In terrible physical sufferings, in full recognition of the weakness of humanity, asking for the comfort afforded by religion, died the greatest of historical workers. We have already spoken in the proper place of how the work of Peter was prepared by all preceding history; how it necessarily proceeded from the same; how it was required by the people, who by means of a tremendous revolution in their existence and customs, by means of an extraordinary effort of strength, had to be brought forth from their hopeless condition into a new way, a new life. But this in nowise diminishes the greatness of the man who in the accomplishment of so difficult an exploit lent his mighty hand to a great nation, and by the extraordinary power of his will strained all her forces and gave direction to the movement.
SOLOVIEV’S ESTIMATE OF PETER’S WORK
Revolutionary epochs constitute a critical time for the life of nations, and such was the epoch of the reformation of Peter. Complaints of the great burdens were to be heard from all sides—and not without cause. The Russian knew no rest from recruiting: recruiting for painful, ceaseless military service in the infantry, and for the newly created naval service; recruiting of workmen for new and difficult labour in distant and unattractive places; recruiting of scholars for the schools, and of young men to be sent to study abroad. For the army and for the fleet, for the great works and undertakings, for the schools and the hospitals, for the maintenance of diplomats and diplomatic bribery, money was necessary. But there was no money in the impoverished state, and heavy taxes in money and in kind had to be levied upon all; in necessary cases they were deducted from the salaries; well-to-do people were ruined by the construction of houses in St. Petersburg; everything that could be taken was taken, or farmed out; the poor people had one object of luxury—oak coffins; but these were confiscated by the fiscus and sold at a high price; raskolniki (dissenters) had to pay double taxes; the bearded had to pay for the privilege of wearing their beards. Orders upon orders were issued; men were to seek for ores and minerals, and for dye-stuffs; they were to tend their sheep not as they had previously done, to dress the skins differently, to build boats in a new way, to dare weave no narrow pieces of cloth, to take their goods to the west instead of to the north.[46] New government centres were created, new courts established, the people did not know where to turn, the members of these new institutions and courts did not know how to go about their novel duties, and official papers were sent from one place to another.
A Bashkirian Woman
The standing army pressed heavily on the unarmed population. People tried to escape from the hard service and hide themselves, but all were not successful, and cruel punishments threatened the disobedient. Illiterate nobles were forbidden to marry. Meanwhile beneath the new French frocks and wigs there was the old coarseness of manners; the same want of respect for human dignity in oneself and in others; the same hideous drunkenness and noisy brawling with which every festivity was terminated. Woman was brought into the society of men, but she was not surrounded with the respect due to her sex and obligations; pregnant women were made to drink to excess. The members of the highest institutions quarrelled and abused each other in the coarsest manner; bribery was as bad as before; the weak were subjected to every violence from the strong, and, as formerly, the noble was permitted to oppress the moujik (peasant), the well-born the base-born.
But this is only one side: there is another. The people were passing through a hard school—the stern teacher was not sparing in punishments for the idle and those who violated the regulations; but the matter was not limited to threats and punishments alone. The people were really learning, learning not only figures and geometry, not only in Russian and foreign schools; the people were learning the duties of citizens, the work of citizens. At the emission of every important regulation, at the inauguration of every great reform, the lawgiver explains why he acts thus, why the new is better than the old. The Russians then received such instruction for the first time; what now seems to us so simple and within the reach of all was first learned by these people from the edicts and manifestoes of Peter the Great.
A Peasant of Little Russia
For the first time the mind of the Russian was awakened, his attention directed to the great questions of political and social organisation; whether he turned sympathisingly or unsympathisingly to the words and deeds of the czar was a matter of indifference—he was obliged to think over these words and deeds, and they were continually there to arouse him. That which might have ruined a decrepit society, a people incapable of development—the shocks of the epoch of reforms, the utter restlessness—developed the forces of a vigorous young nation which had been long asleep and required a violent shock to awaken it. And there was much to be learned. Above was the governing senate, the synod; everywhere was collegiate organisation, the advantages of which were set forth in the church statutes. Everywhere the principle of election was introduced. The trade guilds were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the local governors and given their own independent administration. Peter’s whole system of government was directed against the chief evils from which ancient Russia had suffered: the immaturity of forces, the want of a public spirit, the lack of independence of action, the absence of initiative capacity. The former council of the czar (douma) had suffered from all the deficiencies enumerated. Peter established the senate, to which fidelity had to be sworn and the ukases of which had to be obeyed as the ukases of the czar himself. Peter was not jealous of the power created by him: he did not limit it; but on the contrary he continually and without ceremony required that it should profit by its importance, that it should really be a governing body. Peter’s reproaches and rebukes to the senate were directed against its slowness, its languor, its want of management, and its inability to carry its decrees into immediate effect. The Russian of former times who had received a commission from the government went about in leading strings. He was not trusted, his smallest movement was feared, he was swathed like a child in long detailed instructions, and upon every fresh occasion that presented itself and was not defined in the instructions, the grown up child required teaching. This habit of asking for orders greatly angered Peter: “Act according to your own consideration, how can I tell you from such a distance!” he wrote to those who asked him for instructions. He employed the collegiate system—whether he had met with it in the west or whether it had been advised by Leibnitz is a matter of indifference; he employed it everywhere as the most powerful method of training the Russian people to unrestrained public activity. Instead of separate individuals, institutions came to the front, and over all rose the state, the real significance of which the people of Russia now learned for the first time when they had to take the oath.