"And can your press do nothing to better this general corruption?"
"We have a saying, 'It is hard to dig with a broken shovel.' Talented people like ourselves soon learned from abroad the little art of corrupting the press. With a fettered press like ours, this is less difficult here than in other countries, where a paper respecting public opinion might under some circumstances be unreservedly outspoken. But why should a press with Suvorin and the Novoye Vremya at the head, surpassing absolutely all records of baseness—why should such a press run the risk of bankruptcy? Moreover, you must always keep one thing in mind: a press may exert tremendous power by publishing a man's worthlessness, until he is made powerless in society; but since here notorious sharpers are readily accepted in the highest ranks of society, and even grand-dukes do not escape the suspicion of corruption, it does no one any harm to be reported as having dexterously spirited away a few hundred thousands."
"You say even grand-dukes?"
"—Are not safe from suspicion. I can personally testify that not one of them takes a ruble himself. But the persons who live by obtaining concessions for joint-stock companies, etc., know how to represent that they need considerable sums for the purpose of influencing the highest persons, the minister and grand-dukes. Hence arises this idea."
"And intelligent business men believe that?"
"Believe it? No one would understand the opposite. Imagine a scene in my office. A business man comes to me with a case. He inquires my fee. I say five hundred rubles. He asks what will be the expenses. I say a few rubles for stamp duties, etc. Then he becomes more definite. He means the charges. 'There are none,' I answer. The man of business rises, disappointed. 'Ah! so you have no influential connections?' I will not say that this happens very often with me; for the men who come to me once know what I can do, and what not, and what my practice is. The case is, however, characteristic. Outside the legal profession, which still lives on the tradition of the time of its independence, every one is open to bribery; and every one reckons with the fact."
"And no one is angry at open injustice?"
"What is injustice? Despotism of the great. We have been used to that for thousands of years and accept it like the caprices of fortune. The peasant makes no distinction between a hail-storm which ruins his crop and an authority who oppresses or injures him. There is no way of resisting either; for when one curses God, He sends greater misfortune; and when one disputes with the authorities, one is absolutely lost. 'Duck, little brother; everything passes'; that is the final conclusion of our wisdom. We are educated to it by inhuman despots and by an official service of thieves and debauchees. We lack, too, the sharply defined idea of ownership, in which the sense of justice, considered psychologically, has its root. You know that here the peasants own their own land only to an extremely small extent. The individual is merged and lost in the 'mir' (village community), where the trustee, the 'zemski nachnalnik,'[5] the village elder, and liquor rule. This obshtchina, communism, is the strongest fortress of reaction. No ray of enlightenment penetrates it. At the utmost, misery and ever-returning hunger produce finally a condition of despair in which the peasant is capable of anything except an action which might advance him in civilization. In the census of 1898 there were found villages where no one had any idea what paper is, and peasants who did not know the name of the Emperor. The 'mir,' moreover, is in its nature opposed to private ownership, and every discussion between the member of the village communism and the property-holder is artfully prevented by the scattering about of compulsory peasants. For property-owners are at present for the most part Liberal. The régime, however, stands or falls with the isolation of the peasantry from Liberal influences. For the peasant is not unintelligent by nature, and, if he is not prevented, he learns very quickly."
"That is also, then, one of the causes of the ill-treatment of the Jews?"
"It is the cause. Do not suppose that the Holy Synod alone has power to influence legislation in favor of orthodoxy. Sectarians and Jews are demonstrably the only people who have a moral code of their own, and, therefore, know how to distinguish justice from injustice. They are also the only ones who criticise the actions of the authorities. They were, therefore, a dangerous leaven in the community, otherwise slipping off to sleep in a body. Therefore, it was a matter of self-preservation for the autocracy to isolate the Jews and make them harmless. Do not suppose that any anti-Semitic feeling is prevalent among us. The autocrats are trying artfully to implant it by means of such people as Plehve's intimate, Krushevan, of the 'Bessarabetz.' But the effect does not go deep, thanks to the same circumstance which makes the progress of civilization difficult; the peasant cannot read, and does not in the least believe the priest. The massacres of Kishinef were directly commanded. Every man was killed by order of the Czar. No anti-Semitism exists among the people. Whatever anti-Semitism there is is sown by the government for the purpose of isolating the peasants in order that 'the urchins may grow up stupid.'"