Between the conquests made in the Caucasus and the annexations on the Amoor or in Central Asia, Alexander II. bullied, and at last put down, by unspeakably cruel means,—even as did his predecessor,—the national aspirations of unhappy Poland. Like Nicholas, he kept the road to Siberia alive with the wretched convoys of unfortunate exiles. Even in the Baltic Provinces, whence the Russian Government draws so many able administrators, diplomatists, and military leaders, whose capacities might be employed in a better cause, he began a system of persecution against the German population, of so galling a nature that it threatened, in course of time, to alienate that very mainstay of the public administration. The special towns' charters of the Baltic Provinces were infringed. The German tongue, hitherto possessing full privileges, was threatened. A process of Russification was attempted; the superior civilized element being pushed and annoyed by the inferior and barbarous one.
These acts of the earliest years of the reign of Alexander II. have to be kept in mind, in order to understand that humanitarian motives were not the ruling ones in the final adoption of the Serf Emancipation measure. On his death-bed, Nicholas is stated to have said to his son:— "Thou hast two enemies—the nobility and the Poles. Emancipate the serfs; and do not allow the Poles any Constitution!"
It is impossible, with the mystery which envelopes the last days of Nicholas, to know whether these words are authentic. At all events, Alexander did not give back to the Poles the Constitution they possessed until 1830. Nor did he grant a Constitution to the Russians either. He emancipated the serfs—but not before the principles which had actuated the Conspirators of 1817-25 once more began to show themselves among the upper strata of society; and in passing his measure, he mainly sought to deprive a restive nobility of some of its influence, and to take the wind out of the sails of those Liberal agitators who would have made the abolition of bondage the outcome of the establishment of a freely-chosen Legislature. When, finally, the Poles, counting upon a corresponding movement in Russia, resolved upon that heroic, though desperate, rising which by anticipation I alluded to in the last article, such fresh cruelties were practised by Alexander II. against the vanquished victims, that every human heart worthy of the name must shudder at the mere recollection of them.
From those days, however, the Conspiratory Movement in Russia began to assume larger proportions. What I have said in the preceding pages, goes far to explain the violence by which that movement has latterly been characterized.
V.
Partly from the aggressiveness which is the natural bent of a despotic military monarchy, partly from the wish to check the home-growth of Liberal sentiments by frequent blood-letting abroad, the government of Alexander II. has tried to meet the danger which has been gathering round the autocratic system by lighting up foreign wars. Central Asia has served him for that purpose. So has Turkey. The flag of ambition was flaunted before public opinion as soon as there was a revival of the Opposition tendency in internal affairs.
An attempt at opening up the whole Eastern Question was made as early as 1870, when France and Germany were locked together in deadly embrace. The confidential despatches and cypher telegrams exchanged in 1870 between Mr. de Novikoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, and Mr. Ionin, the Russian Consul-General at Ragusa, which fortunately came to light some years ago, have fully proved that even then Muscovite policy busied itself with getting up a phantom insurrection in Herzegovina, preparatory to an attack upon Turkey. Nor is it a secret that a Bulgarian Committee of Insurrection, affiliated to Russia, had been in existence at Bucharest for years previous to the late war. All these propagandistic intrigues were in a measure designed to occupy some of the more active minds in Russia, who hesitated, between home reform and Panslavistic ambition.
The Czar has indulged in his warlike enterprizes, but he has deceived himself in his calculations as regards home policy. All his frightful spilling of blood abroad has not been able to prevent the formation and extension of what is called the Nihilist Conspiracy. Side by side with his wars, the Secret League has grown apace, overshadowing all his glory. So extensive have the ramifications of that Conspiracy become that the liveliest interest is now awakened as to its origin and its earliest germs.
In the nature of things it is impossible, at present, to speak with full certainty on this subject. The Russian revolutionists, being engaged in a desperate struggle, have neither the leisure necessary for writing such statements; nor is it their interest to go into details. Judicial inquiries have lifted, here and there, some corner of the mysterious winding-sheets in which the secret Vehme is enveloped. But more light can only be expected after the Conspiracy has been entirely crushed,—in which case, however, owing to the heroic silence which its adherents generally maintain, a great deal of knowledge will for ever be buried in the grave,—or the fuller clearing up will come when, as I would fain hope, this fierce struggle ends with a triumph, whether complete or partial, of the cause of freedom.
Even under the iron rule of Nicholas, there were, many years after the St. Petersburg insurrection of 1825, still some faint traces of Secret Societies, in which the spirit of Pestel and Murawieff was continued. One of these occult Leagues was that of Petrascheski, detected in 1849, whose members were sentenced to forced labour and to banishment to Siberia. A nearer approach to the plebeian element than was observable in the Conspiracies of 1817-25, characterized this later association. Altogether the more educated classes gradually began to seek closer contact with the people at large.