The first to feel the weight of the governmental machine were the Jews. Rightly or wrongly, they were thought to be concerned in the peculations that disgraced the campaign of 1877 and in the plot for the murder of Alexander II. In quick succession the officials and the populace found out that outrages on the Jews would not be displeasing at headquarters. The secret once known, the rabble of several towns took the law into their own hands. In scores of places throughout the years 1881 and 1882, the mob plundered and fired their shops and houses, beat the wretched inmates, and in some cases killed them outright. At Elisabetgrad and Kiev the Jewish quarters were systematically pillaged and then given over to the flames. The fury reached its climax at the small town of Balta; the rabble pillaged 976 Jewish houses, and, not content with seizing all the wealth that came to hand, killed eight of the traders, besides wounding 211 others.
Doubtless these outrages were largely due to race-hatred as well as to spite on the part of the heedless, slovenly natives against the keen and grasping Hebrews. The same feelings have at times swept over Roumania, Austria, Germany, and France. Jew-baiting has appealed even to nominally enlightened peoples as a novel and profitable kind of sport; and few of its votaries have had the hypocritical effrontery to cloak their conduct under the plea of religious zeal. The movement has at bottom everywhere been a hunt after Jewish treasure, embittered by the hatred of the clown for the successful trader, of the individualist native for an alien, clannish, and successful community. In Russia religious motives may possibly have weighed with the Czar and the more ignorant and bigoted of the peasantry; but levelling and communistic ideas certainly accounted for the widespread plundering--witness the words often on the lips of the rioters: "We are breakfasting on the Jews; we shall dine on the landlords, and sup on the priests." In 1890 there appeared a ukase ordering the return of the Jews to those provinces and districts where they had been formerly allowed to settle--that is, chiefly in the South and West; and all foreign Jews were expelled from the Empire. It is believed that as many as 225,000 Jewish families left Russia in the sixteen months following[233].
The next onslaught was made against a body of Christian dissenters, the humble community known as Stundists. These God-fearing peasants had taken a German name because the founder of their sect had been converted at the Stunden, or hour-long services, of German Lutherans long settled in the south of Russia; they held a simple evangelical faith; their conduct was admittedly far better than that of the peasants, who held to the mass of customs and superstitions dignified by the name of the orthodox Greek creed; and their piety and zeal served to spread the evangelical faith, especially among the more emotional people of South Russia, known as Little Russians.
Up to the year 1878, Alexander II. refrained from persecuting them, possibly because he felt some sympathy with men who were fast raising themselves and their fellows above the old level of brutish ignorance. But in that year the Greek Church pressed him to take action. If he chastised them with whips, his son lashed them with scorpions. He saw that they were sapping the base of one of the three pillars that supported the imperial fabric--Orthodoxy, in the Russian sense. Orders went forth to stamp out the heretic pest. At once all the strength of the governmental machine was brought to bear on these non-resisting peasants. Imprisonment, exile, execution--such was their lot. Their communities, perhaps the happiest then to be found in rural Russia, were broken up, to be flung into remote corners of Transcaucasia or Siberia, and there doomed to the régime of the knout or the darkness of the mines[234]. According to present appearances the persecutors have succeeded. The evangelical faith seems to have been almost stamped out even in South Russia; and the Greek Church has regained its hold on the allegiance, if not on the beliefs and affections, of the masses.
To account for this fact, we must remember the immense force of tradition and custom among a simple rural folk, also that very many Russians sincerely believe that their institutions and their national creed were destined to regenerate Europe. See, they said in effect, Western Europe oscillates between papal control and free thought; its industries, with their laissez faire methods, raise the few to enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against which the forces of the West will beat in vain. Looking on the Greek Church as a necessary part of the national life, they sought to wield its powers for nationalising all the races of that motley Empire. "Russia for the Russians," cried the Slavophils. "Let us be one people, with one creed. Let us reverence the Czar as head of the Church and of the State. In this unity lies our strength." However defective the argument logically, yet in the realm of sentiment, in which the Slavs live, move, and have their being, the plea passed muster. National pride was pressed into the service of the persecutors; and all dissenters, whether Roman Catholics of Poland, Lutherans of the Baltic Provinces, or Stundists of the Ukraine, felt the remorseless grinding of the State machine, while the Greek Church exalted its horn as it had not done for a century past.
Other sides of this narrowly nationalising policy were seen in the determined repression of Polish feelings, of the Germans in the Baltic provinces, and of the Armenians of Transcaucasia. Finally, remorseless pressure was brought to bear on that interesting people, the Finns. We can here refer only to the last of these topics. The Germans in the Provinces of Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia formed the majority only among the land-holding and merchant classes; and the curbing of their semi-feudal privileges wore the look of a democratic reform.
The case was far different with the Finns. They are a non-Aryan people, and therefore differ widely from the Swedes and Russians. For centuries they formed part of the Swedish monarchy, deriving thence in large measure their literature, civilisation, and institutions. To this day the Swedish tongue is used by about one-half of their gentry and burghers. On the annexation of Finland by Alexander I., in consequence of the Franco-Russian compact framed at Tilsit in 1807, he made to their Estates a solemn promise to respect their constitution and laws. Similar engagements have been made by his successors. Despite some attempts by Nicholas I. to shelve the constitution of the Grand Duchy, local liberties remained almost intact up to a comparatively recent time. In the year 1869 the Finns gained further guarantees of their rights. Alexander II. then ratified the laws of Finland, and caused a statement of the relations between Finland and Russia to be drawn up.
In view of the recent struggle between the Czar and the Finnish people, it may be well to give a sketch of their constitution. The sovereign governs, not as Emperor of Russia, but as Grand Duke of Finland. He delegates his administrative powers to a Senate, which is presided over by a Governor-General. This important official, as a matter of fact, has always been a Russian; his powers are, or rather were[235], shared by two sections of the Finnish Senate, each composed of ten members nominated by the Grand Duke. The Senate prepares laws and ordinances which the Grand Duke then submits to the Diet. This body consists of four Orders--nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants. Since 1886 it has enjoyed to a limited extent the right of initiating laws. The Orders sit and vote separately. In most cases a resolution that is passed by three of them becomes law, when it has received the assent of the Grand Duke. But the assent of a majority in each of the four Orders is needed in the case of a proposal that affects the constitution of the Grand Duchy and the privileges of the Orders. In case a Bill is accepted by two Orders and is rejected by the other two, a deadlock is averted by each of the Orders appointing fifteen delegates; these sixty delegates, meeting without discussion, vote by ballot, and a bare majority carries the day. Measures are then referred to the Grand Duke, who, after consulting the Senate, gives or witholds his assent[236].
A very important clause of the law of 1869 declares that "Fundamental laws can be made, altered, explained, or repealed, only on the representation of the Emperor and Grand Duke, and with the consent of all the Estates." This clause sharply marked off Finland from Russia, where the power of the Czar is theoretically unlimited. New taxes may not be imposed nor old taxes altered without the consent of the Finnish Diet; but, strange to say, the customs dues are fixed by the Government (that is, by the Grand Duke and the Senate) without the co-operation of the Diet. Despite the archaic form of its representation, the Finnish constitution (an offshoot of that of Sweden) has worked extremely well; and in regard to civil freedom and religious toleration, the Finns take their place among the most progressive communities of the world. Moreover, the constitution is no recent and artificial creation; it represents customs and beliefs that are deeply ingrained in a people who, like their Magyar kinsmen, cling firmly to the old, even while they hopefully confront the facts of the present. There was every ground for hope. Between the years 1812 and 1886 the population grew from 900,000 to 2,300,000, and the revenue from less than 7,000,000 marks (a Finnish mark = about ten pence) to 40,000,000 marks.