If anyone were to tell the true history, for example, of the teachers’ college of Tver, or of any similar undertaking of a Zémstvo in those years, with all the petty persecutions, the prohibitions, the suspensions, and whatnot with which the institution was harassed, no West European, and especially no American reader, would believe it. He would throw the book aside, saying, “It cannot be true; it is too stupid to be true.” And yet it was so. Whole groups of the elected representatives of several Zémstvos were deprived of their functions, ordered to leave their province and their estates, or were simply exiled, for having dared to petition the Emperor in the most loyal manner concerning such rights as belonged to the Zémstvos by law. “The elected members of the provincial councils must be simple ministerial functionaries, and obey the minister of the interior:” such was the theory of the St. Petersburg government. As to the less prominent people—teachers, doctors, and the like, in the service of the local councils—they were removed and exiled by the state police in twenty-four hours, without further ceremony than an order of the omnipotent Third Section of the imperial chancelry. No longer ago than last year, a lady whose husband is a rich landowner and occupies a prominent position in one of the Zémstvos, and who is herself interested in education, invited eight schoolmasters to her birthday party. “Poor men,” she said to herself, “they never have the opportunity of seeing anyone but the peasants.” The day after the party, the village policeman called at the mansion and insisted upon having the names of the eight teachers, in order to report them to the police authorities. The lady refused to give the names. “Very well,” he replied, “I will find them out, nevertheless, and make my report. Teachers must not come together, and I am bound to report if they do.” The high position of the lady sheltered the teachers, in this case; but if they had met in the lodgings of one of their own number, they would have received a visit from the state police, and half of them would have been dismissed by the ministry of education; and if, moreover, an angry word had escaped from one of them during the police raid, he or she would have been sent to some province of the Urals. This is what happens today, thirty-three years after the opening of the county and district councils; but it was far worse in the seventies. What sort of basis for a political struggle could such institutions offer?
When I inherited from my father his Tambóv estate, I thought very seriously for a time of settling on that estate, and devoting my energy to work in the local Zémstvo. Some peasants and the poorer priests of the neighborhood asked me to do so. As for myself, I should have been content with anything I could do, no matter how small it might be, if only it would help to raise the intellectual level and the well-being of the peasants. But one day, when several of my advisers were together, I asked them: “Supposing I were to try to start a school, an experimental farm, a cooperative enterprise, and, at the same time, also took upon myself the defense of that peasant from our village who has lately been wronged—would the authorities let me do it?” “Never!” was the unanimous reply.
An old gray-haired priest, a man who was held in great esteem in our neighborhood, came to me, a few days later, with two influential dissenting leaders, and said: “Talk with these two men. If you can manage it, go with them and, Bible in hand, preach to the peasants. … Well, you know what to preach. … No police in the world will find you, if they conceal you. … There’s nothing to be done besides; that’s what I, an old man, advise you.”
I told them frankly why I could not assume the part of Wycliffe. But the old man was right. A movement similar to that of the Lollards is rapidly growing now amongst the Russian peasants. Such tortures as have been inflicted on the peace-loving Dukhobórs, and such raids upon the peasant dissenters in South Russia as were made in 1897, when children were kidnapped so that they might be educated in orthodox monasteries, will only give to that movement a force that it could not have attained five-and-twenty years ago.
As the question of agitation for a constitution was continually being raised in our discussions, I once proposed to our circle to take it up seriously, and to choose an appropriate plan of action. I was always of the opinion that when the circle decided anything unanimously, each member ought to put aside his personal feeling and give all his strength to the task. “If you decide to agitate for a constitution,” I said, “this is my plan: I will separate myself from you, for appearance’ sake, and maintain relations with only one member of the circle—for instance, Tchaikovsky—through whom I shall be kept informed how you succeed in your work, and can communicate to you in a general way what I am doing. My work will be among the courtiers and the higher functionaries. I have among them many acquaintances, and know a number of persons who are disgusted with the present conditions. I will bring them together and unite them, if
