At one of the stations there was a fresh influx of people; among others, an old peasant and a young man in a blouse. The old peasant complained of the times. “Formerly we all had enough to eat; now there is not enough,” he said. “People are clever now. When I was a lad, if I did not obey my grandfather immediately, he used to box my ears; now my son is surprised because I don’t obey him. People have all become clever, and the result is we have got nothing to eat.” The young man said the Government was to blame for most things. “That’s a difficult question to be clear about. How can we be clear about it? We know nothing,” said the old peasant. “You ought to try and know, or else things will never get better,” said the young man. “I don’t want to listen to a Barin like you,” said the old peasant. “I’m not a Barin, I am a peasant, even as thou art,” said the young man. “Nonsense,” said the old peasant. “Thou liest.”
The discussion was then cut short by our arrival at St. Petersburg.
CHAPTER XVIII
ST. PETERSBURG
In October 1906 I took up my duties as correspondent to the Morning Post at St. Petersburg. I took an apartment on the ground floor of a little street running out of the Bolshaya Konioushnaya.
The situation which was created by the dissolution of the Duma was aptly summed up by a Japanese, who said that in Russia an incompetent Government was being opposed by an ineffectual revolution. Although no active revolution followed the dissolution of the Duma, a sporadic civil war spread all over the country, accompanied by anarchy, and an epidemic of political and social crime. Governors of provinces were blown up; Stolypin’s house was blown up, his daughter injured, and he himself only narrowly escaped; banks were robbed; policemen were shot; and the political crimes of the Intellectuals were imitated on a wider scale by the discontented proletariat and the criminal class.
The professional criminals reasoned thus: “If University students can rob a bank in a deserving public cause, why should not we tramps rob and kill a banker in a deserving private cause?” “Expropriation” became a fashionable sport among the criminals, and the prevalence of anarchy, licence, and robbery under arms had the effect of disgusting the man in the street with all things revolutionary; for all the disorder was rightly or wrongly put down to the revolutionaries. Had it not been for this reaction, this turn of the tide in public opinion, Stolypin would have found it impossible to carry out his drastic measures. On the other hand, the Government met the situation with martial law and drumhead court-martials; revolutionary and other crimes were answered by reprisals and summary executions; and daily the record of crime and punishment increased, and Russia seemed to be caught in a vicious circle of repression and anarchy.
The watchword of Stolypin’s policy was Order first, Reform afterwards.
He defended the nature of the steps taken to restore order by saying that when a house is on fire, in order to save what can be saved, you are obliged to hack down what cannot be saved, ruthlessly. He certainly did restore order, and he also initiated certain large measures which made for reform—his Land Bill and his Education Bill; but all the reforms that were started during his administration were curtailed by his successors; and the idea which ran through the policy of all Russian Governments like a baleful thread from 1906 to 1907, was to take back with one hand what had been given with the other.