J. G. L. Bulleid.
[From Household Words.]
YOUNG RUSSIA.
Certain social theorists have, of late years, proclaimed themselves to the puzzled public under the name and signification of "Young." Young France, Young Germany, and Young England have had their day, and having now grown older, and by consequence wiser, are comparatively mute. In accordance with what seems a natural law, it is only when a fashion is being forgotten where it originated—in the west—that is reaches Russia, which rigidly keeps a century or so behind the rest of the Continent. It is only recently, therefore, that we hear of "Young Russia."
The main principles of all these national youths are alike. They are pleasingly picturesque—simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new. Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. Young England, to wit, desires to replace things as they were in the days of the pack-horse, the thumb-screw, the monastery, the ducking-stool, the knight errant, trial by battle, and the donjon-keep. To these he wishes to apply all possible modern improvements, to adapt them to present ideas, and to present events. Though he would have no objection to his mailed knight traveling per first-class railway, he would abolish luggage-trains to encourage intestine trade and the breed of that noble animal the pack-horse. He has, indeed, done something in this monastic line; but his efforts for the dissemination of superstition, and his denunciations of a certain sort of witchcraft, have signally failed. In truth, the task he has set himself—that of re-constructing society anew out of old materials—though highly archæological, historical, and poetic, has the fatal disadvantage of being simply impossible. It is telling the people of the nineteenth century to carry their minds, habits, and sentiments back, so as to become people of the thirteenth century; it is trying to make new muslin out of mummy cloth, or razors out of rusty nails.
"Young Russia" is an equal absurdity, but from a precisely opposite cause; for, indeed, this sort of youth out of age is a series of paradoxes. The Russian of the present day is the Russian of past ages. He exists by rule—the rule of despotism—which is as old as the Medes and Persians; and which forces him into an iron mould that shapes his appearance, his mind, and his actions to one pattern, from one generation to another Hence every thing that lives and breathes in Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school, therefore—even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify—has no materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and "Young Russia" dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the name of civilization, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social happiness. It is merely a tinsel coating over the rottenness and rust with which Russian life is "sicklied o'er." It has nothing to do with a single soul below the rank of a noble; and with him it means Champagne, bad pictures, Parisian tailors, operas, gaming, and other expenses and elegancies imported from the West. Hundreds of provincial noblemen are ruined every year in St. Petersburg, in undergoing this process of civilization. The fortunes thus wasted are enormous; yet there is only one railroad now in operation throughout the whole empire, and that belongs to the Emperor, and leads to one of his palaces a few miles from the capital. Such is Russian civilization. What then is "Young Russia" to do? Ask one of its youngest apostles, Ivan Vassilievitsch.
This young gentleman—for an introduction to whom we are indebted to Count Sollogub—was, not long ago, parading the Iverskoy boulevard—one of the thirteen which half encircle Moscow—when he met a neighbor from the province of Kazan. Ivan had lately returned from abroad. He was a perfect specimen of the new school, inside and out. Within, he had imbibed all the ideas of the juvenile or verdant schools of Germany, France, and England. Without, he displayed a London macintosh; his coat and trowsers had been designed and executed by Parisian artists; his hair was cut in the style of the middle ages; and his chin showed the remnants of a Vandyke beard. He also resembled the new school in another respect: he had spent all his money, yet he was separated from home by the distance of a long—a Russian—journey.
To meet with a neighbor—which he did—who traveled in his own carriage, in which he offered a seat, was the height of good fortune. The more so, as Ivan wished to see as much of Russian life on the road as possible, and to note down his impressions in a journal, whose white leaves were as yet unsullied with ink. From the information he intended to collect, he intended to commence helping to re-construct Russian society after the order of the new Russiaites.