Russian Life To-day

“First to attract notice,” he says, “is the exploit of a Jewish medical student from Wilna, named Osnas, invalided home on account of wounds received in saving the colours of his regiment during the fighting in East Prussia. ‘Do everything that is possible to save the life of Osnas,’ telegraphed his commander to the hospital authorities. The medical student has been honoured by the bestowal of the military Cross of S. George.

“When events come to be sifted, we shall probably hear of similar instances of Russo-Jewish patriotism. As for our own brave soldiers, there can be nothing more convincing, nothing more gratifying than the emphatic reply of a wounded corporal of the Black Watch to a ‘voice’ in a crowd of sympathetic Londoners. ‘And the Jews,’ queried the ‘voice,’ ‘What are they doing?’ The Highlander replied, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Doing? Well, their duty. We had three with us, and bonnier lads and braver I don’t wish to see. They fought just splendid.’

“No less arresting was the avowal of a private of the Berkshire Regiment. ‘We had ten in our company,’ he said, ‘all good fighters, and six won’t be seen again. So don’t say a word against the Jews.’”

Why has Russia’s attitude hitherto, then, been, and for so long, one of rigid exclusion? The Pale, to which they are limited, includes only the ten provinces of Russian Poland, and fifteen provinces in Western Russia, and the arrangements were made first by the government of Catherine the Great in 1791, and definitely settled in 1835. Even there, though by law they are entitled to live and follow their particular tastes and callings freely, yet we are told that “harassing laws restrict their initiative and make even their right of residence within the Pale itself become something of a chimera.” Why is this policy of vexatious exclusion so persistently followed? We are told that it is because the Jewish element is a sordid and deteriorating influence, bad for the local and national life alike, and a hindrance to the nation’s progress. This, however, was clearly not the view of M. de Plehve when, as Minister of the Interior, he received a deputation of representative Jews petitioning for an extension of civil rights. He is reported to have said to them, “It is not true that the Tsar and myself regard the Jews as an inferior race. On the contrary, we regard them as exceptionally smart and clever. But if we admitted Jews to our universities, without restriction, they would overshadow our own Russian students and dominate our own intellectual life. I do not think it would be fair to allow the minority thus to obtain an advantage over the majority in this way.” He did not seem to see that, as those in question were Russian subjects, the very ability to which he gave his testimony was being prevented from enriching the national life. This is a fallacy as old as history itself, and pursued by that shortsighted Pharaoh on the Nile of whom it is significantly said, by way of explanation of his folly, that “He knew not Joseph!” As we read the records of Scripture – and the historical books are for the most part extraordinarily dispassionate and free from undue Hebrew bias – we see that neither Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, nor Persia had any cause to regret giving Jews a place in their national life, and that their fatal mistakes, even with the Jews themselves, lay in not following Jewish counsels.

The Jews have what can only be called a genius for patriotism, and in a way not to be explained they breathe in this spirit very deeply towards any nation which bids them welcome, and offers them a home. During my first service in Siberia, described in another chapter, at Ekaterinburg, three years ago, a young soldier in Russian uniform walked slowly into the room, and took his place with a most wondering expression on his face. He was, I found, a young Jew, and had received baptism some time before in England. The manœuvres had brought him to that part of Siberia, and to his great amazement he had heard just before, that in that unlikely place, there was to be on the following Sunday a service of the Church into which he had been baptized. In my conversation with him afterwards, however, it seemed to me that I was speaking not to a Jew but to a Russian. Somewhere, no doubt, he is fighting now, and as patriotically, I feel sure, as his comrades in the ranks. Is it good policy to waste such good material as this, to restrict the national assets in this way, and keep back its powers of expansion and development? To ask such questions in these days is to answer them.

“I have been discussing,” says Mr. Costa in his most instructive article, “with Jewish folk in London, Russian men and women of culture and refinement, the prospect of this dream becoming a reality. They incline to the belief that if Russia is really in earnest over the matter, and is not propounding it as a strategical move; if, in our time, she will hurl to the dust the grim, hope-excluding walls of the congested Pale, she cannot but open up an era of unexampled greatness and prosperity. With that wonderful intellectual force, now held in check, applied to the advancement of Russian culture and progress, the Empire of the Tsar might awaken and expand beyond the most ambitious dreams of its dead-and-gone autocrats.”

Just as we are led to believe that a people gets the government it deserves, so we may well be brought to think that possibly, with respect to this virile and persistent race, the nation gets the Jews it deserves. As a policy which is meant to degrade must have a degraded class as its result, so to give every part of the nation’s life and equipment full equality of opportunity is to get the best the nation as a whole has to give in return. We are further told by Mr. Costa that while the Russian conscript fights because he must, the English Jew fights because he loves to serve the country which has been all in all to him and his. And thus “Peer’s son and first-born of the ghetto grocer rub shoulders in the task of upholding the nation’s honour. In the Regulars, Cavalry, Guards, and Territorials, here you shall find the cream of Anglo-Jewry, the sons of merchant princes, men who hold the purse-strings of nations.”

I suppose there is no country in the world where so long and so freely, as with us, the Jews have been able to give their full contribution to the national life, and who amongst us with any breadth of view and largeness of heart does not see what this has meant to us in the past, and is meaning for us just now?

If any race can truthfully say that they have never had a chance that race is the Jews. They have not even had a proper chance of accepting Christianity. The Christian Church marvellously soon became their enemy. The nations of the world, without exception, since the first destruction of Jerusalem have taken up the same position of antagonism. All this could only have one end.

In the new time to come, let all this be forgotten, and the nations use all their national life to the full, and confidently await the result. Nothing to my mind can withstand the influence of our Christian religion when it is presented as the religion of Christ Himself; and the modern Jew, I for one believe, will find it as hard to go on kicking against the pricks as his great co-religionist did when he encountered the real thing in S. Stephen, and was already prepared to receive it as his own experience. Nothing can stifle loyal and dutiful service in the hearts of her children when a nation is a true mother to them all. This, in Church and State, we can honestly claim is our own aim towards the Jews; let us express the Emperor’s confident hope once more, and say, “Some day it will be like that in Russia.”

CHAPTER XII

Our Countrymen in the Empire

“There are no two powers in the world – and there have been no other two in history —more distinct in character, less conflicting in interests, and more naturally adapted for mutual agreement and support than are Britain and Russia.”

It is in the full endorsement of these carefully-weighed statements, from a most experienced authority, that I wish to write this last chapter. Looking back upon the past to the days of Ivan the Terrible and Queen Elizabeth, and reviewing the situation in the Russian Empire to-day, and, above all, looking forward to our immediate future, it seems to me that our countrymen in Russia have had a real mission to fulfil, and have done it worthily and well.

They have, from the first, prepared the ground for what has come up for a great decision to-day, our splendid opportunity of having Russia for a friend. And they have not done it by working and planning, still less by scheming for it, but, just as we should wish our countrymen to extend our influence the world over, by being honestly and consistently true to their own nationality, and worthily representing British traditions and ideals.

There is one testimony, if I may venture without undue complacency to give it, to the estimation in which our nationality is held, which does not suggest that we are really considered, even by those who have of late so often glibly said it, to be degenerate and decadent and not fit to hold the possessions we have, or shape the destinies of the many peoples who own our rule. I have never met any one yet, of another nationality, who did not think it a compliment to be mistaken for an Englishman. It is not often that one can make such a mistake, but I have met Dutchmen and Germans, and Russians also, who just for a moment or two, from dress, expression, or speech have made one feel that they were fellow countrymen. Young Russians especially, though different in physique, for often they are built on huge lines and are enormously strong, after receiving an English education from a very early age, wearing English dress, being pleased to meet us, may easily be considered to be English; and I doubt if there are amongst them any who would not feel it a compliment to be so considered, while they would resent the same mistake being made with regard to any other nationality.

Englishmen, therefore, it will be admitted, have kept up the standard in Russia, and not let down the good name of their own country. When I was visiting the Troitsk Gold Mine, in 1912 – a little short of three days’ and three nights’ journey, on the other side of Moscow – to spend Sunday and give them their first English services, the surveyor, when showing me over the mine and its workings on the Monday, told me that those large illustrated almanacks which we have, with a picture in the middle and information about Church and parish round the sides, and which are so often seen on the walls of the houses of our own working-classes, are also very popular amongst their own work-people.

“They are got up in the Russian style, of course,” he said, “with a Russian illustration, and so on; but you will be interested to hear that a great part of the paragraphs round it is given up to describing English ways and ideas, societies and arrangements, and always with appreciation and approval.”

It must ever be remembered that people who cannot leave their own country must judge largely of other countries by what they see of those who come from them. If English ideas, manners, and customs are held in favour and esteem in Russia and Siberia it can only be, therefore, because English men and women have worthily represented them there in business and commerce, by upright and moral conduct.

It does not usually fall to the lot of a bishop in these days, many-sided as are his sympathies, and various as are the claims made upon his time and attention, to see much of actual business and commercial life, nor have I seen much of the working of factories and workshops in the other countries in our jurisdiction; but in Russia and Siberia one of the most important parts of a visitation has been the going amongst the members of a staff while they were actually at work so as to get to really know them and their daily lives.

Outside Moscow, for instance, are nearly twenty mills and manufactories; in and outside Petrograd are some of the largest and best-managed cotton and thread-mills in the world; at Schlusselberg, on the Neva, there is a large and splendidly equipped print-works for Asiatic trade; at Narva, a day’s journey from Petrograd, is a huge factory employing some 70,000 people; and in Siberia are the great mining enterprises, some of them employing from 18,000 to 20,000 people of both sexes. And in all these places the staff is composed of our own countrymen, and numbers, sometimes as many as sixty.

I have always, in these places, stayed with the manager, and have had opportunities of meeting the staff socially and for services, going into every department in the mill, factory, or mine, and, as these visits were not short, making friends and learning their experiences, seeing their outlook and often acquiring the history of the enterprise, with all its ups and downs, and successes and failures, from the very first. Then I am a guest always at the Embassy in Petrograd, and am asked to meet all who can be brought together by kind and courteous host and hostess. It is the same with the Consul and his wife in other cities. And above all is it so when I am the guest of the chaplain, who takes care that I meet every one in the community who cares about it. I get thus into close touch with all sorts and conditions of men, and am compelled to come to the conclusion that very few can have anything like the opportunity of really knowing, in a general way, his own countrymen in Russia as the bishop who goes amongst them. It seems to me, therefore, to be a very real duty to give my tribute to what they have done to make England well spoken of and well thought of throughout the empire.

Englishmen have succeeded amongst the Russians for precisely the same reason that they have succeeded in building up vast colonies and a huge empire. They have developed, and not exploited. There is a way of becoming rich by exploiting resources at the expense of those employed. Instances will occur to the reader at once, and probably are not far to seek. I myself have seen this degrading process conducted on a fairly large scale in another hemisphere, while the most terrible and sinister instance of all is that of the Congo, out of which King Leopold and his agents amassed an immense fortune in a few years, while the natives engaged in collecting the rubber were reduced from twenty millions to a little over seven. No more deadly and wicked exploitation was ever known.

True development, on the other hand, is cultivating and bringing into use the resources of a country and improving the conditions of life for those who produce them at the same time. We have been accused again and again, even by writers of our own, of exploiting India, and of being indifferent to the true interests of its people. No one has ever known, for the Hindoo temperament is vastly different from our own, whether its people did not think so too. But the war has declared it. When India rose as one man and asked only to be allowed to give all for those who had ruled them, then we all knew that we had been understood all over that vast dependency of ours as being there not only to get but to give, not to exploit but to develop.

Is it not true of Egypt also, where the fellaheen along the Nile are of the same race in general habits and employments as their ancestors of thousands of years ago, though different ruling races have come and gone, that in all those ages they have never enjoyed true liberty, and never reaped the fruit of their labours and toil without oppression until they came under British rule? It need not weigh at all with us that this is not known or acknowledged, as it ought to be in Egypt. We are not given, fortunately, to worrying as to what other people think about us. Perhaps it might be better for us sometimes if we were. But we know that in time Egypt will learn, as India has learnt, that we are amongst them not to exploit them, but to develop their resources and to improve in every way that is possible their own character and condition. Thus has it been also in Russia; and I felt a very thankful man, proud of my country and nationality, when, a year ago, I could say to the Emperor of Russia, “My countrymen are in Siberia, sir, not to exploit but to help to develop Russia’s resources and its people.”

“I know it,” he quietly said. And I gave him the following instance to show him how rapidly and on what a large scale this is being done.

Some distance to the left of the Orenburg line which runs down from Samara to Tashkend in Turkestan, and not far from Orenburg itself, only reached at present by motor-car and camel, is a place called Tanalyk, an English property. Not much more than a year ago there were there a British engineer, surveyor, and assistants, with a little handful of nomads, Kirghiz I should think, looking on and giving their labour. They were engaged in prospecting, and drilling for copper. Now, even in this short time, the preliminary work of a great mine has been begun, and there are from eighteen to twenty thousand Russians engaged in it. Accommodation has been provided, schools are going up, their church and priest are there, medical and surgical treatment is within the reach of all. There are stores where they can buy everything they need in the way of food, dress, appliances, all sorts of conveniences and comforts that they have never seen before, at prices which give no profit to the company. Those who used to taste meat perhaps once a fortnight can have it daily, for they have good wages. They are becoming more handy as workmen and improved in physique, and the next generation will be better still. Education and the amenities of life are increasing their self-respect. The determination of the staff not to overlook bad work, their wish to see them improve in character, to set them an example in their own family life, are all having their effect. “Is it possible,” I asked, “to put too high a value on such good work as this which adds to Russia’s enterprise, wealth, and resources, and makes all those thousands of men, women, and children better subjects of your Majesty and the empire?”

The managing director of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation, which began its development with Tanalyk, and has gone on to other and more important developments still, told me that when local option was granted, two years ago, he himself was given the sole right of deciding whether those thousands of Russians should have vodka or not, although it was at that time a government monopoly, and important as a source of revenue. He decided that vodka should not be sold, but that a very light and harmless beer might be provided for those who wished to have it. It was only to be sold by one man, however, and if an instance of drunkenness occurred he was to lose his right to sell. The amount paid for rent has been spent on a People’s House for the recreation of all employed at the mine.

Another manager friend of mine told me that he had helped his people to become more sober by selling vodka at his own stores at a lower price than that of the government. It sounds a strange way of doing it, no doubt, but the sale was restricted to Wednesdays and Saturdays. When, therefore, on the other days there came would-be purchasers anxious to have vodka, with the plea that there was a wedding or a christening or some other domestic festivity at which it would be needed just to complete the enjoyment, they were always told that they could not have it except on the stated days. This was not hardship, for the government shop was open, though the higher price was demanded there. This they would not pay and so went without it, and yet the christening or wedding passed off no less happily – perhaps even more happily; and thus, gradually, amongst the Russian staff, and through them the work-people, there grew up the idea that the results of vodka were to be avoided.

Nothing could be more encouraging than the experience of the management of this particular mine in trying, by example and discipline, to lift their foremen and subordinates of the staff out of what used to be thought a perfectly natural and pardonable weakness, but now throughout the empire is being acknowledged as a national sin.

It will surely and easily be seen by any thinking reader that this initiative on the one hand, and responsiveness on the other, promise well for our future relations with each other, and explains, perhaps, how the Russian Entente has passed quite naturally into an Alliance, which some of us hope and believe will be permanent and stable for many generations.

Our Entente with France has been indeed an Entente Cordiale, and it is now more cordial and friendly than ever; but it is not easy to conceive of anything in the future beyond an Entente and Alliance. We can be real and staunch and faithful friends as becomes those who are near neighbours, but little else opens out before us. Is it possible to think of anything between ourselves and Germany, even when the war is over and many years have passed, except the gradual removal of sadly embittered feelings and outraged convictions and beliefs? Our ideas of what can rightly be called world-power and world-forces are so diametrically opposed that it passes the imagination of man to conceive what great world-purpose we and they could undertake together, for some time.

But directly we think of ourselves and Russia as side by side, and with confidence in each other, there is no limit to what we and they may hope to accomplish together for our own peoples, for humanity, and for God. Not only have we constitutional and religious ideals in common, but our own countrymen are already at work all over the richest and most promising part of their vast empire, and upon the only right lines any one can adopt if the object in view is to increase the resources, character, and ability of a people at the same time.

The Englishman of the ordinary and normal type cannot be content to look upon the man he employs as merely a wage-earner. He wants, as he would put it, “to give him a leg-up” besides, and our countrymen in Siberia have sought just to give that “leg-up” to their employs, to better their conditions of life and educate their children; by precept and example to give them wholesome recreations; to help them to see that there is nothing laughable but everything that is disgusting in such a vice as drunkenness; and to help them in every way they can to manly self-respect.

This is tremendously far-reaching in its results. The Christian paradox is fulfilled here also. “To lose is to save, to save is to lose.” To try and get all one can out of work-people and give as little, is to have little enough to show by way of good results. To think not of the work alone which the wages claim, but of the man who is to do it; to try one’s utmost to make him more of a man for his being employed and to lift up his self-respect, is straightway to increase the value of everything he does, and of the work for which his wages are paid.

The explanation of “dividend or no dividend” is far simpler than it seems, and the New Testament contributes to it. If only a little additional value is placed upon the manhood and womanhood of those employed, and a little increase given to self-respect, responsibility, and conscientiousness where hundreds and thousands are employed, then it requires no great powers of insight to see how rapidly what has hitherto been a failure may become a great commercial success. I attach the greatest importance to the fact that our countrymen in Siberia whom it has been my great privilege to know and make my friends are conducting their great enterprises as honourable and chivalrous men, and have, with public-spirited Russians, like-minded with themselves, laid the foundations of a true Anglo-Russian friendship and agreement. In this I think we are extremely fortunate in the opportunity which world events have brought us, and through no effort of our own. Our own people at home, for the most part, are probably not yet convinced that this is our God-given opportunity. I have already freely owned my former prejudices and misconceptions, and explained how quickly they passed away, and I know that others must feel and think as I used to do myself, and that they have had comparatively little as yet to clear their minds, though I trust what is written in these pages may be a help in that direction. But this opportunity which has come to us was possible for Russia’s great neighbour at one time, as she was told by one of the most far-seeing men of Europe, but it was carelessly and even contemptuously refused. Great opportunities for great nations never return.