Among the other members of the family the Grand-Duke Constantine is called the poet. His interest in art and science is said to be sincere. He has also great personal attractiveness. In sharp contrast with him stands the Grand-Duke Sergius, governor-general of Moscow, and brother-in-law and uncle of the Czar. The things commonly reported of his private life are unsuitable for repetition here, since in general I avoid giving space to scandal in a chronicle of important matters. The things worthy of publicity and important for the weal or woe of population are the opinions and abilities of princes, not their liaisons. It is difficult, however, not to speak of the passions of the Grand-Duke Sergius, since they form such a violent contrast to his former bigotry. He is unanimously pronounced an unprincipled man with a black record—a man whose pleasure consists in the sufferings of others. His influence at court is second only to that of the Grand-Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch.
I found in all Russia no trace of a dynastic sentiment. The loyalty to the House of the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, or to the House of the Hapsburgs in Austria has no counterpart in Russia. If the personal influence of the occupants of the throne may be estimated, the Czar means to the masses of the people the essence of temporal and spiritual power, to the intelligent class an element of fate. The grand-dukes are people who can aid and harm, and who are therefore persons of importance for all Russians. The bond of loyalty between dynasty and people, however, which in the West has assured the safe existence of the royal houses through all revolutionary convulsions, does not exist in Russia. On the contrary, people speak freely in private of the "Saltikov dynasty," in unmistakable allusion to the well-known first lover of the Empress Catherine II. Thus the many murders in the imperial house are received by the people without great excitement. Only the inhabitants of the Baltic provinces are faithful to the dynasty; the spirit of feudal loyalty runs in their German blood. Even there, however, it is being slowly but resolutely destroyed by the ruling anarchists.
In contemporary opinion Alexander II. and Alexander III. still live, while Nicholas I. is practically forgotten. Alexander II. is surrounded with the martyr's halo, and is thought of only as the emancipating Czar who was got out of the way before he could sign the liberty-giving bill for a constitution. Public opinion will not be dissuaded from finding the fact remarkable that the nihilists succeeded for the first time in reaching the Czar at the moment when all the privileges of the reigning oligarchy were threatened. Therefore people will not remember any traits in him except good ones, a thing not altogether consistent with the picture of him left by Kropotkin in his memoirs. Of Alexander III., on the contrary, only evil is heard, which I, however, must doubt for many reasons. For I have been told little incidents of his most private life, incidents which I cannot repeat, out of consideration for the incognito of my informant, but which show a certain knightliness and uprightness, and a truly princely kindness to the weak. Another man is answerable for the pitilessness of his fatal policy—Pobydonostzev, the Torquemada of Russia. It is, however, inevitable that history should preserve only that picture which expresses the sum total of the effect of a personality. Therefore the memory of Alexander III. is certainly overloaded with sins of omission.
XXI PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PRESS
The fine imperial library in St. Petersburg, which I was permitted through the kindness of our legation to use, possesses a specialty in a particular class of works, the collection of so-called "Russica"—i. e., everything that has been written in foreign languages about Russia. Polite attendants, speaking various languages, assist the visitor. One learns from them that it is the business of special agents abroad to report on publications which relate to Russia, and to send them in. So it happens that probably nowhere in the world is there such an accumulation of revolutionary literature as in this imperial collection. For patriotic writings are for the most part in Russian, so that they may be appreciated and quickly rewarded. The semi-official literature in foreign languages is not to be compared in quantity or importance with that which true patriots are forced to their sorrow to write in foreign languages. I looked through piles of this forbidden literature. The impression I received was desperately disheartening. There is nothing which has not been said about Russia. The severest and best-attested attacks on the régime, on persons, on conditions, stand there quietly, volume by volume, in the imperial library, and have had exactly as much effect as whip-strokes on water. The Russian political writer who wishes to war upon the present system with the weapon of reckless criticism must lose all hope in face of this library. What more can be said than has already been said by Milyukov, by Lanin, by Leroy-Beaulieu? The voice of the prophets does not penetrate to the ears of the rulers, or, if it does, it is drowned by the whispers of parasites who know how to protect their own interests, or it finds no echo in the too weak or too hardened hearts of the rulers.
I had the same sensation when, in the course of my conversations with leading persons in the service of the state, and with members of the "Intelligence," I was more and more struck with the fact that in Russia there is an unusually strong public opinion, which in its criticisms far transcends anything that can be said in foreign papers about Russian conditions, and that this criticism makes no impression whatever upon the authorities. I was, of course, interested next in the problem as to how it could be possible without newspapers—the Russian press is under the most barbarous censorship—to disseminate from St. Petersburg to Odessa with a truly uncanny rapidity, an almost monotonously uniform idea of all the events and personalities of the day. I confess I have not yet solved the riddle. It is only a hypothesis of mine to suppose that there are three or four centres for the formation of opinion in Russia, one of which is undoubtedly to be found in the ministry itself, and another, perhaps, in the Noblemen's Club, or in other clubs of the intelligent classes in Moscow, and that through the abundance of time which every Russian allows himself for recreation, every newly coined saying or opinion is spread throughout the whole realm by letters or by word of mouth. I have heard from the lips of statesmen high in office literally the same words I have heard at the table of Leo Tolstoï, in Yasnaya Polyana, or in the study of the lawyer who gave me an interview. After I had come to terms with this fact of the absolute uniformity of public opinion, a fact not altogether gratifying to the collector of information, it was no longer possible to ignore the question as to how it is possible that such a unison of wishes and opinions meets only deaf ears in the highest circles, although it has already become a historic legend that Alexander II. was forced into the war with Turkey against his will by public opinion. If public opinion at that time had so much power for evil, why does it not have power now, and power for good?
An annoying question sooner or later finds an answer—whether a correct one or not remains to be seen—no doubt because the mind does not rest until it has found something plausible wherewith to quiet itself. I finally explained the matter to myself in the following way. The husband is the last to hear of the shame that his consort brings upon him. People point at him, the servants snicker, even anonymous letters flutter on his table, and still he is unsuspecting, or, at the most, is disturbed without definitely knowing why. There is, except in the case of treachery, which is extremely rare, or the taking in the act, which is still rarer, only one possibility of enlightenment for him—namely, that a very intimate friend or a near relative shall play the part of the ruthless physician, and supply evidences which are irrefutable. An autocrat is hardly less interested in the credit of his system than a husband in the reputation of his wife. This system is apparently identical with his personality. He bears all the responsibility. He has reason for the most far-reaching suspicion of all who approach him, because he seldom sees any one who does not wish something of him. Who, then, has the courage, the credit, and the means to approach the Czar, and to tell him the truth concerning what goes on about him and is done in his name? A near friend? That would have to be a foreign monarch. It is well known how carefully kings avoid seeming to advise, especially when the excessively proud Russian dynasty is in question. What other monarch, moreover, must not consider his own interests, which cannot be identical with those of Russia? the German Emperor perhaps least of all. Unfortunately, however, the relations between William II. and Nicholas II. are none of the most intimate. Indeed, Nicholas openly shuns too frequent intercourse with Emperor William, and prefers when he is in Germany to play tennis with his brother-in-law of Hesse. There remains, then, only near relatives. They, indeed, are much in evidence, and they have the Czar entirely under their influence. They are public opinion for him; and as long as they have no interest in placing themselves on the side of the opposition, so long, according to physico-psychological laws, will the voice of the real public opinion decrease in proportion to the square of the approach to the Czar; and all anonymous or unauthorized enlightenments and memorials by patriots who willingly make themselves victims will make no more than a momentary impression. The public opinion which forced the Czar Alexander II. into the war with Turkey was the opinion of the belligerent grand-dukes; the public opinion which rules the present Czar and thereby prevents the counsels of the opposition from having a hearing is again that of the grand-dukes, who move only in the narrowest court circles and in those of the reactionary bureaucracy. The Czar knows this, but he cannot help himself. He has just now had a new experience of it, when those about him made him firmly believe that the Japanese affair was well on the way towards a peaceful settlement, while at the same time, by dilatory tactics and constant preparations, they provoked the Japanese to declare war.
There is only one possible position for an intelligent ruler who seeks to secure veracious information. That is to institute a free press and an independent parliament. To be sure, both press and parliament may be led astray, and lead astray. It is unquestionably easier to find one's way in a few reports of the highest counsellors than in the chaotic confusion of voices of unmuzzled newspaper writers and members of parliament, among whom, it cannot be denied, conscienceless demagogues find place only too quickly. But he who bears such heavy responsibility should not avoid difficulties; and there is absolutely no other means of gaining a hearing for the truth than by the free utterance of every criticism. Finally, one learns to read and to hear, and comes to distinguish between real arguments and those of demagogues. No one outside the country can form a conception of how the Russian press and the elements of parliamentary institutions are oppressed by the camorra of officials. The zemstvo of the province of Tver, which had the effrontery to entertain wishes for a constitution, was dissolved; and this is the least that happens in such cases. The persecution of the persons who are under suspicion of exerting especial influence upon their fellows—this is the evil. They are surprised by night, and in the most fortunate cases are held in prison for months during investigations. In other cases, when the search shows that the smallest bit of forbidden literature was in the hands of the suspected man, his exile to a distant province or to Siberia is a matter of course. These things, however, are unfortunately only too well known. What is not so well known is the way editors are treated who presume to wish to edit a sheet or who draw upon themselves as editors the displeasure of the police. The head censor in St. Petersburg, chief of the highest bureau of the press, is a certain Zvyerev, a former Liberal professor in the University of Moscow. Renegades are always the worst. Since Zvyerev has been censor the restrictions of the Russian press have been severer than ever. I became acquainted with the former editor-in-chief of a great paper, who sketched for me the examination he underwent before permission was granted him to edit a paper under censorship. There are, I should explain, two sorts of papers in Russia. The first are those which appear ostensibly without censorship, at their own risk, and at the slightest slip are simply suppressed. It is easy to guess how ready people are to invest in such enterprises. Those of the second sort are papers under censorship, which are submitted to the censor before they appear, and through his oversight receive a certain protection, not, to be sure, of a very far-reaching kind. This, however, is the only method by which any capital can be secured; and without capital to-day the founding of a paper is an impossibility.