The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

The twelve wards into which Warsaw was divided had to choose eighty electors between them, and upon these eighty fell the choice of the two members who were to represent Warsaw in the Duma. These two were counted among the thirty-six who would stand for Poland as a whole. The Jews, who make up a third part of Warsaw’s population, were the only formidable opponents to the National Democrats. But the Jews are nearly all Socialists, and as the Socialists had up to that time refused to recognize the Duma or take any part in the elections, the National Democrats expected to secure all the “college” of electors.

Their programme was more advanced than I should have supposed from the rather venerable appearance of their meeting. They aimed at complete Polish autonomy in a Russian Federation. They demanded the use of Polish in schools and law-courts; the appointment of Poles to all offices of local administration; complete local self-government for towns and country districts; and some included the restoration of the Polish Parliament as it existed from 1813 to 1831. This programme was obviously very much more Nationalist than Democratic, but, in spite of the demand for Home Rule, there was no intention whatever of breaking away from Russia. My reactionary official was again right in saying that the Poles, like the Baltic Provinces, would rather suffer under Russia than under Germany. The one thing that ended the great general strike was the cry purposely, though falsely, raised by the masters, “The Prussians are coming!” Germans may think it difficult to understand, but, outside Germany, a certain pleasantness of manner counts for something in the affairs of life, and very few people really enjoy being goaded along the regulation road to official perfection.

Next to the National Democrats came the Progressive Democrats, who bridged the gulf from respectability to Socialism, like Mr. John Burns, let us say, or practical leaders of his type. They were what we should call extreme Radicals, but they liked to borrow the word “Fabians,” not having yet discovered that the Fabian Society ceased to count in the advance of thought or politics after the support its majority gave to the South African War. Like academic people among ourselves, they are fond of repeating that they demand evolution, not revolution, but their opposition to the Government is nevertheless sincere, and many of them were in prison. The gradual nationalization of the land, with compensation but compulsory sale where an owner possesses over a certain maximum, is a great point in their programme, and their aims in general are rather social than political, though they, too, demand a Polish Parliament and a military system under which Polish recruits shall remain in Poland. Like the Socialists, they refused to take any part in the elections, because under martial law there could be no freedom of choice. Otherwise, they would have formed the natural allies of the Constitutional Democrats elsewhere.

The powerful party known as National or Polish Socialists came very near to these. In fact, no one but a Pole could have discovered in their programmes any distinction calling for passionate antipathy. They followed the usual Socialistic lines, with Polish autonomy thrown in, and they also prided themselves on their practical or “real” policy.

Next to them, but separated by the impassable abyss of family animosity, came their bitterest enemies, the Social Democrats, with their usual maximum and minimum programmes, that require no further definition. For the Gospel of St. Marx upholds the doctrine of faith all the world over, and its canon allows no variation of circumstance or nationality. In Poland, perhaps, its followers show themselves a little more pedantic and superior than elsewhere, and it is their intolerance of every other form of progress which has done most to keep the parties divided, and maintain the enemy in power. Possibly for this reason, combined with the imprisonment of all their leaders, they appeared, whilst I was in Warsaw, to have lost ground, in spite of their careful organization and superhuman rectitude.

Below them—far below them, they would say—came the Proletariat Socialists, the workman’s party, who refused all “truck” with students or lawyers, or any other members of the “Intelligenzia” and bourgeoisie. They were the extremists; thirty years ago they would have been called Nihilists, though untruly. They preached revolutionary violence of any kind, and took the immediate happiness of the working man as their motive and rule in all conduct. Beyond that, they possessed the immense advantage of being entirely free from all doctrines, theories, and abstractions. For they held by the simple and obvious fact, that a certain amount of pleasure may be obtained from life, and the working man does not get it.

There remains but one party of importance, but it is a little difficult to place it in rank with the rest. For the Bund is not specially a Polish party. As I have shown, it spreads through Kieff, Odessa, and all Southern Russia. But in Warsaw it is particularly strong, because, beyond all others, it is the Jewish party. In social aims it agrees with the Social Democrats, but its methods are more definite and more violent. In Warsaw, its members were at that time collecting arms, organizing bands, and conducting propaganda in meetings that were protected by armed groups. Their programme was to carry on the revolution by a series of general strikes, combined with armed demonstrations and attacks upon Government buildings or officials, and they looked forward to a general and violent insurrection of all Socialists in Russia. Obviously, the first care of such a party should be to win over the enemy’s armed forces, for as long as the Russian Government could trust the army to do the slaughtering for them, a violent insurrection was outside serious consideration. Accordingly, the Bund was continually sending out agents to work among the soldiers. These agents endeavoured to establish in the army a large society of men, who should take an oath never to fire upon their fellow-citizens. There were minor points—a demand for better treatment, a refusal to act as officers’ servants, or to serve outside their home district. But not to fire on citizens was the main thing, and if once that pledge could be imposed upon the Russian army as a whole, the Government, with all its frippery and all its brutality, would vanish in a week.

I have already given my reasons for seeing little hope of such a solution. Obedience is the easiest form of sloth, and as soon as you put a man into uniform you render obedience almost irresistible. Further, a soldier demands pay, clothes, food, and hitherto there has existed no definite power in Russia, except the Crown, to which he could look for these necessities.

But it was no wonder the Government regarded the Bund as their most dangerous enemy in a hostile nation. Under the unpopular bywords of “Anarchist” and “Jew,” the members of the Bund were seized and executed without mercy or regret. Upon the river bank, half a mile north of the city, stands the great fortress called the Citadel. I happened to see more of it than most travellers, for, by good luck, I managed one afternoon to penetrate far within the gates before I was arrested. But still I could not identify Pavilion 10, where some six hundred political prisoners were then crowded together, nor the places of execution, where so-called Anarchist Jews were shot. The official number of the executed in the month then stood at only sixteen, but it was impossible to estimate the true figures, when the only form of trial was a secret court-martial, and when fishermen on the Vistula reported, as they did while I was there, that they had seen bodies appearing through holes in the ice below the Citadel, with faces mutilated to prevent recognition.

As in the rest of Russia, all the prisons were so overcrowded that the prisoners were dying of filth and disease. The town prison in Warsaw had four hundred politicals, and sixty of them were crammed into a room built for twenty-five. But if only as a relief from the dreariness of futile party distinctions, let me end with the official statement concerning two Jewesses, arrested as the accomplices of a man named Gramen, who had been shot for manufacturing bombs. Governor-General Skallon gave it out that it went against his feelings of humanity to shoot women, and accordingly he offered to appeal to the Tsar himself on behalf of these two, if they would only promise never to take part in the revolution again. They both replied that if they were ever released, they would fling themselves into the movement with more enthusiasm than ever. So both were shot. And that one solid instance of invincible heroism proves that even Poland, in spite of all her divisions and abstractions and intrigues, is not beyond the hope of liberty, since even in the wilderness of her parties that kind of courage is seen to blossom.