A group of ragged-looking men were standing outside one of the
izbas and conversing with Vassily Vassilievitch. They
were all barefooted; some were bareheaded, one was
wearing a woman's straw hat untrimmed, and another an ancient soft black felt
that had lost its ribbon. They were in Russian blouses and tight factory-made
trousers.
Vassily Vassilievitch introduced me. They were the political
exiles of Liavlia, banished to that place by the
Government for various reasons. And they talked and laughed with the eagerness
of people who for months have been yearning to see faces and hear voices other
than their own.
My first impression was that I had come to a convict settlement,
but as none of the exiles had been convicted definitely of a crime, the term was
evidently inappropriate. Every one of the prisoners had been brought to trial
before the martial courts and had been found "Not
Guilty "— not guilty, but also not innocent, for they
had evidently dabbled in terrorism and propagandism,
and though no case could be made out against them, it would have been too
dangerous to release them. The Government had banished them "under administrative order"
to this forest-girdled village, where further plotting would be absurd, and
escape impossible. In Liavlia there were about
fifteen men and five women; within certain bounds
their life was fairly free; they might go where they
liked within a five-mile radius of the police station; they each received a
grant from the Government of
seventeen shillings or twenty-seven and six a month, according to their rank in
life; they might work for the farmers if they cared
to, might hunt or fish, study, or receive their friends and make merry. On the
other hand, they were under the surveillance of
keepers, their books were liable to seizure and examination, and their letters
were opened if the police had any suspicions. The tyranny of such treatment lies
in the fact —
1. That some of the exiles may have
been perfectly innocent and Tsar-loving;
2. That they have been brought from a comfortable town life, and
settled side by side with an antique and savage peasantry, in a land of eight
months' winter, far from railways and the outside Western world; and
3. That all the while they are held
here in pledge, the Secret Police are unravelling the story of their lives and
seeking to find sufficient evidence to bring them to
trial once more.
English people wouldn't stand it, but then it must be remembered
that English people would never encourage assassination even for the attainment
of the best of purposes. When once murder has come to the reinforcement of a
cause, the question of the inherent goodness of that cause is forced into the
background. If the good try to murder the wicked, and succeed time after time,
no one will disallow the wicked the right of self-defence, the right of taking
preventive measures. The policy of the Russian bureaucracy is very clear and
simple: even if they cannot succeed in governing the
country more efficiently they will protect themselves and their wives and
families from the bomb and the revolver shot. One has much sympathy with the
revolutionaries, but the conduct of their enemies is explicable and
defensible.
The Russians tell me that their countrymen in exile are the
cream of the nation, which might be true but that it suggests that all the rest
are skimmed milk. The rest — those who have not suffered, those even who have
oppressed — are just as interesting, just as beautiful, just as worthy of a place
in the Russian harmony as the handful of average men and women who have had the
good fortune to suffer for righteousness' sake in this era of
laissez-faire.
"I see," said I, when Alexey Sergeitch and the
other exiles had been explaining why they were banished, "your life is that of the
chess pieces who have been
taken and put to one side whilst the game is going on — white pawns, who ventured
just too far, or who were sacrificed for great ends. You don't know what is
happening on the board, and you think the game is still going on and that your
colour has a chance. But the game is all over and the players have left the
pieces and gone to bed. Your terms are all ending now — when a new game commences
you will all be back in your places again."
"I suppose it is all
finished now," said Alexey, the Moscow student at whose lodging I was domiciled
for the time being.
"Yes, it is all peaceful now, and
the Tsar has got a perfectly tame Duma that will do what it is told to do. The
revolutionaries have played their game and lost — there is nothing left for them
to do but to make themselves secure whenever they can escape the toils of the
Government. Their cause is safe enough — the Tsar and his successors will achieve it,
and achieve it more lastingly than they
would, though it will take a long time. Evolution is the order of the day, and
not Revolution."
"But the abrogation of the
liberties of Finland, that was also revolution of its kind," said
one.
"The English protested violently
against that," said another.
"They scarcely protested at all,"
said an implacable looking woman, smiling acidly.
"Only thirty or forty members of the British Parliament signed the petition to
the Duma."
"You are mistaken, there were sixty
who signed it, and that I find to be a considerable protest."
"Sixty out of six hundred and
sixty," replied the woman. "Do you call that
considerable? I don't. They say that England is
sympathetic. I don't believe it. Why didn't the members of parliament come over
with the first petition and present it themselves?
No harm could have come to them personally since they were British subjects. We
had arranged a beautiful reception for them, and it would have strengthened our
cause more than all the leading articles in their ridiculous newspapers. What
happened? The Russian Government sent a note to
yours and asked that the visit might be cancelled. Your Press ran up a
fictitious story of bombs and cossacks, and
frightened the poor members.
And they said that the visit, if persisted in, would do more
harm than good, forsooth! What did they do? They sent Mr.Nevinson, a
journalist, not even a member of parliament, and deprived the petition of every
atom of political significance. You write back to your papers, and tell them
we've had enough of their sympathy and goodwill and subscriptions. What we want
is a stiff upper lip, and political help rather than newspaper
froth."
There was a pause, and she went on. "You are supposed to have a
Liberal Government in
power, but I can't see where the liberalism of its foreign policy comes in.
There was a time when Liberalism was willing to lift a hand in the cause of
right. But now it seems unwilling to risk a war with
any European power for a charitable object. Which doesn't mean that it oppresses
the Hindus or the Egyptians any less. If Sir Edward Grey had spoken resolutely
and clearly on the question of the suppression of the Finnish Diet, or of the
occupation of Persia, Russia would have given in without recourse to arms, and
British credit would have gone up all over Europe." Vassily Vassilievitch
interrupted. "But Stepan Petrovitch thinks
Russia a more happy country than England, and thinks we ought to help her to
throw off the oppression of her freedom I..." There was a laugh, and
everyone looked towards me. "I do think," said I,
"that you young men would find yourselves just as
rebellious if you were called upon to live a London life. You have no notion of
London life. I can tell you it is very different from that of Moscow or
Petersburg.
"Better!" said Alexey Sergeitch.
Well, you could call it better perhaps — I don't know.
I don't call it better. In Moscow or Petersburg
two-thirds of the young men are students, in London, nine-tenths are
clerks."
"Well dressed, and earning a good
salary," the woman put in.
"No, earning a very poor salary,
and working ten hours a day to get it, and having very little prospect. I can
assure you I'd rather be here under police surveillance than be one of the
million clerks of London. You are individuals cultivating your minds, and they
are bolts and wheels rotating monotonously in the great machine. You are
tyrannised over by an autocracy; they are enslaved
by a plutocracy."
"But at least you are all
educated," someone called out, "and we have a
hundred millions who can neither read nor write. Take Archangel Province, only
one in five can sign his name."
"There you make a mistake. It is
true we have no illiterate peasantry, but you think that means that the poor man
ordinarily goes through a university course, as does the Russian student. In
England we have millions of badly educated peopl;
in Russia you are either well educated, or not educated at all. You may choose
which you please. I prefer "no mind" to "a little
mind."
Then the exiles began to talk among themselves and wonder, for
they had never come up against a rebel before. Their experience of Englishmen
had been confined to correspondents of the
newspapers and business men, and they had taken it for granted that England was
the happy country, the free and democratic that went before, showing the young
nations the ideal path of development.
"Well, it's the first time I've
heard an Englishman talk like that," said the lady who had been vituperizing
Sir Edward Grey.
"And, do you know," said Pereplotchikof, "I love
him because he loves Russia, the old and beautiful, and hates commercialism and
all that commercialism has done. He finds he can breathe better in Russia, that
the air is purer and life freer. See what a living paradox he is — he came to
Russia because it is a free country."
"It's free to foreigners," said
someone with a sneering smile; it was little
Garbage, the Jew. "The Englishman can go where he
likes, Russians will kiss his boots. If a stupid official arrests him, the
British Government will make us pay a fine. See now at Archangel, they have
stopped the trawler Onward, and the Russian Government will have to pay a
large sum of money."
"Oh!" said 1. "I also have
been arrested, three times, no less"; and I
proceeded to tell them of my adventures in Warsaw and the Caucasus, which
pleased them very much, for the revolutionary always delights to hear of the
stupidities of the officials.
But enough of talk! Nikolai Georgitch, a Little Russian,
who had been arrested at
Kharkov a year ago, took me away to test my muscles, for he was a gymnastic
enthusiast, and had made for himself parallel bars and a horizontal bar out of
pine logs. After going through his tricks on these,
we went and climbed hand over hand on ropes to the height of the great
windmills. Nikolai seemed to think I might pass muster, though it is my legs and
not my arms that I am used to exercise. Then, like schoolboys, we had a spell of vaulting five
barred gates,
and I thought soon he would be proposing leap frog.
That evening there was another storm on the Dwina,
and I had an experience similar to that of my
journey to Kekhtya. But heavy rain came on with a
stinging North wind, and we let ourselves go ashore on the sand and mud, and
after making the boat secure, sheltered ourselves under a sail on the beach. We
got thoroughly soaked, and presented rather a funny picture when we returned to
the village. It was very inconvenient for me, getting wet, because as a tramp I
could not possibly carry a change of clothes. But the defect was easily remedied
through the kindness of Alexey Sergeitch, and when I next appeared in public, everyone
declared that I was completely Russian, for I was dressed in a pair of bright
blue students' trousers, and a Russian blouse belted
at the middle.
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