May 23rd.
Every time I pay a fresh visit to the Duma I am struck by the originality of the appearance of its members. There is a Polish member who is dressed in light blue tights, a short Eton jacket and Hessian boots. He has curly hair, and looks exactly like the hero of the “Cavalleria Rusticana.” There is a Polish member who is dressed in a long white flannel coat reaching to his knees, adorned with an intricate pattern of dark crimson braid, and he also wears a long, soft, brown sleeveless cloak hanging from his shoulders, bordered with vermilion stripes. There are some Socialists who wear no collars, and there is, of course, every kind of head-dress you can conceive. The second, and what is to me the principal impression of the Duma, is the familiar ease with which the members speak; some of them speak well, and some of them speak badly, but they all speak as if they had spoken in Parliament all their lives, without the slightest evidence of nervousness or shyness. The sittings of the Duma are like a meeting of acquaintances in a club or a café. There is nothing formal about them. The member walks up to the tribune and sometimes has a short conversation with the President before beginning his speech. Sometimes when he is called to order he indulges in a brief explanation. The last sitting I attended they did their work in a most business-like manner and got through it fairly quickly and without many speeches. The peasants think there is too much speaking altogether. One of them said to me, “There are people here who have no right to be here.” “Who?” I asked. “Popes, for instance,” he said. “Why shouldn’t Popes be members?” I asked. “Because they get 200 roubles a year,” he answered; “what more can they want?” If this principle were carried out in England there would be no members of Parliament at all.
Nobody can possibly say the Duma is disorderly; it takes itself with profound seriousness. Only one person has made a joke so far. But there have been many dramatic moments; for instance, when the President announced that he was not to be received by the Emperor, and when for the first time, in breathless silence, one of the Under Ministers spoke from the Ministerial Bench. The beauty of the hall in which the members sit is increased by its outlook, for the windows form a semicircle behind the President’s chair and they look out on a sheet of water and trees; a kind of Watteau-Versailles landscape where fêtes galantes were once probably held. Two peasants cross-questioned me narrowly the other day about England and English Parliamentary institutions. They asked me if there was an income tax in England, what sort of education I had received, what was the state of agriculture in England, what was the rotation of the crops (to which question I gave a vaguely complicated answer), and how long the House of Commons had existed.
On Monday morning an amusing incident occurred in the Lobby; on the notice-board a telegram from the Temps was pinned, in which it was said that the demands of the Duma were unreasonable. One of the peasants strongly objected to this, and said that it might influence the peasants. It was pointed out to him that telegrams were posted in the House of Commons and in all Parliaments. He then said, “Why don’t they put up all the telegrams? Why do they choose that telegram in particular? Besides, the English House of Commons has existed for centuries; our Parliament is being born, and to do that sort of thing is like interfering with a woman when she is giving birth to a child.” If it be urged that the members of the Duma have spoken a great deal, I should like to remind my readers that they have got through a great deal of business in a short time. They passed the rules with regard to closure and the Address comparatively quickly, and they have now their Agrarian Bill ready for discussion.
Last Sunday I spent the afternoon at Peterhof, a suburb of St. Petersburg, where the Emperor lives. There in the park amidst the trees the splashing waterfalls and the tall fountains, “les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres,” the lilac bushes, and the song of many nightingales, the middle classes were enjoying their Sunday afternoon and the music of a band. In this beautiful and not inappropriate setting suddenly the Empress of Russia passed in an open carriage, without any escort, looking as beautiful as a flower. I could not help thinking of Marie Antoinette at the Trianon, and I wondered whether three thousand swords would leap from their scabbards on her behalf.
St. Petersburg, May 24th.
One is repeatedly told by the best authorities that it is a mistake to compare what is taking place now in Russia with the French Revolution. It is, I know, misleading, and yet I cannot help thinking that, besides the fact of all revolutions having more or less the same fundamental causes, and proceeding, broadly speaking, on the same lines, there are certain superficial resemblances of detail between the two movements which are startling. What occurred in Russia last year was, properly speaking, a prologue; it was not comparable to the events of 1789, because we had not in Russia yet reached the period which corresponds to 1789. But now with the opening of the Duma it seems to me that we are reaching this point. This evening a Russian friend of mine asked me to glance at a short manual of French history which was lying on the table and to notice how striking the resemblance is between the account of the opening of the States-General and that of the Duma.
Before discussing this point there is a greater and more important resemblance to be noted, namely, that the Constitutional Democrats or the Cadets are not only playing the part, but are in their essence the same thing, as the Tiers-État in France. The Constitutional Democrats represent the whole of the educated middle class of Russia, and they are championing the rights and the wishes of the peasants. It is, therefore, a case, if ever, of saying like Sieyès: “Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État?—La nation. Qu’est-il?—Rien. Que doit-il être?—Tout.” Up to now the Tiers-État in Russia has been politically nothing. In the future it will probably be everything.
What do the Cadets want? I find the answer in my French history. “Établir l’unité politique et sociale de la nation par l’égalité devant la loi et la garantir par la liberté, c’était là, en deux mots, tout l’esprit de 1789.” That is also the whole spirit of 1906. People both in Russia as well as abroad minimise the pretensions of the Cadets because they are unaware of the existence, or rather of the nature, of the middle class in Russia. This is not surprising, because the middle class, besides having been denied all access to political life, has produced no startlingly great men in the branches of production which obtain popular fame. The great Russian writers and artists came nearly all from the aristocracy or from the peasantry. Men who have contributed much to modern science have abounded in the middle class, but the fame of such men is rarely popular. But now the work which the Cadets have so far accomplished politically is a work which needs not a few great men, but a compact mass of men who are agreed.
To go back to the French Revolution. It is striking to read sentences such as the following, describing the opening of the States-General: “Dès le 2 mai tous les députés furent présentés au roi; le 4, ils se rendirent en procession solennelle à l’église de Saint-Louis.... L’étiquette avait assigné aux députés du Tiers un modeste vêtement noir; ils furent couverts d’applaudissements. Les habits brodés de la noblesse passèrent au milieu du silence.... Le 5 mai s’ouvrirent les États.... Le roi était sur son trône, entouré des princes du sang; sur les degrés se tenait la cour. Le reste de la salle était occupé par les trois ordres ... le roi exprima, en quelques nobles paroles, ses vœux pour le bonheur de la nation, convia les États à travailler, en les engageant à remédier aux maux, sans se laisser entraîner au désir exagéré d’innovations, qui s’est emparé des esprits.” The powers which were conferred upon the States-General were similar, both as regards their extent and their limitations, to those of the Duma, and the spirit in which they were given then was just the same as that in which they have been given here. The members of the States-General cheered the King. And the silence with which the members of the Duma met the Emperor recalls the phrase of the Bishop of Chartres to the National Assembly, after the taking of the Bastille, “Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.” Unhappily the lesson is not generally learnt.