“In other words,” I said, with a shudder, “I am never to recover my freedom until you have committed a hideous crime that would haunt us all our lives. I would rather die at once.”
“My poor child! you speak out of the ignorance born of residence in a free and happy country,” said Sergius sadly. “Could you but faintly realize the horror and misery that oppress the subjects of the czar, you would pray with us for the abolition of such a monstrous anomaly as a fabulously wealthy ruler at the head of a nation that is ground down to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. While incredible sums are exacted for the support of a prodigal court, each year sees a huge holocaust of the victims of starvation and oppression! Our rulers revel in costly frivolities, while famine depopulates our country by tens of thousands! No other European state can show such a perfect system of barbaric misgovernment and corrupt officialism as Russia. If any of the czar’s subjects show symptoms of originality or strivings after a better state of things, they are promptly consigned either to the state prison or to banishment, and all national reform has to be made the subject of secret plottings by a handful of men and women into whom patriotism or special provocation have instilled a greater amount of bravery than is possessed by their downtrodden and broken-spirited compatriots. The scoundrels whom despotism has put in office abuse their privileges to a brutal extent that would be tolerated nowhere else in Europe, and must come to an end even here some day. Our newspaper press is a dead letter, for it is so supervised and gagged that nothing even approaching a hint of discontent at the existing state of things is allowed to appear. A strict supervision is also exercised upon all our literature, and even that which is imported from other countries is examined so jealously that any article or paragraph which can be construed into disapproval of Russian politics is promptly detected and blocked out. Police spies intrude in our innermost sanctums, and true domestic privacy is practically unknown among us. Nor is this all. Physical oppression has been the heritage of us Russians for ages, and the slightest excuse is good enough to justify the confiscation of our property and the deprivation of our liberty. Liberty! why, even liberty of conscience is not allowed us, and we are asked to believe that God has gifted our cursed tyrants with the knowledge of the only true way in which to worship him. Whether it be Stundist or Jew, it is all the same. The Orthodox priests, who insult Christ by calling themselves Christians, are ever ready to instigate an ignorant mob into deeds of violence which are a disgrace to humanity. Dare to differ from them in creed, and you find yourself singled out for additional outrage. Your house will be wrecked, your home destroyed; your work taken from you, and all manner of vile insult heaped upon you. If you have wives and daughters, God might help them, but you can’t, and the priest won’t raise voice or finger to save them from the atrocities of the mob, which must be allowed to reward itself somehow for its readiness to support the Orthodox Church.”
“But surely the government would not refuse to punish those guilty of such shameful deeds?”
“My dear child, the government and the Church will never fight each other, and the only reward which a complaint against the latter would bring forth would be the ruin of the man who ventured to make the complaint.”
“But the czar. He is so powerful that a word from him would put an end to many of these evils. Surely if he knew—”
“The czar! He must know. He has been appealed to too often to be able to plead ignorance. But if he, who is nominally at the head of so huge a nation as ours, and who receives imperial emoluments for doing his duty to that nation, will not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the needs of the subjects whom he is paid to govern and protect, then it is high time that he be made to give place to some one who will be honest enough to do the work for which he is paid. We want peace and prosperity at home, while our rulers neglect us in order to annex other provinces and enlarge an empire that is already too unwieldy.”
“Yet if this emperor is removed by violence, he will be succeeded by his son, who will probably govern just as he is doing, so that his murder would only prove a fruitless crime.”
“Not so. If his violent death does not frighten his successor into more humane methods of government, he will be removed in his turn. And so it will go on, until the rights of an oppressed people win the recognition that is demanded. You feel horrified at the idea of one man being turned over to avenging justice. How can you put his life in the scale against the lives and souls of the thousands who are the daily victims of governmental oppression and official cruelty? ‘Vox Populi, vox Dei’ is our watchword, and God and the People shall not always lift up their voice in vain!”
Oh, how noble my husband looked as he thus eloquently vindicated the right of the people to insist upon justice! And how strange it was that I, who had come to Russia fully resolved upon converting my husband to my own peaceable ways of thinking, should end by sharing his enthusiasm and by believing as he did. Yet so it was, and in defiance of possible subsequent conscience pricks, I began to look upon my husband’s contemplated act as that of a brave, self-sacrificing hero, rather than as the assassination against which my soul had revolted. Since that eventful night a reaction has set in, and I often thank God that, after all, no bloodshed stains my husband’s hands.
“You will feel your isolation very much, I am afraid,” said Sergius, after we had, by tacit consent, tabooed further conversation anent the czar.