looked at the speaker with fresh interest. I had often heard of him as the perfect type of the thorough-going reactionaries, the real old Russian bureaucrats, who were fighting the revolution at the last ditch for their ideal of empire, their privileges, and their pay. A tall and shapely man of about fifty, diplomatically courteous and grave, he became the furniture of the official palace very well, but in his round, bright eyes I sometimes detected the alert and watchful look of a racoon when he confronts you suddenly in the forest. He afterwards described me to a friend as a terrible revolutionist, and as I remained almost silent during the conversation, being overcome by the superiority of his French, that showed a penetration which gave greater value to his judgments.

“Yes,” he repeated, “these Poles have always been an unreasonable and unpractical people, full of flighty notions. You may now divide them into Nationalists and Socialists—both about equally absurd. I need not speak of the Socialists and the nonsense they talk of equality and nationalization. They are the same everywhere. In Poland we found them doing a certain amount of harm among the peasants; so we quartered troops in the villages, and now the peasants have turned against the Socialists like other right-minded men. Indeed, the Jewish Bund is the only troublesome Socialist body now left, and we are dealing with them. They will tend to disappear.

“The Nationalists are equally helpless. They make a mighty fuss about the suppression of their language, but in our Empire we must have one common language, and it must be Russian. Then as to their Catholic religion: the Poles are a singularly fanatical people. Their attachment to their superstitious rites is most extraordinary. Even the educated classes are little better than fanatics in their religious beliefs. They are incapable of any breadth of view, and if we gave the people the chance, they would show themselves utterly intolerant of the Orthodox Church. They would insult and persecute our fellow-believers. Such things we cannot allow, and we will not.

“Nor can we yield to their talk about autonomy and separation. It is all very well for England to grant autonomy to her Colonies over the sea. She has not granted it to Ireland, and she does not grant it to India. We have not the least desire to become a powerless confederation like Austria, in perpetual danger of disruption. That would be even worse than to become like Germany, continually hampered by her Socialists. Any kind of separation would mean immediate ruin to Poland and her industries. Russia, Siberia, and the Far East are her only markets. If she were separated from us, first she would starve, next she would be swallowed up by Germany, and foolish as the Poles are, they still have sense enough to hate the Germans more than they hate us.

“It is true that in a weak moment our Government made concessions to Finland, and that has encouraged the Poles to hope for the same. But we shall not be able to allow Finland to remain on a different footing from the rest of the Empire. Those concessions must rapidly be withdrawn. We shall very likely have to conquer Finland over again. That would be an easy task, and need cause us no apprehension. All special rights in any part of the Empire must vanish, and the whole Empire must be bound together into one. If we yield at any point, we must yield in all, and that is impossible.

“It is impossible for our own safety. Here in Poland, for instance, we have to defend a frontier where there is no natural barrier to ward off an attack by Germany. Even if we gave up Poland as far as the Vistula, it would not help us. In these days a river is no real protection in war; if the Vistula were a mountain chain, that would be a different question. As it is, we must maintain our two parallel lines of fortresses in Poland, and especially the triangle of the three main strongholds, of which Warsaw is one. The triangle is too large to be surrounded, and it would secure us the time for mobilization. For certainly we could not mobilize nearly so fast as Germany.

“That is the plain truth of the situation. People talk about Russia’s internal troubles, but they are not of any importance. It is mainly an agrarian question. The peasants think their land insufficient, because they are too ignorant to cultivate it properly, and the redistribution of the land by the communes every twelve years—it used to be every year—deprives them of the valuable sense of ownership. We must abolish the communal system, institute private ownership in land, and plant several new colonies—in Siberia, for example. Then you will see that Russia will easily regain her former condition of quietude and prosperity.