The Land of Thor

By a natural law, the waves of despotism gather strength and volume as they spread from the central power. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Autocrat of Russia is the least despotic of all the despots in authority. The landed proprietors in the remote provinces too often rule their dependents with an iron rod, and the strong arm of the supreme authority is more frequently exercised in the protection than in the oppression of the lower classes. The tribunals of justice in these districts are corrupt, and the laws, as they are administered by the subordinate officers of the government, afford but little chance of justice to the ignorant masses. The landed proprietors are subjected to various exactments and oppressions from the governors, and these again are at the mercy of the various colleges or departments above them, and so on up to the imperial council and imperial presence. Each class or grade becomes independent, despotic, and corrupt in proportion as they recede from the central authority, having a greater latitude of power, and being less apprehensive of punishment for its abuse. In truth, the nobles and aristocracy are the immediate oppressors of the ignorant masses, who are taught to regard them as demigods, and bow down before them in slavish abasement. Now and then, in extreme cases, where the autocrat discovers abuses which threaten to impair his authority, he sends some of these aspiring gentlemen on a tour of pleasure to Siberia, and thus practically demonstrates that there is a ruling power in the land. As all authority emanates from him, and all responsibility rests with him, so all justice, liberality, fair dealing, and humanity are apt to find in a good sovereign, under such a system, their best friend and most conscientious supporter. The success of his government, the prosperity and happiness of his people, even the perpetuity of the entire political system, depend upon the judicious and equitable use which he makes of his power. There are limits to human forbearance, as sovereigns have discovered by this time. The Czar is but a man, a mere mortal, after all, and can only hold his authority through the consent, indifference, or ignorance of his subjects; but should he oppress them by extraordinary punishments or exactions, or withdraw from them his protection against the petty tyranny of his subordinates, he would find, sooner or later, that the most degraded can be aroused to resentment. It is the belief on the part of the peasantry, of which the population of Russia is in so large a part formed, that the emperor is their friend – that he does not willingly or unnecessarily deprive them of their liberties. This tends to keep them in subjection. Indeed, they have but faint notions of liberty, if any at all, born as they are to a condition of servitude, and reared in abject submission to the governing authorities. They are generally well satisfied if they can get enough to eat; and, when they are not subjected to cruel and unusual abuses, are comparatively happy.

The unreasonable assumptions of power on the part of their immediate governing authorities present a trait common to mankind. We know from experience in our own country that the negro-driver on a Southern plantation – a slave selected from slaves – is often more tyrannical in the use of authority than the overseer or owner. We know that there are hard and unfeeling overseers on many plantations, where the owner is comparatively mild and humane. So far as he knows any thing of the details of his own affairs, his natural disposition accords with his interest, and he is favorable to the kind treatment of his slaves. But he can not permit them to become intelligent beings. They may study all the mechanical arts which may be useful to him – become blacksmiths, carpenters, or machinists, but they must not learn that they are held in servitude, and that the Almighty has given him no natural right to live upon their earnings, or enjoy his pleasure or power at the expense of their labor and their freedom. The same condition of things, with some variation, of course, arising from differences of climate and races, exists in Russia, and the results are not altogether dissimilar. We find idleness, lack of principle, overbearing manners, ignorance, and sensualism a very common characteristic of the superior classes, mingled though it may be with a show of fine manners, and such trivial and superficial accomplishments as may be obtained without much labor. It is a great negro plantation on a large scale, in which the gradation of powers has a depressing tendency, causing them to increase in rigor as they descend, like a stone dropped from a height, which at first might be caught in the open hand, but soon acquires force enough to brain an ox.

One of the effects of the strong coercive powers of the government is perceptible in this, that the greatest latitude prevails in every thing that does not interfere with the maintenance of political authority; and although it is difficult, in such a country, to find much that comes within that category, occasional exceptions may be found. Thus drunkenness, debauchery, indecency, and reckless, prodigal, and filthy habits, are but little regarded, while the slightest approach to the acquisition of a liberal education, or the expression of liberal opinions on any subject connected with public polity, is rigidly prohibited. Most of the English newspapers are excluded from the empire, although if admitted they would have but few general readers among the Russians – certainly not many among the middle or lower classes. No publication on political economy, no work of any kind relating to the science of government or the natural rights of man; nothing, in short, calculated to impair the faith of the people in the necessity of their political servitude, is permitted to enter the country without a most careful examination. A rigid censorship is exercised over the press, the libraries, the public colleges, the schools, and all institutions having in view the education of the people and the dissemination of intelligence. The Censorial Bureau is in itself an important branch of the government, having its representatives diffused throughout every province, in every public institution, and even extending its ramifications into the sacred realms of private life; for it is a well-known fact that a family can not employ a private tutor whose antecedents and political proclivities have not undergone the scrutiny and received the official sanction of the censorial authorities.

How can a country, under such circumstances, be expected to take a high rank among the enlightened nations of the earth? The very germ of its existence is founded in the suppression of intelligence. It may enjoy a limited advancement, but there can be no great progress in any direction which does not tend at the same time to the subversion of a despotic rule. Even the theatres, operas, cafés, and all places of public amusement, are under the same rigid surveillance. No play can be performed, no opera given, no café opened, no garden amusements offered to the public, unless under the supervision and with the sanction of the censorial authorities. In all well-regulated communities there must be, of course, some local or municipal restrictions respecting popular amusements, based upon a regard for public morals, but in this case the question of morality is not taken into much account. Provided there is nothing politically objectionable in the performance, and it has no tendency to make the people better acquainted with the rottenness of courts, the selfishness, wickedness, and insincerity of men in authority, and their own rights as human beings – provided the theme be Jishn za Zara– “Your life for your Czar,” or the exhibition a voluptuous display – provided it be merely a matter of abject adulation or fashionable sensation, the most fastidious censor can find no fault with it. What, then, does the education of the masses amount to? We read of lectures for the diffusion of knowledge among the people; of colleges for young men; of various institutions of learning; of a liberal system of common schools for the poor. All this is very well in its way. A little light is better than none when the road is crooked, and the country abounds in ruts and deep pitfalls. But the lights shed by these institutions are much obscured by the official glasses through which they shine. The building of fortifications; the manufacture of gunpowder; the use of guns and swords; the beauties of rhetoric abounding in the drill manual; the eloquence of batteries and broadsides; the poetry of ditching and draining; the ethics of primary obedience to the authorities, and afterward to God and reason; all that pertains to rapine, bloodshed, and wholesale murder – the noble art of mutilating men in the most effective manner, and the best method of cutting them up or putting them together again when that is done; the horrid sin of using one’s own lights on any internal problem of right or wrong, religion or public policy, when the emperor, in the plenitude of his generosity, furnishes light enough out of his individual head for sixty-five millions of people – these are the principal themes upon which the intellects of the rising generation of Russia are nourished. In the primary schools a select and authorized few are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but they seldom get much farther, and not always that far, before subordinate positions in the army or navy are found for them. Their education is indeed very limited, and may be set down as an exception to the general ignorance.

It will thus be seen that the whole system of education has but one object in view, the maintenance of a military despotism. In this it would scarcely be reasonable to search for cause of complaint. Doubtless the acquisition of knowledge is encouraged as far as may be consistent with public security and public peace. But it is obvious that under such a system these people can never emerge from their condition of semi-barbarism. They must continue behind the spirit of the age in all that pertains to the highest order of civilization. Science, in a limited sense, may find a few votaries; the arts may be cultivated to a certain degree; a feeble school of literature may attain the eminence of a national feature; but there can be no general expansion of the intellectual faculties, no enlarged and comprehensive views of life and of human affairs. Whatever these people do must be subservient to military rule; beyond that there can be little advance save in what is palpable to the grosser senses, or what panders to the savagery of their nature. A statesman or a philosopher, with independence enough to think and speak the truth if his views differed from those of the constituted authorities, would be a very dangerous character, and be very apt to pursue his career, in company with all who have hitherto aspired to distinction in that way, beyond the confines of Siberia. Russia may produce many Karasmins to write glowing histories of her wars and conquests, but her Burkes, her Pitts, and her Foxes will be few, and her Shakspeares and her Bacons fewer still. Her Pascal’s Reflections will be tinged with Siberian horrors; her Young’s Night Thoughts will be of the dancing damsels of St. Petersburg; her Vicars of Wakefield will abound in the genial humor of devils and dragons, saints and tortures; and the wit of her Sidney Smiths will have a crack of the knout about it, skinning men’s back’s rather than their backslidings; effective only when it draws human blood, and best approved by the censors when it strikes at human freedom.

We find the results of such a system strongly marked upon the general character. While equals are jealous of each other, inferiors are slavish and superiors tyrannical. It is often the case that overbearing manners and abject humility are centred in the same class or person. Thus the Camarilla are overbearing to the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy to the provincial nobility, and the provincial nobility to the inferior classes. As I said before, it is a sliding-scale of despotism. The worst feature of it is seen in the treatment of women. Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat meliorated their condition. Absolute physical cruelty would be, perhaps, a violation of etiquette and good breeding; but neglect, selfishness, innate coarseness of thought, and a general want of chivalrous appreciation, are too common in the treatment of Russian women not to strike the most casual observer. Certainly the impressions of one who has been taught from infancy to regard the gentler sex as entitled to the most profound respect and chivalrous devotion – to look upon them as beings of a more delicate essence than man, yet infinitely superior in those moral attributes which rise so high above intellect or physical power – are not favorable to the assumptions of Russian civilization. Yet, since the condition of woman is but little better in any part of Europe, it may be that this is one of the fashions imported from France or Germany, and since these two claim to be the most polite and cultivated nations in existence, it is even possible that the Americans – a rude people, who have not yet had time to polish their manners or perfect their customs – may be mistaken in their estimate of the ladies, and will, some day or other, become more Europeanized.

But, in all fairness, if the Russians be a little uncouth in their way, they possess, like bears, a wonderful aptness in learning to dance; if the brutal element is strong in their nature, so also is the capacity to acquire frivolous and meretricious accomplishments. Like all races in which the savage naturally predominates, they delight in the glitter of personal decoration, the allurements of music, dancing, and the gambling-table, and all the luxuries of idleness and sensuous folly – traits which they share pretty generally with the rest of mankind. Tropical gardens, where the thermometer is twenty degrees below zero; feasts and frolics that in a single night may leave them beggars for life; military shows; the smoke and carnage of battle; the worship of their saints and Czars – these are their chief pleasures and most genial occupations.

But, with all this folly and prodigality, there is really a great deal of native generosity in the Russian character. Liberal to a fault in every thing but the affairs of government, they freely bestow their wealth upon charitable institutions, and, whether rich or poor, are ever ready to extend the hand of relief to the distresses of their fellow-creatures. It is rarely they hoard their gains. There are few who do not live up to the full measure of their incomes, and most of them very far beyond. Whether they spend their means for good or for evil, they are at least free from the groveling sin of stinginess. I never met more than one stingy Russian to my knowledge; but let him go. He reaped his reward in the dislike of all who knew him. Toward each other, even the beggars are liberal. There is nothing little or contemptible in the Russian character. Overbearing and despotic they may be; deficient in the gentler traits which grace a more cultivated people; but meanness is not one of their failings. In this they present a striking contrast to a large and influential portion of their North German neighbors, for whose sordid souls Beelzebub might search in vain through the desert wastes that lie upon the little end of a cambric needle.

In some respects the Russians evince a more enlarged appreciation of the world’s progress than many of their European neighbors. They have no fixed prejudices against mechanical improvements of any kind. Quick to appreciate every advance in the useful arts, they are ever ready to accept and put in practical operation whatever they see in other countries better than the product of their own. Thus they adopt English and American machinery, railways, telegraphs, improvements in artillery, and whatever else they deem beneficial, or calculated to augment their prosperity and power as a nation. While in Germany it would be almost an impossibility to introduce the commonest and most obvious improvement in the mechanical arts – if we except railways and telegraphs, which have become a military and political necessity, growing out of the progress of neighboring powers – while many of their fabrics are still made by hand, and their mints, presses, and fire-engines are of almost primeval clumsiness, the Russians eagerly grasp at all novelties, and are wonderfully quick in the comprehension of their uses and advantages. A similar comparison might be made in reference to the freedom of internal trade, and the encouragement given to every industrial pursuit among the people, being the exact reverse of the policy pursued by the German governments. Thus, while we find them backward in the refinements of literature and intellectual culture, it is beyond doubt that they possess wonderful natural capacity to learn. They lack steadiness and perseverance, and are not always governed by the best motives; but in boldness of spirit, disregard of narrow prejudice, ability to conceive and execute what they desire to accomplish, they have few equals and no superiors. Combined with these admirable traits, their wild Sclavonic blood abounds in elements which, upon great occasions, arise to the eminence of a sublime heroism. Brave and patriotic, devoted to their country and their religion, we search the pages of history in vain for a parallel to their sacrifices in the defense of both. Not even the wars of the Greeks and Romans can produce such an example of heroic devotion to the maintenance of national integrity as the burning of Moscow. When an entire people, devoted to their religion, gave up their churches and their shrines to the devouring element; when princes and nobles placed the burning brands to their palaces; when bankers, merchants, and tradesmen freely yielded up their hard-earned gains; when women and children joined the great work of destruction to deliver their country from the hands of a ruthless invader, it may well be said of that sublime flame —

“Thou stand’st alone unrivall’d, till the fire,To come, in which all empires shall expire.”

Truly, when we glance back at the national career of the Russians, they can not but strike us as a wonderful people. While we must condemn their cruelty and rapacity; while we can see nothing to excuse in their ferocious persecution of the Turks; while the greater part of their history is a bloody record of injustice to weaker nations, we can not but admire their indomitable courage, their intense and unalterable attachment to their brave old Czars, and their sublime devotion to their religion and their nationality.

CHAPTER XX.

PASSAGE TO REVEL

It was not without a feeling of regret that I took my departure from St. Petersburg. Short as my visit to Russia had been, it was full of interest. Not a single day had been idly or unprofitably spent. Indeed, I know of no country that presents so many attractions to the traveler who takes pleasure in novelties of character and peculiarities of manners and customs. The lovers of picturesque scenery will find little to gratify his taste in a mere railroad excursion to Moscow; but with ample time and means at his disposal, a journey to the Ural Mountains, or a voyage down the Volga to the Caspian Sea, would doubtless be replete with interest. For my part, much as I enjoy the natural beauties of a country through which I travel, they never afford me as much pleasure as the study of a peculiar race of people. Mere scenery, however beautiful, becomes monotonous, unless it be associated with something that gives it a varied and striking human interest. The mountains and lakes of Scotland derive their chief attractions from the wild legends of romance and chivalry so inseparably connected with them; and Switzerland would be but a dreary desert of glaciers without its history. In Russia, Nature has been less prodigal in her gifts; and the real interest of the country centres in its public institutions, the religious observances of the people, and the progress of civilization under a despotic system of government. Of these I have endeavored to give you such impressions as may be derived from a sojourn of a few weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg – necessarily imperfect and superficial, but I trust not altogether destitute of amusing features.

On a pleasant morning in August, I called for my “rechnung” at the German gasthaus on the Wasseli-Ostrow. The bill was complicated in proportion to its length. There was an extra charge of fifteen kopeks a day for the room over and above the amount originally specified. That was conscientious cheating, so I made no complaint. Then there was a charge for two candles when I saw but one, and always went to bed by daylight. That was customary cheating, and could not be disputed. Next came an item for beefsteaks, when, to the best of my knowledge and belief, nothing but veal cutlets, which were also duly specified, ever passed my lips in any part of Russia. Upon that I ventured a remonstrance, but gave in on the assurance that it was Russian beefsteak. I was too glad to have any ground for believing that it was not Russian dog. Next came an item for police commissions. All that work I had done myself, and therefore was entitled to demur. It appeared that a man was kept for that purpose, and when he was not employed he expected remuneration for the disappointment. Then there was an item for domestic service, when the only service rendered was to black my boots, for which I had already paid. No matter; it was customary, so I gave in. Then came sundry bottles of wine. I never drink wine. “But,” said the proprietor, “it was on the table.” Not being able to dispute that, I abandoned the question of wine. Various ices were in the bill. I had asked for a lump of ice in a glass of water on several occasions, supposing it to be a common article in a country on the edge of the Arctic circle, but for every lump of ice the charge was ten kopeks. Upon this principle, I suppose they attach an exorbitant value to thawed water during six months of the year, when the Neva is a solid block of ice. I find that ice is an uncommonly costly luxury in Northern Europe, where there is a great deal of it. In Germany it is ranked with fresh water and other deadly poisons; in Russia it costs too much for general use; and in Norway and Sweden, where the snow-capped mountains are always in sight, the people seem to be unacquainted with the use of iced water, or, indeed, any other kind of water as a beverage in summer. They drink brandy and schnapps to keep themselves cool. However, I got through the bill at last, without loss of temper, being satisfied it was very reasonable for St. Petersburg. Having paid for every article real and imaginary; paid each servant individually for looking at me; then paid for domestic services generally; paid the proprietor for speaking his native language, which was German, and the commissioner for wearing a brass band on his cap, and bowing several times as I passed out, the whole matter was amicably concluded, and, with my knapsack on my back, I wended my way down to the steam-boat landing of the Wasseli-Ostrow. As I was about to step on board the Russian steamer bound for Revel – an eager crowd of passengers pressing in on the plankway from all sides – I was forcibly seized by the arm. Supposing it to be an arrest for some unconscious violation of the police regulations, a ghastly vision of Siberia flashed upon my mind as I turned to demand an explanation. But it was not a policeman who arrested me – it was only my friend, Herr Batz, the rope-maker, who, with a flushed face and starting eyes, gazed at me. “Where are you going?” said he. “To Revel,” said I. Almost breathless from his struggle to get at me, he forcibly pulled me aside from the crowd, drew me close up to him, and in a hoarse whisper uttered these remarkable words: “Hempf is up! It took a rise yesterday —Zweimal zwey macht vier, und sechsmal vier macht vier und zwanzig! verstehen sie?” “Gott im Himmel!” said I, “you don’t say so?” “Ya, freilich!” groaned Herr Batz, hoarsely: “Zwey tausent rubles! verstehen sie? Sechs und dreissig, und acht und vierzig.” “Ya! ya!” said I, grasping him cordially by the hand, for I was afraid the steamer would leave – “Adjeu, mein Herr! adjeu!” and I darted away into the crowd. The last I saw of the unfortunate rope-maker, he was standing on the quay, waving his red cotton handkerchief at me. As the lines were cast loose, and the steamer swung out into the river, he put both hands to his mouth, and shouted out something which the confusion of sounds prevented me from hearing distinctly. I was certain, however, that the last word that fell upon my ear was “hempf!”