The Slav Nations

by Srdan Tucic

Russian Slavdom—The Mir—Stress and Famine—The Duma—Russian Literature—Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoievski—Realistic Ideals—The Russian Soul.

The eminent Russian publicist Menschikoff, in one of his works on Russian nationalism, writes the following: “In a world-wide sense only we Russians are Slavs and—unfortunately—so far no one else. The other Slav nationalities are so dismembered, so stupidly and artificially kept apart and hostile among themselves, that they scarcely count either politically or otherwise. The majority of the Outer Slav nations are still under the German, Hungarian or Turkish yoke, and at present they are quite unable to shake off this yoke. There are many reasons for the decline of the Western Slavs, but the principal one is the negative type of their character and the consequent tendency to dissensions and mutual jealousies.... Even as regards national culture, Russia—in spite of all her internal miseries—takes the lead among the Slav nations. In every respect she has the right to say: ‘I am Slavdom.[38]’”

The somewhat bitter tone adopted towards the other Slav nations in this dictum might easily be modified by an appeal to evidence, but, for all that, Menschikoff’s remarks are correct in essentials. The truth of his assertion as to the world-wide importance of the Russians and the relative unimportance of the other Slavs to-day must be freely admitted. And that is why a special interest attaches to the question of the Russian people. It is too early in the day to judge of the full significance of the Russians as a factor in the world’s development, for they have scarcely yet come into their own. The birth of the Russian people has been in progress for the last century. First the head appeared—Russian literature, and then slowly, deliberately, the giant body—the Russian people, who are gradually attaining to political and national self-consciousness.

Till 1861 the Russian people led an embryonic existence within the womb of Holy Mother Russia. A nobility of mixed Mongolian, German, British, French and even Negroid (Pushkin) stock ate, breathed and thought for the people. Most foreigners imagine that the Russian people were “emancipated” in 1861. But this emancipation was only partial, and more apparent than real; for though serfdom had been abolished, there still remained the heavier yoke of the “Mir”—a conservative, iron-bound institution, which has greatly hindered the development of the Russian people by restricting the liberty of the individual. Strictly speaking, the “Mir” was the village or parish, but in an economic sense it was the association of several families under one head. The Slavophil writers, Homiakoff and the brothers Kirieyevaki, with their followers down to Pobyedonszeff saw in the “Mir” a guarantee, not only for the welfare of Russia, but for all the world. They believed the “Mir” to be that economic communism and moral brotherhood which Western Social Democracy is vainly trying to discover in other ways. They held that the “Mir” was destined to assure the future of the Russian people and to afford it the means of solving all the social problems of the world in accordance with the laws of justice and of love. Russian literature is full of poems, treatises, and religious contemplations in praise of it. Even the greatest Russian minds, such as Dostoievski himself, were smitten with this idea. No “Western” doctrine was potent to disabuse the Russians of their fallacy. Nature herself had to come to the rescue, destroy the chimera and lead Russia back to the high road of common sense and progress.

It happened very simply. The periodic famine arose in Russia, and the vast Empire, the “granary of the world,” had no bread for millions of her honest, hard-working children. They could not understand how there could be a famine in a fertile, sparsely populated country, whilst the teeming populations of the Western countries had enough to eat. The starving Russian people argued that the famine was caused by an insufficiency of land, and that they had been cozened in 1861 when the land was divided up between the nobles and the peasants. The result was a growing ill-feeling against the ruling classes, to whom the peasantry still had to pay “redemption-dues” either in money or in kind. In accordance with ancient custom the “Mir” periodically divided the land among its members. Obviously, in many communities there was not enough land for each member. Result—Famine. The “Mir” was self-governing, and had the same powers over its members as formerly the lord of the soil. It exercised a paternal jurisdiction, punished with blows, or with banishment to Siberia, divided the land, collected taxes, issued travellers’ passes, and often made itself arbitrarily unpleasant. During the ’nineties it became increasingly evident that the “Mir” constituted a moral and material danger to the people. Poor harvests followed by famine were the bane of the people from 1871 till 1907 and even as lately as 1911.

Space forbids me to enter into the agrarian crises—questions of reform, experiments and reactions, which loom so large in the pages of modern Russian history. Suffice it to say that all this led up to the revolution in 1905, and that in consequence of this revolution the Government decided upon a step it might equally well have taken in 1861. In 1906 the Government decided partially to dissolve the “Mirs,” and by establishing freehold farm properties owned by individuals it created the yeoman farmer class with full civic rights. This reform which was only fully carried through in 1911, marks the beginning of a new political era for the Russian man of the people. It is still too soon to feel the consequences of this truly great reform to their full extent. The Russian peasant has scarcely got used to his new position of individual freedom, and has not yet learnt to give effect to his political and social will. There can be no question of a constitution so long as the “Muzhik” has not attained to the full stature of a citizen and agriculturist. In Russia we speak of a “first Duma,” a “second Duma,” a “third Duma,” whereas no one in the rest of Europe would speak of a “first,” “second,” or “third” Parliament, but simply of “the Parliament.” These “first,” “second,” “third” and now “fourth” Dumas are simply so many editions of one and the same Duma, with each edition more rigorously pruned by the Government, till the merest shadow is all that remains. At this moment the entire social structure of Russia is analogous to this Duma-system. The Russian world of intellect is no more entitled to represent the Russian people, than the fourth Duma is to represent the first. The Russian intellectuals may speak in the name of the people, but their word is really no better than a third-hand account. Even when there is no attempt at falsification, they always stand at a certain distance from the people. Whatever the great Russian realists have written concerning their own people is merely intuitive conjecture from a distance. A poet projects his own world into the people. The psychology of the great Russian writers of fiction is a tendency, an illusion based not on exact, but on intuitive knowledge of the people. Russian realism borders on the visionary, and on mysticism. Europe has hitherto failed to discern the actual foundations of this poetry in its relation to Russian life, and has simply allowed herself to be fascinated by the “keen psychology” of the writers. The result has been a false impression. The facts are really different—instead of real truthfulness we find in the Russian writer a realistic tendency, a real ethical resentment; thence the increased “keenness” of his psychology, the critical touch in his imagination, which gives such a striking effect of verisimilitude. European critics have never detected the seam in the fabric of the Russian novel; they have accepted the masterpiece as the outcome of a single creative inspiration. Even though Russian realism comes nearer to life than that of any other literature, still it is more art than life.

Proof of this is to be found in Gogol’s private correspondence. He frequently complained that nobody would send him “copy” from Russian life. He begs in vain for hints, anecdotes and descriptions; he has to “invent” his stories, and is ashamed of having to “deceive” his reader. In his immortal comedy, “The Revising Inspector,” Gogol satirizes his own “untruthfulness,” and in Hlestakoff, the great adventurer, who is mistaken by every one for the real revising inspector, he ridicules himself. For the sake of the people Gogol consents to play the “revising inspector!” But Gogol’s “untruthfulness” is simply creative genius. An eminent Tolstoi student, Osvianiko-Kulikovsky, has plainly asserted that even Tolstoi was not of the soul of the people but of the soul of the gentry. Tolstoi is a “barin” (landlord) and he thinks and feels only as a barin. Turgenyeff was blamed even during his lifetime for writing about Russia without knowing it; for he practically never lived in Russia.

The inmost soul of the Russian people has, however, found an excellent representative in Dostoievski. “Do not judge the Russian people”—pleads Dostoievski—“by the atrocious deeds of which they have often been guilty, but by those great and holy matters to which they aspire in their depravity. And not all the people are depraved. There are saints among them, who shed their light upon all, to show them the way.”

Dostoievski himself was such a light and such a saint. His works reflect the character of the Russian clearly and faithfully as it is:

“In the Russian man of the people one must discriminate between his innate beauty and the product of barbarism. Owing to the events of the whole history of Russia, the Russian has been at the mercy of every depraving influence, he has been so abused and tortured that it is a miracle that he has preserved the human countenance, let alone his beauty. But he has actually retained his beauty ... and in all the Russian people there is not one swindler or scoundrel who does not know that he is mean and vile.”