THE RUSSIAN STEAM-ROLLER. T HE Romans, who understood ruling, held that
the first motto of statecraft was to keep their subjects divided ; and the Anglo-Indians, who also understand ruling, though they do not formulate the maxim, act on it with steady persistence. Nothing would horrify a Viceroy of India more than to see all Indians embrace one creed, or use one language, or adopt any one uniform principle of action. He would be afraid of a sand-storm directly, and a sand-storm is irresistible. The Russian Government is acting on the exactly contrary idea, that it is easier to rule an Empire in which all men think, speak, and believe exactly alike ; and we should greatly like to under- stand why. Russian statesmen are able men, and, as far as the maintenance of autocracy and the increase of empire go, they are successful men ; yet for ten years they have pursued an internal policy which seems to outsiders absolutely inept. They want, one sup- poses, to make a structure, not a road ; yet they have been recklessly driving a crushing steam-roller over the entire Empire. Everything that is separate has been smashed, or at least the intention has been to smash it. The nationalities, to begin with, have been ordered to cease to exist. The Finlanders have lost half their privileges; the Germans of the Baltic Provinces have been driven into Russian schools, and complain that their religious freedom is assailed ; while the Poles have been simply commanded to become Russians at once. Any overt resistance to this policy has been met by sentences to Siberia, any denuncia- tion of it has been treated as a crime, while any dislike of it, once detected, subjects the man of bad taste to a steady persecution by the police. As to the Jews, with whom success is not expected, they are not only treated by the Government as men guilty of insurrection are rarely treated, but they are surrendered to the malice of a population which at once detests them as heretics, and dreads them as successful rivals in business. Differences of religion are treated no better than differences of nationality. The Catholics are not proscribed, but they are persecuted even in Poland, where they form nearly the whole Christian population ; while Dissenters are treated as criminals, and deported to Siberia by whole communities at once. It is officially announced that the fixed policy of the Government is to " Russify Russia," at any cost of human misery; that it intends, in fact, violently to compel its whole population to think in Russian, to profess the Orthodox Russian faith, and to live after the Russian manner in all things, as contradistinguished from the manner of "the West." "The West," indeed, is only mentioned officially with abhorrence, and is declared to be tainted not only with Liberalism, but with habits of thought as to the constitu- tion of society, utterly inconsistent with the ideals which it is the mission of Holy Russia to diffuse. It is quite possible that if the Great War does not result in a great defeat, and if the new policy is persisted in steadily for two reigns, it may up to a certain point succeed. There is a theory prevalent in England that religious persecution always fails ; but that is, unhappily, not in accordance with historic fact. The steady pressure of the Roman Empire, after it became Christian, nearly extirpated paganism, or drove it to linger out an unhappy life in the remotest corners of its old dominion. Charle- magne did make all his subjects nominally Christian. The Spaniards, by a series of expulsions, cleared the Peninsula of all avowed heresy. Alva preserved Belgium to the Catholic faith by executions. The Albigenses disappeared under the swords of the " Crusaders " who attacked them. The in- habitants of Spanish America are all nominally Christians, and the majority of them profess even in secret no other faith. Bohemia was restored to the Papacy by the unsparing use of the sword ; and the Japanese Christians were submerged in a very few years of terrible persecution. The Russian Government will not extirpate Catholicism because it will not dare to use means sufficiently horrible; but it is quite possible that it will get rid of Judaism, and drive all Russian Dissent so completely underground that it will to all but the keenest observers seem non-existent. The nationalities, again, are very weak. The great body of Rus- sians, who are singularly homogeneous, are too powerful for the Finlanders to resist, even if all their privileges are swept away ; the Germans in the Baltic Provinces are powerless against the lower classes, who are either Rus- sian or on the Russian side ; while the Poles, in spite of the gallant resistance of two centuries, are still Slays, dread Germany more than Russia, and may suddenly decide to share the fate of their Russian kinsfolk. As to lan- guage, the difficulty is probably even less. There are a few instances, as in Biscay, Brittany, and Wales, of a won- derfully tenacious adherence to an inconvenient tongue; but a great people usually crushes out all independent speech. Erse is disappearing in Ireland, and has disap- peared in Cornwall; all tongues but the English die away in the United States ; Spanish may be said to be the uni- versal tongue of South America ; and the Americans of the Southern States, who were in earnest about the matter, killed out all Negro dialects with such completeness that they are supposed, perhaps rashly, to be unknown, and are cer- tainly never heard. We can see no solid reason why two successive Czars, if not defeated and if devoted to that policy, should not succeed. in " Russifying Russia" from Riga to the -Ural, so that the population, of their enormous European Empire should profess one faith, acknowledge one nationality, and include no individual ignorant of Russian and no community habitually using any other tongue. The mere refusal of office to all but Russians would, except as regards religion, almost accomplish the end, and religious persecution grows sharper as the numbers of the persecuted decrease.
What we cannot understand is the use of the change from the point of view of a great Government. The statesmen of Russia cannot be mere fanatics for Russian ways, and it is hard to see which of the ends that governing men usually propose to themselves they are hoping to secure. Difference of faith, even when strongly accentuated, is of itself no obstacle to loyalty, and the Catholics of Germany will fight for the Empire just as loyally as the Protestants. English Dissenters are just as loyal as English Churchmen, and the wildest of French 171tramontanes does not suspect the Huguenots of wishing success to any foreign Power. A separate nationality may be a difficulty under certain circumstances ; but the Fin- landers have no hope of rejoining Sweden, even if they love her, which is very doubtful ; while the Poles make as faithful soldiers as any in the Russian Army. The mass of Russia is too overwhelming for serious insurrec- tion even in Poland ; and elsewhere within her dominion nationality is a sort of dress, a peculiarity of no more importance than the nationality of our own Welsh or Highlanders. As to language, it is doubtful if it is even a strong bond. Englishmen and Irish Nationalists scold at one another in a single tongue, while Bretons and Alsatians were among the most faithful troops of France. The greatest war of our time—the Civil War in America —was between two armies who understood each other per- fectly; while in Switzerland citizens of four tongues are equally devoted to the Republic. A common language is, no doubt, a convenience to an Administration ; but the Indian Viceroys find no difficulty in working the machine among a people who speak sixty, and who do not possess, except in English fancy, any lingua franca. Servants do, but not the people. Insurrection is probably easier among people of a common tongue, while it is certain that the force most dreaded in Russia—namely, public opinion--develops most rapidly and strongly .where there is no barrier of language to be overcome. The men of Nihilist opinions all speak Russian, and for the most part are Russians by descent as well as creed—when they have any—while some of the best servants of the autocracy have been Germans, Americans, Poles, and even Corsicans. The effort to pulverise all individuality till there is nothing left except a hundred millions of replicas, seems nothing but a waste of power which, at a cost of an untold amount of human misery, seeks to accelerate—say, by a century— a process which, if left to itself, would probably be com- pleted without perceptible loss to any human being. Even if we admit that the breeze from the West which so irritates your true Russian is a tainted breeze, still it comes out of the West, and not out of any nationalities within the Empire. German social ideas, and French manners, and English notions of governing, invade Russia from outside, not from within, and will no more be kept out by persecuting Stundists, or destroying all languages except Russian, than water would be kept out of Holland by similar decrees. That foreigners overestimate the danger produced by such persecu- tions, is quite possible, for foreigners habitually ignore the wonderful homogeneity of the Russian race, the solidity of the block of power upon which rests the throne of the Czars ; but of their foolishness it is hardly possible to form too strong an opinion. They can produce nothing but Nihilism, and a sort of impression abroad which often makes of the South Slays, Russia's natural allies, her deadliest opponents. If Russia were made a happy place, the attractive force of the Empire throughout South- Eastern Europe would render Austria powerless, and the idea of independence for the Balkan States a foolish dream. Nothing impairs the prestige of Russia like the action of her steam-roller, which every would-be friend outside fears, if he came inside, might go over himself. Yet the steam- roller is the one engine of Government now driven with a will.
Previous page
