A year in Russia

by Maurice Baring

From having had much conversation with people who defend the revolutionaries with what seems to me nonsensical exaggeration, I feel a wave of reaction coming over me. I can never resist this subtle spirit of contradiction when I am with people who belong to a party, and hear them express party feeling in unmeasured and exaggerated terms. If I am with violent Conservatives a subtle spirit of Liberalism rises within me, and vice versâ. Besides this, I hate political parties.

CHAPTER VIII
THE “INTELLIGENZIA”

January 6th.

I arrived at St. Petersburg this morning. I have been trying to formulate my reactionary feelings. I will put them on paper; although I know I shall only have to spend a very short time with real reactionaries to be driven straight back into the opposite camp. But lately at Moscow I have had a heavy dose of anti-governmental unfairness. Too heavy for the present, although perhaps I shall one day in the future think that it was not unfair at all.

I asked a man the other day, who is employed in the “Zemstva,” what party he belonged to. “I belong to the party of common sense,” he answered; “unfortunately it does not exist.” This exactly sums up, I think, the impression that any impartial observer must necessarily derive from the present situation in Russia. Common sense has gone. Hysteria and undisciplined rant have taken its place.

First, the revolutionaries. There are two kinds of revolutionaries: the active, who throw bombs at policemen and soldiers, who are ready to dare anything and sacrifice themselves; and the passive revolutionaries who sit at home and sympathise and talk a great deal. What is their point of view?

1. They consider that all classes who are not definitely enrolled under their flag are violent reactionaries and are fit to be classed with the “Black Hundred.” The Duma that is to be, they say, will be a “Black Hundred” Duma; the present Government is purely and simply a reactionary Government composed of bureaucrats, and no good can come to Russia until the ulcer is pierced to the core, and all bureaucrats, together with the Emperor and all his family, and all his Court, are removed. The objection that the present Government is merely temporary until the Duma assembles, they meet with the counterargument that the Government, with the franchise law as it is, is capable of influencing the elections to any extent, and that the result will be a reactionary Duma.

2. The second question is—What do they want? They say they want a Constituent Assembly and universal suffrage, and no doubt they do want this. But whether they would be satisfied with this if they were given it is another question. Personally, my experience has so far led me to believe that they would in no wise be satisfied with this; I would lay odds to this effect. I may, no doubt, be mistaken. I believe what they really want is for Russia to become a federation of autonomous States represented by a Republic. Some of the more moderate are either opposed to this or refrain from stating any opinion in favour of it, owing to the fact that they know that the Army and ninety million peasants are ready to kill any one within reach if the “Gasudar” is to be tampered with.

They fear that if the question of a Republic is brought forward there will be a general massacre of the educated bourgeoisie, the so-called “Intelligenzia.” Nothing is more probable. Some people say that nothing will really change the attitude of these people: no more than any amount of measures which one of Lord Salisbury’s Cabinets might have adopted would have changed the opinion of the supporters of Mr. Gladstone or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, or vice versâ. That it is utterly futile to expect common sense or common fairness from them. That they have their party feeling, to which they are ready to sacrifice everything, and that it is infinitely stronger and more bitter, and necessarily stronger and more bitter, than anything of which we have had experience in England during the last century.

Some people object that they understand the militant revolutionaries being in this frame of mind, but they do not understand the more intelligent passive and detached supporters of the advanced party sharing such childish views. The more intelligent and detached supporters are even more violent in their talk than the militant fighters. At present the kind of argument one hears used is like the following, which I have heard with my own ears. I have heard intelligent cultivated people say: “How wicked and cowardly of the Government to fire upon the revolutionaries, since they have guns and the revolutionaries haven’t got any.” The English mind, which, be it Liberal or Conservative, tends to common sense, revolts against such reasoning. It is rare to find in Russia an Englishman who sympathises with the revolutionaries. English common sense revolts at the hysterical impatience which demands the immediate fulfilment of measures more radical and socialist than exist in any European state, and the common British sense of fairness is violated at hearing of the wanton murder of policemen, who earn a poor living and are in no way responsible for the misdeeds of the Government, exalted as a patriotic execution worthy of Harmodius and Aristogiton.