“Miliukoff himself may not have a copy,” they told me; “it is a forbidden book in Russia.” Next morning they told me that they had both read it through during the night while we slept—and returned it with profuse gratitude.
Professor Vassiliev conducted me over his estate and afforded me opportunities for conversations with many peasants, and everywhere I found my earlier impressions confirmed. The peasants had advanced by leaps and bounds within a few months, and in the words of the professor: “Kazan was then ripe for insurrection, if only the firebrand were applied, with the assurance that neighboring provinces were rising also.”
Professor Vassiliev was a staunch liberal, a Constitutional Democratic deputy to the first Duma, and a hereditary landowner. Yet he looked upon the expropriation of land in Russia, not only as desirable, but as presently inevitable. “At the same time I am a monarchist,” he added; “but, though a monarchist, I must say that the blunders of the present monarch have damaged him forever with the peasants. The war shook their belief in him. His treatment of the Duma added to their skepticism, and the sending of the Duma away was the final blow.”
“As for the expropriation of land in Russia,” continued the professor, “I believe in the principle, and I shall be glad when my lands are taken—with the rest. I would leave to the proprietors only their house gardens.” When the man who has much to lose is willing to lose all for the good of his neighbors, then, indeed, is the spirit of true citizenship met in its purest form.
These visits to Prince Ouktomsky and Professor Vassiliev, and the conversations with their peasants, went to confirm the impressions gathered in Kostroma, and Nijni-Novgorod. The peasantry no longer cherished dreams of autocratic infallibility. The idea of revolution had gained strong headway, especially since the Duma. An idea cannot be held back by Cossacks, by rapid-firing guns, by bayonets, or by the legalized lawlessness which is screened by so-called martial law. The government, through its fatuous policy of oppression and reaction, had now awakened the sympathies of practically all of its people to revolution. Active revolutionists, in any country, are in a seeming minority up to the crisis. When the wave of success attains formidability, the ranks of the then new régime suddenly become filled and solidified. The present government, partly owing to the financial support it receives from the peoples of England, France, Austria, and other countries, still maintains a show of strength. But examination reveals the obvious condition—strength merely to demoralize the ranks of the revolution, while lacking the strength to rule or to administer.
The next province I went to was Simbirsk, the next province below Kazan on the Volga. “Mountain of the Winds” was the name given to Simbirsk city by early Volga-side dwellers. “Plain of the Whirlwind” might Simbirsk government well be called at the time I passed through. Conservatism would scarcely be expected among the constituents of Aladin—that daring, outspoken labor-group leader in the Duma. “Revolutionary”—he was called by people who heard his impassioned speeches. But the Honorable Maurice Baring, after listening to him many times, recalled the words spoken by Mirabeau of Robespierre: “That young man will go far. He believes every word he says.” Of Aladin’s beliefs I knew nothing at the time, for this was all before his visit to America, where (together with Tchaykovsky the “Father of the Russian Revolution”) he did more, perhaps, than any Russian has ever done to arouse the American people to Russia’s wrongs. Of the man I knew little; only this:—the peasants trusted him, and in as large degree as the Constitutional Democrats had lost the confidence of the peasants, Aladin and the “toil group” had won it. This was not because of Aladin, however, but because the peasants were now unequivocally and avowedly revolutionary, and they trusted the man who dared shake his fist at ministers, hiss them, and shout loudly for their demission, and who had publicly referred to the peasants as men, not as “children”; whose championship of the men in sheepskin had been neither apologetic nor patronizing.
Simbirsk is an illiterate government. Five sixths of the population cannot read or write. It is hard, indeed, for an English mind to conceive the status of education in a country of pretended standing, as we find it in Simbirsk. The government (Zemstvo) school appropriation averages ten copecks (five cents) per head annually. Only nine tenths of one per cent. of the men, and five tenths of one per cent. of the women receive more than a primary-school education, while only four in a thousand ever finish the “gymnasia” (high school), and four in ten thousand reach the universities. In spite of these tremendous handicaps it is patent to the most careless traveler through these parts, that in a simple, direct way the people know what they want.
“We want a Duma that we can trust, and that shall be the highest power over us,” said a middle-aged peasant to me, as he paused in his work in the fields.
“Were you satisfied with the Duma you had?”
“The Duma was all right, but the ministers were bad and it was wrong of the Emperor to send it away.”