There yet remained a better means for strengthening the designs of the secret societies—this was to enter into relations with the Polish secret societies. Negotiations with the representative of the Polish patriotic alliance, Prince Tablonovski, were personally carried on by Pestel; but the details of this agreement are even now little known. Such was the dangerous and fruitless path into which many of the best representatives of thinking Russia were drawn: each year the crisis became more and more inevitable; and meanwhile the government became more decisively confirmed than ever in the pathway of reaction, thus indirectly giving greater power to secret revolutionary propaganda.
Closing of the Masonic Lodges
In August, 1822, a rescript was issued in the name of the minister of the interior, ordering the closing of all secret societies, under whatever name they might exist—masonic lodges or others—and forbidding their establishment in future. All members of these societies had to pledge themselves not to form any masonic lodges or other secret societies in the future; and a declaration was required from all ranks of the army and from the civil service that neither soldiers nor officials should thenceforth belong to such organisations: “If any person refuses to make such a pledge, he shall no longer remain in the service.”
All the measures drawn up by the rescript of August were, however, put into effect only with regard to the closing of the masonic lodges. As to the secret societies, which had undoubtedly a political aim, they continued to develop in all tranquillity. “At that time,” writes a contemporary, “there was a triple police in St. Petersburg—namely, the governor general, the minister of the interior, and Count Araktcheiev; but that it did not bring forth any advantages is proved by the events of 1825.”
According to the remarks of the same contemporary, card-playing had then spread in St. Petersburg society to an incredible degree. “Certainly in ninety houses out of a hundred they play,” writes Danilevski, “and although the circle of my acquaintances has become very vast this year and I go out a great deal yet I never see people doing anything else than playing at cards. If one is invited to an evening party, it means cards, and I have hardly made my bow to the hostess before I find the cards in my hand. When one is asked out to dinner one sits down to whist before the meal is served. Card-playing occupies not only elderly people but young ones also. I think this has arisen partly from a defect in education which is in general observable in Russia—for when education finishes at seventeen, what store of ideas and knowledge, what passion for science can one expect to find in adults? This condition is further exaggerated by the fact that all political matters are banished from conversation: the government is suspicious, and spies are not unfrequently to be met with in society. The greater part of them are, however, known; some belong to old noble families, are decorated with orders, and wear chamberlains’ keys.”
The closing of the masonic lodges called forth the following deliberations from Danilevski: “As far as I know, masonry had no other object in Russia beyond benevolence and providing an agreeable way of passing time. The closing of the lodges deprived us of the only places where we assembled for anything else besides card-playing, for we have no society where cards do not constitute the principal or rather the only occupation. We are as yet so unversed in political matters that it is absurd for the government to fear that such subjects would furnish conversation at the masonic lodges. With us, notable persons have rarely been masons; at least none such have visited our lodge, which is usually full of people of the middle class, officers, civil-service employees, artists, a very few merchants, and a large percentage of literary men.”[b]
These of course are the words of a partisan and must be taken with a certain allowance. The same remark applies with full force to the testimony of the historian Turgeniev, whose association with the secret unions has already been mentioned, and whose comments on the subject, despite a certain bias, are full of interest. Turgeniev is speaking of the period just following that in which the government had taken action against the societies.[a]
Turgeniev’s Comment on the Secret Societies.
The government contributed much [he declares] by its suspicions and precautions, to strengthen the reports which were afloat concerning secret societies: to them all was suspect. A species of insurrection having broken out in a regiment of the guards, of which the emperor was head, the government thought they could trace it to the action of some society, whereas it was caused by the brutal and ridiculous conduct of a new colonel they had placed in command. That such was their conviction there was no doubt, because two of the officers of the insurrectionary companies were traduced before a council of war, and condemned, not only without any proof but with no specification of the crime or fault with which they were charged, whereas in reality neither the one nor the other officer had ever belonged to a secret society.
A rash Englishman took it into his head to go round the world and publish an account of his travels. He arrived at St. Petersburg, went over Russia, and thence to Siberia. There he was taken for a spy, and soon an order came from St. Petersburg to conduct him to the frontier. Even pious Protestant missionaries, propagating with their accustomed zeal Christian morals among savage peoples, were suspected by the government. They were hindered in the holy warfare they desired to carry on in the farthest and least civilised regions of the empire. The powers only saw in them emissaries of European liberalism.