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The police officers became even more omnipotent than ever. If a dozen schoolmasters came together they were treated as conspirators. The reforms of 1861-1866 were treated as the work of rank revolutionists, and the very name of Alexander the Second became suspect. Never can a foreigner realize the darkness of the cloud which hung over Russia during that unfortunate reign. It is only through the deep note of despair sounded in the novels and sketches of Tchékoff and several of his contemporaries-"the men of the eighties"-that one can get a faint idea of that gloom.

However, man always hopes, and as soon as Nicholas the Second came to the throne new hopes were awakened. I have spoken of these hopes in the pages of this Review, and shown how soon they faded away. Since then Nicholas the Second has not shown the slightest desire to repair any one of the grave faults of his father, but he has added very many new ones.

Everywhere he and his Ministers have bred discontent-in Finland, in Poland, in Armenia (by plundering the Armenian Church), in Georgia, in the Zemstvos, among all those who are interested in education, among the students-in fact, everywhere. But that is not all. There is one striking feature in this reign. All these last ten years there has been no lack of forces which endeavored to induce the ruler of Russia to adopt a better policy; and all through these ten years he himself-so weak for good-found the force to resist them. At the decisive moment he always had enough energy to turn the scales in favor of reaction by throwing in the weight of his own personal will. Every time he interfered in public matters-be it in the student affairs, in Finland, or when he spoke so insolently to the Zemstvo delegates on his advent to the throne-every time his interference was for bad.

However, already during the great strikes of 1895, and still more so during the student disturbances of 1897, it had become apparent that the old régime could not last long. Notwithstanding all prosecutions, a quite new Russia had come into existence since 1881. In the seventies it was only the youth which revolted against the old régime. In our circles a man of thirty was an old man. In 1897 men of all ages, even men like Prince Viazemskly, member of the Council of State, or the Union of Writers, and thousands of elderly men scattered all over the country, joined in a unanimous protest against the autocratic bureaucracy.

It was then that Witte began to prepare the gradual passage from autocracy to some sort of a constitutional régime. His Commissions on the Impoverishment of Agriculture in Central Russia were evidently meant to supply that intermediate step. In every district of the thirty-four provinces which have the Zemstvo institutions, Committees, composed of the Zemstvos and of local men invited ad hoc, were asked to discuss the causes of this impoverishment. Most remarkable things were said in these Committees, by noblemen and functionaries, and especially by simple peasants-all coming to one conclusion: Russia cannot continue to exist under the police rule which was inaugurated in 1881. Political liberties and representative government have become a most urgent necessity. "We have something to say about our needs, and we will say it"-this was what peasant and landlord alike said in these Commissions. The convocation of an Assembly of the representatives of all provinces of Russia had thus become unavoidable. But then Nicholas the Second, under the instigation and with the connivance of Plehve, made his little coup d'état. Witte was shelved in the Council of State, and Plehve became an omnipo

tent satrap. However, it is now known that in 1902 Plehve had handed to Nicholas the Second a memoir in which he accused Witte of preparing a revolutionary movement in Russia, and already then the Tsar had decided in his mind to get rid of Witte and his Commissions. This he did, handing Russia to that man whom the worst reactionists despised, even though they called upon him to be their saviour.

An orgy of insolent police omnipotence now began: the wholesale deportation of all discontents; massacres of the Jews, of which the instigators, such as the Moldavian Krushevan, editor of the Bessarabets, were under the personal protection of the Minister; an orgy of wholesale bribery, general corruption, and intimidation. And Nicholas the Second had not one word to say against that man! Only now, when Plehve's successors have brought to the Tsar the copies of all his Majesty's correspondence with the Grand Dukes, which Plehve opened and had carefully copied for some unknown purpose only now they go about in the Winter Palace exclaiming: "It is Plehve who is the cause of all that agitation! It is he who has brought upon us all this odium!" As if Plehve was not their last hope the last card of autocracy! Truly has the lawyer Korobchevsky said before the Court, in defence of his client Sazonoff: "The bomb which killed the late Minister of the Interior was filled, not with dynamite, but with the burning tears of the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of the men whom he sent to the gallows or to die slowly in prison or in Siberia!"

But who are these new men of the Zemstvos-it will be asked-who come now so prominently to the front? Are they capable of playing the responsible part which history seems to bestow upon them?

When provincial self-government was

introduced forty years ago there certainly was among the promoters of this reform some sort of idea like this: "Let the landlords, the merchants, the peasants, familiarize themselves, through the provincial and the district assemblies, with representative government and the management of public affairs." This is also how the reform was understood on the spot, and this is why the Zemstvos attracted at the outset so many of the best provincial forces.

The mode of composition of these assemblies is original. Russia, as is known, is divided into provinces, and each province into ten to twelve districts. Leaving aside Poland (ten provinces), Finland (which has its own Parliament), Caucasia and Asiatic Russia (Siberia, Turkestan, the Steppe Region), European Russia is divided into fifty provinces, out of which thirty-four have now the institution of the Zemstvo. This means that in these provinces each district has an assembly, elected by all the inhabitants, for the management of quite a number of local matters. Each assembly nominates its own executive, and all the district assemblies nominate a Provincial Assembly, which also has its executive, and is presided over by the provincial President of the Nobility. The towns have their own municipal government. The district elections, however, are made separately by the three "orders" -the nobility, the mixed landowners (merchants and peasant proprietors), and the peasants belonging to the village communities. Besides, as the foundation of the electoral rights is the value of landed property owned by each person in the district, and the nobility are the chief landowners, the result is that in most assemblies the number of peasant representatives is inferior to those of the other two orders taken together. Only in certain north-eastern provinces such as Vyatka

have the peasants a dominating voice. This is, at least, how the Zemstvos were constituted till 1890, when the would-be "Peasant Tsar" further reduced the number of peasant delegates.

It would seem that under such an organization the Zemstvos would soon become mere administrative boards, on which the country squires would find a number of well-paid positions. So it was indeed at the outset in some central provinces, where the landlords of the old school had the upper hand. But on the other hand there were also provinces, such as Tver (an old nest of "Decembrists"), Voronezh, Poltava, partly Ryazán, &c., in which the nobility, owing to various circumstances, took the lead of the reform movement. In these provinces, as also in the northeastern ones, in which the peasants dominate, the Zemstvos became an active force for introducing in the villages all sorts of useful institutions on a democratic basis. These two sorts of Zemstvos became the leaders of the others. This is why, notwithstanding all the obstacles opposed to them by the Central Government, the Zemstvos, as a rule, have accomplished something. They have laid the foundation of a rational system of popular education. They have placed sanitation in the villages on a sound basis, and worked out the system which answers best the purpose of free medical help for the peasants and the laboring classes. They elected Justices of Peace who were decidedly popular. And some of the Zemstvos are doing good work by spreading in the villages better methods of agriculture, by the supply of improved machinery at cost price, by spreading cooperative workshops and creameries, by mutual in

* Taking a district of North-Eastern Russia where, owing to the small number of nobles, the first two "orders" vote together, we have three functionaries of the Crown sitting by

surance, by introducing school gardens, and so on. All this, of course, within the narrow limits imposed by the present economical conditions, but capable, like similar beginnings in Western Europe, of a considerable extension.

Another important feature is that the Zemstvos draw into their service a considerable number of excellent men, truly devoted to the people, who in their turn exercise a decided influence upon the whole of the Zemstvo institution. Here is a country district in North-Western Russia. Its district assembly consists of twenty noblemen elected by the nobility, one deputy from the clergy (nominated by the Church), one functionary of the Crown (who sits by right), five deputies elected by the second "order" of mixed landowners (merchants, peasant proprietors, &c.), and nine peasants from the third "order," representing the village communities. ®

They decide, let us say, to open a number of village schools. But the salaries of the teachers are low, the schoolmasters' houses are poor log-huts, and the assembly people know that nobody but a "populist," who loves the people and looks upon his work as upon his mission, will come and stay. And so the "populist" comes in as a teacher. But it is the same with the Zemstvo doctor, who is bound to attend to a number of villages. He has to perform an incredible amount of work, travelling all the year round, every day, from village to village, over impassable roads, amidst a poverty which continually brings him to despair-read only Tchékoff's novels! And, therefore, nobody but a "populist" will stay. And it is the same with the midwife, the doctor's aid, the agricultural inspector, the co-operator, and so on. And when right, twelve members elected by the first two orders (three nobles, the remainder are merchants, &c.), and seven peasants representing the village communities.

several Zemstvos undertook, with their limited budgets, to make house-tohouse statistical inquests in the villages, whom could they find but devoted "populists" to carry on the work and to build up that wonderful monument, the 450 volumes of the Zemstvo inquests? Read Ertel's admirable novel, Changing Guards, and you will understand the force which these teachers, doctors, statisticians, &c., represent in a province.

The more the Zemstvos develop their activity, the more this "third element" grows; and now it is they-the men and women on the spot, who toil during the snowstorm and amidst a typhus-stricken population-who speak for the people and make the Zemstvo speak and act for it. A new Russia has grown in this way. And this Russia hates autocracy, and makes the Zemstvos hate it with a greater hatred than any which would have sprung from theories borrowed from the West. At every step every honest man of the Zemstvo finds the bureaucracy-dishonest, ignorant, and arrogant-standing in his way. And if these men shout, "Down with autocracy!" it is because they know by experience that autocracy is incompatible with real progress.

These are, then, the various elements which are arraigned in Russia against the old institutions. Will autocracy yield, and make substantial concessions -in time, because time plays an immense part under such conditions? This we do not know. But that they never will be able any more to stop the movement, this is certain. It is said that they think at the Winter Palace to pass a few measures in favor of the peasants, but to avoid making any constitutional concessions. However, this will not help. Any improvement in the condition of the peasants will be welcome. But if they think that therefore they will be able to limit

their concessions to the invitation of a few representatives of the provinces to the Council of State, where they may take part in its deliberations, this is a gross mistake. Such a measure might have pacified the minds of 1881, if Alexander the Third had honestly fulfilled the last will of his father. It might have had, perhaps, some slight effect ten years ago, if Nicholas the Second had listened then to the demand of the Zemstvos. But now this will do no longer. The energy of the forces set in motion is too great to be satisfied with such a trifling result. And if they do not make concessions very soon, the Court party may easily learn the lesson which Louis Philippe learned in the last days of February 1848. In those days the situation at Paris changed every twenty-four hours, and therefore the concessions made by the Ministry always came too late. Each time they answered no longer to the new requirements.

In all the recent discussions nothing has yet been said about the terrible economical conditions of the peasants and the working men in the factories. All the resolutions were limited to a demand of political rights, and thus they seem to imply that the leading idea of the agitation was to obtain, first, political rights, and to leave the discussion of the economical questions to the future representative Government. If this were so, I should see in such a one-sidedness the weak point of the agitation. However, we have already in the resolutions of the committees on the Impoverishment of Cen.tral Russia a wide programme of changes, required by the peasants themselves, and it would be of the greatest importance to circulate this programme at once in the villages.

It is quite certain that every Russian -even the poorest of the peasants-is interested in the destruction of the secular political yoke to which all Rus

sia is harnessed. But the destruction of that yoke, if it has to be done in reality, and not on paper only, is an immense work, which cannot be accomplished unless all classes of society, and especially the toiling classes, join in it. Autocracy has its outgrowths in every village. It is even probable that no progress in the overthrow of that institution will be made so long as the peasant masses do not bring their insurrections to bear upon the decisions of the present rulers. They must be told, therefore, frankly and openly by The Nineteenth Century and After.

the educated classes, what the intentions of the latter are concerning the great problem which is now at this very moment facing millions of Russian peasants: "How to live till the next crop?" Let us hope, therefore, that those who have started the present agitation with so much energy will also see that they must tell the ninety million Russian peasants the improvements in the economical conditions of the toiling masses which they can expect under the new régime, in addition to the acquisition of political rights.. P. Kropotkin.

RECOLLECTIONS OF ARTHUR SULLIVAN.

There is sound sense in one of the rules laid down by the Sacred College that no member of the Catholic Church, however saintly their lives may have been, however venerable their reputation may be at the time of their death, can be canonized till half-acentury at least has come and gone since they joined the majority. I have often wished that a similar unwritten law could be enforced with respect to biographies. Nowadays, and especially in our own country, no man who has made any mark in his day is considered by his friends or relatives to have received due recognition of his services unless a bulky biography is published containing full and appreciative records of his private life and his public career. In the case of men of eminence, such as Mr. Gladstone, who have taken a leading share in politics an exception may fairly be made. After all, they are part and parcel of their country's history, and memoirs written by contemporaries, and published while their memory was still green, may be useful for historians of a future day, whose duty it will be to narrate the true story of our time.

I confess, however, that, in my opinion, biographies of men of mark in science, literature, or art had better, with very rare exception, be left unwritten till the judgment of posterity has confirmed the estimate placed on them by their contemporaries. Their works survive them; and by these works they must in the end be judged. Of late years, however, hardly a week passes without the issue of some elaborate biography narrating the sayings and doings of minor politicians, public officials, men of letters, clerics, and artists who doubtless played creditable parts in their respective careers, but who are never likely to be known, even by name, when their own generation has been gathered to its fathers.

In the category of biographies that, as I hold, might have well been left unwritten I should include the memoir of Sir Arthur Sullivan whose author is Mr. Findon, I find no fault with the biography as it stands, except that it contains certain strictures on third parties which might give unnecessary pain should they be regarded as representing the personal opinions of Sir Arthur. I agree in as far as I am

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