KATKOFF.
BY the death of the late editor of the Moscow Gazette Russia has lost the most influential figure in her poli- tical history during the last quarter of a century, and Europe a most distinguished journalist. No other editor of our time has impressed his own individuality so vividly on his genera- tion as Katkoff. To be the editor of the most powerful organ of public opinion in the Russian Empire was in itself a great distinction. But the editors of great journals are generally overshadowed by the prestige of their paper. The policy of the Times has never been identified in public opinion with the personal views of its editor. But from the time that Katkoff took the permanent management of the Moscow Gazette that journal became the organ of Katkoff's opinions. He was a prolific writer in it, and directed its course on every important question of home or foreign policy. The Moscow Gazette was simply Katkoff in person addressing
Russia and Europe. Nobody dreamt of thinking of the paper apart from him. It was a unique position, and Katkoff was a man who magnified his office. The censor- ship of the Press, so alarming to ordinary editors, had no terrors for him. When he received a warning he printed it in a conspicuous place and openly defied it. His versatility and energy were amazing. His mind was disciplined by the best education that Russia and Germany could give, and was furnished with a vast and various store of knowledge. Few educated Englishmen are as familiar as he was with the history and institutions of their own country. And in the earlier part of his career he was an advanced Liberal, and was regarded in Russia as a rather pronounced Anglomaniac. He obtained Imperial authority to start in Moscow a classical Lyceum, modelled largely on the English system of education. In this and in other matters he encountered the vigorous opposi- tion of the Panslavist party, whose aim has always been to rid Russia of its foreign civilisation, and restore the native development which foreign customs and models have arrested. "If there is a shower on the banks of the Seine," said one of those admirers of the olden time, " we immediately put up our umbrellas on the banks of the Neva." There was no hope for Russia, according to these men, until she abjured foreign models and relied upon her own resources. Katkoff, on the contrary, believed that true patriotism consisted in borrowing from other lands ideas and institutions which had borne the test of experience. No country, in his opinion, furnished such rich lessons in this respect as England. Katkoff was, therefore, an ardent reformer on the lines of English Liberalism. He advocated the introduction of constitutional government, not in slavish imitation of our forms, but by way of develop- ment of germs of the representative system already existing in Russia. Before the establishment of the autocracy, and indeed coincidently with it for a considerable time, Russia possessed a large measure of local self-government in repre- sentative Provincial Councils scattered over the Empire. These Katkoff wished to see revived, and they were revived, but only to a sort of comatose existence. The right of petition is denied to the Zemstvo,—the right, that is, of presenting grievances and suggesting reforms to the Government. Nor is it allowed the liberty of free discussion. It can only debate such subjects as are submitted to it, and it debates them within prescribed limits. The Zemstvo is thus in no sense an organ of communi- cation between the Government and the people, as Katkoff wished it to be ; nor can it, thus shackled, ever lead to his dream of a large Central Assembly which should guide and control the autocracy. Katkoff, however, though an ardent, was by no means a rash or fanatical reformer. He knew that his schemes could not be carried out otherwise than very gradually and tentatively. At this period he strenuously advocated the restoration to Poland of the Constitution of 1815, because he believed that constitutional government in Poland would inevitably lead to its gradual introduction into Russia proper. He was, at the same time, a zealous Free- trader and a thorough-going reformer of the judicial system, including the introduction of trial by jury. Such was the great Moscow journalist in the early portion of his career. The latter half of it he devoted, with unabated zeal, to destroy the faith which once he preached. The Polish insurrection of 1863 shocked and alarmed him. He fiercely resented the bungling and impotent interference of France and England on that occasion, and came to dread the influence and tendencies of democratic government. A thorough Russian in every fibre of his nature, he began to smell danger to the unity of the Empire in every movement that tended to encourage any nationalist aspirations other than that of loyalty to Russia at large. The Baltic Provinces might follow the example of Poland, and Russia would thus become gradually disintegrated. He accordingly advocated the summary suppression of everything that seemed to him to point in that direction, including the prohibition of all languages but Russian in the schools and Universities. In short, Katkoff became the leader of the party of reaction, as he had formerly been the leader of the party of reform ; and from being an enthusiastic admirer of England and English institutions, he lost no opportunity of doing us a disservice. The first blow which his Anglomania received was when England took part
with France in favour of the Polish insurgents in 1863 ; but it was Lord Beaconsfield's policy in the East that completed Katkoff's alienation. It was, however, the apparition of Nihilism in Russia that drove Katkoff into the policy of violent reaction which he pursued till he died. That so able and cultivated a man, and so experienced a politician, should have been thrown so completely off his mental balance, would be extraordinary did not experience furnish many examples of similar aberrations. Because Russian juries have occasionally given verdicts more in accordance with their sympathies and prejudices than with the evidence, Katkoff declared war upon the whole jury system, and laboured with the fanaticism of a renegade for its abolition. Because the Nihilists sought an intellectual basis for their destructive creed in some tenets of German philosophy, Katkoff, the great University reformer, started a crusade in favour of placing University education under a system of paralysing tutelage and espionage, while at the same time circumscribing woefully the curriculum of studies. He became, too, an uncompromising Protectionist, and if he saw his way to it, would have driven foreign mer- chants and manufacturers out of Russia, and officers of foreign extraction out of the Army. He ceased, moreover, to be a Panslavist in the original sense of that term,—in the sense for which the amiable and brilliant Akeakoff lived, laboured, and died. He no longer dreamt of the confederation of all Slav peoples, developing their separate types of nation- ality under the friendly leadership of Russia. He feared the democratic tendencies of the Balkan Slave, and would ruthlessly have crushed out what he regarded as an in- cipient danger to the Russian autocracy. In him, there- fore, the kidnapping of Prince Alexander and the hectoring mission of General Kaulbara found an eager champion. The disappearance of such a man from the centre of Russian politics, where he wielded such enormous influence, cannot be without important results. What those results may be it is yet too soon to predict. Our own opinion is that the death of Katkoff makes for peace. The Czar was more under his influence than under that of any other public man, and the influence was the reverse of pacific. It is not long since Katkoff tried a fall with M. de Giere, and nearly succeeded in ousting that states- man from office. De Giers will now probably regain his autho- rity, and the Emperor, no longer goaded and dominated by the masterful genius of Katkoff, is likely to show himself more amenable to the dictates of prudence and the counsels of the peacemakers. The first indication of the effect produced by Katkoff's death will be seen in the attitude of Russia in Bulgaria.
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