The Shield/The First Step

by Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev

 

 

Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev, the author of impressive tales and remarkable dramas, is well known both in America and in England. Since the beginning of the Great War he has devoted himself to the artistic portrayal of the war's effect on his country, and also to purely publicistic tasks. He was born in 1871.

 

THE FIRST STEP

By LEONID ANDREYEV

"O heavens, if within your blue,
Old God is still alive and mighty,
Unseen by me alone, ye pray
For me and for my doom e'er bleeding!
My lips no more are fraught with hymns,
No brawn in arm, no hope in heart . . .
How long, how long, how long?"

—H. Byalik.

IT is with deep emotion that I have read in the Polish New Gazette an interview about the Jewish question with a personage of high station who seems to be really well informed. According to this personage, a number of measures are being proposed and planned, which are intended to lighten the grievous lot of the Jews in Russia: the abolition of the "Pale of Settlement" in relation to towns large and small, the abrogation of the percentage "norm" in the secondary and higher educational institutions, the establishment of special Jewish schools, the reorganisation of Jewish emigration on a broad and rational basis. I confess that I was not prompt in giving credence to these good tidings. And those with whom I shared the news, although excited no less than I, accepted them also with some degree of diffidence, which is only natural in Russians: life indulges us so rarely and so reluctantly. But private rumours corroborate this news, and to persist in one's disbelief would mean to doubt the very meaning of the present great "emancipatory" war, which is building a glorious temple of renovated life on the blood of Russians, Poles, Jews and Lithuanians. And finally, I simply cannot help believing, for my soul is weary with waiting and repeating together with the great Jewish poet: "How long, how long, how long?"

An aged journalist, who, it seems, has lost all fervour and faith, has recently laughed in his sleeve at the word "miracle," which nowadays comes so often to our lips: according to him, miracles, generally speaking, do not exist. It is my opinion also that there are no miracles, if we understand by a miracle an arbitrary violation of the natural, logical, inevitable order of things. But to him who contemplates life proper, not the table of multiplication,—logic itself appears as the greatest of all miracles. Oh, if logic would really reign supreme in life; oh, if in our cursed human existence, where there are so many aimless and unnecessary sorrows and tears and wild outrages, the simplest "two and two is four" would not be the rarest of miracles, equal to the transubstantiation of water into precious wine. Would millions of individually innocent human beings perish in this most terrible of wars, if instead of a dark and terrible alogism a clear and lucid syllogism lay at the basis of our intricate and enigmatical existence? It is logic that is the true miracle, and "two and two is four" is that extraordinary happiness, which falls so seldom to our lot!

And just as I rejoiced as at miracles, at Russia's achievement of temperance, and Poland's rebirth in the same way, I now marvel at the coming solution of the "Jewish question," the immemorial and darkest of alogisms. There is something festive in it; it stirs up in me a feeling of serene and immense joy, bordering on religious exaltation. . . . And the fact that for me, as well as for many other Russian writers, all this was never even a problem, does not by any means diminish the extraordinary character of what is going to happen; for a plain brotherly kiss is almost a miracle and can move one to tears at the time when the rule of life and its highest wisdom is a fierce war of brother against brother.

And how can I help feeling this extraordinary import, I, a Russian intellectual, if, together with the solution of the "question" my soul, too, is suddenly set free. It is delivered from all the habitual and harrowing experiences that, constant companions of my days and nights as they have been, have acquired all the peculiarities of those chronic and incurable ailments, to which the grave alone can bring release. For, if to the Jews themselves the "Pale," the "norm," etc., were a fatal and impregnable fact, which deformed their entire life, they were also for me, a Russian, something in the nature of a hump on my back, a stationary and ugly growth, arising no one knows when or under what circumstances. Wherever I went and whatever I did, the hump was with me; at night it disturbed my sleep, and in my waking hours, when I was among people, it filled me with feelings of confusion and shame.

It is not my intention to demonstrate the soundness and justice of the proposed measures and to force the door which to me was always open, but I am going to take the liberty of adding a few more words about my hump. When did the "Jewish question" leap on my back?—I do not know. I was born with it and under it. From the very moment I assumed a conscious attitude towards life until this very day I have lived in its noisome atmosphere, breathed in the poisoned air which surrounds all these "problems," all these dark, harrowing alogisms, unbearable to the intellect.

Who needs it? Whom does it benefit? If all this exists and is supported, if there are people who assert it fiercely and firmly, there must be some definite sense in it; evidently, the Pale, the educational norm, and the rest increase mankind's sum of joy, exalt life, broaden the limits of human possibilities. Taking a logical point of departure, that is what I thought, but this same logic dictated to me an absolutely negative answer to all these questions: no one needs it, it brings good to no one: all these discriminations not only do not increase the sum of joy on this earth, but engender a multitude of wholly unnecessary, aimless sufferings; some they oppress, and others they badly corrupt. And yet I, a Russian intellectual, a happy representative of the sovereign race, although fully conscious and convinced that the "Jewish question" is no question at all,—I felt powerless and doomed to the most sterile tribulation of spirit. For, all the clear-cut arguments of my intellect, the most fervent tirades and speeches, the sincerest tears of compassion and outcries of indignation unfailingly broke against a dull, unresponsive wall. But all powerlessness, if it is unable to prevent a crime, becomes complicity; and this was the result: personally guiltless of any offence against my brother, I have become in the eyes of all those unconcerned and those of my brother himself, a Cain.

The first consequence of my fatal powerlessness was that the Jew did not trust me, which meant that I lost my self-confidence. Living together with the Jews as my co-citizens, being in constant personal and business relations with them, in the field of consorted social work, I came face to face with the Jewish "problem" every single day,—and every single day of my life I felt with intolerable keenness all the falsehood and wretched ambiguity of my situation, that of an oppressor against one's will. In the doctor's office, at my desk, in the editorial room, in the street, finally in jail, where together with the Jew I fulfilled the all-Russian prison duty—everywhere I remained the privileged "Russian," the representative of the sovereign race, the baron,—without the baronial blazon. And with horror I noticed that even the eyes of a Jew-friend were dimmed with strange shadows … that terrible images surged behind my friendly Russian shoulders and mingled wholly unsuitable noises and voices with my sincere plea for "world citizenship." … And yet he knew me well, he knew my attitude toward the Jews,—how about those who know only that I am a "Russian"?

I remember having spent one night in talking with a very gifted writer, a Jew, who was my casual and most welcome guest. I was trying to convince him that he, a great master of the word, ought to write, but he repeated obstinately that although he loves the Russian language with all his artist's heart, he cannot write in it, in the language which has the word zhid.^[1] Of course, logic was on my side, but on his side there was some dark truth—truth is not always lucid—and I felt, that my ardent arguments began, little by little, to sound like false and cheap babbling. So that I have not succeeded in convincing him, and when we parted I had not the courage to kiss him: how many unexpected meanings could be disclosed in this plain, everyday token of friendship and affection?

Things are altogether bad when even a kiss becomes suspicious and can be susceptible of "interpretation," as a complicated act of intricate and enigmatic relations! That is exactly what happened. And how many odd and nightmare-like misunderstandings were engendered by the poisonous mist in which we all wandered, both friends and foes, and in which the outlines of the plainest objects and feelings assumed the dismal grotesqueness of phantoms. I cannot help recalling here the case of E. A. Chirikov, which at the time excited much comment: the noble and fervent champion of the persecuted race, the author of the drama "Jews," which has more than any other Russian drama contributed to the dispersion of the evil prejudice,—this man was suddenly, in a most absurd manner, without a shadow of foundation, insulted by the accusation of anti-Semitism; and—to think of it!—it was necessary to furnish proofs that the accusation was false. What a painful, what a wholly disgraceful absurdity!

"Who needs all this? Who does not know it?" wearily thought every one of us, again and again realising the harrowing necessity of convincing some unbeliever, that two and two is four . . . nothing but four!

And abroad? "What an injustice!"—thought I, when the cultured West, having separated me from Tolstoy, as if I had stolen him, handed me on the spot, a bill for the "excesses" known the world over, at the same time frowning unambiguously upon my eternal hump. The West refused to consider that I, too, am against this. I was considered a Russian, and the question was put this way: "Tell me, why in your country, in Russia? . . ."

It is ridiculous and utterly odd to think that our far-famed "barbarism" of which our enemies accuse us and which puts our friends out of countenance, is based wholly and exclusively on our Jewish question and its bloody excesses. Take away from Russia these excesses, leave, if you wish, the anti-Semitism, but in that externally decorous form in which it still exists in the backward portions of Europe,—and we shall become at once decent Europeans, and not Asiatics and barbarians, whose proper place is beyond the Ural. This is a fact the obviousness of which every new day of the present war makes more strikingly evident.

Of course culturally we are far behind the world, our economic life is undeveloped, our civic life is at a low level, and all the aspects of our life show clearly that we have not as yet broken the shell of the egg. But we are young, we are only beginning, and for a people who abolished serfdom only half a century ago, we have done quite a good deal,—so that, at the worst, lack of culture is the only reproach which a European with a sense of justice will fling at us. But it is enough to put side by side the words "Russian" and "Jew,"—and I become at once a barbarian, a dark and terrible being, who chills and darkens resplendent Europe. At once in America people begin to hate me, in England and France to despise me; with the swiftness of theatrical transformations Tolstoy's compatriot turns into the brother of those who drive nails into their neighbours' heads,—I become a barbarian. And even the German anti-Semite, a stupid and dull creature, looks down at me and warns England: "See with whom you are friends? Are they not the same people who . . . ?"

"To whose interest is it that Europe should despise me, hate and fear me?" I mused, perplexed, feeling that in the light of the European sun my cursed hump assumes immense proportions and like a screen shuts off the light which comes from the East, and in which the aged and weary West is quite inclined to believe. To whom is it necessary for me to ramble among the cultured nations like a leper, to conceal my race and obtain the ironical bow so essential to my unacknowledged dignity, by means of exorbitant "tips" flung right and left? A barbarian, a barbarian! . . .

The war has opened our eyes to many things, and therein lies for us Russians the sad advantages of it. And now when Germany brands France and England for the union with "the Russian barbarians who . . .," when the allies, while relying on our elemental force, tremble with doubts and fear behind the screen of their noisy sympathies,—I begin to understand in whose interests it was, who needed it, that in the legion of European states we should remain all alone with our barbarism. Whatever is a misfortune for us is favourable for Germany, with her "well-tried" friendship for us, to which Wilhelm referred so loudly from the balcony of his palace. As barbarians we are only an excellent and indispensable market for the Germans' merchandise, a two-hundred-million flock of sheep ready for the shears. As a cultured nation we are a power dangerous to the Teuton's dream of world dominion. And the Jewish question, with its excesses and nails driven into heads, is that trump which our honest German neighbour has always kept hidden in his cuff and which he throws out on the green table at the necessary moment. And he was right from his standpoint. But why had we to drink off the bitter cup? Losing our self-respect, having no faith in our power, growing corrupted by an unnatural existence, cutting down by means of the celebrated "norm" the number of our educated and cultured men—a devilish joke!—our entire nation was diligently performing the "Fools' Dance," which, under the name of a drama from Russian life, has recently met with such a success in the Berlin playhouses. It must not be forgotten that the ardent Polish anti-Semitism, which frightens us so much and which seriously hinders the upbuilding of a new life, as well as the cold Finnish anti-Semitism, the power of which is still unknown to us,—that these two phenomena are nothing but the logical development of the fundamental absurdity, its natural and poisonous fruits. But the time has not come yet to speak about that.

May I be pardoned that in an hour so momentous for the Jews I persist in speaking not of them and their sufferings, but of ourselves. I repeat, the Jewish question was never a question for me, and in order to justify the proposed measures I need not allege the heroism shown by the Jews in defending Russia, their love for Russia, tragic in its faithfulness. As for demonstrating again and again that a Jew, too, is a human being, to do so would mean not only to bow too low to absurdity, but also to insult those whom I respect and love. And if I persist in speaking of ourselves and our suffering, it is not for personal egoism, nor even class egoism, but the pardonable egoism of a nation, which has been too long playing a miserable part on Europe's stage and in its own conscience, and which now repudiates the suffering of yesterday and, at the dawn of new life, seeks the possibility—oh, only the possibility!—of respecting itself.

Yes, we are still barbarians, the Poles still mistrust us, we are a dark terror for Europe, a baffling menace to her civilisation, but we do not want to be that any more, we long for purity and reason, our wretched rags burden us beyond all measure. The Jews' tragic love for Russia finds a counterpart in our love for Europe, as tragical in its faithfulness and completeness. Are we not ourselves the Jews of Europe, and is not our frontier—the same "Pale of Settlement"—something in the nature of a Russian Ghetto? And try as our Pushkin and Dostoyevsky and your Byalik may to prove that we, too, are human beings, people do not believe us, as they do not believe you: here is that equality whence we all can derive a bitter consolation; here is the punishment by means of which impartial life takes revenge on the Russians for the Jews' sufferings.

The thirst for self-respect—that is the fundamental feeling which now, in the days of the most terrible war, has seized all Russian society, which has exalted the people to the heights of heroism, and which makes us fear all that reminds us of our sad past. That is why persecution of Germans in our own country is so unbearable to us; we want no persecution; that is why we hate all that, like the belching of yesterday's drinking, distorts our disinterested aims and intentions: better yield than take too much of what belongs to other people—that is nowadays the motto of the majority. Could the country become sober if not for this feeling which one has when about to receive holy communion? Although proud at the victories of our arms, we scrupulously hide this pride, we treasure it in our hearts as our most precious possession, and we hate all swaggering and self-adulation. Not with the haughtiness of a righteous pharisee do we approach the altar, but with a prayer of penitence: "like a murderer I profess Thee."

We must all understand that the end of Jewish sufferings is the beginning of our self-respect, without which Russia cannot exist. The black days of war will pass, and the "German barbarians" of to-day will again become cultured Germans, to whose voice the world will once more hearken with deference. And we must never again allow this or any other voice to utter aloud: "The Russian barbarians."

 

1. This is an insulting synonym for "Jew."—Translator's Note.