A year in Russia

by Maurice Baring

However, in spite of this there came the incidents of the mutiny on board the Kniaz Potemkin and at Kronstadt and Libau. This was followed by the concession of the law giving the Duma on August 6th, which was accompanied by a law forbidding public meetings. A fourth dam had been made. But the current only increased in strength. The Agrarian movement began. The Labour movement increased. Meetings took place everywhere till the dam burst, owing to the fact that the whole of Russia went on strike in October, 1905.

Then the Manifesto of the 17th of October was given—a Manifesto granting freedom of meeting and of speech, but no laws. It was followed by the declaration of martial law in Poland. This measure was in its turn succeeded by the St. Petersburg strike, the Sevastopol mutiny, and a violent agrarian agitation in the province of Saratov, which spread all over the “black soil” country in Russia. Repressive measures followed. The Zemstvo leaders then addressed themselves to Count Witte, and asked for a cessation of repressive measures, the control of irresponsible bureaucrats in the provinces, and the right of universal suffrage. This was refused. The postal officials, who had formed a union, were arrested; there ensued postal strikes in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Thereupon a law was promulgated—this was the fifth dam—by which each provincial governor could declare his government to be outside the law. This was followed by the armed rising in Moscow, and after this a sixth dam was made by the adoption of repressive measures of arrest all over Russia.

Now, such questions as whether the revolutionary party was right or wrong; whether they were too much in a hurry, and too impulsive and violent in their methods; whether postal officials and Government servants are justified in striking, &c., are altogether beside the mark. The fact is that they have six times been successful in bursting the barrier which has been placed to oppose them. And now once again people are saying that because the movement has been temporarily checked—because a dam has been made—the movement is over; that the stream will not be able to continue its course. This is where I take leave to differ from those who have from the first predicted the ultimate collapse of the revolutionary movement. I differed then—in January, 1905—and I continue to differ now. I am aware that I am laying myself open to the charge of prophesying. “When you keep a diary,” said a shrewd observer of a past generation, “don’t write down public events which you can find in any record, but put down what you think will happen, and then you will be astonished to see how wrong you have been.”

St. Petersburg, February 1st.

I have been amusing myself by putting down some current ideas—those of some people I have met here and some of my own, in the form of a dialogue. The people represented are not real people. They are scarcely even types, but mere mouthpieces of current ideas. I have not tried to describe a conversation such as one now hears in Russia, but I have attempted to put in the form of dialogue certain ideas I have heard expressed by my friends and certain opinions which have occurred to myself during such intercourse.

“There are three parties I could belong to,” said the small landlord; “the alliance of October 17th, the alliance of Right and Order, and the Constitutional Democratic Party. I would be willing to support any one of these three, in the hope that they would lead directly or indirectly to the disappearance of the present dynasty and to the establishment of a real autocracy.”

The student laughed. “The Constitutional Democrats will not lead you to an autocracy of any kind,” he said.

“I am not so sure,” said the landlord. “Napoleon was the child of the Revolution, and so was Cromwell. I support the Radicals in the same way in which I would have supported the Puritans to get rid of Charles I., and make way for Cromwell.”

“And Charles II.?” asked the professor, who had just returned from a prolonged stay in England.

“Precisely, and Charles II.,” said the landlord. “The Charles the Firsts of history are invincibly ignorant, whereas the Charles the Seconds have learned the lesson and make ideal monarchs. One cannot always be governed by men of genius, and in the intervening period, when the genius is absent, I prefer to be governed by a man of the world, such as Charles II. or Louis XVIII., rather than by demagogues and idealists.”