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Originally published in 1923 - translated from the French by F. A. Holt, O.B.E.
Main Menu - Table of Contents
Volume 1:
I. JULY 20-23, 1914 | II. JULY 24-AUGUST 2, 1914 | III.AUGUST 3-17, 1914 | IV. AUGUST 18-SEPTEMBER 11, 1914 | V. SEPTEMBER 12-OCTOBER 28, 1914 | VI. OCTOBER 29-NOVEMBER 30, 1914 | VII. DECEMBER 1-31, 1914 | VIII. JANUARY 1-FEBRUARY 13, 1915 | IX. FEBRUARY 14-MARCH 31, 1915 | X. APRIL 1-JUNE 2, 1915
Volume 2:
I. JUNE 3-AUGUST 24, 1915 | II. AUGUST 25-SEPTEMBER 20, 1915 | III.SEPTEMBER 21-NOVEMBER 8, 1915 | IV. NOVEMBER 9-DECEMBER 31, 1915 | V. JANUARY 1-26, 1916 | VI. JANUARY 27-FEBRUARY 24, 1916 | VII. FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 22, 1916 | VIII. MARCH 23-MAY 3, 1916 | IX. MAY 4-JUNE 15, 1916 | X. JUNE 16-JULY 18, 1916 | XI. JULY 19-AUGUST 18, 1916
Volume 3
I. AUGUST 19-SEPTEMBER 18, 1916 | II. SEPTEMBER 19-OCTOBER 25, 1916 | III. OCTOBER 27-NOVEMBER 22, 1916 | IV. NOVEMBER 23-DECEMBER 24, 1916 | V. DECEMBER 25, 1916-JANUARY 8, 1917 | VI. JANUARY 9-28, 1917 | VII. JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 21, 1917 | VIII. FEBRUARY 22-MARCH 11, 1917 | IX. MARCH 12-22, 1917 | X. MARCH 23-APRIL 6, 1917 | XI. APRIL 7-21, 1917 | XII. APRIL 22-MAY 6, 1917 | XIII. MAY 7-17, 1917
Volume I
CHAPTER VIII
JANUARY 1-FEBRUARY 13, 1915
Opportunity for a separate
peace with Austria-Hungary. - The Empress's patriotism. - The
Okhrana: its origin, prerogatives and power. The palace
police and the Emperor's personal police. - French policy
and Austria-Hungary. - Religious feelings of the Russian
people. - Evangelism and mysticism. - The sects. - At the Hermitage. - Ceremonies
at Tsarskoe Selo on January 1st (O.S.). The Emperor's firm
declaration to me. - Madame Vyrubova and Rasputin. - Intelligence
of the Russian peasant. - Autocracy and orthodoxy; the doctrine
of pure Tsarism. - The Russian students; the University proletariat;
the women students. - The moujik's charitable instincts. - The
Polish question. Discovery of a telegram from the Tsar to the
Emperor William; Germany's responsibility increased. - Reopening
of the Duma; the dream of Constantinople. - A hero of revolutionary
Socialism: Bourtzev. The French Government instructs me to obtain
his pardon. The Emperor's magnanimity.
Friday, January 1, 1915.
Sazonov, Buchanan and I have been amicably discussing the problems
we three shall have to face in the year 1915. None of us has any
illusion about the immense effort required of us by the war, an
effort we have neither the opportunity nor the right to shirk
as nothing less than the independence of our national life is
at stake.
"The military experiences of the last few months,"
I said, "particularly of the last few weeks, embody a valuable
lesson, I think, which we should be wrong not to turn to account."
"What lesson?" asked Sazonov.
After warning them that I was expressing a purely personal
opinion I continued:
"As the German bloc is such a hard nut to crack we should
endeavour to detach Austria-Hungary from the Teutonic coalition
by any and every method of force or persuasion. I believe we should
succeed in a very short time. The Emperor Francis Joseph is very
old; we know he bitterly regrets this war and only asks to be
allowed to die in peace. You have beaten his armies in Galicia
again and again; the Serbs have just won a brilliant victory at
Valievo;. Rumania threatens and Italy is doubtful. The Hapsburg
Monarchy was in no greater peril in 1859 and 1866 yet the same
Francis Joseph then accepted serious territorial sacrifices to
save his crown. Quite between ourselves, my dear Minister, if
the Vienna Cabinet agreed to cede Galicia to you and Bosnia-Herzegovina
to Serbia would not that seem to you an adequate return for making
a separate peace with Austria-Hungary?"
Sazonov pulled a face and replied drily:
"What about Bohemia? And Croatia? Would you leave them
under the present system? ... It's impossible."
"As I'm speaking to you personally forgive me for saying
that in this terrible hour of trial for France the Czech and Jugo-Slav
problems seem to me secondary."
Sazonov peevishly shook his head:
"No. Austria-Hungary must be dismembered."
I then resumed my original arguments and developed them. I
showed that the defection of Austria-Hungary would have important
consequences from the strategic and moral points of view, that
Russia would be the first to derive benefit from them, that it
was our obvious interest and plain duty to concentrate the whole
of our offensive power and destructive forces against Germany,
and if the Vienna Cabinet offered us reasonable terms of peace
we should commit a grave error if we rejected them a priori.
If necessary we could require that a generous measure of self-government
should be granted to the Czechs and Croats: that alone would be
a resounding victory for Slavism ... .
Sazonov seemed moved by my persistence:
"It wants thinking about," he said.
The moment I got back to the embassy I sent a report of this
conversation to Delcassé, reminding him of the unquestionable
advantage to France of the preservation of a great political system
in the Danube basin.
Tuesday, January 5, 1915.
The street is always an instructive sight. I often notice what
a vague, preoccupied and absent-minded creature the passing moujik
looks.
Here is a phenomenon one may observe at an any time, a phenomenon
which sometimes thrusts itself upon one's notice even without
looking for it.
Two sleighs approach from opposite directions; they are still
twenty metres apart and exactly in line. As usual the drivers
casually let the reins lie loosely on their horses' backs. They
look about them in an inattentive, unseeing way. The vehicles
are now no more than ten metres apart. The izvochtchiks merely
begin to realize that they will collide if they do not change
direction. They slowly fumble for the reins. But the presence
of the obstacle immediately ahead has not entirely dawned upon
them even then. When the horses' noses are all but touching there
is a pull at the bridle and they swerve sharply to the right - unless
the two sleighs are not already upside down in the snow.
Several times I have amused myself calculating the time that
elapses between the moment at which it is plain that the two sleighs
are in the same track and the moment at which the izvochtchiks
pull the reins to avert a collision. I have found it
to be from four to eight seconds by my watch. The Paris and London
driver would make up his mind at the first glance and act accordingly
in less than a second.
Is the inference that the moujik is slow-witted
and stupid? Certainly not. But his mind is always wandering. In
his brain fitful and disordered impressions chase one another
continuously: they seem to have no relation to reality. His usual
state of mind oscillates between reverie and mental dispersion.
Wednesday, January 6, 1915.
The Russians have just inflicted a defeat on the Turks near
Sarykamish, on the Kars-Erzerum road.
This success is a particularly fine piece of work as our Ally's
offensive is in a region of mountains as high as the Alps, intersected
by precipices and with passes often over 2,500 metres in height.
It is appalling cold at this season of the year, and there are
incessant snowstorms. No roads and the whole region laid waste.
The army of the Caucasus is performing prodigies of valour every
day.
Thursday, January 7, 1915.
During the last nine days there has been heavy fighting on
the left bank of the Vistula, in the sector between the Bzura
and the Ravka. On January 2 the Germans succeeded in carrying
the important Borjymov position: their front is thus no more than
sixty kilometres from Warsaw.
This situation comes in for very strong comment in Moscow,
if I am to credit the information given me by an English journalist
who was dining in the Slaviansky Bazar only yesterday: "In
all the drawing-rooms and clubs at Moscow," he said, "
there is great irritation at the turn military events are taking.
No one can understand this suspension of all our attacks and these
continuous retreats which look as if they would never end. But
it is not the Grand Duke Nicholas who gets the blame but the Emperor
and still more the Empress. The most absurd stories are told about
Alexandra Feodorovna; Rasputin is accused of being in German pay
and the Tsaritsa is simply called the Niemka [the German
woman] ... "
Several times before have I heard the Empress charged with
having retained sympathies, preferences and a warm corner in her
heart for Germany. The unfortunate woman in no way deserves these
strictures; she knows all about them and they give her great pain.
Alexandra Feodorovna is German neither in mind nor spirit and
has never been so. Of course, she is a German by birth, at any
rate on the paternal side, as her father was Louis IV, Grand Duke
of Hesse and the Rhine. But she is English through her mother,
Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria. In 1878, at the
age of six, she lost her mother and thenceforward resided habitually
at the court of England. Her bringing-up, education and mental
and moral development were thus quite English. She is still English
in her outward appearance, her deportment, a certain strain of
inflexibility and Puritanism, the uncompromising and militant
austerity of her conscience and, last but not least, in many of
her personal habits. That is all that is left of her western origin.
In her inmost being she has become entirely Russian. In the
first place I have no doubt of her patriotism, notwithstanding
the legend I see growing up around her. Her love for Russia is
deep - and true. And why should she not be devoted to her adopted
country which stands for everything dear to her as woman, wife,
sovereign and mother? When she ascended the throne in 1894 she
knew already that she did not like Germany, and particularly Prussia.
In recent years she has taken a personal dislike to the Emperor
William and he it is whom she holds exclusively responsible for
the war, this "wicked war which makes Christ's heart bleed
every day." When she heard of the incendiarism at Louvain
she cried out: "I blush to have been a German!"
But her moral naturalization has gone even further. By a curious
process of mental contagion she has gradually absorbed the most
ancient and characteristic elements of the Russian soul, all those
obscure, emotional and visionary elements which find their highest
expression in religious mysticism.
I have already referred to the morbid proclivities she inherits
from her mother's side and which betray themselves in her sister
Elizabeth as a kind of charitable exaltation and in her brother,
the Grand Duke of Hesse, as a taste for the freakish. These hereditary
tendencies, which would have been more or less checked if she
had continued to live in the practical and balanced West, have
found in Russia the atmosphere most favourable to their perfect
development. Are not all those symptoms - moral unrest, chronic
melancholy, vague sorrows, the see-saw between elation and despondency,
the haunting obsession of the invisible and the life beyond, and
superstitious credulity - which are outstanding features of the
Empress's personality, traditional and endemic in the Russian
people? Alexandra Feodorovna's submissive acceptance of Rasputin's
ascendency is no less significant. She is behaving exactly like
one of the old Tsaritsas of Moscow when she sees in Rasputin a
Bojy tchelloviek, "a man of God," "a saint
persecuted (as Christ was) by the Pharisees," or when she
endows him with the gifts of prophecy, miracle-working and exorcism,
or allows the success of a political step or a military operation
to depend upon his blessing. She carries us back to the times
of Ivan the Terrible or Michael Feodorovitch and takes her place,
so to speak, in the Byzantine setting of archaic Russia.
Friday, January 8, 1915.
Towards three o'clock this afternoon, as the last relics of
day were already submerging in a desolate darkness, I walked along
the Kronversky Prospekt on my way to the French Hospital which
is at the far end of Vassili Island.
On my left the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul thrust forth
its angular bastions under a shroud of snow from which the flat
roof of the state prison barely protruded. A dense, leaden mist
hung heavy over the cupola of the cathedral in which are the tombs
of the Romanovs and the gilded spire above it was lost in the
sombre sky. Ahead of me I had glimpses of the motionless sheet
of the Neva, studded with great blocks of ice, through the leafless
trees of a bare and deserted park.
To heighten the sinister setting of the hour and the place
the corner of a lonely avenue I passed on my right was marked
by a low building with yellowing walls and barred windows, a building
of secret and shameful, aspect. Two police officers came out of
it together. It was the Okhrana..
This fearsome institution dates from the days of Peter the
Great who created it in 1697 under the name of the Preobrajensky
Prikaz. Its historical origins must be sought for much earlier
on, however; they are to be found in Byzantine traditions and
Tartar methods of rule. Its first Chief was Prince Romodanovsky
and it immediately acquired a terrible reputation. From that time
espionage, secret denunciation, torture and secret execution were
the normal and regular instruments of Russian policy. From the
start the Preobrajensky Prikaz applied the true principles
of a State Inquisition, mystery, arbitrary action and ferocity.
In the reigns of Peter II, Anna Tvanovna and Elizabeth Petrovna
the institution lost something of its native vigour but the Empress
Catherine II, "the friend of philosophers," lost no
time in restoring its secret authority and implacable character.
Alexander II kept it at that high level.
It needed the genius for despotism of Nicholas I to discover
that a State service which already had so many exploits to its
credit was defective and inadequate. Immediately after the Decembrist
conspiracy he entirely reorganized the Okhrana, which was
thenceforward known as the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's
private Chancellery. In all these reforms could be observed
the influence of Prussian methods and a tendency to imitate Prussian
bureaucracy and Prussian militarism. The direction of the department
was entrusted to a general of German origin, Count Alexander Benckendorff.(1)
No autocrat ever had a more potent weapon of inquisition and
coercion. After a few years of this regime Russia was essentially
a "Police State."
In the disorganization which succeeded the Crimean War Alexander
II felt the necessity of modernizing the administrative. legislation
of the Empire to a certain extent. The judicial system, which
offered no guarantee of justice whatever, was recast on lines
more in keeping with western ideas. But the Third Section still
retained its extravagant privileges. To realize its place in the
State organization and its reputation in society it is enough
to remember that three of its successive Directors were Count
Orlov, Prince Dolgoruky and Count Shuvalov.
The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and the spread of
the Nihilist movement gave the opponents of liberal reforms the
chance of their life. Throughout his life the "Most Pious"
Alexander III conscientiously devoted himself to extirpating the
evil germs of "modernism" and bringing Russia back to
the theocratic ideal of the Muscovite Tsars. The police of course
took the lead in this work of reaction. But since August, 1880,
it had ceased to be attached to the Private Chancellery of
His Imperial Majesty: it was under the Ministry of
the Interior where it formed a special department with the corps
of gendarmes.
Under the direction of General Tcherevin, a personal friend
of Alexander III, it was as powerful as in the days of Nicholas
1. Shrouded in mystery, thrusting its tentacles into every part
of the Empire and even abroad, outside the jurisdiction of the
courts, disposing of huge funds and free of all supervision it
frequently imposed its decrees on the ministers and even the Emperor
himself.
The superstitious reverence of Nicholas II for the memory and
opinions of his father safeguarded him from making any changes
in a service animated by such matchless loyalty and so zealous
for the safety of the dynasty. His ukases of May 23, 1896 and
December 13, 1897 confirmed and increased the powers of the police.
Those powers were well illustrated during the revolutionary
troubles of 1905 when the Okhrana fomented strikes, attempts
at assassination and pogroms in all quarters, mobilized General
Bogdanovitch's "Black Bands" and tried to rouse the
fanaticism of the rural masses in favour of orthodox Tsarism.
The debate in the Duma in June, 1906, the revelations of Prince
Urussov, the proceedings which were subsequently taken against
the ex-Chief of Police, Lopoukhin, the confessions or reticences
of the police officers, Guerassimov and Ratchkovsky, brought to
light the shocking part played by agents provocateurs like
Azev, Gapon, Harting, Tchiguelsky and Mikhailov in the anarchist
plots of the last few years. It was even thought that their handiwork
could be traced in the assassinations of Plevhe, the Minister
of the Interior, and the Grand Duke Sergius.
What is the Okhrana contemplating now? What plot is
it weaving? I am told that its present Chief, General Globatchev,
is not altogether deaf to reason. But in times of crisis the spirit
of an institution will always prevail against the personality
of its chief.
Nor can I forget that the Police Department at the Ministry
of the Interior is in the hands of Bieletzky, a man entirely lacking
in scruples, bold and deceitful, a tool of Rasputin and all his
gang.(2)
The Police Department at the Ministry of the Interior and its
annex, the Okhrana, function over the general police of
the Empire, the administrative, judicial, and political police.
But in addition to these two great public services there is a
complicated mechanism attached to the Minister of the Court's
department, the duty of which is to ensure the personal safety
of Their Majesties! I cannot find any monarchical state in modern
history in which the safety of the sovereigns has appeared to
require such active and painstaking vigilance and such a rampart
of open or secret precautions. The task is accomplished in the
following way.
All the military and administrative organs employed in the
protection of the sovereigns are under the orders of the Governor
of the Imperial Palaces. His post is greatly coveted because it
confers on its holder immense power and entitles him to approach
the Tsar at any time. The present holder is General Vladimir Nicolaievitch
Voyeikov, formerly Commander of the Regiment of Guard Hussars,
son-in-law of Count Fredericks, Minister of the Court. His predecessor
was General Diedulin who succeeded the famous General Trepov.
In the first place General Voyeikov has under his orders the
Cossack Escort Regiment of four squadrons, with a total
strength of 650 men. The Officer Commanding the Regiment is General
Count Alexander Grabbé. These Cossacks are selected from
the strongest and most active in the Empire, and are posted to
observation, patrol and escort duty outside the palace. These
are the men to be seen galloping at intervals of fifty metres
day and night in the avenue which surrounds Tsarskoe Selo
Park.
Then comes His Majesty's Regiment, four battalions with
a total strength of 5,000 men; the commander of the regiment is
General Ressin. Recruited with the greatest care from all the
corps of the guard and remarkably smart in their plain uniforms,
these picked infantry men supply the guards for the palace gate
and the sentries scattered about the park. It also furnishes some
thirty guards distributed about the vestibules, corridors, staircases,
kitchens, domestic offices and cellars of the imperial residence.
In addition to these cavalry and infantry contingents General
Voyeikov has at his disposal a special unit, His Majesty's
Railway Regiment, comprising two battalions with a total strength
of 1,000 men. This regiment is commanded by General Label and
is in charge of the management of the imperial trains and responsible
for the inspection of the permanent way when Their Majesties are
travelling. This work is of the highest importance as to "blow
up the Tsar's train" is one of the ideas that obsess Russian
anarchists. Not so long ago one of them succeeded in concealing
himself by clinging to the undercarriage of one of the coaches
with a bomb in his pocket.
The protection given by these military forces is supplemented
by that given by two administrative organs, appropriately equipped,
the Police of the Imperial Court and His Majesty
the Emperor's Personal Police.
The Police of the Imperial Court, under the direction
of General of Gendarmerie Ghérardi, has a strength of 250
police officers, and duplicates to a certain extent the guards
and sentries posted at the gates and in the palace buildings.
It watches the entrances and exits, inspects the servants, tradesmen,
workmen, gardeners, visitors, &c. It observes and records
everything that goes on among the entourage of the sovereigns.
It spies, eavesdrops, pries into everything and gets everywhere.
In the execution of its task it never makes the slightest exception.
On that point I can give personal testimony. Every time I was
received by the Emperor at Tsarskoe Selo and Peterhof (and
on each occasion I was in full uniform, in a court carriage and
with a Master of Ceremonies at my side) I had to go through the
usual process. The police officer on duty at the great gates put
his head inside the carriage and was handed the regulation pass
by the groom. I once expressed my surprise at such strictness
to Evreinov, the Director of Ceremonies. "We can't be too
careful, Ambassador," he replied. "Don't forget that
towards the end of Alexander II's time the Nihilists blew up the
dining-room at the Winter Palace, within a few feet of the bedroom
in which poor Empress Marie lay dying! ... Our revolutionaries
are no less bold and ingenious now. They've tried to kill Nicholas
II seven or eight times already."
His Majesty the Emperor's Personal Police has even wider
functions. It is a kind of branch of the great Okhrana, but
responsible solely and directly to the Governor of the Imperial
Palaces. Its Commanding Officer is General of Gendarmerie Spiridovitch,
who has under his orders 300 police officers who have all
gone through an apprenticeship in the ranks of the judicial or
political police. General Spiridovitch's main task is to see to
the safety of the sovereigns when they are outside their palace.
The moment the Tsar or Tsaritsa have left the Dvoretz he
is responsible for their lives. It is a particularly grave responsibility
as Nicholas II is a thoroughgoing fatalist, piously convinced
"that he will not die before the hour decreed by God,"
and therefore allows only well-screened measures for his personal
safety and in particular no conspicuous deployment of police officers.
To do its work thoroughly and well the Personal Police has
to have an intimate knowledge of the organization, designs, schemes,
plots, all the audacious, unceasing and subterranean activities
of the subversive elements. For this purpose General Spiridovitch
is furnished with all the information acquired by the Police Department
and the Okhrana. The high importance of his duties also
gives him the right to enter any of the administrative departments
at any time and insist upon any inquiry he thinks fit. The Chief
of the Personal Police is thus able to furnish his immediate superior,
the Governor of the Imperial Palaces, with a formidable weapon
for political and social espionage.
Saturday, January 9, 1915.
Delcassé has just replied to my telegram of January
1, in which I reported my conversation with Sazonov about the
possibility of inducing the Vienna Cabinet to make a separate
peace. He gives me strict orders not to say a word which might
lead the Russian Government to think that we do not hand over
Austria-Hungary to Russia in toto.
When my Councillor, Doulcet, had read the telegram through
I said to him:
"You might just as well have read out the news of a military
defeat: I shouldn't have been a bit more flabbergasted!"
Are the Russian people as religious as is commonly asserted?
It is a question I have often turned over in my mind and my answers
have been pretty indefinite. Yesterday I was reading some of Merejkovsky's
suggestive pages in Religion and Revolution, and the question
presented itself to my mind once more.
Merejkovsky says that somewhere about 1902 a number of Russians,
who were uneasy in their highly devout minds, arranged at St.
Petersburg a series of conferences in which priests sat with laymen
under the chairmanship of a bishop, Monsignor Sergei, Rector of
the Theological College:
"For the first time," he writes, " the Russian
Church found itself face to face with the lay world, lay culture
and society, not for the purpose of forcing a superficial fusion
but to strive for a free and intimate communion. For the first
time questions were put which had never been raised with the same
searchings of conscience and real torture of mind since the ascetic
separation of Christianity and the world... . The walls of the
room seemed to open and reveal boundless horizons. This tiny assembly
seemed as it were the threshold of an oecumenical council. Speeches
were made which were more like prayers and prophecies. An atmosphere
of enthusiasm was created in which everything seemed possible,
even a miracle... . A tribute must be paid to the heads of the
Russian clergy. They met us more than half-way with an open mind,
a holy humility, a desire to understand, to help, to save the
victim of error... . But the line of demarcation between the
two camps was deeper than we at first thought. Between ourselves
and them we discovered a great abyss which it proved impossible
to bridge... . We made tunnels towards each other but we could
not meet, for we were digging at different levels. For the Church
to respond something more than reform would have been required.
"What was needed was a revolution: a new revelation rather
than a new interpretation; not the sequel to the Second Testament
but the beginning of the Third; not a return to the Christ of
the first coming but an impulse towards the Christ of the second.
A hopeless misunderstanding was the result.
"To us religion was worship; to these priests it was routine.
The sacred words of the scriptures, in which we heard the' voices
of the seven thunders, to them were just as the sentences of the
catechism learned by heart. We thought of the face of Christ as
of the sun shining in his splendour: they were satisfied with
a dark smudge on the halo of an old ikon."
There lies the great religious drama of the Russian conscience.
The nation is more sincere, or at any rate more Christian, than
its Church. In the simple faith of the masses. there is more spirituality,
mysticism and evangelism than in the orthodox theology and ordinances.
The official Church is daily losing its hold over men's hearts
by allowing itself to become the tool of autocracy and an administrative
institution and police force.
Fifteen years ago Tolstoy's dramatic and famous break with
canonical orthodoxy revealed the full gravity of the moral crisis
with which Russia is afflicted. When the Holy Synod launched its
excommunication messages of approval and admiration poured into
Yasnaia Poliana. Even priests raised their voices against the
terrible sentence; theological students went on strike and indignation
was so general that the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg thought
it necessary to send an open letter to Countess Tolstoy in which
he characterized the verdict of the Holy Synod as an "act
of love and charity" towards her apostate husband.
The Russian people are deeply evangelical. The Sermon on the
Mount practically sums up their religion. What appeals to them
most in the Christian revelation is the mystery of love which,
emanating from God, has redeemed the world. The essential articles
of their Credo are the words of the sermon in Galilee:
Love one another... . Love your enemies; do good to them
that hate you ... pray for them which despitefully use you.
... I ask not sacrifice, but love.
Hence the moujik's infinite pity for the poor, the unfortunate,
the oppressed, the humbled and all to whom fate has been unkind.
It is this which gives Dostoievsky's work such a ring of national
truth; it seems wholly inspired by the word of Christ, "Come
unto Me all ye that are heavy-laden!" Alms, good works and
hospitality take an enormous place in the life of the lowly. I
have travelled over the world and never found any other race so
charitable.
Besides the moujik himself feeds on the sympathy he
lavishes on others. His face is a study in fervour and sincerity
when he murmurs the eternal response of the orthodox liturgy to
the accompaniment of vigorous signs of the cross: Gospodi,
pomiloui! " "Lord have mercy on me!"
Next to sympathy for the afflicted the religious sentiment
which strikes me as most active in the popular conscience is the
admission of sin. Here again we can see the influence of the Galilean
teaching. The Russian seems haunted by the idea of sin and repentance..
With the publican of the sacred parable he is always saying: O
God, have mercy upon me, poor sinner! To him Christ is primarily
He who said: The Son of Man is come to save the souls in peril,
and who also said: I am not come to call the just
but the sinners. The moujik is never tired of
listening to the Gospel of Saint Luke, which is par excellence
the gospel of forgiveness. What moves him to the depths of
his soul is the privilege of forgiveness and the preference bestowed
by the divine Master on those who hate their sins: There
is more joy in Heaven for one sinner that repenteth than for
ninety and nine just men that need no repentance. He never
tires of hearing the parables of the prodigal son and of the strayed
sheep, the healing of the Samaritan leper and the promise of the
Kingdom of God to the crucified thief.
Thus, contrary to common report, the Russian is very far from
attaching importance to formal rites exclusively. Of course the
form of worship, services, sacraments, blessings, ikons, relics,
scapularies, candles, anthems, the practice of crossing himself
and genuflexions play a great part in his devotions; his lively
imagination makes him very susceptible to outward pomp. But the
moving force with him - and by a long way the most potent - is
implicit faith, pure Christianity without an element of metaphysics,
the ever-present thought of the Saviour, a deliberate contemplation
of suffering and death and vague meditation on the supernatural
world beyond our ken and on the mystery by which we are surrounded.
In many respects it is this evangelical idealism which accounts
for the multitude of sects in Russia. There is no doubt that the
discredit into which the official church had fallen owing to its
subservience to the autocracy has contributed to the development
of the spirit of sect. But the multiplicity of schisms is due
to a more intimate need of the Russian soul.
Innumerable indeed are the religious communities which have
broken away from the orthodox church or sprung into being outside
it. First comes the most ancient, as also the largest and most
austere of them, the Raskol, which has some points of resemblance
to our Jansenism. Then there are the Doukhobors who admit
only one source of inspiration, spiritual intuition, and refuse
to perform military service on the ground that they cannot shed
blood; the Beglopopovtsy, abjuring priests who flee the
satanical servitude of the official church; the Molokanes,
"milk drinkers," who strive to live the Galilean
life in its simple purity; the Stranniki, "Wanderers,"
who wander at their own sweet will through the steppes and
the icy forests of Siberia in the hope of escaping from the kingdom
of Antichrist; the Chtoundists, who preach agrarian communism
"to put an end to the reign of the Pharaohs"; the Khlysty,
who feel Christ born within them in their erotic ecstacies
and whose most brilliant representative at the moment is Rasputin;
the Skoptzy, who practise castration to escape the allurements
of the flesh; the Bialoritzy, who dress in white "like
the angels in Heaven" and go from village to village teaching
innocence; the Pomortsy, who renounce the baptism they
have received in infancy because "Antichrist reigns over
the Church" and repeat the baptismal sacrament with their
own hands; the Nikoudichniky, bitter enemies of the social
order, who seek the true Kingdom of Christ on earth "further
on, ever further on," where sin is impossible; the Douchitely,
"stranglers" who cut short the tortured last hours
of the dying by choking them, from motives of human pity and retrospective
sympathy for the sufferer of Calvary. And how many more!
All these sects trace their origin from the same principle.
They all reveal the idea of a creed founded solely on purity of
heart and the brotherhood of man, the necessity of direct communication
between the soul and its God, the impossibility of believing that
the clergy are an indispensable mediator between the Heavenly
Father and His flock, the personal inspiration which refuses to
accept the chains of the Church and, lastly and mostly, the anarchy
inherent in the Russian nature. The domestic activities of these
communities reveal all the forms, excesses and varieties of religious
emotion - the highest spirituality and the lowest materialism,
the exaltation of the spirit and the mutilation of the flesh,
fanaticism and belief in miracles, illuminism and divination,
ecstasy and hysteria, asceticism and lust.
The faith of the Russian people being approximately as I have
just described one is faced with a very vexing dilemma. How comes
it that the moujik with so evangelical a spirit allows
himself to be guilty of such appalling atrocities when his anger
is roused? The murders, tortures, incendiarism and looting which
marked the troubles of 1905 show us that he is capable of the
same horrors as in the days of Pugatchev or Ivan the Terrible
or any other period of his history.
It seems to me the reason is twofold. In the first place the
great majority of Russians have remained primitive, that is hardly
beyond the stage of instinct. They are still the slaves of their
impulses. Christianity has only penetrated certain parts of their
nature: it in no way reaches their reason and appeals less to
their conscience than to their imagination and emotions. It must
be admitted, too, that when the moujik's rage has subsided
he at once recovers all his Christian gentleness and humility.
He weeps over his victims and says masses for the repose of their
souls. He confesses his crimes publicly, beats his bosom and sits
in sackcloth and ashes. He revels in repentance and excels in
the art of making it impressive.
The second reason is that the Gospels contain numerous precepts
from which inferences can be drawn subversive of the modern State
as we conceive it. The parable of the rich man who burns in Hell
merely because he is rich, while Lazarus rests in Abraham's bosom,
is a dangerous subject of meditation for the simple minds of the
Russian proletariat and peasantry. In the same way when life is
very hard and they feel the wretchedness of their social condition
very deeply they like to think that it was Christ who said: "The
first shall be last and the last first." Nor are they
ignorant of the terrible words: "I am come to bring fire
on the earth." Lastly, the tendency to communism
which lurks deep down in every moujik finds more than one
argument in its favour in the Galilean programme. Tolstoy has
eloquently interpreted the Gospels "in the Russian sense,"
and he does not hesitate to say that private property is inconsistent
with Christian doctrine, that every man has a right to the fruits
of the glebe as he has to the rays of the sun and that the land
should belong exclusively to those who cultivate it.
Tuesday, January 12, 1915.
In the endless succession of foggy and icy days which make
up winter in Petrograd it is a depressing business to visit the
Hermitage Museum.
The Italian galleries are discovered even before the last steps
of the majestic staircase leading from the vestibule have been
mounted. Like the unfolding of a landscape one sees the Titians,
Veroneses, Tiepolos, Tintorettos, Canalettos, Guardis and Sciavones,
the whole Venetian school, with here and there a few canvases
of Guercino, Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa, hardly distinguishable
in the gloom. From the windows in the roof descends a yellowish,
dirty light which might have been filtered through some thin material.
Through this wan veil all these works of the Venetian masters,
all these scenes of a luxurious life with its pomp and pageantry
seem to be suffering from intolerable homesickness. Tiepolo's
Cleopatra and Titian's Danae fill one with pity.
Dante's lines came to my mind: O settentrional vedovo sito
... "O land of the North, unhappy widow who knows not
the splendours of the South! ... "
There is the same air of melancholy in the French rooms where
the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is superbly
represented by Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Mignard, Lenain, Largillière,
Van Loo, Lemoyne, de Tory, Watteau, Chardin, Pater, Greuze, Boucher,
Lancret, Fragonard, Hubert, Robert, &c... . It is a unique
collection and. several of its canvases may be reckoned among
the most exquisite and radiant creations of the French genius.
But in the livid atmosphere of to-day all these pictures lose
their vivid colour, their freshness, brilliance, spirit and soul.
The colours fade, the spell of harmonies is broken, the vibrations
cease, the luminous glow is dimmed, the skies grow dark, the relief
vanishes, the faces disappear. The long silent gallery seems a
cemetery.
Yet there is one part of the Hermitage where it is a treat
to linger even on dark days: I mean the four rooms devoted to
Rembrandt.
The tawny half-light falling from the windows seems but an
extension of the amber vapour in which the pictures are bathed.
In the dim and golden fluid flowing through the gallery the art
of the great visionary attains a phenomenal power of calling dead
things to life. Each face seems to glow with a strange, profound,
remote and boundless vitality. The external world ceases to exist:
the very depths of the life of the spirit are reached: the insoluble
mystery of the soul and human destiny is touched. After a prolonged
contemplation of masterpieces such as Pallas, the Danae,
Abraham and the Angels, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the
Reconciliation of David and Absalom, the Fall of Aman,
the Parable of the Vineyard, the Denial of St. Peter,
the Descent from the Gross, the Unbelief of St.
Thomas, the Jewish Bride, the Old Man of the Ghetto,
&c., it is easier to understand Carlyle's great thought:
"History is a grandiose drama, played on the stage of the
infinite with the stars for lights and eternity as the background."
Thursday, January 14, 1915.
According to the Gregorian Calendar the year 1915 begins to-day.
At two o'clock under a wan sun and pearl-grey sky which here and
there cast silvery shadows on the snow the Diplomatic Corps called
at Tsarskoe Selo to wish the Emperor a Happy New Year.
As usual the ceremony is marked by the full display of pageantry,
luxury of setting and that inimitable exhibition of pomp and power
in which the Russian court has no rival.
The carriages drew up at the foot of the steps of the immense
palace which the Empress Elizabeth had built in her ambition to
eclipse the court of Louis XV. We were taken into the Hall of
Mirrors, a mass of gilding and glass and a blaze of light. The
various missions lined up in order of seniority, each ambassador
or minister having his staff behind him.
Almost at once the Emperor entered, followed by his brilliant
suite. He looked very well and his face was smiling and calm.
He conversed for a few minutes with each mission.
When he reached me I offered him my congratulations, appending
the words of encouragement and good cheer which General Joffre
had asked me to convey to the Grand Duke Nicholas. I added that
in its recent declaration to the Chambers the Government of the
Republic had solemnly affirmed its determination to continue the
war to the bitter end and that that determination is a guarantee
of final victory. The Emperor answered:
"I have read that pronouncement of your Government and
my whole heart goes with it. My own determination is no less.
I shall continue this war as long as is necessary to secure a
complete victory. You know I have just been visiting my army;
I found it animated by splendid ardour and enthusiasm. All it
asks is to be allowed to fight. It is confident of victory. Unfortunately
our operations are held up by the lack of munitions. We shall
have to possess ourselves in patience for a time. But it is only
a temporary suspension and the Grand Duke Nicholas's general plan
of campaign will in no way be changed. At the earliest possible
moment my army will resume the offensive and the struggle will
be continued until our enemies sue for peace. My recent journey
all over Russia has shown me that I and my people are one on this
point."
I thanked him for these words. After a moment's reflection
he drew himself up and said in a thrilling voice which stressed
each word:
"I should also tell you, Ambassador, that I am not unaware
of certain attempts which have been made, even in Petrograd, to
spread a notion that I am discouraged, that I see no possibility
of crushing Germany and am even thinking of making peace. Those
who spread such rumours are vile creatures, German agents. But
all their intrigues and inventions are beneath contempt. It is
my will alone that counts and you may be sure that I shall not
change."
"The Government of the Republic has absolute confidence
in the feelings that inspire Your Majesty and has therefore ignored
the miserable intrigues to which Your Majesty is good enough to
refer. It will appreciate the more highly the declarations I shall
convey to it in the name of Your Majesty."
He shook my hand and continued:
"And please accept my very best wishes for yourself, my
dear Ambassador."
Friday, January 15, 1915.
A bright, sunny day - such a rare delight in these interminable
winters! Although it is extremely cold I went for a walk on the
Islands where the northern sun was displaying all its magic over
the icy expanse of the Gulf of Finland. A few clouds, shot with
flame, dotted the silvery blue of the sky. The northern lights
played over the horizon. The hoar frost on the trees and the dazzling
carpet of snow on the ground sparkled at intervals as if diamond
dust had been scattered with a lavish hand.
I reflected on what the Emperor said to me yesterday, words
which once more engraved on my mind the splendid moral resolution
which has been his attitude since the war began. His idea of duty
is certainly as high and grand as possible because it is perpetually
nourished, vitalized and illuminated by his religion. But otherwise
I should say that as regards the exact science and the practical
use of power he is patently not equal to his task. I hasten to
add that there is no one who could cope with such a task; it is
quite ultra vires, beyond human power. Does autocracy still
meet the needs of the Russian character and the present stage
of Russian civilization? It is a problem on which even the best
minds hesitate to deliver an opinion. But what cannot be doubted
is that autocracy is no longer compatible with the territorial
expansion of Russia, the diversity of its races and the development
of its economic resources. Compared with the present Empire of
not less than 180,000,000 people spread over an area Of 22,000,000
square kilometres what was the Russia of Ivan the Terrible, Peter
the Great, Catherine II, or even Nicholas I? A genius not less
than Napoleon's would be required to govern a State which has
reached such colossal dimensions, to control all the energies
and cogwheels of such a huge machine and to unite and secure the
smooth working of such complex elements. Whatever may be the intrinsic
virtues of autocratic Tsarism it is a geographical anachronism.
Saturday, January 16, 1915.
Yesterday Madame Vyrubova was the victim of a railway accident
outside Tsarskoe Selo. She was picked up with a fractured
thigh, dislocated shoulder and severe contusions on the head.
She was taken to the Empress's military hospital and the Tsaritsa
went at once to her friend's bedside.
The injured lady was in such a state of exhaustion and shock
that the surgeons considered it impossible to operate at all until
she had recovered her strength. They have decided to let her rest
until to-day and simply applied temporary measures of relief.
Meanwhile, on the Empress's orders Rasputin was at once sent
for. He was dining with some lady friends in Petrograd. A special
train brought him to Tsarskoe Selo an hour later.
When he was taken into Madame Vyrubova's room she was still
quite unconscious. He surveyed her calmly just like any doctor.
Then he resolutely touched the poor patient's fore-head, murmuring
a short prayer after which he called out three times:
"Annushka! Annushka! Annushka!"
At the third time she was seen to open her eyes. Then, in an
even more imperious tone he ordered:
"Now, wake up and rise! " She opened her eyes wide.
He repeated:
"Rise!"
With her free arm she made an effort to get up. He continued,
but in a gentle voice:
"Speak to me!"
And she spoke to him in a feeble voice which grew stronger
with every word.
Sunday, January 17, 1915.
Major Langlois, who is liaison officer between the French G.H.Q.
and the Russian G.H.Q., has arrived from Baranovici and leaves
to-morrow for Paris via Sweden.
He has left the Grand Duke Nicholas "full of enthusiasm
and determined to resume the offensive the moment his army has
received its munitions." The moral of the troops is
good: strengths are low owing to the recent losses.
Monday, January 18, 1915.
I have been discussing the Russian peasant with Countess P - -,
who spends a large part of every year on her estates, nobly doing
her duty as a barina. As a matter of fact her moral inclination
and a certain instinct for equity and good works make her prefer
the society of the lowly.
"In the West," she told me, "no one understands
our moujiks. Because a very large number of them cannot
read or write they are supposed to be defective in intelligence,
stupid, if not barbarous. It's a tremendous mistake! They are
ignorant, that is they have no knowledge; they lack positive
notions; their education is very limited, and often non-existent.
But though they may be untutored their intelligence is none the
less remarkable for its range, elasticity, and also its activity."
"Activity!"
"Certainly. Their minds are always at work. The moujik
does not talk much, but he is always thinking, reflecting,
turning things over in his mind, and dreaming."
"What does he think and dream about?"
"Primarily, his material interests, his harvests, his
cattle, the poverty which grinds him down - or threatens to do
so, the price of clothes and tea, the burden of taxation and forced
labour, the next agrarian reform, and so on. But thoughts of a
much more lofty nature obsess him also and echo into the very
depths of his soul. That is particularly true in winter, in the
long evenings in the isba, and the monotonous walks in the snow.
A slow and melancholy reverie then claims him entirely: he thinks
of human destiny, the meaning of life, the parables in the Gospels,
the duty of generosity, the redemption of sin by suffering, the
ultimate triumph of justice on God's earth. You can have no idea
what a passion for reflection and a feeling for poetry are often
to be found in the souls of our moujiks. I should add,
too, that they use their intelligence very cleverly. They are
splendid in discussion: they argue with much skill and subtlety.
They often give you most witty replies, and display a talent for
waggish insinuations and a fine sense of irony."
Tuesday, January 19, 1915.
The Minister of justice, Stcheglovitov, leader of the Extreme
Right in the Council of Empire, and the most fervent and uncompromising
of the reactionaries, has just called on me to thank me for some
slight service I was able to do him. We talked about the war,
and I warned him it would be a very long one:
"Illusions," I said, "cannot be tolerated any
longer. The real test, the nature of which is becoming clear,
has hardly begun, and it will be more and more severe. We must
arm ourselves with an ample supply of moral and material forces,
just as a ship is equipped for a long and dangerous voyage."
"Of course we must! The trial which it has pleased Providence
to inflict upon us promises to be a terrible one, and we are obviously
only at the beginning. But with God's aid and the help of our
good Allies, we shall come through triumphant. I have no doubt
about our ultimate victory. But forgive me, Ambassador, if I lay
stress on something you have just said. You think, and rightly,
that we must equip ourselves with moral forces as much as with
guns, rifles, and shells, as it is plain that this war has dreadful
sufferings and terrible sacrifices in store for us. I shiver at
the thought! But so far as Russia is concerned the problem of
moral forces is comparatively simple. If the faith of the Russian
people in monarchy is not troubled they will face any trial and
accomplish miracles of heroism and self-effacement. Never forget
that in the eyes of Russians - I mean true Russians - His Majesty
the Emperor personifies not only supreme authority but religion
and the Fatherland itself. Believe me, outside Tsarism there is
no salvation because there would be no more Russia!"
With a warmth in which I detected the thrill of rage as well
as patriotism, he added:
" The Tsar is the Anointed of the Lord, sent by God to
be the supreme guardian of the Church and the all powerful ruler
of the Empire.(3) In popular belief he is even
the image of Christ upon earth. As he receives his power from
God it is to God alone that he must account for it. The essential
divinity of his authority has the second result that autocracy
and nationalism are inseparable. Then, down with the fools who
dare to assail these dogmas! Constitutional liberalism is a heresy
as well as a stupid chimera. There is no national life except
within the framework of autocracy and orthodoxy. If political
reforms are necessary they must be carried out only in the spirit
of autocracy and orthodoxy."
I replied:
"The main point that impresses me in what Your Excellency
has just said is that the essential element of the strength of
Russia is a close and intimate union between the Emperor and his
people. For reasons different to yours I come to the same conclusion.
I shall never cease to advocate that union."
When he had gone I reflected that I had just heard an exposition
of the doctrine of pure Tsarism as taught twenty years ago by
the famous procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobiedonostsev, to his
young pupil Nicholas II, the same doctrine which the great writer,
Merejovsky, once defined in a study on the insurrectionary troubles
of 1905, a masterly work in which these bold words may be found:
"In the house of the Romanovs, as in that of the Atrides,
a mysterious curse descends from generation to generation. Murders
and adultery, blood and mud, 'the fifth act of a tragedy played
in a brothel.' -Peter I kills his son; Alexander I kills his father;
Catherine II kills her husband. And beside these great and famous
victims there are the mean, unknown, and unhappy abortions of
the autocracy such as Ivan Antonovitch, suffocated like mice in
dark corners, in the cells of the Schlusselburg. The block, the
rope, and poison-these are the true emblems of Russian autocracy.
God's unction on the brows of the Tsars has become the brand and
curse of Cain."
Wednesday, January 20, 1915.
Yesterday Rasputin was run over on the Nevsky Prospekt by a
troika going at full speed. He was picked up with a slight
wound on the head.
After the accident to Madame Vyrubova five days ago, this fresh
warning from Heaven is only too eloquent
The war is displeasing God more than ever!
Thursday, January 21, 1915.
The pacifist propaganda with which Germany is so busy in Petrograd
is also at work in the armies at the front. At several points
proclamations in Russian have been seized inciting the soldiers
to stop fighting and declaring that the Emperor Nicholas, with
his fatherly heart, has already been won over to the idea of peace.
The Grand Duke Nicholas has thought it advisable to protest against
these allusions to the Tsar. In an Army Order he has denounced
this insidious scheme of the enemy as a vile crime. The
Order ends thus: All faithful subjects know that in Russia
everyone, from the Generalissimo to the private soldier, obeys
and obeys only the sacred and august will of the Anointed of God,
our deeply revered Emperor, who alone has the power to begin and
end a war.
Monday, January 25, 1915.
This afternoon some shopping took me to Vassily-Ostrov, the
island which is the centre of the intellectual life of Petrograd,
as it is the quarter of the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of
Fine Arts, the School of Mines, the Naval School, the Zoological
Museum, the Historical and Philological Institutes, several schools,
the physical and chemical laboratories, and all the great scholastic
establishments.
As the weather cleared up a little I left my car there and
went for a stroll in the streets. I passed students at every step.
How different they looked from the students one sees in the Latin
Quarter in Paris, or the streets of Oxford and Cambridge! The
faces, gestures, and voices, in fact the whole personality of
French students are the personification of youth, vitality, and
a happy-go-lucky enthusiasm in the work and play of life; even
the eyes of those who look tired seem to sparkle with clear and
frank intelligence. The outstanding characteristic of the English
students, with their healthy complexion and loose limbs, is their
air of determination, instinct for the practical, and cold, resolute,
and well-balanced intellects. Nothing of the kind is to be seen
here. In the first place, Russian students are usually a sorry
spectacle with their haggard faces, drawn features, hollow cheeks,
frail figures, thin arms, and pronounced stoop. These emaciated
bodies in worn-out and tattered clothing are a living witness
of the wretched condition of the university proletariat in Russia.
Many students have no more than twenty-five roubles (60 francs)
a month to live on, i.e., one-third of the bare minimum required
to support a normal existence in this bleak climate. The result
of this defective physiological replacement is not merely a debilitated
organism; combined with the strain of an active brain and mental
anxieties it involves the nervous system in a condition of permanent
irritation. Hence these melancholy, or fevered, anxious, and haggard
faces, these fanatical or prematurely aged looks, these features
of ascetics, visionaries, and anarchists. I could not help thinking
of the remark put in Crime and Punishment into judge Porphyre's
mouth by Dostoievsky:
"Raskolnikov's crime is the work of a mind over-excited
by theories."
The women students, of whom there is a large number, repay
observation no less. I happened to notice one coming out of a
café in the company of four young men: they stopped on
the pavement outside to resume the argument. The tall, pretty
girl with bright, hard eyes under her astrakhan cap, was laying
down the law. Two more students soon came out of the traktir
and joined the group around her. Here before my eyes I had
perhaps one of the most original types of Russian womanhood: a
missionary of the revolutionary gospel.
Russian novelists, particularly Turgeniev, have often said
that the women of their country greatly excel the men in strength
of character, decision, and the temper of their wills. In the
matter of love-making it is almost always the woman who takes
and retains the offensive, rouses and worries her partner, lays
down the law and decides everything; it is the woman whose orders
are accepted and whose will prevails. Russian women are just the
same in a very different department of their activities - the
domain of revolutionary political action.
In the far-away era of Nihilism women, and particularly young
girls, immediately won a high place among the most formidable
protagonists in the heroic epoch of the Narodnaia Volia. They
had no rivals in their tragic work. In their first exploits they
proved themselves wonderful Emmenides.
On January 24, 1878, Vera Zassulitch opened the series by firing
point blank at General Trepov, the Prefect of the Saint Petersburg
police. On March 13, 1881, Sophie Perovsky played an active part
in the assassination of Alexander II. The following year Vera
Figner fomented a military revolt at Kharkov. In 1887 Sophie Gunsburg
organized an attempt on the life of Alexander III. A little later
Catherine Brechkovsky embarked with Tchernov upon that untiring
propaganda which familiarized the humblest of the moujiks with
the mirages of the Socialist gospel. In 1897 the lovely Marie
Vietrov, imprisoned in the Fortress of Saint Peter and Saint Paul
and violated in her cell by a gendarmerie officer, poured the
oil of her lamp over herself and was burnt to death. In 1901 Dora
Brilliant joined with Guerchuny, Savinkov and Bourtzev to found
the Boievaia Organizatsya, the "Fighting Organization,"
and on February 17, 1905, she kept watch at the Kremlin
in Moscow, in order that her comrade, Kalaiev, should be undisturbed
in throwing the bomb which blew the Grand Duke Sergius to pieces.
It is, of course, very difficult to find out anything about
the counter-measures of the Russian police and judicial authorities
in political affairs. The trials of which the public hears from
time to time are always kept very quiet: they are always held
in camera and the censorship only allows a short
notice in the press. But I can give the names of at, any rate
twenty women who have played a part in plots and attempted assassinations
in the last few years: Sophie Ragozinnikov, Tatiana Leontiev,
Marie Spiridonov, Seraphima Klitchoglou, Zynaida Konopliannikov,
Lydia Stoure, Nathalie Klimov, Marussia Benevsky, Lydia Ezersky,
Sophie Venediktov, Catherine Ismailovitch, Helene Ivanov, Anastasis
Bitzenko, Marie Chkolnik, &c. The share of women in terrorist
plots is thus very important and often decisive.
What is the explanation of the fascination that revolutionary
action has for Russian women? They obviously find in it something
which satisfies the strongest instincts of their soul and temperament - their
craving for excitement, their pity for the sufferings of the lowly,
their genius for devotion and sacrifice, their excessive admiration
of heroic deeds, their scorn of danger, their thirst for strong
emotions, their hunger for independence, their taste for mystery,
adventure, and a fevered, extravagant, and rebellious existence.
Tuesday, January 26, 1915.
I lunched at the Winter Palace with the Grand Mistress of the
Court, the worthy Madame Narishkin. The other guests were Prince
Kurakin, Princess Juri Troubetzkoy, Prince and Princess Shakhovskoy,
Count Dimitri Tolstoy, Director of the Hermitage, Count
Apraxin, &c.
The only subject of conversation was the war, which was discussed
in very cautious language: all were agreed that it will be a very
long war, that it still has many painful shocks in store for us,
but that we are obliged to continue it to victory or perish for
ever.
In a tête-à-tête with Madame Narishkin
I asked her what were the Emperor's views:
"He's splendid," she said. "Not the slightest
sign of discouragement! Still calm, still resolute! Always ready
with an encouraging word! Always the same absolute confidence
in victory!"
"What about Her Majesty the Empress?"
Referring to Madame Vyrubova's recent accident, Madame Narishkin
replied:
"You know that Her Majesty the Empress has had a sore
trial the last few days, and as she is very susceptible to emotional
influences her health has suffered. But she is just as determined
as the Emperor, and only yesterday she said to me: "We did
everything we could to avert this war, and we may thus be certain
that God will give us victory."
B - -, who is greatly interested in the lowly and has passed
a good deal of his time in the country, quoted to me to-day some
expressive remarks made by a peasant he met some time ago:
"It was at the great Lavra at Kiev," he said,
"one of the pilgrims' days. In front of the Sacred Door I
spied an old woman who must have been at least eighty. She was
bent double, a bundle of bones, and could hardly drag herself
along. I gave her a few kopecks to make her talkative, and asked
her: 'You look very tired, my poor friend! Where have you come
from?'"
"I'm from Tabinsjk, away in the Urals."
"What a long way!"
"Yes, a very long way."
"But you came by train, I suppose?
"No, I can't afford a railway fare. I've walked."
"Walked, from the Urals to Kiev! How long has it taken
you?"
"Several months. I don't know exactly."
"I suppose you had someone with you?"
No, I came alone."
"Alone!" I looked at her in amazement. She continued:
"Yes, alone ... with my soul! "
I slipped a twenty-rouble note into her hand: it was a lot
of money for her; but her remark was worth far more.
Wednesday, January 27, 1915.
I have been calling on the venerable and attractive Koulomzin,
Secretary of State, Member of the Council of Empire, Chevalier
of the Distinguished Order of Saint Andrew; I wanted to thank
him for sending me a pamphlet. He is nearly eighty, and though
he has grown old in the performance of his high duties his mind
is as clear as ever it was. I like talking to him, as he has a
wealth of experience, good sense, and kindness of heart.
On the subject of the war he was very encouraging:
"Whatever our difficulties at the moment may be it is
an obligation of honour for Russia to overcome them. She owes
it to her Allies and herself to continue the struggle at any cost
until the complete defeat of Germany. But our Allies must be patient!
In any case the continuance of the war depends on His Majesty
alone, and you know what his views are!"
Then we talked about domestic politics. I did not conceal from
him that I am uneasy about the discontent observable in all quarters
and in all ranks of society. He admitted that he, too, was concerned
at the state of public opinion, and that reforms were indicated;
but he added in a determined tone which impressed me:
"The reforms I am contemplating (it would take too long
to describe them in detail) have nothing in common with those
advocated by our Constitutional Democrats in the Duma, and still
less - forgive plain speaking - with those so fervently recommended
by certain western publicists. Russia is not a western country,
and will never be. Our whole national temperament is averse to
your political methods. The reforms I have in mind are inspired
by the two principles which are the pillars of our present system,
and must be retained at any cost - autocracy and orthodoxy. Never
forget that the Emperor has received his authority from God Himself,
in the sacrament of coronation, and that he is not only the head
of the Russian State but the supreme guardian of the Orthodox
Church, the supreme judge of the Holy Synod. The separation of
civil and religious authority which seems so natural to you in
France is impossible with us: it runs counter to our whole historical
evolution. Tsarism and Orthodoxy are linked together by an indissoluble
bond, the bond of divine right. The Tsar is no more free to renounce
absolutism than to abjure the orthodox faith... . Outside autocracy
and orthodoxy there is room for nought save revolution, and by
revolution I mean anarchy, the total subversion of Russia. With
us revolution can only be destructive and anarchist. Look what
happened to Tolstoy! As the climax of his aberrations he renounces
orthodoxy. He at once falls into anarchy. His break with the Church
inevitably led him to deny the authority of the State."
"If I understand you rightly, political reform must be
accompanied, perhaps even preceded, by ecclesiastical reform - the
suppression of the Holy Synod, and the restoration of the Patriarchate,
for example."
In obvious embarrassment he replied:
"You're on a difficult question, Ambassador, a question
on which the best minds are unhappily divided. But much can be
done along those lines ... . ..
After a few remarks by way of digression, he turned the conversation
to the eternal Russian problem in which all the others are involved,
the agrarian problem. There is no one more competent. to discuss
this grave question, as in 1861 he took an active part in the
emancipation of the serfs, and has been concerned in all the successive
reforms since that date. He is said to have been one of the first
to discover that the original idea was a mistake, and to admit
that the moujik should have been given personal ownership,
the full and unrestricted proprietorship of his plot of land.
The conveyance of the land to the mir has had the result
of imbuing the Russian peasant with the essentially communistic
notion that the land belongs legally to those who cultivate it.
The famous ordinances issued by Stolypin in 1906, and inspired
by so liberal a spirit, had no more zealous advocate than Koulomzin.
He concluded as follows:
"In my view, the whole future of Russia depends upon the
transfer to the peasantry of as much land as possible and the
establishment of peasant proprietorship among the rural masses.
The effects produced by the reform of 1906 are already very substantial.
If God keeps us from absurd adventures I believe that in fifteen
or twenty years the system of private property will have completely
ousted that of communal ownership among the peasantry."
Friday, January 29, 1915.
As I was passing Tauride Gardens this afternoon I met four
soldiers on prison duty who, sword in hand, were conducting some
wretched moujik, a ragged, haggard figure with a contrite
and resigned expression, who could hardly drag his worn-out boots
through the snow. The little procession was making for Chpalernaia
Prison.
On its way a woman stopped to gaze at it, a woman of the people
half concealed in a great cloak of greenish wool lined with fur.
She took off her gloves, unhooked her pelisse, rummaged in her
thick skirts, drew out a purse, took a small coin from it and
gave it to the prisoner, simultaneously making the sign of the
cross. The soldiers walked more slowly, and stood aside to let
her do so.
Before my eyes I had the scene from Resurrection in
which Tolstoy shows us Maslova being taken from prison to the
court between two policemen and receiving alms from a moujik
who approaches her and makes the sign of the cross in the
same way.
Sympathy with prisoners, convicts, all who fall into the formidable
clutches of the law, is inherent in the Russian people. In the
eyes of the moujik a breach of the penal code is not a
crime, much less a moral wrong: it is a misfortune, a piece of
ill-luck, a fatality which may happen to anyone, if God so decrees.
Saturday, January 30, 1915.
In a heart-to-heart talk with Sazonov I have returned to the
Polish question:
"I've no hesitation in mentioning it," I said, "as
I know you're as anxious as I to see the kingdom of Poland restored - "
"Under the sceptre of the Romanovs?" he broke in
abruptly.
"That's what I mean! You know my point of view. To me
Poland, reconstituted in its national integrity and restored as
an autonomous kingdom, is the necessary advanced guard of Slavism
against Teutonism, whereas if all the political ties between Poland
and Russia were severed she would inevitably fall into the orbit
of Germany. Poland would thus resume her historic mission on the
frontiers of Eastern Europe, the mission she performed in olden
times when she fought against the Teutonic knights. At the same
time it would mean a final rupture, a decree absolute of divorce
between Germany and Russia."
"I agree with everything you've said and that's why our
Germanophiles hate me so... . But what do I care for their hatred,
as I'm advocating one of the Emperor's pet ideas?"
"I think, too, the resurrection of Poland under the sceptre
of the Romanovs would be of very great advantage to the internal
evolution of the Russian State. I'm not speaking as an Ally now,
but rather as a friend of Russia and, to a great extent, a political
theorist. What I mean is this: one of the things which has struck
me most in the year I have been with you, something which is hardly
noticeable at all abroad, is the importance of the non-Russian
populations in the Empire. Not their numerical importance alone
but rather their moral importance, their high notion of their
ethnical individualism and their claim to stake out a national
life distinct from that of the Russian mass. All your subject
peoples - Poles, Lithuanians, Letts, Balts, Esthonians, Georgians,
Armenians, Tartars and so on are suffering from your administrative
centralization, particularly as your bureaucracy has a heavy hand.
... Sooner or later you'll be compelled to introduce regional
autonomy. If you don't you'll have to be on your guard against
separatism! From this point of view the establishment of an autonomous
Poland would be a very helpful innovation."
"You're on the most ticklish and complex problem in domestic
politics now. In theory I'd go a long way in the direction you
suggest. But if we got down to practical solutions you'd see how
difficult they are to reconcile with Tsarism. Yet to me there's
no Russia without Tsarism."
Sunday, January 31, 1915.
The Official Messenger of Petrograd publishes the text
of a telegram dated July 29 last, in which the Tsar Nicholas proposed
to the Emperor William that the Austro-Serbian dispute should
be referred to the Hague Tribunal. The document reads as follows:
I thank you for your conciliatory and friendly telegram, whereas
the communications of your Ambassador to my Minister to-day have
been in a very different tone. Please clear up this difference.
The Austro-Serbian problem must be submitted to the Hague Conference.
I trust to your wisdom and friendship.
Nicholas.
The German Government omitted to publish this telegram in the
series of messages passing directly between the two sovereigns
in the critical days preceding the war.
I asked Sazonov:
"How is it that neither Buchanan nor I knew of so important
a document?"
"I didn't know of it myself! The Emperor sent it on his
own initiative, without consulting anyone. In his mind it was
a direct and personal appeal to the confidence and friendship
of the Emperor William; he would have put forward his proposal
again, and through official channels, if the Kaiser's answer had
been favourable. As a matter of fact the Kaiser never replied
at all... . The minute of the telegram was discovered the other
day when His Majesty's papers were being arranged. I got the Telegraph
Service to confirm that the message had actually reached Berlin."
"It's alarming to think that our Governments knew nothing
of this telegram. It would have made an immense impression on
public opinion in all countries! Just remember: July 29 was the
time when the Triple Entente was leaving no stone unturned to
save the cause of peace."
"Yes, it's most alarming."
"And think of the Emperor William's frightful responsibility
for letting the Emperor Nicholas's proposal go without a word
in reply!"
"The only reply to such a proposal would have been acceptance.
He did not reply because he wanted war."
"That is what History will say, for it is now clear that
on July 29 the Emperor Nicholas offered to submit the Austro-Serbian
dispute to international arbitration, that on the same day the
Emperor Francis Joseph fired the train by ordering the bombardment
of Belgrade, and the Emperor William presided at the famous Potsdam
Council which decided upon a general war."
Monday, February 1, 1915.
On the left bank of the Vistula, in the region of Sochaczev,
the Russians are engaged in a series of partial, short attacks
which correspond closely with what the Grand Duke Nicholas has
called "as active a defence as possible." In the Bukovina
they are slowly retreating owing to the shortage of ammunition.
Friday, February 5, 1915.
I have just had a call from the Minister of Agriculture, Krivoshein.
Of all the members of Goremykin's Cabinet he and Sazonov are the
most Liberal and the most devoted to the Alliance.
The Department of Agriculture is of vital importance in Russia;
it may be said that it governs all economic and social life. In
the performance of his huge task Krivoshein displays qualities
very rare among Russians - a clear and methodical head, a taste
for precise and accurate information, a notion of leading principles
and broad outlines, the spirit of enterprise, persistence, and
organization. His colonizing work in Siberia, Turkestan, Ferghana,
Outer Mongolia, and the Kirghiz Steppe is showing surprising results
every year.
I asked him what were his impressions of G.H.Q., from which
he has recently returned:
"Splendid!" he said, "splendid! The Grand Duke
Nicholas is most confident and enthusiastic. The moment his artillery
gets ammunition he will take the offensive again; he is as determined
as ever to march on Berlin."
He then spoke to me of the declaration to be read by the Government
at the reopening of the Duma next Tuesday:
"I hope this declaration will have a great effect in Germany
and Austria; it is certainly not less vigorous and uncompromising
than that recently made by your Government to the Chambers. I
can assure you that henceforth no one will wonder whether Russia
is determined to continue the war to victory or not."
Then he told me that the day before yesterday the Emperor detailed
to him at great length his ideas of the broad principles of the
future peace, and several times declared his intention of doing
away with the German Empire: "I will not have," the
Tsar said in a determined tone, " I'll never have
another ambassador of the German Emperor at my court."
Taking advantage of the friendly frankness of our relations,
I asked Krivoshein if he were not afraid that the conduct of operations
might soon be hampered, if not actually paralysed, by internal
difficulties. After a moment's hesitation he replied:
"I can rely on you, Ambassador, and I'll tell you candidly
what I think. I haven't the slightest doubt about the victory
of our armies, on one condition - that there's the closest
co-operation between the Government and public opinion. That co-operation
was perfect at the beginning of the war: I must admit, unfortunately,
that it is threatened now. I spoke about it to the Emperor the
day before yesterday. Unhappily this question is nothing new!
The antagonism between the imperial authority and civil society
is the greatest scourge of our political life. I have been watching
it regretfully for a long time. A few years ago I expressed all
my resentment at it in a phrase which became rather celebrated
at the time. I said: The future of Russia will remain precarious
so long as the Government and society continue to regard each
other as two hostile camps and refer to each other as 'they' instead
of using the word 'us' to designate the Russian nation. Whose
fault is it? Nobody's and everybody's, as usual. You're uneasy
about the abuses and anachronisms of Tsarism. You're right. But
can any substantial reform be ventured upon during the war? Certainly
not! For even if Tsarism has grave faults it also has some of
the highest qualities, qualities for which there is no substitute.
It is the potent link between all the heterogeneous elements which
the work of centuries has gradually grouped around ancient Muscovy.
It is Tsarism alone that constitutes our national unity. Cast
away that life-giving principle and you'll see Russia at once
fall apart and dissolve. To whose advantage? Certainly not that
of France. One of the strongest reasons for my advocacy of Tsarism
is that I believe it capable of evolution. It has been through
so much evolution already! The institution of the Duma is a fact
of enormous importance which has changed all our political psychology.
I hold that further restriction of the imperial power is still
necessary, and that the control of the Duma over the administration
must be extended: I also think that there must be extensive decentralization
in all our public services. But, once more, Ambassador, this can
only be after the war... . For the moment, as I said
to His Majesty the other day, the plain duty of Ministers is to
remove the causes of the friction which has been observable
for several months between the Government and public opinion;
it is a sine qua non of victory.
Tuesday, February 9, 1915.
Much excitement to-day at the Tauride Palace, where the new
session of the Duma has begun.
The Government pronouncement is all that Krivoshein had said:
I could not ask for a tone of greater resolution. There was a
thunder of applause when Goremykin said as loudly as his feeble
voice would let him:
Turkey has joined our enemies; but her military forces are
already shaken by our glorious Caucasian troops, and ever clearer
before our eyes rises the radiant future of Russia on the shores
of the sea which washes the walls of Constantinople.
This was followed by a moving speech by Sazonov, who very wisely
made but a passing reference to the question of the Straits:
"The day is at hand which will see the solution of the
economic and political problems now raised by the necessity of
securing Russia access to the open sea."
The orators who followed him on the tribune voiced the aspirations
of the nation. Evgraf Kovalevsky, the Deputy for Voronej, declared
that the war must put an end to the age-old struggle between Russia
and Turkey. He was cheered to the skies as he said:
"The Straits are the key of our house; they must pass
into our keeping with the territories on their shores."
In the same way Miliukov, the leader of the " Cadets,"
roused his audience to the highest pitch of enthusiasm when he
thanked Sazonov for his words:
"We are glad to know that the realization of our national
task is making good progress. We can now be certain that Constantinople
and the Straits will become ours at the opportune moment through
diplomatic and military measures."
During a kind of interval I had a talk with the President,
Rodzianko, and several deputies - Miliukov, Shingariev, Protopopov,
Kovalevsky, Basil Maklakov, Prince Boris Galitzin, Tchikhatchov
and others. They all brought the same impression from their provinces.
All of them told me that the national conscience had been stirred
to the depths, and that the Russian nation would rise as one man
against a peace which was not a peace of victory and did not give
Constantinople to Russia. Shingariev took me on one side and said:
"What you have been seeing and hearing, Ambassador, is
the real Russia, and I'll guarantee that in her France has a loyal
ally, an ally who is prepared to give her last man and her last
kopeck to the cause of victory. But it is true that Russia must
not be betrayed by certain secret cabals - which are becoming
dangerous. You are in a better position than we ourselves, Ambassador,
to see many things which we can only suspect... . You cannot
be too vigilant."
Shingariev, Deputy for Petrograd, member of the "Cadet"
Party, and a doctor by profession, is a distinguished and honest
man; he was interpreting very accurately what all the soundest
elements of the Russian public are thinking to-day.(4)
Wednesday, February 10, 1915.
When the war broke out many Russian Socialists felt that it
was their duty to co-operate with the other forces in the country
in resistance to German aggression. They thought, too, that the
universal brotherhood of the popular masses would be strengthened
on the field of battle, and that the domestic emancipation of
Russia would be the fruit of victory.
None of them was more convinced of this than one of the revolutionaries
who had taken refuge in Paris, Bourtzev, who made a name for himself
in showing up the agents provocateurs of the Okhrana
and denouncing the infamous methods of the imperial police.
He was also very much impressed by the lofty tone of the proclamation
to the Russian people issued by the Emperor on August 2:
In the dreadful hour of trial, let all intestine strife
be forgotten, the bonds between the Tsar and his people be strengthened;
and may Russia rise as one man to repel the attack of the insolent
foe! A fortnight later the publication of the proclamation
to the Poles fortified him in his views. Without in any way renouncing
his doctrines, or his hopes, he bravely advocated to his comrades
in exile the necessity of a temporary reconciliation with Tsarism.
To prove his trust in the new spirit of the Imperial Government,
he then returned to Russia, believing that he could be more usefully
employed in his own country. He had hardly crossed the frontier
before he was arrested. He was thrown into prison, and detained
pending trial. At length he was tried for certain of his former
writings, and without receiving any credit for his conduct since
the beginning of the war he was condemned to penal servitude for
life in Siberia "for the crime of high treason." He
was immediately sent to Turukansk on the Jenissei, in the Polar
Circle.
This morning I received from Viviani, Minister of justice,
a telegram describing the deplorable effect Bourtzev's sentence
has had on the Socialists of France, and asking me to do everything
in my power - but with due circumspection - to obtain a pardon
for Bourtzev.
Apart from the patriotic attitude displayed by Bourtzev at
the beginning of the war his biography gives me no argument I
can use in his favour with the imperial authorities, who utterly
detest him.
Vladimir Lvovitch Bourtzev, a scion of the small landed nobility,
was born at Fort Alexandrovsk in 1862. At the age of twenty he
was imprisoned for his revolutionary propaganda. Released a month
later he was arrested again in 1885, and this time sentenced to
seven years' detention in Siberia. A year later he succeeded in
escaping from the penal settlement, and took refuge in Geneva
and subsequently in London.
Although English traditions as regards hospitality to political
refugees are extremely liberal he soon found himself in conflict
with the law through having published in his review, Narodno
Voletz (The Will of the People), a series of articles exhorting
the youth of Russia "to imitate the glorious assassins of
Alexander II." This incitement to regicide cost him eighteen
months' hard labour. On the expiration of his sentence he returned
to Switzerland, where his first act was to publish a pamphlet,
Down with the Tsar, which was quite enough to justify the
sentence of the English judge. By way of occupying his spare time
he edited a very interesting review, Byloie (The Past), devoted
to the history of liberal ideas and seditious movements in Russia.
But his hatred of Tsarism, the lust of battle, his romantic
taste for secret and spectacular action would not let him rest
for long. In December, 1901, he joined with Guerchouny, Azev,
Tchernov, Dora Brilliant and Savinkov, in starting a Fighting
Organization which was to concentrate and direct all the militant
energies of the Socialist Party. A plan of campaign was drawn
up. Three victims of high station were selected; first, the Procurator
of the Holy Synod, the fanatical theorist of autocracy, Pobiedonostsev;
then General Prince Obolensky, Governor of Kharkov, and, lastly,
the Minister of the Interior, Sipiaguin.
The attempt on Pobiedonostsev's life failed owing to the work
of an informer. Prince Obolensky was only slightly wounded, but
on April 15, 1902, Sipiaguin was shot through the heart and died
instantly. Thereafter terrorist exploits multiplied apace.
At the end of 1903 the Russian Government protested to the
Swiss Government against the facilities obtained by the revolutionaries
on Swiss territory for the preparation of their plots. The information
accompanying this protest was only too convincing. Bourtzev and
his accomplices were accordingly expelled. They took refuge in
Paris. Bourtzev took up his residence in a small house in the
Boulevard Arago, where he professed to live a peaceful life devoted
exclusively to historical research; but secretly and by degrees
he transferred there the whole Fighting Organization with
its archives, secret meetings, and store of explosives.
At that time I was Director of the Russian Department at the
Foreign Office, and it was thus that the name and activities of
Bourtzev became known to me. Rataiev, the agent of the Okhrana
in Paris, was not slow to discover the mysterious meeting-place
in the Boulevard Arago. On April 20, 1914, the Russian Embassy
asked us to expel Bourtzev, denouncing him as one of the most
dangerous revolutionaries, irreconcilable, and fanatical. The
note given us by the Ambassador, Nelidov, ended thus: Bourtzev
possesses a remarkable faculty for exciting the pernicious instincts
of the revolutionary youth and turning them in a very short space
of time into fanatics committed to crimes of violence. It
was this last sentence which particularly struck me; its tone
was different from that of the ordinary notes we were always receiving
on the subject of Russian refugees; it described an uncommon character,
and suggested an individual of marked originality. The file also
enclosed a photograph, with a view to facilitating the task of
our police. I saw a man who was still young, a man of frail appearance
with a hollow chest and narrow shoulders. His face made a strong
impression upon me - a haggard, ill-looking, ascetic face brightened,
or rather lit up, by his eyes that fascinated me with their gentle
ardour. I at once understood this man's influence, his power to
inspire and sweep others along, the strange magnetism which made
him such a wonderful creator of energy in others, and so formidable
an apostle of the gospel of revolution. On the back of the photograph
I read this dedication:
Never forget the great names of Jelabov, Sophie Perovskaia,
Khalturin and Grinevitsky!(5) Their names are
our standard. They died in the firm conviction that we shall
follow in their glorious tracks.
On April 26, the Prefecture of Police notified Bourtzev
of the decree of expulsion.
However, since he settled in Paris he had made friends with
the leaders of French Socialism, whose admiration and sympathy
he had quickly gained by all that he had gone through and the
fervour of his democratic mysticism, his persuasive eloquence,
and the shy and moving gentleness of his frank eyes. He implored
them to save him from a fresh migration.
Those were the days of the Combes Ministry, which submitted
passively to the dictation of the Socialists in order to preserve
its majority with the Left. Delcassé was Minister for Foreign
Affairs, but on all questions of domestic policy he differed from
his colleagues and jealously confined himself to his diplomatic
duties, in which he consulted no one. Hence his amazement and
rage when Nelidov told him in June that Bourtzev was still at
large in Paris! An urgent appeal by Jaurès to Combes had
prevented the decree of expulsion from being carried into effect.
Bourtzev, of course, made good use of the unfettered liberty
he enjoyed in Paris: he brought the Fighting Organization to
the highest pitch of perfection. On July 28, in one of the busiest
streets of Saint Petersburg, the Ismailovsky Prospekt, the
Minister of the Interior, Plehve, was killed on the spot by a
bomb.
Once more, and with greater insistence, the Russian Ambassador
demanded the deportation of Bourtzev. Delcassé brought
the matter up before the Council of Ministers, sent me several
times to Police Headquarters, and spoke to Combes personally.
It was in vain. The all-powerful protection of Jaurès shielded
the terrorist once more, and the decree of expulsion was annulled.
These recollections of the "Bourtzev Case" did not
exactly encourage me to open the negotiations Viviani has imposed
upon me. To whom should I apply? How, and in what form, was the
discussion to be opened? The problem was all the more ticklish,
as questions of pardon appertain to the Minister of Justice's
department. The present holder of that office is Stcheglovitov,
the fiercest of all the reactionaries, the most jealous upholder
of autocratic prerogatives, and a man who alleges that the alliance
of Russia with the western democracies means the inevitable downfall
of Tsarism.
In my difficulty I had a friendly talk with Sazonov. He almost
jumped out of his skin at first!
"A pardon for Bourtzev! You're not thinking of that!
However carefully you may put it, you'll give Stcheglovitov
and all our wild men of the Extreme Right a terrific argument
against the Alliance... . It's not the right moment either,
indeed it isn't!"
But I reasoned with him and argued that a pardon for Bourtzev
would be interpreted in all quarters as an act of national solidarity;
I added that the French Socialist Ministers such as Guesde, Sembat,
and Albert Thomas, who were helping most patriotically in the
war, needed assistance and encouragement in their task, and that
an exhibition of clemency in favour of Bourtzev would do a good
deal to strengthen their position with the advanced section of
their party, in which all the old prejudices against Russia were
still alive. I ended up by begging Sazonov to see if he could
not lay my request before the Emperor personally without sending
it up through Stcheglovitov:
"It's not a legal matter, it's a diplomatic affair of
the first rank, because it touches the moral relations of the
two allied countries. My Government has no desire whatever to
intervene in your domestic affairs; all it asks me to do is to
suggest to you a step which will do the Russian cause a great
deal of good in France. So I'm certain the Emperor will approve
my appeal directly to himself. When the matter is brought to his
notice in that way I'm quite certain what his reply will be."
"I'll look into it, and think it over... . I'll mention
the matter again in a day or two."
After a few moments of gloomy silence Sazonov resumed, as if
some fresh objection had struck him:
"If you knew what infamous lies Bourtzev had the audacity
to publish against the Emperor and Empress, you'd realize how
dangerous your request is."
"I can trust to His Majesty's great judgment."
Friday, February 12, 1915.
The repeated attacks to which the Russians have been treated
in covering Warsaw on the Bzura line during the last ten days
are only a feint. All indications point to the fact that the Germans
have concentrated in East Prussia everything necessary for a very
violent offensive, under the pressure of which the Russian line
is already wavering.
Saturday, February 13, 1915.
This morning Sazonov received me with a broad smile:
"I've good news for you... . Guess!"
"What do you mean? Bourtzev's pardon?"
"Yes. I was received by the Emperor yesterday evening
and put your request to him. I didn't get through without a struggle!
His Majesty said: 'Does Monsieur Paléologue know all
the infamous things Bourtzev has written about the Empress and
myself?' But I persevered, and the Emperor is so kind and
has such a lofty conception of his sovereign mission that he replied
practically at once:
'All right! Tell the French Ambassador that I give him the
wretch's pardon.' His Majesty could not resist the temptation
to add: ' I don't seem to remember my Ambassador in Paris ever
intervening to secure a pardon for any French political criminal.'"
I asked Sazonov to convey to the Emperor the expression of
my deepest gratitude, and thanked him warmly personally for having
pleaded my cause so effectively:
"You may be certain," I said, "that you and
I have just rendered the Alliance a great service!"(6)
Chapter Footnotes
1. Brother of the famous Princess Lieven,
the friend of Guizot.
2. The Ohkrana is very liberally
supplied with secret service funds. Its normal budget is 3,500,000
roubles annually. It receives another 400,000 roubles for press
propaganda purposes. Further, its extraordinary expenditure is
met out of the special credit of 10,000,000 roubles which is
opened at the Ministry of Finance to cover unforeseen requirements
of the imperial administration. It can only be drawn upon by
express order of the Emperor himself.
3. The Tsar is not, as is often said, the
head of the Church. He is only its supreme guardian.
From the religious point of view his only privilege is that
in the communion service he has the right to take the cup and
the bread from the altar himself.
4. Doctor Shingariev became a member of the
Provisional Government in March, 1917; he was murdered by the
Bolshevists on January 20, 1918.
5. The assassins of Alexander II.
6. Bourtzev was immediately brought from
Turukansk to Russia. For some months he resided at Tver under
police supervision. Then he was permitted to live in Petrograd.
In October, 1917, the Bolshevists threw him into prison. He was
released in April, 1918, and took refuge in France.
