Great Russia/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE LESSON OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY[1]
I
RUSSIA is the classic land for geographers. Nowhere else have geographical conditions left a more indelible imprint. Nowhere else have men felt more deeply the all-pervading influences of physical surroundings, of climate and of race. There are some countries, like England, where man has conquered Nature, where Nature has become the benevolent and ministering servant of man. There are other countries, like Russia, where it is Nature that always threatens to enslave man. In few other countries have men been compelled to submit to that physical despotism with a more passive resignation, the resignation of a Tolstoy so representative of the race. And in no other country has Nature given the lie more cruelly and more emphatically to the noble dreams of idealists. Idealists may dream their dreams, proclaim their systems, and claim their reforms. But the great natural, economic, climatic forces in Russia continue to follow their immovable course, heedless of systems and reforms. It would seem as if the political destiny of Russia had been written not in the book of philosophy, but in the stern and sibylline book of Nature; it has followed the bend of rivers and the curves of isothermic lines; and one guesses its mystery, and one catches its meaning more surely and more easily, by listening to the murmur of forest and steppe than by listening to the most plausible theories of revolutionists.
II
In this connexion, and to illustrate my meaning from the outset, and to indicate what I am driving at, I would like to point out the utter futility and folly of most newspaper comments and discussions on the political situation in Russia. In speculating on the probable course of Russian policy, journalists are constantly reasoning on the childish assumption that the ultimate success or failure of political and social reform must entirely depend on the will, weak or strong, just or wicked, enlightened or obscured, of some one man or group of men, the Tsar or the Grand Dukes, their supporters or opponents. If Russia could only be got rid of these Grand Dukes, and "of a few corrupt officials," then all would be right. Not only do they forget that behind the Tsar and the Grand Dukes, and the high court officials, there is the large army of the bureaucracy, millions strong, with their immense power, with their vested interests, who are capable of paralyzing and neutralizing all the efforts of the most enlightened rulers, and of wrecking all the programmes of reform if they so choose, but they also forget that behind both autocracy and bureaucracy there is a factor infinitely more important still, and that is the passive resistance or active co-operation of one hundred and fifty millions of peasants, whom we totally ignore in our calculations, as if they were absolutely of no account. Unfortunately for our speculations and calculations, these one hundred and fifty millions, whether active or passive, must be taken into account, as the ultimate success of any scheme of reform necessarily depends upon them. It may not be true that the people have generally the Government they deserve, and that they deserve the Government they have; or to use the language of Carlyle, that the rights of a people are equivalent to its mights, its needs and aspirations. But in a country like Russia, the needs and the mights of the people cannot be ignored, and those needs and mights are largely determined by the conditions under which they live, and those conditions largely resolve themselves into facts of climate and distance, of soil and of race.
III
One single illustration applicable to the present situation will explain better than any argument the interdependence between climate, economics and politics. All reformers are agreed that the most urgent need of the Russian people, after the introduction of religious freedom, is the establishment of universal popular education. So vital is that need, so strongly is it felt that, as far back as the sixties, Tolstoy for several years relinquished his literary activities and improvised himself a primary schoolmaster. But Tolstoi was driven by his pedagogical experiment to see the futility of all the theories and reforms propounded by doctrinaire publicists. The doctrinaire publicists imagine that universal compulsory education could be introduced into Russia by a stroke of the autocratic pen, and they blame a reactionary bureaucracy and an obscurantist church for keeping the people in darkness. But the bureaucracy is really much less responsible than theorists imagine for the backwardness of Russian education. In a country where winter lasts for seven months, where for those interminable winter months the plains are covered with a thick shroud of snow, where roads are few and bad, in a country which is further sparsely inhabited and where the izbas of the moujik are as scattered as the farms of the Dutchmen on the South African veld—you cannot possibly have primary schools as in Great Britain or France. Even the most progressive Russian Government could not afford a schoolmaster for every twelve families. It could not even establish itinerant schoolmasters as is done in the Scottish Highlands. For the Highlands are much better provided with roads, and they are more thickly inhabited than many parts of Russia. On the other hand you cannot compel little Russian children to tramp in the depth of winter for ten miles to the nearest school centre. In other words the diffusion of popular education is not mainly a question of political development, but of economic development. Again it is largely a question of climate, of good roads and of density of population.
Let us then constantly keep in mind those physical conditions which are amongst the fundamental factors of the political problem. It would be as idle to ignore those geographical factors as it would be to ignore the intellectual and spiritual factors. Without an accurate and minute investigation of the environment, it is as futile to speculate on the relative strength of the forces of liberty and reaction as it would be to speculate on the resistance of the Forth Bridge or the Tay Bridge, without examining the strength of the foundations, without studying the special properties of iron and steel as well as the general laws of dynamics.
IV
The first feature and the essential fact in the physical geography of Russia is the infinite plain, the uniform steppe and prairie, without any other undulations than the tumuli, or pre-historic tombs, or the high banks of streams, or the insignificant hills which separate the basins of the enormous, slow, aimless rivers. The chain of the Ural Mountains which separates Asiatic Russia from European Russia hardly breaks the continuity of the plain. The slopes of the Ural are a passage rather than a barrier, and between the last slopes of the Ural and the Caspian Sea there opens a gate of three hundred miles in width which has always been the highway of invaders and marauders.
And this unity of the infinite plain is still rendered more striking through the unity of climate. In summer the same Continental climate reigns all over the Empire, the same intense heat relaxes and enervates the inhabitants of Lake Ladoga in the north and the inhabitants of the Caspian shores in the south. In winter the same shroud of snow buries the whole Russian Continent from Poland to Siberia. The Sea of Azov and the northern Caspian Sea are frozen as well as the Gulf of Finland. And the traveller might drive and glide in his sledge in a straight line for six thousand miles from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, from Archangel to Astrakhan.
V
Now, my point is that this single feature of the physical geography of Russia has determined beforehand the whole history of the Russian people. We are reminded of the admirable sonnet of Wordsworth on the subjugation of Switzerland by Napoleon:
Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice;
In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty.
If it be true that the voices of sea and mountain are the two mighty voices of Liberty, on the other it is even more obvious that the plain has ever been the arena and refuge of despotism. The levelling of the soil seems to be significant and symbolical of the levelling of men. Ernest Renan has told us that the desert is monotheistic, i.e. that the uniformity of the desert suggests and determines a belief in the unity of God. In the same way, one might assert that the plain is monarchic and autocratic. In all times and everywhere the plain has invited the invader, and in order to repel and expel that foreign invader the inhabitants have had to submit to the protecting yoke of a master; they have had to accept a military and centralized monarchy.
Examine on the map the few and scattered historic cities of Russia—Moscow, Novgorod the Great, Nijni Novgorod, Kiev, Kazan—generally situated on the border of the sheltering forest, or at the mouth or on the banks of rivers. The new city or "nov gorod" is generally situated on the lower bank (nijni), but the old city is almost invariably situated on a height, round a Kreml. Each one of those old cities dominating the plain appears to us like a sentinel who watches and like a stronghold which protects, and that Kremlin—which is both an acropolis and a capitol, which is at once a fortress, a church, and a city—tells us by its aspect of the violent destinies of the inhabitants. The whole of Russian history is one continued effort to drive out foreign invasion. In everlasting succession on each frontier arises a new enemy—Tatars of Kazan and of Crimea, Khirgiz of the Volga, Cossacks of the Steppe, Turks, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Swedes, towards the south and the west—the external peril has never ceased.
VI
Speaking of the European coalition against France in 1792, Joseph de Maistre has been able to say that France could only be saved by a Reign of Terror. With how much more reason might one affirm that Russia could only be saved by an autocracy? It is Ivan the Terrible, Peter and Catherine the Great who have been the cruel and stern master-builders of the Russian people, the "gatherers" of the Russian soil.[2]
It is hard for a Briton, who has an instinctive worship and almost a superstition for liberty, to get reconciled with the principle of despotism. It is difficult for him not to see in that principle something diabolical, the source of all moral and political evil. And most difficult of all, most repugnant to his feelings, is it to admit that this abhorred autocracy can ever have been the very condition of the salvation of the country. But let us not forget that in the life of nations the principle of authority, as long as it is accepted by the people, and as long as it rests on a moral or spiritual basis, may be as necessary and therefore as legitimate as the principle of liberty. Let us not forget that even in our own history two of the most decisive epochs have been the military dictatorship of Cromwell and the civil dictatorship of Pitt. Let us not forget that the Romans—i.e. the nation who, of all ancient nations, have been the most successful in the practice of freedom and of self-government, did never hesitate to appeal to such dictatorship whenever the country was in danger. Salus populi suprema lex.
VII
Now in Russia for centuries the country has always been in danger. Hannibal has always been at the gates of Rome. Tatars and Poles have always threatened the gates of Moscow. And therefore fatally despotism had to be perpetual. Dura lex sed lex: it was a great evil, but a necessary one.
Let us suppose for one moment that the Russians had adopted another form of government, and had remained loyal to the republican principle which we see prevailing in the most ancient commonwealths of Pskof, Viatka, and My Lord Novgorod the Great. What would have happened if Russia, instead of submitting to the iron hand of the Grand Dukes of Moscow, had risen against them, and if republican freedom had triumphed"?
The reply to that question is written in the whole history of Poland which is inseparable from that of Russia. In the life and death struggle between the two great Slav nations, the Poles seemed to have every advantage: they were a race admirably gifted, brilliant, clever, proud, and bold. They lived in close proximity of the centres of civilization, in communion of sympathy and interest with Western Europe. They were inspired with a passionate love for independence. And yet it was Tartarized and barbarized Russia that triumphed, it was civilized Poland which was crushed and blotted from the very map of Europe. Poland perished through freedom, through the abuse of the liberum veto of the elective principle. She perished because, in the supreme hour of danger, the Poles did not rally around their leaders, because they did not make to their Government the sacrifice of their anarchist instincts. Russia, on the contrary, made that sacrifice; she trusted to the sword of her princes; she allowed herself to be saved by despotism. "Let Poland perish rather than surrender the privileges of a free aristocracy of the Schlachta!" seems to have been the guiding principle of the Poles. "The safety of the country is the supreme law" remained the motto of the Muscovites.
VIII
Let us, therefore, take care not to simplify unduly the tragedy of humanity by rigid adherence to a few doctrinaire principles. By all means let us proclaim that in our modern industrial community, liberty with all its risks is infinitely preferable to despotism with all its security. But do not let us forget the fatality of the past. Let us remember that autocracy is not a mere baneful accident in the annals of Russia, a system born of brutal force and which must perish by brutal force, a despotism only supported by exile and by Cossacks, and only tempered by Nihilism and by assassination. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, although nations may not necessarily have the Government they deserve, and deserve the government they have, yet when a government has succeeded in lasting for generations, it thereby clearly shows that it must be adapted to the needs of and in conformity with the aspirations of the inhabitants. Now autocracy in Russia has endured for centuries; it has survived every revolution. Individual Tsars have been suppressed, Peter III, Paul I, Alexander II, have been murdered. The institution itself could not be suppressed. In times of national disturbance and national distress it has always appeared to the people, rightly or wrongly, as the supreme refuge. It has owed its existence not to chance, but to necessity. And this necessity seems so obvious, so imperative to every Russian who knows his history, that all Slavophiles, even though their tendencies were liberal, as in the case of Aksakov and Yourii Samarine, have upheld the autocracy, the "Samoderjavie," as the corner-stone of the political structure.[3]
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- ↑ I do not in the least pretend to give in the present chapter an "explanation" of Modern Russia. I only desire to single out one particular factor which I think of the highest importance. Whilst not underrating the other factors, and least of all the religious factor, I think it desirable to draw attention to and to emphasize one essential element in the complex Russian problem which is being constantly ignored.
- ↑ See the Russian writings of Danilevski.
- ↑ In the course of an interview with Tolstoy, the Russian prophet repeatedly emphasized to me the importance of studying the "Slavophile" theories, in order to understand the present situation in Russia.