What a calumny! What are the tenets of Panslavism? Religion, autocracy, and nationality. These three motives, according to us, are not only united but indissoluble. They form the very essence of our creed, of our life. In fact we are the opposite pole to the Nihilists, who hate every idea of God, who detest autocracy and despise nationality! The hostility between these two lies in their nature. There can be no compromise between them. The Russian people abhor the Nihilists, who are perfectly aware of that feeling.
I am told that some years ago a judge offered a Nihilist the alternative of being left to Lynch Law, upon which the prisoner fell on his knees and implored to be punished by the existing Russian laws. All the Russians who deserve that name, who are devoted to their Church and their country, are particularly devoted to the present Emperor. They trust, they love him; they appreciate his noble and generous qualities, his extreme kindness, and his self-sacrifice. Anything done to injure him injures the whole of Russia. It needs, in truth, no effort on the part of the Panslavists to be devoted to Nicholas II. I have seen it stated that the peasants, disappointed with not receiving a new distribution of land at the last coronation, form a fertile ground for Nihilism. This is not the case. The Nihilists have long ago given up the hope of spreading their diabolical doctrines among the rural classes. If they got hold of a few peasants—thank God! very few indeed—those "Converts" of theirs have abandoned their plough and have been perverted in some public school only by a semblance of science. It is a fatal tendency, which is to be deplored and deprecated in all the public establishments in Russia as well as in foreign countries, that very young people, even children, are allowed to discuss and twaddle on politics, instead of studying their grammars and their geography! With that tendency mistakes and false doctrines are unavoidable; any mischievous teacher may easily take hold of them and turn them into flexible tools.
People are misinformed about the hardships of compulsory military service, which gives every year, even in time of peace, a contingent of about 830,000, which is much below the number required by the Army.
Russia has never shown herself anxious to fight. In fact she has had fewer wars than her neighbours. From the Crimean War in 1855 till the year 1877 she fought only one serious war with a European Power. In the course of this time France had two—in 1859 with Austria, in 1870 with Germany; Prussia two—in 1866 with Austria, in 1870 with France; Austria two—in 1859 with France, in 1866 with Germany. So there is no actual ground for pitying the Russian soldiers more than any other. Of course, every soldier risks being killed. That is not, however, the speciality of my countrymen alone. All the great European countries, even Great Britain herself has been forced to sacrifice her ideals victim to emergency.
People often talk of the difficulty of an autocratic Government in crushing revolutions. Is this really so? Are the years of '48 and '49 meaningless or forgotten? Surely not in France, not in Germany, not in Austria, or Italy! The form of government has nothing to do with plots and assassinations. The prototype of a constitutional monarch was undoubtedly Louis Philippe, who during his eighteen years' reign had to face eighteen attempts directed against his life. The Emperor Louis Napoleon had about ten; and the President of the United States, even his life is not unassailable. The assassination of Lincoln and McKinley are full of meaning.
There is an old English saying, "Set a thief to catch a thief." I would say, "Learn from an ex-Nihilist what Nihilism really means." In 1888 Mr. Leon Tikhomirov, an able author and accomplished scholar, who had been led into Nihilism, in a pamphlet entitled Why I have Ceased to be a Revolutionist, publicly recanted his former faith. This act on the part of one of its most prominent and active members spread something like dismay in the Nihilist camp. "A great misfortune has befallen us, brethren, a very great one," was the beginning of an open letter addressed by a contemporary Nihilist to his political co-religionists. "Yes, a great misfortune," he exclaims again, with Russian frankness at the conclusion of his epistle. From the Nihilistic point of view the event referred to was undoubtedly a very great loss, a most serious "misfortune."
I did not then know Mr. Tikhomirov personally, but he has since become a great friend of mine. Alter leaving the Kertch Gymnasium with the gold medal, he entered a Russian university, where he took a foolish part in one of the students' riots, and in the propaganda. Four years' prison life was the result of those follies.
The pamphlet which contains his confession is notable for its tone of extreme honesty and sincerity. In all Christian charity we are bound to sympathise with him who repents. "Do not strike a man on the ground" is a good proverb which should have a practical application. In Mr. Tikhomirov the Nihilist party had a talented, cultivated and probably sincere member, who sacrificed his material interests and prospects in life in order to be true to his convictions.
At that time his idea, unfortunately, was that the only possible evolution for Russia was—Revolution. In that direction he worked and wrote for several years. The first edition of La Russie Politique et Sociale belongs to that lamentable period of his career. But the success which attended that mistaken book has not prevented its author from retracing his steps in an opposite and more worthy direction, with the result shown in his pamphlet Why I have Ceased to be a Revolutionist. The unreserved sincerity of this publication is remarkable. To speak out one's mind needs much moral courage, especially when one knows that all who sympathise are far away, and that one is surrounded by people who are only too ready to impute the meanest and most despicable motives. Mr. Leon Tikhomirov, however, faced that risk.
The sketch of his moral convalescence is worth study. Whilst pondering over his psychological diagnosis, one involuntarily recalls Shakespeare's—